At dawn, it was the birds, mostly, during the spring months, like
this. They filled the dim undulations of brush with a constant, shrill
twittering. Bobwhites shrieked from a draw full of white brush, and
blue quail cooed beneath the _cejas_ of green brazil, and turkeys
gobbled down in a dry creek bed where they were fattening on elm mast.
Through all this treble cacophony, Glenn Crawford walked heavily up
the road leading the shaggy black cow pony. It was Jacinto who saw him
first. Though the sun had not yet risen, smoke curled from the kitchen,
and the gross Mexican was just outside the door filling the coffeepot
from the water butt. It cost him some effort to straighten up when he
caught sight of Crawford. He stared blankly. Then he dropped the big
coffeepot with a clang and began running his way, grunting as each
foot struck the ground, his short, bandy legs looking as if they would
collapse every time the prodigious weight of his torso descended on
them in a step.
"_Dios_, Crawford," he shouted. "_Válgame Dios._ What happened? _Que
hace?_ Who is it? Are you all right? What happened?"
He was halfway to Crawford by the time Aforismo stumbled into view at
the bunkhouse door, pulling bare brown legs into his stiff, greasy
_chivarras_ and blinking sleepily. Someone must have asked him what
it was, for he grunted something over his shoulder and came on out.
Jacinto had reached Crawford by the time he got to the front of the
house, and it was there Crawford halted the horse. The tremendous
Mexican stood with his great belly heaving from the run, staring
blankly at Whitehead. He started to reach out and touch the man, then
dropped his hand.
"Is--is he--"
"Yes," said Crawford, watching Aforismo come from the bunkhouse and
Quartel step out the door now, yawning and cursing. The shutter on an
upstairs window clattered against the dilapidated weatherboarding, and
Huerta leaned out to look down a moment. Then he withdrew his head, and
Crawford could hear movement from within his room. Quartel came across
the compound after Aforismo, slipping a dirty cotton shirt over his
head.
"What happened?" he said. He looked at the body slung across the horse
without much expression in his face. What lay in his eyes was not
apparent till he got closer. They were narrowed, and the pupils held a
strange oblong felinity.
"_Es muerto_," said Jacinto stupidly.
"I know he's dead," said Quartel. "What happened?"
"Out in the brush," said Crawford, watching Quartel.
The Mexican looked at him, then glanced at the horse. He reached out to
pull the Winchester from beneath the stirrup leather, opening the front
end of the magazine and tilting the gun down. Two copper rim-fires
clinked into his calloused palm.
"Looks like he did a lot of shooting," said Quartel.
"He always carried that gun in one hand when he rode," said Jacinto. "I
told him he'd fall and break his neck sometime."
"Did you?" said Quartel. He was studying Crawford, shaking the two .44
shells up and down in his closed hand. "You still haven't told us what
happened."
"His neck's broken," said Jacinto hopefully.
Quartel allowed his narrowed eyes to observe the odd way Cabezablanca's
head hung, twisted around from the line of his shoulders. "That's what
it looks like. Where did you find him?"
"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, from the door. "Where did you find him,
Crawford?"
He had on a gaudy black-and-gold dressing-gown with satin lapels and
slippers of red leather. His face had never looked more dissolute. The
dim light seemed to draw out the singular, jaundiced corruption of his
sallow flesh. His heavy lids were almost closed over his eyes, veined
and pouched, and one of them twitched visibly. He had both hands in
the pockets of his bathrobe, and they were visibly closed into fists.
Merida stood behind him. She had on a house gown of blue cashmere,
evidently donned hurriedly. There was something Indian about her dark,
aquiline face; her black hair hanging long and straight about her
shoulders.
"I told you," said Crawford. "Out in the brush."
"You didn't tell me," said Huerta.
"I told Quartel," said Crawford.
"He didn't tell me what happened," said Quartel.
"To Crawford," said Merida, "or Whitehead?"
"Yes," said Doctor Huerta, moving tiredly across the porch. "What did
happen to you, Crawford?"
"We ain't interested in that now," said Quartel. "I'd like to know what
happened to Whitehead first."
"You seemed interested yesterday," said Merida. "You were quite upset
that you had lost Crawford in the brush."
"What have you got in your hand?" said Huerta.
"A gun," Quartel told him.
"Don't be obtuse," said Huerta. "I mean the other hand."
Quartel opened his fingers. The two shells glinted dully in the growing
light. Somewhere out back of the bunkhouse a rooster crowed. Both
Huerta and Merida looked for a long moment at the two cartridges.
Slowly, Huerta's jaded eyes moved to Crawford, and the heavy, blue
lids were lifted farther open.
"You say his neck is broken?" Huerta asked nobody in particular.
"Jacinto said his neck was broken," said Quartel.
"Well," said the woman impatiently, "is it?"
Huerta drew a weary breath and came slowly down the sagging steps and
around the horse. "Yes," he nodded, without taking his hands from his
pockets. "Broken."
"Like in a fall?" That pathetic hope was in Jacinto's voice again.
Huerta took one of his hands out. His long, pale fingers moved slightly
across Cabezablanca's head and face, sifting the dense white hair and
testing the skull with a professional casualness. "No contusions about
the head or face."
Huerta was running his forefinger delicately across the back of
Cabezablanca's shirt now, flattening it over the resilient planes of
the man's back. Then he moved around to the other side of the shaggy
horse, tugging at the man's pants legs. "No other wounds either," he
said at last. His head turned slowly till he was looking at Crawford.
Something had begun to dissipate the jaded glaze from those eyes,
something that grew in them as he watched Crawford. He spoke, however,
to Quartel. "How many shots does that Winchester hold?"
"It's an 1866 with King's improvements," said Quartel. "Thirteen."
"Oh." It was a soft, hissing intonation. Then Huerta motioned toward
the bunkhouse with the hand he had out. "Better take him down and bury
him out back of the bunkhouse."