by B. TRAVEN
The sergeant repeated the order and then selected his men.
The captain lighted a cigarette and called a private who carried a guitarro to sing him the “Adelita.”
The sergeant ordered the prisoners up: “Get your bowels emptied, you rascals. No, not here; over there in those bushes. We don’t want to have that stink around here among decent soldiers. March off!”
The prisoners could hardly have reached the bush when half a dozen shots were heard.
The captain took his cigarette out of his mouth and said: “Now, what the hell can this be? I hope the prisoners didn’t try to escape. That would be too bad.”
A minute later the sergeant stood before his captain.
“Speak up, Sergeant De La Barra, what happened?”
“The prisoners, the minute we were at the bushes, tried to get away. They pushed Private Cabrera aside and grasped his rifle, so he fired and then we shot them. Private Saldivar and Private Narvaez also had to shoot, or the prisoners would have run away. Mi capitán, I have to report the death of the prisoners.”
“Thank you, Sergeant De La Barra. You should have saved the life of our prisoners. They should have had a trial in court. They are citizens and are entitled to a fair trial as the Constitution demands. Of course, if they attacked you, tried to kill you and then make their escape, it was only your duty to shoot them, sergeant. I shall recommend you to the colonel for your quick action.”
“Gracias, mi capitán!”
“Get your men and bury the prisoners, sergeant. You will bury them with your caps off, and cross them.”
“Yes, mi capitán!”
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.
2
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.
“Cómo estas, amigo, how do you do?” Howard greeted the Indian.
Before the Indian could answer, the host began to explain: “See here, señor 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 coal-burner by profession, you know, my compadre is. It was very early in the morning. Coal-burners 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, señor 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.
3
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 coal-burner. 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 god-damned 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 Joaquín, 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, señor 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.”
