A dim, bitter expression entered Merida's face. "Yes," she said, "we found it."
"What do you mean?" Crawford muttered.
She inclined her head through the mesquite, that strange expression still on her features. Crawford frowned at her. Then he turned to jerk the Henry at Quartel. The man had finally got that rope off his neck and stood there rubbing the bruised flesh sullenly. He moved ahead of Crawford through the brush.
"You too, Doctor," said Crawford.
They passed through the thicket and crossed a boggy section. With the violence of the action over now, the hissing of the snakes began to impinge on Crawford's consciousness again. Rising out of the bog to the thick mat of greenish-brown toboso grass covering an island of firm ground, they reached the first aparejo. It was one of the old X-shaped packsaddles used by the original Mexican muleteers, with two brass-bound chests lashed into it so that one would fall on each side of the mule.
"The Mexicans carrying this stuff must have been following the dry river bed and hit the fringe of Snake Thickets about dusk," said Merida. "That's the only way they could have got this far in. Then, when the snakes started waking up, and they realized what they had wandered into, the men left the stuff here, knowing it would be as safe as anywhere they could have hidden it, and shot their way out through the snakes again."
"Did you just stumble onto it too?" Crawford asked.
"Quartel had the other third of the derrotero," said Merida.
"Quartel?" Crawford's head lifted sharply to the man. He emitted a small, humorless laugh. "That explains a lot of things."
"Does it?" said Quartel.