“What?”
He recognized the room and recollection trickled into him. “Uh. How’s Don Pablo?”
“He is the same.”
“How am I?”
“You ought to be dead but you are not.”
He didn’t want to twist his head to look down at himself. “Is it mending?”
“Yes.” She smiled slowly; her cross act had been fraudulent. “You have a very tough body.”
“It’s that black hide. Tough as armor.”
He yelped when she pinched him. “Tough as armor,” she said.
Then he slept again, warmed by the echo of her laughter. She must have bathed him because the prison stench was no longer in his nostrils. He had a picture of that scene and he wished he had been awake at the time.
Sometimes when he opened his eyes she was there; sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes there was daylight at the window. He had no way of counting the nights and days. He hovered in a kind of daydream for a very long time, not unconscious and yet not awake. Fevers sweated him and at times he was frozen through to the bones.
Once she said to him, “I am so glad you asked your friends to bring you back here.”
“There was no other place to go. I’m sorry to be a burden. Now you have to look after two sick men.”
“When I was a whore I dreamed of being a nurse.” Her hand rested on him with a natural intimacy.
On another day Don Pablo came into the room and smiled when he saw Boag was awake. “You feel better now?”
“Getting better all the time,” he said and instantly regretted it because it mocked Don Pablo’s condition and he hadn’t meant that; but an apology would only make it worse so he let it drift away uncorrected.
“Dorotea is very glad you chose our house for refuge.”
“She said that.”
“In a strange way I am glad too.”
“Why?”
“We have very few friends any more. You chose this house because you thought of us as friends. It was the señora of course, it was not me; but nevertheless I am gratified. Can you understand this?”
“I think I can,” Boag said and it occurred to him that with the possible exception of Captain McQuade—who had an axe to grind—he also had no other friends.
Then he thought of Pilar-Carmen, the little Yaqui girl. Was she his friend also? Perhaps she was. I should look her up sometime.
He said, “I owe you a debt now.”
“Not at all. You have done us a kindness, as I have just explained.”
“What if the troops come here looking for me? They find me here and you’ll both be arrested.”
“They will not look here. Why should it occur to them?”
“Suppose they arrest one of Captain McQuade’s people and make him talk?”
“I think they seldom arrest the rebels any more. They do not take prisoners, Pesquiera’s troops. They have an arrogance, they think they do not need to question prisoners any more; they expect to terrorize the province into obedience.”
“Maybe.”
“At any rate you shall stay as long as you need to. Do not feel any urgency about that.”
“How long have I been here anyway?”
“Ten or eleven days, I forget exactly. I myself tend to disregard dates.” Dorotea’s husband touched Boag’s arm and then walked to the door; paused there, and said before he left the room, “She is in love with you. I am sure you know that. I hope you will not grieve her. She should not have to lose both of her men at the same time.”
“You sound like Captain McQuade,” Boag growled, but the door was shut and he heard Don Pablo retreat through the courtyard, his retching cough sounding as though it were ripping the lining of his lungs away.
“I suppose the days give you time to think,” Dorotea said. She lay against his good side and her cool hand slid up his chest.
“Well I get out of here, I expect I’ll have to work out some way to find Mr. Pickett.”
“Have you thought about why you do this?”
“I just have to, that’s all.”
“No, I do not think you have to. It is not pride and I do not really think it is revenge either.”
Boag hitched himself up on one elbow and winced. “Everybody keeps telling me what I’m after. Don’t you think I know? Your husband told me I was scared and he said I hated being scared so much I had to keep going out and proving it wasn’t true.”
“And?”
“He was wrong. I get scared—who doesn’t?”
“But you invite it don’t you? I mean who would care if you simply forgot about this gold and this man Pickett?”
“I’d care.”
“Why? Does it really matter about the gold bullion or your friend who died?”
“Or Mr. Pickett’s friends that put this bullet through me? Well maybe it don’t. Captain McQuade keeps telling me I want an army to fight with.”
“You are a fighting man. That is what you are.”
“All right. But the war Captain McQuade’s offering me, that ain’t my war.”
“And the war with this Pickett, that is your war?”
“Like I told Captain McQuade. It’s the only war I’ve got.” He reached for her hand and closed the big fist over it. “You been a kind of a slave, you know you just don’t let them shove you around any more. That’s what it is.”
“Then your freedom is being in motion and keeping ahead of the bullets, is that what you mean?” She lay back against his arm; he thought she was smiling. “You are my adventurer,” she said. “Big black soldier-of-fortune Boag.”
By the second week of June it was full summer-hot and the grass was going yellow on the high plains. Boag was out of bed moving around as much as he could to rebuild the strength that had drained out of him as if a plug had been pulled. His right hip moved with a stiff awkwardness as if the ball didn’t fit right into its socket any more: the .45–90 had taken some chips out of the hipbone. It didn’t make him limp; it was more of a lurch.
Dorotea was amused. “You are the wreckage of a man. Now you have been shot in both legs.”
“I’m lame but I’m still on my feet.”
“And so brave,” she breathed with wide-eyed mockery.
“Aagh.”
He took one more turn around the courtyard and stopped at the front gate. Miguel stood there, ever vigilant, watching the valley through the view-port in the door. The old man’s eyes were squinted in close-focused attention and Boag said, “Somebody coming.”
“See for yourself, Señor.”
Miguel stepped aside lugging his shotgun and Boag looked through the hole.
It was a crowd of riders in a hurry.
“Coming straight for us.”
“They ride like soldados,” Miguel said and Boag saw the sweat on his wrinkled face.
Boag felt himself tense up. The riders were still better than a mile out but they were drumming forward like a big locomotive at full throttle. A banner of dust raveled high in their wake.
“Where’s my two pistols, Miguel?”
“Under the bed where you sleep.”
Then Boag’s shoulders dropped an inch. “It’s all right. That’s Captain McQuade.”
“You have very good eyes, Señor.”
Dorotea crossed the court and Boag saw Don Pablo appear at his door on the veranda. Boag stepped through the gate and stood just outside it and waited for the horsemen.
They swirled to a halt. Hoofs churned up clots that spattered the adobe wall. Captain McQuade’s grin cracked the coating of dust on his face. “So you made it. I expected you would.”