Chapter II: Part 2

"_Carne adobada, carne adobada?_" said Jacinto, waddling in. "You don't know how long I pickled it in brine. I fry the spices and chile till the juices stream out of the pork, and--" he trailed off, seeing how they were all watching Crawford. He turned to Huerta, wringing his fingers. "Doctor, please, I beseech you--"

"The coffee, Hyacinth, the coffee," murmured Huerta, waving a languid hand at the cook without looking away from Crawford.

Jacinto almost choked on the breath he took, and backed out, staring wide-eyed at Crawford. "_Sí._ The _café_. _Sí._"

Tarant began to serve the meat dish Jacinto had brought. "When you had that ruckus with Rockland in the living-room here, Bueno Bailey said it was over Delcazar," he said.

"You know what it was over," said Crawford. "You got Del's land for Rockland that way."

Huerta leaned forward slightly. "Was it just the land?"

"Del's my _compadre_," said Crawford. "You're Mexican. You know what the word is."

"Crawford," said Huerta, bending farther forward, "we should, of course, send you back to San Antonio. But there are other things which could be done."

"You're riding a muddy creek."

"A colloquialism," murmured the woman. "How quaint."

Crawford's narrow, dark head turned toward her with an angry jerk. She was watching him from beneath her brows in that mocking way, chin tucked in, and it formed a small crease in the rich flesh beneath her jaw. There was something concupiscent about it.

"We think your quarrel with Rockland was over more than the way he acquired Delcazar's land," said Huerta.

Crawford found it difficult to take his eyes off Merida. "Do you?"

"Oh, Huerta," the woman muttered petulantly, "can't you see you'll never get anywhere beating about the bush with him--"

"You'll never get anywhere with him anyway," said Wallace Tarant. "I know Glenn Crawford, Huerta. We'd better send him back to San Antonio right now."

"Oh, no," said Huerta, leaning back. "Not at all. I think if we kept him here long enough, we would find a way of convincing him that it is to his advantage to--ah--" he moved his hand, as if seeking the word--"cooperate, with us. Yes. Co-operate. Don't you, Merida?"

The woman's laugh held a husky sensuality. "Perhaps. Even if not--it would be interesting."

Wallace Tarant put down his fork angrily. "Don't be a fool, Huerta. Having Crawford here is like sitting on a keg of powder with a lighted match. What would Kenmare do if he found we'd caught Crawford and hadn't notified the authorities?"

"Kenmare won't find out," said Huerta, turning toward the man, "unless someone tells him. Ah, our coffee."

Jacinto set the urn down hesitantly, glaring about at them. He started to speak, then caught Huerta's eye, and backed out of the room, muttering to himself. Smiling faintly, Huerta indicated that Tarant should pour. Then he held out a cup.

"Mexican style, Crawford. Perhaps you'll like it. Boiled in milk and water and sweetened in the pot with _poloncillo_, our brown sugar. I was surprised to find how few of the hands here drank it like this. I know Quartel sweetens it with molasses sometimes." His eyes dropped to his own cup, and he stirred it absently. "Speaking of Quartel, that was quite an exhibition this afternoon, wasn't it? I don't think I've ever seen such a vicious horse. And what a magnificent beast a man would have if he could break it." He looked up abruptly. "Oh, excuse me, Crawford, I--" he moved his hand in an apologetic gesture--"I wasn't thinking--"

The woman frowned at him. "Hm?"

"The horse," said Huerta, looking at Merida, "the horse."

"What about the horse?" she said.

"I don't mean that," said Huerta. "I--"

"Never mind," said Crawford. "My legs are all right."

"Oh?" Huerta's arched brows rose. "I got a different impression. You weren't riding."

"I lost my horse on the Flores Road."

"It was hit?"

"I lost it, that's all," said Crawford.

"Oh." Huerta took out a jade cigarette holder, fitting a smoke into it. He leaned back, looking at Crawford. "You were watching Africano out in the corral, that way."

"What about the way I was watching it?"

Huerta's eyes dropped meditatively to the coffee cup, and he allowed twin streamers of smoke to leave his nostrils. "I guess I got the wrong impression, Crawford. You'll have to pardon me."

"Impression about what, Huerta?" said Tarant.

Huerta seemed to rouse himself with an effort. "Ah, nothing. Nothing, Tarant. You're not drinking your coffee, Crawford. Is it too sweet for you? Pour him another cup, Tarant." The woman was watching him narrowly now, and Huerta let his eyes meet hers momentarily before he leaned forward to put his elbows on the table. He took a sip of his own coffee, looking down the middle of the table in that meditation again. "They say a man is getting old when he starts reminiscing, but I can't help being reminded of an instance I ran across in Monterrey some years ago. After the war I chanced to be employed by a Mexican firm with interests in a mine north of the city. I had been company doctor some months when one of the lower shafts caved in, killing half a dozen of the men. I managed to patch up most of those who escaped with minor injuries. There was one miner, a huge giant of a fellow, whose legs had been crushed somewhat beneath the slide. My operations were singularly successful, and within five or six months he was as good as new, the bones knit perfectly and the muscles gave no sign of the damage. During his convalescence, there had been no pain. Yet, the very first day he went back to work, he experienced the most acute agony in his legs."

The little muscles jumped out all along Crawford's jaw suddenly. Huerta looked up, smiled faintly. "Yes--the most acute agony. I could find nothing organically wrong with him, absolutely nothing. In my office, he did not feel the pain. I took him back to the mine. As he approached the mouth of the shaft in which he had worked, the agony returned. All the symptoms of genuine pain. Sweating, trembling, tears in the eyes. I could not account for it. There was utterly no reason for him to feel the pain. I administered drugs, enough to deaden the greatest agony. It had no effect. Then I took him away from the mine. As soon as it was out of sight, the pain receded, disappeared."

Merida's face had lifted as he spoke, a tight furrow appearing between her brows. "You mean--his mind--"

"_Sí_," said Huerta. He was adjusting a fresh cigarette carefully in its holder. "I came to that conclusion finally. The mind plays funny tricks on us sometimes. That cave-in had been such a ghastly experience that he actually felt pain when he returned to the scene. And worse than the pain. Fear. He could never work at his trade again; he could never get near a mine without feeling that pain. And that fear. He tried to fight it. He had been a brave man once. He tried to force himself back into the mines. But in the shaft he became a sniveling, gibbering coward, crying and puking like a baby, unable to speak coherently even. Yes, the mind does play funny tricks on us--" Huerta held his cigarette holder out abruptly. "Crawford, you've spilled your coffee!"

_Chapter Three_

HUERTA WAS RIGHT!

The bunkhouse and cookshack stood a few hundred yards south of the house, two adobe structures connected by a covered dog-run. Rockland's father had put them up to live in while his large dwelling was being built, constructing their walls not with mud bricks but by the older Indian method of making forms out of willow shoots and cotton sheeting, pouring the mud into these forms, and peeling off the cotton after the adobe had dried. Unless these walls were replastered every six months or so, they began to crack, and the inside of the cookshack was already beginning to show a network of minute fissures across its whitewashed surface. It was here Crawford had spent the night, an oppressive sense of the hostility which surrounded him keeping him from much sleep. After breakfast, all the crew had left the bunkhouse but Bueno Bailey.

He was gaunt as an alley cat, and he parted his long yellow hair in the middle and slicked it down with bacon grease, and he sat in the stilling morning heat of the shack, idly spinning the cylinder of his six-shooter.

"Will you stop that, Bueno?" snapped Crawford.

Bailey looked up at Crawford, who had been standing against the doorpost, staring outside. "I've seen cattle look out between the bars of a pen that same way, Glenn," he said, putting his long forefinger against the cylinder of his gun to give it another, deliberate whirl. "You don't need to get ideas. Why do you think they left me here?"

"I'll bite," said Crawford. "Why?"

"They haven't decided what to do with you yet," murmured Bailey. "Tarant was for taking you right back to San Antonio, but Huerta didn't want that, for some reason. Either way, it's a cinch they don't want you to get away. _Sabe?_"

"What's Huerta got to say about it?" said Crawford.

"He's some friend of Rockland's," Bueno told him.

"That doesn't seem to me enough reason for the way he assumes authority around here," Crawford muttered. "I thought Quartel was the ramrod."

"There's some kind of deal between Huerta and Tarant," Bailey answered, giving the cylinder another spin. "Quartel's tried to buck Huerta a couple of times and Tarant stood behind the doctor. Quartel almost lost his job the second time. Tarant gave us the idea we'd better do what Huerta liked if we wanted to keep on working here."

Crawford glanced at the gun. "I asked you to stop that."

Bueno leaned forward on the three-legged stool, placing his elbows on his knees to look up at Crawford. "So you had to come back, Glenn," he said. "Why?"

"Maybe I came back to pay a few debts," said Crawford thinly.

The oily click of the cylinder stopped abruptly. "You owe somebody something?"

"Still snipping cinches, Bueno?"

The stool crashed to the floor, and Crawford whirled from where he had been standing in the doorway to meet Bailey as the man came up against him. The only thing that prevented their bodies from meeting was the gun Bailey held against Crawford's body. The man's milky eyes were slitted, and the smell of that bacon grease in his hair nauseated Crawford.

"Chew that a little finer," said Bueno, through his teeth.

"Africano never could have rolled me under if that rigging hadn't come apart," Crawford said thinly. "I saw the cinch on that saddle afterward. It hadn't pulled loose by itself."

"Glenn--" Bailey let it out on a hissing breath--"I think you better change your mind about that."

"I know who did Rockland's stable jobs for him," said Crawford.

The gun dug into his belly. "Glenn--"

"Yes?" said Crawford. "Make it a better job than that first time, Bueno."

Bueno stood there a moment longer, his breath hot and fetid against Crawford's face. Then his weight settled back onto his heels. He turned around and set the stool upright and lowered himself onto it once more. He began twirling the cylinder again with his forefinger. Crawford saw it tremble against the blued steel.

"When the time comes, Crawford," said Bueno, not looking up, "I will make it a better job, you can depend on that. I'll finish the job."

The harsh laugh from the doorway caused Crawford to turn back that way. He wondered how long Quartel had stood there. The man moved on into the room, a pawky smile on his sensuous lips. The pores of his cheeks and nostrils were large enough to be clearly discernible, and they exuded a heavy sweat, lending a greasy look to the thick brown flesh of his face. He stuck his thumbs in the waistband of his dirty _chivarras_, leaning back slightly.

"It seems that you haven't got one friend left on the Rockland _estancia_, doesn't it, _Señor_ Crawford?" he said.

"_En la cárcel y en la cama se conocen los amigos_," said the man who had come in with Quartel.

"Did I ask for any of your stupid proverbs, Aforismo?" said Quartel.

"It is just a saying they have in Durango," said Aforismo. "In jail and in bed we know our friends."

He was a thin, stooped man, Aforismo, his white cotton shirt soiled with dirt and horse-droppings, his eyebrows slanting upward toward the middle of his forehead to give him a habitual expression of mournful complaint.

"Maybe you got a proverb that tells how to find out where a man pins his badge," said Quartel, looking at Crawford.

"I know one about a stitch in time--"

"Knew a Texas Ranger once who pinned it to his undershirt," said Quartel.

Bueno Bailey had looked up. "What saddle you in now?"

"It would be a good reason," said Quartel. "He had to have some reason."

"Listen," said Bueno. "That's Glenn Crawford. Sure he had some reason. A lot of reasons. But not that. He's--"

"I know who he is," said Quartel.

"Then why--"

"Innes took Tarant back to San Antonio last night," said Quartel. "Innes heard a lot of talk. There's rumor of a government marshal in the _brasada_."

"If that's so, it's because of Crawford," said Bueno. "Kenmare couldn't get him. I wouldn't doubt they'd send a marshal after him."

"Maybe you got it inside your boot," said Quartel.

"What makes you so touchy about a badge-packer?" said Crawford.

Bailey had stood up. "Listen, Quartel, can't you get it through your thick skull, whatever Crawford is, he ain't a lawman."

"Isn't he?" Quartel studied Crawford a moment. Then he threw back his head to emit that short, harsh laugh, so loud it seemed to rock the room. It died as swiftly as it had come. His glance dropped to Crawford's legs. "So you got reasons to come back. Africano, maybe?"

"_You_ haven't broken him," said Crawford.

Quartel flushed. "I will. There isn't any horse I can't break."

"He would have rolled you if you'd been a second later with that _mangana_ yesterday."

"Well, I wasn't a second later," said Quartel. "Did you see that _mangana_? Nobody else could have done it so close." He thumped his barrel chest with a hairy fist. "I'm the best damn roper in the world, Crawford. I can rope better and ride farther and drink more and cuss dirtier than any _hombre_ from here to Mexico City. Now let's go. I got a lot of cattle to clean out of that brush and I'm not wasting a man here to guard you."

Jacinto had come through the covered dog-run from the kitchen in time to hear Quartel. "The _señorita_ will not like that," he said.

Quartel turned angrily toward him. "You in Merida's _corrida_ or mine."

"Yours, Quartel, _madre de Dios_, yours," said Jacinto. "Still she won't like that. Only last night I heard her say--"

"_Punta en boca_," said Quartel. "Shut your mouth. All right, Crawford. We got the horses saddled."

Crawford's boots made a hesitant scrape on the hard-packed adobe floor; then he took a breath, and walked toward the door. Jacinto waddled after him, sweat glistening in the wrinkles between the rolls of fat forming his face. He caught Crawford's arm, trying to stop him.

"Listen, _señor_," he said breathlessly. "Don't let them take you out there. Merida is against it. I heard her and Huerta arguing about it. Just wait till I tell her and she'll stop Quartel. Don't let them get you out there." Quartel had moved outside to let Crawford through the door. The heat of the sun struck him like a blow on the face as he stepped out with Jacinto still tugging at him. "I'm telling you, _señor_, don't be a fool. If they get you--"

"Dammittohell!" screamed Quartel, and stepped in to spin around with his arm held out. The backhand blow caught Jacinto squarely in the face. Jacinto's hand clutched Crawford's arm spasmodically as the blow knocked him backward, jerking Crawford off balance. Then Jacinto's three hundred pounds of sweating brown flesh struck the wall of the bunkhouse. The building shuddered, and a shower of pale adobe flakes descended on the huge Mexican as he slid to the ground.

Quartel stood there a moment, his face diffused with blood till it looked positively negroid, his whole body shaking with rage. For the first time, the utter, primal violence of the man struck Crawford. Without a word, Quartel turned and walked across the compound.

The true suffocation in all this heat seemed to close in on Crawford as he moved to follow Quartel. He found himself breathing with a heavy effort. Cabezablanca was standing by the group of horses near the corral. The white-headed man held his Winchester tenderly.

"How are you, Crawford?" he said softly. Crawford glanced at him without answering, and Cabezablanca's eyes narrowed and he ran one finger up and down the gleaming barrel of his carbine. "You still refuse to be civil with me. That is unfortunate. I am a very dangerous man, Crawford."

"That's your horse." Quartel nodded at a ewe-necked old paint standing near the corral fence. It had rheumy eyes and rope scars all over its gaunt shoulders and a saddleback the shape of hickory bow and the weediest legs Crawford had ever laid eyes on. Yet, standing even this near the animal, Crawford could feel that nebulous excitation begin to rise in him. Or was it excitation? The sweat broke out on his palms. In a sudden burst of anger, he clamped his fists shut.

"What kind of crowbait is this?" he said.

Quartel shrugged. "I thought--I mean your legs--"

"I told you that was over." Crawford did not know whether the anger was at himself or at Quartel. He might not have said it under more control. "I can ride anything you can!"

"Africano?" said Quartel. He saw Crawford stiffen and grow pale, and his laugh had a scraping sound. "Never mind, Crawford, never mind. You won't have to fork the _puro negro_. He ain't broke yet. You saw that yesterday." Then the laughter left Quartel. He jerked a thumb at the paint. "Get on."

"The hell." Crawford had bent forward slightly, his whole body rigid. That bitter intensity had drawn the flesh taut across his cheeks beneath his scrubby beard. He turned abruptly toward the corral.

"Where you going?" shouted Quartel.

"To get a decent horse," said Crawford, without turning back. "You want to try and stop me?"

* * * * *

He was sweating again. It was a little sorrel pony with a running walk so relaxed Crawford could hear the teeth pop at every step like a Tennessee walker, and a rocking-chair would have been harder on a man. Yet he was sweating again.

"They say the _hombres_ who curse the _brasada_ most love it the best," said Aforismo. "You must love it like a woman."

Crawford turned his head sharply toward the man. He hadn't realized he had been swearing out loud. It hadn't been at the brush. It was so confused now, inside and out. It was hard to breathe, and the muscles across his stomach were tight as a stretched dally, and he could feel the pain spreading from his hips. _All the symptoms of genuine pain._ Was that what Huerta had said? _Sweating, trembling, tears in the eyes._ The doctor's voice was in his ears, suave, insidious. _The mind plays funny tricks sometimes._ It couldn't be. Not his mind. Not _my_ mind, Huerta, not _my_ mind.

"Yeah," grinned Bueno Bailey, forking a big dun on Crawford's other side. "There never was a man could cuss the brush like Crawford. I'd rather listen to him talking his way through a _mogote_ of chaparral than hear music."

Crawford hardly heard him. The perspiration was sticky beneath his armpits, his shirt clung to his back with it. And now it was that other, stirring in him, so confused with the pain at first he could not define it, or would not--the same thing he had felt there at the corral, watching Africano. _And worse than the pain._ No. He wasn't afraid. _I'm not afraid, Huerta._ How could he be? _How could I be? Living with horses all my life. How could I be?_

"Take it easy," snapped Bueno. "What's the matter?"

Crawford jerked the reins against his horse, realizing he had allowed it to sidle into the dun. The sorrel shifted uncertainly the other way, thumping into Aforismo's animal. This time Crawford's reining was even more violent and it caused the sorrel to shy.

Crawford was clenching his teeth now with the effort at control. His knees were like vises against the animal's sides. Just a trot, and his knees were like vises. _Oh, damn you, Crawford. Just a trot, and you're bouncing like a satchel in a spring buggy._ He felt a desperate relief sweep him as Quartel drew up ahead of them, running a finger around the inside of the red bandanna he wore.

"God, it's like a furnace," he said.

"The drier the spring the more mesquite beans in the summer," said Aforismo.

Quartel glanced keenly at Crawford, then waved his hand at a big thicket of black chaparral starting a few yards away. "That _mogote_ covers two or three miles. We been through once, but it's so thick a lot of the _cimarrónes_ got away from us. Crawford is riding with Bailey and me. Whitehead, you take a line through the north flank of the _mogote_. Meet us at Rio Diablo about sundown."

Cabezablanca looked at Crawford before he wheeled his horse and trotted off into the brush, followed by Aforismo. Quartel forked a big brown animal with white hairs in its tail; they called it a _pelicano_. He reined the horse violently around, flapping his stirrups out wide. He did not have to kick the animal. As soon as the _pelicano_ saw those feet fly out, it bolted into a wild gallop straight for the thicket. Crawford nudged the sorrel with a heel and followed, stiffening in the saddle as he broke into a trot. Quartel made a great ripping sound tearing through the first thin fringe of mesquite. Then they were in the dry heat of the thicket.

There was no more wily animal in the world than the _ladino_ of the _brasada_. These outlaw cattle made nests for themselves in the thickest _mogoles_, lying there for days at a time when hunted, their food the very thicket that surrounded them. They ate off the prickly pear and other brush within the _mogote_ until it formed a veritable room, with the walls and roof of entangled chaparral and mesquite so dense that they were invisible from without. This larger thicket the men rode through was in reality formed by many smaller thickets, with game trails and open patches throughout the thinner brush surrounding the minor _mogotes_. Quartel followed one of these game trails for some time without any apparent effort to find sign. Then, abruptly, he pulled up on his reins. The heavy _pelicano_ reared to an instant's stop, head jerking up to the brutal jerk on its cruel spade bit. Quartel leaned toward the _mogote_ of black chaparral and Crawford was close enough now to see the man's thick nostrils flutter.

"_Cimarrónes_ in here," whispered the Mexican, finally. "Outlaws. You go around to the other side, Bueno. You'll get the first chance at whatever Crawford and I scare out from here."

Bailey pulled his dun around and cut through an opening between this smaller _mogote_ and another, disappearing. Quartel wiped sweat off his face with the back of his hand. He grinned pawkily at Crawford.

"How's the sorrel?" he said.

"Good enough," said Crawford. He tried to relax. But he knew what was coming. It would be fast now. If there were _ladinos_ in there, it would be fast.

"Hola!"

Quartel's hoarse shout startled the sorrel so much it almost pitched Crawford off. Grabbing wildly with his legs, Crawford saw the Mexican's stirrups flapped out that way. The _pelicano_ bolted into a headlong gallop and crashed bodily into that dense mass of chaparral, ripping a great hole in the _mogote_. Crawford knew a moment's painful hesitation, fighting his spooked sorrel, then he gave the animal its head and booted it in the flanks.

The horse went through the hole Quartel had left. The brush formed but a thin wall, and the sorrel burst into the opening beyond with a startling abruptness. In these first few moments Crawford felt nothing but a blurred impression of externals. He saw Quartel's _pelicano_ ahead, trailing white brush from its scarred hide and dripping mesquite berries in its wake. He had a vivid picture of three gaunt cattle leaping to their feet beyond, and knew a faint, transitory surprise that he should notice such an insignificant detail as the hair rubbed off the knees of the white heifer, showing that she had been crawling the brush instead of walking, in order to remain hidden from the recent roundup. Then the trio of _cimarrónes_ had wheeled away from Quartel's horse and crashed through the opposite wall. The deafening sound and the swift, blinding movement stunned Crawford's senses as he went through after Quartel.

"_Bueno!_" screamed Bailey, appearing from somewhere beyond with his dally rope spinning in a California throw, coming up from underneath so it would not catch on the overhanging brush, "_bueno_," the loop snaking about the forefeet of the lead steer. The ground shook as the steer went down and Bailey's horse was stiff-legging to a stop, Bailey swinging down to run for the kicking steer with a peal. He had done the whole thing with such incredible speed that before Crawford had passed, Bailey had the steer's hind legs hog-tied with the short rawhide peal and was dragging him to a coma tree, where he would leave him hitched until they were ready to take him back to the spread. Then Bailey was behind, and Quartel and Crawford were smashing through a thin stretch of mesquite after the other two.

No riding in the world could compare with popping the brush. A _brasadero_ might easily take a job on a spread outside the brush and make good, but a hand used to the prairies seldom succeeded in becoming a brush hand. It took consummate skill to ride at a dead run through the brush after cattle like this. And Quartel had that skill. Ahead of Crawford, he made a bobbing swaying figure on that big _pelicano_, rarely holding his seat on top of the saddle, incessantly swinging off to the side or ducking down forward or jerking back and forth. The two _ladinos_ raced beneath a post oak branch so low it scraped hide off their backs, and Crawford expected to see Quartel rein violently around it. But the Mexican merely swung one leg off and hung down the side of his horse like an Indian, his thick right arm hooked over the _pelicano's_ neck. The oak branch knocked Quartel's sombrero off his head--he would have lost it but for the tie-thong--and tore at the cantle of the saddle so violently the whole rigging shrieked. There was a great mass of thorny junco just beyond the tree, growing as high as the _pelicano's_ head, and a less skillful man would have been ripped to bloody shreds before he got back onto the saddle. Crawford could hear Quartel's violent grunt and thought sure the man was swinging up too soon and would be knocked back down by that branch. But Quartel had gauged it to a nicety. His spasmodic lurch upward took him back into the saddle just in time. The junco merely scraped his left leg as he thundered by.

"Hola," he shouted wildly, "hola, you crazy _cimarrónes_, I'm right on your tail, hola!"

Something within Crawford rebelled as he neared that spot Quartel had passed through. He felt his hands tugging on the reins, and the sorrel lost all its collection, thrown off balance as it tried to pull out of its mad gallop into a trot. Crawford was panting in a heavy, frustrated way as he shifted through the spot beneath the post oak branch and past the junco bush. And now it was strong enough in him to have a palpable grip, like a great hand squeezing his vitals. The first action had been violent enough to carry him along with it, but now that was over, and slowing like that had been the final error.

The muscles across his stomach were knotting with nervous tension, and his legs quivered against the side of the sorrel. He leaned forward, and the horse gathered itself to break into a gallop ahead. But somehow he could not move his feet against the animal's side. Somehow his hands would not relax their hold on the reins.

"What's the matter, Crawford?"

It was Bueno Bailey, tearing in from behind, and Crawford realized he had been sobbing to himself, huddled over his horse that way. "Nothing, damn you, nothing," he shouted and booted the sorrel so hard it whinnied in surprise and pain, rearing up and then bolting headlong after Quartel. Crawford had one more glimpse of the Mexican before he disappeared from sight, chousing after those two animals. A malignant branch of chaparral reached out for Quartel's head, and he dodged that and then swayed back the other way in time to miss being blinded by a clump of mesquite berries. Then he reined his horse around a growth of prickly pear and swung down off the flank as the animal burst through a last dense growth of chaparral with branches so low the _ladinos_ had found trouble going through, and then he was out of sight.

_Keep your eyes open, keep your eyes open._ It kept spinning through Crawford's head like that, the fundamental dictum of brush-popping. If a man closed his eyes once he was lost. Crawford had seen more than one hand knocked from his horse because a branch appearing suddenly out of nowhere had caused him to shut his eyes and dodge blindly.

The sorrel was going at a frenzied, headlong pace now, caught up in the wild excitement of the chase, with the drumming pound of Bueno Bailey's dun off to the flank and the deafening crash of mesquite and chaparral echoing about them. All he could do was dodge and duck. He found himself gripping the horn with one white-knuckled hand. Cursing bitterly, he tore it off, jerking violently aside just in time to miss being raked by a thick mat of mesquite. And all the time it was going through him, _keep your eyes open_, and he couldn't.

A branch of chaparro _prieto_ loomed before his face and he jerked aside and blackness blotted out sight. He heard someone yelling and did not know it was himself till he had opened his eyes again. It could not have been from pain because he had missed the chaparro. But the instant he opened his eyes, leaning off to one side that way, junco and retama were clawing at his face. With his eyes open he would have been able to see them in time to dodge. As it was, the myriad claws of the allthorn raked his flesh like the stroke of a jaguar's paw. Again his eyes clamped shut, and he tore himself out of the tangle. If it had been a post oak it would have knocked him off.

He did not know whether the screams were inside his head now or whether he actually voiced them. He felt his hands jerking desperately on the reins, but the sorrel was running wild, and he had lost control of the horse as well as himself. He was swept with violent, spasmodic waves of virulent anger at himself and pain that grew more knifing each time it struck from his loins and fear that turned his mind to a kaleidoscope of uncontrolled sensations. He was clinging with both hands to the horn now, his eyes closed, sobbing and screaming. The sorrel sideswiped a post oak. A low branch knocked Crawford backward with the blow. He reeled back to an upright position, swimming in a stunned agony. Somewhere, dimly, in what was left of his consciousness he realized there was only one thing to do. If he tried to keep on the horse any longer this way he would be battered into pulp. Yet, knowing it, there was no will left in him to act. Even that swift thought of it caused a new spasm of awful fear.

Reeling, swaying, his eyes clamped shut, his ducking jacket ripped and torn, he rode on madly through the thicket. He crashed through a mesquite thicket, and the brush clawed his cheeks to shreds. Chaparral beat him aside time and time again. His screams were hoarse and incoherent now, hardly human. The lathered, frothing wild-eyed horse was in a frenzy, its hoofs drumming the ground in a dim tattoo beneath the deafening, incessant crash of brush. Then that last blow caught him, square across the belly. It must have been a low branch. His desperate grip was torn from the saddle horn, and he was swept over the cantle and off the sorrel's rump, doubled over. He had one lucid thought before his head struck the ground, blotting out all thought.

Huerta was right!

_Chapter Four_

UNREASONING FEAR

Dusk held its own singular aspect. There was something hushed about the brush at this time. Not the dead oppressive silence of noon. There were many small sounds, but the bizarre, velvety clutch of twilight seemed to subdue them. A hooty owl called tentatively from a hackberry down in some yonder draw. An invisible jack rabbit made a dim, staccato thump hopping through a distant clearing, then halted. Nearer by a lizard rustled sibilantly through the foot-deep layer of decaying brush, which for eons had been dropping from the bushes to pile up on the ground.

It was these sounds, one by one, which impinged on Glenn Crawford's consciousness. Then the fetid odor of the mold beneath him. His face felt stiff and painful. It caused him a great effort to reach up to his cheek. The rips and tears made great gaps in his beard and his whole face was covered with dried blood. Finally he sat up, shaking his head dully. Three hours? Four hours? What time had it been? It was hard to think. He shook his head again. Early afternoon anyway. And this was--

That brought him up straight. They hadn't found him? It was strange. It was wrong, somehow. They hadn't found him. Wrong. They were better trackers than that. All of them. If Quartel could ride like that he could track like that.

He got up with great difficulty and fell down again. His head was spinning. When he got to his knees once more, the shreds of his ducking jacket bound his arms, and when he fell that second time, he went full on his face, unable to get his hands in front of him. In a fit of anger he tore the remains of the jacket off. The third time he managed to remain upright. As he stood there, the first thought of the horse came to him. He felt that pain begin in his loins. Just the thought of it!

With a sobbing curse he broke into a stumbling run at the first thicket of brush. He halted himself before he had reached the _mogote_. He was breathing heavily and his lips were pinched. He held out his hand before him. It shook visibly. He closed his eyes a moment, face twisted. Then he took a deep breath and opened them again, staring about the clearing. There was a great torn place in one thicket on the other side. He moved over there at a deliberate walk. The hole in the brush was big enough to walk through; beyond that was another open patch and then a second small thicket torn asunder by the passage of a heavy body. It was full night by the time he found the sorrel that way, following the trail it had made bursting through the brush. The animal stood in a clearing, head hanging wearily, dried lather forming dirty yellow patterns on its freshly scarred hide.

Crawford was about to step into the open when he caught himself. There was a dim rustling in the brush to his left. His face turned that way sharply. The noise ceased after a moment. He shook his head and went out to get the horse.

"Stand still, you crazy fool," he said, "stand still now, I'm not going to hurt you, just stand still, that's it, hold it."

The animal had started to shift away, but his soothing voice quieted it. He moved in close and ran his hand reassuringly along its rump and down its side. Then, as he stood with his face toward it that way, close enough so that the heat of its body reached his belly, it began to come again. That insidious, stirring, prickling sensation deep in his loins. That hollow sickness growing in his stomach till it approached nausea; the sweat breaking out on his face and beneath his armpits.

The curse had a strangled sound in his throat, as he bent to get the trailing reins. He wouldn't walk back to the spread. No matter what else, he wouldn't give them that satisfaction. He stopped, with his hand not yet touching the end of the reins. Even in the dark, bending over like that, he could see the footprints. The sorrel's hoofs had made their dim impression all over the decaying vegetation covering the gound. But here and there, where the horse had not blotted it out, was a smaller, deeper imprint, like that of a boot heel. He remained stooped over it for a moment that way. Then, slowly, he started to lift the reins. They were caught on something. He reached down and found the ends tied about a long stake of wood embedded deeply beneath the rotting brush.

Crawford slipped the reins off the stick and rose beside the horse. Slowly he put his weight against its neck. His breath had a small, swift sound. The horse gradually shifted around under that pressure until it stood broadside between Crawford and the direction that small rustling had come from when he first entered the thicket.

"Now." He spoke to the horse softly, sliding his hands up the reins till they were directly beneath the bit, and pulling gently forward. "Let's go. Let's go. Take it easy. Let's go."

The animal moved toward the fringe of brush surrounding the clearing. Crawford walked close in by its side, tugging incessantly forward on the reins, talking in that soft low tone. The animal's hoofs crackled in the brush underfoot. It snorted once, pulling peevishly at his tight grip on the shanks of the bit. He twisted them upward slightly and the horse responded to the bit against its roof, quieting. They had almost reached the edge of the _mogote_ when the shot crashed.

The horse was jerked over against Crawford by the force of the bullet going through its body. Then it reared into the air, screaming. Desperately Crawford tried to retain his hold on the reins, yanking the horse on ahead, throwing the whole weight of his body into it. He managed to fight the plunging, rearing animal a couple more steps toward the brush. Then the beast's violent spasms tore his grip loose of the reins. With the animal still forming a shield in that last instant, he threw himself in a headlong dive for the thicket. Another shot roared behind him, and the horse screamed again, and then Crawford was rolling into the crackling, tearing mesquite thicket. He came to his feet, pawing a cluster of berries out of his face, and plunged blindly on into the _mogote_.

For a long, blind run, the only sound was that incessant deafening crash of brush all about him. He burst through that first thicket and crossed a game trail and clattered into another _mogote_. Black chaparral this time, and stabbing junco and maddening prickly pear. Then an open patch. And another _ramadero_. White brush and golden huisache that filled the air with a vague, viscid odor of honey. Then that was gone and the spines of the agarita tore at his face. He broke through the agarita into a game trail that wound its secretive way through the _mogotes_, and he stumbled down that till it petered out into more mesquite. Halfway through, the spread of mesquite became entwined with chaparro _prieto_ and Spanish dagger that met his every movement with a vicious stab of its dirklike growth. He found himself fighting a frantic, useless battle to penetrate this thicket farther; it had brought him to a complete stop and, standing there, chest heaving, face dripping sweat, he could see that the impenetrable _mogote_ was on the rim of a draw, and that it grew on down into the bottom of the draw, choking it full. Even if he could manage to fight his way through the thicket, he would be exposed, crossing that draw. The realization came to him in a dim, spasmodic way, with no true reasoning behind it, for he was still filled with that animal panic.

He whirled back and fought his way out of the mesquite. And then, crossing the comparatively open space of the game trail, it came to him. He stopped there. Tears squeezed from his eyes with the effort it caused him to control his breath so he could hear more clearly. It came again, small, distant, yet distinct enough. The faint rattle of mesquite berries, brushed by a passing body. The soft snap of decaying vegetation beneath a careless foot. Again it was no reasoning process. Just a wave of instinctive, animal realization of how he was trapped. Face twisting with frustrated rage, Crawford backed slowly, almost involuntarily, across the game trail into the mesquite thicket again. He moved as far back as he could, upright, and then he got down on his belly and crawled in until the roots and trunks and foliage became too thick even for that, and then he stopped.

His shirt was drenched with sweat and the perspiration dripped into his eyes, blinding and stinging. Gnats began to float in, attracted by the sweat and the blood of his scratches. At first he fought them. He rubbed his palms viciously against his face, mashing the maddening insects. He slapped wildly, gasping virulent curses. It only seemed to draw more. With a myriad of the gnats mashed wetly against the cut, bleeding, stinging, itching flesh of his face, and with a veritable cloud of them buzzing about his upper body, he put his head at last into his arms, and a bitter, hoarse sobbing arose mutedly from him.

At last he stopped even that. He lay there in utter, hopeless defeat. His crashing passage through the brush had frightened all the small animals into silence, but now the sounds of them began again. A hooty owl started to call, somewhere far out in the brush. Then, a coyote mourning in some distant draw. The singing of a mockingbird that had stayed awake to welcome the rising moon. The rustle of lizards through the decay. And that other sound. That desultory, intermittent sound of someone moving out there.

A thin scream rang out with terrifying abruptness, jerking Crawford's head up. He lay that way a moment, up on his hands, rigid, trembling with strain. Then he lowered himself again. Only an ocelot, somewhere, out there, a big cat down from the mountains across the Rio maybe. And now, lying there, with the first awful sense of defeat losing its edge, the other began to come. They thought they had him? Damn them. Whoever it was, damn them. The anger grew in him till it struggled with the defeat. It thickened the blood in his throat till he almost choked. Had him trapped? The hell. Kill him like that? Without a gun, without anything. Think he'd just wait? _Try it. Come on, try it. I'm here. Try it._

It was going through his head while he squirmed about beneath the low overhanging branches of chaparral, scratching his face and hands anew on barbed nopal and the harsh mesquite. Finally he found a maguey plant, close to the trail. He had no knife, and he had to tear at it with his fingers. They were ripped and bleeding by the time he had torn the first strip of the leathery plant.

The Mexicans cured the strips in brine and in the sun to supple it for their ropes. Crawford could do nothing but braid the stiff lengths together. And all the time, out there, approaching with the deliberateness of a man knowing the confidence of complete advantage, those sounds, rising with deadly intermittence over the other sounds. The soft crunch of a boot heel driving through the layer of rotting vegetation that covered the ground. The sibilant harshness of mesquite scraping leather. Crawford worked with swift desperation till he had a line long enough; then he knotted a hondo into one end and formed a loop. It took him half a dozen throws across the game trail to snag one of the low chaparral branches in a _mogote_ over there. Then he hooked the line beneath a root on the opposite side of the trail so that it crossed the trail itself on the ground. He moved back into his own thicket as far as the line would permit. Then it was the waiting. Working with the rope that way, there had been no time to think. But now it had begun to come.

_En la cárcel y en la cama se conocen los amigos._

Crawford felt his whole body grow rigid with a palpable jerk. He almost turned his head to see who had spoken. A muffled sound escaped him as he realized it had only been in his mind. The _brasada_ could do that to a man, this way. In bed and in jail we know our friends? Sure. Maybe it was Aforismo. What did it matter.

The hooty owl stopped for a while, and there were only small rustlings in the underbrush. Then the sound again, returning. A sibilant, crushed, snapping sound.

_I am a very dangerous man, Crawford._

This time he did not stiffen. It jumped through his brain so vividly he could have sworn it was spoken. Yet he did not stiffen. All right. So maybe it was Whitehead. All right.

Moonlight spilled through his thicket suddenly, and he realized how long he had lain there. The rising moon made skeletal monsters of the chaparral bushes across the yellow river of the game trail, only adding to the haunted tension filling Crawford. Thoughts moved uncontrollably through his head now.

_Please, no violence. I was born for laughter and wassail and song--_

No. Not Jacinto. Anybody else. Even Wallace Tarant. But not big, fat, grumbling Hyacinth of the River. The gnats had found Crawford again. He dared not move as they buzzed fitfully about his face, stinging, maddening. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. Then he opened them again. That would not do.

He thought he would go crazy. His hands twitched with the impulse to slap at them. His body cried out for movement to escape their insane buzzing. Each sting made him jerk spasmodically.

_Bueno--_

Sure, Bailey. Sure. Crawford could imagine Bailey doing that sort of thing. All right, Bailey. Come on, Bailey. Let's get it over with, Bailey.

He tried to stop thinking like that. There were so many possibilities. He tried to stop considering them. A man could go loco that way. He could go loco and jump right up out of the thicket and run screaming down the game trail right into the arms of that bushwhacker, whoever it was. A man could go loco anyway. The ocelot screamed out there again, filling the night with a thin feral madness. It was all madness. The gnats and the screaming cat and the howling coyote and the crackling mesquite and the thoughts Crawford couldn't stop whirling faster and faster through his head till he wanted to beat it against the ground.

_You'll excuse me. An old complaint._

Huerta? Sure, why not? It could be him. It could be any of them.

_I knew a Ranger once that pinned it to his undershirt._

Yeah. Even Quartel. The ocelot or Quartel or the hooty owl or any of them.

He lay there, wanting to cry, his fists clenched around the rope till they hurt, his eyes squeezed tight with the terrible effort he made to control himself. Finally he opened them again, staring down the trail. It would be getting him, too, out there. If it was getting Crawford it would get the other man just as much. The _brasada_. That's what it was. The _brasada_. Enough to drive any man loco like this. And it would be getting him, too, out there.

The ocelot screamed. Crawford's lips pulled off his teeth in a wolfish grin. That get you, Bailey? That get you, Whitehead? Like it got me? The hooty owl began to talk. Crawford's grin spread. That get you? Huerta? Sort of scary, isn't it? Jacinto? Stop maybe, and look around. Sweat maybe. Like me. Aforismo? Sure. Sure it got them. They were as nervous as hell. Whoever it was, he was as nervous as hell. Crawford wanted to laugh suddenly. He was bathed suddenly in a cold sweat. Then heat flooded up from his loins. It was like a fever.

Or was it the waiting? Or the _brasada_. Sure, the _brasada_. He'd felt this way before out in it. At night. Not so much, maybe. But then he hadn't been waiting for a man with a gun to come and kill him either.

The decay was damp from his sweat beneath his belly and legs. His eyes ached from peering into the brush all about him. The gnats kept clouding his vision. But now the man was closer. Each minute sibilance crashed through Crawford's head like thunder. He could tell when the man's clothing brushed a clump of mesquite berries and knocked some to the ground. There was a peculiar rattling quality to that. He could tell when the man stepped on a prickly pear. It had a squashing sound. And when he shoved aside some chaparral. That held a hollow thump. And pulled aside some huisache. Sighing, like the wind.

_I'm a very dangerous man, Crawford._ Sure. Sure you are, Whitehead. Come on. I'll show you who's dangerous. I knew a man once who pinned it to his undershirt. All right. One more time, Quartel. One more time around and I'll show you who's dangerous. Made for laughter and wassail and song? Come on. I'm waiting. An old complaint? You'll have a complaint, Huerta. In bed and in jail--

Then it was the shadowy figure moving out of the darkness down the trail, and Crawford yanked on the maguey and it slipped off the branch and the branch snapped up with a soft crackle and caused the figure to whirl that way, his gun crashing, his back toward the thicket in which Crawford lay.

"Maybe you're a dangerous man," screamed Crawford in a terrible release, leaping to his feet and throwing himself bodily at the man, who was still firing wildly into the opposite thicket, "but this is one bronc you'll wish to hell you never climbed on."

_Chapter Five_

HUERTA MAKES A PROPOSITION

At dawn, it was the birds, mostly, during the spring months, like this. They filled the dim undulations of brush with a constant, shrill twittering. Bobwhites shrieked from a draw full of white brush, and blue quail cooed beneath the _cejas_ of green brazil, and turkeys gobbled down in a dry creek bed where they were fattening on elm mast.

Through all this treble cacophony, Glenn Crawford walked heavily up the road leading the shaggy black cow pony. It was Jacinto who saw him first. Though the sun had not yet risen, smoke curled from the kitchen, and the gross Mexican was just outside the door filling the coffeepot from the water butt. It cost him some effort to straighten up when he caught sight of Crawford. He stared blankly. Then he dropped the big coffeepot with a clang and began running his way, grunting as each foot struck the ground, his short, bandy legs looking as if they would collapse every time the prodigious weight of his torso descended on them in a step.

"_Dios_, Crawford," he shouted. "_Válgame Dios._ What happened? _Que hace?_ Who is it? Are you all right? What happened?"

He was halfway to Crawford by the time Aforismo stumbled into view at the bunkhouse door, pulling bare brown legs into his stiff, greasy _chivarras_ and blinking sleepily. Someone must have asked him what it was, for he grunted something over his shoulder and came on out. Jacinto had reached Crawford by the time he got to the front of the house, and it was there Crawford halted the horse. The tremendous Mexican stood with his great belly heaving from the run, staring blankly at Whitehead. He started to reach out and touch the man, then dropped his hand.

"Is--is he--"