TALE OF THE HOT LAND
275
On the seventh road, which was even longer, he returned an
hour earlier than he had on the previous one. And so, on each of
the following days, he got home before sundown and met nobody. He
was happy .and went home singing. His skin was losing its sallowness
and was becoming fresh and rosy. He thought he might take the
other roads too, as long as he traveled before sundown, but from
his
house he sometimes heard the white heron's laughter and the coyote's
howl.
He kept returning by the seventh road. In the market place one
day he heard a woman's laughter that seemed like the white heron's,
and yet it was very sweet. He went with the woman to the hut where
she lived and there he stayed an hour longer than the usual time for
his
departure, so that when he got home the sun had already set.
The mist lay like a coiling turbid light stretched along the valley.
The rider saw himself passing down the other roads, bent over his
horse, and wrapped in his serape, with its black, gray, and white
squares which the wind tightened about his chest. He saw himself
disconcerted before the indefinite coyote, the white heron, the man
whose mouth had passed down to
his
hand, and the tree that shrank.
He saw himself on the other road listening to the tapping of the cane
that walked by itself, and he saw himself falling back before the
sinister rabbit of the moon. But now that he was on the seventh road
he felt safer with the love of the woman. One day when he thought
he was already quite near
his
house,
his
horse inexplicably halted.
"Let's go, old boy." But though feeling the spur in its flank,
the horse backed up little by little. The rider rose in the stirrups and
looked ahead of
him.
He saw nothing. The road was unobstructed.
But the horse refused to go forward. He dismounted and took the
reins. He pulled at them, but the horse drew back again. Then the
e
man went ahead and saw lying on the earth beside a cactus, a
,
newborn infant, its face full and pink.
It
was wrapped in a small,
e
white blanket, and seeing the man it smiled. The man shook his
head compassionately. "Who could have abandoned you here?"
ps
He couldn't believe that the child was completely alone and
d
going up to a little mound he gazed over the plain. Nobody was there.
y,
He cried out, making a trumpet of his hands, "Ehhhhhhh!"
r,
He went back to the child. Not knowing what to do he finally
resolved to take it up and return to his horse. The animal refused
