Elmore Leonard - Hombre

At that point there was the sure feeling with all of us that we would make it to Delgado’s without Braden ever getting close again. Except that just a little later on there was another familiar sight. One we had not counted on.

I am referring to Dr. Favor.

But I will get to that in a minute.

It was still dark as we came down the ridge toward the mine works. We didn’t go down all the way, only about fifty or sixty feet to a level place where the open mine shafts and a shack were.

Farther along this shelf there was a shute built on scaffolding that went down to the big crushing mill located about forty or fifty yards down the grade. Ore tailings, which were slides of rock and sand and stuff that had been taken out of the shafts and dumped, formed long humps down on the other side of the crushing mill. Everything was quiet and there wasn’t even a breeze moving.

As I have said, it was still dark, but you could make out the shapes of things down below: the crushing mill and ore tailings to the left of where we were; the company buildings about two hundred yards away, directly across the canyon from us.

We stood there for a few minutes, Russell looking over the works and I guess, thinking. Finally, when he spoke he said, “This is a good place.” Meaning the shack up here on the shelf.

“There’s more water for us down there,” Mendez said, meaning the waterskin we’d left in that company building the day before yesterday.

Russell shook his head. “If we stay here all day, you want tracks leading up and down?”

“Stay!” Mendez said. The waiting was worrying his nerves. “Man, we’re so close now!”

“If you go,” Russell said, without any feeling at all, “you go back the way we came.”

Mendez looked at him with those solemn eyes of his. He didn’t say any more. We went inside the shack which was empty except for a couple of bats which we shooed out. On the two side walls were shelves that held bags of concentrate. (Evidently they had used this shack to test ore samples in.) We just stretched out on the dusty floor and used some of these bags as pillows.

Russell left the door part way open and laid down his head near the opening. I laid down over by one of the windows. There were two of them in front, with board shutters you couldn’t close.

Just one small thing: Russell did not offer his blanket to the McLaren girl, but used it himself. I offered mine to her again, as I had done the night before, and this time she took it. Figure that one out.

It was a few hours later, say between six and seven in the morning, after we had slept some and eaten and had our day’s water, that we saw Dr. Favor again. The McLaren girl, by the right-hand window at the time, saw him first.

He was already down out of the south pass that approached the mine from the direction of that open country we had crossed. He was moving slow; dead tired you could see, his clothes messier and dirtier looking than before. He walked straight down the middle of the canyon in the sunlight and in the dead silence of those rickety buildings, looking up at the crushing mill for the longest time, then over at the line of company buildings.

Watching him, nobody said a word, waiting to see if he remembered the waterskin.

Alongside one of the buildings was a trough with a hand pump at one end of it. When Dr. Favor saw it, he ran over and started pumping. He fell on his knees and kept on pumping, his shoulders and arms moving up and down, up and down, keeping at it even when he must have known he wasn’t going to get any water. After a few minutes he was pumping slower and slower. Finally he fell over the pump and held on there, not moving.

Inside the shack it was quiet as could be.

I remember when the McLaren girl spoke it was hardly above a whisper. I was by the other window with Mendez; Russell was by the door; but we all heard her. “He doesn’t remember it,” she said.

None of the others spoke.

“We have to tell him,” she said then, calm and quiet about it, stating a fact, not just giving in to pity at the sight of him.

“We don’t do anything,” Russell said from the door. He kept his gaze on Dr. Favor who had sat down now, one arm still on the pump handle.

“You can look at that man,” the McLaren girl said, “and not want to help him?” She was staring at Russell now.

“He’ll move off,” Russell said. “Then you won’t have to look at him.”

“But he’s dying of thirst. You can see he is!”

“What did you think would happen?” Russell said. He looked at her then. “You didn’t think you’d see him again. So yesterday was all right, uh?”

“If I didn’t speak up yesterday,” the McLaren girl said, “I was wrong.”

“You’d feel better if he had run off with the water?”

“That has nothing to do with him down there now.”

“But if you were down there,” Russell said, “and he was up here.”

“You just don’t understand, do you?” the McLaren girl said.

Russell kept staring at her. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to help him!” She raised her voice a little, like she was running out of patience.

It didn’t seem to bother Russell any. He said, “You want to go down to him? Make tracks on that slope that hasn’t been touched in five years? You want to make signs pointing up where we are?”

“The man’s dying of thirst!” She screamed it at Russell. She had run clean out of patience and threw the words right at him.

I don’t mean she screamed so loud Dr. Favor heard her. He had now got up from the pump and was moving along the front of the company buildings, reaching the one we had stopped at the day before yesterday and looking up at it.

I held my breath again. Maybe he’d remembered the waterskin. But no, he went on by.

The next thing I knew the McLaren girl was out the window and running down the slope. Russell was out the door but too late to stop her. He stood there in front of the shack, Mendez and I by the window, and watched her raising little dust trails down the grade, seeing her getting smaller and smaller.

Near the bottom the McLaren girl called out. We saw Dr. Favor stop and look around. (He must have been surprised out of his shoes.) He started toward her, but she was yelling something at him now, motioning to the company building.

He stood there a second, then was almost running in his hurry to get to the building, the McLaren girl waiting now to see if he’d find the waterskin.

We were watching all this. We saw him reach the front of the place, just out from the shade formed by the veranda, and that’s where he stopped. Right away he started backing off, like edging away. Next thing he had turned and was running toward the McLaren girl who didn’t know what was going on anymore than we did and stood there watching him.

As he got close he must have said something. The McLaren girl started up the grade, looking back at the company building as she did.

About then was when he appeared. It was Early. He came out of the veranda shade, to the edge of it, and stood there with a Colt gun in one hand and a canteen in the other-evidently the canteen with whisky in it which the Mexican had mentioned to John Russell, for I think Early was drunk or close to it. The way he stood, his boots wide apart, looked like he was steadying himself. I won’t swear to it because there wasn’t time to get a good look at him.

He started firing his Colt, waving it toward us or at the McLaren girl and Dr. Favor as they came up the grade, causing Mendez and me to duck down, and firing until his gun was empty. He started yelling then, but we couldn’t make out any of it.

I kept waiting for Braden and the others to appear, but they didn’t. Not right then. Evidently Early had been sent on ahead, Braden figuring we would come this way.