Cities of the Plain (6 page)

All right.

Billy, are you all workin with us this week?

I reckon.

What time did the man say they'd be here? said John Grady. He said after breakfast. JC.
You all ready?

I was born that way.

Well the day advanceth, said Oren. He put his glasses in his shirtpocket and pushed back
his chair.

THEY PULLED INTO the yard in a pickup truck towing a new single trailer at about
eightthirty. John Grady walked out to meet them. The trailer was painted black and had the
name of a ranch somewhere up in New Mexico that he'd never heard of painted on the side in
gold. The two men unlatching and taking down the gate on the trailer nodded at him and the
taller of the two looked briefly around the yard and then they backed the horse down the
ramp.

Where's Oren at? the tall man said.

John Grady watched the filly. She had a nervous look to her which was all right for a
young mare offloaded onto strange terrain. He limped around to see her from the other
side. Her eye followed him.

Walk her around.

What?

Walk her around.

Is Oren here?

No sir. He's not. I'm the trainer. Just walk her around a minute and let me watch her.

The man stood for a minute. Then he handed the halter rope to the other man. Walk her
around some there, Louis. He looked at John Grady. John Grady was watching the filly.

What time you expect him back?

Not till this evenin.

They watched the little filly walk up and back.

Are you the trainer sure enough?

Yessir.

What is it you're lookin for?

John Grady studied the filly and he looked at the man. That horse is lame, he said.

Lame.

Yessir.

Shit, the man said.

The man walking the horse looked back over his shoulder.

Did you hear that, Louis? the man called to him.

Yeah. I heard it. You want to just go on and shoot her?

What makes you think that horse is lame? the man said.

Well sir. It's not really a matter of what I think. She's lame in the left foreleg. Let me
look at her.

Bring her over here, Louis.

You reckon she can make it that far?

I dont know.

He brought the horse over and John Grady walked up to her and leaned against her with his
shoulder and lifted her foreleg between his knees and examined the hoof. He ran his thumb
around the frog and he examined the hoof wall. He leaned against the animal to feel her
breathing and he talked to her and pulled his kerchief from his back pocket and wet it
with spittle and began to clean the wall of the hoof.

Who put this on here? he said.

Put what?

This dressing. He held up the handkerchief to show them the stain from the hoof.

I dont know, the man said.

John Grady took out his pocketknife and opened it and ran the point of it down the side
wall of the hoof. The man had come closer to watch him. He held up the knifeblade. See
that? he said.

Yeah?

She's got a sandcrack in that hoof and somebody has filled it in with wax and then put
that hoofdressing over it.

He rose and let the filly's foot down and stroked her shoulder and the three of them stood
looking at the filly. The tall man put his hands in his back pockets. He turned and spat.
Well, he said.

The man holding the horse toed the ground and looked away.

The old man will shit when he hears this.

Where did you all buy her at?

The man took one hand out of his back pocket and adjusted his hat. He looked at John Grady
and he looked at the filly again.

Can I leave her with you? he said.

No Sir.

Well let me leave her here till Oren gets back and me and him can talk about it.

I cant do that.

Why not?

I cant do it.

You're tellin me to load her and get her off the place.

John Grady didnt answer. He didnt take his eyes off the man either.

You can do better than that, the man said.

I dont believe I can.

He looked at the man holding the horse. He looked toward the house and he looked at John
Grady again. Then he reached to his hip and took out his wallet and opened it and took out
a tendollar bill and folded the bill and put the wallet back and tendered the bill toward
the boy. Here, he said. Put that in your pocket and dont tell nobody where you got it.

I dont believe I can do that.

Go on.

No Sir.

The man's face darkened. He stood holding out the bill. Then he stuck it in the pocket of
his shirt.

It wouldnt be no skin off your ass.

John Grady didnt answer. The man turned and spat again.

I didnt have nothin to do with doctorin it thataway if that's what you're thinkin.

I never said you did.

You wouldnt help a man out though, would you?

Not that way I wouldnt.

The man stood looking at John Grady. He spat once more. He looked at the other man and he
looked out across the spread.

Let's go, Carl, the other man said. Hell.

They walked the horse back across the lot toward the truck and trailer. John Grady stood
watching them. They loaded the horse and raised the gate and shut the doors and latched
them. The tall man walked around the side of the truck. Hey kid, he called.

Yessir.

You go to hell.

John Grady didnt answer.

You hear me?

Yessir. I hear you.

Then they got in the truck and turned and drove out across the lot and down the drive.

HE DROPPED THE REINS Of his horse in the yard at the kitchen door and went in. Socorro was
not in the kitchen and he called her and waited and then went back out. As he was mounting
the horse she came to the door. She put her hands to her eyes against the sun. Bueno, she
said.

A quŽ hora regresa el Se–or Mac?

No sŽ.

He nodded. She watched him. She asked him what time he would be back and he said by dark.

EspŽrate, she said.

Est‡ bien.

No. EspŽrate.

She went in. He sat the horse. The horse stamped at the bare ground and shook its head.
All right, he said. We're goin.

When she came back out she had his lunch done up in a cloth and she handed it up to him at
the stirrup. He thanked her and reached behind him and put it in the gamepocket of his
duckingjacket and nodded and put the horse forward. She watched him ride to the gate and
lean and undo the latch and push the gate open horseback and ride through and turn the
horse and close the gate horseback and then set off down the road at a jog with the
morning sun on his shoulders, his hat pushed back. Sitting very straight in the saddle.
The wrapped and bootless foot at one side, the empty stirrup. The herefords and their
calves following along the fence and calling after him.

He rode among the half wild cattle in the Bransford pasture all day and a cold wind blew
down from the mountains of New Mexico. The cattle trotted off before him or ran with their
tails up over the gravel plains among the creosote and he studied them for culls as they
went. He was horsetraining as much as he was sorting cattle and the little blue horse he
rode had the cuttinghorse's contempt for cows and would closeherd them along the
crossfence and bite them. John Grady gave him his head and he cut out a big yearling calf
and John Grady roped the calf and dallied but the calf didnt go down. The little horse
stood spraddlelegged backed into the rope with the calf standing and twisting at the end
of it.

What do you want to do now? he asked the horse.

The horse turned and backed. The calf went bucking.

I guess you think I'm goin to get down and flank that big son of a bitch and me on one leg.

He waited until the calf had bucked itself into a clear space among the creosote and then
he put the horse forward at a gallop. He paid the slack rope over the horse's head and
overtook the calf on its off side. The calf went trotting. The rope ran from its neck
along the ground on the near side and trailed in a curve behind its legs and ran forward
up the off side following the horse. John Grady checked his dally and then stood in one
stirrup and cleared his other leg of the trailing rope. When the rope snapped taut it
jerked the calf's head backward and snatched its hind legs from under it. The calf turned
endwise in the air and slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust and lay there.

John Grady was already off the horse and hobbling back along the rope to where the calf
lay and he knelt on its head before it could recover and grabbed its hind leg and yanked
the pigginstring from his belt and tied it and waited till it quit struggling. Then he
leaned and pulled the leg up to take a closer look at the swelling on the inside of its
leg that had made it run oddly and caused him to cut it out and rope it in the first place.

The calf had a stob of wood embedded under the skin. He tried to get hold of it with his
fingers but it was broken off almost flush. He felt along the length of it and pushed on
the end of it with his thumb and tried to feed it forward. He got a bit more of it exposed
and finally leaned forward and got hold of it with his teeth and pulled it out. A watery
serum ran. He held the stick under his nose and sniffed it and then pitched it away and
went back to the horse to get his bottle of Peerless and his swabs. When he turned the
calf loose it was running worse than before but he thought it would be all right.

He ate his lunch at noon in an outcropping of lava rock with a view across the floodplain
to the north and to the west. There were ancient pictographs among the rocks, engravings
of animals and moons and men and lost hieroglyphics whose meaning no man would ever know.
The rocks were warm in the sun and he sat sheltered from the wind and watched the silent
empty land. Nothing moved. After a while he folded away the wrappings from his lunch and
rose and went down and caught the horse.

He was still currying the sweated animal by the light from the barn stall when Billy
walked down picking his teeth and stood watching him.

Where'd you go?

Cedar Springs.

You up there all day?

Yep.

The man called that owned that filly.

I figured he would.

He wasnt pissed off or nothin.

He had no reason to be.

He asked Mac if he could get you to look at some horses for him.

Well.

He moved along the horse brushing. Billy watched him. She says she's fixin to throw it out
if you dont come.

I'll be there in a minute.

All right.

What did you think about that country down there?

I thought it was some pretty nice country.

Yeah?

I aint goin nowheres. Troy aint either.

John Grady ran the brush down the horse's loins. The horse shuddered. We'll all be goin
somewhere when the army takes this spread over.

Yeah, I know it.

Troy aint leavin?

Billy looked at the end of his toothpick and put it back in his mouth. The shadow of a bat
come to hunt in the barnlight passed across the horse, across John Grady.

I think he just wanted to see his brother.

John Grady nodded. He leaned with both forearms across the horse and stripped the loose
hairs from the brush and watched them drop.

When he entered the kitchen Oren was still at the table. He looked up from his paper and
then went back to reading. John Grady went to the sink and washed and Socorro opened the
warmer door over the oven and got down a plate.

He sat eating his supper and reading the news on the back side of Oren's paper across the
table.

What's a plebiscite? said Oren.

You got me.

After a while Oren said: Dont be readin the back of the

paper.

What?

I said dont be readin the back of the paper.

All right.

He folded the paper and slid it across the table and raised his coffee and sipped it.

How did you know I was readin the back of the paper?

I could feel it.

What's wrong with it?

Nothin. It just makes me nervous is all. It's a bad habit people got. If you want to read
a man's paper you ought to ask him.

All right.

The man that owned that filly you wouldnt have on the property called out here tryin to
hire you.

I already got a job.

I think he just wanted you to ride out to Fabens with him to look at a horse.

John Grady nodded. That aint what he wants.

Oren watched him. That's what Mac said.

Or it aint all he wants.

Oren lit a cigarette and laid the pack back on the table. John Grady ate.

What did Mac say?

Said he'd tell you.

Well. I been told.

Hell, call the man. You could do a little horsetradin on the weekend. Make yourself some
money.

I guess I dont know how to work for but one man at a time. Oren smoked. He watched the boy.

I went up to Cedar Springs. Worked them scrubs up there.

I wasnt askin.

I know it. I took that little blue horse of Watson's.

How did he do?

I thought he done awful good. Not braggin or nothin. He was a good horse fore I ever put a
saddle on him.

You could of bought that horse.

I know it.

What didnt you like about him?

There wasnt nothin I didnt like about him.

You wont buy him now.

Nope.

He finished eating and wiped his plate with the last piece of tortilla and ate that and
pushed the plate back and drank his coffee and set the cup down and looked at Oren.

He's just a good all around horse. He aint a finished horse but I think he'll make a cow
horse.

I'm pleased to hear it. Of course your preference is for one that'll bow up like a bandsaw
and run head first into the barn wall.

John Grady smiled. Horse of my dreams, he said. It aint exactly like that.

How is it then?

I dont know. I think it's just somethin you like. Or dont like. You can add up all of a
horse's good points on a sheet of paper and it still wont tell you whether you'll like the
horse or not.