He tried to stop thinking like that. There were so many possibilities. He tried to stop considering them. A man could go loco that way. He could go loco and jump right up out of the thicket and run screaming down the game trail right into the arms of that bushwhacker, whoever it was. A man could go loco anyway. The ocelot screamed out there again, filling the night with a thin feral madness. It was all madness. The gnats and the screaming cat and the howling coyote and the crackling mesquite and the thoughts Crawford couldn't stop whirling faster and faster through his head till he wanted to beat it against the ground.
You'll excuse me. An old complaint.
Huerta? Sure, why not? It could be him. It could be any of them.
I knew a Ranger once that pinned it to his undershirt.
Yeah. Even Quartel. The ocelot or Quartel or the hooty owl or any of them.
He lay there, wanting to cry, his fists clenched around the rope till they hurt, his eyes squeezed tight with the terrible effort he made to control himself. Finally he opened them again, staring down the trail. It would be getting him, too, out there. If it was getting Crawford it would get the other man just as much. The brasada. That's what it was. The brasada. Enough to drive any man loco like this. And it would be getting him, too, out there.
The ocelot screamed. Crawford's lips pulled off his teeth in a wolfish grin. That get you, Bailey? That get you, Whitehead? Like it got me? The hooty owl began to talk. Crawford's grin spread. That get you? Huerta? Sort of scary, isn't it? Jacinto? Stop maybe, and look around. Sweat maybe. Like me. Aforismo? Sure. Sure it got them. They were as nervous as hell. Whoever it was, he was as nervous as hell. Crawford wanted to laugh suddenly. He was bathed suddenly in a cold sweat. Then heat flooded up from his loins. It was like a fever.
Or was it the waiting? Or the brasada. Sure, the brasada. He'd felt this way before out in it. At night. Not so much, maybe. But then he hadn't been waiting for a man with a gun to come and kill him either.
The decay was damp from his sweat beneath his belly and legs. His eyes ached from peering into the brush all about him. The gnats kept clouding his vision. But now the man was closer. Each minute sibilance crashed through Crawford's head like thunder. He could tell when the man's clothing brushed a clump of mesquite berries and knocked some to the ground. There was a peculiar rattling quality to that. He could tell when the man stepped on a prickly pear. It had a squashing sound. And when he shoved aside some chaparral. That held a hollow thump. And pulled aside some huisache. Sighing, like the wind.
I'm a very dangerous man, Crawford. Sure. Sure you are, Whitehead. Come on. I'll show you who's dangerous. I knew a man once who pinned it to his undershirt. All right. One more time, Quartel. One more time around and I'll show you who's dangerous. Made for laughter and wassail and song? Come on. I'm waiting. An old complaint? You'll have a complaint, Huerta. In bed and in jail—