by Bill Brooks
Bill Brooks
The Horses
For Joe Boschen,
who I’ve drank beer and
watched the river with.
Contents
Chapter One
A lone shadow moved through the cold rain. The horses…
Chapter Two
Jim woke to the bright morning light coming through the…
Chapter Three
“Where you been?” the Mortician said. He’d been awake since…
Chapter Four
He crossed the snow-laced ground to the corral but he…
Chapter Five
He found the lawman sitting at the end of the…
Chapter Six
Ardell whistled through his teeth, thinking he had the ability…
Chapter Seven
They rode north at a good pace until they spotted…
Chapter Eight
When he went out in the morning the old breed…
Chapter Nine
“Look yonder,” Ardell said, pointing toward the rise of buildings…
Chapter Ten
The breed stubbed out his cigarette and put the butt…
Chapter Eleven
His true and Christian name was Tug Bailey. Long in…
Chapter Twelve
They made love, then slept, then woke again late in…
Chapter Thirteen
The half-wit watched his brother strap on his pistol, check…
Chapter Fourteen
He rode with a single thought: horses. Domingo lay ahead…
Chapter Fifteen
He had her bent over a barrel, her skirts hiked…
Chapter Sixteen
The breed was there on the porch, hadn’t moved, and…
Chapter Seventeen
It did not rain the day they buried Tug Bailey…
Chapter Eighteen
In the morning they followed the tracks down to the…
Chapter Nineteen
The half-wit was working on his second bowl of mush,…
Chapter Twenty
Jim stood alone while the others stood down along the…
Chapter Twenty-One
They sat there over supper, across from each other in…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bilk heard the train’s whistle a mile out yet. Next…
Chapter Twenty-Three
She dreamed of horses. That the two of them were…
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jim finished what it was he had been writing and…
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Woody got to the jail the chair behind the…
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hairy Legs, fresh from his liaison with the German’s wife…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I still don’t know why I ain’t dead,” Hairy Legs…
About the Author
Other Books by Bill Brooks
Copyright
About the Publishers
Chapter One
A lone shadow moved through the cold rain. The horses stood silent in the corral, their ears pricked at the movement. Inside Jim and Luz slept side by side, dreamless, his arm around her, joined hip to hip.
The icy rain stung like needles. A bit colder and it would turn to snow. The dull sound of distant thunder rumbled like cannon in another valley. The shadowy figure had come from over the ridge, a long knife in one hand, the kind butchers use.
Jim turned once, opened his eyes to the dark room, then closed them again when he realized the woman was beside him.
The shadow moved past the gravestones atop the ridge, did not pause but descended toward the house, the corral, the nervous horses. The rain clattered off the metal roof of the house, and the wind swept along the porch like a cold broom. Farther north, higher up in the Capitans and even in the faraway Sangre de Christos it was snowing, several inches an hour. The time was the darkest hour before dawn.
The shadow had an off gait but moved steadily down toward the corral. Paused at one point, then moved again with the caution of a wise wolf.
Jim dreamed of horses. Wild horses. In his dream they ran free, their manes fluttering in the wind, their tails lifted out behind them. In the dream he had a rope that he could throw true, and gathered in the horses one by one. It was hot, steady work in the dream, and when he reached the river he and the wild horses drank, and they looked beautiful in the bright sun, their reflections floating in the water, and he was glad for their existence.
The shadow closed on the corral. The horses did not protest, sensing no danger, perhaps believing the shadow was the man from the house who came each day and fed and watered them. The rain tamped down any scent the horses might have had of the stranger. The rain boiled up around their hooves, slicked their hides dark and caused their muscles to ripple, and they didn’t care for it much.
The shadow spoke softly to them, trying to calm them as he slipped between the cottonwood rails of the corral. There were six horses, not including the fine stud that roamed free in the far pasture, the one the man in the house had broke to a saddle and trained to come at his whistle. The stud could not be seen in the deep wet darkness, just the six gathered there in the corral.
The shadow came up to the first of them and reached forth the hand not holding the knife, and when the animal snuffled the small green apple the man held, the knife came up swift and sure and plunged into the jugular, then ripped quickly across the animal’s neck, sending it instantly to its knees. An arc of blood thick as a rope hosed the air and splattered into the already wet ground as the horse kicked its legs in a struggle with death it could not outrace. The shadow had already moved on to the next animal before the first stopped kicking—a small sorrel—and let it snuffle the apple and repeated the murder, and yet again and again until all six horses were down, bled or bleeding out, dead or dying.
The shadow looked toward the house, his slicker smeared with blood, the cuffs of his shirt, his face and hands covered in it, the blade of the knife dripping with it, like red rain. He washed the blade in a puddle, then slipped back between the corral logs and started again toward the ridge, muttering low to himself as he went: “Now maybe you’ll shut up. Now maybe you’ll shut up.”
Jim Glass slept as he dreamed of wild horses; the woman next to him hardly moved, her dark hair spread over the pillow. She did not dream but lay in a deep, black void of nothingness, the sweetest kind of sleep.
A sudden clap of thunder shook the whole house, and Jim awakened reaching for the handgun he kept beneath the bed—a Merwin Hulbert First Army Model Revolver. Its ivory grips were smooth and comforting. It was nickel-plated, a single-action .44-caliber, and he had killed men with it. It had its own history of death that went unspoken.
He gripped it as he listened. The rain troubled itself against the window glass, sounded like flung sand at times. He felt his pulse ticking in his wrists. Still he listened for any sound that shouldn’t be there. And when he heard nothing more, he set the pistol back in its place and withdrew his hand and closed his eyes again.
The shadow climbed the ridge with difficulty; the lightning that produced the clap of thunder lit the entire ridge and the shadow in hot flashes, and at one point, if Jim had been looking, he could have plainly seen the shadow standing by the two gravestones before it disappeared over the far side just as the boom of thunder rattled the world.
To heaven’s God, the horses in the corral looked as if they were sleeping on their sides. Six sleeping horses with stiff straight legs. The rain washed their bodies as if the horse gods were preparing them for some strange and final journey. Ministered to them the last cold balm of water upon their distended tongues and washed over their bared teeth and frightful glazed eyes.
The man in
the house would not appear in the morning to feed them, to look them over with a certain pride that the horse catcher has in his stock. And he would not take them into the nearby town and sell them as he’d planned. They were now forever free of ropes and saddles, bits and bridles and the spurs of men. Free of riding a man or woman or child on their backs. And no more either would they run free and wild upon the mesas and over the high desert.
Morning’s first caustic light revealed the snows had come down from the Capitans and the Blood of Christ Mountains too, and mantled the land and dead animals in thin, sugary coats of white so that they seemed not made of flesh and blood and bone, but of crystal. And around them in the pocked earth of the corral were glazed red puddles and small crimson rivers that traversed the mud like bloody veins. Their once proud and beautiful manes were frozen in stiff bristles and strings, their tails matted to the frozen earth.
In the distance the stud horse that was the man’s personal mount whinnied and trotted off, its gaze back toward the house, no doubt smelling the cold odor of death now that the winds had shifted round.
The smell of blood, like the smell of an apple, drew its curiosity.
Chapter Two
Jim woke to the bright morning light coming through the small, four-paned window in the back bedroom. Turned his face away from it, and when he did his lips brushed Luz’s silken black hair. He reached out and touched one bare shoulder, and she stirred. Her skin was warm, even with the chill in the room. He rolled closer to her, and she reached back without opening her eyes and touched him.
“I think that storm’s blown through,” he said softly. It was now so quiet, they heard the house resettling as the cold began to give way to the warmth of a rising sun that pressed its heat against the adobe walls and shake roof.
“Mmm…” she sighed.
He liked having her there in his bed. He thought she liked it too, because it had become a regular event over the past year since he’d first hired her to come once a week and clean his house.
Funny, how people went from being complete strangers to such deep intimacy without planning on it. And funny too, he thought now as he lay there close to her, the curve of her body fitting quite well the curve of his own, how he never thought it possible to be so deeply in love with any woman. Until Luz, he had always thought of himself as someone going it alone. Women, until her, had been temporary distractions in his life—nothing to be taken seriously, to be mulled over and wondered about beyond the bedroom door.
It wasn’t to say he hadn’t thought about it before it ever happened with her; he had, almost from the first time he saw her there working in the kitchen. Otherwise he would have never asked her to stay that one evening to have supper with him. But he never would have dreamed that a woman as aloof and almost stately in manner as Luz would ever find anything charming or likable in him. He’d led a restless and often hard life, had done things he wasn’t proud of and things he’d never tell anyone about—some of them murderous things.
He’d had other women, lots, maybe more than his share. But he never loved any of them, though a few he thought he was in love with at the time, like the wife of the Nebraska rancher. No, these weren’t the things a man talked about, especially to a woman like Luz.
“I best get up and go take care of my horses,” he said.
She rolled over to face him, their noses a mere inch apart, their breath warm against each other’s faces.
“Maybe you should take care of your woman first,” she said with a smile.
“Maybe I should,” he said. “Is that what you are now, my woman?”
“Yes, I think that is what I am.”
“I like the sound of it, my woman.”
“I do too.”
He drew her against him until their flesh was pressed together, their bodies becoming as one, their legs and arms entwining, their mouths coming together in long, deep kisses. His blood rushed through him hot and eager, and she offered herself to him just as eagerly, it seemed, knew just how to accept him into her. It was, she thought, not so unlike the rituals of church, the ritual of communion, an offertory of flesh and desire, one to the other.
“Take of me,” she whispered, “and I will take of you.”
A struggle of passion, urgent, muscular, yielding, overcoming, rising and falling like strong ocean waves crashing upon the shore, bringing pleasure so deep it came near to the point of pain.
The sun continued its ascent, and its strength struck the newly fallen cap of snow a glancing blow. Water from the melting snow dripped from the eaves, and shrank where it lay upon rocks, leaving wet shadows on the gray stone from the sun’s warm breath.
The day held the promise of new life. But the horses did not rise up from their deathbed. They did not whinny and cavort, calling to him to come feed them their portion of grain and oats mixed with honey. The mares did not whicker to the stud for attention. But the stud had come anyway, standing now at the fence line, its ears pricked, snuffling nervously.
An hour more passed as quickly as a minute in their wrestling pleasure until at last they fell apart like a broken thing and lay there breathing heavily.
Somewhere they could hear the trickle of water.
At last Jim rolled to the side of the bed and sat up.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing. I don’t know. I’ve just got this strange feeling is all.”
Her fingers traced the curve of his back, paused by the scars—three of them—small, oddly round, hard puckered. She knew what had caused them without asking. Her father and one brother had both been shot—not fatally—and had such scars as well.
He’d shown up in Domingo a little over a year ago and bought the Bowdre place—Charlie dead, Manuella gone off to live with relatives. She had known Manuella while Charlie was still alive. Had known Charlie too, a little. A quiet man with dark fierce eyes and heavy black mustaches that hid his mouth. She’d heard rumors about him: that he stole horses and cattle with Billy Bonney—the one they called “Kid”—and some others. Then Garrett got elected sheriff of the county and wiped them all out, Charlie and the Kid and the others. And when they brought Charlie’s body to her, wrapped in a tarpaulin, Manuella simply went off, leaving the house abandoned until this stranger who was now Luz’s lover arrived one day and bought the place.
He’d come into Domingo inquiring about a housekeeper. Octavio Ruiz, the barber, mentioned her name and he called on her. She had been hanging fresh-washed clothes to dry when he rode up and sat his big horse outside her fence. He spoke to her directly.
“I understand you hire to clean houses,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I could use the help.”
She saw in him something she did not see in most men—something not so easy to describe, but something that gave her a sense about him that she could trust him, that he was a man of his word and did not give it loosely.
“Do you drink?”
“A little whiskey now and then, but nothing to worry about. I’m not a drunk if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
He had an easy manner about him, leaned his weight on his forearms atop the horn of his saddle, never took his eyes from hers, and yet did not make her feel as though he were stripping her out of her clothes like some men would.
She agreed to his terms—three dollars each time she cleaned, once a week. It seemed fair considering it was a small house. He lived alone. She was surprised at how little she had to do the first time she arrived. Everything was neat and orderly, the dishes clean and stacked, the silverware put in a drawer, an oilcloth over the table. There was dust in the corners and under the bed and along the windowsills, cobwebs up in the corners of the ceiling and the windows needed a good washing. Nothing remarkably dirty or out of place for a single man. But what caught her eye was the shelf of books. She was drawn to them. So few people she knew were able to read, and fewer kept books in their house.
“Which is your favorite?” she said that f
irst time, going over to the shelf.
“Shakespeare,” he said.
She was ashamed that she herself could read very little, her name, her children’s names, a few food labels on tin cans. Formal education had not been a priority of her parents.
“Borrow one if you like,” he said.
She felt herself flushed with embarrassment, too proud to tell him she wasn’t able to read. So she took one at random, the largest one, and said, “I’ll borrow this one.”
He came over just then and cocked his head, looking at the lettering, and said aloud, “Cervantes, Spanish, like yourself. Good choice.”
“Yes,” she said. “He is one of my favorites.” She’d never heard of Cervantes.
From there, their relationship progressed from employer and employee to something more—slowly, inexorably, and they both sensed that it would. They found more and more in common with each visit. They talked as she worked. He would sit at the kitchen table and talk to her, ask her questions about herself. She told him she had two children, a boy and a girl, that she was a recent widow, that her husband had been killed in an accident. He brewed coffee, and they sat and talked and drank the coffee in between her efforts to clean.
“What did you think of Don Quixote?” he asked several weeks after she’d borrowed the big book.
“Who?” she said.
“The book you borrowed. What did you think of it?”
“I liked it,” she said, the lie already bitter in her mouth.
“Which part did you like best?”
She flushed and shrugged, feeling deep embarrassment. It was a small lie. But still it was a lie, and she could find no reason to tell it. And now she must tell another lie to cover the first one.
