The man nodded and returned to the bar. He stopped in front of the man who had come over to his table.
"The alcalde tells me my friend can stay," he said.
The man turned to him angrily. "Who the hell cares what that greaser thinks? Just because we're across the border, doesn't mean I have to drink with niggers!"
The smaller man's voice was cold. "My friend eats with me, drinks with me, sleeps with me, and he's not goin'." He turned his back calmly and went back to his table.
He was just seating himself again when the angry americano started for him.
"If you like niggers so much, nigger-lover, see how you like sleepin' with a dead one!" he shouted, pulling his gun.
The smaller americano seemed scarcely to move but the gun was in his hand, smoke rising from its barrel, the echo of a shot fading away in the rafters of the cantina.
And the loud-mouthed one lay dead on the floor in front of the bar.
"I apologize for the disturbance we have made against the hospitality of your village," he said in his strange Spanish.
The alcalde looked down at the man on the floor, and shrugged.
"De nada," he said. "It is nothing.
You were right. The swine had no grace."
Now, almost three years later, the alcalde sighed, remembering.
The little one had grace, much grace – natural like a panther.
And the gun.
Caramba!
There had never been anything so fast. It seemed almost to have a life of its own.
What a pistolera this one would have made.
Juarez would have been proud of him.
Several times each year, the two friends would quietly disappear from the village and as quietly reappear – several weeks, sometimes several months later.
And each time they came back, they had money to pay for their rooms, their women, their whisky.
But each time, the alcalde could sense a deeper solitude in them, a greater aloneness.
There were times he felt a strange kind of pity for them.
They were not like the others that came to the village.
This way of life held no pleasure for them.
And now they were drinking tequila again.
How many times before they would go out like this and never return?
Not only to this village but to nowhere on this earth.
Max swallowed the tequila and bit into the lime.
The tart juice burst into his throat, giving his mouth a clean, fresh feeling.
He looked at Mike.
"How much we got left?"
Mike thought for a moment.
"Maybe three more weeks."
Max rolled a cigarette and lit it.
"What we gotta do is make a big hit.
Then maybe we could go up into California or Nevada or someplace where they don' know us an' git ourselves straightened out.
Money shore don' last long around this place."
The Negro nodded. "It sho' don'," he agreed. "But that ain' the answer.
We gotta split up. They lookin' for us together. When they see me, it's like you carryin’ a big ol’ sign with you' name on it."
Max filled his glass again. "Tryin' to get rid of me?" He smiled, throwing the liquor down his throat and reaching for the lime. Mike said seriously, "Maybe 'thout me, you could settle down someplace an' make a life fo' yourself. You won' have to run no mor'." Max spit out a lime seed.
"We made us a deal to stick together. We get enough money this time, we'll head for California."
The door opened and a tall, redheaded cowboy came in.
He walked over to their table and dropped into an empty chair.
"Ol' Charlie Dobbs got here in the nick o' time, I reckon." He laughed. "That there tequila'll eat the linin' off your stomach sure as hell.
Bartender, bring us a bottle of whisky."
The bartender put whisky and glasses on the table and walked away.
Charlie filled the glasses and they drank.
"What brings you back, Charlie?" Max asked. "I thought you were headin' up Reno way."
"I was. But I run into the biggest thing ever I saw. It was too good to pass up."