The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Read online

  Dobbs didn’t seem convinced. “How can we tell if he’s that sort of a nut or if he’s crooked?”

  “We can’t. Right you are.” The old man agreed perfectly. “But we ought to give him a chance. And besides, if we shoot him, it might come to light.”

  “Might come to light? How come?” Dobbs could not get away from his idea of killing him. “We dig him in and leave him there. Suppose somebody has seen him coming up here, what of it? That’s no evidence that we shot him. If we don’t want to shoot him we can easily push him over a rock and he’ll break his neck. If his body is found, everybody will accept it as a lamentable accident.”

  “Yes, quite easy.” Howard grinned at Dobbs. “Easy. As easy as kicking an old mule in the buttocks. And just who is going to shoot him or push him off into a ravine? You, Dobby?”

  “Why not? We can flip a coin to find out who will have to do it.”

  “Oh, yes? And the one who did it will be forever in the hands of those who know it. Not me, brother. Count me out. That’s too costly for me. No sale as far as I’m concerned.”

  3

  During all this long discussion between Howard and Dobbs, Curtin had sat silent, drinking his coffee, poking the fire occasionally, and raising his eyes from the ground at times to let his gaze wander around the brush that fenced in the camp.

  Howard suddenly noted that Curtin had not taken part in the conversation for a long time, and asked: “Are you sure he was trailing you?”

  “I’m quite sure of that.”

  “How come?”

  “Because there he is.” Curtin made a tired gesture with his shoulders and shot a glance at an opening in the bushes where the path led to the camp.

  Howard and Dobbs were so bewildered that for a few seconds they could not bring themselves to look in the direction Curtin had indicated.

  “Where?” they asked both at the same time. They were so surprised that they forgot to fatten the question with an oath.

  Curtin nodded his head toward the path.

  Howard and Dobbs finally turned round and looked at the path, and there, in the deep shadows of the falling night, uncertainly lighted up by the flickering camp-fire, the stranger stood, at either side of him a mule which he held by ropes.

  He looked at the three men in amazement, for he had expected to find Curtin alone.

  He didn’t call out a friendly “Hello,” but stood silent, waiting to be called or shot at or cursed. It was difficult to tell from his attitude what he really expected to happen. He gave the impression that he was willing to submit to anything that these three rough-looking fellows should decide to do to him. At the same time he seemed too proud to beg or even to accept any sort of help for which he was not able to pay.

  10

  While Curtin was telling of the stranger, Howard and Dobbs had built up in their minds an idea of what he might look like. Each had pictured the stranger differently.

  Dobbs had imagined him a crude tramp with the features of an old drunkard, coupled with the looks of a man who is spending his life in the tropics, living from robberies on the highway and from all sorts of tricks, and not afraid to slay any man who might resist him.

  Howard, on the other hand, had pictured him as the ordinary prospector, robust, with weather-beaten, leatherlike face, hands like roots of old trees, and not afraid of anything; a man using all his experience, knowledge, and brain and stubbornly trying to find a rich claim and exploit it to the limit. To Howard the stranger appeared to be an honest gold-digger of the old, sturdy sort who would never commit a crime or steal even a nail, but would stand ready to commit murder at any moment to defend his claim against anyone who tried to deprive him of what he was sure was his rightful property.

  Now both Howard and Dobbs were surprised. The stranger looked entirely different from their pictures of him, and as he had appeared so unexpectedly, neither the old man nor Dobbs could utter a sound.

  The stranger was still standing in the opening. Obviously he was at a loss what to do or say.

  His mules sniffed at the ground, then, lifting their noses high, sniffed the air. After this they turned their heads and brayed with all their might to others of their kind in the pasture where the burros were kept. It was this earthy braying of the mules that broke the spell.

  2

  Dobbs rose. With long, slow strides he went across the camp toward the stranger, who did not move.

  Dobbs had had it in mind to treat the intruder as rough as hell and to ask him outright what he wanted and then send him to the devil. But when he reached him he merely said indifferently: “Hello, stranger!”

  “Hello, friend!” the stranger answered quietly.

  Dobbs had his hands in his pants pockets. He looked at the man, moved his tongue inside of a tightly closed mouth, scratched the ground with his right foot, and said: “Okay, won’t you come over and sit by the fire?”

  “Thank you, friend,” was all the stranger said.

  He came closer to the fire, took off the packs and the saddles from his mules, coupled the forelegs of the animals with a leather thong, patted their necks in a friendly way, pushed his fist into their hams, and said: “Now, you rascals, off for your supper.” This he murmured so low it could hardly be heard by the fellows at the fire.

  None of the partners had given him a hand in unpacking his mules. He seemed not to have expected any assistance.

  The mules shuffled off in the direction from where they had heard the call.

  For a minute the new-comer looked toward the darkness which had swallowed them up. Then turning slowly about, he approached the fire.

  “Good evening, all of you!” he said and sat down.

  “How d’ye do?” Only Howard answered.

  Curtin stirred the beans he had on the fire; Dobbs took off the pot of potatoes, shook it, and tested one with a knife to see whether they were cooked enough. Finding them to his liking, he drained off the water and set them back near the fire to keep hot. Howard was occupied with roasting meat. Dobbs rose and carried more wood to the fire. It seemed that supper was about ready. Curtin pushed the coffee-can once more on the fire.

  None of the three took a look at the new-comer. Since they did not speak to each other and made themselves as busy about the cooking as could be, the stranger felt that he was not being entirely ignored, for they didn’t talk among themselves and by so doing give him to understand that he didn’t belong.

  “I know quite well, you fellers, that I’m not wanted around here,” he said when silence had become almost unbearable.

  Curtin frowned and shot him a glance. “I think I made that quite clear to you when we met in the village.”

  “True, you did. But I can’t stand it any longer among the Indians. It’s all right for a while. Yet when I saw you coming along, I simply couldn’t resist the desire to talk with you and try to stay a few days with a white man.”

  Howard uttered a short dry laugh. “If you can’t stand those Indians and must have a white to talk to, why the hell don’t you leave that god-forsaken region and go places where you’ll find more baboons than you could bear to have around? Durango isn’t so far off, nor Mazatlán. With your two strong mules and that little baggage you carry along, it wouldn’t take you more than four or five days to get to where there are all the American clubs and legion posts you want.”

  “I’m not after that. I’ve got other worries.”

  “So have we,” Dobbs broke in. “And don’t you make any mistake. The biggest worry we have right now is your presence here. We have no use for you. We don’t even need a cook, I should say not even a dish-washer. We are complete. No vacancy. Have I made myself clear?”

  The stranger did not answer.

  Dobbs continued: “If I haven’t made myself clear, let me tell you that I think it would do you lots of good if you would saddle up early in the morning and go where you came from and take our blessings with you. And I’ll be damned if we don’t mean it that way, all of us. Get me, stranger?
”

  The new-comer remained silent. He watched the three partners preparing supper and dealing the meal out on the plates. He watched them without looking hungry and without expecting to be invited to partake of the supper.

  Then Curtin, after having half emptied his plate, said: “Help yourself, partner. Here’s a plate, and here’s a spoon, knife, and fork. I hope you know how to use them. Don’t use only the spoon or we might think you’ve broken Leavenworth. We may be the wrong sort, but we still eat as we did at the old homestead.”

  Dobbs watched him fill his plate. He handed him the coffeepot. He could not do it, though, without salting the invitation: “For tonight we have something for you. Mebbe there is even a breakfast for you t’morrow morn. We’re no misers and we don’t let a guy starve to death. But after breakfast you’d better look out for yourself. No trespassing allowed here, you know. Dogs. You understand.”

  After this they ate in silence save for a few words concerned, exclusively, with details about the food before them or which they had in store.

  The stranger ate very little. He appeared to eat more out of politeness than because of hunger. No word did he throw into the meager conversation of the three partners.

  3

  Supper over, they all washed the dishes in a bucket and laid them aside. The three partners tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible in the way they had become used to during the long months spent in the place. For a while they seemed to have forgotten the presence of the guest. They were only reminded of him when they filled their pipes and lighted them and saw the stranger returning to the fire and squatting by it. He had gone to look after his packs and get something out of them.

  “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 truck-loads 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 tree-trunks 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.

  11

  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.”