The morning sun had not yet warmed the mud walls of the bunkshack through, and the dank of filled the dog-run as Crawford passed down its narrow corridor toward the kitchen, still limping with the pain of his ride on Africano the evening before. Coming from the run, he almost knocked over Jacinto, who had been sitting against the wall on a three-legged stool, his head forward on his fat chest.  
"What are you doing?" said Crawford.
 
The huge cook had barely caught himself from falling, and he blinked sleepy eyes up at Crawford in surprise. "Sitting on a stool."
 
"You been sitting there all night," Crawford accused him.
 
Jacinto looked sheepishly at the butcher knife across his lap. "No—I—I just—" He waved the blade suddenly at the room. "Well, why not, you been sleeping up at the big house, and now you come down here, and after all that about Whitehead, and everything else, sacramento, how is a man to know what might happen—"
 
Crawford gazed at him soberly. "Gracias, amigo," he said.
 
Jacinto grinned in , turning to toward the stove. He put the knife down with a and got the big coffeepot to fill it with water at the . When he had it on to boil, he took three clay bowls off a shelf and put them on the table. Seating himself at a bench before the bowls, he again.
 
"You feel all right this morning?"
 
Crawford was in the , staring emptily toward the house. "No," he said. "Beaten to a ."
 
"I'll fix you some Romero steak," said Jacinto. From the dull red clay bowl he a grain of corn, carefully picking out the black base with his teeth and spitting it into a second, a blue bowl, dropping the remainder of the into the third, a yellow container. He gave Crawford a sidelong glance. "You told Merida she did you a favor last night. How did you mean?"
 
"Never mind," said Crawford.
 
Jacinto plucked another grain from the red bowl, picking out the base with his teeth. "You think she put Africano in there?"
 
"What else?" said Crawford. "Did you see any around?"
 
"No," said Jacinto, frowning at him.
 
"Neither did anybody else," said Crawford. "There weren't any."
 
Jacinto took out another grain of corn, waving it at Crawford. "You mean you thought you was running from a ?"
 
Crawford turned away impatiently, pacing toward the door. "That's what she told me."
 
"Por supuesto," said Jacinto. "Why should Merida do such a thing?"
 
"Good way to get rid of me as any," said Crawford bitterly.
 
Jacinto studied him a moment, smiling in a hesitant, puzzled way. Then he tipped the yellow bowl so Crawford could see it was full of pale corn . "Now I have tortillas white as the sand in Blanco." , he bent forward to pull the metate nearer his bench, a large oblong block of pumice stone, hollowed out in the upper surface from grindings with the pumice rolling pin they called a mano. He poured the hollowed portion full of the corn kernels. "Why should she want to get rid of you?" he said, without looking up.
 
"I guess she had a good reason," said Crawford.
 
Jacinto took up the mano, began to grind the corn, the working to the edge of the metate like scum along the edge of a water hole. "That day of the bull-tailing, when you and Merida went out into the brush. You found what you wanted?"
 
"Let's not talk about it," said Crawford.
 
"And maybe you and her was the only ones who knew where it was, then, no?" said Jacinto. With the edge of his fat hand, he shoved the collection of hulls off into the blue bowl, which contained the black bases he had spit out. "You think that's why she did it?"
 
Crawford's head jerked from side to side. When he spoke, the was evident in his voice. "How do I know? How do I know anything? Sure we found what we were looking for. You know what it was. Everybody knows. Why do you all keep beating around the this way? Mogotes Serpientes. You know that. Maybe she and I are the only ones who know how to get there. And if I was out of the way, she would be the only one to know. It's what she came up here in the first place for, isn't it? She didn't even try to deny she put that horse in there. It's the best reason I can think of."
 
Jacinto poured a little water into the corn left on the metate, began grinding it again with the mano. "Is it?"
 
Crawford turned sharply from the door. "What do you mean?"
 
The paste of corn meal and water Jacinto now had was called masa. He began to pat it into thin tortillas. The comal, heating over an open fire, was a large plate upon which he cast the tortillas to bake, without salt, , or grease.
 
"I am not too in affairs of the heart," said the cook, drawing a heavy breath and wiping sweat off his fat face, "but I have had a few, and have some conclusions about women from them, which I think are as accurate as any conclusions about women can be. They will do strange things when they are in love, Crawford, often cruel things, or . Love to them, when they are enmeshed within it, is all of life, is their whole existence. They will fight for it with their last breath. They will go to any extreme for it. Merida is no ordinary woman. You have seen her fire. You know her depths."
 
"You're riding a pretty muddy creek," said Crawford.
 
"I'll clear the water," said Jacinto. "Just give me time. Merida came to you for help, didn't she?"
 
"You might call it that."
 
"All right. But she knew you could never be much help in the state you were in. You told me she tried to aid you in conquering it that day you left the bull-tailing."
 
"So what. Huerta acted like he wanted to help me once too. It was only part of the game he was playing."
 
"Lástima de Dios," cried Jacinto, clapping fat hands to his brow. "Pity of God. Now I know you must be as loco about Merida as she is about you. Only a man in love could be that blind. Can't you see what she did? That day you and she rode into the brasada must have made Merida realize, finally, that the only way you could conquer your fear was to ride Africano again. And she wanted to see you conquer your fear, Crawford. More than anything else. More, even, than finding what she came up here for. More, even, than having you live. She didn't want a half-man. She didn't want a coward. She wanted you, the way you used to be, the way she knew you must have been whenever those little flashes of your old self would show themselves."
 
Crawford had turned around, staring at Jacinto, now. It was beginning to grow in him. The first dim of it. An understanding he couldn't name, yet. It prickled the hair on the back of his neck.
 
"Yes." Jacinto could see the strange wonder in his eyes. "You are beginning to see, no? It took you long enough. There are not many women with that kind of in their craw. Not many women could have done it that way."
 
It was starting to blossom in Crawford now, a strange, dim exaltation. "Do you realize what it did to me? To come out on the porch that morning and see you standing there beside Whitehead's body, knowing what it meant?" Suddenly he knew how she must have felt. "It doesn't happen to a person often in her life." Suddenly he knew what she had been talking about. "That sort of feeling."
 
That sort of feeling. He looked around at Jacinto, his eyes wide.
 
"Sí," said Jacinto. "You understand now. It would take a lot of man to accept it, Crawford, even when he understood. It would take her kind of man. Admittedly she took a big chance on you. Maybe she'd rather have you dead than a coward. That's the kind she is. Not many men could take her. Not many men could realize she sent them out that way, and still take her."
 
"Hyacinth," Crawford said almost inaudibly, "Hyacinth—"
 
"Sí, sí." The gross cook began to excitedly, for he must have seen what was in Crawford. "You better go to her now, Crawford, before it's too late. She thinks you're through with her, after what you told her last night. She thinks you're not enough of a man to take it that way. But you just didn't understand. Now you do. Go on, Crawford. You won't get a woman with that kind of twice in your life. It's almost as good as owning a vinegar roan. I owned a vinegar roan once—"
 
But Crawford had stopped hearing the cook. It held him completely now. It lifted him so high he didn't feel his feet hit the floor when he started to walk. He moved past Jacinto with a dazed, twisted expression on his face, not even seeing the fat Mexican. The only thing within his was that , sense of exaltation, so strong and it approached a . The kitchen door faced away from the house, and it was more direct to go through the dog-run and out the bunkhouse; he must have gone that way unconsciously, not remembering his passage through the covered run.
 
"Where you going?" It only dully. He kept on walking. Then somebody was in front of him. "I said where you going?"
 
Innes! The singular odor of sweaty leather reached Crawford from the red-bearded man's buckskin ducking jacket.
 
"The house," he said, trying to get around the man. Innes shifted again, and this time Crawford was brought up against the man's body. It was like walking into an oak tree.
 
"Not right now," said Innes.
 
It was the other things, then, brought in with a clarity almost painful. Bueno Bailey. Sitting at the table. Filing the sear on the trigger of his gun. Aforismo. Sitting on the upper to Crawford's right. His legs over the sideboard.
 
"Did you ever see the dichos on my belduque?" he asked, seriously. "I like the one on this side best. is sweet but are better. Don't you like that one best?"
 
The of Crawford's muscles began with his . They faintly, up, and the ran up the inside of his legs and his and crossed his chest. His whole body was as he took the step back away from contact with Innes.
 
"That's it," said the red-bearded man.
 
Bueno's gun was an old 1848 Dragoon, converted to handle . Rubbing his finger delicately across the sear, Bailey nodded his head approvingly.
 
"Bueno," he said. "I'll bet the pull isn't more than half a pound on that now."
 
"Where is Quartel?" asked Crawford.
 
"If you don't blow your foot off, you'll blow your head off," Innes told Bailey. "I never heard of anybody filing a hair trigger down below a pound."
 
"Where is Quartel?"
&............