by the window, his lips miming:
Then she sighed as she whispered, “Mañana”
Never dreamed that we were parting
And I lied as I whispered, “Mañana’”for our
tomorrow never came.
The closing words were “South of the Border—I rode back one day” but they were never uttered, for just at the moment when they were about to be delivered, the door splintered open and Ramon (a serving boy who often assisted Rosa in the cantina) fell in crying, “Papa! Papa! Ees the gringo! Captured, he …!”
“Honky!” gasped Pat, leaping to his feet.
Pasty slapped his forehead with a despairing palm.
The pale light of dawn was beginning to enfold the sleeping town, the depth of Honky’s plight dawning on Pat and Pasty as through the broken slats of the stables they observed the tragedy of his fate being played out before their very eyes. The metal toe caps of his boots barely touched the straw on the floor as the generalissimo’s brother (Manchita) slowly tightened the noose of the rope about his neck. General Manchita (for he too was a general) suddenly turned and slammed open the stable door, crying out to the chicken-peppered silence, “You out there? You listen to me! Or perhaps you don’ have ears! You have until zis time tomorrow to give yourselfs up! If you don’t—zen you die weeth heem!”
The door shot closed as he returned to the wan (clearly broken) Honky and placed the handle of his curled bullwhip close to his Adam’s apple.
“So, my frien’? You comfortable? Ha ha!” he sneered.
His indulgent whinnies, thought Pat as his affronted knuckles paled, might have been the braying of an ass, hopelessly oblivious, as many of its compatriots, of the nature and depth of its self-deluding foolishness.
Some hours later, Pat was in an awful state as he paced the floor of the cantina crying, “This is our fault, Pasty! Ours! It’ll be all our fault if he dies!”
“Why did he have to bring us here in the first place!” was Pasty’s response. “If he hadn’t done that! Pat, I don’t care! I’m getting out of here first thing tomorrow!”
“But he’ll be dead by then! Stop it, Pasty! You hear me? Stop that talk and stop it now, I tell you!”
“The first bus that comes along I’m climbing on it! I’m getting on it, Pat, and I’m going!”
Nobody was more shocked than Pat McNab to hear the sharp, uncompromising crack his palm made across the vivid red cheek of Pasty McGookin’s face.
“Stop it now, Pasty! Stop it, I said!”
The effect on Pasty was quite remarkable. Clearly he had been suffering from hysteria. He calmed down almost instantaneously.
“I’m sorry, Pat,” he said placidly, adding, “But what are we going to do? Honky’s going to die!”
The sharp hammer-clips pounding in the nails of the makeshift scaffold which was at that moment being constructed in the village square copper-fastened Pasty’s anguished appraisal. Perhaps it was merciful that this was the only intimation of Honky’s worsening situation that was to be visited upon them that night, for anything approaching the true facts might well have proved unbearable.
The leather thong binding Honky’s wrists as he writhed upon the badly constructed kitchen chair formed red fleshy bangles that seemed to be on fire. His tormentors had not seen fit to permit him so much as a glass of water in over twelve hours. All they granted him were two cigarettes which were inserted in each nostril and various lung-choking taunts of “Ha ha ha! What seems to be ze problem? You don’ smoke?” which they delivered raucously whilst wiping their eyes and supporting each other physically lest they should fall to the ground in a state of incapacitation from sheer mirth.
Their laughter as Honky passed out yet again was as a coil of wire barbed and rusted that sprang from their crusted lips and leaped through a hole in the roof to cruelly encircle the entire town.
The chimes which emanated from the burnished gold timepiece were oddly haunting as Pat, despondent now in a way he’d never been before in his life, contemplated the faded oval watercolor portrait within. He felt Rosa’s bronzed hand touching his shoulder tenderly. “Who is it, Pat?” she softly enquired. He put his hand on hers. “It’s Mammy,” he said, and slowly clasped it shut. Rosa nodded. She understood. Then, smoothing her skirt, she lowered her head then raised it and stared with glittering eyes in the direction of the heat-hung horizon. “He was a beautiful man, your friend Honky,” she said. “Ees hard to