‘¡Dios!’ he said when he saw what had been done to the body. ‘Who is that?’
The lid of the coffin had nails driven halfway in. The undertaker took the feet and Sundance the shoulders and they put Silvestra in the coffin. Then the undertaker got a hammer from the back of the hearse and nailed the lid down tight. The noise of the hammer on the lid sent echoes rolling through the town. Sundance and the undertaker slid the coffin into the hearse—the undertaker closed the doors. By the time all this was done the night sky was streaked with red, but the town was still asleep as the hearse moved off toward the cemetery. The mules knew the way because it was a slow and familiar journey. They got to the plaza and crossed it in the shadow of the cathedral. Then the hearse turned into a long, narrow street lined with stores and cantinas on both sides. The dying moon shone on tin cans rusting in the gutter. The hearse went slowly and they walked silently behind it.
They went through the cemetery gates. Some of the graves had marble headstones and some homemade wooden crosses. Some of the marble memorials were decorated with carvings of angels and lambs. The hearse stopped and the undertaker got down with a shovel in his hand. He dug in the sandy soil until Sundance took the shovel away from him because he was taking too long. He stopped digging when he was down five feet; five feet was enough because the dogs wouldn’t root down that far.
Sundance and the undertaker let the coffin down on ropes. Then the undertaker picked up the shovel and prepared to fill in the grave.
‘Stand back. You’re not burying a dog,’ Jorge said angrily.
Finally, it was over and they were leaving the cemetery. Jorge walked by himself. Montoya said to Sundance, ‘I urge you again, Señor Sundance. In the name of God, leave Las Piedras and take the lawyer with you. I don’t want to have to bury both of you. You are up against men—a man—too powerful to stop. It can’t be done. Don’t you see that? There is nothing I can do. There is nothing anyone can do.’
Sundance’s voice was hard and cold. ‘Just don’t take sides, Montoya. Stay neutral and you’ll probably hang onto your job. You’ve been offering all kinds of good advice. Now I’ll give you some—keep out of it.’
‘My advice is still good advice,’ the police chief said, not wanting to look at the hard lines of the other man’s face.
‘Sure,’ Sundance said. ‘You’re full of good advice.’
Then he quickened his pace to catch up with Jorge.
Nine
They walked in silence until they were halfway across the plaza. Then Jorge spoke and there was no feeling in his voice. ‘I am going to have a drink, a lot of drinks. Don’t try to stop me, Sundance.’
On the plaza stores and cantinas were opening for the business of the day. An old man leading a wagon loaded with chickens in crates cursed his mule for not going fast enough. Dwarfed by the great doors of the cathedral, an old priest with long white hair stood reading from a prayer book.
‘What you do is your business,’ Sundance said. He waited outside a cantina while Jorge went in and came out with two bottles of mescal.
Jorge uncorked a bottle with his teeth and drank from it, shuddering as the raw spirit went down. ‘I have to think,’ he said. ‘Silvestra’s death has changed everything.’
They walked on and Sundance let him talk. Jorge said, ‘I despise Montoya, but he’s right. So I despise myself even more. What did Montoya say? I spout from my damned law books, but it is the Indian who is dead. Silvestra, the Indian, is dead—and what am I going to do about it?’
Now they were back in Jorge’s quarters and a good part of the first bottle was gone. Jorge sat down heavily and swept the law books off the table with his arm. He set down the bottles and pointed to the long-barreled Colt holstered at Sundance’s side. ‘You were right too,’ he said bitterly. ‘Right when you said only guns can settle this. Everybody is right but me. You, Montoya—everybody except Jorge Calderon, the great advocate and champion of the Indians.’
Jorge spilled mescal on his shirt as he drank. When he saw what he had done, he laughed again. ‘My new shirt, my new clean shirt,’ he said, already half drunk. ‘What the hell does it matter? Won’t be needing it. Don’t need to wear a clean shirt to kill a man. All this time I’ve been blind or maybe I didn’t have the nerve. I studied my law books and thought the answer was there. Then I wrote letters to the newspapers and got up petitions—and all the time the answer was right in front of my nose.’
‘You mean killing Lucas Bannerman.’
‘That’s it—kill Bannerman.’
Jorge took another swig of mescal, this time without shuddering. ‘I changed it back,’ he said. ‘What happened to Silvestra made me change it back.’
‘You think you’re going to kill Bannerman. Tell me how.’
‘I won’t talk. This time I won’t talk—I’ll do it. Bannerman is a man so he can be killed like any other man.’
‘No, not just like any other man. He’s tough, smart and well guarded. You won’t even get close to him. All you’ll do is get killed. His pistoleros will gun you down before you get off a shot. Where will that leave your case?’
‘Shit on the case!’ Jorge drank again and smashed the empty bottle against the wall. ‘I'll get to him and I’ll kill him. I think I’ll go and kill him now.’
Sundance got between Jorge and the door. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘Drink all you want, but you’re not leaving. I’ll rope you if I have to.’
Suddenly Jorge’s eyelids began to droop and his voice began a mumble. ‘All right! All right!’ he said. Then before Sundance could close the distance between them Jorge grabbed up the scattergun. ‘Stay back’—he was swaying on his feet—’I’m warning you, stay back!’
Sundance crowded in on him. Jorge reversed the shotgun and tried to hit him with the stock. Sundance grabbed the shotgun and drew his belt gun at the same time. He hated to do it, but it was time for Jorge to sleep off this craziness, so as gently as he could he tapped him on the back of the neck with the barrel of the Colt. Jorge’s eyes closed and he sagged forward. He would have fallen if Sundance hadn’t caught him easily with one hand. Then he carried Jorge over to the cot and covered him with blankets after taking off his coat and boots. Before he had finished Jorge began to snore.
Late in the afternoon Jorge woke up with a headache and a stiff neck. He didn’t remember and Sundance didn’t explain. Sundance poured a half glass of mescal and held it while he drank. ‘Drink this and that’s the end of the drinking,’ Sundance ordered.
‘What happened last night?’ Jorge asked, finishing the mescal in two convulsive swallows. ‘I remember starting on the first bottle. After that it’s all confusion in my mind. Then I must have fallen asleep.’
Sundance went to the window and poured out the rest of the mescal. ‘That’s what happened,’ he said. ‘You fell asleep.’
Jorge lay back on the cot and closed his eyes. When he spoke his eyes were still closed. It was coming back to him. ‘I wanted to kill Bannerman—to try to kill Bannerman—and you stopped me. I still hunger to kill him. It isn’t right to let him get away with this.’
‘Sober up, clean yourself and get ready for Judge Mendoza. That’s how you can get Bannerman. You can’t get him for killing Silvestra, but maybe you can send him to jail. In the end you may have to settle for putting him out of business. Are you ready to settle for that?’
‘Yes,’ Jorge said after thinking about it, ‘I would settle for that. And if I should fail ...’
‘If the law fails you, we’ll find a way to kill Bannerman,’ Sundance said. ‘But you have to give the law a chance.’
‘One more chance,’ Jorge said. ‘Silvestra was a good and brave man.’
‘I know he was.’
‘He was gentle for a man of such great strength. A strange man in many ways.’
‘He had no family of any kind?’
Jorge said, ‘No one. All dead. The Franciscan monks found him after the Mexican cavalry swept through his village. All his life
he was so proud he could read and write. It’s terrible that he had to die like that.’
There was nothing to say, so Sundance didn’t say anything.
Judge Esteban Mendoza held court in Las Piedras on the first Monday of every month. To get there he had to be driven in a private coach from the provincial capital at Durango. It was a two-day journey with a stopover on the way, but in all the years he had been coming to Las Piedras, he had never missed a day in court. His day in court was a long one, from eight in the morning until far into the evening. The old man’s decisions were swift and final.
‘He’s going to die in court or on the way to court,’ Jorge told Sundance. It was Sunday afternoon and he was sponging his black suit with benzene. The pungent smell of the benzene filled the small room, driving out the smells of cooking. Sundance smiled as Jorge, never a deft man with his hands, scrubbed away at the sweatstained collar of his coat.
Jorge had washed his mescal-soaked shirt and hung it over the back of a chair to dry. Monday was only hours away and Jorge wanted to look his best.
‘Mendoza dismissed all my other cases,’ Jorge said, ‘and maybe he was right. “Your arguments are unsound, Señor Calderon,” he said to me more than once. Well, we’ll see what he has to say this time. What he decides should tell what he’s really like. Throw my hat over here, will you. I’d buy a new one but the stores won’t open on Sunday. ¡Dios! That trip across the desert didn’t do it any good.’
Sundance reminded him that he wouldn’t be wearing his hat in court. ‘Take it easy, Jorge. You’ll be all right. A good night’s sleep and you’ll be fine.’
‘Where the hell is the boot blacking?’
‘On the table right in front of you.’
‘You notice I’m saving the worst part for last,’ Jorge said, rubbing the quarter-inch stubble on his face.
Jorge soaked his face in a hot towel, then lathered it energetically. Sundance had sharpened his razor for him until it was sharp enough to slice through a hair, but even so it took fifteen minutes to get the whiskers off.
Later, Sundance cooked a steak and by then it was eight o’clock. Jorge looked at his watch after he wound it with a key. ‘Only twelve hours to go. ¡Dios! I would like it to be Tuesday. It’s been so quiet—no sign of any of Bannerman’s riders.’
‘If they’re out there, I didn’t see them,’ Sundance said. ‘I think Bannerman is waiting to see what your next move will be. Now you better turn in and I’ll do the same.’
‘Who the hell is able to sleep on a night like this?’ Jorge said, but as it turned out he slept very well.
In the morning Jorge refused everything but coffee. It was seven o’clock. The walk to the courthouse took only five minutes, but Jorge wanted to get there early. ‘It will calm me just to be there,’ he said. ‘I can sit there and think of all the centuries of law and that calms me.’
‘Let’s go then.’ Sundance smiled. ‘So you can be calm.’
The courthouse was on the west side of the plaza, now crowded with vendors, beggars and farmers. The two men—the frail Mexican lawyer and the rangy half-breed fighting man—were conscious of the stares that followed them. The sun was already hot, straw and dust blew in the wind. To the east, jutting up into the clear blue sky, was the jagged outline of the Sierra Madre. Sundance looked at the great mountain range with a sudden longing to be there, high up in the cool mountain air and far away from towns, men and killing. Up on the highest peaks it was cold even in the hottest part of summer. There were clear, cold streams where the water was good to drink. It would be good when this was over, to go there with Crook, to sit by a campfire in the cool of the evening, waiting for fish to broil over an open fire.
‘There it is,’ Jorge said, ‘the temple of law.’
The courthouse was the grandest building in Las Piedras after the cathedral. It was three stories and built of cut stone. Over it flew the flag of the Republic of Mexico and the state flag of Sonora. Stone steps led up to the massive doors, which were guarded by two soldiers with rifles and serious expressions on their brown Indian faces. Lawyers and their clerks and clients were gathered in knots in front of the building and on the steps leading up to it. Sundance saw Chief of Police Montoya talking to two of his blue-uniformed constables.
Before they reached the courthouse Bannerman, the gunman called Cajun and two Mexican pistoleros rode up and hitched their horses. They went inside. ‘It’s all right,’ Jorge said. ‘I’m not carrying the gun you gave me.’
Inside the courthouse the marble-tiled hallway was high-ceilinged and cool. On the walls were many oil paintings of judges and politicians, but the portrait of President Porfirio Diaz, lifetime president of the Republic, was bigger than any of them. Diaz looked very Indian in spite of his gorgeous uniform and bushy Burnside mustache. The doors to the courtroom were already open and they went in.
In the front row of the spectators’ section, Bannerman sat with the three gunmen. The only one he talked to was Cajun. The two Mexican gunslingers sat uneasily, turning their hat brims between their fingers. The windows were open the morning breeze brought in the smell of horses. In front of the judge’s massive bench an elderly court clerk with a bald head, wearing a pince-nez, sat writing. After each paper was signed, he stamped it with a rubber stamp. Some of the papers had ribbons held in place by red seals. After a while an old man in a blue uniform without insignia of any kind brought in a pitcher of drinking water and a glass for the judge.
While Sundance waited, Jorge talked to the court clerk and had his name entered in a book. Jorge paid a fee and the clerk took it without looking up from his papers. ‘That pompous old bastard doesn’t like me,’ Jorge said when he came back to his seat. ‘He doesn’t think I have enough dignity.’
The old man in the blue uniform let out a yell and they all stood up as the judge came in.
‘That’s not Mendoza,’ Jorge said in such a loud voice that the court clerk gave him a threatening look.
The judge, who was not Mendoza, was about fifty and so fat that he waddled instead of walked. He was dressed completely in fight gray and the frock coat was tailored to hide his glutton’s belly. He wore a pointed beard in the old French style and his coarse black hair was cut in military fashion. He had a cruel but weak mouth. Everything about him was self-important and threatening. After he settled his broad backside in the leather judge’s chair, the court clerk announced him as ‘His Excellency, Justice Rosalio Colomo of the Provincial Court of the State of Sonora.’
‘What the hell is going on?’ Jorge whispered to Sundance.
Judge Colomo had a loud, coarse voice that carried to every corner of the big courtroom. ‘It is my sad duty to inform you that my distinguished colleague, Judge Esteban Muniz Mendoza, died in his home in Durango during the past week. I am saddened by his passing and can feel only humility as I prepare to take his place. Call the first case.’
Judge Colomo didn’t look sad and he didn’t sound humble. The first case concerned a rancher who was suing another rancher for selling him a horse that he knew had worms. The judge lay back in his comfortable chair and pulled at his right earlobe while the clerk droned out the details of the case.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ Jorge whispered. ‘They put a horse with worms ahead of me.’
‘What do you know about him?’ Sundance asked.
‘Not much. And nothing to his credit. Colomo had the district south of Durango. He was a captain in the Rurales before they made him a judge.’
Jorge was still whispering when Judge Colomo rapped furiously with his gavel. His lardy face was red and he continued to use the gavel long after the courtroom had been pounded into silence. ‘Stand up, Señor Calderon,’ he bellowed. ‘Stand up now and tell me if you intend to continue to hold a private conversation while this court is in session?’
Jorge stood up. ‘I beg your pardon, your excellency,’ he said.
‘All right, then sit down and show some respect. We will continue with the case at hand now
that the advocate from Morelos has agreed to pay attention.’
The spectators laughed appreciately and Jorge’s face grew tight with anger. Lucas Bannerman turned half-way around in his seat, but didn’t smile. Then he turned back to face the judge. Sundance gripped Jorge’s arm, forcing him to hold in his temper.
The case of the two ranchers didn’t take long. After it came the case of an American who was charged with salting a gold mine in the lower Sierra. How to salt a gold mine had to be explained to Judge Colomo. The accused had bought a worthless, worked-out mine, then loaded a 10-gauge shotgun with small nuggets and fired at the walls of the mine. The gold broke up and imbedded itself in the walls of the mine. Later the accused had brought some rich Englishmen to the mine. After inspecting the rich ‘deposits’ of gold, they bought the mine for fifty thousand dollars.
Judge Colomo sent the American swindler to the island penal colony off the Sonoran coast for twenty years. And he seemed to enjoy doing it.
The cases dragged on all day. Even with the windows open, it grew hot in the courtroom. Judge Colomo drank a great deal of water and took two and a half hours for lunch and siesta. It was too hot to eat, so Sundance and Jorge went to a cantina and drank warm beer and fought off the horseflies that buzzed in from the street.
Sipping his beer, Jorge said, ‘What’s the use of waiting around for Colomo to make more jokes. You know he’s trying to wear me down by leaving my case till last. And maybe he won’t even hear the case today. He can hold it over till next month, or the month after. Why don’t we forget about going back in there?’
Sundance 20 Page 9
