Chapter FiveHuerta Makes a Proposition
At dawn, it was the birds, mostly, during the spring months, like this. They filled the dim undulations of brush with a constant, shrill twittering. Bobwhites shrieked from a draw full of white brush, and blue quail cooed beneath the cejas of green brazil, and turkeys gobbled down in a dry creek bed where they were fattening on elm mast.
Through all this treble cacophony, Glenn Crawford walked heavily up the road leading the shaggy black cow pony. It was Jacinto who saw him first. Though the sun had not yet risen, smoke curled from the kitchen, and the gross Mexican was just outside the door filling the coffeepot from the water butt. It cost him some effort to straighten up when he caught sight of Crawford. He stared blankly. Then he dropped the big
