Джек Лондон - Hearts of Three [С англо-русским словарем]

‘Someone must descend into the well,’ spoke Rafael, testing the braided rope with his weight. ‘See! The riata is strong. We will lower a man by it. Who is the brave one who will go down?’

‘I,’ said Vicente. ‘I will be the brave one to go down — ’

‘And steal half that you find,’ Rafael uttered his instant suspicion. ‘If you go down, first must you count over to us the pesos you already possess. Then, when you come up, we can search you for all you have found. After that, when we have divided equitably, will your other pesos be returned to you.’

‘Then will I not go down for comrades who have no trust in me,’ Vicente said stubbornly. ‘Here, beside the well, I am as wealthy as any of you. Then why should I go down? I have heard of men dying in the bottom of wells.’

‘In God’s name go down!’ stormed the Jefe. ‘Haste! Haste!’

‘I am too fat, the rope is not strong, and I shall not go down,’ said Vicente.

All looked to Augustino, the silent one, who had already spoken more than he was accustomed to speak in a week. ‘Guillermo is the thinnest and lightest,’ said Augustino. ‘Guillermo will go down!’ the rest chorused. But Guillermo, glaring apprehensively at the mouth of the well, backed away, shaking his head and crossing himself.

‘Not for the sacred treasure in the secret city of the Mayas,’ he muttered.

The Jefe pulled his revolver and glanced to the remainder of the posse for confirmation. With eyes and head-nods they gave it.

‘In heaven’s name go down,’ he threatened the little gendarme. ‘And make haste, or I shall put you in such a fix that never again will you go up or down, but you will remain here and rot forever beside this hole of perdition. Is it well, comrades, that I kill him if he does not go down?’ ‘It is well,’ they shouted.

And Guillermo, with trembling fingers, counted out the coins he had already retrieved, and, in the throes of fear, crossing himself repeatedly and urged on by the handthrusts of his companions, stepped upon the bucket, sat down on it with legs wrapped about it, and was lowered away out of the light of day.

‘Stop!’ he screamed up the shaft. ‘Stop! Stop! The water! I am upon it!’

Those on the sweep held it with their weight. ‘I should receive ten pesos extra above my share,’ he called up.

‘You shall receive baptism,’ was called down to him, and, variously: ‘You will have your fill of water this day’; ‘We will let go’; ‘We will cut the rope’; ‘There will be one less with whom to share.’

‘The water is not nice,’ he replied, his voice rising like a ghost’s out of the dark depth. ‘There are sick lizards, and a dead bird that stinks. And there may be snakes. It is well worth ten pesos extra what I must do.’

‘We will drown you!’ Rafael shouted.

‘I shall shoot down upon you and kill you!’ the Jefe bullied.

‘Shoot or drown me,’ Guillermo’s voice floated up; ‘but it will buy you nothing, for the treasure will still be in the well.’

There was a pause, in which those at the surface questioned each other with their eyes as to what they should do.

‘And the Gringos are running away farther and farther,’ Torres fumed. ‘A fine discipline you have, Señor Mariano-Vercara e Hijos, over your gendarmes!’

‘This is not San Antonio,’ the Jefe flared back. ‘This is the bush of Juchitan. My dogs are good dogs in San Antonio. In the bush they must be handled gently, else may they become wild dogs, and what then will happen to you and me?’

‘It is the curse of gold,’ Torres surrendered sadly. ‘It is almost enough to make one become a socialist, with a Gringo thus tying the hands of justice with ropes of gold.’

‘Of silver,’ the Jefe corrected.

‘You go to hell,’ said Torres. ‘As you have pointed out, this is not San Antonio but the bush of Juchitan, and here I may well tell you to go to hell. Why should you and I quarrel because of your bad temper, when our prosperity depends on standing together?’

‘Besides,’ the voice of Guillermo drifted up, ‘the water is not two feet deep. You cannot drown me in it. I have just felt the bottom and I have four round silver pesos in my hand right now. The bottom is carpeted with pesos. Do you want to let go? Or do I get ten pesos extra for the filthy job? The water stinks like a fresh graveyard.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ they shouted down.

‘Which? Let go? Or the extra ten?’

‘The extra ten!’ they chorused.

‘In God’s name, haste! haste!’ cried the Jefe.

They heard splashings and curses from the bottom of the well, and, from the lightening of the strain on the riata, knew that Guillermo had left the bucket and was floundering for the coin.

‘Put it in the bucket, good Guillermo,’ Rafael called down.

‘I am putting it in my pockets,’ up came the reply. ‘Did I put it in the bucket you might haul it up first and well forget to haul me up afterward.’

‘The double weight might break the riata,’ Rafael cautioned.

‘The riata may not be so strong as my will, for my will in this matter is most strong,’ said Guillermo.

‘If the riata should break…’ Rafael began again.

‘I have a solution,’ said Guillermo. ‘Do you come down. Then shall I go up first. Second, the treasure shall go up in the bucket. And, third and last, shall you go up. Thus will justice be triumphant.’

Rafael, with dropped jaw of dismay, did not reply.

‘Are you coming, Rafael?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Put all the silver in your pockets and come up together with it.’

‘I could curse the race that bore me,’ was the impatient observation of the Jefe.

‘I have already cursed it,’ said Torres.

‘Haul away ‘ shouted Guillermo. ‘I have everything in my pockets save the stench; and I am suffocating. Haul quick, or I shall perish, and the three hundred pesos will perish with me. And there are more than three hundred. He must have emptied his bag.’

Ahead, on the trail, where the way grew steep and the horses without stamina rested and panted, Francis overtook his party.

‘Never again shall I travel without minted coin of the realm,’ he exulted, as he described what he had remained behind to see from the edge of the deserted plantation. ‘Henry, when I die and go to heaven, I shall have a stout bag of cash along with me. Even there could it redeem me from heaven alone knows what scrapes. Listen! They fought like cats and dogs about the mouth of the well. Nobody would trust anybody to descend into the well unless he deposited what he had previously picked up with those that remained at the top. They were out of hand. The Jefe, at the point of his gun, had to force the littlest and leanest of them to go down. And when he was down he blackmailed them before he would come up. And when he came up they broke their promises and gave him a beating. They were still beating him when I left.’

‘But now your sack is empty,’ said Henry.

‘Which is our present and most pressing trouble,’ Francis agreed. ‘Had I sufficient pesos I could keep the pursuit well behind us forever. I’m afraid I was too generous. I did not know how cheap the poor devils were. But I’ll tell you something that will make your hair stand up. Torres, Señor Torres, Señor Alvarez Torres, the elegant gentleman and old-time friend of you Solanos, is leading the pursuit along with the Jefe. He is furious at the delay. They almost had a rupture because the Jefe couldn’t keep his men in hand. Yes, sir, and he told the Jefe to go to hell. I distinctly heard him tell the Jefe to go to hell.’

Five miles farther on, the horses of Leoncia and her father in collapse, where the trail plunged into and ascended a dark ravine, Francis urged the others on and dropped behind. Giving them a few minutes’ start, he followed on behind, a self-constituted rearguard. Part way along, in an open space where grew only a thick sod of grass, he was dismayed to find the hoof-prints of the two horses staring at him as large as dinner plates from out of the sod. Into the hoof-prints had welled a dark, slimy fluid that his eye told him was crude oil. This was but the beginning, a sort of seepage from a side stream above off from the main flow. A hundred yards beyond he came upon the flow itself, a river of oil that on such a slope would have been a cataract had it been water. But being crude oil, as thick as molasses, it oozed slowly down the hill like so much molasses. And here, preferring to make his stand rather than to wade through the sticky mess, Francis sat down on a rock, laid his rifle on one side of him, his automatic pistol on the other side, rolled a cigarette, and kept his ears pricked for the first sounds of the pursuit.