his deputy.
“What the hell do you want of us?” Miguel raged.
“Until now nothing,” don JoaquIn, the uncle, answered, his voice calm. “We are most astonished that you want to leave us in such a hurry, without taking your burros and your packs with you. Why, friends? We haven’t harmed you. We are here to trade for your burros.”
Miguel, who understood the cold irony of the mayor, shouted: “We may do what we like with our burros. We may take them with us or leave them here and give them away for one peso if we want to.”
Don Joaquin smiled at Miguel. “With your burros you may, of course, do as you like. But these are not your burros. I know the whole story of these animals. Dona Rafaela sold them some ten or eleven months ago to three Americans who went into the Sierra to hunt big game.”
Miguel detected a hole by which he hoped to get out. He grinned and said: “That’s right, quite right, senor alcalde. Those are the three Americans we bought the burros from.”
“At what price, may I ask?”
“Twelve pesos apiece.”
“And you are so rich that you want to sacrifice these animals for four pesos apiece?”
The villagers broke into roaring laughter.
Don Joaquin went on with his cross-examination with all the shrewdness of an intelligent Mexican farmer. He proved that the citizens of the community were wise when they elected him for their alcalde.
“You told me only a halfhour ago that you have owned these animals for a long time. Isn’t that so?”
“Sure, senor.”
“How long would you say?”
Miguel thought for a few seconds, then blurted out: “Four months, I would say.” He remembered that not so long ago he had said that they had worked in a mine and that since then they had made a long journey.
Dryly the alcalde spoke. “Four months? Huh! This is certainly a very strange story. I might say it is even almost a sort of miracle. The Americans crossed the Sierra only a few days ago. Farmers out hunting and others working in their milpas saw them and reported them to me. When they were seen only a few days ago, they still had all the burros with them—the same burros you bought from them four months ago.”
Miguel tried his smart confidential smile again. “To tell you the truth, por el alma de mi madre, and cross my heart, senor alcalde, we bought the burros only two days ago from those Amencanos.”
“That looks better.”
Miguel shot his partners a triumphant glance. They ought to be proud to have such a great leader.
Don JoaquIn, however, did not let him get out of his net. “But there cannot have been three Americans, because I know that one of them is staying in a village on the opposite slope of the Sierra. He is a great doctor and medicine-man.”
“The fact is, senor alcalde, we bought the burros from one American only.” Miguel scratched his head and looked at his partners for assistance.
“Where did you buy the burros?”
“In Durango, senor, in a fonda where the American stopped for the night.”
“That seems rather unbelievable. The American could hardly have been in Durango when you were there to buy the burros. Not with these heavy packs and not plodding up the steep trails back up here, as you had to do. You can’t very well have met him in Durango and then already reached here again.”
“We marched the whole night through, senor. Didn’t we, companeros?”
His two partners vehemently admitted this.
“What I cannot understand,” the alcalde said, searching the faces of the three, “is that this American should have sold you his burros while he was in Durango, where he could find enough buyers and could wait a few days until he could get the price he expected. In Durango he would not have had to sell such good animals for twelve pesos.”
Nacho, who wanted to show his cleverness and perhaps even to outsmart Miguel, came close to the mayor. “How do we know the reason why that goddamned gringo sold us the burros and didn’t want to trade with anybody else?”
Said Miguel: “Yes, how can we know? Gringos are funny that way, they sure are. They don’t act at all as we do. They are often cracked in their brains, see?”
“All right. If the American sold you the burros, where is the bill of sale? You must have it with the brands of the animals written in, the sex, the color, and the name they are called by, if any. If you have no bill of sale dona Rafaela may at any time claim the burros as her own, since they carry the registered brand of her ranch.”
To this Nacho answered: “He didn’t write out a bill of sale because he didn’t want to pay for the stamps on the document, as required by the government.”
“That’s right,” Miguel said, and Pablo nodded his head.
“In that case you would have paid the few centavos for the stamps yourself, just to avoid any complications. What are a few centavos compared with the many pesos you paid for the burros?”
“Well, we hadn’t the centavos to buy the stamps in the public tax office.”
“You mean to tell me you could buy the burros and pay, let’s say, in the neighborhood of about ninety pesos, and that you hadn’t the one peso and eighty centavos left to pay for the stamps? You mean to tell me this?”
Miguel, realizing that the net in which he and his partners were caught was tightening, flew into a rage. He yelled like mad: “Damn it to hell and chinganse sus madres and I don’t know what else! This is going too far. What do you want of us?” He swung both his fists and looked at the men around him as if he were threatening them all. “We are walking peacefully on our way, pass this place quietly, and you people come up, surround us as if we were funking bandits, and keep us by force from going on our way. What does this mean? We’ll send in our complaints to the state governor and make him dismiss you from office for abusing your authority, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Well, this is beyond my comprehension.” The alcalde smiled at the villagers, then turned again to the three thieves: “You come here to our village without having been invited and offer us burros for sale. We are willing to buy the burros and we are agreed upon the price. Don’t you think we have the right to investigate your ownership of these animals? If we did not and should buy them and they should later prove to be stolen, we might have the federal soldiers here in no time and they would shoot every man found to possess one of these burros as a just punishment for rustling and banditry. We might even be accused of having killed the former owner of the animals. What then?”
Miguel gave his partners a quick glance. “We don’t want to sell the burros at all. Not even for ten pesos each. We want to be on our way.”
“You might sell us the hides and the tools?” the alcalde suggested cunningly.
Miguel hesitated. He was not sure that another trap was not being laid for him. Then he remembered that the hides and the tools carried no brand. “All right, senores, if you wish to buy the hides and the tools. What do you say, companeros?” he asked his partners, hoping to shift attention from himself.
“We might,” they answered.
“They belong to you?” the alcalde asked.
“Of course, what do you think?” Miguel replied.
“Why didn’t the American sell the hides in Durango? Why did you bring them up here to sell? Do you also carry water to the river?”
“The prices were not so good in Durango.”
“So you thought they might be better up here in the mountains, where we can get them without paying for them in money?”
Miguel was trying to think of an answer, but before he succeeded the alcalde said curtly: “Did the American go to the depot naked?”
“What do you mean by that crack?” Miguel’s face paled until it was a dirty gray.
“Don’t you have on your feet the American’s boots? And isn’t this man by your side wearing his pants? Why is no one wearing the American’s shirt, which was fairly good, as I know from the reports? It was far better than any of yours.”
None of the three rascals spoke.
“Why didn’t one of you three take his shirt? Well, I can tell you why.”
