‘Just about,’ Sundance said. ‘How long do you think you’ll be gone?’ They had talked about that too, but Jorge still wasn’t sure. ‘I would think a week, maybe a little more. It may take a day or two to get in to see Diaz. Will you be here when I get back?’
‘More than likely. Anyway, close by. I’ll go down and tell the guard.’
While they waited for the escort from the fort Jorge paced the room in nervous strides. Sundance knew it was no use telling him to calm himself. Finally Jorge said, ‘It’s funny. If you hadn’t come to the Sierra to hunt tigres I would be dead and my cause would be lost.’
‘That’s how chance works,’ Sundance said.
‘If it takes longer than a week, you don’t have to wait here for me,’ Jorge said. He smiled ruefully. ‘After all, I am under the protection of Colonel Almirante as well as the War Minister. Leave if you have to. You have your own cause to fight. When this is all over perhaps I can help you in the time I have left.’
‘We can all use help, Jorge.’
‘You know, the odd thing now is I don’t mind dying so much. I’d rather stay, but if I’m successful I won’t mind going so much. You ever think about dying, Sundance?’
‘Not much but I’m ready for it. I’d be in the wrong line of work if I wasn’t ready for it.’
Colonel Almirante arrived with the four troopers. The sun was up now and the colonel was sweating. The four troopers carried Winchesters and had holstered Colts. They were all mestizos and looked very solemn. Colonel Almirante was in his carriage, but he got out when Sundance and Jorge came down to the street. He smelled of sweat and toilet water, and looked as if he would rather be somewhere else. Across the street a crowd of Mexicans had gathered to watch.
The colonel’s driver took Jorge’s battered leather grip and put it in the carriage. ‘I have taken food for the journey,’ Colonel Almirante said. ‘Also wine and whiskey.’
Jorge said, ‘Water will do for me.’
The colonel raised his tufted black eyebrows. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything.’
Jorge held out his hand. ‘Watch out for tigres,’ he said.
‘You too.’
The carriage rolled away in the harsh sunlight, and when it was out of sight Sundance took his gear and went back to the hotel. He saw Luis Montoya watching him from the front of the calabozo. Two of his men were with him; Montoya didn’t nod or speak. Sundance went on. It was hot and quiet in the town except for the usual barking dogs.
In his room Sundance worked on his guns; there wasn’t much else to do in Las Piedras. A dusty wind stirred the faded curtains on the window. The morning dragged on and then it was siesta time. The town was quiet now. Even the dogs were quiet. From where he sat by the window he could see the jagged ridges of the Sierra. There were oak forests on the lower slopes. Pine grew thickly at higher elevations. Once the high peaks and remote valleys had been the stronghold of the Apaches, from which they raided deep into Mexico. Now they were broken and scattered.
Sundance put his guns away and went to the livery stable to see to his horse. The big stallion whinnied when he saw him. Sundance scratched the great animal on the forehead. ‘Won’t be long now, boy.’
The rest of the day was just as quiet. When it got dark he lay on his bed in the dark, listening to the sounds of the town. Down the street somebody was playing a mandolin very badly. Jorge would be well on his way to the railroad by now. Sundance smiled when he thought of the meeting between Diaz and Jorge. Diaz had started out as a champion of the peons and the Indians. Now he ruled like an emperor. Sundance hoped Jorge didn’t lose his temper and tell Diaz what he really thought of him. Anything was possible with Jorge, and yet for all his craziness he was a real man. He had stood against Bannerman when there was no one to help him. Yes, Sundance thought, a crazy man—but still very much of a man.
Next morning before the town was awake, Sundance saddled Eagle and rode into the lower slopes of the mountains. It was still cool and the air was clear, good to breathe after the smells of the town. He rode higher following an old trail. Soon he was up high enough to look down on the town. Beyond the town, miles to the west, the desert began. The desert ran off into the distance, then disappeared in a blue-gray haze. It was very still on the mountain, except when an alarmed bird squawked into the air. On about noontime Sundance found a fast flowing stream and let the stallion drink. He saw a few bobcats but no tigers. Like the old-time Apaches the tigres lived as far as they could get from civilization. When Three Stars arrived they would have to journey far into the mountains before the hunt began.
In the afternoon, Sundance turned his horse and started back for Las Piedras. It was after dark when he got there.
Four days after Jorge left, Sundance was walking across the plaza. Colonel Almirante’s carriage turned into the plaza from the south road. The carriage was filmed with dust; so was the colonel. When the colonel saw Sundance he ordered his driver to stop. Dust was caked in the sweat on the colonel’s face. He was tired but smiling. ‘Ah, Señor Sundance,’ he said. ‘Your friend is on his way. The journey to Durango was without incident. I escorted Señor Calderon on board the train, my men with him of course. It was a quiet journey but a hot one. I look forward to a glass of cold wine.’
Sundance just nodded and the carriage went on in the direction of the fort. He didn’t like the colonel, and didn’t trust him, but figured he was nervous enough to be careful, or at least stay neutral if it ever came to one final showdown with Bannerman. There was still no certainty that it wouldn’t come to that.
A few hours later Sundance was eating a steak in the cantina when Lieutenant Novela, the British-looking Mexican, came in. He was by himself; his face was pale and drawn. Sundance looked up at him without saying anything—he already knew what it was.
Novela said, ‘You see my revolver is holstered. I do not want any trouble with you, Señor Sundance. The other trouble we had, I was just following orders. So no trouble—agreed?’
‘All right,’ Sundance said. ‘So he’s dead, is that it?’
Novela took a deep breath. ‘Yes. They stopped the train—some were already on board—and took him off. They disarmed the soldiers and tied them up. They took him off so he must be dead.’
Probably, Sundance thought without much feeling. This wasn’t the time for feeling. ‘How many men?’ he asked. ‘The telegraph said more than ten. They were masked, all of them. It happened about an hour after the train left Durango. A place called Cubero.’
‘Where’s Colonel Almirante?’ Sundance asked.
Novela said, ‘Gone, Señor Sundance. After the telegraph message came, he swore he had done his best to carry out the orders of the War Minister. Now he is frightened that the War Minister will have him shot or sent to the penal colony in the islands. He is equally frightened of you—so he is gone. I think north to the United States. I am temporarily in command. What are you going to do?’
‘Find Jorge.’
‘Do you want men from the fort?’
‘Jorge had men from the fort, and now he’s gone. Now I’ll tell you what I told the Chief of Police. Keep out of this. I’ll find the men who did this and after I kill them I’ll kill Bannerman. You can run and tell him that, if you like.’
Novela said, ‘I have nothing to do with Bannerman. I am not like Almirante.’
Sundance didn’t finish the steak. ‘I don’t care what you’re like. Stay away from me.’
Lieutenant Novela made a stiff little bow. ‘If that is what you wish. I have no orders concerning you, but may I say that I am sorry your friend is dead?’
After Novela left Sundance saddled Eagle, filled extra canteens and left Las Piedras on the south road, heading for Durango. He kept riding long after it got dark. The road was a military road, and traveling was easy so far. There was no doubt in his mind that Jorge was dead, out there in the wild country south of Durango. It wasn’t desert country, but it was bleak and forbidding, with few trails, and the railroad ran throu
gh it like a knife. Jorge, the poor crazy hombre, was out there and he was dead. Sundance knew, as he always had known, that Lucas Bannerman would never let it go—but there was no stopping Jorge. He had had his chance, and now it was gone, and so was he.
Sundance pushed Eagle hard until the moon clouded over after midnight. Then he made cold camp in a clearing beside the road. He watered the stallion and drank some water himself. After that he rolled himself in his blanket and slept until an hour before first light. By ten or eleven that day he was a good part of the way to Durango. He rested the stallion at noon, then pushed on again. A hot wind blew from the south. He passed a few peons, and they stared at him, wondering who he was.
It could all be a waste of time, he realized. The country south of Durango was scarred with grown over gullies and dry watercourses. A hundred bodies could be thrown there, left to rot, and the buzzards weren’t the only scavengers. The stink of decomposing flesh would bring them quickly.
Sundance knew what he ought to do was ride back and kill Bannerman, and yet he had to find Jorge, what was left of him by this time. It was something he had to do. Someone had to stand over Jorge, had to bury him and mark the place. No one else would do it. That was the white side of his nature, and now he let it have its way. Anyway, Lucas Bannerman wouldn’t run away. He would stay at his fine hacienda, behind his wall of guns, confident that he wouldn’t die until he was rich and old and honored. So he would stay where he was, and he would keep, for the time being. In spite of his cold determination, Sundance knew that killing the ex-Confederate wasn’t going to be easy. Bannerman had lived through the Civil War; they said he had been a brave if brutal commander. Bannerman knew how to stay alive; he was one of those men who fight for life with every vicious trick at their command. And then there was the Louisiana gunman they called Cajun. He had to be good or Bannerman would not have hired him as his personal bodyguard. So he would have to die too. Anyone who stood in front of Bannerman would die.
It was close to dark, after resting the stallion twice, that he rode into Durango. Lights were flickering on in the town when he saw it from the top of a rise a few miles out. The railroad depot was in the center of town. It was the northernmost point of the rails that went all the way to Mexico City, hundreds of miles away. From now on he would follow the rails until he came to Cubero.
That night he slept in a livery stable with the stallion, and in the morning he continued on his way. The railroad ran out straight from the town. The rails glittered in the sunshine. When he had gone a few miles a train pulled by a spanking new American locomotive came from the other direction. Impassive Mexican faces stared at him from the windows of the coaches. A child waved at him and he waved back. The train sped into the distance, leaving a trail of oily smoke, and then it was quiet again. A bright-colored lizard darted across the track in front of him. The wind from the south blew hotter, and out in front of him there was nothing but the shining rails.
Riding easily in the heat, he came to Cubero while it was still early in the morning. He saw the water tower before he was close enough to see the few shacks that clustered around it. It wasn’t any kind of town, just a stop on the railroad. Looking at the fading whitewashed political slogans on the water tower, Sundance thought, so this is where it all came to an end for Jorge. This was where they had waited to put an end to the man who had defied them to the finish.
There was a tin-roofed depot that had never been painted, and when Sundance came close, two Mexicans came out and looked at him. One of them, the older man, said in Spanish that he was the stationmaster. Yes, he said, he had been present when the masked riders took the man from the train. There had been no shooting, and it was clear that they had planned it all with great care. It was an outrage, the stationmaster said. The masked riders had ridden off to the west. He turned to point. ‘That way,’ he said. ‘Was the abducted man a friend of yours?’
‘You could say he was,’ Sundance said.
At first there were no tracks of any kind because the soil was sandy and the wind had blown them away. But then he came to a stretch of rocks and gravel kicked up and chipped by many hoofs. The tracks went west and continued to go that way. Now he was about five miles from the train stop. It was then that he saw the buzzards, black against the sky, kiting in, getting closer all the time to whatever it was. It could be just a dead animal, but once again he knew it was not.
During his life he had seen many forms of death. The death of Silvestra had been terrible—but Silvestra was not a friend. He rode closer. If the new sack suit had not been lying close by there would have been no way of knowing that it was Jorge. They had stripped him and impaled him on the spikes of a bayonet cactus. Then they must have smeared his body with honey or molasses because, even now, what was left of him was still crawling with the huge red ants of the desert. Ants ran in and out of the eaten-away eye sockets, and the mouth. Most of the flesh on the body was already eaten away. It must have taken him many hours to die.
The only way to get rid of the ants was to burn them off, and he piled up brush around the body and set it on fire. Then when the ants were gone he scooped a shallow grave in the sand with his hands. One by one, he collected rocks and covered the grave. At last it was done. He stood up and looked at the mound of rocks.
‘You started something good, Jorge,’ he said almost in a whisper, ‘and now I’m going to finish it for you. You can depend on that as you could never depend on the law.’
The stallion, moving restlessly close by, whinnied now and then. A quick movement of his hand brought the big horse to his side. ‘All right, boy, let’s get on with it,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot to be done.’
The thing now was to make a plan—one that couldn’t fail. He thought about that all the way back to Las Piedras.
What was clear to him was that Bannerman, by having Jorge killed, had thrown a challenge out to him. A bullet would have been enough, but Bannerman wanted him to know that men who opposed him were not about to die so easily. Bannerman knew he would go out and find the body; that he would find it with little trouble. What Bannerman was saying was—I did it. What are you going to do about it?
Not far from Las Piedras he saw a troop of cavalry coming from the fort. Lieutenant Novela was at the head of the column and he reined in quickly.
‘Did you find him, your friend?’ he asked. ‘I have orders to proceed to Cubero.’
‘I found him,’ Sundance said. ‘What was left after the ants got through. He’s buried about five miles west of the train stop. Tracks go on past the grave. I didn’t follow them.’
Novela looked puzzled. ‘But why not?’
‘Because I already know where they lead. Anyway, they have too much of a start.’
‘But I must go there, just the same,’ Novela said. ‘I will be away for at least a week. Do you understand what I mean by that?’
Sundance knew the point Novela was making: he wouldn’t get in the way.
‘Perhaps more than a week,’ the lieutenant went on. ‘It is going to be a long search.’
Sundance nodded as the column moved away. Now he was free to go after Bannerman without interference from the Mexican Army. He had a week to do it in. Why not? If he didn’t do it in a week ….
Late that night when it was hot and quiet, with the window shades pulled down, he took the big Remington rifle from its wool-lined case and looked at it. Then he put it back and went to sleep.
Fourteen
Very early on what might well be the last day of his life, Sundance went to the livery stable and changed the water in his canteens. The town was still asleep as only a Mexican town can be in the hour before dawn. In the hayloft above the stables the stableman snored heavily. Sundance watered and grained the stallion, checked the supply of dried deer meat, and then his other gear, before he started back to the hotel. He had already seen to his weapons, all his weapons, but when he got back he inspected them again. Gray light showed from behind the high peaks of the Sierra; first ligh
t from the east always showed itself far up on the mountain. There was something about the high Sierra that fascinated him, as it has fascinated the Indians for centuries. For him, as for them, it wasn’t just a range of mountains. The Indians had a special feeling for the great mountain that he understood completely. Yes, he thought, it would end in the Sierra. Up there it would end for him or for Bannerman, or both. No matter if it ended for him too. Now his only purpose was make sure that Bannerman did no more harm in the world. There was no sense of nobility or self-sacrifice in his decision. At long last, after all the talk, it was something that had to be done, and he was the only man there to do it. If there were other men to do it—do it with finality—he would have stepped aside for he had much other work ahead of him, and he wanted to live as long as he could. But when he thought about it, it was the same work after all.
The mountain was where he would make his stand. In open country he wouldn’t have a chance, no matter how well or hard or cleverly he fought. The odds were too great for open country. Up on the mountain he would become the hunted, but that was his intention, his plan, the only plan he had. Loading huge .50 caliber shells into his pockets, he knew the heavy, long-range rifle would be his only chance to get out of this alive. They said the big sporting rifle could reach out and knock men down like the hand of God. Well, he didn’t know much about the hand of God, but he knew what the Remington could do. But there was no certainty in anything, even with the .50. It wasn’t likely that anyone in Bannerman’s party possessed such a rifle, but you never knew.
He waited until the cantina down the street opened, then he ate a big breakfast he didn’t have much appetite for. It was just part of the preparation for the fight ahead. The day could be a long one, and there could be more than one day. It was eight o’clock when he got back to the hotel. The owner’s son, Anselmo, the boy who guarded his weapons, was filling coal oil lamps. He smiled quickly when Sundance came in.
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