by B. TRAVEN
Dobbs did not feel sorry for having gone out to the camps to look for work. It was worth the trouble to know that out of town jobs were just as rare as in town. He had no longer to worry about having missed his chances in life or having overlooked opportunity knocking at the back door.
One morning, strolling along the freight depot, he was hailed by the manager of an American agency for agricultural machinery. They were unloading machinery and he was asked if he would like to lend a hand for a day or two. He accepted and was offered four pesos a day. The natives who worked at the same job got only two pesos.
The work was hard and his knuckles peeled off ten times a day. Anyway the four pesos were welcome money. After five days the job was finished and he had to go.
A few days later, standing at the ferry that crosses the river to the Pánuco depot and wondering if he might get a chance to go to that town for a change, five men came running along to catch the ferry that was just about to make off.
One of the men, square-shouldered and rather bulky, caught a glimpse of Dobbs, stopped, and yelled: “What you looking for? Job?”
“Yep. Got one for me?”
“Come here. Hurry, the ferry is making off. I’ve got a job for you if you want to go. Hard work, but good pay. Ever worked at rigging up a camp?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a contract to rig a camp. The hell of it is I’m short a hand; one dirty son of a bitch has kicked out and left me flat. Maybe malaria, or what the hell do I know, or perhaps it’s a goddamned skirt that’s holding him. I can’t wait for that guy to show up. All right, you’re hired.”
“What’s the pay?”
“Eight bucks American a day. Grub goes off on your expense. Figure the Chinese cook will charge one dollar eighty a day. You make six bucks a day clean. Hell, don’t stand and guffaw; come along.”
Only ten minutes ago Dobbs would have run after a job for two dollars a day like a hungry cat after a fat cockroach. Now he looked as though he expected an embrace of gratitude for taking the job offered.
“Come on or go to the devil,” the contractor cried. “You have to come the way you are; there’s no time to get your things. The ferry doesn’t wait, nor the train either. And if we don’t go right this minute we can’t make the train.”
Without waiting for a reply he grasped Dobbs by the sleeve and dragged him on the ferry.
10
Pat McCormick, the contractor, was an old-timer. Before he had come down here, he had worked in Texas fields and afterwards in Oklahoma. He had come down here before the war, before there was anything that looked like a coming boom. There wasn’t a job connected with oil at which he had not tried his hand. He had been teamster, truck-driver, time-keeper, driller, tool-dresser, pumpman, storeman—anything that had come his way he had tackled. In recent years he had found out that there is more money in rigging up camps by contract—so much for the camp ready to start drilling. He had acquired an excellent eye for judging the job. He could look over a lot in the jungle and name his price for the job in such a well-calculated way that the company thought they were buying cheap when in fact he made a large profit on every contract. His trick was to get good and efficient labor cheap, cheaper than any company could get it. A company cannot hire workers with backpattings and cajoling, making them believe they are being taken on out of pity. Pat knew how to play the good fellow, even the Bolshevik comrade, to catch his men cheap. He could curse the big capitalist companies and their unscrupulous shareholders better than a Communist speaker when he wanted to soft-soap good workers. According to him, he never came out of his contract with any profit; he always lost his good money, so hard-earned in better times, and he took contracts, he said, only because he could not see men who wanted to work suffer from unemployment and starvation. In camp he played the good fellow-worker, joking and friendly. The whole job he handled as if it were a sort of co-operative enterprise in which all joined for the general good. He told how excellent Communism is; if he had his way, the United States and all South America would become a paradise for the Communists tomorrow.
American boys he couldn’t catch so easily with these ideas. Americans knew this sort of Pat too well to fall for his cooperative contracts. He took on Americans only when he could procure no others. Most welcome were the newly arrived Hunks, Czechs, Poles, Germans, Italians, fellows who had heard back home the stories of men working in the Mexican oil-fields and earning from thirty to fifty dollars a day almost without bending a finger. Having arrived in the republic, they learned during the first week that such fantastic wages were as rare as are the wages a bricklayer gets in Chicago, according to the fairy-tales circulating in Europe. After these men are here two months or so they kneel down before any contractor who offers them five dollars a day, and if he offers them eight, they worship him as they never worship the Almighty, and the contractor may do with them what he likes. After six months without a job they are ready to accept whatever is offered.
Dobbs would not have fallen for the doctrines of Pat McCormick had he tried them on him. His economic condition left him no choice. He was in his way as glad at landing this job as were the Hunks.
The co-operative arrangement made it obligatory for all hands to work eighteen hours out of twenty–four, every day as long as the contract lasted. There was no extra pay. Eight dollars was the pay for the working-day, and the length of the working-day was decided by Pat. There was no rest on Sunday. The Mexican hands were protected by their law. They could not be worked a minute longer than eight hours or Pat would have landed in jail and been kept there until he paid ten thousand pesos for breaking the labor law.
A sort of road had been cut out of the jungle so that in very dry weather the trucks could come right on the lot where the camp was to be rigged up. Mexican peons, having been sent a few weeks ahead by Pat, had the camp-site cleared when the rig-builders arrived.
Eight dollars a day looked like a lot of money when Dobbs had nothing in his stomach, but he learned that eight dollars a day may be meager pay for certain jobs. The heat was never less than one hundred degrees in the open, where all the work had to be done, surrounded by jungle. He was pestered by the ten thousand sorts of insects and reptiles the jungle breeds. He thought a hundred times a day that his eyes would burn away from the heat above and around him. No breeze could reach the men at work here. Carrying lumber, hoisting it high up for the derrick to be built, and hanging often for minutes like monkeys with only one hand on a beam, or holding on with one leg snake-fashion around a rope and grasping heavy boards swinging out that had to be hauled in to be riveted or bolted, he risked his life twenty times every day, and all for eight dollars.
Pat allowed no rest except for a few hours’ sleep. Until eleven at night they worked by the light of gas-lanterns, and at five in the morning they were already hard at work again. “We have to use the cool morning hours, boys,” Pat would say when he waked them. No sooner had they gulped down their coffee at meal-time and settled to pick their teeth leisurely than Pat would get restless and hustle them up: “Boys, sure it’s hot. I know. We’re in the tropics. It’s hot in Texas sometimes too. Hell knows it’s not my fault. I have to finish that god-damn contract. The sooner we’re through, the sooner we’ll be out of this hell here, and we’ll go back to town and have cold drinks. Hi, Harry, get the Mexicans, those damn lazy rascals, to unload the steam-engine, and start to adjust the parts. Jump at it. And, Slick, you and Dobbs get the drum up the derrick and have it anchored. I’ll see after the cabins. Hurry, hurry up and get busy.”
Pat McCormick sure made a pile with these contracts. He was paid well by the companies for the rigging contracts. The companies allowed fair wages and decent working-hours for all, but the sooner Pat could finish the job, the more was left over to go into his pockets, for he had no other expenses than the wages he paid out. To drain the last ounce of work out of his men he promised them a bonus if inside of a certain number of days the job were finished. This promise of a bonu
s was his whip, since he knew that a real slave-driver’s whip would not do with workers today. He won; he won always. He rigged up two camps in the same time other contractors would have rigged barely one.
“All right, boys, put all your bones into that job. You’ll be with me again on my next contract. I’ve already got three almost for sure coming my way. Get going.” This was another whip he used, promising his slaves future jobs provided they worked the way he wanted them to.
When the camp was rigged, the gang went back to town. The Mexican peons returned to their near-by villages.
Said Dobbs: “Now what about the pay? I haven’t seen a buck yet from you, Pat.”
“What’s the hurry, pal? You’ll get your dough all right, don’t you worry a bit. I won’t run away with it. You’re again on my next contract I have with the Mex Gulf. Sure you are.”
“Now look here, Pat,” said Dobbs, “I haven’t got a cent even to buy me a new shirt. I look like the worst bum.”
“Now don’t you cry out for mother here,” Pat tried to quiet him. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have thirty per cent of your pay. That’s all I can do for you. And don’t you tell the others.”
Dobbs learned that none of the other boys had received his wages in full. Two who were eager to be with Pat on the next contract again had asked very humbly “at least a little, please, Mr. Pat,” and they were awarded five per cent, so that they could have a few meals; they had not eaten since they had returned to town.
11
Within a few days Dobbs had heard many tales about Pat McCormick. Pat was known not to pay cash to his men if he could avoid it. This was one of the reasons that he seldom had an American with him on a contract. Only foreigners and half-baked Americans fell for him. Most of them were glad to go with him any time he hollered. They had their meals because Pat paid the Chinese cook for catering as advance on the wages for the boys. And usually he paid something in cash when the boys he owed were running after him and crying that they had no money for eats and for beds.
One afternoon when Dobbs was drinking a glass of coffee at the bar of the Spanish café on the plaza, Curtin, passing by, saw him and stepped up.
“I might as well have coffee too. What you doing, Dobble?”
Curtin, who was from California, had worked for Pat with Dobbs.
“Did you get your money?” Dobbs asked.
“Forty per cent is all I’ve squeezed out of that bandit so far.”
“I’d like to know one thing—if he has collected the pay for the contract—that’s what I would like to know,” Dobbs said.
“Rather difficult to find out,” answered Curtin. “The companies are often a bit slow in paying the contracts. Often they are short of ready cash, since the funds they have here in the republic are all taken up for drilling-expenses or for paying out options unexpectedly acquired.”
“You’ve got no idea, Cuts, for which company the contract was?”
“Not even a touch. Could just as well have been for an outsider, a private party that wants to try his luck in oil. What do I know?” Curtin said.
For a whole week Dobbs and Curtin had been running after Pat. He could not be found anywhere. At the Bristol Hotel, where he usually lived, the clerk knew nothing about him.
“He’s hiding out somewhere to get away with the money,” Curtin thought. “He knows that we can’t hang around here all the time. So he waits for the moment that we take another job; then he comes out of his hole.”
Dobbs, after another gulp of coffee, said: “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that guy uses our money to speculate with in some new well. He’s got tips all the way to the Alamo and to the Ebano sections.”
This idea made Curtin hot. “That guy’s going to learn something from me. Just let me catch him.”
At that very instant Pat McCormick strolled across the plaza, with a Mexican dame at his side who was flashing a new dress, elegant shoes, and a new colorful silk umbrella.
“What do you think of that?” Dobbs asked. “Rags paid for with our hard-earned money.”
“Let’s get him, right now,” Curtin hollered, “and let’s get him hard this time.”
As quick as the devil Curtin was at Pat’s side, and with him was Dobbs.
Curtin caught Pat by the shirt-sleeve, for he was wearing no coat.
“How are you, boys? Want a drink?” Pat tried to be friendly.
Then he noticed that these two men were deadly serious, so he said to the dame: “Perdóne me, shlucksy dear, mi vida, I’ve got some business to attend to with these two gentlemen. I’ll take you over to that café. You wait there for me a while, honey.”
He steered her to the colonnades of the Light and Power building, ordered a sundae for her, patted her on the back, and said: “Just wait here, mi dulce, I won’t be long, only a few minutes, no más que unos minutos, sure.”
Dobbs and Curtin waited only a few feet away.
Pat came strolling down the few steps and down the street along the plaza as though he were alone. Seeing that the two fellows did not leave him, but kept close by his side, he halted before the W.U. cable office and said: “Let’s have a drink, it’s on me.”
“Okay,” Curtin gave in. “Let’s have one. But you understand that’s not why we’re after you.”
They stepped into the Madrid cantina, and Pat ordered three shots of Scotch.
“Make mine a Hennessy,” Dobbs said to the bartender.
“Make it two,” from Curtin.
“Scotch is still good enough for me.” Pat repeated his order for himself.
When the drinks were before them Pat asked: “Now, what do you want? Sure, I take you on my next contract. Don’t you worry.”
“Don’t play innocent; you know what we want.” Dobbs came to the point.
“Look here, to make it short and plain,” Curtin pulled his drink closer, “where is our money? You won’t get away this time, I can tell you that. We worked harder than nigger slaves, you know that. Now we’ve waited three weeks for our pay. Let’s have it, and right here and now and no mebbe.”
The drinks were gone.
“Three habaneros,” ordered Pat. “No, Chuchu, make them big, make’m schooners.”
“Habaneros? Playing the miser, mister? Won’t do,” Dobbs sneered. But he shot in the drink just the same.
“Now, look here, boys,” Pat tried his game. “Fact is I haven’t got that god-damned contract paid yet myself. If I had the money, I’d pay you the first thing. You know that. I’ll take you both on my next contract, you can count on that. Sure shot. It’ll go through by Monday and we can set out Friday. Glad to have you boys with me again. Well, here’s mud in your eyes. Shoot.”
Curtin was not impressed by this soaping. He said: “Good of you, Pat, to take us with you again. But don’t you get the idea you can honey-smear us with this likker and with your oiled tongue. We know those speeches of yours by heart. They don’t work any more. Come across with the smackers, and no stalling either. Get me?”
“Damned son of a dog, get the money or you won’t leave this joint alive! Geecries, I am sick of that swashing of yours!” Dobbs yelled, and tackled him with his two hands and bent him hard against the bar.
“Be quiet, gentlemen, quiet please, this is an orderly place,” the bartender butted in. He didn’t mean it. He just wanted to show that he had something to say and that, should anything serious happen, he could claim that he had tried his best to calm the men. He took up a rag and wiped the bar clean. Then he broke in: “The same, gentlemen?” Without waiting for their answer he filled up the good-sized glasses with the golden habanero. Then he lighted a cigarette, put his elbows on the bar, and read El Mundo.
Pat could easily have licked Dobbs, and also Curtin, one at a time. To try to lick both of them at the same time would have been too costly for him. Since he had a new contract waiting for him, he couldn’t afford anything beyond two black eyes and a few bruises. He could see that Dobbs and Curtin were in a state
of mind which would make them forget to fight it out in a decent way, and that he had every chance to land in the hospital and stay there for weeks, while the contract would go to someone else.
Realizing that it was the cheapest way out for him to pay them their money, he said: “Tell you, boys, what I’ll do. I gave you thirty per cent. I’ll give you another thirty now, or I reckon I can make it forty. The balance let’s say the middle of next week.”
“Nothing doing next week,” Curtin insisted. “Now and here every cent you owe us, or I swear you won’t go out of here. At least not alive.”
Pat drew up his lips in an ugly manner. “You are thieves and highwaymen. I should have known this before. I wouldn’t trust you to sleep in the same cabin with me, or I might wake up in the morning and find myself murdered and robbed. Take you again on one of my jobs? Not on your knees. If I saw you dying in the street, I wouldn’t even kick you to give you the last grace. Here, take your dough and get out of my sight.”
“Aw, shut up,” Dobbs shouted, “we know your church sermons. Get the money and be quick about it.”
While Pat was talking he must have counted the money in his pocket very accurately because now with one jerk he brought out a bunch of dollar bills, crumpled them in his fist, and banged them upon the bar. “There is the money,” he said. Then he winked at the bartender, threw a handful of pesos on the bar, and bellowed: “That’s for the drinks. I don’t accept drinks paid for by skunks. Keep the damn change and buy you a hotel.”
With this he tipped his hat back on his neck and left.
2
“Why are you living in the Roosevelt Hotel, buddy?” Dobbs asked Curtin as they passed the Southern Hotel. “You pay at least five pesos a day there.”
“Seven,” Curtin answered.
“Better come bunk with me in the Oso Negro. Fifty centavos the cot.”
