Part 3

"Did you ever hear the story of Santa Anna's chests, Mr. Crawford?" Merida Lopez asked, finally, a strange, obscure mockery coloring her voice.

"No," answered Crawford stiffly.

She tasted her soup, eyes still on him. "In April of 1826, at the close of the Texas Revolution, General Santa Anna had led his Mexican army halfway across Texas after General Houston's forces, finally catching him at San Jacinto. There were two major political parties in Mexico at that time, the Federalists and the Centralists. The Centralists had been trying for some time to break Santa Anna's growing power in politics. For four or five months they had managed to have the army pay withheld, but Santa Anna finally got a pay train sent from Mexico City. The battle of San Jacinto was in progress when this mule train arrived, and a party of Texans cut it off before it could reach the Mexican army, chasing it westward into the brush somewhere south of the Nueces. The Texans finally caught the Mexicans, and in the battle that followed the greater part of the Mexicans were killed. But the mules had disappeared. They have not been found since."

"Neither has the Lost Nigger Mine, or Steinheimer's millions," said Crawford. "I been listening to windies like that since I was a button."

"Ah, a skeptic." Again that mockery, more palpable this time. She toyed with her soupspoon. The faint movement of her wrist drew his glance, and he found himself wondering how the soft white skin would feel. "And still, Crawford, doesn't it intrigue you?" Her voice penetrated his attention, and he raised his gaze self-consciously. Just her hand. Just the movement of her hand like that. What the hell? "Five months' pay for an army, Crawford. Does a man like you have any conception of that kind of money? Men would kill for it. Even governments. And there is more than just the story. There is what the Mexicans call a _derrotero_."

She let her eyes lift momentarily from the spoon, but he had kept his face carefully blank. He was beginning to notice her enunciation now. The accent was discernible sometimes. Her careful precision seemed an effort to hide it.

"This _derrotero_," she said. "Literally a map, a chart. It was made by the captain of the mule train. When he realized the Texans would inevitably catch him, he secreted the pay chests somewhere in the brush, making the chart. Fearing that, if he entrusted the whole of the chart to one man, that man might be captured, he divided it into three portions. Thus, if one or even two of the men were caught, the chests would still be safe, for the hiding place could not be located without all three portions. One section he sent with an Indian to Santa Anna himself at San Jacinto. The second part he gave to his lieutenant, to carry to the Federalists in Mexico City. The third he kept himself."

"Yeah?" said Crawford.

"Yes," she said, smiling in dim amusement at his acrid reticence. For a moment, her eyes were half-closed, studying him, and they held a slumberous, provocative temptation. It stirred something primal within him. He had felt it before. But not this way. Not just looking in a woman's eyes.

"The captain of that mule train was the uncle of your friend Pio Delcazar!"

It went through him with a palpable shock, and it was not till after she had finished speaking that Crawford realized what she had been doing, with those eyes. They had turned hard and speculative, now, and with the spell broken, Crawford felt the twisted expression her words had drawn to his face. He tried to regain that inscrutability, but knew it was too late. There was a certain triumphant satisfaction in the way Merida allowed her gaze to drop to the table as she began eating the soup again. And now the two men were watching him. He felt the sweat break out on his palms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're riding a muddy creek."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The woman frowned at him. "Hm?"

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

"What about the horse?" she said.

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

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

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

"I lost my horse on the Flores Road."

"It was hit?"

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

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

"What about the way I was watching it?"

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

"Impression about what, Huerta?" said Tarant.

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

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

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

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

_Chapter Three_

HUERTA WAS RIGHT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Still snipping cinches, Bueno?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know who he is," said Quartel.

"Then why--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where you going?" shouted Quartel.

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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