“Lacaud. Robert W. Lacaud, Phoenix, Arizona; Tech, Pasadena.”
“A rather long name for just one person. But I believe you, don’t mind the formalities.” Howard laughed.
“It may not be his, after all—I mean the long name.” Curtin was grinning.
“Related to the Lacauds in Los Angeles—furniture?” Howard asked.
“Only slightly,” Lacaud answered. “I have no connections with them any longer. Broken off entirely. Last will patchers, you know.”
“Reckon I’ll have a look at the burros,” Howard said.
He did not have to go, as Lacaud had, to the pasture on the slope of the mountain to watch the animals. Near the camp there was a good look-out from a high rock. The partners had found that from this peak the greater part of the slopes of the whole mountain range could be seen very clearly, and when rain was about to come they could tell that a speck three or five miles away was a stray horse or a goat from the village. Coming from the camp, it took only a few minutes to climb that peak.
Howard had hardly reached the look-out when he began to shout: “Hell, what’s this!”
“What’s doing?” Dobbs called back.
“Burros gone?” Curtin hollered.
“Come up here,” the old man yelled. “Come quick, hurry, I say. Hell is loose.”
Curtin and Dobbs sprang to their feet and ran to the peak. Lacaud followed more slowly.
“What’s this coming toward our mountain?” Howard asked his partners. “I can’t make out what it is. Perhaps you can, Curty, with your eyes of a buzzard. What is it?”
Curtin looked for a half a minute. “Must be soldiers or the mounted police, or some sort of rangers, as far as I can make out.”
“It’s the mounted all right,” Dobbs growled, his eyes on the horizon. “Yes, the mounted, and coming right up here.”
The three looked at each other with faces gone pale.
Suddenly Dobbs jumped up, caught Lacaud by the throat, and bellowed: “Now, you dirty crook, son of a bitch, now we got you cached. So that’s your stinking game, is it? Came out too soon, did it? All right, take what is coming to you, you skunk.”
Dobbs had his gun out and pointed at Lacaud ready to shoot. “You rat, if you know a prayer, say it now and make it snappy.”
Howard was quick. He was behind Dobbs, and with a hard jerk he lowered Dobbs’s arm.
“Let me kill that filthy rat,” Dobbs cried. “Gawd and geecries, I knew he was a pigeon, I knew it all the time, with his oily softsoap speech.”
Lacaud made no move, but said quietly: “You are wrong, partner. It means all of us, myself included.”
“Means what?” Curtin asked.
“Means that I think I know who they are. They are not soldiers nor the mounted police or what they call here Rurales. They are wise to us. They are after me, and after you, Curty. They don’t know yet that there is anyone else up here.”
“Then they can have the know only from you,” Dobbs said.
“Not from me, but from the people in the village. I think I know who they are. If I am right, then may the Lord be with us. Bandits, that’s what they are. And they aren’t after our money, but our guns and ammunition, since the villagers have told them about the American hunter up here who has rifles and guns and heaps of ammunition with him.”
“And how come you to know?” Dobbs was still suspicious.
“May I have a look at them?” Lacaud asked.
“Wouldn’t you like it, sweety, and give them signals, hey? Wouldn’t you?” Dobbs sneered.
“You may stay back of me and pluck me off if you see me doing anything suspicious.”
“Maybe Arizona is right,” Curtin observed. “They don’t look to me like police, not even like organized rangers, less like soldiers. They are just what he says, a horde of ragged and filthy bandits. Come up, Lackey, have a look. We can pluck you later.”
“Wait a minute.” Howard held Lacaud by the arm. “They are not after you for stealing or cattlerustling below, are they? Better tell the truth. If they are, you are clearing out of here this very minute to take them off our track or we hand you in, dirty as I would feel; hut we need protection, you know, and cattlerustling is a dirty business, especially against such poor farmers as they are. So get this straight, we can’t afford to have police sniffing about. You have to go right down and let yourself be seen to get them away from us.”
“I understand, friend. But I’ve nothing up my sleeve. I’ve been for weeks in the village. Anybody could have got me if there were somebody looking for me.”
“I think he’s right,” Curtin said thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t have dared to hang around the village for so long if he’d had anything to hide. Come up and see what you can find out. I think we can trust you once more.”
Lacaud climbed up to the peak and sat for a while looking carefully about.
“We’d better make no move,” Lacaud suggested. “We might be seen here on this peak. Sitting quietly, we may look like part of the rock. These are no soldiers. They are no police either. They are no organized posse of deputies or Rurales, for even poor peasants organized for chasing criminals couldn’t look like these men—not even in this country.”
“Then we are in a goddamn hole, I can tell you,” Howard said. “With soldiers or police or a posse we would at least have a chance to explain and defend ourselves and see somebody who looks like a judge and who means to judge rightly. But with bandits we’ve not even a Chinaman’s chance in the hands of Chinese highwaymen.”
Hearing this, Dobbs jerked his body around to Lacaud, saying: “Still the same crook—I think that’s what you are.”
Howard butted in. “Aw, leave him alone, for hell’s sake. We got to work fast now.”
Dobbs did not mind the old man. “Still a spy, as I thought from the first. Only not a spy for the government, but a spy for the bandits, to do the inside job. Too bad for you that we found that out before you got them here.”
“Wrong again, brother. I have nothing to do with bandits either. And if you men don’t stop being suspicious and accusing me of things I never thought or even imagined, you may be short one full-grown man. Within an hour or so you will need not only every man around here, but every hand and every gun, or you won’t see the sun rise tomorrow morning or thereafter. Just let me have another look. Maybe I can even tell you what sort of bandits they are, because in the village I heard tales that were certainly not rumors.”
Once more he climbed to the look-out, followed by Curtin and Dobbs.
“As I thought,” he said after a long glance down.
“What do you think?” Curtin asked.
“Do you see among the riders a man wearing a wide-brimmed golden hat on his head that glitters in the sun?” he asked Curtin.
“No, I can’t see him,” Curtin answered. But after a closer look he added: “Yes, I think—well, let’s see, yes, there he is. A hat like those usually worn by the Indian farmers, wide-brimmed and high. Seems to be a palm hat.”
“It is a palm hat, but painted with shining gold paint, as unskilled Mexican workers paint their hats for fun whenever they are employed at a shop where there is gold or aluminum paint for painting oil-tanks and such things.”
“Seems to be a sort of captain to the horde,” Curtin said, still looking.
“He is the captain all right, the chief of the outfit. Now I know well who they are and why they are coming this way. Last week I was at the hacienda of don Genaro Montereal, ten miles from the village, where I stayed overnight. Senor Montereal had the papers and he read them to me, or, better, he told what was in the papers from the capital. This golden hat was mentioned in the description of the bandits. That man sure has courage not to change his hat. No doubt he is unable to read and so doesn’t know that his band has been described, man by man, and horse by horse. What I couldn’t gather from the papers don Genaro was reading I heard in the village from the people who had returned from town bringing the latest news with them. I will tell you the story, and then you’ll understand why I said: May the Lord be with us if they come up and find us. After I’ve told you the story, you will no longer believe me a spy of these killers, whatever else you may think of me. I would rather help the devil fire the boilers in hell than have anything in common with these bandits.”