The Hot Country (23 page)

40

Slim gave me one sharp little nod and he lifted the extra rifle in his hand, also a Winchester, and he pushed it slightly in my direction. I lifted my pistol in response: The Browning and I had an understanding now. Slim kept the extra rifle and I knew we were about to head for the house, but Slim's eyes moved to my wounded arm and it was like the cue for the pain to enter stage left. A thin strip of flame. I looked.
The bullet had ripped about four inches of the sleeve of my mohair suit coat and, of course, out of sight, ripped the layers of shirt and flesh beneath, and all around the rip the light gray of the coat had gone dark, was even tingeing red, and now, come to think of it, I could feel the warm wet imprint on my arm and even a single far-falling rivulet of my blood down my forearm to my wrist.

I holstered my pistol and removed my passport from my inner coat pocket. I put it in my pants pocket, took off my coat and tossed it away, and the sleeve of my white shirt was crimson and Slim was moving toward me and I turned to the
colorado
I'd killed and I stepped to him and bent to him and I unknotted the red bandana on his throat and pulled it free and I straightened and Slim was beside me now and he knew what I was intending. He took the bandana from me and he wrapped it tight around my wound. “Nice and neat,” he said. “A graze.” And he was cinching it and knotting it and it was done, and without another word we beat it across the yard and I looked for and counted the
colorados'
empty dismounts as we went—ten—and I glanced at Slim and he'd been counting too and we plunged through the front door.

The great, empty, looted receiving room had seven men, all dead, one of them right before us and we vaulted it, one more near the door—these two with red bandanas—and then four of Slim's boys scattered about, a cluster by the fireplace, another in the middle of the room where he'd stood to shoot. And across the broad tile floor was the doorway to the inner galleria with the courtyard beyond, and that was the area where the now-deafening ruckus was happening. Eight more
colorados
somewhere in there, though maybe not all still alive, and I didn't know how many of Slim's boys were left.

He and I headed for the windows flanking the doors, him left and me right. I was on my own now and I hit the wall at the far side of the window and pressed back against it and I went low, just my arms and shoulders and head ready to show themselves, and then I looked out the window, ready quickly to withdraw, and I had two
colorados
right before me in the galleria, shooting into the courtyard from behind posts.

They were close enough that I didn't have to hang out the window. I pulled back to the wall, stood up and squared around to the room, took two paces in, turned and sidestepped to frame these two
colorados
in the window. I extended my arms—the left hurting like a son of a bitch now, but workable still—and I steadied my hands and I started to draw a bead on the middle of the back of the guy on the right and Slim opened up with his Mauser from the other window on somebody else and my two guys were jerking around.

I squeezed off a round and the
colorado
I was shooting for spun and I wasn't sure I got him but his chest was before me now and I put one in the center to make sure and he flew back and the other one had located me and his rifle was swinging my way and he'd have me in his sights before I could have him in mine so I squeezed off another round as I threw myself to the right and his shot traveled through the space I was in.

I scrambled up and back to the wall beside the window. I didn't know if there was another round left in my pistol. I popped the magazine just in case and grabbed one from the pouch on my hip and punched it in, hoping while I was working at it that the other
colorado
wouldn't lean in at the window, gunning for me. But Slim continued to fire. He'd take care of my unfinished business.

Shooting the bad guys from behind suddenly registered in me: Besides the three that Slim and I took care of, three other
colorado
horsemen went around to the back of the house. If there were no targets out there and no one was trying to escape through the rear, the
colorados
would go inside to pick off our courtyard
Villistas
from behind.

I turned to Slim. He'd pulled out of the window and pushed up against the wall and was stripper-clip filling his Mauser's magazine. I lifted my pistol and set myself to cover him, just in case someone burst in.

“Slim!” I called while he finished loading. “The horsemen heading for the back.”

He chambered a round and was ready and he'd heard me, he knew my concern: He waved his arm to me, a swooping angle out the front door and around the house.

I started to move. He held up his hand to stop me. He reached for the Winchester leaning against the wall next to him.

This was prudent. I holstered my Browning, took a step toward him, and he tossed the Winchester to me clean and slick, vertical all the way, and I caught it and he lifted his Mauser and pointed it out the window. I broke for the front door, giving a quick look over my shoulder to the door behind me as I came into its line of view. It was empty.

I pulled up at the front and checked outside and I was clear here too and I stepped through and beat it along the front of the
casa
. I stopped at the corner, checked again, and then sprinted the length of the house, pumping the lever on the Winchester, ready for my first shot. There still was steady gunfire inside and I arrived at the crucial back corner. I crouched low.

I had to make sure I drew a good bead on the first one I tried to take out.

I slowly opened my line of sight beyond the corner, and long before I could look down the house toward the door, I saw the stables a hundred yards off, and about halfway between, cantering this way on a chestnut, was one of the three
colorados
. I pulled back out of his view and I stood and backed away from the corner a couple of steps, a bit more than the length of my raised barrel, and I took two steps to my right, pulling the Winchester up to my shoulder, hoping it was sighted properly, and I went quickly to my set position and found him along my barrel and he still didn't notice me and I had him and I tracked with him and I squeezed the trigger and absorbed the kick and even from where I was I could hear him go “Ooff,” which may have meant he was only winged, but he was falling backward anyway, he was off his horse and going down.

I'd have a few seconds of confusion from the other two if they were closer to the house. They probably heard the man's sound but they had to turn and find him and I was still not showing to them and they wouldn't have a fix on the direction of the shot and maybe it even got lost in the other gunfire going on from inside, and I strode forward past the corner into full view and spun left and crouched flat-footed as low as I could get and I set myself for a shot even before I took in the targets and the nearest
colorado
had just come down off his horse and the other was vanishing into the rear door of the
casa
—he was about to do some damage in there—but I wouldn't let him have any back-up in the meantime: the guy just off his horse was snapping his head toward me, having just looked in the direction of the man I shot and the spooked chestnut that was rushing his way, and he saw me now and my initial set was off and I was swinging my rifle toward him and he happened already to be holding his rifle pretty much directly at me, for all the rotten luck, and I squeezed off a shot a little bit quick and I winged him in the side, and his horse—a nice-looking pinto—reared and whinnied in pain, my bullet having grazed the
colorado
and entered his horse's side, and it bolted away and I centered the man before he could get back to me and I plugged him in the gut, which I didn't mean to do either. He went down and he wouldn't be killing me, but he wouldn't be dying really promptly either, and I regretted both horse and man, and I knew that taking time to regret was the biggest danger to my own life at the moment and I put all this away, put it all out of my head because this was a goddam war that I was in the middle of and I wanted to survive it and I was upright once more and I sprinted to the doorway and stopped. The empty room was around the corner of this doorway and the courtyard action was beyond, but the guy who went in may have known something was wrong behind him, though he couldn't have seen the fall of his fellow
colorado
who was supposed to be at his side by now—that one was moaning behind me, away from the door—but the guy inside maybe saw the pinto bolt. This was a corner I was not wanting to peek around. But it had to be done. I did it quick. And what I saw made me look again.

The man who went in was lying dead on his back in the center of the floor, halfway to the doorway to the inner galleria. Standing in that doorway was the mustachioed
Villista
I kicked in the balls yesterday. He was surprised to see me. I stepped full into the doorway and raised my Winchester into a vertical position. I gave the rifle a little lift and I said to him, “I took care of the other two.”

The
Villista
was holding a Colt revolver in each hand and I was sure something in him wanted to use one of them on me. But I'd made it clear that I was on his side and had even been useful, and his eyes moved to my left arm, which reminded me that it was hurting like hell. He nodded minutely, but he crossed to me and I stepped aside, thinking he wanted to pass. He did, but he stopped first and looked at the wound again. Then he looked me grimly in the eyes. “I'm good with the needle and the thread,” he said, and he cracked me a grin.

“No goddam way,” I said, and his grin turned into a laugh, like we'd been spending the last hour getting chummy-drunk together. He stepped past me and looked out to the first
colorado
I hit, who was lying real still and was probably dead. And then the
Villista
and I both heard the other guy start a new round of moaning from his gut shot. We turned to him. Before I could say a word, the
Villista
stepped to the man on the ground, lifted his pistol, and shot him in the head.

41

It took much of the morning to prepare to decamp. We buried the dead. Eight of ours. Sixteen of theirs, four of whom were wounded and were still alive and were summarily dispatched where they lay. Slim made it clear that we were burying the
colorados
only because we might want to use this
hacienda
again and it was easier to deal with their bodies now. Our men went into individual graves, the
colorados
went into one, and six of their heads went up on the spikes of the front gate with their identifying red bandanas tied on them like they were peasant girls.

We tended to our own half dozen wounded. Two were in bad shape, but we dug out their slugs and cleaned and bound their wounds and filled them with whiskey and strapped them to their horses, and a couple of the religious among us said a prayer for them.

My new-buddy
Villista
did indeed get a shot at sewing up the arm of the guy who kicked him in the balls. Hernando Soto. He told me his name and I told him mine and he did not even smile as he doused me with the fire from a phial of iodine and then he focused on my wound with absolute concentration, protruding and gently biting his tongue through the whole process. He sewed me up with a meticulous delicacy that I could only describe as feminine.

And when he was done, I said, “
Gracias, mi amigo
.”

And he said, very softly, “
Viva Mexico
.”

“
Viva Mexico,
” I said.

And we rounded up the riderless horses and packed them with loot from the train and the canteens of the dead for the dry and sun-emblazoned ride before us, and we gathered in front of the
hacienda,
many of us still on foot, and we were ready to ride. But suddenly all the men of Pancho Villa's train-robbing gang gathered around me, including those already on their horses, who came down to stand with the others.

Slim stepped forward. In his hand he held a sombrero the gray-green color of maguey leaves, the base of the crown rimmed in darker green from sweat, the front of the brim pinned up. He unclasped the pin and threw it aside, straightened the brim. He held the hat out to me.

I hesitated for a moment, and he identified the hat. “The
colorado
you killed for me,” he said.

I looked at all the faces arrayed before me, dark in the shadows of their sombreros. They had that placid inertness which was a fighting man's stare of respect.

I reached up and stripped the fedora from my head and tossed it aside. I took the sombrero from Slim and lifted it and put it on my head. It fit me as if I'd carefully chosen it at a hatter on Michigan Avenue. There was now a moment and then another in which these faces before me did not change but held their expression and in which no one spoke a word, and another moment, and then, as one, we all broke and mounted our horses and we headed north.

Had I killed a man before? For all the men I'd watched die in battle, for all the scrapes I'd gotten into so I could write stories about men dying in battle, until this morning I had never killed a man. But for a long while on the day when I'd done this thing for the first time, as I rode with the
Villistas,
wearing that man's hat, which fit my own head precisely, I could only think about the pinto I'd inadvertently shot in the side. I could only hear the pinto neighing in pain and galloping off as if it could outrun this burning in its side. Before we'd left the
hacienda
I'd mounted my horse and ridden around for a while in the land behind the
casa
to see if I could find the pinto to at least put him out of his pain. But I couldn't find him. And on the ride north I thought and thought and I couldn't stop thinking about where he was right now, how hard it surely was for even an animal to die alone. I worried about the horse and not the men I'd killed. Horses are innocent. We men kill each other in wars because men are guilty. We are all guilty.

And eventually Slim made a point of dropping back and riding by my side. Slim and I rode together through the high-plateau desert of
estado
Coahuila, and we didn't say a word to each other. We rode together because I saved his life and he saved mine.