Cities of the Plain

I

THEY STOOD in the doorway and stomped the rain from their boots and swung their hats and wiped the water from their faces. Out in the street the rain slashed through the standing water driving the gaudy red and green colors of the neon signs to wander and seethe and rain danced on the steel tops of the cars parked along the curb.

Damned if I aint half drowned, Billy said. He swung his drip?ping hat. Where's the allamerican cowboy at?

He's done inside.

Let's go. He'll have all them good fat ones picked out for hisself.

The whores in their shabby deshabille looked up from the shabby sofas where they sat. The place was all but empty. They stomped their boots again and crossed to the bar and stood and thumbed back their hats and propped their boots on the rail above the tiled drainway while the barman poured their whiskies. In the bloodred barlight and the drifting smoke they raised their glasses briefly and nodded as if to salute some fourth companion now lost to them and they tilted back the shots and set the empty glasses on the bar again and wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands. Troy jutted his chin at the barman and made a circling gesture with one finger at the empty glasses. The barman nodded.

John Grady you look like a goddamned wharf rat.

I feel like one.

The barman poured their whiskies.

I never seen it rain no harder. You want a beer back? Give us three beers.

You got one of them little darlins picked out?

The boy shook his head.

Which one you like, Troy?

I'm like you. I come down here for a fat woman and that's what I'm havin. I'm goin to tell you right now cousin, when the mood comes on you for a fat woman they just wont nothin else satisfy.

I know the feelin well. You better pick you one out, John Grady.

The boy turned and looked across the room at the whores.

How about that old bight in the green pajamas?

Dont be puffin him on my gal, said Troy. You'll be the cause of a fight breakin out here in a minute.

Go on. She's lookin over here.

They're all lookin over here.

Go on. I can tell she likes you.

She'd bounce John Grady off the ceilin.

Not the allamerican cowboy she wouldnt. The cowboy'd stick like a cocklebur. What about the one with the blue windercurtain wrapped around her?

Dont pay no attention to him, John Grady. She looks like her face caught fire and they beat it out with a rake. I'm goin to say that blond on the end is more your style.

Billy shook his head and reached for his whiskey. They aint no reasonin with the man. He just aint got no taste in women and that's a mathematical fact.

You stick with your old dad, said Troy. He'll get you onto somethin with some substance to it. Parham yonder actually claimed that a man ought not to date anything he couldnt lift. Said what if the house caught fire.

Or the barn.

Or the barn.

You remember the time we brought Clyde Stapp down here?

I do and he was a man of judgment. Picked him out a gal with some genuine heft to her.

JC and them slipped the old woman a couple of dollars to let em go back there and peek. They was goin to take his picture but they got to laughin and blew the deal.

We told Clyde he looked like a monkey fuckin a football. I thought we was goin to have him to whip. What about that one in the red yonder?

Dont listen to him, John Grady.

Value per pound on a dollar basis. He dont even want to consider a thing like that.

You all go on, said John Grady.

Pick you one out.

That's all right.

You see there Troy? All you done is got the boy confused.

JC told everbody that Clyde fell in love with the old gal and wanted to take her back with him but all they had was the pickup and they'd of had to send for the flatbed. By then Clyde had done sobered up and fell out of love and JC said he wasnt talon him to no more whorehouses. Said he hadnt acted in a manly and responsible fashion.

You all go on, said John Grady.

From the rear of the premises he could hear the rain rattling on a metal roof. He ordered another shot of whiskey and stood turning the glass slowly on the polished wood and watching the room behind him in the yellowing glass of the old Brunswick backbar. One of the whores crossed the room and took him by the arm and asked him to buy her a drink but he said he was only waiting for his friends. After a while Troy came back and sat on the barstool and ordered another whiskey. He sat with his hands folded on the bar before him like a man at church. He took a cigarette from his shirtpocket.

I dont know, John Grady.

What dont you know?

I dont know.

The barman poured his whiskey.

Pour him anothern.

The barman poured.

Another whore had come up to take John Grady's arm. The powder on her face had cracked like sizing.

Tell her you got the clap, said Troy.

John Grady was speaking to her in Spanish. She tugged at his arm.

Billy told that to one down here one time. She said that was all right she had it too.

He lit the cigarette with a Third Infantry Zippo lighter and laid the lighter on top of his cigarettes and blew smoke down along the polished wood and looked at John Grady. The whore had gone back to the sofa and John Grady was studying something in the backbar glass. Troy turned and followed his gaze. A young girl of no more than seventeen and perhaps younger was sitting on the arm of the sofa with her hands cupped in her lap and her eyes cast down. She fussed with the hem of her gaudy dress like a schoolgirl. She looked up and looked toward them. Her long black hair fell across her shoulder and she swept it slowly away with the back of her hand.

She's a goodlookin thing, aint she? Troy said.

John Grady nodded.

Go on and get her.

That's all right.

Hell; go on.

Here he comes.

Billy stepped up to the bar and adjusted his hat.

You want me to go get her? said Troy.

I can get her if I want her.

Otra vez, said Billy. He turned and looked across the room. Go on, said Troy. Hell, we'll wait on you.

That little girl the one you're lookin at? I bet she aint fifteen. I bet she aint either, said Troy.

Get that one I had. She's five gaited or I never rode.

The barman poured their whiskies.

She'll be back over there directly.

That's all right.

Billy looked at Troy. He turned and picked up his glass and contemplated the reddish liquor welling at the brim and raised and drank it and took his money from his shirtpocket and jerked his chin at the watching barkeep.

You all ready? he said.

Yeah.

Let's go get somethin to eat. I think it's fixin to quit rainin. I dont hear it no more.

They walked up Ignacio Mej'a to Ju++rez Avenue. The gutters ran with a grayish water and the lights of the bars and cafes and curioshops bled slowly in the wet black street. Shopowners called to them and streetvendors with jewelry and serapes sallied forth to attend them at either side. They crossed Ju++rez Avenue and went up Mej'a to the Napole-n and sat at a table by the front window. A liveried waiter came and swept the stained white tablecloth with a handbroom.

Caballeros, he said.

They ate steaks and drank coffee and listened to Troy's war stories and smoked and watched the ancient yellow taxicabs ford the water in the streets. They walked up Ju++rez Avenue to the bridge.

The trolleys had quit running and the streets were all but empty of trade and traffic. The tracks shining in the wet lamplight ran on toward the gateshack and beyond to where they lay embedded in the bridge like great surgical clamps binding those disparate and fragile worlds and the cloudcover had moved off down from the Franklins and south toward the dark shapes of the mountains of Mexico standing against the starlit sky. They crossed the bridge and pushed through the turnstile each in turn, their hats cocked slightly, slightly drunk, and walked up south El Paso Street.

IT WAS STILL DARK when John Grady woke him. He was up and dressed and had already been to the kitchen and back and had spoken to the horses and he stood in the doorway of Billy's bunkroom with the canvas curtain pushed back against the jamb and a cup of coffee in one hand. Hey cowboy, he said.

Billy groaned.

Let's go. You can sleep in the winter.

Damn.

Let's go. You been layin there damn near four hours.

Billy sat up and swung his feet onto the floor and sat with his head in his hands.

I dont see how you can lay there like that.

Damn if you aint a cheerful son of a bitch in the mornin. Where's my by god coffee at?

I aint carryin you no coffee. Get your ass up from there. Grub's on the table.

Billy reached up and took his hat from a wallpeg over the bed and put the hat on and squared it. Okay, he said. I'm up.

John Grady walked back out up the barn bay toward the house. The horses nickered at him from their stalls as he passed. I know what time it is, he told them. At the end of the barn a length of hayrope hung from the loft overhead and he drained the last of his coffee and slung the dregs from the cup and leaped up and batted the rope and set it swinging and went out.

They were all at the table eating when Billy pushed open the door and came in. Socorro came and took the plate of biscuits and carried them to the oven and dumped them into a pan and put the pan in the warmer and took hot biscuits from the warmer and put them on the plate and carried the plate back to the table. On the table was a bowl of scrambled eggs and one of grits and there was a plate of sausage and a boat of gravy and bowls of preserves and pico de gallo and butter and honey. Billy washed his face at the sink and Socorro handed him the towel and he dried his face and laid the towel on the counter and came to the table and stepped over the back of the empty chair and sat and reached for the eggs. Oren glanced at him over the top of his paper and continued reading.

Billy spooned the eggs and set the bowl down and reached for the sausage. Mornin Oren, he said. Mornin JC.

JC looked up from his plate. I guess you been fightin that bear all night too.

Fightin that bear, said Billy. He reached and took a biscuit and refolded the cloth back over the plate and reached for the butter.

Let's see them eyes again, said JC.

Aint nothin wrong with these eyes. Pass the salsa yonder.

He spooned the hot sauce over his eggs. Fight fire with fire. Aint that right John Grady?

An old man had come into the kitchen with his braces hanging. He wore an oldfashioned shirt of the kind the collar buttoned to and it was open at the neck and no collar to it. He had just shaved and there was shaving cream on his neck and on the lobe of one ear. John Grady pushed back his chair.

Here Mr Johnson, he said. Set here. I'm all done.

He rose with his plate to take it to the sink but the old man waved him down and went on toward the stove. Set down, he said, set down. I'm just gettin me some coffee.

Socorro unhooked one of the white porcelain mugs from the underside of the cabinet shelf and poured it and turned the handle facing out and handed it to the old man and he took it and nodded and went back across the kitchen. He stopped at the table and spooned two huge scoops of sugar out of the bowl into his cup and left the room taking the sugarspoon with him. John Grady put his cup and plate on the sideboard and got his lunchbucket off the counter and went out.

What's wrong with him? said JC.

Aint nothin wrong with him, said Billy.

I meant John Grady.

I know who you meant.

Oren folded the paper and laid it on the table. Dont you all even start, he said. Troy, you ready?

I'm ready.

They pushed back from the table and rose and went out. Billy sat picking his teeth. He looked at JC. What are you doin this mornin?

I'm goin into town with the old man.

He nodded. Out in the yard the truck started. Well, he said. It's light enough to see, I reckon.

He rose and crossed the kitchen and got his lunchpail from the counter and went out. JC reached across the table and got the paper.

John Grady was sitting behind the wheel of the idling truck. Billy got in and set the lunchpail on the floor and shut the door and looked at him.

Well, he said. You ready to put in a day's work for a day's wages?

John Grady put the truck in gear and they pulled away down the drive.

Daybreak to backbreak for a godgiven dollar, said Billy. I love this life. You love this life, son? I love this life. You do love this life dont you? Cause by god I love it. Just love it.

He reached into his shirtpocket and shook out a cigarette from the pack there and lit it with his lighter and sat smoking while they rolled down the drive through the long morning shadows of fence and post and oaktree. The sun was blinding white on the dusty windshield glass. Cattle standing along the fence called after the truck and Billy studied them. Cows, he said.

They nooned on a grassy rise on the red clay ranges ten miles south of the ranch house. Billy lay with his rolled jacket under his head and his hat over his eyes. He squinted out at the gray headlands of the Guadalupes eighty miles to the west. I hate comin out here, he said. Goddamn ground wont even hold a fencepost.

John Grady sat crosslegged chewing a weedstem. Twenty miles to the south a live belt of green ran down the Rio Grande valley. In the foreground fenced gray fields. Gray dust follow

ing a tractor and cultivator down the gray furrows of a fall cottonfield.

Mr Johnson says the army sent people out here with orders to survey seven states in the southwest and find the sorriest land they could find and report back. And Mac's ranch was settin right in the middle of it.

Billy looked at John Grady and looked back at the mountains.

You think that's true? said John Grady.

Hell, who knows.

JC says the old man is gettin crazier and crazier.

Well he's still got more sense crazy than JC's got sane so what does that make JC?

I dont know.

There aint nothin wrong with him. He's just old is all.

JC says he aint been right since his daughter died.

Well. There aint no reason why he should be. He thought the world of her.

Yeah.

Maybe we ought to ask Delbert. Get Delbert's view of things.

Delbert aint as dumb as he looks.

I hope to God he aint. Anyway the old man always had a few things peculiar about him and he's still got em. This place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we've all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?

John Grady leaned and spat between his teeth and put the stem back in his mouth. You liked her, didnt you?

Awful well. She was as nice to me as anybody I ever knew.

A coyote came out of the brush and trotted along the crest of a rise a quarter mile to the east. I want you to look at that son of a bitch, said Billy.

Let me get the rifle.

He'll be gone before you get done standin up.

The coyote trotted out along the ridge and stopped and looked back and then dropped off down the ridge into the brush again.

What do you reckon he's doin out here in the middle of the day?

He probably wonders the same about you.

You think he seen us?

Well I didnt see him walkin head first into them nopal bushes yonder so I dont expect he was completely blind.

John Grady watched for the coyote to reappear but the coyote didnt.

Funny thing, said Billy, is I was fixin to quit about the time she took sick. I was ready to move on. After she died I had a lot less reason to stay on but I stayed anyways.

I guess maybe you figured Mac needed you.

Horseshit.

How old was she?

I dont know. Late thirties. Forty maybe. You'd never of knowed it though.

You think he's gettin over it?

Mac?

Yeah.

No. You dont get over a woman like that. He aint gettin over nothin. He never will.

He sat and put his hat on and adjusted it. You ready, cousin?

Yeah.

He rose stiffly and reached down and got his lunchpail and he swiped at the seat of his trousers with one hand and then bent and got his jacket. He looked at John Grady.

There was a old waddy told me one time he never knowed a woman raised on indoor plumbin to ever turn out worth a damn. She come up the hard way. Old man Johnson was never nothin but a cowboy and you know what that pays. Mac met her at a church supper in Las Cruces when she was seventeen years old and that was all she wrote. He aint goin to be gettin over it. Not now, not soon, not never.

It was dark when they got back. Billy rolled up the window of the truck and sat looking toward the house. I'm a woreout sumbuck, he said.

You want to just leave the gear in the truck?

Let's bring in the comealong. It might rain. Might. And that box of staples. They'll rust up.

I'll get em.

He got the stuff from the bed of the truck. The lights came on in the barn bay. Billy was standing there shaking his hand up and down.

Ever time I reach for that son of a bitch I get shocked.

It's the nails in them boots.

Then why dont it shock my feet?

I dont know.

He hung the comealong on a nail and set the box of staples on a framing crossbrace just inside the door. The horses whinnied from their stalls.

He went on down the barn bay and at the last stall pounded the flat of his hand against the stall door. There was an instant explosion against the boards on the other side. Dust drifted in the light. He looked back at Billy and grinned. Egg it on, said Billy. He'll put a foot through that son of a bitch.

JOAQUeN STEPPED BACK with both hands atop the board he was leaning on and lowered his head as if he'd seen something in the corral too awful to watch. But he was only stepping back to spit and he did so in his slow and contemplative way and then stepped forward and looked through the boards again. Caballo, he said. The shadow of the trotting horse passed across the boards and across his face and passed on. He shook his head.

They walked on down to where some two by twelves were nailed and braced along the top of the corral and climbed up and sat with their bootheels wedged in the board below and smoked and watched John Grady work the colt.

What does he want with that owlheaded son of a bitch anyway?

Billy shook his head. Maybe it's like Mac says. Ever man winds up with the horse that suits him.

What is that thing he's got on its head?

It's called a cavesson halter.

What's wrong with a plain hackamore?

You'd have to ask the cowboy.

Troy leaned and spat. He looked at Joaquin. QuZ piensas? he said.

Joaquin shrugged. He watched the horse circle the corral at the end of the longeline.

That horse has been broke with a bit, Troy said.

Yeah.

I guess he aims to break it and start over.

Well, Billy said, I got a suspicion that whatever it is he aims to do he'll most likely get it done.

They watched the horse circle.

He aint trainin it for the circus is he?

No. We had the circus yesterday evenin when he forked up on it.

How many times did he get thowed?

Four.

How many times did he get back up on it?

You know how many times.

Is he supposed to be some sort of specialist in spoiled horses?

Let's go, Billy said. He's liable to walk that son of a bitch all afternoon.

They went on toward the house.

Ask Joaquin yonder, Billy said.

Ask me what?

If the cowboy knows horses.

The cowboy says he dont know nothin.

I know it.

He claims he just likes it and works hard at it.

What do you think? said Billy.

Joaquin shook his head.

Joaquin thinks his methods is unorthodox.

So does Mac.

Joaquin didnt answer till they reached the gate. Then he stopped and looked back at the corral. Finally he said that it didnt make much difference if you liked horses or not if they didnt like you. He said the best trainers he ever knew, horses couldnt stay away from them. He said horses would follow Billy S++nchez to the outhouse and stand there and wait for him.

WHEN HE GOT BACK from town John Grady was not in the barn and when he walked up to the house to get his supper he was not there either. Troy was sitting at the table picking his teeth. He sat down with his plate and reached for the salt and pepper. Where's everbody at? he said.

Oren just left. JC's gone out with his girl. John Grady I reckon is laid up in the bed.

No he aint.

Well maybe he's gone off somewheres to think things over.

What happened?

That horse fell backwards on him. Like to broke his foot.

Is he all right?

I reckon. They carried him in to the doctor, him cussin and carryin on. Doctor wrapped it up and give him a pair of crutches and told him to stay off of it.

He's on crutches?

Yep. Supposed to be.

All this happened this afternoon?

Yep. It was lively as you could ever wish for here for a while. Joaquin come and got Oren and he went down there and told him to come on and he wouldnt do it. Oren said he thought he was goin to have to whip him. Hobblin around after the damned horse wantin to get up on it again. Finally got him to take his boot off. Oren said another two minutes and they'd of had to cut it off of him.

Billy nodded his head and bit thoughtfully into a biscuit.

He was ready to fight Oren?

Yep.

Billy chewed. He shook his head.

How bad is his foot?

He's sprained his ankle.

What did Mac say?

Nothin. He's the one carried him in to the doctor's.

I guess he cant do no wrong where Mac's concerned.

You got that right.

Billy shook his head again. He reached for the salsa. I miss ever show that comes to town, he said. I guess this might whittle down his reputation as a pure D peeler some though, mightnt it?

I dont know if it will or not. Joaqu'n says he stood in one stirrup and rode the son of a bitch down like a tree.

What for?

I dont know. I reckon he just dont like to quit a horse.

HEOD BEEN ASLEEP maybe an hour when the commotion in the dark of the barn bay woke him. He lay listening a minute and then he rose and reached for the cord and pulled on the overhead light and put on his hat and stepped to the door and pushed back the curtain and looked out. The horse hove past a foot from his face and went hammering down the bay and turned and stood breathing and stamping in the dark.

Damn, he said. Bud?

John Grady went limping past.

What the hell are you doin?

He hobbled on out of the lightfall. Billy stepped into the bay. You are a goddamned idjit, aint you? What in the hell is wrong with you?

The horse began to run again. He heard it coming and knew it was coming but he'd no more than just got back inside the doorframe before it exploded into the space of light from the single bulb in his cubicle, running with its mouth open and its eyes like eggs in its head.

Goddamn it, he said. He got his pants off of the iron footrail of his cot and pulled them on and squared his hat and stepped out again.

The horse had started down the bay again. He flattened himself against the stall door next to his bunkroom. The horse went by as if the barn were afire and slammed up against the door at the end of the bay and turned and stood shrieking.

Goddamn it will you leave that squirrelheaded son of a bitch alone? What the hell's got into you?

John Grady came limping past into the dusty light again trailing a loop of rope and limped on out the other side.

You cant even see to rope the son of a bitch, Billy called.

The horse came pounding down the far side of the bay. It was saddled and the stirrups were kicking out. One of them must have caught on a board toward the far end where it turned in the thin slats of light from the yardlamp because there was a crack of breaking wood and a clattering in the dark and then the horse stood on its forefeet and jackslammed the boards at the end of the barn. A minute later the lights came on at the house. The dust in the barn drifted like smoke.

There you go, called Billy. The whole damn house is up.

The dark shape of the horse shifted in the barred light. It leaned its long neck and screamed. The door opened at the end of the barn.

John Grady limped past again with the rope.

Someone threw the lightswitch. Oren was standing there flapping his hand about. Goddamn it, he said. Why dont somebody fix that thing.

The crazed horse stood blinking at him ten feet away. He looked at the horse and he looked at John Grady standing in the middle of the barn bay with the catchrope.

What in hell's thunder is goin on out here? he said.

Go on, said Billy. Tell him somethin. I sure as hell dont have no answer for him.

The horse turned and trotted partway down the bay and stopped and stood.

Put the damn horse up, said Oren.

Let me have the rope, said Billy.

John Grady looked back at him. You think I cant even catch him?

Go on then. Catch him. I hope the son of a bitch runs over you.

One of you all catch him, said Oren, and lets quit this damn nonsense.

The door opened behind Oren and Mr Johnson stood there in his hat and boots and nightshirt. Shut the door, Mr Johnson, said Oren. Come in if you want.

John Grady dropped the loop over the horse's neck and walked the horse down along the rope and reached up through the loop and took hold of the trailing bridlereins and threw the rope off.

Dont get on that horse, said Oren.

It's my horse.

Well you can tell that to Mac then. He'll be out here in a minute.

Go on bud, said Billy. Put the damn horse up like the man asked you.

John Grady looked at him and he looked at Oren and then he turned and led the horse back down the barn bay and put it up in the stall.

Bunch of damned ignorance, said Oren. Come on, Mr Johnson. Damn.

The old man turned and went out and Oren followed and pulled the door shut behind him. When John Grady came limping out of the stall he was carrying the saddle by the horn, the stirrups dragging in the dirt. He crossed the bay toward the tackroom. Billy leaned against the jamb watching him. When he came out of the tackroom he passed Billy without looking at him.

You're really somethin, said Billy. You know that?

John Grady turned at the door of his bunkroom and he looked at Billy and he looked down the hall of the lit barn and spat quietly in the dirt and looked at Billy again. It wasnt any of your business, he said. Was it.

Billy shook his head. I will be damned, he said.

IN THE MOUNTAINS they saw deer in the headlights and in the headlights the deer were pale as ghosts and as soundless. They turned their red eyes toward this unreckoned sun and sidled and grouped and leapt the bar ditch by ones and twos. A small doe lost her footing on the macadam and scrabbled wildly and sank onto her hindquarters and rose again and vanished with the others into the chaparral beyond the roadside. Troy held the whiskey up to the dashlights to check the level in the bottle and unscrewed the cap and drank and screwed the cap back on and passed the bottle to Billy. Be no lack of deer to hunt down here it looks like.

Billy unscrewed the cap from the bottle and drank and sat watching the white line down the dark road. I dont doubt but what it's good country.

You dont want to leave Mac.

I dont know. Not without some cause to.

Loyal to the outfit.

It aint just that. You need to find you a hole at some point. Hell, I'm twentyeight years old.

You dont look it.

Yeah?

You look fortyeight. Pass the whiskey.

Billy peered out at the high desert. The bellied lightwires raced against the night.

They wont care for us drinkin?

She dont particularly like it. But there aint much she can do about it. Anyway it aint like we was goin to show up down there kneewalkin drunk.

Will your brother take a drink?

Troy nodded solemnly. Quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper.

Billy drank and handed over the bottle.

What was the kid goin to do? said Troy.

I dont know.

Did you and him have a fallin out?

No. He's all right. He just said he had somethin he needed to do.

He can flat ride a horse. I'll say that.

Yes he can.

He's a salty little booger.

He's all right. He's just got his own notions about things.

That horse he thinks so much of is just a damned outlaw if you want my opinion.

Billy nodded. Yep.

So what's he want with it?

I guess that's what he wants with it.

You still think he's going to have it follerin him around like a dog?

Yeah. I think it.

I'll believe it when I see it.

You want to lay some money?

Troy shook a cigarette from the pack on the dash and put it in his mouth and pushed in the lighter. I dont want to take your money.

Hell, dont be backwards about talon my money.

I think I'll pass. He aint goin to like them crutches.

Not even a little bit.

How long is he supposed to be on em?

I dont know. A couple of weeks. Doctor told him a sprain could be worse than a break.

I'll bet he aint on em a week.

I'll bet he aint either.

A jackrabbit froze in the road. Its red eye shone.

Go on dumbass, Billy said.

The rabbit made a soft thud under the truck. Troy took the lighter from the dashboard and lit his cigarette with it and put the lighter back in the receptacle.

When I got out of the army I went up to Amarillo with Gene Edmonds for the rodeo and stock show. He'd fixed us up with dates and all. We was supposed to be at their house to pick em up at ten oclock in the mornin and it was after midnight fore we left out of El Paso. Gene had a brand new Olds Eightyeight and he pitched me the keys and told me to drive. Quick as we hit highway eighty he looked over at me, told me to shower down on it. That thing would strictly motivate. I pushed it up to about eighty, eightyfive. Still had about a yard of pedal left. He looked over again. I said: How fast do you want to go? He said just whatever you feel comfortable with. Hell. I didnt do nothin but roll her on up to about a hundred and ten and here we went. Old long flat road. Had about six hundred miles of it in front of us.

Well there was all these jackrabbits in the road. They'd set there and freeze in the lights. Blap. Blap. I looked over at Gene and I said: What do you want to do about these rabbits? He looked at me and he said: Rabbits? I mean if you were lookin for somebody to give a shit I can tell you right now it sure as hell wasnt Gene. He didnt care if syrup went to thirty cents a sop.

We pulled into a filling station at Dimmitt Texas just about daybreak. Pulled up to the pumps and shut her down and set there and there was a car on the other side of the pumps and the old boy that worked there was fillin the tank and cleanin the windshield. Woman settin there in the car. The old boy drivin had gone in to take a leak or whatever. Anyway we pulled in facin this other car and I'm kindly layin there with my head back waitin on the old boy and I wasnt even thinkin about this woman but I could see her. Just settin there, sort of lookin around. Well directly she sat straight up and commenced to holler like she was bein murdered. I mean just a hollerin. I raised up, I didnt know what had happened. She was lookin over at us and I thought Gene had done somethin. Exposed hisself or somethin. You never knew what he was goin to do. I looked at Gene but he didnt know what the hell was goin on any more than I did. Well here come the old boy out of the men's room and I mean he was a big son of a bitch too. I got out and walked around the car. I thought I was goin crazy. The Oldsmobile had this big ovalshaped grille in the front of it was like a big scoop and when I got around to the front of the car it was just packed completely full of jackrabbit heads. I mean there was a hundred of em jammed in there and the front of the car the bumper and all just covered with blood and rabbit guts and them rabbits I reckon they'd sort of turned their heads away just at impact cause they was all lookin out, eyes all crazy lookin. Teeth sideways. Grinnin. I cant tell you what it looked like. I come damn near hollerin myself. I'd noticed the car was overheatin but I just put that down to the speed we was makin. This old boy wanted to fight us over it. I said: Damn, Sam. Rabbits. You know? Hell. Gene got out and started mouthin at him and I told him to get his ass back in the car and shut up. Old boy went over and told the woman to hush up and quit slobberin and all but I like to never got him pacified. I started to just go on and hit the big son of a bitch and be done with it.

Billy sat watching the night spool past. The roadside chaparral, the flat black scrim of the mountains cut into the starblown desert sky above them. Troy smoked. He reached for the whiskey and unscrewed the cap and sat holding the bottle.

I got discharged in San Diego. Took the first bus out. Me and another old boy got drunk on the bus and like to got throwed off. I got off in Tucson and went in a store and bought a new pair of Judson boots and a suit. I dont know what the hell I bought the suit for. I thought you was supposed to have one. I got on another bus and come on to El Paso and went up that evenin to Alamogordo and got my horses. I wandered all over this country. Worked in Colorado. Worked up in the panhandle. Got throwed in jail in this little old chickenshit town I wont even name it to you. State of Texas though. State of Texas. I hadnt done nothin. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I like to never got out of there. I'd got in a fight with a Mexican and like to killed him. I was in jail up there for nine months to the day. I wouldnt of wrote home for nothin. Time I got out and went to see about my horses they'd been sold for the feedbill. I didnt care about the one but I did the other cause I'd had him a long time. Nobody seemed to know nothin about it. I knew if I grabbed the old boy I'd be right back in the damn jail again. Asked all around. Finally somebody told me they'd sold my horse out of the state. They thought the buyer was from Alabama or some damn place. I'd had that horse since I was thirteen years old.

I lost a horse in Mexico I was awful partial to, Billy said. I'd had him since I was nine.

It's easy to do.

What, lose a horse?

Troy had tipped the bottle up and he drank and lowered it and screwed the cap back on and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laid the bottle on the seat. No, he said. Get partial to one.

Half an hour later they pulled off the highway and rumbled over the pipes of a cattleguard and drove up the milelong dirt road to the ranch house. The porchlight was on and three heeler dogs came out and ran beside the truck barking. Elton came out and stood on the porch with his hands in his back pockets and his hat on.

They ate at a long table in the kitchen, passing bowls of hominy and okra and a great platter of fried steaks and biscuits.

This is awful good, mam, Billy said.

Elton's wife looked at him. You wouldnt mind not callin me mam would you?

No mam.

It makes me feel like a old woman.

Yes mam.

He cant help hisself, Troy said.

That's all right, the woman said.

You never let me off that easy.

Bein let off easy was never somethin you needed more of, the woman said.

I'll try not to say it, Billy said.

There was a seven year old girl at the table and she watched them with wide eyes. They ate. After a while she said: What's wrong with it?

What's wrong with what?

Sayin mam.

Elton looked up. There aint nothin wrong with it, honey. Your mama's just one of them modern kinds of women.

What's a modern kind of woman?

Eat your supper, the woman said. If your daddy had his way we wouldnt even have the wheel yet.

They sat in old canebottomed chairs on the porch and Elton set the three glass tumblers on the board floor between his feet and unscrewed the cap from the bottle and poured three measures and put the cap back and stood the bottle on the floor and passed the glasses round and leaned back in his rocker. Salud, he said.

He'd turned off the porchlight and they sat in the soft square of light from the window. He raised his glass to the light and looked through it like a chemist. You wont guess who's back at Bell's, he said.

Dont even say her name.

Well you did guess.

Who else would it be?

Elton leaned back in the chair and rocked. The dogs stood in the yard at the foot of the steps looking up at him.

What, said Troy. Did her old man finally run her off?

I dont know. She's supposed to be visitin. It's turned out to be kindly a long visit.

Yeah.

For whatever consolation there might be in that.

It aint no consolation.

Elton nodded. You're right, he said. It aint.

Billy sipped the whiskey and looked out at the shapes of the mountains. Stars were falling everywhere.

Rachel run smack into her in Alpine, said Elton. Little darlin just smiled and hidied like butter wouldnt melt in her mouth.

Troy sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the glass in both hands before him. Elton rocked.

You remember we used to go down to Bloy's to try and pick up girls? That's where he met her at. Camp meetin. That'll make you ponder the ways of God. He asked her out and she told him she wouldnt go out with a man that drank. He looked her straight in the eye and told her he didnt drink. She like to fell over backwards. I guess it come as somethin of a shock to her to meet a even bigger liar than what she was. But he told the naked truth. Of course she called his hand on it. Said she knew for a fact he drank. Said everbody in Jeff Davis County knew he drank and drank plenty and was wild as a buck. He never batted a eye. Said he used to but he quit. She asked him when did he quit and he said I just now did. And she went out with him. And as far as I know he never took another drink. Till she quit him of course. By then he had a lot of catchin up to do. Tell me about the evils of liquor. Liquor aint nothin. But he was changed from that day.

Is she still as good lookin?

I dont know. I aint seen her. Rachel said she was. Satan hath power to assume a pleasing form. Them big blue eyes. Knew more ways to turn a man's head than the devil's grandmother. I dont know where they learn it at. Hell, she wasnt but seventeen.

They're born with it, Troy said. They dont have to learn it.

I hear you.

What they dont seem to learn is not to just run over the top of some poor son of a bitch for the pure enjoyment of it.

Billy sipped his whiskey.

Let me have your glass, Elton said.

He set it on the floor between his feet and poured the whiskey and recapped the bottle and reached and passed the glass across.

Thanks, said Billy.

Were you in the war? Elton said.

No. I was fourE

Elton nodded.

I tried to enlist three different times but they wouldnt take me.

I know you did. I tried to get overseas but I spent the whole war at Camp Pendleton. Johnny fought all over the Pacific theatre. He had whole companies shot out from under him. Never got a scratch. I think it bothered him.

Troy handed across his glass and Elton set it on the floor and poured it and passed it back. Then he poured his own. He sat back. What are you lookin at? he asked the dog. The dog looked away.

The thing that bothers me and then I'll shut up about it is that we had a hell of a row that mornin and I never had the chance to make it up. I told him to his face that he was a damn foolwhich he wasand that the worst thing he could do to the old boy was to let him have her. Which it was. I knew all about her by then. We like to come to blows over it. I never told you that. It was bad. I never saw him alive again. I should of just kept out of it. Anybody in the state he was in you cant talk to em noway. No use to try even.

Troy watched him. You told me, he said.

Yeah. I guess I did. I dont dream about him anymore. I used to all the time. I'd have these conversations with him.

I thought you was goin to get off the subject.

All right. It still seems like about the only subject there is, though. Dont it?

He rose heavily from the chair with bottle and glass in hand. Let's walk out to the barn. I'll show you the foal that Jones mare throwed you never did think much oPS Just bring your all's glasses. I got the bottle.

THEY RODE ALL MORNING through the open juniper country, keeping to the gravelly ridges. A storm was making up over the Sierra Viejas to the west and over the broad plain that ran south from the Guadalupes down around the Cuesta del Burro range and on to Presidio and the border. They crossed the upper reaches of the creek at noon and sat among the yellow leaves and watched leaves turn and drift in a pool while they ate the lunch that Rachel had packed for them.

Look at this, said Troy.

What is it?

A tablecloth.

Damn.

He poured coffee from a thermos into their cups. The turkey sandwiches they ate were wrapped in cloth.

What's in the other thermos?

Soup.

Soup?

Soup.

Damn.

They ate.

How long has he been manager down here?

About two years.

Billy nodded. Did he not offer to hire you on before now?

He did. I told him I didnt mind workin with him but I wasnt all that sure about workin for him.

What made you change your mind?

I aint changed it. I'm just thinkin about it.

They ate. Troy nodded downcountry. They say there's been a white man ambushed ever mile of this draw.

Billy studied the country. Looks like they'd of learned to stay out of it.

When they'd done eating Troy poured the rest of the coffee into their cups and screwed the cap back on the thermos and laid it by with the soup and the sandwich cloths and the still folded tablecloth to pack back in the saddlebags. They sat sipping the coffee. The horses standing downstream side by side looked up from their drinking in the creek. They had wet leaves stuck to their noses.

Elton's got his own notions about what happened, Troy said. Johnny if he hadnt of found that girl would of found somethin else. You couldnt head him. Elton says he changed. He never changed. He was four years older than me. Not a lot of years. But he walked ground I'll never see. Glad not to see. People always said he was bullheaded, but it wasnt just that. He fought Daddy one time he wasnt but fifteen. Fistfought him. Made the old man fight him. Told him to his face that he respected him and all but that he wasnt goin to take what he'd said. Somethin the old man had chewed him out over. I cried like a baby. He didnt cry. Kept gettin up. Nose all busted and all. The old man kept tellin him to stay down. Hell, the old man was cryin. I hope I never see nothin like it again. I can think about it now and it makes me sick. And there was nothin any mortal man could of done to of stopped it.

What happened?

The old man finally walked off. He was beat and he knew it. Johnny standin there. Couldnt hardly stand up. Callin to him to come back. The old man wouldnt even turn around. He just went on to the house.

Troy looked into the bottom of his cup. He slung the dregs out across the leaves.

It wasnt just her. There's a kind of man that when he cant have what he wants he wont take the next best thing but the worst he can find. Elton thinks he was that kind and maybe he was. But I think he loved that girl. I think he knew what she was and he didnt care. I think it was his own self he was blind to. I think he was just lost. This world was never made for him. He'd outlived it before he could walk. Get married. Hell. He couldnt even stand to wear laceup shoes.

You liked him though.

Troy looked off down through the trees. Well, he said. I dont guess like really says it. I cant talk about it. I wanted to be like him. But I wasnt. I tried.

He was your dad's favorite I reckon.

Oh yeah. It wasnt a problem with anybody. It was just known. Accepted. Hell. It wasnt even a contest. You ready?

I'm ready.

He rose. He placed the flat of his hand in the small of his back and stretched. He looked at Billy. I loved him, he said. So did Elton. You couldnt not. That was all there was to it.

He folded the cloths under his arm together with the thermos bottles. They hadnt even looked to see what the soup was. He turned and looked back at Billy. So how do you like this country?

I like it.

I do too. Always have.

So you comin down here?

No.

It was dusk when they rode into Fort Davis. Nighthawks were circling over the old parade grounds when they passed and the sky over the mountains behind them was blood red. Elton was waiting with the truck and horsetrailer in front of the Limpia Hotel. They unsaddled the horses in the graveled parking lot and put the saddles in the bed of the truck and wiped the horses down and loaded them in the trailer and went into the hotel and through the lobby to the coffeeshop.

How did you like that little horse? said Elton.

I liked him fine, said Billy. We got along good.

They sat and studied the menus. What are you all havin? said Elton.

They left around ten oclock. Elton stood in the yard with his hands in his back pockets. He was still standing there, just the silhouette of him against the porchlight, when they rounded the curve at the end of the drive and went on toward the highway.

Billy drove. He looked over at Troy. You goin to stay awake aint you?

Yeah. I'm awake.

You've done decided?

Yeah, I think so.

We're goin to have to go somewheres.

Yeah. I know it.

You aint asked me what I thought.

Well. You aint comin down here unless I do and I aint. So what would be the use in me askin?

Billy didnt answer.

After a while Troy said: Hell, I knew I wasnt comin back down here.

Yeah.

You go back home and everthing you wished was different is still the same and everthing you wished was the same is different.

I know what you mean.

I think especially if you're the youngest. You wasnt the youngest in your family was you?

No. I was the oldest.

You dont want to be the youngest. I can tell you right now. There aint no percentage in it.

They drove on through the mountains. About a mile past the intersection with highway 166 there was a truckload of Mexicans pulled off onto the grass. They stood almost into the road waving their hats. Billy slowed.

The hell with that, said Troy.

Billy drove past. He looked in the rearview mirror but he could see nothing but the dark of the road and the deep of the desert night. He pulled the truck slowly to a halt.

Damn it, Parham, Troy said.

I know. I just cant do it.

You're fixin to get us in a jackpot here we wont get home till daylight.

I know it.

He put the truck into reverse and began to grind slowly back down the highway, using the white line running from under the front of the truck to steer by. When the other truck hove into view alongside them he could see that the right front tire was down.

They gathered around the cab. Punchada, they said. Tenemos una Manta punchada.

Puedo verlo, said Billy. He pulled off the road and climbed out. Troy lit a cigarette and shook his head.

They needed a jack. Did they have a spare? S'. Por supuesto.

He got the jack out of the bed and they carried it back to the truck and commenced to jack the front end up. They had two spares and neither of them would hold air. They spelled each other at the antique tirepump. Finally they raised up and looked at Billy.

He got the tiretools out of the truckbed and came around and got the patchkit and a flashlight from under the seat. They carried one of the spares out into the road and laid it down and stood on it to break the bead and then the man who'd taken the tools from Billy stepped forward and began to pry the tire up off the rim while the others watched. The innertube that he snaked out of the tire's inner cavity was made of red rubber and there was a whole plague of patches upon it. He laid it out on the macadam and Billy trained the light over it. Hay parches sobre los parches, he said.

Es verdad, the man said.

La otra?

Est++ peon

One of the younger men manned the tirepump and the tube bloated slowly up in the road and sat hissing. He knelt and put his ear to the various leaks. Billy flipped open the tin lid of the patchcan and thumbed the number of repairs it contained. Troy had climbed out of the truck and he walked back and stood smoking quietly and looking at the tire and the tube and the Mexicans.

The Mexicans wheeled the blown tire around the side of the truck and Billy put the light on it. There was a great ragged hole in the sidewall. It looked like it had been chewed by bulldogs. Troy spat quietly in the road. The Mexicans threw the tire up onto the bed of the truck.

Billy took the stub of chalk from the patchkit and circled the leaks in the tube and they unscrewed the valvestem from the valve and sat on the tube and then walked it down till it was dead flat. Then they sat in the road with the white line running past their elbows and the gaudy desert night overhead, the myriad constellations moving upon the blackness subtly as sealife, and they worked with the dull red shape of rubber in their laps, squatting like tailors or menders of nets. They scuffed the rubber with the little tin grater stamped into the lid of the kit and they laid on the patches and fired them with a match one by one till all were fused and all were done. When they had the tube pumped up again they sat in the road in the quiet desert dark and listened.

Oye algo? said Billy.

Nada.

They sat listening.

He unscrewed the valvestem again and when they had the tube deflated the man slid it down inside the tire and worked it around the rim and fitted the valve and the boy came forward with the pump and began to pump up the tire. He was a long time pumping. When the bead popped on the rim he stopped and they unscrewed the hose from the valve and the man took the valvestem from his mouth and screwed it into the hissing valve and then they stepped back and looked at Billy. He spat and turned and walked back to the truck to get the tiregauge.

Troy was asleep in the front seat. Billy got the gauge out of the glovebox and walked back and they gauged the tire and then rolled it over to the truck and slid it onto the hub and tightened down the lugnuts with a wrench made from a socket welded onto a length of heavy iron pipe. Then they let down the jack and pulled it from under the truck and handed it to Billy.

He took the jack and tiretools and put the patchkit and the gauge in his shirtpocket and the flashlight in the back pocket of his jeans. Then they shook hands all the way around.

Ad-nde van? said Billy.

The man shrugged. He said that they were going to Sanderson Texas. He turned and looked off across the dark headlands to the east. The younger men stood about them.

Hay trabajo all++?

He shrugged again. Espero que s', he said. He looked at Billy. Es vaquero?

S'. Vaquero.

The man nodded. It was a vaquero's country and other men's troubles were alien to it and that was about all that could be said. They shook hands again and the Mexicans clambered aboard the truck and the truck cranked and coughed and started and lumbered slowly out onto the roadway. The men and boys in the bed of the truck stood and raised their hands. He could see them above the dark hump of the cab, against the deep burnt cobalt of the sky. The single taillight had a short in the wiring and it winked on and off like a signal until the truck had rounded the curve and vanished.

He put the jack and tools in the pickup and opened the door and nudged Troy awake.

Let's go, cowboy.

Troy sat and stared out at the empty road. He looked back behind them.

Where'd they go?

They're done gone.

What time is it do you reckon?

I dont know.

Are you done bein a Samaritan?

I'm done.

He leaned and opened the glovebox door and put the patchkit and the tiregauge and the flashlight in and shut the door and started the engine.

Where were they headed? Troy said.

Sanderson.

Sanderson?

Yeah.

Where were they comin from?

I dont know. They didnt say.

I bet they aint even goin to Sanderson, Troy said.

Where do you think they're goin?

Hell, who knows.

Why would anybody lie about goin to Sanderson Texas?

I dont know.

They drove on. Rounding a curve with a steep bank to the right of the road there was a sudden white flare and a solid whump of a sound. The truck veered, the tires squealing. When they got stopped they were halfway off the road into the bar ditch.

What in the hell, said Troy. What in the hell.

A large owl lay cruciform across the driver's windshield of the truck. The laminate of the glass was belied in softly to hold him and his wings were spread wide and he lay in the concentric rings and rays of the wrecked glass like an enormous moth in a web.

Billy shut off the engine. They sat looking at it. One of its feet shuddered and drew up into a claw and slowly relaxed again and it moved its head slightly as if to better see them and then it died.

Troy opened the door and got out. Billy sat looking at the owl. Then he turned off the headlights and got out too.

The owl was all soft and downy. Its head slumped and rolled. It was soft and warm to the touch and it felt loose inside its feathers. He lifted it free and carried it over to the fence and hung it from the wires and came back. He sat in the truck and turned the lights on to judge if he could drive with the windshield in that condition or whether he might have to kick it out completely. There was a clear place in the lower right corner and he thought he could see if he hunkered down and looked through the windshield there. Troy had walked up the road and was standing taking a leak.

He started the truck and pulled back onto the road. Troy had walked further up and was sitting in the roadside grass. He drove up and rolled down the window and looked at him.

What's wrong with you? he said.

Nothin, Troy said.

Are you ready to go?

Yeah.

He rose and walked around in front of the truck and got in. Billy looked over at him.

Are you all right?

Yeah. I'm all right.

It was just a owl.

I know. It aint that.

Well what is it?

Troy didnt answer.

He pulled the shiftlever in the floor down into first and let the clutch out. They moved down the highway. He could see pretty well. He could lean over and see through the glass on the other side of the division bar. Are you all right? he said. What is it?

Troy sat looking out the window at the passing darkness. Just everthing, he said. Just ever goddamned thing. Hell. Dont pay no attention to me. I ought not to drink whiskey in the first place.

They drove on to Van Horn and stopped for gas and coffee and by then the country that Troy'd grown up in and that he thought he might go back to and where his dead brother was buried was all behind them and it was two oclock in the morning.

Mac will have a few things to say when he sees the truck.

Billy nodded. I might be able to run into town and get it fixed in the mornin.

What do you reckon it'll cost?

I dont know.

You want to just split it?

That would suit me.

All right.

You sure you're okay?

Yeah. I'm all right. I just get to thinkin about things is all.

Yeah.

It dont help none though, does it?

Nope.

They sat drinking their coffee. Troy shook out a cigarette and lit it and put his cigarettes and his Zippo lighter on the table. How come you had to stop back there?

I just did.

You said you had to.

Yeah.

What is it? Some sort of religious thing?

No. It aint nothin like that. It's just that the worst day of my life was one time when I was seventeen years old and me and my budmy brotherwe was on the run and he was hurt and there was a truckload of Mexicans just about like them back yonder appeared out of nowhere and pulled our bacon out of the fire. I wasnt even sure their old truck could outrun a horse, but it did. They didnt have no reason to stop for us. But they did. I dont guess it would of even occurred to em not to. That's all.

Troy sat looking out the window. Well, he said. That's a pretty good reason.

Well. It was all the one I needed anyways. You ready?

Yeah. He drained his cup. I'm ready.

HE PAID HIS TWO PENNIES at the gate and pushed through the turnstile and went on across the bridge. On the banks of the river under the bridge small boys held up tin buckets nailed to the ends of poles and called out for money. He crossed the bridge into a sea of waiting vendors hustling cheap jewelry, leather goods, blankets. They followed him along for a distance and were spelled by others in a relay of huckstering down Ju++rez Avenue and up Ignacio Mej'a to Santos Degollado where they fell away and watched him go.

He stood at the end of the bar and ordered a whiskey and propped his foot on the rail and looked across the room at the whores.

D-nde est++n sus compa-eros? said the barman.

He raised the glass of whiskey and turned it in his hand. En el cameo, he said. He drank.

He stood there for two hours. The whores came across the room one by one to solicit him and one by one returned. He didnt ask about her. When he left he'd had five whiskies and he paid for them with a dollar and put another dollar on top of it for the barman. He crossed Ju++rez Avenue and went limping up Mej'a to the Napole-n and took a seat in front of the cafe and ordered a steak. He sat and drank coffee while he waited and he watched the life in the streets. A man came to the door and tried to sell him cigarettes. A man tried to sell him a Madonna made of painted celluloid. A man with a strange device with dials and levers asked him if he wished to electrocute himself. After a while the steak arrived.

He went again the following night. There were half a dozen soldiers from Fort Bliss there, young recruits, their heads all but shaved. They eyed him drunkenly, they looked at his boots. He stood at the bar and drank three whiskies slowly. She did not appear.

He walked up Ju++rez Avenue through the hucksters and pimps. He saw a boy selling stuffed armadillos. He saw a tourist drunk laboring up the sidewalk carrying a full suit of armor. He saw a beautiful young woman vomit in the street. Dogs turned at the sound and ran toward her.

He walked up Tlaxcala and up Mariscal and entered another such place and sat at the bar. The whores came to tug at his arm. He said that he was waiting for someone. After a while he left and walked back to the bridge.

HE'D PROMISED MAC he wouldnt ride the horse again until his ankle was better. Sunday after breakfast he worked the animal in the corral and in the afternoon he saddled Bird and rode up into the Jarillas. Atop a raw rock bluff he sat the horse and studied the country. The flooded saltflats shining in the evening sun seventy miles to the east. The peak of El Capitan beyond. All the high mountains of New Mexico paling away to the north beyond the red plains, the ancient creosote. In the steeply canted light the laddered shadows of the fences looked like railtracks running up the country and doves were crossing below him toward a watertank on the McNew spread. He could see no cattle anywhere in that cowtrodden scrubland. The doves called everywhere and there was no wind.

When he got back to the house it was dark and by the time he'd unsaddled the horse and put it up and gone to the kitchen Socorro had already cleared away and was washing the dishes. He got a cup of coffee and sat down and she brought him his supper and while he was eating Mac came and stood in the hallway door and lit a cigar.

You about ready? he said.

Yessir.

Take your time. Take your time.

He walked back up the hallway. Socorro brought the pot from the stove and spooned the last of the caldillo onto his plate. She brought him more coffee and poured a cup for Mac and left it steaming on the far side of the table. When he was done eating he rose and carried his plate and cup to the sink and he poured more coffee and then went to the old cherrywood press hauled overland in a wagon from Kentucky eighty years ago and opened the door and took out the chess set from among the old cattleman's journals and the halfbound ledgers and leather daybooks and the old green Remington boxes of shotgun shells and rifle cartridges. On the upper shelf a dovetailed wooden box that held brass scaleweights. A leather folder of drawing instruments. A glass horsecarriage that once held candy for a Christmas in the long ago. He shut the door and carried the board and the wooden box to the table and unfolded the board and slid back the lid of the box and spilled out the pieces, carved walnut, carved holly, and set them up. Then he sat drinking his coffee.

Mac came out and pulled back the chair opposite and sat and dragged the heavy glass ashtray forward from among the bottles of ketchup and hotsauce and laid his cigar in the ashtray and took a sip of the coffee. He nodded toward John Grady's left hand. John Grady opened his hand, he set the pawns on the board.

I'm white again, said Mac.

Yessir.

He moved his pawn forward.

JC came in and got a cup of coffee from the stove and came to the table and stood.

Set down, said Mac. You're makin the room untidy.

That's all right. I aint stayin.

Better set down, said John Grady. He needs all his powers of concentration.

You got that right, said Mac.

JC sat down. Mac studied the board. JC glanced at the pile of white chesspieces at John Grady's elbow.

Son, you better cut the old man some slack. You might could be replaced with somebody that cowboys better and plays chess worse.

Mac reached and moved his remaining bishop. John Grady moved his knight. Mac took up his cigar and sat puffing quietly.

He moved his queen. John Grady moved his other knight and sat back. Check, he said.

Mac sat studying the board. Damn, he said. After a while he looked up. He turned to JC. You want to play him?

No sir. He's done made a believer out of me.

I know the feelin. He's beat me like a rented mule.

He looked at the wallclock and picked up his cigar again and put it in his teeth. I'll play you one more, he said.

Yessir, said John Grady.

Socorro took off her apron and hung it up and stood at the door.

Goodnight, she said.

Night Socorro.

JC rose from his chair. You all want some more coffee?

They played. When John Grady took the black queen JC pushed back his chair and got up.

I've tried to tell you, son. There's a cold winter comin.

He crossed the kitchen and set his cup in the sink and went to the door.

Night, he said.

Mac sat quietly studying the board. The cigar lay dead in the ashtray.

Night, said John Grady.

He pushed open the door and went out. The screendoor flapped shut. The clock ticked. Mac leaned back. He picked up the cigar stub and then he put it back in the ashtray. I believe I'll concede, he said.

You could still win.

Mac looked at him. Bullshit, he said.

John Grady shrugged. Mac looked at the clock. He looked at John Grady. Then he leaned and carefully turned the board around. John Grady moved Mac's remaining black knight.

Mac pursed his lips. He studied the board. He moved.

Five moves later John Grady mated the white king. Mac shook his head. Let's go to bed, he said.

Yessir.

He began to put away the pieces. Mac pushed back his chair and picked up the cups.

What time did Troy and Billy say they'd be back?

I dont reckon they said.

How come you not to go with em?

I just thought I'd stick around here.

Mac carried the cups to the sink. Did they ask you to go?

Yessir. I dont need to go everwhere they go.

He slid the cover shut on the box and folded the board and rose.

Is Troy fixin to go down there and go to work for his brother?

I dont know sir.

He crossed the room and put the chess set back in the press and closed the door and got his hat.

You dont know or you aint sayin?

I dont know. If I wasnt sayin I'd of said so.

I know you would.

Sir.

Yes.

I feel kind of bad about Delbert.

What do you feel bad about?

Well. I guess I feel like I took his job.

Well you didnt. He'd of been gone anyways.

Yessir.

You let me run the place. All right?

Yessir. Goodnight sir.

Switch on the barnlight yonder.

I can see all right.

You could see better with the light on.

Yessir. Well. It bothers the horses.

Bothers the horses?

Yessir.

He put on his hat and pushed open the door. Mac watched him cross the yard. Then he switched off the kitchen light and turned and crossed the room and went up the hallway. Bothers the horses, he said. Damn.

WHEN HE GOT UP in the morning and went down to Billy's room to wake him Billy wasnt there. The bed looked slept in and he limped out past the horse stalls and looked across the yard toward the kitchen. Then he went around to the side of the barn where the truck was parked. Billy was sitting in the seat leaning over the steering wheel taking the screws out of the metal sashframe that held the windshield and dropping the screws into the ashtray.

Mornin cowboy, he said.

Mornin. What happened to the windshield?

Owl.

Owl?

Owl.

He took the last screws out and pried up and lifted away the frame and began to pry the edges of the cavedin glass out of the rubber molding with the blade of the screwdriver.

Walk around and push in on this thing from the outside. Wait a minute. There's some gloves here.

John Grady pulled on the gloves and hobbled around and pushed on the edges of the glass while Billy pried with the screwdriver. They got the glass worked out of the molding along the bottom and one side and then Billy borrowed the gloves and pulled the whole thing out in one piece and lifted it over the steering wheel and laid it in the floor of the truck on the passenger side.

What did you do, drive with your head out the window?

No. I just sort of sat in the middle and looked out the good side.

He pushed at the windshield wiper lying inside across the dashboard.

I thought maybe you'd not got in yet.

We got in around five. What'd you do?

Nothin much.

You aint been rodeoin in the barn while I was gone have you? Nope.

How's your foot?

It's all right.

Billy pushed the wiper up on its spring and pried the wiper arm off the capstan with the screwdriver and laid it on the seat.

You goin to get a new glass for it?

I'll get Joaqu'n to bring one when he goes in. I dont want the old man to see it if I can help it.

Hell, anybody could run into a owl.

I know. But anybody didnt.

John Grady was leaning through the open window of the standing truck door. He turned and spat and leaned some more. Well, he said. I dont know what that means.

Billy laid the screwdriver in the seat. I dont either, he said. I dont know why I said it. Let's go in and see if she's got breakfast ready. I could eat the runnin gears of a bull moose.

When they sat down Oren looked up from his paper and studied John Grady over the tops of his glasses. How's your foot? he said.

It's all right.

I'll bet.

It's all right enough to ride a horse. That's what you wanted to know isnt it?

Can you get that in a stirrup?

I dont have to.

Oren went back to his paper. They ate. After a while he put the paper down and took off his glasses and laid them on the table.

There's a man sendin a two year old filly out here that he aims to give to his wife. I kept my own counsel on that. He dont know nothin about the horse other than its blood. Or any other horse I reckon probably you could say.

Is she broke?

The wife or the horse?

I'll lay eight to five they aint either one, said JC. Sight unseen.

I dont know, said Oren. Green broke or some kind of broke. He wants to leave her here two weeks. I said we'd give her all the trainin she was capable of absorbin in that length of time and he seemed satisfied with that.

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 quZ hora regresa el Se-or Mac?

No sZ.

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

EspZrate, she said.

Est++ bien.

No. EspZrate.

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.

What about if you add up all his bad ones?

I dont know. I'd say you'd probably done made up your mind at that point.

You think there's horses so spoiled you cant do nothin with em?

Yes I do. But probably not as many as you might think.

Maybe not. You think a horse can understand what a man says?

You mean like the words?

I dont know. Like can he understand what he says.

John Grady looked out the window. Water was beaded on the glass. Two bats were hunting in the barnlight. No, he said. I think he can understand what you mean.

He watched the bats. He looked at Oren.

I guess my feelin about a horse is that he mostly worries about what he dont know. He likes to be able to see you. Barring that, he likes to be able to hear you. Maybe he thinks that if you're talkin you wont be doin somethin else he dont know about.

You think horses think?

Sure. Dont you?

Yes I do. Some people claim they dont.

Well. Some people could be wrong.

You think you can tell what a horse is thinkin?

I think I can tell what he's fixin to do.

Generally.

John Grady smiled. Yeah, he said. Generally.

Mac always claimed a horse knows the difference between right and wrong.

Mac's right.

Oren smoked. Well, he said. That's always been a bit much for me to swallow.

I think if they didnt you couldnt even train one.

You dont think it's just gettin em to do what you want?

I think you can train a rooster to do what you want. But you wont have him. There's a way to train a horse where when you get done you've got the horse. On his own ground. A good horse will figure things out on his own. You can see what's in his heart. He wont do one thing while you're watchin him and another when you aint. He's all of a piece. When you've got a horse to that place you cant hardly get him to do somethin he knows is wrong. He'll fight you over it. And if you mistreat him it just about kills him. A good horse has justice in his heart. I've seen it.

You got a lot higher opinion of horses than I got, Oren said. I really dont have all that much in the way of opinions where horses are concerned. When I was a kid I thought I knew all there was to know about a horse. Where horses are concerned I've just got dumber and dumber.

Oren smiled.

If a man really understood horses, John Grady said. If a man really understood horses he could just about train one by lookin at it. There wouldnt be nothin to it. My way is a long way from workin one over with a tracechain. But it's a long way from what's possible too.

He stretched his legs out. He crossed the sprained foot over his boot.

You're right about one thing, he said. They're mostly ruint before they ever bring em out here. They're ruined at the first saddle. Before that, even. The best horses are the ones been around kids. Or maybe even just a wild horse in off the range that's never even seen a man. He's got nothin to unlearn.

You might have a hard time gettin anyone to agree with you on that last one.

I know it.

You ever break a wild horse?

Yeah. You hardly ever train one though.

Why not?

People dont want em trained. They just want em broke. You got to train the owner.

Oren leaned and stubbed out his cigarette. I hear you, he said.

John Grady sat studying the smoke rising into the lampshade over the table. That probably aint true what I said about the one that aint never seen a man. They need to see people. They need to just see em around. Maybe what they need is to just think people are trees until the trainer comes along.

IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUT, a gray light with the rain falling in the streets again and the vendors huddled in the doorways looking out at the rain without expression. He stomped the water from his boots and entered and crossed to the bar and took off his hat and laid it on the barstool. There were no other customers. TWO whores lounging on a sofa watched him without much interest. The barman poured his whiskey.

He described the girl to the barman but the barman only shrugged and shook his head.

Eres muy joven.

He shrugged again. He wiped the bar and leaned back and took a cigarette from his shirtpocket and lit it. John Grady motioned for another whiskey and doled his coins onto the counter. He took his hat and his glass over to the sofa and queried the whores but they only tugged at his clothing and asked him to buy them a drink. He looked into their faces. Who they might be behind the caked sizing and the rouge, the black greasepaint lining their dark Indian eyes. They seemed alien and sad. Like madwomen dressed for an outing. He looked at the neon deer hanging on the wall behind them and the garish tapestries of plush, of foil and braid. He could hear the rain on the roof to the rear and the steady small drip of water falling from the ceiling into puddles in the bloodred carpeting. He drained his whiskey and set the glass on the low table and put on his hat. He nodded to them and touched the brim of his hat to go.

Joven, said the oldest.

S'.

She looked furtively about but there was no one there to hear.

Ya no est++, she said.

He asked where she had gone but they did not know. He asked if she would return but they did not think so.

He touched his hat again. Gracias, he said.

cndale, said the whores.

At the corner a sturdy cabdriver in a blue suit of polished serge hailed him. He held an antique umbrella, rare to see in that country. One of the panels between the ribs had been replaced by a sheet of blue cellophane and under it the driver's face was blue. He asked John Grady if he wanted to go see the girls and he said that he did.

They drove through the flooded and potholed streets. The driver was slightly drunk and commented freely on pedestrians that crossed before them or that stood in the doorways. He commented on aspects of their character deducible from their appearance. He commented on crossing dogs. He talked about what the dogs thought and where they might be going and why.

They sat at a whorehouse bar on the outskirts of the city and the driver pointed out the virtues of the various whores that were in the room. He said that men out for an evening were often likely to accept the first proposal but that the prudent man would be more selective. That he would not be misled by appearances. He said that it was best to move freely where whores were concerned. He said that in a healthy society choice should always be the prerogative of the buyer. He turned to regard the boy with dreamy eyes.

De acuerdo? he said.

Claro que s', said John Grady.

They drank up and moved on. Outside it was dark and in the streets the colored lights lay slurred and faintly peened in the fine rain. They sat at the bar of an establishment called the Red Cock. The driver saluted with his glass aloft and drank. They studied the whores.

I can take you some other places, the driver said. Maybe she is go home.

Maybe.

Maybe she is get married. Sometimes these girls is get married.

I seen her down here two weeks ago.

The driver reflected. He sat smoking. John Grady finished his drink and rose. Vamos a regresar a La Venada, he said.

In the Calle de Santos Degollado he sat at the bar and waited. After a while the driver returned and leaned and whispered to him and then looked about with studied caution.

You must talk to Manolo. Manolo only can give us this information.

Where is he?

I take you to him. I take you. It is arrange. You have to pay.

John Grady reached for his wallet. The driver stayed his arm.

He looked toward the barman. Afuera, he said. No podemos hacerlo aqu'.

Outside he again reached for his billfold but the driver said for him to wait. He looked about theatrically. Es peligroso, he hissed.

They got into the cab.

Where is he? said John Grady.

We go to him now. I take you.

He started the engine and they pulled away down the street and turned right. They drove half way up the block and turned again and pulled into an alley and parked. The driver cut the engine and switched off the lights. They sat in the darkness. They could hear a radio in the distance. They could hear rainwater from the canales dripping in the puddles in the alley. After a while a man appeared and opened the rear door of the cab and got in.

The domelight was out in the cab and John Grady could not see the man's face. He was smoking a cigarette and he cupped his hand over it when he smoked in the manner of country people. John Grady could smell the cologne he wore.

Bueno, the man said.

You pay him now, said the cabdriver. He will tell you where the girl is.

How much do I pay him?

You pay me fifty dollars, the man said.

Fifty dollars?

No one answered.

I dont have fifty dollars.

The man sat for a moment. Then he opened the door again and got out.

Wait a minute, said John Grady.

The man stood in the alley, one hand on the door. John Grady could see him. He was wearing a black suit and a black tie. His face was small and wedgeshaped.

Do you know this girl? said John Grady.

Of course I know this girl. You waste my time.

What does she look like?

She is sixteen years old. She is the epilZptica. There is only one. She is gone two weeks now. You waste my time. You have no money and you waste my time.

I'll get the money. I'll bring it tomorrow night.

The man looked at the driver.

I'll come to the Venada. I'll bring it to the Venada.

The man turned his head slightly and spat and turned back. You cant come to the Venada. On this business. What is the matter with you? How much do you have?

John Grady took out his billfold. Thirty somethin, he said. He thumbed through the bills. Thirtysix dollars.

The man held out his hand. Give it to me.

John Grady handed him the money. He wadded it into his shirtpocket without even looking at it. The White Lake, he said. Then he shut the door and was gone. They couldnt even hear his footsteps going back up the alley. The driver turned in his seat.

You want to go to the White Lake?

I dont have any more money.

The driver drummed his fingers on the back of the seat. You dont have no monies?

No.

The driver shook his head. No monies, he said. Okay. You want to go back to the Avenida?

I cant pay you.

Is okay.

He started the engine and backed down the alley toward the street. You pay me next time. Okay?

Okay.

Okay.

WHEN H E PASSED Billy's room the light was on and he stopped and pushed open the canvas and looked in. Billy was lying in bed. He lowered the book he was reading and looked over the top of it and then laid it down.

What are you readin?

Destry. Where you been?

You ever been to a place called the White Lake?

Yes I have. One time.

Is it real expensive?

It's real expensive. Why?

I was just wonderin about it. See you in the mornin.

He let the canvas fall and turned and went on down the bay to his room.

You better stay out of the White Lake, son, Billy called.

John Grady pushed open the curtain and felt for the lightchain.

It aint no place for a cowboy.

He found the chain and pulled the light on.

You hear me?

HE LIMPED DOWN the hallway after breakfast with his hat in his hand. Mr Mac? he called.

McGovern came to the door of his office. He had some papers in his hand and some more wedged under his elbow. Come on in, son, he said.

John Grady stood in the door. Mac was at his desk. Come on in, he said. What do you need that I aint got?

He looked up from his papers. John Grady was still standing in the doorway.

I wonder if I could draw some on next month's pay.

Mac reached for his billfold. How much did you need.

Well. I'd like to get a hundred if I could.

Mac looked at him. You can have it if you want, he said. What did you aim to do next month?

I'll make out.

He opened the billfold and counted out five twenties. Well, he said. I guess you're big enough to handle your own affairs. It aint none of my business, is it?

I just needed it for somethin.

All right.

He shuffled the bills together and leaned and laid them on the desk. John Grady came in and picked them up and folded them and stuck them in his shirtpocket.

Thank you, he said.

That's all right. How's your foot?

It's doin good.

You're still favorin it I see.

It's all right.

You still intend to trade for that horse?

Yessir. I do.

How did you know Wolfenbarger's filly had a bad hoof?

I could see it.

She didnt walk lame.

No sir. It was her ear.

Her ear?

Yessir. Ever time that foot hit the ground one ear would move a little. I just kept watchin her.

Sort of like a poker tell.

Yessir. Sort of.

You didnt want to go off horsetradin with the old man though.

No sir. Is he a friend of yours?

I know him. Why?

Nothin.

What were you goin to say?

That's all right.

You can say it. Go ahead.

Well. I guess I was goin to say that I didnt think I could keep him out of trouble on no part time basis.

Like it would be a full time job?

I didnt say that.

Mac shook his head. Get your butt out of here, he said.

Yessir.

You didnt tell him that did you?

No sir. I aint talked to him.

Well. That's a shame.

Yessir.

He put on his hat and turned but stopped again at the door.

Thank you sir.

Go on. It's your money.

When he came in that evening Socorro had already left the kitchen and there was no one at the table except the old man. He was smoking a homerolled cigarette and listening to the news on the radio. John Grady got his plate and his coffee and set them on the table and pulled back the chair and sat.

Evenin Mr Johnson, he said.

Evenin son.

What's the news?

The old man shook his head. He leaned across the table to the windowsill where the radio sat and turned it off. It aint news no more, he said. Wars and rumors of wars. I dont know why I listen to it. It's a ugly habit and I wish I could get broke of it but I think I just get worse.

John Grady spooned pico de gallo over his rice and his flautas and rolled up a tortilla and commenced to eat. The old man watched him. He nodded at the boy's boots.

You look like you been in some pretty mirey country today.

Yessir. I was. Some.

That old greasy clay is hard to clean off of anything. Oliver Lee always said he come out here because the country was so sorry nobody else would have it and he'd be left alone. Of course he was wrong. At least about bein left alone.

Yessir. I guess he was.

How's your foot doin.

It's all right.

The old man smiled. He drew on his cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray on the table.

Dont be fooled by the good rains we've had. This country is fixin to dry up and blow away.

How do you know?

It just is.

You want some more coffee?

No thanks.

The boy got up and went to the stove and filled his cup and came back.

Country's overdue, the old man said. Folks have got short memories. They might be glad to let the army have it fore they're done.

The boy ate. How much do you think the army will take?

The old man drew on his cigarette and stubbed it out thoughtfully. I think they'll take the whole Tularosa basin. That's my guess.

Can they just take it?

Yeah. They can take it. Folks will piss and moan about it. But they dont have a choice. They ought to be glad to get shut of it.

What do you think Mr Prather will do?

John Prather will do whatever he says he'll do.

Mr Mac said he told em the only way he'd leave was in a box. Then that's how he'll leave. You can take that to the bank.

John Grady wiped his plate and sat back with his cup of coffee. I ought not to ask you this, he said.

Ask it.

You dont have to answer.

I know it.

Who do you think killed Colonel Fountain?

The old man shook his head. He sat for a long time.

I ought not to of asked you.

No. It's all right. You know his daughter's name was Maggie too. She was the one told Fountain to take the boy with him. Said they wouldnt bother a eight year old boy. But she was wrong, wasnt she?

Yessir.

A lot of people think Oliver Lee killed him. I knew Oliver pretty well. We was the same age. He had four sons himself. I just dont believe it.

You dont think he could of done it?

I'll say it stronger than that. I'll say he didnt.

Or cause it to be done?

Well. That's another matter. I'll say he never shed no tears over it. Over the colonel, leastways.

You didnt want some more coffee?

No thank you son. I'd be up all night.

Do you think they're still buried out there somewheres?

No. I dont.

What do you think happened?

I always thought the bodies were taken to Mexico. They had a choice to bury em out there somewhere south of the pass where they might be discovered or to go another thirty miles to where they could drop em off the edge of the world and I think that's what they done.

John Grady nodded. He sipped his coffee. Were you ever in a shooting scrape?

I was. One time. I was old enough to know better too.

Where was it?

Down on the river east of Clint. It was in nineteen and seventeen just before my brother died and we were on the wrong side of the river waitin for dark to cross some stolen horses we'd recovered and we got word they was layin for us. We waited and waited and after a while the moon come upjust a piece of a moon, not even a quarter. It come up behind us and we could see it reflected in the windshield of their car over in the trees along the river breaks. Wendell Williams looked at me and he said: We got two moons in the sky. I dont believe I ever seen that before. And I said: Yes, and one of em is backwards. And we opened fire on em with our rifles.

Did they shoot back?

Sure they did. We laid there and shot up about a box of shells apiece and then they left out.

Was anybody hit?

Not that I ever heard of. We hit the car a time or two. Knocked the windshield out.

Did you get the horses across?

We did.

How many head was it?

It was a few. About seventy head.

That's a lot of horses.

It was a lot of horses. We was paid good money, too. But it wasnt worth gettin shot over.

No sir. I guess not.

It does funny things to a man's head.

What's that, sir?

Bein shot at. Havin dirt thowed on you. Leaves cut. It changes a man's perspective. Maybe some might have a appetite for it. I never did.

You didnt fight in the revolution?

No.

You were down there though.

Yes. Tryin to get the hell out. I'd been down there too long. I was just as glad when it did start. You'd wake up in some little town on a Sunday mornin and they'd be out in the street shootin at one another. You couldnt make any sense out of it. We like to never got out of there. I saw terrible things in that country. I dreamt about em for years.

He leaned and put his elbows on the table and took his makings from his shirtpocket and rolled another smoke and lit it. He sat looking at the table. He talked for a long time. He named the towns and villages. The mud pueblos. The executions against the mud walls sprayed with new blood over the dried black of the old and the fine powdered clay sifting down from the bulletholes in the wall after the men had fallen and the slow drift of riflesmoke and the corpses stacked in the streets or piled into the woodenwheeled carretas trundling over the cobbles or over the dirt roads to the nameless graves. There were thousands who went to war in the only suit they owned. Suits in which they'd been married and in which they would be buried. Standing in the streets in their coats and ties and hats behind the upturned carts and bales and firing their rifles like irate accountants. And the small artillery pieces on wheels that scooted backwards in the street at every round and had to be retrieved and the endless riding of horses to their deaths bearing flags or banners or the tentlike tapestries painted with portraits of the Virgin carried on poles into battle as if the mother of God herself were authoress of all that calamity and mayhem and madness.

The tallcase clock in the hallway chimed ten.

I reckon I'd better get on to bed, the old man said.

Yessir.

He rose. I dont much like to, he said. But there aint no help for it.

Goodnight sir.

Goodnight.

THE CABDRIVER would see him through the wroughtiron gate in the high brick wall and up the walk to the doorway. As if the surrounding dark that formed the outskirts of the city were a danger. Or the desert plains beyond. He pulled a velvet bellpull in an alcove in the archway and stood back humming. He looked at John Grady.

You like for me to wait I can wait.

No. It's all right.

The door opened. A hostess in evening attire smiled at them and stood back and held the door. John Grady entered and took off his hat and the woman spoke with the driver and then shut the door and turned. She held out her hand and John Grady reached for his hip pocket. She smiled.

Your hat, she said.

He handed her his hat and she gestured toward the room and he turned and went in, brushing down his hair with the flat of his hand.

There was a bar to the right up the two stairs and he stepped up and passed along behind the stools where men were drinking and talking. The bar was mahogany and softly lit and the barmen wore little burgundy jackets and bowties. Out in the salon the whores lounged on sofas of red damask and gold brocade. They wore negligees and floorlength formal gowns and sheath dresses of white satin or purple velvet that were split up the thigh and they wore shoes of glass or gold and sat in studied poses with their red mouths pouting in the gloom. A cutglass chandelier hung overhead and on a dais to the right a string trio was playing.

He walked to the far end of the bar. When he put his hand on the rail the barman was already there placing a napkin.

Good evening sir, he said.

Evenin. I'll have a Old Grandad and water back.

Yessir.

The barman moved away. John Grady put his boot on the polished brass footrail and he watched the whores in the glass of the backbar. The men at the bar were mostly welldressed Mexicans with a few Americans dressed in flowered shirts of an intemperately thin cloth. A tall woman in a diaphanous gown passed through the salon like the ghost of a whore. A cockroach that had been moving along the counter behind the bottles ascended to the glass where it encountered itself and froze.

He ordered another drink. The barman poured. When he looked into the glass again she was sitting by herself on a dark velvet couch with her gown arranged about her and her hands composed in her lap. He reached for his hat, not taking his eyes from her. He called for the barman.

La cuenta por favor.

He looked down. He remembered that he'd left his hat with the hostess at the door. He took out his wallet and pushed a fivedollar bill across the mahogany and folded the rest of the bills and put them in his shirtpocket. The barman brought the change and he pushed a dollar back toward him and turned and looked across the room to where she sat. She looked small and lost. She sat with her eyes closed and he realized that she was listening to the music. He poured the shot of whiskey into the glass of water and set the shotglass on the bar and took his drink and set out across the room.

His faint shadow under the lights of the great glass tiara above them may have brought her from her reveries. She looked up at him and smiled thinly with her painted child's mouth. He almost reached for his hatbrim.

Hello, he said. Do you care if I set down?

She recomposed herself and smoothed her skirt to make room on the couch beside her. A waiter moved out from the shadows along the walls and laid down two napkins on the low glass table before them and stood.

Bring me a Old Grandad and water back. And whatever she's drinkin.

He nodded and moved away. John Grady looked at the girl. She leaned forward and smoothed her skirt again.

Lo siento, she said. Pero no hablo inglZs.

Est++ bien. Podemos hablar espa-ol.

Oh, she said. QuZ bueno.

QuZ es su nombre?

Magdalena. Y usted?

He didnt answer. Magdalena, he said.

She looked down. As if the sound of her name were troubling to her.

Es su nombre de pila? he said.

S'. Por supuesto.

No es su nombre. su nombre profesional.

She put her hand to her mouth. Oh, she said. No. Es mi nombre propio.

He watched her. He told her that he had seen her at La Venada but she only nodded and did not seem surprised. The waiter arrived with the drinks and he paid for them and tipped the man a dollar. She did not pick up her drink then or later. She spoke so softly he had to lean to catch her words. She said that the other women were watching but that it was nothing. It was only that she was new to this place. He nodded. No importa, he said.

She asked why he had not spoken to her at La Venada. He said that it was because he was with friends. She asked him if he had a sweetheart at La Venada but he said that he did not.

No me recuerda? he said.

She shook her head. She looked up. They sat in silence.

Cu++ntos a-os tiene? he said.

Bastantes.

He said it was all right if she did not wish to say but she didnt answer. She smiled wistfully. She touched his sleeve. Fue mentira, she said. Lo que dec'a.

C-mo?

She said that it was a lie that she did not remember him. She said that he was standing at the bar and she thought that he would come to talk to her but that he had not and when she looked again he was gone.

Verdad?

S'.

He said that she had not really lied. He said she'd only shook her head, but she shook her head again and said that these were the worst lies of all. She asked him why he had come to the White Lake alone and he looked at the drinks untouched on the table before them and he thought about that and about lies and he turned and looked at her.

Porque la andaba buscando, he said. Ya tengo tiempo busc++ndola.

She didnt answer.

Y c-mo es que me recuerda?

She half turned away, she almost whispered. TambiZn yo, she said.

Mande?

She turned and looked at him. TambiZn yo.

In the room she turned and closed the door behind them. He couldnt even remember how they got there. He remembered her hand in his, small and cold, so strange to feel. The prismbroken light from the chandelier that ran in a river over her naked shoulders when they passed beneath. Half stumbling after her like a child.

She went to the bedside and lit two candles and then turned off the lamp. He stood in the room with his hands at his sides. She reached to the back of her neck and undid the clasp of her gown and reached behind and pulled down the zipper. He began to unbutton his shirt. The room was small and the bed all but filled it. It was a fourpost bed with a canopy and curtains of winecolored organza and the candles shone through onto the pillows with a winey light.

There was a light knock at the door.

Tenemos que pagan she said.

He took the folded bills from his pocket. Para la noche, he said.

Es muy taro.

Cu++nto? He was counting out the bills. He had eightytwo dollars. He held it out to her. She looked at the money and she looked at him. The knock came again.

Dame cincuenta, she said.

Es bastante?

S', s'. She took the money and opened the door and held it out and whispered to the man on the other side. He was tall and thin and he smoked a cigarette in a silver holder and he wore a black silk shirt. He looked at the client for just a moment through the partly opened door and he counted the money and nodded and turned away and she shut the door. Her bare back was pale in the candlelight where the dress was open. Her black hair glistened. She turned and withdrew her arms from the sleeves of the dress and caught the front of it before her. She stepped from the pooled cloth and laid the dress across a chair and stepped behind the gauzy curtains and turned back the covers and then she pulled the straps of her chemise from her shoulders and let it fall and stepped naked into the bed and pulled the satin quilt to her chin and turned on her side and put her arm beneath her head and lay watching him.

He took off his shirt and stood looking for some place to put it.

Sobre la silla, she whispered.

He draped the shirt over the chair and sat and pulled off his boots and put his socks in the tops of them and stood them to one side and stood and unbuckled his belt. He crossed the room naked and she reached and turned back the covers for him and he slid beneath the tinted sheets and lay back on the pillow and looked up at the softly draped canopy. He turned and looked at her. She'd not taken her eyes from him. He raised his arm and she slid against him the whole length of her soft and naked and cool. He gathered her black hair in his hand and spread it across his chest like a blessing.

Es casado? she said.

No.

He asked her why she wished to know. She was silent a moment. Then she said that it would be a worse sin if he were married. He thought about that. He asked her if that was really why she wished to know but she said he wished to know too much. Then she leaned and kissed him. In the dawn he held her while she slept and he had no need to ask her anything at all.

She woke while he was dressing. He pulled on his boots and crossed to the bedside and sat and put his hand against her cheek and smoothed her hair. She turned sleepily and looked up at him. The candles in their holders had burned out and the bits of wick lay blackened in the scalloped shapes of wax.

Tienes que irte?

S'.

Vas a regresar?

S'.

She studied his eyes to see if he spoke the truth. He leaned and kissed her.

Vete con Dios, she whispered.

Y toe.

She put her arms around him and held him against her breast and then she let him go and he rose and walked to the door. He turned and stood looking back at her.

Say my name, he said.

She reached and parted the canopy curtain. Mande? she said.

Di mi nombre.

She lay there holding the curtain. Tu nombre es Juan, she said.

Yes, he said. Then he pulled the door closed and went down the hall.

The salon was empty. It smelled of stale smoke and sweet ferment and the fading lilac rose and spice of the vanished whores. There was no one at the bar. In the gray light there were stains on the carpet, worn places on the arms of the furniture, cigarette burns. In the foyer he unlatched the painted half door and entered the little cloakroom and retrieved his hat. Then he opened the front door and walked out into the morning cold.

A landscape of low shacks of tin and cratewood here on the outskirts of the city. Barren dirt and gravel lots and beyond them the plains of sage and creosote. Roosters were calling and the air smelled of burning charcoal. He took his bearings by the gray light to the east and set out toward the city. In the cold dawn the lights were still burning out there under the dark cape of the mountains with that precious insularity common to cities of the desert. A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

THE OLD ONEEYED CRIADA was the first to reach her, trotting stoically down the hallway in her broken slippers and pushing open the door to find her bowed in the bed and raging as if some incubus were upon her. The old woman carried her keys tied by a thong to a short length of broomstick and she wrapped the stick with a quick turn of the bedclothes and forced it between the girl's teeth. The girl arched herself stiffly and the criada climbed up onto the bed and pinned her down and held her. A second woman had come to the doorway bearing a glass of water but she waved her away with a toss of her head.

Es como una mujer diab-lica, the woman said.

Vete, called the criada. No es diab-lica. Vete.

But the housewhores were gathering in the doorway and they began to push through into the room all of them in facecream and hairpapers and dressed in their varied nightwear and they gathered clamoring about the bed and one pushed forward with a statue of the Virgin and raised it above the bed and another took one of the girl's hands and commenced to tie it to the bedpost with the sash from her robe. The girl's mouth was bloody and some of the whores came forward and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood as if to wipe it away but they hid the handkerchiefs on their persons to take away with them and the girl's mouth continued to bleed. They pulled her other arm free and tied it as well and some of them were chanting and some were blessing themselves and the girl bowed and thrashed and then went rigid and her eyes white. They'd brought little figures from their rooms and votive shrines of gilt and painted plaster and some were at lighting candles when the owner of the establishment appeared in the doorway in his shirtsleeves.

Eduardo! Eduardo! they cried. He strode into the room backhanding them away. He swept icons and candles to the floor and seized the old criada by one arm and flung her back.

Basta! he cried. Basta!

The whores huddled whimpering, clutching their robes about their rolling breasts. They retreated to the door. The criada alone stood her ground.

Por quZ est++s esperando? he hissed.

Her solitary eye blinked. She would not move.

He'd brought from somewhere in his clothes an Italian switchblade knife with black onyx handles and silver bolsters and he leaned and cut the sashes from the girl's wrists and seized the covers and pulled them up over her nakedness and folded the knife away as silently as it had appeared.

No la moleste, hissed the criada. No la moleste.

C++llate.

GolpZame si tienes que golpear a alguien.

He turned and seized the old woman by the hair and forced her to the door and shoved her into the hallway with the whores and shut the door behind her. He'd have latched it but those doors latched only from without. The old woman nevertheless did not enter again but stood outside calling that she needed her keys. He stood looking at the girl. The piece of broomstick had fallen from her mouth and lay on the bloodstained sheets. He picked it up and went to the door and opened it. The old woman shrank back and raised one arm but he only threw the keys rattling and clattering down the corridor and then slammed the door shut again.

She lay breathing quietly. There was a cloth lying on the bed and he picked it up and held it for a moment almost as if he might bend to wipe the blood from her mouth but then he flung it away also and turned and looked once more at the wreckage of the room and swore softly to himself and went out and shut the door behind him.

WARD BROUGHT THE STALLION out of the stall and started down the bay with it. The stallion stopped in the middle of the bay and stood trembling and took small steps as if the ground had got unsteady under its feet. Ward stood close to the stallion and talked to it and the stallion jerked its head up and down in a sort of frenzied agreement. They'd been through it all before but the stallion was no less crazy for that and Ward no less patient. He led the horse prancing past the stalls where the other horses circled and rolled their eyes.

John Grady was holding the mare by a twitch and when the stallion entered the paddock she tried to stand upright. She turned at the end of the rope and shot out one hindfoot and then she tried to stand again.

That is a pretty decent lookin mare, Ward said.

Yessir.

What happened to her eye?

Man that owned her knocked it out with a stick.

Ward led the walleyed stallion around the perimeter of the paddock. Knocked it out with a stick, he said.

Yessir.

He couldnt put it back though, could he?

No sir.

Easy, said Ward. Easy now. That's a sweet mare.

Yessir, said John Grady. She is.

He walked the stallion forward by fits and starts. The little mare rolled her good eye till it was white as the blind one. JC and another man had entered the paddock and closed the gate behind them. Ward turned and looked past them toward the paddock walls.

I aint tellin you all again, he called. You go on to the house like I told you.

Two teenage girls came out and started across the yard toward the house.

Where's Oren at? said Ward.

John Grady turned with the skittering mare. He was leaning all over her and trying to keep her from stepping on his feet.

He had to go to Alamogordo.

Hold her now, Ward said. Hold her.

The stallion stood, his great phallus swinging.

Hold her, said Ward.

I got her.

He knows where it's at.

The mare bucked and kicked one leg. On the third try the stallion mounted her, clambering, stamping his hindlegs, the great thighs quivering and the veins standing. John Grady stood holding all of this before him on a twisted tether like a child holding by a string some struggling and gasping chimera invoked by sorcery out of the void into the astonished dayworld. He held the twitchrope in one hand and laid his face against the sweating neck. He could hear the slow bellows of her lungs and feel the blood pumping. He could hear the slow dull beating of the heart within her like an engine deep in a ship.

He and JC loaded the mare in the trailer. She look knocked up to you? JC said.

I dont know.

He bowed her back, didnt he?

They raised the tailgate on the trailer and latched it at either side. John Grady turned and leaned against the trailer and wiped his face with his kerchief and pulled his hat back down.

Mac's done got the colt sold.

I hope he aint spent the money.

Yeah?

She's been bred twice before and it didnt take.

Ward's stud?

No.

I got my money on Ward's studhorse.

So does Mac.

Are we done?

We're done. You want to swing by the cantina?

Are you buyin?

Hell, said JC. I thought I'd get you to back me on the shuffleboard. Give us a chance to improve our financial position.

Last time I done that the position we wound up in wasnt financial.

They climbed into the truck.

Are you broke sure enough? said JC.

I aint got a weepin dime.

They started slowly down the drive. The horsetrailer clanked behind. Troy was counting change in his hand.

I got enough for a couple of beers apiece, he said.

That's all right.

I'm ready to blow in the whole dollar and thirtyfive cents.

We better get on back.

H E WATCHED BILLY RIDE down along the fenceline from where it crested against the red dunes. He rode past and then sat the horse and looked out across the windscoured terrain and he turned and looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat.

Hard country, he said.

Hard country.

This used to be grama grass to a horse's stirrups.

I've heard that. Did you see any more of that bunch?

No. They're scattered all to hell and gone. Wild as deer. A man needs three horses to put in a day up here.

Why dont we ride up Bell Springs Draw.

Were you up there last week?

No.

All right.

They crossed the red creosote plain and picked their way up along the dry arroyo over the red rock scree.

John Grady Cole was a rugged old soul, Billy sang.

The trail crossed through the rock and led out along a wash. The dirt was like red talc.

With a buckskin belly and a rubber asshole.

An hour later they sat their horses at the spring. The cattle had been and gone. There were wet tracks at the south end of the ciZnega and wet tracks in the trail leading out south down the side of the ridge.

There's at least two new calves with this bunch, Billy said.

John Grady didnt answer. The horses raised their dripping mouths from the water one and then the other and blew and leaned and drank again. The dead leaves clinging to the pale and twisted cottonwoods rattled in the wind. Set in a flat above the springs was a small adobe house in ruins these many years. Billy took his cigarettes from his shirtpocket and shook one out and hunched his shoulders forward and lit it.

I used to think I'd like to have a little spread up in the hills somewhere like this. Run a few head on it. Kill your own meat. Stuff like that.

You might one day.

I doubt it.

You never know.

I wintered one time in a linecamp up in New Mexico. You get a pretty good ration of yourself after a while. I wouldnt do it again if I could help it. I like to froze in that damn shack. The wind would blow your hat off inside.

He smoked. The horses raised their heads and looked out. John Grady pulled the latigo on his catchrope and retied it. You think you'd of liked to of lived back in the old days? he said.

No. I did when I was a kid. I used to think rawhidin a bunch of bony cattle in some outland country would be just as close to heaven as a roan was likely to get. I wouldnt give you much for it now.

You think they were a tougher breed back then?

Tougher or dumber?

The dry leaves rattled. Evening was coming on and Billy buttoned his jacket against the cold.

I could live here, John Grady said.

Young and ignorant as you are you probably could.

I think I'd like it.

I'll tell you what I like.

What's that?

When you throw a switch and the lights come on.

Yeah.

If I think about what I wanted as a kid and what I want now they aint the same thing. I guess what I wanted wasnt what I wanted. You ready?

Yeah. I'm ready. What do you want now?

Billy spoke to the horse and reined it around. He sat and looked back at the little adobe house and at the blue and cooling country below them. Hell, he said. I dont know what I want. Never did.

They rode back in the dusk. The dark shapes of cattle moved off sullenly before them.

This is the tag end of that bunch, Billy said.

Yep.

They rode on.

When you're a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be, Billy said. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I think you wind up just tryin to minimize the pain. Anyway this country aint the same. Nor anything in it. The war changed everthing. I dont think people even know it yet.

The sky to the west darkened. A cold wind blew. They could see the aura of the lights from the city come up forty miles away.

You need to wear more clothes than that, Billy said.

I'm all right. How did the war change it?

It just did. It aint the same no more. It never will be.

EDUARDO STOOD at the rear door smoking one of his thin cigars and looking out at the rain. There was a sheetiron warehouse behind the building and there was nothing much there to see except the rain and black pools of water standing in the alley where the rain fell and the soft light from the yellow bulb screwed into the fixture over the back door. The air was cool. The smoke drifted in the light. A young girl who limped on a withered leg passed carrying a great armload of soiled linen down the hall. After a while he closed the door and walked back up the hallway to his office.

When Tiburcio knocked he did not even turn around. Adelante, he said. Tiburcio entered. He stood at the desk and counted out money. The desk was of polished glass and fruitwood and there was a white leather sofa against one wall and a low coffeetable of glass and chrome and there was a small bar against the other wall with four white leather stools. The carpeting on the floor was a rich cream color. The alcahuete counted out the money and stood waiting. Eduardo turned and looked at him. The alcahuete smiled thinly under his thin moustache. His black greased hair shone in the soft light. His black shirt bore a glossy sheen from the pressings of an iron too hot.

Eduardo put the cigar between his teeth and came to the desk. He stood looking down. He fanned with one slender jeweled hand the bills on the glass and he took the cigar from his teeth and looked up.

El mismo muchacho?

El mismo.

He pursed his lips, he nodded. Bueno, he said. cndale.

When Tiburcio had gone he unlocked his desk drawer and took from it a long leather wallet with a chain hanging from it and put the bills in the wallet and put the wallet back in the drawer and locked it again. He opened his ledgerbook and made an entry in it and closed it. Then he went to the door and stood smoking quietly and looking out up the hallway. His hands clasped behind him at the small of his back in a stance he had perhaps admired or read of but a stance native to some other country, not his.

THE MONTH of NOVEMBER passed and he saw her but once more. The alcahuete came to the door and tapped and went away and she said that he must leave. He held her hands in his, both of them sitting tailorwise and fully dressed in the center of the canopy bed. Leaning and talking to her very quickly and with great earnestness but she would only say it was too dangerous and then the alcahuete rapped at the door again and did not go away.

PromZteme, he said. PromZteme.

The alcahuete rapped with the heel of his fist. She clutched his hand, her eyes wide.

Debes salir, she whispered.

PromZteme.

S'. S'. Lo prometo.

When he passed through the salon it was all but empty. The blind pianist who sat in for the string trio at these late hours was at the bench but he was not playing. His young daughter stood beside him. On the piano lay the book which she had been reading to him as he played. John Grady crossed the room and took his last dollar but one and dropped it into the barglass atop the piano. The maestro smiled and bowed slightly. Gracias, he said.

C-mo est++s, said John Grady.

The old man smiled again. My young friend, he said. How are you? You are well?

Yes, thank you. And you?

He shrugged. His thin shoulders rose in the dull black stuff of his suit and fell again. I am well, he said. I am well.

Are you done for the night?

No. We go for our supper.

It is very late.

Oh yes. It is late.

The blind man spoke an oldworld english, a language from another place and time. He steadied himself and rose and turned woodenly.

Will you join us?

No thank you sir. I need to get on.

And how is your suit advancing?

He wasnt sure what that meant. He turned the words over in his mind. The girl, he said.

The old man bowed his head in affirmation.

I dont know, John Grady said. All right, I think. I hope so.

It is an uncertain business, the old man said. You must persevere. To persevere is everything.

Yessir.

The girl had taken her father's hat from the piano and stood holding it. She took his hand but he made no motion to leave. He faced the room, empty save for two whores and a drunk at the bar. We are friends, he said.

Yessir, John Grady said. He wasnt sure of whom the old man spoke.

May I speak in confidence?

Yes.

I believe she is favorable. He placed one delicate and yellowed finger to his lips.

Thank you sir. I appreciate that.

Of course. He held out one hand palm up and the girl placed the brim of his hat in his grip and he took it in both hands and turned and placed it on his head and looked up.

Do you think she's a good person? John Grady said.

Oh my, said the blind man. Oh my.

I think she is.

Oh my, said the blind man.

John Grady smiled. I'll let you get on to your supper. He nodded to the girl and turned to go.

Her condition, the blind man said. You know her condition?

He turned back. Sir? he said.

Little is known. There is a great deal of superstition. Here they are divided in two camps. Some take a benign view and others do not. You see. But this is my belief. My belief is that she is at best a visitor. At best. She does not belong here. Among us.

Yessir. I know she dont belong here.

No, said the blind man. I do not mean in this house. I mean here. Among us.

He walked back through the streets. Carrying the blind man's words concerning his prospects as if they were a contract with the world to come. Cold as it was the Ju++renses stood in the open doorways and smoked or called to one another. Along the sandy unpaved streets nightvendors trundled their carts or drove their small burros before them. They called out leeenya. They called out queroseeena. Plying the darkened streets and calling out like old suitors in search themselves of maids long lost to them.