They were on one of the shelves above the estufa, thick buckskin gloves with flaps as long as the forearm. Crawford pulled them on his hands and stepped past the old man. He stopped there a moment, staring down at Delcazar. His mouth twisted open as if he would speak. No words came. A torn look crossed his face momentarily. Then he turned and swung aboard the black and jerked the hackamore against its neck and the animal wheeled and broke into a gallop down toward the brush lining the river—
The sun was low and he forced the flagging puro negro down Rio Diablo until the water ceased and they were running the dry bed. The mesquite became thicker in the bottom lands, interspersed by cottonwoods turning sear with the heat of oncoming summer. Finally the pechero was rattling and scraping constantly against the brush as Crawford forced his way through. He was riding at a walk now, head cocked to listen, eyes roving the terrain restlessly, whole body tense with waiting for the first sign that he had reached Mogotes Serpientes. The sun was almost down now, and he was filled with a growing, trembling sense of urgency. Maybe it was the incessant clash of brush against the buckskin shield which hid the other sound at first. Suddenly he pulled the black to a halt. It came from ahead of him, a faint, barely perceptible hissing sound. He sat there a moment, letting the thought of Merida in there harden the resolve within himself till it was so sharp and clear it hurt. The black had begun fretting at the sound, and Crawford pulled in the mecate on the hackamore, bending forward.
"All right," he said, "we're going through!"
Perhaps it was the tone of his voice. The horse ceased all movement abruptly, stiffening beneath him. Then the man flapped his legs out wide and brought his spurs in against the sweating black flanks with a hoarse shout. The puro negro leaped forward like a startled buck, breaking into a headlong gallop straight into the brush thickening in the river bottom ahead of them. Crawford rode as if he were bareback, gripping the animal from his thighs down, heels turned in hard against the horse. They crashed headlong through the first thicket of mesquite, Crawford bent forward with his free arm thrown in front of his face, the branches ripping at his cheeks and tearing his levi ducking jacket half off his back. A post oak loomed before them as they tore free of the mesquite. He reined the black viciously to one side and the animal reacted with a violence that would have unseated Crawford but for that grip of his legs, wheeling so sharply the man's torso was snapped to one side like the flirt of a rope. Crawford jerked himself back in time to bend down off one side as they passed beneath the branches. Then they were racing at a thicket of chaparral and huisache entwined together so thickly it formed a solid mat before them. Crawford felt the confidence of the horse beneath him and gave the animal its head, and they crashed headlong through the hole Africano had spotted with his uncanny instinct. Filled with the wild excitement of it, Crawford had begun shouting and swearing that way again, adding his own hoarse obscenities to the roar of popping brush. But even all this sound did not obliterate the noise. It came through his bellow and the crash of brush with an insidious, sinister insistence, that constant menacing hiss, like the threat of escaping steam. It filled him with an excitation which did not come from the mad ride. And as he burst through the chaparral into the open, the first snake struck.
It happened so fast his own reaction did not come till the snake had gone again. He had a dim sense of a sudden writhing shape leaping from the last of the chaparral they were coming out of, and the sharp snapping thud somewhere in front of him, and the horse's leap sideways, screaming. Again his terrible grip was the only thing that kept the man in the saddle, and they were tearing forward once more with a vague impression of that writhing shape slithering off into the brush. They were crashing into the next mogote before Crawford realized the snake must have struck that pechero on the horse's chest. Now more of them were in sight. Fast as he was going, he could still see the sleepy torpidity of the awakening snakes. He spotted what he thought was a root lying in the thickness of a mogote, but as the black jumped it, the root came alive, jerking in a surprised, sluggish way, and then one end began to curl inward. But by the time the serpent had awakened fully and snapped into its coil, Africano was by.
Another one ahead woke faster. Crawford did not see it till a flashing motion filled the lower corner of his vision. Again he heard the sharp thump of the snake striking that pechero, and saw the frustrated serpent drop away from the shield in a stunned way. The horse was in a veritable frenzy now, lather foaming its mouth, screaming and whinnying and fighting the hackamore madly without actually trying to change its direction. It was no longer only the hissing all about them. It was the movement. On every side the thickets seemed to have come alive. Writhing, slithering shapes undulating in dim spasms through the pattern of brush. But the fact that they were still awakening and the speed at which Crawford was going aborted the greater part of their efforts. Time and again he saw a snake strike after he was already by. Twice more one of them reached the horse, only to batter its head against that stiff shield of cowhide. Then, beneath him, Crawford heard a thick, slopping sound, and the black stumbled, and almost went down. With his spurs he forced the animal farther on into the muck. It was not very deep and there were patches of dry ground, but there was no more of that nightmarish movement about him now. Only the incessant sinister sibilation to his rear.
His body was drenched with perspiration, and for the first time he realized he was panting in a choked, rasping way. The horse was heaving beneath him, still fighting the hackamore and fiddling around wildly. He suddenly felt as if he were going to collapse. He bent forward, gripping the saddle horn, realizing it was only reaction. Then, as strength returned in slow, undulating waves, the black stopped abruptly, head raised, ears stiffened. Crawford automatically put his heels into the animal. The puro negro stood adamant. Then Crawford heard it, and stopped trying to force Africano ahead. Suddenly the horse threw up its head and let out a shrill, wild whinny.
"Damn you," snarled Crawford in a guttural voice. "I ought to—"
He stopped at the answering whinny from farther in the brush. "Crawford?" asked someone from there.
Crawford felt his body straighten involuntarily in the saddle. "Yes, Quartel," he said.