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By Root 8881 0

it, the first cautious heavy step forward, then the hesitation, then the surging onward, the lurching surefootedness below one that was yet so delicate there derived a certain sensation of lightness, as if the mare were swimming, or floating through the air, bearing one across with the divine surety of a Cristoferus, rather than by fallible instinct. The dog swam ahead, fatuously important; the foals, nodding solemnly, swayed along behind up to their necks: sunlight sparkled on the calm water, which further downstream where the river narrowed broke into furious little waves, swirling and eddying close inshore against black rocks, giving an effect of wildness, almost of rapids; low over their heads an ecstatic lightning of strange birds manoeuvred, looping-the-loop and immelmaning at unbelievable speed, aerobatic as new-born dragon-flies. The opposite shore was thickly wooded. Beyond the gently sloping bank, a little to the left of what was apparently the cavernous entrance to the continuation of their lane, stood a pulquería, decorated, above its wooden twin swing-doors (which from a distance looked not unlike the immensely magnificent chevrons of an American army sergeant), with gaily coloured fluttering ribbons. Pulques Finos, it said in faded blue letters on the oyster-white adobe wall: La Sepultura. A grim name: but doubtless it had some humorous connotation. An Indian sat with his back against the wall, his broad hat half down over his face, rested outside in the sunshine. His horse, or a horse, was tethered near him to a tree and Hugh could see from midstream the number seven branded on its rump. An advertisement for the local cinema was stuck on the tree: Las Manos de Orlac con Peter Lorre. On the roof of the pulquería a toy windmill, of the kind one saw in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was twirling restlessly in the breeze. Hugh said:

"Your horse doesn't want to drink, Yvonne, just to look at her reflection. Let her. Don't yank at her head."

"I wasn't. I know that too," Yvonne said, with an ironic little smile.

They zigzagged slowly across the river; the dog, swimming like an otter, had almost reached the opposite bank. Hugh became aware of a question in the air.

"--you're our house guest, you know."

"Por favor." Hugh inclined his head.

"--would you like to have dinner out and go to a movie? Or will you brave Concepta's cooking?"

"What what?" Hugh had been thinking, for some reason, of his first week at his public school in England, a week of not knowing what one was supposed to do or to answer to any question, but of being carried on by a sort of pressure of shared ignorance into crowded halls, activities, marathons, even exclusive isolations, as when he had found himself once riding on horseback with the headmaster's wife, a reward, he was told, but for what he had never found out. "No, I think I should hate to go to a movie, thank you very much," he laughed.

"It's a strange little place--you might find it fun. The news-reels used to be about two years old and I shouldn't think it's changed any. And the same features come back over and over again. Cimarron and the Gold Diggers of 1930 and oh--last year we saw a travelogue, Come to Sunny Andalusia by way of news from Spain--"

"Blimey," Hugh said.

"And the lighting is always failing."

"I think I've seen the Peter Lorre movie somewhere. He's a great actor but it's a lousy picture. Your horse doesn't want to drink, Yvonne. It's all about a pianist who has a sense of guilt because he thinks his hands are a murderer's or something and keeps washing the blood off them. Perhaps they really are a murderer's, but I forget."

"It sounds creepy."

"I know, but it isn't."

On the other side of the river their horses did want to drink and they paused to let them. Then they rode up the bank into the lane. This time the hedges were taller and thicker and twined with convolvulus. For that matter they might have been in England, exploring some little-known bypath of Devon or Cheshire. There was little to contradict the impression save an occasional huddled conclave of vultures