They chose to get off. They had noted the quick start as of recognition which the brakeman had given. They figured — and figured rightly — that by now the chase for them was on and that their descriptions had been telegraphed back and forth along the line. The train was traveling at least twenty miles an hour, but as soon as the brakeman was out of sight, they jumped for it, tumbling like shot rabbits down the slope of the right of way and bringing up jarred and shaken in the dry ditch at the bottom.
Barring bruises and scratches, Green had taken no hurt, but Gaza landed with a badly sprained ankle. With Green to give him a helping arm, he hobbled away from the railroad.
To get away from that railroad was their prime aim now. Choosing a course at random, they went north over the undulating waste lands and through the shimmering heat, toward a range of mottled high buttes rising on beyond.
It took them until deep into the afternoon to cover a matter roughly of five miles. By now, Gaza’s lower left leg was elephantine in its proportions and every forced step he took meant a fresh stab of agony. He knew he could not go much farther. Green knew it too, and in his brain began shaping tentative plans. The law of self-preservation was one of the few laws for which he had respect. They panted from heat and from thirst and from weariness.
At the end of those five miles, having toiled laboriously up over a fold in the land, they saw close at hand and almost directly below them, a ’dobe hut, and not quite so near at hand, a big flock of sheep. At the door of the cabin, a man in overalls was stripping the hide from a swollen dead cow.
Before they could dodge back below the sky line, he saw them and stood up expectantly. There was nothing for them to do except to go toward him. At their slow approach, an expression of curiosity crept over his brown face and stayed there. He looked like a Mexican or possibly a half-breed Indian.
When Gaza, stumbling nearer, hailed him in English, he merely shook his head dumbly. Then Gaza tried him in Spanish and to that he replied volubly. For minutes they palavered back and forth; then the stranger served them with deep drafts from a water bottle swinging in the doorway with a damp sack over it. The water was lukewarm and bitterish-tasting but it was grateful to their parched throats. Then he withdrew inside the little house and Gaza, for Green’s benefit, translated into Italian what talk had passed.
“He says he is quite alone here, which is the better for us,” explained the Spaniard, speaking swiftly. “He says that a week ago he came up from Old Mexico, seeking work. A gringo — a white man — gave him work. The white man is a sheepman. His home ranch is miles away. In a sheep wagon he brought this Mexican here and left him here in charge of that flock yonder, with provisions for a month.
“It will be three weeks then before the white man, his employer, comes again. Except for that white man he knows nobody hereabouts. Until we came just now, he had seen no one at all. So he is glad to see us.”
“And accounting for ourselves you told him what?” asked Green.
“I told him we were traveling across country in a car and that going down a steepness last night the car overturned and was wrecked and I crippled myself. I told him that, traveling light because of my leg, we started out to find some town, some house, and that, hoping to make a short cut, we left the road, but that since morning and until we blundered upon this camp, we had been quite lost in this ugly country. He believes me. He is simple, that one, an ignorant, credulous peon.
“But kind-hearted, that also is plain. For proof of it observe this.” He pointed to the bloated, half-flayed carcass. “He says three days ago he found this beast — a stray from somewhere, he knows not where. So far as he knows there are no cattle droves in these parts — only sheep.
“She was sick, she staggered, she was dizzy and turned in circles as if blind, and froth ran from her mouth. There is a weed which does that to animals when they eat it, he says. So, hoping to make her well again, he put a scrap of rope on her horns and led her here. But last night she died. So to-day he has been peeling her. Now he goes to make ready some food for us. He is hospitable, also, that one.”
“And when we have eaten, then what? We can’t linger here.”
“Wait, please, Señor. To my mind already an idea comes.” His tone was authoritative, confident. “First we fill our empty stomachs to give us strength, and then we smoke a cigaret, and while we smoke, I think. And then — we see.”
On frijoles and rancid bacon and thin corn cakes and bad coffee, which the herder brought them on tin platters and in tin cups, they did fill their empty stomachs. Then they smoked together, all three of them, smoking cigarets rolled in corn-husk wrappers.
The Mexican was hunkered on his heels, making smoke rings in the still, hot air when Gaza, getting on his feet with difficulty, limped toward the doorway, gesturing to show that he craved another swig from the water bottle. When he was behind the other two, almost touching them, he drew the special agent’s pistol and fired once and their host tumbled forward on his face and spraddled his limbs and quivered a bit and was still, with a bullet hole in the back of his head.
This killing gave the Italian, seasoned killer as he was, a profound shock. It seemed so unnecessary, unless—? He started up, his features twitching, and backed away, fearing the next bullet would be for him.
“Remain tranquil, Señor,” said the Spaniard, almost gayly. “For you, my comrade, there is no danger. There is for you hope of deliverance, you who professed last night to have hope in your soul.
“Now me, I have charity in my soul — charity for you, charity for myself, charity also for this one lying here. Behold, he is now out of his troubles. He was a dolt, a clod of the earth, a creature of no refinement. He lived a hermit’s life, lonely, miserable. Now he has been dispatched to a better and a brighter world. That was but kindness.” With his foot he touched the sprawled corpse.
“But in dispatching him I had thought also for you — for both of us. I elucidate: First we bury him under the dirt floor of this house, taking care to leave no telltale traces of our work. Then you make a pack for your back of the food that is here. You take also the water bottle, filled. Furthermore, you take with you this pistol.
“Then, stepping lightly on rocky ground or on hard ground so that you make no tracks, you go swiftly hence and hide yourself in those mountains until — who can tell? — until those who will come presently here have ceased to search for you. With me along, lamed as I am, me to hamper you, there would be no chance for either of us. But you, going alone — you armed, provisioned, quick of foot — you have a hope.”
“But... but you? What then becomes of you? — You... you sacrifice yourself?” In his bewilderment the Italian stammered.
“Me, I stay here to greet the pursuers. It is quite simple. In peaceful solitude I await their coming. It cannot be long until they come. That man of the freight train will be guiding them back to pick up our trail. By to-night at latest I expect them.”
At sight of the Italian’s mystified face he broke now into a laugh.
“Still you are puzzled, eh? You think that I am magnanimous, that I am generous? Well, all that I am. But you think me also a fool and there you err. I save you perhaps but likewise perhaps I save myself. Observe, Señor.”
He stooped and lifted the dead face of his victim. “See now what I myself saw the moment I beheld this herder of ours: This man is much my shape, my height, my coloring. He spoke a corrupt Spanish such as I can speak. Put upon me the clothes which he wears, and remove from my lip this mustache which I wear, and I would pass for him even before the very eyes of that white man who hired him.