The Hi-Lo Country

by Max Evans

  “What is it?” I asked, beginning to lose my breath out of sheer curiosity.

  “What is it?” He looked at me as if I had just swung down out of the trees. “What is it?” he screamed, and his face turned from crimson to purple. “It is very simple,” he said. “That, gentlemen, is a water-making machine! Water, the one thing man has never conquered or controlled. Even now, though he fingers outer space, he has failed ignominiously here on this earth. Water! Water! That’s the answer to everything. Look! Feel!” he shouted, waving a hand in the dirt-filled wind. “Right here is the driest wind this side of the Mohave, but did you know it is filled with life-granting moisture all the way into the upper levels of space? Every square inch of it contains moisture that can never be destroyed. You can destroy nothing! This wind that howls like tormented wolves cannot destroy it. Man and all his follies cannot destroy it. It is there for the taking. And I, Tinker Grits, shall be the taker. If Shakespeare was a surgeon of the soul, then I am the doctor of the mind. What else is there but ideas, gentlemen, what else?”

  I couldn’t do anything but swallow and nod. Big Boy stood entranced.

  “In a moment, gentlemen, you will be witnesses to an event that will make the invention of the wheel and the control of atomic fission look like the play of moronic babes. I shall turn a tiny spout, and chemicals will pass out of that vast funnel and a vapor will rise up into the heavens and condense and distill the water, pulling it from the sky down along this vapor trail and fill this container”—he motioned to the boiler—“and then it will spout out this pipe”—pointing to an eighteen-inch steel pipe like that found on the largest irrigation wells.

  “It will flow like the nectar of the king of all gods into the arid land, and all shall become bountiful and the Garden of Eden will cover the face of the earth. Foliage shall grow so thick and ripe that this eternal devil-haunted wind cannot push through it and will die exhausted, never to molest us again. Imagine, gentlemen,” he said, making a wide sweep with his pincer-like hands, “the mountaintops and the desert to the south will have row upon row of my machines like soldiers of peace and love lined up for the battle of good against evil. And from their spouts shall pour in unending streams that bountiful and luxurious fluid, water! Water!” he screamed and his voice almost failed. “Water!”

  I was sure he was going to have a stroke.

  Big Boy’s expression was rapt.

  “Peace,” Tinker went on. “Peace. No more wars. Why fight, gentlemen, when there is plenty for all? Imagine the new rivers with lush banks of grass and orchards of fine fruits, lakes brimming over with powerful silver fish and forests full of animals of every kind. Yes, this is the answer. Not just a world of plenty but a world of bountiful abundance. No more blood or barricades or bomb shelters. No! All will be serene, all will be love, peace, and contentment.”

  Tinker paused a moment with one hand still flung in the air. “Listen,” he said. “The howl of the wind softens. Now I must strike! Watch!” he said, “watch the spout!” whereupon he whirled and scrambled up the steel ladder to the barrel and turned a spigot. For a moment nothing happened; then he yelled, “Observe, gentlemen!” and pointed up.

  Sure enough, a vapor was rising from the boiler like a spirit headed for the final kingdom. We watched and waited. Tinker poured in more chemicals. The vapor grew thicker.

  In a moment Big Boy said, “Look, by God, look! There it is!” And sure enough, a tiny drop of water rolled to the edge of the spout and dropped to the kiln-dry earth, making a tiny dark spot. In a few seconds it was gone.

  About ten minutes later another drop fell. Tinker danced around in a transport of joy. “Success! Success! It worked! I knew it! The world is mine! Gentlemen, you have brought me luck. I am going to put you in charge of my great army. Big Boy Matson, you are my Chief of Staff, and Pete, you shall be General of the Army of Love and Peace. It won’t be long now. I’m fresh out of chemicals and there will have to be a few slight adjustments made to increase the flow somewhat, but success is at the tips of our fingers. Soon we shall feel it heavy in our palms. Truly the streets of our cities will be paved with gold!”

  On the way back to town we talked of the experiment. I said, “You know, right now the chemicals would come so high it would cost him a hundred dollars to make a gallon of water.”

  “He’s on the right track, though,” Big Boy said, his absolute loyalty to Tinker Grits strong in his voice. “If he doesn’t live to perfect it, somebody else will.”

  “I reckon so. Someday,” I said.

  “The old son of a bitch is wrong about one thing, though.” “What’s that?”

  “Love and peace.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People like to fight,” he said.

  But it worked out as I’d hoped; Big Boy was in a good mood now, and he’d forgotten about the particular fight he was spoiling for.

  Sixteen

  Talk, talk, talk. Too much of it. From the stories circulating around Hi Lo, you’d think the chambered bullets of a hundred cocked guns were engraved with the name of Big Boy Matson.

  Jim Ed Love, the Felders, and a host of others had done their dirty work well. The ground-burning wind had set people more on edge than ever. They wouldn’t blame themselves for what was happening to their land and their lives, so Big Boy was a welcome and convenient target for their bottled-up anger. There were plenty who listened, who’d never liked Big Boy because they were afraid of him.

  I wondered how Mona was taking it. I hadn’t seen her in quite a spell. I knew that Big Boy had, but he didn’t say how or when. There was still a question mark in my mind about Josepha, and I couldn’t get Mona completely out of it. If Big Boy could make his lick somehow and get enough cash to run off with Mona, get her out of the country, maybe I could settle down to my own future. If it had been any other woman in the world, Big Boy would have expected her to follow him penniless from one cow camp to another. But it was Mona. How could I criticize his reasoning when I myself was so in love with her I had actually considered killing him.

  I asked Big Boy to go with me to Two Mesa, where the gambling was wide open. I suggested that maybe at the gaming tables he could hit that lick he wanted so desperately. I knew he had been making a deep study of gambling for some time now and all his homework, added to his natural luck, might just pull it off. But my real motive lay buried and unconfessed, like fused powder in a drill hole.

  So we went to Two Mesa, that fabled mountain village of three cultures—Spanish, Indian, Gringo. A mud and viga town, hunkered to the earth between two mighty ranges of mountains, as a weary traveler might lie on a featherbed. It was full of artists, writers, and the usual run of businessman found everywhere else. But it had spark and it was different. And it was stiff with dice tables.

  We took a room in a pueblo-type inn and started to shave and clean up. I noticed that Big Boy used an old-time straight razor. It half embarrassed me to use the electric one Josepha had given me for Christmas.

  Big Boy said, “Here, hold this for me,” and handed me the other end of a leather strap. He worked the razor back and forth, putting a fine edge on it and savoring the sound it made, as no doubt his grandfather and his father before him had done. They must have come to his mind too, for he said: “You know, Pete, in the day of the horse I wouldn’t be scrounging around raising a few dollars at a time. I’d get hold of another horse as good as Old Sorrel for Mona and we’d proceed to rob us a bank. In the day of the horse if you had guts and luck enough to get a bank robbed and get out in the hills without being caught, everything was even from there on. If the robber had the best horse and knew the hills, he was home free, feller. He could drop off down in southern Arizona or the Big Bend country of Texas, or even into Mexico, and nobody would ever know the difference.” He tested the razor and said, “But if I was to rob a bank today, within thirty minutes every local law in a two-hundred-mile radius would be looking for me. The state police would throw up road blocks; the telephones
and Western Union would be full of my description and if they didn’t snag me the first couple of hours they’d call out the FBI and I’d be hunted with airplanes, motorcycles, and high-geared cars. And if that didn’t get the job done, they’d have the National Guard out looking under every bush in three states.”

  “They’ve got a man by the short hairs,” I agreed.

  “Look at old Tinker Grits,” Big Boy went on, getting the same far-off, thousand-yard daze in his eyes that Tinker did. “If he’d made that chemical to recover gold about forty years earlier, he could’ve raised ten million dollars and gone ahead and put it over. They didn’t have all those laws then to kill a man who has ideas and guts. Hell no, a man could use his guts and his brains, and he knew that out ahead there somewhere was the double rainbow.”

  “Got to have laws,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know, but not these piddling little stifling laws.” He looked out the window toward the mountains and repeated softly, “Little stifling laws.”

  We finished throwing powder on our flanks and went out to look the place over. The inn had a big lobby full of Navaho rugs, Spanish santos and oil paintings. There was a long bar, and just to the right of the bar a big room full of slot machines, roulette wheels, and dice tables. To one side, between the bar and the gaming room, was a small dance floor. The whole thing was visible and easy to reach from the bar. We had a drink, and Big Boy asked the bartender when the gambling started.

  “About eight o’clock,” he said. “You got nearly two hours.” “Come on, let’s roam around town,” Big Boy said.

  Some of the dives were already going, and Big Boy dropped about $20. I could tell he was looking for something to go on but I didn’t know what it was. We made every joint; then we decided to head back to the inn.

  The place had changed dramatically in the last two or three hours. The bar was busy and the drinking tables were half full. You could hear the slot machines whirring, clicking, and choking down. A couple of women sat at one of the tables. One was a tall blonde who looked about forty years old, maybe fifty. I kept staring at her because I knew I’d seen her picture in the papers some time or other. For a while I thought she was giving me the eye, but of course it was Big Boy she was checking out.

  He wasn’t paying any attention to her but was studying one of the dice tables where a weasel-faced man handled the stick.

  He leaned toward me and said softly: “Listen, Pete, when I move over to that table you go with me and stand right up next to that little bastard and glare at him like you was going to kill him just for kicks. At the same time you watch me, and when I push my hat back on my head you accidently bump that little bastard hard enough to make his eyes spin. You got it?”

  I nodded.

  We had another drink, and Big Boy said, “Now.”

  We walked over to the table. “What’s the limit?” he asked the dealer, at the same time pulling out a big crumpled wad of bills. “I’m goin’ to buy my baby a new oil well,” he said, laying $100 worth of chips on the table.

  The dealer glanced at him and said, “Good luck.”

  Well, I leaned on the dealer and he kept shifting out of my way. Big Boy made eighteen straight passes. I was beginning to catch on to what was taking place. The dealer figured that Big Boy was a rich oil man, and he had given him a set of passing dice with no fives or aces. He couldn’t miss. The dealer intended to let him win a while, suck him in good, then switch the dice when he started betting heavy.

  The dealer was in a jackpot. I had scared him out of changing the dice so far. Big Boy had a hell of a pile of chips in front of him now. I kept motioning him to quit but he didn’t pay me any mind. Then he pushed the hat back and I gouged the dealer in the ribs and grabbed him by the arm as though I’d had a few too many at the bar.

  “Hey, mister, how do I get on this gravy train?”

  Big Boy told me later what happened. He had watched the dealer carefully, and when he switched the dice Big Boy pushed his hat back. Soon as I knocked the dealer off balance, Big Boy switched another pair of tops in the game—his own.

  He bet everything he had on a ten and won after three rolls. The dealer knew he was trapped and in trouble with his boss. He broke the mahogany stick and said, “The game is closed.” A crowd had gathered and they started raising hell with him.

  “The game is closed,” he repeated. His face shone with sweat. Big Boy cashed in his chips and took the money over to the bar. “Give everybody in the house a drink,” he said.

  “How much you think we’ve got?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe two or three thousand.”

  “By God, that’s pretty good. We can work that all over town and leave here with enough to buy in partners with Jim Ed Love.”

  “No, it’s over,” he said. “The same man controls the whole town, and the word is already out.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  We belted down a couple of drinks, and then I saw the blonde get up and come toward the bar, leaving her plainer companion at the table. She moved like a bobcat after a fat sparrow.

  “This is your night, cowboy,” she said.

  Big Boy turned his eyes without moving his head just like an old, tired dog.

  “Every nights my night.”

  “Dance with me,” she said, turning on so much charm that I damn near fainted just getting hit by it second hand.

  “Don’t dance,” Big Boy said, taking another drink.

  I could tell the blonde was set back on her hocks a little at this. But she smoothed the squaw skirt across her lean model’s figure and said, “Maybe you need a horse to dance with.”

  Big Boy swung around to her and looked her right in the eye. “Ma’am, my granddaddy told me that a man marries a woman, not a horse, but I’m beginning to wonder.”

  Well, with that I went over and sat down with the other woman. She knew I wasn’t really interested in her but she was friendly just the same.

  “Who’s your friend?” I asked, nodding toward the bar where she and Big Boy were still going at it.

  “I’m her secretary,” she said.

  “What’s her line of business?” I asked.

  The woman laughed at me and said, “Her line? Well, she’s an heiress.”

  Then I knew who she was: Sandra Compton, heiress to a fortune of over fifty million oil-soaked dollars. I swallowed two or three times and said, “She likes my partner, I think.”

  “I think you think right,” she said.

  I ordered us a drink and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Irene.”

  “Mine’s Pete,” I said. “Glad to know you.”

  I watched the bar, and I could tell that Miss Compton was getting nowhere with Big Boy. I felt a little sorry for her; she didn’t know the kind of competition she was up against. But even so it wouldn’t hurt to dance with her. Hell’s fire, fifty million dollars was a consideration.

  All of a sudden Big Boy grabbed her by one elbow and marched her back to her table. She was cursing under her breath and her face was crimson. Big Boy sat her down hard, and when she tried to get up he bounced her down again.

  “Now, you stay right there, little lady,” he said, “before you get in trouble.”

  She started crying.

  Big Boy said, “Come on, Pete, let’s go.”

  I told Irene goodbye, but before we could leave, Miss Compton was on her feet and pleading with Big Boy: “Don’t leave. Please. Please. I’m sorry. Let’s talk.” The tears had smeared her make-up.

  Big Boy swiveled her around and gave her a boot in the tail and we got the hell out of there. All the way over to Ragoon that night I expected to see one of those roadblocks thrown up ahead of us, but nothing happened. Maybe the heiress liked rough treatment.

  We got to Ragoon in time to buy a fifth before the bars closed. We drained most of it on the way to Hi Lo. I couldn’t remember much about going to bed that morning, but we woke up about noon over at Levi G6mez’s place. He’d given us his
bed and taken the old couch for himself. He had a pot of coffee going and cooked us a mess of scrambled eggs.

  We spent about an hour doctoring our hang-over with black coffee, laughing and telling Levi about the night before.

  We got to feeling so good that Big Boy said, “Come on, let’s all us bums congregate at Lollypop’s for the divine purpose of hoisting.”

  “Now you’re talking like Tinker Grits,” I said, “but it sounds good.”

  Horsethief Willy and a few ranchers were there. Horsethief could see we had been on a drunk, and when Big Boy told him about leaving Two Mesa sudden-like, he started telling about his own adventures the night before in Ragoon.

  It seems he had run over a sign out in the middle of the street that said one way—fifteen miles an hour. (I didn’t know he had ever had a car that would go any faster than that.)

  “I stuck my foot in the carburetor and almost throwed the gallopin’ rods out of the old Ford gettin’ out of Ragoon. I had about two minutes to get away from the Ragoon law, and I gave them back one minute and fifty-nine seconds in change. I wasn’t speedin’ exactly, but I was flyin’ dangerously low.” At this old chestnut he slapped his wooden leg and yelled: “What the hell town is this? Give us another round!”

  Well, somehow the word got out about Big Boy’s winnings, and people began to drop in. Even those who lived scattered back in the hills got the message somehow. The bar was full before sundown. Big Boy was still standing drinks. The party was on.

  “Let the goddam wind blow,” Horsethief said. “Just give me a nice air-conditioned bar and I’m happy.”

  I thought about calling Josepha and inviting her up from Sano, but about the time I was looking for a phone a silence suddenly fell. It was the kind of silence you feel deep in a cavern. The crowd that had gathered around Big Boy thinned out. I could tell he was pretty drunk.