"Crawford," Huerta began again, "you can't—"
"Get your horse if you're coming with us," he told the man.
Huerta opened his mouth to say something more; then, with a strangled, inarticulate sound, he turned and crashed back through the mesquite. In a moment he returned on the copperbottom. It was a risky thing to do with such a green horse, but there was no other way, and Crawford swung onto the black behind the cantle. The animal kicked in a startled, angry way and started to buck. Crawford swung his arms around in front of Merida to grab the mecate and yank back hard on it, spurring Africano at the same time. The puro negro quit bucking and broke forward, slopping into a muddy stretch. Crawford turned the horse to get Quartel in front of him. They rode toward the edge of the bog that way.
"You go first, Quartel," Crawford said. "I'll follow you, Huerta. If you can keep your head and stay in between us, we might be able to get you out. Just keep your head. That's the whole thing. Get panicky and you're through. You can even get bit a couple of times by snakes and still live to tell about it if you don't let it throw you. It isn't the venom that kills a man so quick; it's when he gets spooked and starts running and yelling and pumping all that poison through him a hundred times as fast as it would spread if he just stayed calm. Savvy?"
Huerta's copperbottom fiddled beneath him. "Crawford, I can't. Not without a gun. You can't ask me to."
"Quartel?" said Crawford.
"Sí," grinned the Mexican, and flapped his feet out wide. The trigueño bolted before Quartel's feet came back in to kick his flanks, and then crashed into the thickets. Crawford held the Henry in one hand and he waved it at Huerta.
"Get going, damn you, I'm not going to wait for you to puke, get going!"
"No, I can't, not through there—" Huerta saw Crawford swing out his feet, and whirled the copperbottom with a last desperate shout, and crashed into the Snake Thickets after Quartel. Then Crawford's heels struck the black, and they were going.
At first it was only the wild, crashing, pounding, yelling run through the mesquite. With Quartel leading the way all they had to do was follow the trail he made, running through holes he had burst in the thickets ahead of them. Then the snakes began. First it was that sharp, dry thump against Africano's pechero, and the woman's shrill, startled cry. Quartel's gun crashed from ahead of them, but Crawford was too taken up with reining the black to use his Henry. He had that blurred impression of violent undulation around him. There was another snapping thud against Africano's buckskin shield, and a big diamondback fell to the ground beneath them as they went by.