Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

not have the decency to show it in posture. He thought: Now I know what people mean about wanting to die in bed. But again he told himself to shut up, because it was foolish to talk.
    There was only a soft squeak of saddle leather and the muffled clop of hoofs on sand, and ahead, the dim figure of Juan Solo moving silently, rhythmically to the sounds.
    The dusk thickened into night, and later Struggles could feel the ground beneath him changing though he could make out nothing in the darkness. There was a closeness above him along with the more broken ground, so that he sensed rather than observed that they were passing into rockier country.
    And when first morning light reflected in the sky, Struggles saw that they were deep into a canyon. Ahead, it twisted out of sight, but beyond the rim a wall of mountain rose a thousand feet into the sky, tapering into a slender pinnacle at one end of its unbalanced crest. It seemed close enough to hit with astone, but it was at least two miles beyond the canyon.
    Juan Solo reined in gently and raised his arm toward the peak, pointing a finger. “Señor Doctor,” he said. “Be the first American to observe El Sangre del Santo…and know it.”
    Struggles was unprepared. “That’s it?” he said incredulously; then wondered why he had expected it to appear differently. Lost mines needn’t look like lost mines. Looking at the peak he thought of the legend, trying to picture what had taken place here; but then he thought of the other that he had been thinking all night, and he glanced uneasily behind him.
    Juan Solo watched him. “They are many hours behind,” he said, “since they could not follow in the night. So, if it is not abusive to you, I say we should go quickly to the mine and leave before they arrive, continuing on in the widest circle that ends again where we started. Thus they will not know that they have been to El Sangre and left it. And later, when they see us surrounded by seven hundred bottles of mescal—” the Indian could not keep from grinning—“they will scratch their heads and turn and gaze out at the mountains that say nothing, and they will scratch their thick heads again.”
    Just past the canyon bend, Juan angled toward the shadowy vein of a crevice, the base overgrownwith brush, which entered into a defile twisting through a squeezed-in narrowness to finally emerge in open country again at the base of the mountain.
    From the ledge, Struggles’ gaze lifted to the thin spire of rock, then dropped slowly, inching down with the speck that was Juan Solo descending the steep, narrow path of a rock slide that made a sweeping angle from the peak to the ledge where Struggles stood, then lost itself completely in a scatter of boulders on a bench fifty feet below. Struggles moved to the edge and glanced at the animals on the bench then on down the grade to the canyon they had left a few hours before, squinting hard, before looking back at Juan Solo.
    And as the Indian reached the ledge, Struggles shook his head, then pressed his sleeve against his forehead and exhaled slowly. “I’m worn out just watching you,” he said.
    The Indian swung from his shoulder a blanket gathered into the shape of a sack. “Climbing for such that is up there is never wearing,” he said. He untied the blanket ends and let them drop, watching Struggles, as the surgeon looked with astonishment at the dull-gleaming heap of candlesticks, chalices and crosses; all ornately tooled and some decorated with precious stones.
    â€œThese and more were placed in the sepulchre of Tomas Maria,” Juan Solo said. “Along with the silver that had already been fashioned into bars when the restoration took place.”
    Struggles picked up a slender cruciform and ran his fingers over the baroque carvings. “It’s unbelievable,” he said, looking at Juan Solo. “These articles should be in a