The morning sun had not yet warmed the mud walls of the bunkshack
through, and the dank reek of adobe filled the dog-run as Crawford
passed down its narrow corridor toward the kitchen, still limping
with the pain of his ride on Africano the evening before. Coming from
the run, he almost knocked over Jacinto, who had been sitting propped
against the wall on a three-legged stool, his head bent forward on his
fat chest.
"What are you doing?" said Crawford.
The huge cook had barely caught himself from falling, and he blinked
sleepy eyes up at Crawford in surprise. "Sitting on a stool."
"You been sitting there all night," Crawford accused him.
Jacinto looked sheepishly at the prodigious butcher knife across his
lap. "No--I--I just--" He waved the blade suddenly at the room. "Well,
why not, you been sleeping up at the big house, and now you come
down here, and after all that about Whitehead, and everything else,
_sacramento_, how is a man to know what might happen--"
Crawford gazed at him soberly. "_Gracias, amigo_," he said.
Jacinto grinned in embarrassment, turning to shuffle toward the stove.
He put the knife down with a clatter and got the big coffeepot to fill
it with water at the butt. When he had it on to boil, he took three
clay bowls off a shelf and put them on the table. Seating himself at a
bench before the bowls, he spoke again.
"You feel all right this morning?"
Crawford was standing in the doorway, staring emptily toward the house.
"No," he said. "Beaten to a pulp."
"I'll fix you some Romero steak," said Jacinto. From the dull red clay
bowl he fumbled a grain of corn, carefully picking out the black base
with his teeth and spitting it into a second, a blue bowl, dropping the
remainder of the kernel into the third, a yellow container. He gave
Crawford a sidelong glance. "You told Merida she did you a favor last
night. How did you mean?"
"Never mind," said Crawford.
Jacinto plucked another grain from the red bowl, picking out the base
with his teeth. "You think she put Africano in there?"
"What else?" said Crawford. "Did you see any Rangers around?"
"No," said Jacinto, frowning at him.
"Neither did anybody else," said Crawford. "There weren't any."
Jacinto took out another grain of corn, waving it at Crawford. "You
mean you thought you was running from a Ranger?"
Crawford turned away impatiently, pacing toward the door. "That's what
she told me."
"_Por supuesto_," said Jacinto. "Why should Merida do such a thing?"
"Good way to get rid of me as any," said Crawford bitterly.
Jacinto studied him a moment, smiling in a hesitant, puzzled way. Then
he tipped the yellow bowl so Crawford could see it was full of pale
corn kernels. "Now I have _tortillas_ white as the sand in Arroyo
Blanco." Grunting, he bent forward to pull the metate nearer his bench,
a large oblong block of pumice stone, hollowed out in the upper surface
from countless grindings with the pumice rolling pin they called a
mano. He poured the hollowed portion full of the corn kernels. "Why
should she want to get rid of you?" he said, without looking up.
"I guess she had a good reason," said Crawford.
Jacinto took up the mano, began to grind the corn, the hulls working to
the edge of the metate like scum along the edge of a water hole. "That
day of the bull-tailing, when you and Merida went out into the brush.
You found what you wanted?"
"Let's not talk about it," said Crawford.
"And maybe you and her was the only ones who knew where it was, then,
no?" said Jacinto. With the edge of his fat hand, he shoved the
collection of hulls off into the blue bowl, which contained the black
bases he had spit out. "You think that's why she did it?"
Crawford's head jerked from side to side. When he spoke, the
frustration was evident in his voice. "How do I know? How do I know
anything? Sure we found what we were looking for. You know what it was.
Everybody knows. Why do you all keep beating around the thicket this
way? Mogotes Serpientes. You know that. Maybe she and I are the only
ones who know how to get there. And if I was out of the way, she would
be the only one to know. It's what she came up here in the first place
for, isn't it? She didn't even try to deny she put that killer horse in
there. It's the best reason I can think of."
Jacinto poured a little water into the corn left on the metate, began
grinding it again with the mano. "Is it?"