Joe Millard - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

A faint smile stirred his lips.

“Goodbye, old friend and partner,” he murmured.

He glanced at the four sprawled belies, shrugged and squatted down to sample his cooling coffee.

Sentenza had spent most of the morning working his way up the mountain to avoid the Union forces holding the canyon and pass below. Close to noon he sat down to rest and catch his breath. He glanced idly around and his eye caught a flash of dark blue among the grey-brown of the rocks. He sprang up and moved cautiously towards the spot.

He found the body of a Union sergeant huddled in a shallow niche under an overhang of rock. The man apparently had been mortally wounded in the fighting that had surged up the flanks of Glorietta Pass and had crawled here to die.

Sentenza squatted and went through the dead man’s pockets. Inside the jacket he came upon an order, assigning Sergeant Allen Crane to adjutant duty at Battleville Prison Camp. Sentenza’s pale sorrel eyes glowed with satisfaction.

Luckily the sergeant had been no small man. His uniform jacket was full enough to conceal the long-barrelled pistol at Sentenza’s left hip. Sentenza buttoned the jacket and strapped on the dead man’s army Colt over it.

“Excellent,” he murmured, looking down at himself. “Now, if you can only remember how to salute properly, Sergeant Crane, you may wind up yet with two hundred thousand in gold.”

The scene had been duplicated too many times. The swarthy prisoner slumped in his saddle beneath the gallows beam, the hangman’s noose around his neck. The sheriff stood at the horse’s flank, holding his whip. The judge finished reading the list of charges.

“Therefore, with the powers vested in us by the law, the aforesaid Thomas Larson, commonly known as Shorty, has been duly condemned to hang by the neck until dead. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.”

Some two hundred yards down the street, in a narrow alleyway, the hunter steadied his rifle across his left aim and took careful aim at the gallows rope. The sheriff raised his whip. The hunter’s finger tightened on the trigger.

The barrel of a gun rammed hard into his back and the voice of Tuco biased, “Eh-eh-eh—not this time, Whitey.”

The ugly one reached around and snatched the rifle, then lifted the hunter’s pistol from its holster. Down the street the whip came slashing down and the horse lunged away.

“What about Shorty?”

Tuco chuckled coldly.

“Shorty be hanged, amigo . This partnership, like the old one, is—how did you put it, Whitey? Dissolved?”

The hunter looked at the figure kicking at the and of the rope. He shrugged.

“Sorry, Shorty, but I guess every man’s luck has to run out sooner or later.”

He tramped to the rear of the buildings, the gun nudging his back. He turned towards his horse.

Theo said, “No, Whitey. Not this time. The world is divided into two kinds of people, amigo —those who ride and those who walk. This time you walk.” He swung into his own saddle and grinned down. “They say walking is good exercise. It makes a man healthy. You are going to be the healthiest man in the territory, Whitey—if you live long enough. Start walking.”

The Man From Nowhere stumbled and caught himself, forcing his legs to move on. The hot sand dragged at his boots, making every step a supreme effort of muscle and will. The sun hammered down with incredible ferocity until he felt as if he were being beaten from head to foot with white-hot irons. Even when he closed his eyes the fierce glare from the sand burned through the lids. Every sobbing breath of the superheated air seared his throat and lungs.

“Come on there, Whitey,” Tuco said gaily. “Walk, man. Walk faster. You’re leaving me with no one to talk to. That is not polite.”

He sat comfortably on his horse, grinning down at his dishevelled victim. Two full canteens of water hung from his saddle horn, sloshing with every movement of the horse. The blond man stumbled again and instinctively grabbed for Tuco’s stirrup to keep from falling. The outlaw jabbed with his spur and the horse skittered out of reach. The hunter fell heavily. It seemed to take him forever to struggle to his knees, then to his feet again.

“You should watch where you are walking,” Tuco said in mock reproof. “Ah, but I know what the trouble is, Whitey. You are carrying too much extra weight.” He reached down, snatched off the hunter’s broad-brimmed hat and sent it sailing out of sight behind a dune. “There. Now you will walk lighter, amigo .”

Even at a slow walk the horse was moving farther and farther ahead of the man on foot. Tuco reined in, waited for the stumbling figure to catch up.

“Eh, Whitey, this desert makes a man thirsty just to look at it.” He uncapped a canteen and tipped it up, drinking noisily, letting some of the precious fluid dribble down his chin and on to his shirt. “Ahhhh, that’s better. You have no idea how good cool water can feel on the tongue and throat.”

He made a pretence of peering down anxiously as the other caught up.

“How this sun beats down. They say the sun is very bad for people with pale skin like yours, Whitey. It burns and blisters until the skin peels off in strips. And worse, it burns through a man’s skull and cooks his brains until they are nothing but jelly. You must be careful not to get too much of the sun, Whitey.”

Tuco squirmed around to reach into the blanket roll tied behind his cantle. He brought out a ridiculously ruffled pink parasol. He opened it over his head and pretended to shiver.

“It is strange how this thin air cannot hold the sun’s heat. A little bit of shade like this and I feel actually cold. Brrr!”

“Where—are—we—going?” the hunter croaked.

“Where? Towards a place where only one of us will arrive, amigo . Do you see all that beautiful sand ahead of us? That is the Jornada del Muerte —an oven a hundred and fifty miles long. Even armies are afraid to go through here. On that side the Confederates are trying to escape. The bluecoats are arriving on the other side. But neither dares set foot in here. Only you and I, Whitey, have the courage to take this beautiful walk where we can be alone and undisturbed. Is that not a pleasant thought?”

The hunter stumbled again and made thick croaking noises.

“What was it you told me once?” Tuco asked. “Oh, yes. Now I remember. ‘You might not survive—but again, you might. Consider it a challenge, amigo . A man needs a challenge to bring out the best in him.’”

The hunter fell, made a feeble, aimless effort to getup again, then collapsed on the burning sand. Tuco shook his head sadly.

“What? You are not resting already? Up, man. On your feet. We are almost there. It can’t be more than a hundred and twenty miles more. And in eight hours it will be sundown, when it gets so cold your teeth chatter and the dew falls like rain until you are drenched to the skin. Do you think you will be around to feel it, Whitey?”

He roared with laughter, rocking in the saddle. The hunter made an herculean effort and made it to his feet He stumbled on. He endured an eternity of torment before Tuco squinted towards the sun and reined in.

“Time to eat so soon? Ah, but I am starved. How good the bread and the big slabs of meat will taste, washed down with plenty of cool water. What? You’re not hungry, Whitey? You would rather enjoy the sun while I eat? Oh, very well. But I insist that you have a good drink of water. Here.”

He unhooked a canteen, sloshed it invitingly and tossed it to the ground some yards beyond the hunter’s reach. The tall man pitched forward on to hands and knees and crawled towards it. He got the canteen and was struggling with the cap when Tuco drew his pistol and fired. The container flew out of the hunter’s hands, spurting water from both sides.