Agony pulled at Jackson’s mouth; he gulped like a fresh-caught fish. “He’s got a big safe coming up from Mexico City. They building him a vault. They get it built, the gold comes in, that’s the idea.”
“Where’s this vault at?”
“I don’t rightly remember.”
Boag pushed on the back of his head and immersed his face and held it there until he saw the muscles of the neck begin to bulge. He let Jackson sputter and gag and shoved him under water again. He did it five times in all before he spoke again:
“Try me on that vault of Mr. Pickett’s now.”
All these efforts were painful for Boag. The .45-90 wound in his hip was bad and even the old hole through his calf was troublesome. He’d pushed himself a little too hard. Now he was impatient with Jackson’s bravery. Perhaps it communicated itself to Jackson; the flight trickled out of the fat man. He talked in a weary fast drone.
“You know where Santa Cruz Creek starts?”
“No.”
“Up in the mountains a ways south of Coronado.”
“You mean way back in the Sierra Madre.”
When Jackson spoke he wheezed and sputtered a lot. “Yeah. All right, a few mile northwest of the lakes. There’s a real old silver mine up there. Must be two hundred years old. They had a lot of Innun trouble in those days, they built those mines like Cavalry forts. Some kind of high old rock wall around the thing. Sets up there on a flat-top mountain and they ain’t but one way in or out of there, it’s a kind of steep cut in the cliff with a wagon road goes down it.”
“And that’s where Mr. Pickett’s at?”
“I got no idea if that’s where he’s at now. It’s where we was supposed to bring the gold to. Where the vault is. Christ, you mind if I slide over a bit? I’m getting mighty tired holding my chin up like this.”
“We’ll just wait on you to get all finished talking first.”
“Jesus Boag, I told you what you wanted.”
Boag pushed his face in the water.
The idea was to keep up the pressure until you kept getting the same answer every time. With a liar like Jackson you had to make sure.
Laced with his own hurts Boag kept it up for another half hour until he was satisfied Jackson was telling something that approximated the truth.
After a while Jackson became eager to talk because as long as he was talking his face wasn’t in the pool. But Boag caught him lying twice and shoved him back in mid-sentence, and soon Jackson was talking with care. But talking.
“Pickett’s fixing to set himself up like a tinpot Napoleon over there in that district,” Jackson explained, and wheezed and spat to catch his breath. “Using that gold to start buying up all kinds of properties. This revolution going on, a lot of them old dons scared shitless. They eager to get hard money for their ranchos. All they want to do is beat it out of Mexico. Time he’s through, Jed Pickett’s gon own half of the state of Sonora.”
“Well six feet of it anyway.”
Jackson said, “You got a large opinion of yourself, boy.”
“Who?”
“Sergeant Boag. Whatever you want to be called. Your skin won’t be worth tanning, time Jed Pickett gets through with you. I’d admire to see that, too.”
“You and Smith was supposed to take your piece of the gold on down to Mr. Pickett’s place in the Santa Cruz district, that right?”
“I just got done telling you that.”
“When was this supposed to be?”
“We supposed to show up there this comin’ Friday. We was fixing to leave maybe Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning.”
“All right. Now where’s your cache, Jackson?”
“Never you mind.”
Boag’s nostrils dilated. “Time you went back in that pool, get your face washed again.”
“Sergeant Boag sir, I ain’t going to tell you where that gold’s at. You wouldn’t have no more use for me alive.”
“This gon be a mighty painful Saturday night for you then, fat trash.”
“I expect it will.”
“Then I may as well kill you right now if there ain’t nothing else you want to tell me.”
“Oh I don’t think you’ll do that, Sergeant Boag, sir.”
“Well,” Boag said, and slammed Jackson’s face down into the water.
All the splashing had half-emptied the little pool but there was still enough to cover Jackson’s nose and mouth. Boag kept grinding his face against the rock. It took a while but finally Jackson gave in.
“All right, all right. I’ll show you where it’s at.”
“Like hell you will. You’ll tell me.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“You just try.”
He had Jackson explain it three or four times until he was pretty sure he had the idea. Then he roped Jackson to a tree and went looking for the gold.
The moon slid one way and clouds moved the other way across it. You go out back of town and there’s some old greaser’s shack up in them trees with a bunch of roses in the yard. Bats dived from tree to tree; a flock of chickens ran across Boag’s path. Back of the house there’s some aspen. You go around them, you find a half acre of bald-headed boulders. A bobcat leaped away, flushed by Boag’s approach. Boag dismounted. His boots scraped the limestone. The breeze was thin and cool. You find a boulder higher than your head shaped kind of like a soldier’s shako hat. Kind of flat on top but tilted over to one side. Boag didn’t have any trouble finding it by moonlight. It loomed against the forest beyond, a pale monument against the heavy mass of dark trees.
He had a stick he used as a cane to walk across the rocks. When he reached the shako boulder he started poking under it with the stick because he didn’t want to be surprised by a sleepy rattler. He kept poking until he knew it would have disturbed any poison critter sleeping there. Then he got down on his knees and almost cried out from the pain and used his hands to paw the rocks and pebbles out of the hole.
It took a while. Finally he got down to the canvas sacks. He poked some more with the stick and a scorpion went scuttling away, making a little scratching racket on the rocks. He let it get a good piece away from him before he did any more prospecting.
“Now don’t that beat all.”
He hadn’t really believed Jackson but here it was. Two gunny sacks, maybe seventy-five pounds of weight in each one of them. Boag did figures in his head. “Maybe thirty-thousand dollars American. Well Hallelujah.”
He lugged it back over to the horse one sack at a time because he was nowhere near being in shape to carry both at once.
It made a heavy load for the horse. He’d have to ride slow and easy.
He headed up into the mountains. There was no point going back to where he’d left Jackson tied up. The fat trash would work himself loose sooner or later. Or he wouldn’t.
It had occurred to him maybe he ought to put Jackson on his horse and tell him to ride up into Santa Cruz and tell Mr. Pickett what had happened up here tonight. It would be good in a number of ways to have Mr. Pickett know. Tell Jackson to give Mr. Pickett a message: “Tell him he’ll be seeing me all of a sudden.” Over a gunsight.
It had appeal. Get Mr. Pickett angry as hell. When a man got angry he made mistakes. It would have been nice.
But Jackson wouldn’t have done it. Jackson wasn’t about to go back to Mr. Pickett now. He’d have to tell Mr. Pickett how Boag got the best of him and Smith and got away with Mr. Pickett’s gold. Mr. Pickett wouldn’t like that at all; he’d take Jackson apart in pieces and throw the pieces in Santa Cruz Creek. No, Jackson would stay as far away from the rawhiders as he could get. So there was no point turning him loose. Let him take his chances. He’d maybe get loose, and if he did he’d be like the other white trash, like Frailey back on the Colorado River who’d shrugged his losses and taken off for California to try his luck. These rawhiders didn’t have much sand except when they were mobbed together in the big gang. Then they were tough enough.