The Crossing(44)

Déme la carabina, he said.

The boy looked at the wolf. He looked at the crowd. His eyes were swimming but he did not let down the hammer of the rifle or move to relinquish it. The deputy raised the pistol and sighted it upon his upper chest. Spectators at the far side of the estacada squatted or dropped to their knees and some of them lay face down in the dirt with their hands over their heads. In the silence the only sound was the low whining of one of the dogs. Then someone spoke from the bleachers. Bastante, he said. No le molests.

It was the alguacil. All turned to him. He was standing in the upper tiers of the rough board scaffolding with men at either side of him in their seven x beaver hats, some smoking puros as was the alguacil. He gestured with one hand. He said it was finished. He said for the boy to put up his rifle and that he would not be harmed. The deputy lowered the pistol, the watchers in the gallery rose from the ground and dusted themselves off. The boy laid the barrel of the rifle across his shoulder and lowered the hammer with his thumb. He turned and looked up at the alguacil. The alguacil made a small sweeping motion with the back of his hand. Whether to him or to the crowd at large he knew not but the spectators began to talk among themselves once more and someone opened the doors of the bodega onto the cool Mexican night.

The man to whom the hide had been promised had stepped across the boards and come forward. He walked around the dead wolf and stood facing her with his beltknife in his hand. The boy asked him what the hide was worth and he shrugged. He watched the boy carefully.

Cuánto quiere por él? the boy said.

E1 cuero?

La lobs.

The claimant to the hide looked at the wolf and he looked at the boy. He said that the hide was worth fifty pesos.

Acepta la carabina? the boy said.

The claimant’s eyebrows rose but he regained his composure. En un huinche? he said.

Clam. Cuarenta y cuatro.

He unlimbered the rifle from his shoulder and pitched it across to the man. The claimant jacked open the lever and closed it again. He bent and picked up the ejected cartridge from the dirt and wiped it on his shirtsleeve and fed it back into the receiver. He raised the rifle and sighted at the lights overhead. It was worth a dozen mutilated wolfhides but he held it and weighed it in his hand and looked at the boy before nodding. Bueno, he said. He put the rifle over his shoulder and held out his hand. The boy looked down at the hand, then slowly took it and they sealed their barter by handclasp in the center of the pit while the populace filed past toward the open door. They studied him with their dark eyes in passing but if they were disappointed in their sport they gave no notice for they also were guests of hacendado and alguacil and they kept their own counsel as the custom of the country decreed. The claimant of the hide asked the boy if he had any more cartridges for the rifle but he only shook his head and knelt down and gathered up the limp shape of the shewolf in his arms which thin as she was yet was all he could carry and he crossed the pit and stepped over the barricade and went on toward the door at the rear with the head lolling and the slow blood dripping in his tracks.

When he rode out from the shadow of the building with the wolf across the bow of the saddle he had wrapped her in the remainder of the sheeting the rancher’s wife had given him. The yard was filled with departing horsemen and with their shouts to each other. Dogs swarmed baying about the legs of his horse and the horse shied and stamped and kicked out at them and he rode past the open door of the bodega and on through the gate and out across the fields toward the river, leaning from the saddle and batting away the last of the dogs with his hat. To the south over the town rockets were rising in long sputtering arcs and breaking open in the darkness and falling in a slow hot confetti. The crack of their bursting reached him well behind the flare of light and in each flare of light hung the smudged ghosts of those gone before. He reached the river and turned downstream and rode through the shallow riffles and out along the broad gravel flats. A flight of ducks passed him going downriver in the dark. He could hear their wings. He could see them where they rose against the sky and flared away over the dark country to the west. He rode past the town and the small lights of the carnival and the shapes of the lights that lay slurred in the slow black coils of water along the river shore. A burntout catherinewheel stood smoking beyond the willow bracken. He studied the rise of the mountains, how they lay. The wind coming off the water smelled like wet metal. He could feel the blood of the wolf against his thigh where it had soaked through the sheeting and through his breeches and he put his hand to his leg and tasted the blood which tasted no different than his own. The fireworks died away. The moon’s half hung over the black cape of the mountains.