“No, I can’t tell how long I may be. Make it after lunch at the car.”
Bull nodded. Then remembering the correspondent’s warning, he called after him, “I’d like to be there when you tackle him again.”
Nodding, Benson walked on. Left alone, Bull sat down on a bench in the plaza. Already the drink desire was returned upon him. And as he sat there, in the grip of his mortal weakness, three soldiers seated themselves on the same bench and proceeded to pass a bottle of tequila.
Before he even saw it Bull’s mutinous nostrils snuffed the odor. Looking away, he tried to think, to recall the vision that strengthened and cooled him in his hour of torture last night. But now, the stronger for his long abstinence, that enormous desire inflamed his brain; enveloped it in heated mists through which the pretty, wholesome faces loomed dim and indefinite. And then—
After a curious glance up at the huge figure, the nearest soldier tapped his arm. “You will drink with us, señor?”
What it cost him to refuse and walk away! Men have gone down in history as martyrs by the exercise of no more effort. But just as pressure enough will snap a bone, as persistent fatigue will paralyze a muscle, so the effort weakened his will, broke his resolution. Feeling curiously weak, utterly exhausted, he stopped at the plaza corner and gazed at a cantina across the road.
Even then he did not give in. Hands writhing behind his back, face one purple suffusion, he circled and recircled the plaza half a dozen times before he stopped at the same spot again. In that time desire has no height he did not reach; passion no heat, hell no torture, he did not endure. And while he stood watching the cantina’s roaring trade, reluctant but conscious in his soul that the end was come, a hand dropped with a hearty slap on his back.
“Come on, Diogenes, you’re just in time. We’ve discovered some beer, good cold beer, down at the German Club. Counting the consul, there’s only two Dutchmen left in the town, but trust them to have their beer. Don’t waste time in astonishment. Come right along.”
In his mortal weakness Bull snatched at the straw. He could drink a barrel of the thin Mexican stuff without knowing it—at least he felt he could! But while, for an hour thereafter, they sat in a cool patio talking and sipping, the despised brew was still potent enough to loose the mad rustler spirit that hearkened only to the voice of desire.
When the correspondents left to file their despatches, he remained.