Teresa smiles at him again.
No matter, Nepomuceno thinks, contented; he won that battle.
Ooh, that Teresa is something else … but then he begins thinking about Stealman and old Arnoldo again, and he feels even worse.
His moods are unpredictable these days. He’s jumpy. He goes out into the street. Four of his men wait with their mounts; the other eight or so who accompanied him into Bruneville have stayed away from the Market Square so as not to set the gringos on edge. Three are waiting at the turnoff to Rancho del Carmen, and the rest are even further ahead. These days it’s safest to travel in packs.
Mexicans might think his men are simply vaqueros, or shady bandits, or lively young men. To gringos they’re all worthless greasers.
The fact is that vaqueros are no longer what they used to be, back in Lázaro’s day: they were both tender and tough with the herd, defending it from buffalo stampedes, wolves, and drought; leading the cattle to green pastures and rescuing them from gullies if necessary; fattening them up daily and always returning them to the corral.
Some say everything changed when the slaughterhouse opened in Bruneville. Others say it happened before that, when the buffalo began to be hunted to extinction, the Indians started carrying firearms, and grass began to be sown, causing the land itself to change. Grass grows fast and feeds the fast-growing herds, but it needs a lot of water — if it doesn’t rain it dries out — and it’s destructive: it kills trees and other plants, including grains and fruits, even sweet potatoes.
The truth is that the volume of cattle has ravaged the prairie … When a herd passes through it’s worse than wildfire because the earth isn’t cleansed for renewal, it’s just trampled.
(The slaughterhouse is past the docks, near Mrs. Big’s Hotel. Cattle and swine low, bellow, and bawl; they’re slaughtered by the dozens, sliced in half, they’re hung on hooks and shipped out on boats; there’s a constant stream of blood, and a pervasive stench.
In the slaughterhouse they experiment with ice, trying to freeze the meat to prevent it from rotting … it’s not that they have a problem with the flies and worms, but they want it to appear fresh, despite the fact it’s nearly rotten — if they could find buyers, they’d even sell the worms and flies by the pound.)
But back to our story: Nepomuceno sees Shears beating the old vaquero mercilessly in the Market Square.
“What’s going on here?” he asks calmly (despite the fact he’s deeply fond of Lázaro Rueda) to take things down a notch.
La Plange, the photographer who claims to be French, though no one knows where he’s really from — some say he’s Belgian or Dutch, though these days he asks folks to pronounce his name the Anglo way and signs his prints “Leplange”—came to Bruneville to make money taking portraits of the gringos; he’s already cleaned up with the rich folks across the river in Matasánchez. He leans over and takes a few steps so he can see everything. How he’d love to photograph this scene, but it’s one thing to want to and another to actually do it. Eyes riveted, he motions to Snotty, the kid who helps him out (day and night, through thick and thin, even between the sheets), making signs with his left hand to bring his camera so he can capture the moment:
“Quick, Snotty!” It’s La Plange’s fault the kid’s got stuck with this nickname.
Alicia, Captain Boyle’s Mexican wife — wagging tongues say she’s not his only one — sets down her new earthenware pot, which is filled with berries she just bought from Joe. “Good heavens!”
A step behind Alicia, Joe, the Lieders’ oldest son, nervously scratches the earth with his bare feet. With the few words he knows in Spanish and English (no one understands the Germans because they speak with such a strange accent), supplemented by gestures, he’s trying to sell the harvest his mother worked so hard to gather. He’s so fidgety that he’s accidentally struck by the ring of belts the trapper, Cruz, has hanging from his shoulder.
Right behind Joe is Dry Whitman, a teetotaler from the Temperance Society. He’s been in town for four months preaching the virtues of sobriety, persecuting drunkards, and pestering the owners of establishments that sell alcohol, threatening them with the fires of hell.
Nepomuceno repeats his question:
“What’s going on here?”
Joe explains to Nepomuceno in his broken Spanish.
“Leave the poor man alone, Mister Shears.” Nepomuceno is not prepared to call this imbecile “Sheriff.” “I’ll take care of this. Just a few words to help him see…”
And without waiting for an answer, Nepomuceno begins: “Lázaro, arise and walk …”
Laughter. The joke strikes a chord. Good old Nepo! He’s so witty!
That’s when Sheriff Shears spits the phrase at Nepomuceno we’ve already heard, “Shut up, you dirty greaser.” And that’s when Snotty, La Plange’s apprentice, runs to get the tripod, camera, and other equipment, thereby missing the insult.
Frank hears it while he’s repeating his orders to himself, And make it snappy!, to avoid forgetting them. He hastens his pace.
Everyone else stands stock still, it’s the calm before the storm, even though a breeze from the Gulf, warm and salty, has kicked up.
A tense second passes, a long one, the kind that existed back in the days when everyone carried Colts. Three more seconds pass in the same manner.
Six seconds.
Not even the birds are moving; just the hair on Sandy’s head (the town coquette), and Nepomuceno’s (which looks reddish in the sun), and Joe’s blond shock of hair. Their hair moves in the breeze, waving on their heads, a controlled flight of sorts, sweet and gentle.
Twelve seconds. Fifteen. Eighteen. Twenty.
A hat flies off someone’s head. No one chases after it. A feather escapes from pretty Sandy’s thick hair, an ornament from the previous evening.
They’re frozen in a face-off: Sheriff Shears leaning forward, his fine hair stuck to his face with sweat, his face twisted with rage, the barrel of the gun (the butt of which he was using to beat Lázaro Rueda) in his gnarled hands, his cross-eyes sweeping the floor, his pants a few inches longer than his legs, his grubby shirt untucked, his five-pointed star hanging from his vest; Nepomuceno stands erect, tall, his bright eyes staring straight ahead, his fine riding pants (made from Scottish cashmere) made to measure by the best tailor in Puebla, his sharp-looking jacket (made by a tailor in New Orleans), the cuffs of his white (Dutch) shirt showing, his silk tie (French), his beard and his hair well-groomed (by a barber from Doña Estefanía’s ranch), and clean boots (only the finest, made in Coahuila).
The breeze blows the seeds off a dandelion puff-ball, scattering them everywhere.
Shears is famous for his temper; conversely, it’s impossible to tell what’s going through Nepomuceno’s mind. He appears to be watching everyone at once, cold and calculating, there’s something commanding in his gaze, except that in the reflection of his pupils there’s the memory of how Lázaro taught him how to use a lasso when he was a boy and of his violin and songs.
The breeze persists. The naked dandelion stalk sways. You won’t find the feather that blew out of Sandy’s hair.
The flyaway hat floats to the ground, blows around the corner and out of sight.
In Nepomuceno’s memory the vaquero’s lasso is dancing in the air.
Thirty seconds. The breeze hasn’t stopped; but the hairs on Sheriff Shears’ greasy head don’t move.
Thirty-five.
Suddenly the gust of air from the gulf stops as if it turned into lead and plummeted to earth.