Well I’m pleased to meet you.
I’ll send you that half dollar soon as I catch somebody comin back this way. You neednt to worry about it.
I aint worried about it.
The boy sat holding the reins loosely. He looked out up the broad street lying before him and at the barren hills about. He looked at Gilchrist again.
How do you like this country? he said.
I like it fine.
The boy nodded. I do too, he said. He touched the brim of his hat. Thanks, he said. I appreciate it. Then he touched the wildlooking horse with his heels and rode off up the street into America.
H E WAS ALL DAY on the old road from Douglas to Cloverdale. By evening he was high in the Guadalupes and it was cold and cold in the pass with the early dark coming and the wind that shunted through the gap. He rode slouched loosely in the saddle with his elbows at his side. He read names and dates where they’d been written in the rock by men long dead who’d passed the same as he. Below him in the long enshadowed twilight lay the beautiful Animas Plain. Coming down the eastern side of the pass the horse suddenly knew where it was and it raised its nose and nickered and quickened its step.
It was past midnight when he reached the house. There were no lights. He went to the barn to put the horse up and there were no horses in the barn and there was no dog and before he’d even traversed half the length of the barn bay he knew that something was bad wrong. He pulled the saddle off the horse and hung it up and pulled down some hay and shut the stall door and walked down to the house and opened the kitchen door and walked in.
The house was empty. He walked through all the rooms.
Most of the furniture was gone. His own small iron bed stood alone in the room off the kitchen, bare save for the tick. In the closet a few wire hangers. He went into the pantry and found some canned peaches and he stood in the dark at the sink eating them out of the glass jar with a cookingspoon and looking out through the window at the pastureland to the south blue and silent under the rising moon and the fence running out into the darkness under the mountains and the shadow of the fence crossing the land in the moonlight like a suture. He turned on the tap at the sink but it gave only a dry gasp and then nothing. He finished the peaches and went to his parents’ room and stood in the doorway looking at the empty bedstead, the few rags of clothes in the floor. He went to the front door and opened it and walked out onto the porch. He walked down to the creek and stood listening. After a while he went back to the house and went to his room and lay down on his bed and after a while he slept.
He was up in the morning at daylight sorting through the jars on the shelves in the pantry. He found some stewed tomatoes and ate them and he walked out to the barn and found a brush and led the horse out into the sun and stood brushing him for a long time. Then he led him back into the barn bay and saddled him and mounted up and rode out through the standing gate and took the road north toward the SK Bar.
When he rode into the yard old man Sanders was sitting on the porch much as he’d left him. He didnt know the boy. He didnt even know the horse. He called for him to get down anyway.
It’s Billy Parham, the boy called. The old man didnt answer for a minute. Then he called into the house. Leona, he called. Leona.
The girl came to the door and shaded her eyes with one hand and looked at the rider. Then she came out and stood with her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder. As if it was the rider had come with bad news for the old man.
WHEN HE GOT BACK to the house again it was past noon. He left the horse saddled and standing in the yard and walked in and took off his hat. He walked through all the rooms. He thought the old man was crazy but he couldnt account for the girl. He walked into his parents’ room and stood. He stood for a long time. He saw how the ticking of the mattress bore the rusty imprint of the springcoils and he looked at that for a long time. Then he hung his hat on the doorknob and walked over to the bed. He stood beside it. He reached down and got hold of the mattress and dragged it off the bed and stood it up and let it fall over backwards in the floor. What came to light beneath was an enormous bloodstain dried near black and soaked so thick it cracked and splintered like some dark ceramic glaze. A faint sour dust rose. He stood there. His hands reached about in the air and finally he took hold of the bedpost and gripped it for support. After a while he looked up and after a while he walked over to the window. Where the noon light lay over the fields. Over the new green of the cottonwoods along the creek. Bright on the Animas Peaks. He looked at it all and he fell to his knees in the floor and sobbed into his hands.
When he rode through Animas the houses seemed deserted. He stopped at the store and filled his canteen from the spigot at the side of the building but he didnt go in. He slept that night on the plains north of the town. He’d nothing to eat and he made no fire. He woke all night and at each waking the signature of Cassiopeia had swung further about the polestar and at each wakening all was as it had been and would forever be. At noon the following day he rode into Lordsburg.