Challenging Snake Thickets

No longer did it wait. No longer did it crouch in passive, latent malignance. Now the evil coma unsheathed its thorns, like a knife-thrower drawing his dirks for the first time. Now the adder-toothed retama struck from beneath the disguise of yellow flowers which had caused the Mexicans to call it flower of gold. Now the deadly Spanish dagger of the devil's head thrust and parried and lunged like a savage fencer.

Ever since Crawford had returned to the Big O, the brasada had filled him with a strange, inexplicable sense of biding its time, crouched out there, surrounding them with its sinister, purring, waiting destruction. And now, as if this was what it had anticipated, it seemed to leap forth in all its deadly, ruthless malevolence, like a beast unleashed. Never before had it fought him so, blocking his way impenetrably, cutting and stabbing and striking every foot of the way. And Crawford met its challenge, taking a wild, savage delight in pitting all his skill and strength and experience against the brasada's violent, cunning, malicious virulence.

And he had a horse! Knowing it would take something more than an ordinary brush horse to catch Huerta, he had chosen Africano. It had not been broken to the spade bit yet, but would work with a hackamore, and the fact that they had first captured it in the brasada indicated a life of running the thickets, which would make it a good brush horse even without training. Just how good, Crawford realized the first thicket they traversed. The puro negro met the brush with a fearless, consummate skill, something uncanny about the way it could sense whether the mogotes were actually impenetrable or whether they held a weak spot which could be run through. It found holes in thickets Crawford would never have guessed were there, running headlong through the most dense ramaderos without a moment's hesitation. The kind of a horse a brush-popper dreamed about. It was a constant battle, and Crawford fought it with the wild abandon peculiar to the brasadero when he was riding the brush like this, shouting at the horse and himself and anything else that wanted to listen, and cursing in two languages at every stabbing, clawing thicket which tried to drag him off.

And the names passed by, as they had before. Silver Persimmons. Turtle Sink. Rio Diablo. Chapotes Platas. He had tried to follow Huerta's trail for a while, but when he had seen the undeviating direction it was taking he had quit tracking and had let the black out. Finally he came crashing through the fringe of chaparral into the clearing above Rio Diablo and swung down off the lathered, heaving horse, and ran toward the jacal. A man was trying to crawl across the threshold of the doorway.

"Crawford," he groaned. "I knew it was you. I heard you coming ten miles off. There never was anybody could match you cussing the brush. I guess that's 'cause there never was anybody loved it the way you do." He tried to rise abruptly, his eyes opening in a glazed way as he stared past Crawford. "Dios, Africano!"

Crawford had reached him by then. "What happened, Del? They did this to you?"

Dried blood darkened the old man's face, and the soles of his bare feet had a red, blistered look. "You got a hackamore on it," said Delcazar vacantly, still staring at the black. "You can't ride that killer with a hackamore. You're loco—"

"Who did it? Tell me who did it!" almost shouted Crawford.

"Merida—"

"She did this!"

"No, no," gasped Delcazar weakly. "Merida come first. She say she needed help. Say you weren't with her any more for some reason. Had an idea I knew about Snake Thickets. While she was still here, Huerta came. Followed her, I guess. He thought I knew about Snake Thickets too. Those cigarettes of Huerta's. I'm a viejo, an old man. I couldn't stand much. The woman try to stop him. She couldn't do it."

"How do you get in, Delcazar?" Crawford's voice shook with its low intensity.

Delcazar's eyes widened. "Crawford, you ain't going to try and follow them. It's suicide. Even if you know how to get in. Those serpientes. You been there. You heard them. Please, you and I been amigos too long. Let those fools kill themselves after a chest of pesos. Who wants pesos—"

"How do you get in?"

Crawford's voice held a shrill, driven stridor that stiffened Delcazar. The old man stared at him a moment, mouth open slightly. Maybe it was the pale, set look to Crawford's face.

"Rio Diablo. You know how it goes underground about a mile above here. Nobody's ever been able to find where it comes up again. It comes from the Nueces past here and then drops out of sight and there ain't nothing left but the dry bed going on south to Mogotes Serpientes. I'll tell you where it does come up again. Right inside Snake Thickets. That's why nobody ever found it. You know how water in a place like Turtle Sink dries up during the day. Then, come night, it rises to the surface again. That's what happens inside Mogotes Serpientes. During the day, the part of Rio Diablo that surfaces inside the thickets is all dried up. Then when evening sets in, it comes up again. That's how you get in. You got to run a short stretch of the thicket before you reach water. That's why you have to time it right. The snakes sleep during the day, and start to stir around at sundown. That's about the same time the water starts rising. If you start in just a few minutes before the sun sets, you can run that stretch of thicket between the outside and the water while the snakes are still asleep. Naturally you'll wake them, but you got a bigger chance of reaching the water than if they were already wide-awake and waiting for you. Once you're in the bog, you're safe. The snakes will come down to drink, but rattlers like dry land too much to go swimming in that muck. Time it wrong by one minute either way and you're done. If you go in too early and the water ain't risen yet, you're setting right in the middle of a million rattlers. And if you go in too late and the snakes are stirring around, they'll probably get you before you reach water. I found it out from an old Comanche a long time ago, Crawford. I was afraid to tell. I was afraid to go in myself and I was afraid somebody would make me show them the way if I tell, and I couldn't do that, Crawford, nobody could. It's suicide. Maybe those Mexicans do it once, with the chests. It couldn't be done again in a million years."

"Still got those cavalry boots?"

"Crawford, please, you ain't going to—"

"I'll want your batwings too."

Delcazar began to cry without sound, and the words came between his lips with a resigned audibility. "In the jacal. Under my bunk."

Crawford stepped past the man, the decision hard and crystallized in him now, permitting no other considerations. He hauled out the old pair of jack boots someone in Delcazar's family had worn with Diaz, and unhooked a tattered pair of batwing chaps from the bunk post, a rarity in this border section where most men preferred chivarras. He pulled the ancient Chimayo from the bunk and began cutting it in strips with the bowie. Then he wound the strips about his legs like puttees, up to his crotch, till they formed three or four layers; he had trouble pulling the jack boots on over this thickness.

"Pechero?" he said, swiftly buckling the bull-hide chaps on.

Delcazar was huddled against the doorframe, watching him hopelessly. "Had one somewhere. Maybe under the bunk too."

The pechero was a buckskin shield used by the brasaderos for popping the heaviest brush; it fitted around the front of the horse's chest, tying over its withers and behind its front legs. The black was too weary for any objection as Crawford lashed the pechero on.

"Gloves," Delcazar was motioning vaguely toward the fireplace, "gloves—"

They were on one of the shelves above the estufa, thick buckskin gloves with flaps as long as the forearm. Crawford pulled them on his hands and stepped past the old man. He stopped there a moment, staring down at Delcazar. His mouth twisted open as if he would speak. No words came. A torn look crossed his face momentarily. Then he turned and swung aboard the black and jerked the hackamore against its neck and the animal wheeled and broke into a gallop down toward the brush lining the river—

The sun was low and he forced the flagging puro negro down Rio Diablo until the water ceased and they were running the dry bed. The mesquite became thicker in the bottom lands, interspersed by cottonwoods turning sear with the heat of oncoming summer. Finally the pechero was rattling and scraping constantly against the brush as Crawford forced his way through. He was riding at a walk now, head cocked to listen, eyes roving the terrain restlessly, whole body tense with waiting for the first sign that he had reached Mogotes Serpientes. The sun was almost down now, and he was filled with a growing, trembling sense of urgency. Maybe it was the incessant clash of brush against the buckskin shield which hid the other sound at first. Suddenly he pulled the black to a halt. It came from ahead of him, a faint, barely perceptible hissing sound. He sat there a moment, letting the thought of Merida in there harden the resolve within himself till it was so sharp and clear it hurt. The black had begun fretting at the sound, and Crawford pulled in the mecate on the hackamore, bending forward.

"All right," he said, "we're going through!"

Perhaps it was the tone of his voice. The horse ceased all movement abruptly, stiffening beneath him. Then the man flapped his legs out wide and brought his spurs in against the sweating black flanks with a hoarse shout. The puro negro leaped forward like a startled buck, breaking into a headlong gallop straight into the brush thickening in the river bottom ahead of them. Crawford rode as if he were bareback, gripping the animal from his thighs down, heels turned in hard against the horse. They crashed headlong through the first thicket of mesquite, Crawford bent forward with his free arm thrown in front of his face, the branches ripping at his cheeks and tearing his levi ducking jacket half off his back. A post oak loomed before them as they tore free of the mesquite. He reined the black viciously to one side and the animal reacted with a violence that would have unseated Crawford but for that grip of his legs, wheeling so sharply the man's torso was snapped to one side like the flirt of a rope. Crawford jerked himself back in time to bend down off one side as they passed beneath the branches. Then they were racing at a thicket of chaparral and huisache entwined together so thickly it formed a solid mat before them. Crawford felt the confidence of the horse beneath him and gave the animal its head, and they crashed headlong through the hole Africano had spotted with his uncanny instinct. Filled with the wild excitement of it, Crawford had begun shouting and swearing that way again, adding his own hoarse obscenities to the roar of popping brush. But even all this sound did not obliterate the noise. It came through his bellow and the crash of brush with an insidious, sinister insistence, that constant menacing hiss, like the threat of escaping steam. It filled him with an excitation which did not come from the mad ride. And as he burst through the chaparral into the open, the first snake struck.

It happened so fast his own reaction did not come till the snake had gone again. He had a dim sense of a sudden writhing shape leaping from the last of the chaparral they were coming out of, and the sharp snapping thud somewhere in front of him, and the horse's leap sideways, screaming. Again his terrible grip was the only thing that kept the man in the saddle, and they were tearing forward once more with a vague impression of that writhing shape slithering off into the brush. They were crashing into the next mogote before Crawford realized the snake must have struck that pechero on the horse's chest. Now more of them were in sight. Fast as he was going, he could still see the sleepy torpidity of the awakening snakes. He spotted what he thought was a root lying in the thickness of a mogote, but as the black jumped it, the root came alive, jerking in a surprised, sluggish way, and then one end began to curl inward. But by the time the serpent had awakened fully and snapped into its coil, Africano was by.

Another one ahead woke faster. Crawford did not see it till a flashing motion filled the lower corner of his vision. Again he heard the sharp thump of the snake striking that pechero, and saw the frustrated serpent drop away from the shield in a stunned way. The horse was in a veritable frenzy now, lather foaming its mouth, screaming and whinnying and fighting the hackamore madly without actually trying to change its direction. It was no longer only the hissing all about them. It was the movement. On every side the thickets seemed to have come alive. Writhing, slithering shapes undulating in dim spasms through the pattern of brush. But the fact that they were still awakening and the speed at which Crawford was going aborted the greater part of their efforts. Time and again he saw a snake strike after he was already by. Twice more one of them reached the horse, only to batter its head against that stiff shield of cowhide. Then, beneath him, Crawford heard a thick, slopping sound, and the black stumbled, and almost went down. With his spurs he forced the animal farther on into the muck. It was not very deep and there were patches of dry ground, but there was no more of that nightmarish movement about him now. Only the incessant sinister sibilation to his rear.

His body was drenched with perspiration, and for the first time he realized he was panting in a choked, rasping way. The horse was heaving beneath him, still fighting the hackamore and fiddling around wildly. He suddenly felt as if he were going to collapse. He bent forward, gripping the saddle horn, realizing it was only reaction. Then, as strength returned in slow, undulating waves, the black stopped abruptly, head raised, ears stiffened. Crawford automatically put his heels into the animal. The puro negro stood adamant. Then Crawford heard it, and stopped trying to force Africano ahead. Suddenly the horse threw up its head and let out a shrill, wild whinny.

"Damn you," snarled Crawford in a guttural voice. "I ought to—"

He stopped at the answering whinny from farther in the brush. "Crawford?" asked someone from there.

Crawford felt his body straighten involuntarily in the saddle. "Yes, Quartel," he said.