The Crossing(62)
Yeah. About half way.
Which half?
Boyd didn’t answer.
What is that you’re eatin?
A raisin sandwich.
Billy shook his head. He poured water from the canteen into a fruitcan and set it in the coals.
What happened to your saddle? Boyd said.
Billy looked at the saddle with the mutilated offside fender but he didnt answer.
They’ll be huntin us, Boyd said.
Let em hunt.
How are we goin to pay em back for what all we took?
Billy looked up at him. Maybe you better just get used to the idea of bein a outlaw, he said.
Even a outlaw dont rob them that’s took him in and befriended him.
How much of this are we goin to have to listen to?
Boyd didnt answer. They ate and unrolled their beds and turned in to sleep. The wind blew all night. It burned up the fire and burned up the coals of the fire and the balled and twisted shape of redhot wire burned briefly like the incandescent armature of an enormous heart in the night’s darkness and then faded to black and the wind blew the coals to ash and blew the ash away and scoured the clay where coals and ash had been till other than the blackened wire there was no trace of fire at all and all night things passed in the dark that had of themselves no articulation yet had a destination for that.
Are you awake? Billy said.
Yeah.
What did you tell em?
Nothin.
Why?
What would be the use in it?
The wind blew. The migrant sands seethed past.
Billy?
What?
They knew my name.
Knew your name?
They called for me. Called Boyd. Boyd.
It dont mean nothin.
Go to sleep.
Like we was friends.
Go to sleep.
Billy?
What?
You dont have to try and make it better than what it is.
Billy didnt answer.
It is what it is.
I know it. Go to sleep.
In the morning they sat eating and they watched across the flats where something was articulating in the sunrise far out on the steelcolored clay of the playa. After a while they could see that it was a rider. He was perhaps a mile out and he approached in a series of thin and trembling images which in those places where the footground was flooded would suddenly augment in their length and then shrivel and draw up again so that the rider appeared to advance and recede and advance again. The sun rose into the red reefs of cloud along the eastern shore and the rider came on, crossing a lake ten miles wide and three inches deep. Billy got up and got the shotgun and came back and put it under the blanket and sat again.
The horse was either the color of the terrain or was stained so by it. The rider advanced over the shallow standing water and the water displaced under the hooves of the horse brightened in the light and vanished instantly like lead dishing in a vat. He rode off of the lake and threaded a path along the sandy soda shore through the sparse tussocks of grass until he sat the claycolored horse before them and looked down at them from under the shade of his hat. He didnt speak. He looked at them and he looked back across the playa and leaned and spat and looked at them again. You aint who I thought you was, he said.
Who’d you think we was?
The rider ignored him. What are you all doin out here? he said.
Aint doin nothin.
He looked at Boyd. He looked at the horse. What have you got under that blanket? he said.
A shotgun.
Are you fixin to shoot me?
No sir.
Is that your brother?
He can answer for hisself.
Are you his brother?
Yeah.
What are you all doin out here?
Passin through.
Passin through?
Yeah.
Passin through to where?
We’re goin to Douglas Arizona.
Yeah?
We got friends over there.
You aint got none over here?
We aint cut out for town life.
Is that your all’s horse?
Yeah.
I know who you are, the man said.
They didnt answer. The man looked back out across the flats of the dry lake where the thin standing water lay like lead in the windless morning. He leaned and spat again and looked at Billy.
I’m goin to tell Mr Boruff what you told me. That it’s just a pair of drifters. Or if you want I’ll wait on you and you can ride back with me.
We aint ridin back. I appreciate it.
I’ll tell you somethin else if you dont know it.
Tell it.
You got a long row to hoe.
Billy didnt answer.
How old are you?
Seventeen.
The man shook his head. Well, he said. You all take care.
Tell me somethin, Billy said.
All right.
How could you see us from way out yonder?
I seen your reflection. Certain times you can see things out on a playa that’s too far to see. Some of the boys claimed you all was a mirage but Mr Boruff knowed you wasnt. He studies this country. He knows what’s in it and what aint in it. So do I.
You study it again in about a hour and see if you see us.
I aim to.
He nodded to them each separately where they sat on that barren inland strand and he looked at the mute dog.