It was a hard country for tracking; the pine needles did not take impressions and hold them. But the ground was soft underneath and in bare spots they had left hoofprints in the rotted half-mud. It was one of those open mountain forests with no underbrush; the high corridors ran unobstructed between rows of lanced pines and the air was very cool with a sharp coniferous pungency. Boag’s horse moved along with very little sound and for a moment he was reminded of a church he had once rested in, an empty church in some mountain village south of Fort Defiance.
He was hurrying the horse because he knew there would be no tracking after dark in these woods. At sunset he was ready to give it up for the night when he picked up the lights of some establishment winking through the forest and he homed in on them, riding into a little village of log buildings that was decidedly un-Mexican in flavor; you thought of all Mexico as being nothing but mud huts and dusty plazas and narrow streets in squalid colors. This was more like something in the Wyoming mountains. But wherever men went they built with the materials at hand and up here the most plentiful things were pine trees.
Probably a community of trappers and prospectors and those who traded with the mountain Yaquis. There were half a dozen log cabins, cook-smoke rising from the chimneys of three of them, and there was one large building with a galleried porch across the front and a pair of long hitch rails at which Boag counted seven tied horses. All but one had Mexican rigs and there was no packhorse but he hadn’t expected to come upon any of Mr. Pickett’s people this quickly anyway. The one horse that stood out from the rest had a blanketed McClellan rig and when Boag looked closer he saw the U.S. brand on the horse’s flank. An American Cavalry horse, but not a regulation Cavalry saddle. Something to look out for, he judged; he dismounted and loosened the cinches and gave the hard-mouth sorrel a nosebag of grain and climbed the four wooden steps to the porch and walked along the porch to a window to look inside.
It was a trading post with a saloon bar along one of the walls. He counted six Mexicans standing at the bar eating pinto beans and pork cubes off wooden plates. They were hardcases, their chests crossed with bandoleros of cartridges. The seventh man was a gringo in a fringed buckskin outfit that looked as if it had been made up for a performer in a wild-west show. Boag recognized him mostly by the clothes and by the dirty white Cavalry hat with its crossed brass sabers; it touched Boag with surprise and then made him grin and he walked along the porch to the log door and went in, and the gringo in buckskin looked around with his dour long face—the lugubrious doleful face of a professional mourner— and broke into a painful creasing of wrinkles which passed for a smile. “Well zippity-doo-day if it isn’t the good Sergeant Boag!”
“Your humble servant, Captain,” Boag said.
“You’re a long way from home, Sergeant.”
Boag said, “I have to be.”
“Tequila or mescal or beer?”
“Tequila, beer chaser,” Boag said, and Captain Shelby McQuade relayed the order to the man behind the bar.
“You hungry, Boag? I don’t much recommend the food here, it’s enough to give a buzzard the trots but there’s not a whole lot of competition.”
“I could eat, Captain, my belly feels like my throat’s been cut. What you doing in this town?”
“I thought,” Captain McQuade said, “that question was one that nobody in a town like this ever asked.”
“No offense.”
“I’m just ribbing you. You’re welcome to ask.”
“Those boys with you, Captain?”
Captain McQuade looked upon the six armed Mexicans with distaste. Evidently none of them spoke English; they watched Boag with curiosity, reserving hostility. “They’re with me,” the Captain said without pleasure.
Boag sampled the tequila. “They seem to be putting bigger snakes in these here bottles this season.”
Captain McQuade’s mouth smiled again while his eyes sized Boag up. “Looks like you’ve got some kind of burden, Sergeant.”
“Well I’m looking to find some people. How long you been in this town, Captain?”
“About two hours. I gather that won’t help you.”
“Looking to find three men rode in here maybe four days ago, probably rode right out again.”
“Well you can ask the storekeeper here. These three men some kind of special friends of yours?”
“I guess not,” Boag said.
Captain McQuade took a snap-lid timepiece out of his pocket and opened it and raised one eyebrow, and put the watch away. Boag said, “You got to be someplace?”
“There’s time. Got a bit of a ride ahead of us.” Captain McQuade glanced at the row of fierce Mexicans and shook his head and said under his breath, “Been a long time since I closed both eyes, Boag. You wouldn’t be looking for a job, would you?”
“Doin’ what?”
“Same kind of thing you used to do before the both of us got cans tied to our tails. Only this time you’d be my topkick instead of Captain Gatewood’s.”
Boag said, very dry, “Which side, Captain?”
“Rebels.”
“Ruiz?”
“That’s right.”
“You hiring out mercenary, Captain?”
“What else is a soldier to do?”
“I don’t know, Captain. I ain’t sure I understand why you ain’t still in the Army. I mean I always thought they couldn’t fire officers.”
“They can put them on shelves someplace where they can’t do a damn thing for amusement. They wanted to post me to some Godforsaken Indian agency in Texas with a detail of four enlisted men. I don’t know a worse way to rot, Boag. I resigned and came here seeking adventure and usefulness and I imagine I’ve found them. But I can’t say I’m happy with the tools I have to work with. I’d be a much happier man if I had a man at my back I knew I could trust. These gentlemen you see here would slit your throat for a peso.”
Boag kept his hat on while he ate, standing up at the bar. “So now you’re a captain in Ruiz’s rebel army.”
“Actually I’m a coronel.” The doleful eyes beamed.
“Well congratulations, Captain.”
“How about it—Sergeant-Major?”
“I guess not, Captain, I got a few fish to fry. But thank you.”
“Pays a good wage, Boag. You draw down a hundred pesos every month and that’s in gold coin, and on top of that you can keep anything you loot.”
“Well I’m obliged but no.”
“What are you so bent out of shape about? Somebody step on your sore corn?”
“I guess you could say that. You know anything about Mr. Jed Pickett, Captain?”
“I’ve heard he used to scalp-hunt around here. Haven’t heard anything about him recently. What would you be having to do with the likes of him?”
“Just looking to find the man, that’s all. He owes me something.”
“I’d forget it, Boag, Jed Pickett’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. You go looking to get him to settle a debt and you’re just likely to spend the rest of your life all shot to pieces.”
“Well chicken today, feathers tomorrow. I’d dearly like to catch up with Mr. Pickett.”
“They’ll take you apart and throw the pieces in the Gulf of California. Jed Pickett travels with a retinue, Boag. Fifteen or twenty men and the one that wouldn’t shoot you for the fun of it’s as rare as a pair of clean socks around an enlisted men’s barracks. Why don’t you just forget this debt of Pickett’s?”