“I guess I just ain’t gaited that way.”
“Boag, I must admit there have been times I suspected you had nothing but pork fat between your ears. This is one of those times. I recall you always did think with your fists, it got you busted three or four times and this time it’s likely to get you killed. Why the hell don’t you give it up and join up with me? We can have a hell of a fine time trying to kick over the pail.”
Boag mopped up the last of the bean gravy with a crust of heavy bread. “Coffee, Captain?”
“Uh-huh.”
Boag said to the barkeep, “Draw two,” and turned his back to the bar to hook his elbows over it. “Captain, Mr. Jed Pickett must have somebody around Sonora he deals with when he’s got something to sell. You wouldn’t have no notions about that, would you?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well Mr. Pickett’s got something that belongs to me and I expect he aims to sell it somewhere. Now how would you tote that?”
“Well I think you’re a damned fool to pursue this, Boag, that’s the way I tote it. But there’s a man named Almada down the Rio Conceptión a few miles the other side of Caborca, owns a big ranch and a hacienda, and a good many of our rebel bandits go there to trade loot. You might try Almada.”
“Much oblige.”
“I’ve got to be moving,” Captain McQuade said after he looked at his pocket watch. “We’ve got a train to meet. If you finish what you’re doing alive, come over to Caborca and ask for Hector Veragua. He can always tell you how to get in touch with me. Any time you want that job.”
“Thank you Captain.”
“Well I’ve got to gather my children and be on my way. Why don’t you buy yourself another drink? You may as well, while your money’s still some good to you.” Captain McQuade shook his head and strode to the door. “Vamanos, muchachos,” he said in a ringing cavalryman’s voice, and banged out followed by his hulking warriors.
Boag heard the horses mill around while their riders got mounted, and then there was the call of Captain McQuade’s command-voice and the hoofs drummed away until distance absorbed the sound.
The bartender said, “You wish something more, Señor?”
“Nada, grácias.” Boag finished his coffee and settled the tab and went outside. The night was sharp with chill. He thought about bedding down for the night but the juices were running in him. He went back inside; the bartender was going around the room blowing out the lamps. Boag said, “Hey amigo, how do I get to Caborca?”
“Through the pass to the south and down the mountain until you find the river. That is the Rio de la Conceptión. You go downstream and you will come to a town with many tall palm trees.”
He heard the barkeep latch the door behind him. He was tired and his bad leg was bothering him a little. Ought to sleep it out, but the juices were still pumping and he cinched up the sorrel and rode out toward the pass.
He heard gunfire, a lot of it. From a hilltop that commanded several thousand acres of desert flats he had a long-distance view of people flitting from rock to rock, powder smoke drifting in tufts, a long line of uniformed troops lying along the parapet of a low bluff shooting down into the flitting figures, riderless horses prancing nervously. Evidently a troop of federals had ambushed a rebel column.
Boag didn’t hang around to see how it turned out. The federals were setting up a hand-crank Gatling gun on its wheeled cart and when he rode back behind the hill he heard the thing begin to stutter viciously. Not much chance for the rebels there.
Long rays of morning sun slanted across the hills. The racket of battle receded behind Boag; once, a mile or more to the north of him and running parallel with Boag’s course, a horseman riding low to the withers raced through the cuts and gullies and finally disappeared into the ridged badlands—a rebel messenger dispatched for help, Boag judged. It wasn’t going to do them any good, there wasn’t time to bring reinforcements. He gave that outfit back there half an hour to get cut to pieces by the Gatling gun. There wasn’t enough cover in the ambush-ground the federals had picked; the federals had set it up with first-class tactical talent.
The old woman back on the Colorado had been right; the regular troops would win this one, there wouldn’t be any overthrow of the provincial government. Governor Pesquiera not only had the troops and the money; it was clear he also had the military brains. Boag wondered what kind of suicidal lunacy had persuaded Captain Shelby McQuade to join up with the losing side. Captain McQuade had always been reckless but he’d seldom been stupid. But now he wanted to kick over the pail and he didn’t seem to realize the pail was too full; he wasn’t going to kick it over, he was going to stub his toe against it.
It took Boag two days to find his way to Caborca town. Distances down here were always endless. The Concepción was as poor an excuse for a river as the Gila; in a lot of places it was only a dry sandy bed with trees on both banks. The river ran underground here and if you had to you could dig down and find it a few feet below the surface. It wasn’t worth the trouble if your life didn’t depend on it because a yard’s depth of loose fine sand was the worst thing in the world to dig a hole in.
Caborca had very tall palms and a big old battered mission church on a square. There were farms around the town, irrigated by ditch water from the river. Boag passed fat women with burdens on their heads and big farm carts with huge wheels made of solid wood. The huts were painted different pale colors. He bought food for his pack and grain for the horse and moved right on down the river after no more than twenty minutes in the town.
Halfway through the following morning he found Almada’s hacienda. The patron was a suspicious man but courteous; he accepted Captain McQuade’s introduction and said in a curt candid way that he had heard of Mr. Pickett but had never had dealings with the man. He said it in a way that persuaded Boag it was true. Almada didn’t know where Boag might look unless it was farther to the southeast in the mountain country where there were half a dozen aristocratic manor-lords who had fallen on hard times and had taken to trading with bandits for a livelihood. Almada gave Boag two names, Felix Cielo and Don Pablo Ortiz, and showed Boag the door.
Two days out of Caborca on his way into the mountains he passed a troop of rurales, provincial dragoons on horseback dragging two little twelve-pound brass cannons on horsecarts. Boag swung wide around them because he was familiar with the tedious suspicions of rurale officers and in the old days riding dispatch during the campaigns he’d sometimes had to spend hours with them establishing credentials. Now he had no credentials and didn’t care to get shot for sport so he cut across behind them and went higher into the timber.
The air got cooler as he climbed into the pines. Here and there he passed empty tunnel mouths and discolored piles of tailings where hopeful hardrockers had tried to strike it rich. It was silver country up here but most of the mines, even the paying ones, had been closed down toward the end of the Maximilian reign and had never reopened because the revolutions against the Austrian crown had spawned hungry battalions of bandits who still prowled the Sierra like dogs gone wild, hunting in vicious packs for scraps. It was easier to give birth to a litter of bandits than it was to get rid of them; the big revolutions were finished now but the bandits still rode, and the mines were still closed, and the owners of the mines were dead or poor or living in exile with their relatives like the old woman he’d left in Yuma.