Huerta Makes a Proposition

At dawn, it was the birds, mostly, during the spring months, like this. They filled the dim undulations of brush with a constant, shrill twittering. Bobwhites shrieked from a draw full of white brush, and blue quail cooed beneath the cejas of green brazil, and turkeys gobbled down in a dry creek bed where they were fattening on elm mast.

Through all this treble cacophony, Glenn Crawford walked heavily up the road leading the shaggy black cow pony. It was Jacinto who saw him first. Though the sun had not yet risen, smoke curled from the kitchen, and the gross Mexican was just outside the door filling the coffeepot from the water butt. It cost him some effort to straighten up when he caught sight of Crawford. He stared blankly. Then he dropped the big coffeepot with a clang and began running his way, grunting as each foot struck the ground, his short, bandy legs looking as if they would collapse every time the prodigious weight of his torso descended on them in a step.

"Dios, Crawford," he shouted. "VÁlgame Dios. What happened? Que hace? Who is it? Are you all right? What happened?"

He was halfway to Crawford by the time Aforismo stumbled into view at the bunkhouse door, pulling bare brown legs into his stiff, greasy chivarras and blinking sleepily. Someone must have asked him what it was, for he grunted something over his shoulder and came on out. Jacinto had reached Crawford by the time he got to the front of the house, and it was there Crawford halted the horse. The tremendous Mexican stood with his great belly heaving from the run, staring blankly at Whitehead. He started to reach out and touch the man, then dropped his hand.

"Is—is he—"

"Yes," said Crawford, watching Aforismo come from the bunkhouse and Quartel step out the door now, yawning and cursing. The shutter on an upstairs window clattered against the dilapidated weatherboarding, and Huerta leaned out to look down a moment. Then he withdrew his head, and Crawford could hear movement from within his room. Quartel came across the compound after Aforismo, slipping a dirty cotton shirt over his head.

"What happened?" he said. He looked at the body slung across the horse without much expression in his face. What lay in his eyes was not apparent till he got closer. They were narrowed, and the pupils held a strange oblong felinity.

"Es muerto," said Jacinto stupidly.

"I know he's dead," said Quartel. "What happened?"

"Out in the brush," said Crawford, watching Quartel.

The Mexican looked at him, then glanced at the horse. He reached out to pull the Winchester from beneath the stirrup leather, opening the front end of the magazine and tilting the gun down. Two copper rim-fires clinked into his calloused palm.

"Looks like he did a lot of shooting," said Quartel.

"He always carried that gun in one hand when he rode," said Jacinto. "I told him he'd fall and break his neck sometime."

"Did you?" said Quartel. He was studying Crawford, shaking the two .44 shells up and down in his closed hand. "You still haven't told us what happened."

"His neck's broken," said Jacinto hopefully.

Quartel allowed his narrowed eyes to observe the odd way Cabezablanca's head hung, twisted around from the line of his shoulders. "That's what it looks like. Where did you find him?"

"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, from the door. "Where did you find him, Crawford?"

He had on a gaudy black-and-gold dressing-gown with satin lapels and slippers of red leather. His face had never looked more dissolute. The dim light seemed to draw out the singular, jaundiced corruption of his sallow flesh. His heavy lids were almost closed over his eyes, veined and pouched, and one of them twitched visibly. He had both hands in the pockets of his bathrobe, and they were visibly closed into fists. Merida stood behind him. She had on a house gown of blue cashmere, evidently donned hurriedly. There was something Indian about her dark, aquiline face; her black hair hanging long and straight about her shoulders.

"I told you," said Crawford. "Out in the brush."

"You didn't tell me," said Huerta.

"I told Quartel," said Crawford.

"He didn't tell me what happened," said Quartel.

"To Crawford," said Merida, "or Whitehead?"

"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, moving tiredly across the porch. "What did happen to you, Crawford?"

"We ain't interested in that now," said Quartel. "I'd like to know what happened to Whitehead first."

"You seemed interested yesterday," said Merida. "You were quite upset that you had lost Crawford in the brush."

"What have you got in your hand?" said Huerta.

"A gun," Quartel told him.

"Don't be obtuse," said Huerta. "I mean the other hand."

Quartel opened his fingers. The two shells glinted dully in the growing light. Somewhere out back of the bunkhouse a rooster crowed. Both Huerta and Merida looked for a long moment at the two cartridges. Slowly, Huerta's jaded eyes moved to Crawford, and the heavy, blue lids were lifted farther open.

"You say his neck is broken?" Huerta asked nobody in particular.

"Jacinto said his neck was broken," said Quartel.

"Well," said the woman impatiently, "is it?"

Huerta drew a weary breath and came slowly down the sagging steps and around the horse. "Yes," he nodded, without taking his hands from his pockets. "Broken."

"Like in a fall?" That pathetic hope was in Jacinto's voice again.

Huerta took one of his hands out. His long, pale fingers moved slightly across Cabezablanca's head and face, sifting the dense white hair and testing the skull with a professional casualness. "No contusions about the head or face."

Huerta was running his forefinger delicately across the back of Cabezablanca's shirt now, flattening it over the resilient planes of the man's back. Then he moved around to the other side of the shaggy horse, tugging at the man's pants legs. "No other wounds either," he said at last. His head turned slowly till he was looking at Crawford. Something had begun to dissipate the jaded glaze from those eyes, something that grew in them as he watched Crawford. He spoke, however, to Quartel. "How many shots does that Winchester hold?"

"It's an 1866 with King's improvements," said Quartel. "Thirteen."

"Oh." It was a soft, hissing intonation. Then Huerta motioned toward the bunkhouse with the hand he had out. "Better take him down and bury him out back of the bunkhouse."

Quartel jerked the Winchester at Crawford. "Let's go."

"No," said Huerta, putting that hand back in his pocket and walking up the steps to the porch. "I think Crawford had better stay here at the house for breakfast. You did such a poor job of keeping tabs on him yesterday."

Quartel's face darkened and he took a quick breath before he spoke the word. "Huerta—"

"Yes?" said Huerta, turning around at the top of the steps to face Quartel. He leaned forward slightly, his satanic brows arched upward, those heavy lids slipping down across his eyes. There was a faint, inquiring smile on his thin, bloodless lips. For a moment Quartel stood there staring at him, mouth still open a little. The rooster crowed again. A chachalaca started scolding his mate out in the thicket. With an abrupt jerk, Quartel turned to catch up the trailing reins of the pony and started off toward the bunkhouse in that stiff-legged walk of his, wooden boot heels thumping in a swift, hard tattoo against the ground. Aforismo watched him go a moment, scratching his bare stomach absently.

"You can't tell a man's been picking tunas just because he has nopal thorns all over his coat," he said.

Crawford's boots made a soft muffled sound across the Aubusson rug of the living-room. He lowered himself heavily into the Turkish toweling which upholstered the movable cushions of the willow chairs by the front windows. For the first time he felt fully the toll the preceding night had exacted from him. His black beard failed to hide the gaunt, driven hollows beneath his cheeks, and there was something feverish in the glow of his eyes. He stared absently about the spacious, cool room. Rockland had refurnished this chamber not two years ago, and as many times as Crawford had been in it, he could never get used to such luxury in this harsh, barren land. Huerta had followed him into the house, halting in the entrance hall for a word with Merida, and now the doctor stepped into the living-room, closing the door behind him. He stood there a moment, studying Crawford.

"Merida will dress and be down for breakfast," he said, absently. He moved to the pier table of rich, figured British oak at one side of the room, opening one of the doors to lift out a cut-glass decanter. "Perhaps you would like a drink—after what happened, no?" His face managed to convey the effort the slightest physical exertion seemed to cause him, as he poured the liquor. Then his red Chinese slippers slid over the Aubusson's thick nap to Crawford. As he bent forward to hand Crawford the drink, their glances met. Perhaps it was a trick of the illumination from the window. The pupils of Huerta's eyes seemed to dilate and contract and dilate again, small pin points of glittering light flaring and dying and flaring once more beneath the jet-black surface. It filled Crawford with a vague dizziness. "Why did you bring Whitehead back, Crawford?" murmured the doctor. "It seems to me you were rather in a position to escape, out there." He waited a moment, but Crawford did not answer. "When you first came, I considered it necessary to guard you," said Huerta, finally. "Perhaps I was taking undue precautions. It seems you would have stayed anyway. Why, Crawford? Do you still maintain you didn't murder Rockland?"

"That's right." It came from Crawford in a flat defiance.

"Then the only way you could prove your innocence would be to find who really did murder Rockland," said Huerta. "Do you think the murderer is here?"

"I have no doubt of it," said Crawford.

"Just what did happen out there?" Huerta said softly, bending toward Crawford with the liquor.

Crawford took the drink, downed it neat before answering. "What do you think?"

"I think you surprised a lot of people," said Huerta. "And gave them a different estimation of you than they had possessed before." He leaned backward slightly. "Why should Whitehead want to kill you?"

"Who said he did?"

"I never knew such a secretive man," said Huerta. "You refuse to give one inch, don't you? Very well. Let us assume that Whitehead wanted to kill you. Why should he?"

"Whitehead was Quartel's man?" said Crawford.

"Quartel is the foreman here," Huerta's agile mind had connected that even while he spoke, and his head tilted forward in a faint acquiescence. "All right. Why should Quartel want you killed?"

"He seemed to think I was a lawman," Crawford muttered.

"Is that sufficient reason?"

"You haven't been in the brasada long, have you?" said Crawford. "It's a good form of suicide for a lawman to show up in here."

Huerta nodded that way again, studying Crawford. "It is interesting," he murmured, "to watch it."

That took Crawford off guard. "What?"

"The way it works in you," said Huerta. "You're conscious of it all the time, Crawford, whether in the proximity of horses or not."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Crawford, getting up from the chair with such violence that he pulled one of the rich blue pillows off with him. He paced across the room in swift, inhibited strides. Huerta watched him a moment, putting the jade holder languidly to his lips. He did not smile, but the heavy blue lids, narrowing across his eyes with a feline torpidity, managed to convey a certain condescending amusement. His pale, pinched nostrils fluttered, emitting twin streamers of smoke.

"Did it ever occur to you," he said, "that the legs might not really be completely healed?"

Crawford turned to look at him a moment. "Sure," he said, finally. "Sure it occurred to me. I went to more than one doctor. They all said I was okay."

"It's not like an ordinary fracture, you realize," said Huerta. "Not like you'd take a stick and snap it, or a leg. Mashed. Not a clean severance. Crushed, Crawford, like you'd take a handful of meal and grind it beneath—"

"All right. Mashed. Crushed. All right."

Huerta allowed him to finish, then inclined his head apologetically. "It does things to the nerves. Physically, I mean. They get crushed too. Displaced. Pinched. All manner of derangement. Your bones may knit—the flesh, the skin. But the nerves. That's different. It would, ah, take a man skilled in that type of work, now, a man with experience in such things—"

"You've had a vast experience, I suppose."

Huerta shrugged. "Why don't you let me look at them. Maybe we do you an injustice. Perhaps you have sound reason for feeling the pain."

Crawford studied the man's dissolute face, trying to read what lay in the ironic twist of the lips, the narrow occultation of the eyes, wondering if this was just another variation in the game. Yet, the possibility of sincerity—

"Shall we go into the kitchen?" said Huerta. "The parlor is not exactly the place for such an examination."

Crawford knew a hesitation. Then, with a decisive abruptness he turned out into the entrance way and down the hall past the stairs. The fireplace was of stone rather than the adobe found in the Mexican dwellings; it ran almost the length of one wall. Jacinto had left a pot of soup simmering over one of the smaller pot fires to one side of the main spit. There was a plain Gothic dining-set, and Huerta pulled one of the butternut chairs from beneath the bare table, indicating that Crawford should remove his pants. That wary inhibition was in Crawford's movements.

"You might sit on the table," said Huerta. When Crawford was seated, the doctor moved closer and bent slightly, reaching out one pale hand. It was like a woman's hand, satiny, boneless. "Can't you relax, Crawford? What's the matter? Feel any pain?"

Crawford stared in a strange fascination at the slender, spatulated fingers spidering his hairy calves. "No. No pain."

"Then why so stiff?" Huerta pressed a spot just below his knee. The strength of his grip was surprising. Then, still holding the kneecap between thumb and forefinger, he looked up. It was the same thing, again, those eyes. The pupils took on an oblique felinity, and the odd little lights flaring beneath the surface. And he began to talk, in that soft, bored, insinuating tone. "Nerve ends, you understand. Pressures. As I said, deranged. Nucleus. So on. Hm? Pain?"

"No—no—"

Perhaps it was the gusty vehemence in Crawford's voice which caused Huerta to look up. For a moment their glances met. Huerta's pupils seemed to dilate slightly. Sure, thought Crawford, go ahead, make it good, and he tried to feel the sarcasm, but somehow he couldn't, because the effect of those eyes was real, distinct, eerie.

"No pain?

"No. No pain. No!"

Those eyes again. Contracting. Little lights flaring and dying. Just for an instant. The probing fingers. That sibilant, insistent voice.

"Here, perhaps? The flesh looks rather badly healed. Feel that? Pain?"

"No!"

"Take it easy, Crawford. I'm trying to help. Here?"

"No. I told you. I don't feel pain, damn it, I told you—"

"Here then. Pain?"

"No—"

"Here?"

"No, damn you, no, I—"

"Pain?" Huerta's head raised abruptly. "What's the matter, Crawford?"

Crawford stood where he had stepped off the table, pulling on his faded old levis with swift, tense jerks. "Nothing. Forget it."

Huerta leaned back against the table, studying Crawford through the twin streamers of smoke he emitted. "Why does it disturb you so much, Crawford, if you feel no pain?" he asked softly.

Crawford stood there facing him, breathing heavily. "What are you trying to do, Huerta?"

"Give you, shall we say, an illustration," said Huerta. "Don't you think I know what is the matter with you, Crawford? Ever since I first saw you watching Africano out in the corral. Perhaps the others are still groping. They sense something not quite right in you, Crawford. But they don't know for sure, yet. I know, Crawford." He said the last softly, positively, watching Crawford. He took a drag on the cigarette. "It must be a terrible thing to live with constantly. It makes two personalities out of you, really, Crawford. In these flashes of bitter defiance, I see what you must have been before. The strength. The courage. But the other is always there, isn't it, working beneath, stirring in you, weakening you, tearing at you. The pain that comes whenever you get near a horse. And the fear, Crawford. And more and more, not just when you're near a horse. All the time. That lack of confidence, that constant indecision. It won't lessen. It will grow, Crawford, until you are that way completely, until these flashes of your former self cease to come. I told you about that miner in Monterrey—"

"You told me!" Crawford choked off the shout, staring sullenly at Huerta. He spoke finally, again, controlling it with hoarse effort. "Think I don't know."

"You do know," said Huerta. "However, it is not hopeless. For most diseases, there is a cure, even for those of the mind. Doctors are only human beings. They can only cure what they have the knowledge to cure. If the men you went to were not experienced in this type of thing, it does not mean there is no hope."

"Are you suggesting—that you—"

"Why not?" shrugged Huerta. "I've had experience in such cases. Is it inconceivable to you?"

"Why?" said Crawford.

Huerta studied his cigarette. "I don't quite understand."

"I mean why should you do it," said Crawford.

"I am no altruist," said Huerta. "A doctor usually gets paid."

"You know I haven't got any money," Crawford said. Huerta did not answer, leaning against the table and studying Crawford through narrowed eyes. "You're offering me some kind of proposition?" Crawford asked him.

"You might call it that," said Huerta. "As I said before, we think your quarrel with Rockland was over more than the way he acquired Delcazar's land."

"Was it?"

"You know what I mean," said Huerta.

"Maybe I haven't got what you want."

"I think you have," said Huerta.

"Have you got a license?" said Crawford.

It was the first time he had ever seen Huerta taken off guard. There was no change of expression in the doctor's face. Just that moment's hesitation. It was enough to give Crawford a certain satisfaction.

"License?"

"M.D.," said Crawford. "Every doctor I've seen had it pinned on his wall. Two or three, some of them. How about yours?"

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."