# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 29/Number 6/The Two Smiths

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1917 Oct, pp. 83–88, 120, 123, 124, 126, 128.
The two Smiths pulled triggers and manipulated feeds and learned how to take the gun to pieces and put it together again.
THE TWO SMITHS
By ROY NORTON
ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT AMICK
FROM the Klondike to Colon they were known to intimates as Jim and Bill, or to mere acquaintances as “the two Smiths.” And in thirty years of partnership, through fair and foul, they had come to think alike, to talk alike, to act alike and to look alike. They were so nearly the same age that they celebrated their fiftieth birthday together and had much difficulty in convincing the skeptical that they had not made a mistake of ten years in their reckoning; for they appeared as men of forty—a battered forty, as befits great adventurers and those who have drunk of life's cup with free draught. The celebration took place in Tucson, whither they had gone after disposing of a copper prospect in the hinterland. But Tucson was now a metropolis very unlike the wild town the two Smiths had first known. And many persons in Tucson, including the sheriff and chief of police, regarded the two Smiths with disfavor.
It was at four o'clock in the afternoon of the day of the celebration, as the two Smiths were walking somewhat hilariously down the main street of Tucson, watched by a cynical deputy, that a small man with a large belly and much watch chain also observed them—with more or less sympathy and understanding, be it noted; for to those of the fraternity of alcoholism all unfortunate members of that sorry lodge are as open books, be their degrees the first or the last. He asked a man on the street, smilingly, who the strange twain were.
“Them? Humph! Where was you dragged up?” the stranger replied, evincing surprise at such ignorance. “Them's the two Smiths!”
Observing that his answer was not appreciated at full worth, he condescended to add:
“That's Bill and Jim Smith, partners for God knows how long. The two Smiths, we calls 'em, because they're always together, come rain or shine. If one's in the calaboose for raisin' a row, look in the next cell for the other. If one is on trial for shootin' a citizen, look in the dock for t'other. If they're in big luck and buyin' a town, look for the names of both on the deeds. Come hard luck or good, look for two Smiths—never for one! But bet on this, both ways and down the middle, that they're honest and will do anything they say they'll do! That's the two Smiths, always.”
THEN he went his cryptic way, leaving the man with eyes that were too small and belly that was too large, to ponder—but not for long, because he came from New York, whence come many diverse men of many devious but quick ways. So the two Smiths were still celebrating when the man from the great entrepôt of America tapped mysteriously on a door in an obscure part of Tucson, was admitted and entered. He closed the door behind him, carefully rubbed his hands and spoke to a man who got up from a rude sofa, ran his fingers through his straight though tousled hair, said, “Por amor de Dios, que hay, señor?” and then recovering from the annoyance of a disturbed siesta added in broken English: “Why do you deesturb? Ess it poleece?”
“Not at all,” declared the disturber. “These rube cops don't amount to that!”
He snapped a thumb against a finger in a derisive gesture and added ingratiatingly: “I've good news. Get me? You say you can't get the goods over the Border without help, and that you are suspected and watched—that you need Americans to find a way to land the stuff safely across the line, and that it takes men who aint afraid of a chance. Well, I've got the very men you want—the two Smiths; and they're here in Tucson right now!”
“The two Smeeths? You say you have thee men—yes? And you have arranged—yes?”
The fat man scowled, with a thoughtfulness that might have alarmed a less astute observer.
“No, I haven't,” he said. “That must be up to you. But I think these two men would take a chance in a game like this.”
The Mexican scowled and shrugged. The gesture, rather than the scowl, seemed to anger his companion.
“Look here!” he exclaimed, laying a pudgy finger on the other's coat-lapel. “You say you don't dare take a chance. You've induced me to ship three cases of ammunition and three of the new Marburg machine-guns down here. It was a square deal. We were to get a nice clean-up from the lot. You put off paying for them, or accepting them, until you could find a way to get them across the line. Get me so far?”
“Si, Señor.”
“Well, I've waited a week for you to do something. You say you can't because you are watched too closely. I tell you I think I've got two men that can get away with the stuff. If they can't, from all I hear, nobody can. I know the type. They're the kind that, if offered enough, would, as a certain governor said, 'tackle hell with a garden sprinkler.' Do you want to try these men out or don't you?”
The Mexican looked dubious. It exasperated the fat man, who now banged the palm of his hand on a somewhat littered table and announced with venomous decision: “You do or you don't! That's not my business. But if I don't get the certified check for the goods within the next twenty-four hours, I'll ship that whole outfit back to New York and call it quits. That goes! I'll stand no bluff, either, Señor Juan Estebán.”
Save for one momentary flash of hot anger, the Mexican displayed no temper, and then as if falling to diplomacy as his sole recourse, he began to offer objections in suave terms.
“Ah, señor!” he exclaimed deprecatingly. “Eet is unjoost. These machine-guns are new and—most deeficult as well as terreeble. You were to teach me how they work. Yes? And I dare not leave the house to learn! What good to the great General Pancho are these if he knows not how these guns shoot, eh?”
The salesman wrinkled his brow for a moment as the logic of the argument struck home.
“Then it's up to you to come to some terms with the two Smiths more than ever,” he insisted, moving restlessly round the narrow room in the meantime. Suddenly he too changed to persuasion. “I know as well as any man that these new guns are intricate and difficult,” he said, confronting his purchaser. “That's the main objection to 'em, and that's why you get them so cheap; but they're the deadliest shooting-iron of the kind ever invented. You could wipe out an army with 'em! You say you don't dare take a chance because you're watched by Government detectives. All right! Here's what I'll do to play fair with you. You make a deal with the two Smiths, and if you can get 'em to agree to tackle the job, I'll teach 'em how to manage the guns somewhere between here and the Border. They've got the reputation of making good on anything they promise. I'll feel 'em out, and get em here to-night. If you come to an agreement with 'em, you pay me for the order, and you can slip out and across the line and save yourself. I'll go with them to some place where I can show 'em all that's necessary. They smuggle the stuff across in their own way, and meet you at some place you agree on, on the other side, of course, and then they can teach you how to handle the machines as well as I could. Isn't that fair enough? You've got to have help, because you admit it yourself. I don't see any other way. And anyhow, if you don't do something, that stuff all goes back in just twenty-four hours, and the deal is off.”
ESTEBÁN, playing for time, tried other arguments, but they were equally unsuccessful. The arms-dealer was obdurate. They were interrupted by a signal-knock at the door, and another Mexican entered. Estebán turned to him in his perplexity and spoke in Spanish. Did the newcomer by any chance know anything about the two Smiths? The newcomer did, and waxed eloquent over their exploits. Yes, they were astonishingly fearless and resourceful. Yes, the very men for the job. Also a mysterious man with a gold badge had been making inquiries concerning the present whereabouts of one Señor Juan Estebán. The señor must go quickly, lest he be detained from his great work of emancipation. It was for this that his friend and compatriot had come for a daylight visit.
Almost in a panic, Estebán turned to the salesman and exclaimed in English: “Good, señor! I accept. Have the two Smiths here at ten o'clock to-night. Tell them how to knock upon the door.”
The two Smiths had lost heavily in a quiet gambling-game, for which, this being a celebration, they cared not much. Besides, in a long career passed in many camps, they were accustomed to losing, hoping, with careless optimism, for “better luck next time, pardner!” They were ripe for temptation at that moment when the arms-agent approached them and with oily suggestions and ingratiating words induced them to give ear. And at ten o'clock that night, after long and devious ways of caution, they gave the signal on the door of the obscure house where Señor Juan Estebán, Mexican patriot, was concealed.
The meeting was almost brotherly in its simplicity. The señor was very polite and very humble. He regretted that he could speak no English, and was gratified at their knowledge of Spanish—very much so, indeed. He complimented them upon their fluency in the tongue. Also he trusted them implicitly. They were gentlemen of their word, he had heard; therefore they had been specially selected. Quite well they understood, he hoped, that they were doing something for liberty. Viva la República!
There was a wild scream of terror and anguish as the knife, thrown underhand, swept upward through the illustrious General's throat.
Their host paused to see what effect his eloquence, florid and flashing, so potent when used to sway his Latin countrymen, was having upon the two Smiths. Somehow they did not appear too highly impressed. Bill was actually beginning to shift restlessly.
“But you haven't told us yet what you want us to do!”
“Ah! So I have not!” said the Mexican, as if for the first time aware that he had neglected so important a detail. “I wish to enlist your services, the services of two such valorous men, to take some machine-guns across the Border.”
“To take guns across the Border? What? Do I get you right?” demanded Bill, half rising from his chair. “If you think we're the sort that would get guns into Mexico to shoot down our own countrymen—some of 'em are already in there—” he began, but was hastily interrupted by the señor, who threw his hands upward in expostulation and vented fervid disclaimers.
“To shoot your countrymen, the brave Americans? Señor Smith, you must be mad! Surely you have heard of the great General Pancho?”
The two Smiths admitted their ignorance of General Pancho.
“General Pancho, the great liberator,” said their host reverently, “believes in and loves Americans. That is why he is hated by those vile dogs who have murdered Americans. In due time his army will join the American forces, but—your government has not understand. The guns you bring will fight for Americans, not against them! You will be doing you own country great service. If your own government really knew the situation—”
And thus, speciously, and with many mysterious hints leading them to believe that he was the sharer of state secrets, and actually playing upon their patriotism, he convinced them of the nobility of their task. And great was to be their reward for something that by this time they would have almost volunteered to do. If the two Smiths would get the shipment to the Rancho Cerro Gordo, and there teach their very humble admirer how to manipulate the new machine-guns: that were to decimate the scum usurpers of liberty, fighting under the blood-stained banners of the latest tyrant, they would be paid in American gold the munificent sum of five thousand dollars!
The partners looked at each other and gasped. Five thousand? It was like finding money!
“If we could pull this off, Jim,” said Bill in English, “we could do a heap of things. Lord Almighty! Why, with five thousand and what we've got left, we could slip back to that Arripa prospect we had to pass up because we didn't have the mazuma, open her up and become—”
“Millionaires!” Jim exclaimed as the dream expanded. “And besides, as I understand it, this feller's fightin' on the side of the poor devils that have always got the worst of it, as well as for Americans. He must be on the level, from the way he trusts us, because me and you are the only ones that will sabe the guns we tote across. Eh? Looks good to me. I'm for it!”
Estebán's eyes were fixed blankly on the flame of the lamp, as was proper for one who did not understand English. He saw no visions.
They almost ran, the guide and the guided..... They came closer to the languorous noises of the encampment that encircled the ancient town.
“Maybe we ought to get some of it in advance, though,” Bill suggested.
“What for? We got money enough for an outfit,” protested Jim. “I think this little feller is all right.”
Estebán's eyes did not in the least betray him. They were still fixed in that abstracted stare when the partners, reverting to Spanish, sometimes in chorus, sometimes singly, accepted his proffer. He offered them, with a gentleman's delicacy, money if they stood in need, and seemed surprised when they did not accept it. He was almost tearful when they declined, and assured them of his profound respect and brotherly affection. They too were liberatores!
He gave them brotherly pats on their broad shoulders and his “Vaya V. con Dios” on the following night, when all plans were perfected and final instructions given for the rendezvous at the ranch. Undoubtedly they were “going with God!” The two Smiths had embarked on an enterprise.
It became bruited around Tucson, mysteriously, that the partners, who after the brief celebration had reverted to strict teetotalism, had been backed by the fat Easterner in a new mining enterprise in some indefinite field; hence there was not much surprise when a small string of pack-burros plunged northward one day and disappeared; but certain men in Tucson were perplexed by their inability to learn at what hour, and why, Don Estebán had departed—men who might have been interested could they have seen the two Smiths, under able instruction, studying the mechanism of a machine-gun in a distant and secluded arroyo.
The two Smiths laid themselves upon their bellies on the sands of isolation and pulled triggers and manipulated feeds and learned how to take the gun to pieces and put it together again—what to do if sand got into the breech, how frequently to oil this and that part, and to keep the water-jackets full. Their lesson learned, they saw the salesman aboard a train that stopped at a water-tank. He waved them a cheerful and smiling good-by. He could afford to. He had received and cashed the certified check. What eventually became of the two Smiths was none of his business.
To such frontiersmen, seasoned, wise, habituated to numerous wiles and totally without fear, the crossing of the international boundary was merely a wait for a seasonable hour. A drowsy sentry abruptly pulled up his horse in a cloudy dawn, after a black night, on a river-bank, and swore fluently when he saw the unmistakable trail made by a burro-train leading down to the water.
And his report, passing upward, caused much bad language; but this had not the slightest effect upon the two Smiths, who were plugging along toward the distant Cerro Gordo Ranch. With no hardships other than those to which they were duly seasoned, such as an occasional centipede or scorpion in the blankets, and one or two brief and unexpected conflicts with pugnacious rattlesnakes, they reached to within two short days' travel of their destination. And it was there that they encountered their first distress; for the water-hole upon which they had depended was but a hollow, armored with dried mud.
To man and beast familiar with deserts, there is no terror equal to that of thirst. For a long time that night the partners sat ominously quiet and brooding, each fearing to discuss the future, lest he discourage the other.
“We could shoot half the train and save them misery, and maybe pull through with the rest; but I'd hate to have to kill the poor animals, Bill!” said Jim at last.
“Yes, but that would mean leaving a lot of the stuff behind; we promised we'd get it through,” replied Bill.
“Yes, we promised,” was the quiet response, as if that made it irrevocable.
“And of course those poor devils down there, making the best fight they can for their country and what they believe is right, are—are depending on us and will need it all,” muttered Bill.
“Yes, that's it! Dependin' on us! So it seems as if all we can do is to do our best to make all good—or not good at all.”
“That's the way it looks to me—all or nothing. We gave our words.” And Bill reached for his blankets as if the argument was conclusively finished.
They tell yet, as a great joke on themselves, that they forgot to blindfold him or to bind his hands, and that he stood quite calm and unresisting when they fired.
By common though unvoiced agreement, as became men who had lived together so long and had learned to read each other's minds, they were awake while the night was still but a purple blanket of velvet, and the land but a mysterious, brooding waste, waiting in profound silence and speculation for what the invaders might do. Reluctant, astonished and weary, the pack-animals bestirred themselves and gulped the little ration of water.
The partners walked at intervals that day, to spare the saddle-ponies; and toward night, and another dry camp, they fell to vague, half-broken sentences always couched in generous regard for each other. Now one would say: “Of course we'll pull through if we can keep goin'.” And the other would assert: “The burros seem to be standing it better'n the cayuses. Sure we'll pull through.” Or again: “We've got to make good; we said we would.”
They stinted themselves of water through the following day, being determined to get the whole train through alive. They progressed doggedly, but ever more slowly; and then, when a blurred uprise, as of distant buildings, crept above the flat horizon, they dared not speak of it lest it be but mirage and the finish. But it increased its solid tenure of the land, and Jim had to talk.
“If we can only stick it out, we're bound to reach the ranch,” he said tentatively, like a man doubting his eyes.
“And if that is the ranch ahead of us,” muttered Bill, between his parched lips, “we'll make it—yet—and—and— get the guns through and—and—”
His voice trailed away into a whisper; but he knew by his partner's face that what he feared to be a mirage had been seen by the other also. He shut his teeth savagely and emptied his canteen into the necks of the stumbling brigade of animals. Jim shut his teeth and did likewise.
The sun was almost down when they reached the goal. Somehow the animals had survived and with quickened nostrils knew that could they but reach it, moisture was near. A staggering, plunging cavalcade drew up outside the crumbling, broken adobe wall that surrounded the scattered buildings of the Rancho Cerro Gordo. Some sinister air of desertion and desolation pervaded it. Terrified, as by an apparition of death the partners stopped the burros and surviving saddle-horse in front of a closed gate, and croaking like ravens, shouted as best they could but failed to gain a response.
“It don't look right to me, Jim,” said Bill huskily.
“Nor to me,” replied Jim in a scarcely more audible tone. “Think we'd better go in and nose around some?”
“Got to! Can't go farther without water, no matter who's in there. We're goners if we can't get in.”
He pulled off the rag that had been wound round the mechanism of his rifle and took the cork out of the muzzle, as he talked. Bill did likewise. Without further hesitancy they climbed over the rubble of a breach in the wall, and the string of burros followed them. An overturned cart lay in the middle of the yard, and there were significant holes in it. The doors of the buildings were all open, and those of the main house had been battered down.
By common impulse, they entered the house. A dead man lay on the floor; at the foot of a little shrine the candles of which had long expired, lay the body of a woman, hands outstretched, even as she had died, in supplication.
“Must have been dead more'n a week—all drying up!” Bill commented.
“Poor cuss!” said Jim, suddenly taking off his hat.
“Yes, poor cuss!” added Bill, doffing his own hat. Apparently their pity and horror did not extend to the dead man, as if it were nothing that a man should die, that being merely his luck. The two Smiths had seen many men die, some of them by the Smiths' own efforts, but with a woman it was quite different. Also—that overturned cart, the battered doors. “I'm afraid they didn't get a fair show!” said Bill, and carefully, as if fearing to disturb the dead, he tiptoed toward the door. Jim cautiously tiptoed after him.
“There it is, water!” Jim croaked, and ran heavily up a path that led to a tank below a spring, then stopped by its edge. Bill gained his side and also looked. A dead man lay in the water, his face quite mussily shot away; and they observed that his hands were tied behind him.
“No, these folks didn't have a chance,” Jim said, but Bill was already half up the hillside following the water-pipe. He turned and called: “Here's the spring, Jim, and it's clean.”
WHEN Jim reached him, he was lying on his chest and luxuriously drinking from a sunken tub, and for a long time they were contented merely to gulp a little, rest a few moments and drink again. They returned more buoyantly downward to their burros and ponies, hurriedly threw off the hitches and the heavy packs and led the thirst-tortured animals in turn up the hillside, caressing them as they watched them gulp the cool water.
“Close shave,” said Bill.
“Very close,” said Jim.
They were overjoyed to find a few bales of hay for their animals before they prepared their own fare.
“Getting late; but—don't seem quite right to—to leave em there—like that, does it, Jim?” Bill said between puffs of his cigarette after they had finished their supper.
“Just what I been thinkin' about, Bill.”
“I saw a couple of shovels and some picks down there in that shack to the left. I'll get 'em, eh?”
“How about that tree up there? Nice place, aint it? Most likely she was fond of it, being the only tree here.”
“Most likely.”
The night was warm. They stripped to their waists, and very soon the moonlight glistened from the rivulets of sweat that trickled down great ridges of muscles on their broad, lean backs. They paused but once.
“Looks to me like it's kind of hard to decide,” said Bill. “About this grave, I mean. I sort of reckon one of the dead fellers is the woman's husband, and—most likely she'd like to be with him. Hang it all! Which feller do you calculate it was?”
Jim wiped the sweat from his forehead and appeared vastly troubled and perplexed.
“I sort of think it must have been the feller in the house,” he mumbled.
“Nope. Looks to me like they shot the boss of the house out there by the cistern, first. He'd be her man.”
“Maybe; but—Lord! It'd be rotten luck to separate the right ones and put the wrong ones together, and get things all mixed and fussed up, like.”
“We could make it big enough for all three and put her in the middle, couldn't we? I don't reckon as how the right two'd object too much, seeing as how they all went out fighting together, eh?”
They laid the woman away reverently with her fellow-victims by her side, and even essayed a rude prayer over the mound. Although the night was waning, they did not rest until they had found the material to make a crude cross, upon which, after due consideration, they scrawled:
Here lies a Mexican woman found dead at the foot of a Shrine. Lord have mercy on her soul
Then, by afterthought:
P. S. Also two men, one of which maybe was her husband, but which no one can tell, so we had to plant them all together
James Smith. William Smith
A FULL week elapsed before the Senior Estebán appeared—in the night! They were asleep when he arrived, and so they did not notice that he grinned most knowingly, as at something very familiar, when he entered through the broken walls, nor that he gave an amused chuckle and lifted his eyebrows whimsically when he paused beside the grave that they had now decorated with a crude border. He was not an expert on graves, although very familiar with their causes. Graves, so far as he could judge, were a waste of effort.
His brief meditations were stopped by a heavy snore, then a quick stir and a voice: “Who's there?”
“Ah, Señor Smeeth, it is I, Señor Estebán! Your friend awake?” He spoke in his soft Spanish.
The two Smiths sprang from their blankets, and heeding his plaint of exhaustion, hastened like twin Samaritans to minister to his comfort. Not until he had fed to repletion, would they let him talk. His tale was dramatic and well told. And thus it ran:
After leaving. them in Tucson, he had undergone great difficulties in making his escape; the cursed gringo officers had nearly caught him; he had wandered for days across the wastes, parched, hungry, athirst; by the benevolent mercy of God he had been found by other patriots, who nursed his feeble remnant of life back to full flame and told him that the barbarous agents of the latest tyrant crushing his beloved Mexico beneath the heel had laid waste all the northern province and sacked the Rancho Cerro Gordo. By valor and endurance alone had he survived to carry the news to the great and illustrious General Pancho, the Liberator, whom God and the Virgin bless for his many kindly and courageous deeds, and had told him that two very dear amigos, almost brothers of his, were even now in peril because they would rendezvous at that ranch.
The General had wept over their plight. He dared not send an army northward, for he was outnumbered. He would have come himself, alone, had he not been overcome by reason and sent his most trusted lieutenant to bring them to the place where he might clasp them in his arms and give them thanks and payment for all they had endured. Mexico would not forget them!
“But what I can't see,” said Bill, scratching his head when this eloquence died of exhaustion, “is what we're to do now.”
“We shall have to travel a hundred miles farther south, whither I shall lead you, and there meet the General and accept his reward,” said Estebán. And then, seeing their interchanged glance of dismay, he added somewhat hastily: “The General told me to say that as a matter of justice your payment would be increased.”
Nearly all roads were alike to the two Smiths. And a hundred miles was a small matter to them. They were indeed quite cheerful when they threw the packs on the protesting burros at early dawn and made ready to travel farther into the interior of bleeding Mexico.
It was more than a mere camp that they came upon after five days of steady traveling; they had entered the domain of an army whose camp-fires stretched wide, and had they been sophisticated, they would not have accepted the salutes bestowed upon their guide as mere signs of friendliness. They did not observe the scowls, nor hear the derisive curses that followed them as the wake of their progress closed behind.
They were in a small city that had been the capital of a province. There was a plaza with its inevitable bandstand, and gardens once luxuriant with tropical growth.
“No honor is too great for my friends,” said Estebán as he halted at the border of the tiny square. “These men will take your animals to a place where they shall be cared for. You will—”
“Will they give them plenty to eat and drink?” inquired the two Smiths. “They've done right good work for us, and—may be we'd best go and take care of 'em, Bill,” added Jim.
Reassured that their beasts would be well cared for, they were conducted to what had once been a comfortable home, luxurious for men of their type, and found themselves therein installed. A camerero showed them a bath. They stood together under the generous shower and like boys yelled with delight. They marveled at the stateliness of the dining-room when they seated themselves at an ancient table. They recognized their servitor and shouted boisterously: “Why, it's Pete! Good old Pete that used to work at the Miners' Café in Val Verde!”
Pete shook hands with them and told them how, after they had given him money to bury his wife and for masses for her soul, he had returned to Mexico to fight, and then asked about men they had known. They invited him to sit down and dine with them, but he declined, and there was something in his demeanor they could not understand—some anxiety, some slight aloofness, some terror.
There was something loud and declamatory in his praise of General Pancho, in his extolling of the General's deeds, in his assertions that the great Pancho would some day become at least president, and probably king of Mexico. The praise was a trifle too fulsome; it aroused suspicion even in their unsophisticated minds. This was not like the good old Pete they had known and befriended in those past days at Val Verde. And why had such unexpected attention been paid them?
“The illustrious General Pancho has sent an orderly to conduct you to his headquarters,” loudly declaimed Pete, interrupting their meditations.
“Good! That's what I call business!” exclaimed Bill; and Jim, reaching for his hat, nodded affirmation.
Bill couldn't find his so easily, being sometimes careless, and Pete volunteered to assist him in the search. Bill was seeking it behind a sofa when Pete, pretending to assist, whispered close to his ear: “Amigo! Be careful what you say and do. Be careful what you promise. You are in terrible danger. Pancho is a treacherous devil—a swine from the filthiest wallow in Hades!” And then aloud, before Bill could recover from his surprise: “Ah! Here is the hat! Make haste. The General waits.”
BILL had no opportunity to whisper a warning to Jim before they had joined the restless orderly at the doorway. The man was a surly brute, but the two Smiths maintained a careless, inconsequential conversation in Spanish as they accompanied him to what had been the governor's palace.
The two Smiths were conducted up a noble staircase, announced and ushered blinking into the presence. They gasped in astonishment. The Señor Juan Estebán, now resplendent in a general's uniform, grinned at them from behind a large, flat-topped mahogany desk, in the midst of a magnificently furnished apartment. The lights from a huge cut-glass chandelier showered down upon his gold lace and his gold epaulettes and his smiling face.
“Good Lord! Are you—” Jim exclaimed, and then he paused.
“Yes, my friends, I myself am the General Pancho. It is a pleasant surprise, I hope. Be seated, señores.” He waved his hand at two of the finely carved chairs, opened a box of cigars on the desk and invited them to smoke. “You will find these better than the vile stuff we smoked when we were comrades on the trail,” he said with a disarming air of great good fellowship.
“But—but why didn't you tell us, General, who you really were?” Bill asked.
“Ah, my friends, there are a very great many who seek General Pancho, including many of your countrymen—estimable but—shall we say—stupid men.”
He did not lift his eyes as he spoke, but the scarcely suppressed sneer in his voice was not reassuring. The two Smiths sensed a bitter animosity toward official America. Jim merely laughed, but Bill was more on guard.
“Well, it doesn't matter who we deal with, so long as we get our pay. And it does make it easier, now that we know you are the General,” said Bill.
He could not entirely conceal a certain grim significance in his words, but he appeared unconcerned and calm when Pancho suddenly fixed somewhat startled and angry eyes on him, and then fell to playing with a bronze paper-cutter that lay upon his desk. It was shaped like a Roman dagger, doubtless a keepsake of the departed governor. Bill observed that it was very pointed and very sharp.
Pancho adopted a painfully maintained air of good fellowship and was solicitous for their comfort. That, he declared, was the main reason for his sending for them. “It shall never be said,” he declared, “that General Pancho, the true liberator of Mexico the great, is not hospitable to his guests, and particularly where they are such valorous comrades as are the Señores Smith. Ah! It is well! You have all your desire for entertainment? I am reassured. Now, to-morrow morning, early, I shall call upon you with certain men whom you will instruct in the assembling and mounting of the machine-guns, and teach them their operation.”
“Sure,” said Jim the good-natured and unsuspecting. “We'll be waiting for you.”
“But hold on a moment,” interjected Bill calmly. “I believe the agreement was that we were first of all to be handed five thousand dollars, American gold—and something extra if we came on down here from the Rancho; but as far as that last is concerned, I'm willing to call it off, if Jim is.”
HIS words had a distinct and differing effect upon his hearers. The General's jaw shut harshly, and his eyes narrowed and blazed. Jim's jaw dropped, and his eyes opened widely in surprise.
“You mean to say you don't trust—” began Pancho furiously, and was coolly interrupted by the unawed Bill: “Trust, nothing! That has nothing at all to do with the agreement. We were to get the money in hand, and of course you've got it ready?”
He had again jumped intuitively at a truthful conclusion, which was that this illustrious blackleg general did not have the money and had no intention of paying them, and that once the secret of the guns was given over, the men who had brought them there were lost.
The partners knew each other very well indeed. Jim, still trustful, looked at Bill and read many danger-signs. He hastened to play the part of peacemaker, and believing Pancho ignorant of English, spoke soothingly in the latter tongue.
“Lord Almighty, Bill! What ails you? Aint we been treated white, so far? You act as if you were afraid our friend here was a crook. Don't niggle over little things like the time when the money's to be paid. It don't make any difference if it's paid before, or after, so long as we get it. Let's help him out. He's a right good feller, so far as I can see. What's got you sore on the deal?”
Bill would have answered immediately, save for one fact he observed, which was that Pancho's eyes, fixed on Jim, betrayed that he understood every word. It was another proof of duplicity. He fought for time to put his partner on guard and confide his suspicions.
“Maybe so,” he replied stubbornly, “maybe so; but a contract's a contract, Jim. I think we'd ought to have the money first.”
“Go on! Let's not be pikers! I like this General, I do. He's been right decent all the way through. If he says he's got the money, I'm willing to take a chance. Come on. Be a good feller.”
It was Pancho's cue. He took advantage of it.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his softest voice of persuasion, “pardon me. I do not understand your English tongue. But coming back to the subject of payment, what the Señor William Smith last said in my native tongue is quite right.”
He paused impressively, and even Bill lifted his eyebrows and waited.
“The money is coming from Chihuahua. It should have been here before this. Had it arrived, believe me, señores, I should not have discussed anything at all before making the payment you have so bravely earned. You would now be sitting with bags of gold by your sides. A messenger was here on my return, to convey to me the news that it was on the way. It should have been here to-day. It is certain to come to-morrow or the next day, if those who carry it have not been held up by unforeseen circumstances. If you insist, you need not trouble to instruct my men until it is paid; but señores, what have I done to make you lose faith in my word? Have I thus far broken it? Have I not met you at the place agreed upon, trailed with you, slept with you, eaten with you, shared hardships with you and brought you here? Ay de mi! It is not thus that Mexican gentlemen betray their friends! I am hurt by the Señor William's lack of confidence.”
He threatened tears, and Jim gave vent to indignation—in his mother tongue.
“There, Bill. See what you've done? You've hurt the poor feller's feelings. It aint like you, Bill, to act that way. Tell him it's all right.”
BILL sat scowling at the end of his half-burned cigar. He was very generous and tried to be fair.
“Well,” he said in Spanish, “perhaps I am too close in sticking to the letter of the contract. I did it just because I like to do things the way it's been agreed beforehand. Maybe we'd best think it over. Why not wait until to-morrow, and give the men bringing the gold from Chihuahua a chance to come? Then, if they don't, we'll have to calculate something has held them up, and go ahead and teach the General's men how to handle the tools.”
Had he not relaxed his vigilance and been eying his partner as he spoke, he would have seen the sudden wry but satisfied twist of Pancho's lips—a twist that was suddenly controlled and whipped to a semblance of extreme friendship.
“That is all right! Well spoken, amigo!” enthusiastically declared the General. “For a moment I thought you doubted my word—the word of Mexico's liberator! I beg your forgiveness for the thought! The small differences in languages, after all, do not reach so far as the heart, where there is impressed a great gratitude and affection for you, my friends! Here—I shall prove my trust in you!”
He had half arisen from his chair. He now sat down, seized a piece of note-paper from the ornate bronze holder on the desk and hurriedly scrawled two passes giving to his honored friends and guests their freedom throughout the entire encampment.
“You can go, to-morrow, while you wait, anywhere, and see and learn what Mexican patriotism means. Free to come and go as you please—understand? And to-morrow evening I hope to have the pleasure of your company again. It is a great pleasure for comrades to meet. If the gold comes, you shall have it. If not, we must consider what we shall do.”
He did not call an orderly, but himself escorted them to the door and gave them again his: “Vaya V. con Dios!” Even Bill was placated by his friendliness.
Pete was waiting to let them in. He appeared relieved at their return. He asked Bill what had happened; but Bill, tired, laughed and said: “Nothing—nothing at all. Good night.”
THEY loitered through the town the next morning, and lounged upon the benches in the park. They smoked steadily from a box of choice cigars that had been sent them with the General's compliments. They took a long siesta after luncheon, as befits those who, working strenuously for many days, have come upon a time of utter relaxation. Bill awoke first and decided to go to the corral and talk to the mules. He was anxious lest they be neglected, for to him they were friends dependent upon him and his partner for the rewards and comforts of life. He washed and dressed a saddle-gall on one of them. Next he went over the pack-saddles and other equipment. Then he went over the mechanism of the machine-guns, wiping, drying and oiling them. If Pancho played fair, he should have perfect guns. He was surprised at the lateness of the hour when he emerged, washed his hands at a horse-trough and trudged homeward.
Jim was not there; neither was Pete. A strange servitor asked him if he was ready to dine, and told him Jim had gone away with a soldier, and that shortly afterward Pete had been missed. Bill waited awhile; then, still wondering why Jim had not returned, but succumbing to a lusty appetite, he dined alone. It was very unlike Jim to stay away so long, but Jim had a fondness for adventure, for the bright eyes of women, for the twanging of a guitar. But—why in the deuce hadn't Jim come home? This was no time for tomfoolery. And it was getting late.
Perturbed, Bill went out upon the little iron balcony, leaned across it, smoked and stared at the newly arisen moon. Its light fascinated him. Each leaf of the trees below stood out distinct. The smell of flowers was in the air, but they struck his nostrils as overprofuse and deadly. His finely trained ears caught the sound of a cautiously opened door in the room behind him. He whirled and saw Pete closing it gently; Pete's fingers fumbled nervously, and when he turned, his eyes were staring and terrified, his lips twitching and inarticulate. He put his fingers to them with a sign of profound and appealing caution; then he beckoned somewhat wildly to the American.
“Why—why, Pete, what's the matter—”
“Come! By the love of our Lady! Come!” he whispered; he opened the door again, and passed down the stairs. Bill discerned that the old waiter from Val Verde was in his stocking feet, and aware of something abnormal, removed his own shoes and passed silently after. Pete was already hastening ahead of him when he replaced his shoes, and gave chase through the shaded Prado, where the trees stood motionless—not even the frond of a palm wavered in the light. They almost ran, the guide and the guided, paces apart, but keeping exact distance, through a narrow deserted street. They came closer to the languorous noises of the encampment that encircled the ancient town. They swung away toward a ravine in the outskirts, which locality was curiously deserted, and Bill was aware of a pungent, unmistakable stench.
He saw Pete stop and wring his hands, as if by that exercise to express his emotion. There was a remnant of a wall, a sward where grass had run wild, and over all the tropical moon. Pete waited for him, and when he came, pointed at his feet. For an instant the heart of Bill Smith stopped beating as he leaned forward and stared downward and then with weakened knees knelt beside an object, thrust a hand beneath it, lifted it upward and called in a very strange and broken voice: “Jim! Jim!” He hugged it to his breast, all the instincts and habits of life commanding him to hold and to shield; to succor and to sacrifice. But the moon brought back no smiling response from the white, dead face, though it showed the dark stain where a dozen bullets had torn a hole through the unfaltering heart.
BILL'S voice was very quiet and cold when he spoke to Pete, who stood sobbing behind him.
“Who did it?”
“Pancho, that spawn of hell, señor.” And then bursting all bounds, Pete gave details of which he was certain, because, fearful for one whom he had loved, this Mexican of a lower caste had eavesdropped, tried to warn and, when hope was lost, followed with a dog's fidelity to the end. It was Pancho himself who had come to the rooms and, finding Jim alone, had tried to induce him to tell the secret of the guns.
Jim would have willingly done so, had not there been a most unfortunate intrusion. A courier, spent, had arrived with news that the advance guard of the army of the United. States was but a day's march away—that its arrival meant either flight or fight. Coming with guns was this army, bent upon an arrest which meant punishment. The illustrious General Pancho lost his temper and stormed. He swore by the Holy Virgin that he was done with all trifling, that now was the time for him to have his machine-guns so that he might wipe the cowardly scum of a cowardly government from the face of the earth. It was life or death, now, for Jim Smith. And Jim Smith had calmly folded his arms and said: “You ask me to tell you how to kill my countrymen, who you told us were your friends. Bill was right, after all! You are a dog—a dog by instinct as well as ancestry! And may the curse of God Almighty rest upon me if I ever speak to you again.”
He kept his word; for he spoke not again save to tell his executioners, there in the place of execution where many other men had died against the wall, that he was not afraid to die and therefore they need not wrap his eyes about with a dirty handkerchief. He looked squarely into the sun when the light went out, did the Señor Jim, as relinquishing all, he pitched forward upon his face. That was all: a wall, a man standing in front of it and bound, a volley, and a corpse unburied in a land where burials were wasted time.
Bill Smith listened, standing as motionless as the broken wall. He asked no questions. He betrayed no further emotion—only, when the tale was told, he took a knife from his pocket, gently lifted what had been Jim Smith and cut the cords that bound the stiffened arms.
“There,” he said, as if to himself, “that's better. I don't like the idea of Jim's going before God Almighty with his hands tied. They were free hands. They were never raised against any man in less than righteous anger. They were always open to help a friend. They never refused help to a hard-up stranger. And they were brave hands, hands that never should have been tied, for they wouldn't have lifted themselves, at the last, to shield his face when he knew that he was cashing in his chips for what was wholly right!
“All right! We'll go now, Pete,” he said, and turned away. He did not look backward. He walked very rigidly up the steep path leading from the place of execution. But his head was carried stiffly on a stiff neck, and there was something fearsome in the way his sturdy legs moved, and the pat of his feet upon the ground. He did not speak until they had regained the room that had so lately been theirs and was now his.
“You'll say nothing about this, Pete. Pancho will kill you as quickly as he did him, if he ever knew. Good-by!”
He held out his hand and smiled with his lips, and with nothing more than a kindly look of gratitude in his eyes.
“We thank you—Jim and I—for being our friend. Don't bother about it any more. Here—wait a moment!”
He pulled the tails of his worn blue woolen shirt from his trousers-band and unbuckled and removed a belt which he thrust into the hands of the perplexed Pete. It was heavy with gold.
“I was always the banker,” he said. “There were women and green tables and—Jim was sometimes careless! Get out of this mess when you get a chance.”
HE thrust Pete from the door and sat down to wait. He took one of General Pancho's cigars from its box and then, remembering its donor, crushed it in his hand, threw it on the tiles and rolled a cigarette. It was not half consumed when the orderly he had expected was announced. He rose to his feet, took a look around the room and went to meet him. He evinced not the slightest astonishment when he saw that there was a guard of honor consisting of six men to accompany him on his visit. He asked one for a match, and his hand did not waver as he relighted his stub of a cigarette. He led the way up the grand staircase of the Governor's palace, as if familiar with it, and at the same time eager to meet the illustrious General.
He was in the act of opening the door when one of the guardsmen said: “Pardon me, señor! You have a revolver. There is a new order issued that no one shall wear arms when interviewing the illustrious General Pancho.” Bill bit his lip and was keenly aware that the officer who removed his heavy pistol also ran deft hands feelingly over his body to learn whether other weapons of offense might thereupon be concealed. Disarmed, he walked through the door with a chill and satisfied smile upon his face.
“Ah, amigo,” said the General with a soft smile, “where is our dear friend the Señor James?”
“He was not in the room when you sent for me,” said Bill, for once in his life avoiding the eyes of the man to whom he spoke.
“Ah! I am grieved,” said General Pancho, again playing with the bronze paper-cutter on his desk. “I regret to say that the gold has not arrived from Chihuahua. Of course, this delay is troublesome, but—war is war. Perhaps our friend has—met some of our famous Mexican beauties and—been detained. Men will be men, after all. I can't blame him. But let us get to business. Time is important to me. To-morrow morning at four o'clock I will send men to you, whom you are to instruct in the handling of the new machine-guns. Better show them the actual operation first of all. They can learn the assembling of them later. We have immediate use for them. We expect a battle within the next twenty-four hours. Can you hasten the instruction, señor?”
BILL stared quietly at the man in uniform and took his time to reply. He was interested in what size soul such a reprobate must possess, if he were thus endowed. He found tobacco and papers and started to roll a cigarette.
“Here, amigo! Have one of my cigars,” said Pancho, reaching for the box.
“No, thanks, I'd rather smoke my own,” said Bill, blinking his eyes from the lighted match. And then, after a long, deliberate inhalation: “I'm afraid I can't agree to that, Estebán,—I beg pardon, General Pancho,—until I've had a talk with my partner Jim. You see, we agreed that neither should do anything without the other, and—well, you understand how it is. Why, we've been partners for more than thirty years! Think of it—thirty years! There never has been a partner like Jim. Everything about him honest and fair and truthful! No such thing as a lie or deceit, or to look in a man's eyes and smile when there wasn't a smile in his heart.”
He paused and scrutinized the Mexican as slowly and carefully as a scientist might an unknown insect, and something in his attitude and tone caused the illustrious General to lower his eyes and twist in his chair.
“No,” Bill continued in that same low, quiet voice, “I shall not show any man anything at all about the guns until I have had a talk with Jim. And here's another point: the guns can't be put together and used until that talk comes off, because this afternoon I took pains to hide part of the mechanism where no one can find it, but me. They're quite useless now!”
He rubbed his chin meditatively, and his eyes were fixed, through the smoke, on Pancho's face. The latter stared at him and suddenly read the truth. He dropped the mask.
“You'll bring back the missing parts, and teach my men how to use those guns before noon to-morrow,” he said, raising his body from the chair and leaning over the top of the mahogany desk, “or die.”
Arrested in this attitude by his own animosity, he stood very still and menacing. There was a tense and beating stillness in the room. Then Bill Smith said:
“Sit down, Estebán! Calm yourself. Don't get excited. I've got a lot to say.”
AS if expecting a surrender, the General fell back into his seat, and Bill Smith drew his chair closer to the edge of the flat-topped desk and rested his elbows thereon.
“Jim's not coming back, is he?” he drawled after a long wait, as if to give himself plan and formulation for his words.
“It will not matter to you by noon to-morrow, unless you do what I order,” said the General tersely.
“Wont matter, eh? That's funny. You see, Jimmy and I are partners, and we've lived together and fought together and played together so long that we most always do the same things—together. I don't suppose you understand this. Your kind don't. You are one of the sort that mistake kindness for weakness, forgiveness for cowardice, good nature for folly, and—bah! What's the use of trying to talk into your swelled, thick, idiotic head anything above dirt! You a general and a liberator of a country? Why, you filthy hog! You rotten Judas! You don't know what honor, let alone liberty, mean!”
It was a quite true arraignment, as was proven by the fact that General Pancho leaned back, grinned and then broke into a malevolent laugh.
“Gringo!” he said, applying the Mexican term of contempt for those who dwell north of the line. “It doesn't matter what you think. What does matter for you is whether you teach my men the guns. Listen!” He too leaned forward and scowled at the last of the two Smiths, seeming to gloat over the pain he might inflict. “This afternoon Jim Smith, the fool, was shot down in the place where I rid myself of such as don't obey.”
Bill did not move. It angered the General.
“Don't you understand, you cowardly Americano? Killed, I say! Killed as you shall be, if you don't wake and do what I say you must, before to-morrow noon. I had him shot this afternoon.”
“All right! Calm yourself!” was the amazing reply. “Be quiet a moment. You're a general, aren't you? You're supposed to have some sort of dignity. That's right! Lean back in your chair and grin. One time there were two partners called Smith. The two Smiths, most folks called them. They never stole anything, and they never wronged a man willingly. Ignorant about a lot of things, were the two Smiths, but always doing the best they knew how. And, you see, we sort of loved each other, Jim and I did. And above all, we were Americans. Do you get what that means? It means this: That some of you Mexicans aren't the only ones who mistake kindness and tolerance for cowardice. A lion doesn't always stop his business to chase a mouse that annoys him; but when the lion does think it's time to smash up a nuisance, God help the mouse! That's where Mexico and some others stand, just about now.”
HE paused almost pensively, as if he were thinking of greater possibilities than his own predicament, and suddenly his face hardened to inflexibility and his eyes were like accusing points of light.
“You killed my partner Jim!” he said in a voice that was beyond misinterpretation. “Therefore I'm going to kill you!”
As Pancho, terrified and fearful, read the warning with protruding eyes, and sprang to his feet, reaching madly for the pistol at his side, the long arm of Bill Smith swept catlike across the top of the desk and caught up the sharp and pointed paper-cutter. For the smallest part of a second it balanced in his adept hand. His left arm feinted with grim intent, causing the illustrious General Pancho involuntarily to lift his own left arm to fend off injury. And then there was a swift, inverted arc of bronzed light, caught from the chandelier above them upon the flying metal, and a choked scream of terror and anguish as the knife, thrown underhand, swept upward through the illustrious General's throat.
So strong was his vitality that he had time to think of many things and to stare into the exultant face above him—to gurgle and to call upon the Virgin for mercy—before his waiting soldiers thronged the room. Hardened as they were to timorous death, they shuddered at the fear mirrored in that coward's eyes.
There was some decency in them, after all, in that they granted the sole request that Bill Smith made—which was that he be shot in the place of execution. They tell yet, as a great joke on themselves, that they forgot to blindfold him or to bind his hands, and that he stood quite calm and unresisting when they fired. But of this, one may be quite sure: that when he reeled and dropped with many bullets through his body, he lived to crawl and fall upon the body of a mere gringo who had gone before, and who lay close by upon the blood-stained turf. A humble waiter, who has returned to Val Verde, says that Bill Smith died with a smile upon his lips, and thanked God that his hands were like those dead ones beneath, still free, and that in his dying embrace he might clasp all that was left of his friend. For to whatever hidden land of adventure they fared forth, they were partners still—the two Smiths!
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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