Читать книгу Dead Men Don't Lie - Jackson Cain - Страница 34

Chapter 21

Slater was over two hundred feet up-tunnel when he found Luis Moreno. He was on his back, his head near Slater’s outstretched candle, the lower half of his body buried under a ton of rock. The deadfall appeared to have broken every bone in his friend’s body from his short ribs down to his toes.

Raising a lit candle, Slater could see two heavy canvas ore sacks near the top of Luis’s head. He looked inside the two bags. In the candlelight he saw dozens of solid gold nuggets, several the size of his fist, none of them smaller than a .50 caliber rifle round.

Slater checked for a pulse in Luis’s throat. It was surprisingly steady. He dripped some canteen water on Luis’s mouth, and miraculously, Luis’s eyes fluttered open.

His friend was still alive.

“Ey, compadre,” Luis said, giving Slater a small, brave smile. “You came back for me. I knew you wouldn’t let your compadre down. I told you también we’d hit it big, and we did. That gold is for you now—because you came back for me. Take it and vaya con Dios [go with God]. This tunnel is not safe.”

“I’m not leavin’ without you.”

“Then you will die in darkness and dust under a Sierra Madre of rock. Just like me. With me. Only you aren’t going to die, because I’m asking you to leave me. Por favor. You were right. I never should have come back here. Nothing can save me now.”

“But—”

Then they heard it—up-tunnel. The hysterical shrieking and frantic scurrying of mine rats—an army of them.

They smelled Moreno’s blood, and they were coming toward him.

That froze Moreno, and the machismo ran out of him in a nerve-racking rush.

“Still, amigo,” Moreno said, “don’t let them bastardas ratas [rats] eat me alive.”

But what could Slater do? Luis was the best friend he’d ever had. The man had saved his life and watched his back a thousand times over for three godawful years in that Sonoran hell pit. Luis never complained, never backed down from a fight, and never turned his back on his friends. You knew who he was, what his word was worth, the things that count.

But Luis hadn’t listened to him, had come back in to dig out that gold, and now Slater couldn’t save him. If Slater stayed they both would die. In less than an hour.

Sooner.

The army of scurrying, shrieking rats was getting closer and closer.

Slater slipped his double-edged Arkansas toothpick out of its belt sheath. Covering his friend’s eyes with his left hand, he said:

“Don’t worry, amigo. I won’t let the rats eat you alive. I am your compadre—now, always, to the end. You are so lucky to have such fine a compadre as me.”

“Muchas gracias, mi amigo. I know you would not let me down.”

Slater knew there should be words at a time like this. If they had been back in the civilized world, there might have even been a Christian service and a sermon filled with meaningful words. Over the years, Slater had heard some of those words—sermon-words about how “dust we art and to dust we shall return” and about “men who riseth up like the grass in summer and are cut down in their prime.” Slater knew that hymns often came before the words and followed afterward. Then there were the burials in the churchyard, which began with hymns, followed by more words and more hymns, even as the bodies were lowered into the grave. Potluck dinners frequently followed. Slater had eaten a few of those too. He remembered the food was goddamned good.

But Slater was running out of time, and the rats were closing in. Their shrieking and scurrying—along with the creaking of shoring timbers, the jolting crack of the collapsing deadfall, and the dripping of the mine water—were the closest things Luis would have to a church choir. Screeching rats would serenade his unceremonious demise.

Still there had to be words.

“Luis, you were mi amigo—mi amigo bueno. Whatever we done—robbin’ banks or blowin’ trains or stackin’ time—you held up your end. You were always there. But that ends now. Adiós, compadre, y vaya con diabla.”

Placing a hand over Luis’s eyes, he quickly slit his friend’s throat from ear to ear.

Grabbing the big ore sacks, he began crawling backward, making his way out of the mine, careful not to knock down any of the shoring timbers, laboriously dragging the two thick bulging sacks full of gold behind him.