The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 26

Howard was a busy man indeed, wanted everywhere and for everything. He had hoped to find tranquillity in the village so that he might give his old bones a well-deserved rest after the hard work at the mine. But he found none. He was the famous medicine-man and the great doctor who could perform many miracles—in fact, any miracle ever heard of since the Bible was first written.

The Indians living on the Sierra Madre, like all those living in the mountains of this continent, are a healthy lot. They reach ages which make old man Methuselah a poor runner-up. But they are practically defenseless against diseases which do not originate on this continent. Simple-minded people, living a natural life, they suffer, as most people on earth do, more from imagined illnesses than from real ones. The acknowledged greatness of Howard as a doctor was based, as he alone knew, on his ability to distinguish between imagined, self-suggested sicknesses and true maladies. Another thing added to his fame: He had always a good answer ready for his patients, and it was always an answer which satisfied his patients fully.

A woman came to Howard to ask why she had lice when her neighbor had none. Nothing is easier to get rid of than lice. But with Indians and mestizos lice are as much a matter of course as fleas on dogs. They actually seem not to want to lose their lice. If the Health Department of the federal government goes after them too hard, owing to the fact that lice, like fleas, are transmitters of many diseases, the Indians are liable to rise up in arms against the government; they have often done so for similar reasons.

Howard knew the country and had lived there long enough to know the people. As a great medicine-man he had to make use of his knowledge. He could have easily told the woman what to do about her lice, but he didn’t wish to lose his reputation as a great doctor. And as a great doctor he knew that he must not tell his patients the truth about themselves and their ailments or he might, as has happened to many an honest doctor, have to work in a coal mine to earn his living.

Howard said to the woman: “You have lice because you have good, healthy blood, which lice prefer to suck. Your neighbor has bad blood, so she has no lice. Lice are a clever lot and shun bad blood as your husband shuns bad tequila.”

The woman was satisfied and decided to love and honor her lice as the best sign that she was a healthy woman. But five minutes later the other woman came, asking the doctor for medicine to improve her blood, which must be bad, for she had no lice. Howard did as all other doctors do. He prescribed a medicine, which, to make business still better, he himself manufactured by cooking up grass, leaves, herbs, roots which he was certain would not harm even a baby. The woman was so grateful that she would have given him a hundred silver pesos had she possessed them. Howard had to be content with ten centavos, all she could afford.

Howard’s stock medicine was hot water administered inside and outside the body, the quantities being changed according to carefully specified prescriptions. He had an astounding aptness for making so many variations of the same medicine that he could afford to cure each sickness and each individual in a different way.

All the Indians of the region swore by Howard and his miracles. They would have made him president of the republic had they had the power to do so.

Sick men and women came telling him that they knew death was upon them, saying that they could actually feel at what place death had chosen to sneak treacherously into them. Howard, never short of remedies, never saying he was sorry that he could do nothing, ordered hot towels laid upon the skin where it pained, upon the stomach, or the calves, or the soles of their feet, or the neck, or the back—in short, wherever there was room for placing a hot towel. Some patients were healed within three days, others within two weeks; and others died. Howard explained the deaths by saying that the patient had come to him too late, because death was already well settled inside, or that the deceased was too noble in soul to live on this cruel earth and that the Holy Virgin had decided to take him up to heaven, to have him at her side. And if the patient had been known to everybody as a rascal, Howard explained his death as God’s desire to save his soul by sending it to purgatory before he had committed so many sins that there could have been no hope for saving his soul.

With bone-setting Howard was not bothered. The Indians believed firmly that their old men and women, who had done these jobs satisfactorily for thousands of years, could not be beaten by a gringo who told of trains running under rivers and of trains flying through the heavens with a tremendous noise. They agreed, however, that such a great doctor had the unquestionable right to lie sometimes for his own entertainment.

Howard could have lived here until the end of his days and been worshipped and fed and treated like a high priest. Everything was at his disposal, for he was intelligent enough to live by the approved doctrine—that is, by doing what the people wanted him to do and expected him to do, never trying to reform anybody or change the conditions of life about him, never telling other people that they were all wrong and he alone right. And so everybody liked him and was happy to have him among them.

Yet he would not have been a true American had he not longed for a change, whether for better or worse.

Daily he was thinking of leaving. Suspicion of his two partners troubled him. They might take his goods and disappear. He consoled himself with the thought that, whatever might have happened to them, there was nothing he could do. He had to trust them and hope for the best.

One pleasant morning he was swinging leisurely in a hammock when an Indian from a distant village rode up on a pony and stopped to ask where the great doctor lived. He spoke to the owner of the house, who took him to where Howard was resting from the work of eating a whole roast chicken.

“This is the great doctor,” the host said.

“Como estas, amigo, how do you do?” Howard greeted the Indian.

Before the Indian could answer, the host began to explain: “See here, senor doctor, this man is from a village far over the mountains. He has come to tell you a story which he thinks you might like to hear.”

The visitor sat down near the hammock and began his tale.

“Lazaro, who is my compadre and who lives with me in the same village, was in the bush to burn charcoal, which he sells for a good price in Durango. He is a coalburner by profession, you know, my compadre is. It was very early in the morning. Coalburners have to be up early. The sun was just out. He was deep in the bush. He had just built up the wood-stack and was covering it with earth to keep the flames well inside, when he saw something crawl along the ground in the thicket. It was still dark in the woods, so he could not see clearly what it was.

“First he thought it might be a tiger, and he was very much afraid. He reached for his machete to kill it. On looking closer he saw that it was a man crawling on the ground like an animal, and that he was a white, un hombre blanco. He was in rags, el hombre blanco was, covered with blood all over and entirely exhausted. He had many bullet-wounds. He would have died right there at the wood-stack.

“Lazaro, who is a very good man, gave the stranger water to drink and washed the blood off his face. He left his wood-pile, which, anyhow, needed little further care just then, and loaded the white man upon his burro and brought him to our village. There he took him into his own house. When he had laid him down upon the petate, the bast mat, you know, he saw that the white man was dead.

“Neighbors came in to see the stranger; also the medicine-man, our native bone-setter, a very good old man with much experience, who looked carefully at the white man and said: ‘That man is not dead. He is only very sick and very weak from loss of blood and the struggle to crawl through the woods.’ That’s what he said.

“Then he called for Filomeno, who has a good horse, and who should ride over to this village here and call for the white doctor who is here, because our medicine-man thinks that the white doctor might know better how to cure his own kind.

“Now, I am Filomeno, see, and so I took my horse, saddled it, and rode over here like the devil to fetch you, senor doctor, and make you look at your brother. We all think that you can cure him, for he is not dead, he is only very weak, and you may know a white man’s nature better than we do. You can save him if you will come with me right now.”

“What does the white man look like, Filomeno?” Howard asked.

Filomeno described him so well that you could imagine the man was standing before you. Howard knew that it was Curtin, and he felt sure that Curtin and Dobbs had been waylaid by bandits.

Howard was offered the best horse his host had, and his host and three villagers accompanied him to the little pueblo. It was a long way off, and the trail was difficult, as all trails are in the Sierra Madre.

When Howard and his friends arrived at the village, Curtin had already slightly recovered. The women of the house where he was staying had been more practical than their men. They had washed his wounds with hot water and poured into them mescal, a very strong native brandy. Then they had dressed the wounds as well as they could. One of the women had killed a chicken and made a good broth with half a dozen different herbs boiled in it, which had a very stimulating effect upon the wounded man.

Curtin had come to and had told the villagers what had happened to him. He said robbers had shot him from ambush. He did not mention Dobbs, for he didn’t want Dobbs to be pursued, on account of the packs, which might get lost some way or other. He knew that with the help of the old man he would get that scoundrel soon enough without any outside assistance.

When he had given Howard a true account, he asked: “What do you think, Howy, of that deal he gave me? Would you ever have expected anything like that from a pal? He bumped me off in cold blood without even giving me a dirty dog’s chance.”

“But I can’t see why!”

“Quite simple. I didn’t want to join him in robbing you and making off with your goods. He played the old racket, pretending he had to shoot in self-defense, that rascal did. Well, I could have agreed to his plans until we reached the port, and there I could have said that the deal was off. But there was one thing I thought of: you might have come sooner than we expected and have believed that I wanted to betray you. It would have been difficult for me to explain things as they really were. He might have bumped me off anyway, to make sure that he would get the whole load.”

“That’s a pal, a great pal!”

“You’re telling me! He slugged me in my left breast and left me lying in the woods. But now I can’t quite figure one thing. I’ve got another wound I can’t account for. I almost think that the beastly rascal came again in the middle of night and slugged me another one to make sure of the job.”

“How did you get out?”

“During the night I came to, and thinking he would come in the morning to see if I still had a flicker of life, I crawled away. As I inched along the ground, I came upon my gun, which he seems to have thrown beside me to make it look like suicide or a decent fight. There were four empty shells in it, so I think that dirty rat slugged me with my own gat.”

“Now keep quiet and don’t get overexcited or it won’t be so good for your lungs,” Howard warned.

“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be all right, if only to get that stinking funker. Well, to finish up. I staggered along in the opposite direction from the place where he camped. Early in the morning I came upon an Indian coalburner. When he first saw me he wanted to cut me into pieces with his machete. Then he tried to run away. I had quite a bit of trouble convincing him, weak as I was, that I was as harmless as a snail and that he should help me out and take me with him to his home. But then, on realizing that I was in terrible need, he was the finest guy you can think of, whiter than plenty of our own mugs. Without his help I certainly would have died a most miserable death, worse than a rat in a gutter.”

“So it appears that our fine Mr. Dobbs has made off with the whole train, leaving us cold.”

“Apparently, old man.”

Howard meditated for a while; then he said: “Come to think of it, you can’t blame him.”

“Meaning what?” Curtin asked, as though he had not heard right.

“Meaning that I think he’s not a real killer and robber, as killers go. It’s rather difficult to explain it to you, with the slugs in you. You see, I think at bottom he’s as honest as you and me. The mistake was that you two were left alone in the depths of the wilderness with almost fifty thousand clean cash between you two. That is a goddamned temptation, believe me, partner. Being day and night on lonely trails without ever meeting a human soul—that gets on your mind, brother. That eats you up. I know it. Perhaps you felt it, too. Don’t deny it. You may have only forgotten how you felt at certain times. The wilderness, the desolate mountains, cry day and night in your ears: ‘We don’t talk. It will never come out. Do it. Do it right now. At that winding of the trail do it. Here’s the chance of your lifetime. Don’t miss it. You have only to grasp it and it is yours. No one will ever know. No one can ever find out. Take it, it’s yours for the taking. Don’t mind a life, the world is crowded with mugs like him.’ If you ask me, partner, I’d like to know the man on earth who could resist trying it without nearly going mad. If I were still young and I had been alone with you or with him, to tell you the truth, Curty, I might have been tempted too. And I wonder, if you search your mind very carefully, if you won’t find that you had similar ideas on this lonely march. That you didn’t act on them doesn’t mean that you felt no temptation. You may have got hold of yourself just before the most dangerous moment.”

“But he had no scruples, no conscience, I know. I knew it long before.”

“He had as much conscience as we would have had under similar circumstances. Where there is no prosecutor, there is no defendant. Don’t forget that. All we have to do now is to find that cheat and get our money back.”

4.

Howard wanted to go after Dobbs at once so as to overtake him in Durango or at least in the port and so prevent him from crossing the border. Curtin was to stay in the village until fully recovered, when he would join Howard in port at the Southern Hotel.

When Howard told his Indian friends that he had to go to look after his property, as Curtin was sick, the Indians agreed, though they were sorry to have him go.

Next morning Howard was on his way to Durango on a good horse. His brown friends did not allow him to go alone. They insisted on going with him to protect him against any accident of the sort Curtin had encountered.

They had passed the next village when they met on the trail the alcalde don JoaquIn, who, accompanied by six of his men, were bringing Howard his burros and the packs.

Howard, seeing his train complete, asked the alcalde: “Well, amigo mio, where is the American who was with the train? I don’t see him. His name is Dobbs.”

“He was slain by bandits not far from Durango,” the alcalde answered. “We buried him with prayers and with a cross. He is resting in a blessed grave.”

“Did they get the bandits?”

“Yes, senor doctor, we caught them in our village, where they wanted to sell the burros. They were taken away yesterday by the Federales and will be shot for banditry.”

Howard looked at the packs and found them smaller than he remembered them.

He dismounted in a hurry, ran to the nearest pack, and opened it with nervous haste. The hides were there, but no little bags. He ran to another pack and opened it with trembling fingers. No bags were inside.

“Friends,” he shouted, “we must overtake the bandidos. I must ask them something. I want to know what they’ve done with a number of little bags made of rags and sackcloth which were in these packs. They contained sand and dust which we meant to take to town to be tested by learned men so as to find what sort of minerals the soil holds.”

“It may take us two days to reach the soldiers who are marching the bandits to the military post. They must be at the post by now. We will have to take a different direction and be quick, for once these bandoleros have arrived at the post, it will be only two hours before they are court-martialed, and after two hours more they will be shot,” the alcalde explained. “Then it will be too late to ask them anything.”

He gave orders to four of his men to take the train to his brother-in-law’s house in the pueblo where Howard was living, telling them that he and the white doctor would come a few days later as they were going after the soldiers.

When they were ready to start, one of the Indians who had come with the mayor said to Howard: “Oiga, senor doctor, listen, is it only about these little bags you want to ask the bandoleros?”

“Precisely, that’s it, amigo, nothing else. I only want to know what they’ve done with these little bags.”

“I can tell you, maybe, senor doctor, and then perhaps we won’t have to go after the soldiers.”

“Yes, go on, tell me, digale,” Howard urged.

“Mire, senor doctor, look here. I was one of the men that were ordered by our alcalde to guard the bandits while our alcalde and our head of police went to look for the body of your good companero who was murdered. Well, we were sitting there and talking in a friendly way. We even played cards with the bandoleros, because we didn’t know what to do all the time. We gambled for cigarettes for fun. And of course we talked a lot. The bandits told us about their life, where they had worked and in how many jails they had been and how many times they had escaped and all the nasty things they had done. They wanted to show us what great guys they really were.”

“Yes?” Howard knew that he must not press these people when they are telling stories. If they are interrupted, they become easily confused. He just listened with eager attention, even to those details which were of no interest to him. He knew the story-teller would finally come to the point. It was the same with his patients, who in explaining their sicknesses, usually began by telling how many sheep their grandfathers had owned.

“So they talked and we listened. Then they said that there were more thieves and bandits in the world than themselves, and that some of them look like honest, decent men. Pardon me, senor doctor, if I say this, I feel sorry to tell you, but by these ugly words he meant you and especially the American whose head they had cut off with a machete. They said that this man was as big and dirty a thief—excuse me again, senor doctor, for saying that about your good friend—yes, they said that this American was as dirty and stinking a thief as they were themselves. He was even worse. He had put among all the hides little bags filled with sand and dirt so as to cheat the poor man in Durango who was going to buy the hides late in the evening when he could not see well. The hides would not be opened; the buyer, trusting the American, would just look at the outside of them. Inside the hides there were hidden the little heavy bags with sand to increase the weight of the hides, which would be sold by weight, not separately. So when the bandits came to the woods, they opened the packs to see how much they had made, and when they saw that in these little bags there was only sand and dirt to cheat the honest tanners in Durango, they emptied the bags and scattered the sand all over the ground. I don’t know where this was done, and the wind will have carried the sand away anyhow. It lessened the weight of the packs, and so the burros, with less to carry, could get up here in the Sierra, where they hoped to sell the burros, more quickly. Now you know, senor doctor, what became of the bags, and perhaps there is no reason to follow the soldiers to ask the bandits about it, since the sand cannot be found—not even the place in the woods where it was poured out of the bags, for it was dark, and they had left the trail, for fear of meeting people.”

“Thank you, my friend, for your story,” Howard said, with a very sour face. “No, there is no longer any reason to go after them. They didn’t carry any of these little bags with them when they were arrested?”

“Not one,” the Indian replied. “They had only the boots of the man they had killed and his pants and a few centavos. It wasn’t much. And a pocketknife. Everything else is still in the packs. They didn’t sell anything on their way up here to our village, for they met no one who could buy. So there is only very little lost, senor doctor. Everything is in the packs just as you packed it. Only the sand is gone, of course.”

“Yes, of course, only the sand is gone.” Howard meditated for a few seconds as though he wanted to get the whole affair well fixed in his mind. Then he let out such a roar of Homeric laughter that his companions thought him crazy.

“Well, amigos finos, don’t mind my laughing. This is the biggest and best joke I ever heard in all my life.” And he laughed again until his belly ached. The Indians, supposing he was overjoyed about something, fell in with him, laughing as heartily as he did, without knowing what it all was about.

“So we have worked and labored and suffered like galley-slaves for the pleasure of it,” Howard said to Curtin when he finished his story. “Anyway, I think it’s a very good joke—a good one played on us and on the bandits by the Lord or by fate or by nature, whichever you prefer. And whoever or whatever played it certainly had a good sense of humor. The gold has gone back where we got it?”

Curtin, however, was not so philosophical as Howard. He was in a bad mood. All their hard work and privations had been for nothing.

“The whole output of our mine could be had for a bag of tobacco, had we met the bandits in time and asked them for that sand.” Howard again burst out laughing.

“You make me sick with your foolish laughter,” Curtin yelled at him in anger. “I can’t understand how anybody in his right mind can laugh at such a silly thing!”

“If you can’t laugh at that, my boy, then I don’t know what humor is. This joke alone is worth ten months of labor and trouble.” He laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Since I was robbed, I’ve been made into a great performer of miracles, a doctor whose fame is spreading all over the Sierra Madre. I have more successful cures to my credit than the bestpaid doe in Los An. You’ve been killed twice and you are still alive, and will be, I hope, for sixty years to come. Dobbs has lost his head so completely that he can’t use it any longer. And all this for a certain amount of gold which no one can locate and which could have been bought for three packages of cigarettes, worth thirty centavos.” Howard couldn’t help it, he had to laugh again and again.

At last, Curtin also began to see the joke and broke out laughing. When Howard saw this he jumped up and pressed his hand over Curtin’s mouth. “Not you, old boy, don’t you try to imitate me, or you’ll burst your lungs. Better be careful about them, they aren’t yet entirely healed. We need your lungs to return to the port—to return as men who have owned and lost a million.”

Curtin became thoughtful. “I was just wondering what we can do in the port. We’ll have to look for a living some way.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing since I knew that the sand was gone. I might try to settle here for good as a medicine-man. I shall never run short of patrons, that’s one thing I know. We might run this business together. I could make you my junior partner. In fact, I need a good assistant. Often I don’t know where to go first, and, you know, one man can’t very well be in two different places at the same time.”

The partnership was never formed, for the simple reason that when Howard opened all packs, he found two bags still filled with sand. They had either been overlooked by the thieves or those rascals had been too lazy to open all the packs.

Howard held these two bags up to appraise their value.

“How much do you think they might be worth?” Curtin asked. “Do you think it might be enough to run a movie house in the port?”

“I’m afraid not. A movie house would cost us slightly more. What I was thinking is what about a grocery store, one of the better sort?”

“Where? In that port?”

“Where else did you figure? With that oil boom on, man, there’s always business.”

“Oil boom. Don’t make me laugh. There’s no boom any longer.” Curtin disapproved of this plan and explained why. “During the month before we left, I remember that four of the largest and best-stocked grocery stores in the port went broke and were closed. Don’t you remember that, you smart promoter?”

“Yep, I admit it might be risky. You’re right, the boom is over. But it’s now more than ten months since that, and many things may have happened meantime to change the whole situation. What about giving luck a chance?”

“After all, your medicine business might be still better, old man. We’ll stay here for another two months. Here we always have three square meals a day, even five if we want them; we have a roof over our heads and frequently even a hearty drink, and there will be a dance Saturday night with other possibilities of avoiding loneliness. It’s a question whether we should have that much if we opened a grocery store.”

“You said it, Curty. And just take into consideration the plain fact that any damned fool may become a grocer, but not win fame among the Indians as a great doctor and be more highly respected than the president himself. To be a good medicine-man is not so easy as you might think. You can’t learn that profession in a university. A good medicine-man is born, not made. I’m a born medicine-man, I can tell you that. Just come over to the village where I have my headquarters. Yes, my boy, even you will take off your hat when you see how much respected I am there. Only the day before yesterday they wanted to make me their legislature—the whole legislature. I don’t know what they mean by that, but I figure it must be the greatest honor they can bestow.”

At this moment his host stepped into the hut where Curtin and Howard were talking.

“Senor doctor,” the host said, “I am sorry to ask you to leave your dear friend who is so sick. He will recover all right, don’t worry, for he has had your good medicine. We shall look after him and take the best of care of him. But I have to take you with me, senor doctor, back to our pueblo. A man on horseback who has just arrived from there says that so many people have come to our village to see the doctor that all our folks are anxious. They are not used to such crowds. So I beg you to hurry and go back home, so that the visitors may see you, get their medicine, and leave our village peacefully.”

“There you see, partner,” Howard said to Curtin, “what an important person I am, and I want you to respect me properly.”

“I certainly will, senor doctor.” Curtin laughed mockingly and shook hands with Howard.

“And hurry up, old boy, and get well.”

“I’m feeling fine already. I’m sure I will be okay inside of three days. As soon as I can sit in a saddle, I shall come over to your village to see the great doctor performing his miracles.”

Howard had no time to answer, for the Indians snatched him away from his pal, dragged him out, and lifted him on his horse. No sooner was he seated in the saddle than the Indians shouted, whipped their ponies into action, and hurried back home.