Brian Garfield

by Tripwire

  Late in the afternoon the honeymoon couple went away in a weathered buckboard and the fat women went back to their huts and the men settled down in the plaza for some industrious drinking.

  The air stank of sulphur smoke as if a battle had been fought. The church bells had quit ringing and the yelling was done; everyone had gone hoarse. The silence seemed unnatural. In that atmosphere Boag saw the two rawhiders emerge from the shade of a pine copse beside a corral that contained four or five horses and several burros. They must have been there all the time, sitting with their backs to the corral fence watching the show.

  They walked across the plaza into a square hut. Boag watched the place patiently. Within three minutes the rawhiders reappeared in the doorway. One of them had a small jug so that hut must be the cantina.

  Some old men on the plaza shouted at the rawhiders, inviting them to take part in the remnants of the feast. The two rawhiders went over to them and sat down on the ground to eat. There was a thin one and a fat one. Boag remembered the fat one; he believed the fat one went by the name of Jackson.

  By the time the rawhiders finished eating it would be pretty dark. Jackson and his friend would probably finish their small jug on the plaza and then perhaps they would return to the cantina for another jug and a game of cards or monte or darts. They would do that because there was nothing else to do in a village like this and it was clear the two men were waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen right away. Either they were hiding out or they were waiting for someone to arrive and meet them.

  At any rate the thing to do was to get inside the cantina and wait for them there.

  Boag led his horse back into the trees and began to make a wide circle through the forest to come up behind the cantina. He hoped the place had a back door.

  7

  The weedy ground behind the cantina was strewn with broken jugs and bits of splintered woodwork, the souvenirs of lusty brawls. It smelled of urine.

  There was a back door and Boag opened it without announcing himself.

  There was no real bar. A big plank table served. Jugs were cluttered on it and a half-asleep proprietor sat in a chair behind the table. He had a little wooden box with coins in it. Probably he had a brewing shack and a small distillery back in the woods near a spring.

  Two Indians at a table watched Boag enter the room. Nobody seemed surprised, let alone alarmed. It was the kind of place where it took a great deal to arouse people.

  Boag bought a small jug and settled down behind a table facing the front door.

  Someone outside had brought a guitar and the rapid-fire music reached Boag faintly. There were occasional bursts of laughter in the night; now and then a footstep moved by, and Boag would stiffen and fasten his eyes on the door. Three townsfolk came in and settled at a front table to play cards. The two Indians finished their jug and left the place. The proprietor’s face was tilted in disgust as he contemplated the contents of his wooden box. Here it was Saturday night but most everybody was played-out by the wedding festival and the cantina’s trade was shot to hell.

  Boag heard boots with spurs on them and he knew it was Jackson and his compadre. He made his simple preparations and watched them walk in.

  They didn’t see him at first. They were off guard; Jackson was telling a story:

  “… and she says to Ben Stryker, she says ‘That man wanted to give me four dollars to sleep with him!’ and old Ben pulls his iron on the boy and puts two good ones right in his balls. And you know what Ben Stryker did then? He says, ‘I reckon that’ll be a lesson for rich boys that try to come down here and double the price of everthang.’”

  They were both bent over laughing their guts out when Jackson picked up Boag in the corner of his vision. Jackson went bolt still and straightened up very slowly. It took his partner a little longer to catch on and then the partner gave Jackson a puzzled look.

  Jackson said, “Now, I know you.”

  “I’m Boag.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you. I expect you’ve got a gun under that table.”

  “Two of them.”

  “You think that’s fair, boy?”

  “I count two of you.”

  Sweating, Jackson wiped his palms dry on his buttocks. He was a sag-bellied suety man with droopy jowls and big hard hands. His face was covered with dust and insect bites.

  Boag said, “You gents might shuck your irons and sit down here.”

  Jackson hesitated and his partner looked at him, but it was all right; Jackson had made up his mind when he hadn’t started for his gun the moment he’d recognized Boag.

  Jackson unbuckled his belt carefully and hung it over the back of the nearest chair, waited for his partner to do the same and then they both walked up to Boag’s table, dragged chairs over with their toes and sat down slowly as if they were afraid the chairs were about to explode under their butts.

  Boag said, “I know Jackson. What do you go by?”

  “Smith.”

  “Sure enough,” Boag said. “You folks want a drink?” He nodded his head toward the jug in the middle of the table and Jackson nodded his head and reached out for the jug. Jackson took a swallow and set the jug down. He didn’t offer it to Smith. He just sat turning the jug casually in his fingers, thinking about throwing it in Boag’s face, and Boag said, “Let that thing alone unless you’re ready to drink from it.”

  “I’d sure like to try you on, boy.”

  “You won’t get the chance,” Boag said. “One white trash more or less ain’t worth dying for. I ain’t got time to waste in disputations with you.”

  He was watching Smith out of the edge of his eye. A corded muscle tensed under Smith’s shirt sleeve, his hand was easing toward the edge of the table. Boag reached across and grabbed Smith’s shirt-front and pulled Smith’s face down onto the tabletop. Smith’s teeth clicked, his jaw sagged, his eyes rolled up.

  Jackson said drily, “You lied about one of them guns.”

  “No, I left it in my lap.”

  “Maybe you lied about both of them.”

  “You got one quick way to find out, fat man.” Boag smiled amiably. “I got one in here with your name on it, Jackson.”

  “What you got against me, boy? What I ever do to you?”

  “Sure. Now you can tell me you weren’t one of those guns shooting at me from the riverboat when I went in the water.”

  “What if I was? You asked for that.”

  “’Course I did,” Boag muttered. “Now let’s talk about Mr. Pickett a while.”

  Smith was sitting up. Groggy. Fingering his jaw. His Adam’s apple rode up and down his throat in spasms; his thin face looked sick. “Christ I think you bust my jaw.”

  “No,” Boag said. “But it’ll hurt to chew for a week or so. You better stick to soft food.”

  He went back to the fat one: “I said let’s talk about Mr. Pickett.”

  “What about him?”

  “I ain’t greedy, Jackson, I don’t want more than you got. All I want is the name of a place.”

  “What place?”

  “Where I can find Mr. Pickett.”

  Smith snickered and winced and touched his jaw very gently.

  Jackson said, “Listen, he double-crossed us the same way he double-crossed you. He tooken off with the gold, him and Ben Stryker and Gutierrez and a couple others. The rest of us scattered and hid out on account we didn’t want them gunning after us one by one.”

  Boag smiled a little. “And you expect me to buy that right off the shelf”

  “It’s the truth, I can’t hep it. Smith, you tell him.”

  “I ain’t likely to believe him more than you,” Boag said. “Now why don’t we try it again. Pretend like I asked the same question and you get to answer it like you never heard it before.”

  “Boy, the trouble with you, you don’t wear your hat square on your head. You think we’d be up here in this miserable hole if we had some of that gold to spend?”

  “Why don’t you just
tell me why you’re up here in this miserable hole.”

  “I told you boy, we hiding out from Pickett’s guns.”

  Boag sighed. “How long you been riding for Mr. Pickett, Jackson? Twenty years?”

  “Twenty-three. And the thanks I get——”

  “Let’s us go up in the woods a ways,” Boag said. “We’ll set and jaw.” He rammed one of the revolvers into his belt and plucked the jug off the table. “We’ll take this here for company.”

  He stood up waggling the revolver in his right hand. “Back door, gents.”

  They went out the door ahead of him and they were ready to jump him when he came through it but he jabbed the pistol-barrel hard into Jackson’s diaphragm and Jackson folded up on the ground and sucked for breath. Boag wheeled toward Smith but Smith wasn’t fighting, he was slithering back inside.

  Boag whipped around the doorframe but Smith had reached the table just inside. Smith batted the table back at him and it hit Boag between the knees and the crotch. It didn’t knock him down but it pushed him back from the door and by the time he got in the doorway again and shoved the table aside Smith was diving at the chair where his gunbelt hung. He knocked the chair over with him and went sliding along the floor trying to fumble the six-gun out of leather. Boag was wary of Jackson behind him but he tried to sight a clear shot through the tables and chairs. He didn’t get one before Smith got hold of the gun; Smith was shooting through the toe of the holster and that was no aid to accuracy and after Smith’s second bullet punched into the doorjamb Boag got an unobstructed line on his neck and put a bullet into it.

  He didn’t wait to see its effect; what he aimed at, he hit. He spun backward through the door and cocked the revolver and let his voice sing out loud toward the wide round backside of Jackson who was scrambling up toward the pines. “Freeze.”

  Jackson stopped and turned. He looked unhappy as a soaked cat.

  “Come on back here.”

  Jackson started to waddle and Boag flattened his shoulder-blades against the wall beside the open door in case Smith still had enough blood in him to come after him.

  Boag said, “Run, you fat trash. Run.”

  Jackson started to lope. His belly flopped up and down and his arms pumped. He was short of breath by the time he came up; it had only been thirty yards. Boag said, “Go on inside ahead of me.” He pushed his gun into Jackson’s kidney and marched him inside with an armlock around Jackson’s fat throat.

  The shield was unnecessary. Smith wasn’t dead yet but he hadn’t moved six inches from where he’d fallen. The three card-players and the proprietor hadn’t stirred; they watched Boag with no show of friendliness but no show of threat either. These were all outsiders to them and they didn’t care who killed whom, so long as no citizens got stray lead.

  Boag hauled Jackson outside again. “You got a horse in that corral up there?”

  “I reckon.”

  “Let’s go saddle up then.”

  “Wait a minute. Can’t we talk here?”

  “I don’t think we want to be disturbed.”

  “I’d just as soon not leave this town.”

  “Well you ain’t got a vote, Jackson. Now let’s go get your horse.”

  8

  Boag picked a spot back in the mountains six or seven miles away from Tres Osos. He hobbled his horse and hobbled Jackson’s horse and then he unlashed Jackson’s wrists from the saddlehorn and let Jackson step down. While Jackson rubbed some circulation back into his hands Boag loosened the cinches and carried Jackson’s rifle over to a flat slab of rock. “Come on over here. Bring my canteen.”

  “Canteen?”

  “Just bring it, stupid.”

  It was a clear night, part of a moon and plenty of stars. It took Jackson’s clumsy hands a long time to untie the canteen. He brought it with him. Boag pointed to a little bowl-shaped depression in the slab of granite. “Empty it in there.”

  “All of it?”

  “There’s plenty of springs up here. Nobody’ll go thirsty.”

  Jackson emptied it into the bowl. The water gurgled ominously. It made a little pool of motionless liquid a foot in diameter and four or five inches deep.

  Boag cut a six-foot length of rope and tossed it to him. “Tie your ankles together now. I’m going to check it afterward so you may as well make it good and tight the first time.”

  “What the hell you up to, boy?”

  “Quit calling me boy, Jackson. Just because you outweigh me by forty pounds of lard.”

  “What you got in mind here?”

  “Never you mind. You just do what you’re told.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I got this gun pointed at your ass, you stupid trash.”

  Jackson sat down with a grunt and doubled his knees up under his chin and wrapped the rope around his ankles. Boag watched him cinch it up and tie a double bowline knot in it. Boag said, “You’re pretty good with knots.”

  “I’ve hung a few nigger boys in my time.”

  “You ain’t making friends with me that way.”

  “You can go fuck yourself, boy.”

  “Lay down on your belly,” Boag said. He took the rope he’d used on Jackson’s wrists before; he tied Jackson’s arms together, sitting on Jackson’s buttocks while he yanked the tie up tight. Jackson’s cheek was pressed into the rough surface of the rock; Jackson said, “Hey.”

  “Well I’m sorry we ain’t got no feather pillows.” When Boag was satisfied with the tie he climbed off the man. “You can roll over and set up.”

  Jackson showed his distress but he managed to heave himself onto his back and sit up without scraping too much skin off his hands. He glanced at the little pool of water a few yards off to his left.

  “Now you’re hogtied and sweatin’ and you don’t know for sure what’s coming next. I’d tell you but it might spoil the fun. I’ll just tell you this much. You can save yourself whatever it is by telling me where I can find Mr. Pickett.”

  “I told you, boy. You just don’t listen. I got no idea where he’s at.”

  Boag decided to save the pool of water a while. Lead up to it first. He walked over to Jackson and hunkered down and put his palms flat against Jackson’s jowly cheeks. Held his thumbs over Jackson’s eyes and pressed slowly. Enough of it and it would crush in Jackson’s eyeballs. He kept increasing the pressure until Jackson screamed.

  He relaxed his thumbs. “Aeah?”

  “Cut that out, you son of a bitch.”

  “What about Mr. Pickett then?”

  “I can’t tell you nothing I don’t know!”

  Boag put the pressure on again.

  9

  Jackson’s chest heaved for breath. “All right boy. All right.”

  “All right who?”

  “Just all right.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Jackson, you call me Sergeant Boag, all right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “If you say so who?”

  “If you say so, Sergeant Boag.”

  “Now let Sergeant Boag hear where Mr. Pickett’s camped.”

  “Last I heard he was up one of them little towns above Ures on the Sonora River, waitin’ to meet up with some fellow from Mexico City was going to take the gold off his hands for New York bank scrip.”

  “Selling the same gold all over again, is he?”

  “How’s that?”

  “He already sold it once to a fellow name of Ortiz.”

  “Yeah. How’d you know about that? Jesus my eyes hurt. I think I’m blind.”

  “You’ll have a hell of a headache for a couple days,” Boag said. “You’ll think somebody jammed a wad of barbwire inside your skull.”

  “Boy you want carvin’ up. I get a chance I’m gon bust a big hole in you, Sergeant Boag sir.”

  There was still too much defiance in Jackson and that was what convinced Boag he was still lying. There was no point questioning him any further until he’d been softened up some more. Jackson was big and soft bu
t he had a great capacity for pain and Boag wasn’t getting the truth out of him.

  Boag took him by the arm. “Come over here with me.” He brought Jackson along on his knees and positioned him belly-flat on the rock. Jackson had to hold his chin up to keep his face out of the pool of water. Every time he tried to wriggle to one side Boag pushed him back into position.

  “What you think now, Jackson?”

  “For God’s sake I already told you what you want to know.”

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind after a while of this.”

  With red-hot hate Jackson reared his head back. “By God boy——”

  Boag shoved his face down into the water and felt it when Jackson’s nose hit the bottom of the pool. He held the back of Jackson’s head and sat on Jackson’s spine to keep him from rolling away. Jackson’s legs came up from the knee hinges but Jackson couldn’t reach Boag with his spurs. Boag held his head under until bubbles started coming up. Then he hauled Jackson’s head back by the hair.

  Jackson blew and snorted and heaved for breath. Boag said, “God damn it you got chiggers in your hair. Don’t you ever take a bath, white trash?” He let go of Jackson’s head and batted at his hand.

  Then when Jackson exhaled he shoved Jackson’s face in the water again.

  He let Jackson get panicky this time before he let go. Jackson’s head skewed back and he spouted a spray of water. He coughed a lot and started to retch into the water and when he was all through being sick, Boag shoved his face in it again.

  This time he let Jackson get his breath afterward.

  “Let’s try a different question this time, fat boy. Why’d Mr. Pickett send you two gents up to Tres Osos?”

  “Look after,” Jackson said and coughed, “the gold.”

  “You mean you got the gold up here in Tres Osos with you?”