The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (17 page)

“Got tobacco?” Dobbs asked.

“Yes, thanks.” He had no pipe. He rolled himself a cigarette rather expertly.

The partners began talking. By agreement they talked only about hunting, so as to drag the stranger off the real track. He, however, was not so dumb as to be caught that easily. They didn’t know much about hunting. Therefore their talk was not very convincing to a man who knew more about it than his hosts would ever learn. Several times they caught glances from him which showed them that he knew that they were not there merely for hunting, as they wanted him to believe.

He felt sorry for them, so he finished them up with a few strokes: “This is no hunting-ground here. Excuse me for butting in. There is no game here worth going after. It wouldn’t take one week for a real hunter to clean up all around for five miles in each direction.”

“My, my, what a smart guy we have with us!” Dobbs sneered.

“He’s right,” Howard said. “There’s no good hunting here. That’s why we’ve made up our minds to leave this ground inside of a week and look for something better. You are right, stranger; this is poor ground. It took us some time to find it out.”

The stranger looked at Howard with eyes partly closed. “Poor ground, you say? Depends what you call poor ground. There isn’t game enough here to give you a fair living. What really is here is something else. Something better.”

“And what is that, doctor, may I ask you?” Dobbs threw him a suspicious glance, and to hide his true feeling he emphasized his nasty tone.

“Gold, that’s what is here.” This very calmly from the stranger.

“There’s no gold hereabouts,” Curtin said, with a fluttering breath.

Howard smiled. “My boy, if there were one single ounce of gold here, I would sure have seen it. I know gold when I see it, believe me, stranger.”

“You look like you would. And if you say you haven’t found any gold here, then good night, sir; then you wouldn’t be the intelligent man I thought the minute I saw you here.” The stranger spoke very courteously.

None of the partners knew what to answer. They thought it wiser not to discuss this particular subject any further. Having shown no special interest in gold, they hoped that there might still be a chance to lead the stranger astray.

“Maybe,” Howard nodded. “Maybe you are right. Who knows? We’ve never thought about it. Gives me an idea. I’ll sleep over it, and so I guess I’ll hit the hay. Good night, and sweet dreams of sugars in silk undies.”

Dobbs and Curtin made an effort to follow up the old man in displaying indifference to the truckloads of gold that might be lying about, according to the stranger. They knocked their pipes clean, then they rose, stretched their limbs, yawned indecently, and trudged heavily to their tent.

“Until t’morrow, stranger.” Curtin nodded his head to the stranger, who was still sitting by the fire.

“You bet,” he said, looking after them.

He hadn’t been invited to spend the night in the tent, which was big enough to shelter three more men. He seemed not to mind.

He whistled. His riding-mule came hobbling along. He gave him a handful of corn which he had taken from the packs, patted the mule on the neck, and, with a slight kick in the hams, started it on its way back to the others. A minute later his pack-mule came and he treated it in the same way, leaving it to hobble after the first.

Again he went to his packs, brought his saddle and two blankets to the fire, arranged his bed, and, after pushing a couple of dead treetrunks into the fire, lay down to sleep. For a few minutes he hummed a tune while rolling himself snugly in his blanket, and then he was quiet.

4

There was less quietness in the tent, which was too far away from the fire for the stranger to distinguish all that was said there, though he could hear hushed voices.

“I am still of the opinion that we must get rid of him some Way,” Dobbs insisted.

Howard tried to calm him: “Hush, hush! Not so hot. We don’t know a damn thing about him yet. Give him a chance. To me he looks absolutely harmless. I would bet that he isn’t a spy for any outside party, government or highwaymen. If he were that he wouldn’t come alone, and he sure wouldn’t look so hungry.”

“Hungry, yea? He? You make me sick,” Dobbs interrupted the old man. “Did he eat? He hardly touched the food.”

“Come, come. If you are as dead tired as he seemed to be you can’t eat very well. I rather figure he has a guilty conscience. Guess he’s running away from something or somebody. Something or somebody is after him. It may not be just murder or a hold-up. There are other things. Often worse than the cops.”

Now Curtin spoke up. “Perhaps we could start a quarrel with him and make him boil over, and as soon as he draws, we could switch him off and be fully justified.”

“That doesn’t look so very swell to me.” Howard was sitting on his cot pulling off his boots. “No, I’m against it. It’s dirty_ would be dirty that way. It isn’t fair.”

“Oh hell, fair or no fair,” Dobbs howled, “we have to get rid of him. That’s all there is to it. He is warned about his health, isn’t he? If he doesn’t take heed, it’s his funeral.”

Stretched on their cots, they were still talking and trying to find a solution for the problem which so unexpectedly confronted them. All were agreed that the stranger was not welcome and that he had to be disposed of. Yet they also admitted that killing him had many disadvantages and only one benefit. And even this benefit was rather doubtful.

Finally they fell asleep without having reached any definite decision.

The next morning found the three partners very early by the fire. Having had a bad night with all sorts of heavy dreams, they were in as bad humor as a girl whose new white dress has been soiled by a passing motorist just three minutes before she is to meet the boy friend.

The stranger had been busy. Fuel was heaped by the fire, which was blazing, and his own cooking-kettles, with beans and coffee, were hanging over it.

Dobbs greeted him: “Hey, you mug, where did you get the water for your stuff?”

“I just took it from the bucket.”

“Oh, you did, did you? Fine. But don’t get the idea into your cone that we are pulling up the water for you. We don’t wait on anybody—least of all on a tramp like you.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t know that water was so hard to get here.”

“You know it now, and no more lip from you, you son of a bitch.”

“I’ll get the bucket filled for you.”

“Better hurry.”

At this moment Curtin came to the fire:’ “Water-stealing, hey? And stealing our fuel? What do you think you are, anyway? Just let me catch you once more taking one thing that belongs to us. Then I’ll fill your belly up, doggone it to hell.”

“I thought that perhaps I was among civilized men who would not mind letting me have a drink of fresh water,” he said very politely.

Dobbs was on his feet as though he had been sitting on a bomb. “You don’t mean to say that we can’t read or write, that we are just bandits and Sons of a dozen bitches? Is that it?” And without waiting for an answer he planted his fist in the stranger’s face with such force that he dropped full-length as if felled by a heavy club.

He needed time to come to. Slowly he rose and shook his head as if he wanted to find the full use of his neck again.

Then he came close to Dobbs and said: “I could easily do the same to you, and it isn’t settled yet who might come out the better of us two. What good would it do me? I know you three are only waiting for the moment I draw to catch me and bump me off the landscape. I won’t make it so easy for you. No fooling for me. Never mind, perhaps there will come a day when we shall have an accounting, and then we’ll look at the balance. This time I took it. Thanks for your kind attention.”

He went to the fire and lifted his kettles off. Just as he started to carry them away to another site, where he wanted to build his own fire, Howard approached him.

“Got something to eat, stranger?” Howard asked in a friendly voice.

“Yes, partner. I’ve got tea, coffee, beans, rice, dried meat, and two cans of milk.”

“Never mind your own eats. Today you may eat with us. But tomorrow I’d suggest you have your own kitchen ready.”

“Thanks. I certainly shall take your hint.”

“Tomorrow?” Dobbs, who by his victory had steamed off his anger, spoke less harshly. “Tomorrow? Now, listen here, stranger, what do you mean? You don’t mean to rent an apartment here and spend your vacation in our neighborhood? We sure wouldn’t be pleased to have you for our next-door family.”

“Who cares?” the stranger answered, throwing a few pinches of tea into his kettle, and without looking up from the boiling brew he added: “I mean to stay here. It’s pretty around here.”

Curtin with a voice louder than necessary said: “No parking here without our permission, partner.”

“Bush and mountains are free, ain’t they?”

“Not the way you think, friend,” Howard broke in. “Free is the bush, and the desert, and the woods, and the mountain ranges for whoever likes to camp there. In that you are right. But we were the first here; we’ve got the first claim.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s what you think. But how can you prove that you were really the first here on this spot? What if I was here long before you ever thought of coming?”

“Registered your claim?” Howard asked.

“Did you?”

“That’s beyond the point. We are here right now. And suppose you have been here before, as you say you have; why didn’t you stake it? Since you didn’t, you haven’t the slightest chance in any court if you mean to fight it out. Well, let’s have breakfast.”

2

Breakfast over, the partners did not know what to do. They couldn’t go to work at the mine, for the stranger would find them out.

Curtin then had an idea. He said that they all might go hunting together.

The stranger looked from one to another. He was not sure what was behind this proposal. The hunt might give the partners a great opportunity to get rid of him through an accident. Thinking this over, he concluded that if they meant to kill him they would do it anyhow, accident or no accident. They alone would be the witnesses.

So he said: “Okay with me. Today I’ll go hunting with you, but tomorrow I’ve got other things to do, more important things.”

“What?” the three partners asked almost simultaneously.

“Tomorrow I start to dig for gold here.”

“You don’t say so?” Howard had heard the word with a deep breath. He had become pale. So had his two partners.

“Yes, I’m going to prospect here. Right at this spot or somewhere around in the neighborhood. Here is the stuff I was looking for. If none of you have found anything here, that would only be evidence that all of you are boneheads. But I don’t think you are.”

“You’re smart, stranger,” Howard answered him. “Where would we be if it were not for you to show us the glory of heaven? My, my! What a great guy!”

“I figure you’ve scratched up, let’s say, around fifty ounces.”

“Or five hundred. Isn’t that what you mean?” Howard found it hard to open his mouth, which seemed to dry out. Dobbs and Curtin were without speech.

“Or five hundred. Right, partner. But here is at least an easy million, if you ask me and my grandfather.”

“A million?” Dobbs and Curtin shouted, and with this they were fully home again, color, breath, wet lips, moisture in the eyes, and all that they had lost during the last two minutes.

“Yes, a full uncut million. If you haven’t found it yet, it’s your fault, not the mountain’s. I know you haven’t got the rich pot yet, although you have been hanging around here eight months or nine. The Indians down in the valley told me that only one man was up here. If you had come upon the right entrance and knocked at the door behind which the treasure is open to view, you would have had so much that you would have left long ago, because you couldn’t carry all that’s here without arousing suspicion and being waylaid on your road home. Or you would have sent back just one man to get the claim legally registered and then have formed a regular mining company, with all the machinery and a hundred men working for you.”

“That so?” Dobbs said scoffingly. “Well, you may as well know facts. We haven’t got anything, nothing. See?”

The stranger could not be talked off. “You may tell me what you like. I don’t believe a word anyhow. I don’t care what you have, how much you have, whether you have anything at all, or what you are doing here. I’m not a baby. If I see three men living up here for eight months, then I know without a Bible that they are not staying for pleasure or for an ordinary fishing-trip. You can’t put this one over on me, partners. You’d better lay the cards on the table and then let’s see who has buried away the four jacks. What’s the use playing hide-and-seek? I’m not a criminal, not a crook, not a spy. I’m just as decent as any one of you three fellers is. Better than you I don’t want to be. It suits me all right to be just the kind you are. We all are Out here to make money. If we were looking for pleasure, we wouldn’t select this godforsaken region full of mosquitoes, yellow fever, typhoidal Water, scorpions, tarantulas, and even hungry tigers sniffing around the camp by night. I know quite well you can bump me off any minute you wish. But that could happen to me any place, even in Chicago walking quietly down the street. You always have to risk something if you want to make money. If you bump me off you can’t be sure but that tomorrow another guy may show up whom you’ll have to give the final works. Or instead of one guy popping up, there may be a full dozen any day. Then you stop bumping off, and you are worse off than you are right now.”

“All right, stranger,” Howard said, “what’s above your shoulders? Spit it out. We are at least willing to tune in.”

3

“Let’s make a clean breast,” the stranger suggested.

“We might.” Howard filled his cup with fresh coffee. “Now, of course we don’t know who you are or what you are. You may be a spy and you may not. If you are, all that we can lose is our labor of eight months and what we have invested in cold cash. But I tell you it would be expensive for you should you squeal. We’d get you even if we had to look for you in China or on a ranch in the pampas of the Argentine. There would be no quarter. I think you have that clear.”