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

little enough to laugh about at that time.
    He wasn’t a fanatic about gold. Some men eat and breathe it and know nothing else. Struggles simply thought prospecting was a good idea. Sun and fresh air, hard work, enough excitement to keep your blood circulating regularly and the chance of becoming rich for life. Finally, after almost twenty years of campaigning, he reasoned that his obligation to the Army was at an end. He had served long enough that no one could say he had signed up just for the free transportation.
    He worked the Dragoons for almost a year with only a few pyrite showings and then a trace that would die out before it had hardly started. It was enough discouragement to make him look for a new field. He decided to point south and follow the Bavispe down through Sonora, keeping the Sierra Madre on his left, working the foothills until he had the feel of the country, then go deeper into the range.
    Five days after Juan Solo left his pueblo, Struggles found him in a barranca. They did not speak, because Juan was unable to. He was spread on his back in the middle of the depression, stripped, his hands and feet fastened with rawhide and peggeddeep into the sand. Near him were the ashes of a fire over which his feet had been held before he was staked to the ground.
    They spoke of it for a long time after in Soyopa. How Juan Solo rode out one morning on his burro and returned a week later tied to the animal with the American leading it, along with his own, and how the American stayed on with Juan at his adobe and tended him until his sickness passed.
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    S TRUGGLES DID NOT consider saving Juan’s life a special act of charity. He would have done the same for anyone. Nor did the man’s reluctance to explain completely what had occurred bother Struggles. At first, all Juan offered in explanation was that an American, a man whom he had trusted as a friend, caught him unaware and performed this torture on him. Struggles accepted this without pressing conversation and gradually, as his wounds healed, Juan Solo became more at ease. A natural friendship was developing, in spite of their extremely opposite backgrounds.
    Finally, one day when Juan’s burns were almost healed, he said to Struggles: “That was a good thing you did before.” It was his way of thanking Struggles for saving his life.
    The surgeon brushed it off. “No more than any man would have done,” he said.
    Juan Solo frowned. “It is not of such a simple nature. There was a good thing you did before.”
    Struggles waited while Juan Solo unhurriedly formed the words in his mind.
    â€œOnce,” Juan began, “I had a friend who desired to be rich. He begged me to show him silver, so I took him into the hills. But even being a friend, I blindfolded his eyes lest avarice lead him back for more, though I meant to give him plenty enough. For two days I walked behind his burro picking up the kernels of maize that he was dropping to mark the trail. And at the end of that time, I unbound his eyes and returned to him all the maize he had dropped, saying such a wasteful man would indeed not know how to use silver. And there I left him, discovering that he was no friend.
    â€œThe next time I went out from the pueblo, he was waiting for me and he took me and demanded that I show him the place of the silver. He had Mexican men with him, and at his word they built a fire to abuse the truth from me, as if the words would come from my feet; but I would not speak, so they left me to die.”
    Juan Solo’s eyes did not leave Struggles’ hard-lined face. He went on, “Now I have learned thatfriendship is not simply of words. Man, I will show you silver; as much as your burro can carry will be yours. And there will be no blindfold.”
    Struggles cleared his throat and felt a flush of embarrassment. “Juan, I didn’t treat you for a fee.” And then was sorry he had said it when the Indian’s sleepy