Chapter TenFlight From Snake Thickets
This time of night did strange things to the brush. The moon had not yet risen enough to light fully the trails winding their secretive way through the jealous chaparral, and what vague dim light did seep through the gloom held a reflected, synthetic quality. Most of the vaqueros were in a drunken stupor when Crawford and the woman left the house, getting one of Rockland’s prized copperbottoms and a pinto mare from the corrals without being detected. They rode north from the spread, following one of the ancient game traces which the vaqueros used when working the cattle. In the eerie illumination, the berries ripening on the granjeno bushes formed yellow shadow patches against the velvet backdrop of darkness farther back, and the white filament of the
