They’d clambered up into the road with half a dozen other horses all of them still dripping water and they trotted and tossed their heads in the cool of the morning. Two riders came into the road behind them and hazed them up out of their cropping at the roadside grass and drove them on.
Billy neckreined the horse to the side of the road and swung his leg over the pommel of the saddle and slid down and handed the reins up to Boyd. The bunched horses advanced curiously, their ears up. Their father’s horse tossed its head and let out a long whicker.
Aint this somethin? said Billy. Aint this somethin?
He watched the riders. Young boys themselves. Perhaps his age. They were wet to the knees and the horses they rode were wet. They’d seen the riders and seen them rein to the side and they came on more cautiously. Billy pulled the shotgun from the scabbard and unbreeched it to see that it was loaded and breeched it shut again with a quick upward jerk. The advancing horses stopped in the road.
Shake out a loop, he said. Dont let that Niño by.
He stepped out into the road with the shotgun in the crook of his arm. Boyd boosted himself over the cantle and pulled the lasso tie and paid out the rope in his hands. The other horses had stopped but Niño came on along the edge of the road, his head up, testing the air.
Whoa Niño, Billy said. Whoa boy.
The two riders coming along behind stopped. They sat their horses uncertainly. Billy had crossed the road to head Niño and Niño tossed his head and came back into the road.
Qué pass? called the vaqueros.
Drop a loop on that son of a bitch or take the shotgun one, Billy said.
Boyd brought the loop up. Niño had already sized up the space between the man afoot and the man horseback and he bolted forward. When he saw the rope come up he tried to check but he lost footing on the packed clay of the roadway and Boyd swung the loop once and dropped it over his head and dallied the rope to the saddlehorn. Bird turned and planted himself in the road and squatted on his haunches but the Niño horse stopped when the rope hit him and stood and whinnied and looked back at the riders and the horses behind.
Qué están haciendo? the riders called. They were sitting their horses where they’d first stopped. The other horses had turned and taken to grazing by the roadside again.
Pull a piece of that small rope and build me a hackamore, Billy said.
You aim to ride him?
Yes.
I can ride him.
I’ll ride him. Make it longer. Longer.
Boyd looped and tied the hackamore and cut the rope with his claspknife and pitched the hackamore to Billy. Billy caught it and walked Niño down along the length of the catchrope talking softly to him. The two riders put their horses forward.
He slipped the hackamore over Niño’s head and loosed the catchrope. He talked to the horse and patted it and then pulled the catchrope off over the horse’s head and let it fall to the ground and led the horse over to where Boyd sat the other horse. The loop of rope went scurrying over the dirt. The riders stopped again. Qué pasa? they called.
Billy pitched the shotgun up to Boyd and then jumped and pulled himself up over the horse’s back with both hands and swung a leg over and sat and reached for the shotgun again. Niño stamped in the road and tossed his head.
Dab your twine on old Bailey yonder, Billy said.
Boyd looked out down the road at the two riders. He put the horse forward.
No moleste esos caballos, the riders called.
Billy reined Niño to the side of the road. Boyd advanced upon the horses where they stood leisurely cropping the roadside grass and threw his loop. The throw anticipated the Bailey horse and as he raised his head to move away he raised it into the loop. Billy sat his father’s horse watching. I could do that, he told the horse. In about nine tries.
Quiénes son ustedes? the riders called.
Billy rode forward. Somos proprietarios de estos caballos, he called.
The vaqueros sat their horses. Behind them a truck had appeared in the road coming from Boquilla. It was too far off to hear but they must have seen the gaze of the other two riders shift for they turned and looked behind them. No one moved. The truck came on slowly in a thin and augmenting gearwhine. The dust from the wheels drifted slowly out over the country. Billy turned his horse out of the road and sat with the shotgun upright on his thigh. The truck came on. It labored past. The driver looked at the horses and at the boy sitting with the shotgun. In the bed of the truck were eight or ten workers all huddled like conscriptees and as the truck passed they sat looking out back down the road through the dust and motorsmoke at the horses and riders with no expression at all.
Billy nudged Niño forward. But when he looked for the vaqueros there was only one of them in the road: The other one was already riding back south across the cameo. He crossed to the standing horses and cut the Tom horse out of the bunch and hazed the rest of the horses up out of the road and turned and looked at Boyd. Let’s go, he said.