Crawford

“ Old Crawford's memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on age, 'respect, and troops of friends.' His son—whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the middle ages—is driver, in the season, and sportsman in and out of it. ”

“ Crawford stood there facing him, breathing heavily. "What are you trying to do, Huerta?"
"Give you, shall we say, an illustration," said Huerta. "Don't you think I know what is the matter with you, Crawford? Ever since I first saw you watching Africano out in the corral. Perhaps the others are still groping. They sense something not quite right in you, Crawford. But they don't know for sure, yet. I know, Crawford." He said the last softly, positively, watching Crawford. He took a drag on the cigarette. "It must be a terrible thing to live with constantly. ”

“ Then it was the shadowy figure moving out of the darkness down the trail, and Crawford yanked on the maguey and it slipped off the branch and the branch snapped up with a soft crackle and caused the figure to whirl that way, his gun crashing, his back toward the thicket in which Crawford lay.
"Maybe you're a dangerous man," screamed Crawford in a terrible release, leaping to his feet and throwing himself bodily at the man, who was still firing wildly into the opposite thicket, "but this is one bronc you'll wish to hell you never climbed on." ”

“ The horse was as wild and frenzied as Crawford now. Two beasts filled the narrow confines of the corral with their crazed screams, forming shadowy, thundering, pounding, running shapes back and forth between the fences, the whole structure shuddering as one or the other smashed into the sides. Crawford did not try again to climb the fence. Hands bloody, clothes covered with dirt, shirt torn, all his wild concentration was on avoiding the mad, blind rushes of the killer horse. He found himself backed up against the door leading into the chute, facing the charging horse. ”

“ A man stepping off then would have ultimately lost his touch with the horse too. But Crawford rode its neck when it twisted onto its hips and rode its head when it put its rump into the ground and rode its belly while it was upside down.
The horse rose into a veritable orgasm of mad bucking, pin-wheeling, sunfishing, humping up and coming down with all four feet planted, and knocking most of the consciousness from Crawford every time it landed. Crawford was bleeding at the nose and ears, face covered with blood and sweat, clothes black with dirt. ”

“ Since the Revolution, there has scarcely been a time that some one of the family has not been prominently before the public as a representative man. Mr. Crawford was an eminent type of his race, sternly honest, of ardent temperament, full of dignity, generous, frank, and brave. Plain and simple in his habits, disdaining everything like ostentation, or foolish display—strictly moral, firm in his friendship, and unrelenting in his hatred, his sagacity and sincerity forbade the forming of the one or the other without abundant cause. He was never known to desert a friend or shrink from a foe. ”

“ To come out on the porch that morning and see you standing there beside Whitehead's body, knowing what it meant. It doesn't happen to a person often in her life, Crawford. That sort of feeling. Let me help you, Crawford. I want to. I can't if you don't trust me."
She was up against him now, almost sobbing it, and his hands had slid around her waist, the flesh hot and silken against his palm through her gown. For one last moment he tried to fight it. But he had fought so long, so alone, without anyone, and the warm resilience of her body against him filled Crawford with a giddy weakness. ”

“ Forbes sat down next to Crawford, who slapped him on the shoulder. He liked Crawford the best of all his friends; Crawford, the kindly, the loyal, the silent, the scholar who wrote brochures on ancient hieroglyphics, who was rich but who lived like a sensible lawyer's clerk; who was always agreeable and charming, whose eyes had that calm steady unchanging gray of the sea where it nears the horizon. He fought shy of women; but he was not one of those mentally deficient apes who call themselves woman-haters. ”

“ Crawford felt his body straighten involuntarily in the saddle. "Yes, Quartel," he said.
Chapter Fifteen Treasure Hunt Climax
Perhaps it was the sound. The constant, incessant, unrelenting sound of those snakes. Standing in this narrow strip of bog formed by the rising muck of the underground river, the hissing was audible on both sides now. There was something infinitely evil about it that clutched at a man's vitals. It filled Crawford with a vague, primal panic, akin to the fear he had known of Africano before, yet different, in a subtle, insidious way. ”

“ Never had incurably wounded pride forged itself a more consummately impenetrable mask; never had bravado achieved so triumphant an imitation of sincerity. In his wife's absence, Crawford never alluded to her; but, in her presence, he was an embodiment of deference and attentive civility. ”

“ The Ingrams anticipated by several weeks their projected departure for Newport—they had given out that they were to spend the summer there—and, quitting New York, quite left, like the gentleman in "The School for Scandal," their reputations behind them.
I continued to observe Crawford with interest, and, although I did full justice to his wisdom and self-control, when the summer arrived I was ill at ease about him. He led exactly the life he had led before his engagement, and mingled with society; neither more nor less. ”

“ Quartel's gun crashed from ahead of them, but Crawford was too taken up with reining the black to use his Henry. He had that blurred impression of violent undulation around him. There was another snapping thud against Africano's buckskin shield, and a big diamondback fell to the ground beneath them as they went by.
Then it was the shrill scream from Huerta's copperbottom ahead. Crawford saw the huge rattler dropping off the animal's rump, and the copperbottom started to buck.
"There it is," screamed Huerta, "there it is!"
"Don't lose your head," shouted Crawford. "Get him to running again. ”

“ You can't do much the way you are now, Crawford. You're only half a man. It's not just the horses any more. It's your whole life. Everything you do is affected by it. I've thought of trying to get you a gun. A dozen times. It would be hard, but I might be able to do it. To stay unarmed here, like this—" She put her free hand against his chest to stop him. "What good would it do, Crawford? If you'd had a gun, would you have used it today? Quartel carries one. ”

“ He isn't four inches taller than you, Mr. Crawford."
"He is."
"Excuse me, sir; if you tell me so, of course I have nothing more to say," said Mrs. Grainger, rising with severity and dignity. "The gentleman that lives on Poland's Ait is a shorter man than you, sir."
"Are you sure?" said Crawford, standing for the third time in front of the woman.
"Quite certain."
"Shorter than I?" said he, in a tone of abstraction, as he gnawed his knuckles, unconscious of her presence--"shorter than I?" he repeated, lost in thought. "Then he can't be Philip Ray," he cried in a tone of relief. ”

“ The gulf between Richard Crawford and herself might have grown too wide to be over-leaped—she might have become, to him, only a name to be regretted and yet despised—but it was still something in life to know that he was true and worthy, even if he was to be nothing more to her ”

“ At the Counter Club there were men every night who did not mind how far into the morning they sat so long as they were winning. From the moment Crawford touched the cards until he rose at half-past six he had lost steadily. Though he had played for higher stakes than usual, he had been as careful of his game as if he had no more than a few hundred pounds with him. ”

“ Not the type of thing Quartel would use. Not making you ride a horse or letting you watch Africano. Not anything as simple to get away from. Merely suggestion, Crawford. Your mind will do the rest. Little things. Insidious things.
"Like the story of a miner who got crushed in a cave-in down at Monterrey. Did that stay with you a long time, Crawford? At night, perhaps, you'd wake up. Remembering. Wondering. Innuendoes, Crawford. Insinuations. Things for the mind to retain and savor. Because it is your mind. I showed you that with the examination. It isn't your legs. ”

“ In a moment he returned on the copperbottom. It was a risky thing to do with such a green horse, but there was no other way, and Crawford swung onto the black behind the cantle. The animal kicked in a startled, angry way and started to buck. Crawford swung his arms around in front of Merida to grab the mecate and yank back hard on it, spurring Africano at the same time. The puro negro quit bucking and broke forward, slopping into a muddy stretch. Crawford turned the horse to get Quartel in front of him. ”

“ Guest. By the Lord, sir, she can whistle for me now! If there was a decently good-looking woman in this house, I'd march straight up to her and offer myself. You're a happy man, my boy, not to have a d—d fool to interfere with you, and not to be in love with a d—d fool either."
I had no present leisure to smooth the turbid waters of poor Crawford's passion; but I remembered a clever remark in a French book, to the effect that even the best men—and Crawford was one of the best—are subject to a momentary need not to respect what they love. ”

“ Alfred Layard was thirty years of age, and had been a widower two years, his young wife dying a twelve-month after the birth of her only child Freddie, now three.
William Crawford was a man of very different mould; thick-set, good-looking, with bold brown eyes, clean-shaven face, close thick hair which curled all over a massive head, full lips that had few movements, and handsome well cut forehead too hollow for beauty in the upper central region. ”

“ During his (Lavirotte's) absence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault. Crawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While he (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a giant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now, here was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the treasure from the old man's eyes. He could see Crawford stoop in the dim light of the lantern, lean over his pick, grovel under his shovel, panting, praying, sweating, until a large space of the stonework of the roof had been cleared. ”

“ The soft snap of decaying vegetation beneath a careless foot. Again it was no reasoning process. Just a wave of instinctive, animal realization of how he was trapped. Face twisting with frustrated rage, Crawford backed slowly, almost involuntarily, across the game trail into the mesquite thicket again. He moved as far back as he could, upright, and then he got down on his belly and crawled in until the roots and trunks and foliage became too thick even for that, and then he stopped.
His shirt was drenched with sweat and the perspiration dripped into his eyes, blinding and stinging. ”

“ Layard thought Crawford must be a very excitable and somewhat eccentric man to allow himself to be troubled by a purely playful speech as to the pedestrian on the tow-path; but he felt he had been almost unjust to Crawford when talking to his sister, and he was anxious for this reason, and because of a desire to conciliate his lodger, to gratify him by joining in this expedition, which he looked on as absurd. ”

“ Crawford was walking under the trees in the gardens opposite Government House, when she heard a pleasant little musical laugh behind her, accompanied by the pat of dainty little high-heeled shoes.
“Dear, good Mrs. Crawford, why will you walk so terribly fast? It quite took away the breath of poor little me to follow you,” came the voice of Lottie Vincent Mrs. Crawford turned, and as she was with a friend, she could not avoid allowing her stout hand to be touched by one of Lottie's ten-buttoned gloves. ”

“ Now you do. Go on, Crawford. You won't get a woman with that kind of guts twice in your life. It's almost as good as owning a vinegar roan. I owned a vinegar roan once—"
But Crawford had stopped hearing the cook. It held him completely now. It lifted him so high he didn't feel his feet hit the floor when he started to walk. He moved past Jacinto with a dazed, twisted expression on his face, not even seeing the fat Mexican. The only thing within his awareness was that sweeping, tingling sense of exaltation, so strong and poignant it approached a nausea. ”

“ Later, by his novels, Crawford was to teach the English reading world to love the simple Italian ways. He taught me so much of Italy that I am glad to find, from an old letter, that he learned something that was worth while from me,—the American point of view. I was frankly horrified at the lack of purpose in his life. This handsome, gifted, brilliant man of twenty-four seemed perfectly content to live at home, idle, and supported by his mother.
Crawford’s mother, for years “a leader” of the Anglo-American colony, was much beloved.
“Madama Terry is the most simpatica American I know!” ”

“ This writer tells us that “Crawford added the indispensable advantage of being a Catholic in religion, a circumstance that has not only allowed him a truer sympathy with the life there, but has afforded him an open sesame to many things which must be sealed books to Protestants.” As to my friend’s summing up Crawford as a cosmopolitan, in the every-day meaning of that word, I take issue. Cosmopolitan novelist is one who can produce a three-volume novel, whose scenes are laid in all the great centers of commerce, while he sits calmly in his library. ”