preach on each and every occasion is my besetting sin. I’m hoping to make my way through the Sierras to a place called Guayamas on the west coast. What about you?’
‘Delivering a load of bootleg whisky to a man in Huila,’ I said. ‘You’ll find petrol there if you’re short.’
‘Do you hope to get there tonight?’
I shook my head. ‘There’s a little place called Huerta about twenty miles farther on. Old stage-line way-station.’
‘Perhaps I’ll see you there.’
I smiled and climbed into the cab of the Ford. ‘If you do, for God’s sake keep religion out of it, father.’
‘Almost impossible,’ he said. ‘But I’ll do what I can. God bless you.’
But sentiments like those had long since ceased to have any effect on me and I drove away quickly.
Suddenly, it seemed to be late evening, the sun dropping behind the Sierras taking the heat of the day with it, the great peaks black against gold as the fire died. There was no sign of the Mercedes coming up behind and I wondered what he was doing. A strange one certainly although priests, like anyone else, were entitled to their idiosyncrasies.
I came over the brow of a small hill just before dark and saw the way-station at Huerta lying below me, lights winking palely at the windows. It was a small, flat-roofed building which must have been a hundred and fifty years old at least and was enclosed by an adobe wall, most of which had crumbled away where the place faced the road.
The sky beyond was like molten gold, the great black fingers of the organ cactus like cut-outs pasted in place against a stage set as I coasted down the hill. When I turned in across the courtyard and switched off the engine, I heard laughter and singing and there were half a dozen horses tied to the hitching post. The door opened as I got out and a man appeared, bare-headed, a couple of bandoleers criss-crossing his ornate jacket, a rifle in his hands.
‘Stand and declare yourself,’ he called, and his speech was slurred with the drink.
I could have shot him, been back behind the wheel of the Ford and away before his friends inside knew what was happening, but there was no need for I had already noticed the large silver badge so conspicuously displayed on his right breast, worn only by the rurales, the country police, as fine a body of men who ever cut a throat or raped a woman and got away with it.
‘I’m taking supplies to Gomez in Huila,’ I said. ‘I have a permit from Captain Ortiz, the jefe in Bonito.’
‘Inside,’ he said, ‘where we can see you.’
The place was lit by a single oil lamp hanging from one of the beams in the low ceiling. There were four of them sitting at a long wooden table, two holding pistols at the ready as I went in. They wore the same ornate braided jackets and crossed bandoleers as the man behind me and if it had not been for the silver badges of office, one might well have been pardoned for confusing them with those on the wrong side of the law.
There was a strange uniformity in their general appearance. Heavy moustaches, unshaven chins, brooding suspicious eyes. The only one not wearing his sombrero seemed to be in charge. ‘What have we here?’
‘I’m delivering supplies by truck to Gomez of Huila.’ I produced the jefe’s travel permit and offered it to him. ‘My papers.’
He examined it, then passed it back. ‘Luis Delgado, at your orders, señor.’
‘At yours,’ I gave him politely.
‘You intend to stay here tonight?’
‘If it can be arranged.’
‘No difficulty, eh, Tacho.’ He looked over his shoulder at the old, white-haired man standing behind the small bar. ‘The señor desires accommodation. You will see to it?’
The old man, who was looking distinctly worried, nodded eagerly and Delgado chuckled. ‘They jump these back-country pigs, when I crack the whip. You will drink with me, señor?’
It seemed a reasonably politic thing to do. I downed the glass of tequila he offered, gave him his health and moved to the bar. The old man, Tacho, was frightened – really frightened. There was a mute appeal in his eyes that I was unable to answer because I didn’t know what it was all about, not realizing then that these visits by Delgado and his men were an old story.
Delgado slapped his hand hard down on the table. ‘The food, you miserable worm. You turd, what about our food?’
Tacho moved to the other end of the bar and the door opened and a young woman came out of the kitchen. As I later discovered, she was barely past her seventeenth birthday, but looked a little older as women of mixed blood tend to do. She wore the usual ankle-length skirt, an Indian-work blouse and black hair hung down her back in a single braid.
She was small for I would say I had at least three inches on her and I can barely touch five and a half feet. Dark, dark eyes, high cheekbones, a wide mouth and a skin of palest olive that reminded me of my own mother, God rest her soul. She was not beautiful yet after turning away I felt a compulsion to look at her again. Now why should that be?
Her face showed no emotion of any kind. She put the tray down on the table, turned to go and Delgado caught her wrist. ‘Heh, not so fast, little flower. An appetizer before the main course is the sensible man’s way of eating.’
He grabbed at the neck of the loose blouse, pulled it down and was put out to discover she was wearing a bodice underneath.
He roared with laughter, ‘Playing the lady, eh? We’ll soon fix that.’
She put her nails down his cheek, drawing blood and he slapped her solidly across the face as he might have slapped a man, forced her back across his knee as he put a hand up her skirt.
His friends were roaring with delight and when old Tacho ran round the end of the bar and tried to intervene, someone sent him staggering back against the wall so forcibly that he fell to the ground.
The girl struggled desperately and two of the others got a wrist each and pinned her back across the table. She didn’t scream, didn’t show any fear at all, simply fought with all her strength, would struggle for her soul’s sake to the final, bitter end, expecting nothing, not even from me, for when our eyes met, she looked through me as if I did not exist.
It was happening all over the country seven days a week, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. No business of mine, so I pulled out the Enfield and blew the tequila bottle on the table into several score pieces.
The effect was considerable and I have seldom seen a group of men scatter so rapidly. Delgado was the only one who didn’t move. He glanced back at me, still clutching the girl, his eyes wary, watchful, no fear there at all.
‘Be easy, señor,’ he said softly. ‘Your turn will come.’
‘The next one is through the back of the skull,’ I told him. ‘Now move to the bar, hands high, all of you.’
They obeyed reluctantly, warily, going backwards slowly, waiting their opportunity. The girl’s reaction was interesting. She moved to my side and stood very close, holding on to my jacket tightly like a child recognizing a loved one in a
