“Yeah,” grinned Bueno Bailey, forking a big dun on Crawford’s other side. “There never was a man could cuss the brush like Crawford. I’d rather listen to him talking his way through a mogote of chaparral than hear music.”
Crawford hardly heard him. The perspiration was sticky beneath his armpits, his shirt clung to his back with it. And now it was that other, stirring in him, so confused with the pain at first he could not define it, or would not—the same thing he had felt there at the corral, watching Africano. And worse than the pain. No. He wasn’t afraid. I’m not afraid, Huerta. How could he be? How could I be? Living with horses all my life. How could I be?
“Take it easy,” snapped Bueno. “What’s the matter?”
Crawford jerked the reins against his horse, realizing he had allowed it to
