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."