Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then perhaps you will reconsider my proposition."

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

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

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

_Chapter Six_

"TELL US WHAT HAPPENED."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crawford looked at the knife. He sat down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How did it happen?" Innes asked Crawford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where's the sorrel?" said Bailey.

"What sorrel?" said Innes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How did it get broke?"

"How did you lose the sorrel?"

"What happened?"

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

"Tell us what happened."

"_Sí_, tell us, Crawford."

"What happened, Crawford?"

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

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

"Where's the sorrel?"

"How'd he break his neck?"

"Talk, damn you!"

"Tell us, Crawford."

"What happened?"

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

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

_Chapter Seven_

SUNDAY CELEBRATION

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

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

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

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

"Huerta!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What are you talking about?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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