All hell broke loose. The boys began to tear the pages of The Rape of the Lock into tatters and convert them into a snowfall and they began to smash the chairs and desks. Even I, though of course never a bodgie, was inspired to carefully incise a few pages, a sin for which I have still never completely forgiven myself. Mr Demetre’s papers were littered, his chalk ground into the floor, while he shouted, unheeded, to them to stop this madness. Then six large bodgies took him away. The snowfall of Belinda and the Baron settled, the boys fell quiet.
“They’re gonna kill him,” someone said.
A chilled silence gripped us. The condemned waited for the final outcome.

Still in the same second Dobbs thought of another weapon. He was standing close beside one of the donkeys to whose pack a machete was tied. He made a grab to draw the machete and defend himself with it. This might have served him well, for with the machete in his hands he could perhaps have gained some time to load his revolver with the few loose cartridges in his shirt pocket.
But the second had now run out and the stone came hurtling at his head. He saw it coming but did not turn his head aside quickly enough, because his mind was completely taken up with the machete.
The stone stretched him out, more by the weight of its impact than the injury it did him.
Before he had time to jump up again Miguel was on to the machete, to which his eyes were first directed by Dobb’s movement. With a practised hand he drew it in one sweep from its long leather sheath; the next moment he was above Dobbs, whose head with one short sharp blow he struck clean from his neck.
Less shocked than taken aback by the swiftness of it, they all three stared at the body. The head lay separated only by the thickness of the blade from the trunk, and the eyes quivered spasmodically and then, with a sudden jerk, remained three-quarters shut. The fingers of both hands stretched to their fullest extent and then were tightly cramped together, This they did several times, until, when the nails had bitten into the palms for the last time, they gently opened, and died, half-closed.
    The great thing about Humphrey Bogart was that, unlike most other film stars, he was willing to play utterly unredeemable characters. But, brainwashed as I was, it took a long time for me to get to be able to admire him for it. I remember being outraged when I saw The Treasure of Sierra Madre on television, always expecting him to turn around and show his good side. I was so disappointed, I read the book by B Traven, just to make sure Bogie knew what he was doing when he chose to play the character. He did. Dobbs is absolutely despicable. So is the book. I remembered the passage above not just for the blood, but also because it wasn’t in the film. On screen, we last see Dobbs raise his head from drinking at the waterhole, as he becomes aware his three murderers are right behind him. I also remember being rather relieved at the time, that it wasn’t the sort of book Mr Demetre approved of and therefore not in a position to be added to his repertoire.  
    However, the author, B. Traven was destined to become a literary hero of mine. He published a number of bestsellers in the 1930s but only Sierra Madre endured, and that only because of John Huston’s movie. But Traven is fascinating. No one knows what the B stood for, or even if it stood for anything because it was a pseudonym. No one knows what his real name was, and his publishers never met him. When his first books were translated from the original German into English, he moved to America somewhere, but continued to send his manuscripts to the New York publishers in German. They had to translate them before they could decide to publish.
    Journalists of the time and later researchers have sought his true identity in vain, but when Huston went to Mexico to prepare his movie, he met a man who seemed to know all about Sierra Madre, both the place and the book. He had an Italian name but a thick German accent. Huston was certain it was Traven, but when he told the publishers later, they went and found he had slipped away again, and that  the Italian name was yet another alias. Soon after, the last manuscript in German arrived at the publishers, and Traven was never heard of again.