statement of facts.
Sandy: 'Why, — how did you know about the sandals?'
'Tracked you after a team of us ran those outlaws down. I was too late to help your mom. Saw some other prints with yours at a waterhole, and figured you'd made a meal for the biggest predator that ever roamed this country.'
Sandy tried to change the subject. Lufo was having none of that. Until now he'd held some hope that her tantalizing hints of a protector in the brush was only a fanciful tissue. Yet Quantrill added earlier, if circumstantial, evidence. Lufo, almost sadly: 'Ted, you're talkin' about a big boar hog.'
Sandy said nothing, but stared daggers at her lover.
Quantrill, nodding, with a half-smile toward Sandy: 'I'm talking about Ba'al. Or maybe there's more than one. Sandy?'
She searched her teacup for a reply, evidently without success. 'I don't want to talk about it. I have enough trouble keeping my — human friends from each other's throats.'
'That brute is a killer,' Quantrill said without rancor.
'And you?' This from Sandy with much rancor. 'From the little Lufo said about you, I didn't recognize the gentle boy I used to know. I expected someone like the picture of Dorian Gray! You've probably shed more blood than Ba'al, and for worse reasons — both of you! That brute adopted me and Childe. If you were hungry and hunted, would you adopt a piglet?'
'I wouldn' make it part of my family,' Lufo said levelly.
'Many's the night I've stayed awake wondering, if I ever had to choose between the brute that looks after us and a human who looks in on us now and then, how I would choose. Well, now I can sleep!'
The nubile breasts rose and fell rapidly as Sandy's temper flared.
The two men shared guilty knowledge that with only a casual application of heat they had brought a long- simmering problem to a rolling boil. Sandy burst out: 'I'll show you two what you came here for, and you can take it and, and, and go to hell with it and remember me as the piglady for all I–Lufo Albeniz, do you want Mayberry tea down your collar?'
Lufo had moved near her; had made what he imagined was a conciliating gesture. Blinking: 'Hadn't planned on it, chica.'
'Then take your hand off my butt! Lordy, but you big strong men are sure of yourselves,' she snorted, as Lufo jerked the offending hand away.
Lufo's choice would have been clear to any old-fashioned macho. He could either beat the squishy mierda out of his woman, or he could retreat with the lighthearted patience of a big dog attacked by a very small dog. Any other solution — apology, or any explanation that smacked of apology — would be unthinkable in the presence of another man, especially Quantrill. Because Lufo was survival-oriented, he let himself be swayed by several facts.
If he struck her, he might have to fight Quantrill too. And Ted Quantrill was the only unarmed combat student he'd ever seen whose psychomotor responses defied belief.
If his little gringa became angry enough, she might just whistle up a half-tone cyclone of tusk and gristle that could come through a wall and survive a lot of small-caliber hits while scattering a man around a little, Lufo needed time to think. Sandy Grange didn't fit any simple pattern, and her old friendship with Quantrill muddied the problem further. He examined these facts in the space of a second or two, unleashed a dazzling smile, made a mocking bow as he backed away. 'I was clumsy with desire, chica.
I'll set up my bedroll at the woodpile as penance while the light is still good.' He paused at the door, traveling gear under his arm. There was a faint air of command in his, 'Coming, compadre?'
'In a minute.' Quantrill waited for the door to swing shut; considered several questions. Instead, he said,
'I tried every way I knew to find you, Sandy. If that — that boar succeeded where I failed, I'm in his debt.
I know for certain he's taken out some enemies of mine so,' he sighed and slapped his thigh with rueful good humor, ' — I guess I have to count him as a friend.' He put down his cup, grasped his traveling gear.
'You have to admit this is a little hard for me to take in, all at once. But I thought I'd forgotten how to laugh until I recognized you. Now I'd better go.'
He was in the doorway when she said, very softly,
'I don't want you to go, but yes, you'd better. Tell Lufo I'll send Childe out with bowls of menudo when she gets home. Wouldn't want him to think I maltreat my guests.' But her smile was the real apology.
CHAPTER 65
Neither of the men found the right words before dinner. They spent the time with a deck of Lufo's cards and reminiscences. At last the shadow-quiet Childe faced them, offered steaming bowls of savory tripe soup and, after studying Quantrill for long minutes, ghosted away again. With the sun down and the breeze up, they were soon lying on their backs in mummybags.
Lufo lit a cheroot. After a few puffs he offered it to Quantrill. 'Some things a man can share, compadre,'
he said.
Quantrill, who disliked cigars, accepted this one for its symbolic value. Handing it back, exhaling luxuriously, he asked, 'You two married?'
'No. Now don' interrupt; I have some things to say but they won' be the right ones if you push me.
Okay?'
'Right.'
Long silence before, 'I talk too much. But I only exaggerate a little. I have three wives; since I already tol'
you about that, I may as well keep on. I don' know what you two had going when she was a kid, maybe nothing, but I know how she looked when she saw you today. I know that look.' Chuckling gruffly: 'It was a jump- on-your-bones look, compadre. Maybe that's layin' it on some, but take it from me, she mus' have missed you a lot once, and she didn' forget you.'
Long ago, Quantrill had noted the heightened sibilant TexMex speech accents in his friend at times when he was not posturing. He recognized them now as Lufo went on: 'In la raza there is a code. I'm glad it isn' your code because it gives you two places to stand in this matter, but only one way to move. You could act as a brother or as the one with the horns, the cuckold. Either way you'd have some bad business with me for trifling with Sandy. Because either way, you have a prior claim. I donno, maybe it is your code. Is it?'
'I don't know. Not the way you put it, but I won't see her victimized. If she knows all about you and likes it that way, it isn't up to me to make trouble.'
'She doesn' know what you know — and I'd jus' as soon she didn'. What my code says is, the nex' move is yours. If you don' go for my hide then I can either keep on seein' Sandy, or I can admit you have first claim and shy off. But it's your move.'
Quantrill puzzled over that for awhile. Eventually he said, 'An old guy named Brubaker told me everybody's got an ethic whether he knows it or not. An ethic, a code, — whatever. Yours says I'd have to act as an injured party, but mine says no; it's none of my affair if she isn't hurt. And I go by my ethic, not yours. If you go on with her like this, not telling her your ways, sooner or later she will get hurt. And then you and I will have what you call bad business. If you really care about her, seems to me you have a choice, and I won't try to make it for you.'
'I can read an angle's moves, compadre, but not his mind. What choice?'
'Tell her about your wives or shy off. Any other way, you'd be treating her like someone without rights.'
A chuckle: 'The rights of a woman? Yours is a troublesome code, compadre.'
From Quantrill, a sigh: 'Don't I know it.'
'At leas' it gives me room to live with mine. Whatthefuck is that word? Ay, compassion. I am a
