Mustang

by Marguerite Henry

  There was so dead a silence I almost shrieked, “Are you still there?”

  The words came reluctantly. “If it were up to me, Annie, I’d agree to the Bureau’s demand.”

  “Agree!” I nearly choked on the word.

  “Half a loaf is better than none, Annie. Remember how many attempts have failed. Are you going to let it die again? Think it over. Talk it over with Charley, and call me back.”

  I hung up. I could feel the tears running down my face and I couldn’t stop them. Charley took my hand and pulled me over to the big old chair that faced the fire. We could both squeeze into it with our skinny cowboy hips and have room left over for our littlest dog, who promptly joined us.

  “All those stamps we bought!” I sobbed. “And my new secondhand typewriter. So much money!” I buried my face in Charley’s neck and wept.

  When I quieted a little, he took out his bandanna and mopped my face and his own neck. “It’s all right, little one. Hush a moment, and listen to me. Look like a girl. Cry like a girl. But think like your Pa!”

  At mention of Pa I blubbered all the more. Then in the middle of a sob I suddenly burst into laughter. “He’d say,” I snuffled, “ ‘Comes a time you got to horse-trade.’”

  16. Stockings Hung by the Fire

  HORSE-TRADING isn’t much fun when you know you’ve been taken in. As soon as we agreed to the Bureau’s demand, the bill passed lightning-quick. The newspapers cheered as if the mustangs were now and forever safe. Lucius Beebe splashed the verdict as a great victory. My friend Lura called it THE MUSTANGS’ TRIUMPH.

  Even California papers hailed Senator Slattery and me as guardians of the wildlife. They all said pretty much the same thing: That the first shot in the mustang war had been fired in a little courtroom in Storey County and now the second volley was ringing around the whole great state of Nevada.

  I felt no such joy. I said to Senator Slattery: “We’ve won but we’ve lost.”

  “Look here, Annie,” he scolded, “you’ve done what Mr. Richards tried for years to do. You’ve planted the first footprint on the trail.”

  He didn’t come right out and say, Now you’ve got to go on. I knew, though, that’s what he meant. But I was tired, so tired. I didn’t think I could fight any more. I just wanted to crawl under a rock like a lizard, and stay there asleep until the summer sun baked me awake.

  Nothing helped. The mountains stood stark and bare. The wind moaned wearily. Even with Charley, I felt so utterly small and alone. “I’m depending on you, Annie.” Mr. Richards’ words weighted my shoulders, heavied my heart.

  Wearily I went to work and wearily came home. I bought our groceries in little off-beat stores where I knew no one, and I hurried out with only the bare necessities, so anxious was I to escape congratulations I didn’t deserve.

  I didn’t want to see anyone, not even the friends who had helped. Charley and I stopped going to church. We stayed away from the square dances. We didn’t want to run into Tex Gladding or Mr. Flick, or the lawyer for the three little girls whose horses had been slaughtered. I was too tired to care who won that case. The horses were gone forever. Nobody could help them now.

  The only happy time in my day was just before supper. Charley would saddle up, and for a whole wonderful hour we breathed the smell of sage and pine, and I’d be laughing at the snorting joy of Hobo and the antics of Nip and Tucker. Sometimes we’d stop by and watch Mr. Graf training his Appaloosey on a lunge line. And sometimes he rode along with us, almost in silence, each of us tossing his cares to the winds.

  Full of peace, we came home to our supper by campfire, and afterward Charley played his harmonica until we both grew sleepy.

  But the moment my head touched the pillow I came wide awake, and the nagging guilt of failure plucked at my brain. When I did sleep, I dreamed of an ocean of water and I was trapped underneath a raft with my clothes snagged on the underside of it and I was drowning, holding my breath until my lungs were ready to burst. Kicking, suffocating, I woke up drenched in sweat. And I’d rush to the window for air. And I’d cry out, “O God, let somebody else take over. They’ve beaten me, beaten me.” I looked up to the stars, but they were hopelessly far away; cold, pitiless, without answer.

  My birthday came, and Mom sent a big cake over to the office. It had chocolate mustangs bucking all over the snow-white frosting, and on a pennant stuck in it were the words: WILD HORSE ANNIE. They were a stab.

  Poor Mom! She did her best to cheer me up. But I was no longer the child she could comfort with a hug and a sweet; no longer the child whose burden she could share. The battle was mine alone.

  December came in, and Christmas week, and with it days of hard, cold rain. It pinged against the windows; and on the mountain slopes it pried the snow loose and shoved it into the Truckee River. What was once an innocent stream became a raging torrent, bursting from its bed, sprawling over the land. It sprawled around the Double Lazy Heart, flooding the barn and the fields and making an island of our house.

  With true mustang sense Hobo rounded up our five horses and drove them onto the little rise near the railroad bridge. Through the window we could watch them, all huddled together, rumps against the wind. I felt proud of Hobo, like a mother whose wild son shows good horse sense. Charley had long ago built a shelter there on the high ground, and at the first radio warning he had stocked it with hay.

  But I my numbness, had neglected our cupboard. And here with the calendar saying Merry Christmas we were marooned with no roast, no turkey, only a big elderly duck that had been hit by a jeep weeks ago. Charley had dressed it and put it in the deep freeze against need.

  “One thing sure,” he laughed, “today’s the need!”

  All Christmas morning we roasted it and laid strips of bacon across its bony breast, and we basted and basted it. And all morning, and half the afternoon, there was this delicious fragrance of browning duck steaming through the house until we could hardly wait to taste its goodness. The dogs, too, were drooling and waltzing around the stove on their hind legs, snuffing in the good smells, yelping in eagerness.

  Dinnertime came and my testing fork couldn’t pierce the duck’s hide. Yet how magnificent it looked on the platter with squiggles of mashed potatoes around it and shredded carrots. I had made a table bouquet of some Everlastings. The flowers were bright as new-picked ones—yellows and blues and orange and rose.

  “Looks like a party!” Charley nodded.

  “It is!” I gasped, staring out the window at the rain-draggled parade of Eli Pike followed by Mrs. Pike holding a new baby, and all the older Pike children each holding a younger one in hand.

  I flung wide the door and gathered them in, wet and dripping, all making little rivers on the bare floor.

  Mrs. Pike’s eyes were red-rimmed. “We’re flooded out,” she said. “Eli,” she hesitated, “Eli thought maybe you . . . ”

  “You bet we will!” shouted Charley.

  Back went the duck into the oven to be kept warm, and out came towels and blankets and sweaters. Then all the grown-ups fell to undressing the little ones and wrapping them up, and in no time Charley’s fire was roaring and we’d stretched a lineful of dripping dresses and shirts and pants and socks in front of the fire.

  “Why, it’s a real Christmas!” I cried “Stockings hung by the fire with care.”

  “But nothing in ’em,” a little Pike said, his face puckered up for crying.

  “Just you wait and see! They’ve got to dry out first.”

  It was hard to tell who was helping whom. Such laughter and talking all at the same time.

  “Oh, look at Pa!” Emma and Clara, young ladies now, were screeching with laughter. “Pa’s drowning in Charley’s pants.”

  Mrs. Pike and I joined in the laughter. We were working like a team. With safety pins and string we made dresses out of bath towels. Even the boys had to wear dresses. And Charley’s socks, darned and undarned, made warm footgear.

  At last when heads were rubbed dry and face
s shone with rubbing, we brought out the duck, none the worse for the delay. And the potato squiggles were browned prettier than ever now.

  Who minded a tough drumstick or a wing or a stringy slice of breast when there was enough for all, and giblet gravy so brown and good, and dressing to melt in your mouth?

  When we were filled to bursting, Mrs. Pike wiped her baby’s mouth and turned to Charley and me. “How do you keep so happy, you two? It’s the remarkablest thing I ever, ever see.”

  Charley and I looked at each other in surprise. “It’s Annie,” he said quietly. “She keeps me happy with her crusadin’ and all the work she piles on me.”

  Mrs. Pike still wasn’t satisfied. “Annie,” she said, her eyes beginning to flood, “but how come you are so happy, even with us eatin’ you outa house and home, and the river at your door.”

  I was thinking of the stockings drying and how to fill them, and I remembered some bead belts our weekend children had started. They weren’t quite finished, but the Pike children could work on them. It’d be something to do while Charley and I hauled out the sleeping bags and . . .

  “Annie!” Eli Pike said. “Ma’s right. You allus seem right up on the bit, and lively as a colt. Someway you musta struck a rich vein o’ gumption from somewheres.”

  “I’m not always this happy,” I admitted. “But tonight you folks came and made me feel needed.”

  “Tell more, Annie,” Charley said softly.

  I knew what he meant. And so with most of the children listening but some falling asleep, I began Grandma’s story.

  “Our wagon rolled through dust. A choking, sneezy wilderness of dust . . . ”

  17. At Black Rock Desert

  THE FLOOD waters dried. January froze and thawed. February wore itself out. And the Pikes wouldn’t have believed how gloomy I felt, marking time, doing nothing, my job unfinished, but not knowing where to turn. Then one early evening in March my gloom vanished in a flash.

  I was alone in the office. I had stayed after five to prepare a special report for Mr. Harris. Time slid away and before I knew it, the whole building had that night-empty feeling. Suddenly in the enormous quiet I heard the click of the mail-slit, then a lisp of sound as an envelope skidded across the floor. I ran to pick it up, and with a sense of impending excitement read:

  The paper inside was lined wide apart, like the tablets we had in first grade, and the printed letters were scrawled in a childlike hand. Street sounds seemed far away . . . only the clock on the wall ticking as loud as my heart. In the silence I read the note and I could hear Zeke’s foghorn voice saying the words he had so painstakingly printed:

  I knew what must follow. It was almost as if I had been expecting this. I memorized the directions. I would be there. Alone. I locked the letter in my top drawer. If anything should happen to me, my desk would be searched. They’d know where and why I’d gone. Someone would tell Charley.

  I brushed the thought away. Hastily I wrote on Mr. Harris’ scratch pad: “Must be gone all morning. Will explain later.” I tilted the pad against his ash tray where he’d surely see it the first thing.

  The next morning I stole out of bed at two and left a note for Charley. “Sleepyhead!” I said. “Don’t you know morning hours have gold in their mouth? Which reminds me we are out of toothpaste! Your early bird is on her way . . . ” I started to say where, but quickly stabbed a period instead. Charley could not be told. The mustangers might shoot a man, but they wouldn’t shoot me.

  • • •

  In the half light of dawn, Black Rock Desert looked desolate and lonely, a waste place of the earth. Once it had been an inland sea, hundreds of feet deep. Now years of sun and wind had baked it into hardpan, hard and gray as marble. It was mottled like marble too, with cracks crisscrossing it. Around this dry crust of earth scraggly sagebrush grew, and old volcanic rocks were piled higgledy-piggledy. As there was no sign of rain, I hid my car in a dry wash where sage grew on either side. Old and dusty as it was, it blended into the landscape like a chameleon.

  Then I slung my camera over one shoulder, my field glasses over the other, and feeling of the pistol in my belt, I scrambled along the rim until I reached a benchland that boasted the only juniper for miles. Here I took my stand. I could see out over the dead-level tableland without, I hoped, being seen.

  In all this wilderness I felt little as a lost baby field mouse. I crouched motionless, quivering with cold and fear. Even the sky looked cold. It was the color of pewter with not a bird in sight. A desert-swift fox with a pocket rat in his mouth circled my tree. He glanced at me with his yellow eyes and padded noiselessly on his way. I looked at my watch. Only ten minutes had passed.

  Suddenly a high, thin Whi-eeeee cut into the stillness. I reached for my pistol, certain I’d been discovered. But it was just a ground squirrel, sitting up on his haunches, his tiny paws crossed over his belly. He sat there frozen, except for a little twitch to his whiskers. After he scurried away I felt even more alone, and I was glad when the first brightness of the sun struck the Granite Range and warmed the world.

  I thought of home. Charley would be reading my note now. Would he guess it had something to do with the mustangs? My knees were shaking and my teeth still chattering. Then I heard a whirring sound overhead. I swung my binoculars to the sky and caught a flock of ducks on their way south to Pyramid Lake.

  More long moments of stillness. Time to think. In all this barrenness where is the dotted line that marks off the government lands? And who owns all that blueing sky above? Then from far away a motor’s drone! And out of the hills in the distance a wispy cloud flirting along a ledge. It could be dust kicked up by fast-running mustangs. It is!

  A plane is diving, banking, whipping them into line. Look! As they gallop onto the tableland, one escapes to the north! Two are kiting off to the south. The plane roars, is everywhere at once—swooping like a hawk, chasing the loners back into the bunch.

  Now it flies away over their heads. I hear a spitfire of shots. Then more strays join the band. Together they are flying across the desert. On they come. In single file! Toward me! I can hear the thunder of their hoofs pounding the earth.

  Now a nearer noise! It drowns out hoof beats, drowns out the roar of the plane. Trucks, two of them, are rumbling out onto the desert floor. A man is standing up on the bed of one. He’s strapped to a post. His arms are free, free to twirl a rope. He’s spinning it wide. He’s warming up for the throw!

  The horses are coming in closer and closer, trying to escape the plane, but now the truck takes up the chase! Like a long snake uncoiling, the rope whangs through the air. It catches the neck of a crazed stallion. Instantly the truck veers, jerking the horse’s head back, yanking him completely around and upside down. Through my glasses I see him—a splashy-marked pinto. I see his eye-rolling fear, and the blood spilling from his nostrils. He’s up again, fighting with all the heart in him. He runs away with the rope! He thinks he’s free! But as he runs he pulls a frightening thing from the bed of the truck—a huge tire. It bounces and bounds after him, a living monster.

  Bucking and plunging, he drags it through the dust, fighting, fighting, fighting to be free. He almost runs away with it! But a second rope snakes through the air, lassoes him clear back to the shoulder, and a second tire comes bumping after him. With a last burst of energy he lugs his two anchors until the weight of them pulls the ropes tighter and tighter around his neck, choking off his breath. He staggers a few paces, and stops, head bowed in defeat. It has taken four men, a couple of hundred-pound tires, and two giant machines to quench his spirit.

  My heart all but exploding in anger, I looked on, helpless. Suddenly I remembered my pistol. My hand touched it, but what could one pistol do against a whole gang? It was no use. My only weapon was my camera.

  I was no longer afraid. Boldly I stood up and snapped my pictures. My hands were icy-cold and steady as I snapped again and again, and again. I would have my evidence. I must!

  Standing in plain si
ght now, I watched aghast as mare after mare was choked to the ground until the desert floor was blotched with blood and heaving bodies.

  Only one little mustang was left. A splay-legged colt. His herd instinct was strong, but he was dazed. Should he stay with the bunch, lying all over the desert, or should he bolt for the hills? Wait! The noose is sailing toward him. It’s going to catch him. He shoots up like a rocket, his toothpick legs raking the air. He bounds out of reach . . . but he’s heading for the truck!

  Something snapped in my mind. With flooding horror I realized that I was seeing a nightmare version of the old hospital painting. The colt was my little Buck. Mine to catch, to gentle . . . . Suddenly I found myself screaming: “Run away, you little brown bullet! Run. Run. Run!” I covered my mouth to stop my screaming.

  In the turmoil and excitement the mustangers did not hear me. They were laughing hoarsely. “No meat on his bones . . . weighs no more’n a flea. Let ’im go.” It was the voice of Zeke!

  And still the colt hovered near the bunch, smelling for his mother, watching while she was loaded. I watched, too, saw forefoot tied to hindfoot, then the half-dead mare dragged up the ramp and slung aboard. And more horses loaded. And more. Pushed, jolted, prodded to their feet, body crushed against body, until the truck was full.

  At last the tailgate slammed shut. In the other truck men were carefully coiling ropes, stacking the tires neatly, one atop the other. Then both trucks rolled off into the sunlit morning, carrying the horses toward death.

  I was alone now in the desert. Alone, except for a little left-over broomtail who gave one baby-nicker in the direction of the trucks. Then all in an instant he grew up. With a snorty shake of his head he high-tailed it for the far, far mountains. I watched him go, kicking up a ragged tail of dust behind him, watched until he was lost in the cloud of his own making. Then the cloud, too, was gone.