The Vanquished (18 page)

“Well,” the old man said, with a quizzical turn of his lips, “perhaps you could suggest a good place to die?”

“You know,” Charley said by way of an answer, “I don't think you really know what you've bought into. If you did, maybe you wouldn't be here now.”

Edmonson walked scuffing the ground with his bootheels. He said, “Putting too much trust in too many people—perhaps that's my great fault. But I've survived through it this far. With luck I'll last a little longer. I don't have much to lose, at any rate. But with you it's a different thing. I should think that of the two of us, you're the one who's putting the most in the balance.”

“I can look out for myself,” Charley said.

“That's fine,” the old man answered, and Charley wondered if he imagined the touch of dryness on his tone. Hard bright heat lay across the desert. Edmonson gestured with a lunge of his arm. “Just the same,” he said, “this is a hell of a thing to die for.”

“The desert, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you doing here?” he said bluntly.

Edmonson looked at him. An obscure smile came to his mouth. “Well, I'll tell you something,” he said. “Essentially, nothing has much meaning to an old man. Everything can be canceled at any time. I just walk along and run my little shoestring life and mind my own business most of the time. I like the desert air—even if it's hot I can breathe it. I'm all right, you see, as long as I keep my lungs dry.” He paused. There was the sound of feet regularly crunching the earth. Back along the column somewhere a man was softly humming a tune. Edmonson seemed to be rummaging in his thoughts. He said, “You strike me as a shrewd enough young fellow. What are you looking for?”

“Looking for?”

“You must be searching for something. Otherwise why are you here?”

Charley made no answer. In truth, he didn't have a ready answer. “You're still walking around looking for a place to sit down,” Edmonson said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“When you accumulate a little humility,” the old man went on, as if Charley had said nothing, “then perhaps you'll have found what you're looking for. But it will take time. Humility is not a virtue of youth.”

“What have I got to be humble about?”

“Exactly,” Edmonson murmured. “Youth is arrogance. From where you stand, a man is either a hammer or an anvil. To your eyes there's no third alternative. Therefore, naturally, you seek to become a hammer. Nobody wants to be hammered upon. But you'll be making a great mistake if you maintain that attitude very long.”

“Why?”

“You become too hidebound. If you insist on being the hammer, it can only lead you in one direction. You'll become a strong man but a lonely one. Look at Norval Douglas.”

“What's wrong with him?”

“He's not a happy man.”

“Show me a happy man,” Charley said.

“I put myself on display,” answered the old man.

Charley could not agree. To reduce oneself to the point of accepting whatever happened—that was not happiness; it was vegetation. Edmonson went on: “When you learn to be content with yourself, you'll have arrived where you wanted to be. Until then, impatience will drive you relentlessly. Look at the way it drives Douglas. He's a strong man, smart. Probably he's never knuckled under in his life. But he's no longer young—and he's still driving himself because he isn't satisfied.”

“No,” Charley said. “You're wrong. He's satisfied. That's why he pushes himself. The only way to keep your self-respect is to make the most of yourself.”

Edmonson chuckled softly; the chuckle turned into a cough. “You've been listening to Douglas too much. All he's really managed to do is find a shortcut from nowhere to nowhere. What will all his driving amount to when he dies?”

“It won't matter then.”

“Just so. Then why not be satisfied with things as they are?”

“Because it matters now.” Charley said nothing further. He did not, however, believe the old man. He did not see how it could be worthwhile to let the wind push him around until he died. What was important was the now—otherwise the only thing that came after birth was death, and there was no point in living at all. He had learned that much: that the present was no longer a dismal uncertain gray; it was, in fact, the only sure thing he had.

Edmonson, he felt, was an old man who was not so much embittered as unknowingly defeated. The old man had given up, and was now busy trying to convince himself that he had been right in giving up. But it would not suit Charley. The greatest failure of all would be failure for the want of trying. In this old man it seemed that fear had turned to a flame that had consumed his strength. But that was no good. Time was here to be used; it was here for him to make something of it. The words, passing through his mind, seemed to echo something he had heard Norval Douglas say. He could not place the time or memory.

Rich light streamed across the desert. On the hour the column halted to rest. Charley sat down on a flat smooth rock and sipped from his belt canteen. The rifle, slung across his shoulder, was a half-forgotten weight that had worn a callus along his flesh. He laid it aside and pushed his hat back, feeling the wind cut through the dampness of his hair. When he looked at John Edmonson, who was lying back on one elbow and regarding the desert without much interest, it became plain enough that the sharp savor of life had passed the old man by. Charley resolved not to let that happen to him. Probably long ago Edmonson had found himself struggling under the belief, encouraged by his doctors, that life was tragically brief and therefore essentially without value. He had lost his capacity to believe; he had flattened himself and somewhere he had obviously lost the knowledge that the day was a stretch of time that he could use as a tool to his accomplishment.

The earth glittered. A peak stood round and lofty, its slopes darkened by rock. The air was thin and at the same time like a fire's radiant heat, with an acid burn against the skin. Dust gritted on the roof of his mouth. When he turned his head, the shirt collar scraped his neck. At the head of the column, Colonel McCoun made a signal and the men climbed to their feet. Charley capped his canteen, hung the rifle across his shoulder, and stepped into line.

A few trees; a patternless scatter of adobe buildings, made with great thick walls and tiny windows. A cupola-roofed well in the center of the square. One cactus wren perched with dusty weariness on the rim of the well. A heavy woman in a shapeless dress, black dusty hair knotted and stringy across her eyes, moving on springless feet with a wooden bucket toward the well; the bird flapped its wings and departed for a slim mesquite branch at the edge of the square. The woman reached the well and listlessly brought up the bucket on its rope, and balanced it on her head when she trudged back into the shade of her house. Across the square on the veranda of his office sat the
alcalde
, whose name was Redondo, and who was also the
comisario
of Sonoyta—behind him his building served as general store, mayor's office, jail. Sonoyta was technically north of the border, and thus a part of the newly annexed Gadsden Purchase area of Arizona; but Redondo, who had lived here under Spanish and Mexican flags, was a man slow to heed change, and still owed his allegiance to Mexico—in particular, to the governor of Sonora. Perhaps it was a trifle illegal; but no representative of the United States, or of the Territory of Arizona, had ever paid a call on him, and in the absence of orders to the contrary, Redondo considered himself a Mexican subject. He looked upon his town without delusions. No one cared very much, one way or another, what happened in Sonoyta. The surveyors had been haphazard, lazy men, and perhaps after all it was true that if a decent survey of the boundary had been made, Sonoyta might perhaps still remain a part of Sonora. But Sonora did not seem to care, and Arizona remained silent, and for all practical purposes Sonoyta town was a reasonably independent province by itself, and Redondo its baron. He was satisfied.

He was a potbellied man of middle years, with no particular distinction of features except for a scar along his cheek that he had earned at San Jacinto in the war against Texas. He wore it as a badge of honor. Not all men could claim to have fought under the great general, Santa Anna. Redondo had a habit of running his index fingernail along the ridge of the scar.

His wife, who had put on weight in the past few years, came from the store and spoke a few words to him and dipped a drink of water for herself out of the
olla
, the clay jug that hung under the veranda roof suspended in a net of rope. Having satisfied her thirst, she replaced the long-handled dipper in the
olla
and made her brown-skinned, heavy-legged way back inside the store. Redondo remained seated in his cane-bottom chair; it was too hot to busy himself. He thought without emotion that the summer would get a good deal hotter before it got cooler. Today was only the twenty-seventh of March. The thermometer hung above him and he had to twist his head to look at it; bunched folds of fat rippled along his neck. Ninety-six degrees in the shade. He poked a cheroot in his mouth and struck flame with a flint-and-steel mechanism, and thought that in another two months the midday temperature would be up to a hundred and fifteen. Sometimes it gave him cause to wonder why humanity sought out such inclement districts in which to build homes. Why had anyone ever come here? The nearest town of any consequence was Altar, in Sonora on the Concepcion, and that was almost two hundred kilometers distant. To the northeast, it was even farther to Tubac and Tucson. He made no sense of it. For himself, he would never have settled here, except that the government had made him
alcalde
, and as the only storekeeper except for Dunbar within forty miles in any direction he was bound to make a profit.

His daughter Teresa appeared in the doorway and he made a frown at her, so that she shut the door to keep the heat out. She dipped a drink from the
olla
and handed the cup to him. He muttered his thanks and drank, and handed the cup back. Teresa drank the rest of the cupful. “It is very hot,” she said.

“It will get worse.”

“Of course.” Teresa put the cup back into the
olla
. Redondo took pride in his daughter. Her back was straight, her waist was long and slim. Her eyes and hair glistened like a raven's wing. Her flesh was smooth and brown; her arms were firmly round. She was a very fine daughter. He hoped to see her marry a wealthy man. There was a
ranchero
from San Perfecto who had been calling on her of late. He was not an old man yet—he was only thirty-one—and he owned a great many acres and many head of cattle. Unfortunately he was quite fat; but one could not ask for everything. The
ranchero
was a good suitor. Even so, Redondo now and then wished idly that he could live in a larger town, so that his daughter would have more to choose from.

She had a small head, set aristocratically on a long graceful neck. When he considered his own bull-throat and meaty shoulders, he was amazed that she had proved so beautiful. He wore a gun at his hip, not so much because he was the only law officer within three days' ride, but rather to keep the young
caballeros
aware that his daughter Teresa was not to be trifled with. She was but sixteen. There was plenty of time yet.

She was nibbling on a salt cracker; her hip was perched against one of the posts that supported the veranda roof. Since his was the only shaded porch in Sonoyta, Redondo was jealously proud of it. He squinted into the west and tried to decide whether it would rain. There had been no rain for three months. There were gray clouds on the western horizon, but on the other hand there was no particular wind; and in all his experience he had never known it to rain without raising a wind first.

A horseman trotted into town from the northwest. That was young Luis, and since Luis was something of a young rake, Redondo told his daughter to go inside the store. She went, after casting an innocent but speculative look toward the slim rider. Luis rode up, his horse's hoofs boiling up little whorls of dust, and dismounted gracefully, leaving the reins trailing and coming up on the porch with a tinkle of spurs. Luis grinned amiably and touched his thin black mustache, and dipped a drink for himself out of the
olla
. “
Muy seco
,” he said—very dry. After wiping his lips he said, “There is a very large group of gringos approaching from that way.” He waved a hand.

“How large?”

“Many more than I could count on fingers and toes,” said Luis. “Most are on foot. A few ride horses. They have a number of pack animals, both horses and mules.”

“They are armed?”

Luis gave him an impatient look. “What kind of question is this? Only a fool empty in the head would travel in this country without arms. Of course they are armed.”

Redondo for the moment chose to ignore the young man's sass. “Anything more?”