The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (6 page)

Dobbs and Moulton threw stones at him to show him that he was not welcome. It looked somewhat awkward for two Americans looking for work and a free meal to bring along an Indian with them. Rough as they might treat that poor man to induce him to stay behind, he was stoical. He followed them like a dog, not minding stones thrown at him nor the promise of a sound beating. He would even have taken the beating if he could have gained by it the right to walk behind them. The two finally let him have his way. So he was the winner after all.

They reached another camp. It was the same story there. No work, and the outlook far from promising. The field manager had also the feeling that oil was no longer easy money, only he had another explanation to offer—that the new oil laws of the republic were to blame for the dying of the business. “That hell of a government is confiscating all the oil, declaring all oil land the property of the nation. Why, for devil’s sake, didn’t they think of that fifty years ago when we had no money stuck in it? The whole world goes Bolshevik, and I don’t care a worn-out step-in either. I’ll go Bolshevik too, first thing when I see it coming; that’s what I’m going to do, blaze my time. Sit down and fill up the ol’ tank to the rim. I got word from H.Q. we are closing down. Likely next week I can go along with you, pushing camps for a meal.”

Having made five camps and swallowed five different stories about the lack of work and the causes of the oil business breathing its last, both Moulton and Dobbs decided that it would be a waste of time and hard work to go any farther. In two camps they had already met men coming back from other camps who had lost jobs which they had held for years.

“Best thing for us to do,” Moulton said, “is to go back where we came from. In town there’s a better chance than here to get work and to meet somebody who is looking for men for rigging a new camp. Around here are the old established fields. There’s no chance here. Better look for new fields.”

“There’s something in what you say,” Dobbs answered. “I was told that to the north of the river, near the Altamira section, there might be something doing very soon. Guess you’re right. Let’s hoof back.”

So one day, late in the afternoon, they arrived in the port again. Moulton said: “Here we are. Now everybody for himself once more.”

With these words their partnership was broken up.

9

While they had been away, no change had taken place in town. The same fellows were hanging around the curbstones and pushing every man that came to town from the fields for a drink, a good steak, a gamble, and a girl. Not one of these curbstonepolishers had left for better places. And exactly the same boys that held the corner of the Southern Hotel and the entrance to the bank on the ground floor were doing exactly the same as they had done last week, last month, last year perhaps. That is to say, waiting to be taken to the Madrid Bar or the Louisiana to help somebody with money to get drunk. They all knew the prayers to say at the right time and in the right way and to the right gods. So they spent life, strength, and will-power.

Dobbs did not feel sorry for having gone out to the camps to look for work. It was worth the trouble to know that out of town jobs were just as rare as in town. He had no longer to worry about having missed his chances in life or having overlooked opportunity knocking at the back door.

One morning, strolling along the freight depot, he was hailed by the manager of an American agency for agricultural machinery. They were unloading machinery and he was asked if he would like to lend a hand for a day or two. He accepted and was offered four pesos a day. The natives who worked at the same job got only two pesos.

The work was hard and his knuckles peeled off ten times a day. Anyway the four pesos were welcome money. After five days the job was finished and he had to go.

A few days later, standing at the ferry that crosses the river to the Panuco depot and wondering if he might get a chance to go to that town for a change, five men came running along to catch the ferry that was just about to make off.

One of the men, square-shouldered and rather bulky, caught a glimpse of Dobbs, stopped, and yelled: “What you looking for? Job?”

“Yep. Got one for me?”

“Come here. Hurry, the ferry is making off. I’ve got a job for you if you want to go. Hard work, but good pay. Ever worked at rigging up a camp?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got a contract to rig a camp. The hell of it is I’m short a hand; one dirty son of a bitch has kicked out and left me flat. Maybe malaria, or what the hell do I know, or perhaps it’s a goddamned skirt that’s holding him. I can’t wait for that guy to show up. All right, you’re hired.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Eight bucks American a day. Grub goes off on your expense. Figure the Chinese cook will charge one dollar eighty a day. You make six bucks a day clean. Hell, don’t stand and guffaw; come along.”

Only ten minutes ago Dobbs would have run after a job for two dollars a day like a hungry cat after a fat cockroach. Now he looked as though he expected an embrace of gratitude for taking the job offered.

“Come on or go to the devil,” the contractor cried. “You have to come the way you are; there’s no time to get your things. The ferry doesn’t wait, nor the train either. And if we don’t go right this minute we can’t make the train.”

Without waiting for a reply he grasped Dobbs by the sleeve and dragged him on the ferry.

10

Pat McCormick, the contractor, was an oldtimer. Before he had come down here, he had worked in Texas fields and afterwards in Oklahoma. He had come down here before the war, before there was anything that looked like a coming boom. There wasn’t a job connected with oil at which he had not tried his hand. He had been teamster, truck-driver, time-keeper, driller, tool-dresser, pumpman, storeman—anything that had come his way he had tackled. In recent years he had found out that there is more money in rigging up camps by contract—so much for the camp ready to start drilling. He had acquired an excellent eye for judging the job. He could look over a lot in the jungle and name his price for the job in such a well-calculated way that the company thought they were buying cheap when in fact he made a large profit on every contract. His trick was to get good and efficient labor cheap, cheaper than any company could get it. A company cannot hire workers with backpattings and cajoling, making them believe they are being taken on out of pity. Pat knew how to play the good fellow, even the Bolshevik comrade, to catch his men cheap. He could curse the big capitalist companies and their unscrupulous shareholders better than a Communist speaker when he wanted to softsoap good workers. According to him, he never came out of his contract with any profit; he always lost his good money, so hard-earned in better times, and he took contracts, he said, only because he could not see men who wanted to work suffer from unemployment and starvation. In camp he played the good fellow-worker, joking and - friendly. The whole job he handled as if it were a sort of co_operative enterprise in which all joined for the general good. He told how excellent Communism is; if he had his way, the United States and all South America would become a paradise for the Communists tomorrow.

American boys he couldn’t catch so easily with these ideas. Americans knew this sort of Pat too well to fall for his cooperative contracts. He took on Americans only when he could procure no others. Most welcome were the newly arrived Hunks, Czechs, Poles, Germans, Italians, fellows who had heard back home the stories of men working in the Mexican oil-fields and earning from thirty to fifty dollars a day almost without bending a finger. Having arrived in the republic, they learned during the first week that such fantastic wages were as rare as are the wages a bricklayer gets in Chicago, according to the fairy-tales circulating in Europe. After these men are here two months or so they kneel down before any contractor who offers them five dollars a day, and if he offers them eight, they worship him as they never worship the Almighty, and the contractor may do with them what he likes. After six months without a job they are ready to accept whatever is offered.

Dobbs would not have fallen for the doctrines of Pat McCormick had he tried them on him. His economic condition left him no choice. He was in his way as glad at landing this job as were the Hunks.

The cooperative arrangement made it obligatory for all hands to work eighteen hours out of twenty—four, every day as long as the contract lasted. There was no extra pay. Eight dollars was the pay for the working-day, and the length of the working-day was decided by Pat. There was no rest on Sunday. The Mexican hands were protected by their law. They could not be worked a minute longer than eight hours or Pat would have landed in jail and been kept there until he paid ten thousand pesos for breaking the labor law.

A sort of road had been cut out of the jungle so that in very dry weather the trucks could come right on the lot where the camp was to be rigged up. Mexican peons, having been sent a few weeks ahead by Pat, had the camp-site cleared when the rigbuilders arrived.

Eight dollars a day looked like a lot of money when Dobbs had nothing in his stomach, but he learned that eight dollars a day may be meager pay for certain jobs. The heat was never less than one hundred degrees in the open, where all the work had to be done, surrounded by jungle. He was pestered by the ten thousand sorts of insects and reptiles the jungle breeds. He thought a hundred times a day that his eyes would burn away from the heat above and around him. No breeze could reach the men at work here. Carrying lumber, hoisting it high up for the derrick to be built, and hanging often for minutes like monkeys with only one hand on a beam, or holding on with one leg snake-fashion around a rope and grasping heavy boards swinging out that had to be hauled in to be riveted or bolted, he risked his life twenty times every day, and all for eight dollars.

Pat allowed no rest except for a few hours’ sleep. Until eleven at night they worked by the light of gas-lanterns, and at five in the morning they were already hard at work again. “We have to use the cool morning hours, boys,” Pat would say when he waked them. No sooner had they gulped down their coffee at meal-time and settled to pick their teeth leisurely than Pat would get restless and hustle them up: “Boys, sure it’s hot. I know. We’re in the tropics. It’s hot in Texas sometimes too. Hell knows it’s not my fault. I have to finish that goddamn contract. The sooner we’re through, the sooner we’ll be out of this hell here, and we’ll go back to town and have cold drinks. Hi, Harry, get the Mexicans, those damn lazy rascals, to unload the steamengine, and start to adjust the parts. Jump at it. And, Slick, you and Dobbs get the drum up the derrick and have it anchored. I’ll see after the cabins. Hurry, hurry up and get busy.”

Pat McCormick sure made a pile with these contracts. He was paid well by the companies for the rigging contracts. The companies allowed fair wages and decent working-hours for all, but the sooner Pat could finish the job, the more was left over to go into his pockets, for he had no other expenses than the wages he paid out. To drain the last ounce of work out of his men he promised them a bonus if inside of a certain number of days the job were finished. This promise of a bonus was his whip, since he knew that a real slave-driver’s whip would not do with workers today. He won; he won always. He rigged up two camps in the same time other contractors would have rigged barely one.

“All right, boys, put all your bones into that job. You’ll be with me again on my next contract. I’ve already got three almost for sure coming my way. Get going.” This was another whip he used, promising his slaves future jobs provided they worked the way he wanted them to.

When the camp was rigged, the gang went back to town. The Mexican peons returned to their near-by villages.

Said Dobbs: “Now what about the pay? I haven’t seen a buck yet from you, Pat.”

“What’s the hurry, pal? You’ll get your dough all right, don’t you worry a bit. I won’t run away with it. You’re again on my next contract I have with the Mex Gulf. Sure you are.”

“Now look here, Pat,” said Dobbs, “I haven’t got a cent even to buy me a new shirt. I look like the worst bum.”

“Now don’t you cry out for mother here,” Pat tried to quiet him. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have thirty per cent of your pay. That’s all I can do for you. And don’t you tell the others.”

Dobbs learned that none of the other boys had received his wages in full. Two who were eager to be with Pat on the next contract again had asked very humbly “at least a little, please, Mr. Pat,” and they were awarded five per cent, so that they could have a few meals; they had not eaten since they had returned to town.

11

Within a few days Dobbs had heard many tales about Pat McCormick. Pat was known not to pay cash to his men if he could avoid it. This was one of the reasons that he seldom had an American with him on a contract. Only foreigners and halfbaked Americans fell for him. Most of them were glad to go with him any time he hollered. They had their meals because Pat paid the Chinese cook for catering as advance on the wages for the boys. And usually he paid something in cash when the boys he owed were running after him and crying that they had no money for eats and for beds.

One afternoon when Dobbs was drinking a glass of coffee at the bar of the Spanish cafe on the plaza, Curtin, passing by, saw him and stepped up.

“I might as well have coffee too. What you doing, Dobble?”

Curtin, who was from California, had worked for Pat with Dobbs.

“Did you get your money?” Dobbs asked.

“Forty per cent is all I’ve squeezed out of that bandit so far.”

“I’d like to know one thing—if he has collected the pay for the contract—that’s what I would like to know,” Dobbs said.

“Rather difficult to find out,” answered Curtin. “The companies are often a bit slow in paying the contracts. Often they are short of ready cash, since the funds they have here in the republic are all taken up for drilling-expenses or for paying out options unexpectedly acquired.”