I didnt know dogs were that smart, said John Grady.
I didnt either. They probably didnt know we were that dumb.
You ever trap dogs before?
No.
What do you want to do?
Billy picked up the unsprung trap and reached under the jaw and sprang it with his thumb. It chopped shut with a dead metal sound in the quiet morning air. He cut the wires and wired the rings together and hung the traps over the horn of his saddle and mounted up. He looked at John Grady.
We just aint found where they’re usin is all. They might walk in a blind set.
You think Travis’s dogs would run em?
Billy sat looking out at the long morning light on the rocks of the mesa. I dont know, he said. That’s a pretty good question.
They took a packhorse and carried a kitchen box and their soogans out to the mesa and made camp. They sat drinking coffee from tin cups and watching the coals flare and lapse in the wind’s fanning of them. Far out on the plain below the lights of the cities lay shimmering in their grids with the dark serpentine of the river dividing them.
I thought you had other business to attend to, Billy said.
I do.
You think it can wait.
I hope it can wait. I aint sure this can.
Well I’m glad you aint forgot all of your raising.
I aint forgot anything.
You’re tired of me gettin on your ass though.
You’re entitled.
They sipped their coffee. The wind blew. They pulled their blankets about their shoulders.
I aint jealous you know.
I never said you were.
I know. You might of thought it. Truth is, I wouldnt pull your boots on at gunpoint.
I know.
Billy lit a cigarette with a brand from the fire and laid the brand back. He smoked. It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it?
Yes. It does.
There’s a lot of things look better at a distance.
Yeah?
I think so.
I guess there are. The life you’ve lived, for one.
Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.
They stayed out Saturday and they rode the country under the rim Sunday morning and midday they found a freshkilled calf lying in a gravel wash out on the floodplain. The mother was standing looking at it and they hazed her away and she walked off bawling and stood and looked back.
Them old-time brocklefaces wouldnt of give up a calf thataway, Billy said. I’ll bet they aint a mark on her.
I’ll bet there aint either, said John Grady.
You aint good for nothin but to eat and shit, are you? Billy told the cow. The cow stared dully.
You know they’re holed up in them rocks somewhere under the rim.
Yeah. I know it. But you’d have a hell of a time tryin to ride it and I sure aint goin to walk it.
John Grady looked down at the dead calf. He leaned and spat. What do you want to do?
Why dont we just pack up and ride back and call Travis and see what he says.
All right. If he’d come out this evenin we could lay for em.
Well he wont be comin out this evenin, I can tell you that.
Why is that?
Shit, said Billy. That old man wont hunt on a Sunday.
John Grady smiled. What if our ox was in the ditch?
He wouldnt give a damn if the whole outfit was in the ditch and you and me and Mac with it.
Maybe he’d just let us borrow the dogs.
He wouldnt do that. Anyways the dogs wont hunt on Sunday either. They’re Christian dogs.
Christian dogs.
Yep. Raised that way.
As they rode out along the upper end of the floodplain they heard another cow bawl and they halted and sat their horses and scanned the country below them.
Do you see her? said Billy.
Yeah. Yonder she is.
Is it that same one?
No.
Billy leaned and spat. Well, he said. You know what that means. You want to ride down there?
I dont see what would be the use in it.
* * *
THEY SET OUT across the broad creosote flats of the valley in the darkness before dawn on Tuesday. Archer had a set of six dogboxes that fitted atop the bed of the Reo truck they drove and the truck groaned along in low gear and the headlights swung up and down in pale yellow fulcrums picking up the riders that went before them in the dark and the shapes of the creosote bushes and the red eyes of the horses where they turned their heads or crossed ahead of the truck. The dogs jostling in their boxes rode in silence and the riders smoked or talked quietly among themselves. Their hats low, the corduroy collars of their duckingjackets turned up. Riding slowly up the broad flat valley ahead of the truck.
The truck pulled up in a gravel fan at the head of the valley and the riders dismounted and dropped the reins on their horses and helped Travis and Archer unload the dogs and snap them onto the big harnessleather gangleads. The dogs backed and danced and whined and some raised their mouths and howled and the howls echoed off of the rimrock and back again and Travis halfhitched the first cast of dogs to the front bumper of the truck where their collective breath clouded whitely in the headlamps and the horses standing along the edge of the dark stamped and snorted and leaned to test the yellow light-beams with their noses. They handed down the dogs by their collars from the boxes on the other side of the truck and leashed them up as well and the stars in the east began to dim out one by one.