"No. I told you. I don't feel pain, damn it, I told you—"
"Here then. Pain?"
"No—"
"Here?"
"No, damn you, no, I—"
"Pain?" Huerta's head raised abruptly. "What's the matter, Crawford?"
Crawford stood where he had stepped off the table, pulling on his faded old levis with swift, tense jerks. "Nothing. Forget it."
Huerta leaned back against the table, studying Crawford through the twin streamers of smoke he emitted. "Why does it disturb you so much, Crawford, if you feel no pain?" he asked softly.
Crawford stood there facing him, breathing heavily. "What are you trying to do, Huerta?"
"Give you, shall we say, an illustration," said Huerta. "Don't you think I know what is the matter with you, Crawford? Ever since I first saw you watching Africano out in the corral. Perhaps the others are still groping. They sense something not quite right in you, Crawford. But they don't know for sure, yet. I know, Crawford." He said the last softly, positively, watching Crawford. He took a drag on the cigarette. "It must be a terrible thing to live with constantly. It makes two personalities out of you, really, Crawford. In these flashes of bitter defiance, I see what you must have been before. The strength. The courage. But the other is always there, isn't it, working beneath, stirring in you, weakening you, tearing at you. The pain that comes whenever you get near a horse. And the fear, Crawford. And more and more, not just when you're near a horse. All the time. That lack of confidence, that constant indecision. It won't lessen. It will grow, Crawford, until you are that way completely, until these flashes of your former self cease to come. I told you about that miner in Monterrey—"