Cities of the Plain (20 page)

IT WAS STILL DARK In the morning when John Grady woke him. He groaned and turned and put
the pillow over his head. Wake up, cowboy. What the hell time is it? Fivethirty. What's
wrong with you? You want to see if we can find them dogs? Dogs? What dogs? What the hell
are you talkin about? Them pups. Shit, said Billy. John Grady sat in the doorway and
propped one boot against the frame.Billy? he said. What, damn it.

We could ride up there and take a look around.

He rolled over and looked at John Grady sitting sideways in the door in the dark. You're
makin me completely crazy, he said.

Cut for sign. I guarantee you we could find em.

You couldnt find em.

We could get a couple of dogs from Travis.

Travis wont loan his dogs. We done been through all that.

I know about where that den's at.

Why wont you let me sleep?

We could be back by dinnertime. I guarantee you.

I'm beggin you to leave me alone, son. Beggin you. I dont want to have to shoot you. I'd
never hear the end of it from Mac.

Where the dogs struck that first time just below that big slide of gravel? I'll bet we
rode within fifty feet of that den. You know they're in those big rocks.

THEY RODE OUT carrying across the pommels of their saddles a longhanded spade, a mattock,
a fourfoot iron prybar. Socorro had come to her door in wrapper and hairpapers while they
were finding something to eat and shooed them to the table while she cooked eggs and
sausage and made coffee. She packed their lunch while they ate.

Billy looked out the window to where the horses stood saddled at the kitchen door. Let's
eat and get gone, he said. And do not tell her where we're goin.

All right.

I dont want to have to listen to it.

They crossed into the Valenciana pasture before the sun was up and rode past the old well.
The cattle moved off before them in the gray halflight. Billy rode with the spade over his
shoulder. I'll tell you one thing, he said.

What's that.

There's places up in them rocks where if they are denned you damn sure wont dig em out.

Yeah. I know it.

When they reached the trail along the western edge of the floodplain the sun was up behind
the mesa and the light that overshot the plain crossed to the rocks above them so that
they rode out the remnant night in a deep blue sink with the new day falling slowly down
about them. They rode to the upper end and came back slowly, Billy in the lead studying
the ground at either side of the horse, leaning with his forearm across the horse's
withers.

Are you a tracker? said John Grady.

I'm a trackin fool. I can track lowflyin birds.

What do you see?

Not a damn thing.

The sun came down the rocks and over the broken ground toward them. They sat the horses.

They been runnin these cowtracks, Billy said. Or did run. I dont think they were all
denned together. I think there was two separate bunches.

That could be.

Any close place like that right yonder?

Yeah?

There's doghair on ever rock. Let's just circle up here and keep our eyes open.

They came back up the valley close under the wall among the boulders and scree. They
circled among the rocks and studied the ground. It was weeks since the last rain and what
dogtracks had been printed in the clay trails below them had long since been trodden out
by the cattle and in the dry ground the dogs made no track at all.

Let's go back up here, said Billy.

They rode along the upper slope close under the rock bluffs. They crossed the gravel slide
and rode under the old shamans and the ledgerless arcana inscribed upon those outsize
tablets.

I know where they're at, Billy said.

He turned the horse on the narrow trail and rode back down through the rocks. John Grady
followed. Billy halted and dropped the reins and stood down. He passed afoot through a
narrow place in the rocks and then he came back out again and pointed down the hill.

They've come in here from three sides, he said. Down yonder the cows have come right up to
the rocks but they cant get in. See that tall grass?

I see it.

Reason it's tall is the cows couldnt get in there to eat it.

John Grady dismounted and followed him into the rocks. They walked up and back and they
studied the ground. The horses stood looking in.

Let's just set a while, said Billy.

They sat. Within the rocks it was cool. The ground was cold. Billy smoked.

I hear em, John Grady said.

I do too.

They rose and stood listening. The mewling stopped. Then it began again.

The den was in a corner of the rocks and it angled back under a boulder. They lay on their
bellies in the grass and listened.

I can smell em, Billy said.

I can too.

They listened.

How are we goin to get em out?

Billy looked at him. You aint, he said.

Maybe they'll come out.

What for?

We could get some milk and set it out for them.

I dont think they'll come out. Listen at how young they are. I'll bet their eyes aint
open. What do you want with em anyway? he said.

I dont know. I hate leavin em down there.

We might could twist em out. Get a ocotillo long enough.

John Grady lay peering into the darkness under the rock. Let me have your cigarette, he
said.

Billy handed it across.

There's another entrance, John Grady said. There's air blowin out of this one. See the
smoke?

Billy reached and took the cigarette. Yeah, he said. But the den is still under that rock
and the rock's the size of Mac's kitchen.

A kid could crawl down in there.

Where you goin to get a kid at? And suppose he got stuck down in there?

You could tie a rope to his legs.

They'd tie one to your neck if anything happened to him. Let me have your knife.

John Grady handed him his pocketknife and he rose and went off and after a while he came
back with an ocotillo branch. It was a good ten feet long and he sat and trimmed the
thorns off the lower couple of feet for a handhold and then they lay and took turns for
the next half hour with the ocotillo down in the hole turning it in an effort to twist up
the fur of the pups in the thorns.

We dont even know if this is long enough, Billy said.

I think what it is is that the hole's too big down there. You'd have to run the end of it
underneath them some way to do any good and that would just be luck.

I aint heard one of em squeal for a while.

They might of moved back in a corner or somethin.

Billy sat up and pulled the ocotillo out of the hole and examined the end of it.

Is there any hair on it?

Yeah. Some. But there probably aint no shortage of hair down there.

What do you think that rock weighs?

Shit, said Billy.

All we'd have to do is tip it over.

I'll bet that damn rock weighs five tons. How in the hell are you goin to tip it over?

I dont believe it would be all that hard.

And where you goin to tip it to?

We could tip it this way.

Then it'd be layin over the hole.

So what? The pups are at the back.

What makes you so bullheaded? You cant get the horses in here and if you could they'd pull
the damn rock over on top of theirselves.

They wouldnt have to be in here. They could be outside.

The ropes wont reach.

They will if we tie em end to end.

They still wont. It'd take near one just to go around the rock. I think I can make it
reach.

You got a ropestretcher in your saddlebags? Anyway, no two horses could tip that rock over.

They could with some leverage.

Bullheaded, Billy said. Worst case I believe I ever saw.

There's some fairsized saplin trees at the upper end of the wash. If we could cut one of
em with the mattock we could use it for a prypole. Then we could tie the rope to the end
of it and that would save havin to tie it around the rock. We'd be killin two birds with
one stone.

Two horses and two cowboys is more like it.

We should of brought a axe.

You let me know when you're ready to go back. I'm goin to see if I can catch me a little
nap.

All right.

John Grady rode up to the wash with the mattock across the saddle in front of him. Billy
stretched out and crossed his boots one over the top of theother and pulled his hat over
his face. It was totally silent in the basin. No wind, no bird. No call of cattle. He was
almost asleep when he heard the first dull chock of the mattock blade. He smiled into the
darkness of his hatcrown and slept.

When John Grady came back he was dragging behind the horse a cottonwood sapling he'd
topped out and limbed. It was about eighteen feet long and close to six inches in diameter
at the base and the weight of it hanging by the loop of rope from the saddlehorn was
pulling his saddle over. He rode half standing in the offside stirrup with his left leg
hanging over the sapling trunk and the horse was walking on eggshells. When he reached the
rocks he stepped down and unlooped the rope and let the pole down on the ground and walked
in and kicked Billy's bootsole.

Wake up and piss, he said. The world's on fire.

Let the son of a bitch burn.

Come on and give me a hand.

Billy shoved the hat back from his face and looked up. All right, he said.

They tied John Grady's catchrope to the end of the pole and stood it up behind the rock
and made a cairn of rocks to bridge between the butt of it and the next ledge of rock up
the slope. Then John Grady joined the home ends of the two reatas with a running splice
and looped a broad Y in the end of Billy's rope that would afford loops for both pommels.
They stood the horses side by side and dropped the loops over the horns and looked up at
the rope bellying down from the end of the pole and they looked at each other and then
they untracted the horses and walked them forward by the cheekstraps. The rope stretched
taut. The pole bowed. They talked the horses forward and the horses leaned into their
work. Billy looked up at the rope. If that sumbuck breaks, he said, we're goin to be
huntin a hole.

The pole sawed suddenly sideways and stopped again and stood quivering.

Shit, said Billy.

I hear you. If that thing comes out of there you'll be huntin more than a hole.

We'll be huntin a undertaker.

What do you want to do?

It's your show, cowboy.

John Grady walked around and checked the pole and came back. Let's head the horses a
little bit more to the left, he said.

All right.

They eased the horses forward. The rope stretched and began to unwind slowly on its axis.
They looked at the rope and they looked at the horses. They looked at each other. Then the
rock moved. It began to rear haltingly up out of its resting place these thousand years
and it tilted and tottered and fell forward into the little grotto with a thud they could
feel through their bootsoles. The pole clattered among the rocks, the horses recovered and
stood.

Kiss my ass, said Billy.

They set to digging in the bare sunless earth that the rock had vacated and in twenty
minutes they'd uncovered the den. The pups were back in the farthest corner huddled in a
pile. John Grady lay on his stomach and reached down and back and brought one out and held
it to the light. It just filled the palm of his hand and it was fat and it swung its small
muzzle about and whined and blinked its pale blue eyes.

Hold him.

How many are they?

I dont know.

He ran his arm down the hole again and reached back and brought out another. Billy sat and
piled the dogs together in the crook of his knee as they came. There were four of them.
I'll bet these little shits are hungry, he said. Is that all of em?

John Grady lay with his cheek in the dirt. I think that's them, he said.

The dogs were trying to hide under Billy's knee. He held one up by its small nape. It hung
like a sock, glaring bleakly at the world with its watery eyes.

Listen a minute, said John Grady.

They sat listening.

There's anothern.

He ran his arm down the hole and lay on the ground feeling about in the dark beneath them.
He closed his eyes. I got him, he said.

The dog he brought up was dead.

Yonder's your runt, Billy said.

The little dog was curled and stiff, its paws before its face. He put it down and pushed
his shoulder deeper into the hole.

Can you find him?

No.

Billy stood. Let me try, he said. My arm's longern yours.

All right.

Billy lay in the dirt and ran his arm down into the hole. Come here you little turd, he
said.

Have you got him?

Yeah. Damn if I dont think he's offerin to bite me.

The dog came up mewling and twisting in his hand.

This aint no runt, he said.

Let me see him.

He's fat as a butterball.

John Grady took the little dog and held it in his cupped hand.

Wonder what was he doin off back there by himself?

Maybe he was with the one that died.

John Grady held the dog up and looked into its small wrinkled face. I think I got me a
dog, he said.

HE WORKED all through the month of December at the cabin. He carried tools horseback up
the Bell Springs trail and he left a mattock and a spade beside the road and worked on the
roadway by hand in the evenings when it was cool, filling the washes and cutting brush and
ditching and filling in the gullies and squatting and eyeing the terrain for the way the
water would run. In three weeks' time he had the worst of the trash hauled or burned and
he had painted the stove and patched the roof and driven the truck for the first time up
the old road all the way to the cabin with the new lengths of blue sheetmetal stovepipe in
the truckbed and the cans of paint and whitewash and new pine shelving for the kitchen.