by B. TRAVEN
“I figure,” Howard said, “this guy is a special commissioner of the gov’ment—the federal government, I mean. Hell, I can’t quite make out what he wants.”
“Looks to me as if he’s questioning the villagers,” Dobbs said. “I hope he isn’t asking them any questions about us.”
“What of it? It’s too late now, anyhow.” Curtin kicked a burro nibbling at the grass of the plaza.
“All right, let’s pretend we don’t mind.” Howard lighted his pipe to cover his nervousness.
The Mexican officials, occupied with the little crowd of villagers at the house, had taken no notice of the pack-train. Pack-trains of burros or mules passing through the villages on the slopes of the Sierra Madre are no novelty. The three partners reached the center of the square before any of the officials noticed them. Then one said a few words to his companions, and all of them looked at the partners, who went on their way. As they neared the opposite end of the plaza, one of the officials stepped out of the portico, walked a few strides toward the passing train, and called: “’ello there, caballeros, un momento, por favor!”
“Good night, now we are finished,” Dobbs said, and swore.
“Wait here,” Howard ordered. “I’ll go over alone first and see what they want. You stay here with the burros. Maybe I can square things with them better alone. I can make them think I’m a Baptist preacher from an abandoned mining town.”
“He’s right as always, the old man is,” Curtin admitted. “That’s why I’d never try to play poker with him. Okay, go over and give them a good look at your honest face and tell them the story of Jonah in the whale or maybe Elijah flying a plane up to heaven.”
Howard crossed the plaza and walked over to the officials. “Buenas días, señores. What can I do for you? Qué puedo ofrecerle?”
“Lots you can, señor,” one of them answered. “You come from the mountains, señores?”
“Yes, we do. And it’s a god-damned hard journey. We’ve been on a hunting-trip. Got quite a few hides, and we hope to get a good price in San Luis Potosí.”
“Are you all vaccinated?”
“Are we what?”
“I mean have you got with you your certificado de vacunación, your vaccination certificate? It’s the law that everybody in the republic has to have been vaccinated inside of the last five years to prevent smallpox epidemics.”
“Oh, caballeros, we were vaccinated back home when still kids. But, of course, we don’t carry our vaccination papers with us.”
“Of course not, gentlemen, and who does? Not even I do.” The officer laughed. So did all the other officials. “You see, we are the Federal Health Commission, sent out by the government to vaccinate everyone, especially the Indians, who suffer most from the smallpox. It’s a hard task for us. They run away from us whenever we come to a village. They are afraid. We’d have to bring along a whole regiment of soldiers to catch them. They hide in the mountains and in the bush and don’t go back to their homes until we have left the district.”
“Yes,” said another official, “look here at my face, all scratched up by women who defended their babies whom we wanted to vaccinate. But you know our country. Look at the thousands who have lost their eyesight on account of the ravages caused by smallpox epidemics. Look at the thousands and hundreds of thousands of pretty girls and women whose faces are scarred.”
“And when we come to these people to help them,” another of the officials broke in, “they fight us and even stone us as if we were their greatest enemies and not, as we really are, their best friends. They don’t have to pay a cent. Everything is done without any charge. The government only wishes to save them.”
Now the man with the eyeglasses spoke up. “See here, my good friend, I know you and your compañeros over there are all vaccinated. But we would like you to do us a great favor. Let your friends come over here voluntarily and get vaccinated once more, please. What we need is to show all these ignorant people that you, white men, are not afraid of what we are doing and that you come to get the scratch as if you were going to a dance. In all those huts behind the saplings there are families watching us. We have been here four days, offering vaccination for nothing and persuading people to come and take it. What makes things worse for us, the church is set against vaccination because it was not ordered by the Lord, just as this same church is against educating the children, because they might read books written against the church and write sinful love-letters. Well, you know all this without my telling you more about it. Now, won’t you, please, help us?”
“Why not? Of course,” Howard replied. “We are pleased to help you and the government.”
“I thought so when I saw you coming,” the doctor said. He laid before Howard his book with blanks. “Now, just write your name and your age on this line. After the vaccination you receive this slip, which is good for the next five years. If officials at a railroad station or in a town bother you about vaccination, all you have to do is just show them this slip. All right, let’s have your left arm and clean first with alcohol. Okay, friend, there are the few scratches.”
“Gracias, doctor.” Howard meant his thanks in more than one way.
“Now, please, tell your friends when they come over here to roll up the sleeve of their left arm while crossing the plaza so that the people watching from their huts can see what they are doing and that they are not a bit afraid of the medicine. We’ll put this table farther out in the open to make it a great show. To have you three white men, Americans, coming here of your own free will to get the scratch, or the medicine, as these Indians call it, is a great help to us. They’ll see that we don’t mean to poison them, and they’ll have more confidence in our work. So, please, let your friends put on a great show for the benefit of the villagers. Thank you, and have a pleasant trip home.”
“Gee, I got scared,” Dobbs said when Howard returned to the waiting train. “Seeing that feller take out a book and make you scribble in it, I was sure everything was lost. Huh, of course we’ll make them a great circus. Just watch me, how I handle a big show.”
So Dobbs and Curtin rolled up their sleeves and shouted in Spanish from where they were: “Si, doctor, what a pleasure to get that sweet vacuna in our arms! We’ve been waiting for it for ten years and couldn’t get it. In town the doctors charged us fifteen pesos for each little scratch, and you give it away for nothing. Yes, we are coming.”
As the officials had expected, the plan worked fine. The villagers, first mostly men and the bigger boys, came out and stood in the opening of their huts, watching the show Curtin and Dobbs were offering them. When Dobbs held his arm toward the doctor, he laughed out loud. Curtin whistled a jolly tune. Men and boys came closer to see the procedure. The doctor smiled and the officers persuaded one of the men standing nearest to come and have the same thing done to him. Curtin pushed him closer jokingly, as the man was still frightened. But after he had the few scratches and felt nothing, he pushed his two boys forward and ordered them to hold still and have it over. When the partners finally left the plaza, the officers were so busy that they had to line up the people waiting for their turn, and among them now there were already women offering the arms of their babies to the officers.
After passing the last hut of the village, Dobbs said with a laugh: “Hey, Curty, you’re a funny mug.”
“What the hell is so funny about me?”
“You see ghosts like an old woman. If you see a guy with a rusty gat on his hip, right away you think the goods are gone. Anyone could have told you that these guys didn’t want anything from us. You could have seen that the guy with the specs was a doc. Couldn’t you see that right away from the table with a white sheet spread out on it? What else could a table with a white sheet on it serve for?”
“You’re telling me, wise mug!” Curtin grinned. “Anyhow, joke or no joke, I like it better this way.”
“So do I,” Howard threw in.
19
That night the partners pitched cam
p not far away from the village of Amapuli. An Indian meeting them on the trail had assured them that the next water was too far off to be reached before nightfall, so they decided to pass the night there by a brook, although it was still early in the afternoon.
While sitting by the fire cooking their supper, they were surprised to see four Indians on horseback coming into their camp. The visitors greeted them courteously and asked permission to sit down by the fire and rest a little.
“Ay, como no?” Howard answered. “Why not? It’s a pleasure to have your company. No, no bother at all, caballeros. Feel quite at home, es su casa. Want to have some hot coffee with us?”
The coffee was accepted, and the four natives helped themselves, all drinking out of the same cup, which Curtin offered them. Dobbs offered his tobacco-pouch, which the men also accepted. They each took a pinch of tobacco and rolled it in corn leaves which they carried with them. In return they offered the partners tobacco of their own.
Silently they watched Howard and Dobbs roast their pork and cook their rice. Curtin was taking care of the burros.
Then, after a long wait, one of the Indians seemed ready at last to come to the point of their visit. It is not considered polite among them to make their wishes clear during the first half-hour.
“I presume,” the speaker began, “you caballeros come from a far-away country, and I trust you will travel a long way from here. I think, and my compañeros think the same, that you are very clever, very intelligent, and highly educated men.”
“Fairly.” Howard took up their way of talking. “We can read books and also papers with all the news, and we can write letters and also count with written figures.”
“Figures?”
“Yep, figures,” Howard repeated. “To say it more plainly, ten, five, twenty—those are figures.”
“But,” said the Indian, “that would be only half of it. You can’t say ten or twenty. You have to add what ten you mean, ten goats, or ten centavos, or ten horses. Ten alone means nothing.”
“Tal vez, maybe you’re right.” Howard had never looked at figures this way.
For a quarter of an hour more the Indians watched the partners preparing their food.
Then the man spoke again: “You see, caballeros, it is like this. My boy fell into the water today. We fished him out soon enough. I do not think he is dead. I think he is not dead at all. But he simply won’t come to, see? He can’t move and he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t wake up. That’s the whole trouble with him. Now, I understand you have read many books in which much is said about all the wisdom of doctors and medicine. And so I came with my dear friends here to find out if perhaps one of you, having read all the clever books written by great men, might know what is the matter with my boy who fell into the river, not very wide, but right now very deep.”
“When did your son fall into the water? Was it yesterday?” Howard asked.
“No, señor, he fell into the water only today—this afternoon. But he does not wake up. When he did not come to and we no longer knew what to do, along came don Filberto, my friend here and neighbor. He is the man, you will remember, who met you today in the bush and whom you asked how far away the next water might be. So we thought that you might know what we can do to bring my son back to life.”
Howard looked at the four Indians. Then he looked at the supper, now almost ready. And he said: “I will go with you, friends, and have a look at the boy. I don’t know if I can do anything. But I’ll do my best to help you.”
The Indians stood up, politely took leave of the two remaining partners, and with Howard in their midst went to their little village. Howard had been given a horse, while the owner of the horse took his seat behind the saddle of one of the others.
It was a poor adobe house which they entered. A petate, a palm mat, was spread over the only table in the house, and on this mat the boy lay.
Howard examined him carefully. He lifted the boy’s eyelids and held a lighted match before the eyes. Then he pressed his right ear against his heart. He put his hand against the upper part of the skull to see if it was still warm. Then he pressed the fingers and the toes of the youngster, watching to see if the pressed nails reddened quickly.
All the people assembled in the house seemed to expect that the American would now perform a great miracle such as raising the dead by sheer command. Howard stood for minutes silent, hesitating what treatment if any he should try first. “I will see if I can bring him back this way,” he finally said.
There was little water coming from the body. The old man tried artificial respiration, something these Indians had never seen before. This treatment made a deep impression and added to the belief that Howard was a great medicine-man, even a magician. They looked at each other approvingly, and once more became convinced that those god-damned gringos could do things they had thought only God Himself could do.
Howard, examining the boy again after fifteen minutes of this work, was sure that he showed slight signs of life. He asked for a little mirror, and when he held it to the boy’s mouth, he thought he could see a trace of mist on the glass. He had the women bring him all the hot water that was in the house and in the neighborhood and boil as much more as could be had. He got towels and made hot compresses to put on the boy’s belly, and when they were in place he rubbed and slapped the patient’s hands and feet. Then he forced his mouth open, pulled the tongue out as far as he could, and poured a teaspoonful of tequila into the mouth. Next he began to massage the heart. When he listened again with his ear close to the breast, the heart had begun to pump feebly. Howard could hear it very distinctly. And just then the boy began to cough.
Half of all this procedure, Howard knew, was unnecessary. He had gone through it merely to impress the Indians with his great wisdom, for he noted that the Indians were watching every move he made. He admitted to himself that the boy if left entirely alone might, perhaps, have come to just as well. Why he put on this show he could not explain. He had the feeling that the more he acted, the more these people would respect and admire him; though why, again, he should yearn for the admiration and respect of these poor folk he would not have been able to explain, even to himself.
All the people present considered that he had performed a miracle. Even now, when the boy opened his eyes and began to recognize his surroundings and his father and mother, the onlookers acted as if under a spell. They did not utter a word, but simply looked at the awakening boy and at Howard in awe.
When Howard had made sure that the boy was all right and that there would be no bad reaction he took his hat and said: “Buenas noches! Good night!” and went to the door. The father of the boy followed, shook hands, and muttered: “Muchas, muchas, mil gracias, señor, thousand thanks!” Then he returned to the table, where the boy was trying to sit up.
2
It was now pitch-dark. Howard had some difficulty in finding his way back to camp. No one accompanied him, but the faint light of the camp-fire flickering in the distance guided him.
“Well, what did the great doctor achieve?” Dobbs asked when the old man came near.
“It wasn’t anything to speak of. Artificial respiration and some boy-scout tricks and he came along fine. I think it was more shock than drowning. He hadn’t swallowed much water, as far as I could tell. Perhaps he was stunned when diving. Now what about my part of the supper? Any meat left?”
“Plenty. Don’t you worry,” Curtin laughed and heaped his plate.
3
Dawn saw the partners already on their march again. They wished to reach the village of Tominil, where they would try to cross the high passes of the Sierra Madre.
At noon they stopped to give themselves and the animals a rest, as the sun was mercilessly hot.
They were just ready to pack up again when Curtin exclaimed: “Now what the devil is coming? Looks as if we have something on our heels.”
“Where?” Dobbs asked. At the same moment he had caught sight of a group of Indians on horseback.
>
It was not long before they reached the partners, who recognized four of the men as the same who last night had come to their camp to ask for help. Two others Howard knew had been in the house when he had treated the boy.
The Indians greeted the travelers, and one of the men asked: “Señores, why did you leave our neighborhood so soon?”
Howard laughed. “We weren’t running away, señores. The fact is we have to go to Durango, to attend to our business, which is very important.”
“Business?” the father of the rescued boy questioned. “What is business, after all? Just hustle and worry. Business can wait. There is no business in this world which is urgent, señores. Urgent business is nothing but sheer imagination. Death finishes the most important and the most urgent business in a second. So what? There are more days coming, as long as there is a sun in the heavens. Every new day you can use to do business. Why just today? There is always a mañana, always a tomorrow, which is just as good as today. What’s the difference between today and tomorrow? It’s only imaginary. And so I say, señores, you cannot go. You cannot leave me like that. No, señor. You cannot leave me in debt to you. I invite you to stay with me. You rescued my boy from certain death. For having done this great service I should be damned and burn in hell for all eternity if I allowed you to go without first showing you my deep gratitude. What is more, all the people in the village would believe me a sinner and a devil if I did not reward you properly for what you have done for me and my family.”
Dobbs pushed Curtin in the ribs and said in a low voice: “Seems to me a similar story to that told us by the old man the other day about the doctor who cured the eyes of the son of an Indian chief, and this time it’s us that gets the benefit. Sure, that guy knows a lost gold mine he’s going to offer us. I bet you.”
“Keep quiet and let’s listen first,” Curtin said.