Free The Damned by John D. MacDonald Page B

anxiously at Bill.
    “I think they get the next ride across, Gerrold. I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do about it.”
    “What gives him the right? Who does he think he is?”
    “He’s the head of a new political party in the northern provinces. His name is Atahualpa. That’s not his real name, of course. It’s the name of the last Inca king. He claims to have some Inca blood, though I never heard of any Incas in Mexico before. His party is based on some pretty rugged racial ideas. He’s nearly pure India, and ruthless as they come.”
    “Are you trying to say we won’t get my mother across to the doctor on this trip?”
    “I’ve been watching the river. It isn’t dropping so fast now. Maybe this round trip will only take fifteen minutes.”
    John Gerrold turned on his heel and walked toward the group of men. Bill called to him sharply.
    John Gerrold had to stop so that the first car that had come off the ferry could pass. The people in the car grinned and waved and shouted as it sped up the hill.
    John Gerrold tried to edge by the circle of men, tried to get close to the lead sedan. He was grabbed and spun back. He poised and leaped at them, swinging his fists blindly.
    Bill saw it happening, and he was powerless to stop it. He saw the short vicious chop of the barrel of a revolver. He heard the crisp sound as it met bone. John Gerrold stood quite still for a moment, turned half away, and went down onto his face. The bent glasses skittered a few feet in the dust. One lens was shattered.
    His young wife ran to him, knelt beside him. The men moved away as though a bit embarrassed. She gently rolled John Gerrold over onto his back. Bill saw that Atahualpa had not even turned his head.
    The girl looked toward Bill and cried out, “Can’t you do something?”
    Bill was conscious that all the spectators had moved back. He felt that he was very much alone. There was the very real chance that Atahualpa would continue to gain power in the government, and he would make a very bad enemy of the Danton family. Obscure rules could be applied. It was even possible that, should Atahualpa achieve real power, the citizenship of Bill’s father could be canceled on some technicality, that the wide rich lands of the Rancho Danton could be handed over, almost for nothing, to Atahualpa.
    Logic said to lay low, make but the smallest of sounds. Bill was not the least naive about Mexican politics. Both he and his father were conscious, always, of the threat hanging over them—threat of a change of regime, a change of viewpoint toward norteamericanos that would make their life impossible.
    But the girl’s fine eyes were on his, in helplessness and in appeal. And his father had said, many times, “When you have to do something right, boy, don’t stop to count how much money you got in your pants.”
    Bill walked forward, conscious of Pepe, behind him, saying softly, “No, hombre! No.”
    Atahualpa’s guard watched Bill’s approach with that mild curiosity of a pack of village dogs seeing a strange car coming down the village street. They shifted a little.
    Bill stopped, raised his voice, and said, “Was Atahualpa responsible for that stupidity?”
    Three of the guards moved lightly toward him, converging. Bill stood tense. When, from the corner of his eye, he caught the flick of the descending blow, he snapped his head away, felt the stir of the heated air against his cheek. The force of the blow spun the man off balance, and as he took a lurching awkward step, Bill struck down at him with a sweeping backhand blow of a big right fist. It hit the guard behind the ear, driving him down into the dust.
    The nearest man gave a grunt of anger and the sun gleamed blue on barrel steel. To Bill all movement became stickily slow, as though the low sun and the blue shadows formed some underwater scene. It was incredible that these guards should have such colossal indifference to the law that they would shoot him, kill him here