Страница 33 из 65
III
THEY RODE all day, up through the low hills and into the mountains and along the mesa to the north well beyond the horse range and into the country they'd first crossed into some four months before. They nooned at a spring and squatted about the cold and blackened sticks of some former fire and ate cold beans and tortillas out of a newspaper. He thought the tortillas could have come from the hacienda kitchen. The newspaper was from Monclova. He ate slowly with his manacled hands and drank water from a tin cup that could only be partly filled for the water ru
The country they traversed was advanced in season and the acacia was in bloom and there had been rain in the mountains and the grass along the selvedge of the draws was green and blowsy in the long twilight where they rode. Except for remarks concerning the countryside the guards said little among themselves and to the Americans they said nothing at all. They rode through the long red sunset and they rode on in the dark. The guards had long since scabbarded their rifles and they rode easily, half slouched in the saddle. About ten oclock they halted and made camp and built a fire. The prisoners sat in the sand among old rusted tins and bits of charcoal with their hands still manacled before them and the guards set out an old blue graniteware coffeepot and a stewpot of the same material and they drank coffee and ate a dish containing some kind of pale and fibrous tuber, some kind of meat, some kind of fowl. All of it stringy, all of it sour.
They spent the night with their hands chained through the stirrups of their saddles, trying to keep warm under their single blankets. They were on the trail again before the sun was up an hour and glad to be so.
This was their life for three days. On the afternoon of the third they rode into the town of Encantada of recent memory.
They sat side by side on a bench of iron slats in the little alameda. A pair of the guards stood a little ways off with their rifles and a dozen children of different ages stood in the dust of the street watching them. Two of the children were girls about twelve years of age and when the prisoners looked at them they turned shyly and twisted at their skirts. John Grady called to them to ask if they could get them cigarettes.
The guards glared at him. He made smoking motions at the girls and they turned and ran off down the street. The other children stood as before.
Ladies' man, said Rawlins.
You dont want a cigarette?
Rawlins spat slowly between his boots and looked up again. They aint goin to bring you no damn cigarette, he said.
I'll bet you.
What the hell you goin to bet with?
I'll bet you a cigarette.
How you goin to do that?
I'll bet you a cigarette she brings em. If she brings em I keep yours.
What are you goin to give me if she dont bring em?
If she dont bring em then you get mine.
Rawlins stared out across the alameda.
I aint above whippin your ass, you know.
Dont you think if we're goin to get out of this jackpot we might better start thinkin about how to get out of it together?
You mean like we got in it?
You dont get to go back and pick some time when the trouble started and then lay everthing off on your friend.
Rawlins didnt answer.
Dont sull up on me. Let's get it aired.
All right. When they arrested you what did you say?
I didnt say nothin. What would of been the use?
That's right. What would of been the use.
What does that mean?
It means you never asked em to go wake the patrón, did you? No.
I did.
What did they say?
Rawlins leaned and spat and wiped his mouth.
They said he was awake. They said he'd been awake for a long time. Then they laughed.
You think he sold us down the river?
Dont you?
I dont know. If he did it was because of some lie.
Or some truth.
John Grady sat looking down at his hands.
Would it satisfy you, he said, if I was to just go on and admit to bein a fourteen carat gold plated son of a bitch?
I never said that.
They sat. After a while John Grady looked up.
I cant back up and start over. But I dont see the point in slobberin over it. And I cant see where it would make me feel better to be able to point a finger at somebody else.
It dont make me feel better. I tried to reason with you, that's all. Tried any number of times.
I know you did. But some things aint reasonable. Be that as it may I'm the same man you crossed that river with. How I was is how I am and all I know to do is stick. I never even promised you you wouldnt die down here. Never asked your word on it either. I dont believe in signing on just till it quits suitin you. You either stick or you quit and I wouldnt quit you I dont care what you done. And that's about all I got to say.
I never quit you, Rawlins said.
All right.
After a while the two girls came back. The taller of them held up her hand with two cigarettes in it.
John Grady looked at the guards. They motioned the girls over and looked at the cigarettes and nodded and the girls approached the bench and handed the cigarettes to the prisoners together with several wooden matches.
Muy amable, said John Grady. Muchas gracias.
They lit the cigarettes off one match and John Grady put the other matches in his pocket and looked at the girls. They smiled shyly.
Son americanos ustedes? they said.
Sí.
Son ladrones?
Sí. Ladrones muy famosos. Bandoleros.
They sucked in their breath. Qué precioso, they said. But the guards called to them and waved them away.
They sat leaning forward on their elbows, smoking the cigarettes. John Grady looked at Rawlins' boots.
Where's them new boots at? he said.
Back at the bunkhouse.
He nodded. They smoked. After a while the others returned and called to the guards. The guards gestured at the prisoners and they rose and nodded to the children and walked out to the street.,
They rode out through the north end of the town and they halted before an adobe building with a corrugated tin roof and an empty mud bellcot above it. Scales of old painted plaster still clung to the mud brick walls. They dismounted and entered a large room that might once have been a schoolroom. There was a rail along the front wall and a frame that could once have held a blackboard. The floors were of narrow pine boards and the grain was etched by years of sand trod into them and the windows along both walls had missing panes of glass replaced with squares of tin all cut from the same large sign to form a broken mozaic among the windowlights. At a gray metal desk in one corner sat a stout man likewise in khaki uniform who wore about his neck a scarf of yellow silk. He regarded the prisoners without expression. He gestured slightly with his head toward the rear of the building and one of the guards took down a ring of keys from the wall and the prisoners were led out through a dusty weed yard to a small stone building with a heavy wooden door shod in iron.
There was a square judas-hole cut into the door at eye level and fastened across it and welded to the iron framing was a mesh of lightgauge rebar. One of the guards unfastened the old brass padlock and opened the door. He took a separate ring of keys from his belt.