Limekiller!

Nobody was boating back to town then, although earnest guarantees were offered that “by and by somebody” would be boating back, for sure. Limekiller knew7 such sureties. He knew, too, that he mi°:ht certainlv stav on with the Marin familv at Parrot Bend until then — and longer — and be fully welcome. But he had after all come to “Mountains” for something else besides rural hospitality along the Ningoon River (a former Commissioner of Historical Sites and Antiquities had argued that the name came from an Indian word, or words, meaning Region of Bounteous Plenty; local Indians asserted that a more literal and less literary translation would be Big Wet). The fine rain of the night before began to fall again as he walked along, and soon he was soaked.

It did not bother him. By the time he got back into town the sun would have come out and dried him. Nobody bothered with oilskins or mackintoshes on the Bay of Hidalgo, nor did he intend to worry about his lack of them here in the Mountains of Saint Michael Archangel and Prince of Israel.

Along the road (to give it its courtesy title) he saw a beautiful flurry of wdiite birds — were they indeed cattle egrets? living in symbiosis, or commensality, with the cattle? was one, indeed, heavy with egg, “blown over from Africa”? Whatever their name or origin, they did follow the kine around, heads bobbing as they, presumably, ate the insects the heavy cloven hooves stirred up. But what did the cattle get out of it? Company?

The rain stopped, sure enough.

It was a beautiful river, with clear water, green and bending banks. He wondered how7 high the highest flood waters came. A “top gallon flood,” they called that. Was there a hint of an old tradition that the highest floods would come as high as the topgallant sails of a ship? Maybe.

The rain began again. Oh, well.

An oilcloth serving as door of a tiny cabin was hauled aside and an old woman appeared and gazed anxiously at Jack. “Oh, sah, why you wahk around in dis eager rain?” she cried at him. “Best you come in, bide, till eet stop!”

He laughed. “It doesn’t seem all that eager to me, Grandv,” he said, “but thank you anyway.”

In a little while it had stopped. See?

Further on, a small girl under a tree called, “Oh, see what beauty harse, meester!”

Limekiller looked. Several horses were coming from a stable and down the path to the river; they were indeed beautiful, and several men were discussing a sad story of how the malfeasance of a jockey (evidently not present) had lost first place in a recent race for one of them to the famous Tigre Rojo, the Red Tiger, of w hich even Limekiller, not a racing buff, had heard.

“Bloody b’y just raggedy-ahss about wid him, an so Rojo win by just a nose. Son of a beach!” said one of the men, evidently the trainer of the beauty horse, a big bay.

„— otherwise he beat any harse in British Hidalgo!”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Mr. Ruv! — dot he w'ould!”

Ruy, his dark face enflamed by the memory of the loss, grew darker as he watched, cried, “Goddammit, oh Laard Jesus Christ, b’y! Lead him by de head till he in de wahter, den lead him by rope! When you goin to learn? — an watch out for boulder! — you know w'hat one bloodv fool mon want me to do? Want me to run harse dis marnin — not even just canter, he want run him! — No, no, b’y, just let him swim about be de best ting for him -

“Dis one harse no common harse — dis one harse foal by Garobo, from Mr. Pike stud! Just let him swim about, I say!”

The boy in the water continued, perhaps wisely, to say nothing, but another man now said, “Oh, yes. An blow aht de cold aht of he’s head, too.”

Mr. Ruv grunted, then, surveying the larger scene and the graceful sweep of it, he said, gesturing, “I cotch plenty fish in dis river — catfish, twenty-pound tarpon, too. I got nylon line, but three week now, becahs of race, I have no time for cotch fish.” And his face, which had gradually smoothed, now grewr rough and fierce again. “Bloody dom fool jockey b’y purely raggeddy-ahss around wid harse!” he cried. The other men sighed, shook their heads. Jack left them to their sorrow.

Here the river rolled through rolling pasture lands, green, with trees, some living and draped with vines, some dead and gaunt but still beautiful. The river passed a paddock of Brahma cattle like statues of weathered grey stone, beautiful as the trees they took the shade beneath, cattle with ears like leaf-shaped spearheads, with wattles and humps. Then came an even lovelier sight: black cattle in a green field with snow-white birds close by among them. Fat hogs, Barbados sheep, water meadows, sweet soft air.