by Gwen Moffat
‘Do we go up that rock?’ Miss Pink was trying to sound casual.
‘It’s all right, the horses are used to it. That’s where the trail splits: at the slickrock above the Upper Jump. You take a right and go through the Twist into Rustler Park, or continue up Horsethief and out into the Straight Canyons. Why, there’s someone coming down the slickrock.’
‘Birdie?’
‘No, her pony’s a pinto and this is dull. It must be Sarah Gray. She rides a blue roan.’ She fumbled in her saddle bags and produced a pair of binoculars. ‘It is Sarah,’ she said, focusing. ‘She must have gone up ahead of Birdie.’
‘Could these prints be hers?’
‘No, her horse is too big. This is Jerome Gray’s girl, the retired biologist I told you is writing a book. Sarah’s seventeen and very laid-back. Jerome must have been quite old when she was born; that could explain it: elderly parents. Sarah’s almost too cool; she was grown up already when she was a teenager. Like Birdie … Now why did I say that?’ She looked up the canyon and thought about it. ‘They’re not a bit alike. Birdie’s impulsive – but the child’s taken a shine to Sarah. There’s the parentage: Birdie’s – and Frankie is Sarah’s stepmother. Her own mother died when she was quite small so Frankie raised her. They hit it off, though; you’ll see for yourself.’ She started to move then checked. ‘Funny thing,’ she went on. ‘We’re not ordinary folk in this canyon, and you’d expect sparks to fly more than they do.’ She grinned and Mouse moved up the trail. Miss Pink caught something about ‘the Olsons’.
‘What was that?’
‘I said maybe the Olsons keep us sane. They’re normal.’
‘Who isn’t?’
But this was too sharp a question for such a lovely day. Dolly interpreted it as rhetorical and made no response.
The girl on the blue roan was waiting for them below the slickrock, horse and rider immobile against the shining sky, the abyss plunging beneath them. Statuesque and watchful, they fitted their environment, even their colours blending with the rock: the horse’s grey coat, the girl’s faded shirt and jeans, her drab hat. She was slim and tanned with long russet hair. Pale eyes were shadowed by the hat brim. There were bulky packs behind her saddle.
‘No sign of her?’ Dolly asked, and made the introductions.
Sarah smiled and said: ‘No sign of who?’
‘Birdie. She’s gone again. Disappeared this morning. Where were you?’
‘I’ve been in Ringtail for two days trying to get pictures of sheep for Dad’s book. You’re going to Rustler?’
‘If you were in the Straights and saw no sign of her, then she has to be in Rustler. Her tracks are here. You’ve overlaid them now but we were following them to this point.’
‘Right. I’ll come with you.’ The roan turned neatly and they fell in behind, the girl automatically assuming the lead.
The trail ran into bedrock and forked at a large cairn. They took the right fork which started to climb and now the way was marked by the rudimentary cairns which hikers call ducks: one stone placed on another at salient points. The rock was soft and rough and the only sounds were the muffled clop of hoofs and the creak of leather. They began to feel the power of the sun reflected by rock which had been exposed to the heat since early morning.
They came out on a brow and saw the next duck on a lip above. They were mounting a system of rounded terraces that rose, one above the other, to a rank of pinnacles in which there seemed to be no break large enough for a cat to slip through. The terraces, although horizontal, were not always continuous. Some ended abruptly above a precipice, others were blocked by the outer edge of buttresses. In places the riders would approach a short but impassable wall to swing sideways along its foot until a line of weakness allowed them to turn the obstacle. They scrambled up shallow gullies and climbed bulges with a screech of nails. They did not dismount but they rode with loose reins, allowing the horses to pick their way. The ledges were not bare. Juniper and small pinyons had established themselves in cracks, and here and there a clump of Indian paintbrush flamed scarlet against the sun.
They reached the fissured wall that formed the base of the pinnacles, and turned left along a platform where patches of sand were marked by tracks. ‘You see?’ Dolly called to Sarah, and the girl nodded. ‘She came by here,’ she called back. Miss Pink noticed that she did not say: ‘She is here.’
‘Is there no other way out?’ she asked.
Sarah turned to regard her levelly but it was Dolly who answered: ‘No, no other way.’
Deep chimneys rose above them, inviting for a distance: pleasant back-and-foot work for old climbers, and then, fifty feet up, the way would be blocked by a monstrous wedged boulder. Or a rough crack, with splendid holds, fined down to a line which, defying convention, would angle across a wall to a sheet of ochre rubbish like flaking plaster. This was one place where no one would ever want to climb, but a spectacular place for all that, and more so as one penetrated its mysteries.
Miss Pink had a sudden hawk’s-eye vision of their party traversing this ledge under the titanic wall with its jagged skyline. The terrace was strewn with rock like breadcrumbs and the junipers were bonsai trees, the three riders dwarfed and all but lost under the rock. She was askance at their temerity in coming here. She heard a squeak and saw a chipmunk perched on a boulder, scolding them, its tail jerking spasmodically with every cry.
The chipmunk was not awed by the scale; the boundaries of its world were probably no further than it could see. Lulled by their steady progress, she reflected on her situation relative to that of a small rodent and concluded that she preferred to be human. She could, with application, reduce the scale to manageable proportions; the chipmunk was totally at the mercy of snake or buzzard: tangible dangers which could never be reduced. Prey animals must spend all their short lives listening for the soft passage of a body crossing sand, or the brush of wind through pinyons in the terrible penultimate moment before the strike.
A clump of cactus caught her eye, the blooms a spray of saffron cups. Yes, it was good to be human on a fine morning in Utah, with wars and violence far away, in another country.
Mouse turned at right angles; Sarah on the roan had vanished. Panic seized her. Where— ? Fallen? There was no commotion. Yaller swung round a rock as big as a cabin and a few yards away a grey rump was a pale blob in the gloom of a mighty portal. Still she could not see Sarah. The horses’ hoofs were silent in the sand. Walls rose on either side, near enough to touch, sometimes both at the same time. She had to be careful not to scrape her knees. The shadowed rock soared until it caught the sun blindingly. This, then, was the Twist. A canyon wren suddenly burst into song, the notes descending to a gurgle. Mouse turned again and she saw his muscles bunch. He heaved and was on a higher level. Dolly shouted something and Miss Pink grabbed the horn a moment before Yaller gave a lurching spring up a bank.
On they went, turning, twisting, until they came to a level defile still between walls but now they could see sunshine on ground ahead, and grass in a frieze against the light.
At first sight Rustler Park was a gently sloping meadow surrounded by rock, with an isolated reef towards the centre. On three sides were the pinnacles, on the fourth was a wall, not very high, perhaps a hundred feet, a wall that was a plinth for towers and buttes in fantastic shapes with the light showing through in the most unexpected places. ‘Incredible!’ breathed Miss Pink and turned with relief to ordinary grass, clumps of sage, wildflowers.
‘We’ll try the line camp,’ Sarah said, and they moved out towards the reef.
It was a large park, over a mile square, and it was not at all level once they were crossing it. There were old water courses, quite deep, into which they disappeared for minutes at a time. A person might stay hidden in this place even if he were mounted. They climbed a bank and paused. Dolly swore softly. ‘There’s no pony about,’ she said. ‘It would have whinnied. And our horses are showing no interest.’
‘It’s hot,’ Sa
rah pointed out. ‘She’d be round the other side, in the shade.’
They came to the reef at a point where a corral had been built against the rock. The rails were broken now and a low cabin was in no better shape, sagging forlornly, its roof collapsed. Sarah looked down through the beams without dismounting. There was a sound from the interior; they all heard it: unmistakable, like a big grasshopper clattering as it took off. The roan jumped and tensed, its eyes glaring.
‘Well, she wouldn’t be there,’ Dolly said grimly, ‘but the pony’s tracks are here.’
They moved towards the end of the reef. Miss Pink remarked that there must be rattlesnakes everywhere.
‘There are,’ Dolly assured her. ‘Normally they get out of your way. It’s only in enclosed places they’re dangerous, when they’re cornered. But no one in their senses would go in a ruin, particularly that one.’
‘That snake’s years old,’ Sarah said conversationally. ‘It was there when Dad brought me up here the first time. I was twelve then.’
‘You can distinguish them?’ Miss Pink asked in amazement.
‘Of course. They’re all marked differently.’
‘She can’t distinguish all of them,’ Dolly said with a trace of irony. ‘Just the ones she knows.’
Sarah said nothing. They came round the point of the reef and there was a screaming neigh from the shadows. The other horses nickered and snorted; there was a jangle of bits and, from Dolly: ‘The little monkey!’
A small figure was sitting up in a drift of lupins, rubbing its eyes. Miss Pink saw an unexpectedly pale face above a grimy T-shirt with Mickey Mouse across the front. The skewbald pony, tied to a pinyon, had slewed to face them. It had turned wisely; had it gone in the opposite direction it would have trampled the child.
Sarah dismounted, took a flask from her saddle bag and knelt in front of Birdie, watching her drink. The child took rather longer over it than seemed necessary, even if she were dehydrated. At length she lowered the flask and regarded Sarah warily.
‘O.K.?’ the girl asked.
There was a nod and then: ‘Is Jo mad at me?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t go off without I tell someone where I’m going.’
‘They wouldn’t have let me go. He locked the gate. I’m going to kill ’im some day.’
Sarah raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s baby talk. It’s what the littluns say.’
The eyes were defiant but the lower lip trembled. The watchers were forgotten. ‘Where’s my dad?’ Birdie asked.
‘I don’t know where my mom is either.’ Sarah sounded eminently reasonable. ‘I changed moms, same as you changed dads.’
‘They didn’t let me choose.’
For a moment Sarah’s shoulders slumped, then she stood up and went to lift the child to her feet, but Birdie hurled herself into the big girl’s arms, sobbing wildly. Dolly shook her head at Miss Pink who, for something to do, dismounted, untied the pinto, collected the roan’s reins and stood waiting until the sobs subsided. Shaken by the occasional hiccup, Birdie stood red-faced and miserable while Sarah wiped her eyes. Suddenly she thrust the older girl away. ‘You show me that cave,’ she demanded. ‘Now!’
‘You have to wait.’
‘I won’t.’
‘So what makes you different from everybody else?’
‘The others know.’
‘They know about it. They haven’t seen it. You know the story: they’re not old enough.’
‘You’re telling lies.’
‘So you don’t believe me. You break my heart. I’m going home.’
‘Shit,’ Birdie said, and kicked the sand. ‘Didn’t you bring no Snickers?’
Sarah looked round, her eyes eloquent. Dolly nodded grimly, reached behind her and produced a candy bar. She tossed it over. Birdie unwrapped it in silence, studying Miss Pink.
‘Who’s she?’
‘A friend of Dolly’s.’
‘I don’t like her.’
‘And Indians are supposed to be polite folk,’ Sarah said.
‘She’s on Forset’s horse.’
‘Not everyone has their own pony,’ Miss Pink said. ‘You gotta ride well enough first.’
Dolly stared at her. Birdie thought about this and asked: ‘Did you come off him yet?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Huh. Maybe old Forset will sell him to you, offer him enough.’
Dolly snorted. ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘We’ve done our bit, and we’re certainly not needed here.’
‘We’re on our way,’ Sarah said, acknowledging the breakup of the party, taking the reins from Miss Pink. ‘Thanks for the candy.’
She lifted Birdie on to the pinto’s back, mounted, and the two trotted away through the flowers. Dolly gave a deep sigh. ‘Let’s get out of here; this place gives me the creeps with that rattler round the corner. We’ll go over and have lunch under the Pale Hunter.’
They moved across the park to a slim-waisted tower of light rock that stood on the boundary and marked what appeared to be a breach in the Barrier. They tied the horses in the shade and removed themselves to a distance in order to escape the flies. Dolly arranged lunch on napkins on the ground: chicken, rolls, the Stilton in foil but somewhat the worse for the heat, cans of beer, pears. ‘So what did you think of that?’ she asked, not looking at Miss Pink.
‘Birdie? That she’s not a full-blood.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Miss Pink was silent. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d notice.’ Dolly sat back on her heels and stared at the food like an anxious hostess. Miss Pink was not deceived.
‘I’m uncertain whether you’re being naïve or trying to cover up,’ she said. It was Dolly’s turn to be silent. ‘Look,’ Miss Pink went on, ‘I’m proposing to stay here for a month, and on my first day you present me with a situation which is obvious to any person of normal intelligence. Here’s a child who is only half-Indian, but since you maintain that she’s wholly Ute then there’s a secret which you – and no doubt others – know but don’t discuss with strangers. Birdie, you say, is an Indian child adopted by the Estwicks.’ Dolly was expressionless. ‘It’s not an uncommon situation,’ Miss Pink went on. ‘The husband has an affair and the wife agrees to adopt the child. Only with Birdie it’s obvious because of her colour. Now do you want me to conform and put on blinkers? If so, I’ll forget the whole thing, which will be easy because it’s not my business – but don’t insult me by inferring that I’m too dim to know when a child has a white parent.’
Dolly popped a can of beer and proffered it. ‘Sorry. It was a last-ditch effort on my part to bluff it out. Neighbourhood loyalty and all that. You’re right about her parentage, except that the one who, as you so delicately put it, “had an affair” wasn’t Sam, but Paula. She’s Birdie’s real mother, and the father was a Ute working for the Duvals like I said last night. Paula and Sam married after Birdie was born. When Paula got pregnant she was living alone with her old dad and she went away for a year or so, came back with the baby and the usual story of marrying a guy and he ran off and left her with the kid. Said he had Mexican blood, which accounted for Birdie’s dark colouring. I mean, it’s darker than white, isn’t it? When Paula’s dad died she and Sam got married. He was just a cowhand and glad of a home and a woman to look after him. Am I being bitchy?’
‘How much does Birdie know?’
‘She has to know Sam’s not her father. You heard her ask Sarah where her dad was. She’ll have got the story from Jo’s kids, but they wouldn’t tease her about it. That tribe is so mixed up with all the different fathers that I don’t expect the younger ones give it a thought that she’s not Sam’s child.’
‘What’s Birdie’s mother like?’
‘Big, plain – typical ranch wife. She was brought up Mormon by the old man and, although she lapsed after he died, she’s hung on to some of the bad habits, like no coffee or drink, so Sam would have a hard time of it but that he visits with the neighbours, particularly … Well, he has to g
o out for his drink,’ she ended lamely.
‘Is Paula a good mother?’
‘Sort of … No, she isn’t, not the way you mean. She swings between being over-protective and permissive. She just doesn’t know how to cope. But Birdie would be a difficult child for any woman to raise. She drives me up the wall.’ Dolly thought about that and went on: ‘Jo has a very loving relationship with her, though; you heard her ask if Jo was mad, not a word about her mother – and you saw how she was with Sarah. She can be sweet. I feel sorry for her although she’s so damn rude – but, six years old, a half-breed and a bastard: poor little kid. Trouble with Paula is: she feels guilty; six years ago she committed a sin – perhaps the only one of its kind – and there’s Birdie to remind her of it for the rest of her life. If she was Jo’s baby it would be no different to her from having a baby by a Mexican or a Swede. And Sarah! She’d be fascinated to see how the cross-breeding’d turn out. Sarah’s a scientist’s daughter to the core. Me, if I was Birdie’s mother, what I’d see is fine bones and bad manners, but Paula – hell, all she sees is sin.’
‘How do the other children treat her?’
‘Carefully. She behaves better when she’s with them because, I suppose, in her mind Jo belongs to them. But she likes to be cuddled by Jo and then she’ll stare hard at the others as if she’s won a point. I’ve seen it happen, and the little Olsons look away and get very busy doing something else. It’s obvious that she needs people to be demonstrative and if she can’t get it from her own mom she’ll come to the old earth mother. Jo mothers everyone, including her men.’
‘How does Birdie relate to other Indians?’
‘Now that’s odd. You know we adopt the culture we grow up in, irrespective of parentage? Birdie behaves like an Anglo child as regards Indians. Jo takes the kids to town in the pickup and Paula lets her take Birdie. She acts just like the others: ignores adult Indians and stares at their children coldly. But she’s fascinated by the Anasazi, no doubt about that. And it’s not surprising. Jo tells them stories about the Ancient Ones, and then there are all the ruins. It’s the fashion to cultivate the first native Americans; they were too long ago to have any vices. And their houses are beautiful, the way they blend with the rock. It’s difficult keeping the children out of them.’
