“I’m thinking,” Russell said, “whether to kill you right now or wait till you turn around.”
Do you know what the Mexican did? He smiled. Not that unbelieving kind of smile, but like he appreciated Russell or enjoyed him. It was about the strangest thing I ever saw. He smiled and said, “If I didn’t believe you, I think you would do it. All right, I talk to Braden.”
He turned and walked away dragging the truce flag, not with his shoulders hunched like he expected something, but as calmly as he had walked up.
Russell waited until the Mexican was almost down to the bottom. He got his blanket roll and the saddlebags, just glanced at us, and moved off. He didn’t tell us what he had planned. If we wanted to follow him that was up to us.
We didn’t expect this. We thought he would talk to them again. But who could be sure what Russell was thinking? We knew we couldn’t sit in that draw forever. Sooner or later Braden would try to get at us. But was going on right then the best way? Russell must have thought so, though he wasn’t telling us why.
We followed him. What choice had we?
That was a funny thing. I felt closer to Dr. Favor than I did to Russell. Dr. Favor might have stolen government money and left his wife to her own fate; but it was something you had to think about before you realized it. He never admitted either right out.
Russell was something else. He had said to the Mexican, not caring who heard him, “All right, shoot her.” Like she was nothing to him, so what did he care? Do you see the difference? Russell was so cold and calm about it, it scared you to death. Also, if he didn’t care about her, what did he care about us?
Now it was almost like the whole thing was between Braden and Russell and we were in it only because there wasn’t any place else to go. Like it was all Russell’s fault and he had dragged us into it.
I would say we walked three miles from the time we left that draw until we stopped again, though we did not gain more than one mile in actual distance. We kept pretty much to ridges, high up as possible in the cover of pinyon pine and scrub, and when we stopped it was because flat country opened up at the end of the canyon not far ahead of us. It was a good two or three miles across the openness before the hills took up again.
Russell didn’t say it and nobody asked, but we knew he planned to wait for dark to cross that open part. It was no place to be seen in daylight by three men riding horses. (We did not know then whether Russell had killed one or two of their horses.)
We had climbed a pretty steep grade to reach this place we camped at (high up the way Apaches always camp, whether there is water or not) with thick pinyon on three sides of us and the slope, with some cliffrose and scrub, on the open side.
Russell had made it hard for them to follow. If they came directly on our sign, they would have to come up the open slope. If they came any other way, it would take them hours to work around, and then they would be taking a chance of not finding us. So, we figured, they would come directly when they came. All right, but to come up that open slope they would have to wait until dark. Which was what we would be waiting for to slip off through the trees.
Do you see how Russell figured to stay one jump ahead of them? I estimated we would reach the old San Pete mine some time during the night; Delgado’s if we were lucky, some time during the next afternoon or evening. Then home. It didn’t seem far when you looked ahead. The trouble was you had to keep looking back.
After the little sleep we had had it was good to lie down again. Everybody picked out a spot. We couldn’t make a fire so we ate some more of the biscuits, which were pretty hard by now, and the dried strip meat which never was very good.
We did not drink any water though. John Russell had said we would have to wait until night. It was midafternoon now. Imagine not having had a drink since that morning. The salty beef didn’t help your thirst any either. But what could we do?
I kept picturing myself sitting on a shady porch with a big pitcher of ice water, sitting there in a clean shirt having just shaved and taken a bath. Boy!
Mendez looked ten years older, his eyes sunken in and his face covered with beard stubble. Dr. Favor’s big, broad face, framed by that half-moon-shaped beard, was sweaty looking. The McLaren girl and John Russell were the only ones who didn’t look so bad, I mean not as dirty or sweaty as the rest of us. With her hair too short to muss and her dark skin, she looked like she was taking it all right. John Russell was dusty, of course, but had no beard to make his face look dirty. You could tell he had pulled out the stubbles Indian-fashion when he first started to get a beard, years ago, and now he’d never have one.
Russell stayed mostly by the open side, lying down but propped on his elbows and looking down the way we had come up. I guess he was resting and doing his thinking now, taking time to see things clearly. Whatever he saw in his mind, it got him up on his feet after a while.
He brought the saddlebags over to me and dropped them. He didn’t say guard them, but that’s what his look meant. All he said was he would go have a look at things and he left, taking only the Spencer carbine; no water or anything else. He didn’t go straight down the slope but headed off through the pinyon, I guess to keep high up as he scouted the ground we had covered from the draw.
A little while after he was gone, Dr. Favor went over to where the waterskin and canteen and provisions were. He picked up the canteen and was drinking from it before anyone had time to yell stop. It was the McLaren girl who yelled it.
She jumped up, and Dr. Favor held the canteen out to her. “Your turn,” he said.
“We’re not to drink till tonight. You know that.”
“I forget,” Dr. Favor said. She could believe him or not; he didn’t care.
Mendez, still sitting down, said, “Maybe we should all take one, to keep it even.”
“To keep it even!” the McLaren girl said. “What about later when we don’t have any. What good does keeping it even do?”
“I’m thinking of now,” Mendez said, rising. “You can think of any time you want.”
“All right,” the girl said. “And what about Russell?”
“Look”-Mendez had this surprised sound to his voice-“if he wants to wait till dark, all right. That’s up to him. We drink when we want.”
“He doesn’t even have to know,” Dr. Favor said. He saw Mendez liked this idea so he put it out there again. “If you’re worried about Russell, why would he even have to know?”
“And you think that would be fair,” the McLaren girl said.
“It’s his rule,” Dr. Favor said. “If it’s unfair, he brought it on himself.”
“Look,” Mendez said, making it sound simple, “if you want to wait, you wait. If you want a drink now, then you take it.”
That was when he grabbed the canteen from Dr. Favor and took a good drink, more even than Favor had, so that Dr. Favor reached for it and pulled it out of Mendez’s mouth.
“You said keep it even.”
Then he handed the canteen to the McLaren girl.
She took it, her eyes right on Dr. Favor and hesitating just a little before she put it to her mouth. If this surprises you, look at it this way: they could drink it all while you sat there obeying Russell’s rule. All right, if they were going to have some, a person would be dumb not to take his share. That’s why I took a drink right after she did. I’m sure she was thinking the same way.
Dr. Favor was still looking at her, more sure of himself than ever now. He said, “If you want to tell him when he gets back, you just go right ahead.” He was even smiling then.
What could she say? On the other hand, knowing her, she might have said something at that. But she didn’t.
Everybody settled down again. For a little while there was peace. Then Dr. Favor came over to me.
Right away he said, “That’s some Indian chief we got,” meaning Russell of course.
“Well,” I said, “I guess he knows what he’s doing.”