Elmore Leonard: Hombre

She let her temper calm down and said, half as loud, “Like that woman needs to live. It’s not up to us to decide if she deserves it.”

“We only help her, uh?”

“Do we have another choice?”

Russell nodded. “Not help her.”

“Just let her die.” The McLaren girl kept staring at him.

“That’s up to Braden,” Russell said. “We have another thing to look at. If we don’t give him the money, he has to come get it.”

The McLaren girl almost let go of her temper then. “You’d sacrifice a human life for that money. That’s what you’re saying.”

Russell started making a cigarette, looking out the window at the crushing mill as he shaped it, then at the McLaren girl again. “Go ask that woman what she thinks of human life. Ask her what a human life is worth at San Carlos when they run out of meat.”

“That isn’t any fault of hers.”

“She said those dirty Indians eat dogs. You remember that? She couldn’t eat a dog no matter how hungry she was.” Everybody was watching him. He lit his cigarette and blew out smoke. “Go ask her if she’d eat a dog now.”

“That’s why!” the McLaren girl said, like it was all clear to her now. “She insulted the poor hungry miserable Indians and you’d let her die for that!”

Russell shook his head. “We were talking about human life.”

“Even if there was no money, nothing to be gained, you’d let her die!” All the McLaren girl’s temper was showing now, and she was just letting it come. “Because she thinks Indians are dirty and no better than animals you’d sit there and let her die!”

Russell held the cigarette close to his mouth, watching her. “It makes you angry, why talk about it?”

“I want to talk about it,” she shot back. “I would like you to ask me what I think a human life is worth…a dirty human Apache life. Go on, ask me. Ask me about the ones that took me from my home and kept me past a month. Ask me about the dirty things they did, what the women did when the men weren’t around and what the men did when we weren’t running but were hiding somewhere and there was time to waste. I dare you to ask me!”

She knelt there tensed, like she was to spring on him if he moved, though it was just she was so intent on telling him what she’d just said.

It was all out of her system then. I think everybody wasn’t so tense anymore. She sank back to a sitting position, taking her eyes off Russell, looking down at that loose sole on her shoe and fooling with it as she thought something over.

Next thing, she was saying, “I haven’t seen my folks in almost two months…or my little brother. Just he and I were home and he ran and I don’t know what happened to him, whether they caught him or what.”

She looked up at Russell again, all the softness gone out of her that quick, like it was starting all over again. “What do they think of an eight-year-old human life?” she said. “Do they just kill little boys who can’t defend themselves?”

Russell had not taken his eyes off her, still holding the cigarette up near his face. “If they don’t want them,” he said, and kept looking right at her.

That ended it. For a thin little seventeen-year-old girl she was tougher than most men and I think you know that by now. But she had to give some time. I thought she was going to cut at Russell again, but the words didn’t come. Her eyes filled up first. She sat there trying to keep her chin from quivering or crying so we’d hear her, still looking right at Russell even with her eyes wet, daring him to say something else.

Right at that time (and it was almost welcome) the Mexican started again. He yelled out, “Hey man, you hear me!” Russell turned and looked down the barrel of the Spencer. The Mexican wasn’t showing himself now and his voice sounded a little farther away. You knew he was there though.

“Come on down here,” the Mexican yelled out, “I got something for you!”

Russell had something for him too if he showed even part of his face.

“Man!” the Mexican yelled then. “We both come out-talk to each other!”

He waited.

“You bring that piece of iron you got. I bring one, uh?”

Every word he yelled echoed up canyon and came back again.

“Hey, hombre, whatever your name is-you hear me!”

After that he said some things I had better not put down here, terrible words that were embarrassing to hear with the McLaren girl in the same room. He was trying to get Russell out by insulting him, but he could have been yelling at a tree stump for all the good it did. Russell sat there waiting for the Mexican to show himself; which he never did.

Something Russell had said to the McLaren girl bothered me, so I asked him about it: about them having to come up here if they wanted the money. Why couldn’t they just outwait us? Our water would run out (there was about a quart and a half left), then what would we do?

Theirs would run out too, Russell said. But, I said, they can go get more.

All the way to Delgado’s? Russell said. Who would go, the one up behind us? The Mexican? Then who would watch us? No, Russell said. Some time they have to come up here. They know it.

I said that may be, but the Favor woman would be dead by then. Russell didn’t answer.

About two o’clock in the afternoon the Favor woman started screaming.

It could not get any hotter than it was then. There was no breeze, no clouds; the sun was bright, boiling hot and you would not even dare look up to see where it was.

The Favor woman sat down there near the bottom of the grade, no hat or anything to cover her head, no shade to crawl into. As I have said, there was a little shack near where she was, but the rope tied to her neck would not even let her stand up straight much less get over to the shack. She had given up trying to undo the rope.

For the longest time she sat hunched over, her face buried in her arm resting on her raised knees. Now she was looking up toward us, as she had done when the Mexican first put her there, and now every once in a while she would scream out to her husband, calling his name at first.

“Alex!” she would call, but drawn out and faint sounding, not sharp and loud as you would imagine a real scream.

“Alex…help me!” Sounding far away almost, like hearing only an echo of the words. She had not had water since yesterday. It was something that she could call out at all.

Dr. Favor raised up when she started and looked down at her for a while. I don’t know what he was thinking. I don’t even know if he felt sorry for her, because his expression never changed; he was just looking at something. He didn’t call back to her or say a word.

Some people can hide their feelings very well, so I had better not pass judgment on Dr. Favor. I remember picturing him and his wife alone and wondering what they ever talked about and if they had ever got along well together. (I couldn’t help having that feeling she had been just a woman to him. You know what I mean, just a woman to have around.) I tried to imagine her calling him Alex when they were alone. But it didn’t sound right. He was not the kind of man you thought of as having a first name. Especially not a name like Alex or Alexander.

There it was though, faintly, coming from out of that big open canyon, “Alex…” And he just sat there looking down at her, not moving much other than to feel his beard, to rub it gently under his chin with the back of his fingers.

Once she stood up, as far as she could, and yelled his name louder than she ever did before. “Alex!” And this time it was sharp and clear enough and with an echo coming back to give you goose pimples at the sound of it.

And then again, which I will hear every day of my life.