Brian Garfield (16 page)

He stood up waggling the revolver in his right hand. “Back door, gents.”

They went out the door ahead of him and they were ready to jump him when he came through it but he jabbed the pistol-barrel hard into Jackson's diaphragm and Jackson folded up on the ground and sucked for breath. Boag wheeled toward Smith but Smith wasn't fighting, he was slithering back inside.

Boag whipped around the doorframe but Smith had reached the table just inside. Smith batted the table back at him and it hit Boag between the knees and the crotch. It didn't knock him down but it pushed him back from the door and by the time he got in the doorway again and shoved the table aside Smith was diving at the chair where his gunbelt hung. He knocked the chair over with him and went sliding along the floor trying to fumble the six-gun out of leather. Boag was wary of Jackson behind him but he tried to sight a clear shot through the tables and chairs. He didn't get one before Smith got hold of the gun; Smith was shooting through the toe of the holster and that was no aid to accuracy and after Smith's second bullet punched into the doorjamb Boag got an unobstructed line on his neck and put a bullet into it.

He didn't wait to see its effect; what he aimed at, he hit. He spun backward through the door and cocked the revolver and let his voice sing out loud toward the wide round backside of Jackson who was scrambling up toward the pines. “
Freeze.
”

Jackson stopped and turned. He looked unhappy as a soaked cat.

“Come on back here.”

Jackson started to waddle and Boag flattened his shoulder-blades against the wall beside the open door in case Smith still had enough blood in him to come after him.

Boag said, “Run, you fat trash. Run.”

Jackson started to lope. His belly flopped up and down and his arms pumped. He was short of breath by the time he came up; it had only been thirty yards. Boag said, “Go on inside ahead of me.” He pushed his gun into Jackson's kidney and marched him inside with an armlock around Jackson's fat throat.

The shield was unnecessary. Smith wasn't dead yet but he hadn't moved six inches from where he'd fallen. The three card-players and the proprietor hadn't stirred; they watched Boag with no show of friendliness but no show of threat either. These were all outsiders to them and they didn't care who killed whom, so long as no citizens got stray lead.

Boag hauled Jackson outside again. “You got a horse in that corral up there?”

“I reckon.”

“Let's go saddle up then.”

“Wait a minute. Can't we talk here?”

“I don't think we want to be disturbed.”

“I'd just as soon not leave this town.”

“Well you ain't got a vote, Jackson. Now let's go get your horse.”

8

Boag picked a spot back in the mountains six or seven miles away from Tres Osos. He hobbled his horse and hobbled Jackson's horse and then he unlashed Jackson's wrists from the saddlehorn and let Jackson step down. While Jackson rubbed some circulation back into his hands Boag loosened the cinches and carried Jackson's rifle over to a flat slab of rock. “Come on over here. Bring my canteen.”

“Canteen?”

“Just bring it, stupid.”

It was a clear night, part of a moon and plenty of stars. It took Jackson's clumsy hands a long time to untie the canteen. He brought it with him. Boag pointed to a little bowl-shaped depression in the slab of granite. “Empty it in there.”

“All of it?”

“There's plenty of springs up here. Nobody'll go thirsty.”

Jackson emptied it into the bowl. The water gurgled ominously. It made a little pool of motionless liquid a foot in diameter and four or five inches deep.

Boag cut a six-foot length of rope and tossed it to him. “Tie your ankles together now. I'm going to check it afterward so you may as well make it good and tight the first time.”

“What the hell you up to, boy?”

“Quit calling me boy, Jackson. Just because you outweigh me by forty pounds of lard.”

“What you got in mind here?”

“Never you mind. You just do what you're told.”

“Why?”

“Because I got this gun pointed at your ass, you stupid trash.”

Jackson sat down with a grunt and doubled his knees up under his chin and wrapped the rope around his ankles. Boag watched him cinch it up and tie a double bowline knot in it. Boag said, “You're pretty good with knots.”

“I've hung a few nigger boys in my time.”

“You ain't making friends with me that way.”

“You can go fuck yourself, boy.”

“Lay down on your belly,” Boag said. He took the rope he'd used on Jackson's wrists before; he tied Jackson's arms together, sitting on Jackson's buttocks while he yanked the tie up tight. Jackson's cheek was pressed into the rough surface of the rock; Jackson said, “Hey.”

“Well I'm sorry we ain't got no feather pillows.” When Boag was satisfied with the tie he climbed off the man. “You can roll over and set up.”

Jackson showed his distress but he managed to heave himself onto his back and sit up without scraping too much skin off his hands. He glanced at the little pool of water a few yards off to his left.

“Now you're hogtied and sweatin' and you don't know for sure what's coming next. I'd tell you but it might spoil the fun. I'll just tell you this much. You can save yourself whatever it is by telling me where I can find Mr. Pickett.”

“I told you, boy. You just don't listen. I got no idea where he's at.”

Boag decided to save the pool of water a while. Lead up to it first. He walked over to Jackson and hunkered down and put his palms flat against Jackson's jowly cheeks. Held his thumbs over Jackson's eyes and pressed slowly. Enough of it and it would crush in Jackson's eyeballs. He kept increasing the pressure until Jackson screamed.

He relaxed his thumbs. “Aeah?”

“Cut that out, you son of a bitch.”

“What about Mr. Pickett then?”

“I can't tell you nothing I don't know!”

Boag put the pressure on again.

9

Jackson's chest heaved for breath. “All right boy. All right.”

“All right who?”

“Just all right.”

“I'll tell you what, Jackson, you call me Sergeant Boag, all right?”

“If you say so.”

“If you say so who?”

“If you say so, Sergeant Boag.”

“Now let Sergeant Boag hear where Mr. Pickett's camped.”

“Last I heard he was up one of them little towns above Ures on the Sonora River, waitin' to meet up with some fellow from Mexico City was going to take the gold off his hands for New York bank scrip.”

“Selling the same gold all over again, is he?”

“How's that?”

“He already sold it once to a fellow name of Ortiz.”

“Yeah. How'd you know about that? Jesus my eyes hurt. I think I'm blind.”

“You'll have a hell of a headache for a couple days,” Boag said. “You'll think somebody jammed a wad of barbwire inside your skull.”

“Boy you want carvin' up. I get a chance I'm gon bust a big hole in you, Sergeant Boag sir.”

There was still too much defiance in Jackson and that was what convinced Boag he was still lying. There was no point questioning him any further until he'd been softened up some more. Jackson was big and soft but he had a great capacity for pain and Boag wasn't getting the truth out of him.

Boag took him by the arm. “Come over here with me.” He brought Jackson along on his knees and positioned him belly-flat on the rock. Jackson had to hold his chin up to keep his face out of the pool of water. Every time he tried to wriggle to one side Boag pushed him back into position.

“What you think now, Jackson?”

“For God's sake I already told you what you want to know.”

“Maybe you'll change your mind after a while of this.”

With red-hot hate Jackson reared his head back. “By God boy——”

Boag shoved his face down into the water and felt it when Jackson's nose hit the bottom of the pool. He held the back of Jackson's head and sat on Jackson's spine to keep him from rolling away. Jackson's legs came up from the knee hinges but Jackson couldn't reach Boag with his spurs. Boag held his head under until bubbles started coming up. Then he hauled Jackson's head back by the hair.

Jackson blew and snorted and heaved for breath. Boag said, “God damn it you got chiggers in your hair. Don't you ever take a bath, white trash?” He let go of Jackson's head and batted at his hand.

Then when Jackson exhaled he shoved Jackson's face in the water again.

He let Jackson get panicky this time before he let go. Jackson's head skewed back and he spouted a spray of water. He coughed a lot and started to retch into the water and when he was all through being sick, Boag shoved his face in it again.

This time he let Jackson get his breath afterward.

“Let's try a different question this time, fat boy. Why'd Mr. Pickett send you two gents up to Tres Osos?”

“Look after,” Jackson said and coughed, “the gold.”

“You mean you got the gold up here in Tres Osos with you?”

“Some of it. It's scattered, some of the boys got some of the gold. A lot of different towns—a dozen maybe.” Jackson wheezed and coughed.

“So all the gold ain't in one place for somebody to steal it away. Mr. Pickett's sure a cautious man.”

Agony pulled at Jackson's mouth; he gulped like a fresh-caught fish. “He's got a big safe coming up from Mexico City. They building him a vault. They get it built, the gold comes in, that's the idea.”

“Where's this vault at?”

“I don't rightly remember.”

Boag pushed on the back of his head and immersed his face and held it there until he saw the muscles of the neck begin to bulge. He let Jackson sputter and gag and shoved him under water again. He did it five times in all before he spoke again:

“Try me on that vault of Mr. Pickett's now.”

All these efforts were painful for Boag. The .45-90 wound in his hip was bad and even the old hole through his calf was troublesome. He'd pushed himself a little too hard. Now he was impatient with Jackson's bravery. Perhaps it communicated itself to Jackson; the flight trickled out of the fat man. He talked in a weary fast drone.

“You know where Santa Cruz Creek starts?”

“No.”

“Up in the mountains a ways south of Coronado.”

“You mean way back in the Sierra Madre.”

When Jackson spoke he wheezed and sputtered a lot. “Yeah. All right, a few mile northwest of the lakes. There's a real old silver mine up there. Must be two hundred years old. They had a lot of Innun trouble in those days, they built those mines like Cavalry forts. Some kind of high old rock wall around the thing. Sets up there on a flat-top mountain and they ain't but one way in or out of there, it's a kind of steep cut in the cliff with a wagon road goes down it.”

“And that's where Mr. Pickett's at?”

“I got no idea if that's where he's at now. It's where we was supposed to bring the gold to. Where the vault is. Christ, you mind if I slide over a bit? I'm getting mighty tired holding my chin up like this.”

“We'll just wait on you to get all finished talking first.”

“Jesus Boag, I told you what you wanted.”

Boag pushed his face in the water.

The idea was to keep up the pressure until you kept getting the same answer every time. With a liar like Jackson you had to make sure.

Laced with his own hurts Boag kept it up for another half hour until he was satisfied Jackson was telling something that approximated the truth.

After a while Jackson became eager to talk because as long as he was talking his face wasn't in the pool. But Boag caught him lying twice and shoved him back in mid-sentence, and soon Jackson was talking with care. But talking.

“Pickett's fixing to set himself up like a tinpot Napoleon over there in that district,” Jackson explained, and wheezed and spat to catch his breath. “Using that gold to start buying up all kinds of properties. This revolution going on, a lot of them old
dons
scared shitless. They eager to get hard money for their
ranchos.
All they want to do is beat it out of Mexico. Time he's through, Jed Pickett's gon own half of the state of Sonora.”

“Well six feet of it anyway.”

Jackson said, “You got a large opinion of yourself, boy.”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Boag. Whatever you want to be called. Your skin won't be worth tanning, time Jed Pickett gets through with you. I'd admire to see that, too.”

“You and Smith was supposed to take your piece of the gold on down to Mr. Pickett's place in the Santa Cruz district, that right?”

“I just got done telling you that.”

“When was this supposed to be?”

“We supposed to show up there this comin' Friday. We was fixing to leave maybe Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning.”

“All right. Now where's your cache, Jackson?”

“Never you mind.”

Boag's nostrils dilated. “Time you went back in that pool, get your face washed again.”

“Sergeant Boag sir, I ain't going to tell you where that gold's at. You wouldn't have no more use for me alive.”

“This gon be a mighty painful Saturday night for you then, fat trash.”

“I expect it will.”

“Then I may as well kill you right now if there ain't nothing else you want to tell me.”

“Oh I don't think you'll do that, Sergeant Boag, sir.”

“Well,” Boag said, and slammed Jackson's face down into the water.

All the splashing had half-emptied the little pool but there was still enough to cover Jackson's nose and mouth. Boag kept grinding his face against the rock. It took a while but finally Jackson gave in.