When the Owl Cries Part 16

"We'll have to do it slow. You take my horse, Raul."

A great hive of maggots, a brown clot, in the arms of a red birch, broke as Manuel swung the knife. Sweat dripped from his face and arms.

He stopped to peel off his shirt and knot it around his waist. His Negroid features, streaked with dust and pocked with leaf fragments, had whitened. He worked with big long sweeps of the machete, realizing haste was futile. His eyes became slits, and he called back at Raul:

"There ought to be a place to break through soon ... soon now."

"You ride, Manuel. I'll cut."

"No ... you ride," said Manuel, wheezing as he chopped.

"I wonder what happened at Petaca?" Raul said.

"Plenty."

Raul left his saddle and slashed with the bone-handled knife and a load of ants sprayed over him. He backed away, shouting:

"Next time, I'll look, and then cut."

Before long, they reached a hill strewn with wreckage from a forest fire: old palm logs humped the sand and rocks; the horses walked across fronds so burned and fragile their ashes rose in spurts. From the crest they saw the volcano.

A black horse's tail, some twenty thousand feet long, arched above the peak. The smoke seemed too enormous to be moved by any wind. Lower, behind other mountain ranges, ranges that flanked the cone, black teeth of rain gaped, ready to bite into the earth.

Neither Raul nor Manuel spoke. Faces streaked, their white clothes filthy, they merely looked, steadying their horses. A chain of yellow traveled through the volcanic smoke and then the flame became red and gradually bloomed into more smoke.

"I've never seen so much smoke," Raul said.

"Lava must be pouring down," Manuel said, recalling his mother's sobbing, when he was a boy; the peak had threatened them then and the ground had trembled drunkenly. Some said she had been all right till that day. Some said a man had quarreled with her, beaten her, and hurled her into a corner of their hut. Manuel reached into his pocket for a shred of iguana and chewed it and said:

"What do you think ... Do you think it will get worse?"

"I don't think so. The cone is blown open now." Raul sat erect, his face set. "We have a long way to go and I'm worried about Petaca."

They soon found a trail and trotted their horses, horses and men swaying to avoid lianas and thorned branches. Manuel had his machete in its case. He slouched over the pommel and munched iguana, as if it were chewing gum. Thirsty, he wanted to drink from their gourd but something kept him from taking a sip.

Early that morning, men had fired on them as they searched for Farias, missing along the del Valle boundary. While completing his check of the upper corn crops in Sector 11, he had been taken prisoner, he and his son, Luis.

For Raul and Manuel, it had been a dismal and useless search; the hacienda people had said they knew nothing about Farias and Luis and yet someone had tipped off Raul, telling him Luis had escaped and gone back to Petaca.

Again they rode through cactus country, sandy but free of boulders, the cactus tall and strong, with lianas and vines swinging from the top of one to the top of another, a desolate camouflage, suggesting primordial days.

Sky had darkened appreciably and explosions indicated further eruptions, yet no quakes rumbled or shook the ground. When the riders topped a ridge, long-tailed, blue flycatchers winged from cactus to cactus, and parrots clattered in a forgotten language. An iguana slept on a log ... all seemed normal here.

Feeling his cinch strap slip, Manuel got off, checked the strap and yanked it up a notch. A shot rang out as he pulled the leather.

Raul felt something burn his shoulder; he felt he had been slapped by a heavy branch; then he remembered that they had not been moving and put his hand to his shoulder and saw blood.

Swiftly, throwing himself off his saddle, he lay on the ground and shouted:

"Down, Manuel. They hit me!"

Manuel let go his bridle and yanked his rifle, tearing it from its scabbard. With rifle in his arms, he looped his bridle over Chico's head and then--all in a rolling motion--buried himself in the bush.

Quietly, he asked:

"Can you shoot, Don Raul? See anyone?"

Raul hunched along the sand, dug his toes and squirmed behind a heap of vines and bush.

"Hope they don't get our horses," he muttered.

Pain drenched in a kind of perspiration over his brain and he lay motionless, eyes shut, gasping for breath. He thought: It's Pedro ...

if I could only get him! It's no good, I've got to sit up, think straight. That d.a.m.n bullet can't be so bad. Can't seem to see clearly. Now ... now, that's better. Cabrones, to chase us, hunt us.

G.o.d d.a.m.n them! Ai, chingado!

Manuel had begun firing, shooting across the trail, picking at trees and vines. His bullets clicked dry stuff and some of it shattered and the dry shattering sound emphasized the danger. A parrot squawked. A couple of shots spanged near Raul and he rolled on his uninjured side, forced himself to sit up and saw three men rushing through the bush, bent double.

"There they go!" he shouted.

Manuel fired several times, his old Remington shooting fast ... then silence.

Raul could hear Manuel crawling toward him; the horses were moving noisily, tangled among bushes; he recognized Chico's snuffling; Manuel's gun clicked against a rock; leaves sc.r.a.ped close by; his head appeared.

"Where did you get hit?" he asked, dragging himself closer.

"My shoulder."

"How does it feel?"

"Can scarcely see ... for the pain."

"I saw the men, had a good look. Who the h.e.l.l does Pedro think he is!

Here, let me pull open your shirt, Raul. You're bleeding."

"A handkerchief in my back pocket."

"I'll need it for the wound."

"Wait ... have to move," said Raul, sitting up, so Manuel could pull out the handkerchief. "Got to move more ... this way ... try to shake the pain."

"Do you think you'll be able to ride?"

"Later ... I'll manage."

"You're hit deep.... Let me tear the handkerchief and make a wad."

"Aah ... aah ... I taste blood."

"You're not hit in the chest. You're imagining that. Here, I'll tear my shirt and bind your chest and shoulder."