Gunsights - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 21

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The young news reporter was, for he had heard the name Armando Duro before, though he had not known this fiery champion of Mexican land rights was living in these mountains.

Here he was now rattling off Spanish a mile a minute, his son and his companions nodding in agreement while Moon listened intently at first, then seemed to get tired of hanging on and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as Armando went on and on. When there was a pause Maurice said quickly, “I'd like to interview Senor Duro if I could.”

Moon said, “If you can get a word in.” Armando's eyes darted from the news reporter to Moon. “And if you-si puede hablar en Espanol. Can you?”

“Doesn't he speak English?”

“When he wants to,” Moon said. “It depends if he's in one of his royal pain-in-the-ass moods or not.”

If the Mexican could understand him, how come Moon was saying this in front of him? Evidently because Moon had only so much patience with the man and had run out.

Following Moon's less than kind remark, Armando turned to the young news reporter and said in English, “Will you print the truth for a change if I give it to you?”

What kind of question was that? Maurice Dumas said the Times always printed the truth.

“The twisting of truth to fit your purpose,” Armando said, “is the same as a lie.”

Maurice didn't know what the man was talking about because the paper had hardly ever printed anything about Armando Duro or Mexican land rights to begin with. It was an old issue, settled in court, dead and buried. But since the man did represent the Mexican community here, some eighty or ninety people living on scattered farms and sheep pastures, Maurice decided he'd better pay attention.

He said, “Well, I suppose you see this present situation as an opportunity to air your complaints once again, bring them into the open.” Maurice heard Moon groan and knew he had said the wrong thing.

Sure enough.

Armando started talking, taking them back to the time of Spanish land grants and plodding on through the war with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase to explain why their acreage, their sheep graze, their golden fields of corn and bean patches belonged to them as if by divine succession and not to a mining company from a state named for a small island in the English Channel (which Maurice Dumas had not realized before this).

Bo Catlett and the colored troopers shuffled around or leaned against a wagon. Moon would continue to shift from one foot to another. His wife, what she did was shake her head and go into the house. Even Armando's son and the other Mexicans seemed ready to fall asleep. Only the Apaches, sitting along the edge of the porch, stared at Armando with rapt attention, not having any idea what he was talking about, even though Armando would lapse into fiery Spanish phrases every so often. He reminded the young news reporter of every politician he had ever heard speak, except that Armando talked in bigger circles that included God and kings.

“How am I going to write about all that?” Maurice said to Moon, after.

Moon said, “You picked your line of work, I didn't.”

Armando got a rolled-up sheet of heavy paper from his wagon and came over to the news reporter opening it as you would a proclamation, which is what it was.

“Here,” Armando said, handing it to Maurice, “show this to the mine company and print it in your newspaper so anyone who sees one of these will know it marks the boundary of our land.”

The notice said, in large black letters:

WARNING

Anyone venturing onto

this land uninvited is

TRESPASSING

on property granted by

Royal Decree and witnessed

before God. Trespassers

are not welcome and

will be fired on if they cross this boundary.

Armando Duro

and the

People of the Mountain

Later on, just before Maurice Dumas left to go back down the switchback trail, he said to Moon, “Does that man know what he's doing?”

“It's his idea of the way to do it,” Moon said.

“But that warning's not gonna do any good. You think?”

“Warning?” Moon said. “It reads more like an invitation.”

“Can't you stop him, shut him up?”

“I suppose,” Moon said, “but the sooner it starts, the sooner it's over, huh?”

Moon, Bo Catlett and Red, the leader of the Mimbres, packed up into the high reaches to shoot some game, drink whiskey, have a talk and get away from their women for a few days. Moon said that's all they would have, three days. On the piney shoulder of the mountain where they camped, they could hear the mine company survey crew exploding dynamite as they searched out new ore veins: like artillery off to the west, an army gradually moving closer, having already wiped out several of the Mexican homesites.

Armando Duro had drawn the line and posted his trespass notices, giving himself a printed excuse to start shooting. But how did you tell a man like Armando he was a fool? Armando was not a listener, he was a talker.

Moon, in the high camp, took out a roughsketch map he'd drawn and laid it on the pine needles for Bo Catlett and Red to look at, Moon pointing: little squares were homes and farms, though maybe he was missing some; the circles were graze. X's marked the areas where the survey crews had been working.

Here, scattered over the pastureland in the Western foothills, the Mexican homesteads. How would you defend them?

“No way to do it, considering they farmers,” Bo Catlett said. “They ever see more than three coming they got to get out…Maybe try draw them up in the woods.”

Moon shook his head. “Armando told them, don't leave your homes. Something about leaving your honor on the doorstep when you flee.”

“I'm not talking about they should flee,” Bo Catlett said. “But they start shooting from the house, that's where they gonna die. They don't have enough people in one place. Like you-” Bo Catlett looked at the map. “Where you at here?”

Moon pointed to the square on the Eastern slope, the closest one to the wavy line indicating the San Pedro River.

“You no better off'n they are,” Bot Catlett said, “all by yourself there.”

“I got open ground in front of me and high rock behind,” Moon said, “with Red and some of his people right here, watching my back door. Nobody gets close without my knowing. So…around here, both sides of the crest, the Apache rancherias. Red, that's you right there. Coming south a bit, these circles are the horse pastures…Here's the canyon, Bo, where you got your settlement.”

“Niggerville,” Bo Catlett said. “Some day they put railroad tracks up there, you can bet money we be on the wrong side.”

“Here's the box canyon,” Moon continued, “where you gather your mustangs. I'm thinking we might do something with that blind alley. You follow me?”

“Invite 'em in,” Bo Catlett said, “and close the door.”

“It'd be a way, wouldn't it? If they come up to Niggerville and you pull back, draw 'em into the box.”

“If they dumb enough, think I'm a black lead mare,” Bo Catlett said.

“We'll find out,” Moon said. “Red's gonna be our eyes, huh, Red? los ojos.” And said in Spanish, “The eyes of the mountain people.”

The Apache nodded and said, also in Spanish, “It's been a long time since we used them.”

Moon said, “Him and a bunch were gonna summer up at Whiteriver, visit some of their people, but Red's staying now for the war. That's what they call it in town, the Rincon Mountain War.”

Bo Catlett seemed to be thinking about the name, trying it a few times in his mind. “We got any say in it?”

“We're still around when the smoke clears,” Moon said, “I guess we can call it anything we want.”

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