Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 8
Her mocking laughter came floating back.
XIII: AMERICAN RUSTLERS VS. MEXICAN RAIDERS
Shoving rapidly into the mountains, Sliver ascended with the trail in a couple of hours through upland growth of piñon and juniper to the height of land, a pass riven by earthquake or subsidence between twin jagged peaks, from where he overlooked the valley pasture.
Like a great jade bowl, bisected by the silver line of a stream, its wide green circle, miles in diameter, lay within a broad ring of purple chaparral. Over its surface black dots were scurrying toward the corrals at the northern end, and under Sliver’s glass these resolved into horses that were being rounded up by four Mexicans; for he could see their peaked sombreros, tight charro suits, even at that distance. Turning the glass on the jacal, a rude hut of poles and grass thatch near the corrals, he looked for Pedro, the anciano.
“Poor old chap! they’ve sure got his goat.” While clucking his commiseration, however, he shifted the glass to a patch of white on a near-by tree, and it immediately resolved into the old fellow’s blouse and calzones. “No, they’ve just tied him up. Then these ain’t no Colorados. It’s Felicia’s gang, all right, all right.” He added, chuckling, “Four nice little raiders in a pretty trap, along comes Jake and Bull, then there was none.”
And trapped they were. Except where the stream slipped out over a precipice between two narrow walls, the mountains rose sheer around the Bowl, unscalable save where the trail rose by precarious zigzags to where Sliver held the pass a thousand feet above. At few places was it possible for two horsemen to ride abreast. At that point there was barely room for one; if necessary, he could have held it, alone, against a score. But it was not. Watching closely, he saw the raiders first drive the horses into the corrals, then settle down for a siesta in the shade of the jacal.
“Going to bring ’em up at sundown,” he muttered, “in time to make the first run by night.”
So certain he was of it that he did not scruple to take a sleep himself; cat-napped, with occasional squints down into the valley up to the moment that he was awakened by the hoof-beats of Jake and Bull’s beasts. The glass then showed the raiders working the horses out of the corrals. As the herd thinned out to single file at the trail, one man took the lead; a second and third fell in at even distances; the last brought up the rear.
“They know their business,” Bull commented on the manœuver. “It’s easier to keep ’em moving.” He grimly added: “And easier for us. The line will string out for a quarter-mile, so I’ll go down that distance an’ hide in the chaparral. Let the last man pass me before you hold up the first. Then, while one of you keeps him covered, t’other can take away his tools. I’ll keep ’em moving on up till you’ve got the other three.”
While Jake took away and tied their horses, Bull gained his position. By that time the leading raider had gained a like distance uphill and, peeping, Bull watched the thin file of animals wriggling like a slow black snake up the yellow trail. So clear was the air he could hear, above the thud and scrape of hoofs, the raiders calling to one another. Now they were directly beneath him; so close that he could plainly see the leader’s face, ugly, pock-marked. As he withdrew into the chaparral Bull carried with him an irritatingly haunting remembrance. Somewhere, though he could not place it, he had seen the man before! He was still puzzling over it when Jake’s command rang out in Spanish:
“Hands up!”
The leader looked and complied, persuaded by the black muzzles, wicked eyes, that looked down from the rock above. The second and third men did try to turn, but were blocked by the file of animals. An attempt to pass would have sent them down, bounding from level to level to the floor of the valley below. The fourth man swung his beast around only to find himself looking into Bull’s rifle. So while Jake covered the operation from above and Bull from below, Sliver disarmed and bound the raiders.
After the captives were arranged in line under a copal tree upon a little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had aroused that haunting memory. “I’ve a hunch that I’ve seen this chap afore.”
He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow’s look of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican peoncan so easily assume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of Bull’s questions. He did not come from any of the neighboringhaciendas! They had never met before! His pais was far – it might have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his hand.
“Yet I could swear to him.” Bull looked musingly at Sliver. “Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?”
Sliver shook his head. “Can’t prove it be me. All peones look like so many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an’ pock-marks ain’t no distinction with two-thirds of ’em pitted like a nutmeg-grater.”
“That ain’t the question before the house, neither,” Jake put in. “All I’m bothering about is whether to hang or shoot ’em. Hanging is what I was brought up to, but shooting’s more fashionable down here. I’d allow they’d likely prefer it.”
“Shooting’s too good for ’em.” In a spasm of virtuous indignation, Sliver shook his fist at the captives. “Hanging’s slower an’ hurts a heap, an’ if it gets about that the gent that meddles with our stock is in for a slow, choking they ain’t a-going to be near so careless.”
“There’s something in that,” Jake conceded. “An’ this copal’s got nice stout limbs. We kin use their own riatas, an’ that’ll be what the Tombstone editor used to call ‘poetic justice.’ Hanging goes.”
Bull was still staring at the raider, but, taking his consent for granted, they proceeded to fit the riatas around the prisoners’ necks. Jake had, indeed, thrown the slack of the last over a bough when there came a rattle of stones and scrape of hoofs on the trail below. Grabbing his rifle, he slid with Bull and Sliver, each behind a tree. One second thereafter their guns were trained on the spot where the trail debouched on the plateau.
Meanwhile, with Gordon in pursuit, Lee had led the race into the hills. Her blood mare was the fleetest animal she owned and, had she chosen, Gordon would have soon dropped out of sight. But she contented herself with just holding a lead.
Unaware of this, Gordon made repeated attempts to catch her with sudden bursts of speed. Perfectly aware of it, on her part, she would wait till his horse’s head almost touched her leg, then shoot ahead with a little laugh. Her face, looking back at him, was hard as her laugh – eyes bright and shining, nose contemptuously tilted, mouth one scarlet line.
To be defied, drawn on, mocked, and teased with low, derisive laughter is not a situation that any man loves. But if thoroughly angry, mad clear to the bone, Gordon’s face revealed only dogged hope. For Chance was riding with him. If Lee’s beast slipped or tired. If she were a second late with the spur. One of the three was fairly certain, and the belief set a gleam in his eyes that caused her a quiver of apprehension.
“Oh, he’s mad enough to beat me!” she told it to herself. “I wonder if he would.”
Nevertheless, every time she looked back at that dogged face she felt a sense of security. With raiders at large, it was just as well to have him around! The thought was in her mind when, with him only a few feet behind, she shot over the edge of the last steep out upon the plateau.
“Oh, my goodness!” It burst from her in sudden fright.
The Three, of course, were out of sight. The natural droop of thecopal’s outer branches hid the halters, and she saw only the four raiders, unevenly grouped, and three rifle-barrels aimed from behind the tree. As she reined her beast back on its haunches Gordon swung his animal sideways between her and the raiders, and, quite shamelessly, she accepted the protection.
“Beat it quick!”
Already he had pulled his gun, and but for the fact that Bull just then stepped out in the open the question of hanging or shooting would have been decided for at least one of the thieves. As it was, his readiness served one purpose – reduced the heat in Bull’s eyes.
“Put up your gun, Son, the job’s done.” Pointing at Lee, he sternly inquired, “But what’s she doing here?”
Now fright, plus Gordon’s chivalrous behavior, had driven the last vestige of anger out of Lee. She spoke before he could answer. “Don’t blame him. He did his best to take me in.”
“Then who shall I blame?”
“Me!” The coals of her anger sent forth a last flash that was immediately quenched by her mischievous smile. “Or blame yourself for leaving me the machete. I wiggled and wiggled till one hand was free, then cut the rope.”
Combined with the smile, her little illustrative wriggle completed his rout. He turned to hide a grin, but was betrayed by his shaking shoulders. Noting it, she flashed with feminine quickness from defendant to accuser. She pointed at the halters.
“What are you going to do?”
Sliver and Jake had now come out. The former answered, “We was jest about to bump ’em off, Miss.”
“What? Hang them?”
“Now look a-here, Lady-girl!” Sliver burst forth in indignant remonstrance. “Didn’t we catch ’em red-handed? An’ d’you allow we’re a-going to let ’em loose to try again?”
“But hang them? Just for stealing? Of course, if they were Colorados, but – ” She stopped, clasping her hands in sudden fear. “Oh! they killed him – poor Pedro?”
“Nary; jes’ tied him up,” Sliver quickly reassured her. “I seen him wiggling through the glass, an’ the big thief, there, says they didn’t harm him.”
Sighing with sudden relief, she returned to the charge. “Then if they spared him, why are you going to kill them?”
“Look a-here, Missy,” Bull now intervened. “’Twas agreed between Benson an’ all the hacendados to make an example of captured raiders. If you once start letting ’em off, there won’t be a head of stock left in all this country at the end of a year. That was why I wanted you to go back, an’ – ”
“I’m glad that I didn’t.”
Up to that moment the raiders had accepted the situation with Indian stoicism. Two of them were still puffing cigarettes Sliver had placed in their mouths while Jake adjusted the nooses. But their fatalism did not preclude hope. Though Lee had spoken in English, the language of pity is universal. They knew she was interceding, and now the fellow with the pock-marked face loosed upon her a veritable torrent of Spanish.
They were poor hombres with families back in their pais reduced to the point of starvation by incessant revolutions. Of themselves they would never have conceived this great wickedness! They had been tempted to banditry by an evil one with the offer of a great price! For themselves, they cared not! A few kicks, a gurgle or two, and there would be an end! But their women? And the little niñas? These would be left in continual suffering!
Children? It drew instant response from dominant maternalism, the deep instinct that caused Lee to tyrannize over the Three. Dismounting, she began to question the prisoners concerning their families and women. Their number, names, and sex? Were they good children? Had they been duly christened by the priest? Their dispositions and traits? Thus and so on till from a lynching-bee the occasion was in danger of lapsing into a catechism. For, once started, the bandits were equally willing. Oblivious of nooses and bonds, they plunged into family history and reminiscence, reminding each other of this or that, and while they related and recalled, the sullen hardness died out of their faces, leaving them soft and human.
Vividly, as in real life, Lee saw their corn-stalk jacales with their brown wives in the doorways looking anxiously from under shading hands for their men’s return; their small, nude children playing in the hot dust. Here was little Pancho, who would some day be a great vaquero, roping chickens and cats with a string riata, then dragging them, captive, to the feet of chubby Dolores, who was, as her father swore by the saints, sweet as the Infant in the arms of the Blessed Virgin. It was then that she turned to the Three, her face aglow.
“This man has three little girls. The others all have families. They were driven to steal by want. Under the same circumstances any one of us might have done the same thing. If you had and were caught, how would you feel?”
“Under the same circumstances, they might have done the same thing!” She was looking at Bull, but as her glance returned at once to the prisoners she did not see him flush. He looked at Jake, who looked at Sliver, who looked away.
A busy and useful present soon buries the memory of a doubtful past, and beyond the pleasant span of to-day’s existence the old rustler life of yesterday loomed very far away. The fact that, by tacit consent, it was now never mentioned among them had helped to bury it more completely. But now, perhaps more vividly for the lapse, there rose in the mind of each the spiteful bead eyes, scorpion utterances of Don Miguel in Las Bocas, urging them to raid these very horses. Small wonder if they looked away, or that, as their glances returned, they exchanged sheepish grins.
“Under the same circumstances,” Bull answered, slowly and truthfully, “we-all ’u’d expect to hang. But if you feel different” – his glance interrogated Sliver and Jake – “it goes as you say. On’y, if you let ’em go, we’ll have to run ’em out of the country in fairness to the other haciendas.”
“Of course.” Lee joyfully accepted the compromise. “We’ll take them home now, and to-morrow Sliver and Jake can run them out.”
This settled, and while Sliver rode on down into the valley to free theanciano, Bull and Jake cinched the thieves securely in their saddles. Then, driving them and the horses ahead, with Lee and Gordon following, they started down the trail.
Now the spectacle of four men trussed for hanging is not to be seen every day – let us say, on the streets of New York – and though Gordon had looked on with breathless interest, he could hardly believe that the business would have been carried to a conclusion.
“Do you really think they would?”
Lee looked at him in surprise. “Of course! You know Valles has issued orders for hacendados to shoot raiders on sight; that is” – she added it with a little sigh – “all but his own.”
Her tone was so casual, he felt convicted of vast and unlimited greenness. But where, according to the lights under which he had been raised, he ought to have suffered a severe revulsion, he actually experienced a thrill. This juxtaposition of life and death, the violence and quickness with which events rang their changes, somehow stripped away the veils from the riddle of existence, reduced its complex terms to their basic factors. Here in the mountains, desert, plains, they were very simple – to eat well, sleep well, fight well, and die well, even as these thieves, comprised the whole duty of man. The thrill recorded his acceptance of the terms.
While they were riding down and down the sun lowered its great crimson orb till it hung, transfixed, on a distant peak. The mountain steeps above, spurs, and ridges beneath, were washed in its dying crimson. Deep purple filled the hollows; faint violet clothed the distant plains. Over all a cloud-flecked sky spread its parti-colored glories. Mountain and plain, cañon and deep ravine, it was a scene infinitely wild, infinitely beautiful, and as he looked over it all Gordon took his breath in a deep sigh.
“This is life! I hate to leave it.”
“Leave it?” If Lee’s surprise was assumed, it was exceedingly well done. She went on, with a low laugh: “Oh, I see! Papa wins out. The prodigal will return to marry the beautiful heiress and live happy ever afterward.”
“Who told you? Oh, Bull, of course. Now that comes of owning a blabbing tongue. Confound him! Well, since you want to know, I won’t. In my present mood, New York is the last place in the world I want to see.”
“Then you have tired of us —so soon?”
“Or you of me? You forget —I’m fired.”
She noted the subtle accent, and equally subtle was her reply. “Why, yes, so you were.”
Then, looking at each other, they both laughed.
XIV: NEMESIS DOGS THE THREE – AND IS “DOGGED,” IN TURN, BY LEE
Midnight saw the prisoners safely bestowed in a ’dobe that had served the old Spaniard, Carleton’s predecessor, for a jail. During the remainder of the night the Three stood guard in turn and Gordon, who relieved Sliver at daybreak, was still at the door when Lee came out of her bedroom on the upper gallery.
Goodness knows she was pretty enough in her man’s riding-togs, but now a flowing kimono added the softness and mystery a man loves best in a woman. As she moved forward to the rail and stretched, looking off and away to the mountains, the loose sleeves fell away and Gordon obtained a distracting glimpse of polished arms, small white teeth, in a round red mouth, all set in the blazing gold of her hair. Seeing him, she cut off the yawn and smiled.
“You must be dreadfully hungry.” Her clear call floated across the compound. “Come to breakfast. I’ll send Miguel to keep watch.”
She was already seated at the table under the portales when he came in, and as he took his seat Maria, the smaller of the two housecriadas, reported the Three as being still lost in sleep.
“The poor fellows!” Lee commented, distressfully. “They must be dead. Don’t awaken them.”
Thus, after the crowding events of the previous day, which included a fist fight, proposal of marriage from one girl, wild chase after another, a bandit raid and lynching-party, all rendered more impressive by the dark ride through warm, mysterious night, Gordon now sattête-à-tête with his pretty employer.
The patio, with its arched corredors, cool as a grotto under flooding greenery, the bird song, and exotic flowers; flame of thearbol de fuego; glimpses in the crypt-like kitchen of a criada down on her knees rubbing tortilla paste on a stone metate; the soft stealth with which Maria moved around the table on nude feet; all these helped to deepen those profound impressions. And while he watched Lee’s small hands fluttering like butterflies over the breakfast things, and gained confirmatory glimpses of the polished whiteness of her arms, came still others.
Two brown girls, who stood twisting their skirts in the gateway, moved forward at Lee’s word.
“They wish to take my advice about following their lovers to the wars,” she summed for him their Spanish. “I explained the risks of hunting them among twenty thousand revolutionists, and advised them to wait till they came home. But they say that is too indefinite. They may be killed, and there is no one to marry them here but the ancianos, and they already have wives. So they are going – to join the rag and bobtail in the wake of the revolution.”
After the next client, a wrinkled old woman, had followed the girls out, Lee burst out in merry laughter. “She was telling me of a miracle that occurred at the funeral of her brother, who worked for William Benson. It appears that he had only his dirty cotton calzones to be buried in, so his wife begged a worn white suit from Mr. Benson. The poor old fellow had been reduced by sickness to a rack of bones, and you could have rolled him in it like a blanket. And here came the miracle! The weather, you know, was exceedingly hot last week, and instead of burying him at once they waited till some relatives from a distance had arrived. And when the coffin was opened for them to take a last look – lo! the miracle!
“‘For Saint Joseph,’ she said, just now, ‘had wrought a most wonderful thing, señorita. Whereas Refugio had lain in the señor’s clothes like a nut in a withered shell, he was now so large and handsome they fitted him like his skin!’”
He laughed so heartily she was drawn on to tell him more, and pleased herself thereby as much as him. For to be really happy, a girl must have exercise for her tongue, and with all their genuine devotion the Three offered but a limited field for conversation. Naturally laconic, their communications touched principally upon flocks and herds; and holding, as they did, the traditional frontier viewpoint concerning Mexicans – to wit, that they ranked in the scale of creation below the Gila monster – they shared neither her affection for, nor understanding of, her brown retainers.
But Gordon, with his quick and reciprocal feeling, made an ideal listener. From the “miracle” she ran on with anecdotes and happenings, some quaint, others amusing, several tragic, that revealed with a vividness beyond the power of description the mixture of love and treachery, simplicity and savagery, ignorance and idealism, religious faith and gross superstition, that go into the making of a Mexican. While she talked and he listened, there was established a community of feeling which was destined to produce immediate results.
“What is it, Maria?” Pausing, she looked up at the criada who had just carried the prisoners their breakfast.
“They wish to speak to me,” she translated the girl’s answer, “alone. They say it is very important.”
“Better let me go with you.” Gordon rose. “I can wait outside.”
“Surely.” She accepted, at once, his offer, and when, moreover, he followed in after Miguel opened the prison door, she offered no objection.
Neither did the raiders – for reasons that quickly developed. “It matters not, señorita.” The man whose face had caused Bull such disturbance shrugged his indifference when Lee explained that Gordon spoke no Spanish. “’Tis of the others, your servants, I would speak.”
While crossing the compound she had puckered her smooth brow over the mystery – without gaining any inkling to break the force of the communication. While the fellow ran on, hands and shoulders helping out his torrential Spanish, Gordon saw her expression pass through surprise, incredulity, doubt, finally settle in deep concern, when, with emphasis that carried conviction, the other three testified to the truth of their fellow’s words.
“I – Oh, do you know what they say?” Distressed, she turned to Gordon with blind instinct for help. “I really don’t know whether I ought to tell you. It so dreadfully, pitifully concerns our poor friends. You have been here such a short time, yet – I feel that you can be trusted. They say – ”
But the tale, as elaborated and filled in by Gordon’s cross-examination, is best summed. Not for nothing had been Bull’s “hunch.” The haunting face fitted the charro who had held their horses that day at thejefe-politico’s gate in Las Bocas. When the Three failed to return with Carleton’s horses, that astute person – the “wicked one” of yesterday’s talk – had sent out others. In return for the señorita’sgreat kindness in saving their lives – but principally, if the truth be known, because they feared to be sent out under convoy of Sliver and Jake – they wished to make grateful return by warning her against these evil ones; these wolves in sheep’s clothing that had slunk into her fold! Followed a recital of their border raids that lost nothing by reason of the details being filled in from imagination! They were terrible hombres! Muy malo! greatly desired by the gringo police for dreadful crimes!
“Don’t you suppose they are lying?” Gordon suggested.
She shook her head. “Their story is too literal. When a peon lies, he goes the limit. Some terrible tale of atrocious murder and torture would be the least; something beyond mere banditry, which is scarcely a crime in their eyes. Then it is corroborated by a lot of little things. You know they were riding my horses yesterday and were differently dressed, yet this man described their horses and clothing as he saw them in Las Bocas, just as they were the first day they came here. And do you remember how they looked at one another yesterday when I said that any of us might have done the same thing?”
Gordon nodded. “They did look queer, and do you recall Bull’s answer? ‘Under the same circumstances, we-all ’u’d expect to hang.’ He spoke so slowly, looking at the others, and they both nodded.”
“Then see how they came here – started up, as it were, out of the ground. In Mexico one doesn’t ask strangers embarrassing questions. It would be like throwing stones at random in a city of glass. But if they stay with you, one generally learns something of their past. But theirs is wrapped in mystery. I know no more of them than on the day they came. It is probably true.”
Her tone was quiet, indeed so casual in its acceptance of the fact that Gordon wondered. In El Paso he had been greatly impressed by the knight-errantry of the Three in espousing the cause of a lonely girl. During the last week he had seen for himself their simplicity of heart, rough kindliness, genuine devotion; and now this land of surprises had confounded him again with its juggler’s changes of good and evil. These kindly fellows were, after all, cattle-rustlers, but one remove from bandits.
To him it was a most astonishing situation. In New York, where folks were sharply divided into the sheep and the goats, it would have been easily solved; one would have merely rung for the police. But here, where everything seemed to go by contraries, anything might happen. Accordingly, he looked at her and waited.
But she did not answer his unspoken question. She was looking at him, yes, with wide, distressed eyes. But he felt, without understanding, that she was looking across that queer situation. He had a sudden, vivid suspicion that he was on trial in her mind instead of the Three. He was certain of it when she spoke.
“What would you do?”
Ten days ago he would undoubtedly have viewed the case under his previous lights and have pronounced it one for the police. Now he answered from the larger charity that belonged to the land: “You remember what you said yesterday and repeated a moment ago – under the same circumstances we might have done the same thing? It isn’t what theywere; it’s what they are that counts.”
“Oh, I knew you would say it!” She impulsively thrust out her hand, and as the small, firm fingers locked with his in a strong grip, he knew that not only had he emerged victorious, but also that his answer had established between them a real bond. Eyes shining, she ran on: “They saved my life, helped to nurse my father, have been so kind and good and dear! If they had been the vilest criminals it would make no difference to me. They are my people, my men!”
“Of course they are!” Gordon cordially agreed. “Now what about these fellows? What will you tell them?”
Doubt clouded her shining enthusiasm. “I don’t quite know. What do you think would be best?”
“The truth. If what they say is true, and we believe it is, they can’t be bluffed. But it won’t do to have them believe you knew nothing of this. I’d hint that though you were not acquainted with the details, you were perfectly aware of your servants’ past, but that they are now leading honorable lives. Clinch it by adding that you hope they will do half as well with their chance.”
“Fine!” Her face lit up again, and when, having put it all into Spanish for the thieves, they went outside, she thanked him for the counsel. “I knew you could help me. Now just one more thing – this is all between you and me. No one else must ever know – especially them.”
“We’ll forget it ourselves.”
Once more her small cool fingers locked with his, and, smiling brightly, she went back to the house, leaving him to resume his guard till the prisoners were taken away by Sliver and Jake.
After they were gone there entered into Gordon’s mind a small doubt. Supposing the raiders talked? Spread their report of the Three through the desert country? It remained, that little doubt, like a thorn in the side till it was drawn by Sliver and Jake when they returned the following night.
“We’d calc’lated to hand ’em over to the vaqueros at Hacienda El Reposo, an’ have them chase ’em beyond their bounds,” Jake explained. “But at the railroad we ran into a Valles colonel that was drumming up recruits. He grabbed ’em offen our hands that quick they hadn’t time to kick.”
“By now,” Sliver added, “they’re three hundred miles south on their way to death an’ glory.”
“But the little girl mustn’t know that,” Bull’s heavy bass rose in caution. “She was that sot on returning ’em to their women and children, it ’u’d half break her heart.”
“Not a whisper,” the two agreed, but Sliver added, with a chuckle, “Alle same, they’ll stay put an’ trouble her no more.”
Inwardly Gordon echoed it, “They’ll trouble you no more.”
While the others were away Bull had also been doing some thinking, and after Gordon went out for his evening stroll through the compound he laid the results before them. “Say, I’ve placed that chap.”
“Which chap?”
“Fellow with the pock-marks. D’you remember the mozo that held our horses at Don Miguel’s gate?”
“No-o-o – ” Jake began, but with memory thus stimulated Sliver recalled him.
“Julius Seize-her! you’re right!” As the possibilities of the late situation flashed upon him he gave a low whistle. “What an escape! We’ve had some close calls in our time, but none to beat it. ’Twas lucky he didn’t recognize us, for he’d sure have peached, an’ I wouldn’t have Lady-girl to know for a cold million.”
“Nor me,” Jake added. “But it ain’t likely – now.”
“Thank God for that!” Sliver exclaimed it with almost religious fervor. With deep thankfulness Bull repeated it in his mind.
