About the middle of the forenoon Curtin called Dobbs: “Do you see what I see?”
“Those goddamned devils! If we could only send them all to hell!” Dobbs answered as he roused Howard and Lacaud.
“What is it?” Howard asked. “Coming again?”
“Just have a look at a fine performance; you don’t have to go to the movies this afternoon to learn new tricks.” Dobbs whistled through his teeth out of excitement.
Howard watched the bandits for half a minute. “I reckon they are going to trap us now. We have to think awfully fast to meet their old Indian trick. Doggone it to hell, I’ve got to get an idea what to do now and, hell knows, I haven’t any. If none of you mugs knows anything new, and pretty quick too, then we may as well say our last prayers, if you still know some.”
The bandits were busy cutting saplings, branches, and twigs. They were constructing movable barricades, Indian-fashion. Once ready, they would push these barricades before them, using them as shields while steadily moving on. All the attacked could do would be to fire against the thickly interwoven branches and foliage. The bullets might not even penetrate, and the man crawling behind could not be aimed at. The possibility of being hit was reduced tenfold. It could be reduced still more by forming two attacking lines, one closing in behind the first.
“If they use that trick at night or early before sunrise,” Howard said, watching them eagerly, “then we haven’t even a Bolshevik’s chance. We’ll be killed like rats. My gold mine for two dozen grenades or one Jack Johnson! Oh hell, I’d exchange it for an old minnie, or even for half a dozen smoke candles, my swell mine. Well, partners, to tell you the Bible’s truth, this is what we may call H-hour for us. If my mother were still alive I’d ask her forgiveness for having stolen her jam and then lying about it, cross my heart.”
“It looks to me,” said Dobbs, “as if all we can do now is to sell our hides for the highest price possible, and at the last minute, when they jump in here, send as many of those sons of bitches to hell as we can.”
“And don’t you forget one last bullet to blow your head off yourself,” Curtin suggested. “I pray to all the gods in heaven that I don’t fall into their hands alive. If you can’t shoot yourself, try to stab yourself to death. It will still be sweeter than being peeled by them. Hell forbid they hand you over to those we wounded.”
Lacaud had become very pale. He tried to grin at the jokes cracked by the other fellows, but he failed in his effort.
Howard looked at him and felt pity. He slapped him on his back and said: “Well, buddy, if you had asked me before, I’d have told you in my most straightforward manner that gold is always very expensive, no matter how you get it or where you get it.”
Hearing this, Curtin had an idea: “Perhaps if we offer them our goods and the guns, they will let us off.”
“No, honey dear, you still misjudge them,” Howard said. “This race has lived for four hundred years under conditions in which it never paid to trust anyone, it never paid to build a good house, it never paid to take your little money to a savings bank or invest it in some decent enterprise. You can’t expect them to treat you in any other way, considering how they have been treated by the church, by the Spanish authorities, and by their own authorities for four hundred years. If you offer them your gold and your guns, they will take them and promise to let you go. But they won’t let you go. They’ll torture you just the same, to find out if there isn’t more than you offered them. Then they kill you just the same, because you might give them away. They have never known what justice is, so you can’t expect them to know it now. Nobody has ever shown them loyalty, so how could they show it to you? None has ever kept any promise to them, so they can’t keep any promise they may have made you. They all say an Ave Maria before killing you, and they will cross you and themselves before and after slaying you in the most cruel way. We wouldn’t be any different from them if we had had to live for four hundred years under all sorts of tyrannies, superstitions, despotisms, corruptions, and perverted religions.”
“I’d like to know,” Curtin broke in, “why they didn’t come out with that old redskin trick earlier?”
“Huh, they are lazier than an ol’ mule.” Dobbs really smiled. “Too lazy for that. They tried to catch us without so much work. Only when they saw they couldn’t get us any other way did they come to that smart tank attack. I bet they’re cursing now that they have to work so hard to catch us.”
