Turn the horse loose, Billy said.
Boyd sat holding the rope.
Do like I told you, Billy said.
Boyd leaned and slacked the noose of the catchrope under Bailey’s jaw and pulled the rope off over the animal’s head. The horse turned and crossed through the roadside ditch and set off at a trot. Billy stepped down from Niño and pulled the hackamore off and slapped the animal across the rump with it and it turned and set out after the other horse. By now the riders behind them had come up and they set off after the horses without being told. The jefe smiled. He touched his hat at them and picked up the reins and turned his horse sharply in the road. Vámonos, he said. Then he and the four mounted riflemen set off back down the road toward Boquilla from whence they’d come. Out on the plain the young vaqueros had headed the loose horses and were driving them back into the road west again as they had first intended and soon all were lost to sight in the noon heatshimmer and there was only the silence left. Billy stood in the road and leaned and spat.
Say what’s on your mind, he said.
I aint got nothin to say.
Well.
You ready?
Yeah.
Boyd shucked his boot backward out of the stirrup and Billy put his foot in and swung up behind him.
Bunch of damned ignorance if you ask me, Boyd said.
I thought you didnt have nothin to say.
Boyd didnt answer. The mute dog had gone to hide in the roadside weeds and now it reappeared and stood waiting. Boyd sat the horse.
Now what are you waitin on? said Billy.
Waitin on you to tell me which way you want to go.
Well what the hell way do you think we’re goin?
We’re supposed to be in Santa Ana de Babícora in three days’ time.
Well we might just be late.
What about the papers?
What the hell good are the papers without the horse? Anyway you just got done seem what papers are worth in this country.
One of them boys that left out of here with the horses had a rifle in a boot.
I seen it. I aint blind.
Boyd turned the horse and they set out back west along the road. The dog fell in and trotted at the horse’s offside in the horse’s shadow.
You want to quit? Billy said.
I never said nothin about quittin.
It aint like home down here.
I never said it was.
You dont want to use common sense. We come too far down here to go back dead.
Boyd pressed the horse’s flanks with the heels of his boots and the horse stepped out more smartly. You think there is a place that far? he said.
They picked up the tracks of the two riders and the three horses where they’d returned to the road and an hour later they were back at the place above the lake where they’d first seen the horses. Boyd rode slowly along the side of the road studying the ground underfoot until he saw where horses shod and shoeless had left the road and set out north across the high rolling grasslands.
Where do you reckon they’re headed? he said.
I dont know, said Billy. I dont know where they come from for that matter.
They rode north all afternoon. From a rise just at twilight they saw the riders looseherding the horses now some dozen in number before them five miles away on the blue and cooling prairie.
You reckon that’s them? Boyd said.
Pret near got to be, said Billy.
They rode on. They rode into the dark and when it was too dark to see they halted the horse and sat listening. There was no sound save the wind in the grass. The evening star sat low in the west round and red like a shrunken sun. Billy slid to the ground and took the bridlereins from his brother and led the horse.
It’s dark as the inside of a cow.
I know it. It’s all overcast.
That’s a damned favorable way to get snakebit.
I got boots on. The horse dont.
They crested out on a knoll and Boyd stood in the stirrups. Can you see em? said Billy.
No.
What do you see?
I dont see nothin. There aint nothin to see. It’s just dark on dark and then more of it.
Maybe they aint had time to build a fire yet.
Maybe they aim to drive all night.
They moved on along the crest of the rise.
Yonder they are, said Boyd.
I see em.
They crossed down the far side into a low swale and looked for some sheltered place out of the wind. Boyd got down and stood in the grassy bajada and Billy handed him the reins.
Find somethin to tie him to. Dont hobble him and dont try to stake him. He’ll wind up in their remuda.
He pulled down the saddle and blankets and saddlebag.
You want to build a fire? said Boyd.
What would you build it with?
Boyd walked off into the night with the horse. After a while he came back.
There aint nothin to tie him to that I can find.
Let me have him.
He looped the catchrope and slid it over the horse’s head and dallied the other end to the saddlehorn.
I’ll sleep with the saddle for a pillow, he said. He’ll wake me if he gets farthern forty foot.