Old Friends Reunited

The Mexicans constructed the roofs of their jacals by laying willow shoots in a herringbone pattern across the bare vigas which formed the rafters, and then piling a foot or so of earth atop the shoots. It was this pattern Crawford saw when he first opened his eyes. Then it was the estufa, built of adobe, in one corner of the room, with a raised hearth and a cone-shaped opening in front, the hood rounding from the center to each wall with two mantels terraced back toward the chimney. It was over this oven that the old man stood.

"Delcazar!"

Crawford's voice turned the aged Mexican, a rusty black frying pan still held in one gnarled fist. His face was seamed like an ancient satchel, and he squinted with the effort of focusing his rheumy eyes on Crawford. His soiled white cotton shirt hung slack from stooped, bony shoulders, and the inevitable chivarras were on his skinny legs, glistening with daubs of grease. They gazed at each other in an uncomfortable silence, and finally Delcazar made a vague movement with the frying pan.

"Hard to know what to say," he mumbled. "After such a long time, and all that's happened."

"Yeah." Crawford put the rotting bayeta blanket off him, moving his arms and legs tentatively, grimacing with the pain it caused him. Hail had come after that first downpour of rain, and the white skin of his shoulders was marked with small purple bruises. He sat up, swinging his legs off, watching the Mexican. "I remember we had a terrible time in that storm. Last I recollect is trying to build a fire beneath some coma trees."

"That must have been a long time before I find you," said Delcazar. "I was in my jacal here when I hear somebody yelling my name. You was carrying Merida across your shoulder. Both near froze to death. I put you to bed like that time in Austin when the red-eye got you." He saw how Crawford was looking around the dim room, and Delcazar grinned hesitantly. "She's out getting water for the coffee."

They were still watching one another that way, waiting, and Crawford waved his hand around the room. "I didn't think you'd hide out here."

Delcazar bent toward him, squinting. "Hide out? How do you mean?"

"A lot of people know about it," said Crawford. "I should think it would be the first place they'd look."

"They?" Then Delcazar seemed to understand. He pointed at himself with a thumb. "You think—that I—I—" He halted with a confused grunt, staring at Crawford. "Then—you didn't?"

"Don't you know?" said Crawford.

"Dios, no," said Delcazar. "How could I know? Bueno told me how you threaten Rockland after Africano rolled you. I thought—" he gave a short, rueful laugh—"I guess I even hoped—"

He trailed off, shrugging hopelessly again, and Crawford bent toward him. "Del, are you trying to tell me you didn't kill Rockland?"

"Trying!" The old man bristled. "Trying to tell you? You doubt my—" He broke off, staring at Crawford. When he spoke again, it was simply, without vehemence. "No, Crawford. I didn't. I thought you did. You're on Bible Two. There was a couple of Rangers in the brush. Torbirio spoke with them. He tell me they had you on the fugitive list."

His face darkened, and he turned away from Crawford, setting the frying pan down. From one of the terraced shelves he took a grease-soaked paper, unwrapping it from about the piece of bacon, rubbing the meat sparingly across the frying pan.

"Isn't that the same piece of side meat you had when we were here last?" said Crawford.

Delcazar tried to smile. "Almost, I guess. Some day I have a hog of my own and we grease the pan with a fresh piece every morning."

"You said you hoped I had killed Rockland," Crawford murmured, watching Delcazar's back. "Why?"

"Nada," said Delcazar. "Nada."

Crawford's levis had been drying over the fire, and he rose to get them. "Because if I had done it, the whole thing could have been nothing more than the quarrel between me and Rockland?"

The old man pulled a pot of boiled beans out and dumped them into the frying pan. "Frijoles fritos, Crawford. You always like them."

"But if it wasn't me who did it," said Crawford, pulling on his damp levis, "there would have to be some other reason for Rockland being murdered. Santa Anna's chests, for instance." He saw Delcazar's whole body stiffen. The beans started to hiss as the flames licked at the bottom of the frying pan. "What do you know, Del?" said Crawford.

"Nada, nada." The old man turned around, rising with effort. "I don't know nothing."

"Your uncle was the capitÁn of that mule train," said Crawford.

"My mother tell me that," said Delcazar. "I never seen him. He died in Mexico City when I was a little niÑo."

"Then why are you so het-up if you don't know anything about it?"

"It's dangerous, Crawford," said Delcazar, catching at his arm. "It's the most dangerous thing ever hit this brush. You better get out of it while you're still alive. It's got the whole brasada going now. No telling how many are mixed up in it now. The Mexican government has an agent up here somewhere."

"Huerta?"

"The man at Rockland's?" said Delcazar. "I don't think so."

"Huerta was the one who told me about your uncle," said Crawford. "Funny nobody has come hunting you. You're a logical link."

"They have," said Delcazar. "I wasn't here to greet them."

"Who?"

"That ramrod Tarant hired to clean out the brush," said Delcazar. "Him and his whole corrida."

"Quartel?" Crawford's eyes narrowed, staring past Delcazar. "I hadn't thought of him."

"You better think of him. You better think about everybody, Glenn. No telling who's in it, now, and who ain't. No telling who's going to come up behind you next. I hear they take your Henry away—" He turned and squatted by the mess of saddle rigging and blankets in the corner, rummaging around till he came up with a wooden-handled bowie—"Here, it's all I have. I know it seems silly, but you got to have something. I wish I had a gun. That old Remington I owned blew up." He stopped again, clutching Crawford's arm. "Glenn, you ain't going back?"

"Why else did you give me the knife?"

The old man let his hand slide off.

"I guess so. I know you." He sniffled, rubbing peevishly at his coffee-colored nose with a calloused index finger. "I guess there ain't any use trying to keep you from it. They couldn't keep you from it with Whitehead. What are you after there, Glenn?"

Puntales of peeled cedar formed the doorframe. Crawford hefted the bowie in his hand, flipped it into the cedar post with a deft twist of his hand. He walked across the room and pulled it free.

"We found Snake Thickets before the norther hit, Del," he said.

The old man grunted. "You're doing it wrong for a short throw like that. Let me show you."

Crawford had been holding the bowie by the tip of its blade and throwing it from back over his shoulder, allowing it to flip over once in the air before it struck. Delcazar palmed the heavy knife with the hilt against his wrist and the blade on his fingers. He threw it from his hip, point foremost. It struck with a dull thud. Crawford went over to the post. The blade was embedded half an inch deeper than his throws had sent it in. Standing there in the doorway, he turned back to the old man, squinting at him. Delcazar sniffled that way again, rubbing his nose, not meeting Crawford's eyes.

"I told you, Glenn, I never even seen Mogotes Serpientes. If you find it, okay. But I never even seen it. I thought it was just a story, like Resaca Perdida."

"We saw Lost Swamp too," said Crawford. "Snake Thickets was the most interesting, though. You should have heard it. Sounded like those beans, only ten times as much. Must be a million snakes in those mogotes." He paced back to Delcazar, palming the knife as the old man had this time, throwing it with a grunt. With the blade quivering in the cedar post, he turned part way to the Mexican. "I guess you know what the woman came from Mexico for. She thinks it's somewhere in Snake Thickets."

Delcazar was shorter than Crawford, and he had to turn his head up to meet the younger man's eyes. "Listen, Glenn," he said soberly, "I don't know what you're in this for. I've heard a lot of reasons. Quartel thinks you got a badge tacked on you somewhere. That might be. A man can get a new job in the time you been away from the brush. Bueno Bailey said something about trying to clear yourself of Rockland's murder. That may be, too. If you didn't kill Rockland, maybe the man who did is at the Big O spread. Personally, I no care whether you killed Rockland or not or why you're here. I just no want to see you messed up in it, that's all. I know you before, and I no want to see you messed up in it. Take my advice as an amigo. Forget Mogotes Serpientes. Forget the whole thing. Get out of it. Get out of it right now."

Crawford scratched his beard, squinting into the old man's eyes thoughtfully. "You know, Del, it just strikes me. Two men can be friends for a long time, and not really know each other very well."

"Ah, carajo," growled Delcazar, shuffling back to hunker over the fire.

Crawford watched him stir the steaming beans. "Is there a way into Snake Thickets, Del?"

"Nada," grumbled the old man. "I don't know. I don't know nothing."

There was a muffled sound from outside, and then Merida was standing silhouetted in the doorway, staring at Crawford. All his weight lay in his chest and shoulders, and below the line of dark sunburn that covered his face and neck, the skin was pale and white and so thin as to gleam almost translucently over the musculature lying quilted across his upper back. He became aware of how long Merida had gazed at him like that, without speaking, and turned farther toward her. The myriad striations that formed the heavy roll of muscle capping his shoulders were clearly defined, and the abrupt movement caused a faint ripple beneath the skin, like the stir of a sleepy snake. Merida smiled strangely as she entered with a big clay jug of water.

"CimarrÓn," she said.

"What?" he asked.

"CimarrÓn," she said. "Ladino. I never could quite think of what you reminded me of. Now I know. One of those wild outlaw cattle Quartel brings in from the brush. Sullen, like them. Bitter. Even built like them. Their weight all up in their shoulders, running the brush so constantly they melt the beef off till—"

She stopped short, a strange, indulgent smile catching at her mouth as she saw the puzzled expression in his face. He turned to pull his shirt off the estufa. Merida moved after him, till she stood close behind. Delcazar was across the room, pulling a twist of chili from where he had hung it on a viga. Merida spoke in a low tone that the old man would not hear.

"What was it out there, Glenn?"

"When do you mean?" he said, without turning around.

"You know when I mean," she said. "After I'd kissed you. The way you looked. That expression on your face."

"Nothing," he said stiffly. He couldn't tell her, somehow, if she didn't know. It just wasn't in him to express his own terrible incapacity again, to her. For that was what it had been, out there, after the kiss. The bitter, unutterable realization that no matter how much he wanted her, he was completely unworthy of such a woman, and could never have her.

"It was something," said Merida, tensely, trying to turn him around, "tell me, Crawford, tell me—"

"Hola, Delcazar!" shouted someone, from outside, halting Merida. The old man whirled about, dropping the chili. Quartel had come into view, outside, across the clearing from the doorway, moving into the open from the brush in stiff, tentative steps, his Chihuahuas tinkling softly. He was leading his own trigueÑo and the copperbottom Merida had ridden. Crawford made an abortive move toward the door, but Delcazar caught him.

"Buenos dÍas," said Delcazar, stepping then into view.

"I found Merida's horse down in the bottoms," Quartel told him. "I thought they might—ah, the flash rider himself."

He must have seen them behind Delcazar. Crawford pushed past the old man into the open, and saw the morning sunlight catch Quartel's white teeth in that pawky grin. The brush held a torn, rended look after the norther, great holes ripped in the mesquite thicket behind Quartel, mesquite berries littering the ground. The copperbottom shifted wearily, rattling its bridle.

"How did you find us?" said Crawford.

"I trailed you," said Quartel.

"That's some trailing."

Quartel shrugged. "Believe it or not. I don't care. There was someone at the Big O looking for you."

"Yeah?"

"SÍ. I misjudged you, Crawford. Let me apologize for thinking you were a lawman." Merida made a small strained sound from behind Crawford, and Quartel grinned at her. "SÍ, Merida. This man looking for Crawford don't pin it on his undershirt, either. He has it right out where everybody can see. He's hunting Crawford all right. He says he's got orders to shoot him on sight."