Dusk held its own singular aspect. There was something hushed about the
brush at this time. Not the dead oppressive silence of noon. There were
many small sounds, but the bizarre, velvety clutch of twilight seemed
to subdue them. A hooty owl called tentatively from a hackberry down in
some yonder draw. An invisible jack rabbit made a dim, staccato thump
hopping through a distant clearing, then halted. Nearer by a lizard
rustled sibilantly through the foot-deep layer of decaying brush, which
for eons had been dropping from the bushes to pile up on the ground.
It was these sounds, one by one, which impinged on Glenn Crawford's
consciousness. Then the fetid odor of the mold beneath him. His face
felt stiff and painful. It caused him a great effort to reach up to his
cheek. The rips and tears made great gaps in his beard and his whole
face was covered with dried blood. Finally he sat up, shaking his head
dully. Three hours? Four hours? What time had it been? It was hard to
think. He shook his head again. Early afternoon anyway. And this was--
That brought him up straight. They hadn't found him? It was strange.
It was wrong, somehow. They hadn't found him. Wrong. They were better
trackers than that. All of them. If Quartel could ride like that he
could track like that.
He got up with great difficulty and fell down again. His head was
spinning. When he got to his knees once more, the shreds of his ducking
jacket bound his arms, and when he fell that second time, he went full
on his face, unable to get his hands in front of him. In a fit of
anger he tore the remains of the jacket off. The third time he managed
to remain upright. As he stood there, the first thought of the horse
came to him. He felt that pain begin in his loins. Just the thought of
it!
With a sobbing curse he broke into a stumbling run at the first thicket
of brush. He halted himself before he had reached the _mogote_. He
was breathing heavily and his lips were pinched. He held out his
hand before him. It shook visibly. He closed his eyes a moment, face
twisted. Then he took a deep breath and opened them again, staring
about the clearing. There was a great torn place in one thicket on the
other side. He moved over there at a deliberate walk. The hole in the
brush was big enough to walk through; beyond that was another open
patch and then a second small thicket torn asunder by the passage of a
heavy body. It was full night by the time he found the sorrel that way,
following the trail it had made bursting through the brush. The animal
stood in a clearing, head hanging wearily, dried lather forming dirty
yellow patterns on its freshly scarred hide.
Crawford was about to step into the open when he caught himself. There
was a dim rustling in the brush to his left. His face turned that way
sharply. The noise ceased after a moment. He shook his head and went
out to get the horse.
"Stand still, you crazy fool," he said, "stand still now, I'm not going
to hurt you, just stand still, that's it, hold it."
The animal had started to shift away, but his soothing voice quieted
it. He moved in close and ran his hand reassuringly along its rump
and down its side. Then, as he stood with his face toward it that
way, close enough so that the heat of its body reached his belly, it
began to come again. That insidious, stirring, prickling sensation
deep in his loins. That hollow sickness growing in his stomach till it
approached nausea; the sweat breaking out on his face and beneath his
armpits.
The curse had a strangled sound in his throat, as he bent to get the
trailing reins. He wouldn't walk back to the spread. No matter what
else, he wouldn't give them that satisfaction. He stopped, with his
hand not yet touching the end of the reins. Even in the dark, bending
over like that, he could see the footprints. The sorrel's hoofs had
made their dim impression all over the decaying vegetation covering
the gound. But here and there, where the horse had not blotted it out,
was a smaller, deeper imprint, like that of a boot heel. He remained
stooped over it for a moment that way. Then, slowly, he started to lift
the reins. They were caught on something. He reached down and found
the ends tied about a long stake of wood embedded deeply beneath the
rotting brush.
Crawford slipped the reins off the stick and rose beside the horse.
Slowly he put his weight against its neck. His breath had a small,
swift sound. The horse gradually shifted around under that pressure
until it stood broadside between Crawford and the direction that small
rustling had come from when he first entered the thicket.
"Now." He spoke to the horse softly, sliding his hands up the reins
till they were directly beneath the bit, and pulling gently forward.
"Let's go. Let's go. Take it easy. Let's go."
The animal moved toward the fringe of brush surrounding the clearing.
Crawford walked close in by its side, tugging incessantly forward on
the reins, talking in that soft low tone. The animal's hoofs crackled
in the brush underfoot. It snorted once, pulling peevishly at his tight
grip on the shanks of the bit. He twisted them upward slightly and the
horse responded to the bit against its roof, quieting. They had almost
reached the edge of the _mogote_ when the shot crashed.
The horse was jerked over against Crawford by the force of the bullet
going through its body. Then it reared into the air, screaming.
Desperately Crawford tried to retain his hold on the reins, yanking
the horse on ahead, throwing the whole weight of his body into it.
He managed to fight the plunging, rearing animal a couple more steps
toward the brush. Then the beast's violent spasms tore his grip loose
of the reins. With the animal still forming a shield in that last
instant, he threw himself in a headlong dive for the thicket. Another
shot roared behind him, and the horse screamed again, and then Crawford
was rolling into the crackling, tearing mesquite thicket. He came to
his feet, pawing a cluster of berries out of his face, and plunged
blindly on into the _mogote_.
For a long, blind run, the only sound was that incessant deafening
crash of brush all about him. He burst through that first thicket
and crossed a game trail and clattered into another _mogote_. Black
chaparral this time, and stabbing junco and maddening prickly pear.
Then an open patch. And another _ramadero_. White brush and golden
huisache that filled the air with a vague, viscid odor of honey. Then
that was gone and the spines of the agarita tore at his face. He broke
through the agarita into a game trail that wound its secretive way
through the _mogotes_, and he stumbled down that till it petered out
into more mesquite. Halfway through, the spread of mesquite became
entwined with chaparro _prieto_ and Spanish dagger that met his
every movement with a vicious stab of its dirklike growth. He found
himself fighting a frantic, useless battle to penetrate this thicket
farther; it had brought him to a complete stop and, standing there,
chest heaving, face dripping sweat, he could see that the impenetrable
_mogote_ was on the rim of a draw, and that it grew on down into the
bottom of the draw, choking it full. Even if he could manage to fight
his way through the thicket, he would be exposed, crossing that draw.
The realization came to him in a dim, spasmodic way, with no true
reasoning behind it, for he was still filled with that animal panic.
He whirled back and fought his way out of the mesquite. And then,
crossing the comparatively open space of the game trail, it came to
him. He stopped there. Tears squeezed from his eyes with the effort
it caused him to control his breath so he could hear more clearly. It
came again, small, distant, yet distinct enough. The faint rattle of
mesquite berries, brushed by a passing body. The soft snap of decaying
vegetation beneath a careless foot. Again it was no reasoning process.
Just a wave of instinctive, animal realization of how he was trapped.
Face twisting with frustrated rage, Crawford backed slowly, almost
involuntarily, across the game trail into the mesquite thicket again.
He moved as far back as he could, upright, and then he got down on his
belly and crawled in until the roots and trunks and foliage became too
thick even for that, and then he stopped.
His shirt was drenched with sweat and the perspiration dripped into
his eyes, blinding and stinging. Gnats began to float in, attracted
by the sweat and the blood of his scratches. At first he fought them.
He rubbed his palms viciously against his face, mashing the maddening
insects. He slapped wildly, gasping virulent curses. It only seemed to
draw more. With a myriad of the gnats mashed wetly against the cut,
bleeding, stinging, itching flesh of his face, and with a veritable
cloud of them buzzing about his upper body, he put his head at last
into his arms, and a bitter, hoarse sobbing arose mutedly from him.
At last he stopped even that. He lay there in utter, hopeless defeat.
His crashing passage through the brush had frightened all the small
animals into silence, but now the sounds of them began again. A hooty
owl started to call, somewhere far out in the brush. Then, a coyote
mourning in some distant draw. The singing of a mockingbird that had
stayed awake to welcome the rising moon. The rustle of lizards through
the decay. And that other sound. That desultory, intermittent sound of
someone moving out there.
A thin scream rang out with terrifying abruptness, jerking Crawford's
head up. He lay that way a moment, up on his hands, rigid, trembling
with strain. Then he lowered himself again. Only an ocelot, somewhere,
out there, a big cat down from the mountains across the Rio maybe. And
now, lying there, with the first awful sense of defeat losing its edge,
the other began to come. They thought they had him? Damn them. Whoever
it was, damn them. The anger grew in him till it struggled with the
defeat. It thickened the blood in his throat till he almost choked.
Had him trapped? The hell. Kill him like that? Without a gun, without
anything. Think he'd just wait? _Try it. Come on, try it. I'm here. Try
it._
It was going through his head while he squirmed about beneath the low
overhanging branches of chaparral, scratching his face and hands anew
on barbed nopal and the harsh mesquite. Finally he found a maguey
plant, close to the trail. He had no knife, and he had to tear at it
with his fingers. They were ripped and bleeding by the time he had torn
the first strip of the leathery plant.
The Mexicans cured the strips in brine and in the sun to supple
it for their ropes. Crawford could do nothing but braid the stiff
lengths together. And all the time, out there, approaching with the
deliberateness of a man knowing the confidence of complete advantage,
those sounds, rising with deadly intermittence over the other sounds.
The soft crunch of a boot heel driving through the layer of rotting
vegetation that covered the ground. The sibilant harshness of mesquite
scraping leather. Crawford worked with swift desperation till he had
a line long enough; then he knotted a hondo into one end and formed
a loop. It took him half a dozen throws across the game trail to snag
one of the low chaparral branches in a _mogote_ over there. Then he
hooked the line beneath a root on the opposite side of the trail so
that it crossed the trail itself on the ground. He moved back into his
own thicket as far as the line would permit. Then it was the waiting.
Working with the rope that way, there had been no time to think. But
now it had begun to come.
_En la cárcel y en la cama se conocen los amigos._
Crawford felt his whole body grow rigid with a palpable jerk. He almost
turned his head to see who had spoken. A muffled sound escaped him as
he realized it had only been in his mind. The _brasada_ could do that
to a man, this way. In bed and in jail we know our friends? Sure. Maybe
it was Aforismo. What did it matter.
The hooty owl stopped for a while, and there were only small rustlings
in the underbrush. Then the sound again, returning. A sibilant,
crushed, snapping sound.
_I am a very dangerous man, Crawford._
This time he did not stiffen. It jumped through his brain so vividly he
could have sworn it was spoken. Yet he did not stiffen. All right. So
maybe it was Whitehead. All right.
Moonlight spilled through his thicket suddenly, and he realized how
long he had lain there. The rising moon made skeletal monsters of the
chaparral bushes across the yellow river of the game trail, only adding
to the haunted tension filling Crawford. Thoughts moved uncontrollably
through his head now.
_Please, no violence. I was born for laughter and wassail and song--_
No. Not Jacinto. Anybody else. Even Wallace Tarant. But not big, fat,
grumbling Hyacinth of the River. The gnats had found Crawford again.
He dared not move as they buzzed fitfully about his face, stinging,
maddening. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. Then he opened them
again. That would not do.
He thought he would go crazy. His hands twitched with the impulse to
slap at them. His body cried out for movement to escape their insane
buzzing. Each sting made him jerk spasmodically.
_Bueno--_
Sure, Bailey. Sure. Crawford could imagine Bailey doing that sort of
thing. All right, Bailey. Come on, Bailey. Let's get it over with,
Bailey.
He tried to stop thinking like that. There were so many possibilities.
He tried to stop considering them. A man could go loco that way. He
could go loco and jump right up out of the thicket and run screaming
down the game trail right into the arms of that bushwhacker, whoever it
was. A man could go loco anyway. The ocelot screamed out there again,
filling the night with a thin feral madness. It was all madness. The
gnats and the screaming cat and the howling coyote and the crackling
mesquite and the thoughts Crawford couldn't stop whirling faster and
faster through his head till he wanted to beat it against the ground.
_You'll excuse me. An old complaint._
Huerta? Sure, why not? It could be him. It could be any of them.
_I knew a Ranger once that pinned it to his undershirt._
Yeah. Even Quartel. The ocelot or Quartel or the hooty owl or any of
them.
He lay there, wanting to cry, his fists clenched around the rope till
they hurt, his eyes squeezed tight with the terrible effort he made to
control himself. Finally he opened them again, staring down the trail.
It would be getting him, too, out there. If it was getting Crawford
it would get the other man just as much. The _brasada_. That's what
it was. The _brasada_. Enough to drive any man loco like this. And it
would be getting him, too, out there.
The ocelot screamed. Crawford's lips pulled off his teeth in a wolfish
grin. That get you, Bailey? That get you, Whitehead? Like it got me?
The hooty owl began to talk. Crawford's grin spread. That get you?
Huerta? Sort of scary, isn't it? Jacinto? Stop maybe, and look around.
Sweat maybe. Like me. Aforismo? Sure. Sure it got them. They were as
nervous as hell. Whoever it was, he was as nervous as hell. Crawford
wanted to laugh suddenly. He was bathed suddenly in a cold sweat. Then
heat flooded up from his loins. It was like a fever.
Or was it the waiting? Or the _brasada_. Sure, the _brasada_. He'd felt
this way before out in it. At night. Not so much, maybe. But then he
hadn't been waiting for a man with a gun to come and kill him either.
The decay was damp from his sweat beneath his belly and legs. His
eyes ached from peering into the brush all about him. The gnats kept
clouding his vision. But now the man was closer. Each minute sibilance
crashed through Crawford's head like thunder. He could tell when the
man's clothing brushed a clump of mesquite berries and knocked some to
the ground. There was a peculiar rattling quality to that. He could
tell when the man stepped on a prickly pear. It had a squashing sound.
And when he shoved aside some chaparral. That held a hollow thump. And
pulled aside some huisache. Sighing, like the wind.
_I'm a very dangerous man, Crawford._ Sure. Sure you are, Whitehead.
Come on. I'll show you who's dangerous. I knew a man once who pinned
it to his undershirt. All right. One more time, Quartel. One more
time around and I'll show you who's dangerous. Made for laughter and
wassail and song? Come on. I'm waiting. An old complaint? You'll have a
complaint, Huerta. In bed and in jail--
Then it was the shadowy figure moving out of the darkness down the
trail, and Crawford yanked on the maguey and it slipped off the branch
and the branch snapped up with a soft crackle and caused the figure to
whirl that way, his gun crashing, his back toward the thicket in which
Crawford lay.
"Maybe you're a dangerous man," screamed Crawford in a terrible
release, leaping to his feet and throwing himself bodily at the man,
who was still firing wildly into the opposite thicket, "but this is one
bronc you'll wish to hell you never climbed on."
_Chapter Five_