Chapter IV: Part 4

"Why not?" The woman's voice held a savage undertone that surprised Crawford. She caught his eyes on her and turned toward Crawford. When she saw the look on his face, she threw her head back that way, to laugh. It held a rich, wild mockery. "What's the matter, Crawford? Don't you like that in a woman? Maybe you haven't known the right women."

Still laughing, she reached through the bars to tie the bandanna behind Quartet's head as the man slipped off the _trigueño_ and turned his back to her. Then he swung aboard again, and tied one end of the rope he was carrying about his thick neck in a noose, too small to slip over his head. Merida's face was flushed excitedly as she watched him prance the _trigueño_ away, and her eyes flashed in frank anticipation. Huerta pulled out his cigarette case and put a smoke into his jade holder. His motions were as languid as ever, but Crawford thought his fingers pinched the holder more tightly than was necessary.

"Hola!" shouted Quartel, wheeling his _trigueño_ in the middle of the corral and kicking its flanks with his heels. The horse charged toward the bulls, and the animals strung out along the fence. Quartel was an uncanny judge of distance; when his horse was but half a length from the fence, he made a quarter turn and raced along the bars after the last bull in the running bunch.

"_Andale!_" yelled the man, and made his toss.

The loop snaked about the forefeet of that last bull as it turned at the corner of the corral, and as Quartel felt the rope snap taut, he let go completely with his hands, pulling his thick neck down into his shoulders to set it and jerking back with his torso at the last moment. The bull turned a flip, its shoulder striking the rump of the running animal in front, and as the falling bull struck, Quartel shoved his reins hard against the _trigueño's_ neck to wheel inward and give himself slack on the rope. He clutched for the slackening rawhide and sent a flirt down the rope that lifted the loop off the bull's forelegs, and when he turned away, he was pulling the line in.

"_Viva Quartel, viva!_" shouted the _vaqueros_, shoving Crawford up against the fence with their shifting press and deafening him with their cheers. Grinning, Quartel kicked the _trigueño_ after the bulls again. It started them off once more, bawling and running. Quartel's hearing was as uncanny as his judgment of distance; he rode with his head lifted, and when a scarred brindle bull broke from the others, running along the fence and cutting across the middle of the corral, Crawford could see Quartel's head turn after the animal. The Mexican reined his _trigueño_ over that way, kicking it into a dead run that closed the space between himself and the bull in a swift instant.

"_Ahora_," he shouted, "now," and tossed. His rope caught the bull's hind feet instead of its forefeet, and as a strange sighing sound rose from the crowd, Quartel must have sensed something was wrong, for he spurred the _trigueño_ brutally, and its frenzied leap into a headlong run gave him slack enough in the rope for that last moment to send a flirt down its length that carried the loop off the bull's hind feet before it could draw closed. The bull stumbled into the other animals as they turned the corner and milled down this side of the corral. By that time Quartel had his rope coiled, and he maneuvered the bawling, excited animals so that they strung out down the fence once more, and then ran his horse up behind the last one. This time it was the forefeet, and he dropped the animal, breaking its neck as before. The end of the rope about Quartel's neck was not a slip noose, but Crawford could see the rawhide dig into the thick brown flesh of Quartel's neck as he jerked back, till the skin showed a white ridge above and below the lasso. He watched in undeniable fascination as the Mexican flirted in the rope and turned his horse after them once more. Shouting, Quartel closed the gap between himself and another bull and made his toss. He released the lasso with his hand as soon as it was in the air. The instant that loop caught on the running bull's forefeet, Quartel reined his _trigueño_ in a quarter turn that wheeled it away from the running bull. The bull's own forward motion would draw the noose tight about its legs, and the turning maneuver of the horse would stretch the rope taut between them as soon as that noose was completely closed. In that instant, with the bull hitting the end of the rope and flipping, Quartel had to wheel his horse back or be pulled off. He had already turned the _trigueño_ away from the bull, and the noose was making its singing sound closing on those churning forefeet, when a big _hosco golondrino_ cut away from the other animals running along the fence and turned out into the corral, directly across the head of the _trigueño_. Quartel's huge neck sank into his shoulders, and he put the reins against the _trigueño's_ neck to swerve it back as he felt the rope snapping taut. But the turn would have run the horse head-on into the _hosco golondrino_. It was the first time Crawford had seen that _trigueño_ fight the bit; its head turned in and its neck arched, it lurched in the opposite direction from Quartel's reining.

"Crawford," screamed Merida, and then the full weight of the falling bull hit the end of that rope with Quartel going in the wrong direction to take the shock. He made a small, choked sound as he was snapped off the _trigueño's_ rump. Crawford was not conscious of going through the bars. He found himself on the inside of the corral, with someone climbing through the rails on his left. He did not realize who it was till he had started running toward Quartel where he was rolling across the ground. Then from the corner of his eye, Crawford caught the white flutter of Merida's fichu.

"Get back, you crazy fool," he screamed at her, diving headlong at her as a couple of crazed bulls charged by. He struck her with his arms around her waist and carried her back against the bars as a third animal crashed past where she had been standing. He rolled to his feet, leaving her there huddled up against the fence, and dodged through another pair of the bawling, frenzied animals, coughing in the dust.

The bull Quartel had thrown was scrambling to its feet, the _reata_ still caught around one foreleg. Crawford saw the slack rope hiss taut as the animal broke into a stumbling gallop, and knew he could never reach it in time. If Quartel's neck were not already broken, his head would be pulled from his body now. Another bull went past behind Crawford, its shoulder sending him spinning, and he threw himself bodily toward the rope where it lay tautening across the ground, in a last desperate effort to try and get it before the bull had stretched it completely.

But even as he did so, he saw Quartel had risen to his hands and knees. Still blindfolded, the man must have heard the sing of the rope and known what was occurring. He gave his head one dazed shake and jumped to his feet, sinking his neck in that way and throwing himself backward. His body was at a three-quarter angle when the rope snapped taut; he would have fallen completely if the line had not caught him. The impetus of his jerking back that way and the weight of his body combined to upset the bull once more. The ground shuddered to the falling animal. Crawford heard the crack of its broken neck.

"How's that, Huerta?" laughed Quartel, running forward to slacken the rope so he could flirt the loop free. "I told you I wouldn't pull on it by hand. Did you see that? I didn't touch it with my hands, did I? I'll bet you never saw a roper could do that down around Mexico City. Even Oro Peso. Did you think I was finished? Not with a neck like that. I could throw ten bulls all at once. Where's my horse? Bring me that _trigueño_. I'm not through yet. Not with a neck like that."

In a daze, Crawford picked himself off the ground, seeing Indita run out to corner the _trigueño_ and lead him over to the sweating, roaring Quartel. Stumbling back to the fence, Crawford watched the whole crazy performance begin once more. It was a nightmare of shouting _vaqueros_ and bawling bulls and singing ropes and clouds of acrid russet dust obscuring the whole pattern every time the animals broke into a run. Quartel took three casts to nail the seventh bull, and it was obvious he was tiring.

"Three more," Crawford heard Jacinto mumbling beside him. "Three more. Oh, _madre de Dios_, let him get over with this, will you, and I'll never forget to say my rosary again. Three more, three more--"

Two more. One more. "Hola!" shouted the Mexican, "_ahora_," and the rope spun, and caught, and tautened, and the ground shook as the last bull broke its neck. Coiling in the rope, Quartel spurred the _trigueño_ to the gate, ripping off his blindfold. They were all running that way, Aforismo catching the man as he slid off the lathered, quivering horse, pounding him on the back. Even Merida had lifted her skirts to run that way, drawn by the excitement. Quartel came through the crowd, sweating and grinning and pounding himself on the chest with his hairy fist. "I told you. The best roper in the world. What do you think of it, Huerta? Have you ever seen better? Was Oro Peso better?" Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he sobered, looking around at the _vaqueros_. "When I was pulled off the horse. Someone was in the corral. I heard them."

The hubbub sank until there was only the muffled sound of stirring bodies, and Quartel saw the direction their glances had taken, one after another. He stared at Crawford in disbelief.

"You--"

Crawford shrugged, sullenly. "It was automatic, I guess. I didn't think."

"Yes." Huerta allowed twin streamers of gray smoke to escape his nostrils. "I wonder what would have happened if you had stopped to think."

Crawford flushed, turning toward him, but Quartel came forward, clapping his hand on Crawford's shoulder. "Huerta, I'm surprised at you. After all, he saved my life. And how about you. A _talega_ of pesos."

"I made no wager," said Huerta, tapping ash from his cigarette.

The blood swept into Quartel's face, and he stepped forward to grab the lapels of Huerta's coat with one huge hand, jerking the man toward him. "Huerta, I bet you a _talega_ of pesos--"

"I made no wager." Huerta had not moved his hands. One of them still held the cigarette holder at his side; the other rested in the pocket of his coat. But he was looking into Quartel's eyes, and his own eyes had opened wider. The veined dissolution of his heavy bluish lids had lifted until the whole pupil was visible.

"That's right, that's right," said Jacinto nervously. "Huerta didn't take up your bet, Quartel. You was so busy shouting and all you didn't wait to see if he'd made the bet with you."

"If he had, he'd pay me," said Quartel, still looking into Huerta's eyes, an indefinable puzzlement drawing a faint furrow through his brow, and something else. Abruptly he turned around, raising his voice. "_Caramba_, if I ain't going to get a _talega_ of pesos, I should get some kind of reward. You don't see a rodeo like that every day. How about it, Merida? I want a reward--"

He had shoved through the crowd toward her, catching her around the waist. Apparently not divining his intent at first, she had been smiling, her face still flushed with that excitement. But as he caught her and bent his face to hers, the smile twisted into a grimace. She threw her forearm across his neck and tried to lever him away.

"_Vayase con la música a otra parte_," she cried, anger causing her to break into Spanish. "_Tu barrachon, largo de aqui, tu chile, no puedo sufrir su insolencia--_"

"My insolence?" laughed Quartel, grasping her wrist and tearing it from between them. The force of it drew a gasp of pain from Merida; she began writhing more violently in his embrace, and tried to scratch his face with the other hand. But he caught that too, and forced both her hands behind her until he had her wrists crossed with his arms about her waist. In that last moment, he quit grinning. Crawford had seen the same expression in the man's face before, when he looked at Merida, but never so palpable, never so clearly recognizable. His voice came from deep in his throat, husky and sensual and demanding.

"_Besame, querida_," he said, and lowered his sweating face to hers.

"Let her go, Quartel!"

The Mexican stopped, with his lips not quite touching Merida. The woman's body ceased to writhe; she stood there in his arms, bent backward like a bow, looking up at him. Without releasing her, Quartel raised his head and turned it over his shoulder till he could see Crawford. It had taken Crawford that long to get through the laughing, shouting crowd; they were no longer making any noise, and they had spread away from him. He stood there with his boots spread a little on the hard-packed dirt and the weight of his shoulders thrown forward, the bitter intensity of his face only accentuating its gauntness.

"Oh." The word came out softly, slyly on Quartel's breath. "Maybe you'd rather be the one to kiss her. First he saves my life, then he wants to take my woman away."

"Your woman?" gasped Merida.

"Take your hands off, damn you--"

"Don't swear at me, Crawford." The hurt tone of Quartel's voice held that pawky mockery. "I thought we were _amigos_. I thought you saved my life in the corrals."

"Quartel--"

"_Sí?_" The man had released Merida and wheeled to face Crawford. For a moment he stood there, his heavy chest rising and falling gently with his breathing. The mockery faded from his face, leaving a heavy, deliberate intent. His shift to the side was unhurried, but Crawford's effort to keep facing the man came in a swift, spasmodic reaction. Then Quartel stood there again. "Nobody swears at me, Crawford," he said, and then, moving with incredible speed for such a bulky man, he leaped forward. Crawford had been waiting for something, but it came so fast his move to block it was aborted. Quartel had him by the shoulders, knocking him off balance, and Crawford had to stumble backward to keep from falling. "Do you understand that?" Quartel was shouting it now, hoarsely, allowing his ebullience to escape finally. "I'm _amansador_, here, I'm foreman, and nobody swears at me or tries to stop me whatever I'm doing. I rod this outfit and I can do anything I want and nobody can stop me, do you hear?"

It was then Crawford realized what he had brought up against. Stumbling backward, he had lurched into the _trigueño_ and it had kept him from falling. He was held against it now by Quartel's hands gripping his shoulders. The animal heat of it penetrated through his shirt, and something else clawed at him, somewhere way down in his vitals.

In a new spasm, Crawford tried to lurch free of Quartel's grip; but the man had still managed to keep him off balance, and he was held there, with his knees bent and his body pushed off to one side so that he had no leverage. He was shoved back hard against the horse again, and the hot, living, hairy, animal resilience of it against his back intensified that vague alarm inside him.

"Do you hear me, Crawford, do you hear me--"

Quartel's voice came through to him as if the man were far away. Crawford was writhing from side to side, trying to escape, but he was still held at that disadvantage. He had his hands on the man's arms, tearing at them. The effort rocked Quartel from side to side, but failed to loosen his grip. Crawford's face was twisted, and he was gasping hoarsely, because it was growing in him now, raking at him insistently with its subtle, insidious nails. His legs were beginning to tremble and the muscles across his belly were twisting up into little involuntary knots.

"Let go, let go--"

The violent movement and their shouting had excited the horse, and it began to shift around behind Crawford. It had been standing there against the fence where Quartel left it when he slid off. Crawford had it pinned up against the bars, and the animal whinnied nervously, trying to get from between him and the fence. Aforismo moved from the crowd to grab the _trigueño's_ reins and pull its head down.

"What's the matter, Juarez?" he said. "Crawford, don't do that, you're spooking this horse."

"Yeah, quit shouting!" roared Quartel. "Can't you see what you're doing to my _trigueño_? Hasn't he been through enough today? Quit jumping around like that."

He realized what they were doing. That had been the intent in Quartel's face. It didn't help him now to understand. Nothing helped him now. It had its grip on him. His struggles had become a blind, frenetic effort to escape. Not from Quartel, now. It was the horse. The shrill sound of the _trigueño's_ whinny and the rising turbulence of the beast's nervous movement against him drove Crawford to a new violence in his attempts at escape. It was no longer small or vague in him. It filled his whole consciousness. It spread through his legs and lower body in a clutching, stabbing pain that caused his knees to tremble and jerk. It filled his chest with a terrible constriction. And as before, the pain was rapidly turning to something else.

"Let go, damn you, let go--"

He was screaming it now, in animal panic, his face contorted, his whole body writhing and struggling in a blind frenzy that only excited the horse further. He felt it rear up, and would have fallen backward beneath it had not Aforismo yanked it down hard with his grip on the reins. The hot hide was wet with nervous sweat against Crawford's back, and he could feel the ripple of its muscle with every movement it made, and every ripple sent a new wave of panic through him. All reason was gone from his mind and he was sinking into a dark vortex of that terrible panic like a cow sinking into a black bog.

"What's the matter, Crawford? Are you afraid of the horse?"

"Let go, please, for God's sake, let go."

"What's the matter, Crawford?"

"Leggo, leggo, leggo--"

He stopped screaming. It took him a long time to comprehend he was no longer being held against the horse. He crouched there on his knees where he had fallen when Quartel had stepped back, releasing him. The movement of the animal behind him raised a flurry of dirty brown dust. Coughing in it, Crawford stared up at Quartel. The rage had disappeared from Quartel's face. His lips were spread in that pawky smile.

"Sure," he said, "I'll let you go. What will you do if I let you go?"

Aforismo had pulled the _trigueño_ out from behind him now, and Crawford crouched there on his hands and knees, black hair falling dankly over his feverish eyes. He looked like a trapped animal, his breath escaping him in hoarse gasps, his head turning in quick jerks as his wild glance leaped from one person to another. First it was Merida. There was a desperate plea in the way she bent toward him, her bosom rising and falling, her red lower lip dropped away from the shadowed white line of her teeth, glistening damply. Then Huerta, managing to convey a bored amusement without actually expressing anything in his face, as he studied Crawford distantly. And Jacinto, great, lugubrious globules of sweat sliding down his brown face, wringing his fat hands, making small, unintelligible sounds of pain.

A vagrant anger swept Crawford and he tried to collect it and hold it in him, bitter and acrid and violent. But it held no strength, and a shift of the wind swept the fetor of the _trigueño_ to him once more, and the anger disappeared. There was none of the spasm of panic now. It was heavy and oppressive in him, holding him down like a physical weight, robbing him of all resolve, dominating all other emotion. He was still shaking violently, and the salty tears blinded him. He felt a dim impulse to move twitch at his legs, and he knew a moment there when he thought he could rise. Then he heard the guttural, frustrated sound he made, and knew he was still on the ground, and felt an overpowering impulse to give way and cry.

"I thought so," said Quartel, and turned to take the reins from Aforismo. He checked the animal to prevent its whirling away from him, and jumped onto its back. He released the rein, and the _trigueño's_ head came around with a snap as it spun to trot off toward the fires. The other _vaqueros_ followed one by one, in an uncomfortable silence. Huerta patted a yawn.

"They've got some cane chairs over under those coma trees," he said. "I think I'll watch the proceedings from there. Coming, Merida?"

She did not answer. She was looking at Crawford, her face pale. Huerta shrugged, moved languidly across the dusty compound. Then it was just the two of them, with Crawford finally gaining his feet, unable to meet her eyes. Merida's weight had settled back onto her high heels slowly. That ripe lower lip had contracted against her teeth till her mouth was twisted across them faintly. Her husky voice was barely audible.

"I had hoped Huerta was wrong."

He stared at her, wanting to turn and run, unable to, somehow, and finally it came from him, guttural, hardly recognizable. "Whadda you mean?"

"About that fellow in the mine," she said.

"Whaddaya mean?" Had that been him? Shrill, and cracked, like that?

"You know what I mean," she said. "Not only pain. Fear. And not only fear of what originally caused the pain."

"No--"

"Yes!" she said thinly. "Yes! It's not just the horses any more. It's everything. You're a coward, Crawford. You're a coward!"

_Chapter Nine_

STILL IN THE THROES OF FEAR

The girandole candelabra on the mantel looked like a brooding ghoul in the evening gloom which shrouded the living-room of Otis Rockland's house. The French windows at the front extended completely to the floor, double-hung sashes forming the upper half, paneled gates of unpolished oak being the lower section. The damask hangings had been pulled across during the afternoon to shut out the sun, but the windows themselves were partly ajar, allowing the sounds from the corrals to enter the room. Someone was playing a guitar over there where they were still roasting the bulls that had been killed. A woman's laugh came dimly.

Crawford raised his head a moment where he sat in a willow chair by the window; then he lowered it once more into his hands. His face was bleak and empty. He did not know how long it was since he had come here, unable to face them out there.

When the creak of the porch came mutedly to him, he gave no sign. Then there was more sound, louder, more recognizable. His head lifted as the noise terminated with a muffled crash.

"Crawford!"

Just once like that, shrill and cracked. He got to his feet and ran to the door, tearing it open. It was the side table in the entrance hall which had made the crash. Merida must have pulled it over, falling. The marble top had smashed, and a piece of it lay on the floor beside her. The front door stood open wide.

"Merida?" he said, dropping to one knee. "You fell?"

"No." She stirred feebly, rising to one elbow with his help, hanging her head over against his knee a moment. The kitchen door opened, and her maid padded down the hall in bare feet, a small, wizened Indian, so dark she looked negroid, dressed in nothing more than a white cotton shift.

"It's all right, Nexpa," Merida told her. "A little accident. Crawford will help me to my room."

She allowed him to help her up the stairs, leaning heavily on his arm. The warmth of her body flowed through Crawford, and when they reached the second floor he was breathing heavily. Beyond the last step, Merida pulled away from him, her eyes meeting his in a swift, unreadable way.

She turned and moved toward her room, halting a moment outside Huerta's closed door, as if listening. Then she opened the door of her bedroom. He had kept from asking by an effort, but now he followed her in hesitantly, speaking.

"Huerta came up?"

She closed her door softly. "He wasn't at the corrals when I left."

"Maybe he got hungry for his red beans." Her face lifted to him, eyes widening, and he shrugged. "Jacinto said something about dope."

She pursed her lips, moving around him toward the table. "Couldn't you see it? Opium when we were in Mexico City. Peyote now."

"Those beans."

"Yes. You've heard it. The Indians call it _raíz diabólica_. Devil weed. They've been using it for centuries in Mexico. Even the Aztecs knew of it. They called it peyotl. It's effect isn't as marked as opium. He seems capable of eating those beans all day. They make a drink of it that's more potent."

"He said something about a complaint," Crawford told her.

Her mouth twisted somewhat. "Maybe he has an old wound. He's been around. He'd take dope anyway. That's just the kind he is. You saw the kind. Dissolute? I don't know. Whatever you want." She had got a punk off the table and was lighting the candles in the porcelain candelabra supported by oak wall brackets. Then she saw how he was looking at her, and turned part way. "What is it?"

He looked away. "Nothing."

She caught his arm, turning him back.

"No," she said. "It is something. Huerta?"

Crawford pulled away from her hand, uncomfortable, somehow. "I just can't see you with him. You're not the type."

"What type do you think I am?"

He started to answer. Then he moved his shoulders again, letting out a muted, rueful sound. "I guess I don't know, really, do I?"

"Don't you?" She was meeting his glance with a wide, candid demand in her eyes.

"Santa Anna's chests?" he said.

She drew in a long, slow breath, and nodded, finally. "You do know, then," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "You have known, all along." She hesitated, studying him. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger. "That's inconceivable to you, isn't it?"

"No--"

"Yes!" She blew out the punk with the word. "You've lived in the _brasada_ most of your life. Money to you represents no more than a barren, lonely ranch like this and a herd of cattle to support it. You have no conception of what riches can really mean. Not just the horses, the servants, the jewels. The grace, Crawford, the ease, the beauty, the way of life." An intensity had gripped her voice, and her face was flushed. "Do you know what it is to be a peon in Mexico? No. You've never seen it, have you? You've seen the women in the brush here, living like animals in a one-room mud house with nothing but a cotton sheet for a dress. That's nothing. They're rich. They're hidalgos compared with a real peon. I should know. I was one, Crawford. I won't be one again. I'd rather steal and lie and cheat. I'd rather murder. Can you understand that? I will, if it's necessary. I--"

She broke off, breathing deeply, looking wide-eyed up at him. Then a short bitter laugh escaped her, and she turned away, the line of her shoulders bowing faintly. Light drew a soft glow from the rich black hair drawn tightly across the back of her head. With a new understanding of the woman, he stepped in behind her.

"All right," he said.

The simple acceptance of that drew her around. They were standing so close her breast touched his when it stirred faintly to her breathing.

"You were going to tell me what happened downstairs," he murmured.

"_Derrotero?_" she said, watching his face narrowly.

It was an effort to keep it expressionless. "The map?"

"It's why Huerta wanted to keep you here in the first place," she said. "Quartel and Tarant were against it, but Huerta thought you had some reason for coming here. He was right, Crawford. Nothing else could make you take what they've been doing. You've got part of the _derrotero_, and you think one of us has the rest. Well, one of us has!"

She turned around and did something with the waist of her dress, beneath the fichu. When she turned back, she held a piece of torn, yellowed paper in her hand.

"There are three pieces to the map," she said. "This is one of them."

"Lopez?" he asked.

"Yes," she muttered. "Santa Anna had many wives. My mother was one. You will recall that the captain of the mule train sent one third of the map to Santa Anna himself. It was about all my mother got out of Santa Anna's estate when he died."

"Who was it downstairs?" he asked.

"He came from behind. It was dark. I did not see."

He stared at the section of paper a long time, scratching his dirty beard with a thumbnail. "Huerta's been trying to find out all along if I have the _derrotero_. The fact that he doesn't know for sure has kept him from making any definite move, one way or another. What would he do if he found out, for sure, one way or another?"

"Why should he find out?" she said.

"You're with Huerta."

"Am I?" she said, moving in close again. "Maybe I _was_."

"You tried that before," he said.

"No," she said hotly. "Will you never trust me, Crawford? I want to help you. Not just the map. That doesn't matter, now. Out there, with the _trigueño_. I'm sorry for what I called you."

"Maybe you were right," he said, bitterly.

"No! You're not a coward, intrinsically. Can't you see what they were doing? Maybe Huerta was the first to see how it was--about your legs. Now they all know. They're using it, Crawford. Quartel used it today. He shoved you up against the horse and held you there till you were half-crazy with panic. He knew you wouldn't fight him in that state. It wasn't fear of him that demoralized you. It was horrible to watch." She reached up to grasp his elbows with her hands, lifting her weight toward him. "But I've seen what you used to be, too. When you brought Whitehead back. No coward could have done that. Come back, with Whitehead that way, knowing what you would have to face, here. Do you realize what it did to me? To come out on the porch that morning and see you standing there beside Whitehead's body, knowing what it meant. It doesn't happen to a person often in her life, Crawford. That sort of feeling. Let me help you, Crawford. I want to. I can't if you don't trust me."

She was up against him now, almost sobbing it, and his hands had slid around her waist, the flesh hot and silken against his palm through her gown. For one last moment he tried to fight it. But he had fought so long, so alone, without anyone, and the warm resilience of her body against him filled Crawford with a giddy weakness.

"Merida," he muttered thickly, bending her back, "Merida--"

She pulled away, her face flushed. "I can't--if you don't trust me--"

He held her that way, breathing heavily, her back arched away from him by the pressure of her hands against his chest. He searched her wide, dark eyes, and found no guile there. Still filled with that desire and driven by it, he made a guttural, inarticulate sound, releasing her, and took one step to the bed, lowering himself on the embroidered muslin coverlet. He bent to take off his right Justin. The fancy stitching across the top of the boot unknotted, and he pulled it away from half a dozen eyelets in the leather, revealing a double thickness which formed a pocket.

"Used to keep my money here," he said, pulling out the piece of parchment Rockland had given him. The woman's hand trembled as she took it from him, laying it on the bed beside her piece, fitting them together. Then her pale finger crossed the map until it reached a word printed on his section. Her voice was no more than a whisper.

"Mogotes Serpientes."

"Yeah," he said, watching her. "Yeah. I never got around to using the map. Kenmare was on my tail a lot since I left San Antonio. I didn't take too much stock in the story anyway. Del never told me anything about it, and it was his uncle supposed to have been captain of that mule train. How did Rockland get hold of this portion?"

"Delcazar's uncle escaped to Mexico City, where he died, his effects being turned over to the family lawyer down there," she said. "Rockland originally wanted the Delcazar land up here for the water. He sent Tarant down to Mexico City to make sure there was nothing in the Delcazar papers which would prevent having clear title to the land when he got hold of it. Tarant found this part of the chart when he was going through those papers." She straightened slowly, allowing her gaze to reach his face. "Do you know who has the other piece, Crawford?"

"No," he said.

Her eyes grew blank; and he stood swiftly, grasping her hand. "I've trusted you, Merida. Now you've got to trust me. I don't know."

"It's got to be more than trust now," she said. "We're in it together, Crawford. If I'm to help you, you've got to help me. Will you?"

"Haven't I proved that?" he said, trying to pull her toward him with that hand. "Anything, Merida--"

She held back, calculation hardening the planes of her face. "Perhaps I should have said, _can_ you?"

Just the feel of her wrist in his fingers that way, soft and satiny, started it up again in him, and he quit trying to pull her in, and took a step in toward her. "What horse you on now?"

"I mean, maybe you can't. Maybe you're incapable of it. You can't do much the way you are now, Crawford. You're only half a man. It's not just the horses any more. It's your whole life. Everything you do is affected by it. I've thought of trying to get you a gun. A dozen times. It would be hard, but I might be able to do it. To stay unarmed here, like this--" She put her free hand against his chest to stop him. "What good would it do, Crawford? If you'd had a gun, would you have used it today? Quartel carries one. Would you have pulled yours on him?"

No woman had ever affected him so violently before. Hardly aware of what she was saying, the blood pounding through his head, he sought to force her hand aside and bend his face to hers, wanting only to feel her against him again.

"Merida," he said, the blood so thick in his throat it made him sound strangled, "I told you--anything--"

She took a deep, ragged breath, and he could not tell whether she was fighting him or herself, now. "No, Crawford. It wouldn't be any different with a gun. Not the way you are now. A gun wouldn't do you any more good than your bare hands. Quartel wanted you to fight him with your hands. You wouldn't even do that. Nothing will do you any good until you can step on a horse again without feeling that pain in your legs--that fear." She forced herself away, saying it in a cold tone, "Africano?"

It was like throwing ice water on a fire. All his ardor disappeared before the abrupt clutch of fear that word engendered in him. He stiffened for a moment, still holding that one hand. Then he dropped it and stepped back, his mouth twisted. Just the word, like that. Just the name.

"Yes." The heavy rise and fall of Merida's breast abated as she studied him, the candor gone from her face now, a cold, critical speculation filling her eyes as she studied him. "Perhaps I was wrong, Crawford. Perhaps you can't help me. Perhaps I can't help you."

"No? Let me show you," he said desperately.

_Chapter Ten_

FLIGHT FROM SNAKE THICKETS

This time of night did strange things to the brush. The moon had not yet risen enough to light fully the trails winding their secretive way through the jealous chaparral, and what vague dim light did seep through the gloom held a reflected, synthetic quality. Most of the _vaqueros_ were in a drunken stupor when Crawford and the woman left the house, getting one of Rockland's prized copperbottoms and a pinto mare from the corrals without being detected. They rode north from the spread, following one of the ancient game traces which the _vaqueros_ used when working the cattle. In the eerie illumination, the berries ripening on the granjeno bushes formed yellow shadow patches against the velvet backdrop of darkness farther back, and the white filament of the horse-maimer was turned to a sick erubescence where it crouched on a stony ridge. Crawford caught the dim glow of the cactus's silky blossoms, and pulled his reins in a hard jerk against the pinto's neck. The animal shied to the right, away from the horse-maimer.

"Crawford!"

The woman said it softly from behind him, a controlled anger in her voice. She moved the copperbottom up beside him, peering at his face.

"It's all right," he said impatiently.

"Crawford," she said again, in that low, insistent tone.

He tried to relax his legs against the pinto. Just a walk, and they were like that. He felt his shirt sticking to his armpits and knew the sweat was showing on his face. That terrible frustration was biting at him.

"I told you it was all right," he said harshly.

A savagery entered her voice, struggling with that restraint. "Will you quit trying to hide it, Crawford. From me. From yourself. I know all about it now. I've seen it. There's no use being ashamed of it with me. It's there. We both recognize it. Admit it. That's the first thing you've got to do."

"All right. I'm afraid. Every time it moves. Every time it bats an eyelash. Every time it--"

He stopped, realizing how violent the release had been, and it seemed the mocking echoes of his voice were dying down the sombrous lanes of the brush. He turned away from her, feeling a new wave of shame.

"That's better than nothing," she said. The tone of Merida's voice made him turn back to her. She must have been waiting for that, because the movement brought his eyes around to hers. "When you wouldn't meet Quartel back at the bull-tailing," she said, "I condemned you for being a coward. I'll never do it again. You may be afraid, but I'll never condemn you for it. The only thing I'll condemn you for is refusing to face your fear."

He felt his legs relaxing slightly, and for a moment the beat of his heart diminished. He had never talked with anyone about it like this before. He had kept it locked within himself, refusing to look at it, refusing to admit it even to himself.

"Do your legs hurt now?" she said.

"A little." His voice was tight.

"Crawford--"

"All right. A lot. They hurt like hell. I hurt all over. Does that satisfy you?"

"This the river?" she said.

He pulled the pinto to a stop and stepped off stiffly. He stood there a moment with his face into the horse, trembling faintly. When he moved away from the animal, the nebulous pain subsided somewhat in his loins. Yet the animal's very proximity kept the irritation in his consciousness. When he pulled the map from his shirt, his hand twitched spasmodically, and he almost tore the paper. She took the paper from his uncertain hands, moving into the best of the bizarre light. They had ridden north in order to strike the Nueces River where the route on his portion of the _derrotero_ started. The woman hunkered down on the ground, spreading the paper out. There was something wild about her figure, crouching there like that, her dark head brooding over the chart. She looked up abruptly. It caused him to make a small, involuntary movement, realizing how he had been watching her. He squatted down beside her, seeing the scarlet tip of her finger descend to the words printed in Spanish at one end of the chart.

"Montezuma Embrujada?"

"Yeah," he said. "You can see them right across the river. I don't know why they're called the Haunted Ruins. It's just an old Spanish fort they had here to guard the gold trains coming from the San Saba Mines."

Her finger moved down the line on the paper to the next spot. "Chapotes Platas."

"Silver Persimmons. A bunch of persimmon trees growing about five miles south of here that look silver in the moonlight. I been by there sometimes chousing cattle with Delcazar."

"Tinaja de la Tortuga." Her finger had passed on to the third spot marked on the upper portion of the map.

"Turtle Sink, we call it," he said. "There's the biggest old granddaddy turtle you ever saw living there, but I never saw any water."

"Veredas Coloradas--"

"You got me now," he said. "I told you nobody's seen all of the _brasada_. Delcazar knows more about it than anybody else I ever knew, but he can't tell me where Snake Thickets are, or what's in Lost Swamp."

"This is still on the portion of the map you had," she said.

He nodded. "It's new brush to me and thicker'n heel flies in spring. It takes a machete to get through."

Her finger was trailing on down the line, crossing the jagged tear in the paper, marking the spots noted on the second portion of the _derrotero_. "Llano Sacaguista, Puenta Piedra, Resaca Perdida--you don't know any of these?"

He shook his head. "I told you. I've never been down that way. I've heard of some. Puenta Piedra, for instance. There's supposed to be a natural stone bridge somewhere along the Rio Diablo. And most everybody in the brush has heard the tales about Lost Swamp."

"Puenta Piedra is beyond that thick brush," she said. "Why not skirt that section of the _brasada_ until we strike Rio Diablo? If Puenta Piedra is somewhere along Rio Diablo, we should find it by following the river's course. Then maybe we can follow the chart from Puenta Piedra on down to the Snake Thickets."

"We won't get back before daylight," he said.

"I don't care." She rose with a toss of her head. "Let them know we've been hunting the chest. I told you there wasn't any time left to beat about the bush."

"And what have we got when we do reach Snake Thickets?" he said.

"Don't ask me!" She seemed to allow herself full release for the first time. Her face was flushed and she swung aboard the copperbottom viciously. "All I know is I can't sit around that house and wait for something to happen. The only way to find something is to go out and hunt for it--"

She stopped, as she saw him standing there staring at the pinto. It had a little roan in its black coloring which caused the dark spots to run over into the white patches, giving a sloppy, splotched effect. It stirred faintly, snorting. Merida saw what that did to him.

"Crawford--"

There was a plea in her voice. She sat quiescent, waiting. His lips flattened against his teeth. He moved slowly to the pinto, standing there, staring at the sweaty saddle. The smell of it grew in his nostrils. He was filled with the impulse to turn and run. His body twitched with it.

"Crawford--"

He put his foot in the stirrup and stepped aboard.

Silver Persimmons, Turtle Sink, Rio Diablo. They were names on the chart. They were spots in the brasada. They were names in his head and their reality blended with black letters on faded parchment. He lost all sense of time. His only consciousness was of movement. No telling how long it took them from Haunted Ruins to Silver Persimmons. The weird brush floated past in a sea of mingled pain and trembling and sweating. The stark arms of chaparral supplicated the night on every side. The _cenizo's_ ashen hue had turned a sick lavender from recent rain, and it reeled biliously into vision and out again. Then Chapotes Platas were gleaming like newly minted coin beneath the risen moon. The woman talked sometimes, watching Crawford, in a low, insistent way.

"My mother was the _curandera_ of the village. You have no idea how many plants those herb-women can make medicine from. On Saturday we would go to the river a mile away and gather herbs. I used to enjoy that. It was as far away from home as I got. The rest was mostly work. Nothing very nice to remember. Choking to death in the fumes of the herbs my mother had cooking constantly in the big brass kettle in our jacal. Rubbing my eyes all day in the smoke. She was stone blind from that. Grinding corn on the metate. I must have spent half my waking hours with that metate. Do you blame me for marrying Capitán Mendoza when he asked? I didn't love him. He was brutal and ugly. But he was stationed in Mexico City. I was fourteen at the time--"

Turtle Sink ceased to be inked words on yellowed paper and rose abruptly from the shadowed depths of the brush--a stony water hole with sand white as bleached bones covering its bottom and the scarred, mottled shell of a huge turtle barely visible in the black shadow beneath one end. They were beyond that when the sound of his breathing slid momentarily across the uppermost reaches of his consciousness. It was not as labored, or as harsh. Then it was her voice, floating in again.

"After Mendoza died, riding with Diaz, I got a job entertaining in a cafe near Collegio Militar. It was there I first met Huerta. He taught me to speak English, gave me my first taste of what money can do. Tarant had known Huerta before, and when Rockland sent him down to look into the Delcazar papers, Tarant contacted Huerta to help him. Huerta was there when Tarant came across the portion of the _derrotero_ Delcazar's uncle had possessed. That's how Huerta knew Rockland would have it. When Huerta told me about it, I showed him the portion of the map I had--"

Now it was his legs. First it had been his breath, now it was his legs. He realized they were hanging free against the stirrup leathers. He was sitting a horse without tension for the first time since Africano had rolled him. He turned toward Merida. Maybe it was in his face.

"Your legs don't hurt now, do they?"

He was almost afraid to speak. "No," he said, with a strange, husky wonder in his voice. "No."

He had never seen her smile with such rich sincerity, and her voice trembled with a strange, joyful excitation. "Then we can, Crawford, we can!"

He stared at her, unable to answer. Then he averted his head, lips thin against his teeth. Could they? He was afraid to answer it. Yet the pain was gone. He could sit there with the movement of the horse beneath him and its sweaty fetor reaching his nostrils in vagrant waves and feel no pain. And with the cessation of his pain, the other things became more vivid in his consciousness.

He caught the faint honeyed odor of white brush from a draw to his right, and drank in its full sweetness for the first time in months. The woman saw that, and her lips lifted faintly. They reached Rio Diablo and turned northward on its banks. It was the best water between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, yet it was no more than a stream, its mucky course following a sandy bottom that wandered in lazy loops through the _brasada_.

"We're crossing Delcazar's old spread now," Crawford told her. "You can see how much better watering you'd get here than where Rio Diablo turns into Rockland's holdings. That's why Rockland wanted to get hold of this stretch. When Rockland's dad first got the Big O, they say the river was bank full from one end of his pastures to the other. Couple more years and it will be completely dry there."

They passed the borders of what had once belonged to Pio Delcazar and came across a grass-grown pile of stones on a clay bank while it was still dark, a broken, hand-hewn timber thrusting its jagged end skyward from the rubble. Crawford dismounted and moved about the area, bending now and then to squint at certain spots. Then he stared across the river to where another heap of stones stood on the far bank.

"Puenta Piedra," he mused, tugging idly at his scraggly black beard. "I wonder if those stories about a natural stone bridge could have started from one the Spaniards built on the route south from San Antonio."

"How does this line up with Tinaja de la Tortuga?"

He looked upward, turning his head till he found Lucero, and raised his hand to it. "There's the Shepherd's Star. And the one the Mexicans call La Guía. They're always fixed in relation to each other. That leaves us almost due south of Turtle Sink."

"That tallies with the map," she said, spreading the parchment out against her horse's neck. "Red Trails must be right in the middle of that thicket we skirted. And this is the Puenta Piedra they mean. We have to turn east a little now to strike Llano Sacaguista."

He got onto the pinto without hesitation this time, and led down into the brown muck of the shallow water and up the other bank. Llano Sacaguista proved to be a vast open flat covered with greening sacaguista grass. He had never traversed these particular flats, and beyond this was a stretch of brush entirely foreign to him. They left Rio Diablo for a mile or so and then struck it again. A block in the river caused by some ancient upheaval rendered the land boggy here. The hollow boom of bullfrogs mingled with the other night sounds. A 'gator bellowed somewhere from the depths of the exotic brush.

"Looks more like East Texas," Crawford muttered. "I wonder if this could be Lost Swamp."

He could see the glow of excitement in the woman's eyes now. They pushed on southward with the false dawn dropping an eerie light through the brush. The boggy section fell behind, and the natural aridity of the _brasada_ returned. They were still following the river, though it was nothing but a dry bed now, the trickle of water having ceased where it ran into Lost Swamp. A true dawn was bringing light to the sky in the east when they heard the first sound. It was a thin sibilation, reminiscent of the mesquite sighing in a light breeze. Crawford moved his pinto over beside Merida's copperbottom, halting both horses, to sit there, listening. Then he touched a heel to the pinto's flank, moving it carefully down into the very center of the river bed. The brush on either bank grew more dense as they moved on up the dry bed, and began to gather here in the bottoms now. The sound increased, too. The faint hissing was veritably ceaseless now, rising and falling in a sibilant tide. Finally the brush was so thick in the river bed they were having to force their way through. The pinto was beginning to fiddle nervously. It shied, finally, and Crawford jerked it to a stop, a vagrant wave of the old panic gripping him. He sat there a moment, trying to control his breathing.

"You wanted to know where Snake Thickets was," he said. "It looks like we're sitting right on the edge of it."

There was a vague awe in her voice. "It sounds as if all the snakes in Texas had gathered here. Crawford--"

"Don't be loco," he said, seeing it in her eyes. "We wouldn't last two minutes beyond this spot. If those Mexicans cached anything, it sure couldn't have been inside here."