Cities of the Plain(24)

WARD BROUGHT THE STALLION out of the stall and started down the bay with it. The stallion stopped in the middle of the bay and stood trembling and took small steps as if the ground had got unsteady under its feet. Ward stood close to the stallion and talked to it and the stallion jerked its head up and down in a sort of frenzied agreement. They’d been through it all before but the stallion was no less crazy for that and Ward no less patient. He led the horse prancing past the stalls where the other horses circled and rolled their eyes.

John Grady was holding the mare by a twitch and when the stallion entered the paddock she tried to stand upright. She turned at the end of the rope and shot out one hindfoot and then she tried to stand again.

That is a pretty decent lookin mare, Ward said.

Yessir.

What happened to her eye?

Man that owned her knocked it out with a stick.

Ward led the walleyed stallion around the perimeter of the paddock. Knocked it out with a stick, he said.

Yessir.

He couldnt put it back though, could he?

No sir.

Easy, said Ward. Easy now. That’s a sweet mare.

Yessir, said John Grady. She is.

He walked the stallion forward by fits and starts. The little mare rolled her good eye till it was white as the blind one. JC and another man had entered the paddock and closed the gate behind them. Ward turned and looked past them toward the paddock walls.

I aint tellin you all again, he called. You go on to the house like I told you.

Two teen-age girls came out and started across the yard toward the house.

Where’s Oren at? said Ward.

John Grady turned with the skittering mare. He was leaning all over her and trying to keep her from stepping on his feet.

He had to go to Alamogordo.

Hold her now, Ward said. Hold her.

The stallion stood, his great phallus swinging.

Hold her, said Ward.

I got her.

He knows where it’s at.

The mare bucked and kicked one leg. On the third try the stallion mounted her, clambering, stamping his hindlegs, the great thighs quivering and the veins standing. John Grady stood holding all of this before him on a twisted tether like a child holding by a string some struggling and gasping chimera invoked by sorcery out of the void into the astonished day-world. He held the twitchrope in one hand and laid his face against the sweating neck. He could hear the slow bellows of her lungs and feel the blood pumping. He could hear the slow dull beating of the heart within her like an engine deep in a ship.

He and JC loaded the mare in the trailer. She look knocked up to you? JC said.

I dont know.

He bowed her back, didnt he?

They raised the tailgate on the trailer and latched it at either side. John Grady turned and leaned against the trailer and wiped his face with his kerchief and pulled his hat back down.

Mac’s done got the colt sold.

I hope he aint spent the money.

Yeah?

She’s been bred twice before and it didnt take.

Ward’s stud?

No.

I got my money on Ward’s studhorse.

So does Mac.

Are we done?

We’re done. You want to swing by the cantina?

Are you buyin?

Hell, said JC. I thought I’d get you to back me on the shuffleboard. Give us a chance to improve our financial position.

Last time I done that the position we wound up in wasnt financial.

They climbed into the truck.

Are you broke sure enough? said JC.

I aint got a weepin dime.

They started slowly down the drive. The horsetrailer clanked behind. Troy was counting change in his hand.

I got enough for a couple of beers apiece, he said.

That’s all right.

I’m ready to blow in the whole dollar and thirty-five cents.

We better get on back.


HE WATCHED BILLY RIDE down along the fenceline from where it crested against the red dunes. He rode past and then sat the horse and looked out across the windscoured terrain and he turned and looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat.

Hard country, he said.

Hard country.

This used to be grama grass to a horse’s stirrups.

I’ve heard that. Did you see any more of that bunch?

No. They’re scattered all to hell and gone. Wild as deer. A man needs three horses to put in a day up here.

Why dont we ride up Bell Springs Draw.

Were you up there last week?

No.

All right.

They crossed the red creosote plain and picked their way up along the dry arroyo over the red rock scree.

John Grady Cole was a rugged old soul, Billy sang.

The trail crossed through the rock and led out along a wash. The dirt was like red talc.

With a buckskin belly and a rubber asshole.

An hour later they sat their horses at the spring. The cattle had been and gone. There were wet tracks at the south end of the ciénega and wet tracks in the trail leading out south down the side of the ridge.

There’s at least two new calves with this bunch, Billy said.

John Grady didnt answer. The horses raised their dripping mouths from the water one and then the other and blew and leaned and drank again. The dead leaves clinging to the pale and twisted cottonwoods rattled in the wind. Set in a flat above the springs was a small adobe house in ruins these many years. Billy took his cigarettes from his shirtpocket and shook one out and hunched his shoulders forward and lit it.