CHAPTER 16
FROM the foot of the embankment Tuco looked back at the long train. The last of the freight cars was racketing past. Behind it were two passenger coaches. Coaches meant people who might well see him and stop the train to investigate.
Tuco dived into a patch of mesquite, throwing himself flat behind the spare cover. Something hard dug into his cheek. He reached up to paw it aside and his hand felt metal. He snatched it out and stared increduously at the pistol that must have been jarred from Wallace’s holster by the fall.
Slowly it came to him that there was something vaguely familiar about the weapon. He turned it over and gaped at a nick in one of the walnut grips. That nick had come, he well knew, from using the butt to crack the skull of a bounty-seeking deputy.
It was his own gun, taken from him at the time of their capture. It must have fallen to Wallace in the division of the plunder taken from prisoners. Now, miraculously, it was back where it belonged and he no longer felt naked and defenceless.
He climbed to his feet, thumbed his nose toward the vanishing train and set off in the direction he knew would take him to the nearest settlement.
The gun, both protector and provider, served Tuco well. At an outlying ranch it got him a good horse and saddle with a fine rifle in the boot. At the first small settlement it got him a supply of provisions, including a bottle of whisky. At the next town it persuaded a reluctant blacksmith to chisel off the handcuff.
The one thing it could not provide was a solution to his most urgent problem—the two hundred thousand dollars in gold. He knew where Sad Hill Cemetery was. But only the tall one he called Whitey knew in which grave the money lay waiting.
But Whitey was, as far as he knew, still a prisoner at Battleville and to be caught anywhere near that prison camp would be putting his own neck back into a tight noose. Yet somehow he had either to engineer his partner’s escape or persuade Whitey to reveal his share of the secret. Neither prospect seemed likely.
He was still wrestling with the problem when he crested a low ridge and saw a sizeable town ahead. He approached with caution, baffled by the fact that he saw no horses at any of the hitchrails or any sign of human life anywhere. Then he became aware of the extent of the scars of the bombardment and guessed that the town’s occupants had all fled.
His ride down the main street confirmed his guess. The hotel caught his eye, as did a narrow alley beside it. As he anticipated, the alley led to a small stable in the rear where guests had kept their mounts. He unsaddled, found some hay and grain and left his horse in a box stall.
Gun in hand he prowled the hotel, finding only empty rooms. He came at last to one larger than the others and much more luxuriously furnished. A large folding screen at one end aroused his curiosity. He tiptoed across and peered over it.
Behind the screen was a rarity of rarities in that rough frontier land—a tin bathtub. It was narrow and long enough for a man to sit down in with his legs outstretched. One end swept up in a high graceful curve to provide a headrest for a bather. Attesting to the hasty abandonment, the tub was filled with sudsy water from which rose a delicate fragrance.
It was the first real bathtub Tuco had ever seen. As he goggled at it he realised that he was hot, dusty, sweaty and tired from a long day’s ride. A glint came into his eye and he began to strip.
The water was luxuriously cold as he sank into it. He soon discovered that splashing increased the foamy suds and sent up fresh waves of perfume to his nostrils. He became so absorbed in revelling in the new sensation that he almost failed to hear the stealthy creak of a floor board in the halt outside.
He was lolling back against the headrest, his eyes closed, when a harsh voice said, “If that ain’t the damnedest place to finally catch up with you, Tuco.”
Tuco’s eyes opened and snapped wide. The man standing just inside the door was gaunt, with a tangle of unkempt beard. His right arm was no more than a short stump in an empty sleeve. His left held a cocked pistol that pointed unwaveringly at Tuco.
The intruder laughed harshly.
“So you remember me, eh, Tuco? You haven’t forgotten old Elam after all these years. I never forget you, either. I remembered you real good every time I wanted to do something with my right hand and it wasn’t there.” He hawked and spat on the carpeted floor. “I just rode in and was puttin’ up my horse when you come riding down the street, bold as brass. I knowed you in a flash, Tuco, so I follered you here. Remember that day, Tuco? You could have killed me. You was a lot faster on your draw than me. You should have killed me—’stead of bullet-smashing my gun arm so it had to be cut off.”
Tuco had neither moved nor spoken. He sad rigid in the ridiculous tub, both hands hidden in the foamy suds. His clothing was piled on a chair beside the tub.
His gunbeit hung from a chairback.
“A lot of time has passed since then, Tuco, Time enough for me to learn to shoot real good with my left hand. Now I’m gonna show you just how good I learned.” His eyes narrowed as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Tuco lifted his own gun out of the concealing suds and shot him precisely through the adam’s apple.
“When you’re going to shoot somebody,” he said coldly to the twitching figure on the floor, “shoot him. Don’t stand around trying to talk a man to death.”
He carefully wiped the soapsuds from his gun, returned it to its holster and lolled back in the tub, splashing the cold water up over his chest and shoulders. He felt so relaxed and content that presently he yielded to an unprecedented urge to burst into song.
The sound of his voice drowned out the single gunshot from below.
The song ended abruptly in a choked gurgle. He sat up, his mouth open, gaping at the tall figure in the poncho who materialised in the doorway.
“Eh-eh-eh! Whitey? Is that really you or a ghost? It must be you because I don’t believe in ghosts. If there were such things—I would be followed by a crowd.”
“Get out of that silly bucket of suds and get your pants on. You’d look pretty ridiculous going into a gunfight naked as a jaybird.”
“A gunfight?” Tuco scrambled out of the tub, skidded on the soapy floor and grabbed wildly fora towel. “What are you doing here, Whitey? How did you get out of that sewer?”
“Your dear old friend, Sentenza, gave me new clothes and a gun and personally escorted me out of Battleville.”
“Sentenza?” Tuco howled. “You coward! You traitor! You stinking Judas! You talked. You told him the name. You betrayed your own partner, who loved you like a brother. Who saved you from that awful desert, eh? Who shared his water with you? Who carried you to that mission and stayed by your side, night and day, to help nurse you back to health, eh? And in return you sell me out to that black-hearted scoundrel, Sentenza.
“Oh, shut up and try using your head for a change. If I’d given Sentenza even a hint of what he wants to know, do you think I’d be alive and standing here now?”
“Ah—you didn’t talk, then. Your secret is still your secret and no one else’s. Whitey, I could not love my own brother more. Wait a moment until I button my pants and we will go kill that pig, Sentenza, eh?”
“That might take a little doing, Tuco. Sentenza isn’t alone. He has five gunmen, all pretty good at their trade and every one itching to gun me out,”
A crafty look came over the bandit’s face.
“Five, eh? So that’s why you come to Tuco again No matter. Five or five hundred, we’ll kill them all.”
The hunter stirred the body on the floor with his toe.
“Who was this? A friend of yours?”