was there.
Herrara I would remember, and another man, too. I would remember Franklyn
Deckrow, who had betrayed us to them, and who had killed Jonas, his
brother-in-law. It was something to live for.
And I would live. No matter what, I would survive so that these men might die.
No help could come to me, for they believed me dead. Jonas had fallen, and
Miguel too, although he might have somehow gotten away. They had forced me to
bury Jonas, but Miguel’s body was nowhere around. I hoped for him. But the
Tinker had looked back and seen me lying there, and I knew he believed me dead.
Suddenly, one night, I was moved. Out of a sound sleep I was shaken awake,
jerked to my feet and led away. Herrara rode beside me. “Your friends do not
give up,” he said, “and they have powerful friends in Mexico, so we must take
you where you will never be found.”
The place to which they took me was a ranch owned by an outlaw named Flares, an
outlaw who raided Texas ranches for their stock and so was ignored by the law of
the province.
Duty called Herrara away to the south, so the beatings ended, but I was put to
work among the Yaqui slaves. Most of the Yaqui prisoners had been sent away to
work in the humid south where they soon died. Only a few were kept in the north.
The work was preferable to the cell, and I gloried in my growing strength. We
were fed corn and frijoles and good beef, all of which was cheap enough, and
they wanted my strength for the work I could do.
A dozen times I tried to smuggle messages across the border. Twice they were
found and I was beaten brutally. “Tell me,” Herrara said to me on one of his
sudden visits, “tell me where is the gold and you shall have a horse and your
freedom.” But I did not tell.
Herrara had become powerful. The outlaws supported him and he protected them and
derived income from their raids into Texas. Night after night men rode away from
the Flores ranch and raided over the border, returning with cattle, horses, and
women.
No other Mexican came to the ranch to visit, and I gathered the outlaws were
hated by those who lived nearby, but they were people cut off from authority who
could do nothing.
When I looked down at my hands, I saw them calloused and scarred, but powerful.
My shoulders and arms were heavy with muscle, and my mind, sharpened by endless
observation and planning, was cunning as an animal’s is cunning. No day passed
without its plan for escape, no possible opportunity went unnoticed by me.
Always my senses were alert for the moment.
Then came another Herrara visit. The heavy oaken door grated against the stone,
and he stepped inside. He held a pistol and a heavy whip, the cat-o’-nine-tails
which is used aboard ship. Behind him in the doorway were two men with guns.
“It is the end,” he said. “I shall wait no longer. Tonight you will tell me, for
if you do not, these”—he held up the whip—”will take out your eyes.”
The cat hung from his hand by its stubby wooden handle, and from its end dangled
nine strips of rawhide, each with a tip wrapped in wire. It was a whip that
could cut a man to ribbons, or bite at his eyes, cutting them from his head in a
bloody mess.
And in that moment I knew that I could no longer wait. I must kill him and be
killed.
He moved toward me, and I remained where I was, crouched in the corner with one
heel braced against the wall, ready to lunge at him. My thick forearms rested
upon my knees, and I waited, watching him like the cornered animal I had become.
We were at a smaller ranch, half a mile from Las Cuevas, the headquarters of
Flores. It was November 19,1875. The date is one I shall never forget.
A mistake was made that night, and upon such mistakes do men’s lives depend; by
such mistakes are men’s lives lost—or saved. Outside my cell, beyond the walls
about the ranch, beyond the border even, events had marched forward, and tonight
men rode in darkness, moving along the cactus-lined trails.
As Herrara came toward me, he had his pistol ready, for he was a clever man and
knew what must be in my mind. The whip was poised for a blow, but I was hard to
get at, for the corner was a partial protection.
My tongue went to my lips. Within me burned a kind of cold fury, welling up from
the deep hatreds that had grown within me, until nothing mattered but my hands
upon his throat.
He would strike me. His bullet would tear into my flesh, and perhaps the bullets
of those others in the doorway, but my hands must reach his throat. These hands
that only a day or so before had bent and twisted an iron horseshoe—these hands
must reach that throat and lock there. Surely, I would be killed, but surely I
should kill him first.
He flipped the whip at me, but I did not move. He lifted the whip to strike
downward, and he brought it down hard over my head and shoulders, but still I
did not move. Suddenly his own anger burst within him, the hatred of me because
I kept him from the wealth he wanted and the position it would buy, the hatred
of me for holding out so long against him.
His lips curled from his teeth and the whip drew back for a mighty blow at my
face. Those wire-twisted whipends would tear at my eyes. His own hatred had
mastered him—I saw it in his face.
Suddenly, from outside there was a crash of gunfire, the race of pounding hoofs,
shrill Texas yells. The men at the door wheeled and ran toward the court. Even
Herrara was caught, gripped by shock in the middle of his blow. And in that
instant I leaped.
My left hand gripped the gun-wrist, my right seized his throat, not a grip
around the neck, but the far more deadly grip of the Adam’s apple and the throat
itself. His gun exploded, but the muzzle had been turned aside, and the roar was
lost in the concussions of the shots outside. I smashed him back bodily against
the stone wall with stunning force. My right hand gripping his throat held him
on tiptoes against the stone, and my other hand gripping his gun-wrist ground
his knuckles against the roughness of the stone wall.
Brutally, I ground the flesh against the stone, rasping it back and forth until
he struggled to scream and his fingers could no longer grip the gun. I released
my hold upon his throat and stepped back. He struck weakly at me with the cat,
but then, my feet wide, I hit with my left fist, then with my right, rolling my
shoulders for the power it gave. One fist struck his ribs, crushing them; the
other his face.
His head bounced against the wall, and glassy-eyed he started to fall toward me.
I struck him again, and when he fell forward that time I knew that he was dead.
Quickly, I stripped off his gun belt and picked his pistol from the floor.
The passage outside the door was empty, and I ran along it, turned down another,
and was in the living quarters of the ranch house. A door stood open, as it had
been left when the shooting called the men out, and I smashed through it.
The room was empty and still. My footsteps padded on the bare floor as I crossed
to the gun case. Picking up a chair with one hand, I swung it and smashed the
glass. I reached in for a shotgun and filled my pockets with shells.
A Henry rifle was there, and I took that also, and two belts of cartridges that
hung from a chair. And then as I turned away I saw a familiar sight. In the
corner of the gun cabinet was my old Walch Navy .36 with the initials C.B.
scratched on it. Quickly, I took it up and thrust it into my waistband with
another pistol that lay there.
No one appeared in the passage as I ran, and I went through the door to the long
veranda outside. There I stopped in the shadows. Mounted men were racing back
and forth, and the red lances of gunfire stabbed the darkness. A Texas yell
broke out, and a shot caught a Mexican upon a balcony. He fell headlong from it
and landed nearby. The rider wheeled his horse, and in that instant he saw me.
The pistol swung at me to fire and I shouted, “No! I’m an American!”