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Show -2- The mid-morning smothered the cliffs. A breath from the distant black mountain scattered dust over the rocks and naked weeds of the plain. All the earth had turned from black to white, a rolling gypsum desert encrusted with patchwork cactus, the dry mud cracking from yesterday's rain. The horses nearby twitched under the heat of the meager sun. They pawed the ground, nervous, clever, bowing to their master who stood looking over the rock, Juan looked up at Padre Escalante and tasted the boiled horsemeat and running berry juice; Fray Silvestre, as everyone called him, had gently ordered the horse's death. The muttered order, a smile, and Juan had seen that the horse could smell the threat, shifting its feet back and forth in the narrow cave of last night's camp. His mouth running red, Fray Silvestre had touched his gray cassock to his face to clean it. The grease he had rubbed from his fingers blotted the seam of the cassock. Then he had polished with fresh fingers the oaken cross swinging from his rosary belt. But now the Padre advanced with the quiet horses into the train down the cliffside to the ford. The beads of his rosary swung gently with the crucifix, the image dangling over the rocks in a benediction without thought. The cross, Juan touched the talisman around his own neck to reassure himself and started down the cliff leading his master's horse over the sheer trail. The men laced along the cliff like beads on a string, like the beads which braced the Padre's cassock. Juan felt the horse breathe with fear. He knew the feeling in those sighs; the Yuta guide had panted like that, fearful when he heard the roar from the gorge and saw the distant black mound of Tucane. "Black mountain...black river," he had stuttered in Spanish. The rough beads around his neck had tightened with the rattle of fear in his mutterings. Fray Silvestre had smiled in his pale way as the guide danced out his fear of the country, the seething eyes and the canter of his steps shaking the Padre not at all. Juan Domingo had jeered at the Yuta and laughed at the black river^ |