The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (21 page)

“You suffer often from nose-bleeding?” the captain asks.

The man looks down at his shirt. “You said it, mi jefe, I certainly do.”

“I thought so.” The officer looks at the other things found in the purse. A railroad ticket to Torreon. First class. This mestizo never rides first class. Something more still. The ticket has the date of the day when the train was robbed.

The other mestizo is searched quickly. He has little money loose in his pocket, but he has a diamond ring and two pearl earrings tucked away in the watch-pocket of his pants.

“Where are your horses?”

“In the corral back of the jacal,” the mestizo answers.

The captain sends one of his men to examine the hoofs. The man returns. “The hoofs fit all right, my captain.”

The horses are poor beasts. The saddles are old, worn-out, and ragged.

“Where are the rifles and the guns?”

One of the mestizos answers: “In the corral where the horses were.”

The captain goes to the corral. He scratches the ground with his feet and picks up a rusty revolver, an old-fashioned pistol, and a battered shotgun.

He returns to the mestizos, who are fully surrounded by the soldiers. Seeing the guns brought by two soldiers, they shrug their shoulders and smile. They know that they are lost. But what does it matter? San Antonio, their patron in heaven, did not want to protect them, so what is the use battling against destiny?

“No more guns?”

“No, jefe.” Unconcerned about their fate, they smoke their cigarettes and watch the preparations of the soldiers as if they were looking at a show.

Only a dozen villagers have assembled around the soldiers. And of course quite a number of boys. A few of them are helping the soldiers to guard their horses. The great majority of the villagers remain in their huts. From there they watch everything that goes on outside. They know by long tradition that it is not wise to be seen when soldiers or mounted police are around. None has an absolutely clear conscience, or at least none feels that he has. There are hundreds of orders given by the government or by other authorities of which they may have broken many without knowing it, so it is best not to be seen by soldiers. Once seen, one might easily be accused of something, whatever it may be.

“What are your names?” the captain asks the mestizos.

They give their names, or what they think are their names.

The captain writes the names down in his notebook.

“Where is the cemetery?” he then asks a village boy standing by.

The soldiers march the two captured men off to the cemetery, guided by the boy and followed by about twenty grown-up people and almost all the boys of the little community. While marching, the captain orders a couple of boys to get two shovels from the man who usually digs the graves.

Having arrived at the cemetery, the two prisoners are handed the shovels and led to a site where there are no other graves. They need no further orders. Leisurely they begin to dig, and both, after digging deep, lie down in the graves to see if they would rest comfortably for the next hundred years. They try them three or four times until they are satisfied and then drop their shovels, indicating that they have finished.

Then there is an intermission. The two men must have a rest after so much digging under the blazing sun. They squat and start once more to roll their cigarettes. The captain, seeing this, takes out his own cigarettes and offers the prisoners the package. They look at the package and say: “Thanks, coronel, but we are no sissy smokers, we’d better smoke our own brand.”

“As you wish,” says the captain, and lights a cigarette for himself.

The prisoners begin to talk with a few of the soldiers and find that they have acquaintances in common, or that they know the villages where some of the soldiers were born.

Having smoked three cigarettes, the prisoners look at the captain, who responds by asking: “Listo, muchachos? Ready, boys, for the trip?”

Both answer with smiling lips: “Si, coronel, yes, we are ready.”

Without being ordered, they stand up in front of the holes, each taking good care that he is in front of the hole he has dug and tried out.

The sergeant names the two squads and has them marched up before the prisoners. The prisoners, seeing everything ready, murmur a dozen words to their saints or to the Virgin, cross themselves several times, and look at the captain.

“Listo, mi coronel, ready,” they say.

Thirty seconds later they are already covered with the earth which they dug out a quarter of an hour before.

The captain and the soldiers cross themselves, salute, cross themselves once more, and then leave the cemetery, mount their horses, and march off to look for other bandits.

This murder trial, including the execution, costs the people who pay taxes three pesos and fifty centavos, the cost for cartridges. The final results are more effective than in countries where an average murder trial will cost around two hundred thousand dollars.

7

The apprehension of the bandits is not always so easy.

There was another detachment of cavalry hot on the trail of a group of bandits. On reaching the top of a hill the officer noted ten men on horseback riding three miles ahead. When these men became aware of the soldiers, they fell into a gallop and soon disappeared among the hills. The officer with his men followed the tracks. Since the country after a while turned very sandy and tracks of other horses crossed the trail, the pursuit had to be given up.

In the afternoon the soldiers approached a big hacienda where the officer had decided to spend the night with his men. The soldiers rode into the wide inner patio of the hacienda, and the officer, after greeting the hacendado, asked him if he had seen ten men on horseback coming that way. The hacendado denied having seen a single soul the whole day long and added that he should know whether or not men had passed the hacienda during the day, since he had been at home all the time.

For some reason the officer changed his mind about staying here overnight, but he told the hacendado that he had to search the hacienda, to which the hacendado answered that the officer might do as he pleased.

No sooner did the soldiers come near the main building than they received a good greeting of bullets from all directions. One fell dead and three were wounded when the soldiers in retreat reached the main gate of the hacienda.

Haciendas are often built almost like fortresses, with all the buildings inside of a very wide patio, which is surrounded by stone walls crowned at intervals by little towers.

As soon as the last soldier left, the huge gate was closed from the inside. And now a real battle began. The officer of course might go back to headquarters and ask for more men and machine-guns. But he is a true soldier and does not run away from bandits. Nor would his men like him to do so. He would lose their respect. He has to accept battle and fight until the last cartridge is gone.

Since revolutionary times both parties know that the battle will end only with the destruction of one of them, and that no quarter will be asked or given. The besieged bandits know they have nothing to lose. They are shot anyway if caught alive. The same will happen to the soldiers if they don’t win the fight. If you wish to survive, you have to win the battle.

The officer ordered all the horses led behind a hill so that they would not be shot. The bandits do not waste bullets on the horses, for they know they must save their ammunition, the more so since their arms are not all alike, so that the same cartridges cannot be used by everyone. Besides they also hope to win the battle, and it would be had economy to shoot the horses which they would own if they win.

The soldiers found they were not in a good position. The hacienda was located on a plain, and every soldier approaching could be seen as if marching on an ice-covered lake.

First, just to get the thing under way, the officer ordered a general attack on all four sides of the hacienda. The soldiers, well trained in modern warfare, scattered and crawled along the ground, making only short forward jumps, without waiting for the officer to whistle.

The officer took advantage of the fact that the hacienda had two gates, one in front, one at the back. He let his men go on, keeping up a slow fire to keep the besieged busy. A few soldiers reached the walls, but they were too high and could not be climbed without sacrificing every man who tried to get over.

After two hours’ fighting in this ineffectual way, the officer sent word round to all his men to be ready for the final attack. He gathered the greater number in front_of the main gate and by a few tricks made the bandits believe that the attack would take place immediately, with an effort to break in the main gate. WThile the bandits concentrated all their attention on this gate, a small group of soldiers took the back gate, which was defended by only three men. Far less strong than the main gate, this one was easily opened by a man who, catlike, squeezed himself through a crack in the wall near it. The moment the bandits found the back gate in the hands of the soldiers, they were so confused that they all forgot about the main gate and put their whole force against the invaders at the back. Having foreseen that this would happen to a body undisciplined and without definite leadership, the officer now stormed the main gate with all his might. Before the bandits could think of organizing again to defend the main gate, it had been opened and the soldiers swarmed into the patio.

Here, of course, the fight became fiercest—man against man. Guns could no longer be used, and knives, stones, fists, had to take their places. The battle was finally carried inside the house, into the living-rooms and bedrooms.

Three hours after the soldiers arrived at the hacienda, the fight was over, won by the soldiers. Four of them were dead, three badly wounded, and ten had received slighter wounds. The officer had been shot twice, but he was still up and in full command.

The ten bandits had been joined by three other men who were hiding in the hacienda when the bandits arrived. The hacendado was found dead, so he could not be questioned to ascertain whether he himself was an accomplice of the bandits or whether he had been forced by them to take their side. Seven bandits were dead, two were wounded, and so was one of the three who had joined the bandits in their fight. The wounded and the sound alike were executed against the back wall half an hour later. Who would be so stupid as to take a bandit to a hospital to be cured and made fit once more to follow his trade? Not the officer and the soldiers sent after bandits to rid the country of public enemies, the pets of sob-sisters and prison-reformers. Rattlesnakes are killed whenever found near the dwellings of human beings. If man wants to follow his peaceful occupations, he cannot have a live rattlesnake in the neighborhood.

The peons of the hacienda went into hiding when the battle began. They now came out of their holes and helped the soldiers to get in the horses. The family of the hacendado were away on a visit in the capital.

In the pockets of the dead and the executed were found purses, jewelry, train-tickets, dollar bills, ladies’ handbags, and other things that come into the possession of active bandits. So there was no doubt that the officer again had got the right men. And again he got them in the right way—that is to say, he killed the rats first and afterwards looked them over to find out if they carried the pest. Luckily there were no reporters or photographers around to fill the papers with stories of heroic bandits fighting and dying bravely.

In this way all the bandits were caught sooner or later and executed on the spot. The country has its sporadic spells of banditry, but banditry never has become an institution, not even when, as may occasionally happen, a general or a politician uses hordes of bandits to further his own ends.

8

“That is all I know about this train assault and about the rounding up of the bandits,” Lacaud concluded his report. “Part of it I had from don Genaro, who read it to me from the papers, and part of it I heard on my way down to the village and from villagers who had been to market in town.”

For a minute Lacaud was silent. Then he asked: “Now that you know these men, do you still think me a spy or an accomplice of those murderers now on their way up here? Just answer me.”

“We have never said you are, and not for a minute do we think you have any connection with these women-killers,” Howard said. “Well, partners, I guess the question of confidence in our new partner is now settled.”

“All right with me.” Dobbs stretched out his hand to Lacaud. “Shake, partner,” he said.

“Welcome here.” Curtin offered Lacaud his hand.

Howard suddenly took a deep breath. “Why, the hell, then these men must be the last of the criminals the government is so hot to corner.”

“I’m sure of that,” Lacaud admitted. “In the papers there was Something about a gang still not caught, and the leader of this group, the worst of the whole lot, was described as wearing a gold-painted palm hat.”

Curtin made a face. “If that is as you say, Lak, then it sure will be no laughing matter for us.” He climbed upon the rock and looked down the valley. After some time he said: “I can’t see these devils any longer. They must have gone another way.”

“Now, don’t you be so sure, kid,” Howard corrected him. “They are by now at the loop. You can’t see it from here. But as you can’t see them anywhere else, I’ll lay you any bet that they are right on the road up here. Let’s all go over to that side of the rock. There we may see them again when they have passed the loop and turned into that path crossing the naked rock. They ought to be on that path inside of a few minutes. If we don’t see them, they may have given up coming here. Otherwise—well, we’ll have to face the enemy.”

They were all sitting at their second look-out watching for the bandits to come out of the ioop, to make sure that they were on their way up.

“How many did you say you counted, Curty?” asked Howard.

“Fifteen or sixteen.”

Howard addressed Lacaud: “According to what you told us, there could not be that many left in this part of the mountains.”