Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco Page A

followed the boy, as if they were simply setting off together again to explore the fortress and its surrounds. It kept running from one side of the boy to the other, then stationed itself before him and put its paws on his thighs asking to be petted. The boy pushed the dog away, and the dog then stopped pestering him and trotted meekly after him. When they had gone some fifteen or twenty yards, the goatherd whistled, and the dog, its legs tense, paused and pricked up its ears. Then the boy bent down, put his hands about the dog’s neck and whispered something into the dog’s ear that made the dog relinquish its herding instincts and happily return to the castle wall.
    The boy stood up, brushed off his trousers and felt a breath of warm air on the back of his neck. He sighed at the uncertainty of what lay ahead, and it was then that he heard the sound of an engine brought to him by that same breath of air. He turned and, in the distance, spotted a cloud of dust on the towpath. The heat haze was such that he couldn’t actually see the surface of the earth or make out the precise origin of the noise that was growing ever clearer. He instinctively glanced back at the goatherd and saw that he too was kneeling, one hand shading his eyes, straining in the direction of that cloud of dust. The same wind that was bringing those men closer was also turning the thin pages of the Bible that now lay open on the ground. The goatherd signalled to him to get down out of sight.
    The boy looked nervously about him in search of some escape route, but there was none. Behind him were the goatherd, the castle wall and its rubble. In every other direction lay the endless, pitiless plain where he would find no shelter. He crept back along the way he had come. He passed the old man and continued on until he was pressed against the wall.
    â€˜Hide.’
    The boy lay flat on the ground and began to crawl along using his elbows. The pebbles dug into the skin of his arms and tore the sleeves of his shirt. He dragged himself along the whole wall round to the other side of the tower. Safe from the eyes of those men, he continued dragging himself through the rubble to the middle of the wall. The dog followed him, curious, waiting for the boy to throw it a stick or tickle it under the chin. It could so easily reveal his hiding-place. Squatting, with his back against the wall, he called to the dog and stroked it under the chin to pacify it.
    When the search party left the towpath and headed up the track to the castle, the old man recognised the bailiff’s motorbike. He was accompanied by two men on horseback, their horses’ hooves striking sparks from the stones on the path.
    The goatherd whistled and the dog stopped wagging its tail and pricked up its ears. It removed its head from the boy’s hands and shot off round the wall to rejoin the old man, who was fumbling for something in the food pouch. As the men approached, the motorcycle engine backfired repeatedly, startling the pigeons nesting inside the tower.
    The goats made way for the new arrivals. The old man dropped the last piece of dried meat at his feet. The dog sat down beside him and began licking and chewing that piece of sinewy flesh, which it would not take long to soften and swallow down.
    The goatherd stood up to receive the men. He took off his hat and nodded a welcome. One of the horsemen returned his greeting, touching his cap. The other man, who had a reddish beard, was already looking about him. Of the three, he was the only one to carry a weapon. A double-barrelled shotgun with a fancy inlaid butt. The bailiff turned off his engine and, even though the goats were still bleating and their bells tinkling, the old man felt as if a sudden absolute silence had fallen. The man took off his leather gloves and placed them, one beside the other, on the edge of the sidecar, fingers pointing inwards. Then, without getting off his bike, he removed first his goggles and then