Blood Sport

Chapter Nine

At one o’clock, early Sunday morning, I stood on the porch of my cabin waiting for my eyes to dilate, and listening to the night.

A slight wind, riffling the trees. A car horn, very distant. The faint hum of the electric generator in its special house. No sound from Yola’s cabin. None all evening. Matt hadn’t yet come home.

With some misgivings I had left my riding boots in the cabin, and wore only thin rubber-soled plimsolls, with a pair of socks on top. I walked quietly through the sage brush on the long way round to the little paddock, the spicy fragrance rising into my nose as I disturbed the silver-grey leaves. The half moonlight was enough to see by without a torch and streaky clouds made shifting shadows across the ground: it couldn’t have been better if I’d sent in an order.

The padlock’s strength was illusory. It had a simple lever movement inside which took me less than five minutes to fiddle open. No one could have heard the click of success. Nor the tiny squeak of the gate opening. I slipped through and distributed sugar to the mares and foals. The bay with the white blaze greeted this with a trumpeting whinny; but no lights went on in Yola’s cabin or the wranglers’ bunkhouse.

The sardine horse flared his nostrils at me but ate the sugar and let me slip over his head the simple rope halter I had come armed with. I spent some time rubbing his nose and patting his neck, and when I walked towards the gate he came with me docilely enough. I opened the gate and led him through, and the mares and foals quietly followed, their unshod hooves making dull little clops on the loamy ground.

The gentle procession went slowly across towards the river, over the flat bridge with hollow thuds, and up into the darkness of the pine woods. The mares soon stopped to graze, and the foals with them, but the bay stallion with the blaze suddenly realized he was free again, and crashed past me at high speed, squealing and cantering up the path and making as much noise as a train-load of football supporters. Anxious, heart-quickened moments passed: but still no reaction from below.

The sardine bay tugged hard to follow. I soothed him and steadied him, and we presently walked on. He picked his way too cautiously over the stones and corners of rocks sticking up in the narrow path, but I couldn’t hurry him without risk; my neck prickled at the thought of being slung into a Wyoming jail for horse stealing; but it was nothing to the fear I had that Mickey might be right about those spindly legs.

In places all the way up the width of the path dwindled to two feet, with a wall of rock on one side and a steep slope on the other. Riding along them by day one simply had to trust that one’s horse wouldn’t tumble over the edge, as nothing could then have stopped a rock-strewn descent of two or three hundred feet. At these points there wasn’t room to walk side by side with a horse one was leading: I inched up the path ahead of him, and slowly, cautiously, he put his feet delicately down between the bigger stones, and scrunched after me.

Two or three times we passed small groups of horses from the ranch, the cow bell clanking gently round the neck of the leader and betraying their presence. Their dark shapes melted into the jumbled background of woods and rocks, and the moonlight picked out only an eye, a rump, a swishing tail. The wranglers found them each morning by tracking, as the bells were only audible for a furlong. I’d had a long talk with one of the boys about tracking, and he’d shown me how they did it. They were going to be able to follow my way up the mountain as clearly as if I’d given them directions, and to tell the time I went by the amount of dew which formed in the hoof prints. The boy had shown me hoof prints, told me how many horses had gone by and when, and all I had seen were some scattered dusty marks. They read the ground like a book. If I tried to obliterate the sardine horse’s hoof prints, I obliterated also any chance of the Clives believing he had wandered off by accident. The fuzzy outline of plimsolls under socks was, I hoped, going to pass unnoticed: nothing less was worth the discomfort of wearing them on such jagged going.

It took two hours to reach twelve thousand feet and to come to the end of the tracks I’d learnt in the past four days. From there it was a case of trusting my own nose. The drifting streaks of cloud made black shadows like pits across the rocks and several times I stood still and felt ahead with one toe to make sure that the ground was in fact still there, and I was not stepping straight off a precipice. The moon itself, and the cold mountain air moving against my right cheek, kept me going in the right general direction, but the dotted-line trail I had studied on the map proved more optimistic than actual.

The horse’s legs stood up to it remarkably well. Mine had already had enough. Mountaineering was not among Civil Service requirements.

The peak of the Grand Teton rose to thirteen thousand seven hundred feet. The summit loomed very close. Patches of snow, half melted, exposed black looking banks of scree. I came suddenly across a narrow trail winding past them like an eel: people had walked along there recently, scraping into the snow. I had, with some luck, come the right way. The cold bit down under my black jersey and through the thin shirt underneath, and I wished I had had the sense to bring gloves. But it couldn’t be a great deal farther: through the short canyon pass, and out the other side. I looked at my watch. The climb had taken nearly three hours and I was late.

It was darker in the canyon, but also invisible from the valley below. I took the small torch out of my jeans pocket, and shone it in front of my feet. Because of that, the whole expedition came unstuck.

A man suddenly rounded a corner a short way ahead and stood foursquare in the centre of the trail. Startled even more than I was, the horse backed instantly away, tore the rope out of my hand, pulled me flat over as I tried to hang on, and skipped sharply away along a narrow ridge branching off to the left.

Sick and furious I got back on my feet and turned to go after him. The man took a tentative step down the trail and called out.

‘Gene?’

It was Walt.

I bit my tongue literally to stop the rage in my mind from spilling over him. There wasn’t time for it.

‘I saw you coming. The light,’ he explained. ‘I thought I’d come along to meet you. You’re later than you said.’

‘Yes.’ I shut my mouth. There was half a million pounds loose in a death trap. My responsibility, and my fault.

The moon pushed out a feeble twenty watts. I couldn’t see the horse. The path he had taken in panic was a ledge eighteen inches wide with sheer rock on the left and a fierce slope of scree on the right. A gradient so steep that it was as dangerous as a straight down drop: and in its black invisible depths there would be the usual big slabs with upjutting edges.

‘Stay here,’ I said to Walt. ‘And keep quiet.’

He nodded without speaking, understanding that the situation was beyond apology. His instructions had been expressly to wait for me at one arranged spot.

The ledge was thirty feet long with a bend to the left. I walked along it slowly, not using the torch, my left hand trailing along the rock wall, the grey light just enough to show the crumbly uneven outer edge.

After thirty feet the ledge widened into a saucer-shaped bowl three quarters surrounded by towering rocks. The sloping floor of the bowl led directly into the sharper slope of the scree. On the floor of the bowl, patchy snow and rough black pebble.

The horse was standing there, sweating. Quivering in every rigid limb. There was no way out except back along the ledge.

I stroked his muzzle and gave him four lumps of sugar, speaking gently to him in a voice much calmer than my feelings. It took ten minutes for the excessive tension to leave his body, and another five before he would move. Then I turned him carefully round until he was facing the way he had come.

Horses react instantly to human fear. The only chance I had of getting him safely back was to walk round there as if it were a broad concrete path across his own stable yard. If he smelt fear, he wouldn’t come.

Where the ledge began, he baulked. I gave him more sugar and more sweet talk. Then I turned my back on him and with the halter rope leading over my shoulder, walked slowly away. There was the faintest of protesting backward tugs. Then he came.

Thirty feet had never seemed so interminable. But an animal’s sixth sense kept him from putting a foot over the edge, and the slithering clop of his hooves on the broken ground came steadily after me all the way.

Walt, this time, made no sound at all. I came across him standing motionless several yards up the intended trail and he turned without speaking and went on ahead.

Less than half a mile farther the path descended and widened into a broad sweeping basin: and there, where Walt had been supposed to meet me, waited another man, stamping his feet to keep warm.

Sam Kitchens. Holding another horse.

With a powerful torch he inspected every inch of the one I’d brought, while I held his.

‘Well?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘It’s Chrysalis all right. See that tiny scar up there, under his shoulder? He cut himself on a metal gate post one day when he was a two-year-old and a bit full of himself. And these black dots, sort of freckles, along that patch of his belly. And the way his hide grows in a whirl just there inside his hock. He always had clean legs. There’s a mark or two on them now that wasn’t there when I had him. But apart from knowing him from his general shape, like, I’d certainly swear to those other things in any court you’d like to mention.’

‘Was the cut from the gate post bad enough to be treated by a vet?’

He nodded. ‘Five or six stitches.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then off you go with him. And take good care.’

Sam Kitchens grinned. ‘Who’d have thought I’d have seen him again up the Rocky Mountains in the middle of the night? Never you mind, I’ll take care all right.’

He turned Chrysalis expertly round, clicking his tongue affectionately, and began the mile-long walk down to the Teton camping ground, to where he and Walt and Sam Hengelman had come in a horse box.

Walt said, ‘It’s too late for you to go back. Come with us.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll meet you in Idaho Falls as we arranged.’

Walt moved uncomfortably. ‘It’s not safe to go back.’

‘I’ll be fine. You just get the two Sams cracking. They’ve got to be well on their way before dawn. They’ve got that bill of sale?’

Walt nodded, looking at the big mountain pony beside me.

‘He cost five hundred dollars. One bay horse, no markings, entire, aged seven or eight. As ordered. That’s what the bill of sale says, and that’s what we’ve got in the van, if anyone asks. Sam Kitchens chose it. Said it was as near as you would get, without actually paying thousands for a blood horse.’

‘This one looks fine. See you, then, Walt.’

He stood in silence while I levered myself on to the new horse’s bare back and gathered up the reins. I nodded to him, turned away, and started back up the trail to the canyon.

Late, I thought. Almost too late, now. The wranglers would be high up in the hills by six, rounding up the horses. Dudes rode as usual on Sunday mornings. It was already five, and the first greyness of dawn had crept in as the moon faded. If they saw me out so early, I was in trouble.

At a jog trot, his sturdy legs absolutely at home on the terrain, the new horse took me back up into the canyon, past the fearful little ridge that Chrysalis had taken, and out on to the Clive valley side of the Tetons. From there down I looked out for a bunch of High Zee horses, but I was well below the snow line before I heard any of the bells.

There was a little group in a tree-filled hollow. They moved away at my approach, but slowly, and when I was among them and stopped, they stopped also. I slid off the horse I was riding, threaded my fingers through the mane of one of the High Zee group, and transferred the bridle from one to the other. Then, leaving Dave Teller’s five-hundred-dollar purchase free on the hill, I pointed my new mount’s nose homewards, and gave him a kick.

He knew the way, and he consequently could go much faster. The Wilkersons had told me the wranglers cantered down those steep rocky inclines, but until I did it I hadn’t imagined what a hair-raising business it would be. The horse put his feet where I would have said no man could balance, let alone a quadruped, and when I turned him off the regular path he hardly slackened his pace. We went headlong downwards through pines and alders and groves of silver-trunked dead trees, back to the thicker woods with patches of grass underfoot, and more undergrowth of huckleberry and sapling. There was one sticky incline of black bog where a mountain stream had spilled out sideways on to a slope of earth, but my pony staggered across it, tacking downwards, sinking-in to his knees at every step. Farther on, he crossed the tumbling stream itself, picking his way through a mass of underwater rocks, and lower still he went straight down a bare pebbly slope where the normal path ran from side to side in easier zigzags. Whippy branches caught at us under the trees, but I laid my head flat beside his ears, and where he could go, I went too.

The gentle dude rides had been no preparation for this reckless descent, and the one or two point-to-points I’d tried in my teens were distant memories and milksop stuff in comparison. But skills learnt in childhood stay for ever: balance still came instinctively. I didn’t fall off.

We kept up the pace until there was less than a mile to go, then I veered the pony along to the right, up along the valley and away from the bridge to the ranch.

The wranglers would no doubt follow him up there to round him up, but I hadn’t time to do the whole detour on foot. It was too light and too late to get back into the ranch across the bridge. I was going to have to cross the stream higher up and go down to my cabin through the woods on the far side.

I slid off the pony nearly half a mile upstream, and took off the bridle. The rough brown hide was streaked dark with sweat, and he didn’t look at all like an animal who had spent a peaceful night grazing. I gave him a slap and he trotted away, wheeling round and upwards, back on to the hill. With luck the wranglers wouldn’t find him until he’d cooled down, especially as it wouldn’t be him they’d be looking for.

I could hear the panic going on down by the ranch house as soon as I stepped cautiously out of the woods and began the freezing cold traverse of the stream. The stones dug into my bare feet, and the water splashed my rolled-up trouser legs. But as I couldn’t from where I was see any of the buildings, I trusted that no one there could see me. The shouts came up clearly, and then the thud of several horses cantering across the bridge. By the time I was across the stream and sitting down to put on my shoes again, they were going up towards the woods, and I could see them. Six wranglers, moving fast. If they looked back, they could see my head and shoulders sticking up out of the stretch of sage brush.

A hundred yards of it between me and the safety of the trees on the ranch-house side of the valley. I lay down flat on the ground for a few exhausted minutes, looking up at the dawn-filled sky: a high clear pale blue taking over from grey. The tracks of the mares and foals and both the stallions led straight uphill. I gave the wranglers time to go some way after them, and then quietly got to my feet and slipped unhurriedly across the sage brush and down through the trees to my cabin.

It was ten past six. Broad daylight.

I pulled off my filthy sweaty clothes and ran a deep hot bath. Tiredness had gone down to the bone, and the water tingled like a friction rub on my skin. Relaxing, reviving, I stayed in it for half an hour.

The tape played back for me the heavy knocking on Yola’s door and the head wrangler telling her that the mares and stallions were out.

‘What do you mean, out?’

‘The tracks lead down to the bridge. They’re out on the hills.’

‘What?’ Yola’s voice screeched as the full meaning hit her. ‘They can’t be.’

‘They sure are.’ The wrangler’s voice was much calmer. He didn’t know the size of the disaster: wasn’t in the game. ‘But I can’t understand it. The padlock was fastened like you said it must be, when I checked around yesterday evening.’

‘Get them back,’ said Yola sharply. ‘Get them back.’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘That new stallion. Get him. Get him back.’

There were sounds after that of drawers being pulled roughly open, and a door slamming, and silence. Yola was out looking for Chrysalis. And, Chrysalis was on his way to Kentucky.

The ranch guests knew all about it, at breakfast.

‘What a fuss,’ Wilkie said. ‘You’d think they’d lost the deeds to a goldmine.’

They had.

‘I’m glad they found the dear little foals anyway,’ Samantha said.

‘They’ve found them?’ I asked. The small paddock was still empty.

‘They’ve put them in the barn,’ agreed Mickey. ‘With their mothers.’

‘Someone left the gate unlocked,’ Betty-Ann told me. ‘Isn’t it a shame? Yola’s obviously in a fearful state.’

Yola had been in the dining room when I strolled in to breakfast, standing silent and rigid by the kitchen door, checking that all the guests were there, looking for signs of guilt.

Poise had deserted her. The hair was roughly tied with a ribbon at the nape of her neck and the lipstick was missing. There had been no professional reassuring smiles. A muscle twitched in the strong jaw and she hadn’t been in control of the wildness in her eyes.

I ate a double order of bacon and buckwheat hot-cakes with maple syrup, and drank three cups of coffee.

Betty-Ann opposite me lit a cigarette and said did I have to leave, couldn’t I stay another few days. Wilkie gruffly said they shouldn’t try to keep a feller. Wilkie had cottoned on, and was glad to see me go.

Strong footsteps came into the room from the door behind me. Betty-Ann looked over my head and her eyes widened.

‘Why hello there,’ she exclaimed warmly, transferring her attentions. ‘How good to see you.’

Wilkie, I thought in amusement, should be used to it by now. But the Wilkersons’ problems blinked out of my mind for ever when someone else called the new man by his name.

Matt.

Matt Clive spoke from behind my shoulder; a drawling bass voice under strict control.

‘Listen folks. I guess you know we’ve had a little trouble here this morning. Someone let out the mares and horses from their paddock over there. Now if it was any of you kids, we’d sure like to know about it.’

There was a short silence. The various children looked uncomfortable and their parents’ eyebrows peaked into question marks.

‘Or if anyone knows that the gate wasn’t properly fastened yesterday at any time?’

More silence.

Matt Clive walked tentatively round the long table, into my line of sight. About Yola’s age, Yola’s height. Same jawline. Same strong body, only more so. I remembered the two bedrooms in their cabin: the ring-less fingers of Yola’s hand. Yola’s brother, Matt. I drank my coffee and avoided meeting his eyes.

One or two of the guests laughingly mentioned rustlers, and someone suggested calling in the police. Matt said they were seriously thinking of it. One of the stallions was quite valuable. But only, of course, if it was absolutely certain that none of the guests had left the gate open by accident.

Sympathetic murmurs were all he got. He might indeed be brave enough, or desperate enough, to call in the police. But if he did, they wouldn’t recover Chrysalis, who should by now be hundreds of miles away on a roundabout route, accompanied by a strictly legal bill of sale.

Matt eventually went away, trailing a thunderous aura and leaving the guests unsettled and embarrassed.

I asked the girl who waited at table if she could fetch my account for me, as I wanted to pay up before leaving, and after an interval she returned with it. I gave her cash, and waited while she wrote a receipt.

The Wilkerson family said their goodbyes, as they were hoping to go riding if any of the wranglers had come back from searching for the missing horse, and I walked unhurriedly back to my cabin to finish packing. Up the two steps, across the porch, through the two doors, and into the room.

Yola came out of the bathroom carrying a rifle. The way she handled it showed she knew how to use it. Matt stepped from behind the curtained closet, between me and the way out. No rifle for him. A shotgun.

I put on the puzzled act, German accent stronger.

‘Excuse me. I do not understand.’

‘It’s the same man,’ Matt said. ‘Definitely.’

‘Where’s our horse?’ said Yola furiously.

‘I do not know,’ I said truthfully, spreading my hands out in a heavy shrug. ‘Why do you ask such a question?’

Both the guns were pointing steadfastly my way.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I have my packing to finish. I have paid the bill. I am leaving this morning.’

‘You’re not going anywhere, friend,’ Matt said grimly.

‘Why not?’

‘You get that horse back here, and then you can go. Not before.’

He was going to have a fine old time if he intended to keep a prisoner silent indefinitely on a ranch full of holiday guests.

‘I can’t get him back,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is. Several friends of mine, however, do know where I am. They will be expecting me to be leaving here this morning.’

They stared at me in silent fury. Children in crime, I thought, for all their ingenuity. They had walked straight in with their guns without thinking clearly through. They were, however, lethal children, ruled by impulse more than reason.

I said, ‘I am unlikely to go around saying “I stole a horse from the Clives.” If you do nothing, and I now drive safely away, you may hear no more of it. That’s the best I can offer. You will not, whatever you do, recover the horse.’

The only sensible course open to them was to let me go. But Yola’s finger tightened on the trigger, and I reluctantly decided it was time for the Luger. Watching her, I saw a split second too late in the looking glass that Matt had taken a step behind me and was swinging his gun butt like a bludgeon.

He caught me solidly across the back of the skull and the patchwork quilt on the bed dazzled into kaleidoscopic fragments in my glazing eyes as I went down.