Cities of the Plain

  Where the dogs struck that first time just below that big slide of gravel? I'll bet we rode within fifty feet of that den. You know they're in those big rocks.

  THEY RODE OUT carrying across the pommels of their saddles a longhanded spade, a mattock, a fourfoot iron prybar. Socorro had come to her door in wrapper and hairpapers while they were finding something to eat and shooed them to the table while she cooked eggs and sausage and made coffee. She packed their lunch while they ate.

  Billy looked out the window to where the horses stood saddled at the kitchen door. Let's eat and get gone, he said. And do not tell her where we're goin.

  All right.

  I dont want to have to listen to it.

  They crossed into the Valenciana pasture before the sun was up and rode past the old well. The cattle moved off before them in the gray half-light. Billy rode with the spade over his shoulder. I'll tell you one thing, he said.

  What's that.

  There's places up in them rocks where if they are denned you damn sure wont dig em out.

  Yeah. I know it.

  When they reached the trail along the western edge of the floodplain the sun was up behind the mesa and the light that overshot the plain crossed to the rocks above them so that they rode out the remnant night in a deep blue sink with the new day falling slowly down about them. They rode to the upper end and came back slowly, Billy in the lead studying the ground at either side of the horse, leaning with his forearm across the horse's withers.

  Are you a tracker? said John Grady.

  I'm a trackin fool. I can track lowflyin birds.

  What do you see?

  Not a damn thing.

  The sun came down the rocks and over the broken ground toward them. They sat the horses.

  They been runnin these cowtracks, Billy said. Or did run. I dont think they were all denned together. I think there was two separate bunches.

  That could be.

  Any close place like that right yonder?

  Yeah?

  There's doghair on ever rock. Let's just circle up here and keep our eyes open.

  They came back up the valley close under the wall among the boulders and scree. They circled among the rocks and studied the ground. It was weeks since the last rain and what dogtracks had been printed in the clay trails below them had long since been trodden out by the cattle and in the dry ground the dogs made no track at all.

  Let's go back up here, said Billy.

  They rode along the upper slope close under the rock bluffs. They crossed the gravel slide and rode under the old shamans and the ledgerless arcana inscribed upon those outsize tablets.

  I know where they're at, Billy said.

  He turned the horse on the narrow trail and rode back down through the rocks. John Grady followed. Billy halted and dropped the reins and stood down. He passed afoot through a narrow place in the rocks and then he came back out again and pointed down the hill.

  They've come in here from three sides, he said. Down yonder the cows have come right up to the rocks but they cant get in. See that tall grass?

  I see it.

  Reason it's tall is the cows couldnt get in there to eat it.

  John Grady dismounted and followed him into the rocks. They walked up and back and they studied the ground. The horses stood looking in.

  Let's just set a while, said Billy.

  They sat. Within the rocks it was cool. The ground was cold. Billy smoked.

  I hear em, John Grady said.

  I do too.

  They rose and stood listening. The mewling stopped. Then it began again.

  The den was in a corner of the rocks and it angled back under a boulder. They lay on their bellies in the grass and listened.

  I can smell em, Billy said.

  I can too.

  They listened.

  How are we goin to get em out?

  Billy looked at him. You aint, he said.

  Maybe they'll come out.

  What for?

  We could get some milk and set it out for them.

  I dont think they'll come out. Listen at how young they are. I'll bet their eyes aint open. What do you want with em anyway? he said.

  I dont know. I hate leavin em down there.

  We might could twist em out. Get a ocotillo long enough.

  John Grady lay peering into the darkness under the rock. Let me have your cigarette, he said.

  Billy handed it across.

  There's another entrance, John Grady said. There's air blowin out of this one. See the smoke?

  Billy reached and took the cigarette. Yeah, he said. But the den is still under that rock and the rock's the size of Mac's kitchen.

  A kid could crawl down in there.

  Where you goin to get a kid at? And suppose he got stuck down in there?

  You could tie a rope to his legs.

  They'd tie one to your neck if anything happened to him. Let me have your knife.

  John Grady handed him his pocketknife and he rose and went off and after a while he came back with an ocotillo branch. It was a good ten feet long and he sat and trimmed the thorns off the lower couple of feet for a handhold and then they lay and took turns for the next half hour with the ocotillo down in the hole turning it in an effort to twist up the fur of the pups in the thorns.

  We dont even know if this is long enough, Billy said.

  I think what it is is that the hole's too big down there. You'd have to run the end of it underneath them some way to do any good and that would just be luck.

  I aint heard one of em squeal for a while.

  They might of moved back in a corner or somethin.

  Billy sat up and pulled the ocotillo out of the hole and examined the end of it.

  Is there any hair on it?

  Yeah. Some. But there probably aint no shortage of hair down there.

  What do you think that rock weighs?

  Shit, said Billy.

  All we'd have to do is tip it over.

  I'll bet that damn rock weighs five tons. How in the hell are you goin to tip it over?

  I dont believe it would be all that hard.

  And where you goin to tip it to?

  We could tip it this way.

  Then it'd be layin over the hole.

  So what? The pups are at the back.

  What makes you so bullheaded? You cant get the horses in here and if you could they'd pull the damn rock over on top of theirselves.

  They wouldnt have to be in here. They could be outside.

  The ropes wont reach.

  They will if we tie em end to end.

  They still wont. It'd take near one just to go around the rock.

  I think I can make it reach.

  You got a ropestretcher in your saddlebags? Anyway, no two horses could tip that rock over.

  They could with some leverage.

  Bullheaded, Billy said. Worst case I believe I ever saw.

  There's some fairsized saplin trees at the upper end of the wash. If we could cut one of em with the mattock we could use it for a prypole. Then we could tie the rope to the end of it and that would save havin to tie it around the rock. We'd be killin two birds with one stone.

  Two horses and two cowboys is more like it.

  We should of brought a axe.

  You let me know when you're ready to go back. I'm goin to see if I can catch me a little nap.

  All right.

  John Grady rode up to the wash with the mattock across the saddle in front of him. Billy stretched out and crossed his boots one over the top of the other and pulled his hat over his face. It was totally silent in the basin. No wind, no bird. No call of cattle. He was almost asleep when he heard the first dull chock of the mattock blade. He smiled into the darkness of his hatcrown and slept.

  When John Grady came back he was dragging behind the horse a cottonwood sapling he'd topped out and limbed. It was about eighteen feet long and close to six inches in diameter at the base and the weight of it hanging by the loop of ro
pe from the saddlehorn was pulling his saddle over. He rode half standing in the offside stirrup with his left leg hanging over the sapling trunk and the horse was walking on eggshells. When he reached the rocks he stepped down and unlooped the rope and let the pole down on the ground and walked in and kicked Billy's bootsole.

  Wake up and piss, he said. The world's on fire.

  Let the son of a bitch burn.

  Come on and give me a hand.

  Billy shoved the hat back from his face and looked up. All right, he said.

  They tied John Grady's catchrope to the end of the pole and stood it up behind the rock and made a cairn of rocks to bridge between the butt of it and the next ledge of rock up the slope. Then John Grady joined the home ends of the two reatas with a running splice and looped a broad Y in the end of Billy's rope that would afford loops for both pommels. They stood the horses side by side and dropped the loops over the horns and looked up at the rope bellying down from the end of the pole and they looked at each other and then they untracted the horses and walked them forward by the cheekstraps. The rope stretched taut. The pole bowed. They talked the horses forward and the horses leaned into their work. Billy looked up at the rope. If that sumbuck breaks, he said, we're goin to be huntin a hole.

  The pole sawed suddenly sideways and stopped again and stood quivering.

  Shit, said Billy.

  I hear you. If that thing comes out of there you'll be huntin more than a hole.

  We'll be huntin a undertaker.

  What do you want to do?

  It's your show, cowboy.

  John Grady walked around and checked the pole and came back. Let's head the horses a little bit more to the left, he said.

  All right.

  They eased the horses forward. The rope stretched and began to unwind slowly on its axis. They looked at the rope and they looked at the horses. They looked at each other. Then the rock moved. It began to rear haltingly up out of its resting place these thousand years and it tilted and tottered and fell forward into the little grotto with a thud they could feel through their bootsoles. The pole clattered among the rocks, the horses recovered and stood.

  Kiss my ass, said Billy.

  They set to digging in the bare sunless earth that the rock had vacated and in twenty minutes they'd uncovered the den. The pups were back in the farthest corner huddled in a pile. John Grady lay on his stomach and reached down and back and brought one out and held it to the light. It just filled the palm of his hand and it was fat and it swung its small muzzle about and whined and blinked its pale blue eyes.

  Hold him.

  How many are they?

  I dont know.

  He ran his arm down the hole again and reached back and brought out another. Billy sat and piled the dogs together in the crook of his knee as they came. There were four of them. I'll bet these little shits are hungry, he said. Is that all of em?

  John Grady lay with his cheek in the dirt. I think that's them, he said.

  The dogs were trying to hide under Billy's knee. He held one up by its small nape. It hung like a sock, glaring bleakly at the world with its watery eyes.

  Listen a minute, said John Grady.

  They sat listening.

  There's anothern.

  He ran his arm down the hole and lay on the ground feeling about in the dark beneath them. He closed his eyes. I got him, he said.

  The dog he brought up was dead.

  Yonder's your runt, Billy said.

  The little dog was curled and stiff, its paws before its face. He put it down and pushed his shoulder deeper into the hole.

  Can you find him?

  No.

  Billy stood. Let me try, he said. My arm's longern yours.

  All right.

  Billy lay in the dirt and ran his arm down into the hole. Come here you little turd, he said.

  Have you got him?

  Yeah. Damn if I dont think he's offerin to bite me.

  The dog came up mewling and twisting in his hand.

  This aint no runt, he said.

  Let me see him.

  He's fat as a butterball.

  John Grady took the little dog and held it in his cupped hand.

  Wonder what was he doin off back there by himself?

  Maybe he was with the one that died.

  John Grady held the dog up and looked into its small wrinkled face. I think I got me a dog, he said.

  HE WORKED all through the month of December at the cabin. He carried tools horseback up the Bell Springs trail and he left a mattock and a spade beside the road and worked on the roadway by hand in the evenings when it was cool, filling the washes and cutting brush and ditching and filling in the gullies and squatting and eyeing the terrain for the way the water would run. In three weeks' time he had the worst of the trash hauled or burned and he had painted the stove and patched the roof and driven the truck for the first time up the old road all the way to the cabin with the new lengths of blue sheetmetal stovepipe in the truckbed and the cans of paint and whitewash and new pine shelving for the kitchen.

  At the wreckingyard out on Alameda he went up and down the aisles of old stacked windowsash with a steel tape measuring by height and width and checking figures against those he'd jotted on the notepad in his shirtpocket. He dragged the windows he wanted out into the aisle and got the truck and backed it to the door and he and the yardman loaded the windows in the truck. The man sold him some panes of glass to replace the broken ones and showed him how to score and break them with a glasscutter and then gave him the glasscutter.

  He bought an old Mennonite kitchen table made of pine and the man helped him carry it out and set it in the bed of the truck and the man told him to take the drawer out and stand it in the bed.

  You go around a curve it'll come out of there.

  Yessir.

  Liable to go plumb overboard.

  Yessir.

  And take that glass and put it up there in the cab with you if you dont want it broke.

  All right.

  I'll see you.

  Yessir.

  He worked long into the nights and he'd come in and unsaddle the horse and brush it in the partial darkness of the barn bay and walk across to the kitchen and get his supper out of the warmer and sit and eat alone at the table by the shaded light of the lamp and listen to the faultless chronicling of the ancient clockworks in the hallway and the ancient silence of the desert in the darkness about. There were times he'd fall asleep in the chair and wake at some strange hour and stagger up and cross the yard to the barn and get the pup and take it and put it in its box on the floor beside his bunk and lie face down with his arm over the side of the bunk and his hand in the box so that it would not cry and then fall asleep in his clothes.

  Christmas came and went. In the afternoon of the first Sunday in January Billy rode up and crossed the little creek and halloed the house and stood down. John Grady came to the door.

  What are you doin? Billy said.

  Paintin windowsash.

  Billy nodded. He looked about. You aint goin to ask me in?

  John Grady passed his sleeve along the side of his nose. He had a paintbrush in one hand and his hands were blue. I didnt know I had to, he said. Come on in.

  Billy came in and stood. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and looked around. He walked into the other room and he came back. The adobe brick walls had been whitewashed and the inside of the little house was bright and monastically austere. The clay floors were swept and slaked and he'd beaten them down with a homemade maul contrived from a fencepost with a section of board nailed to the bottom.

  The old place dont look half bad. You aim to get you a santo to put in the corner yonder?

  I might.

  Billy nodded.

  I'll take all the help I can get, John Grady said.

  I hear you, said Billy. He looked at the bright blue of the sash of the windows. Did they not have any blue paint? he said.

  They said this was about a
s close as they could get.

  You fixin to paint the door the same color?

  Yep.

  You got another brush?

  Yeah. I got one.

  Billy took off his hat and hung it on one of the pegs by the door. Well, he said. Where's it at?

  John Grady poured paint from his paintcan into an empty one and Billy squatted on one knee and stirred the brush into the paint. He passed the flat of the brush carefully across the rim of the can and painted a bright blue band down the center stile. He looked across his shoulder.

  How come you to have a extra brush?

  Just in case some fool showed up wantin to paint, I reckon.

  They quit before dark. A cool wind was coming down from the gap in the Jarillas. They stood by the truck and Billy smoked and they watched the running fire deepening to darkness over the mountains to the west.

  It's goin to be cold up here in the wintertime, pardner, Billy said.

  I know it.

  Cold and lonely.

  It wont be lonely.

  I'm talkin about her.

  Mac says she can come down and work with Socorro whenever she wants.

  Well that's good. I dont expect there'll be a lot of empty chairs at the table on them days.

  John Grady smiled. I expect you're right.

  When have you seen her?

  Not for a while.

  How long a while?

  I dont know. Three weeks.

  Billy shook his head.

  She's still there, John Grady said.

  You got a lot of confidence in her.

  Yes I do.

  What do you think is goin to happen when her and Socorro get their heads together?

  She dont tell everthing she knows.

  Her or Socorro?

  Either one.

  I hope you're right.

  They aint goin to run her off, Billy. There's more to her than just she's good lookin.

  Billy flipped the cigarette out across the yard. We better get on back.

  You can take the truck if you want.

  That's all right.

  Go on. I'll ride that old crowbait of yours.

  Billy nodded. Ride him blind through the brush tryin to beat me back. Get him snakebit and I dont know what all.

  Go on. I'll ride behind the truck.

  Horse like that it takes a special hand to ride him in the dark.

  I'll bet it does.

  A rider that can instill confidence in a animal.

  John Grady smiled and shook his head.

  A rider that's accustomed to the ways and the needs of the nighthorse. Ride the bedgrounds slow. Ride left to right. Sing to them snuffies. Dont pop no matches.

  I hear you.