The Vanquished (21 page)

Charley shaded his eyes with his hatbrim and swept the camp with an idle glance. Some men were playing poker in the miserly shade of a paloverde. By himself on the slope sat Carl Chapin, against whose young pallid flesh no amount of sun could throw a tan; Chapin bent over the gun he was cleaning and coughed once or twice, spitting beside him. The rasp of his cough reached Charley. General Crabb was at the lip of the arroyo, watching the camp and stroking his brown beard in thought.

Edmonson put the bridle aside and began to pack his awl and lacings away in their kit. “That should hold,” he said in a satisfied way. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. Charley caught him staring sadly toward the mountain peaks, hazed in violet distance. Edmonson said, “I was thinking of the general's speech last night. It's frightening, the effect one man's will can have.” The old man patted his pockets. “Have you seen my pipe?”

“No.”

“Perhaps I dropped it by the campfire.” He got up and walked away, his back a little stooped.

Charley settled back to enjoy the day's ease, but just then a corner of his vision detected movement, and some distance to the west along the bank of the arroyo he saw a tan-gray jackrab-bit humping away as though on coil springs. Charley rolled around to reach his rifle, but the rabbit bounded out of sight down into the arroyo.

Hunger for the taste of meat pushed Charley to his feet. He walked to the rim of the cutbank and looked down the gully. Nothing stirred. On the back of his tongue was the aftertaste of the salty jerked beef he had eaten for breakfast today and yesterday and for numberless days before that. He checked the rifle's percussion cap and ran along the lip of the arroyo. The sun was hot on his shirt; the metal of the rifle's lockplate almost seared his hand. The arroyo made a sudden turn, and he saw the rabbit fifty yards down the dry bed, standing in quivering motionless-ness, it forepaws raised to cup something on a plant. One long ear twitched, and as Charley sighted his rifle, the rabbit plunged away in great loping bounds. He could hear the
slap-slap
of its big hind feet against the soft sand in the arroyo. It leaped around a further bend; Charley muttered an oath and ran forward.

Budding anger grew in him when the jackrabbit continued to elude him. He followed relentlessly. Every now and then it popped into sight, but dived away before he could take a shot at it. He almost thought it was laughing. Once he had it in his sights and was curling his finger around the trigger when it wheeled behind a scrub and skittered away down the bed of the winding arroyo. Charley's palms began to sweat; as he ran he wiped them, one at a time, against his trousers, swearing bright oaths.

Unwilling to give up, he let the taunting jackrabbit lead him far from camp. He did not know how many miles he had come. He walked on weary legs and cursed monotonously. The arroyo curled around the end of a sparsely brush-dotted hill. When he rounded that turn he saw, not far ahead, a large clump of trees—cottonwoods, mostly, with smaller mesquites and paloverdes roundabout. The jackrabbit was nowhere in sight.

He sighed and sat down, cuffing his hat back to release the collected sweat under its band. The tips of his hair, where it stuck out from under the hat, were bleached several shades lighter than the rest. He dragged his sleeve across his forehead to mop away sweat. When he looked back, the campsite was out of sight behind the hill he had come around, but the town of Sonoyta was visible across the burning flats—box-shaped 'dobes, their hues weathered into the common bright drabness of the plain. Two or three miles away, he guessed; and that put the camp an equal distance away. It would be a long, dusty walk home, empty-handed. But he did not get up yet. He regretted that he did not have his canteen. He picked up a pebble, rubbed it clean, and sucked on it for a while, but even that did not seem to moisten his dry mouth.

He had another look at the clump of cottonwoods a hundred yards down the arroyo. Where there were trees, there must be water. Of course, the water might be some distance underground, inaccessible. But he was here now and it was worth a try. He got up wearily and was for a moment aware of the unwashed smell of his own body, baking in the sunlight. He trudged along the arroyo bank. When he came nearer the trees, the dry earth on the floor of the arroyo began to turn darker brown in color, an indication of moisture near the surface. A small excitement lifted him. He increased his pace.

Above the cottonwoods, on a little hill, squatted a soilitary building, a small square adobe house with thick walls and small windows. A clothesline ran back from a corner of the house, hung with sun-bleached clothes and pieces of cloth. It was a strangely incongruous scene on the face of the desert wilderness. Charley hesitated, watching the house, but there was no sign of activity there, and he went on into the cool shade of the tall cottonwoods.

For a moment it was like walking out of the sunlight into a dark room. He could make out nothing; his eyes had to accustom themselves to the dimness. The contrast between light and shade was that great on the desert. Presently he threaded a path among the trees and found, in the secluded center of the grove, a small pool. Its slightly steamy odor reached his nostrils. He bent down on its grassy bank. The water seemed reasonably clear; at least it was not stagnant. No doubt the pool was fed by some kind of artesian spring. It was a strange thing to find in such country; here in the depths of the grove the desert flats were almost concealed from sight, and except for the heat of the air, which was diminished by the shade, it would have been easy to believe himself back in the California hills. The water lapped gently near his knees. Since there was no wind, the movement of the water must be due to an underground flow. He cupped his hands and knelt forward, brought a handful of water to his mouth and sipped tentatively. It tasted fresh and clean. He swept off his hat and lay belly-flat on the bank, pushing his face into the water, running the water through his hair, splashing it down under the back of his collar. He kept his face under water until he felt the need to breathe. Then he sat up, and a thought came to him, pulling his lips back in a smile that was both sly and happy.

He got to his feet and walked around the pool, and went up toward the far fringe of the trees until he could see the adobe house. A small breeze came along, cooling his damp hair and face, and a moment later, traveling uphill, it made the hanging garments flap lazily. No one was in view.

Still smiling, Charley turned back to the pool. At its bank he stripped quickly and waded into the center of it. The water was about three feet deep; he crouched down until it covered him up to his neck. Tossing his head back he looked at the sky, interlaced with branches; and let the cool luxury of the water lull him. After a while he moved closer to the bank and lay down on his back in the water, his head up on the bank, his feet floating. The water moved very gently around his naked flesh. This was what life was made for; such pleasures were a man's magnificence. He resolved to lie here until the water cleansed every pore and penetrated to the innermost dry centers of his bones.

A jackrabbit—he could not tell if it was the one that had led him here—popped its head out of the brush and stood uncertainly, staring at him, shaded by the massive overhang of a cot-tonwood limb. Charley stared back. His rifle and pistol were both up the bank with his clothes, but he made no movement toward them. Today he would not shoot anything. He let himself lie still and grinned amiably at the rabbit. Presently, assured, it moved slowly forward to the bank of the pool and stooped to test the water with its tongue. Charley studied it at close range. Presently the rabbit turned away and left. Charley closed his eyes down to slits and watched the reflected brilliance of the sky ripple along the surface of the pool when he wiggled his toes. The silence was deep and comfortable until a small flock of birds settled down in the trees and began to chirp. He shut his eyes, smiling. He did not notice when the birds flapped away.

The mud underneath was a soft mattress cradling his body. The itch that had troubled his back this morning came back to him now; he tried to scrape himself against the mud, but it was too pliable and did not scratch him sufficiently. In a moment he got up out of the water and felt the wonderful cool touch of the air against his glistening flesh. He walked barefoot to the trunk of a cottonwood and put his back to the tree, and rubbed himself up and down against it like a bear. The rough bark scratched his back satisfactorily, and still with a smile he returned to the shaded side of the pool and paddled around before again settling down on his back. He closed his eyes pleasurably and had a vision of the street of Sonora town, gray with rain, the face of the Triple Ace saloon, Gail standing in the doorway smiling. It was such a long time ago, it seemed a childhood memory. There were hard calluses on the soles of his feet and across his shoulder where the rifle-strap hung; his upper arms were thickly muscled and his legs had carried him hundreds of miles.

The water brushed him like a woman's soft hands and it occurred to him, as a surprise, that he was not lonely. It was not possible really to understand anyone; how then could any kind of real friendship be reached? Probably the truth was that humans were not comprehensible in human terms. And if you could not reach a man, you could not be his friend.

It was a crazy line of thought. His mind drifted around and his eyes, opening, followed the aimless passage of a wind-blown yellow leaf that floated near his toes. The sun had moved along above the cottonwoods, pushing the shade ahead of its rays, and he was almost into its glare. In a little while he would move. He would get up and stretch out on the bank and let the wind make him cold. He was slightly hungry. He remembered something Norval Douglas had said to him, back along the trail at a campfire. The harmonica had been making brief noises, someone tentatively breathing into it, and had stopped quickly; its owner apparently was not in a mood for it. Douglas had been chewing on a yellow stalk he had pulled out of the ground; he had been lying on one elbow, and had said in the darkness, “You can be alone for a long time, but then you want somebody to talk to. It doesn't matter very much whether he understands you, but you've got to have the illusion of getting through to him.”

The floating dead leaf brushed his chin. He picked it up and crumpled it in his hand, and threw it up on the bank. That was when he heard, quite close by, the sound of a soft voice chuckling throatily.

He had to sit up in the water to look around. For a moment he almost thought it was another vision in his mind. A girl with a long graceful neck sat by his clothes. She was laughing at him; her eyes glistened. Charley stared at her. Her laughter grew more brilliant. Groping for words, Charley said, “
Buenos días
.” It only increased her laughter. Charley slid into deeper water and glared at the girl. “What the hell's so funny?”

Her hand came up and pointed straight at him, and then she lay back flat on the mossy earth, lurching with laughter, soft insistent bubbling of liquid humor. Charley looked down at the surface of the water. Sunlight dappled it; ripples spread away from him. The girl was young but her body was fully molded. She wore sandals and a cheap dress. She sat up and said, “Why don't you come out of the water?” and lay back again with violent laughter. Her face was small, smooth, brown, delicate. She spoke English without hesitation, but with a strange lingering accent. She sat up again and primly smoothed the dress across her lap. Her feet came back under the dress and she sat cross-legged, her back quite slim and straight, looking at him, wiping tears from her eyes. “Very funny,” Charley muttered. He wished fervently that she had left him alone in solitary possession of the grove and pool.

“You do not look like a dangerous pirate to me,” the girl said.

“Who said I was a dangerous pirate?”

“You are with the party of men at the arroyo?”

“Yes.”

“My father says you are pirates,” she said.

“Who's your father?”

“The
alcalde
.”

Charley thought of the fat man on the porch of the store, who had never stirred out of his cane-bottom chair when they had marched into Sonoyta. “Are you really a pirate?” the girl said inquisitively. “I have never seen a pirate.”

“No,” he said, and cursed inwardly. “I'm not a pirate.”

“What are you, then?”

He hunted around for words but could find none that he felt would adequately describe him, and so he said, “I'm a traveler, that's all.”

“A traveling
caballero
,” the girl said musingly. A lacework of shadows from the treetops swayed slowly across her face. “Perhaps you will look more dangerous with your clothes on and a gun in your fist, eh,
caballero?
”

“You've got a fine sense of humor,” Charley grumbled. “Why don't you go away?”

The girl's full lips pouted in mock anger. “The señor does not enjoy my presence.”

“What would your father say?”

“My father is not here.”

“Do you keep secrets from him?”

“All the time,” she said cheerfully. “My father barks very much. He does not bite.” She shrugged her shoulders prettily. “He is old and lazy. What is your name?”

“Charley.”

“I am Teresa.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said grudgingly. He felt embarrassed, though he knew she could not see the part of him that was under water. The girl showed no sign of preparing to leave. She sat comfortably and lifted a small basket to her lap. Out of it she took a handful of berries. She ate a few of them and then looked at him out of the side of her vision. “The berries grow here,” she said. “Would you like some?”

“Sure.”

She held out her hand, full of berries. Charley sat where he was and tried to assume an angry glower. The girl said, “You do not have to be shy,” and chuckled maddeningly. She was pretty and would have seemed out of place anywhere on the desert but here in this grove. It was all very improbable, and it would not have taken much to convince Charley that he was dreaming, except that the air on his bare shoulders was too cold and the sky too bright and the water too wet. “What do you want?” Charley said angrily.