didn’t, when I slugged him. He did not whine or make a sound. Just dropped like a felled tree. The blood that trickled from his breast and soaked his shirt was the only thing that moved. When I came with that burning stick and looked at him once more, his face was white. I thought I might have the quivers, but, hell, I didn’t. And why should I? I could have laughed. That’s what I could. Laughed right out. He looked so funny the way his legs and arms were twisted about. Almost like a coiled snake. It sure was funny.” Dobbs laughed. “Just a slug and finished a whole guy that cared so much about his life and work. Funny, things are. Really funny. All things are funny.”
He smoked and watched the little clouds before his face. “If I only had the slightest notion where that body can be! I simply can’t figure it out. Carried off by a lion? Likely. Lots of mountain lions about. Found by an Indian and taken to his village? No, I don t think so. Anyway, suppose the body was carried away by a tiger or a cougar; I would have seen the tracks where he was dragged over the ground. The trouble is I didn’t look for tracks, I looked just for him. That was the mistake I made. Hell, I should have looked more carefully for tracks of wild beasts. Now, let’s see. Yes, I think that tiger, or what it was, took him up in his jaws and carried him off without leaving any tracks. That’s it. Hell, tigers are strong. Musta been a big tiger, a tigre real, a royal tiger. Those big tigers are awfully strong and can easily carry away a whole cow, jumping with her over a fence. They are really big and strong.”
Dobbs felt satisfied with the explanation he had given himself.
“Perhaps he isn’t dead at all. Aw, nonsense. He’s dead all right. I slugged him fine. Didn’t I see the blood, and his white face, and his twisted body, and his closed eyes, which didn’t quiver, not a bit, when I touched them with the burning stick? He was as dead as that stone here. He sure was.”
Dobbs grew uneasy. He began to shiver. He stirred the fire and pushed in a few more logs. He looked down across the plains, hoping to see flickers of light from the huts where small farmers lived. He turned his head toward the brush, sure that he heard someone coming.
At last he could sit no longer. He had to stand up and walk about the fire. He told himself he did so only because he felt cold and had to walk to get warm. But the truth was that he wanted to look around freely. He would have felt better had he had a high brick wall against his back, to be sure that no one could be behind him.
As he stood quietly for a moment, he thought he felt somebody behind him, so close that he had the sensation of breath on his neck. He imagined he felt the point of a knife in his back. He sprang forward, drew his gun, and, turning, aimed at—nothing. No one was threatening him. He saw nothing but the dark shadows of the burros grazing peacefully near the camp. Dobbs looked at them and thought for a second how happy animals are because they cannot think, as human beings can.
He told himself that he was not nervous at all; that in the wilderness one must be always on guard. To be always on the alert is the mark of a true woodman, and it has nothing whatever to do with what people call conscience. That’s sheer nonsense. Alone and so far from civilization and with valuable goods, one cannot be too careful. Anybody might sneak up from behind and try to get the better of him and then make off with the booty. “Not me,” Dobbs said half aloud, “no one can get me that easy. I know how to protect my hide. I’m not a yellow sissy like that Laky guy or that Cu—well, he had no guts. I’m tough, I sure am. No sneaking up behind me. No, sir.”
He made an effort to chuckle and sat down by the fire and tried to concentrate his thoughts on the job of cleaning his pipe.
3
Next morning Dobbs could not leave as early as he had planned. Several of the burros had strayed. He had been careless last night in hobbling them, and they had gone looking for better pasture. He lost hours in rounding them up.
The trail soon ran into a wide dirt road covered with fine dust and sand that made traveling on it a torture.
Dobbs figured he would be in Durango about three in the afternoon. Had it not been for the loss of so many valuable hours in the morning, he would have been at the first houses of the town by now.
The road was tiresome to travel. One side of it lay along cultivated fields, now dried up for months. The rich soil was at present like powder. The other side of the road was partly walled in by a long hill of soft earth, a sort of clay of a yellowish, brownish color. Thorny bushes and magueys and nopales and organos growing along the road and partly fencing in the fields were thickly covered with white dust.
When a breeze rose, huge clouds of dust swept over the fields and made the road ahead almost invisible, as if wrapped in a heavy fog. Often Dobbs could not see farther ahead than ten feet. But this was not the real trouble, because he and the animals could find their way. It was the heavy dust sweeping in from all directions, which made breathing a real pain. The fine sand, which was like powdered glass, nearly blinded Dobbs, reddening his eyes and making it painful to open or close them. Above was a merciless sun, the pitiless sun of midday in the tropics. For months the earth had waited for rain, and not a drop had fallen in this section. The heat broke upon man and beast until they were numb in mind and body, so that they closed their eyes and staggered along not wishing anything from life but an end of this painful march.
The burros no longer strayed and nibbled at dry leaves of grass by the road. They plodded on like automatons. They hardly moved even their heads. From former experience they knew that a town means rest, protection against heat and dust, and water and food. So they hurried on toward this town, which to them, as to Dobbs, under these circumstances was the promised land.
Then, through his almost closed eyes Dobbs noted a few trees growing near the road. They were low, but they had thick, very wide crowns and offered a most welcome shade. Here he could sit down for a while and lean his tired body against a tree, have a drink of water and a smoke, and after that make the rest of the way refreshed. Even the burros would welcome the opportunity to stand in the shade for a few minutes.
The first shacks of the town were hardly five miles away.
4
Dobbs hurried ahead to turn the leading burro about. The animals came willingly to the trees. They panted, shook their heads to free them from horse-flies, and then moved slowly about in the cooling shade.
Dobbs went to one of the burros, took the water-bag from the saddle, rinsed his mouth of the dust which was grinding between his teeth, and then drank. He poured some water into his hands and wet his face and neck.
As he returned the water-bag to the saddle, he heard somebody say: “Tiene un cigarro, hombre? Have you got a cigarette?”
Dobbs started. This was the first human voice he had heard for days, and it came to his ears with a shock.
Although the words were spoken in Spanish, Dobbs thought first of Howard and Curtin, realizing at the same moment that they would not speak to him in this way.
Turning his head in the direction the voice had come from, he saw three ragged tramps lying in a hollow under one of the trees farthest away toward the field. They were mestizos, unwashed, uncombed, with ugly faces, types that are frequently met on the roads in the vicinity of cities, where they can sleep free of charge and wait for any opportunities the road may offer. Their look alone gave evidence that they had not worked for months and had reached the state where they no longer cared about finding a job, having tried in vain a thousand times. They were the human sweepings of the cities, left on the dumps of civilization, possibly escaped convicts, outlaws, fugitives from justice. They were the garbage of civilization with their headquarters near all the other garbage and junk a modern city spits out unceasingly day and night.
Seeing these three empty tin cans of modern civilization, Dobbs, once in his life having been one of them himself, knew immediately that he was in one of the toughest situations he would ever have to face. He realized that he had made a mistake in leaving the open road and turning to the trees. The road was only about fifty feet away, but screened by these trees many things could happen. And, of course, out on the road he might not have been much safer.
Dobbs had no plan. He could only try to gain time in the hope that someone might pass by whom he might hail. He might convince the thieves that he had no money and nothing of value, but this would not be easy; his
