“I’m still takin’ nourishment,” Boag acknowledged. “Light and set a while.”
“Can’t, Sergeant, we’re in a little bit of a hurry.”
“You got federates on your ass?”
“I think we shook them off. But there’s a good big fight shaping up north of here. I’d hate to miss out on it.”
Boag grinned.
“You well enough to ride?”
“It still ain’t my fight, Captain.”
“That’s too bad. I’ll talk you into it one of these days.” Captain McQuade swept off his hat and dragged the crook of his elbow across his forehead. “There’s two of Pickett’s rawhiders hanging around the town of Tres Osos,” he said, and replaced the hat square across his eyebrows.
“Thank you kindly, Captain.”
“Well take it easy, Boag.” And then they were moving: a rise and fall of Captain McQuade’s arm, a looping wheel of two dozen horses, a thunder of hoof-fall.
Boag stepped inside and shut the door against the dust. Looking through the view-port he had a glimpse of the drag riders in Captain McQuade’s troop: they were hauling a gun-cart and there was a ten-barrel Gatling gun mounted on it. Captain McQuade must have won a battle and taken that as part of the spoils.
In the twilight Don Pablo struggled down the stairs to the dining room where Miguel had set the table with their few plates and glasses arranged in formal patterns on the bare wood. Dorotea served up a meal that tasted very good to Boag.
Don Pablo was looking a little stronger than he had; it was possibly because there was color in his cheeks but that might have been the flush of fever, it was hard to tell.
Boag said, “How long before they throw you out of here?”
“Perhaps the end of this month. Perhaps my creditors will be kind and extend us a few weeks before we are dispossessed.”
“Then I might as well get moving.”
Dorotea rolled her eyes toward him. Don Pablo said, “You are not strong enough yet.”
“I’m strong enough to ride. The rest will take care of itself in the saddle.”
“But are you fast enough?”
“I never was fast. Just steady.”
“You will need a little money I think. I have a little for you.”
“You need to feed yourselves.”
“There is enough for both.”
“Then I won’t dispute it. I’m obliged.”
“It is we who are obliged,” Don Pablo said.
But in the morning when Don Pablo came down one step at a time to watch Boag saddle the horse he said, “You will recall what was said the last time you rode away from here.” He bent over to cough. “It still pertains.”
“Other words, if I don’t get some gold in my pockets you don’t want me to come back.”
“Not for Dorotea.”
“Well you’re her husband.”
“I used to be,” Don Pablo said. “Now I am her friend. I would not wish her to follow a dirt-poor Negro from town to town.”
“What about a dirt-poor Castilian?”
Don Pablo considered it. In the end he conceded, “You have a point.”
Boag smiled and went to say his hasta luego to the señora.
He didn’t push himself; he used up four slow-riding days getting to Tres Osos. It was one of those mestizo towns high in the Sierra where most of the people had no Spanish, they talked an Indio dialect that Boag didn’t understand.
The village welcomed him spectacularly: it was a Saturday afternoon and there was a wedding. The fiesta was accompanied by an earsplitting spectacle of Mexican fireworks and the entire population was turned out in elaborate costumes the women had probably spent a year making. It was a profusion of movement and color and noise. Boag sat on a rock up in the trees above the village, holding the reins of his horse, watching. He tried to disregard all the wheeling color; he was looking for two gringos not partaking of the festival.
He didn’t see them for two hours. The village was a loose assemblage of huts that crawled down the corkscrew sides of a narrow canyon shaded by ranks of enormous pines that marched down the mountain like lancers with their weapons at the ready. The road ran close along the bank of the dry creek, wandering from one side of the canyon to the other. In seasons of heavy rain or during the spring thaw he expected not only the stream but the road also ran a foot deep in rushing water. Right now it was two months since the thaw and he didn’t know of much rain since then, and the whole forest looked ready to go up in flame but the villagers were happily flinging their fireworks in the air with frivolous abandon and Boag watched with alarm as some of the sparks arced into the woods.
Late in the afternoon the honeymoon couple went away in a weathered buckboard and the fat women went back to their huts and the men settled down in the plaza for some industrious drinking.
The air stank of sulphur smoke as if a battle had been fought. The church bells had quit ringing and the yelling was done; everyone had gone hoarse. The silence seemed unnatural. In that atmosphere Boag saw the two rawhiders emerge from the shade of a pine copse beside a corral that contained four or five horses and several burros. They must have been there all the time, sitting with their backs to the corral fence watching the show.
They walked across the plaza into a square hut. Boag watched the place patiently. Within three minutes the rawhiders reappeared in the doorway. One of them had a small jug so that hut must be the cantina.
Some old men on the plaza shouted at the rawhiders, inviting them to take part in the remnants of the feast. The two rawhiders went over to them and sat down on the ground to eat. There was a thin one and a fat one. Boag remembered the fat one; he believed the fat one went by the name of Jackson.
By the time the rawhiders finished eating it would be pretty dark. Jackson and his friend would probably finish their small jug on the plaza and then perhaps they would return to the cantina for another jug and a game of cards or monte or darts. They would do that because there was nothing else to do in a village like this and it was clear the two men were waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen right away. Either they were hiding out or they were waiting for someone to arrive and meet them.
At any rate the thing to do was to get inside the cantina and wait for them there.
Boag led his horse back into the trees and began to make a wide circle through the forest to come up behind the cantina. He hoped the place had a back door.
The weedy ground behind the cantina was strewn with broken jugs and bits of splintered woodwork, the souvenirs of lusty brawls. It smelled of urine.
There was a back door and Boag opened it without announcing himself.
There was no real bar. A big plank table served. Jugs were cluttered on it and a half-asleep proprietor sat in a chair behind the table. He had a little wooden box with coins in it. Probably he had a brewing shack and a small distillery back in the woods near a spring.
Two Indians at a table watched Boag enter the room. Nobody seemed surprised, let alone alarmed. It was the kind of place where it took a great deal to arouse people.
Boag bought a small jug and settled down behind a table facing the front door.
Someone outside had brought a guitar and the rapid-fire music reached Boag faintly. There were occasional bursts of laughter in the night; now and then a footstep moved by, and Boag would stiffen and fasten his eyes on the door. Three townsfolk came in and settled at a front table to play cards. The two Indians finished their jug and left the place. The proprietor’s face was tilted in disgust as he contemplated the contents of his wooden box. Here it was Saturday night but most everybody was played-out by the wedding festival and the cantina’s trade was shot to hell.