The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [81]
“Well, the point is, you’re sitting on a pile of silver and I want it.” His smile broadened and he added, “And the edge of the point is that we’re six and you’re two.”
“Only when you come to get us, it’s going to cost you something,” Struggles said.
“Not if we sit back in the shade and wait for your tongues to swell up.”
“You look a little too skinny to be good at waiting.”
The American nodded to the ledge. “Ask Juan how good I am at waiting. I used up a lot of my patience while my vaqueros scratched for your sign, but I still got some left.”
Struggles admitted, “It didn’t take you too long at that.”
“Your boy isn’t the only one who knows the country.” He was waving the white cloth idly. “Look,” he said. “Here’s how it is. You either sit and die of thirst, or else get on your mounts and ride the hell out. Of course, for my own protection I’d have to ask both of you to leave your guns behind.”
Struggles said, “You don’t have a high regard for our reasoning, do you?”
The man shrugged. “I’m not talking you into anything.” He waited a few moments, then turned and walked down the slope. The Mexican backed down, keeping the Winchester high.
Struggles fingered the trigger lightly and wondered what that principle was based on—about not shooting a man in the back. And when the straw hat was out of range he still had not thought of it.
Through the heat of the afternoon Struggles’ mind talked to him, making conversation; but always an argument resulted, and his mind was poor company because it kept telling him that he was afraid. When the heat began to lift, a breeze stirred lazily over the bench and made a faint whispering sound as it played through the crevices above. And finally, the bench lost its shape in darkness.
It was cool relief after the glaring white light of the afternoon; but with the darkness, the slope that was still a painting now came alive and was something menacing.
Struggles crawled back to the slope and stood up, cupping his hands to his mouth, and whispered, “Juan,” then gritted his teeth as the word cut the silence.
He waited, but nothing happened. He brought up his hands again, but jumped back quickly as a stream of loose shale clattered down from above. And as if on signal, two rifles opened up from below. Struggles went flat and inched back to the rim as the firing kept up, spattering against the flinty slope.
WHEN IT STOPPED, he raised his head above the rocks, but there was only the darkness. They’re not a hundred feet away, he thought. Waiting for us to move. He settled down again, pressing close to the rock barrier. Well, they were going to have a long wait. But now he wondered if he was alone. Since the firing there had been no sound from above. Had something happened to Juan?
Time lost its meaning after a while and became only something that dragged hope with it as it went nowhere.
Sometime after midnight, Struggles started to doze off. His head nodded and his chin was almost on his chest, but even then a consciousness warned him and he jerked his head up abruptly. He moved it from side to side now, shaking himself awake; and as his face swung to the left he saw the pinpoint of a gleam up on the mountainside.
He came to his feet, fully awake now, but blinked his eyes to make sure. The light was moving down with crawling slowness from the peak, flickering dully, but growing in intensity as it inched down the rock slide path that Juan Solo had climbed earlier.
After a few minutes Struggles saw a torch, with the flame dancing against the blackness of the slope, and as it descended to the ledge the shape of a man was illuminated weirdly in the flickering orange light it cast.
The figure moved to the edge, holding up a baroque cross whose end was the burning torch—the figure of a man wearing the coarse brown robes of a Franciscan friar.
He held the cross high overhead and spoke one sentence of Castilian, the words cold and shrill in the darkness.