Boag stopped two paces from the rifle. “Put your rifle down, old man.”
The old man looked sick; he was sitting still but his chest heaved with his breathing. His face was lined as though he had slept all his life with his face pressed against a screen of rabbit wire.
Boag bent down, gripped the rifle and pulled it out of the old man’s limp grasp. It had not been cocked and it did not go off. Boag slung it across the bend of his elbow. “If you point a gun at a man it only makes good sense to cock it.”
“We have very little ammunition left,” said the old man. He sat against the wagon wheel and soon the sun would reach its midpoint and either the old man would have to suffer its rays or he would have to move underneath the wagon. He seemed to drift; his eyes kept closing slowly and popping open again. He wore dust-coated remnants of good Spanish clothing, old now, worn thin and patched.
The fat woman said, “He has the fever,” as if in apology.
“He has chills?”
“Frequently.”
“When the chills start you should cover him up. Keep him covered and get all the water down him he can swallow.”
Her eyes beseeched. “Is that all one can do?”
“What do you want me to do? Hold his hand?”
“Will he be better?”
“He’ll be better or he’ll be dead.” He turned. “You ought to tell that little girl to wear a hat in this sun.”
Boag sank down in the patch of shade beside the old man. “What happened to your mules?” The iron rim of the wheel was hot against his back.
“Two Mojaves came here the night before last night,” the woman said. “They ate our meal with us and then stole our mules and our cow.”
“No mules,” Boag said weakly. He roused himself: “How do you expect to get anywhere without mules, you damn fools?” But it was in English, this last, and they only gave him puzzled looks, the woman and the girl; the old man’s eyelids had sagged and he wasn’t listening. Boag wiped a forearm across his face and looked at the river and saw that this had been a ferry landing at one time. The wreckage of a ferry-raft was tied up on the far side of the river.
The wind came damp and sultry off the river. He was thinking that old wreck of a ferry would make a good enough raft if he could find some kind of pole to steer it with. Maybe that wagon tongue of theirs.
The old woman had got started and seemed unable to stop talking now. “We have seen much misfortune. The revolution has destroyed my husband’s properties. We must go to my uncle in California, in the county of Tuolumne.”
“What revolution?”
“In Sonora the revolution.”
They were always having revolutions in the northern provinces but he hadn’t heard about a current one. “Tell me about that.”
“How can I tell you anything while my husband is so ill? We must get him across the river. This desert is a poor place for a proud man to die. He must be brought to our family in Tuolumne.”
The wagon’s stripe of shade was very thin. Boag said, “You’d better get him under the wagon.”
He sat frowning at the river while the old woman struggled with the old man’s weight. “Nina, come and help me.”
The little girl moved reluctantly; they struggled and the old man tried to assist them but he seemed weak to the point of helplessness. It was curious he had been able to hold the rifle.
The old woman sat down by Boag. “There is no one to rob here except ourselves, and we are poor, it would not be worth your trouble. You must either go back in the desert or swim across the river. But you cannot go back, for you have no horse. What happened to your horse?”
“You will hurt yourself talking so much.”
“I have nothing to do but talk, and you have little to do but listen. You cannot return into the desert with that injured leg. You must swim across. I only ask that you carry the end of the rope and tie it to the ferryboat. When you have done that, we can pull the ferry across to us.”
“You have a long enough rope?”
“We have three riatas and if they are tied together they are very long.”
“You are mistaken. Three riatas would be two hundred feet, perhaps three hundred feet of rope. From here to the other shore is four times that distance. Perhaps more.”
“There must be a method,” she said with stubborn helplessness.
“What if I say you can die without my help?”
“Then that is what we shall do, is it not?”
“What if you do get to the far side? You still have no mules.”
“But we shall be in California then.”
“What difference does that make? It is still the same desert.”
The old woman seemed puzzled and confused. He saw that she had been doing the same thing Boag had been doing for several days: thinking ahead just one step at a time because if you thought it all the way through you had to give it up. The old woman had thought no farther than the other side of the river.
He could get across the river by himself all right. The old ferry would be an adequate raft.
Boag crawled down to the ferry landing. The flies were numerous but he paid them no mind.
When the little girl came down to the dock Boag laid his hand on the rifle. “You’re a witch. Get away.”
The little girl said, “They keep me because I can work but they hate me because I am Yaqui and they know the Yaqui is better than they are. You are a ladrón, you can understand. My father was a warrior and he killed many of them.”
“And they killed him, didn’t they?”
The little girl ran away. Boag picked up the rifle and hobbled back to the wagon. The wound wasn’t as bad as he’d feared this morning; he felt better about the idea of a swim across.
The old man was breathing heavily beneath the wagon, a flush on his cheeks. The little girl wandered away into the rocks.
The woman said, “The truth is that her mother was not a Yaqui. Her father may have been. A mountain thief, I am sure.”
“Your mouth flaps,” Boag told her.
“Would you shoot me for that, tough one?” A plump finger waggled at him. “You will not shoot, but you will leave us to die.”
“Old woman, I have trouble enough of my own.” He made his way down to the river. The flow was fast and steady, and frightening. He bounced the rifle in the circle of his fist.
Finally he went back to the wagon. “Listen to me. I will take you to Yuma—I go that way anyway.”
If the woman had feelings she gave no indication. “How will you do this?”
“Swim across, pole the ferry over to this side. The current will drive me far downstream before I reach this bank so you must get him on his feet and come down along the bank to meet me.”
He went back down to the crumbled landing and scowled at the river. This morning it had almost killed him.
The little girl trailed him there. Boag had the rifle in his fist and the little girl said, “You cannot take that with you.”
“You are right.”
“I will keep it for you.”
He didn’t trust her, but he trusted her not to be able to use the rifle. He handed it to her and stepped into the water. His toes felt the suck of the mud bottom. He stepped out again and stripped off his pants and shirt and placed them in a neat bundle on the landing. “Bring these to me also.”
“All right, ladrón.”
The sun was very hot on his bare flesh. He moved out into the current, feeling the force of the river against him. It rushed warm toward the south. He struck out into it.
In Boag’s judgment they made seventy miles before nightfall. Delay annoyed him but the old man was too weak to make a night trip of it. They camped in reed bottoms.