Jornado (An E.R. Slade Western

by E. R. Slade

“Señor,” Felipe begged, “do not be angry with me. I am only a poor sheepherder. I have a beeg family and no money. Have compassion, señor.”

  “You know, last night I was thinking maybe I had been too hard on you. I thought you were basically honest and that it was only a hard life that made you the way you are. But I think you have a hard life because you are crooked and thief. One day it will get you in big trouble, Fats. Somebody will put a bullet between your eyes. You do not know how tempted I am to do that myself, right now. You have caused me no end of trouble. I ought to skin you alive and leave you for the buzzards. I’d do it, too, only I want Dixon, and you’re my lead. First, we have to take this rented horse back to town. Then we’re going to ride to find Dixon. You won’t see the last of me until we do find Dixon. Then you can have the letter. I’ll keep the money, by way of compensation for all the cussing energy you’ve cost me. You understand, Fats?”

  “Sí, Señor Cleent,” Felipe said meekly. “I have treated you poorly, have I not?”

  “You have.”

  “I am sorry, Cleent. It is much temptation for a poor man like me. I drink too much sometimes, you know?”

  “Is that a fact,” Clint said, not really listening. He already knew how the conversation would go, and it was getting boring to have to have it every other day or so.

  “Sí,” Felipe said eagerly. “Last night I have a drink, you know?” He was getting on his horse. “I begin to think, you know? I think about this beautiful horse and all the burros, and I think perhaps I need them more than you. I think perhaps you can always make the money, no? You can shoot, you are norteamericano, you are smart and you are strong. You can do anything, no?”

  “Save it,” Clint said.

  “But poor Felipe. He is only a poor mexicano, a sheepherder, a man with nothing, señor. A man who must make his money how he can. A big family too—and you have no family, sí? It is a lot of mouths to feed. I think I can sell the burros in Crooked Creek, and the horses are worth much anywhere, no? Perhaps Adelita will be able to buy a new dress, eh? It is so bad for Adelita to become beautiful with a new dress? Is not this worth a horse and some burros?”

  “I don’t want to hear about it, Fats.”

  “It is only that I try to explain, Señor Cleent, so you will understand. I do not wish to hurt you. But it is the way the world passes, is it not?”

  “Shut up, Fats.”

  “I think you are a fine, understanding man, Señor Cleent,” Felipe said reverently.

  “Yeah,” Clint said, and stuck a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

  Chapter Twelve

  They rode back to Oak Creek without further Indian trouble. Clint was careful to bind Felipe hand and foot at night. Clint returned the horse and got the impression that the liveryman had been hoping Clint would be late so he could send the sheriff after him.

  “Okay, Fats, where to?” Clint asked, as they settled into the hotel room that night—one room because Clint wasn’t about to let Felipe pull the same stunt again.

  “Señor, I must be very honest with you. I do not know where the señor Dixon is. I know only that Pedro must have seen him or seen someone who had passed him the letter. But as to where the señor Dixon is, I do not know.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t figure it that way. I figure you do know. What’s more, I’m not cutting you loose until you find him for me. So if you don’t know, then you’d best find out.”

  “Señor Cleent, I would like to help you, for I would like to have the burros. I am very poor, as you have seen for yourself. But it might be a long time. My family will worry about me. And then there is the letter to Señor Griego. It is very important. I must deliver it very soon. Señor Valenzuela has allowed three weeks only for a reply. It will take a long time to get to the hacienda—perhaps two weeks. It will take longer than three weeks for a reply now. Señor Valenzuela will be very angry. He is dangerous when he is angry. Señor, it is my suggestion to deliver the letter and bring Señor Valenzuela his reply first, and then we will look for Señor Dixon.”

  Clint was in no mood to be put off yet again. On the other hand, having met Valenzuela and suspecting that Felipe was probably telling something like the truth about rapid delivery of the letter, Clint was inclined to go along with Felipe. One thing Clint didn’t figure he needed was Valenzuela on his tail. Life was complicated and difficult enough now without that.

  “Okay, Fats, we take Griego the letter. We bring back the reply. Maybe we’ll run into Dixon along the way somewhere. He’s mixed up with Valenzuela somehow.” As an afterthought, Clint asked, “You don’t happen to know just what the connection is between Valenzuela and Dixon, do you?”

  Felipe appeared to consider.

  “Señor Cleent, you have saved my life now twice. This is worth something, is it not?”

  “Well, your life better be worth something, if I keep saving it. It’s costing me a lot of trouble to keep you alive.”

  “It is worth much to me, señor,” Felipe said seriously. “I do not think Valenzuela would allow me to live if he finds out I have told you about Dixon. But I will tell you in any case. It is something I can give for my life.”

  Clint adjusted the toothpick and lay back against the headboard to listen.

  “The señor Dixon, he is very important to Señor Valenzuela. Señor Valenzuela, he meets the señor Dixon two years ago, when Señor Dixon comes to him. The señor Dixon, he has some information, he says, and he will sell it for a part of the profit to be made. At this time, Señor Valenzuela, he is not much better than me. He is only a poor sheepherder, who must take money from gringos to live. He has a small number of friends who help him. They have become known as dangerous, because they have killed three men once, and the gringo sheriff, he is after them. Well, the señor Dixon, he says he works for the Tracker Detectives, who are to watch that the gold and silver from the mills is not stolen. The gold and silver, it is sent out at certain secret times, and is hidden in certain wagons, because there has been much holding up. The señor Dixon, he knows when they are sent because he works for those who protect the gold and silver. He says he will sell to Señor Valenzuela the knowledge of when gold or silver is to be sent from town, and in return desires half the profits.”

  “So Dixon’s Valenzuela’s spotter.”

  “Sí. That is how Valenzuela has become rich and has built his stronghold.”

  “Dixon must be just as rich then.”

  “Sí.”

  “But he must be useless now, since it doesn’t figure that he’s still working as a guard and not enjoying his wealth.”

  “Oh no, señor, he does not work anymore. But he still has the connections, no? He finds out and then tells Señor Valenzuela.”

  “I’d think Valenzuela would get tired of giving him half and get the connections himself.”

  “Señor, it would be impossible. It requires trust, and no gringo will trust a mexicano.”

  “Can’t imagine why that should be so. How is it that somebody doesn’t catch on to Dixon and jail him? If the holdups come off like clockwork, it seems likely that the mining company would either go out of business or change guard companies.”

  “Señor Dixon does not give information on Oak Creek only. He can find out about gold being moved in any town in the mountains or for two weeks travel in any direction. The holdups are spread around. Not every shipment is hit. He has long ears, very long, señor.”

  “But you don’t know where this wealthy long-eared filth lives?”

  “It is not something Señor Dixon wishes known.”

  “But Valenzuela knows.”

  “I am sure.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “No, señor.”

  “And his messengers?”

  “No, Cleent. I am a messenger, and I do not know. Letters to him can be left at any saloon and they will find the way to Señor Dixon.”

  “Well, seems to me the thing to do is follow one of the messages.”

  “This w
ould be very difficult, señor. Everyone is afraid of Señor Dixon. He has much power. No one will allow the message to be seen changing hands.”

  “Okay, Felipe, let’s have your wrists.”

  “Cleent, I will not run. I swear upon my mother’s holy grave ...”

  “The hands, Fats.”

  Clint tied Felipe’s wrists behind him, and then tied him down to the legs of the heavy dresser. Then Clint rolled his own blanket out on the bed and went to sleep.

  Not long after sunup, they were riding southeast out of town along the sluggish creek. Clint, toothpick in teeth, was pondering Mescaleros. All this crossing of Mescalero desert had a way of wearing you down, and making you jumpy.

  The burros were not slow to give trouble. At the point where it was time to turn south away from the creek into the desert, the burros decided they’d rather roll in the mud of the creek bottoms. Felipe’s advice was to let them do it for a few minutes. Clint, keeping a tight rein on his temper and aware that the nightmares about burros would be sure to return tonight, agreed. It took an hour to coax the burros into the desert and get under way again.

  As it turned out, the crossing of the desert wasn’t a problem. They saw no Indians, though the concern that Indians might be about to attack at any moment was nearly as bad in itself. The burros were enough to drive anybody but a Mexican crazy, such was Clint’s settled conviction, but by the time Felipe’s brush hut appeared as a dot on the horizon, Clint had once again grown accustomed to the critters and was grudgingly appreciative that they had helped bring him and Felipe safely across the desert.

  “How do you navigate across that place, anyway?” Clint asked, struck by the way they were coming out on Felipe’s isolated hut with as much accuracy as a train on rails finds the town it’s headed for. Clint could have found it eventually, but not with this kind of accuracy.

  Felipe shrugged. “It is not difficult. I go where it is I wish to go.”

  “Ah, so that explains it.”

  Adelita, Felipe’s wife, looked at Clint sourly. For that matter, she looked at Felipe sourly, and the first thing she did was complain to him that she had been even sicker while he was away, and that the children had caused her much concern and worry. She practically accused him of deserting her. But Felipe beamed. He took it all as though the warmest welcome and embraced his wife and kissed her enthusiastically. Several shabbily clothed and dour-faced children looked silently on, and when he hugged them also, took it all impassively.

  They stayed the night. Clint made an effort to eat Adelita’s cooking, but it tasted like fried bedbugs in chili sauce and he had trouble keeping it down. He was offered a mat and a tight corner inside the hut to sleep, but the thick air, the coughing and snoring, and squabbles between the children, and the elbows and knees which prodded him continuously made him give it up. He went out into the fresh air upwind of the hut and here finally went peacefully to sleep.

  He woke to find a rattler curled up under the edge of his blanket. With extreme care, he got clear and then shot the rattler, and Adelita cooked it for breakfast, mixing in a few dozen chili peppers and so on. Clint got a little down, and attempted to wash out the fire in his throat, which burned clear to the bottom of his stomach, with black coffee. And then Felipe went into a long and apologetic explanation of what he had to do. His wife waved her arms and scolded him furiously for deserting her again. He kept explaining that it was necessary that he do this in order to get money, and that in any case it was for his cousin Valenzuela.

  They rode off with Adelita screaming accusations at them and Felipe smiling and waving gaily.

  “Is she not wonderful?” he said to Clint.

  “She sure can talk.”

  “This she can do!” Felipe agreed, beaming.

  “Looky, Felipe, I’ve been thinking. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, while we were in Oak Creek. I’m going to leave a message for Dixon. Let’s ride over to Crooked Creek and find a saloon.”

  “We are going that way in any case. But what will you write?”

  “I’m going to tell him I want to talk to him.”

  “And then you hope he will allow you to speak with him? And you will shoot him? It is very clever, but very dangerous. He will have men watching. I do not advise this, Cleent.”

  “You have a better way?”

  “Señor, there is no good way. The señor Dixon is a very dangerous man. But if you have something to settle with him, you must settle it.”

  “I’m still going to stay with you, Felipe. In case I don’t get an answer. When you deliver the reply to Valenzuela, I’m going with you, unless there is a message from Dixon. I’ll see that Valenzuela opens up about Dixon.”

  “That is not a safe thing, Señor Cleent. Valenzuela will crush you.”

  “I know what he’s apt to try. But there may be no other way. You’ve told me he’s the only man who knows where Dixon is. If Dixon won’t talk to me, I’ll have to find him. And the only way to do that is by making Valenzuela open up.”

  “I am glad I am not you, Cleent,” Felipe said soberly. “I am glad it is not my wife who is dead so that I must kill Dixon. It is a dangerous thing. You will not live. You will give up your life because of your dead wife.”

  “The hell.”

  “But you must do this, I understand. I would do it in your place, Cleent, but I would not like to die.”

  They rode into Crooked Creek two hours after lunchtime, the burros having been frolicsome that morning and one having therefore lost a pack in a mesquite thicket. The straps had to be repaired and it took half an hour.

  Crooked Creek was just as full of gun smoke and excitement as ever. When they rode up the street, three gunfights were going on at once, and a bunch of drunken miners were chasing a playful dog which had somebody’s hat in his mouth, smashing anything that came in their way as part of the fun. It was amazing to Clint that there was anything left of the town at all after such a continuous barrage of destruction for so long. When a tent was blown down, or burned or run down by rambunctious men, it was always set right up again in hasty fashion, doing only the barest minimum of work required to effect the repair. The result was a shabbiness and atmosphere of carelessness that pervaded the whole town, and if the claims all played out and everybody moved away, there would be nothing here but a couple of adobe walls inside a week, and they would crumble soon enough under the wear of blowing sand and occasional sudden flooding caused by desert downpours.

  Clint hunted up a scrap of paper and borrowed a played-out quill pen and some ink and wrote a note:

  Mr. Blake Dixon—

  I want to talk to you. It’s important for both you and me—life or death. I’ll be waiting.

  The name is

  Clint Evans

  He folded it, sealed it with wax from the candle, wrote Dixon’s name on the outside and walked into the nearest saloon.

  “See this gets to Dixon,” he said, handing it to the barkeeper.

  The barkeeper eyed him, then the note, which he had quickly dropped below the bar out of sight of the other patrons.

  “What’s your pleasure?” he asked.

  “Whiskey.”

  He drank it off, paid for it and left.

  “You have done it?” Felipe asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Señor Cleent, I will tell you now, in case I do not get a chance again before you die. You are a fine man. I have much respect for you, and I will pray for your soul in heaven.”

  “Don’t deal me out yet, Fats. I’ll likely outlive you.”

  They rode south for the border.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Griego hacienda was in the foothills of the Sierra Madre not very far into Mexico. It was a sunny, rich spot halfway between the brutal wastes of the desert and the impenetrable jumbled mass of the mountains. The Griego hacienda ran cattle and did it on a grand scale. As he rode with Felipe over a hill and had a view of the sprawl of the buildings near a sparkling river, the mass of the
Sierra Madre behind, the fluffs of distant summer clouds overhead, Clint drew a deep breath. He had always thought of Mexico as desert and endless squalid repetitions of Felipe. But it appeared there was wealth here in places.

  They passed a group of vaqueros, looking prosperous and healthy for their kind, whooping cows into a bunch to drive off somewhere. Felipe waved and a couple of them waved back.

  After a half hour, during which it seemed that the buildings got no closer, they dropped behind a ridge, and when they topped it a few minutes later, they were almost in the dooryard.

  Felipe was known here, and because Clint was with Felipe he was also accepted with friendly politeness. Yet, Clint had the feeling that it was nothing more than politeness, that he was being tolerated, not trusted. Clint didn’t care a hang for that, but figured he’d stay next to Felipe. He wasn’t confident he wouldn’t be ambushed if he were to be separated from the tortilla chili pepper.

  Their animals were taken care of by cordial vaqueros who joked with Felipe about the burros. Then they were shown into the house, which went in for the usual Spanish architecture: high ceilings, a patio full of flowers and caged birds in the middle. The uniformed man who had let them in took them along to a room that seemed taller than it was long and whose white stucco walls were hung with what looked like priceless paintings and whose furniture was equally valuable. Lying in a huge bed under a canopy of silk tapestries was a shriveled little figure in a white nightcap and bedclothes showing a hunting scene. The man’s head was propped up gently by the man who let them in, and Felipe approached the bedside.

  “Hola, Felipe,” Griego said weakly, trying to smile. Continuing in Spanish, he said, “So, my cousin, what is occurring at that scoundrel’s camp? Do you have a message for me?”

  Clint had passed the letter from Pepita to Felipe before they entered the house, and now Felipe passed the letter to Griego, who took it in a bony, shaking hand.

  “Who is your American companion, Felipe?” he asked as he fumbled trying to open the seal.