It was the odor at first. Crawford lay there, staring up at the ceiling, groping up through the remnants of a sleep so heavy it left him filled with an oppressive . The hangings had been removed from the bed and the four reeded mahogany posts reached up through the semi-gloom to support the bare tester frame above him. He realized where he was, then. Huerta had stopped them? Yes, Huerta had stopped them last night, and brought him to the big house to sleep. Strange, the influence Huerta had over them. Without actually doing anything. Those eyes? Maybe that was it.  
Crawford sat up , the heavy chintz coverlet falling away from him. He held out his hand, staring at the fingers. They were trembling. He the air. He pulled the coverlet completely off, swinging his bare feet out of the bed. His levis were on the russet wing chair and he grabbed them up and stepped into the legs. It was that sensation again, stirring within him. It was hard for him to breathe. He sat on the bed a moment, hands clutching the covers, staring at the wall. Why? Here. Why?
 
He turned his head from side to side, searching the room. It was day, but the overdrapes had been pulled across the window, and he could make out the furniture only dimly in the semi-gloom. And still, down inside him, rising, growing. He down to pull on his boots with swift, desperate , then rose. He looked like a hounded animal, the forward thrust of his body imparting that narrowness to his shoulders, his eyes shifting in a gaunt face. Then, on one of those shallow, indrawn breaths, it came to him, unmistakable.
 
Slowly, his whole body so tense it was trembling now, he turned about, . He stepped away from the bed, toward the windows, and it faded. He moved back toward the bed, and he could smell it again. With a muttered curse he bent down and tore the coverlet off. The dirty, fetid horse blanket had been laid out flat beneath the chintz spread.
 
"Huerta!"
 
It came out of him in a strangled, guttural rage, and he bent to clutch the horse blanket. He had it lifted off the bed before he released it, throwing it back down and whirling to the door. His boots made a hard down the stairway and into the entrance hall. He had almost passed the living-room when, through the open door, he caught sight of Huerta, seated in one of the chairs by the window. The doctor had been reading, and he lowered the book, leaning forward in the chair.
 
"You must have slept well, Crawford," he said. "It's nearly noon."
 
Crawford started to take a step forward, opening his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again, his fists tight. There was a faint, waiting mockery on Huerta's face. Crawford whirled and stamped on out the front door. As he went down the front steps, he saw the crowd out by the corrals, and was toward it. He made out Bueno Bailey and Innes among the men, but the others were new faces to him. There were half a dozen riders their horses around in the open flats, and a big Chihuahua cart was creaking out of the brush, piled high with onions and apricots and baskets of blue corn meal and Mexican children and a fat Mexican peon driving. Crawford was part way across the compound when he saw the woman coming toward him. He had a impulse to turn away, and that. She held her heavy green satin skirt up out of the dust with one hand, and the wind the throat of her white Antoinette fichu. Her eyes, big and dark and searching, were held to his face until she reached him, and it did something to Crawford.
 
"They said it was a bull-tailing," she told him, coming to a stop. "I don't exactly understand."
 
"About the only celebration the brasaderos get," he said, watching her . "A bunch of them gather almost every Sunday somewhere to eat and drink and tail the bull. I think they're celebrating Cinco de Mayo today. some battle at Puebla—"
 
He trailed off, because he could see it in her face, and he didn't particularly want to talk about the bull-tailing either. When she again, her voice was husky and strained, and it must have been what was really on her mind, from the first.
 
"They were trying to kill you," she said. "Jacinto told me. They got you in there, and started in on you, and they meant to drive you till you cracked and fought back, and then they were going to kill you. How did you stand it so long, Crawford? Jacinto said no other man could have. Pushing you and shoving you and beating you like that. How did you stand it?"
 
"I'm still here, ain't I?" he said.
 
She drew in a breath, staring up at him. "Why did you come back with Whitehead?" she said finally. "You could have escaped."
 
"Maybe a man gets tired running," he said.
 
She caught his arm, coming in close enough for him to catch a hint of her perfume. "Crawford, I want to help you."
 
His whole body was rigid now, with that . "I never saw a cow yet that wanted to get back inside a corral when it was outside."
 
"You're so suspicious," she flamed. Then she leaned toward him farther, looking up into his face. "I guess you have a right to be. You've been fighting all of them, haven't you, ever since this started. I don't blame you, Crawford. I know how you feel. I'm in the same position. I need your help as much as you need mine."
 
It had been a long time since a woman stood this close to him, with her hair shining like that, and her eyes. He felt a weakness through him. He stared at the soft red curve of her lip, and his voice was hardly audible.
 
"What are you talking about?"
 
"Have you ever heard of Mogotes Serpientes?" she said.
 
"Snake ? I guess so. It's supposed to be somewhere west of Rio Diablo in that stretch of bad brush."
 
"You've never actually been there?" Her voice was tense.
 
"I don't know who has," he said. "There's a lot of the brasada nobody's ever seen, white man or Indian. There's a stretch due south from here just above the Rio Grande called Resaca Espantosa. Nobody's ever been through it. I don't know why they call it Haunted Swamp."
 
"But there is a good reason for the name Mogotes Serpientes?"
 
"So they say. It's supposed to be so full of snakes no man could stay alive in there more than a few—" He trailed off as he realized how far he had let her carry him, and pulled roughly away from her, his mouth twisting down at one corner.
 
"Crawford," she said, trying to get in close again. "Please. Don't. I mean it. You've got to believe me. If you believe in anything, you've got to—"
 
"Huerta made me a proposition too," said Crawford. "It didn't pack such a wallop, but it was along the same lines."
 
She flushed, stepping back from him violently. "You fool," she said, in a bitter, intense whisper. "You fool."
 
They were still that way, staring at each other, when Huerta came out on the porch. The woman saw him and turned away, moving back toward the corrals.
 
"Hola, Quartel," someone over by the pens shouted. "When are you letting the toros out? I got a twenty-dollar pot for the first man to tail a bull."
 
"It's mine." Quartel's came from somewhere in the crowd, and then he appeared, running in that stiff, saddle-bound stride of his toward the horses. "Aforismo, let that blue out. He ought to give us a good run."
 
Used to working the wild, cattle of the brushland, the Mexicans trained their horses to spin away from the side on which a man mounted as soon as he lifted a foot to the stirrup. Though this saved many a vaquero from being by a ringy bull which he had just released after throwing and branding the beast, it took a good man to get on one of these horses. Each rider had a string of animals, and from his bunch Quartel had saddled a brown horse they called a trigueño. He knocked the loose of the corral post and snapped them over the trigueño's head. Then he checked the animal, pulling the nigh in till it twisted the trigueño's head down toward its shoulder so that the horse's action would be long enough for him to mount. As soon as Quartel raised his left foot, the trigueño tried to whirl, but that checking action held him long enough ............