The Wild Bunch Page 16

  In the morning Jess dug in his heels and insisted on staying to watch for the buzzards that would show him where Sykes lay. The others rode warily for the town.

  • Herrera came through the gate as unobtrusively as he could, dispersed his men and made a quiet survey of the plaza, looking for Pike. It might go easier with him if he could make the gringo outlaw confess that there were no police coming to take the guns.

  He did not find Pike, Dutch or the Gorch brothers. All four of them were in the native huts outside the wall.

  Pike was drunk and getting drunker. He sprawled in a hammock, a woman beside him. A baby on the floor across the hut was whining at the flies that crawled over it. The woman was not unattractive except for the sadness in her face. He had given her silver and she had given herself. He had drunk enough tequila to drown him. None of it helped.

  He kept seeing Angel.

  For the first time in his life he had backed away from siding a man who rode with him.

  He shut his eyes, tried to shut his ears. But the voices of the Gorch brothers in the next room came through. They were arguing drunkenly with a prostitute.

  Pike sat up suddenly, swung his feet to the floor, dumping the woman to the ground without knowing it. He crashed the bottle against the far corner, hitched his trousers, slapped his gun belt around his waist, staggered to the door of the Gorches’ room.

  He hung there, supporting himself with both hands on the jamb, swaying in, swaying back.

  Tector looked up blearily. He had been watching Lyle wrestling with a woman on the floor. Lyle also looked up and silence fell. The tableau froze.

  Pike said thickly, “Let’s get Angel.”

  Tector reached for his belt and fastened it, his movements as unsteady as Pike’s.

  Lyle fumbled into his clothes and checked his gun.

  “Why not?”

  Pike lurched back from the door and the three went out to the village street. Night had come. The air had cooled. They stood breathing it in.

  Dutch sat against the hut wall in the darkness, leaning a nearly empty bottle held carelessly in his lap. He looked up at Pike, set the bottle on the ground and got up.

  “Angel?”

  “Yeah.”

  Pike headed for their horses, staggering less with every step. Pike and Dutch pulled rifles from their saddle scabbards, Tector and Lyle chose shotguns. For a moment they stood, looking at each other. Suddenly every man was sober. Like a single entity they went through the gate into the plaza.

  They walked four abreast and an air of impending violence grew and wrapped around them. The laughter, the songs, the hilarity of the soldiers died as they passed.

  Marching, guns across their stomachs, they moved toward the open arch of the ruined hacienda.

  Inside was light and noise. Mapache sat at his raised table, his aides around him. The table was cluttered with food and liquor bottles. The mariachi band was playing. A girl, Chita, danced on the table, dodging debris.

  Angel lay in front of the table, all but unconscious, all but unrecognizable from cruelly timed beatings.

  The Wild Bunch stopped in the arch, imprinting every detail of the scene on their awareness—including the machine gun on its tripod in the corner and the tables crowded with soldiers.

  The four started forward.

  They had not been seen by the head table. The dancer held Mapache’s attention. She stumbled and Mapache swung a bottle, knocking her down. She fell to the floor and Mapache discovered the Americans. Half angry, he yelled at them.

  Zamorra translated: “What you want now?”

  Pike stopped five feet away.

  “We want Angel.”

  Mapache blinked at them, his mouth opening, saying nothing. Zamorra leaned forward shaking his head.

  “You are stupid—very stupid.”

  Suddenly Mapache lurched up, flinging his chair behind him, stomping around to stand above Angel, then stooped and jerked him to his feet, yanking him in front of Pike, holding him up with one hand. He reached behind him, whipped a sharp knife from the table and slashed the rope that tied Angel’s hands, grinning now, still holding him.

  Pike saw Angel’s eyes open, saw that Angel knew but could not believe his hands were free. The four outlaws stood without a movement, without sound. The Gorches ignored Mapache, drifting their eyes over soldiers, who were beginning to move quietly closer to the action.

  “Take him.”

  Mapache spoke softly in Spanish.

  Zamorra did not bother to translate. He poured himself a drink. The clink of the bottle against the glass was loud, the only sound in the room. The Germans began slowly to rise.

  Mapache leaned over Angel’s shoulder, said loudly, “Vete, Angelito—te esperan los gringitos—”

  He opened his hand.

  Angel, looking at Pike, stood fast, then took one tentative step forward. He was not hauled back. His face began to light with hope. He took a second step. No one else moved. He began a third step.

  Mapache’s hand struck like a snake, caught Angel’s hair, jerked the head back. The knife in the general’s other hand flashed across the stretched throat. Blood flooded over Pike as Mapache flung the dying body at him.

  Pike jumped back, let the body fall, wildness leaping in him. Before Angel hit the floor Pike’s forty-five was in his hand, pumping two bullets into the grinning Mexican.

  The grin changed to surprise. Mapache bent double. Dutch’s shot smashed open the top of his head.

  The room exploded in gunfire and motion. Zamorra and his neighbors dived for cover, drawing their side arms. Mohr spun and ran for the machine gun. Rifle fire erupted from the courtyard as soldiers rushed in. Dutch, his hand around a grenade in his pocket, drew it out, pulled the pin and threw it, to explode among the inrushing soldiers.

  Pike was moving now, emptying his forty-five, shoving it into his belt and cocking his rifle, firing with enormous speed while steadily stalking the shadowed corners of the room, killing and killing and ignoring the shots that hit him in return.

  Dutch threw a second grenade into a new wave of men from the courtyard, blocking the entrance with bodies.

  Tector and Lyle, side by side, yelling their lust for the battle, charged the table and emptied it of life.

  Mohr, ducking, running, dodging, reached the machine gun, fired before he was set, let the gun swing out of control and killed a group of soldiers.

  Pike killed the German with his last two rifle shots, but Mohr’s fingers locked on the trigger and as he fell it spat a vicious spray through other soldiers, wounded Dutch.

  Pike threw the rifle away, slipped a new clip into the forty-five. He jumped for the machine gun, kicked Mohr away. The gun fell silent.

  They had a chance. Laughter welled up through him and his eyes, raking the room to find his team, located Dutch, laughing back at him.

  Zamorra lunged toward Dutch, fired three shots into him from close range before Pike’s bullet shattered Zamorra’s head. Herrera came into focus and Pike killed him.

  But Pike missed the thing he should have seen.

  A soldier rushed him from the side, bayonet leveled, ran it through Pike’s gut and pinned him against the wall.

  Dutch was down but not dead. He saw the bayoneting and killed the soldier, rolling, found his feet, still shooting.

  The Gorch brothers, in the middle of the room and surrounded by Mexicans firing on them, were badly wounded but still standing, yelling, blasting at the surging mass. Tector found the dancer, Chita, crawling between overturned tables. He picked her up. Using the screaming girl as a shield, he rushed the crowd and felt her body jump and die. He was hit and dropped to one knee. Revolver bullets drove into him from the arch. He hurled the woman that way, rose again, dancing, whirling, firing, killing the man in the arch. Then, as shots poured against him from all directions he straightened to his tallest, waved at Pike and crumpled.

  Lyle, himself hit many times, screamed his rage and pumped bullets at those who h
ad downed his brother. Tector was not through, but his gun clicked on an empty cylinder. A soldier with a machete escaped Lyle’s notice, swung the machete against Tector’s back. Tector, dying, still managed to find the man’s throat. His fingers clamped around it and locked there. Both were dead when Lyle, riddled, dropped lifeless across them.

  Pike and Dutch alone were left alive and fighting. Dutch was on his feet again. He lifted a soldier over his head, threw him into his fellows and fell once more. He dragged himself to a fallen carbine, lay prone, firing methodically. He kept his odd, ecstatic grin until a wounded soldier, dying, pulled his knife and dropped across him. The knife blade sank into Dutch’s back and the two lay dead together.

  Pike managed to pull out the bayonet. He dropped it, staggered toward the machine gun. He had reached it, had jerked back the bolt, had tightened his finger on the trigger when a soldier rose behind him, stood above him and emptied his pistol.

  Pike Bishop did not know the instant he died.

  The noise did not stop at once. The soldiers left alive poured vengeful bullets into the bodies of the Wild Bunch. The cries of the dying lasted moments longer. Then the room was still. Outside in the courtyard a final shot by a hand convulsing for the last time on a gun hit a cur dog. The dog ran, yelping, through the gate.

  And silence settled on the night.

  • The bounty hunters rode into Agua Verde at mid-morning. They had heard the sounds of the battle in the night. At daylight they had caught a fleeing soldier and heard the story. Still they rode warily. That most of Mapache’s command was wiped out did not seem possible to Thornton.

  They rode through the gate and stopped. Bloody bodies lay where they had dragged themselves out of the hacienda to die. A few black-shawled women moving among the dead melted into doorways as the riders appeared. A lone vulture spread its beak in a curse and lumbered off through the trees. There was no other sign of life.

  Still cautious, Thornton dropped out of his saddle and with Coffer, Nash and Ross behind him eased toward the arch. The stench of death came out to meet them. Nothing moved inside. They looked in. Thornton’s lips thinned and he turned his head away.

  Coffer sounded as if he had discovered the mother lode.

  “It’s them.”

  Thornton said through his teeth, “You’d have one hell of a time proving it a week from now—in Texas.”

  “Hell, we can try. A pelt’s a pelt—don’t matter what condition it’s in.”

  Nash had gone to investigate.

  He called back, mystified, “Picked clean—not a gun on ’em. Why? Who?”

  Thornton walked among the bodies. He found Angel, stooped unobtrusively to take the medal from around his neck and drop it into his pocket. He headed for the arch again. Coffer asked eagerly, “Hey, Thornton, should we load up?”

  Thornton did not stop, said only, “Suit yourself—” and went out.

  T.C. Nash yelled after him, “We going to wait here for Jess or meet him on the way?”

  Thornton did not answer. They did not press the question but went happily to work. They did not see him mount his horse and ride through the gate and toward the hills.

  They were still there, scavenging, finding gold inlays in Mapache’s teeth, finding treasure everywhere, even a bag of gold on Pike Bishop, when Thornton rode in again, tied his horse and sat down at a distance, his back against the wall in the deserted village. He rolled a cigarette, closed his eyes, and waited. He no longer had Angel’s medal.

  The three bounty hunters came out at last, leading four pack animals, each with a body lashed across it. They came to Thornton and when he did not move Coffer raised an eyebrow.

  “Ain’t you coming?”

  Thornton shook his head.

  Nash looked nervously at the buzzards that now wheeled above them.

  “Maybe we better wait here for Jess—”

  “No.” Coffer was decisive. “We’ll pick him up on the way. I want to get out of this damned place. Thornton, you sure you ain’t coming?”

  Still Thornton did not answer and Coffer shrugged. He drank from a tequila bottle that had survived the carnage and rode out with the pack horses, Nash and Ross.

  Thornton sat on. Noon passed, and the afternoon. At last across the silence came three distant, carefully paced rifle shots. He sat up, listening until a fourth came.

  Then he settled back.

  It was early evening. The sun was down and a cold wind was kicking small dust devils across the plaza, breaking up as they struck against the corpses. Movement came at the gate. Thornton’s eyes had not left it for an hour. Slowly he stood up.

  Freddie Sykes walked his horse through, a group of Indos behind him. Don José, the young goat herder, Ignacio, and a handful of Angel’s village comrades led the bounty hunters’ horses. Sykes’ saddle horn was hung with sacks of gold. He stopped at sight of Thornton, then came on.

  “Didn’t expect to find you here, Deke.”

  “Why not? I sent ’em back. That’s all I said I’d do.”

  “They didn’t get far.” Sykes paused, then said, “You the one that shot me?”

  Thornton lifted his shoulders.

  “Don’t know. Does it make any difference?”

  Sykes studied him for a moment.

  “I reckon not.” After another pause he added: “What are your plans?”

  Thornton’s eyes lifted, looked across the wall, across the northern sky.

  “Drift around down here—try and stay out of jail.”

  Sykes spat. “Well, come along. We got some work to do.” He turned his horse in front of Thornton, headed it toward the gate, walked it a few steps. “It ain’t like it used to be but it’s better than nothing.”

  Thornton looked after the retreating old man, took a deep breath, his face relaxing in a half grin. Then he got up, untied his horse, mounted it and followed Sykes out through the gate.

  THE END