“When that pool is gone the beasts will die,” he thought, “or maybe they’ll move over the ridge.”
Thomas turned away and walked toward his own house, carrying the body of Elizabeth. For the first time that he could remember, Thomas was crying. Joseph watched him until he climbed the steps, and then he walked away at a quick pace, nearly a run. He came to the dry river and hurried up it, over the round smooth stones. The sun was going down in the mouth of the Puerto Suelo, and the clouds that had rained a little towered in the east like red walls and threw back a red light on the land and made the leafless trees purple. Joseph hurried on up the river. “There was a deep pool,” he thought. “It couldn’t be all dry, it was too deep.” For at least a mile he went up the stream bed, and at last he found the pool, deep and brown and ill-smelling. In the dusk-light he could see the big black eels moving about in slow convolutions. The pool was surrounded on two sides by round, smooth boulders. In better times a little waterfall plunged into it. The third side gave on a sandy beach, cut and trampled with the tracks of animals; the dainty spear-heads of deer and the pads of lions and the little hands of racoons, and over everything the miring spread of wild pigs’ hoofs. Joseph climbed to the top of one of the water-worn boulders and sat down, clasping one knee in his arms. He shivered a little with the cold, although he did not feel it. As he stared down into the pool, the whole day passed before him, not as a day, but as an epoch. He remembered little gestures he had not known he saw. Elizabeth’s words came back to him, so true in intonation, so complete in emphasis that he thought he really heard them again. The words sounded in his ears.
“This is the storm,” he thought. “This is the beginning of the thing I knew. There is some cycle here, steady and quick and unchangeable as a fly-wheel.” And the tired thought came to him that if he gazed into the pool and cleaned his mind of every cluttering picture he might come to know the cycle.
There came a sharp grunting from the brush. Joseph lost his thought and looked toward the beach. Five lean wild pigs and one great curved-tusked boar came into the open and approached the water. They drank cautiously, and then wading noisily into the water they began to catch the eels and to eat them while the slimy fish slapped and struggled in their mouths. Two pigs caught one eel and squalling angrily tore it in two, and each chewed up its portion. The night was almost down before they waded back to the beach and drank once more. Suddenly there came a flash of yellow light. One of the pigs fell under the furious ray. There was a crunch of bone and a shrill screaming, and then the ray arched its back as the lean and sleek lion looked around and leaped back from the charging boar. The boar snorted at its dead and then whirled and led the four others into the brush. Joseph stood up and the lion watched him, lashing its tail. “If I could only shoot you,” Joseph said aloud, “there would be an end and a new beginning. But I have no gun. Go on with your dinner.” He climbed down from the rock and walked away, through the trees. “When that pool is gone the beasts will die,” he thought, “or maybe they’ll move over the ridge.” He walked slowly back to the ranch, reluctant to go, and yet fearing a little to be out in the night. He thought how a new bond tied him to the earth, and how this land of his was closer now.
