Notes

Kino was not breathing, but his back arched a little and the muscles of his arms and legs
stood out with tension and a line of sweat formed on his upper lip. For a long moment the
trackers bent over the road, and then they moved on slowly, studying the ground ahead of
them, and the horseman moved after them. The trackers scuttled along, stopping, looking,
and hurrying on. They would be back, Kino knew. They would be circling and searching,
peeping, stopping, and they would come back sooner or later to his covered track.
He slid backward and did not bother to cover his tracks. He could not; too many little
signs were there, too many broken twigs and scuffed places and displaced stones. And
there was a panic in Kino now, a panic of flight. The trackers would find his trail, he
knew it. There was no escape, except in flight. He edged away from the road and went
quickly and silently to the hidden place where Juana was. She looked up at him in
question.
"Trackers," he said. "Come!"
And then a helplessness and a hopelessness swept over him, and his face went black and
his eyes were sad. "Perhaps I should let them take me."
Instantly Juana was on her feet and her hand lay on his arm. "You have the pearl," she
cried hoarsely. "Do you think they would take you back alive to say they had stolen it?"
His hand strayed limply to the place where the pearl was hidden under his clothes. "They
will find it," he said weakly.
"Come," she said. "Come!"
And when he did not respond, "Do you think they would let me live? Do you think they
would let the little one here live?"
Her goading struck into his brain; his lips snarled and his eyes were fierce again. "Come,"
he said. "We will go into the mountains. Maybe we can lose them in the mountains."
Frantically he gathered the gourds and the little bags that were their property. Kino
carried a bundle in his left hand, but the big knife swung free in his right hand. He parted
the brush for Juana and they hurried to the west, towards the high stone mountains. They
trotted quickly through the tangle of the undergrowth. This was panic flight. Kino did not
try to conceal his passage; he trotted, kicking the stones, knocking the tell-tale leaves
from the little trees. The high sun streamed down on the dry creaking earth so that even
the vegetation ticked in protest. But ahead were the naked granite mountains, rising out of
erosion rubble and standing monolithic against the sky. And Kino ran for the high place,
as nearly all animals do when they are pursued.
This land was waterless, furred with the cacti which could store water and with the great-
rooted brush which could reach deep into the earth for a little moisture and get along on
very little. And underfoot was not soil but broken rock, split into small cubes, great slabs,
but none of it water-rounded. Little tufts of sad dry grass grew between the stones, grass
that had sprouted with one single rain and headed, dropped its seed, and died. Horned
toads watched the family go by and turned their little pivoting dragon heads. And now
and then a great jack-rabbit, disturbed in his shade, bumped away and hid behind the
nearest rock. The singing heat lay over this desert country, and ahead the stone mountains
looked cool and welcoming.
And Kino fled. He knew what would happen. A little way along the road the trackers
would become aware that they had missed the path, and they would come back, searching
and judging, and in a little while they would find the place where Kino and Juana had
rested. From there it would be easy for them - these little stones, the fallen leaves and the
whipped branches, the scuffed places where a foot had slipped. Kino could see them in
his mind, slipping along the track, whining a little with eagerness, and behind them, dark
and half-interested, the horseman with the rifle. His work would come last, for he would
not take them back. Oh, the music of evil sang loud in Kino's head now, it sang with the
whine of heat and with the dry ringing of snake rattles. It was not large and
overwhelming now, but secret and poisonous, and the pounding of his heart gave it
undertone and rhythm.
The way began to rise, and as it did the rocks grew larger. But now Kino had put a little
distance between his family and the trackers. Now, on the first rise, he rested. He climbed
a great boulder and looked back over the shimmering country, but he could not see his enemies, not even the tall horseman riding through the brush. Juana had squatted in the
shade of the boulder. She raised her bottle of water to Coyotito's lips; his little dried
tongue sucked greedily at it. She looked up at Kino when he came back; she saw him
examine her ankles, cut and scratched from the stones and brush, andshe covered them
quickly with her skirt. Then she handed the bottle to him, but he shook his head. Her eyes
were bright in her tired face. Kino moistened his cracked lips with his tongue.
"Juana," he said, "I will go on and you will hide. I will lead them into the mountains, and
when they have gone past, you will go north to Loreto or to Santa Rosalia. Then, if I can
escape them, I will come to you. It is the only safe way."
She looked full into his eyes for a moment. "No," she said. "We go with you."
"I can go faster alone," he said harshly. "You will put the little one in more danger if you
go with me."
"No," said Juana.
"You must. It is the wise thing and it is my wish," he said.
"No," said Juana.
He looked then for weakness in her face, for fear or irresolution, and there was none. Her
eyes were very bright. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly then, but he had taken
strength from her. When they moved on it was no longer panic flight.
The country, as it rose toward the mountains, changed rapidly. Now there were long
outcroppings of granite with deep crevices between, and Kino walked on bare
unmarkable stone when he could and leaped from ledge to ledge. He knew that wherever
the trackers lost his path they must circle and lose time before they found it again. And so
he did not go straight for the mountains any more; he moved in zigzags, and sometimes
he cut back to the south and left a sign and then went toward the mountains over bare
stone again. And the path rose steeply now, so that he panted a little as he went.
The sun moved downward toward the bare stone teeth of the mountains, and Kino set his
direction for a dark and shadowy cleft in the range. If there were any water at all, it would
be there where he could see, even in the distance, a hint of foliage. And if there were any
passage through the smooth stone range, it would be by this same deep cleft. It had its
danger, for the trackers would think of it too, but the empty water-bottle did not let that
consideration enter. And as the sun lowered, Kino and Juana struggled wearily up the
steep slope towards the cleft.
High in the gray stone mountains, under a frowning peak, a little spring bubbled out of a
rupture in the stone. It was fed by shade-preserved snow in the summer, and now and
then it died completely and bare rocks and dry algae were on its bottom. But nearly
always it gushed out, cold and clean and lovely. In the times when the quick rains fell, it might become a freshet and send its column of white water crashing down the mountain
cleft, but nearly always it was a lean little spring. It bubbled out into a pool and then fell a
hundred feet to another pool, and this one, overflowing, dropped again, so that it
continued, down and down, until it came to the rubble of the upland, and there it
disappeared altogether. There wasn't much left of it then anyway, for every time it fell
over an escarpment the thirsty air drank it, and it splashed from the pools to the dry
vegetation. The animals from miles around came to drink from the little pools, and the
wild sheep and the deer, the pumas and raccoons, and the mice - all came to drink. And
the birds which spent the day in the brushland came at night to the little pools that were
like steps in the mountain cleft. Beside this tiny stream, wherever enough earth collected
for root-hold, colonies of plants grew, wild grape and little palms, maidenhair fern,
hibiscus, and tall pampas grass with feathery rods raised above the spike leaves. And in
the pool lived frogs and water-skaters, and water-worms crawled on the bottom of the
pool. Everything that loved water came to these few shallow places. The cats took their
prey there, and strewed feathers and lapped water through their bloody teeth. The little
pools were places of life because of the water, and places of killing becauseof the water,
too.
The lowest step, where the stream collected before it tumbled down a hundred feet and
disappeared into the rubbly desert, was a little platform of stone and sand. Only a pencil
of water fell into the pool, but it was enough to keep the pool full and to keep the ferns
green in the underhang of the cliff, and wild grape climbed the stone mountain and all
manner of little plants found comfort here. The freshets had made a small sandy beach
through which the pool flowed, and bright green watercress grew in the damp sand. The
beach was cut and scarred and padded by the feet of animals that had come to drink and
to hunt.
The sun had passed over the stone mountains when Kino and Juana struggled up the steep
broken slope and came at last to the water. From this step they could look out over the
sun-beaten desert to the blue Gulf in the distance. They came utterly weary to the pool,
and Juana slumped to her knees and first washed Coyotito's face and then filled her bottle
and gave him a drink. And the baby was weary and petulant, and he cried softly until
Juana gave him her breast, and then he gurgled and clucked against her. Kino drank long
and thirstily at the pool. For a moment, then, he stretched out beside the water and
relaxed all his muscles and watched Juana feeding the baby, and then he got to his feet
and went to the edge of the step where the water slipped over, and he searched the
distance carefully. His eyes set on a point and he became rigid. Far down the slope he
could see the two trackers; they were little more than dots or scurrying ants and behind
them a larger ant.
Juana had turned to look at him and she saw his back stiffen.
"How far?" she asked quietly.
"They will be here by evening," said Kino. He looked up the long steep chimney of the
cleft where the water came down. "We must go west," he said, and his eyes searched the stone shoulder behind the cleft. And thirty feet up on the gray shoulder he saw a series of
little erosion caves. He slipped off his sandals and clambered up to them, gripping the
bare stone with his toes, and he looked into the shallow caves. They were only a few feet
deep, wind-hollowed scoops, but they sloped slightly downward and back. Kino crawled
into the largest one and lay down and knew that he could not be seen from the outside.
Quickly he went back to Juana.
"You must go up there. Perhaps they will not find us there," he said.
Without question she filled her water bottle to the top, and then Kino helped her up to the
shallow cave and brought up the packages of food and passed them to her. And Juana sat
in the cave entrance and watched him. She saw that he did not try to erase their tracks in
the sand. Instead, he climbed up the brush cliff beside the water, clawing and tearing at
the ferns and wild grape as he went. And when he had climbed a hundred feet to the next
bench, he came down again. He looked carefully at the smooth rock shoulder toward the
cave to see that there was no trace of passage, and last he climbed up and crept into the
cave beside Juana.
"When they go up," he said, "we will slip away, down to the lowlands again. I am afraid
only that the baby may cry. You must see that he does not cry."
"He will not cry," she said, and she raised the baby's face to her own and looked into his
eyes and he stared solemnly back at her.
"He knows," said Juana.
Now Kino lay in the cave entrance, his chin braced on his crossed arms, and he watched
the blue shadow of the mountain move out across the brushy desert below until it reached
the Gulf, and the long twilight of the shadow was over the land.
The trackers were long in coming, as though they had trouble with the trail Kino had left.
It was dusk when they came at last to the little pool. And all three were on foot now, for a
horse could not climb the last steep slope. From above they were thin figures in the
evening. The two trackers scurried about on the little beach, and they saw Kino's progress
up the cliff before they drank. The man with the rifle sat down and rested himself, and the
trackers squatted near him, and in the evening the points of their cigarettes glowed and
receded. And then Kino could see that they were eating, and the soft murmur of their
voices came to him.
Then darkness fell, deep and black in the mountain cleft. The animals that used the pool
came near and smelled men there and drifted away again into the darkness.
He heard a murmur behind him. Juana was whispering: "Coyotito." She was begging him
to be quiet. Kino heard the baby whimper, and he knew from the muffled sounds that
Juana had covered his head with her shawl. Down on the beach a match flared, and in its momentary light Kino saw that two of the
men were sleeping, curled up like dogs, while the third watched, and he saw the glint of
the rifle in the match light. And then the match died, but it left a picture on Kino's eyes.
He could see it, just how each man was, two sleeping curled up and the third squatting in
the sand with the rifle between his knees.
Kino moved silently back into the cave. Juana's eyes were two sparks reflecting a low
star. Kino crawled quietly close to her and he put his lips near to her cheek.
"There is a way," he said.
"But they will kill you."
"If I get first to the one with the rifle," Kino said, "I must get to him first, then I will be
all right. Two are sleeping."
Her hand crept out from under her shawl and gripped his arm. "They will see your white
clothes in the starlight."
"No," he said. "And I must go before moonrise."
He searched for a soft word and then gave it up. "If they kill me," he said, "lie quietly.
And when they are gone away, go to Loreto."
Her hand shook a little, holding his wrist.
"There is no choice," he said. "It is the only way. They will find us in the morning."
Her voice trembled a little. "Go with God," she said.
He peered closely at her and he could see her large eyes. His hand fumbled out and found
the baby, and for a moment his palm lay on Coyotito's head. And then Kino raised his
hand and touched Juana's cheek, and she held her breath.
Against the sky in the cave entrance Juana could see that Kino was taking off his white
clothes, for dirty and ragged though they were they would show up against the dark night.
His own brown skin was a better protection for him. And then she saw how he hooked his
amulet neck-string about the horn handle of his great knife, so that it hung down in front
of him and left both hands free. He did not come back to her. For a moment his body was
black in the cave entrance, crouched and silent, and then he was gone.
Juana moved to the entrance and looked out. She peered like an owl from the hole in the
mountain, and the baby slept under the blanket on her back, his face turned sideways
against her neck and shoulder. She could feel his warm breath against her skin, and Juana
whispered her combination of prayer and magic, her Hail Marys and her ancient
intercession, against the black unhuman things. The night seemed a little less dark when she looked out, and to the east there was a
lightening in the sky, down near the horizon where the moon would show. And, looking
down, she could see the cigarette of the man on watch.
Kino edged like a slow lizard down the smooth rock shoulder. He had turned his neck-
string so that the great knife hung down from his back and could not clash against the
stone. His spread fingers gripped the mountain, and his bare toes found support through
contact, and even his chest lay against the stone so that he would not slip. For any sound,
a rolling pebble or a sigh, a little slip of flesh on rock, would rouse the watchers below.
Any sound that was not germane to the night would make them alert. But the night was
not silent; the little tree frogs that lived near the stream twittered like birds, and the high
metallic ringing of the cicadas filled the mountain cleft. And Kino's own music was in his
head, the music of the enemy, low and pulsing, nearly asleep. But the Song of the Family
had become as fierce and sharp and feline as the snarl of a female puma. The family song
was alive now and driving him down on the dark enemy. The harsh cicada seemed to take
up its melody, and the twittering tree frogs called little phrases of it.
And Kino crept silently as a shadow down the smooth mountain face. One bare foot
moved a few inches and the toes touched the stone and gripped, and the other foot a few
inches, and then the palm of one hand a little downwards, and then the other hand, until
the whole body, without seeming to move, had moved. Kino's mouth was open so that
even his breath would make no sound, for he knew that he was not invisible. If the
watcher, sensing movement, looked at the dark place against the stone which was his
body, he could see him. Kino must move so slowly he would not draw the watcher's eyes.
It took him a long time to reach the bottom and to crouch behind a little dwarf palm. His
heart thundered in his chest and his hands and face were wet with sweat. He crouched
and took great slow long breaths to calm himself.
Only twenty feet separated him from the enemy now, and he tried to remember the
ground between. Was there any stone which might trip him in his rush? He kneaded his
legs against cramp and found that his muscles were jerking after their long tension. And
then he looked apprehensively to the east. The moon would rise in a few moments now,
and he must attack before it rose. He could see the outline of the watcher, but the sleeping
men were below his vision. It was the watcher Kino must find - must find quickly and
without hesitation. Silently he drew the amulet string over his shoulder and loosened the
loop from the horn handle of his great knife.
He was too late, for as he rose from his crouch the silver edge of the moon slipped above
the eastern horizon, and Kino sank back behind his bush.
It was an old and ragged moon, but it threw hard light and hard shadow into the mountain
cleft, and now Kino could see the seated figure of the watcher on the little beach beside
the pool. The watcher gazed full at the moon, and then he lighted another cigarette, and
the match illumined his dark face for a moment. There could be no waiting now; when
the watcher turned his head, Kino must leap. His legs were as tight as wound springs. And then from above came a little murmuring cry. The watcher turned his head to listen
and then he stood up, and one of the sleepers stirred on the ground and awakened and
asked quietly, "What is it?"
"I don't know," said the watcher. "It sounded like a cry, almost like a human - like a
baby."
The man who had been sleeping said: "You can't tell. Some coyote bitch with a litter. I've
heard a coyote pup cry like a baby."
The sweat rolled in drops down Kino's forehead and fell into his eyes and burned them.
The little cry came again and the watcher looked up the side of the hill to the dark cave.
"Coyote maybe," he said, and Kino heard the harsh click as he cocked the rifle.
"If it's a coyote, this will stop it," the watcher said as he raised the gun.
Kino was in mid-leap when the gun crashed and the barrel-flash made a picture on his
eyes. The great knife swung and crunched hollowly. It bit through neck and deep into
chest, and Kino was a terrible machine now. He grasped the rifle even as he wrenched
free his knife. His strength and his movement and his speed were a machine. He whirled
and struck the head of the seated man like a melon. The third man scrabbled away like a
crab, slipped into the pool, and then he began to climb frantically, to climb up the cliff
where the water pencilled down. His hands and feet threshed in the tangle of the wild
grapevine, and he whimpered and gibbered as he tried to get up. But Kino had become as
cold and deadly as steel. Deliberately he threw the lever of the rifle, and then he raised
the gun and aimed deliberately and fired. He saw his enemy tumble backward into the
pool, and Kino strode to the water. In the moonlight he could see the frantic eyes, and
Kino aimed and fired between the eyes.
And then Kino stood uncertainly. Something was wrong, some signal was trying to get
through to his brain. Tree frogs and cicadas were silent now. And then Kino's brain
cleared from its red concentration and he knew the sound - the keening, moaning, rising
hysterical cry from the little cave in the side of the stone mountain, the cry of death.
Everyone in La Paz remembers the return of the family; there may be some old ones who
saw it, but those whose fathers and whose grandfathers told it to them remember it
nevertheless. It is an event that happened to everyone.
It was late in the golden afternoon when the first little boys ran hysterically in the town
and spread the word that Kino and Juana were coming back. And everyone hurried to see
them. The sun was settling toward the western mountains and the shadows on the ground
were long. And perhaps that was what left the deep impression on those who saw them. The two came from the rutted country road into the city, and they were not walking in
single file, Kino ahead and Juana behind, as usual, but side by side. The sun was behind
them and their long shadows stalked ahead, and they seemed to carry two towers of
darkness with them. Kino had a rifle across his arm and Juana carried her shawl like a
sack over her shoulder. And in it was a small limp heavy bundle. The shawl was crusted
with dried blood, and the bundle swayed a little as she walked. Her face was hard and
lined and leathery with fatigue and with the tightness with which she fought fatigue. And
her wide eyes stared inward on herself. She was as remote and as removed as Heaven.
Kino's lips were thin and his jaws tight, and the people say that he carried fear with him,
that he was as dangerous as a rising storm. The people say that the two seemed tobe
removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on
the other side; that there was almost a magical protection about them. And those people
who had rushed to see them crowded back and let them pass and did not speak to them.
Kino and Juana walked through the city as though it were not there. Their eyes glanced
neither right nor left nor up nor down, but stared only straight ahead. Their legs moved a
little jerkily, like well-made wooden dolls, and they carried pillars of black fear about
them. And as they walked through the stone and plaster city brokers peered at them from
barred windows and servants put one eye to a slitted gate and mothers turned the faces of
their youngest children inward against their skirts. Kino and Juana strode side by side
through the stone and plaster city and down among the brush houses, and the neighbours
stood back and let them pass. Juan Tomás raised his hand in greeting and did not say the
greeting and left his hand in the air for a moment uncertainly.
In Kino's ears the Song of the Family was as fierce as a cry. He was immune and terrible,
and his song had become a battle cry. They trudged past the burned square where their
house had been without even looking at it. They cleared the brush that edged the beach
and picked their way down the shore toward the water. And they did not look toward
Kino's broken canoe.
And when they came to the water's edge they stopped and stared out over the Gulf. And
then Kino laid the rifle down, and he dug among his clothes, and then he held the great
pearl in his hand. He looked into its surface and it was gray and ulcerous. Evil faces
peered from it into his eyes, and he saw the light of burning. And in the surface of the
pearl he saw the frantic eyes of the man in the pool. And in the surface of the pearl he
saw Coyotito lying in the little cave with the top of his head shot away. And the pearl was
ugly; it was gray, like a malignant growth. And Kino heard the music of the pearl,
distorted and insane. Kino's hand shook a little, and he turned slowly to Juana and held
the pearl out to her. She stood beside him, still holding her dead bundle over her shoulder.
She looked at the pearl in his hand for a moment and then she looked into Kino's eyes
and said softly: "No, you."
And Kino drew back his arm and flung the pearl with all his might. Kino and Juana
watched it go, winking and glimmering under the setting sun. They saw the little splash
in the distance, and they stood side by side watching the place for a long time. And the pearl settled into the lovely green water and dropped towards the bottom. The
waving branches of the algae called to it and beckoned to it. The lights on its surface
were green and lovely. It settled down to the sand bottom among the fern-like plants.
Above, the surface of the water was a green mirror. And the pearl lay on the floor of the
sea. A crab scampering over the bottom raised a little cloud of sand, and when it settled
the pearl was gone.
And the music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared.