The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 18

The partners went a long way round the village where Curtin used to buy provisions. It was better to let the villagers believe him still up in the mountains. Whenever it could be done, they avoided villages, traveling, wherever possible, isolated trails. The less they were seen, the less apt they were to be molested.

They had very little cash about them. Upon reaching the station they would sell the burros, the tools, and even the hides, which would give them more than sufficient money to buy second-class railroad tickets to the port.

Most of the trails led naturally into villages, and so it frequently happened that they found themselves unexpectedly at the first houses of a village which they had not been able to see before, owing to the woods, hills, or curves. Turning back when in sight of the houses would have aroused suspicion, so they had to go on into the heart of the village, where one of them usually went into the general store and bought something—cigarettes, a box of matches, a can of sardines, sugar, or salt. Here he spoke a few words to the storekeeper and to bystanders, so as to let everybody know that the three had no cause to hide their faces.

On the third day they found themselves, about noon, in a village which they would have avoided had it been a matter of their own choice. On reaching the plaza they saw four Mexicans standing in front of an adobe house. Three of them carried guns, yet they did not look like bandits.

“Now we’re caught,” Dobbs said to Howard. “That’s police.”

“Seems so.”

Dobbs stopped the burros as if to try to lead them through the village some other way. Curtin marched behind the last animaL

“You’d better not make any foolish move,” Howard warned Dobbs. “If we arouse suspicion now, we’re in for it. Let’s go straight on. All they can do is search us and hold us for taxes and for dodging the permit.”

“Exactly! And that may cost us everything we have, even the burros.”

Curtin came up with the last pair of beasts. “What is this man doing there—I mean the man with specs and no gun?”

This bespectacled man was standing in the portico of the humble house, discussing something with a few residents gathered around him. There was a very small table set up in the portico. Spread on this table was a white cotton cloth, none too clean.

“I figure,” Howard said, “this guy is a special commissioner of the gov’ment_the federal government, I mean. Hell, I can’t quite make out what he wants.”

“Looks to me as if he’s questioning the villagers,” Dobbs said. “I hope he isn’t asking them any questions about us.”

“What of it? It’s too late now, anyhow.” Curtin kicked a burro nibbling at the grass of the plaza.

“All right, let’s pretend we don’t mind.” Howard lighted his pipe to cover his nervousness.

The Mexican officials, occupied with the little crowd of villagers at the house, had taken no notice of the pack-train. Packtrains of burros or mules passing through the villages on the slopes of the Sierra Madre are no novelty. The three partners reached the center of the square before any of the officials noticed them. Then one said a few words to his companions, and all of them looked at the partners, who went on their way. As they neared the opposite end of the plaza, one of the officials stepped out of the portico, walked a few strides toward the passing train, and called: “‘ello there, caballeros, un momento, por favor!”

“Good night, now we are finished,” Dobbs said, and swore.

“Wait here,” Howard ordered. “I’ll go over alone first and see what they want. You stay here with the burros. Maybe I can square things with them better alone. I can make them think I’m a Baptist preacher from an abandoned mining town.”

“He’s right as always, the old man is,” Curtin admitted. “That’s why I’d never try to play poker with him. Okay, go over and give them a good look at your honest face and tell them the story of Jonah in the whale or maybe Elijah flying a plane up to heaven.”

Howard crossed the plaza and walked over to the officials. “Buenas dias, senores. What can I do for you? Que puedo ofrecerle?”

“Lots you can, senor,” one of them answered. “You come from the mountains, senores?”

“Yes, we do. And it’s a goddamned hard journey. We’ve been on a huntingtrip. Got quite a few hides, and we hope to get a good price in San Luis Potosi.”

“Are you all vaccinated?”

“Are we what?”

“I mean have you got with you your certificado de vacunacion, your vaccination certificate? It’s the law that everybody in the republic has to have been vaccinated inside of the last five years to prevent smallpox epidemics.”

“Oh, caballeros, we were vaccinated back home when still kids. But, of course, we don’t carry our vaccination papers with us.”

“Of course not, gentlemen, and who does? Not even I do.” The officer laughed. So did all the other officials. “You see, we are the Federal Health Commission, sent out by the government to vaccinate everyone, especially the Indians, who suffer most from the smallpox. It’s a hard task for us. They run away from us whenever we come to a village. They are afraid. We’d have to bring along a whole regiment of soldiers to catch them. They hide in the mountains and in the bush and don’t go back to their homes until we have left the district.”

“Yes,” said another official, “look here at my face, all scratched up by women who defended their babies whom we wanted to vaccinate. But you know our country. Look at the thousands who have lost their eyesight on account of the ravages caused by smallpox epidemics. Look at the thousands and hundreds of thousands of pretty girls and women whose faces are scarred.”

“And when we come to these people to help them,” another of the officials broke in, “they fight us and even stone us as if we were their greatest enemies and not, as we really are, their best friends. They don’t have to pay a cent. Everything is done without any charge. The government only wishes to save them.”

Now the man with the eyeglasses spoke up. “See here, my good friend, I know you and your companeros over there are all vaccinated. But we would like you to do us a great favor. Let your friends come over here voluntarily and get vaccinated once more, please. ‘'Vhat we need is to show all these ignorant people that you, white men, are not afraid of what we are doing and that you come to get the scratch as if you were going to a dance. In all those huts behind the saplings there are families watching us. We have been here four days, offering vaccination for nothing and persuading people to come and take it. What makes things worse for us, the church is set against vaccination because it was not ordered by the Lord, just as this same church is against educating the children, because they might read books written against the church and write sinful love-letters. Well, you know all this without my telling you more about it. Now, won’t you, please, help us?”

“Why not? Of course,” Howard replied. “We are pleased to help you and the government.”

“I thought so when I saw you coming,” the doctor said. He laid before Howard his book with blanks. “Now, just write your name and your age on this line. After the vaccination you receive this slip, which is good for the next five years. If officials at a railroad station or in a town bother you about vaccination, all you have to do is just show them this slip. All right, let’s have your left arm and clean first with alcohol. Okay, friend, there are the few scratches.”

“Gracias, doctor.” Howard meant his thanks in more than one way.

“Now, please, tell your friends when they come over here to roll up the sleeve of their left arm while crossing the plaza so that the people watching from their huts can see what they are doing and that they are not a bit afraid of the medicine. We’ll put this table farther out in the open to make it a great show. To have you three white men, Americans, coming here of your own free will to get the scratch, or the medicine, as these Indians call it, is a great help to us. They’ll see that we don’t mean to poison them, and they’ll have more confidence in our work. So, please, let your friends put on a great show for the benefit of the villagers. Thank you, and have a pleasant trip home.”

“Gee, I got scared,” Dobbs said when Howard returned to the waiting train. “Seeing that feller take out a book and make you scribble in it, I was sure everything was lost. Huh, of course we’ll make them a great circus. Just watch me, how I handle a big show.”

So Dobbs and Curtin rolled up their sleeves and shouted in Spanish from where they were: “Si, doctor, what a pleasure to get that sweet vacuna in our arms! We’ve been waiting for it for ten years and couldn’t get it. In town the doctors charged us fifteen pesos for each little scratch, and you give it away for nothing. Yes, we are coming.”

As the officials had expected, the plan worked fine. The villagers, first mostly men and the bigger boys, came out and stood in the opening of their huts, watching the show Curtin and Dobbs were offering them. When Dobbs held his arm toward the doctor, he laughed out loud. Curtin whistled a jolly tune.. Men and boys came closer to see the procedure. The doctor smiled and the officers persuaded one of the men standing nearest to come and have the same thing done to him. Curtin pushed him closer jokingly, as the man was still frightened. But after he had the few scratches and felt nothing, he pushed his two boys forward and ordered them to hold still and have it over. When the partners finally left the plaza, the officers were so busy that they had to line up the people waiting for their turn, and among them now there were already women offering the arms of their babies to the officers.

After passing the last hut of the village, Dobbs said with a laugh: “Hey, Curty, you’re a funny mug.”

“What the hell is so funny about me?”

“You see ghosts like an old woman. If you see a guy with a rusty gat on his hip, right away you think the goods are gone. Anyone could have told you that these guys didn’t want anything from us. You could have seen that the guy with the specs was a doe. Couldn’t you see that right away from the table with a white sheet spread out on it? What else could a table with a white sheet on it serve for?”

“You’re telling me, wise mug!” Curtin grinned. “Anyhow, joke or no joke, I like it better this way.”

“So do I,” Howard threw in.