We made our way up this draw, looking back across the meadow as we went, finally reached the top and almost dropped everything we carried. Not out of tiredness, out of surprise!
For sitting there with his Spencer across his lap and smoking a cigarette was John Russell.
Mendez yelled his name and ran over to him, Mendez assuming just as I did, I guess, that Russell had changed his mind and gotten the mean feeling out of his system, and now wanted to show us the way out of here.
Mendez scolded him a little, but in a kidding way, that he shouldn’t have done what he did. Mendez was too glad to see Russell to be serious or angry at him, telling him how we couldn’t keep up with him and how worn out we got trying to.
Russell moved him aside with his arm and motioned all of us back from the crest so we wouldn’t be seen from below.
From the way Mendez acted, our troubles were over.
Not so according to Dr. Favor. He said, staring at Russell, “You going to sit there for a while, are you?”
Russell didn’t move. “You want to go bad, uh?”
He saw that Russell had no intention of getting up. “Now it comes,” Dr. Favor said. “I want to hear how you’ll say this.”
“You want to go,” Russell said, “go on.”
Dr. Favor kept looking at him. “What else?”
“Leave the saddlebag and the gun here.”
Dr. Favor’s big red face almost seemed to relax and smile. “There,” he said. “Right out in the open. It took you all night to realize you’d run off and left something behind.”
Mendez, not understanding, had that worried look again. “What is it?” he said to Russell.
“It’s my money,” Dr. Favor said. “He’s thinking it looks pretty good. Out here and no law to stop him. But four people against one. Maybe he hasn’t thought about that.”
Russell drew on the cigarette. “Maybe one is enough,” he said.
That was when the McLaren girl stepped in. “Your money,” she yelled at Dr. Favor. I mean yelled it. “After you stole it! We’re supposed to side with you to protect money you stole!” Then her eyes took in Russell too. “You sit here arguing about money and giving Frank Braden all the time he’d ever need.”
“Be careful what you say,” Dr. Favor said to her. “I think you are talking without thinking. This is my money, in my possession, and it will take more than the word of a dead outlaw to prove it isn’t.”
“All this talk,” Mendez said, like he had just thought of it. “We have to move.”
Russell looked up at him. “Where do you want to go?”
Mendez said, “Are you crazy? They’re coming!”
“Tell me where,” Russell said.
“Where? I don’t know. Out of here.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Russell said. “There’s open country. Maybe it takes you two, three hours to cross it. And while you’re there they come with their horses.”
“Then hide somewhere,” Mendez said, “and wait for dark to cross it.”
Russell nodded. “Or do better than that. Wait for them here. Shoot their horses to make it even, uh? Maybe finish it.”
“Finish it,” I said, understanding him, but I guess not believing what he was asking us to do. “You mean try and kill them?”
“If they get close enough,” Russell said, “they’re going to kill you.”
“But they didn’t harm anybody before. Why would they want to now?”
“Do you want to give them your water?”
“They got water.”
“Two canteens which they were drinking out of all day yesterday. Do you want to give them yours?”
“No, but-”
“Then they’ll kill you for it.”
Until then it seemed just a matter of running and getting away or running and being caught and they getting the money after all. But kill them or they would kill us? It was a terrible thing to think about and you couldn’t help looking for other ways. Run or hide. Run or hide. Those ways kept popping into your head while Russell just sat there looking down the draw and waiting.
“And if we don’t finish it,” Dr. Favor said, making those last words sound dumb to have ever been thought of. “What then?”
“You don’t have a say in this,” Russell said, looking up at him. “You can stay or go, but either way you leave the saddlebag.”
“You must have kept awake all night,” Dr. Favor said.
“It came to me,” Russell said back.
“How much you figure I have?”
Russell shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Wouldn’t take much, would it, to keep you in whisky?”
“You leave the belly gun too,” Russell said. And held out his hand for it, turning just a little so that the Spencer in his lap turned with him.
Dr. Favor just stared, not moving. “You’re forgetting something,” he said. “What if the others decide against you?”
“Then they have you to lead them,” Russell answered.
He sat there with his hand still held toward Dr. Favor and you knew he could sit there the rest of his life and never budge. It was his way if we stayed with him. It was either do what he wanted or else go on with Dr. Favor. It was not like choosing between a good thing or a bad thing. Still, one felt to be better than the other and it wasn’t much of a hard choice to make.
The McLaren girl was the one who said it out loud, though not very loud. “I would like to go home,” she said, hardly glancing at Dr. Favor. “I sure would like to go home. And I know he can’t find the way.”
Neither Mendez nor I had to say anything. If we’d sided with Dr. Favor, we would have.
With us watching him, I believe, Dr. Favor didn’t want to get caught looking awkward or nervous. You had to give him credit for that. He took it calmly, not offering any argument, but I will bet thinking fast all the time. He just shrugged and handed his revolver to Russell.
“Chief make plenty war now,” he said. You see how he was passing it off? Like Russell was a bully you had to give in to if you wanted some peace.
Russell didn’t pay any attention. He took the gun, then looked at Mendez, noticing Mendez had Lamarr Dean’s revolver besides his shotgun.
“You shoot all right?” he asked.
Mendez frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“You’ll find out,” Russell said. “First the shotgun. When they’re close. So close you can touch them. Then the other one if you need it.”
“I don’t know,” Mendez said, worried. “Just sit and wait for them like that.”
“If there was a better way,” Russell said, “we would do it.” Just that moment talking to Mendez, Russell’s voice was gentle and you remembered they had known each other before and maybe had been friends.
He looked off down the draw, studying the trees over the other side of the meadow. If they were on our sign, he knew, they would come through there and up the draw.
Then he was looking right at me and handing me Dr. Favor’s revolver. At first I didn’t make any move to take it.
He pushed it out again like telling me, “Come on, take it,” and that time I did.
“You have one thing to do,” he said and shifted his eyes over to Dr. Favor and back again. “Watch him.”
Then it was the McLaren girl’s turn. She stood there, her dark nice-looking face very calm, seeing Russell looking at her then.
“You stay with this one,” Russell said, meaning me.
“Carl Allen,” the McLaren girl said.
It stopped Russell just for a second as if she’d interrupted his thoughts. “You’ll have the saddlebag and the water.”
“Squaw work,” Dr. Favor said. “You ought to like that.” He was also saying, “See what you’re getting yourself in for?”
It didn’t bother her, or else she was so intent on Russell she didn’t hear him. She said, “The money and the waterskin, but you carry your own water I see.” She meant the canteen that was on the ground next to him. The one he and Mendez had used.
He watched her, getting all the meaning out of her words that she didn’t say. “You want it too?”
“Why burden yourself?” she said, and you weren’t sure if she was serious or not.
For just a moment there John Russell hesitated, as if handing over the canteen would be giving up his independence. But he did and the McLaren girl took it.
“You and you and you,” Russell said, meaning the McLaren girl and Dr. Favor and I, “will be here. You don’t stand up. You don’t move back away from the edge here and stand up. You sit and don’t move.” (Like a teacher talking to little children in school!) “Him-”
“Reverend Dr. Favor,” the McLaren girl said with that little knife edge in her voice again.
“He can leave up to the time they come,” Russell went on. “After that, no.” Russell was looking right at me again, but still talking about Dr. Favor.
“If he tries to leave with nothing, shoot him once,” Russell said. “If he takes the saddlebag, shoot him twice. If he picks up the water, empty your gun. You understand that?”
(I have thought about those words since then and I am sure Russell was having a little fun with us when he said that. Part serious, part in fun. But can you imagine joking at a time like that? That of course was the reason no one even smiled. He must have thought we were dumb.)
I just nodded, not wanting to say anything with Dr. Favor standing right there.
“I don’t know,” Mendez said. You could see what had been going on in his mind. “Maybe we should just keep going, try and outrun them.”
“You run now,” Russell said to him, “they’ll catch you and kill you. Believe that more than you believe anything.”
Russell told us again to stay where we were, down low. He talked to Mendez, going over it again with him, telling him to wait till they got close and to be sure of hitting something, to shoot first at the men, then at the horses; but watch for the woman. Mendez listened, nodding sometimes, but kept looking over toward us.
After that Russell didn’t waste any more talk. He and Mendez crawled out through the brush, working their way about forty feet down the draw, then separating, Mendez staying on the right, Russell crawling way over to the left side so that anybody coming up the draw would pass between them. If one did not have a good shot when the time came, the other probably would.
Both had good cover, for there were sizable rocks that had been washed down the draw, mostly along the sides where they were, and pretty thick brush where there weren’t any rocks. Only the middle ground, where water would run off in the spring, was fairly open.
Russell had this timed pretty well, knowing how long it would take them to get on our sign and follow us. He had figured a few other things too. That they wouldn’t be as careful by now as they had been yesterday evening and during the first hour or so this morning. There had been good ambush places before this, but nothing had jumped out at them. Why should it now? They would be awake, of course, wide awake coming up something like this draw; but they would tend to keep their eyes on the top and expect it to come from there if it was coming at all.
(It is easy to talk about something like this. It is also interesting to plan and imagine what you would do, but only as long as you aren’t there. I wouldn’t sit where we were, just waiting there again, no matter what anybody gave me.)
We kept our eyes on the trees that were some kind of pine, big ones, probably ponderosa, across the meadow at the bottom of the draw. Still, when they came, it wasn’t sudden at all.
Right at the edge of the trees, in shadow, was a horse and rider and you wondered how long he had been there with you looking right at him. He was awake all right.
He came out of the trees holding to a slow walk and was out in the meadow a ways before the next rider appeared. Then another one came who you knew right away was the Favor woman. (I did not look over at Dr. Favor to see what his face showed. I would have if I had known I was going to write this.) The fourth one was right behind her. That would be Frank Braden, the big sugar of this outfit. He would be the one telling the others what to do, while he stayed with their hostage or whatever Mrs. Favor was.
It was the Mexican rider who dismounted and came first when they reached the bottom of the draw. He seemed to be making sure of our tracks, walking along a little ways with his head down. Then he swung back up and he and Early came on, the Mexican staying a little bit in the lead. They kept looking up at the sides of the draw, being very watchful now. They knew we had come this way and I think they smelled it as a fresh trail. Not so much Early as the Mexican.
You got the feeling he knew by the sign that Russell had passed through here on his own or ahead of us, or maybe Russell had left no tracks at all and the Mexican saw only that the four of us had come up this way. There is nothing to prove this, but I believe he did know. The Mexican seemed so sure of himself, riding right up the middle of the draw first, seeming relaxed but his eyes taking everything in.
Braden, with the Favor woman, kept a good ten lengths back of Early and the Mexican. That was the way they came up, walking right into it.
It was like watching a play. No, it was realer than that. (My gosh, it couldn’t get more real!) It gave you a strange feeling to watch it, thinking that in a minute or two you were going to see somebody get killed.
Russell never moved. We could see just part of him. He lay full length as if asleep. His hat was off and his head was down, as if he was listening to them coming up the draw instead of watching them.
Mendez kept looking over to where Russell was, but I doubt he could see him, being on about the same level. Then he would look back up in our direction. You could see he wanted no part of this. Why couldn’t he be up where we were? Or the rest of us down there helping him, he was probably thinking. Mendez was nervous. You couldn’t blame him for it. Still, it was strange to see him in that state. (In the last two days I had certainly learned a lot about show-nothing, tell-nothing Henry Mendez.)
As Early and the Mexican got up a ways, they started looking up at the top of the draw and studying it. Especially the Mexican. He was closer to Mendez’s side of the draw now and about five horselengths ahead of Early. Halfway up, the Mexican drew his right-hand gun and held it ready.
You saw Mendez pressing himself tight against the rock he was behind and not looking around now. He would inch up to sneak a look at the Mexican and then duck down again. You almost knew what he was thinking. You also knew this wasn’t something he had done before.
Looking at Russell you couldn’t even tell if he was alive, laying there sighting down his carbine now and waiting as if he could wait like that all day, waiting for Early to ride right up to him.
I don’t remember what the McLaren girl and Dr. Favor were doing then. I could feel them there. The thing is, the one I really wanted to watch was Russell; then you would see how this was done. But Mendez, the way he was fidgeting, looking up at the Mexican coming and then pressing against the rock, made you nervous and you kept watching him, holding your breath for fear he was going to jump up and start running.
The Mexican was now about a hundred feet away from him, sitting round-shouldered and relaxed, the Colt gun held about chest high and pointed straight up, the sun glinting and moving a little with the motion of the horse and rider.
That was what Mendez saw coming toward him, a man holding a gun that seemed part of his hand, and another gun still holstered; a man you knew was ready, but could still be relaxed about it and not sit stiff in the saddle or with his shoulders hunched.
Maybe if I was Mendez I would have done the same as he did. Which was all of a sudden rise up and fire both barrels of that scatter gun like he couldn’t let go fast enough.
At a hundred feet or less, some of the buckshot could have found the Mexican, but Mendez hurried and didn’t aim at all. The Mexican straightened and fired three times, faster than I’ve ever seen a man thumb and fire a Colt revolver, with all three shots zinging off the rocks Mendez had flattened himself behind. Then you saw the Mexican twist in the saddle, like something had pushed him, and grab his side right above the belt.