All the Pretty Horses (15 page)

Yessir. Where’s he at?

He is enroute.

He’s where?

Enroute. From Mexico. The hacendado smiled. He has been standing at stud.

You intend to raise racehorses?

No. I intend to raise quarterhorses.

To use here on the ranch?

Yes.

You aim to breed this stallion to your mares.

Yes. What is your opinion?

I dont have a opinion. I’ve known a few breeders and some with a world of experience but I’ve noticed they were all pretty short on opinions. I do know there’s been some good cowhorses sired out of thoroughbreds.

Yes. How much importance do you give to the mare?

Same as the sire. In my opinion.

Most breeders place more confidence in the horse.

Yessir. They do.

The hacendado smiled. I happen to agree with you.

John Grady leaned and tipped the ash from his cigarette. You dont have to agree with me.

No. Nor you with me.

Yessir.

Tell me about the horses up on the mesa.

There may be a few of them good mares still up there but not many. The rest I’d pretty much call scrubs. Even some of them might make a half decent cowhorse. Just all around using kind of a horse. Spanish ponies, what we used to call em. Chihuahua horses. Old Barb stock. They’re small and they’re a little on the light side and they dont have the hindquarters you’d want in a cuttinghorse but you can rope off of em …

He stopped. He looked at the hat in his lap and ran his fingers along the crease and looked up. I aint tellin you nothin you dont know.

The hacendado took up the coffeepitcher and poured their cups.

Do you know what a criollo is?

Yessir. That’s a argentine horse.

Do you know who Sam Jones was?

I do if you’re talkin about a horse.

Crawford Sykes?

That’s another of Uncle Billy Anson’s horses. I heard about that horse all my life.

My father bought horses from Mr Anson.

Uncle Billy and my grandaddy were friends. They were born within three days of each other. He was the seventh son of the Earl of Litchfield. His wife was a actress on the stage.

You are from Christoval?

San Angelo. Or just outside of San Angelo.

The hacendado studied him.

Do you know a book called
The Horse of America,
by Wallace?

Yessir. I’ve read it front to back.

The hacendado leaned back in his chair. One of the cats rose and stretched.

You rode here from Texas.

Yessir.

You and your friend.

Yessir.

Just the two of you?

John Grady looked at the table. The paper cat stepped thin and slant among the shapes of cats thereon. He looked up again. Yessir, he said. Just me and him.

The hacendado nodded and stubbed out his cigarette and pushed back his chair. Come, he said. I will show you some horses.

T
HEY SAT
opposite on their bunks with their elbows on their knees leaning forward and looking down at their folded hands. After a while Rawlins spoke. He didnt look up.

It’s a opportunity for you. Aint no reason for you to turn it down that I can see.

If you dont want me to I wont. I’ll stick right here.

It aint like you was goin off someplace.

We’ll still be workin together. Bringin in horses and all.

Rawlins nodded. John Grady watched him.

You just say the word and I’ll tell him no.

Aint no reason to do that, said Rawlins. Its a opportunity for you.

In the morning they ate breakfast and Rawlins went out to work the pens. When he came in at noon John Grady’s tick was rolled up at the head of his bunk and his gear was gone. Rawlins went on to the back to wash up for dinner.

T
HE BARN
was built on the english style and it was sheathed with milled one by fours and painted white and it had a cupola and a weathervane on top of the cupola. His room was at the far end next to the saddleroom. Across the bay was another cubicle where there lived an old groom who’d worked for Rocha’s father. When John Grady led his horse through the barn the old man came out and stood and looked at the horse. Then he looked at its feet. Then he looked at John Grady. Then he turned and went back into his room and shut the door.

In the afternoon while he was working one of the new mares in the corral outside the barn the old man came out and watched him. John Grady said him a good afternoon and the old man nodded and said one back. He watched the mare. He said she was stocky. He said rechoncha and John Grady didnt know what it meant and he asked the old man and the old man made a barrel shape with his arms and John Grady thought he meant that she was pregnant and he said no she wasnt and the old man shrugged and went back in.

When he took the mare back to the barn the old man was pulling the cinchstrap on the black Arabian. The girl stood with her back to him. When the shadow of the mare darkened the bay door she turned and looked.

Buenas tardes, he said.

Buenas tardes, she said. She reached and slid her fingers under the strap to check it. He stood at the bay door. She raised up and passed the reins over the horse’s head and put her foot in the stirrup and stood up into the saddle and turned the horse and rode down the bay and out the door.

That night as he lay in his cot he could hear music from the house and as he was drifting to sleep his thoughts were of horses
and of the open country and of horses. Horses still wild on the mesa who’d never seen a man afoot and who knew nothing of him or his life yet in whose souls he would come to reside forever.

They went up into the mountains a week later with the mozo and two of the vaqueros and after the vaqueros had turned in in their blankets he and Rawlins sat by the fire on the rim of the mesa drinking coffee. Rawlins took out his tobacco and John Grady took out cigarettes and shook the pack at him. Rawlins put his tobacco back.

Where’d you get the ready rolls?

In La Vega.

He nodded. He took a brand from the fire and lit the cigarette and John Grady leaned and lit his own.

You say she goes to school in Mexico City?

Yeah.

How old is she?

Seventeen.

Rawlins nodded. What kind of a school is it she goes to?

I dont know. It’s some kind of a prep school or somethin.

Fancy sort of school.

Yeah. Fancy sort of school.

Rawlins smoked. Well, he said. She’s a fancy sort of girl.

No she aint.

Rawlins was leaning against his propped saddle, sitting with his legs crossed sideways on to the fire. The sole of his right boot had come loose and he’d fastened it back with hogrings stapled through the welt. He looked at the cigarette.

Well, he said. I’ve told you before but I dont reckon you’ll listen now any more than you done then.

Yeah. I know.

I just figure you must enjoy cryin yourself to sleep at night.

John Grady didnt answer.

This one of course she probably dates guys got their own airplanes let alone cars.

You’re probably right.

I’m glad to hear you say it.

It dont help nothin though, does it?

Rawlins sucked on the cigarette. They sat for a long time. Finally he pitched the stub of the cigarette into the fire. I’m goin to bed, he said.

Yeah, said John Grady. I guess that’s a good idea.

They spread their soogans and he pulled off his boots and stood them beside him and stretched out in his blankets. The fire had burned to coals and he lay looking up at the stars in their places and the hot belt of matter that ran the chord of the dark vault overhead and he put his hands on the ground at either side of him and pressed them against the earth and in that coldly burning canopy of black he slowly turned dead center to the world, all of it taut and trembling and moving enormous and alive under his hands.

What’s her name? said Rawlins in the darkness.

Alejandra. Her name is Alejandra.

Sunday afternoon they rode into the town of La Vega on horses they’d been working out of the new string. They’d had their hair cut with sheepshears by an esquilador at the ranch and the backs of their necks above their collars were white as scars and they wore their hats cocked forward on their heads and they looked from side to side as they jogged along as if to challenge the countryside or anything it might hold. They raced the animals on the road at a fifty-cent bet and John Grady won and they swapped horses and he won on Rawlins’ horse. They rode the horses at a gallop and they rode them at a trot and the horses were hot and lathered and squatted and stamped in the road and the campesinos afoot in the road with baskets of garden-stuff or pails covered with cheesecloth would press to the edge of the road or climb through the roadside brush and cactus to watch wide eyed the young horsemen on their horses passing and the horses mouthing froth and champing and the riders calling to one another in their alien tongue and passing in a
muted fury that seemed scarcely to be contained in the space allotted them and yet leaving all unchanged where they had been: dust, sunlight, a singing bird.

In the tienda the topmost shirts folded upon the shelves when shaken out retained a square of paler color where dust had settled on the cloth or sun had faded it or both. They sorted through the stacks to find one with sleeves long enough for Rawlins, the woman holding out the sleeve along the outstretched length of his arm, the pins caught in her mouth like a seamstress where she meant to refold, repin the shirt, shaking her head doubtfully. They carried stiff new canvas pants to the rear of the store and tried them on in a bedroom that had three beds in it and a cold concrete floor that had once been painted green. They sat on one of the beds and counted their money.

How much are these britches if they’re fifteen pesos?

Just remember that two pesos is two bits.

You remember it. How much are they?

A dollar and eighty-seven cents.

Hell, said Rawlins. We’re in good shape. We get paid in five days.

They bought socks and underwear and they piled everything on the counter while the woman totted up the figures. Then she wrapped the new clothes in two separate parcels and tied them with string.

What have you got left? said John Grady.

Four dollars and somethin.

Get a pair of boots.

I lack some havin enough.

I’ll let you have the difference.

You sure?

Yeah.

We got to have some operatin capital for this evenin.

We’ll still have a couple of dollars. Go on.

What if you want to buy that sweet thing a soda pop?

It’ll set me back about four cents. Go on.

Rawlins handled the boots dubiously. He stood one against the sole of his own raised boot.

These things are awful small.

Try these.

Black?

Sure. Why not.

Rawlins pulled on the new boots and walked up and down the floor. The woman nodded approvingly.

What do you think? said John Grady.

They’re all right. These underslung heels take some gettin used to.

Let’s see you dance.

Do what?

Dance.

Rawlins looked at the woman and he looked at John Grady. Shit, he said. You’re lookin at a dancin fool.

Hit it there a few steps.

Rawlins executed a nimble ninestep stomp on the old board floor and stood grinning in the dust he’d raised.

Qué guapo, said the woman.

John Grady grinned and reached in his pocket for his money.

We’ve forgot to get gloves, said Rawlins.

Gloves?

Gloves. We get done sportin we’re goin to have to go back to work.

You got a point.

Them old hot maggie ropes have eat my hands about up.

John Grady looked at his own hands. He asked the woman where the gloves were and they bought a pair apiece.

They stood at the counter while she wrapped them. Rawlins was looking down at his boots.

The old man’s got some good silk manilla ropes in the barn, said John Grady. I’ll slip one out to you quick as I get a chance.

Black boots, said Rawlins. Aint that the shits? I always wanted to be a badman.

* * *

A
LTHOUGH THE NIGHT
was cool the double doors of the grange stood open and the man selling the tickets was seated in a chair on a raised wooden platform just within the doors so that he must lean down to each in a gesture akin to benevolence and take their coins and hand them down their tickets or pass upon the ticketstubs of those who were only returning from outside. The old adobe hall was buttressed along its outer walls with piers not all of which had been a part of its design and there were no windows and the walls were s wagged and cracked. A string of electric bulbs ran the length of the hall at either side and the bulbs were covered with paper bags that had been painted and the brushstrokes showed through in the light and the reds and greens and blues were all muted and much of a piece. The floor was swept but there were pockets of seeds underfoot and drifts of straw and at the far end of the hall a small orchestra labored on a stage of grainpallets under a band-shell rigged from sheeting. Along the foot of the stage were lights set in fruitcans among colored crepe that smoldered throughout the night. The mouths of the cans were lensed with tinted cellophane and they cast upon the sheeting a shadowplay in the lights and smoke of antic demon players and a pair of goathawks arced chittering through the partial darkness overhead.

John Grady and Rawlins and a boy named Roberto from the ranch stood just beyond the reach of light at the door among the cars and wagons and passed among themselves a pint medicine-bottle of mescal. Roberto held the bottle to the light.

A las chicas, he said.

He drank and handed off the bottle. They drank. They poured salt from a paper onto their wrists and licked it off and Roberto pushed the cob stopper into the neck of the bottle and hid the bottle behind the tire of a parked truck and they passed around a pack of chewing gum.

Listos? he said.

Listos.

She was dancing with a tall boy from the San Pablo ranch and she wore a blue dress and her mouth was red. He and Rawlins and Roberto stood with other youths along the wall and watched the dancers and watched beyond the dancers the young girls at the far side of the hall. He moved along past the groups. The air smelled of straw and sweat and a rich spice of colognes. Under the bandshell the accordion player struggled with his instrument and slammed his boot on the boards in countertime and stepped back and the trumpet player came forward. Her eyes above the shoulder of her partner swept across him where he stood. Her black hair done up in a blue ribbon and the nape of her neck pale as porcelain. When she turned again she smiled.