Her head bobbed. There was nothing she would like better—especially since I had come into a fortune of silver. Marta's old man had been quiet through the whole thing until now. He had been sitting at a rough plank table holding his head in his hands. Every once in a while he would fumble at some wooden beads around his neck and mumble a prayer, and from the look of hate in his eyes I figured he was praying for lightning, to strike us all. Now his head jerked up and he glared at me. He didn't understand a word of what I had said, but somehow he knew.
“This is what we're going to do,” I said. And I was talking to the old man as much as to Marta. “We've got to get out of Ocotillo and we've got to leave the silver here. The old man's got some burros, hasn't he?” She nodded, puzzled.
“All right, we'll go somewhere—” And then I remembered a place on that map that Bama had drawn for me. “We'll go to Three Mile Cave down near the border. Do you know where that is?” She knew. “We'll go there and wait two days, and in the meantime Papacito can load the silver and bring it to us. He can cover it with wood or something to fool anybody who may get curious. I don't care how he does it, just so he does it.”
She was beginning to get it now. Her eyes lit up, and I guess she was seeing herself as the belle of Sonora, dressed in silks and satins and cutting quite a figure. The real reason I wanted her along never occurred to her.
But it did to the old man. He jumped up from the table and began to jabber in that spick language, and I could see that he was telling Marta that he wasn't going to do it. But Marta was still seeing herself with all the things that silver could buy. That was one picture that she liked, and she wasn't going to have it ruined, Papacito or no Papacito. Before I knew it, the whole thing got out of control. Marta's eyes spat fire and they stood there in the middle of the room yelling at each other.
I had to break it up myself. I stepped in and shoved Marta against the wall. The old man yelled louder than ever, so I shoved him down in his chair and whipped my hand back and forth across his mouth, crack, crack, like a mule skinner two days behind schedule and laying on the leather.
That quieted things down for a minute. Marta stood against the wall, her eyes still flashing. She hadn't liked the way I shoved the old man around, and I hadn't enjoyed it much myself. But sooner or later somebody was going to have to step in and declare himself boss. So that was what I did.
I got hold of Marta's arm and quieted her down. “I'm sorry,” I said. “But we can't stand here yelling at each other. We haven't got time for it. For all I know, Kreyler and his boys may be right outside the door getting ready to shoot hell out of everything.”
I said, “Has the old man got it straight what he's to do with the silver? We pull out of here tonight and head for Three Mile Cave. Tomorrow he loads the silver on his burros and meets us at the cave the next day. Tell him again.”
She shrugged and told him again, and the old man didn't like it any better this time than he had the first.
“We'd better do something to impress it on his mind,” I said. “Tell him we're taking you as hostage. If he doesn't show up with the silver he'll never see you again.”
She wasn't so sure that she liked that, but she understood that it was the only way of being sure of that silver. So she told him.
The old man stared at me for a long while with those hate-filled eyes, and then he started breaking up in little pieces. He dropped his head on the table and his shoulders began shaking. The silver would arrive on time.
But in the meantime we couldn't just leave it piled up in the middle of the room. I walked around the house, but there wasn't any place there to hide it. I went out in the yard and kicked around for a few minutes, waking up a hound dog and a few chickens. The chickens gave me an idea.
“Bring the stuff out here,” I called. “Johnny, give Marta a hand.”
I had the chickens scattered and squawking all over the place by the time they came out with the first load, but I also had a couple of empty chicken coops, which were just what we needed. We piled the silver in the back of the coops and shooed the chickens back in.
That about nailed things down. All we had to do now was to get out of Ocotillo, and we couldn't do it too fast to suit me. We went back in the house and I said, “Well, Bama, I guess this is good-by.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Good-by to Ocotillo,” he said lazily. “I've been saying that ever since I got her, but I never left the place. Maybe I never will now.”
“Sure you will,” I said. “I'll have the old man give you some silver. All you can carry. When your leg gets better you can pull out of here. Maybe we'll meet up in Mexico sometime. You can't tell who you'll run into down there, they tell me.”
The kid came into the room just as I was finishing my speech. I turned and said. “We've got to get a horse for Marta. I'll have to see if I can get back to the livery barn—if Kreyler's men haven't already missed us and started tearing things up.”
“You mean two horses, don't you, Mr. Cameron?” the kid said. “Bama hasn't got a way to travel.”
“Bama's not going,” I said.
I don't think he even heard me, or if he did, he didn't believe me. “He sure can't stay here,” he went on. “He would be the only one left who knew about the ledger, and you know what Kreyler would do to him about that.”
“Kreyler can have the ledger,” I said. “It doesn't make any difference now.”
But he still couldn't believe that I was going to leave Bama behind. Bama was my friend. Bama was a man you could put your trust in. You didn't go off and leave friends to wait for what was almost certain death.
“Look,” I said. “We've got a long ride ahead of us and it's no kind of trip for a man with a hole in his leg.” I could have gone on arguing, trying to justify it, but what good would it do? It was a hard world, and sooner or later the kid had to learn that.
He began to get a stubborn look. He wanted to argue. Bama was watching us in a disinterested sort of way, as though he thought it might be kind of interesting to see how it-came out. But not too interesting.
