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."
"it's mine." quartel's bellow came from somewhere in the crowd, and then he appeared, running in that stiff, saddle-bound stride of his toward the horses. "aforismo, let that blue out. he ought to give us a good run."
used to working the wild, savage cattle of the brushland, the mexicans trained their horses to spin away from the side on which a man mounted as soon as he lifted a foot to the stirrup. though this saved many a vaquero from being gored by a ringy bull which he had just released after throwing and branding the beast, it took a good man to get on one of these horses. each rider had a string of animals, and from his bunch quartel had saddled a brown horse they called a trigueño. he knocked the reins loose of the corral post and snapped them over the trigueño's head. then he checked the animal, pulling the nigh rein in till it twisted the trigueño's head down toward its shoulder so that the horse's action would be inhibited long enough for him to mount. as soon as quartel raised his left foot, the trigueño tried to whirl, but that checking action held him long enough for quartel to jam his foot in the stirrup and swing aboard in one violent movement. then he released the tight rein and allowed the animal to spin toward the right.
from outside the cedar-post corral, aforismo and several other vaqueros had goaded and prodded a blue bull until it was separated from the other bulls within the enclosure. as it neared the gate, aforismo let down the drop bar.
in their natural state, running the brush, these cows were among the wildest animals of the world, and the several days this cut of bulls had spent penned up had put them in a frenzied rage. the blue stood there a moment, glaring suspiciously at the opening, pawing the ground. his great long curving horns had been scored and ripped and punched by the brush until it looked as if someone had hacked them over with a knife, and a pattern of scars formed a network across the gleaming lathered hide of his forequarters. from the side, he looked deceptively heavy, his length so extended that his back swayed, but as he lashed his tail and shifted around to display a rear view, his narrow hips and cat hams and ridgepole back became apparent. abruptly, with a hoarse bellow, he lowered his head, and swinging it from side to side, galloped out of the gate.
quartel yelled something, dug in with his chihuahuas and whacked his quirt against the trigueño's rump at the same time. the brown horse burst into a headlong run, followed by most of the other vaqueros, shouting and yelling and snapping their quirts against leather chivarras and fancy charro pants. the blue bull had spotted an opening in the brush across the compound, and he shook the ground tearing for it. but the horsemen swiftly closed up on the animal. quartel and another vaquero were bunched together in the lead. quartel raked his trigueño with those huge chihuahua guthooks, and the horse spurted ahead, drawing up beside the bull. quartel leaned out of the saddle and made a grab for that lashing tail. but the blue bull jammed its forefeet into the ground and came to a jarring halt, plowing twin furrows in the earth. quartel was several lengths on by before he could swing back in the saddle and pull his horse around; by that time the bull had turned in a half circle and cut for the brush.
the other vaquero had pulled up shorter than quartel, and was in a position to run down the bull on its quarter. he was a tall, supple youth on a short-coupled horse they called a bayo coyote, its coat a buckskin color with a black line running down the spine, with a black mane and tail. quartel spurred and quirted his trigueño in a last desperate effort to reach the bull first, but just at the edge of brush, the other vaquero pulled up beside the blue and leaned out to grab for that tail.
he caught its hairy end, and dallied it around his saddle horn, clapping the guthooks to his bayo coyote at the same time. the buckskin gave a spurt that pulled it ahead of the blue bull, and just as the horse smashed into the first thicket, the tail of the bull snapped taut, yanking its hind feet from beneath it. the vaquero tore the tail off his horn and hunched forward with his arm before his face all at the same time, and as he disappeared into the thicket the ground shook with the bull's falling. huerta had come down from the house, and he moved in behind crawford.
"i understand a good man can break the bull's neck every time," he said. "why don't you try it, crawford?"
crawford's hands closed tightly, and he did not look at huerta. the inside of his mouth was dry and cottony as he watched the vaquero come back through the mesquite into the open, prancing his bayo coyote proudly.
"you better go back to herding dogies, quartel," the vaquero grinned, "and leave the grown ones to men."
"if you're a man, let's see your reata," roared quartel, wheeling his trigueño toward the man and unlashing his 40-foot rope from his saddle.
the rider fought his excited buckskin around in a circle as he tore his own rope from the saddle, and when he had completed the circle, the rope was free and the two riders were facing each other about a hundred yards apart.
"vamanos, indita," shouted quartel, his huge cart-wheel spurs gouging the brown into a headlong run toward the other man.
"are they crazy?" said huerta.
"stay around the border much and you'll get used to it," merida told him. "the vaqueros used to do the same thing on the rancho where i was born. they'd rather rope than eat."
"duello," said crawford.
"with ropes?" it caused huerta distinct effort to evince even the dim incredulity.
"lot of 'em would rather fight with ropes than guns," crawford told him. "more than one lawman has been dragged to death here in the brush."
it had taken that long for the two riders to meet, passing one another not 10 feet apart. at the last moment quartel made a pass with his rope arm. indita's own throw caused him a hoarse exhalation that turned into a shout of triumph as he saw his loop settling over quartel's head. then it happened. as much as he had handled horses, crawford did not think he had ever seen one turn so fast. one instant the trigueño was racing past the bayo coyote, the next it was facing in the opposite direction, quartel's own involuntary grunt still hanging in the air to tell what a vicious effort he had put into the reining. the motion had carried quartel from beneath indita's loop in that last moment, and now he sat the trigueño perfectly still, facing after indita's retreating buckskin.
quartel's first pass had been a feint, and he still retained his rope. it was so slight a flirt of his hand that crawford barely caught it. he did not spin the loop above his head. he tossed it underhand, the way he had thrown it with africano in the corral. it was a hooley-ann, spinning flatly out above indita, seeming to hover above him an instant, no bigger than the brim of his sombrero; then it was taut about his shoulders, and he was pulled over the back of his horse with a resounding thump.
"i ought to drag you for your presumption," said quartel, shifting his horse forward so he could get enough slack in his rope to flirt it off indita as the man rose. then, pulling the rawhide clothesline in with a series of quick, skillful snaps, he turned the trigueño to prance it over toward them, grinning at merida. "how do you like that, señorita?"
"i have seen it done before," said merida.
quartel's face darkened. "you don't think i am any good?"
"i didn't say that."
"listen," he shouted, thumping his chest, "i am the best goddam roper in the world. i am the best goddam rider in the world. i am—"
"don't be a boor," said huerta, in faint disgust.
"a what?" quartel wheeled the horse around in a growing rage, the sweat greasing his coarse face. "i'll show you." he started pounding his chest again. "i'll show you who's good. i'll make you a bet. i'll bet you a talega full of gold pesos that i can, blindfolded, with one end of the reata tied to my own neck and not to be touched by my hands, riding a bareback horse of your own choosing, forefoot each of any ten bulls we got in a pen, and break their necks."
huerta shrugged, smiling in a faint, vague dismissal. quartel reined the trigueño in closer. "i mean it," he bellowed. "are you afraid to make the bet? could anybody where you come from do it?"
"frankly, i don't think anyone can do it," said huerta, disinterestedly.
"i can," yelled quartel. "i'm the best—"
"don't be a fool, quartel," the woman told him.
"you'll kill yourself. one mistake with that rope around your neck and you'll be dead."
that was the final impetus. "hijo de la chingada," shouted quartel, whirling his trigueño away from them. "how many bulls you got in that corral, aforismo? seven? get me three more. get me three more from that holding pen across the arroyo. i'll show you what roping really is, merida. you're going to see a performance tonight you'll never forget!"
