Boag lay on his back with one knee bent and the Spanish rifle across his stomach. After the fire was laid the little girl came and sat beside Boag and talked softly. “If we go to California the old man will die, and she will have her people. They will have no use for me.”
“Then you will have to learn to look out for yourself.”
The woman propped the old man up against the raft and they ate. The food was meager. Afterward Boag picked a spot to sleep, and did not awaken until sunrise. In the morning he had a look at the leg. Swollen but not much pus; the scabs were tight, the leg itched. Good signs.
The old man lay on his back, his mouth open and slack. Boag looked away with his eyebrows drawn together. He pitied them all and he was angry because he had to be pitying them; they were getting in the way.
The sun blasted his face. Heat glistened on the muddy surface of the Colorado and the water rushed past the banks, tearing bits of it away.
The woman crouched by the old man. “He is dead.”
They buried him in the riverbank. The old woman mumbled words and Boag filled in the grave and tamped it with a stone.
“That was kind,” the woman said.
Boag grunted.
“But there are still the three of us,” she said.
“No, there are the two of you and there is the one of me.”
“And we are not three? You have no sums?”
“I have no ties,” Boag said. “I’m a fool. I ought to let you get across the river by yourselves, the old man did.”
“And now you are a philosopher? Besides, we no longer go across, we go down the river, yes?”
“Yuma is as far as I go with you.”
“That is understood.”
The little girl waited until the woman went away to kill the fire; the little girl said, “She will sit in the sun in Yuma and die.”
“She doesn’t care about you, niña. Why think about her?”
“She does. She is only gruff.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“I do.”
“Make up your mind.”
“What are you going to do after we come to Yuma?” “Leave me alone,” he growled, and set his good leg in the mud to shoulder the ferry-raft into the river.
By the next night he was tired of them both, tired of the little girl’s chatter and the woman’s sour body smell.
In the dusk he poled the ferry-raft through the crosscurrents of the Gila fork. The Gila rose somewhere in the mountains over in New Mexico or far-eastern Arizona and came down the White Mountains, fed by the Salt River and some others, and went past Phoenix and a few no-account towns and finally flowed into the Colorado here a few miles north of Yuma. Buffalo-soldiering, Boag had followed the pilgrim highway along the south bank of the Gila a good many times across the desert. It was nobody’s favorite river.
He got the raft through the turmoil and they floated on down. Boag said, “You said you would tell me about the revolution in Sonora.”
The little girl watched them both with her big angry eyes. The woman sighed. “They are a people who must be slaves or tyrants. Revolution only means exchanging one group of tyrants for another.”
“Who are they this time?”
“Pesquiera is the governor. There are bandits and rebels trying to overthrow him.”
“Who leads these bandits and rebels?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just tell me, vieja.”
“I think it is a man called Ruiz from Caborca. I am not sure. There are many bandit chieftains who pretend they are revolutionary leaders.”
“What does Mexico City do about all this?”
“No one in Mexico City cares what happens in the provinces. We beseeched the government to help but they ignored us, which is why we are without our properties. The peones burned us out and ran to the hills to join the bandits who promised them freedom.”
It sounded familiar enough to Boag. The woman said, “But there is no freedom for them except for the few who become tyrants.”
“Who’s going to win?”
“Who can say? The Governor Pesquiera has many troops, he will probably win.”
It was dangerous making too many guesses. But a man like Mr. Pickett would find some way to make profit out of rebellions. Yet right now that didn’t necessarily follow: Mr. Pickett had three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion and he didn’t need to mix in anybody’s trouble for money right now.
A ton and a half of gold. It had to leave deep tracks. Boag kept dwelling on that.
And here’s Boag without a cent in his kick. Well there was still the twenty dollars in his boots, he hadn’t lost that.
The raft swept around a wide bend and just beyond the tall bluff sprouted the lights of Yuma town. There was a big prison on the bluff, of which Boag had heard tell; he didn’t want to get anywhere near that, he’d had enough of jails in Ehrenburg. He poled the ferry-raft up onto the eastern bank of the river in the darkness a quarter mile north of the town. “I get off here,” he said. “You can get this raft to Yuma by yourselves or you can walk.”
The woman gave the raft her dubious attention. “We shall walk, I think.”
The little girl was watching them. She hadn’t said a word for quite some time and that was unusual if not unique.
Boag helped them unload the few possessions they had salvaged from their wagon. He still had the old Spanish percussion rifle which he considered a moment before he proffered it to the woman. “You can sell this for the price of a meal and a telegraph wire to your people in Tuolumne.”
“You have been kind.”
“You will find help in Yuma, it is a big town.”
The river picked the raft off the bank and moved it out. It spun slowly into the muddy flow.
“You two go on ahead,” Boag said.
“And what of you?”
“I got things to do.”
The little girl snatched at Boag’s hand. “My name is Carmen.”
The woman snorted. “She dreams. Her name is Pilar, Señor.”
“I wish to be called Carmen.”
“All right Carmen.” Boag managed a bit of a smile before he pulled loose of her grip. “Hasta luego.”
“Adiós,” the woman said, and smiled showing the gaps between her teeth. “Go with God, our good friend.”
The woman started off laden with her things, the long rifle sticking out above her shoulder. The little girl didn’t stir and finally the woman came back and rearranged her load to free a hand, took the girl by the arm and pulled her away.
Boag watched them fade into the dissolving darkness against the lights of Yuma. When they were out of sight he began to limp along toward town.
He dusted himself off as well as he could and decided he probably wouldn’t draw any more attention than any other black drifter on the night streets of Yuma. He was clean enough; he’d bathed several times the past few days, in the river with fire ashes and grease for soap. It was the clothes that were bad: ripped here and there, caked with river mud at the cuffs. He’d have to get clothes. It wasn’t vanity, it was the knowledge that they arrested you on appearance more than anything else and if you looked reasonably prosperous they’d leave you be. It was the ragged army uniform that had betrayed him in Ehrenburg, there were too many mustered-out Buffalo soldiers in Arizona right now and the whole Territory knew they were broke, jobless and vagrant. Nobody trusted them.