The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis (best books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📕

THE rounds that some rich tourists from the United States who were staying at the Hotel Azteca outside Mazalar were going to make the bus trip up to Los Altos. It was obvious, of course, that this rumor wasn't entirely to be trusted. Anyone with any brains or a radio knew that the people from the United States were too busy raising hell up and down the world to have any time to look at scenery except through a bombsight.

But tourists of any brand had been so remarkably scarce of late that the mere hint of their impending arrival was enough to touch off a sort of impromptu fiesta. The inhabitants of Los Altos shook the mothballs out of their serapes, mantillas, rebozas and similar bric-a-brac and prepared to look colorful at the drop of a sombrero. They gathered in the marketplace with their pigs and chickens and burros and dogs and children, and slept, argued, bellowed, squealed, cackled or urinated on the age-old pavement according to their various natural urges.

All this was very boring to a man who, for the time being, was named Garcia. He sat and drank beer the general color and consistency of warm vinegar, and glowered. He had a thin, yellowish face and a straggling black mustache, and he was cross-eyed. He should really have been more interested in the tourists coming from the Hotel Azteca, because in a short time one of them was going to shoot him dead. However, he didn't know that, and had you told him he would have laughed or spat in your eye or perhaps both. He was a bad man.

He was sitting now in the Dos Hermanos, which was according to its brotherly proprietors, a cafe very high class. It was one door off the marketplace on the street running north. Since it was early and no one yet had any money to get drunk on and Garcia looked mean, he was the only customer. One of the proprietors was sleeping with his head on the bar while flies explored gingerly in the dark and gusty cavern of his mouth. Garcia could look out the open front of the cafe and see kitty-corner across the marketplace, but it was hard for anyone outside to see him.

Private Serez of the Mexican Army had found that out some time ago. He was in the abandoned building directly across the street from the cafe. He was lying on his stomach on some very rough boards peering out and down through a high, glassless window. His rifle, bayonet attached, lay beside him. He was very tired, and his eyes ached, and his elbows were sore. He wanted a cigarette, a beer, and a siesta in that order, but he didn't really think he was going to get any of them for a long time to come.

The reason for this pessimism was a sergeant by the name of Obrian, also of the Mexican Army. Sergeant Obrian had inherited a red mustache and a violent temper from his Irish grandfather, and he was very sticky about having his commands obeyed literally. He had ordered Private Serez to lie right where he was and keep out of sight and watch Garcia with all due vigilance. Private Serez knew he had better do just that and keep on doing it until he got some further orders.

Even as he was thinking drearily about the prospect, he heard a board creak in the hall outside the closed door of his watch-room. That would be Sergeant Obrian with his bad disposition and worse vocabulary coming around to check up. Private Serez wiggled himself higher on his sore elbows and looked out the window in as soldierly and alert a manner as possible.

The heavy, wrought-iron door hinges creaked just slightly, and then something hit the floorboards beside Private Serez with a heavy thud. He looked back over his shoulder. The door was closing again very gently, but Private Serez didn't even notice it.

He was staring in paralyzed horror at what had made the thud. That was a diamondback rattlesnake five feet long and thicker around the middle than a man's doubled biceps.

The snake had had its rattles clipped off and had been submitted to other indignities that hadn't improved its temper. It whipped back into a coil--all lithely sinister muscle--and struck. It missed Private Serez's leg by half an inch.

He yelled--loudly. He could no more have helped that than he could have helped breathing. He scrambled frantically on the floor, grabbing for his rifle, trying to get back out of range of the next strike. There was no furniture in the room. The snake was between Private Serez and the door. He jumped for the only other place that promised temporary refuge. He climbed right up into the window.

Garcia heard the yell. He looked up, and he saw Private Serez in the window. His yellowish face showed neither shock nor fear, but his lips peeled back thinly from his teeth, and he drew a thick, nickel-plated revolver from his coat pocket. He got up from his table, watching the proprietor. The proprietor mumbled and rolled his head on the bar, faintly disturbed by the yell, but luckily for him he didn't wake up. Garcia went quietly to the back of the room, opened the door there and went down a short passageway past a kitchen that smelled abominably. At the end of the passageway he opened another door and stepped out into a small, high-walled patio paved with garbage and less mentionable refuse.

He was halfway across the patio, heading for the side door, when a soldier stood up behind the back wall. Garcia and the soldier stared at each other, rigid with surprise, for the space of two heartbeats, and then Garcia whipped up his revolver and fired.

The report was a flat, ragged crash, and the bullet hit the soldier just under his chin. He clapped both hands to his throat and flopped backwards out of sight. Garcia opened the side door and looked at the butcher who owned the shop next to the cafe .

The butcher had been interrupted in the process of carving up a skinny cow with the aid of three cats and one million flies. He opened his mouth to yell, but he didn't, because Garcia hit him on top of the head with the revolver and knocked him flat. The cats went in three directions, and the flies droned up in an angry swarm and then settled back on the beef and the butcher indiscriminately.

Garcia didn't hurry. He went cautiously along the alley in the direction of the marketplace, sliding along one wall with the revolver thrust out ahead of him. He reached the alley-mouth and peered out. The people in the marketplace were beginning to stir and wonder uneasily.

Sergeant Obrian stood up on the roof of a building two doors away and leaned over the parapet, peering down to see what was happening. Garcia raised his revolver and aimed carefully at him. He was shooting up at an angle and against the sun. He missed by six inches. The bullet slapped a silvery blob of lead against the adobe. Instantly Sergeant Obrian dropped back out of sight behind the parapet.

In the same split second, Private Serez managed to spear the rattlesnake with his bayonet. He didn't know exactly what to do with it now that he had it, so he pitched it out the window into the marketplace. The snake, still writhing, fell across the nose of a burro below. The burro kicked out backward with both heels and hit its master squarely in the stomach. He fell down and screamed and flailed the ground with his arms.

The burro stamped on the snake and then ran away, and the butcher woke up and yelled, and the whole marketplace went off like a time bomb. All the people decided they would go somewhere else right away and, if possible, take their various dependents, human and animal, along with them. The confusion was something terrific, and Garcia stepped right into the middle of it and disappeared.

Chapter 3

 

THE ROLLED GRAVEL ROAD WAS LIKE A CLEAN white ribbon laid in graceful loops along the side of the mountain that towered red and enormous up into the thin, clear blue of the sky. Heat waves shimmered and wiggled above bare rock, and the dust from the bus's passage drifted back in a lazy plume. The engine burbled and muttered to itself in quiet protest over the steepness of the grade.

"This is a pretty sizeable rock pile," Henshaw volunteered, trying to look out the window and up toward the summit.

"Kindly do not waste the astonishment," Bartolome ordered. "This is not yet the magnificence. This is called 'La Cabeza,' the head, because that is its name. The scenery here is only ordinarily wonderful." Janet Martin's eyes were shining. "It's the beginning of the middle range," she said in a low voice to Doan. "One of Cortez's lieutenants discovered it. He thought the whole length of the range looked like a sleeping woman. He saw it first from the other side of Azela Valley--a hundred and ten miles from here"

"What was the guy's name?" Doan asked.

"Lieutenant Emile Perona. He was a soldier of fortune--an adventurer. He was the younger son of a very noble Spanish family, and he was one of the first men to come to America. He loved this country--its beauty and its ruggedness. It just suited his own nature."

"Was he handsome?" Doan asked, watching her.

"Oh, yes," said Janet softly. "Very. He was tall and hawk-faced and dark, with piercing eyes and a smile that seemed like a light in a darkened room. He was ruthless and cruel, too, as all brave men could be cruel in those old days, but he had integrity and honesty--" Her voice trailed away dreamily.

"You seem to know him pretty well," Doan observed, "seeing he's been dead for four hundred years or so."

"I read about him," Janet said.

"I can read, too," said Doan, "and often do. But I never ran across Lieutenant Perona. Where'd you find him?"

"He was mentioned in Cortez's reports."

"Did Cortez say he was handsome?"

"No," Janet said stiffly.

"Tell me some more," Doan invited.

Janet shook her head. "No. You're laughing at me."

"I'm not," Doan denied. "Neither is Carstairs. We like you."

"Do you--do you think I look sexy?"

"What?" Doan said, startled.

Janet was blushing furiously. "You don't! You weren't thinking of anything like that!"

"I was, too," Doan contradicted. "I was just working up to it in a roundabout way."

"Now you are laughing at me!" Janet bit down hard on her lower lip. "I don't care! It's not true, and it's wicked to make girls think it is!"

"What's not true?" Doan inquired.

"What they say in novels and movies about how you can go to beauty parlors and fix yourself all over and men will be--will be attracted to you."

"In a nice way, of course," Doan added.

"No!" said Janet angrily. "I don't want them to be attracted in a nice way!"

"I can work up a pretty fair leer if you give me time," Doan offered. "Will that help?"

"You stop making fun of me!"

Greg turned around in his seat and looked back at them. "Miss Martin, is that detective fellow annoying you?"

"What?" Janet