The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (41 page)

“Neighbors came in to see the stranger; also the medicine-man, our native bone-setter, a very good old man with much experience, who looked carefully at the white man and said: ‘That man is not dead. He is only very sick and very weak from loss of blood and the struggle to crawl through the woods.’ That’s what he said.

“Then he called for Filomeno, who has a good horse, and who should ride over to this village here and call for the white doctor who is here, because our medicine-man thinks that the white doctor might know better how to cure his own kind.

“Now, I am Filomeno, see, and so I took my horse, saddled it, and rode over here like the devil to fetch you, senor doctor, and make you look at your brother. We all think that you can cure him, for he is not dead, he is only very weak, and you may know a white man’s nature better than we do. You can save him if you will come with me right now.”

“What does the white man look like, Filomeno?” Howard asked.

Filomeno described him so well that you could imagine the man was standing before you. Howard knew that it was Curtin, and he felt sure that Curtin and Dobbs had been waylaid by bandits.

Howard was offered the best horse his host had, and his host and three villagers accompanied him to the little pueblo. It was a long way off, and the trail was difficult, as all trails are in the Sierra Madre.

3

When Howard and his friends arrived at the village, Curtin had already slightly recovered. The women of the house where he was staying had been more practical than their men. They had washed his wounds with hot water and poured into them mescal, a very strong native brandy. Then they had dressed the wounds as well as they could. One of the women had killed a chicken and made a good broth with half a dozen different herbs boiled in it, which had a very stimulating effect upon the wounded man.

Curtin had come to and had told the villagers what had happened to him. He said robbers had shot him from ambush. He did not mention Dobbs, for he didn’t want Dobbs to be pursued, on account of the packs, which might get lost some way or other. He knew that with the help of the old man he would get that scoundrel soon enough without any outside assistance.

When he had given Howard a true account, he asked: “What do you think, Howy, of that deal he gave me? Would you ever have expected anything like that from a pal? He bumped me off in cold blood without even giving me a dirty dog’s chance.”

“But I can’t see why!”

“Quite simple. I didn’t want to join him in robbing you and making off with your goods. He played the old racket, pretending he had to shoot in self-defense, that rascal did. Well, I could have agreed to his plans until we reached the port, and there I could have said that the deal was off. But there was one thing I thought of: you might have come sooner than we expected and have believed that I wanted to betray you. It would have been difficult for me to explain things as they really were. He might have bumped me off anyway, to make sure that he would get the whole load.”

“That’s a pal, a great pal!”

“You’re telling me! He slugged me in my left breast and left me lying in the woods. But now I can’t quite figure one thing. I’ve got another wound I can’t account for. I almost think that the beastly rascal came again in the middle of night and slugged me another one to make sure of the job.”

“How did you get out?”

“During the night I came to, and thinking he would come in the morning to see if I still had a flicker of life, I crawled away. As I inched along the ground, I came upon my gun, which he seems to have thrown beside me to make it look like suicide or a decent fight. There were four empty shells in it, so I think that dirty rat slugged me with my own gat.”

“Now keep quiet and don’t get overexcited or it won’t be so good for your lungs,” Howard warned.

“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be all right, if only to get that stinking funker. Well, to finish up. I staggered along in the opposite direction from the place where he camped. Early in the morning I came upon an Indian coalburner. When he first saw me he wanted to cut me into pieces with his machete. Then he tried to run away. I had quite a bit of trouble convincing him, weak as I was, that I was as harmless as a snail and that he should help me out and take me with him to his home. But then, on realizing that I was in terrible need, he was the finest guy you can think of, whiter than plenty of our own mugs. Without his help I certainly would have died a most miserable death, worse than a rat in a gutter.”

“So it appears that our fine Mr. Dobbs has made off with the whole train, leaving us cold.”

“Apparently, old man.”

Howard meditated for a while; then he said: “Come to think of it, you can’t blame him.”

“Meaning what?” Curtin asked, as though he had not heard right.

“Meaning that I think he’s not a real killer and robber, as killers go. It’s rather difficult to explain it to you, with the slugs in you. You see, I think at bottom he’s as honest as you and me. The mistake was that you two were left alone in the depths of the wilderness with almost fifty thousand clean cash between you two. That is a goddamned temptation, believe me, partner. Being day and night on lonely trails without ever meeting a human soul—that gets on your mind, brother. That eats you up. I know it. Perhaps you felt it, too. Don’t deny it. You may have only forgotten how you felt at certain times. The wilderness, the desolate mountains, cry day and night in your ears: ‘We don’t talk. It will never come out. Do it. Do it right now. At that winding of the trail do it. Here’s the chance of your lifetime. Don’t miss it. You have only to grasp it and it is yours. No one will ever know. No one can ever find out. Take it, it’s yours for the taking. Don’t mind a life, the world is crowded with mugs like him.’ If you ask me, partner, I’d like to know the man on earth who could resist trying it without nearly going mad. If I were still young and I had been alone with you or with him, to tell you the truth, Curty, I might have been tempted too. And I wonder, if you search your mind very carefully, if you won’t find that you had similar ideas on this lonely march. That you didn’t act on them doesn’t mean that you felt no temptation. You may have got hold of yourself just before the most dangerous moment.”

“But he had no scruples, no conscience, I know. I knew it long before.”

“He had as much conscience as we would have had under similar circumstances. Where there is no prosecutor, there is no defendant. Don’t forget that. All we have to do now is to find that cheat and get our money back.”

4.

Howard wanted to go after Dobbs at once so as to overtake him in Durango or at least in the port and so prevent him from crossing the border. Curtin was to stay in the village until fully recovered, when he would join Howard in port at the Southern Hotel.

When Howard told his Indian friends that he had to go to look after his property, as Curtin was sick, the Indians agreed, though they were sorry to have him go.

Next morning Howard was on his way to Durango on a good horse. His brown friends did not allow him to go alone. They insisted on going with him to protect him against any accident of the sort Curtin had encountered.

They had passed the next village when they met on the trail the alcalde don JoaquIn, who, accompanied by six of his men, were bringing Howard his burros and the packs.

Howard, seeing his train complete, asked the alcalde: “Well, amigo mio, where is the American who was with the train? I don’t see him. His name is Dobbs.”

“He was slain by bandits not far from Durango,” the alcalde answered. “We buried him with prayers and with a cross. He is resting in a blessed grave.”

“Did they get the bandits?”

“Yes, senor doctor, we caught them in our village, where they wanted to sell the burros. They were taken away yesterday by the Federales and will be shot for banditry.”

Howard looked at the packs and found them smaller than he remembered them.

He dismounted in a hurry, ran to the nearest pack, and opened it with nervous haste. The hides were there, but no little bags. He ran to another pack and opened it with trembling fingers. No bags were inside.

“Friends,” he shouted, “we must overtake the bandidos. I must ask them something. I want to know what they’ve done with a number of little bags made of rags and sackcloth which were in these packs. They contained sand and dust which we meant to take to town to be tested by learned men so as to find what sort of minerals the soil holds.”

“It may take us two days to reach the soldiers who are marching the bandits to the military post. They must be at the post by now. We will have to take a different direction and be quick, for once these bandoleros have arrived at the post, it will be only two hours before they are court-martialed, and after two hours more they will be shot,” the alcalde explained. “Then it will be too late to ask them anything.”

He gave orders to four of his men to take the train to his brother-in-law’s house in the pueblo where Howard was living, telling them that he and the white doctor would come a few days later as they were going after the soldiers.

When they were ready to start, one of the Indians who had come with the mayor said to Howard: “Oiga, senor doctor, listen, is it only about these little bags you want to ask the bandoleros?”

“Precisely, that’s it, amigo, nothing else. I only want to know what they’ve done with these little bags.”

“I can tell you, maybe, senor doctor, and then perhaps we won’t have to go after the soldiers.”

“Yes, go on, tell me, digale,” Howard urged.

“Mire, senor doctor, look here. I was one of the men that were ordered by our alcalde to guard the bandits while our alcalde and our head of police went to look for the body of your good companero who was murdered. Well, we were sitting there and talking in a friendly way. We even played cards with the bandoleros, because we didn’t know what to do all the time. We gambled for cigarettes for fun. And of course we talked a lot. The bandits told us about their life, where they had worked and in how many jails they had been and how many times they had escaped and all the nasty things they had done. They wanted to show us what great guys they really were.”

“Yes?” Howard knew that he must not press these people when they are telling stories. If they are interrupted, they become easily confused. He just listened with eager attention, even to those details which were of no interest to him. He knew the story-teller would finally come to the point. It was the same with his patients, who in explaining their sicknesses, usually began by telling how many sheep their grandfathers had owned.

“So they talked and we listened. Then they said that there were more thieves and bandits in the world than themselves, and that some of them look like honest, decent men. Pardon me, senor doctor, if I say this, I feel sorry to tell you, but by these ugly words he meant you and especially the American whose head they had cut off with a machete. They said that this man was as big and dirty a thief—excuse me again, senor doctor, for saying that about your good friend—yes, they said that this American was as dirty and stinking a thief as they were themselves. He was even worse. He had put among all the hides little bags filled with sand and dirt so as to cheat the poor man in Durango who was going to buy the hides late in the evening when he could not see well. The hides would not be opened; the buyer, trusting the American, would just look at the outside of them. Inside the hides there were hidden the little heavy bags with sand to increase the weight of the hides, which would be sold by weight, not separately. So when the bandits came to the woods, they opened the packs to see how much they had made, and when they saw that in these little bags there was only sand and dirt to cheat the honest tanners in Durango, they emptied the bags and scattered the sand all over the ground. I don’t know where this was done, and the wind will have carried the sand away anyhow. It lessened the weight of the packs, and so the burros, with less to carry, could get up here in the Sierra, where they hoped to sell the burros, more quickly. Now you know, senor doctor, what became of the bags, and perhaps there is no reason to follow the soldiers to ask the bandits about it, since the sand cannot be found—not even the place in the woods where it was poured out of the bags, for it was dark, and they had left the trail, for fear of meeting people.”

“Thank you, my friend, for your story,” Howard said, with a very sour face. “No, there is no longer any reason to go after them. They didn’t carry any of these little bags with them when they were arrested?”

“Not one,” the Indian replied. “They had only the boots of the man they had killed and his pants and a few centavos. It wasn’t much. And a pocketknife. Everything else is still in the packs. They didn’t sell anything on their way up here to our village, for they met no one who could buy. So there is only very little lost, senor doctor. Everything is in the packs just as you packed it. Only the sand is gone, of course.”

“Yes, of course, only the sand is gone.” Howard meditated for a few seconds as though he wanted to get the whole affair well fixed in his mind. Then he let out such a roar of Homeric laughter that his companions thought him crazy.

“Well, amigos finos, don’t mind my laughing. This is the biggest and best joke I ever heard in all my life.” And he laughed again until his belly ached. The Indians, supposing he was overjoyed about something, fell in with him, laughing as heartily as he did, without knowing what it all was about.

5

“So we have worked and labored and suffered like galley-slaves for the pleasure of it,” Howard said to Curtin when he finished his story. “Anyway, I think it’s a very good joke—a good one played on us and on the bandits by the Lord or by fate or by nature, whichever you prefer. And whoever or whatever played it certainly had a good sense of humor. The gold has gone back where we got it?”

Curtin, however, was not so philosophical as Howard. He was in a bad mood. All their hard work and privations had been for nothing.

“The whole output of our mine could be had for a bag of tobacco, had we met the bandits in time and asked them for that sand.” Howard again burst out laughing.