Drifting Off the Coast of New Mexico--Excerpt
WELL, SIR, there's bullets whizzing past us like we done shook up a hornet's nest, which in a manner of speaking I guess we done. Bierce is face-up on the travois we made for him after he caught one in the gut outside a Ojinaco, and Tom's pulling one pole of it and me t'other, and we couldn't be leaving no clearer trail if we jumped up and down and clapped our hands and yelled hey. All I got's my little Smith & Wesson slapping my leg like it wants out; I done lumped the Springfield in with Bierce on the travois cause it ain't no good to me while we're racing and wheezing along. It's hotter'n a dutch oven in a burning house and we're running low on energy and rounds.
We're too god damn old for this.
Another slug goes whooting past my leg. Maybe it had my name wrote on it, but they done spelt it wrong. Anyways their shots are killing Mexican dirt more than anything else; Carranza's troops are pretty near out of range and don't shoot all that commendably to begin with. I ain't sure they been allowed to have ammunition till recently, and if I was Carranza I'da found that a sound policy myself.
Now we're heading uphill and the going ain't hardly fun at all. My lungs are on fire but I'm in pretty good shape for an old war horse if you don't check my teeth. Tom's having a tough go of it though. Sometime in them soft big-city years he done swallered a cannonball and has been lugging it around ever since, and right now he's red-faced as a naked preacher and sweating like his hat's squeezing it out of his head.
Tom sees me looking at him and I guess he reads my worried look. Can't hardly have a thought to yourself when you're with a body too long; you may as well get married and have done with it. He nods, probably 'cause talking is pretty much out of the question. Then he glances at Bierce and back at me, and I know what he is thinking and I shake my head no, and my look says Shame on you for thinking it. Tom kind of shrugs--which is his reply to plum near everything anymore--and hauls on.
Round a bend Tom recognizes another opportunity to slow down Carranza's boys, so I grab up the Springfield from beside Bierce--it weighs about a hundred pounds more than I remember--and Tom drags the travois back a ways while I work the action and kneel down and wipe sweat from my eyes and put on my glasses and draw a bead. I feel another of my coughing spells coming on and fight it off long enough to steady that long barrel and squeeze off. That Springfield kicks like everclear and my shoulder's already throbbing from plugging away.
I get up and my knees pop and it hurts like a sumbitch--and then the coughing spell lays me up. When it's over my lungs feel like they been scoured with steel wool.
I set the Springfield alongside Bierce.
"Get him?" asks Tom.
I shrug and grab up my end of the travois. "If my aim was true, some fella wearing a coat with shiny buttons has got a plug tore outta his chest that a 'gator could use for a chaw. But waiting to find out is a good way to end up on the receiving end of some Mexican hospitality, I figger."
Tom don't have no argument with that--for a change--and we set to pulling Bierce again. I hold my rifle out to get Tom's eye.
"Thomas," I declare "if I get out a this in one piece, I'll visit Springfield and kiss the ground. I'd lay odds it's good ground, too. Hell, it's in Missouri."
Tom, he just pulls up one corner of his mouth. "It is that," he says. "But your Springfield hails from Massachusetts."
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