The kid looked around the room. Some of those men wore pistols in their belts but none moved. The kid vaulted the bar and took another bottle and tucked it under his arm and walked out the door. The dog was gone. The man on the bench was gone too. He untied the mule and led it across the square.
He woke in the nave of a ruinous church, blinking up at the vaulted ceiling and the tall swagged walls with their faded frescos. The floor of the church was deep in dried guano and the droppings of cattle and sheep. Pigeons flapped through the piers of dusty light and three buzzards hobbled about on the picked bone carcass of some animal dead in the chancel.
His head was in torment and his tongue swollen with thirst. He sat up and looked around him. He'd put the bottle under his saddle and he found it and held it up and shook it and drew the cork and drank. He sat with his eyes closed, the sweat beaded on his forehead. Then he opened his eyes and drank again. The buzzards stepped down one by one and trotted off into the sacristy. After a while he rose and went out to look for the mule.
It was nowhere in sight. The mission occupied eight or ten ares of enclosed land, a barren purlieu that held a few goats and burros. In the mud walls of the enclosure were cribs inhabited by families of squatters and a few cookfires smoked thinly in the sun. He walked around the side of the church and entered the sacristy. Buzzards shuffled off through the chaff and plaster like enormous yardfowl. The domed vaults overhead were clotted with a dark furred mass that shifted and breathed and chittered. In the room was a wooden table with a few clay pots and along the back wall lay the remains of several bodies, one a child. He went on through the sacristy into the church again and got his saddle. He drank the rest of the bottle and he put the saddle on his shoulder and went out.
The facade of the building bore an array of saints in their niches and they had been shot up by American troops trying their rifles, the figures shorn of ears and noses and darkly mottled with leadmarks oxidized upon the stone. The huge carved and paneled doors hung awap on their hinges and a carved stone Virgin held in her arms a headless child. He stood blinking in the noon heat. Then he saw the mule's tracks. They were just the palest disturbance of the dust and they came out of the door of the church and crossed the lot to the gate in the east wall. He hiked the saddle higher onto his shoulder and set out after them.
A dog in the shade of the portal rose and lurched sullenly out into the sun until he had passed and then lurched back. He took the road down the hill toward the river, a ragged figure enough. He entered a deep wood of pecan and oak and the road took a rise and he could see the river below him. Blacks were washing a carriage in the ford and he went down the hill and stood at the edge of the water and after a while he called out to them.
They were sopping water over the black lacquerwork and one of them raised up and turned to look at him. The horses stood to their knees in the current.
What? called the black.
Have you seen a mule.
Mule?
I lost a mule. I think he come this way.
The black wiped his face with the back of his arm. Somethin come down the road about a hour back. I think it went down the river yonder. It might of been a mule. It didnt have no tail nor no hair to speak of but it did have long ears.
The other two blacks grinned. The kid looked off down the river. He spat and set off along the path through the willows and swales of grass.
He found it about a hundred yards downriver. It was wet to its belly and it looked up at him and then lowered its head again into the lush river grass. He threw down the saddle and took up the trailing rope and tied the animal to a limb and kicked it halfheartedly. It shifted slightly to the side and continued to graze. He reached atop his head but he had lost the crazy hat somewhere. He made his way down through the trees and stood looking at the cold swirling waters. Then he waded out into the river like some wholly wretched baptismal candidate.
III
Sought out to join an army - Interview with Captain White —
His views - The camp - Trades his mule - A cantina in the Laredito -
A Mennonite - Companion killed.
He was lying naked under the trees with his rags spread across the limbs above him when another rider going down the river reined up and stopped.
He turned his head. Through the willows he could see the legs of the horse. He rolled over on his stomach.
The man got down and stood beside the horse.
He reached and got his twinehandled knife.
Howdy there, said the rider.
He didnt answer. He moved to the side to see better through, the branches.
Howdy there. Where ye at?
What do you want?
Wanted to talk to ye.
What about?
Hell fire, come on out. I'm white and Christian.
The kid was reaching up through the willows trying to get his breeches. The belt was hanging down and he tugged at it but the breeches were hung on a limb.