Brian Garfield

by Tripwire

  She rested a hand against the mantel. “Pablo .…”

  “Querida, ténga la bondad.”

  She left the room without further protest. The door clicked shut. Don Pablo said, “I am not fit to hold her stirrup.”

  “Why?”

  “It is tiresome looking after a dying man. She could have left me and gone to Mexico City where she comes from. It is not as if she would lose anything by that; I have no one else to leave my estate to, and in any case there is no estate left for her to inherit. She knows all this, and there is no tradition in her background that would make her loyal. But she stays.”

  “She loves you.”

  “That would be more than I bargained for with her.”

  “Sometimes a man gets lucky.”

  Don Pablo grinned. “You are very wry, Señor Boag.”

  “No. I reckon there are worse things than dying.”

  “You mean having no one to care about you. Well I suppose that is a point. She worked in a house, you know. One of the best parlors in Mexico City. I would not have taken her out of that except that after a while I could no longer stand the idea of sharing her with other men. She came with me because of course it was a great advancement for her. Nothing was said about love.”

  “It doesn’t always have to be said.”

  “Of course I was not sick then.” Don Pablo began dry-washing his clasped hands.

  “About Mr. Pickett,” Boag said gently.

  “You would like to find him.” Don Pablo nodded his head as if to confirm something. “Yes. Well so would I, Señor. If it is my last act on earth I should like very much to find Mr. Jed Pickett and have his entrails for guitar strings.”

  “I thought maybe you might have bought the gold from him.”

  “I did.”

  “But?”

  “Even a dying man hates to look a fool, Señor Boag. I am reluctant to admit the truth to you. I shall do it, but allow me to explain things. An hour will make no difference to you.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  Don Pablo coughed and sipped his drink and began to make his explanation. It covered a great deal of ground; it was a tedious apology which did not explain at all, it only tried to excuse. It did not explain, for instance, why Don Pablo insisted on informing a stranger—a black stranger at that—of the fact that his wife had once been a whore in Mexico City. It only ticked off incidents: revolutions, bandits, the mines petering out, the death of the wise uncle who had managed these estates until his death four years ago from the same malaise that now infected the young Pablo.

  Boag didn’t dislike him but it was hard to find sympathy for him; Don Pablo had too much sympathy for himself, he didn’t leave room for anyone else’s.

  He had contacts in Mexico City, he explained—companions from the days, only a few years ago, when he had been a flippant young blade touring the fandango spots of the city. These contacts knew his good family name and trusted him, or else they were too jaded and cynical to care: in any case they were eager to buy what Don Pablo offered for sale, at a price—the stolen items he traded with the mountain bandits and rebels.

  He had dealt a few times with Mr. Jed Pickett in treasures the Pickett gang had collected in its raids on Apache camps in the Sierra Madre: treasures the Apaches in turn had stolen from ranches they raided along both sides of the Border.

  Four months ago Mr. Pickett had first mentioned the gold bullion. Don Pablo never knew where it came from; he never asked. A tentative price was settled between them, a price by the ounce because Mr. Pickett was not certain how much gold would be involved. The proposition excited Don Pablo because it meant he could cancel all his debts at once and, he said, “Also it would make a little dowry for Dorotea.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “I refer to the señora.”

  A dowry for his wife? It was a phrase that made no sense.

  Don Pablo said, “I had to strip myself of what few possessions remained, to raise the cash. Our estimate was on the basis of two million pesos. Much of this I had to borrow of course. I signed notes against my estates to do that—mortgages.”

  Boag didn’t need to hear the rest of it because he had already guessed.

  Don Pablo wheezed into his handkerchief. “When he came here one week ago he had only three companions and one pack mule and I thought the thing had gone bad, but he was in wickedly high spirits. Over the next thirty-six hours his men trickled into this valley from all directions. They all had pack animals. I gathered not a single pack had been lost. The gold was as he had said it would be, a few pounds less than the maximum I had been prepared to pay for. We weighed the gold on my cattle scales and I counted out one million, nine hundred thousand pesos on this table right here. Most of it was in Mexico City scrip, in denominations of one thousand pesos. It was very easy to carry when you compare it with the bullion. It disappeared into the pockets of himself and his men, and you hardly noticed the bulges.”

  Boag was impatient. “And then?”

  “I am sure you have guessed by now. They leveled their guns at us and backed away to their horses. They took with them not only the nearly two million pesos in cash which I had paid for the gold. They took also the gold.”

  5

  “You are going to say I was a champion of a fool to trust them.”

  “It crossed my mind,” Boag said.

  “I did not trust them. My vaqueros were armed and watchful. But vaqueros are not a match for men like his. They were taken by surprise, overwhelmed before they knew it. Four of my people were killed and three others are still under treatment with the doctor in the town of Coronado.”

  “You do any damage to the other side?”

  “I think two or three of Pickett’s ladrónes were injured. I saw one whose arm flopped very loosely, I am sure it had been broken by a bullet above the elbow.”

  “But they took the cash and the gold bullion both.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea where they went from here?”

  “It is a large world, Señor.”

  “Then Mr. Pickett didn’t drop any hints.”

  “No, he is too clever for that.”

  “Which way did they ride out?”

  “To the south. It means nothing of course.”

  “Maybe,” Boag said.

  “You have an idea?”

  “How much is that gold really worth, in pesos?”

  “You mean if it were clean, if it could be sold in the open market without fear of discovery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Approximately three and one half million pesos.”

  Boag said, “So Mr. Pickett has more than five million pesos to spend. You could almost buy this whole province for that.”

  “Well hardly, Señor. But it is an impressive sum.” Don Pablo’s pale hands came together in a prayer clasp. “You said some part of the gold was yours?”

  “Yes.” Boag refused to be drawn. He was thinking, if I had all that money where would I take it? But it was hard to think like Mr. Jed Pickett. He didn’t have the background for it.

  He said, “He left about a week ago?”

  “Today is Monday. They left here Wednesday evening. It is five days.”

  “You didn’t send anybody after them?”

  “I had no one left to send,” Don Pablo murmured. He roused himself, shaking his head as though to clear it. “I was obligated to inform my men that I had nothing left with which to pay them, that my estate was under mortgage which could not be repaid, and would be taken from me in due course. I gave them what little I could and dismissed them. The aged one, Miguel, chose to remain with us without pay. He is the only one.”

  Well it wasn’t the way Boag would have done it. At least you could give them a choice. If you want to get paid you have to go after the son of a bitch and get my money back for me. But that wasn’t realistic, was it; not when you were talking about Mr. Pickett’s rawhiders. They had been fighting Yankees and Apaches and Mexicans for twenty-odd
years while Don Pablo’s vaqueros had been chousing cows.

  Miguel appeared. “La comida.” Miguel helped Don Pablo out of the chair and half carried him. Boag trailed them down the stairs and across the courtyard in the dusk. There was the rasp of cicadas, a cool dry wind, light clouds scudding by.

  You could see where there had been paintings and candelabra in the dining room; now there was only the table and a few chairs which probably had been brought up from crew’s quarters. Señora Dorotea served the meal on chipped Indian pottery plates; the Don ate soup while the rest of them ate the meat of a rabbit Miguel had shot. The cattle herds, it was explained, had been sold along with everything else to raise money to pay for Mr. Pickett’s gold. It had been Don Pablo’s plan to sell the estate to the men in Monterrey and Durango who held the mortgages; then he would have been able to take Dorotea to a mountain resort for the cure. The cure seldom worked but it was worth the attempt; what else was there? There would have been money enough to buy their own resort.

  “Now it is all ashes,” Don Pablo whispered into his soup.

  It was as if he was already dead; it was just taking him some time to quit breathing. Boag said, “How long do they give you?”

  There was a sharp glance from Miguel. The señora did not look up. Don Pablo said, “A few months, perhaps a year, perhaps two years or five. No one knows, really.”

  “Then maybe you’re giving up a little early.”

  Don Pablo cackled. It made him cough.

  6

  He lay on a straw tick in a small room off the veranda.

  A light rapping at the door; he looked up and it was the Señora Dorotea. She rested her shoulder against the door-frame. “I was lonely,” she said.

  He looked into her eyes; she gave a little smile as if to say she knew what had not been said and was not going to be said.

  When he touched her cheek he felt her tremble. He ran his fingertips up into her thick dark hair, surprised by the cool smoothness of her skin. Her woman-smell filled him.

  She sat on the cot beside him; the heavy rope of her hair swung forward. She bent down and he tasted her mouth and then she slipped her face away to guide his lips down her throat.

  They took a long time making love.

  Then he lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath, and she laid her head back against the hard muscles of his thigh and spoke in a voice drowsy with spent passion: “I think we have both been too long without this.”

  She turned and curled up with her fists together against him, one knee hooked over his body. He ruffled her hair. “I feel hound-dog lazy.”

  “Were you a slave?”

  “When I was a little kid.”

  “So was I. In a way.”

  He turned his head to look at her. She said, “Pablo has not bought me and he does not own me. He knows that.”

  “I thought you were married to him.”

  “I am. But he has told me I may leave when I wish.”

  “But you’ve stayed.”

  “He needs looking after.”

  “You’re a good woman.”

  “I think I am,” she said. “When I said I was a slave I meant before, when I was a girl in the city. I was bought and put into a house there.”

  “He told me about that.”

  “Did he also tell you he bought me from the madam?”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “But I had a choice. I could have run away from him. I knew he wouldn’t try very hard to get me back. Not that he did not want me, but he has never forced me to do anything unless it was what I wished.”

  “He loves you.”

  “He has never said that,” she said, and it made Boag remember the same conversation with Don Pablo.

  “This gold,” she said. “Do you really expect to take any of it away from that man?”

  “Well I expect to try.”

  “Is it enough to die for?”

  “He owes me something else besides gold. There was a friend of mine.…” But he didn’t go on about Wilstach; it would probably make no sense to her. “He needs killing.”

  “But how will you fight him if you find him?”

  “Dirty.”

  Her head stirred. Boag said, “There’s no difference between one way of fighting and another. The winner is the man still alive afterward.”

  “If we could help, Don Pablo and I .…”

  “Yes?”

  “… Do you think you could try to recover Pablo’s money as well?”

  Well there had to be a reason, he supposed bleakly.

  She read his mind; she sat up. “That is not the reason I came to you tonight. Did you think it was?”

  He made no answer of any kind; his silence argued with her, however, and in the end she got off the cot and reached for her clothes. “I suppose it is what you must believe. I was foolish, I should have said nothing.”

  “All right. Forget it.”

  “I shall try to. I hope you will also.”

  He reached for her. “Come on then, let’s do this again.” In relief he laughed till his stomach hurt. And when they had made love he kissed her thoroughly on the mouth. “That’s to be sure you won’t forget me right away.”

  She teased him. “I have a very poor memory.”

  He kissed her again.

  He had been a soldier all the years; in the Army you learned not to think about women except when there were women within reach. Either you had women or you did not, and if you did not have them there was nothing but pain in thinking about them. But he knew he was going to think about Dorotea. They had not had much time together but it was enough to make him wish there was more.

  7

  There was nothing dog-in-the-manger about Don Pablo Ortiz. He summoned Boag to his chambers in the early morning and when Miguel had left the room the young Don said, “Are you a man of means, Señor Boag?”

  “Do I look it?”

  “You look like a penniless black gringo to me. But I have learned something about appearances.”

  “I am what I look like.”

  “And you seek to do battle single-handed against a cut-throat army. It would not be putting it too strongly to state that you have the life expectancy of a lit sulphur match.”

  “I’d rather not put it just like that.”

  “Do you know what I think, Señor? I think you are hoping you never find Jed Pickett. You are hoping you will continue to arrive at places to find that Jed Pickett is no longer there, he is still a week ahead of you. He will always be a week ahead of you, Boag; I think he was born a week ahead of you.”

  “If I don’t really want to catch him why should I keep chasing him?”

  “I think it gives you something to do, something to justify your existence. And I think you hate being afraid. You hate it that much.”

  Boag thought, it was true. Not once in his life had he been so afraid as that night in the river in the swirling afterwash of the Uncle Sam’s paddlewheels, the water tumbling him over and over until he was sure he would drown, and knowing that if he surfaced the guns on deck would finish him. Mr. Jed Pickett had no right doing that to a man.

  “So you have to prove something now,” Don Pablo said in his voice that was half a wheeze. “You will of course get killed and that will be the proof that you were not afraid. The only one who will know it is a lie is yourself, and of course when you are dead no one can force you to confess it.”

  “You’re a little deep for me now.”

  “Señor Boag, I have seen the eyes you exchange with Dorotea.”

  Boag stiffened.

  Don Pablo waggled his frail hand. “Did she visit you in the night? I suppose it does not matter. I will be truthful. If you were a man who could afford to buy a villa like this one then I should not object to anything you did; I would be pleased to see Dorotea go with a man who can make her happy. I suspect if you asked her to ride away with you this morning she would do it without a backward look.”

  “You�
��re wrong.”

  “No.”

  “Shall we ask her?” Boag said in the most formal Spanish he knew. He got up to move toward the door.

  “Wait. Hear me out.”

  “Get it said, then.”

  “I have accustomed her to a certain kind of life. I can no longer provide it myself. But when I look into your future I must ask you to get on your horse and go. For Dorotea’s sake, no es verdad?”

  Boag studied the ravaged face. “That was what I aimed to do anyway. But after I go you ask her. The trouble with both of you, you don’t trust each other enough.”

  “You are very kind,” Don Pablo wheezed. “I hope we meet again.”

  When Boag rode away she was standing just outside the gate and she was still watching him, one arm raised to shade her eyes. When he had his last look at her from a low hill four miles out, she was only a speck.

  chapter five

  1

  After that it was days and days on horseback, going from town to town trying to ask questions without being shot for it.

  It took a week to get a line on Mr. Pickett. Along the Rio Bavispe in a town called Huásabas there was a fat man in a cantina who knew Mr. Pickett by sight from the old scalp-bounty days and said he had seen Mr. Pickett ride through the town two weeks ago with six hardcase riders and several pack animals. So they had split the bunch up again. Heading for where?

  The fat man said Mr. Pickett had headed out up the mountain toward Granados, but in that town Boag found no trace of the rawhiders. He cast around for spoor in the memories of goatherds and vaqueros and mountain people of indeterminate occupation; it took another four days before he turned up a trace of Mr. Pickett’s passage at Mazatán, west of the Yaqui River. Again Mr. Pickett had been seen riding away to the south; this time it was said he had nine tough men with him and at least half a dozen pack mules. For rawhiders with a lot of spending money they had been curiously well behaved, they hadn’t treed the town the way gringo gangs liked to do. Possibly Mr. Pickett had given orders to be on good behavior because that way nobody would notice them, but it was having the opposite effect because the town had noticed how well behaved these toughs were.