Hombre

by Elmore Leonard

  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.

  5

  Frank Braden had nerve. You can put that under his name big. A man does not hold up stagecoaches without nerve, or walk up an open grade in plain sight of people he knows are armed.

  If he was afraid at all, he never showed it. The way his hat was funneled and tipped forward over his eyes he had to raise his head to look up. He kept watching, but it did not make him hesitate. He came across the open from the company building like nothing in the world bothered him, the Winchester raised a little and the white truce flag tied to the end of it.

  He was putting his faith in that truce flag and the fact that the Mexican had done the same thing yesterday without drawing fire. It showed he still didn’t know John Russell very well.

  Russell was lettin
g him come. He never took the Spencer away from his shoulder, but the barrel kept lowering a hair at a time as Braden came closer. Anyone else might have been covering Braden; but somehow you knew Russell meant to fire on him, else he never would have raised the gun. The question was how close Braden would get.

  “Listen—he just wants to talk,” Mendez said, moving toward Russell as you would approach a bronc with your hand out to gentle it. “You can see it’s no trick. The man is coming to talk. Can’t you see that? You want to start something when there’s no need to?

  “Look at me!”

  Russell’s head raised up a little, interrupted from what he was concentrating on. But he kept his eyes on Braden who had now reached some ore-cart tracks that came across from the crushing mill and past a little shack on out into the open a ways. On this side of the tracks Braden was less than a hundred yards off. He kept coming.

  “Just see what he wants,” Mendez said. “You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t want to, one of us will.” Mendez looked outside, seeing Braden on the grade now and starting up.

  “You don’t know what he wants. Man, you got to find out what he wants,” Mendez kept saying. “Listen to him. He trusts us…we have to trust him and see what he wants. Doesn’t that make sense to you?” Mendez said it all fast. If it didn’t convince Russell, it bothered him enough so he couldn’t concentrate on Braden.

  By that time Braden was part way up the grade. He stopped there and yelled out, “Anybody home?”

  Mendez saw the opportunity looking at him and he grabbed a hold of it. “We hear you!” he yelled back.

  “Come on out of that boar’s nest,” Braden called. “We’ll talk some.”

  “Say what you want,” Mendez answered.