“Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Have you ever seen a small dog chase a herd of horses around a corral, Señor Boag? Did you ever stop to wonder what might happen if the horses decided to stop and let the small dog catch them?”

It gave Boag a very graphic picture of a small mutt being trampled to death by iron-shod hoofs. He smiled over the rim of his glass.

Don Pablo said, “Mr. Jed Pickett has something of mine as well. You and I have that in common.” And broke off to cough into his lace.

The señora entered with an armload of wood and kindling. She built a fire quickly and well. When the flame caught at the edges she stood up. “It is time for your soup.” The eyes came at Boag: “Will you take dinner with us?”

“Grácias.”

“I shall bring it up here then.”

Don Pablo’s shoulders moved. “I can still walk to the dining room.”

“You should conserve your strength.”

“For dying? No, I can still eat at the table where my father and his father ate.”

She rested a hand against the mantel. “Pablo .…”

“Querida, ténga la bondad.”

She left the room without further protest. The door clicked shut. Don Pablo said, “I am not fit to hold her stirrup.”

“Why?”

“It is tiresome looking after a dying man. She could have left me and gone to Mexico City where she comes from. It is not as if she would lose anything by that; I have no one else to leave my estate to, and in any case there is no estate left for her to inherit. She knows all this, and there is no tradition in her background that would make her loyal. But she stays.”

“She loves you.”

“That would be more than I bargained for with her.”

“Sometimes a man gets lucky.”

Don Pablo grinned. “You are very wry, Señor Boag.”

“No. I reckon there are worse things than dying.”

“You mean having no one to care about you. Well I suppose that is a point. She worked in a house, you know. One of the best parlors in Mexico City. I would not have taken her out of that except that after a while I could no longer stand the idea of sharing her with other men. She came with me because of course it was a great advancement for her. Nothing was said about love.”

“It doesn’t always have to be said.”

“Of course I was not sick then.” Don Pablo began dry-washing his clasped hands.

“About Mr. Pickett,” Boag said gently.

“You would like to find him.” Don Pablo nodded his head as if to confirm something. “Yes. Well so would I, Señor. If it is my last act on earth I should like very much to find Mr. Jed Pickett and have his entrails for guitar strings.”

“I thought maybe you might have bought the gold from him.”

“I did.”

“But?”

“Even a dying man hates to look a fool, Señor Boag. I am reluctant to admit the truth to you. I shall do it, but allow me to explain things. An hour will make no difference to you.”

“Go ahead then.”

Don Pablo coughed and sipped his drink and began to make his explanation. It covered a great deal of ground; it was a tedious apology which did not explain at all, it only tried to excuse. It did not explain, for instance, why Don Pablo insisted on informing a stranger—a black stranger at that—of the fact that his wife had once been a whore in Mexico City. It only ticked off incidents: revolutions, bandits, the mines petering out, the death of the wise uncle who had managed these estates until his death four years ago from the same malaise that now infected the young Pablo.

Boag didn’t dislike him but it was hard to find sympathy for him; Don Pablo had too much sympathy for himself, he didn’t leave room for anyone else’s.

He had contacts in Mexico City, he explained—companions from the days, only a few years ago, when he had been a flippant young blade touring the fandango spots of the city. These contacts knew his good family name and trusted him, or else they were too jaded and cynical to care: in any case they were eager to buy what Don Pablo offered for sale, at a price—the stolen items he traded with the mountain bandits and rebels.

He had dealt a few times with Mr. Jed Pickett in treasures the Pickett gang had collected in its raids on Apache camps in the Sierra Madre: treasures the Apaches in turn had stolen from ranches they raided along both sides of the Border.

Four months ago Mr. Pickett had first mentioned the gold bullion. Don Pablo never knew where it came from; he never asked. A tentative price was settled between them, a price by the ounce because Mr. Pickett was not certain how much gold would be involved. The proposition excited Don Pablo because it meant he could cancel all his debts at once and, he said, “Also it would make a little dowry for Dorotea.”

“Your daughter?”

“I refer to the señora.”

A dowry for his wife? It was a phrase that made no sense.

Don Pablo said, “I had to strip myself of what few possessions remained, to raise the cash. Our estimate was on the basis of two million pesos. Much of this I had to borrow of course. I signed notes against my estates to do that—mortgages.”

Boag didn’t need to hear the rest of it because he had already guessed.

Don Pablo wheezed into his handkerchief. “When he came here one week ago he had only three companions and one pack mule and I thought the thing had gone bad, but he was in wickedly high spirits. Over the next thirty-six hours his men trickled into this valley from all directions. They all had pack animals. I gathered not a single pack had been lost. The gold was as he had said it would be, a few pounds less than the maximum I had been prepared to pay for. We weighed the gold on my cattle scales and I counted out one million, nine hundred thousand pesos on this table right here. Most of it was in Mexico City scrip, in denominations of one thousand pesos. It was very easy to carry when you compare it with the bullion. It disappeared into the pockets of himself and his men, and you hardly noticed the bulges.”

Boag was impatient. “And then?”

“I am sure you have guessed by now. They leveled their guns at us and backed away to their horses. They took with them not only the nearly two million pesos in cash which I had paid for the gold. They took also the gold.”

“You are going to say I was a champion of a fool to trust them.”

“It crossed my mind,” Boag said.

“I did not trust them. My vaqueros were armed and watchful. But vaqueros are not a match for men like his. They were taken by surprise, overwhelmed before they knew it. Four of my people were killed and three others are still under treatment with the doctor in the town of Coronado.”

“You do any damage to the other side?”

“I think two or three of Pickett’s ladrónes were injured. I saw one whose arm flopped very loosely, I am sure it had been broken by a bullet above the elbow.”

“But they took the cash and the gold bullion both.”

“Yes.”

“Any idea where they went from here?”

“It is a large world, Señor.”

“Then Mr. Pickett didn’t drop any hints.”

“No, he is too clever for that.”

“Which way did they ride out?”

“To the south. It means nothing of course.”

“Maybe,” Boag said.

“You have an idea?”

“How much is that gold really worth, in pesos?”

“You mean if it were clean, if it could be sold in the open market without fear of discovery?”

“Yes.”

“Approximately three and one half million pesos.”

Boag said, “So Mr. Pickett has more than five million pesos to spend. You could almost buy this whole province for that.”

“Well hardly, Señor. But it is an impressive sum.” Don Pablo’s pale hands came together in a prayer clasp. “You said some part of the gold was yours?”

“Yes.” Boag refused to be drawn. He was thinking, if I had all that money where would I take it? But it was hard to think like Mr. Jed Pickett. He didn’t have the background for it.