In Bruneville, at the Smiths’ house, their daughter Caroline listens closely and anxiously to what’s happening in the Fears’ house. In the room at the back, fever has sunk its claws into the sick adventurer’s neck. He raves while Shears bleats in pain (and terror, afraid Nepomuceno will come back to finish him off).
Their nursemaid, Eleonor, doesn’t relent in her battle against the fever. She fills the pail with fresh water, wetting the rag that used to be part of her blue camisole. She wrings it out and listens to the drops falling in the pail.
Caroline, her ears straining, hears that the fever and delirium have changed the adventurer’s heartbeat, it sounds like a savage’s, following a singsong beat.
Angry and lying sleepless in bed, she begins to hear things. With perfect clarity, she hears El Loco shaking the branches of ivy on the wall at the south side of the market. Later — the sound drifts away — she hears a dove. Then she clearly hears the cat they have put in the market to eat the rats swallowing a fat one, which has just given birth to a half dozen babies.
The Lipans arrive in their settlement. They had to stop on the road three times to rest their horses and let them recover. One of them has barely survived the trip — it’s hobbling, and its left rear shank is swollen: when they see this they realize they should put it out of its misery. The sooner the better. The keeper of the horses — an important role in the community — takes his rifle. Bang! The bullet whistles, as if it laments its task for the fraction of a second it takes to fly its course.
In Matasánchez, Dr. Velafuente gets up to pee. He could use the chamber pot beneath his bed but he feels the need to go outdoors and breathe fresh air. He passes the bed of his wife, Aunt Cuca, who’s snoring lightly, “Like a humming-bird, Cuquita, just like when I met you, I went to spy on you from your balcony, and your hummingbird snoring drove me wild.” The Doctor feels an uncontrollable urge to cry. “I’m just an old sissy, crying at a memory.”
He tries to repress his faint sobs, which sound like mourning doves: u-u, u-u.
A cat scampers by, black as night, jumping along the wall toward the neighbors’ rooftop.
Back at the Lipans’ settlement, the horse, shattered by its journey at a pace it couldn’t keep, falls, mortally wounded, its muscles spent.
Its final thought: They never gave me a name, even though the Lipans stole me from a runaway slave.
(One day the local poet will pass by that spot, singing the horse’s final thoughts:
No one ever named me.
I was a crazy horse,
A slave beyond compare.
I could have been called Cinnamon,
Or Hack, maybe — I would have liked that name.)
At Mrs. Big’s Hotel, darkness is nearly complete.
Mrs. Big and Sandy are asleep.
Sandy’s niece’s eyes are still wide open, watching the weakening shadows from the Rangers’ smoldering campfire beneath the icaco tree. Their macho enthusiasm has faded.
Suddenly, Sandy’s niece falls asleep, so quickly that her eyes remain open. Her eyelids close slowly.
The Rangers justify their actions to each other. They no longer guffaw. They murmur secrets among themselves. They’re oblivious to everything else. A golden whale could come floating past the riverbank like an angel from on high, right past their noses, and they wouldn’t notice it.
The cadavers sway beneath the icaco tree. Toads croak at their feet. Frogs jump, startled.
The most remarkable thing in this scene is what’s happening in Mrs. Big’s bed.
In Mrs. Big’s belly there’s a hurricane force wind, if we take into account the relative proportion of Mrs. Big’s innards to the gas therein. The gas is dark, like its surroundings. It’s impatient, and in a foul mood. It’s not exactly mute — the sounds it emits are not words but sinister rumblings, equal to lightning in their intensity and electric nature. Mrs. Big’s lower gut endures the pangs of this attack, putting up with them as she dreams she’s in an elegant salon, watching Zachary approaching surrounded by fair-haired men.
The gas struggles to escape. There’s not enough room for it in this box of muscle and bone, even though we’re talking about Mrs. Big here. It makes like it’s in the bowels of a gigantic volcano. It fights to erupt. Despite its tenacity, she neither burps nor farts. Its entrapment prolongs Mrs. Big’s discomfort, and the gas’s, too.
A war is underway inside Mrs. Big, but no one is aware. Pain is futile because it elicits no response. Cramps, though intense, are equally ineffective. The blood takes control; it joins the battle.
Mrs. Big’s cheeks burn. She’s helpless. Her dream changes direction. The storm changes direction, too. “Zachary! Zachary!” Zachary looks up disdainfully at the sound of his name. He fixes his attention on another young lady. He ignores Mrs. Big.
She feels like she’s going to explode.
The gas inside her strengthens. Without fully understanding its own will, except this urgency to escape — the only thing fate is denying it — the gas inside Mrs. Big pushes against blood, guts, muscle, her soul, everything that stands in its way.
Mrs. Big’s mood blackens further: as far as she’s concerned both Shears and Nepomuceno and their little conniption fit can all go to hell …
IN NEPOMUCENO’S CAMP, Lázaro comes to. He gets up to pee. He takes a gourd of water. He listens to what folks are saying around him — a couple of men are awake, keeping watch.
Lázaro thinks things over.
He speaks:
Do I need to excuse myself for what I did, for being drunk? Well, I’ll tell you how it happened. I was out of work, because of something that happened with Doña Estefanía, or her two older sons, to be specific, who don’t care for me one bit, and with each passing day I was losing hope that things would look up. One of those days, when I was waiting to go meet her boy Nepo in the Plaza del Mercado — he’s the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of my bosses, the only ones I’ve had ever since I arrived in these parts — to see if I wanted to join up for one of his jobs — no sure thing, because for cattle drives they always want gunslingers, and it’s not that I don’t know how to fire a gun, I do, but I’m better with a lasso than a Colt, I don’t carry a gun, I’m an old guy, I’ve been around (that’s what I was going to say to Nepomuceno to get him to hire me) — besides, I was prepared to do anything due to the stroke of bad luck that had left me penniless …
(Just quickly I’ll tell you that Nepo was coming from Rita’s tobacco shop, what a woman — good enough to eat — he went to get some, and I don’t mean just tobacco! I waited near the Café Ronsard, though I could have gone to find him at Rita’s, I used to look after her foals but she doesn’t have any left, she sold them all …)
(Since Rita is widowed, gossips might say Nepomuceno likes widows, but that’s hogwash: what he likes are women with flesh on their bones. I knew the woman who was his true love, and I’m telling you she was something special, she woulda knocked the breath out of you.)
In the cantina behind the plaza one of King’s cowboys challenged me.
“Su no hombre.”
“Su what?” I asked him, because, really, I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say.
“Su! Su! Su, su no hombre!”
His gestures clarified his meaning; he meant “tu” as in “you.” As in, “You’re not a man.”
“Of course I’m a man! I’m not a … bird!” I wanted to say “eagle,” but I am one, and I can’t tell a lie. I’ve been a loyal Eagle for a long time.