A sickish smile he was not aware of hung around Elbert’s mouth. The floor of the cell was of stone. The wooden bars very thick, the ceiling low. There was a wide wooden bench for him to lie upon—blanket roll, saddle, and saddle-bags had been brought.... So the voluble rurale had had but one idea all the time in the afternoon; and crafty little Ramon Bistula with amiable guile—so pleasantly impersonal in leading one astray and putting men to death—Ramon, keeping him in the plaza while his men doubtless went through saddle-bags and roll. But they could have found nothing to implicate him—some silver and canned stuff. His papers of identification were in order. Then he remembered his mention of San Isidro; he would have to prove that Mamie was not one of the stolen horses. Perhaps they would think his papers were stolen, too!
The sickish smile remained—the smile of one who has seen his quest ending in failure. He thought of Mr. Leadley’s affection and care for Mamie, and he had known no better than to let her show her speed on a highroad, and mention the name of San Isidro to the rurale.
His hand came up to his mouth—an ache of muscles that didn’t seem to know enough to relax by themselves. The moonlight felt cold, a creeping cold on the stone floor.... The same song from the patio—guitar and corn-dust maiden—but so different, coming to him through the bars. El capitan was at the door, the sentry unlocking the cell.
‘I have brought blankets of my own for you, Señor. Very soft and warm blankets. I am grieved; but it is only for the present—this interesting mare of yours—a puzzle to the soldiers of Cordano.... A very good night, Señor—’
He had actually dozed, for the plaza was empty. Elbert had heard of people going to sleep as usual, with death hanging over, but he wouldn’t have believed it of himself. All was still, the moon very white upon the turf. The blank wall of the main building within forty feet from where he lay.... This very morning ... word from Cordano all that was necessary for more executions ... ‘mere formality.’ Now gradually, he entered one of the deep and memorable hours of his life, lying propped up against the saddle, looking out through the bars, moonlight flooding down outside, everything so still that he could hear the drops of water from the pail into the cistern in the center of the prison patio. He waited for the isolated drops, but his mind often wandered before the sound came—back to his own house in the East, to his own room, where he had dreamed so much, but nothing like this—slowly through the days at Heaslep’s and the leather-store; the noon-hour in the latter place, when the door was pushed open and a certain whimsical voice started the whole works going:
‘The first thing cow-people does, when they don’t know what to do—’
And that very saddle was under his head! Heaslep’s again, Nacimiento. His Spanish book said that word ‘Nacimiento’ meant Birth ... the old Señora with her castanets, and her house in the town called Birth.... Then the part he never remembered clearly, not even now—the ride to San Pasquali, the ride back; Nogales, its smell of drugs, and the Letter; Tucson and that still room where so many flowers were, still as the patio out yonder.
Until just now, he had never let himself go, in thinking about that room. Too much of a magnet about it all; it drew all the strength of mind and feeling back to it, taking the force from the work at hand here in Sonora. But this was a sort of show-down—locked up here in Arecibo. He dared now to remember that Tucson hour, moment by moment.
... And what did she mean—that she could see the car below—see right through it, and their own bodies, sort of little and broken? He knew what she meant. More than that, he knew her meaning when she said, ‘And I could feel our pain, but we were really together outside and above.’ And ‘You were like one dead, yet you still drove.’... ‘Your face was like stone, eyes open, but no life, the skin pulled back over the bones from behind.’... ‘It was when the dawn came—the time we were in the awful cold—’