Part 13

"I knew it was you." Quartel's voice startled him, coming from an entirely different direction than before. "I heard you coming. I wish I could cuss the way you can, Crawford." It was getting on Crawford's nerves. The black was becoming unmanageable beneath him. Under other circumstances he would have been willing to play the game. But the thought of Merida somewhere in there drove all the conditioned wariness from him. Suddenly the black raised its head again; he pulled on the hackamore to stifle the whinny in its throat, but he saw which direction it was turned in. He flapped his legs out wide and brought the heels in hard, bolting the black into the mesquite. They crashed through the _mogote_. Crawford had the Henry in his right hand as they burst into the open, keeping it free of brush with the lever down. A vague, blurred impression of Quartel sitting that _trigueño_ leaped into Crawford's vision. With one motion he was jerking the hackamore against the left side of the black's neck to wheel it toward the man, and then releasing the hackamore completely to have both hands for his rifle, bringing the Henry up into line with his right hand and slapping his left palm against the barrel at the same time. In that last instant, as fast as he had moved, he had time to see why Quartel had been doing it this way. The man had no gun in his hand. Even as Crawford wheeled and brought his Henry up, Quartel was leaning forward with a grunt, his arm snapping out.

Crawford tried to duck the rope and fire at the same time. He heard his bullet clatter through brush, after the thunder of the shot, and knew he had missed. Then the edge of the loop struck his hand and slid down his arm and closed over the gun. It was either let go the Henry or be jerked from his horse.

The rifle bounced along the ground, and for a moment it looked as if Quartel were going to be able to pull it to him. Then it slipped from the noose. The Mexican wheeled his _trigueño_ toward the rifle, and his intent was patent. Crawford turned the black and quartered in on a line that would bring him between Quartel and the Henry. Seeing how he would be blocked off from reaching the gun, Quartel reared his horse to a stop, flirting in his rope and catching it up in loops. Crawford, realizing that if he turned to approach the Henry his back would be to Quartel and the man would have him with that rope, halted his black too. For a moment, the two men sat there facing each other across the open ground. It must have struck Quartel how it had to be, now, about the same time the realization came to Crawford. The Mexican let out a hoarse, violent laugh.

"All right," he said. "I am the best roper in the world, Crawford."

He sat there, grinning, allowing Crawford to unlash the 40-foot rawhide lasso from the black's rig. A picture formed in Crawford's mind that filled him with a growing tension. A picture of Quartel blindfolded on that _trigueño_ in the corral with one end of a rawhide dally tied about his neck and ten snorting, stamping, vicious _ladinos_ tearing up the turf and the strange sighing sound rising from the crowd of sweating, stinking _vaqueros_ every time he threw the bull. It didn't help a man. It didn't help a man while he unhitched the rawhide lashing on the saddle skirt from about the dally and shook out the loops and watched the braided hondo slide down the slick rope. His motions were stiff, jerky. He hadn't roped in a long time.

"Hola!" bellowed Quartel, and those great Chihuahua spurs rolled down the flanks of his brown animal like cart wheels digging ruts in a road. Crawford jabbed his own guthooks into the black, and Africano jumped into a dead run. The brown horse seemed to come at Crawford in a surge that left no space for conscious thought. He knew what a mistake it would be for him to make the first pass, and he bent forward in the saddle, watching Quartel's hand.

But the Mexican was waiting too, and the _trigueño_ was completely past Crawford, with Crawford still holding his rope and twisting around so he could watch Quartel, when the man made his throw. The Mexican passed the rope over his shoulder, without looking at Crawford. In that position, the movement of Quartel's arms was blocked off by his body, and Crawford did not know the Mexican had made his toss till he saw the small, tight loop spinning directly over his head. The throw was calculated to compensate for Crawford's forward speed. All he could do to escape it was rein to one side or the other. He bent forward so far on Africano his chest struck the saddle horn, putting the reins against the black neck hard.

The violence of the quarter turn almost snapped Crawford from the saddle. He shouted with the pain stabbing through his middle. He heard the faint sound of the rope striking Africano's rump. Then he was tearing into a _mogote_ of mesquite.

Instead of going on through, he wheeled Africano within the thicket. The horse reared up, screaming with the pain of turning in that cruel brush, and Crawford was charging out the way he had come.

Evidently expecting Crawford to go on through the mesquite, Quartel was racing around the fringe to intercept him on the other side. This caused the Mexican to be at Crawford's rear as he burst out the same spot he had gone in. Crawford put his reins against Africano's neck, and again the horse responded with that incredible turn, and Crawford found himself directly behind the churning brown rump of the _trigueño_. The Mexican was already in the act of wheeling his horse around to meet Crawford. Then he must have seen how Crawford had turned after him, and realized how his own maneuver would place him, for he tried to turn back. It was too late.

Quartel's first turn had placed him broadside to Crawford's oncoming black. Crawford had that one free pass at Quartel's flank, with the Mexican in no position to defend himself by a throw of his own. Crawford saw his loop settle over the man's head.

"All right," he shouted, and dallied his end of the rope around the saddle horn, wheeling Africano away to pull Quartel off.

But there was no weight on the rope. It fell slackly from the horn, and Crawford twisted back to see what had happened.

He had seen Indians do it. One instant Quartel had been sitting the horse, the next he wasn't. The loop fell across the back of the riderless _trigueño_, caught on the cantle, slipped off. Then the Mexican appeared in the saddle again. He had jumped completely off, hanging onto the horn with but one hand, to strike the ground and bounce back up, the rope hitting while he was off on the far side that way.

The first wild action had left no time for much thought, but now, as he recovered his rope and maneuvered to meet Quartel's next move, the sheer deadliness of this struck Crawford fully. Like trying to figure out three or four plays ahead in a poker game, with your life in the pot instead of a few dollars. Well, he had been figuring one play ahead, ever since he had seen the cards Quartel put down back there at the bull-tailing. It was the trick Quartel had used on Indita. Crawford had spotted the weakness of it, even then. A man could take advantage of that, if he had a horse which could turn quick enough.

Crawford remembered Quartel and Indita had been racing head-on at each other, and he placed himself in the position to meet Quartel that way as the Mexican trotted toward him from across the clearing now. The _trigueño_ was picking up its feet in a high, excited action, lather marbling its snout and chest.

"_Vamanos_," Quartel roared, and raked the animal's bloody flanks with his Chihuahua can openers, and they were racing at each other again. Quartel leaned forward and threw his arm out with a grunt as they went by one another. Crawford's own arm stiffened with the impulse to make his throw. Then he realized Quartel's clothesline was not coming.

The rest of it moved automatically, without any conscious volition from Crawford. Holding his throw, he allowed the black to race on past Quartel. Then, when he knew Quartel would be wheeling that _trigueño_ to make his true cast at Crawford's retreating back, Crawford yanked the _mecate_ against Africano's neck. He felt the movement of the horse's shoulders beneath him, changing leads as it spun in full gallop on its hind foot. No quarter turn this time. A half turn, switching ends completely in that instant, so that he was facing Quartel instead of going away and, with the horse still in motion, was racing back toward the Mexican.

It caused Quartel's rope to overshoot completely. Crawford saw the man's face twist in surprise. Then Crawford made his cast. It was an underhanded throw with a hooley-ann at the end. In wheeling, Quartel had come to a full stop. He made one last abortive effort to turn his animal away, but the small loop caught him before the _trigueño_ reacted. Then Crawford was on past the Mexican, with the rope dallied on his horn and snapping taut. He heard Quartel make a strangled sound of pain. Then there was the thump of him striking the ground.

Crawford tried to keep his black in full gallop and drag Quartel, but something within him rebelled. He halted the animal and swung off, running back to catch the man before he could rise. Quartel was on his knees, that rope still about his thick neck, shaking his head dully. The mesquite rattled behind Quartel, and Merida stepped out. She must have passed the Henry where it had been dropped. She held it cocked in both hands, and her bosom was heaving, her face torn and bleeding from the brush she had run through. They stared at each other without speaking. Her eyes were wide and shining, and her lips started twisting across her teeth without any sound coming out.

Then, without any consciousness of having moved, he found her body in his arms and her lips against his and the sound of her expelled breath hot and hoarse in his ears. He didn't know how long he was lost in it. Finally the other things began to come. The cold, hard feel of the rifle barrel against his back where she held it in one hand with that arm around him. The guttural sounds of pain Quartel was making trying to get that noose off his neck. The crash of another passage through the mesquite.

"Crawford, Crawford, I knew you'd come, I knew they couldn't stop you, none of them--" It was Merida, whispering it in a husky, passionate, barely coherent stream against his chest. "I was so afraid. Thinking of you out there. All those snakes. I wanted you to come and I didn't want you to. I didn't know what I wanted. I do now, I mean. I guess I haven't known really what I wanted all my life, but I do now. I was so afraid--"

"Merida--Where are you?"

It was Huerta's voice, accompanying the rattle of the thicket. Crawford lifted his face from the woman's, staring at the doctor as he stumbled from the mesquite. The man's fustian was ripped and torn, and he was dabbing at a cut on his cheek with a silk monogrammed handkerchief. He brought himself to an abrupt halt, breathing heavily, when he saw them.

Crawford disengaged himself from Merida, taking the rifle out of her hand, still looking at the doctor. There was something about the man that vaguely puzzled him.

"Did you find it?" Crawford asked Merida finally.

A dim, bitter expression entered Merida's face. "Yes," she said, "we found it."

"What do you mean?" Crawford muttered.

She inclined her head through the mesquite, that strange expression still on her features. Crawford frowned at her. Then he turned to jerk the Henry at Quartel. The man had finally got that rope off his neck and stood there rubbing the bruised flesh sullenly. He moved ahead of Crawford through the brush.

"You too, Doctor," said Crawford.

They passed through the thicket and crossed a boggy section. With the violence of the action over now, the hissing of the snakes began to impinge on Crawford's consciousness again. Rising out of the bog to the thick mat of greenish-brown toboso grass covering an island of firm ground, they reached the first aparejo. It was one of the old X-shaped packsaddles used by the original Mexican muleteers, with two brass-bound chests lashed into it so that one would fall on each side of the mule.

"The Mexicans carrying this stuff must have been following the dry river bed and hit the fringe of Snake Thickets about dusk," said Merida. "That's the only way they could have got this far in. Then, when the snakes started waking up, and they realized what they had wandered into, the men left the stuff here, knowing it would be as safe as anywhere they could have hidden it, and shot their way out through the snakes again."

"Did you just stumble onto it too?" Crawford asked.

"Quartel had the other third of the _derrotero_," said Merida.

"Quartel?" Crawford's head lifted sharply to the man. He emitted a small, humorless laugh. "That explains a lot of things."

"Does it?" said Quartel.

"It showed Quartel how to find the aparejos once he was inside Mogotes Serpientes," Merida said. "But not how to find Snake Thickets." Her eyes were on Crawford, and that odd expression still filled her face. She moved her head toward the chest. "Go ahead," she said.

He kept Quartel and Huerta in sight when he knelt. The wood was rotten and someone had torn the lid of one chest away from its brass bindings. He lifted it, and stared at the black gunpowder filling the oak box. The woman's voice sounded far away.

"The Centralists must have done this. They would have done anything to break Santa Anna's power at that time. They knew his men were ready to desert because they hadn't been paid in three months. It was only by the promise of this pay that Santa Anna held them together long enough to fight the battle of San Jacinto. You can imagine their reaction if the train had reached the army and they had found their pay to be nothing more than this." She stared emptily at the case. "Twenty chests of gunpowder. That's ironic, isn't it? All this trouble over twenty chests of gunpowder."

Crawford rose slowly, drawing himself back to present necessities by a distinct effort. "We'd better start thinking about getting out of here."

Huerta's feet made a small, quick shift against the toboso grass. Crawford realized what it was in the man now. That air of infinite ennui was beginning to dissipate before something else; an indefinable tension tightened the little muscles about Huerta's mouth till the soft flesh was furrowed like an old man's. The bluish, veined lower lid of his right eye was twitching noticeably. "We can't go out now," he said, and the strain was palpable in his voice. "Not through all those snakes again. They're awake now."

"This place dries up come daylight," said Crawford. "It won't be any safer than out there. We have to leave sometime before then, and it might as well be now."

He began peeling off his gloves and handing them to Merida; then his heavy denim ducking jacket and the bull-hide chaps. Huerta's breathing became more audible as he watched it.

"No," he said, "no--listen--"

"What's wrong with your gun?" Crawford asked Quartel.

"Merida's horse got hit by a snake about halfway through," said the Mexican. "She got pitched and Huerta wouldn't stop to pick her up. I was following them pretty close and came across her before she'd been caught by the snakes. But they were all waked up in that section and I used my lead up shooting our way on into here. That's why I had to use the rope on you."

"What caliber you got?"

Quartel looked surprised. "It's an old Bisley .44."

From the pocket of his levis, Crawford pulled a handful of his .44 flat-noses. He stood there with the copper cartridges in his hand, meeting Quartet's eyes. He held out his hand.

Quartel stared at the handful of shells, then he threw back his head and let out that Gargantuan laugh. "Crawford, you're the craziest _barrachon_ I ever saw."

He took the cartridges and broke his Bisley and began thumbing them into the cylinder. Huerta lowered the handkerchief from his scratched face, and his effort at control was more obvious now.

"I haven't got a gun," he said.

"That's too bad," said Crawford.

"No, no, listen, you can't expect me to go out there without--"

He turned around and indicated Quartel should follow him through the mesquite to their horses. Like the well-trained roper it was, the _trigueño_ had stopped the instant Quartel left its back, and was standing in the same spot they had left it. Africano must have run on across the bog and been stopped by his fear of the snakes in the first dry thickets over there, for he came trotting back through the mud, whinnying nervously. Crawford blocked the animal off against a _mogote_ of chaparral and caught it.

"Get on first," he told the girl.

"Crawford," Huerta began again, "you can't--"

"Get your horse if you're coming with us," he told the man.

Huerta opened his mouth to say something more; then, with a strangled, inarticulate sound, he turned and crashed back through the mesquite. In a moment he returned on the copperbottom. It was a risky thing to do with such a green horse, but there was no other way, and Crawford swung onto the black behind the cantle. The animal kicked in a startled, angry way and started to buck. Crawford swung his arms around in front of Merida to grab the _mecate_ and yank back hard on it, spurring Africano at the same time. The _puro negro_ quit bucking and broke forward, slopping into a muddy stretch. Crawford turned the horse to get Quartel in front of him. They rode toward the edge of the bog that way.

"You go first, Quartel," Crawford said. "I'll follow you, Huerta. If you can keep your head and stay in between us, we might be able to get you out. Just keep your head. That's the whole thing. Get panicky and you're through. You can even get bit a couple of times by snakes and still live to tell about it if you don't let it throw you. It isn't the venom that kills a man so quick; it's when he gets spooked and starts running and yelling and pumping all that poison through him a hundred times as fast as it would spread if he just stayed calm. Savvy?"

Huerta's copperbottom fiddled beneath him. "Crawford, I can't. Not without a gun. You can't ask me to."

"Quartel?" said Crawford.

"_Sí_," grinned the Mexican, and flapped his feet out wide. The _trigueño_ bolted before Quartel's feet came back in to kick his flanks, and then crashed into the thickets. Crawford held the Henry in one hand and he waved it at Huerta.

"Get going, damn you, I'm not going to wait for you to puke, get going!"

"No, I can't, not through there--" Huerta saw Crawford swing out his feet, and whirled the copperbottom with a last desperate shout, and crashed into the Snake Thickets after Quartel. Then Crawford's heels struck the black, and they were going.

At first it was only the wild, crashing, pounding, yelling run through the mesquite. With Quartel leading the way all they had to do was follow the trail he made, running through holes he had burst in the thickets ahead of them. Then the snakes began. First it was that sharp, dry thump against Africano's _pechero_, and the woman's shrill, startled cry. Quartel's gun crashed from ahead of them, but Crawford was too taken up with reining the black to use his Henry. He had that blurred impression of violent undulation around him. There was another snapping thud against Africano's buckskin shield, and a big diamondback fell to the ground beneath them as they went by.

Then it was the shrill scream from Huerta's copperbottom ahead. Crawford saw the huge rattler dropping off the animal's rump, and the copperbottom started to buck.

"There it is," screamed Huerta, "there it is!"

"Don't lose your head," shouted Crawford. "Get him to running again. He'll last through, Huerta, get him to running--"

Another rattler flashed from the thickets. The copperbottom reared up as the snake struck, pawing the air wildly. Crawford came up from behind at a dead run and Huerta's panicky reining brought the copperbottom down broadside to them. Crawford jerked his whole body to the left with the desperation of his attempt to rein the black around, but Africano smashed head-on into Huerta's animal.

Crawford had the sense of falling through a bedlam of Huerta's wild yells and Merida's voice calling something and the animal's frenzied, agonized screaming. Then he hit the ground with Merida coming down on top of him. It knocked the breath from him and he struggled to get from beneath her, making a horrible retching sound in his fight for breath. He got to his knees, surprised that he still clutched the Henry. The copperbottom was already crashing off through the brush, and Africano was just scrambling to his feet. Crawford lurched at the black horse, but Africano whirled and galloped at a _ramadero_ of _cejas_, smashing through and disappearing. There was a whirring sound from behind and Merida's shriek. He whirled, snapping the lever on his Henry down at the same time, and fired from the hip at the serpent coiled just beyond her. She had been in the act of throwing herself away, and the slug driving into the snake aborted its strike. The head fell heavily to the ground with only half its length uncoiled. Crawford leaped to Merida, grabbing her roughly by the elbow and yanking her erect.

"Crawford, get me out, Crawford! Crawford!" It was Huerta, rising from the patch of switch mesquite where he had been thrown. There was a sallow, putty color to his face and that eye was twitching uncontrollably now. He staggered toward them, his blasé, jaded sophistication swept away before the terrible animal fear. A deadly rattle rose from behind him and he tried to run, and stumbled, falling against Crawford.

The woman's gasp made Crawford turn in the direction she was looking, and he brought up the Henry, kicking free of Huerta, firing at the snake which had writhed from the switch mesquite toward them, shouting at Huerta. "Get up, then. I'll get you out. Get up!"

Panting, sobbing hoarsely, Huerta pulled himself up, staring about him wildly, starting like a frightened deer at every new sound. Crawford put the woman directly before him and started moving forward. Huerta cringed at his side, clawing at him, and he had to keep shoving the man away.

"Hurry, Crawford, hurry, please, what are you doing this for? We'll never--"

"Let go," Crawford bawled at him. "It won't do to lose our heads and start running. How can I--"

"No, Crawford, no--"

Shouting it, Huerta reeled back against him. Crawford had to fight the man off and wheel that way and fire all at once. He couldn't have hit the snake anyway. It had already been in the middle of its lunge.

"I'm hit," screamed Huerta. "Crawford, I'm hit. Save me. I'll do anything. Help me!"

"Keep your head, Huerta. Quit fighting like that!"

"No, Crawford, for God's sake!" Huerta was floundering around blindly, shouting and clutching at Crawford, who tried to kick him away so he could keep the gun going. Another rattler slithered from the thickets, and he fired wildly at it.

"Huerta!" cried Merida, tearing at the man, the panic gripping her voice and twisting her face, "don't be a fool. Let him go, let him go--"