Hombre

by Elmore Leonard

  “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 hi
mself.”

  “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.