"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!
_Chapter Four_