‘Any white men?’
‘Sure. That’s why. This fellow Burton—“Mexicali” Burton—he’s American. Struck it rich in oil, but looks to be unpopulyar with a revolutionist, called Vallejo—’
‘Just a Sunday newspaper yarn,’ said Cal.
‘This feller who’s writin’ says Mister Vallejo could use them oil wells of Burton’s to pay off his soldiers and finally take over the government.’
Elbert wasn’t breathing right. Another version of the same newspaper story Mort Cotton had sent. He felt as if the truth was being extracted in spite of him; that Cal and Slim had somehow landed into the midst of his private business. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. At the same time, he was powerfully thrilled by some vague prospect, his mind repeating to itself that he had given nothing away so far.
Slim, meanwhile, was reading aloud laboriously about an American oil man, named Burton, who had sent in a call for help to General Juan Cordano, in charge of the Government soldiers in Sonora. This man Burton was said to be standing pat on his property at San Pasquali with a few dozen white men and some Mexican laborers he wasn’t at all sure of.
‘Every time them newspaper fellers up in Tucson can’t think of anything else to write on, they start a Mexican revolution,’ Cal said.
‘But why couldn’t it be?’ asked Slim, sitting up straighter, more and more sleepless, his bridle-arm lifted, his right fallen limp as if he were in the saddle. Slim had to wear his belt tight or it would drop down over his hips. One had a feeling that it could be pulled up over his shoulders without loosening a notch. ‘Why couldn’t it be?’ he wanted to know in a louder tone.
‘You’re breaking in on my rest,’ Cal murmured.
Slim straightened out his legs and helped himself to his feet with both hands. Taking a quart cup from his mess-case, he went back to the cook-wagon and returned with it full of hot coffee. ‘This ain’t no night for rest; this ain’t no place for me, Cal. I’ve been making forty dollars a month so long, anybody’d think I was keepin’ up a twenty-year endowment policy—’