The sickish smile came again to his lips. He wasn’t much for this sort of life; he ought to be driving a car, a truck, possibly. He recalled his funk in the prison at Arecibo, even before he was locked up, and afterward in the cell--and how the bandits had given themselves to death. ‘... peaceful to be with like cattle. I don’t mean they’re cattle, only that they loll around and ruminate like ’em,’ old Bob Leadley had said, summing up the whole matter in the remark that he wished he had treated the Mexicans as well as they treated him. Moreover, the old man had found out that there were times when a man couldn’t wash his hands. ‘Wasn’t that just what I did about the other three?’ Elbert questioned, squinting up at the sky. Now a painful rush of pictures went through his brain--the wall in the prison patio, the corner of the wall--only yesterday morning--standing at the bars of the cell. He caught himself rubbing his right cheek. No, there was something in him that didn’t belong to this sort of life. As for Red Ante, he couldn’t have done the thing Bart did--he couldn’t have lived through it, as Bart’s father did. All day the horses kept their heads turned down hill. They snipped the sparse grass--eyes and ears and muzzles stretched toward distant hollows--all instincts fixed upon unseen water. Elbert didn’t trust the sorrel, not even to tether him, but kept a hand on his bridle-rein. Once he dozed and was awakened from a thirst dream by the sound of horses sucking in water from a stony stream. ... Mexico with her quaint, gentle ways--a plaintive singing voice ‘carved out of starlight’--but underneath--violence. Men fell to killing each other. Just so much of all this killing a man could stand, and no more. How had Bart stood it for so long? Bart wasn’t like that, himself. He hadn’t even roughed it with the soldier of the keys in the Arecibo prison--not even in that moment of fierce danger and haste! ... and that easy flowing voice of coolness and laughter and daring, but how had Bart dared to put Palto out of his misery? Elbert pondered a long time, finally remembering how he had felt the need of carrying Bart deeper and deeper into the house, as if he had known all the time there was an inner room. When he reached there and had laid his burden down--a sudden sense of peace had come over him. What was the meaning of that? With his eyelids closed he saw a light shining through alabaster. Yes, he had met one who would know the meaning and could answer this.... But what was the meaning of the power that had seemed to come to him to make the señorita understand with so few words?... Cross and white flower--Spanish-faced girl standing back against the wall... Elbert dozed again, and the inner room of El Relicario and the still flowered room of Tucson softly, magically folded into one. It seemed quite easy and natural.