Cities of the Plain

  You say this is a three year old?

  Yessir.

  Ride him around some.

  They stood watching while John Grady rode the horse up and back and turned the horse and backed him and then cantered him around the corral.

  How come the boy wants to sell him?

  Mac didnt answer. They watched the horse. After a while he said: He just needs the money. The horse is sound.

  What do you think, Junior?

  You aint goin to pay no attention to me. Get me on Mac's wrong side.

  It aint my horse, said Mac.

  What do you think?

  Crawford spat. Pretty good lookin horse I think.

  What will he take for him?

  What he's askin.

  They stood.

  I might go two and a half.

  Mac shook his head.

  It's his horse to sell aint it? the man said.

  Mac nodded. Yes, he said. It is. But if he was to let that horse go for two hundred and fifty dollars I'd pay him off. I wouldnt want anybody that ignorant on the place. Liable to do themselves a injury.

  The man toed the dirt. He looked at Crawford and he studied the horse again and he looked at Mac.

  Will he take three?

  Will you give three?

  Yessir.

  John Grady, called Mac.

  Yessir?

  Bring that man's horse over here and get your saddle off of him.

  Yessir, said John Grady.

  WHEN HE CAME IN that night Oren and Troy were still at the table drinking coffee and he got his plate from the warmer and filled his cup and joined them.

  They tell me you're damn near afoot, said Oren.

  Just about it.

  I guess you decided that varmint was just too crazy to make a horse out of.

  I just needed the money.

  Mac said the man never even rode him.

  He didnt.

  I suppose the critter's reputation had done preceded him.

  Could be.

  You may not of heard the last from him.

  Could be.

  They watched him eat.

  The cowboy thinks horses are sane and people are crazy, Troy said.

  He might have a point.

  You all have been around different horses from what I have.

  More likely we been around different people.

  I dont know, said Troy. I been acquainted with some lulus.

  How did you all get along?

  John Grady looked up. He smiled. Oren was shucking a cigarette out of the pack. All horses are crazy, he said. To a degree. Only thing to be said in their favor is that they dont try to hide it from you.

  He reached down and popped a wooden match on the underside of his chair and lit his cigarette and shook the match out and laid it in the ashtray.

  Why do you think they're crazy? said John Grady.

  Why do I think it or why are they?

  Why are they.

  They're just made that way. A horse has got two brains. He dont see the same thing out of both eyes at once. He's got a eye for each side.

  So does a fish, said Troy.

  Well. That's true.

  So does a fish have two brains?

  I dont know. I dont know that a fish has got any brains at all to speak of.

  Maybe a fish just aint smart enough to be crazy.

  I think you got a point. A horse aint really all that dumb.

  They're too dumb to shade up and a dumb-assed cow will do that.

  So will a fish. Or a rattlesnake for that matter.

  You think a snake is dumber than a fish?

  Hell, Troy. I dont know. Who in the hell would know such a thing? They're both dumbern hell in my opinion.

  Well I didnt mean to get you stirred up.

  I aint stirred up.

  Well go on with the story.

  It aint a story. It was just a observation about horses.

  Well what was it.

  I dont know. I forgot.

  No you aint.

  You were talkin about a horse havin two brains, said John Grady.

  Oren pulled on the cigarette. He looked at John Grady. He leaned and tapped the ash into the ashtray.

  All I was sayin is that a horse is a different proposition from what a lot of people think. A lot of what people take for ignorance on the part of the horse is just confusion between the righthand horse and the lefthand horse. Like if you was to saddle a horse and all and then walk around to his off side and start to mount up. You know what's goin to happen.

  Sure. All hell's goin to bust loose.

  That's right. That particular horse aint even seen you yet.

  Oren jerked up his elbows and drew back in alarm from his own off side. Shit, he said. Who's that?

  Troy grinned. John Grady drank from his cup and set it back on the table. Why couldnt it be that he's just not used to bein mounted from that side? he said.

  It is. But the point is he cant ask the other half of the horse if he's ever seen this man before or get his advice about what to do.

  Well it seems to me that if the two sides of the horse aint even speakin to one another you'd have some real problems. The whole horse wouldnt even start off together in the same direction. What about that?

  Oren smoked. He looked at Troy. I aint a authority on horses' brains. I'm just tellin you what one cowboy's experience has been. There's two sides to a horse and it's been my experience that what you got to do is work the one side and let the other side go.

  I've known some people the same way. Several, in fact.

  Yes. I have too. But I think it's somethin they've worked at. A horse comes by it natural.

  You dont think you could train both sides of the horse the same?

  You're wearin me out.

  Hell, that's a fair question.

  I suppose you could. Maybe. It'd be hard to do. There would just about have to be two of you.

  Well suppose you had a twin brother.

  I suppose in principle maybe you could work with a horse thataway. I dont know. But what would you have when you got done?

  You'd have a two-sided balanced horse.

  No you wouldnt. You'd just have a horse that thought there was two of you. Suppose one day he sees you both on the same side. What then?

  I reckon he'd think you was quadruplets.

  Oren stubbed out the cigarette. No, he said. He'd think the same thing as everbody else.

  What's that?

  That you're as crazy as a shithouse rat.

  He pushed back his chair and rose. I'll see you all in the mornin.

  The kitchen door closed. Troy shook his head. Old Oren is losin his sense of humor.

  John Grady smiled. He thumbed his plate back from the edge of the table and leaned back in his chair. Through the window he could see Oren adjust his hat as he set out down the drive toward the small house he shared with his cat. As if the dead world past might take pains to notice. He'd not always been a cowboy. He'd been a miner in northern Mexico and he'd fought in wars and revolutions and he'd been an oilfield roustabout in the Permian Basin and a mariner under three different flags. He'd even been married once.

  John Grady drained the last dark dregs from the bottom of the cup and set the cup on the table. Oren's all right, he said.

  III

  WHEN HE CROSSED at the top of the draw he smelled what the horse had been smelling. A reek of carrion wafted up on some vector of the cooling evening air. He sat the horse and turned in the saddle and tested the air with his nose but the smell had passed and vanished. He turned the horse and sat facing back down the draw and then he put the horse forward again down the narrow cattletrail. The horse watched the cattle moving out before them through the scrub and pricked his ears about.

  I'll let you know what it is you need to do, John Grady told him.

  A hundred yards down the far side of the draw he smelled it again and he halted the horse. The horse stood waiting.

  You woul
dnt scout out a dead cow for me, would you? he said.

  The horse stood. He put him forward again and they rode down another quarter mile or so and the horse settled into his gait such as it was and paid no more mind to the distant cattle. A little further on and he halted the horse and tested the air. He sat the horse. Then he turned and started back up the way they'd come.

  He cut for sign and finally picked up the scent ripe and strong and in the dusk he dismounted and stood looking down at the flyblown carcass of a new calf that had been dragged into the center of a ring of creosote bush in broad open country. There'd been no rain in two weeks and the dragmarks were visible across the gravel and he walked out a ways on the backtrack looking for sand or dirt where there might be a foot track but he didnt find one. He came back and picked up the reins and mounted up and looked out at the surrounding countryside to mark the spot and then rode out and back down the draw.

  HE AND BILLY STOOD over the dead calf and Billy walked back out following the dragmarks and stood looking over the country.

  How far out did you go? he said.

  Not far.

  It's been a stout somethin to drag that big calf.

  You think it's been a lion?

  No. A lion'd of covered it up. Or tried to.

  They mounted up and rode out on the backtrack. They lost the track on the hard ground and picked it up again. Billy followed the track over the gravels by raising or lowering his head and catching a certain angle of the light. He said that the disturbed ground had a different look and after a while John Grady could see it too. The day was cool. The horses were fresh with the morning and the weather and seemed unworried.

  Range riders, said Billy.

  Range riders.

  Detectives.

  Pinkertons.

  The calf had been cut out and run down and killed in open country. Billy dismounted and walked over the ground. There was blood on the rocks, black from the sun.

  You dont think it's just been coyotes? said John Grady.

  I dont think so.

  What do you think it's been?

  I know what it's been.

  What?

  Dogs.

  Dogs?

  Yep.

  I aint never seen any dogs out here.

  I aint either. But they're here.

  In the days that followed they found two more dead calves. They rode the Cedar Springs pasture and they crossed the floodplain below it and they rode the surrounding traprock bluffs and the mesa that ran east toward the old mine. They found tracks of the dogs but they did not see them. Before the week was out they'd found another freshkilled calf not dead a day.

  There were some old Oneida number three doublespring traps on a shelf in the saddleroom and Billy boiled and waxed them and they carried them out the next day and buried three of them around the carcass. They rode out before daybreak to check the sets and when they got to the kill the traps were all dug out and lying on the ground. One of them was not even sprung. The carcass itself was little more than skin and bones.

  I didnt know dogs were that smart, said John Grady.

  I didnt either. They probably didnt know we were that dumb.

  You ever trap dogs before?

  No.

  What do you want to do?

  Billy picked up the unsprung trap and reached under the jaw and sprang it with his thumb. It chopped shut with a dead metal sound in the quiet morning air. He cut the wires and wired the rings together and hung the traps over the horn of his saddle and mounted up. He looked at John Grady.

  We just aint found where they're usin is all. They might walk in a blind set.

  You think Travis's dogs would run em?

  Billy sat looking out at the long morning light on the rocks of the mesa. I dont know, he said. That's a pretty good question.

  They took a packhorse and carried a kitchen box and their soogans out to the mesa and made camp. They sat drinking coffee from tin cups and watching the coals flare and lapse in the wind's fanning of them. Far out on the plain below the lights of the cities lay shimmering in their grids with the dark serpentine of the river dividing them.

  I thought you had other business to attend to, Billy said.

  I do.

  You think it can wait.

  I hope it can wait. I aint sure this can.

  Well I'm glad you aint forgot all of your raising.

  I aint forgot anything.

  You're tired of me gettin on your ass though.

  You're entitled.

  They sipped their coffee. The wind blew. They pulled their blankets about their shoulders.

  I aint jealous you know.

  I never said you were.

  I know. You might of thought it. Truth is, I wouldnt pull your boots on at gunpoint.

  I know.

  Billy lit a cigarette with a brand from the fire and laid the brand back. He smoked. It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it?

  Yes. It does.

  There's a lot of things look better at a distance.

  Yeah?

  I think so.

  I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one.

  Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.

  They stayed out Saturday and they rode the country under the rim Sunday morning and midday they found a freshkilled calf lying in a gravel wash out on the floodplain. The mother was standing looking at it and they hazed her away and she walked off bawling and stood and looked back.

  Them old-time brocklefaces wouldnt of give up a calf thataway, Billy said. I'll bet they aint a mark on her.

  I'll bet there aint either, said John Grady.

  You aint good for nothin but to eat and shit, are you? Billy told the cow. The cow stared dully.

  You know they're holed up in them rocks somewhere under the rim.

  Yeah. I know it. But you'd have a hell of a time tryin to ride it and I sure aint goin to walk it.

  John Grady looked down at the dead calf. He leaned and spat. What do you want to do?

  Why dont we just pack up and ride back and call Travis and see what he says.

  All right. If he'd come out this evenin we could lay for em.

  Well he wont be comin out this evenin, I can tell you that.

  Why is that?

  Shit, said Billy. That old man wont hunt on a Sunday.

  John Grady smiled. What if our ox was in the ditch?

  He wouldnt give a damn if the whole outfit was in the ditch and you and me and Mac with it.

  Maybe he'd just let us borrow the dogs.

  He wouldnt do that. Anyways the dogs wont hunt on Sunday either. They're Christian dogs.

  Christian dogs.

  Yep. Raised that way.

  As they rode out along the upper end of the floodplain they heard another cow bawl and they halted and sat their horses and scanned the country below them.

  Do you see her? said Billy.

  Yeah. Yonder she is.

  Is it that same one?

  No.

  Billy leaned and spat. Well, he said. You know what that means. You want to ride down there?

  I dont see what would be the use in it.

  *

  THEY SET OUT across the broad creosote flats of the valley in the darkness before dawn on Tuesday. Archer had a set of six dogboxes that fitted atop the bed of the Reo truck they drove and the truck groaned along in low gear and the headlights swung up and down in pale yellow fulcrums picking up the riders that went before them in the dark and the shapes of the creosote bushes and the red eyes of the horses where they turned their heads or crossed ahead of the truck. The dogs jostling in their boxes rode in silence and the riders smoked or talked quietly among themselves. Their hats low, the corduroy collars of their duckingjackets turned up. Riding slowly up the broad flat valley ahead of the truck.

  The truck pulled up in a gravel fan at the head of the valley and the riders dismounted and dropped the reins on their horses and helped Travis and Archer unload the d
ogs and snap them onto the big harnessleather gangleads. The dogs backed and danced and whined and some raised their mouths and howled and the howls echoed off of the rimrock and back again and Travis halfhitched the first cast of dogs to the front bumper of the truck where their collective breath clouded whitely in the headlamps and the horses standing along the edge of the dark stamped and snorted and leaned to test the yellow light-beams with their noses. They handed down the dogs by their collars from the boxes on the other side of the truck and leashed them up as well and the stars in the east began to dim out one by one.

  They walked the dogs baying out along the gravel and Billy and John Grady rode below them and cut back and forth until they located the dead calf in the wash. It had been eaten to the bones and the bones had been dragged about over the ground. The ribcage lay with its curved tines upturned on the gravel plain like some great carnivorous plant brooding in the barren dawn.

  They called out to the doghandlers and Travis called back to the others and they came down the wash with the big bluetick and treeing walker hounds lunging at their leads and slobbering and sucking at the air with their noses. When they fetched up at the remains of the calf they drew back and shied and sniffed the ground and looked at Travis.

  Keep the horses back, called Travis. Let's give em a chance.

  He set about unleashing the dogs and urging them on. They padded about snuffing at the ground and the dogs that Archer was bringing down began to howl and moan and Archer turned them loose and they came barreling down the draw.

  Travis walked over to where Billy sat his horse. He stood with the leads braided up together and slung across his shoulder and listened.

  What do you think? said Billy.

  I dont know.

  I'll bet them calfkillin sons of bitches aint been gone from here long.

  I bet they aint either.

  What do you think?

  I dont know. If Smoke wont run em they aint goin to be run.

  Is that your best dog?

  No. But he's the dog for the job.

  Why is that?

  Cause he's run dogs before.

  What did he think about it?

  He never said.

  The dogs were casting about in the dark, returning and setting out again.

  It looks to me like they've left out of here in ever direction. How many are they up here do you reckon?

  I dont know. Three or four.

  I'll bet they's moren that.

  You may be right.

  Yonder he goes now.

  One of the dogs had sorted out the track and set off baying. The others came tearing out of the creosote and within seconds all eight hounds were in full cry.

  That sounds pretty hot on that dry ground, said Travis. Where's my horse at?