Chapter III: Part 3

"Yes," said Crawford, watching Aforismo come from the bunkhouse and Quartel step out the door now, yawning and cursing. The shutter on an upstairs window clattered against the dilapidated weatherboarding, and Huerta leaned out to look down a moment. Then he withdrew his head, and Crawford could hear movement from within his room. Quartel came across the compound after Aforismo, slipping a dirty cotton shirt over his head.

"What happened?" he said. He looked at the body slung across the horse without much expression in his face. What lay in his eyes was not apparent till he got closer. They were narrowed, and the pupils held a strange oblong felinity.

"_Es muerto_," said Jacinto stupidly.

"I know he's dead," said Quartel. "What happened?"

"Out in the brush," said Crawford, watching Quartel.

The Mexican looked at him, then glanced at the horse. He reached out to pull the Winchester from beneath the stirrup leather, opening the front end of the magazine and tilting the gun down. Two copper rim-fires clinked into his calloused palm.

"Looks like he did a lot of shooting," said Quartel.

"He always carried that gun in one hand when he rode," said Jacinto. "I told him he'd fall and break his neck sometime."

"Did you?" said Quartel. He was studying Crawford, shaking the two .44 shells up and down in his closed hand. "You still haven't told us what happened."

"His neck's broken," said Jacinto hopefully.

Quartel allowed his narrowed eyes to observe the odd way Cabezablanca's head hung, twisted around from the line of his shoulders. "That's what it looks like. Where did you find him?"

"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, from the door. "Where did you find him, Crawford?"

He had on a gaudy black-and-gold dressing-gown with satin lapels and slippers of red leather. His face had never looked more dissolute. The dim light seemed to draw out the singular, jaundiced corruption of his sallow flesh. His heavy lids were almost closed over his eyes, veined and pouched, and one of them twitched visibly. He had both hands in the pockets of his bathrobe, and they were visibly closed into fists. Merida stood behind him. She had on a house gown of blue cashmere, evidently donned hurriedly. There was something Indian about her dark, aquiline face; her black hair hanging long and straight about her shoulders.

"I told you," said Crawford. "Out in the brush."

"You didn't tell me," said Huerta.

"I told Quartel," said Crawford.

"He didn't tell me what happened," said Quartel.

"To Crawford," said Merida, "or Whitehead?"

"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, moving tiredly across the porch. "What did happen to you, Crawford?"

"We ain't interested in that now," said Quartel. "I'd like to know what happened to Whitehead first."

"You seemed interested yesterday," said Merida. "You were quite upset that you had lost Crawford in the brush."

"What have you got in your hand?" said Huerta.

"A gun," Quartel told him.

"Don't be obtuse," said Huerta. "I mean the other hand."

Quartel opened his fingers. The two shells glinted dully in the growing light. Somewhere out back of the bunkhouse a rooster crowed. Both Huerta and Merida looked for a long moment at the two cartridges. Slowly, Huerta's jaded eyes moved to Crawford, and the heavy, blue lids were lifted farther open.

"You say his neck is broken?" Huerta asked nobody in particular.

"Jacinto said his neck was broken," said Quartel.

"Well," said the woman impatiently, "is it?"

Huerta drew a weary breath and came slowly down the sagging steps and around the horse. "Yes," he nodded, without taking his hands from his pockets. "Broken."

"Like in a fall?" That pathetic hope was in Jacinto's voice again.

Huerta took one of his hands out. His long, pale fingers moved slightly across Cabezablanca's head and face, sifting the dense white hair and testing the skull with a professional casualness. "No contusions about the head or face."

Huerta was running his forefinger delicately across the back of Cabezablanca's shirt now, flattening it over the resilient planes of the man's back. Then he moved around to the other side of the shaggy horse, tugging at the man's pants legs. "No other wounds either," he said at last. His head turned slowly till he was looking at Crawford. Something had begun to dissipate the jaded glaze from those eyes, something that grew in them as he watched Crawford. He spoke, however, to Quartel. "How many shots does that Winchester hold?"

"It's an 1866 with King's improvements," said Quartel. "Thirteen."

"Oh." It was a soft, hissing intonation. Then Huerta motioned toward the bunkhouse with the hand he had out. "Better take him down and bury him out back of the bunkhouse."

Quartel jerked the Winchester at Crawford. "Let's go."

"No," said Huerta, putting that hand back in his pocket and walking up the steps to the porch. "I think Crawford had better stay here at the house for breakfast. You did such a poor job of keeping tabs on him yesterday."

Quartel's face darkened and he took a quick breath before he spoke the word. "Huerta--"

"Yes?" said Huerta, turning around at the top of the steps to face Quartel. He leaned forward slightly, his satanic brows arched upward, those heavy lids slipping down across his eyes. There was a faint, inquiring smile on his thin, bloodless lips. For a moment Quartel stood there staring at him, mouth still open a little. The rooster crowed again. A chachalaca started scolding his mate out in the thicket. With an abrupt jerk, Quartel turned to catch up the trailing reins of the pony and started off toward the bunkhouse in that stiff-legged walk of his, wooden boot heels thumping in a swift, hard tattoo against the ground. Aforismo watched him go a moment, scratching his bare stomach absently.

"You can't tell a man's been picking tunas just because he has nopal thorns all over his coat," he said.

* * * * *

Crawford's boots made a soft muffled sound across the Aubusson rug of the living-room. He lowered himself heavily into the Turkish toweling which upholstered the movable cushions of the willow chairs by the front windows. For the first time he felt fully the toll the preceding night had exacted from him. His black beard failed to hide the gaunt, driven hollows beneath his cheeks, and there was something feverish in the glow of his eyes. He stared absently about the spacious, cool room. Rockland had refurnished this chamber not two years ago, and as many times as Crawford had been in it, he could never get used to such luxury in this harsh, barren land. Huerta had followed him into the house, halting in the entrance hall for a word with Merida, and now the doctor stepped into the living-room, closing the door behind him. He stood there a moment, studying Crawford.

"Merida will dress and be down for breakfast," he said, absently. He moved to the pier table of rich, figured British oak at one side of the room, opening one of the doors to lift out a cut-glass decanter. "Perhaps you would like a drink--after what happened, no?" His face managed to convey the effort the slightest physical exertion seemed to cause him, as he poured the liquor. Then his red Chinese slippers slid over the Aubusson's thick nap to Crawford. As he bent forward to hand Crawford the drink, their glances met. Perhaps it was a trick of the illumination from the window. The pupils of Huerta's eyes seemed to dilate and contract and dilate again, small pin points of glittering light flaring and dying and flaring once more beneath the jet-black surface. It filled Crawford with a vague dizziness. "Why did you bring Whitehead back, Crawford?" murmured the doctor. "It seems to me you were rather in a position to escape, out there." He waited a moment, but Crawford did not answer. "When you first came, I considered it necessary to guard you," said Huerta, finally. "Perhaps I was taking undue precautions. It seems you would have stayed anyway. Why, Crawford? Do you still maintain you didn't murder Rockland?"

"That's right." It came from Crawford in a flat defiance.

"Then the only way you could prove your innocence would be to find who really did murder Rockland," said Huerta. "Do you think the murderer is here?"

"I have no doubt of it," said Crawford.

"Just what did happen out there?" Huerta said softly, bending toward Crawford with the liquor.

Crawford took the drink, downed it neat before answering. "What do you think?"

"I think you surprised a lot of people," said Huerta. "And gave them a different estimation of you than they had possessed before." He leaned backward slightly. "Why should Whitehead want to kill you?"

"Who said he did?"

"I never knew such a secretive man," said Huerta. "You refuse to give one inch, don't you? Very well. Let us assume that Whitehead wanted to kill you. Why should he?"

"Whitehead was Quartel's man?" said Crawford.

"Quartel is the foreman here," Huerta's agile mind had connected that even while he spoke, and his head tilted forward in a faint acquiescence. "All right. Why should Quartel want you killed?"

"He seemed to think I was a lawman," Crawford muttered.

"Is that sufficient reason?"

"You haven't been in the _brasada_ long, have you?" said Crawford. "It's a good form of suicide for a lawman to show up in here."

Huerta nodded that way again, studying Crawford. "It is interesting," he murmured, "to watch it."

That took Crawford off guard. "What?"

"The way it works in you," said Huerta. "You're conscious of it all the time, Crawford, whether in the proximity of horses or not."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Crawford, getting up from the chair with such violence that he pulled one of the rich blue pillows off with him. He paced across the room in swift, inhibited strides. Huerta watched him a moment, putting the jade holder languidly to his lips. He did not smile, but the heavy blue lids, narrowing across his eyes with a feline torpidity, managed to convey a certain condescending amusement. His pale, pinched nostrils fluttered, emitting twin streamers of smoke.

"Did it ever occur to you," he said, "that the legs might not really be completely healed?"

Crawford turned to look at him a moment. "Sure," he said, finally. "Sure it occurred to me. I went to more than one doctor. They all said I was okay."

"It's not like an ordinary fracture, you realize," said Huerta. "Not like you'd take a stick and snap it, or a leg. Mashed. Not a clean severance. Crushed, Crawford, like you'd take a handful of meal and grind it beneath--"

"All right. Mashed. Crushed. All right."

Huerta allowed him to finish, then inclined his head apologetically. "It does things to the nerves. Physically, I mean. They get crushed too. Displaced. Pinched. All manner of derangement. Your bones may knit--the flesh, the skin. But the nerves. That's different. It would, ah, take a man skilled in that type of work, now, a man with experience in such things--"

"You've had a vast experience, I suppose."

Huerta shrugged. "Why don't you let me look at them. Maybe we do you an injustice. Perhaps you have sound reason for feeling the pain."

Crawford studied the man's dissolute face, trying to read what lay in the ironic twist of the lips, the narrow occultation of the eyes, wondering if this was just another variation in the game. Yet, the possibility of sincerity--

"Shall we go into the kitchen?" said Huerta. "The parlor is not exactly the place for such an examination."

Crawford knew a hesitation. Then, with a decisive abruptness he turned out into the entrance way and down the hall past the stairs. The fireplace was of stone rather than the adobe found in the Mexican dwellings; it ran almost the length of one wall. Jacinto had left a pot of soup simmering over one of the smaller pot fires to one side of the main spit. There was a plain Gothic dining-set, and Huerta pulled one of the butternut chairs from beneath the bare table, indicating that Crawford should remove his pants. That wary inhibition was in Crawford's movements.

"You might sit on the table," said Huerta. When Crawford was seated, the doctor moved closer and bent slightly, reaching out one pale hand. It was like a woman's hand, satiny, boneless. "Can't you relax, Crawford? What's the matter? Feel any pain?"

Crawford stared in a strange fascination at the slender, spatulated fingers spidering his hairy calves. "No. No pain."

"Then why so stiff?" Huerta pressed a spot just below his knee. The strength of his grip was surprising. Then, still holding the kneecap between thumb and forefinger, he looked up. It was the same thing, again, those eyes. The pupils took on an oblique felinity, and the odd little lights flaring beneath the surface. And he began to talk, in that soft, bored, insinuating tone. "Nerve ends, you understand. Pressures. As I said, deranged. Nucleus. So on. Hm? Pain?"

"No--no--"

Perhaps it was the gusty vehemence in Crawford's voice which caused Huerta to look up. For a moment their glances met. Huerta's pupils seemed to dilate slightly. _Sure_, thought Crawford, _go ahead, make it good_, and he tried to feel the sarcasm, but somehow he couldn't, because the effect of those eyes was real, distinct, eerie.

"No pain?

"No. No pain. No!"

Those eyes again. Contracting. Little lights flaring and dying. Just for an instant. The probing fingers. That sibilant, insistent voice.

"Here, perhaps? The flesh looks rather badly healed. Feel that? Pain?"

"No!"

"Take it easy, Crawford. I'm trying to help. Here?"

"No. I told you. I don't feel pain, damn it, I told you--"

"Here then. Pain?"

"No--"

"Here?"

"No, damn you, no, I--"

"Pain?" Huerta's head raised abruptly. "What's the matter, Crawford?"

Crawford stood where he had stepped off the table, pulling on his faded old levis with swift, tense jerks. "Nothing. Forget it."

Huerta leaned back against the table, studying Crawford through the twin streamers of smoke he emitted. "Why does it disturb you so much, Crawford, if you feel no pain?" he asked softly.

Crawford stood there facing him, breathing heavily. "What are you trying to do, Huerta?"

"Give you, shall we say, an illustration," said Huerta. "Don't you think I know what is the matter with you, Crawford? Ever since I first saw you watching Africano out in the corral. Perhaps the others are still groping. They sense something not quite right in you, Crawford. But they don't know for sure, yet. I know, Crawford." He said the last softly, positively, watching Crawford. He took a drag on the cigarette. "It must be a terrible thing to live with constantly. It makes two personalities out of you, really, Crawford. In these flashes of bitter defiance, I see what you must have been before. The strength. The courage. But the other is always there, isn't it, working beneath, stirring in you, weakening you, tearing at you. The pain that comes whenever you get near a horse. And the fear, Crawford. And more and more, not just when you're near a horse. All the time. That lack of confidence, that constant indecision. It won't lessen. It will grow, Crawford, until you are that way completely, until these flashes of your former self cease to come. I told you about that miner in Monterrey--"

"You told me!" Crawford choked off the shout, staring sullenly at Huerta. He spoke finally, again, controlling it with hoarse effort. "Think I don't know."

"You _do_ know," said Huerta. "However, it is not hopeless. For most diseases, there is a cure, even for those of the mind. Doctors are only human beings. They can only cure what they have the knowledge to cure. If the men you went to were not experienced in this type of thing, it does not mean there is no hope."

"Are you suggesting--that you--"

"Why not?" shrugged Huerta. "I've had experience in such cases. Is it inconceivable to you?"

"Why?" said Crawford.

Huerta studied his cigarette. "I don't quite understand."

"I mean why should you do it," said Crawford.

"I am no altruist," said Huerta. "A doctor usually gets paid."

"You know I haven't got any money," Crawford said. Huerta did not answer, leaning against the table and studying Crawford through narrowed eyes. "You're offering me some kind of proposition?" Crawford asked him.

"You might call it that," said Huerta. "As I said before, we think your quarrel with Rockland was over more than the way he acquired Delcazar's land."

"Was it?"

"You know what I mean," said Huerta.

"Maybe I haven't got what you want."

"I think you have," said Huerta.

"Have you got a license?" said Crawford.

It was the first time he had ever seen Huerta taken off guard. There was no change of expression in the doctor's face. Just that moment's hesitation. It was enough to give Crawford a certain satisfaction.

"License?"

"M.D.," said Crawford. "Every doctor I've seen had it pinned on his wall. Two or three, some of them. How about yours?"

Huerta drew a heavy breath. "I won't dignify that with an answer."

"I didn't think so," said Crawford. "That's one reason I won't take your proposition. I don't think you could cure me of the stomach-ache. I don't think you're a doctor. I don't think you ever were."

"My dear fellow, I spent fourteen years in the Mexican army--"

"So did a lot of butchers. If you operated on anybody, I'll bet a pink cow to a blind hoot owl it was with a machete right up in the ranks."

"Crawford, my medical reputation has never been ques--" It had come out of Huerta involuntarily, and he stopped himself with a distinct effort. He stood there a moment, the anger flushing his sallow face dully as he must have realized how far he had let himself go. Deliberately, he allowed himself to settle back against the table. He closed his eyes when he took a drag on the cigarette, did not open them as he exhaled, and spoke. "Let us consider the negative side of my proposition, then. Your condition can be used against you, Crawford. You could be driven quite mad. Not obvious crudities. Not the type of thing Quartel would use. Not making you ride a horse or letting you watch Africano. Not anything as simple to get away from. Merely suggestion, Crawford. Your mind will do the rest. Little things. Insidious things.

"Like the story of a miner who got crushed in a cave-in down at Monterrey. Did that stay with you a long time, Crawford? At night, perhaps, you'd wake up. Remembering. Wondering. Innuendoes, Crawford. Insinuations. Things for the mind to retain and savor. Because it _is_ your mind. I showed you that with the examination. It isn't your legs. That doesn't give you the fear. It's what a man could work with, Crawford, a doctor, who knew every stimulus, every reaction." He took the butt of his cigarette from the jade holder, tossing it absently into the fireplace. Then, still watching the holder, he spoke again, sibilantly. "Do you doubt my ability to do it, Crawford, if necessary?"

Crawford had been watching the doctor with a taut, bleak expression on his gaunt face, and he answered in a hollow, resigned way. "No."

"Then perhaps you will reconsider my proposition."

"No," said Crawford, in that same hollow tone.

Huerta reached beneath his coat for his silver cigarette case, taking a smoke from this to fit it in the holder. He did not raise his eyes to Crawford again as he moved across the room toward the door. He pulled open the portal, and only then, turning toward Crawford, did his glance rise. Again Crawford was swept with that strange, hypnotic dizziness, as he stared into the man's eyes. It struck him as childishly melodramatic, and he wanted to laugh, and could not.

"I think you will regret coming back this morning," said Huerta, in a barely audible voice, before he turned to go out. "I think you will regret it exceedingly."

_Chapter Six_

"TELL US WHAT HAPPENED."

An adobe banco ran down one side of the cookshack on the inside, forming a bench, and it was upon this that Jacinto had deposited his generous bulk. He was bent in childish concentration over a block of wax from which he carefully peeled thin strips, depositing these with much care into a clay bowl. Small, intimate mutters rumbled up from him with each process.

"Ah, so," he mumbled, slicing off a piece, "ah _sí_," and sliced off another, and then jumped erect in startled surprise, dropping the block of wax. "Ah, Crawford!"

Crawford stepped on in through the door, sniffing. "Smells like bayberry."

"How--how did you get out?" quavered Jacinto, grunting painfully with the effort it cost him to stoop over and retrieve the wax.

"Nobody stopped me," said Crawford. "They gave me that upstairs bedroom, but I couldn't sleep."

"You better not come in here, Crawford," said the gross cook. "Maybe they're not watching you like they did, but you better get out of here. Why do you think Huerta kept you up at the house this morning? Didn't you see how Quartel looked at you? You're just lucky he didn't get you down here."

There was a dish of cracklings on the table, and Crawford took one, pulling a three-legged stool out to sit on it. "Quartel and the others are out chousing cattle. Making candles?"

"_Sí_," mumbled Jacinto, lowering himself back on the bench. "Nobody can make them like me. That was bayberry you smelled all right. I didn't have enough sheep tallow. First I make it into blocks and then cut it into small scraps so it melts quick without burning. I put the wax in hot water and scoop the grease off as it comes to the top. Then I strain it through a horsehair cloth to remove whatever dirt I missed in skimming. I am now heating the wax to pour in the molds. Did you ever see such fine molds? My father owned that brass one in El Paso. It holds two dozen candles at one pouring. If you came here to find out what's going on, I can't tell you."

The abrupt transition brought Crawford's head up in surprise. Jacinto set the mold end up in a dishpan, chuckling.

"I am not as stupid as I am corpulent, Crawford. You didn't come here just to eat my cracklings." His great bloodshot eyes slid upward in their pouches till they met Crawford's. "But I can't tell you anything, Crawford. I know something is going on. Huerta and that woman. Something not quite right. Tarant too, somehow. Maybe you can tell me."

"Hyacinth, what did you think of that story about Santa Anna's chests?"

"I--Santa Maria, that wax is hot." Jacinto sat shaking his finger a moment. Then he put it into his mouth. "If Santa Anna lost some chests up here, I guess he lost them, that's all. Mm, you ought to taste that bayberry. I think I'll season my _chiles rollenos_ with it some time."

"You heard the one about the map?" said Crawford.

"The _derrotero_? _Sí_, I guess there was supposed to be a map. Isn't there always, with something like that?"

"Ever stop to think of Santa Anna's full name?"

"_Ciertamente._ Everybody knows it. Antonio Lopez de San--" Jacinto stopped, staring at Crawford. Wax dripped from the tin ladle onto the floor. Crawford popped a last crackling into his mouth.

"Would that give her a connection?" he said.

"Lopez is a common name," said Jacinto, almost defensively.

"A woman like that don't trail through this kind of country just for the scenery," said Crawford. He closed his eyes, rolling the name meditatively off his tongue. "Merida Lopez."

It must have been about then the first sound floated in from outside, the creak of saddle leather, a man's hoarse cough. Jacinto jumped across the room, jerking Crawford up out of the chair. "They're back, Crawford, you got to go, you got to get out of here, if Quartel ever gets you alone after Whitehead, he'll--"

He stopped shoving Crawford toward the doorway, and his voice faded into a series of small, choked sounds. Aforismo stood there, sweat streaking the dust in his smooth brown face, holding a belduque in his hands.

"_El amante fiel_," he said, running his finger down the keen edge, "the Loyal Lover. Did you ever see my knife, Crawford? Truly a remarkable weapon. Handed down in my family for generations. The hilt was once studded with precious stones, but they have long since been picked out by various members of my illustrious house who were in temporary financial destitution." He took a shuffling step toward them. "Look at the _bravos_ on the blade. See this one. _Nothing compares with my kiss._ Isn't that a delectable motto?"

Jacinto shrank back, staring in fascinated horror at the words cut into that side of the gleaming blade. Through the dog-run, Crawford could hear the thump of a chair in the bunkhouse, the clatter of spoons on the table.

"Please, Aforismo, please," quavered Jacinto. "Let him go. _Madre de Dios!_ let him go out the door before they find him in here. You know what will happen. Quartel would--"

"And this one," Aforismo said, turning the blade over and pointing to another motto cut into that side. "This is my favorite _bravo_ I think. _Tripe is sweet but bowels are better._ Don't you like that one, Jacinto?" He took another shuffling step toward them with the point almost touching Crawford's belly. "Don't you like that _bravo_, Crawford? Tell me you like it. It is my favorite, I think."

"Please, please." Jacinto was cringing behind Crawford, wringing his hands, sweat dribbling down his coarse face. "_En el nombre de Dios_, Aforismo, let him go, he never did anything to you, he never harmed one little hair of your head, I hate violence so, oh, I do hate violence so, my father he always tell me there are two sins in the world, work and fighting, and--oh, _por Dios_, Aforismo, _Santa Maria, nombre de mi madre_, let him go, let him go--"

"They say down in Durango a coyote always howls loudest in the trap," said Aforismo, nudging Crawford gently back with that needle point. "I think maybe we better all go in the bunkhouse, eh? The hands are getting hungry. Tripe is sweet but bowels are better, eh?" Crawford did not step back quickly enough, and that needle point went through his shirt with a soft ripping sound. The stinging bite of steel in the hard muscle of his belly caused his move back to be involuntary. His breath left him in a hoarse gust and he bent forward with the impulse driving through him. That was as far as it went. Aforismo's boots made that bland shuffle on the hard-packed earth, moving forward. His face twisted with frustrated anger, Crawford shifted back into the dog-run, shoving the cringing cook behind him.

"_Dios_, Aforismo, _por Dios_, no violence, please, I could not stand the sight of blood, it would make me regurgitate, please--"

Jacinto knocked over a chair backing from the dog-run into the bunkhouse. It made a loud clatter. Then Crawford was in the bunkhouse, still bent forward that way, his breath coming out harsh and swift, and he could see them. Bueno Bailey was seated at the table.

"I was just showing Crawford the _bravos_ on my belduque," said Aforismo. "In Durango they say it is an ignorant man who cannot tell his sons at least one _bravo_."

"_Bueno._" Bailey trailed the word out in a pleased, nasal twang, shoving the bench back from the table. "Siddown, Crawford. We was just about to eat."

"I guess you never met Ford Innes, did you, Crawford," said Quartel. "This is Crawford, Ford. He is the one who brought your _amigo_ back this morning."

The redheaded man in the doorway emitted a flat, harsh grunt. He must have just stepped in, for he held his saddle under one arm. The short, square lines of his body held all the lethal threat of a snub-nosed derringer. He had a flat-topped hat set squarely on his head. The bottom of his red beard was dirty from rubbing against the grease daubs on the chest of a buckskin ducking jacket with square tails that hung outside his _chivarras_ and which were caught up on one side by the wooden handle of his Remington.

"Ford just got back from taking Wallace Tarant into San Antonio," said Quartel. "As many times as that shyster's been back and forth between here and town, he still can't find his way through the brush himself."

The leather rigging clattered against the hard earthen floor when Innes dropped his pack. His bushy bleached brows formed a reddish dominance above shrewd little eyes that had not left Crawford's face since he entered. He moved over and sat down across from Bailey.

"So you brought Whitehead back." His voice held the same lack of intonation as his grunt.

"Ford had been Whitehead's saddle mate for a long time," said Quartel. "I guess he'd like to know how it happened to Whitehead."

"Get us some grub, Jacinto," said Aforismo. With his belduque he indicated a place beside Bailey. "An empty seat there, Crawford. Sit down."

Crawford looked at the knife. He sat down.

The table groaned as Aforismo lowered himself onto it and put his feet on the bench, running a finger up and down his belduque. Ford Innes began playing with his spoon on the table. Jacinto came from the dog-run with a dish of beans. He fumbled the plate at the last moment and almost tipped it onto the table. His fat jowls were trembling with his chin.

"Please, please, let's not have any--"

"So Whitehead broke his neck out in the thicket," said Innes.

"Have some beans, Glenn," said Bailey, ladling them onto a plate he had shoved before Crawford.

"They call them _nacionales_ down in Durango, because so many Mexicans eat them," said Aforismo. "It is said of one who is weak that he lacks _nacionales_."

"How did it happen to Whitehead?" said Innes.

"We don't know," said Bailey, helping the man to beans. "Crawford just brought him back over his horse with his neck broke and said he found him out in the brush that way."

"How did it happen?" Innes asked Crawford.

"There was eleven shots gone from Whitehead's carbine," said Quartel.

Innes began eating in a slow, mechanical way, his jaws working steadily beneath his red beard, looking at Crawford. "Where's your iron?"

"Whitehead took away Crawford's rifle when he first came," said Aforismo.

Innes's bleached eyebrows raised, and he ceased chewing for a moment. Quartel was standing behind Crawford to one side, and Crawford caught the sly grin spreading the man's pawky lips.

"There was no other marks on Whitehead's body," Quartel said.

"Well," said Innes, still looking at Crawford that way. Finally he went back to spooning up the beans, his eyes never leaving Crawford's face. "What happened?" he said again, around a mouthful.

"Yeah." Bailey nudged Crawford on the shoulder with his spoon. "What happened?"

Crawford could hear his own breathing now. It held a harsh, driven sound. He looked from Innes to Bailey, from Bailey to Quartel, from Quartel to Aforismo. There was a patent brutal intent in all their faces. He was hunched over so far now the heat of the beans in his plate penetrated his shirt and warmed his chest.

"Where's the sorrel?" said Bailey.

"What sorrel?" said Innes.

"The horse he took out," said Quartel. "He never brought him back."

"Coffee?" It was Jacinto again, waddling in with a big pot. He set it down, looking around at the men. He wrung his great fat hands together, speaking in a small, strained voice. "Please, _señores_, please. Violence. I cannot stand it. You won't do this. Tell me you won't do this. My father, he say--"

Aforismo turned toward him, lifting the belduque. "Would you like my Loyal Lover to see inside the sack?"

"No." Jacinto backed out, lugubrious tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "No, _lástima de Dios_, tears of God, no--"

"You ain't told us what happened yet," said Innes, still eating.

"Yeah." Quartel shoved Crawford from behind. "How did you lose the sorrel? You could ride any horse I could, remember?"

Crawford's hands were clasped desperately between his knees. There was a taut, set expression to his features. Sweat had begun trickling down his cheeks into his beard. His whole body was trembling.

"So you brought Whitehead in with a broken neck," said Innes.

"Yeah." Bueno poked Crawford with the spoon again. "How did it get broke?"

"Yeah." Aforismo pricked him from the other side with the knife. "What happened?"

"How did it get broke?"

"How did you lose the sorrel?"

"What happened?"

Crawford jerked away as Aforismo bent forward with that belduque again. It carried him against Bueno, sitting on his other side. Bueno pushed him back roughly. Quartel shoved him from behind so hard his chest struck the table. A small, strangled sound escaped him.

"Tell us what happened."

"_Sí_, tell us, Crawford."

"What happened, Crawford?"

"Talk, damn you." Bueno's shove was harder.

"Tell us, Crawford." The knife prick was deeper. He jerked away from it. Bailey caught him and shoved him back brutally. He made a spasmodic effort to rise. Quartel put both hands on his shoulders and forced him back down. He tried to twist around. Aforismo's belduque was in his face. He jerked back the other way into Bailey. His hands knotted and writhed between his knees underneath the table. His whole body was shuddering now.

"Where's the sorrel?"

"How'd he break his neck?"

"Talk, damn you!"

"Tell us, Crawford."

"What happened?"

"Gentlemen!" It came from the doorway, and it stopped them abruptly. Huerta stood there, bent forward slightly, and those bluish lids were almost closed over his eyes.

"I think we all know what happened to Whitehead," he said, "don't you?" He stood there a moment, but no one answered. He dropped his eyes to the jade cigarette holder he held in one hand, tapping it to knock the ash from the cigarette, and still looking down that way, spoke again. "I think it would be wise, now, Crawford, for you to come with me, up to the house, don't you?"

_Chapter Seven_

SUNDAY CELEBRATION

It was the odor at first. Crawford lay there, staring up at the ceiling, groping up through the remnants of a sleep so heavy it left him filled with an oppressive nausea. The hangings had been removed from the bed and the four reeded mahogany posts reached up through the semi-gloom to support the bare tester frame above him. He realized where he was, then. Huerta had stopped them? Yes, Huerta had stopped them last night, and brought him to the big house to sleep. Strange, the influence Huerta had over them. Without actually doing anything. Those eyes? Maybe that was it.

Crawford sat up abruptly, the heavy chintz coverlet falling away from him. He held out his hand, staring at the fingers. They were trembling. He sniffed the air. He pulled the coverlet completely off, swinging his bare feet out of the bed. His levis were on the russet wing chair and he grabbed them up and stepped into the legs. It was that sensation again, stirring within him. It was hard for him to breathe. He sat on the bed a moment, hands clutching the covers, staring at the wall. Why? Here. Why?

He turned his head from side to side, searching the room. It was day, but the overdrapes had been pulled across the window, and he could make out the furniture only dimly in the semi-gloom. And still, down inside him, rising, growing. He bent down to pull on his boots with swift, desperate tugs, then rose. He looked like a hounded animal, the forward thrust of his rigid body imparting that narrowness to his shoulders, his eyes shifting furtively in a gaunt face. Then, on one of those shallow, indrawn breaths, it came to him, unmistakable.

Slowly, his whole body so tense it was trembling now, he turned about, sniffing. He stepped away from the bed, toward the windows, and it faded. He moved back toward the bed, and he could smell it again. With a muttered curse he bent down and tore the coverlet off. The dirty, fetid horse blanket had been laid out flat beneath the chintz spread.

"Huerta!"

It came out of him in a strangled, guttural rage, and he bent to clutch the horse blanket. He had it lifted off the bed before he released it, throwing it back down and whirling to the door. His boots made a hard thump down the stairway and into the entrance hall. He had almost passed the living-room when, through the open door, he caught sight of Huerta, seated in one of the willow chairs by the window. The doctor had been reading, and he lowered the book, leaning forward in the chair.

"You must have slept well, Crawford," he said. "It's nearly noon."

Crawford started to take a step forward, opening his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again, his fists clenched tight. There was a faint, waiting mockery on Huerta's face. Crawford whirled and stamped on out the front door. As he went down the front steps, he saw the crowd out by the corrals, and was drawn toward it. He made out Bueno Bailey and Innes among the men, but the others were new faces to him. There were half a dozen riders cavorting their horses around in the open flats, and a big Chihuahua cart was creaking out of the brush, piled high with onions and apricots and baskets of blue corn meal and squealing Mexican children and a fat Mexican peon driving. Crawford was part way across the compound when he saw the woman coming toward him. He had a momentary impulse to turn away, and stifled that. She held her heavy green satin skirt up out of the dust with one hand, and the wind ruffled the throat of her white Antoinette fichu. Her eyes, big and dark and searching, were held to his face until she reached him, and it did something to Crawford.

"They said it was a bull-tailing," she told him, coming to a stop. "I don't exactly understand."

"About the only celebration the _brasaderos_ get," he said, watching her warily. "A bunch of them gather almost every Sunday somewhere to eat and drink and tail the bull. I think they're celebrating Cinco de Mayo today. Commemorating some battle at Puebla--"

He trailed off, because he could see it in her face, and he didn't particularly want to talk about the bull-tailing either. When she spoke again, her voice was husky and strained, and it must have been what was really on her mind, from the first.

"They were trying to kill you," she said. "Jacinto told me. They got you in there, and started in on you, and they meant to drive you till you cracked and fought back, and then they were going to kill you. How did you stand it so long, Crawford? Jacinto said no other man could have. Pushing you and shoving you and beating you like that. How did you stand it?"

"I'm still here, ain't I?" he said.

She drew in a breath, staring up at him. "Why did you come back with Whitehead?" she said finally. "You could have escaped."

"Maybe a man gets tired running," he said.

She caught his arm, coming in close enough for him to catch a hint of her perfume. "Crawford, I want to help you."

His whole body was rigid now, with that wariness. "I never saw a cow yet that wanted to get back inside a corral when it was outside."

"You're so suspicious," she flamed. Then she leaned toward him farther, looking up into his face. "I guess you have a right to be. You've been fighting all of them, haven't you, ever since this started. I don't blame you, Crawford. I know how you feel. I'm in the same position. I need your help as much as you need mine."

It had been a long time since a woman stood this close to him, with her hair shining like that, and her eyes. He felt a weakness seep through him. He stared at the soft red curve of her lip, and his voice was hardly audible.

"What are you talking about?"

"Have you ever heard of Mogotes Serpientes?" she said.

"Snake Thickets? I guess so. It's supposed to be somewhere west of Rio Diablo in that stretch of bad brush."

"You've never actually been there?" Her voice was tense.

"I don't know who has," he said. "There's a lot of the _brasada_ nobody's ever seen, white man _or_ Indian. There's a stretch due south from here just above the Rio Grande called Resaca Espantosa. Nobody's ever been through it. I don't know why they call it Haunted Swamp."

"But there is a good reason for the name Mogotes Serpientes?"

"So they say. It's supposed to be so full of snakes no man could stay alive in there more than a few--" He trailed off as he realized how far he had let her allure carry him, and pulled roughly away from her, his mouth twisting down at one corner.

"Crawford," she said, trying to get in close again. "Please. Don't. I mean it. You've got to believe me. If you believe in anything, you've got to--"

"Huerta made me a proposition too," said Crawford. "It didn't pack such a wallop, but it was along the same lines."

She flushed, stepping back from him violently. "You fool," she said, in a bitter, intense whisper. "You fool."

They were still standing that way, staring at each other, when Huerta came out on the porch. The woman saw him and turned away, moving back toward the corrals.

"Hola, Quartel," someone over by the pens shouted. "When are you letting the _toros_ out? I got a twenty-dollar pot for the first man to tail a bull."

"It's mine." Quartel's bellow came from somewhere in the crowd, and then he appeared, running in that stiff, saddle-bound stride of his toward the horses. "Aforismo, let that blue out. He ought to give us a good run."

* * * * *

Used to working the wild, savage cattle of the brushland, the Mexicans trained their horses to spin away from the side on which a man mounted as soon as he lifted a foot to the stirrup. Though this saved many a _vaquero_ from being gored by a ringy bull which he had just released after throwing and branding the beast, it took a good man to get on one of these horses. Each rider had a string of animals, and from his bunch Quartel had saddled a brown horse they called a _trigueño_. He knocked the reins loose of the corral post and snapped them over the _trigueño's_ head. Then he checked the animal, pulling the nigh rein in till it twisted the _trigueño's_ head down toward its shoulder so that the horse's action would be inhibited long enough for him to mount. As soon as Quartel raised his left foot, the _trigueño_ tried to whirl, but that checking action held him long enough for Quartel to jam his foot in the stirrup and swing aboard in one violent movement. Then he released the tight rein and allowed the animal to spin toward the right.

From outside the cedar-post corral, Aforismo and several other _vaqueros_ had goaded and prodded a blue bull until it was separated from the other bulls within the enclosure. As it neared the gate, Aforismo let down the drop bar.

In their natural state, running the brush, these cows were among the wildest animals of the world, and the several days this cut of bulls had spent penned up had put them in a frenzied rage. The blue stood there a moment, glaring suspiciously at the opening, pawing the ground. His great long curving horns had been scored and ripped and punched by the brush until it looked as if someone had hacked them over with a knife, and a pattern of scars formed a network across the gleaming lathered hide of his forequarters. From the side, he looked deceptively heavy, his length so extended that his back swayed, but as he lashed his tail and shifted around to display a rear view, his narrow hips and cat hams and ridgepole back became apparent. Abruptly, with a hoarse bellow, he lowered his head, and swinging it from side to side, galloped out of the gate.

Quartel yelled something, dug in with his Chihuahuas and whacked his quirt against the _trigueño's_ rump at the same time. The brown horse burst into a headlong run, followed by most of the other _vaqueros_, shouting and yelling and snapping their quirts against leather _chivarras_ and fancy _charro_ pants. The blue bull had spotted an opening in the brush across the compound, and he shook the ground tearing for it. But the horsemen swiftly closed up on the animal. Quartel and another _vaquero_ were bunched together in the lead. Quartel raked his _trigueño_ with those huge Chihuahua guthooks, and the horse spurted ahead, drawing up beside the bull. Quartel leaned out of the saddle and made a grab for that lashing tail. But the blue bull jammed its forefeet into the ground and came to a jarring halt, plowing twin furrows in the earth. Quartel was several lengths on by before he could swing back in the saddle and pull his horse around; by that time the bull had turned in a half circle and cut for the brush.

The other _vaquero_ had pulled up shorter than Quartel, and was in a position to run down the bull on its quarter. He was a tall, supple youth on a short-coupled horse they called a _bayo coyote_, its coat a buckskin color with a black line running down the spine, with a black mane and tail. Quartel spurred and quirted his _trigueño_ in a last desperate effort to reach the bull first, but just at the edge of brush, the other _vaquero_ pulled up beside the blue and leaned out to grab for that tail.

He caught its hairy end, and dallied it around his saddle horn, clapping the guthooks to his _bayo coyote_ at the same time. The buckskin gave a spurt that pulled it ahead of the blue bull, and just as the horse smashed into the first thicket, the tail of the bull snapped taut, yanking its hind feet from beneath it. The _vaquero_ tore the tail off his horn and hunched forward with his arm before his face all at the same time, and as he disappeared into the thicket the ground shook with the bull's falling. Huerta had come down from the house, and he moved in behind Crawford.

"I understand a good man can break the bull's neck every time," he said. "Why don't you try it, Crawford?"

Crawford's hands closed tightly, and he did not look at Huerta. The inside of his mouth was dry and cottony as he watched the _vaquero_ come back through the mesquite into the open, prancing his _bayo coyote_ proudly.

"You better go back to herding dogies, Quartel," the _vaquero_ grinned, "and leave the grown ones to men."

"If you're a man, let's see your _reata_," roared Quartel, wheeling his _trigueño_ toward the man and unlashing his 40-foot rope from his saddle.

The rider fought his excited buckskin around in a circle as he tore his own rope from the saddle, and when he had completed the circle, the rope was free and the two riders were facing each other about a hundred yards apart.

"_Vamanos, Indita_," shouted Quartel, his huge cart-wheel spurs gouging the brown into a headlong run toward the other man.

"Are they crazy?" said Huerta.

"Stay around the border much and you'll get used to it," Merida told him. "The _vaqueros_ used to do the same thing on the rancho where I was born. They'd rather rope than eat."

"Duello," said Crawford.

"With ropes?" It caused Huerta distinct effort to evince even the dim incredulity.

"Lot of 'em would rather fight with ropes than guns," Crawford told him. "More than one lawman has been dragged to death here in the brush."

It had taken that long for the two riders to meet, passing one another not 10 feet apart. At the last moment Quartel made a pass with his rope arm. Indita's own throw caused him a hoarse exhalation that turned into a shout of triumph as he saw his loop settling over Quartel's head. Then it happened. As much as he had handled horses, Crawford did not think he had ever seen one turn so fast. One instant the _trigueño_ was racing past the _bayo coyote_, the next it was facing in the opposite direction, Quartel's own involuntary grunt still hanging in the air to tell what a vicious effort he had put into the reining. The motion had carried Quartel from beneath Indita's loop in that last moment, and now he sat the _trigueño_ perfectly still, facing after Indita's retreating buckskin.

Quartel's first pass had been a feint, and he still retained his rope. It was so slight a flirt of his hand that Crawford barely caught it. He did not spin the loop above his head. He tossed it underhand, the way he had thrown it with Africano in the corral. It was a hooley-ann, spinning flatly out above Indita, seeming to hover above him an instant, no bigger than the brim of his sombrero; then it was taut about his shoulders, and he was pulled over the back of his horse with a resounding thump.

"I ought to drag you for your presumption," said Quartel, shifting his horse forward so he could get enough slack in his rope to flirt it off Indita as the man rose. Then, pulling the rawhide clothesline in with a series of quick, skillful snaps, he turned the _trigueño_ to prance it over toward them, grinning at Merida. "How do you like that, _señorita_?"

"I have seen it done before," said Merida.

Quartel's face darkened. "You don't think I am any good?"

"I didn't say that."

"Listen," he shouted, thumping his chest, "I am the best goddam roper in the world. I am the best goddam rider in the world. I am--"

"Don't be a boor," said Huerta, in faint disgust.

"A what?" Quartel wheeled the horse around in a growing rage, the sweat greasing his coarse face. "I'll show you." He started pounding his chest again. "I'll show you who's good. I'll make you a bet. I'll bet you a _talega_ full of gold pesos that I can, blindfolded, with one end of the _reata_ tied to my own neck and not to be touched by my hands, riding a bareback horse of your own choosing, forefoot each of any ten bulls we got in a pen, and break their necks."

Huerta shrugged, smiling in a faint, vague dismissal. Quartel reined the _trigueño_ in closer. "I mean it," he bellowed. "Are you afraid to make the bet? Could anybody where you come from do it?"

"Frankly, I don't think anyone can do it," said Huerta, disinterestedly.

"I can," yelled Quartel. "I'm the best--"

"Don't be a fool, Quartel," the woman told him.

"You'll kill yourself. One mistake with that rope around your neck and you'll be dead."

That was the final impetus. "_Hijo de la chingada_," shouted Quartel, whirling his _trigueño_ away from them. "How many bulls you got in that corral, Aforismo? Seven? Get me three more. Get me three more from that holding pen across the arroyo. I'll show you what roping really is, Merida. You're going to see a performance tonight you'll never forget!"

_Chapter Eight_

BEST ROPER IN THE WORLD

The throng about the large cedar-post corral was oddly subdued. Some of the _vaqueros_ had dragged the blue bull over to the cooking fire for Jacinto to spit, but the gross cook had left the carcass lying on the ground. He stood with the middle bar of the fence making a deep indentation in the incredible protuberance of his stomach as the crowding _vaqueros_ pressed in from behind.

"_Madre de Dios_, Crawford, why do you let him do this thing?" wailed the cook, running his fat hands nervously up and down the rail. "I don't want to see a man die."

"Then why watch?" said Crawford.

"Please, Crawford, you take such a brutal attitude. Don't you know this is the way Oro Peso died down in Mexico? He was the greatest roper in the world, Quartel's boasting to the contrary. Oro Peso used to go around making this same bet. Then somebody took him up on it. The third bull pulled him from his horse. His neck was broken like you'd snap a switch of mesquite. Please--"

"Hola, _compadres_!" shouted Quartel, from outside the corral, and they saw that he had stripped his _trigueño_ of its saddle. Indita dropped the bar and Quartel trotted the animal in, laughing as the bulls bunched up on the other side, bawling. "You see, already they are afraid of me. Who is going to put the blindfold on? Merida, will you honor me?"