by J P S Brown
"How long are you going to leave my little daughter like that? The animals and insects will eat her. She'll stiffen and cramp."
"Don't worry, Boni. I'm taking good care of her. She's learning a lot the way she is. She had to be tied up in the same way a colt has to be tied in order that she be broken to lead. All young animals with spirit have to be tied and buffeted before they are gentled enough to become willing servants. Even you, an old man loosened by age, are bronco. See how I had to hit you and tie you to make you reason with me?"
"Untie me and we'll reason with me untied."
"Hah! I'm not Juanito Vogel. I'm not going to give you a chance to cheat me. You do as I say at least for a while and then I'll see if I can trust you. You see, I'll tie your hands in front of you so if you fall you can protect yourself. You are already gaining my confidence. I should tie them behind your back. ¡Mas seguro, mas amarrado! The more you are trussed, the better you are tied! But I'll tie them in front of you and trust you. How clever you are, Boni. Let's go."
Chombe followed Bonifacio in the bright moonlight. Bonifacio limped badly on his blistered feet. His white shirt looked blueish in the moonlight and showed none of its stains of dirt, blood, and sweat. Chombe put his head back and breathed the moondust air and looked fully upon the moon. He smiled, feeling the shape of his life. He was taking form for all the world to see just as though his life were a moon. Everyone in the world would hear of him. Young men would want to be like him. Young girls would wait on him and hope for him to use them. He was a bigger, finer being than the moon because he could make people change their lives to suit him. Bonifacio stopped. Chombe walked into the back of the Indian. He laughed.
"What happened?" Bonifacio said.
"I was looking at the fire," Chombe said. "Didn't you see it?"
"Where?"
"Right over the ground ahead of us. That was why I bumped into you. The fire glow had me blinded."
"This is my clearing. The mauguechi. "
"You must have cleared the ground over a treasure. Someone's savings is buried here. The fire I saw is a sign of buried treasure. You know the belief."
"I saw no light and no fire."
"I saw it briefly. A bright light. You must have been looking at the trail because of your sore feet."
"What kind of light? Where was it?"
"In the very center of the clearing, right over that white rock. A red light like fire with a white glow in its center. Don't the people say such lights indicate a buried treasure?"
"They say so."
"Where are your tools.?"
"Under that brush pile."
"Get them. We'll dig out a treasure, my Boni. This is our lucky night. The luckiest night of your life, Boni, man."
Bonifacio walked to the brush pile and uncovered his bar, pick, ax, shovel, and mattock.
"Leave the ax and mattock. You dig and I'll bet we find so much treasure you'll never have to pick up an ax or mattock again."
They walked to the center of the clearing by the boulder. Bonifacio sighed. "Where shall I dig?" he asked.
"Start under the boulder. Move it away. Dig straight down on that spot."
"My hands. How am I going to dig with my hands tied?"
"Pardon me," Chombe said and untied Bonifacio's hands. Bonifacio rolled the rock away and began to dig, groaning and sweating with pain. "Nothing is here," he said, but he did not stop working.
"It has to be there. Believe it. I saw the glow." Chombe grinned at the moon, barely containing his laughter. He laid the machete on the ground. "Do you remember the Indian, Chano?"
"My uncle."
"Well, I've heard Juanito Vogel tell it that Chano sold forty cattle to the Vogels every year for twenty years. They always paid him in hard money. Gold money when the gold alazanes, the sorrel gold coin, was still in use. Later they paid him in silver coin. Chano never went to a bank. He hunted and farmed for all his food. The money for three calves kept him clothed for three years at a time. He lived at Teguaraco where you live now. He buried that money somewhere. This has to be the place."
"How do you know this is the place?"
"I saw the glow, didn't I. Think about it. This has been the most special day of my life. Today I gave away my virginity and did other acts that made me realize my manhood. You had to give away your daughter. Have you ever experienced another day like this in which you suffered so much and lost so much?"
"No."
"No. And yet we are both so calm. You know why?"
"No."
"Because of the recompense, man. We are about to become recompensed. In that ground lies all the savings of Chano, your uncle, and half of it is yours. I want half. I'm your son now and we are both about to become rich. You can bet your life on it."
Bonifacio straightened and rested on the pick handle, debilitated by having to listen to lies.
"Anyway, dig," Chombe said. "Whether you believe it or not. At least, we'll find out the truth about whether or not we've found a treasure."
"I dig because you force me to," Bonifacio said, looking down at the moonlit ground. "But don't lie to me about making me dig for my uncle's treasure. My uncle Chano buried his savings in a cave."
"Where, then?"
"I wish I knew. I wouldn't be the poor man I am who finds himself tortured and hungry if I knew."
"Dig then, if only to relieve your misery."
Bonifacio's digging was sore but constant. The field was rocky. He dug for hours. He dug until his head was out of sight and the moon was going down. Chombe began to worry about not being able to see him, even though dirt surfaced regularly from the hole.
"Have you found it?" he asked. "You are so quiet." He grinned at the moon and picked up the machete.
"In a minute," Bonifacio said.
"Come out and rest, Boni,"
"In a little minute," Boni said, quickening his shoveling. "I'm in the plush-- The digging is very easy here-- Something is down here-- No rock now-- Pure earth-- I'm going down fast now-- I may soon find the money-- All the coins- All for you-- I don't want any-- You can go away in peace-"
"Come out, Boni," Chombe said. He stood at the edge where the shovelfuls of dirt just cleared the brink of the hole and landed softly at his feet. They were coming so fast they seemed to start off the bottom before the last shovelful landed out of the hole. Then Chombe saw what Bonifacio was trying to do. He was trying to tunnel back in soft ground to get out of sight and reach of Chombe and the rifle. Chombe marveled at the athletic feat. Bonifacio had made Chombe believe he was shoveling straight down and had not broken the rhythm of his shoveling as he made the tunnel.
"Come out, Boni. You can't get away from me. I can kill you with the rifle, but come out anyway."
Bonifacio dropped the shovel and folded himself into his hole. He did not answer. Chombe laid his head back and laughed at the moon with delight.
"Come on, Boni. I can bury you. Out!" He pushed a yard of dirt and rock into the hole with his feet. Bonifacio stuck out a leg and Chombe dropped a rock on it. Bonifacio retracted the leg.
"Don't throw rock," Bonifacio said. "You'll hurt me."
Chombe stepped around the hole to see Bonifacio more clearly. Bonifacio was wedged into the hole, his head between his knees, his hand playing with soft, clean, moist dirt by his side. Chombe picked up a long branch from the brush pile and extended it to Bonifacio, prodding him with it.
"No," said Bonifacio, speaking between his knees and not looking up.
"Come out or I'll hurt you with this," Chombe said, levering a shell into the chamber of the rifle. Bonifacio grabbed the limb and Chombe helped him out of the hole. Before Bonifacio got to his feet Chombe swung the machete at the ridge of his spine on the base of his neck. Bonifacio saw the blow and raised his hand to stop it. The blade cut his hand off at the wrist. The hand jumped away and writhed on the ground. Bonifacio hugged the stump against his breast and rolled onto his back with his feet up to protect himself. Chombe, grinning, circled him loo
king for a clean blow at the neck. Bonifacio looked down at the stump when he saw Chombe holding off striking him again.
"You've disgraced me," Bonifacio accused. "You've taken my hand."
"Think of it," Chombe grinned, "You lost a hand because you wanted to."
"How do you think I wanted to?"
"Put your hand in the path of a machete and you lose the hand. You act like a child who doesn't know how to play the game of rock, scissors, and paper. Put a rock in the path of a machete and you lose a machete. Put flesh out in the path of a rock and you may catch and cover the rock. You gambled flesh against steel and lost a hand. You never played that game? You should have learned that game."
"You've maimed me. How am I to live without a hand? The only work I know is done with two hands."
"Precisely. How can you work now? And how can you live without working? Also, if I leave you alone now you will be in agony until you die. I should go away and leave you for being so stupid."
"No! How could you leave me?"
"I can't stay any longer. I have to attend to Luz del Carmen. You should have let me strike you cleanly with the first blow. You wouldn't have felt any pain at all."
"How could it be stupid not to let you kill me? I don't want to die."
"Well, suit yourself. Die quickly without pain, or agonize. I don't care any more. I'm leaving."
"Wait. I'll let you. How do you want me?" Bonifacio rolled to his knees. Blood squirted under his chin through the fingers holding the stump. He knelt in front of Chombe. "How, Chombe, please?"
"All right, Boni. Once more, then. Bow your head and don't move. I won't strike hard, but your pain will stop."
"My God," Boni prayed. "Please." He bowed his head.
His hat fell off. His thick hair shrouded his face. Chombe stepped to Boni's side, breathing shortly into lungs already full of hot breath. He felt the warmth of Bonifacio's body through his pant leg.
"¡Yyyyyy vamonos!" he grunted, dismissing Bonifacio and the act at the same time. The word added strength and accuracy to the slice of the blade as it beheaded Bonifacio. He kicked the body backward into the hole as it straightened in reaction. He picked the head up by the hair, saw the gleam of the moon in the eyes and dropped it into the hole. He kicked the hand into the hole. He filled and leveled the hole with Bonifacio's dirt. He stacked the tools carefully over the grave, piled brush over it until the pile was taller than he, and set it afire. He watched oil and pitch ooze in the brush and flash and sputter to an ungovernable momentum, and then he walked away feeling clean and absolved of any wrong that only the moon could have witnessed. He hurried to the camp and washed and revived Luz del Carmen. He raped her joyously the rest of the night.
9
Adán awakened with the crowing of a cock after his second deep sleep. He awoke impatient with himself for sleeping so soundly, and because his nose was running and a cough was trying to intrude on his day. He sat up and was dizzy. He put on his hat, tied on his huaraches, rolled his blanket, and walked outside. He walked by Don Panchito who was lying too still to be asleep on his pallet on the floor of the commissary. Adán went into the kitchen. Coals from the supper fire glowed with still warmth in the stove. Adán stirred them and put water on the range to boil. He took flame from the stove on a sliver of pitch and lit the cachimba.
"I would say good day, but it is still too dark and too long until the light of day," Don Panchito said as he scuffed into the kitchen. He looked to see what Adán had done in his kitchen before he could get up. He waited a moment while full awareness of what needed to be done came to him. He looked around with eyes that had long ago accepted not seeing well in dark, early hours. Adán watched him.
The old man's face had not changed with sleep and awakening as most men's faces change. Don Panchito's face was still dirty and its furrows and planes were smeared with smoke and grime--it looked no different three hours after midnight than it did in the last hour of daylight when the old man had been breaking clods in the patio. How close the old face was to the young peach tree. Both depended for life on the same soil, the same hands, the same broken feet of the man, the skinny legs naked under the billowing loose trousers that were tied at the waist with a strip of feed sack.
"Ah, you put on the water. I'll make you coffee," Don Panchito said. He picked up a hard stick of split firewood from the darkness between the stove and the wall. He poked the kindling into the open door of the firebox, moved it, squirmed it, and bedded it into the embers, looked at it, stooped, and brought up another to lay beside the first. Adán went to the woodpile outside and found two long pieces of oily pitch pine. He put them in his marral. Don Panchito filled his bottle with lechuguilla. Adán filled his bule with fresh water. Don Panchito packed broiled kidneys, liver, and loin in a clean cloth and put them in Adán's morral. When Adán was ready with water, food, reata, and rifle he sat down to the coffee Don Panchito served him. Don Panchito filled Adán's coffee bottle and sugared it for him.
"We have a fire in the forest above Teguaraco," Don Panchito announced. "After you retired, Lico sent word that a fire had started and was burning up the mountain toward Rancho Quemado. We were lucky the fiesta was going on. All the young bucks were here. They weren't tired from dancing because no girls came to dance. They were brave and manly from the lechuguilla and we had no trouble sending them to the fire. Will you be going that way, Don Adán?"
"I don't think so. I'm going east. I don't think my tigre stayed at Teguaraco."
"I thought, on your way, you might carry lunch to the fire fighters."
"No. If I was going that way I would be glad to do it. My reason for an early start is to go east."
"Thank you. It's not important. I'll send Manuelito at dawn. The men are sleeping now anyway. The morning is cold and the progress of the fire is unimportant to them at this moment. They have all day to stop the fire before it tops out and burns the timber."
"It has to be stopped. I'm sorry I won't be able to help. Fire fighting is hard work, especially when a man is raw and thirsty with a mezcal hangover."
"The work you do is as important and demanding as fighting a fire, Don Adán. God bless it with success."
"As far as success goes, God seems to be altogether on the side of El Yoco," Adán said, rising and slinging on his rifle, morral, blanket, and bule. I hope God doesn't always give the signs of his favor with success. If he does we'd better not go against the fire or El Yoco."
"Don't worry, you are doing right," Don Panchito said. "I hope you succeed, whether God is on your side or not."
"Your support is enough for me, Don Panchito. Until later."
Adán stepped out into moonlight that was setting on a cold morning of the high Sierra. He skirted the house on the moonlit side, went out through the gates, and warmed when he stepped onto a bright trail powdered and cut by shod hooves on rock slab. He climbed over the plateau of Avena and stopped to breathe before descending into the deep canyon ground of the arroyos of Teguaraco, Tepochici, and the Mayo river that lay in moonlight below him.
He saw the fire creeping brightly up the mountain from Teguaraco. He skidded and hopped fast down the trail through the vertical cornfields above Teguaraco and went to the place where he had last seen the track of El Yoco. He followed it through thick brush and vainoro to the white rock of the ford at Teguaraco. He built a fire under a mesquite and warmed tortillas and part of the roasted liver and kidneys of the brown bull. He ate well and packed up in time to find the track again across
the ford with the first sunlight.
Through the long morning he tracked El Yoco on the steep, spiny brown hills between Teguaraco and the arroyo of Tepochici. At noon he stopped at the pool of the duck and the hawk. He lay down in the same shady spot over the pool that El Yoco had used when he watched Manuelito worrying his burro on the trail. Adán knew his adversary had rested there. He felt dry and feverish and knew he should go down to the pool and bathe and drink a lot of water, but he lay in the jaguar's comfort
able hollow and slept. The sun was only two hours from setting when he awoke and rose to his feet in the same motion. He drank out of his cupped hand as he forded the stream and he picked up the track where he had left it. El Yoco had moved up this trail, the steepest, the most broken trail Adán knew, at a trot. Adán, feverish and tiring, suddenly felt hurried and impatient, too late, too weak for this business. He bent his head and calmed himself. He sipped lechuguilla and moved on in a slow, careful placing of his huaraches that always served him best. He might live one hundred and ten years at that pace. Jaguars never did.
While he moved along, delirious with concentration, the sun, and the catarrh he had caught, he came upon El Yoco's latest kill. El Solitario had crossed El Yoco's path here. El Yoco had left him in shreds. El Solitario had never been great in size, only in temper, but now all that remained of him that was identifiable was his rib cage, spinal column, and head. The white of his bared teeth grinned in his destruction. Adán sighed and squatted in the shade away from the ants and flies feeding on El Solitario. He began to examine the small hollow of ground El Yoco had passed through almost without a pause. El Solitario's hide, flesh, and bone hung from the limbs of a brasil tree. The hindquarters lay in rocks up the hill. Part of the innards were hanging low in the limbs of a vinarama. El Yoco had not eaten any part of El Solitario. He had fallen on El Solitario with all his weapons exploding. El Solitario was not offensive to any but his own kind. He had been no threat to El Yoco.
Adán unsheathed his knife and took a hand of El Solitario's to keep in his pocket. The pads of the hand were large, soft, and black. The claws were long as El Yoco's and always bared. El Solitario had never been able to hide them. He could not sheathe them as El Yoco could sheathe his. They must have bothered him, being so big and always in sight with no place to hide or get out of his way. He could not move without them when he did not need them. Adán stood up. He felt like groaning, lying back, and going to sleep on the hard ground near the flies and ants. He was sick. He ached. His eyes were dry and sensitive to the glare of the sun on the land. He squinted his eyes and moved up the trail. El Yoco had not fed, reclined, groaned, or slept here. Neither would El Martinillo. El Yoco had gone purposefully toward the buttes of Contreras Peak. Adán had no trouble following him. El Yoco moved as though sure of a mate or a meal. He had destroyed a meal in El Solitario. He must be sure of a better one. Maybe the meal or the mate would hold him long enough for Adán to catch up.