“Who’s going to untie the barge for Don Arnoldo?” Ismael thinks, so he shouts it aloud.
Ludovico backs up his horse. He draws close to the moorings, takes out his quietest pistol (to minimize upsetting the herd) and shoots through them both twice; they’re thin ropes and don’t break clean through, they’re still held fast by a few smoking threads which soon begin to burn. Quickly, he catches up with the others.
The mooing, the sound of the hooves and the horseshoes, the giddy-ups of the vaqueros, and the cracking of the whip grow farther and farther away from the banks of the Río Bravo. There’s no riverbreeze, but a prairie wind blows along the riverbank, refreshing; it extinguishes the flames on the mooring ropes. Old Arnoldo doesn’t understand a thing. Like clockwork, he falls asleep as soon as he takes his hand off the tiller. It’s his age, he inevitably needs to take a siesta on each trip; it’s like a reflex — as soon as they make land he begins “my shuteye.” There’s wisdom in the rhythm of his siestas, at the end of each trip from Bruneville to Matasánchez, or vice versa, he takes a short nap. His boys always come and wake him up when they’ve tied up the moorings. On this occasion, he awakens by himself, confused, because he has had more than his usual “shuteye.” “Why didn’t you wake me up already?”
He struggles to free himself from Morpheus’ embrace.
The tug’s motors are still running.
“They left me here like an idiot …”
Where are those boys? He picks up the bullhorn and shouts, “Pablo! Pedro! Twoooo Eeeeeiiights!?”
Nothing.
“You goddamn kids! Get back here right now or I’ll tan your hides!”
Still nothing. Nothing at all.
What should he do? With great difficulty — it’s not easy for him alone, he always leans on Pablo’s or Pedro’s arm — he leaves the cabin for the stern to take a look around. Without his bullhorn (he can’t risk moving from the tug to the barge without both hands free), he shouts two or three times.
“Pedro! Pablo!”
He sees, but he doesn’t believe his eyes; he blinks. Without a doubt the barge is empty, the three sets of gates are wide open, and there’s no trace of the boys.
“Damn it all to hell! How could they do this to me?”
What’s going on? For crying out loud! Did they steal his cargo? Have they run away? He can’t believe it.
He returns to the tug with a little more agility. Surprise and worry have taken years off him. He retreats to the tiller. He picks up the horn again and shouts, “Pedro! Pablo!”
He feels a jerk. He knows the feeling. The moorings have just come undone. A rotting post on the Old Dock has bent, freeing the rope that wasn’t burnt through by the gunshot. The second rope the boys tied couldn’t hold the weight of the vessel and snapped. One snapped and one twisted; the barge is free. The river’s current takes over.
The old boards that the boys threw across to the Old Dock fall into the river.
Old Arnoldo sits down behind the tiller. No point in staying angry. What if they didn’t steal the cargo? What if … No, there’s no other explanation.
“I don’t believe it, I just can’t … I must be dreaming …”
He steers the boat back to Bruneville. He thinks, They’re good boys, I know that. They wouldn’t steal from me … so what happened? What lightning struck them?
At the inn known as Mrs. Big’s Hotel, furious Wild, the buffalo hunter, rants and raves. There’s no boat to Point Isabel today?! What will happen to his cargo? He insults his slaves, One, Two, and Three, curses and throws a glass at his sidekick, handsome Trust.
He kicks them out of the bar. “Get outta here! Scram! Out!”
Outside, Trust leans against the log wall of Mrs. Big’s, one boot on the wall, the other on the ground; he takes a piece of straw from his shirt pocket and begins to pick his teeth, talking to himself loud enough that One, Two, and Three — all barefoot and dressed in rags — can hear.
“That’s it. I can’t take it no more. I’m gonna go prospect for gold in Nevada, or silver in Virginia. I can’t stay with him another day.”
One, Two, and Three are taken aback. They won’t be able to put up with Wild without Trust around. They repeat the arguments handsome Trust has used on them before, when the topic of prospecting for gold comes up.
“You gonna spend years in darkness, scratching away at stones with a shovel in your hands? That life’s for the dogs!”
“You gonna shut off your sight for good, without waiting for your life to end? Better die an early death!”
“You gonna bury yourself where nothing grows, where there’s no women, not even a slave, and eat stone soup every day? Dying of hunger to earn something that they’ll rob you for when you try to sell it?”
“You ain’t never gonna ride a horse again!”
“You ain’t gonna have no one but a mule for company.”
“Good grief! Damn! Holy Mary, Mother of God! Hell!”
They’re alluding to a cartoon that appeared in the Corpus Christi papers a few days ago. It depicted three miners trying to lead their heavily laden mules out of a deep, swampy canyon. Handsome Trust showed it to them, saying, “Here’s One, Two, and Three, enslaved by the gold they dug up. They’re worse off than you, because they chose to do this!”
“You gonna die of blood poisoning …”
This last line was one of Three’s ideas, not something he’s heard handsome Trust say. It snaps Trust out of it. He throws the straw he was picking his teeth with to the ground.
“I’d rather lose my legs than put up with Wild one second longer. Goddamn buffalo killer! Fucking buffalo hunter … he’s a sonofabitch … But don’t worry, I’ll take you across the river today no matter what, I won’t leave you here for that idiot to abuse you. Come with me. As for myself, just so you know, I got no choice, even if there’s only shit in the Virginia hills.”
They begin to walk along the riverbank, leaving Bruneville behind them. They don’t carry a thing: each of them has his hands clasped behind his back.
Nepomuceno, his men, and the refreshed herd charge after Fausto, who knows these parts like the back of his hand. Soon they’ll arrive at a watering hole where there’s grass for the cattle. It’s a horseshoe bend in the Río Bravo that has been cut off by the accumulated sediment the river carries, creating a ring of water called Laguna del Diablo, not to be confused with others by the same name. That’s how it got its name, it doesn’t belong to anyone, it’s just a ring of water that used to be part of the river but is long since cut off. And that’s why it’s not deep. Under skilled hands, the cattle can cross here. The water here flows gently, it couldn’t sweep away the youngest calf, though a newborn might not be able to touch bottom and keep its head above water, but there are no newborns in this herd Nepomuceno’s men are leading.
In the middle of Laguna del Diablo there’s an ideal pasture that resembles the shape of an “o.” The water will serve as a pen. It’s the perfect place to camp. The herd will stay in the middle, the men will stay between the ring and the river, protected and with an open escape route to the south, in case they need one.
At the New Dock in Matasánchez, the Port Chief, Lopez de Aguada, watches the barge’s irregular and unpredictable movements through his spyglass. Under such circumstances others might be suspected of carrying illegal cargo, but not Arnoldo, it’s more likely his compass is acting up. He can’t see that the herd disembarked at the Old Dock because it’s out of his line of sight, but clearly the barge is empty … What’s going on? What’s wrong with Arnoldo?
He watches the barge and the tugboat heading back to Bruneville.
“He’s not coming? He’s not going to Bagdad? What’s happening? He’s gonna leave me here with these boxes of fragile crockery no one’s going to want to store? And the feed they asked us to get? What on earth? What’s he thinking about?”