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Transaction Publishers
New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)
Copyright © 2008 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven-
tions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publish-
ers, Rutgers—The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey
08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2006044497

ISBN: 978-1-4128-0934-4
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shanahan, Daniel.
Language, feeling, and the brain : the evocative vector / Dan Shanahan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-0934-4 (E-Book)
1. Language and languages. 2. Emotions. 3. Language and languages—
Origin. 4. Myth. 5. Culture. I. Title.

P107.S53 2007
401’.9—dc22
2006044497
 For Gabriel and Marc,
whose adventures in language
have always moved in me the deepest feeling
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 Contents 7

Contents

Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. Two Theories of the Emergence of Language 15
2. Affect, Emotions, and Feeling 29
3. Embodied Language 45
4. Language, Catharsis, and Action 67
5. Symbol, Syntax, and Meaning 93
6. Apprehending Through Gesture 113
7. On the Emotional Origins of Language 135
8. Metaphor 157
9. Narrative and Myth 177
10. Myth and Culture 193
11. Language, Literature, and Culture 207
Conclusion: Language Embodied 221
Bibliography 229
Subject Index 237
Name Index 245
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 Preface

This book had its genesis in the 1980s, during the years I spent on the
faculty of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. It was there I
first encountered a divergence of opinion about language that was to lead
me to believe that an area of language study had been ignored during
the heady days of the Cognitive Revolution, when our notions about the
mind were so dramatically transformed.
The essence of the divergence I found among my colleagues at the
Institute lay in their attitudes towards teaching foreign language. One
group—mostly classically trained Europeans—saw culture,1 particularly
in the great works of literature produced by a target culture, as the sine
qua non of their language teaching philosophy. The other group—mostly
younger colleagues trained in the relatively new methods of the then-
expanding discipline of Teaching of English as a Second Language—es-
poused a more systematic approach to curriculum design, one based
on cognitive research into the nature teaching, learning, and language
done since the end of World War II. What was curious—and, for me,
deeply frustrating—about this divergence was an inability on the part
of most of those on either side of the fence dividing the two groups to
see their views as complementary. In most meetings and discussions,
the remarks made and the attitudes expressed were largely adversarial,
sometimes heatedly so.
As fate would have it, the new, more systematic approach to teaching
language was the rising star of the time, and the older, more classically-
oriented approach in its sunset years, guaranteeing that the younger
colleagues would have the greater influence on the development of the
curriculum. But feeling strong allegiance to arguments put forward on
both sides, I felt that either/or attitudes were not only unnecessary, they
ignored the fact that the dialectic between the two views represented a
great opportunity for bringing together two powerful features of language
in the service of the language learner. Moreover, it quickly became appar-
ent to me that, at the time, comparatively little systematic investigation

ix
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x Language, Feeling, and the Brain

had been done into the power of culture and literature to invigorate the
language learning experience. While there was a veritable explosion tak-
ing place in research into the cognitive side of language learning, such
things as emotion, if considered at all, were largely consigned either to
generalities about learner motivation or to resistance to language learn-
ing—the “affective filter.” And that imbalance in our knowledge about
language learning led me to realize that the very good work that had been
done in the entire field of language theory since World War II was rather
lopsided. And thus to the fifteen year investigation that has produced this
book, which moves far beyond the questions I was putting to myself in
those early days, but that remains motivated by them all the same.
There are many who contributed to the high learning curve I experi-
enced in those fifteen years, and first among them must come Karl Pri-
bram, whose support for my work during our quarter-century relationship
has been unflagging and always profoundly appreciated. Close behind
ˇ ˇ Juraj Hvorecky, Alessandro Duranti,
come those, like Nenad Miscevic,
Mark Turner, Richard Kern, and Richard Yarborough, who provided
support for this project, sometimes almost on a daily basis.
But thanks must also go to the many who contributed, as colleagues
and friends, to my understanding of language and mind: Peter Shaw,
Paula Moddel, Jane Atkins, and Glenn Fisher at the Institute; Wally
Lambert, Fred Genesee, Tony Clark, Claire Kramsch, Jim Tollefson,
Rafael Ramirez, and Marilyn Garcia—to name only those who cut the
highest profile in helping my understanding evolve. And thanks as well
to others who commented on various parts of the manuscript itself,
John Schumann, Antonio Damasio, and Merlin Donald among them,
and to Pascale Paquet for help in preparing a skeletal version of the
manuscript early on, and to Ond ej Beran, who prepared the index in
the final stages.
I must also acknowledge the help of Project A funds of the Ecole
des hautes etudes commercials for supporting the first stages of my
research, and the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GACR) ˇ for the
very generous grant (Grant Number 406/04/1307) that allowed me to
pull all the pieces of the puzzle together. Thanks as well go to Irving
Louis Horowitz and Transaction Publishers for having found sufficient
merit in the manuscript to publish it, and to Jan Sokol and Ivan Havel
for having helped provide an intellectual environment in which I could
bring the work to completion. And finally, special thanks to others who,
in more indirect ways, provided their help in the sometimes difficult
 Preface xi

circumstances that accompanied pursuit of the project: Delphine Barbier,

Tom Bishop, Pavel Mohr, et l’équipe du Café Mirabeau, qui a m’accueilli
comme une membre de la famille pendant ma “periode d’isolation.”

Selections trom Mind.’ An Essay on Human Feeling, vol. 2 (pp. 122,

123, 269, 274,294,295,296,298,300,301) by Susanne K. Langer, Copy-
right 1973 by the Johns Hopkins University Press, are reprinted with
the permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

Note
1. Whether one should use the word Culture, culture, or “culture” in this context is
the subject of Shanahan (1998).
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 Introduction
Suck was a queer word…the sound was ugly…when
[the water] had all gone down…the hole in the
basin had made a sound like that: suck.

The “speaker” of these phrases is James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus,

consummate wordsmith and lover of language, for whom “kiss” is the
“tiny little noise” made when his mother “put her lips on his cheek”
and for whom the word “wine” is “beautiful.” That Stephen—and, most
would agree, Joyce himself—finds words “ugly” and “beautiful” is
both predictable and unremarkable, except in one respect. The fact that
one of the most gifted writers in the English language attributes these
qualities to words—to the “word in itself,” rather than the meaning it
conveys—suggests a contradiction of the conventional wisdom that has
dominated our thinking about language in the last half century. For that
thinking has itself been heavily influenced by the dramatic increase in our
understanding of cognition characteristic of the Cognitive Revolution,
and as a consequence we have tended to think of language along largely
cognitive lines, examining the ways in which it reflects and is influenced
by human modes of thinking. And Stephen/Joyce’s response to these
words obviously goes well beyond those familiar cognitive lines.
True, it may be possible to look at Stephen Dedalus’ reaction to words
as “ugly” and “beautiful” as revealing particular habits of cognition. But
one cannot deny that reactions such as his are at least as reflective of
feeling. The ugliness of “suck” is almost a visceral response that, while
it has aesthetic elements included in it, is powerfully influenced by
what we commonly call “emotions.” So too Stephen’s characterization
of “wine” as a “beautiful” word. And one needn’t stop there: “Aroha”
and “laska” might easily be characterized as “soft,” even “affectionate,”
words independent of whether the hearer knows they share the same
meaning with “love” and “amour,” and such characterizations would
be, like Stephen’s characterizations of “ugly” and “wine,” responses of
feeling rather than cognition.1

1
2 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

The fact that we may respond to words in ways that go beyond their
cognitive functions as carriers of literal meaning is hardly a new one,
nor is it particularly earthshaking. Well before the advent of the written
word, oral wordsmiths used the music of words and the feelings provoked
by that music to give power to their chants, their spells, their poems,
and their oratory, and we have been doing the same ever since. We are
not moved by the information contained in Antony’s repeated, “Brutus
is an honorable man,” but by the feelings evoked by the irony and the
repetitive technique. Nor do we laugh at the information contained in the
commercial narrative of the man who has fulfilled a lifelong ambition of
becoming a poet merely by drinking a name brand soft drink:
Now I rhyme all the time
See what I mean? It comes out keen!
If I don’t stop, I think I’ll pop…

In each of these situations, and countless others like them, the impact
of language on listeners, and on readers as well, goes beyond the cogni-
tive and includes some element of feeling. We know this instinctively
about language. However, the more formal kinds of understanding we
have developed in the last half-century and more largely ignore the fact
that feelings inform language as much as the cognitive features that have
come to dominate our study of it.
In his masterful The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cogni-
tive Revolution, Howard Gardner (1987) points out that the history of
linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century has been irrevo-
cably bound up with the cognitive revolution that has swept such other
disciplines as psychology, anthropology, and philosophy during the same
period. In no small degree, Gardner says, we have Noam Chomsky and
the revolution in linguistic thinking he helped introduce to thank for that
fact. While such figures as Saussure, Pierce, Jakobson, Sapir, and others
can be ranked as among the earliest truly modern linguists, Chomsky
was responsible for delineating the “paradigm shift” that would set the
agenda for linguistics in the post-World War II period.
As Gardner puts it,

Chomsky took issue with the view that the methodological burden of linguistics is the
elaboration of techniques for discovering and classing linguistic elements, and that
grammars are inventories of these elements and classes. Instead, he saw grammar as a
theory of the sentences of the language; and he saw the major methodological problem
as the construction of a general theory of linguistic structure in which the properties
of grammars…are studied in an abstract way. (194; italics in the original)
 Introduction 3

This emphasis on theory and abstraction is one of the features of

Chomsky’s work that, in Gardner’s view, links it to the cognitive revolu-
tion taking place in the postwar period. That revolution involved, again
in Gardner’s words, “a contemporary, empirically-based effort to answer
long-standing epistemological questions—particularly those concerned
with the nature of knowledge, its components, its sources, its develop-
ment, and its deployment.” (1987:6) Postwar linguistics and its emphasis
on the theoretical and abstract features of language fall neatly within
the boundaries Gardner describes for the cognitive revolution precisely
because that emphasis provoked a thorough preoccupation with language
as a form of knowing that reveals cognitive structures in the human spe-
cies. Whether one is dealing with theoretical questions of Chomskyan
“surface structure” versus “deep structure,”2 or, in such sub-disciplines
of applied linguistics as second language acquisition, Stephen Krashen’s
“input hypothesis,”3 the fundamental questions underlying theory and
practice alike have to do with mental representations, the structures
which contain them, and the picture both give us of the workings of the
human mind.
The criticisms, the convolutions, the controversies, and the restate-
ments produced by Chomsky and his theories are both myriad and
profoundly fertile—and far too complex to be summarized here.4
However, the fact that the Chomskyan paradigm shift has placed mod-
ern linguistics squarely in the middle of the cognitive revolution is
inescapable. Moreover, that fact provides a key to understanding other
features of contemporary linguistics that go hand in hand with its status
as a founding participant in that revolution. Gardner says, for instance,
that among the common characteristics of disciplines that make up the
cognitive revolution are a “faith that central to any understanding of the
human mind is the electronic computer,” as well as a belief “that much
is to be gained from interdisciplinary studies.” (1985:6) While it may be
that linguistics has more influence over studies in artificial intelligence
than the other way round, the cross-referencing between the two is not
insignificant5 and the common ground increasingly occupied by linguis-
tics, anthropology, psychology, and AI is testimony to the fact that the
interdisciplinary element has played an increasingly forceful role in the
development of contemporary linguistic theory.
Naturally, this interdisciplinary bias can be expected to produce valu-
able cross-fertilization of the best kind among these disciplines, and
Gardner provides numerous examples of this cooperative, and at times
4 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

collegially competitive, approach, all-too-rare in contemporary scholar-

ship. However, the ongoing interdisciplinary conversation, if one may
call it that, between like-minded researchers and theorists exists in part
because each in his or her own way, “speaks a common language,” that
is, operates on the basis of common assumptions about what is and is not
important, valid, and worth investigation. And Gardner points to one of
those assumptions as central to the cognitive enterprise when he cites

the deliberate decision to de-emphasize certain factors which may be important

for cognitive functioning but whose inclusion at this point would unnecessarily
complicate the cognitive-scientific enterprise. These factors include the influence of
affective factors or emotions… (6)

Exclusion of complicating features of a subject of study is no vice: It

is part and parcel of what constitutes scientific selectivity—the refining
of our focus on what can be identified and studied, leaving for later what
cannot. However, the failure to allow for the shortcomings that may be
built into one’s study when such exclusion takes place can be a problem,
particularly if the pared-down version of one’s subject of study begins to
establish itself as a definitive, rather than selective, picture of reality.
In Acts of Meaning, Jerome Bruner (1990), arguably as much a found-
ing father of the cognitive revolution as Chomsky, suggests that such a
conceptual hegemony has, indeed, taken over and diverted the revolution
from its original goals. Bruner remarks that

what I and my friends thought the revolution was about back there in the late
1950s…was…an all-out effort to establish meaning as the central concept of psychol-
ogy…to discover and to describe formally the meanings that human beings created
out of their encounters with the world, and then to propose hypotheses about what
meaning-making processes were implicated. (2)

Bruner does not provide a clear and concise definition of what he

intends by the word “meaning,” but that intention becomes clear in his
remark that the cognitive revolution has been “technicalized” by its
success (1)—and particularly by its shift from concern with meaning to
“information.” For Bruner, information processing is content-blind; that
is, one codes information, stores it, manipulates it, and recalls it without
“respect to whether what is stored is words from Shakespeare’s sonnets
or numbers from a random table.” (4) Thus information processing

precludes such ill-formed questions as “How is the world organized in the mind of a
Muslim fundamentalist?” or “How does the concept of Self differ in Homeric Greece
and in the postindustrial world?” And it favors questions like “What is the optimum
 Introduction 5

strategy for providing control information to an operator to ensure that a vehicle will
be kept in a predetermined orbit?” (5)

There are, no doubt, those who would become immediately uncom-

fortable with Bruner’s criticism on the grounds that the introduction of
such things as “world view” brings with it a measure of subjectivity that
would undermine the empirical aspect of the cognitive revolution project
set forth in Gardner’s characterization above. Moreover, one might argue
that Bruner’s (and his friends’) notion of what the cognitive revolution
was about “back there in the late 1950s” was one that was particular
to their limited perspective, outdated by later advances in such things
as neuropsychology and AI, or that it was simply a “subjective” view
unsupportable with evidence from the historical perspective. In certain
respects, such objections constitute meta-versions of the complex contro-
versies surrounding Chomsky and can even less fully be dealt with here.
However, it can be said that 1) Bruner’s characterization of the path taken
by the cognitive revolution, toward information-based rather than meaning-
based theories, is fair and accurate; that 2) the shift away from “meaning”
toward “information” has constituted the establishing of a limited view
of reality as a definitive, at times even hegemonic, view; and that 3) re-
search of the last ten years has suggested that it is time to recognize the
limits imposed by that view and broaden the picture to include aspects
of human experience previously excluded for practical reasons.
In Bruner’s opinion, one key step in broadening our picture of hu-
man cognitive functioning is the inclusion of cultural aspects of cogni-
tion—“the emergence of shared symbolic systems, of traditionalized
ways of living and working together.” (11) Bruner sees the subjective
element of cultural meaning as the chief obstacle to including it within the
domain of cognitive study, most especially the extent to which focus on
subjective elements may allow relativism to creep into the endeavor and
render all our findings irrelevant. In response, he says that no perspective
can claim true objectivity, that anyone who comes to the endeavor of
cognitive study does so with value-laden presuppositions:
[K]nowledge is “right” or “wrong” in light of the perspective we have chosen to
assume. Rights and wrongs of this kind—however well we can test them—do not
sum to absolute truths and falsities. The best we can hope for is that we be aware of
our own perspective and those of others when we make our claims of “rightness”
and wrongness.” (25)

This awareness of our own perspective and those of others, Bruner says, will not
lead to an “anything goes” philosophy but “to an unpacking of presuppositions, the
better to explore one’s commitments.” (27)
6 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

Bruner’s critique is a valuable one, and his insistence that culture must
be included in the study of human cognitive experience is entirely valid.
However, the rationale he presents is at least somewhat incomplete. While
one can easily agree that a systematic examination of how “people and
cultures…are governed by shared meanings and values” (20) will get
us beyond the narrow view of what constitutes “meaning,” the question
of subjectivity is a more complex one than can be addressed by mere
comparative study of such things as cultural values. The fact that cultural
“unpacking of presuppositions” allows us to better understand our own
is a comforting—and true—insight into the value of the endeavor Bruner
proposes. However, while it broaches fundamentally important moral
questions about how we see ourselves and others, it makes something of
an end run around more fundamental questions about “the nature of the
beast.” That is to say, if the introduction of cultural aspects of cognition
into the discussion challenge premises upon which the discussion has
been held up until now, we must go beyond merely addressing concerns
about the moral consequences of that challenge and ask whether or not
the premises themselves must be adjusted to fit the expanding picture
we aim to encompass with our investigations.
This returns us to “the de-emphasis on affective factors or emotions”
cited by Gardner above as one of the five hallmarks of study in the cogni-
tive sciences. In fact, Gardner’s remark is probably an understatement
of the true nature of cognitive study. His own very comprehensive and
thorough work is remarkable for the fact that it shows no index entry for
“emotions,” “affect,” or “feelings.” Nor is his book unique. Bruner him-
self includes only one set of substantive remarks about affect, referring
to Bartlett’s study of memory in the thirties and his contention that recall
is “loaded” with affect, which helps to schematize memory.6 Moreover,
Bruner raises Bartlett’s findings only to comment that they must be seen
in an interpersonal or intercultural context; the influence of affect itself
on the structure of cognitive experience is not considered.
Neither Bruner nor Gardner is to be faulted for their “omission.” Ques-
tions of emotion or affect, while they have begun to receive considerably
more attention in the last decade, have not been integrated into the larger
project of “the mind’s new science.” As Gardner’s remarks suggest,
emotion and affect are often only mentioned in passing. More frequently
they are relegated to other domains, if only rhetorically, with the implicit
suggestion that work in this area is the concern of another discipline.7
Unfortunately, the domination of what Bruner calls the “technicalized”
 Introduction 7

approach within cognitive study, and the ascension of cognitive study

as the domain for relevant discussion about the human mind, has lain at
the heart of the exclusion of affect and emotion from the discussion of
cognitive faculties. Though the only thing deliberate about this exclusion
may be the desire to eliminate “unnecessary complication” of the cogni-
tive-scientific enterprise, it must be said that the relative paucity of work
on affect and emotion in the first few decades after Gardner’s revolution
got itself underway suggests a growing bias against dealing with emo-
tions, a bias that must be challenged if Bruner’s project of uncovering
the bases for “meaning-making processes” is to be realized.
Science is meant to be a dispassionate enterprise, free of the emotional
factors that kept humankind “in the dark” before the rise of the scien-
tific method; thus it would be natural to find, as one does, a tendency
to gravitate towards studying aspects of the human experience that are
closer to the rational faculties that have provoked scientific study in the
first place. Moreover, science is highly—some would hope entirely—ra-
tionalistic, and if its enterprise is laced with a sense of “mission,” as
has always been the case, then it is only natural that it would pursue an
agenda that deepens our understanding of cognitive faculties, even if in
so doing it limits the completeness of the picture it gives us. But, hap-
pily, elements of a more complete picture have begun to emerge even
from within the “camp” that Bruner sees as having so given itself over
to being “technicalized.”
While “emotions are the heart and soul of human life,” as one contem-
porary textbook in psychology puts it, “it is curious that the field…didn’t
pay more attention to [them] until relatively recently.” (Wade and Tavris,
1993:312-313) In fact, psychology has dealt with emotions for many
years,8 but their study has largely been relegated to theories of personal-
ity such as psychoanalysis, or to social psychology. Extensive “hard”
research on emotions of the kind one associates with the cognitive revolu-
tion has been a long time coming. Not surprisingly, when that research
did begin to come into its own, the relation of emotion to cognition took
paramount, sometimes even exclusive, importance. As K. T. Strongman
acknowledges in The Psychology of Emotion (1996), “those who have
created [theories of emotion] have given pride of place to cognition, and
in some cases have left out other aspects of emotion entirely.” (61)
Moreover, attitudes of researchers towards emotion often tend to reveal
a subtle bias against them, if only in the form of the suggestion that they
often cloud, or completely obscure, the clear vision that our cognitive
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8 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

faculties make possible; “control” of emotions seems to lie at the heart

of most psychological approaches to them, whether in the area of therapy
or of hard science. Joseph LeDoux, one of those responsible for helping
to bring emotions back into the mainstream of cognitive studies, reveal
this bias in the conclusion of his The Emotional Brain (1996), when he
points out that the emotional-cognitive dyad of the human experience
is in a state of evolutionary change:

As things now stand, the amygdala has a greater influence on the cortex than the
cortex has on the amygdala, allowing emotional arousal to dominate and control
thinking…

At the same time, it is apparent that the cortical connections with the
amygdala are far greater in primates than in other mammals. This suggests
the possibility that as these connections continue to expand, the cortex
might gain more and more control over the amygdala, possibly allowing
future humans to be better able to control their emotions. (303)9
Alert himself to the problem of unfair bias against the role of emo-
tion in human experience, LeDoux’s penultimate paragraph suggests
the possibility that evolution may ultimately establish “a harmonious
integration of reason and passion,” but the remark stands largely as a
hopeful afterthought, rather than as a basis upon which we must construct
our view of the relationship between cognition and emotion.
The possibility that cognitive functions and emotional functions may
already exist in some complementary symbiosis is, however, at the core
of one of the more balanced views of the cognitive-emotional relation-
ship in human experience to appear, Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’
Error (1996). Working, like LeDoux, from the neuropsychological
work done on emotions in the last twenty-five years, Damasio argues
not only that emotions play a role in cognitive processing—an asser-
tion made, as LeDoux points out, as long ago as the early 1960s10—but
that the two exist in a tightly-integrated reciprocal relationship that, if
disturbed, causes the breakdown of cognitive processing as we know it.
Reason, Damasio argues, relies heavily on emotional cues in making its
decisions, and detachment from these cues, whether the result of neuro-
logical damage, of inadequate development of the emotions, or of some
other disturbance of the emotions’ link to judgment-making, results in a
diminished ability to function “reasonably.” In other words, Damasio’s
findings strongly suggest that what we have come to call “cognitive
processing” may better termed “cognitive-emotional processing,” or, to
 Introduction 9

return to the term introduced by Bruner, “meaning making.” Of course,

as we have seen, Bruner himself does not highlight the central role of
emotions. However, embedded in his critique of the failure of cognitive
studies to include the intersubjective side of “meaning-making” in its
picture of the human experience is the importance of emotion: Intersub-
jectivity presupposes emotional investment; for without it there is only
indifference, the equivalent of a null hypothesis for intersubjectivity.
Which brings us to the question of language. If, indeed, Damasio is
right that all cognitive processing has an equally important emotional
component, what should that tell us about language? As has been said
already, the cognitive revolution has led us to see language largely
from a cognitive perspective, both with respect to the shape language
takes from its origins in the psyche and the shape it gives to the world
around us. Emotions have not figured prominently, if at all, in our view
of the nature of language,11 which has been seen largely as a cogni-
tive construct and tool. But if we accept Bruner’s distinction between
“information processing” and “meaning processing” it becomes quite
clear that language has important features that fall outside of the for-
mer and that can be treated successfully only by a more penetrating
look at the latter. Moreover, as will be argued in chapter 3, the notion
of “meaning” must, at least with reference to language, and perhaps
beyond, take into account the emotional investment that goes into
“meaning making.”
Take, for instance, the question of symbols and the role they play in
“processing” language. In his tour de force on the origins of language,
symbol-making, and the neurological underpinnings that made both
possible, The Symbolic Species (1997), Terence Deacon provides (69-
101) a detailed account of cognitive experimentation that has revealed
how we move from indexical relationships (relatively one-to-one cor-
respondences between objects and signs) to what he calls “transitional
relationships” in which patterns of token combinations appear, to true
symbolic relationships, in which higher order, generalized relationships
begin to emerge. However, Deacon’s account of symbols is largely rooted
in the cognitive view: They are seen as cognitive constructs based on
higher order, generalized relationships.12 Absent from his discussion
is the question that would lead us into a direct encounter with the role
of emotions in both symbol-making and in language: What is it about
symbols (and language) that lend them their vitality and their “magic,”
the critical element that erupted when Helen Keller moved across the
10 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

threshold from sign to symbol in her famous encounter with the “living
word” at the well?13
Of course, in bringing up the question of the power of language to
move us, one immediately encounters two formidable objections: the
conviction that such “power” lies outside the realm of cognition, espe-
cially within the limits Gardner describes; and the even deeper underlying
suspicion—going back at least as far as Plato’s insistence that poetry be
barred from his ideal society—of the ubiquitous power of language
to sway us subjectively. But if we maintain our focus on the true
basis for language, the symbolic mode, we detect the grounds upon
which one may reevaluate the presumption that we must detach the
“persuasive” features of symbols from their cognitive features. While
it may be desirable, for the sake of clarity and precision, to distin-
guish between a “symbol” on a keyboard that is used by a chimp in
primate language studies and the scarlet letter that appears on Hester
Prynne’s cloak (not to mention Arthur Dimmesdale’s chest and in
the night sky) in Hawthorne’s romance, two things are clear: 1) Both
types of symbols represent the “higher order” generalizing functions of
which Deacon and others speak; and 2) language and symbol-making
are much more likely to have emerged in an environment similar to the
steamy atmosphere of Hawthorne’s novel than the clinical atmosphere
of a primate lab.
In short, just as it is incomplete to see the study of the human mind
as limited to the “rational”—or better, rationalizable—faculties of that
mind, so too is it incomplete to deal with language only from the perspec-
tive of its structural, cognitive features. This is not to say that the cognitive
approach is “wrong.” On the contrary, it has produced much of irreplace-
able value in our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of
the act of understanding. However, in order to produce these insights it
adopted, perhaps unavoidably, a limited perspective that excludes a whole
domain of human experience and understanding from view. Moreover,
this exclusivity seems now not to have been merely componential: that
is to say, we are not merely faced with adding a piece of the puzzle that
had previously been withheld. The reevaluation of emotions currently
underway suggests that there is an integral, reciprocal relationship be-
tween the emotional and the rational; each informs the other, interacts
with the other, and relies on the other in order to function. While divid-
ing things into two domains may have had value for understanding one
or the other, a true reevaluation must discard the polarity between the
 Introduction 11

two that has come to dominate our view of each and recognize that they
exist in intimate symbiosis with one another.
So too with language. To see the emotional as simply an “overlay” at
the level of rhetoric, prosody, or metaphor is to fail to understand that
language is, like all cognitive faculties, steeped in the emotional features
of the human experience; at the deepest level, there is the same inter-
action, influence, and reliance between the emotional and the rational
aspects of language that we are beginning to recognize in other faculties
of the mind. Language is, at bottom, as much a product of humankind’s
emotional faculties as it is a product of its rational faculties, and the
discussion that follows attempts to set out some of the parameters for
extending the reconsideration of the role of the emotions in the nature
of language itself.
A final word on the philosophical implications of cognitive studies.
Gardner suggests that philosophy has always been given the role of
agenda-setting for scientific study, and that this has been no less the case
for the cognitive revolution:

[P]hilosophers propose certain issues, empirical disciplines arise in an attempt to

answer them, and then philosophers cooperate with empirical scientists in interpret-
ing the results and in proposing new lines for work. (1986:54)

Starting with Descartes, Gardner says, modern philosophy has

struggled with the “rationalist-empiricist” question with respect to the
mind, the dialectic between those, like Descartes, who “believe that the
mind exhibits powers of reasoning which it imposes upon the world of
sensory experience,” and those, like Locke, who believe “mental pro-
cesses either reflect, or are constructed on the basis of, external sensory
impressions.” (53) Contemporarily, Gardner argues, work such as that
by Jerry Fodor has been less concerned with “which perspective ‘wins’
this debate,” than with demonstrating “the bankruptcy of the empiricist
position” (86) as embodied in behaviorism.
This is certainly an accurate characterization of the importance phi-
losophy has played in the evolution of cognitive studies. However, it goes
without saying that the cognitive revolution naturally drew on aspects of
philosophical work that complimented its own biases in favor of cogni-
tive faculties and rational functions of the mind. This being the case it
seems not only appropriate but necessary to reconsider the contribution
other veins of philosophy might make to the discussion when one begins
to include the emotional features of human experience. Unfortunately,
12 Language, Feeling, and the Brain

philosophy has been no less biased “against” emotion than psychology

in that most philosophical theory on human experience reflects either a
rationalistic approach (as opposed to the “rationalism” Gardner cites)
or a romantic reaction against it. In the former case, philosophy is seen
as the exercise of humankind’s “greatest” faculty, reason, in the service
of “higher” ends; in the latter case, the irrational is celebrated as an
antidote to the excesses of the former.14 The notion that emotion and
reason may be complementary has been put forward in one ambitious
study,15 but there is nothing by way of a “school” that proposes either the
importance of emotion, or the complementarity of reason and emotion
as a fundamental principle.
However, there is a body of work that not only includes, but even
highlights the importance of emotion and emotion-related phenomena
in its analysis of the human experience, and it is curious, though per-
haps understandable in light of the behaviorist hegemony that ruled at
the same time, that this work has gone unrecognized for the insights it
affords into symbolic “processing.” I am speaking here of the work of
Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer, the former perhaps best character-
ized, not by the “neo-Kantian” label often attached to him, but by his
bedrock assessment of the human species as the “symbolizing animal,”
and the latter, in my opinion, greatly undervalued with respect to the reli-
ance she place on “hard” cognitive data for the formulations put forward
in her Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.16 Both Cassirer and Langer
made profound contributions to our understanding of symbol-making,
most especially because they take the step implied but not made explicit
in Bruner’s critique and presuppose that the making of symbols is an emo-
tion-laden activity. For Cassirer, these emotions are implicit in the role
that religion plays in culture, myth, and language; for Langer, emotions
are like molecules composed of atomic particles she calls “feelings,”
the molecules themselves being the building blocks of all other human
experience.
In that the cognitive enterprise privileges information-processing,
symbol-making, and language, and that it also embodies an interdisci-
plinary approach, I have drawn freely from both Cassirer and Langer in
what follows. It seems to me that they represent a rich line of thought
that has lain fallow for too long and that our developing understanding
of the complementarity of cognition and emotion, most especially with
respect to the way it is reflected in language, will be greatly enhanced by
a new appreciation of their work. To that end, the discussion begins with
a comparison of Cassirer’s (1946) Language and Myth—first published
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He kept Quartel and Huerta in sight when he knelt. The wood was
rotten and someone had torn the lid of one chest away from its
brass bindings. He lifted it, and stared at the black gunpowder filling
the oak box. The woman's voice sounded far away.
"The Centralists must have done this. They would have done
anything to break Santa Anna's power at that time. They knew his
men were ready to desert because they hadn't been paid in three
months. It was only by the promise of this pay that Santa Anna held
them together long enough to fight the battle of San Jacinto. You
can imagine their reaction if the train had reached the army and
they had found their pay to be nothing more than this." She stared
emptily at the case. "Twenty chests of gunpowder. That's ironic, isn't
it? All this trouble over twenty chests of gunpowder."
Crawford rose slowly, drawing himself back to present necessities by
a distinct effort. "We'd better start thinking about getting out of
here."
Huerta's feet made a small, quick shift against the toboso grass.
Crawford realized what it was in the man now. That air of infinite
ennui was beginning to dissipate before something else; an
indefinable tension tightened the little muscles about Huerta's mouth
till the soft flesh was furrowed like an old man's. The bluish, veined
lower lid of his right eye was twitching noticeably. "We can't go out
now," he said, and the strain was palpable in his voice. "Not through
all those snakes again. They're awake now."
"This place dries up come daylight," said Crawford. "It won't be any
safer than out there. We have to leave sometime before then, and it
might as well be now."
He began peeling off his gloves and handing them to Merida; then
his heavy denim ducking jacket and the bull-hide chaps. Huerta's
breathing became more audible as he watched it.
"No," he said, "no—listen—"
"What's wrong with your gun?" Crawford asked Quartel.
"Merida's horse got hit by a snake about halfway through," said the
Mexican. "She got pitched and Huerta wouldn't stop to pick her up. I
was following them pretty close and came across her before she'd
been caught by the snakes. But they were all waked up in that
section and I used my lead up shooting our way on into here. That's
why I had to use the rope on you."
"What caliber you got?"
Quartel looked surprised. "It's an old Bisley .44."
From the pocket of his levis, Crawford pulled a handful of his .44
flat-noses. He stood there with the copper cartridges in his hand,
meeting Quartet's eyes. He held out his hand.
Quartel stared at the handful of shells, then he threw back his head
and let out that Gargantuan laugh. "Crawford, you're the craziest
barrachon I ever saw."
He took the cartridges and broke his Bisley and began thumbing
them into the cylinder. Huerta lowered the handkerchief from his
scratched face, and his effort at control was more obvious now.
"I haven't got a gun," he said.
"That's too bad," said Crawford.
"No, no, listen, you can't expect me to go out there without—"
He turned around and indicated Quartel should follow him through
the mesquite to their horses. Like the well-trained roper it was, the
trigueño had stopped the instant Quartel left its back, and was
standing in the same spot they had left it. Africano must have run on
across the bog and been stopped by his fear of the snakes in the
first dry thickets over there, for he came trotting back through the
mud, whinnying nervously. Crawford blocked the animal off against a
mogote of chaparral and caught it.
"Get on first," he told the girl.
"Crawford," Huerta began again, "you can't—"
"Get your horse if you're coming with us," he told the man.
Huerta opened his mouth to say something more; then, with a
strangled, inarticulate sound, he turned and crashed back through
the mesquite. 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.
They rode toward the edge of the bog that way.
"You go first, Quartel," Crawford said. "I'll follow you, Huerta. If you
can keep your head and stay in between us, we might be able to get
you out. Just keep your head. That's the whole thing. Get panicky
and you're through. You can even get bit a couple of times by
snakes and still live to tell about it if you don't let it throw you. It
isn't the venom that kills a man so quick; it's when he gets spooked
and starts running and yelling and pumping all that poison through
him a hundred times as fast as it would spread if he just stayed
calm. Savvy?"
Huerta's copperbottom fiddled beneath him. "Crawford, I can't. Not
without a gun. You can't ask me to."
"Quartel?" said Crawford.
"Sí," grinned the Mexican, and flapped his feet out wide. The
trigueño bolted before Quartel's feet came back in to kick his flanks,
and then crashed into the thickets. Crawford held the Henry in one
hand and he waved it at Huerta.
"Get going, damn you, I'm not going to wait for you to puke, get
going!"
"No, I can't, not through there—" Huerta saw Crawford swing out his
feet, and whirled the copperbottom with a last desperate shout, and
crashed into the Snake Thickets after Quartel. Then Crawford's heels
struck the black, and they were going.
At first it was only the wild, crashing, pounding, yelling run through
the mesquite. With Quartel leading the way all they had to do was
follow the trail he made, running through holes he had burst in the
thickets ahead of them. Then the snakes began. First it was that
sharp, dry thump against Africano's pechero, and the woman's shrill,
startled cry. 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. He'll last through, Huerta, get him to running—"
Another rattler flashed from the thickets. The copperbottom reared
up as the snake struck, pawing the air wildly. Crawford came up
from behind at a dead run and Huerta's panicky reining brought the
copperbottom down broadside to them. Crawford jerked his whole
body to the left with the desperation of his attempt to rein the black
around, but Africano smashed head-on into Huerta's animal.
Crawford had the sense of falling through a bedlam of Huerta's wild
yells and Merida's voice calling something and the animal's frenzied,
agonized screaming. Then he hit the ground with Merida coming
down on top of him. It knocked the breath from him and he
struggled to get from beneath her, making a horrible retching sound
in his fight for breath. He got to his knees, surprised that he still
clutched the Henry. The copperbottom was already crashing off
through the brush, and Africano was just scrambling to his feet.
Crawford lurched at the black horse, but Africano whirled and
galloped at a ramadero of cejas, smashing through and
disappearing. There was a whirring sound from behind and Merida's
shriek. He whirled, snapping the lever on his Henry down at the
same time, and fired from the hip at the serpent coiled just beyond
her. She had been in the act of throwing herself away, and the slug
driving into the snake aborted its strike. The head fell heavily to the
ground with only half its length uncoiled. Crawford leaped to Merida,
grabbing her roughly by the elbow and yanking her erect.
"Crawford, get me out, Crawford! Crawford!" It was Huerta, rising
from the patch of switch mesquite where he had been thrown. There
was a sallow, putty color to his face and that eye was twitching
uncontrollably now. He staggered toward them, his blasé, jaded
sophistication swept away before the terrible animal fear. A deadly
rattle rose from behind him and he tried to run, and stumbled,
falling against Crawford.
The woman's gasp made Crawford turn in the direction she was
looking, and he brought up the Henry, kicking free of Huerta, firing
at the snake which had writhed from the switch mesquite toward
them, shouting at Huerta. "Get up, then. I'll get you out. Get up!"
Panting, sobbing hoarsely, Huerta pulled himself up, staring about
him wildly, starting like a frightened deer at every new sound.
Crawford put the woman directly before him and started moving
forward. Huerta cringed at his side, clawing at him, and he had to
keep shoving the man away.
"Hurry, Crawford, hurry, please, what are you doing this for? We'll
never—"
"Let go," Crawford bawled at him. "It won't do to lose our heads and
start running. How can I—"
"No, Crawford, no—"
Shouting it, Huerta reeled back against him. Crawford had to fight
the man off and wheel that way and fire all at once. He couldn't
have hit the snake anyway. It had already been in the middle of its
lunge.
"I'm hit," screamed Huerta. "Crawford, I'm hit. Save me. I'll do
anything. Help me!"
"Keep your head, Huerta. Quit fighting like that!"
"No, Crawford, for God's sake!" Huerta was floundering around
blindly, shouting and clutching at Crawford, who tried to kick him
away so he could keep the gun going. Another rattler slithered from
the thickets, and he fired wildly at it.
"Huerta!" cried Merida, tearing at the man, the panic gripping her
voice and twisting her face, "don't be a fool. Let him go, let him go
—"
"No. Get me out! I'll do anything, Crawford, admit anything. You
were right. I'm no doctor. I had two years in France and they
dismissed me. The opium. There. Now. I've told you—" His babble
broke off in a wild shriek. Crawford had not seen the snake strike. It
fell away from Huerta's back, slithering off into the thicket. Huerta
crawled toward Crawford on his hands and knees, a faint, yellow
froth forming at his lips. He clutched at Crawford's legs, shouting up
at him. "I'll tell you anything, please, anything. I was the one who
killed Otis Rockland. Is that what you want? I knew Tarant had given
him that piece of the derrotero, and I knew Otis was in that hotel
room. I'd just reached him when you arrived, and I had to escape by
the balcony without getting the map—"
Again his hoarse bawling broke off in a scream. His struggles had
carried them both over to a thicket, and Crawford could see the
same snake Huerta did, coiled almost at their feet. He tore free of
the doctor's frantic hands, throwing himself back, and firing at the
serpent. He tripped and fell heavily onto his back, seeing the snake
jerk with the slug but reach Huerta anyway. Screaming, the doctor
fought to gain his feet.
"Get me out, Crawford, get me out," he howled, pawing the
writhing, thumping thing off in horror, whirling to run blindly away
from it across the small opening. "It wasn't Quartel who had
Whitehead try to bushwhack you that time, either. It was me. I
wanted the third of the derrotero you had. And I was the one who
tried to get Merida's third in the house during the bull-tailing. Please,
Crawford, what more can you want? Get me out now!"
He looked like some frenzied beast, greasy black hair down over his
face, froth drooling off his chin. He stumbled blindly into a mogote of
chaparro prieto, and tried to turn and get out. But there must have
been a nest of them in the black chaparral, and they caught him
there.
"No, Crawford," he screamed, as the first one struck, with a fleshy
spissitude, knocking him to his knees in the thicket, "they're all
around me," and his voice broke as a second one caught him. "For
Christ's sake, Crawford, get me out. I told you, didn't I?" he sobbed,
trying to crawl on through. And then another one struck him. "Oh,
for God's sake, Crawford, please, for God's sake." And another, and
he was lying on his belly, still trying to crawl, and his voice had sunk
to a pitiful wailing, like a little child weakening, sinking until it was
barely audible. "Please, get me out, oh, please, Crawford, get me
out," and then dying finally, beneath the crescendo hissing of the
snakes, "Get me out, I'll do anything, only please get me out—"
After it had ceased, Crawford felt himself twitch, and realized how
long he had been crouching there in a dazed shocked immobility at
such a bizarre, terrifying display. It was like awakening from a deep
sleep. There was a thick, sweet taste in his mouth, and he was
sweating, and movement came with a strange pain. He saw that
Merida was standing over him, staring at the brush with that same
stunned horror in her face. His movement caused her to turn in
something akin to surprise. She looked at him a moment before her
eyes dropped to his hand; he was rising, but the sound she made
stopped him. It must have struck him sometime during his struggles
with Huerta. He did not remember when. The twin red punctures on
the back of his hand were oozing blood thickly. With a curse, he
started to rise again and get the rifle, but Merida caught him.
"No, Crawford. The knife. Your bowie. You've got to get it now
before it spreads." She was on her knees beside him, pulling the
bowie from his boot where he had thrust it after winding those strips
of blanket on.
"The snakes," he said, "the snakes—"
"If we sit still they won't come for a minute. Now—I've got to." She
met his eyes, then bent over his hand with the blade. He felt himself
turn rigid, but it caused him less pain than he anticipated. She did it
in three quick, skillful strokes. "I told you my mother was a
curandera. I've seen her do this a dozen times. Find some Spanish
dagger and you can get a poison from it that makes as good an
antidote as any."
She bent to suck the wound, and now it was beginning to come.
Take it easy. The hissing bore in on him with a physical weight. Take
it easy, damn you. That's why Huerta's through. He lost his head. All
right. Get up, then, damn you, get up. He got up.
The motion drew his hand from Merida's fingers, and she rose too.
He had scooped up the Henry in rising, and he pulled the lever
down. No fired shell popped out, and he realized the magazine must
be empty. He reached in his right-hand pocket for fresh loads, and
pulled out his hand, empty. The woman's eyes followed the
movements in a fascinated way as he shifted the rifle so he could
reach into his left-hand pocket. Again his hand came out empty.
Merida's gaze raised to his, and they stared at each other blankly for
a long moment. A small, hopeless sob escaped her.
The first, faint, snapping crackle came from behind, turning him that
way. It was a big diamondback, slithering from the switch mesquite.
It stopped as it caught sight of them, and its long, shimmering body
coiled with oily facility. The ugly hammerhead raised, and the
glittering opacity of its cruel little eyes held Crawford's gaze in a
viscid mesmerization. Then it began to rattle.
"Crawford—"
The woman's agonized whisper brought his eyes around the other
way. Another serpent, as big around as his lower leg, had crawled
from a mogote of huisache. Again it was the soft snap of decaying
vegetation that lay thickly over the ground, and the cessation of this
as the snake saw them and stopped, and that swift coiling
movement, and that sibilant rattle.
"Crawford," said Merida, in a hoarse, strained whisper. "We can't
move. They'll strike as soon as we move. They're all around us and
we can't move—"
"No," he said gutturally. "Remember they don't often strike above
the hip. You've got those batwings. Just keep your feet, that's all,
just keep your feet."
"There's another one," she said, and he saw the panic was gripping
her the way it had Huerta. "We can't move, Crawford. Not a step.
They'll have us."
"Merida," he said. "You've got to. Don't lose your head. Just start
walking."
"I can't," she said, in a strangled, pathetic way, "Crawford, I can't—"
He could feel that animal fear rising up in him, to blot out all his
terrible control. Sweat formed gleaming streaks through the grime of
his face. His right hand was clenched so hard around the useless
gun it ached. Gritting his teeth, he summoned the awful, supreme
effort of will it would take for him to make that first step. His whole
body was stiffened for it, when the first thunderous detonation came
from out in the brush. There was a second, and a third, before
Crawford recognized them as gunshots. This was followed by a long
crashing of brush, and Quartel burst into view. This movement
caused the snake on Crawford's right to strike. It hit his leg with a
solid thump, knocking him over against Merida, and though he knew
the fangs had not penetrated the triple thickness of Chimayo blanket
around his calf, he could not hold back his hoarse, fearful shout.
Quartel had fired twice at the second rattler, knocking it back before
it could strike. The serpent tried to recoil and strike again, in a weak,
abortive way, and Quartel jumped at it with a curse, stamping on its
head. Then he whirled away to fire at a third one beyond Merida.
"Hola!" bellowed Quartel. "Let's go. You only got a little stretch left
and we'll be out."
"You!" said Crawford blankly, gaping at him.
"Who else?" grinned the man. He caught Crawford by the shoulder,
shoving him forward. "Come on, I tell you. We ain't got time for
coffee."
The rest of it was Quartel's bellowing gun and the crash of mesquite
and Merida's hoarse, uncontrollable sobbing and a nightmarish sense
of movement within and without him as he staggered through the
thickets. At last he found himself face down on gritty sand, his
breathing settling down to the shallow exhalation of complete
exhaustion. He looked up to see Quartel squatting over him, that
grin on his sweaty, greasy face. The woman was sitting up on the
bank beyond Quartel, the batwings lying at her feet. Crawford
realized he was barefooted and the blanketing had been stripped off
his legs.
"The chaps saved Merida," said Quartel. "And that Chimayo on you
was a good idea. The only thing you got is that hand. I don't think it
will cause you too much trouble, the way she fixed it."
"Why did you come back?" said Crawford.
Quartel shrugged. "For the same reason you gave me those shells
back in the bog when you didn't know for sure whether I'd use them
on you or the snakes, I guess." He sat there looking at Crawford a
while. "I'm sort of glad it was Huerta that killed Rockland," he said
finally. He laughed, at the look Crawford gave him. "Sí. You could
have heard that Huerta yelling up in San Antone. My horse went
down just as I got out, and I was lying here in the sand when
Huerta cut loose. He really cracked up good, didn't he? It sort of
finishes my job out here."
Merida came over and lowered herself to her knees beside Crawford,
and he sat up, staring at Quartel. "Your job?"
That pawky grin was on the Mexican's face. "Sí. Like I said I knew
one who pinned it to his undershirt. Me, I couldn't even do that.
Only a damn fool would come into the brasada with a badge. But I
got a commission back in San Antonio from the federal government."
Crawford continued to stare at the man a long time, and it all went
through his head, before he said it. "Marshal Quartel?"
"That's right," said the Mexican. "Maybe I look like I should be a
rurale, but I'm a citizen of the States and my father was before me.
They sent me out to get you a couple of weeks after Rockland was
killed. Other lawmen had been given the job without meeting much
success. I guess you know about that. I figured you'd turn up at
your old corral sooner or later, so I had the Nueces Cattle
Association recommend me to Tarant as qualified to rod the roundup
he was managing for Rockland's estate. By the time you'd showed
up at the Big O, I'd been there long enough to find out that,
whether you murdered Rockland or not, there was more to the
whole business than just the personal trouble between you and him.
That derrotero for instance. I'd gotten a third of it from Whitehead.
He'd found it many years ago on the body of one of the Mexican
muleteers, who had been shot in the brush by Houston's men but
apparently had gotten away from them to die. It was the section of
the map which showed Snake Thickets, and how to find the chests
once you got inside the thickets, but not how to find the thickets
themselves. When you finally arrived, I had to choose between
nabbing you then, or staying on and trying to find out what was
really behind the murder."
"Then, those other lawmen—"
"The ones I told you about when I found you at Delcazar's?" Quartel
giggled slyly. "I'm the only lawman I seen in the brasada since I
came. You were pretty jumpy, Crawford. I thought if I cinched the
girth up tight enough it might squeeze out some interesting things."
There was no apology in his voice for how he had used Crawford.
The elemental brutality of the man was in his greasy, thick-featured
face, and the courage, too. And it would take that kind, thought
Crawford, to come into a place like this. I can cuss better and ride
better and rope better than any hombre in the world.
"Not rope better."
"What?" said Quartel.
"Nothing," said Crawford, sitting up to pull on his boots. "How about
Tarant?"
"He was involved all right," said Quartel. "He knew Rockland had
that section of the map, and allowed Huerta to stay at the Big O,
undoubtedly having made some deal with him to split the money
when they got it. Since it was Huerta that murdered Rockland, we
might be able to nab Tarant as an accessory."
With a weary breath, Crawford rose. "We can reach Del's from here
in a couple of hours. He needs tending to, and that old Chihuahua
cart of his will be better than walking back."
Quartel got up and turned to climb the bank toward the brush.
Merida started after him, but Crawford caught her arm.
"Out there in the thickets," he said. "I didn't quite get it. You were
all mixed up. Something about not knowing what you'd wanted all
your life, and knowing now."
"Maybe seeing those chests of gunpowder made me realize it fully,"
she said. "It could be symbolical, in a way, of money. You seek it all
your life, and when you finally get it, you realize it isn't what you
want, after all."
"What do you want?"
"Don't you know?"
He gazed at her without speaking for a moment. Her face had taken
on that feminine softness. Her eyes met his widely, shining a little.
He was suddenly swept with the desire to shout or cry or laugh or
take her in his arms, he didn't know which, the realization swelled so
swiftly within him. It had all been so broken and aborted and bitterly
frustrating between himself and Merida before, and now it was so
complete. Yet, somehow, it was too poignant to express here. He
reached out and took her hand.
"Let's go," he said.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TREASURE OF THE
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