Hombre

4

We sat there only a few minutes. That’s all the longer our rest time lasted, and it was starting again. Only not the way we expected it to. We didn’t go right then. We were about to when the McLaren girl said, “Look-” pointing down the draw.

We looked, but we all crouched down at the same time. There, way down at the bottom, was the Mexican again, his straw hat bright in the sunlight so that you knew it was the Mexican and not one of the others. But we could not tell at first what he was carrying. He had to get up a ways-taking his time, his face raised, his one hand holding his side-before we saw it was a stick with something white tied to the end of it.

He seemed careful, but not scared, keeping his eyes on the ridge, not sure we would honor his white truce flag, I guess, and ready to dive for cover if we let go at him. He was armed with both his revolvers.

Nobody said anything. We just watched. He kept coming, almost reaching the place where Mendez had been during the ambush.

Russell stood up holding his carbine in one hand, pointed down, and the Mexican stopped.

Russell said, “You come to give up?”

The Mexican stood at ease, letting his truce flag dip down to the ground. I think he smiled when Russell said that, but I’m not sure.

I know he shook his head. He said, “When you learn to shoot better.” He raised his hand from his side and there was blood on it.

“You didn’t do so good.”

“I tried to do better,” Russell said. “I think you moved.”

“Moved,” the Mexican said. “How do you like them, tied to a tree?”

“On a horse,” Russell said. “Like your friend.”

The Mexican grinned. “You like to pull the trigger.”

“I can do it again for you,” Russell said.

“You could,” the Mexican agreed, staring up at Russell, studying him and judging the distance between them. “I have to talk to this other one first. This Favor.”

He pronounced it Fa-vor, like it was a Spanish word.

“He can hear you,” Russell said.

“If he can’t you tell him,” the Mexican said. “This. He gives us the money…and some of the water. We give him his wife and everyone goes home. Ask him how he likes that.”

“You’re out of water?”

“Almost.” The Mexican grinned. “That Early. He put whisky in his canteen. He thought it would be easy.”

Russell shook his head. “It will get even harder.”

“Not if this Fa vor gives us the money.”

“He doesn’t have it,” Russell said.

The Mexican grinned again. “Tell me he hid it.”

Russell shook his head. “He gave it to me.”

The Mexican nodded, looking up at Russell like he was admiring him. “So now you steal the money.” He shrugged his shoulders. “All right, we trade with you then.”

“She’s not my woman,” Russell said.

“We give her to you.”

“What else?”

“Your life. How’s that?”

“Tell Braden how things are now,” Russell said.

“What’s the difference who has the money?” the Mexican said. “You give it to us or we shoot that woman.”

“All right,” Russell said. “You shoot her.”

The Mexican kept staring at him. “What about the rest of them? What do they say?”

“They say what they want,” Russell said. “I say what I want. Do you see that now?”

He didn’t see it. He didn’t know what to think, so he just stood there, one hand on his side, the other holding that truce flag.

“Tell Braden how it is,” Russell said. “Tell him to think some more.”

“He’ll say the same thing.”

“Tell him anyway.”

The Mexican hadn’t taken his eyes off Russell for a second, sizing him up all the while they talked. “Maybe you and I finish something first,” he said. “Maybe you come down here a little.”

“I’m thinking,” Russell said, “whether to kill you right now or wait till you turn around.”

Do you know what the Mexican did? He smiled. Not that unbelieving kind of smile, but like he appreciated Russell or enjoyed him. It was about the strangest thing I ever saw. He smiled and said, “If I didn’t believe you, I think you would do it. All right, I talk to Braden.”

He turned and walked away dragging the truce flag, not with his shoulders hunched like he expected something, but as calmly as he had walked up.

Russell waited until the Mexican was almost down to the bottom. He got his blanket roll and the saddlebags, just glanced at us, and moved off. He didn’t tell us what he had planned. If we wanted to follow him that was up to us.

We didn’t expect this. We thought he would talk to them again. But who could be sure what Russell was thinking? We knew we couldn’t sit in that draw forever. Sooner or later Braden would try to get at us. But was going on right then the best way? Russell must have thought so, though he wasn’t telling us why.

We followed him. What choice had we?

That was a funny thing. I felt closer to Dr. Favor than I did to Russell. Dr. Favor might have stolen government money and left his wife to her own fate; but it was something you had to think about before you realized it. He never admitted either right out.

Russell was something else. He had said to the Mexican, not caring who heard him, “All right, shoot her.” Like she was nothing to him, so what did he care? Do you see the difference? Russell was so cold and calm about it, it scared you to death. Also, if he didn’t care about her, what did he care about us?

Now it was almost like the whole thing was between Braden and Russell and we were in it only because there wasn’t any place else to go. Like it was all Russell’s fault and he had dragged us into it.

I would say we walked three miles from the time we left that draw until we stopped again, though we did not gain more than one mile in actual distance. We kept pretty much to ridges, high up as possible in the cover of pinyon pine and scrub, and when we stopped it was because flat country opened up at the end of the canyon not far ahead of us. It was a good two or three miles across the openness before the hills took up again.

Russell didn’t say it and nobody asked, but we knew he planned to wait for dark to cross that open part. It was no place to be seen in daylight by three men riding horses. (We did not know then whether Russell had killed one or two of their horses.)

We had climbed a pretty steep grade to reach this place we camped at (high up the way Apaches always camp, whether there is water or not) with thick pinyon on three sides of us and the slope, with some cliffrose and scrub, on the open side.

Russell had made it hard for them to follow. If they came directly on our sign, they would have to come up the open slope. If they came any other way, it would take them hours to work around, and then they would be taking a chance of not finding us. So, we figured, they would come directly when they came. All right, but to come up that open slope they would have to wait until dark. Which was what we would be waiting for to slip off through the trees.

Do you see how Russell figured to stay one jump ahead of them? I estimated we would reach the old San Pete mine some time during the night; Delgado’s if we were lucky, some time during the next afternoon or evening. Then home. It didn’t seem far when you looked ahead. The trouble was you had to keep looking back.

After the little sleep we had had it was good to lie down again. Everybody picked out a spot. We couldn’t make a fire so we ate some more of the biscuits, which were pretty hard by now, and the dried strip meat which never was very good.

We did not drink any water though. John Russell had said we would have to wait until night. It was midafternoon now. Imagine not having had a drink since that morning. The salty beef didn’t help your thirst any either. But what could we do?

I kept picturing myself sitting on a shady porch with a big pitcher of ice water, sitting there in a clean shirt having just shaved and taken a bath. Boy!

Mendez looked ten years older, his eyes sunken in and his face covered with beard stubble. Dr. Favor’s big, broad face, framed by that half-moon-shaped beard, was sweaty looking. The McLaren girl and John Russell were the only ones who didn’t look so bad, I mean not as dirty or sweaty as the rest of us. With her hair too short to muss and her dark skin, she looked like she was taking it all right. John Russell was dusty, of course, but had no beard to make his face look dirty. You could tell he had pulled out the stubbles Indian-fashion when he first started to get a beard, years ago, and now he’d never have one.

Russell stayed mostly by the open side, lying down but propped on his elbows and looking down the way we had come up. I guess he was resting and doing his thinking now, taking time to see things clearly. Whatever he saw in his mind, it got him up on his feet after a while.

He brought the saddlebags over to me and dropped them. He didn’t say guard them, but that’s what his look meant. All he said was he would go have a look at things and he left, taking only the Spencer carbine; no water or anything else. He didn’t go straight down the slope but headed off through the pinyon, I guess to keep high up as he scouted the ground we had covered from the draw.

A little while after he was gone, Dr. Favor went over to where the waterskin and canteen and provisions were. He picked up the canteen and was drinking from it before anyone had time to yell stop. It was the McLaren girl who yelled it.

She jumped up, and Dr. Favor held the canteen out to her. “Your turn,” he said.

“We’re not to drink till tonight. You know that.”

“I forget,” Dr. Favor said. She could believe him or not; he didn’t care.

Mendez, still sitting down, said, “Maybe we should all take one, to keep it even.”

“To keep it even!” the McLaren girl said. “What about later when we don’t have any. What good does keeping it even do?”

“I’m thinking of now,” Mendez said, rising. “You can think of any time you want.”

“All right,” the girl said. “And what about Russell?”

“Look”-Mendez had this surprised sound to his voice-“if he wants to wait till dark, all right. That’s up to him. We drink when we want.”

“He doesn’t even have to know,” Dr. Favor said. He saw Mendez liked this idea so he put it out there again. “If you’re worried about Russell, why would he even have to know?”

“And you think that would be fair,” the McLaren girl said.

“It’s his rule,” Dr. Favor said. “If it’s unfair, he brought it on himself.”

“Look,” Mendez said, making it sound simple, “if you want to wait, you wait. If you want a drink now, then you take it.”

That was when he grabbed the canteen from Dr. Favor and took a good drink, more even than Favor had, so that Dr. Favor reached for it and pulled it out of Mendez’s mouth.

“You said keep it even.”

Then he handed the canteen to the McLaren girl.

She took it, her eyes right on Dr. Favor and hesitating just a little before she put it to her mouth. If this surprises you, look at it this way: they could drink it all while you sat there obeying Russell’s rule. All right, if they were going to have some, a person would be dumb not to take his share. That’s why I took a drink right after she did. I’m sure she was thinking the same way.

Dr. Favor was still looking at her, more sure of himself than ever now. He said, “If you want to tell him when he gets back, you just go right ahead.” He was even smiling then.

What could she say? On the other hand, knowing her, she might have said something at that. But she didn’t.

Everybody settled down again. For a little while there was peace. Then Dr. Favor came over to me.

Right away he said, “That’s some Indian chief we got,” meaning Russell of course.

“Well,” I said, “I guess he knows what he’s doing.”

“He knows what he wants. That much is sure.”

If he thought Russell wanted the money, that was his business. But why talk about something you couldn’t prove? I just said, “Maybe he’s the best chief we got,” kind of joking about it.

“Only we’re not his braves,” Dr. Favor said, and he was serious, his face close to mine and staring right at me.

“If somebody has another idea,” I said, “I’ll listen.”

“I’ve got one,” he said. “We leave right now.”

He’d force you right up against a wall like that; then you’d have to try and wiggle out.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said.

“Let me have my gun then.”

He said it all of a sudden and I didn’t have any idea in the world what to say back. What I finally said was something like, “Well, I don’t think I can do that.”

“Because he said so?”

“No, not just because of him.”

“Because of the others?”

“We’re all in this together.”

“But not going by his rules anymore.”

“Just the water.”

“What’s more important than that?”

“I’m holding it,” I said. “He’s the one took it.”

“Now that doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Dr. Favor said. “What you’re doing, you’re keeping something that doesn’t belong to you.”

I couldn’t tell the man to his face I thought he was a thief. That’s why I had so much trouble thinking of something to say. Even with the gun in my belt, or maybe because it was there, I felt awkward and dumb. He just kept staring at me.

“Maybe I should take it away from you,” he said.

When I hesitated, not knowing what to say or do, the McLaren girl got into it. She said, looking at me, “Are you going to let him?”

She pushed up to a sitting position, about ten or twelve feet away from us. “You know what he wants,” she said.

“What’s mine,” Dr. Favor said. “If you think anything else, you’re imagining things.”

“I know one thing,” the McLaren girl said. “I wouldn’t give you the gun if I had it. And if you tried to take it, I’d shoot you.”

“For hardly more than a little girl,” Dr. Favor said, “you certainly have strong opinions.”

“When I know I’m right,” the McLaren girl said.

Dr. Favor stood up. He lit a cigar and for a while stood there looking out over the slope and smoking. Time crept along. I laid down with one arm on the saddlebags and my head on my arm. I don’t think I have ever been so tired, and it was easy to close my eyes and fall asleep. I fought it for a while, dozing, opening my eyes. Once when I opened them, I saw Dr. Favor sitting by Mendez and Mendez was smoking a cigar too.

I heard Dr. Favor say, “You did fine. It took more nerve than most have to lie there waiting for them.”

“He shouldn’t have made me do it,” Mendez said.

“You didn’t have to, you know.”

“Listen, he makes sense,” Mendez said. “Whether you agree with him or not.”

“He makes sense even if it kills you,” Dr. Favor said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“It’s just I had never shot at a man before,” Mendez said. “It isn’t an easy thing.”

“It seems easy to him,” Dr. Favor said. “And if you can kill one person, you can kill four.”

“For what reason?”

“My money,” Dr. Favor said.

Mendez shook his head. “I know him better than that.”

“Where money is concerned,” Dr. Favor said, “you don’t know anybody.”

Within the next quarter of an hour Dr. Favor proved those words.

I should have taken them as a warning, but I had not for a minute thought he would ever use force. By the time I woke up (I mean actually woke up, for I had dozed off again) it was too late. Dr. Favor was standing over me with Mendez’s shotgun pointed right at my head.

Mendez sat there with his legs crossed and his shoulders hunched as if he didn’t care what was happening-as if Dr. Favor had just taken the gun and Mendez hadn’t lifted an eyebrow to stop him.

The McLaren girl was watching too. She had been lying on her side, but now pushed herself up on one arm as Dr. Favor took the revolver from me first and then the saddlebags. He went over to the waterskin next and filled up the two-quart canteen from it, leaving hardly anything in the skin.

That’s when the McLaren girl finally spoke. She said, “Maybe you’ll leave us your blessing since you’re taking everything else.”

Dr. Favor was past arguing with anybody. He didn’t say a word. He opened the canvas grainsack, looked at the meat and biscuits inside like he was going to take some out, but he pulled the neck closed and swung it over his shoulder with the saddlebags.

He was standing like that, ready to move off, when John Russell appeared out of the pinyon.

They stood facing each other about twenty feet apart, Russell holding the Spencer against his leg and pointed down; Favor holding the sawed-off shotgun the same way.

“You got everything?” Russell said.

“What’s mine,” Favor answered.

“You better put it down,” Russell said. It sounded like he meant the shotgun.

Mendez must have felt funny about Dr. Favor holding it. He said, “He just took it. I closed my eyes and he had it.”

Dr. Favor shook his head slowly. “Like I’m against everybody. Like I was running off on my own.”

“You sure had us fooled then,” the McLaren girl said, her voice dry and sharp enough to pierce right through him.

“Believe what you like,” Dr. Favor said. “I was going to get help. One man can travel faster than five. With food and water he could make it out of here in no time and have help back in less than a day.”

“So you elected yourself,” the McLaren girl said.

“I’ve tried to reason with you people before,” Dr. Favor said. “I decided it was time to do something besides waste my breath.”

Russell’s eyes never left Dr. Favor. “Put it down or else use it,” he said. “You have two ways to go.” His tone seemed to say he didn’t care which Favor did. One way would be as easy as the other.

“There’s no talking to a man who relies only on force,” Dr. Favor said. He shrugged, hesitating, holding on by his fingernails for a moment, waiting for Russell to drop his guard for one second. Maybe he could beat Russell, he was probably thinking. But if he didn’t beat him, he would be dead. If he tied Russell, he could also be dead.

Maybe that was the way he thought and he didn’t like the odds. Maybe if he gave in now he would get a better chance later on. I guess he knew nobody believed his story about getting help, but he didn’t care what we thought. Whatever he was thinking, it told him today wasn’t the day. He let the shotgun and revolver fall, then lifted off the grainsack and saddlebags.

No, it didn’t bother him at all what we thought. He turned his back on us and strolled over by the cliffrose bushes to look down the grade. As if telling us he knew we wouldn’t do anything to him, so what did he care what we thought?

But that’s where he was wrong. John Russell did not just think things.

As Dr. Favor stood there, Russell said, “Keep going.”

All we saw was his back for a minute. Dr. Favor seemed to be waiting for the rest of it: “-if you ever try that again.” Or “-if you don’t behave yourself.” You know.

But there wasn’t any rest of it. Russell had said it all.

When Dr. Favor realized this, he turned around to look at Russell. His face had lost a little of its calm cocksureness. Not all, just some. But maybe at that point he half believed Russell might be bluffing.

Maybe, he thought, if he could just pass a little time it would blow over.

He said, “You’re betting my money I won’t survive all alone.”

“You could do it,” Russell said. “With some luck.”

“If I don’t, it’s the same as murder.”

“Like the way you killed those people at San Carlos.”

“This is a new one,” Dr. Favor said. “First I’m accused of stealing my own money. Now murder.”

“Without enough to eat,” Russell said, “people sicken and die. I saw that at Whiteriver and also I heard things, how the agent had money to buy more beef, but he had a way of keeping the money to himself.”

“A way,” Dr. Favor said. “You figure the way and then prove it.”

“That one called Dean said enough.”

Dr. Favor seemed to smile. “But you went and killed our witness.”

“You think I need one?” Russell said.

We weren’t in any court. We were fifty miles out in high desert country, and John Russell was standing there with a.56-56 Spencer in his hand. All he had to do was raise it and Dr. Favor was gone forever.

There wasn’t any question, Dr. Favor knew it.

It is hard to try and imagine what was going on in his mind then, because I never did learn much about this Dr. Alexander Favor.

Look at him for a minute. A heavyset man, both in his body and in his opinion of himself. He did what he wanted and did not take much pushing from others. He had been Indian Agent at San Carlos about two years, having come from somewhere in Ohio. The “Doctor” part of his name was not medicine. I have learned that he was a Doctor of the Faith Reform Church. But I had never heard him preaching anything, so you cannot accuse him of not practicing it.

Evidently he got into that profession to make money and for that reason only, thinking it would be an easy way: the same reason he applied to the government to become an Indian Agent and got sent to San Carlos. Though he could have just made up the divinity title and got the appointment through some friend in the Interior Department. I would not like to think that he had ever honestly been a preacher.

He must have started withholding government funds soon after he got to San Carlos to build up the amount in the saddlebags. About twelve thousand dollars. He probably made some of it off supply contractors who paid him in order to get the government business. So you know one thing for sure; he was dishonest. A thief no matter what he hid behind.

You can also say he was a man who cared more about his money than his wife. But maybe he always did. I mean maybe she was just a woman to him. Someone to have around, but not feeling about her the way most men felt about their wives. I mean liking them along with having them there.

Maybe he did like her, but she never liked him and didn’t care if he knew it. I think that is the way it was, judging from the way she didn’t pay any attention to him on the stagecoach and fooled with Frank Braden right in front of him. I think even then Dr. Favor had finally had enough of her. Leaving her was a good way to pay her back.

You knew good and well he wasn’t thinking about her right now. I doubt he was even thinking about the money. Right now he just had his life to worry about. Russell wasn’t letting him take anything else.

There was that little space of silence where he must have been digging in his mind to say something more to Russell, to scare him or put him in his place or something. But he must have thought what was the use? Why waste breath?

He looked at Mendez though, then at the McLaren girl and said, “You take care of yourselves now. Do everything he tells you.” He was turning then to go. “And remember, don’t drink any water till tonight.”

We watched him step through the cliffrose bushes and he was gone. Russell went over to the edge, but the McLaren girl and Mendez and I didn’t move. Not for a moment anyway. Maybe we were afraid Favor would look back up and see us watching him and laugh or say something else about the water.

When I walked over finally and looked down the grade, he was past the steepest part but having an awful time, skidding and raising dust all the way. We watched him down at the bottom, standing there for a minute, looking up canyon to the flat country that opened up there. He crossed the canyon to the other side and started up a little wash (he had learned something from Russell) and after a minute you couldn’t see him for the brush and the steepness of the cutbank.

Nobody said a word.

Without Russell I know we could never have sat there in that place until dark. It was too easy to imagine them sneaking up on you, knowing they were out there somewhere and drawing closer all the time. Russell sat watching the slope. Then he’d move off into the trees for a time. He never said anything. He smoked a little, maybe twice. Most of the time though he sat watching; watching and I think listening. But all that time there was no sign of them.

As it started to get dark in the trees, we ate again and Russell held up the canteen and handed it to the McLaren girl.

“Finally, uh?” he said.

She didn’t look at him. She took a drink and passed the canteen to me. Mendez was next. Then Russell took his turn. The McLaren girl watched him drink, holding the water in his mouth before swallowing it, and I kept thinking: She’s going to tell him.

Russell lowered the canteen.

Now, I thought, waiting for her to speak.

Russell pushed the cork in tight. She watched him. I think right then she almost told, so near to doing it the words were formed in her mouth. But she didn’t say it.

She said instead, “Maybe we should have let him take some.” Meaning Dr. Favor.

Russell looked at her.

“I mean just some,” the McLaren girl said.

I thought of something then. All of a sudden. “We left a waterskin at the San Pete! Remember that?”

The McLaren girl looked at me. “Will he remember it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just started thinking, Braden knows about it too.”

We did not go down the slope we had come up but went off through the trees, following Russell and not asking any questions.

I remember we crept down through a gully that was very thick with brush and near the bottom of it Russell held up. The open part was next and it was not dark enough to cross it.

When I think of all the waiting we did. It made being out there all the worse because it gave you time to imagine things. We kept quiet because Russell did. I have never seen a man so patient. He would sit with his legs crossed and fool with a stick or something, drawing with it in the sand, making circles and different signs and then smoothing out the sand and doing it all over again. What did a man like that think about? That’s what I wondered about every time I looked at him.

From this gully you could not see anything but sky and the dark hump of the slope above us. I kept thinking that if I was back in Sweetmary I would have finished my supper and would be reading or going to visit somebody; seeing the main street then and the lanterns shining through the windows of the saloons; seeing lights way off in the adobes that were situated out from town.

There were some sounds around us, night sounds, which I took as a good sign; nothing was moving nearby. I heard the clicking sound of the McLaren girl’s rosary beads, which I had not heard since the first evening in the stagecoach. It was funny, I had forgotten all about making conversation in order to get to know her. If I did not know her after this, I never would. It was something the way she never complained. But maybe she spoke out a little too quickly; even when she was right. That was something I never could do.

When the time came it was like always, coming after you had got tired of waiting for it and wondering when it ever would. There was Russell standing up again, like he knew or felt the exact moment we should leave, and within a few minutes we were down out of the gully with dark, wide-open country stretching out on three sides of us.

We did what Russell did. He didn’t tell us. He kept in the lead and we followed with our eyes pretty much of the time. When he stopped, we stopped, which was often, though you could never guess when it was going to be. Or you could listen till your head ached and never know what made him stop.

All of us together made some noise moving through the brush clumps and kicking stones and things, which couldn’t be helped. Just grit your teeth and hope nobody else heard it. Yet when Russell moved off from us to scout a little, which he did a few times, he never made a sound going or coming. His Apache-type moccasins had something to do with it, but it was also the way he walked, a way I never learned.

You know how it is outside at night as far as seeing things, shapes and the sky and all. It is never as dark as indoors, in a cellar or in a closed room without a window. We would see a dark patch and it would turn out to be a brush thicket or some Joshua trees. There were those saguaros, but not as many as had been in the higher country. There was greasewood and prickly pear and other bushes I never knew the names of, most of them low to the ground so that you still felt yourself out in the open and unprotected.

I mentioned that Russell would stop and then we would, listening hard to make out some sound. We never heard anything except twice.

The first time, we were maybe halfway across, though it is hard to judge. I remember I was looking down at the ground, then up and I stopped all of a sudden seeing Russell standing still. He had turned and was facing us with his head raised a little.

Then we all heard it, thin and faraway but unmistakable, the sound of a gunshot.

We waited. A few minutes later it came again and seemed a little closer, though I could have imagined that. About ten seconds passed. A third gunshot sounded faintly, off in another direction, way off in the darkness.

Russell moved on, faster now, knowing they were still behind and not somewhere up ahead waiting. I was sure then that the gunshots were signals. Say they had split up to poke through that area where we had hid. Say one group found a sign of us (probably the Mexican) and signaled the others with a shot, then with another one when they did not answer at first. The third shot was when they did answer.

The McLaren girl thought differently. Right after the shots, as we went on, she said to me, “They’ve killed him.”

I had forgotten about Dr. Favor until she said that. I explained what I thought about the signals.

“Maybe,” she said. “But if they haven’t killed him he’ll die of thirst or starvation. He doesn’t have any chance at all.”

I said, “He sure didn’t worry about us.”

“Because he would do such a thing,” the McLaren girl said, “should we?”

How do you answer a question like that? Anyway it wasn’t us that did it, it was Russell. She certainly worried a lot without showing it on her face. I will say that for the McLaren girl.

The second time we heard a sound was a little later. This time it was a horse, sounding close, but far enough out so we couldn’t see it. We went down flat and stayed that way for some time. We heard the horse again, never running or galloping, but walking, his shoes clinking against stones. It never came so close you could see it, but there was no doubting what it meant. They were out in the open now looking for us.

When Russell moved off finally it was at his careful, stopping, listening pace again. Nothing could hurry him, not even feeling them out here. He moved along with the Spencer down-pointed in one hand and the saddlebags over the other shoulder, like there wasn’t anything in the world could make him hurry. Add that to what you know about his patience.

We saw the shape of the high ground ahead of us by the time we were halfway across. That’s what made going slow so hard. There was cover staring right at you, but Russell chose to walk to it.

Finally he led us into some trees that was like going into a house and locking the door, and right away (which surprised nobody) we were climbing again. All the way up to the top of a ridge and along it instead of taking the pass that led into these hills. This part wasn’t hard; it was even ground, grassy and with a lot of trees. But when we came to a higher ridge and Russell started climbing again, Mendez complained.

I don’t think Russell even looked at him. He went on climbing and the rest of us followed: up through rocks and places you had to grab hold of roots and branches to pull yourself up. Then along a path that was probably a game trail, and finally on up to the top.

A couple of hundred yards along this ridge Russell stopped. There, down below us, was the San Pete mine works.

We had approached it the back way, from up above the shafts and crushing mill and all, which were on this side of the canyon. Way over on the other side you could make out the company buildings, even the one we had eaten breakfast in two days ago.

I think I would have bought John Russell a drink of liquor right then had there been any to buy. The McLaren girl and Mendez just stared; you could see the relief on their faces. That’s what seeing something familiar did, letting you forget Braden for a minute and look ahead and start to see a little daylight.

At that point there was the sure feeling with all of us that we would make it to Delgado’s without Braden ever getting close again. Except that just a little later on there was another familiar sight. One we had not counted on.

I am referring to Dr. Favor.

But I will get to that in a minute.

It was still dark as we came down the ridge toward the mine works. We didn’t go down all the way, only about fifty or sixty feet to a level place where the open mine shafts and a shack were.

Farther along this shelf there was a shute built on scaffolding that went down to the big crushing mill located about forty or fifty yards down the grade. Ore tailings, which were slides of rock and sand and stuff that had been taken out of the shafts and dumped, formed long humps down on the other side of the crushing mill. Everything was quiet and there wasn’t even a breeze moving.

As I have said, it was still dark, but you could make out the shapes of things down below: the crushing mill and ore tailings to the left of where we were; the company buildings about two hundred yards away, directly across the canyon from us.

We stood there for a few minutes, Russell looking over the works and I guess, thinking. Finally, when he spoke he said, “This is a good place.” Meaning the shack up here on the shelf.

“There’s more water for us down there,” Mendez said, meaning the waterskin we’d left in that company building the day before yesterday.

Russell shook his head. “If we stay here all day, you want tracks leading up and down?”

“Stay!” Mendez said. The waiting was worrying his nerves. “Man, we’re so close now!”

“If you go,” Russell said, without any feeling at all, “you go back the way we came.”

Mendez looked at him with those solemn eyes of his. He didn’t say any more. We went inside the shack which was empty except for a couple of bats which we shooed out. On the two side walls were shelves that held bags of concentrate. (Evidently they had used this shack to test ore samples in.) We just stretched out on the dusty floor and used some of these bags as pillows.

Russell left the door part way open and laid down his head near the opening. I laid down over by one of the windows. There were two of them in front, with board shutters you couldn’t close.

Just one small thing: Russell did not offer his blanket to the McLaren girl, but used it himself. I offered mine to her again, as I had done the night before, and this time she took it. Figure that one out.

It was a few hours later, say between six and seven in the morning, after we had slept some and eaten and had our day’s water, that we saw Dr. Favor again. The McLaren girl, by the right-hand window at the time, saw him first.

He was already down out of the south pass that approached the mine from the direction of that open country we had crossed. He was moving slow; dead tired you could see, his clothes messier and dirtier looking than before. He walked straight down the middle of the canyon in the sunlight and in the dead silence of those rickety buildings, looking up at the crushing mill for the longest time, then over at the line of company buildings.

Watching him, nobody said a word, waiting to see if he remembered the waterskin.

Alongside one of the buildings was a trough with a hand pump at one end of it. When Dr. Favor saw it, he ran over and started pumping. He fell on his knees and kept on pumping, his shoulders and arms moving up and down, up and down, keeping at it even when he must have known he wasn’t going to get any water. After a few minutes he was pumping slower and slower. Finally he fell over the pump and held on there, not moving.

Inside the shack it was quiet as could be.

I remember when the McLaren girl spoke it was hardly above a whisper. I was by the other window with Mendez; Russell was by the door; but we all heard her. “He doesn’t remember it,” she said.

None of the others spoke.

“We have to tell him,” she said then, calm and quiet about it, stating a fact, not just giving in to pity at the sight of him.

“We don’t do anything,” Russell said from the door. He kept his gaze on Dr. Favor who had sat down now, one arm still on the pump handle.

“You can look at that man,” the McLaren girl said, “and not want to help him?” She was staring at Russell now.

“He’ll move off,” Russell said. “Then you won’t have to look at him.”

“But he’s dying of thirst. You can see he is!”

“What did you think would happen?” Russell said. He looked at her then. “You didn’t think you’d see him again. So yesterday was all right, uh?”

“If I didn’t speak up yesterday,” the McLaren girl said, “I was wrong.”

“You’d feel better if he had run off with the water?”

“That has nothing to do with him down there now.”

“But if you were down there,” Russell said, “and he was up here.”

“You just don’t understand, do you?” the McLaren girl said.

Russell kept staring at her. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to help him!” She raised her voice a little, like she was running out of patience.

It didn’t seem to bother Russell any. He said, “You want to go down to him? Make tracks on that slope that hasn’t been touched in five years? You want to make signs pointing up where we are?”

“The man’s dying of thirst!” She screamed it at Russell. She had run clean out of patience and threw the words right at him.

I don’t mean she screamed so loud Dr. Favor heard her. He had now got up from the pump and was moving along the front of the company buildings, reaching the one we had stopped at the day before yesterday and looking up at it.

I held my breath again. Maybe he’d remembered the waterskin. But no, he went on by.

The next thing I knew the McLaren girl was out the window and running down the slope. Russell was out the door but too late to stop her. He stood there in front of the shack, Mendez and I by the window, and watched her raising little dust trails down the grade, seeing her getting smaller and smaller.

Near the bottom the McLaren girl called out. We saw Dr. Favor stop and look around. (He must have been surprised out of his shoes.) He started toward her, but she was yelling something at him now, motioning to the company building.

He stood there a second, then was almost running in his hurry to get to the building, the McLaren girl waiting now to see if he’d find the waterskin.

We were watching all this. We saw him reach the front of the place, just out from the shade formed by the veranda, and that’s where he stopped. Right away he started backing off, like edging away. Next thing he had turned and was running toward the McLaren girl who didn’t know what was going on anymore than we did and stood there watching him.

As he got close he must have said something. The McLaren girl started up the grade, looking back at the company building as she did.

About then was when he appeared. It was Early. He came out of the veranda shade, to the edge of it, and stood there with a Colt gun in one hand and a canteen in the other-evidently the canteen with whisky in it which the Mexican had mentioned to John Russell, for I think Early was drunk or close to it. The way he stood, his boots wide apart, looked like he was steadying himself. I won’t swear to it because there wasn’t time to get a good look at him.

He started firing his Colt, waving it toward us or at the McLaren girl and Dr. Favor as they came up the grade, causing Mendez and me to duck down, and firing until his gun was empty. He started yelling then, but we couldn’t make out any of it.

I kept waiting for Braden and the others to appear, but they didn’t. Not right then. Evidently Early had been sent on ahead, Braden figuring we would come this way.

I was still there at the window when the McLaren girl and Dr. Favor reached the shack. She came inside and went out again with the canteen and gave it to Dr. Favor who drank until she yanked it away from his mouth. He yanked back, held onto it and handed it to Russell. I think he could tell from looking at Russell that saving him had been just the McLaren girl’s idea. He seemed to be smiling some, like the joke was on Russell.

“You will learn something about white people,” he said to Russell. “They stick together.”

“They better,” Mendez said. “We all better.”

Just for a second there was the old tell-nothing Henry Mendez talking. It sounded good after seeing the other side of him for two days. He wasn’t looking at Dr. Favor. I noticed then Russell was looking off down the slope too.

Like they had been following Dr. Favor (and no doubt they had), there came the Mexican on foot, Frank Braden and the Favor woman each on a horse, this little procession coming down out of the south pass, keeping close to the other side and in no hurry at all. The Mexican raised his arm up and waved.

We were all back together again. Right back where we had started. Except now we were up on that shelf of rock, looking down and seeing them moving up canyon and dismounting in front of the company building that was straight across from us and drawing their rifles.

You think about an awful lot of things at once. That we should be doing something; getting out of there or doing something. That this never should have happened. That if it wasn’t for the McLaren girl and her act of kindness to a man who didn’t deserve it, they never would have found us; they would have looked up at that bare unmarked slope and gone right on. Maybe you would like to have said something to the McLaren girl. It was a temptation. But only Mendez did.

He said, “You see?” looking at Dr. Favor and then at the McLaren girl in the doorway. “You see?” he said again, wanting to say more, but just shaking his head as he thought of everything at once.

The McLaren girl had been quiet, but I think Mendez made her mad. She said, “I’d do it again. Knowing they were there I’d do it again. What do you think of that!”

“He’s not worth it!” Mendez said, keeping his teeth together so he wouldn’t scream it at her. Still it was loud.

“Who are you to say who’s worth it!” When she got mad, she spoke out, as you have seen.

Dr. Favor didn’t get into it. He was running his tongue over his swollen lips, I think still tasting the water.

And Russell. Russell, still outside squatted down, sitting back on his heels. He was smoking a cigarette, gazing over across the canyon. Russell didn’t look at the McLaren girl (not then) or say anything to anybody. Russell was Russell.

He just smoked the cigarette as he watched Braden and the others over in front of the company building, watching them take the two horses into the shade of the built-up, second-story veranda, watching the Mexican come out again in the sunlight and walk up and down in a show-offy way, his hands on his hips and looking up toward where we were.

That’s when Russell came inside the shack. Next thing I knew he was at the other window with the Spencer at his shoulder. I doubt the Mexican saw him. I’m sure he didn’t else he would have done something before Russell fired.

With the sound of the shot and dust kicking up in front of him, the Mexican stopped dead. Russell fired again and this time the Mexican jumped back into the veranda shade. Russell was not taking anything off that Mexican.

“What do you start that for?” Mendez said, sounding pained.

Russell must have thought there was an awful lot of dumb questions asked. He said to Mendez, “So they’d see us.”

Nobody down there returned the fire, but we kept expecting it. Everybody was inside by then. Russell was already piling those bags of concentrate on his window sill. I started building up the other one then, the McLaren girl helping. Mendez brought a few over to Russell, but Dr. Favor didn’t lift a hand. He was doing his thinking now, I guess, and eying the saddlebags. Since Russell didn’t say anything to him, I didn’t either. Hell.

Next Russell pulled the loading tube out of his Spencer and stuck two more cartridges in it from his belt. I kept by the other window wondering if this little revolver I had would do any good.

The minutes went by but the awful nervous feeling I had and tried not to show didn’t ease up any. I remember wondering if Russell was scared. He had taken his hat off and I could see the side of his face good. As I have said before, he looked so much younger with his hat off and his hair pressed down on his forehead. He would swallow or scratch his nose, things everybody did, and he didn’t seem any different than the rest of us.

Only he was different. As Braden was about to learn first hand.

Frank Braden’s idea was to let us worry some, I suppose. About a half hour passed before we heard from him. Then it came all of a sudden.

He yelled out from across the way, “You hear me!” He waited. “I’m coming up to talk! You hold your fire!” He waited and yelled again. Maybe a minute passed.

Then Braden appeared at the edge of the veranda shade. Early and the Mexican were behind him. They waited there as Braden moved out from them carrying a Winchester rifle and a white cloth or something tied to the end of it. Frank Braden’s idea of a truce flag.

Russell watched him. As Braden came across the open, out in the sunlight and without any cover close by, Russell raised the Spencer and eared back the hammer.

“He wants to talk,” Mendez said. “You heard him. It’s no trick. He’s got something to say to us!”

Russell didn’t bother with Mendez or even look up. He steadied the Spencer on the ore-sample bags and put the front sight on Braden.