The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (40 page)

“Then the body must be near here somewhere,” the alcalde said.

“They may have taken the body along and hidden it in the woods at the base of the mountains.”

“I don’t think, don Chuncho, that they would have dared do that. Many people travel over this road, small merchants and peasants going to market or coming from there. It would be dangerous to carry the body on this road. Let’s look around here. It must be here. If not, we may still follow the whole trail of these thieves. Somewhere along this trail we’ll have to look again for the body. Anyway, let’s try here first, since we are here. I am positive we’ll find him here.”

So the men went searching about the place.

No sign of any digging was found under the trees or near them. The men circled the place, going farther and farther. There was a cornfield near by, where the ground was soft. They had looked about this field hardly fifteen minutes when one of the men shouted: “I’ve got it, don Joaquin. Here he is.”

The body was taken out. It was still fresh and the features could easily be recognized.

“It’s the Americano all right,” the alcalde said. “He was the stockiest of the three, the fair-haired one. Get his shirt off. We’ll take it along for evidence.”

The body was carried back near the trees. The alcalde ordered his men to dig a grave for the dead man some twenty feet away from the trees, yet not in the field. With their machetes the men dug a deep hole and lowered the body into it. All the men took off their huge hats and knelt at the open grave. The mayor said a dozen Ave Marias for the soul of the slain. Then he cut off a twig and made a little cross held together by a few threads, kissed it and blessed it, and laid it on the naked body. Thereupon the grave was covered and the ground leveled, so that the place should not reveal a grave. But the mayor made now another cross slightly bigger than the first one, blessed it and kissed it, put it into the ground where the head lay, knelt down again, prayed, made the sign of the cross over the grave and three times over his own face and heart, and said: “Let’s go now. The Holy Virgin in heaven will protect him and bless his eternal soul!”

4

The men returned to their village early next morning.

They went right to the thieves. The alcalde showed them the shirt and said: “We found it.”

“So I see,” Miguel answered. He shrugged his shoulders lazily and rolled himself another cigarette. His two partners grinned. Miguel chuckled as if all this were a joke on him and he meant to take it without offense. He had known long before that one can do nothing against his fate; one can’t even marry the right girl, or get rich, or make a fair living by decent work, if fate does not decree it. Why worry?

The alcalde had already sent word the day before to the nearest military post, and during the forenoon twelve federal soldiers led by a captain came to take charge of the prisoners.

The captain on seeing Miguel said: “We know him. We’ve been looking for him and his two amigos. Last week on a lonely ranch he killed a farmer and his wife. All he could get was about seven pesos, because there was no more in the house. These two birds were with him.”

The captain gave orders to his sergeant. Then he turned again to the mayor: “What are you going to do with the burros and the packs, senor alcalde?”

“I know the rightful owners of these donkeys and of the packs they carry,” the mayor replied. “One of those Americans is a great doctor, just now on the other slope of the mountains staying with my brother-in-law, that is my hermano politico, whose son he has awakened from the dead. They don’t want to let him go yet because he can perform miracles of all sorts. I’ll take the burros and the packs over to him, for I’ve wanted, anyhow, for a long time, to pay a visit to my sister, who has her Santo next week.”

“Right,” said the captain. “Then I have nothing to do with the goods. We’ll shuffle off now. I want to be back at the post by midnight. My woman is always a bit scared if I stay away too long.”

The soldiers took their prisoners without binding them and marched them off.

5

The trail the soldiers followed was hard, and they cursed having to guard the prisoners as if they were virgins.

Night fell while the little troop was still five miles from the post.

“Let’s rest here,” commanded the captain. “We need a good deep breath after these goddamned steep trails.”

The soldiers settled down and had a smoke.

“Sergeant De La Barra!” the captain called.

“A sus ordenes, mi capitan!” The sergeant stood before his captain waiting for orders.

“Take three men and get the prisoners over to those bushes for a few minutes. But I warn you, sergeant, don’t let them escape. I make you responsible. If they escape, I shall have you put into the guardhouse for three months, on tortillas and water. If they try to make their get-away, shoot to kill and don’t come back telling me that you missed. You have your orders. Repeat them, sergeant!”

The sergeant repeated the order and then selected his men.

The captain lighted a cigarette and called a private who carried a guitarro to sing him the “Adelita.”

The sergeant ordered the prisoners up: “Get your bowels emptied, you rascals. No, not here; over there in those bushes. We don’t want to have that stink around here among decent soldiers. March off!”

The prisoners could hardly have reached the bush when half a dozen shots were heard.

The captain took his cigarette out of his mouth and said: “Now, what the hell can this be? I hope the prisoners didn’t try to escape. That would be too bad.”

A minute later the sergeant stood before his captain.

“Speak up, Sergeant De La Barra, what happened?”

“The prisoners, the minute we were at the bushes, tried to get away. They pushed Private Cabrera aside and grasped his rifle, so he fired and then we shot them. Private Saldivar and Private Narvaez also had to shoot, or the prisoners would have run away. Mi capitan, I have to report the death of the prisoners.”

“Thank you, Sergeant De La Barra. You should have saved the life of our prisoners. They should have had a trial in court. They are citizens and are entitled to a fair trial as the Constitution demands. Of course, if they attacked you, tried to kill you and then make their escape, it was only your duty to shoot them, sergeant. I shall recommend you to the colonel for your quick action.”

“Gracias, mi capitan!”

“Get your men and bury the prisoners, sergeant. You will bury them with your caps off, and cross them.”

“Yes, mi capitan!”

Howard was a busy man indeed, wanted everywhere and for everything. He had hoped to find tranquillity in the village so that he might give his old bones a well-deserved rest after the hard work at the mine. But he found none. He was the famous medicine-man and the great doctor who could perform many miracles—in fact, any miracle ever heard of since the Bible was first written.

The Indians living on the Sierra Madre, like all those living in the mountains of this continent, are a healthy lot. They reach ages which make old man Methuselah a poor runner-up. But they are practically defenseless against diseases which do not originate on this continent. Simple-minded people, living a natural life, they suffer, as most people on earth do, more from imagined illnesses than from real ones. The acknowledged greatness of Howard as a doctor was based, as he alone knew, on his ability to distinguish between imagined, self-suggested sicknesses and true maladies. Another thing added to his fame: He had always a good answer ready for his patients, and it was always an answer which satisfied his patients fully.

A woman came to Howard to ask why she had lice when her neighbor had none. Nothing is easier to get rid of than lice. But with Indians and mestizos lice are as much a matter of course as fleas on dogs. They actually seem not to want to lose their lice. If the Health Department of the federal government goes after them too hard, owing to the fact that lice, like fleas, are transmitters of many diseases, the Indians are liable to rise up in arms against the government; they have often done so for similar reasons.

Howard knew the country and had lived there long enough to know the people. As a great medicine-man he had to make use of his knowledge. He could have easily told the woman what to do about her lice, but he didn’t wish to lose his reputation as a great doctor. And as a great doctor he knew that he must not tell his patients the truth about themselves and their ailments or he might, as has happened to many an honest doctor, have to work in a coal mine to earn his living.

Howard said to the woman: “You have lice because you have good, healthy blood, which lice prefer to suck. Your neighbor has bad blood, so she has no lice. Lice are a clever lot and shun bad blood as your husband shuns bad tequila.”

The woman was satisfied and decided to love and honor her lice as the best sign that she was a healthy woman. But five minutes later the other woman came, asking the doctor for medicine to improve her blood, which must be bad, for she had no lice. Howard did as all other doctors do. He prescribed a medicine, which, to make business still better, he himself manufactured by cooking up grass, leaves, herbs, roots which he was certain would not harm even a baby. The woman was so grateful that she would have given him a hundred silver pesos had she possessed them. Howard had to be content with ten centavos, all she could afford.

Howard’s stock medicine was hot water administered inside and outside the body, the quantities being changed according to carefully specified prescriptions. He had an astounding aptness for making so many variations of the same medicine that he could afford to cure each sickness and each individual in a different way.

All the Indians of the region swore by Howard and his miracles. They would have made him president of the republic had they had the power to do so.

Sick men and women came telling him that they knew death was upon them, saying that they could actually feel at what place death had chosen to sneak treacherously into them. Howard, never short of remedies, never saying he was sorry that he could do nothing, ordered hot towels laid upon the skin where it pained, upon the stomach, or the calves, or the soles of their feet, or the neck, or the back—in short, wherever there was room for placing a hot towel. Some patients were healed within three days, others within two weeks; and others died. Howard explained the deaths by saying that the patient had come to him too late, because death was already well settled inside, or that the deceased was too noble in soul to live on this cruel earth and that the Holy Virgin had decided to take him up to heaven, to have him at her side. And if the patient had been known to everybody as a rascal, Howard explained his death as God’s desire to save his soul by sending it to purgatory before he had committed so many sins that there could have been no hope for saving his soul.

With bone-setting Howard was not bothered. The Indians believed firmly that their old men and women, who had done these jobs satisfactorily for thousands of years, could not be beaten by a gringo who told of trains running under rivers and of trains flying through the heavens with a tremendous noise. They agreed, however, that such a great doctor had the unquestionable right to lie sometimes for his own entertainment.

Howard could have lived here until the end of his days and been worshipped and fed and treated like a high priest. Everything was at his disposal, for he was intelligent enough to live by the approved doctrine—that is, by doing what the people wanted him to do and expected him to do, never trying to reform anybody or change the conditions of life about him, never telling other people that they were all wrong and he alone right. And so everybody liked him and was happy to have him among them.

Yet he would not have been a true American had he not longed for a change, whether for better or worse.

Daily he was thinking of leaving. Suspicion of his two partners troubled him. They might take his goods and disappear. He consoled himself with the thought that, whatever might have happened to them, there was nothing he could do. He had to trust them and hope for the best.

2

One pleasant morning he was swinging leisurely in a hammock when an Indian from a distant village rode up on a pony and stopped to ask where the great doctor lived. He spoke to the owner of the house, who took him to where Howard was resting from the work of eating a whole roast chicken.

“This is the great doctor,” the host said.

“Como estas, amigo, how do you do?” Howard greeted the Indian.

Before the Indian could answer, the host began to explain: “See here, senor doctor, this man is from a village far over the mountains. He has come to tell you a story which he thinks you might like to hear.”

The visitor sat down near the hammock and began his tale.

“Lazaro, who is my compadre and who lives with me in the same village, was in the bush to burn charcoal, which he sells for a good price in Durango. He is a coalburner by profession, you know, my compadre is. It was very early in the morning. Coalburners have to be up early. The sun was just out. He was deep in the bush. He had just built up the wood-stack and was covering it with earth to keep the flames well inside, when he saw something crawl along the ground in the thicket. It was still dark in the woods, so he could not see clearly what it was.

“First he thought it might be a tiger, and he was very much afraid. He reached for his machete to kill it. On looking closer he saw that it was a man crawling on the ground like an animal, and that he was a white, un hombre blanco. He was in rags, el hombre blanco was, covered with blood all over and entirely exhausted. He had many bullet-wounds. He would have died right there at the wood-stack.

“Lazaro, who is a very good man, gave the stranger water to drink and washed the blood off his face. He left his wood-pile, which, anyhow, needed little further care just then, and loaded the white man upon his burro and brought him to our village. There he took him into his own house. When he had laid him down upon the petate, the bast mat, you know, he saw that the white man was dead.