Whiskey by Gil Brewer

Author:Gil Brewer [Brewer, Gil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2019-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 3

He sat at the entrance to the whiskey cave and drank heartily, thinking things over. Ah, that whiskey was good. He lay down for a moment, juggling the bottle on his chest, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, feeling the fresh burning of the alcohol. He hadn’t been this drunk in a long while. It was pleasant.

Now, that cringo, how about him? He had meant Guinda when he talked of the “she.” No doubt this all added up to something. The man was caught in there, and he certainly couldn’t live for too long. It was pretty certain the air would become foul soon, and after a time there would be no air at all.

A pity. Pedro Cargado sat up, pushed his hat back, and took a small drink from the bottle. The earth leading down toward the mine tilted and careened. Pedro sat there and tried to make it all stop, but it would not, so he endured it with content. Anyway, that was the idea behind whiskey—to think anything different was to be the fool, eh, no?

About the man with the gun. He had planned to kill, to murder. Killing was wrong.

Pedro Cargado stood up, rammed the bottle into his hip pocket and moved down to the mine again. He located his shovel and went inside.

He stood at the mouth of the left tunnel. Dios, this was unpleasant. It would surely collapse. It must be treated with the utmost tenderness, this one. How had he ever come out of there?

He did not at first hear the man yelling as he crept forward, pulling the shovel behind him. He did not dare speak loudly, even, or the tunnel would fall.

Then, very faintly, he heard. “Please—for God’s sake, help me.”

Pedro Cargado squirmed through the small hole into the coffin of earth and banged the shovel lightly against the man’s side of the cave-in.

“I return,” he said. “I will dig you free, señor.”

The man thanked him. Pedro began to work slowly. He worked for a long time. Eventually it became too thick with dust to continue. He was choking, he could hardly breathe.

“Take it easy,” Pedro said. “I will come back. Do not yell too much, or you will be extinguished.”

He felt strange and realized that with the work he had approached sobriety again. With this curious sensation he began to get mad all over again—truly mad this time. Here he was, Pedro Cargado, taxing the gods’ concern over his life, trying to save a man who wanted to kill him, rob him, perhaps even steal his wife.

Dios! It was loco—estupido! He cautiously left the mine again, wondering how the man figured to get the gold if he, Pedro Cargado, were dead?

He stood again in the long slant of afternoon sunlight and drank gently, carefully from the bottle.

“Pedro!”

Ah, she was home again.

He watched her fling herself from the mule, stare at the yellow dust-covered convertible, then run wildly down toward the mine. She wore a blue polka-dot dress, from being of course at the Garcias, visiting.

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