by John Saul
“Wow.” Kim’s voice was awed, and Susan, who had stooped down to investigate a rock, looked up. Kim was pointing ahead. “She’s got a horse!”
Susan stood up and gazed across the field to see Christie leading Hayburner around the corral. “Do you think she’ll let us ride it?” Susan asked. They broke into a run, entranced by the possibilities of access to a horse. Arriving at the corral, they scrambled up the rails, and Christie brought Hayburner to a halt next to them. The big gray gazed placidly at the two newcomers. Kim put out a hand to pat him, and the horse snuffled affably.
“Is he yours?” Susan asked.
“I guess so,” Christie began uncertainly. “His name’s Hayburner, and Aunt Diana gave him to me this morning. Isn’t he neat?”
“Gave him to you?” Kim demanded suspiciously. “To keep? I mean, could you sell him if you wanted to?”
“Why would I want to?” Christie countered.
“I didn’t mean you’d want to. I mean, is he really yours, or do you just get to ride him?”
Christie glanced at the house nervously, remembering Diana’s strange words. “He’s mine,” she insisted. “Anyway, that’s what Aunt Diana said.” Then, as if to prove the horse was really hers, she turned to Susan. “Want to ride him with me?”
Susan nodded eagerly, and after Christie had mounted, she scrambled from the corral fence onto the horse, her wiry body perched behind Christie. As Kim looked on enviously Hayburner obligingly trotted around the corral.
“Can he gallop?” Susan asked, her arms gripping Christie’s waist. Christie nodded. “Well, make him, Susan begged.
“There isn’t enough room in here,” Christie told her. She reined the horse to a halt, and Susan clambered back onto the fence. As Kim was about to take her place the three girls heard a voice calling from the house.
“Christie? Christie!”
All three of them turned toward the sound and saw Diana hurrying toward them. Instinctively Kim settled back onto the fence.
Approaching the corral, Diana ignored the two other girls, her attention focused on Christie. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice edged with annoyance.
“Just giving Susan and Kim a ride,” Christie replied, wondering what mistake she had made now.
“You barely know how to ride him yourself,” Diana protested. “You could get hurt.”
“Hayburner wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Christie said. “He didn’t mind. He likes us.”
“He really does, Miss Diana,” Susan added. For the first time Diana shifted her attention to the two other girls.
“What are you doing out here?” she demanded.
Susan and Kim exchanged a worried look, then Kim spoke for both of them. “We just came to see Christie.”
“To see Christie.” The words echoed in Diana’s ears and anger surged through her. Her first impulse was to order them off the property. And yet, even as she was gripped by the same surge of jealousy she’d felt earlier as she’d watched Christie ride, the voice of reason whispered to her. If she sent them away, what would they tell their parents? That she was crazy? That she wouldn’t let anyone see Christie? She made herself calm down, and forced a smile. “Would you like something to drink?” she offered. “Some lemonade, maybe?”
Again Kim and Susan exchanged a look. “We were going for a hike,” Susan explained. “We thought maybe Christie could come with us.”
“Can I?” Christie asked.
Again the strange anger swept through Diana, but this time she didn’t try to overcome it. “No,” she said. Then, feeling compelled to provide a reason for her refusal, she went on. “Juan’s coming, and we’re going to ride fence with him.”
Christie slid off Hayburner and dug her toe into the ground. “Do I have to?” she asked.
“I thought you’d want to.” Diana’s voice was harsh, and Christie felt trapped.
“All right.” She gave in.
Diana’s face cleared and she smiled. “You can go for a hike another day. All right?”
Christie shrugged helplessly. “I guess so.”
A few minutes later she watched her friends start off toward the hills. Wishing she were going with them, but knowing she couldn’t, Christie obediently followed Diana back to the house.
Juan Rodriguez reined in his horse and waited for Diana Amber and the little girl to catch up with him. It had been that way all afternoon, like a game. He would ride ahead and try to find breaks in the fence, then see if he could fix them before Miss Diana and the little girl caught up with him. Mostly he had plenty of time to finish the work, because Miss Diana was talking to the girl, showing her things, and telling her how things used to be.
To Juan, it didn’t matter how things used to be. The only thing that counted was the present, and he was having fun. His favorite days were the days he got to go riding with Miss Diana.
Now he paused and watched the two of them approach him. He wondered if it was always going to be like this, if the little girl was always going to go with them.
He’d been watching her for the last few days, wondering if she was going to be nice to him, or be like the others—like those boys who had teased him the other night. From what he’d seen she looked like a nice little girl, and his mother had told him to keep an eye on her. He’d made it a game, hiding himself in the scrub Juniper, watching her whenever she was outside but never letting her see him.
“Hi!” he called now as they drew up beside him. “All fixed!” Diana dismounted and carefully inspected the splice that Juan had worked into the barbed wire. It had taken him years to master the simple task, and she always made a show of praising his work, while he happily nodded his head, eager to get on to the next break in the fence.
“Very good, Juan,” Diana told him. “Think we should keep going?”
Juan looked toward the mountains, and his eyes squinted in the bright afternoon sun. Then he licked his finger and held it in the air.
“Wind coming,” he told Diana. She glanced westward and nodded.
“Looks like it. Why don’t we do a few more miles, then call it a day?”
“You’re da boss!” Juan dug his spurs into his mount, and the horse reared, pawed at the air for a moment, then broke into a gallop.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” Christie said as the Mexican disappeared in a cloud of reddish dust. “All he has to do is squeeze him. He doesn’t have to kick him.”
“It makes him feel like a cowboy,” Diana replied placidly. “Besides, the spurs aren’t sharp.”
“He still doesn’t need to kick him,” Christie repeated stubbornly. She looked around at the rolling landscape, mostly grass, dotted with patches of aspens, some cottonwoods, and an occasional willow. Here and there outcroppings of red sandstone thrust upward toward the sky. “How big is the ranch?”
“A township.” Then, as Christie looked blank, she explained. “That’s thirty-six square miles. Each square mile is called a section, and there are six hundred and forty acres in each section.”
“It’s a whole town?” Christie breathed, and Diana laughed.
“Except that there isn’t any town on it. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t, not anymore. Most of it just sits here, waiting for a cow to come around.”
Again Christie looked around, this time searching for cattle. There were none to be seen.
“We haven’t had many cattle for years. After the mine closed, mother tried to keep up the herd, but now we just lease grazing rights. We still have a few of our own just for fun.” Her voice dropped as she gazed across the valley. “It must have been something,” she mused. “Can’t you just see it? Once, there were probably ten thousand head out there, and who knows how many men to run them.” With Christie beside her, Diana surveyed the land and wished that it were still the way it had once been, long before either of them was born.
“I’m glad I’m here.”
Diana heard the whispered words and turned to Christie. “Are you? Are you really?”
Christie nodded, the beauty of the ranch over whelming her. “I wish my mother was here. I bet she would have loved it.”
“Do you remember her?”
“Only a little bit. But I miss her a lot.”
Diana glanced at the child, but her face was expressionless. The brief flash of jealousy she had just felt passed as quickly as it had come. “Come on,” she said.
The two of them shook their reins, and their horses started forward again, walking slowly along the fence. For a long time silence settled over them, but then, as the first breezes of the coming wind caressed them, Christie spoke once more, her voice shaking and choked with emotion.
“Aunt Diana?”
“Hmm?”
“Could—could you be my mother now?”
Diana pulled her horse next to Christie’s and reached out to touch the girl’s cheek. “Is that what you want?” she whispered. The little girl nodded mutely. “Then I’ll be your mother,” Diana promised. She straightened in her saddle and looked for Juan Rodriguez, but he was nowhere to be seen. She glanced up at the sun, which was lowering toward the mountaintops, and shivered slightly as the wind began to blow, then gently slapped her horse’s neck with the reins. The horse moved placidly forward, with Hayburner keeping the pace. Ahead of them a grove of cottonwoods clustered around a small spring, and Diana guided her horse toward it. Juan was probably there, sleeping in the shade.
The snake, a five-foot diamondback, lay curled in the shelter of a rock, its eyes watchful, its tongue darting in and out as it searched the area for prey.
It moved restlessly as the vibrations of horses’ hooves disturbed its environment, and its sinewy body slid further beneath the rock.
As the horses came into its territory a tremor went through its body, and the rattles at the tip of its tail whispered softly. It moved away from the rock and disappeared into a jumble of sandstone near the spring.
Christie pulled Hayburner to a stop and slid out of the saddle. She looped the reins around a low-slung branch of one of the cottonwoods and started toward the spring. “Is it okay to drink the water?” she asked as Diana, too, tied her horse to the tree.
“Well, it hasn’t killed me yet,” Diana replied. The wind was blowing stronger, and the cottonwoods began to creak. Diana, well aware of the way such trees tended to drop branches with no warning, decided to let the horses, too, have a drink from the bubbling spring. She untied their reins, and they ambled toward the water.
As Hayburner’s hooves disturbed the sandstone rocks a small stone came loose and clattered into the pool. Immediately there was a flash of movement, and then the loud buzzing of the diamondback’s rattle.
“What was that?” Christie asked. She looked toward Diana, totally unaware of the snake that was now coiled watchfully a yard from her feet.
“Don’t move,” Diana whispered. “Hold absolutely still.”
She stared at the rattler, its thick body coiled tightly, its tongue flicking the air as its triangular head bobbed in the sunlight. Its rattle, standing straight up from the center of its coil, was vibrating angrily, and its eyes, black slits in the sides of its head, seemed to project hatred toward the little girl who had invaded its privacy.
Suddenly, as the wind gusted around her, one of the darkly closed doors of Diana’s memory flew open and she saw herself, at the same age as Christie, playing near the back door of the house.
There had been a snake that day, too.
It had flashed out from under the back porch, its body writhing, and drawn itself into a coil close to her feet. As she had stood paralyzed with fear she had heard her mother’s voice drifting dimly from the kitchen as if from another world.
“It’s come to punish you,” her mother had said, “You’re an evil child, and God has sent the snake to punish you.” And then there had been silence for what seemed to Diana to be an eternity.
Now, as her eyes fixed on the snake that threatened Christie, she heard her own voice.
“What have you done, Christie?”
Christie heard the words, and her mind churned. Wasn’t Diana going to help her? What should she do?
For Diana, the moment was one of pure terror. She knew she had to move, to take some action. The snake’s head was moving faster now, and she had a terrible feeling that at any second it would strike, its mouth agape, its fangs ready to sink deep into the soft flesh of Christie’s leg. And yet she couldn’t move. She stood frozen, her mother’s voice echoing in her ears, asking her what she had done that had made God send a snake to punish her.
That day, it had been the cook who had saved her, bursting through the back door, a broom in her hands. The snake, whirling at the noise behind it, had been struck by the broom, and as Diana had fled across the backyard it had retreated under the porch.
Today, there was no one to save her. She had to do something. And then it happened.
She became another person. The rage that was bottled up in her subconscious, the fury that had lain festering within her since she was a child, burst to the surface and gave her the strength to do what had to be done.
And her body, the body that had been frozen in horror a moment ago, responded to the insistent will of the angry child within her.
She bent over and snatched up a rock.
With her newfound strength, she hurled the stone at the snake, and the serpent, distracted by the sudden movement, struck at it, its mouth wide, its fangs bared.
Christie, screaming, hurled herself toward Diana.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she sobbed helplessly. “I didn’t do anything, Aunt Diana. It wasn’t my fault!”
Diana stood still, her arms around the child, her mind whirling. The doors of her memory had slammed shut, and there was nothing left of the last few moments.
She tried to concentrate on what Christie was saying. Her fault? How could what had happened have been Christie’s fault? It made no sense.
She didn’t notice that the wind had slackened as quickly as it had come up.
Juan Rodriguez rode into the cottonwood grove and found Diana and Christie sitting on their horses.
“I found more holes,” he announced proudly, his face glowing with pleasure. “That way!” He pointed off into the distance, but Diana ignored his gesture.
“Never mind, Juan,” she said, her voice shaking. “We’re going home. We ran into a snake, and Christie’s upset.”
“Snake?” Juan asked. “Where?”
“It was in the rocks,” Diana explained. Juan dismounted and started toward the spring. “Juan!” Diana said sharply. “It was a rattler. Leave it alone!”
His face reflecting his disappointment, Juan obediently climbed back on his horse. “Can I go play now?” he asked.
“Don’t you think you’d better go home?” Diana countered.
Juan shook his head.
Diana shrugged. “Okay, but don’t get lost! I don’t want to have to send the marshal looking for you.”
“I won’t,” Juan promised. “I never get lost.” Then, waving good-bye, he spurred his horse and trotted out of the grove.
A moment later Diana and Christie left the grove, too, and as they started homeward Christie was silent for a while. Finally, however, she reached out and took Diana’s hand. “I didn’t do anything,” she said softly. “Really, I didn’t, Aunt Diana.”
Diana squeezed the little girl’s hand. “Of course you didn’t, sweetheart,” she said. “I guess I was just as scared as you were.”
Assured of her forgiveness, Christie suddenly grinned and slapped Hayburner’s neck with the reins. “Come on,” she shouted. “I’ll race you back to the barn!”
Juan pulled his horse to a stop and looked down at the still water below him.
He’d discovered the pool when he was a boy. It was carved into the side of a hill, ringed by dense foliage, the waters that fed it springing clear and pure from the depths of the earth. Juan thought of it as his own, and it occupied a special place in his dreams.
He liked to come here, strip off his clothes, and swim naked in the cold waters, then sprawl on a rock in the sun and look out over the plains, dreaming his dreams.
Juan dreamed that someday he would grow up and be like the other people his age. Then he would go to school and learn all the things that everybody else knew. Until then, though, he didn’t mind living the way he did. He liked the ranch, liked helping Miss Diana with the fence, and he liked being outside, wandering around in his little world, exploring things.
Most of all, he liked this pool.
But today, it was spoiled for him.
Today, two little girls were swimming in his pool.
He watched them for a few minutes until they saw him. Then, as they ran screaming to hide in the foliage, Juan Rodriguez kicked his horse again and rode away. But he would be back; it was, after all, his pool.
The heat of the late afternoon was beginning to fade as Bill Henry urged his old Rambler up the Ambers’ driveway. He saw Juan Rodriguez leading a horse into the barn, and tooted his horn, but if Juan noticed him, he gave no sign.
Bill parked his car in front of the house and took the steps onto the porch two at a time. He pressed the doorbell, then, hearing nothing from inside, knocked loudly. A moment later Edna Amber opened the door and stared at him.
“Yes?”
Bill smiled uneasily. “Good afternoon, Miss Edna. I—I just thought I’d drop by and say hello.”
“To me?” The old woman made no move to invite him in.
“To you, and Diana and Christie.”
“I’ll tell Diana you’re here.” Edna Amber closed the door and left him standing on the porch. A minute went by, then another. The door reopened and Diana, looking preoccupied with something, nodded to him.
“Bill? What are you doing out here? And why didn’t you come in?”
“I wasn’t invited in,” Bill told her. “What’s going on around here? Your mother at least used to let me in the house, even if she made me feel like I should bow three times and back out of the room she was in.”
Diana led him toward the kitchen. “She’s making things difficult, that’s all,” she said. “She didn’t even tell me who was at the door. Just ‘someone.’ Oh, well, she’ll get over it. Want some lemonade?”
