The Mouse in the Mountain | Page 6

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