Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How's the sorrel?" he said.

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

"Hola!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's the matter, Crawford?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huerta was right!

_Chapter Four_

UNREASONING FEAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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