“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.
Tough enough, he thought. He had a lot of gold on his saddle right now and the smart thing would be to take it and get shet of Sonora. That little business he'd been planning to start, up in Oregon or somewhere. He had plenty of money for that now. To hell with Mr. Pickett, to hell with the
Señora
Dorotea Ortiz. Boag had his share and he had about a thousand percent interest on it.
Why push your luck?
You went along most of the time like a damn fool letting impulse push you around. Once in a while a small voice inside you said, “Quit this foolishness.”
Boag heard the small voice. He didn't obey it.
chapter seven
1
In the morning he came to a town where people were just emerging from the church, shorn of sin and renewed for another week. The women all had shawls over their heads and the men were putting their hats on. Boag doubted God had much interest in their prayers but he had no objection; they had to feel they could do something that would protect themselves.
He rode through the town with Jackson's .41 Remington rifle across his saddlebow. He was looking for a livery stable because he wanted to buy a pack horse to carry the gold; his own horse was game enough but this weight would wear it out soon.
The town had no livery but he was directed by the blacksmith to a ranch north of the village and because it was not out of his way he stopped there and bargained with a sweating old man who finally sold him an eight-year-old mare and a crosstree pack saddle.
He packed his way north along the ridgetops, riding the military crest to keep off the skyline. From here he could see west across the flats of the river valleys; he was looking and listening for signs of battle because he needed a certain amount of ordnance and materiel to make his fanciful schemes work, and a battlefield was the likely place to look.
Monday afternoon he observed a light skirmish along the Yaqui River but there was nothing going off except rifles. He didn't hang around.
Early Tuesday morning he judged he was close enough to the Santa Cruz country. He cached almost all the gold by making a little mud-and-rock dam across part of a thin stream, digging a hole, burying the gold, and then breaking the dam up so that the water flowed back across its original channel with the gold under it.
He marked the spot in his memory and knew he wouldn't have trouble finding it again; there was a twisted pine on the north side of the creek and a top-heavy boulder on the south bank and the gold was buried on the line of sight between them.
He kept one ingot with him. It was a partial ingot, the kind the smelters stamped out one at a time when they didn't have enough gold to complete a run on the main stamp press. It probably weighed twelve or fourteen pounds and it had to be worth at least twenty-five hundred dollars; it was a little bigger than Boag's fist.
He spent the day chasing around the high country seeking vantage points from which to view the wide Mexican plains. Still looking for a battle. He didn't find any. Maybe the revolution had quieted down but more likely it was just the law of averages; you couldn't be more than one place at one time and the odds weren't too good there'd be a battle there at that time.
By nightfall he was a little jittery because time was getting tight. He wanted to hit those messengers with their gold before they got it into Mr. Pickett's vault.
He had a piece of luck. Sundownâhe was about to give up and pitch camp when he spotted movement down near the river. A thousand feet lower in elevation and a good many miles away. It was dust on the road, the kind that had to come from the hoofs of a pretty big column of riders. Anything smaller and Boag wouldn't have seen it at that distance.
He rode toward it. They might shoot at him just for target practice but then again they might have something Boag could use.
2
“You independent son of a bitch,” Captain Shelby McQuade said by way of greeting.
“You want to tell these picket guards of yours to point them rifles at somebody else, Captain?”
Captain McQuade made hand gestures and the two sentries who'd prodded Boag into camp lowered their rolling-blocks and turned away to go back to their posts. “Eyes like eagles, these guard dogs of yours,” Boag said, dismounting stiff in all his joints. “I practically had to announce my name before they knowed I was there.”
“Lazy turds,” Captain McQuade growled. “I have to kick ass every half hour.”
“You got a pretty big army here now, though.”
The Mexicans were setting up a few tents along the riverbank. Most of them didn't bother with tents or didn't have any; they were unrolling their saddle blankets on the hot dry ground. Boag's eye had had a good many years' practice estimating the size of a military unit with a single glance. He figured this one close to regiment size.
“We won a couple of fights up above Ures. A lot of recruits came in. We even got a few coming over from the Pesquiera army.”
“Then at least you got some professional help.”
Captain McQuade snorted. “Rotten excuses for soldiers. That's why we're whipping the pants off them.”
“Are you now?”
“Well we would be if it wasn't for your friend Jed Pickett, I think.” Captain McQuade lifted the flap of his command tent and ducked inside; Boag followed him. There was a cot and a folding desk with a lantern on it and Captain McQuade shook the lantern to check the fuel before he put a match to it and adjusted the wick. “We had a good one two days ago up there. We killed some, and then we set up an ambush because I knew they'd be backâthese Papists never leave their dead, they always come back for them. So we killed some more.”
“You could play that trick once too often.”
“Sure, I know that Boag,” Captain McQuade said. “How's Don Pablo and the missus?”
“All right.”
“When'd you see them last?”
“About a week ago.”
“Around here that can be a long time.”
Boag slapped his hat against his thigh to beat the dust from it. “What's this you said about Mr. Pickett mixing into your war?”
“He's backing Pesquiera, I hear. Trying to shore up the regime.”
“What for?”
“Pickett's buying up a lot of land for pennies on the peso. I think he's got empire plans, he wants to be the czar of the Santa Cruz district. But it's against Mexican law for any foreigner to own more than forty-nine percent of any income-producing property. They want to keep foreign capital from taking over the country. So your friend Pickett's putting the land in the name of one of his men, a Mexican.”
“Gutierrez.”
“That's it. Gutierrez is just a dummy front for Pickett and everybody knows it. The government could hit him for fraud and take it all away from him. If we win this revolution and Cesar Ruiz takes over the Governor's Palace down in Hermosillo your friend Pickett is out on his ass. So Pickett's paying a lot of money into the Governor's treasury and the Governor's using it to buy new batches of field pieces and Gatling guns. It makes the hill a lot harder for us to climb.”
“Then you'd feel a lot better if you could get Mr. Pickett out of this thing. Right Captain?”
“Now you're the one that wants me to join your army, that it?” Captain McQuade laughed a little but his long face settled back into lines that seemed even more dour than usual. His eyes had an ominous murky color; he seemed unnaturally tired. He uncorked a jug and offered it to Boag: pure tequila, the kind that burned all the way down.
“I'm sorry Boag. For one thing Pickett's a civilian and that puts him out of my reach. But for another thing I've got a campaign going here and I haven't got time chasing off with you after some pipe dream of glory. I guess you're still in a real sweat to get killed, aren't you.”
“Captain I ain't asking you to fight my war for me. But I need a little backing. Logistical. I think it'd be worth your while on the chance it would take him out. Mr. Pickett.”
“What kind of logistical backing, Boag?”
“Mainly one of them Gatling guns you got.”
“I'm sorry. That's out of the question.”
“I'd be pleased to pay for it. I can lead you to twenty-five hundred dollars real quick-like. You get the money first, then I take the Gatling gun. Just a loan for a little spell, you understand. You'll get the gun back but you keep the twenty-five hundred dollars. You boys need money don't you? That's a pretty high rental fee.”
He never trusted anyone entirely. He had the money right outside in his saddlebag, the half brick of gold, but he wasn't about to admit that.
“I'll have to think on that,” Captain McQuade said. “We need every gun, Boag.”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars U.S., Captain.”
“I'll think on it. You had any grub tonight?”
“Not yet.”
“Neither have I. Let's fit our bellies around something.”
3
The coffee smoked as it poured into Boag's cup; it made a good smell. He was reminded of the musky smell of Dorotea's breasts.
“You've got twenty-five hundred dollars,” Captain McQuade said. “Why don't you quit? Even a train stops.”
“Well I still got a thing or two to settle with Mr. Pickett.”
“It gravels me to see a good man ask for killing. You're just standing out there like Custer, Boag. Pickett's just waiting for you to get a little closer to him so he can stick it in your back and break it off.”
“It wouldn't be the first time he tried that. I found those two rawhiders of his down to Tres Osos. I'm obliged to you for the word on that.”
“That where you got all this money you're waving around at me?”
“Aeah.”
“Well that bought you a little time, I guess.”
“That's all any of us got, Captain. A little time between birth and death.”
“Don't you go wise man on me, Boag Look, join up with me. Between us we'll get rid of Pesquiera and that'll put the slide under Jed Pickett. We're both on the same side of this. And God knows I still need you. All I've got around here is fools with cranberries for
cojones.
”
“It still ain't my war, Captain.”
“Now quit waving your conscience around. You want Pickett a lot worse than I do.”
“And I'm gon get him. But my way, Captain.”
Captain McQuade rubbed the back of his head, bobbing and ducking his head. Very tired. Finally he said, “Well I'm sorry Boag but I can't let you have a ten-barrel gun. We're short of them and besides if yours fell into Pickett's hands that would be one more Gatling out against us. But you got anything else I can provide?”