Cities of the Plain(52)

Where they came up off the desert parkland there were great boulders fallen from the mesa above and they rode up the slope among them until John Grady halted his horse and held up his hand. They stopped to listen. John Grady stood in the saddle and scanned the slope above them. Billy rode up.

I think they’re headed up towards the top of the mesa.

I do too.

Can they get up there?

I dont know. Probably. They seem to think so.

Can you see them?

No. There was one big yellow son of a bitch and another kindly spotted one. There may be three or four of em.

I guess they’ve thrown the dogs, aint they?

It looks like it.

You think we can get up there?

I think I might know a way.

Billy squinted up at the stone ramparts. He leaned and spat. I’d hate to get a horse half way up that draw and not be able to go either way.

So would I.

Plus I dont know how much good we’re goin to do runnin these varmints without dogs. Do you?

We just need to get up there before they get gone. It’s pretty open country up on top.

Well, lead on then.

All right.

Let’s not get in too big a hurry.

All right.

Let’s just cover the ground in front of us. Let’s not get in a jackpot up here.

All right.

He followed John Grady back down the way they’d come and they rode for the better part of a mile and then turned up along the wash. The way grew steep, the path more narrow. They dismounted and led the horses. They crossed gray bands of midden soil from ancient campsites washed down out of the arroyo that carried bits of bone and pottery and they passed under pictographs upon the rimland boulders that bore images of hunter and shaman and meetingfires and desert sheep all picked into the rock a thousand years and more. They passed beneath a band of dancers holding hands like paper figures scissored out by children and stenciled on the stone. Under the caprock was a running shelf and they turned and looked back down over the floodplain and the desert. Troy was riding out toward Travis and JC and Archer and they were crossing toward the truck with most of the dogs in tow. They couldnt see Joaquín anywhere. In the distance they could see the highway through a gap in the low hills fifteen miles away. The horses stood blowing.

Where to now, cowboy? said Billy.

John Grady nodded toward the country above them and set out again leading the horse.

The shelf narrowed upward to a break in the strata of the rock and they led the horses into a defile so narrow that Billy’s horse balked and would not follow. It backed and jerked at the bridlereins and skittered dangerously on the shales. Billy looked up the narrow passageway. The sheer rock walls rose up into the blue sky.

Bud are you real sure about this?

John Grady had dropped the reins on the blue horse and he peeled out of his jacket and made his way back to Billy.

Take my horse, he said.

What?

Take my horse. Or Watson’s. He’s been through here before.

He took the reins from Billy and calmed the horse and tied the jacket by the sleeves over the horse’s eyes, leaning against the animal with his whole body. Billy worked his way up to where the dun horse stood and took up the reins and led it on up through the rocks, the horse scrabbling in the shale, the loose spurs clinking off the stone. At the top of the defile the horses lunged and clambered up and out onto the mesa and stood trembling and blowing. John Grady pulled the jacket off the horse’s head and the horse blew and looked about. A mile away on the mesa three of the dogs were loping and looking back.

You want to ride that good horse? said John Grady.

Let me ride this good horse.

Well yonder they go.

They set off across the open tableland with their ropes popping and loud cries, leaning low in the saddle, riding neck and neck. In a mile they’d halved the dogs’ lead. The dogs kept to the mesa and the mesa widened before them. If they’d kept to the rim they might have found a place to go down again where the horses could not follow but they seemed to think they could outrun anything that cared to follow and run they did, two of them side by side and the third behind, their long dogshadows beside them in the sun racing brokenly over the sparse taupe grass of the tableland.

Billy overhauled them on the dun horse before they could separate and leaned and roped the hindmost dog. He didnt even dally the rope but just caught two turns about his wrist and gave a yank and snatched the dog from the ground and rode on dragging it behind the horse with the rope in one hand.

He overtook the dogs again and rode past so as to head them. The running dogs looked up, their eyes lost, their tongues lolling. Their dead companion came sliding up beside them at the end of the trailing rope. Billy looked back and reined the horse to the right and dragged the dead dog in front of them and headed them in a long running arc. John Grady was coming hard across the mesa and Billy brought the dun horse to a halt in a series of hops and jumped down and freed his noose from the dog and rewound it on the run and mounted up again.