by B. TRAVEN
The Indian continued his speech. “You see, señores, the only way I can show you my gratitude is by inviting you to be my guests for at least two weeks.”
Dobbs looked sour.
“No, señores, let’s make it six weeks; that would be better. I have good milpas, very fine acres. Lots of corn. I have many goats and quite a number of sheep. I am not so poor as I may look. Each day I shall have a turkey roasted for you, and as many eggs and as much goat’s milk and roast kid as you can eat. I have already ordered my wife to make you at least three times a week the very best tamales she can make. In fact, she has been hard at work since long before sunrise to prepare a great feast for you. You cannot well leave her now with all the good food cooked. She would die of shame, thinking you believe her a bad cook. She isn’t; my wife is a great cook. I think she is the best cook for miles around.”
“I thank you for your kindness, for your very great kindness indeed,” Howard responded, falling in with the elaborate speech his would-be host had used. “To tell you the truth, I’m very sorry we can’t stay on. We have to go to Durango. Unless I am in Durango inside of a week, I’ll lose all my business.”
“In this you are mistaken, my friend. You won’t lose your business. And if you should, why, pick up another one. There is so much business in the world just waiting to be picked up. No use to hurry. All I can say is that you cannot go like this. I have to pay you for your medicine. I haven’t any money. All I can offer is my house and my most sincere hospitality. Sorry, my friend, I’m afraid I shall have to insist that you stay with me at least six weeks. You will get a good horse to ride on. You may go hunting and get more hides. You haven’t so many. We have the best game around here. I will see the musicians tomorrow, and every Saturday night we will have a dance. The prettiest girls will come and be pleased to dance with you. I will make them, because you are my guest. Why worry about your business? There is only one business on earth, and that is to live and be happy. What greater thing can you gain from life than happiness?”
“I am extremely sorry, señor, but I cannot stay.” Howard had no means and no words with which to explain to these simple men that business is the only real thing in life, that it is heaven and paradise and all the happiness of a good Rotarian. These Indians were still living in a semi-civilized state, with little hope of improvement within the next hundred years. “No, honestly,” he added, “I can’t accept your hospitality, much as I’d like to.”
“Understand, caballeros,” Dobbs cut in, “we can’t stay here. We can’t, I say, we simply can’t, and that’s that; there’s no other way out.”
“You’d better not try to come into our deal, young man,” said the Indian, who took little notice of Dobbs and his opinion. He again addressed Howard: “I don’t accept refusal, caballero. We have taken your help without question and we accepted what you offered us. You cannot back out now and refuse what we wish to offer you in return for your service.”
To get angry would not help. The partners felt that there was no escape. Here were six mounted Indians with a firm and unshakable idea of what they wanted. They were determined to show their gratitude in their own way, and show it they would if it meant taking the partners to the village as prisoners.
At this stage of deadlock Curtin said: “Oiga, listen, friends, we want to talk this thing over among ourselves, if you don’t mind. Will you please leave us alone for a minute?”
When they had stepped aside, Dobbs spoke up: “Look here, Howy, I don’t think we can get out of this. They will take us along by force if we don’t go. Now, the thing is, they want only you, you alone, not us two. That much is clear.”
“Looks like.”
“Okay. So I propose that you stay a few days and we go on. You may follow up later, meeting us in Durango.”
“What about my packs?”
“You take them along with you,” Curtin suggested.
Dobbs was against it. “That wouldn’t be wise. They might, out of pure curiosity, search the packs, and if they discover what is in them they will rob you, perhaps kill you. You can never trust an Indian. No road would be safe for you traveling alone. You know that, old feller, don’t you?”
“All right. What can I do? Spill it.”
“I suggest we take it along with us, and, as I said, we would wait for you in Durango City. Or if you should stay longer, we might take the whole lot with us to the port and deposit it in your name in a bank there, in the Banking Company or in the Banco Nacional, just as you say.”
After some further discussion they decided that this was the best suggestion, in fact the only one to consider under the circumstances which confronted them.
Curtin wrote out a receipt for so many bags of dust of approximately so much weight. He signed the receipt and so did Dobbs.
“I don’t think it necessary for us to exchange receipts,” Curtin explained, “yet something might befall one of us. On such a trip one isn’t always sure of reaching his destination. If we can’t wait for you in port, this receipt will give you the right to claim your portion, which we’ll deposit with the Banking Company—you know that bank on the ground floor of the Southern? We will tell the manager that you hold the receipt. We’ll leave with him our signatures to identify this receipt. Okay?”
“I guess that’s really the best we can do. Agreed,” Howard said. “You take, of course, all the burros along with you. These fellers will surely let me have a horse to ride to Durango. If lucky, I may catch up with you sooner than you expect.”
“That would be fine. I hate to be separated from you like this.” Curtin reached out his hand to shake. “Good luck. And hurry up to join us.”
“I sure will.”
“Good-by, old rascal.” Dobbs shook hands with Howard. “Make it snappy. I’m feeling sort of lonely leaving you behind. I’ll sure miss your preaching, and more so your hot-mamma stories. Well, as a dried-up hussy once told me in Sunday school, sometimes, in this sad life, we have to swallow disappointments. Nobody can help that. Have all the luck, old man!”
“And here is some good advice that might come in handy, Howy,” Curtin said, laughing. “Don’t you get mixed up with some of those Indian dames. They are often really smart, and also awfully pretty. Lots of them are. You know that, you old rider. And don’t you come some day and tell me you’ve actually married a squaw. You know, quite a number of guys do it, and like it a lot. But don’t tell me later I didn’t warn you if anything goes wrong, you old bucker.” Curtin slapped him on the back till the old man coughed.
Still coughing, he said: “Maybe I will get me such a bronze-colored hot dame myself. I’m not so sure. They’ve got class, real class, if you know what I mean. And there’s no hustling and worrying about them. They are easy to feed and easy to entertain. No taking them every night to the god-damned pictures and bridge-parties where they lose your hard-earned money, goddamn it. And no nagging either. I’ll think it over, Curty. Maybe I am going to change my outlook on life. Well, have an easy trip, partners.”
The burros had become restless. Dobbs and Curtin went after them, and the train was on its way.
Howard watched his two partners go down the trail. When he turned to the Indians, patiently waiting for him, his eyes looked watery.
He was given a horse to ride.
Shouting joyfully, they all rode off. Howard was led in triumph into the village, where all the people, old and young, were awaiting him and cheering him as though he had returned from some victory in foreign lands for the glory of this little village.
20
Curtin and Dobbs were not in good humor. The pass across the highest mountain range was still far off, and the trail leading to this high pass had become so difficult that the two partners became near senseless from desperation.
They no longer spoke to each other in the usual manner. They bellowed at each other, howled like wild beasts, and cursed themselves and the rest of the world for the hard job they had undertaken. And most bitterly of all they cur
sed the absent Howard. While they had to drive his burros, to load and unload his packs, and to take care of all his belongings, he was most probably now enjoying himself, with a pretty Indian hussy sitting on his knees and another brown wench hanging on his neck and before him a swell meal of roast turkey and a bottle of tequila. And here his two partners had to slave for him and die for him on that god-damned hell of a funking trail, put there by the Lord for no other reason than to make you suffer for all the dirty sins fifty generations of your forefathers committed.
“Why the hell did we offer to take along the packs of that son of a skunk? As if he couldn’t take them by himself, or with the help of those god-damned Indians, who, of all the people in the world, had to come to get that god-damned boy of theirs out of hell, where he was already being well cared for and where he properly belonged!”
“And isn’t it always his burros that, god-damn it, won’t march in line, and stray off and smash their packs against the trees, trying to get them off their funking backs?”
“He knew, that god-damned story-teller did, why he wanted us to take along his packs. They are the heaviest of all and the most carelessly packed. Gawd knows, his burros are the laziest that were ever born anywhere under heaven, and the most stubborn. Hell, how I wish they would break off the trail and drop down the three thousand feet of the gorge and crash their bones! What would I care? To hell with him and all he has!”
It was lucky for them that heaven was too high above to hear them and lay half a hundred broken trees across the trail and soak the narrow path with so much water that the burros would sink into the mud up to the saddles, so that for once they would learn what a really tough trail on the Sierra Madre is like when hell and heaven are against the traveler. What they encountered was in fact nothing, if you would ask a hard-boiled arriero whose business it is to bring pack-trains of mules across the Sierra Madre at any time of year.
Of course, it would have meant much to have one more man at hand on trails like this one. A pack which has come off the animal’s back can only be properly replaced by two men, and while these two are loading, another man is needed to look after the rest of the pack-burros, so that they will not break loose and stray off and enter dead trails.
No sooner did the two realize that it was ridiculous to curse the old man than they started quarreling, and yelling and shouting at each other.
The burros did not mind, because they had more sense and besides had been raised on a better philosophical system.
All of a sudden Dobbs halted, wiped the sweat from his face with an angry gesture, and said: “I stop here for the night. If you want to go on, it’s okay by me. Only leave my packs and my burros here. I am no god-damned nigger slave. Get me?”
“It’s only three o’clock. We might still make four miles more.” Curtin saw no reason for camping so early.
“No one has ordered you to camp here. If you want to march twenty miles more, what the hell do I care?” Dobbs stood before Curtin as if he were ready to spring at him.
“Ordered? You?” Curtin asked. “You don’t mean to say you are the boss of this outfit?”
“Perhaps you are. Just say it. I’m waiting.” Dobbs’s face became redder.
“All right, if you can’t do any more——”
“Can’t do any more? What do you mean by that crack?” Dobbs seemed to go mad. “Don’t make me laugh. I can do four times as much as a mug like you and kick half a dozen of your size both sides of your pants. Can’t do any more? And how is your grandmother? It’s simple; I don’t want any more, if you must know, mug.”
“What’s the good of hollering?” Curtin stayed calm enough. “We’ve started; now we have to stick it out, like it or not. All right, then, let’s camp here.”
“That’s what I said long ago. Here is water, and very good water. It’s a good place for camping, isn’t it?”
“Right you are. Not likely we’d find any water during the next three hours.”
“So what’s the arguing about?” Dobbs began to unload the burro standing next to him. Curtin came close and gave him a hand at the job.
The burros unloaded, quarreling started again. Who was to cook, who was to look for fuel, who was to care for the burros, who repair the pack-saddles? There had never been any disputing about these jobs as long as Howard had been with them. Now it seemed as if they had lost the capacity for sound and simple reasoning. They were overtired, their nerves quivering like telegraph wires in the open country. They couldn’t agree any longer on who had to do this job and who that. When the meal was finally cooked and ready, Curtin found that he had done most of the work—three times his share. He didn’t mind, and said nothing. He put up with Dobbs’s bad humor. Something during the march today, the climate, the growing altitude, a fall, the hot sun, a sting from a reptile, a bite of an insect, a scratch of a poisonous thorn, whatever it was, must, so it appeared to Curtin, be responsible for Dobbs’s strange behavior.
2
Eating usually conciliates people. So also here in the loneliness of the Sierra the meal Curtin and Dobbs had together softened their feelings toward each other. It calmed their nerves. They came to speak with less yelling and with more sense than they had done during the last six hours.
“I wonder what the old man is doing now,” Curtin said.
“I’m sure he’s having a swell time with these Indians,” Dobbs replied. “His meal will be better than ours, sure.”
At mention of the old man, Dobbs looked casually at Howard’s packs, which lay close to where Dobbs was sitting and filling his pipe. For a minute his looks were fixed on these packs, and in his mind he tried to figure out how much they might be worth in dollars and cents.
Curtin misjudged Dobbs’s expression, for he said: “Oh, I think we can manage his packs all right. This was the first day we had to handle everything without his help. Tomorrow it will be lots easier, once we get the real go of it and are used to being one hand short.”
“How far from the railroad do you think we are now?” Dobbs asked.
“As the crow flies, it wouldn’t be so far. Since we aren’t crows, it will take us quite some time. Days, perhaps a week more. These mountain trails make the way ten times longer, winding round and round and going up and down as if they would never end; and if in the evening you look behind, it seems as if you can almost spit at the place you left in the morning. The worst isn’t over yet. One of the guys we met near the village told me we’ll have stretches where we will hardly make six miles during the whole day, loading and unloading a dozen times when the animals can’t take the steep ravines. I figure we can make the high pass in two days more. Then three or four days more to go before we actually reach the railroad. But it may be more still. Any sort of difficulties may come our way any time.”
To this Dobbs said nothing. He stared into the fire. Then he filled his pipe once more and lighted it. It was as though he could not take his eyes off the packs; his glance wandered from the fire to them and back again very often.
Yet Curtin took no notice of it.
3
Unexpectedly Dobbs pushed Curtin in the ribs and laughed in a curious way.
Curtin felt uneasy. Something was wrong with Dobbs. He was not himself any longer. To cover his growing anxiety Curtin tried to laugh, his eyes resting on Dobbs’s face.
As if keyed up by Curtin’s nervous laugh, Dobbs broke out into bellowing laughter which made him almost lose his breath. Curtin became still more confused. He did not know what to make of it. “What’s the joke? Won’t you let me in on it, Dobby?”
“In on it? I should say I will.” He roared with laughter and had to hold his belly.
“Well, spill it.”
“Oh, sonny, my boy, isn’t that too funny for words?” He had to stop for breath, for his laughter became hysterical.
“What’s so funny?” Curtin’s face was turning gray with anxiety. Dobbs acted no longer sane.
Dobbs said: “This old jackass of a boneheaded mug han
ds over all his pay to us and lets us go off with it like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“I don’t quite understand.”
“But, man, can’t you see? It’s all ours now. We drag it off and where can he look for us? We don’t go back to the port at all. Sabe? We go straight up north and leave that ass flat. Let him marry an Indian hussy. What do we care?”
Curtin was now all seriousness. “I simply can’t get you, Dobby. What the hell are you talking about? You must be dreaming.”
“Aw, don’t be such a sap. Where did you grow up? Under the canvas of a revival show or what? Well, to make it plain to a dumbhead like you, we take the load and go off. What is there so very special about that? Nothing new to you, I should say.”
“I begin to see through it now.”
“Long distance, was it?” Dobbs giggled.
Curtin rose. He moved around as if to get his bearings. He could not believe his ears. There must be something wrong.
He came back to the fire, but did not squat down. He looked around, gazed up at the clear sky, and then said: “Now, get this straight, Dobby; if you mean to lift the goods of the old man, count me out. And what is more, I won’t let you do it.”
“And who else? Just come and tell pop.”
“As I said, as long as I am around and on my feet, you won’t take a single grain from the old man’s pay. I think I’ve made myself clear enough, or have I?”
Dobbs grinned. “Yes, you have, sweety. Sure you have. I can see very plainly what you mean. You want to take it all for yourself and cut me off. That’s the meaning.”
“No, that is not the meaning. I’m on the level with the old man exactly as I would be on the level with you if you weren’t here.”
Taking up his pouch, Dobbs filled another pipe. “Mebbe I don’t need you at all. I can take it alone. I don’t need no outside help, buddy.” He laughed while lighting his pipe.
Curtin, still standing, looked Dobbs over from head to foot. “I signed that receipt.”