Tahoe Heat

by Todd Borg

  “Gentle means break them?” Diamond said.

  “In the training sense, yes, but gentling a horse is a different mindset than breaking a horse. Better for the horse. Kinder. After one hundred twenty days, they are put up for auction.”

  I saw where she was going. “And adopted Mustangs, like all horses, sometimes get out of their pastures.”

  “Sí. When that happens with most horses, you find them and bring them back home.”

  “But the Mustangs are still mostly wild and they know how to care for themselves,” I said.

  Maria nodded vigorously. “Exactly. They want to go back to the wild herd, back to their home.”

  “Do they ever succeed?” Street asked.

  “Sometimes. Especially if their new owners live close to the wilds of Nevada. But not if their new owner took them to Tahoe, and they escaped their paddock and are stuck on the wrong side of those mountains.” She turned and pointed across the valley to the wall of the Carson Range. “They would be in an unfamiliar forest, without grazing lands other than the rare meadow. Their only hope would be if their new owners found them.” Maria went over to the barn and walked in through the open breezeway. We five followed into the dark interior.

  A horse neighed from inside one of the stalls.

  “Come meet Mandy,” Maria said, flipping on the light. “She’s my little Mustang sweetheart.”

  A small horse had its head out, sniffing Maria’s jacket, pushing at Maria with her nose.

  Maria produced a carrot. Mandy nibbled it out of her hand, chewed it fast, nuzzled Maria for more. As the rest of us walked up, Mandy reached out and nuzzled each of us in turn.

  “Lily?” Maria said. “Would you like to feed Mandy a carrot?”

  Lily nodded and got so excited that she started bouncing. Maria handed her a carrot. Unlike adults, it didn’t even occur to her to ask how to feed the horse. She just walked up, held the carrot up high and Mandy nibbled it out of her hand.

  Spot got into the act, and he and Mandy bumped noses. Then, as with Captain, Spot turned and explored the barn.

  “Look,” Maria said, noticing Spot’s behavior as well. “I’ve seen this many times. Dogs interact with most animals in terms of play, or a chase, or as rivals. They tree bears and mountain lions and chase house cats and herd sheep and kill rodents and play with other dogs and will run deer for miles. Huge animals like cattle and elk and even moose will run from dogs. But not horses. Even wolves will usually stay away from horses. It’s just too much trouble to fight the stallion. But dogs are curiously indifferent to horses. I think it’s because they sense that horses are not impressed with them. Horses know they are largely untouchable, except by people and other horses, so they don’t care very much about what other animals do.” Maria grinned at us. “The one exception is amusing. When Mandy sees a coyote, she lowers her head and chases it away.”

  I reached out to touch Mandy. She was dark brown and, though small, looked very strong. She had an unusual marking on the left side of her neck. Maria saw me touch it.

  “It’s a BLM freeze brand. The various marks are lines and right-angles turned in different directions indicating numbers. Mandy’s number indicates the year of her birth and that she came from Nevada.”

  “How many other states have wild horses?” Street asked.

  “A surprising number. If you draw a north/south line from Montana down to New Mexico, Mustangs are found nearly everywhere to the west. Even in Southern California and up into Oregon. And back east there are also pockets of wild horses, such as the famous herds on the barrier islands from Georgia up to Maryland. The eastern mustangs trace back to early settlers, and, some say, from shipwrecks hundreds of years ago.”

  “Any wild horses near here?” I asked.

  “Just out here, on the ridge behind my trailer, I saw a herd of eight Mustangs. There are herds near Virginia City, herds just north in Washoe Valley. When you drive to Reno, always look to the east. You may see the Mustangs drinking out of Washoe Lake. These western Mustangs go back to horses that escaped from the settlers who migrated west. And the first of those was Cortez.”

  Maria broke another carrot into thirds so that Lily could feed Mandy more pieces, which the horse nibbled out of Lily’s hands with her big soft lips. Then Maria took us back to her trailer for dinner.

  While Diamond worked a blender, mixing up margaritas and pouring them into champagne glasses rimmed with salt, Maria served dinner on huge square plates, each a different, brilliant color. Our food lay on over-sized tortillas, cherry tomatoes cut in half, spinach, refried beans, shredded cheddar cheese and, in the center, a pyramid of Swedish meatballs on top of salsa, and a dollop of sour cream on top of that. We all ate with our plates in our laps, except for Ryan who stood and held his plate.

  The Swedish meatballs were fire-hot, a taste explosion so powerful that Sweden’s favorite pyromaniac homeboy, Alfred Nobel, might have altered his formula for dynamite had he first sampled Maria’s recipe.

  “You mentioned Cortez,” Street said. “Tell us about him.” Street was nibbling at her meal, while Maria ate with a hearty appetite and Diamond and I did our best imitation of steam shovels. Both Lily and Ryan appeared to be put off by the fire in the meatballs.

  “Cortez’s history is kind of a horse history, so I actually know a bit about it. As you probably know, after Columbus, Cortez was the big cheese of Spanish outreach to the New World. Of course, Columbus thought he’d come to the East Indies of the Old World, near Asia. So he called the native people Indians. My people are still called Indians, all because Columbus made a twelve-thousand-mile mistake.”

  At Maria’s mention of her Indian heritage, Ryan looked up.

  “Anyway,” Maria continued, “Columbus had brought horses to the Caribbean islands. But first I should back up.” Maria popped another Swedish ball of fire into her mouth, followed it with spinach and sour cream to dampen the flames and Margarita to put it dead out.

  “What is ironic,” she said, “is that horses actually evolved here in North America millions of years ago. From here, they traveled over the Alaska land bridge to Asia and spread throughout the world. But then climate changes in the Americas put a great deal of stress on horses, and they began to die off on our continents. Then this pesky new guy on the block called Man started hunting horses for food. This was around the same time that people killed off the last of America’s wooly mammoths. And it wasn’t just here. Mankind decimated horse populations all over the world. And just as they’d done with the mammoths, people eventually managed to kill off the last of the horses in the Americas.”

  Maria glanced out the small living room window. In the paddock light stood Captain, his black mane flowing in the breeze as if he were starring in a Disney movie.

  Maria continued. “The problems for horses were so severe that the only horses left in the world were just a few small herds in central Asia near the Black Sea. This was about six thousand years ago, around the time that the Sumerians were building the first major civilization in Babylon, which is now Iraq.”

  Diamond caught my eye and smiled.

  I nodded.

  In my peripheral vision, I could tell that Ryan watched all of us carefully.

  “So anyway,” Maria continued, “no one knows exactly what happened, but for some reason the people with the last horses decided not to eat them all. And in the process, they discovered that horses were good for other things. Riding, pulling plows, fighting wars, all that good stuff. So they took care of the last horses, fed them, and helped them breed. Men went from being horses’ worst nightmare to their best buds. With the help of the people who nearly killed them all off, horses began to thrive.”

  “But there still weren’t any horses in North or South America,” Street said.

  “Right,” Maria said. “Which brings us to a guy named Hernando.”

  “Hernando Cortez,” Diamond said.

  Maria grinned. “Columbus had done his thing for Spain and they knew ab
out all of these islands in the Caribbean, and they’d also visited what is now Central America. But they didn’t discover what we call Mexico until fifteen-seventeen. So Cortez decided in fifteen-nineteen that he would take on Mexico with a little over 500 men and about eighteen horses.”

  “Not much of an army,” Street said.

  “No. And much of Mexico was run by Montezuma, ruler of the Aztecs, who were fierce warriors. Not only that, the Aztec numbered over two hundred thousand people.”

  “You’d think that Cortez wouldn’t have a chance,” I said.

  “Sí. A tiny help for him was that when he landed, he found a small tribe of people who were enemies of the Aztecs. He managed to get them to join his men, giving him something like a thousand or twelve hundred men.”

  “To take on hundreds of thousands of Aztecs,” I said.

  Maria nodded. “It was crazy. But what happened was that Cortez ran them over, captured Montezuma, and brought down the greatest empire that had ever existed in the Americas.”

  “With a tiny group,” Diamond said. “How could it happen?”

  “It was the horses,” Maria said.

  I felt a collective chill go through our group.

  “But even though horses can do a lot for warring men, you said there were only eighteen of them,” Diamond said. “What can eighteen horses do against a huge population?”

  “It wasn’t what they did,” Maria said. “It was what they represented.” She took a sip of margarita. “Before I go any further, I should point out that we don’t really know exactly what happened, and scholars disagree over the fine points. But here’s the basics.

  “The Aztecs worshiped a light-skinned god named Quetzalcoatl. When Cortez showed up, he was quite light-skinned. There is some scholarly opinion that the Aztecs thought he was their god, and they were unwilling to fight him.”

  Diamond spoke up. “But even though he was light-skinned, if he came with ill will and not in peace, why would they think he was their god?”

  “Well, he was a bit nuts, and acting crazy probably helped his case. But the main reason that scholars put forth for Cortez’s success is that he had horses. The Aztecs had never seen horses. So when Cortez and his men - all wearing funny clothes - came charging up on top of these huge, racing animals, it was beyond astonishing. It was as if the deity had arrived. And it was that awe that allowed Cortez to literally ride all over the Aztecs, and eventually bring the Aztec Empire to an end. The great Aztec city of Tenochtitlán was destroyed. Never again would Native Americans rule any part of their homelands.”

  We were all silent for a minute.

  Eventually, Maria spoke. “The Spanish built Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlán.”

  “And this was all possible because of the magic and power of eighteen horses,” I said.

  “Probably,” Maria said. She looked out the window. Captain appeared to be looking in at all of us.

  “So horses periodically escaped Cortez,” Street said. “And some escaped now and then from all of the people who subsequently raised horses. And the descendents of those escapees are the Mustangs.”

  “Sí. Other Europeans also brought many horses over during the next few centuries. And their various stocks also contributed to our Mustang populations.” She looked back out toward the barn. “But it is indeed possible that some of Mandy’s DNA came from a horse that rode with Cortez’s men.”

  After dinner, Maria took Lily and Spot outside, and showed Lily how to toss leftover meatballs high into the air. They shrieked at Spot’s ability to catch them with only the paddock light for illumination. Other than a little extra tongue and jaw movement, he showed no reaction to the fire in his mouth. After Lily fed him the last meatball, he pressed her for more, staring at her, and wagging hard.

  An hour later we thanked Maria. As Street and Lily had a few last words with Maria, Diamond, Ryan and I walked out to Captain’s fence and pet him while we stood under the spectacular, star-filled desert sky.

  “You’re right,” I said. “An orchid with hot salsa. Seems like a keeper to me.”

  Diamond raised two crossed fingers.

  TWENTY

  The next morning, Street had to leave early. A white pickup arrived at 9:30 a.m. There was a magnetic sign stuck to its door. It said, Image And Sound Security. I looked at Ryan.

  “Motion lights?”

  “And webcams. Anyone comes near the house again, the lights go on, and their picture is recorded and transmitted to the company.”

  “Good idea.”

  Three workmen filled the house and grounds with equipment and wiring and tools.

  I asked Ryan if he minded me looking around Herman’s cabin.

  “No, of course not. There’s nothing really to see except how messy he was. Ryan looked away. “It’s very upsetting to have Herman die so suddenly. I can’t help thinking that someone caused his death.”

  “Diamond said it looked natural.”

  “Right,” Ryan said. He walked over and opened a kitchen drawer. He pulled out a key and brought it to me. The key fob was shaped like a tiny wrench with a big round handle, presumably a miniature of something a piano tuner would use.

  “I don’t think Herman ever locked his door, whether at night when he was sleeping or during the day when he was often gone. He grew up back when Tahoe was just a few people who came during the summer. He once told me he never heard of a burglary in Tahoe until he was in his thirties.” Ryan looked at me with a furrowed brow. “Maybe you think it’s part of my paranoia, always locking the door and putting on the chains.” He was talking in a loud voice. “But I always think that if there’s no downside to an action, and there’s a large potential upside, then...”

  I held up my hand to interrupt. “It’s okay, Ryan. I’m with you. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a cop who leaves his doors unlocked. Many people like the carefree feeling that their neighborhood is perfectly safe, but cops see what actually happens. They have no illusions.”

  I held up the key, nodded at him and said, “I’ll go take a look.”

  I checked the family room. Spot was sprawled on the floor, his head on Lily’s lap. She had a book resting on his head while she read it.

  I let myself out. Officer Vistamon was back on duty. He was in his dress blues, standing next to his Toyota, leaning against the hood. I waved and walked across to the old cabin. Herman’s homestead was probably built back in the early 1900s. Compared to my little log cabin, it was a grand lodge. I stepped up onto the broad deck that had a large, sloppy pile of split wood on one side and on the other side a row of rustic Adirondack-style furniture near the chairlift seat.

  I put the key into an old lock and let myself in through a heavy plank door in the center of the wide front wall.

  There was no entry area inside. The front door opened onto a large room that stretched the 40-foot width of the cabin. Directly opposite the door was a huge cobblestone fireplace with a large beam mantle five feet above the stone hearth. There was a braided rug in front of the fireplace. An old stuffed couch sat in front of the rug with a big leather chair on each side. Between the chairs and couch were end tables covered in books, everything from old dusty hardbounds to new, brightly-colored paperbacks.

  To the right of the room was the dining area with a heavy wooden table no doubt built in the same era as the cabin and large enough to seat ten people. On the far end of the table sat a TV. The rest of the table was covered with stacks of paper, old bills, a ceramic pot with the withered remains of a plant that must have died months before but never got thrown out. Not even a solo diner could find room to set a plate of food without sweeping papers to the side.

  Behind the dining area, to the right rear of the cabin, was the kitchen, largely out of my line of vision from the front door.

  It was the left portion of the living room that upstaged the rest. Framed by large windows made up of dozens of small panes, and well-lit by the sunlight that cascaded in, was a huge, black grand piano.
It had the Steinway logo above the keys.

  I walked over and sat down on the black, upholstered seat.

  I didn’t know anything about pianos, but it looked like a model from recent decades, with clean modern lines, a perfect matte black finish, and none of the filigree I’d seen on pianos from a hundred years ago.

  The Steinway lid was up at a steep angle, exposing the brassy metal framework that supported the strings and the golden wood beneath them. On the music support stand were spiral notebooks. To one side was some sheet music with three bent sheets and dog-eared corners.

  I opened the notebooks. They were logbooks of pianos tuned, with dates and names and addresses. Next to each entry were brief notes. ‘Replaced broken string on A6. Adjusted action, especially key dip, hammer height, and the let-off.’ The handwriting was barely legible.

  I leafed through the sheet music. Jazz standards from the 1930s and ’40s. Ellington, Porter, Carmichael. Under the sheet music was an assortment of pocket detritus. Paper clips, a bent toothpick, a quarter and seven pennies.

  On the floor beneath the piano were piles of books and magazines and other household stuff. A framed certificate of appreciation that wasn’t appreciated enough to get hung on a wall, but was too nice an accolade to toss into the garbage. Two pairs of shoes. Cross-country ski boots. A stack of Sunday papers.

  A large, red, metal toolbox that showed the dents and scrapes of many decades sat on the floor next to the piano bench. Its top was open.

  Herman’s tuning tools were out. A wrench very much like the miniature key fob sat on the top of the piano. A long strip of red felt lay draped over the toolbox. Nearby were several black rubber wedges with wire handles coming out of their blunt ends.