Huerta Was Right!

The bunkhouse and cookshack stood a few hundred yards south of the house, two adobe structures connected by a covered dog-run. Rockland's father had put them up to live in while his large dwelling was being built, constructing their walls not with mud bricks but by the older Indian method of making forms out of willow shoots and cotton sheeting, pouring the mud into these forms, and peeling off the cotton after the adobe had dried. Unless these walls were replastered every six months or so, they began to crack, and the inside of the cookshack was already beginning to show a network of minute fissures across its whitewashed surface. It was here Crawford had spent the night, an oppressive sense of the hostility which surrounded him keeping him from much sleep. After breakfast, all the crew had left the bunkhouse but Bueno Bailey.

He was gaunt as an alley cat, and he parted his long yellow hair in the middle and slicked it down with bacon grease, and he sat in the stilling morning heat of the shack, idly spinning the cylinder of his six-shooter.

"Will you stop that, Bueno?" snapped Crawford.

Bailey looked up at Crawford, who had been standing against the doorpost, staring outside. "I've seen cattle look out between the bars of a pen that same way, Glenn," he said, putting his long forefinger against the cylinder of his gun to give it another, deliberate whirl. "You don't need to get ideas. Why do you think they left me here?"

"I'll bite," said Crawford. "Why?"

"They haven't decided what to do with you yet," murmured Bailey. "Tarant was for taking you right back to San Antonio, but Huerta didn't want that, for some reason. Either way, it's a cinch they don't want you to get away. Sabe?"

"What's Huerta got to say about it?" said Crawford.

"He's some friend of Rockland's," Bueno told him.

"That doesn't seem to me enough reason for the way he assumes authority around here," Crawford muttered. "I thought Quartel was the ramrod."

"There's some kind of deal between Huerta and Tarant," Bailey answered, giving the cylinder another spin. "Quartel's tried to buck Huerta a couple of times and Tarant stood behind the doctor. Quartel almost lost his job the second time. Tarant gave us the idea we'd better do what Huerta liked if we wanted to keep on working here."

Crawford glanced at the gun. "I asked you to stop that."

Bueno leaned forward on the three-legged stool, placing his elbows on his knees to look up at Crawford. "So you had to come back, Glenn," he said. "Why?"

"Maybe I came back to pay a few debts," said Crawford thinly.

The oily click of the cylinder stopped abruptly. "You owe somebody something?"

"Still snipping cinches, Bueno?"

The stool crashed to the floor, and Crawford whirled from where he had been standing in the doorway to meet Bailey as the man came up against him. The only thing that prevented their bodies from meeting was the gun Bailey held against Crawford's body. The man's milky eyes were slitted, and the smell of that bacon grease in his hair nauseated Crawford.

"Chew that a little finer," said Bueno, through his teeth.

"Africano never could have rolled me under if that rigging hadn't come apart," Crawford said thinly. "I saw the cinch on that saddle afterward. It hadn't pulled loose by itself."

"Glenn—" Bailey let it out on a hissing breath—"I think you better change your mind about that."

"I know who did Rockland's stable jobs for him," said Crawford.

The gun dug into his belly. "Glenn—"

"Yes?" said Crawford. "Make it a better job than that first time, Bueno."

Bueno stood there a moment longer, his breath hot and fetid against Crawford's face. Then his weight settled back onto his heels. He turned around and set the stool upright and lowered himself onto it once more. He began twirling the cylinder again with his forefinger. Crawford saw it tremble against the blued steel.

"When the time comes, Crawford," said Bueno, not looking up, "I will make it a better job, you can depend on that. I'll finish the job."

The harsh laugh from the doorway caused Crawford to turn back that way. He wondered how long Quartel had stood there. The man moved on into the room, a pawky smile on his sensuous lips. The pores of his cheeks and nostrils were large enough to be clearly discernible, and they exuded a heavy sweat, lending a greasy look to the thick brown flesh of his face. He stuck his thumbs in the waistband of his dirty chivarras, leaning back slightly.

"It seems that you haven't got one friend left on the Rockland estancia, doesn't it, SeÑor Crawford?" he said.

"En la cÁrcel y en la cama se conocen los amigos," said the man who had come in with Quartel.

"Did I ask for any of your stupid proverbs, Aforismo?" said Quartel.

"It is just a saying they have in Durango," said Aforismo. "In jail and in bed we know our friends."

He was a thin, stooped man, Aforismo, his white cotton shirt soiled with dirt and horse-droppings, his eyebrows slanting upward toward the middle of his forehead to give him a habitual expression of mournful complaint.

"Maybe you got a proverb that tells how to find out where a man pins his badge," said Quartel, looking at Crawford.

"I know one about a stitch in time—"

"Knew a Texas Ranger once who pinned it to his undershirt," said Quartel.

Bueno Bailey had looked up. "What saddle you in now?"

"It would be a good reason," said Quartel. "He had to have some reason."

"Listen," said Bueno. "That's Glenn Crawford. Sure he had some reason. A lot of reasons. But not that. He's—"

"I know who he is," said Quartel.

"Then why—"

"Innes took Tarant back to San Antonio last night," said Quartel. "Innes heard a lot of talk. There's rumor of a government marshal in the brasada."

"If that's so, it's because of Crawford," said Bueno. "Kenmare couldn't get him. I wouldn't doubt they'd send a marshal after him."

"Maybe you got it inside your boot," said Quartel.

"What makes you so touchy about a badge-packer?" said Crawford.

Bailey had stood up. "Listen, Quartel, can't you get it through your thick skull, whatever Crawford is, he ain't a lawman."

"Isn't he?" Quartel studied Crawford a moment. Then he threw back his head to emit that short, harsh laugh, so loud it seemed to rock the room. It died as swiftly as it had come. His glance dropped to Crawford's legs. "So you got reasons to come back. Africano, maybe?"

"You haven't broken him," said Crawford.

Quartel flushed. "I will. There isn't any horse I can't break."

"He would have rolled you if you'd been a second later with that mangana yesterday."

"Well, I wasn't a second later," said Quartel. "Did you see that mangana? Nobody else could have done it so close." He thumped his barrel chest with a hairy fist. "I'm the best damn roper in the world, Crawford. I can rope better and ride farther and drink more and cuss dirtier than any hombre from here to Mexico City. Now let's go. I got a lot of cattle to clean out of that brush and I'm not wasting a man here to guard you."

Jacinto had come through the covered dog-run from the kitchen in time to hear Quartel. "The seÑorita will not like that," he said.

Quartel turned angrily toward him. "You in Merida's corrida or mine."

"Yours, Quartel, madre de Dios, yours," said Jacinto. "Still she won't like that. Only last night I heard her say—"

"Punta en boca," said Quartel. "Shut your mouth. All right, Crawford. We got the horses saddled."

Crawford's boots made a hesitant scrape on the hard-packed adobe floor; then he took a breath, and walked toward the door. Jacinto waddled after him, sweat glistening in the wrinkles between the rolls of fat forming his face. He caught Crawford's arm, trying to stop him.

"Listen, seÑor," he said breathlessly. "Don't let them take you out there. Merida is against it. I heard her and Huerta arguing about it. Just wait till I tell her and she'll stop Quartel. Don't let them get you out there." Quartel had moved outside to let Crawford through the door. The heat of the sun struck him like a blow on the face as he stepped out with Jacinto still tugging at him. "I'm telling you, seÑor, don't be a fool. If they get you—"

"Dammittohell!" screamed Quartel, and stepped in to spin around with his arm held out. The backhand blow caught Jacinto squarely in the face. Jacinto's hand clutched Crawford's arm spasmodically as the blow knocked him backward, jerking Crawford off balance. Then Jacinto's three hundred pounds of sweating brown flesh struck the wall of the bunkhouse. The building shuddered, and a shower of pale adobe flakes descended on the huge Mexican as he slid to the ground.

Quartel stood there a moment, his face diffused with blood till it looked positively negroid, his whole body shaking with rage. For the first time, the utter, primal violence of the man struck Crawford. Without a word, Quartel turned and walked across the compound.

The true suffocation in all this heat seemed to close in on Crawford as he moved to follow Quartel. He found himself breathing with a heavy effort. Cabezablanca was standing by the group of horses near the corral. The white-headed man held his Winchester tenderly.

"How are you, Crawford?" he said softly. Crawford glanced at him without answering, and Cabezablanca's eyes narrowed and he ran one finger up and down the gleaming barrel of his carbine. "You still refuse to be civil with me. That is unfortunate. I am a very dangerous man, Crawford."

"That's your horse." Quartel nodded at a ewe-necked old paint standing near the corral fence. It had rheumy eyes and rope scars all over its gaunt shoulders and a saddleback the shape of hickory bow and the weediest legs Crawford had ever laid eyes on. Yet, standing even this near the animal, Crawford could feel that nebulous excitation begin to rise in him. Or was it excitation? The sweat broke out on his palms. In a sudden burst of anger, he clamped his fists shut.

"What kind of crowbait is this?" he said.

Quartel shrugged. "I thought—I mean your legs—"

"I told you that was over." Crawford did not know whether the anger was at himself or at Quartel. He might not have said it under more control. "I can ride anything you can!"

"Africano?" said Quartel. He saw Crawford stiffen and grow pale, and his laugh had a scraping sound. "Never mind, Crawford, never mind. You won't have to fork the puro negro. He ain't broke yet. You saw that yesterday." Then the laughter left Quartel. He jerked a thumb at the paint. "Get on."

"The hell." Crawford had bent forward slightly, his whole body rigid. That bitter intensity had drawn the flesh taut across his cheeks beneath his scrubby beard. He turned abruptly toward the corral.

"Where you going?" shouted Quartel.

"To get a decent horse," said Crawford, without turning back. "You want to try and stop me?"

He was sweating again. It was a little sorrel pony with a running walk so relaxed Crawford could hear the teeth pop at every step like a Tennessee walker, and a rocking-chair would have been harder on a man. Yet he was sweating again.

"They say the hombres who curse the brasada most love it the best," said Aforismo. "You must love it like a woman."

Crawford turned his head sharply toward the man. He hadn't realized he had been swearing out loud. It hadn't been at the brush. It was so confused now, inside and out. It was hard to breathe, and the muscles across his stomach were tight as a stretched dally, and he could feel the pain spreading from his hips. All the symptoms of genuine pain. Was that what Huerta had said? Sweating, trembling, tears in the eyes. The doctor's voice was in his ears, suave, insidious. The mind plays funny tricks sometimes. It couldn't be. Not his mind. Not my mind, Huerta, not my mind.

"Yeah," grinned Bueno Bailey, forking a big dun on Crawford's other side. "There never was a man could cuss the brush like Crawford. I'd rather listen to him talking his way through a mogote of chaparral than hear music."

Crawford hardly heard him. The perspiration was sticky beneath his armpits, his shirt clung to his back with it. And now it was that other, stirring in him, so confused with the pain at first he could not define it, or would not—the same thing he had felt there at the corral, watching Africano. And worse than the pain. No. He wasn't afraid. I'm not afraid, Huerta. How could he be? How could I be? Living with horses all my life. How could I be?

"Take it easy," snapped Bueno. "What's the matter?"

Crawford jerked the reins against his horse, realizing he had allowed it to sidle into the dun. The sorrel shifted uncertainly the other way, thumping into Aforismo's animal. This time Crawford's reining was even more violent and it caused the sorrel to shy.

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!