Captain Alfaro pasted a smile on to his handsome face. Then he grimaced as the smell of burning wood reached his nostrils. He picked up his cigar and drew against it, smiled again. “It is even more undignified to be shot, gringo.”
“So shoot us,” Edge invited. “I’ve told you what we are. It’s your duty to execute us.”
“No!” Luis screamed. “If he is a bandit, I am not, captain. I am a poor, honest …”
Alfaro had touched his earlobe again and this time the rifle butt cracked against Luis’ skull, and the old man pitched sideways with a whimper, unconscious.
The captain merely glanced at him, as if he were a sack of potatoes that had been knocked over. Then he returned his attention to Edge, eyes showing genuine interest in the man.
“Somebody who wants to die,” he muttered pensively, and drew deeply against the cigar, “You are a new experience for me, señor.”
“I doubt it,” Edge answered.
“Señor?”
“You don’t get to be an officer in the Mexican army without learning the techniques of torture,” Edge explained softly. “You must have heard a hundred men plead with you to kill them.”
Alfaro smiled his understanding. “Ah, I see. You think I will kill you anyway and so by telling me what you feel I wish to hear, you hope for an easy death?”
“Bright, as well as brutal,” Edge said with unconcealed sarcasm, his lips tightening into a fleeting line of satisfaction when he saw the anger leap into Alfaro’s eyes.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, señor,” he snapped, lifted his glass to his lips, drank and then sent the glass flying across the cantina. It crashed into the wall and exploded splinters on to a nearby table. “If you insult me, you insult my uniform, and my uniform represents El Presidente. Pick him up and prepare him for execution.”
This last was addressed to the soldiers as the captain stabbed a finger at the inert form of Luis. Two of them stepped forward, stooped and hauled the old man up by the armpits, dragged him towards the door. Alfaro jabbed his cigar into the heap of salt and it sizzled softly as the man rose to his feet.
“You,” he said, his eyes boring into Edge’s face, “will witness the death of your compadre before you discover just how much I have learned about the infliction of pain. So you will know to the full extent how tragically your plan has misfired.”
Edge did not flinch under the words and their accompanying stare, turned at the insistence of rifle muzzles and followed in the wake of the captain.
“Captain Alfaro,” he called softly.
The Mexican officer halted in the doorway and turned to look quizzically at Edge. “Señor?”
“Doesn’t Luis get a last request?”
Alfaro smiled. “He could ask for nothing better than to be shot.”
Edge believed him.
THEY tied the limp body of Luis Aviles to the right-hand pole, with a rope at the ankles, waist and chest, fastening his hands behind his back. His unconscious head sagged forward so that his chin rested on his chest. The soldiers were brought down from the wall surrounding the town and while a firing squad of six was being selected Luis’ two guards amused themselves by attempting to scale the old man’s hat on to the top of the pole to which the condemned prisoner was bound. Those soldiers, not actively engaged in the execution formed into a group on one side of the plaza, opposite the crowd of civilians who continued to watch in quiet acceptance of anything the captain decreed.
Edge stood between and slightly in front of his two guards, watching through narrowed lids as Alfaro strutted among his men, directing operations with little regard for formality. The spluttering torches were visibly losing their power as the pale grey of dawn streaked the sky.
The sombrero finally hitched on to the top of the pole and spun around several times to a huge cheer from the watching soldiers, and one of the two participants in the game tossed some coins to the other in settlement of a bet. The sudden burst of noise brought Luis back to consciousness and he shook his head several times to clear it, raised his eyes to look about him. Then his face contorted into a mask of fear as he realized his predicament.
“I am innocent!” he yelled, looking about wildly, his eyes stopping for a moment on the disinterested captain, then moving on to fasten on the impassive face of Edge. “He lied. I am not a bandit. You will suffer the flames of hell for eternity if you kill an innocent man.”
Alfaro had lined up the firing squad, went through a parody of an inspection of the six men, halting to flick a speck of dust from the shoulder of one, to fasten the button on the uniform of another. Then he stepped back, set fire to another cigar and spun on his heels to march over to where Edge stood.
“You are silent, señor,” he said. “It will not be long before you are screaming like the old one. But you will be demanding death, not pleading for life.”
“In America,” Edge replied, “we have a saying. Where there’s life, there’s hope. I have a little more hope than Luis.”
