Take the horse over yonder and keep out of the way.
All right.
He watched while Boyd walked the horse across the road and then he turned and started for the house. The dog stood looking from one to the other until Boyd whistled for it.
He walked around Keno and patted his neck and the horse pushed its forehead against his shirt and breathed a long sweet breath against him. He stood the shotgun against the elder tree and lifted the stirrup and hung it over the horn and pulled the latigo and slid the strap free and pulled loose the backcinch and took hold of the saddle by horn and cantle and lifted it down and stood it in the dirt. Then he pulled off the saddleblanket and hung it over the horn of the saddle and picked up the shotgun and untied the horse and led it back across the street to where Boyd stood.
He jammed the shotgun back into the scabbard and looked again toward the house. Ride Bird, he said.
Boyd stood up into the saddle and looked down at him.
Take the horses up here and keep out of sight of the house.
I’ll meet you at the south end of town. Just stay hid. I’ll find you.
What do you aim to do?
I want to see who all’s in there.
What if it’s them?
It aint.
Who all do you think is in there?
I dont know. I think somebody has died. Go on now.
You better take the shotgun.
I dont need it. Go on.
He watched him ride up the narrow dirt street and then he turned and walked back to the house.
He knocked at the door and stood with his hat in his hands. No one came. He put his hat on and walked down and pushed at an old weathered carriage door in the wall but it was barred shut. He looked at the top of the wall. There were broken bottle ends set into the mud masonry there. He took out his knife and put it between the doors and began to walk the ancient wooden tranca a half inch at a time across the gates until the end of it slipped free of the cradle and he pushed the door open and stepped inside and pushed it shut again. There were no dragmarks in the dirt, nothing come and gone. There were chickens sitting in a tree in broad daylight. He crossed the patio to the rear of the house and stood in a doorway that gave onto a long hall. On a low bench were clay pots with plants in them which had been recently watered and the dirt was damp and the tiles under the bench were wet. He took off his hat again and walked down the hallway and stood in the door at the far end. In a darkened room a woman lay in a bed. About her were sister figures clothed in dark rebozos. On a table a candle burning.
The woman in the bed was lying with her eyes closed and she held a glass rosary in her hands. She was dead. One of the women kneeling turned her head and looked at him. Then she looked toward a part of the room he could not see. After a while a man came out pulling on his coat and he nodded politely to the boy standing at the door.
Quién es? he said.
He was tall and blond and he spoke Spanish with a foreign accent. Billy stepped to one side and they stood in the hall.
Estaba su caballo enfrente de la casa?
The man stopped, his coat on one shoulder. He looked at Billy and he looked down the hallway. Estaba? he said.
HE FOUND BOYD laid up with the horses in a stand of carrizo cane at the river’s edge south of the town.
Anybody could of tracked you here, he said.
Boyd didnt answer. Billy squatted on the ground and broke off a reed and broke it again in his hands.
He’s a German doctor. He had a factura for the horse. Or said he did. He said he had papers from a broker in Casas Grandes named Soto.
Boyd had been standing holding the shotgun. He reholstered it in the scabbard and leaned and spat. Well, he said. Whatever papers he has it’s moren what we got.
We got the horse.
Boyd stood looking past the horse at the river running. They’re goin to shoot us, he said.
Come on, Billy said. Let’s go.
You just walked in there?
Yeah.
What did you tell him?
Let’s go. We aint down here for the fun of it.
What did you tell him.
Told him the truth. Told him his horse was stole by Indians. Where’s he at now?
He took the mozo’s horse and rode off downriver to hunt em. Did he have a gun?
Yeah. He had a gun.
What are we goin to do?
Ride to Casas Grandes.
Where’s it at?
I dont know.
They left Keno in the brake doublehobbled with the dog tied to him and rode back into the town. They sat on the ground in the dusty square while a thin old man squatted opposite and drew for them with a whittled stick a portrait of the country they said they wished to visit. He sketched in the dust streams and promontories and pueblos and mountain ranges. He commenced to draw trees and houses. Clouds. A bird. He penciled in the horsemen themselves doubled upon their mount. Billy leaned forward from time to time to question the measure of some part of their route whereupon the old man would turn and squint at the horse standing in the street and then give an answer in hours. All the while there sat watching on a bench a few feet away four men dressed in ancient and sunfaded suits. By the time the old man was done the map he’d drawn covered an area in the dirt the size of a blanket. He stood and dusted the seat of his trousers with a swipe of his flattened hand.