The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 11

The next morning found the three partners very early by the fire. Having had a bad night with all sorts of heavy dreams, they were in as bad humor as a girl whose new white dress has been soiled by a passing motorist just three minutes before she is to meet the boy friend.

The stranger had been busy. Fuel was heaped by the fire, which was blazing, and his own cooking-kettles, with beans and coffee, were hanging over it.

Dobbs greeted him: “Hey, you mug, where did you get the water for your stuff?”

“I just took it from the bucket.”

“Oh, you did, did you? Fine. But don’t get the idea into your cone that we are pulling up the water for you. We don’t wait on anybody—least of all on a tramp like you.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t know that water was so hard to get here.”

“You know it now, and no more lip from you, you son of a bitch.”

“I’ll get the bucket filled for you.”

“Better hurry.”

At this moment Curtin came to the fire:’ “Water-stealing, hey? And stealing our fuel? What do you think you are, anyway? Just let me catch you once more taking one thing that belongs to us. Then I’ll fill your belly up, doggone it to hell.”

“I thought that perhaps I was among civilized men who would not mind letting me have a drink of fresh water,” he said very politely.

Dobbs was on his feet as though he had been sitting on a bomb. “You don’t mean to say that we can’t read or write, that we are just bandits and Sons of a dozen bitches? Is that it?” And without waiting for an answer he planted his fist in the stranger’s face with such force that he dropped full-length as if felled by a heavy club.

He needed time to come to. Slowly he rose and shook his head as if he wanted to find the full use of his neck again.

Then he came close to Dobbs and said: “I could easily do the same to you, and it isn’t settled yet who might come out the better of us two. What good would it do me? I know you three are only waiting for the moment I draw to catch me and bump me off the landscape. I won’t make it so easy for you. No fooling for me. Never mind, perhaps there will come a day when we shall have an accounting, and then we’ll look at the balance. This time I took it. Thanks for your kind attention.”

He went to the fire and lifted his kettles off. Just as he started to carry them away to another site, where he wanted to build his own fire, Howard approached him.

“Got something to eat, stranger?” Howard asked in a friendly voice.

“Yes, partner. I’ve got tea, coffee, beans, rice, dried meat, and two cans of milk.”

“Never mind your own eats. Today you may eat with us. But tomorrow I’d suggest you have your own kitchen ready.”

“Thanks. I certainly shall take your hint.”

“Tomorrow?” Dobbs, who by his victory had steamed off his anger, spoke less harshly. “Tomorrow? Now, listen here, stranger, what do you mean? You don’t mean to rent an apartment here and spend your vacation in our neighborhood? We sure wouldn’t be pleased to have you for our next-door family.”

“Who cares?” the stranger answered, throwing a few pinches of tea into his kettle, and without looking up from the boiling brew he added: “I mean to stay here. It’s pretty around here.”

Curtin with a voice louder than necessary said: “No parking here without our permission, partner.”

“Bush and mountains are free, ain’t they?”

“Not the way you think, friend,” Howard broke in. “Free is the bush, and the desert, and the woods, and the mountain ranges for whoever likes to camp there. In that you are right. But we were the first here; we’ve got the first claim.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s what you think. But how can you prove that you were really the first here on this spot? What if I was here long before you ever thought of coming?”

“Registered your claim?” Howard asked.

“Did you?”

“That’s beyond the point. We are here right now. And suppose you have been here before, as you say you have; why didn’t you stake it? Since you didn’t, you haven’t the slightest chance in any court if you mean to fight it out. Well, let’s have breakfast.”

Breakfast over, the partners did not know what to do. They couldn’t go to work at the mine, for the stranger would find them out.

Curtin then had an idea. He said that they all might go hunting together.

The stranger looked from one to another. He was not sure what was behind this proposal. The hunt might give the partners a great opportunity to get rid of him through an accident. Thinking this over, he concluded that if they meant to kill him they would do it anyhow, accident or no accident. They alone would be the witnesses.

So he said: “Okay with me. Today I’ll go hunting with you, but tomorrow I’ve got other things to do, more important things.”

“What?” the three partners asked almost simultaneously.

“Tomorrow I start to dig for gold here.”

“You don’t say so?” Howard had heard the word with a deep breath. He had become pale. So had his two partners.

“Yes, I’m going to prospect here. Right at this spot or somewhere around in the neighborhood. Here is the stuff I was looking for. If none of you have found anything here, that would only be evidence that all of you are boneheads. But I don’t think you are.”

“You’re smart, stranger,” Howard answered him. “Where would we be if it were not for you to show us the glory of heaven? My, my! What a great guy!”

“I figure you’ve scratched up, let’s say, around fifty ounces.”

“Or five hundred. Isn’t that what you mean?” Howard found it hard to open his mouth, which seemed to dry out. Dobbs and Curtin were without speech.

“Or five hundred. Right, partner. But here is at least an easy million, if you ask me and my grandfather.”

“A million?” Dobbs and Curtin shouted, and with this they were fully home again, color, breath, wet lips, moisture in the eyes, and all that they had lost during the last two minutes.

“Yes, a full uncut million. If you haven’t found it yet, it’s your fault, not the mountain’s. I know you haven’t got the rich pot yet, although you have been hanging around here eight months or nine. The Indians down in the valley told me that only one man was up here. If you had come upon the right entrance and knocked at the door behind which the treasure is open to view, you would have had so much that you would have left long ago, because you couldn’t carry all that’s here without arousing suspicion and being waylaid on your road home. Or you would have sent back just one man to get the claim legally registered and then have formed a regular mining company, with all the machinery and a hundred men working for you.”

“That so?” Dobbs said scoffingly. “Well, you may as well know facts. We haven’t got anything, nothing. See?”

The stranger could not be talked off. “You may tell me what you like. I don’t believe a word anyhow. I don’t care what you have, how much you have, whether you have anything at all, or what you are doing here. I’m not a baby. If I see three men living up here for eight months, then I know without a Bible that they are not staying for pleasure or for an ordinary fishing-trip. You can’t put this one over on me, partners. You’d better lay the cards on the table and then let’s see who has buried away the four jacks. What’s the use playing hide-and-seek? I’m not a criminal, not a crook, not a spy. I’m just as decent as any one of you three fellers is. Better than you I don’t want to be. It suits me all right to be just the kind you are. We all are Out here to make money. If we were looking for pleasure, we wouldn’t select this godforsaken region full of mosquitoes, yellow fever, typhoidal Water, scorpions, tarantulas, and even hungry tigers sniffing around the camp by night. I know quite well you can bump me off any minute you wish. But that could happen to me any place, even in Chicago walking quietly down the street. You always have to risk something if you want to make money. If you bump me off you can’t be sure but that tomorrow another guy may show up whom you’ll have to give the final works. Or instead of one guy popping up, there may be a full dozen any day. Then you stop bumping off, and you are worse off than you are right now.”

“All right, stranger,” Howard said, “what’s above your shoulders? Spit it out. We are at least willing to tune in.”

“Let’s make a clean breast,” the stranger suggested.

“We might.” Howard filled his cup with fresh coffee. “Now, of course we don’t know who you are or what you are. You may be a spy and you may not. If you are, all that we can lose is our labor of eight months and what we have invested in cold cash. But I tell you it would be expensive for you should you squeal. We’d get you even if we had to look for you in China or on a ranch in the pampas of the Argentine. There would be no quarter. I think you have that clear.”

“Yes, I have. I know I could not get away with it forever. Since I know this, I think we are now on equal terms, so I want to make it plain to you that I don’t want to share in what you have so far, not a cent. I won’t even work near you. We’ll stake our mines and work them as we think best, each party for himself. Right?”

“Right by me. What do you think of that proposition, partners?” Howard asked.

Dobbs and Curtin waited for some time before they answered. Then Curtin said: “Would you mind, stranger, letting us three thresh this out alone among ourselves?”

“Not at all. Go ahead. I’ll have to look after my mules anyway.” He stood up and walked off in the direction in which his mules had gone the night before.

He returned after two hours.

“Found them?” Curtin asked.

“Yes, they are all right. Fine pasture you’ve got around here.”

“Now, let’s all sit down and have this over.” Howard filled his pipe. Having lighted it, he said: “Yep, we’ve got something. Matter of fact, all taken together it’s just good pay for eight months of hard work.”

“That’s what I thought. Now, down in the village I was not just hanging around. I looked about. I noted from sand washed down from these mountains by the heavy rains that there is quite a lot of metal up here.”

Howard interrupted: “I think I know something about prospecting. Not much perhaps, not as much as you seem to know. If there were, as you say, a million here, we sure would have seen it. We haven’t, and that’s that.”

“I’m convinced it is here.” The stranger was very insistent. “It must be here. I simply couldn’t be mistaken. Alone I can’t do it. I need you three fellows. You’ve got all the tools, you’ve got the technical experience, and I have the better knowledge. I’ve studied this line, you haven’t. Now the thing is to find the thick deposit, the lode. I know I could never interest a bank or a mining company in my project, because I’m working only on a hunch which would be extremely difficult to explain to a banker or to a board of directors who want to see things plain and clear. All right, my proposition is this: You keep what you have so far as your well-earned property, but all that is coming to us after we have started to work my plan is cut two fifths my way and three fifths your way.”

The three partners looked at each other and then they laughed right in his face.

“Shavings we can get ourselves; for that we don’t need any help from the outside,” Howard said. “And fairy-tales we had forgotten long before we reached the fourth grade. What you say, partners?”

“We’ve got along fine without you so far arid I think we can do for the rest of our stay here,” Dobbs answered with a smile. “What’s your opinion, Curty?” he added, turning to his partner.

“If you ask me, I’d say we haven’t much to lose if we give this feller’s proposition a chance, at least for a few days. Since we are here anyway, and since we have decided to make off inside of a week, we might just as well have a look at what he offers.”

“Count me out,” Howard said. “These are old magazine stories, nothing new about them. I’m through with this living like wild beasts. I want to have a real bed under my hams; that’s what I want. I’m fully satisfied with what I’ve got now.”

Dobbs had been stirred up by Curtin’s idea. “Why, Howdy, I think Curty isn’t so dumb after all. Let’s stick just a week more. It may bring us something better than we have had during all the eight months of chain-gang life we’ve spent here.”

“You guys win. I can’t make the trip back to Durango all by myself. I know what I can do and what not when alone with pack-burros. So for this reason and for no other I have to stick with you for another week. All right.”

“Understand, stranger,” Curtin began to make clear how he meant his agreement, “we’ve no intention of staying long. I’ve got somebody waiting for me. A dame, if you must know. I need her badly, so let’s say one week more. If we find inside of a week a fair trace of what you tell us is here, then I’ll be willing to hang on longer. If we don’t and it’s just so much more baloney, I’m off with you, old man,” he ended, addressing Howard.

“Who agrees say: ‘Ay!’” Dobbs mocked.

“Now, stranger, since we’re partners, what’s your name?” Howard asked. “And if it’s a secret, then tell us what you wish to be called. We can’t call you mug or stranger or what have you all the time.”

“Lacaud. Robert W. Lacaud, Phoenix, Arizona; Tech, Pasadena.”

“A rather long name for just one person. But I believe you, don’t mind the formalities.” Howard laughed.

“It may not be his, after all—I mean the long name.” Curtin was grinning.

“Related to the Lacauds in Los Angeles—furniture?” Howard asked.

“Only slightly,” Lacaud answered. “I have no connections with them any longer. Broken off entirely. Last will patchers, you know.”

“Reckon I’ll have a look at the burros,” Howard said.

He did not have to go, as Lacaud had, to the pasture on the slope of the mountain to watch the animals. Near the camp there was a good look-out from a high rock. The partners had found that from this peak the greater part of the slopes of the whole mountain range could be seen very clearly, and when rain was about to come they could tell that a speck three or five miles away was a stray horse or a goat from the village. Coming from the camp, it took only a few minutes to climb that peak.

Howard had hardly reached the look-out when he began to shout: “Hell, what’s this!”

“What’s doing?” Dobbs called back.

“Burros gone?” Curtin hollered.

“Come up here,” the old man yelled. “Come quick, hurry, I say. Hell is loose.”

Curtin and Dobbs sprang to their feet and ran to the peak. Lacaud followed more slowly.

“What’s this coming toward our mountain?” Howard asked his partners. “I can’t make out what it is. Perhaps you can, Curty, with your eyes of a buzzard. What is it?”

Curtin looked for a half a minute. “Must be soldiers or the mounted police, or some sort of rangers, as far as I can make out.”

“It’s the mounted all right,” Dobbs growled, his eyes on the horizon. “Yes, the mounted, and coming right up here.”

The three looked at each other with faces gone pale.

Suddenly Dobbs jumped up, caught Lacaud by the throat, and bellowed: “Now, you dirty crook, son of a bitch, now we got you cached. So that’s your stinking game, is it? Came out too soon, did it? All right, take what is coming to you, you skunk.”

Dobbs had his gun out and pointed at Lacaud ready to shoot. “You rat, if you know a prayer, say it now and make it snappy.”

Howard was quick. He was behind Dobbs, and with a hard jerk he lowered Dobbs’s arm.

“Let me kill that filthy rat,” Dobbs cried. “Gawd and geecries, I knew he was a pigeon, I knew it all the time, with his oily softsoap speech.”

Lacaud made no move, but said quietly: “You are wrong, partner. It means all of us, myself included.”

“Means what?” Curtin asked.

“Means that I think I know who they are. They are not soldiers nor the mounted police or what they call here Rurales. They are wise to us. They are after me, and after you, Curty. They don’t know yet that there is anyone else up here.”

“Then they can have the know only from you,” Dobbs said.

“Not from me, but from the people in the village. I think I know who they are. If I am right, then may the Lord be with us. Bandits, that’s what they are. And they aren’t after our money, but our guns and ammunition, since the villagers have told them about the American hunter up here who has rifles and guns and heaps of ammunition with him.”

“And how come you to know?” Dobbs was still suspicious.

“May I have a look at them?” Lacaud asked.

“Wouldn’t you like it, sweety, and give them signals, hey? Wouldn’t you?” Dobbs sneered.

“You may stay back of me and pluck me off if you see me doing anything suspicious.”

“Maybe Arizona is right,” Curtin observed. “They don’t look to me like police, not even like organized rangers, less like soldiers. They are just what he says, a horde of ragged and filthy bandits. Come up, Lackey, have a look. We can pluck you later.”

“Wait a minute.” Howard held Lacaud by the arm. “They are not after you for stealing or cattlerustling below, are they? Better tell the truth. If they are, you are clearing out of here this very minute to take them off our track or we hand you in, dirty as I would feel; hut we need protection, you know, and cattlerustling is a dirty business, especially against such poor farmers as they are. So get this straight, we can’t afford to have police sniffing about. You have to go right down and let yourself be seen to get them away from us.”

“I understand, friend. But I’ve nothing up my sleeve. I’ve been for weeks in the village. Anybody could have got me if there were somebody looking for me.”

“I think he’s right,” Curtin said thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t have dared to hang around the village for so long if he’d had anything to hide. Come up and see what you can find out. I think we can trust you once more.”

Lacaud climbed up to the peak and sat for a while looking carefully about.

“We’d better make no move,” Lacaud suggested. “We might be seen here on this peak. Sitting quietly, we may look like part of the rock. These are no soldiers. They are no police either. They are no organized posse of deputies or Rurales, for even poor peasants organized for chasing criminals couldn’t look like these men—not even in this country.”

“Then we are in a goddamn hole, I can tell you,” Howard said. “With soldiers or police or a posse we would at least have a chance to explain and defend ourselves and see somebody who looks like a judge and who means to judge rightly. But with bandits we’ve not even a Chinaman’s chance in the hands of Chinese highwaymen.”

Hearing this, Dobbs jerked his body around to Lacaud, saying: “Still the same crook—I think that’s what you are.”

Howard butted in. “Aw, leave him alone, for hell’s sake. We got to work fast now.”

Dobbs did not mind the old man. “Still a spy, as I thought from the first. Only not a spy for the government, but a spy for the bandits, to do the inside job. Too bad for you that we found that out before you got them here.”

“Wrong again, brother. I have nothing to do with bandits either. And if you men don’t stop being suspicious and accusing me of things I never thought or even imagined, you may be short one full-grown man. Within an hour or so you will need not only every man around here, but every hand and every gun, or you won’t see the sun rise tomorrow morning or thereafter. Just let me have another look. Maybe I can even tell you what sort of bandits they are, because in the village I heard tales that were certainly not rumors.”

Once more he climbed to the look-out, followed by Curtin and Dobbs.

“As I thought,” he said after a long glance down.

“What do you think?” Curtin asked.

“Do you see among the riders a man wearing a wide-brimmed golden hat on his head that glitters in the sun?” he asked Curtin.

“No, I can’t see him,” Curtin answered. But after a closer look he added: “Yes, I think—well, let’s see, yes, there he is. A hat like those usually worn by the Indian farmers, wide-brimmed and high. Seems to be a palm hat.”

“It is a palm hat, but painted with shining gold paint, as unskilled Mexican workers paint their hats for fun whenever they are employed at a shop where there is gold or aluminum paint for painting oil-tanks and such things.”

“Seems to be a sort of captain to the horde,” Curtin said, still looking.

“He is the captain all right, the chief of the outfit. Now I know well who they are and why they are coming this way. Last week I was at the hacienda of don Genaro Montereal, ten miles from the village, where I stayed overnight. Senor Montereal had the papers and he read them to me, or, better, he told what was in the papers from the capital. This golden hat was mentioned in the description of the bandits. That man sure has courage not to change his hat. No doubt he is unable to read and so doesn’t know that his band has been described, man by man, and horse by horse. What I couldn’t gather from the papers don Genaro was reading I heard in the village from the people who had returned from town bringing the latest news with them. I will tell you the story, and then you’ll understand why I said: May the Lord be with us if they come up and find us. After I’ve told you the story, you will no longer believe me a spy of these killers, whatever else you may think of me. I would rather help the devil fire the boilers in hell than have anything in common with these bandits.”

While all four men were sitting on the peak watching every move the bandits made below in the valley, Lacaud told the story of the bandits.