The big bay, he said. And that lightcolored bay with him. The one with the blaze. And that speckled horse at the back. The tigre.
Cut them out, said Quijada.
Yessir, Billy said. He turned to Boyd. Get down.
Let me do it, said Boyd.
Get down.
Let him do it, said Quijada.
Billy looked at Quijada. The caporal had turned his horse and the two men sat side by side. He swung his leg over the fork of the saddle and slid to the ground and stepped back. Boyd boosted himself into the saddle and took down the rope and began to build a loop, putting the horse forward with his knees and riding back along the edge of the remuda. The vaqueros sat smoking, watching him. He rode slowly and he did not look at the horses. He rode with the loop hanging down the near side of the horse and then he swung it low along the roadside balk of pines and brought up a hoolihan backhanded over the heads of the now stirring horses and dropped the loop over Niño’s neck and raised his arm aloft to carry the slack rope off of the backs of the interim horses all in one gesture and dallied and began to cluck to the roped horse and talk him gently out of the bunch. The vaqueros watched, they smoked.
Niño came forward. The Bailey horse followed, the two of them shouldering their way haltingly and wide of eye out through the strange horses. Boyd brought them close in behind him and continued on along the edge of the road. He undallied and fashioned a jimsaw loop from the home end of the rope and when he reached the rear of the bunch he dropped the loop over the head of the Tom horse without even looking at it. Then he led the three horses back up along the edge of the road past the remuda and stopped with the horses pressed up against Bird and against each other, raising and ducking their heads.
Quijada turned and spoke to the caporal and the caporal nodded. Then he turned and looked at Billy.
Take your horses, he said.
Billy reached and took the bridlereins from his brother and stood in the road holding the horses. I need you to write. me a paper, he said.
What kind of paper.
A quitclaim or a conducta or a factura. Some kind of a voucher with your name on it till I can get these horses off of this range.
Quijada nodded. He turned and unfastened the flap on his saddlebag and rummaged through his possibles and came up with a small black leather notebook. He opened it and took a pencil from the binding and sat writing.
What is your name? he said.
Billy Parham.
He wrote. When he was done he tore the page from the notebook and put the pencil back in the binding and closed the book and handed the paper down to Billy. Billy took it and folded it without reading it and took off his hat and put the folded paper inside the sweatband and put the hat back on again.
Thank you, he said. I appreciate it.
Quijada nodded again and spoke again to the caporal. The caporal called to the vaqueros. Boyd leaned down and took the reins and walked the horse out into the dusty roadside pines and turned and sat the horse and he and the horses watched while the vaqueros hazed the remuda into motion again. They passed.
The horses bunched and sorted and rolled their eyes and the vaquero riding drag looked at Boyd sitting his horse with the horses among the trees and he raised one hand and made a small tossing motion with his jaw. Adiós, caballero, he said. Then he fell in behind the remuda and they all passed on up the road into the mountains.
IN THE EVENING they watered the horses at an abrevadero masoned up out of hewn limestone. The vanes of the mill turned slowly above them and the long and skewed shadow of the vanes lay turning out on the high prairie in a slow dark carousel. They’d saddled Niño to ride and Billy dismounted and loosed the cinch to let him blow and Boyd slid down from the Bailey horse he’d been riding and they drank from the pipe and then squatted and watched the horses drink.
You like to watch horses drink, Billy said. Yeah.
He nodded. I do too.
What would you say that paper’s worth? On this spread I’d say it’s worth gold.
And not much off of it. No. Not much off of it. Boyd pulled a grass stem and put it in his teeth. Why do you reckon he let us have the horses?
Cause he knowed they was ours.
How did he know it?
He just knew it.
He could of kept em anyways. Yeah. He could of.
Boyd spat and put the grass stem back in his teeth. He watched the horses. That was more blind luck, he said. Us runnin up on the horses.
I know it.
How much more luck you reckon we got comin? You mean like findin the other two horses?
Yeah. That. Or anything.
I dont know.
I dont either.
You think the girl will be there like she said?
Yeah. She’ll be there.
Yeah, Billy said. I guess she will be.
Doves coming in across the drylands to the south veered and flared away from the tank when they saw them sitting there. The water from the pipe ran with a cold metallic sound. The western sun descending under the banked clouds had sucked away the golden light and left the land all blue and cool and silent.