"This derrotero," she said. "Literally a map, a chart. It was made by the captain of the mule train. When he realized the Texans would inevitably catch him, he secreted the pay chests somewhere in the brush, making the chart. Fearing that, if he entrusted the whole of the chart to one man, that man might be captured, he divided it into three portions. Thus, if one or even two of the men were caught, the chests would still be safe, for the hiding place could not be located without all three portions. One section he sent with an Indian to Santa Anna himself at San Jacinto. The second part he gave to his lieutenant, to carry to the Federalists in Mexico City. The third he kept himself."
"Yeah?" said Crawford.
"Yes," she said, smiling in dim amusement at his acrid reticence. For a moment, her eyes were half-closed, studying him, and they held a slumberous, provocative temptation. It stirred something primal within him. He had felt it before. But not this way. Not just looking in a woman's eyes.
"The captain of that mule train was the uncle of your friend Pio Delcazar!"
It went through him with a palpable shock, and it was not till after she had finished speaking that Crawford realized what she had been doing, with those eyes. They had turned hard and speculative, now, and with the spell broken, Crawford felt the twisted expression her words had drawn to his face. He tried to regain that inscrutability, but knew it was too late. There was a certain triumphant satisfaction in the way Merida allowed her gaze to drop to the table as she began eating the soup again. And now the two men were watching him. He felt the sweat break out on his palms.
"Carne adobada, carne adobada?" said Jacinto, waddling in. "You don't know how long I pickled it in brine. I fry the spices and chile till the juices stream out of the pork, and—" he trailed off, seeing how they were all watching Crawford. He turned to Huerta, wringing his fingers. "Doctor, please, I beseech you—"
"The coffee, Hyacinth, the coffee," murmured Huerta, waving a languid hand at the cook without looking away from Crawford.
Jacinto almost choked on the breath he took, and backed out, staring wide-eyed at Crawford. "Sí. The café. Sí."
Tarant began to serve the meat dish Jacinto had brought. "When you had that ruckus with Rockland in the living-room here, Bueno Bailey said it was over Delcazar," he said.
"You know what it was over," said Crawford. "You got Del's land for Rockland that way."