Hard Twisted (15 page)

In Blanding proper, on their third morning in the saddle, they'd eaten breakfast in a café and grazed the horse on the ball field of an old Mormon schoolhouse, the muffled hymnsong of the children within like some ballad sung in celebration of their passing. By afternooon they'd climbed the northward pass into rimrock and ponderosa and there glimpsed the notched and frosted summits of the Manti-La Sals.

Lottie held the horse, bedraggled and footsore, while Palmer mounted the steps of the Monticello courthouse. He rattled the doors and cupped his face to the plate glass.

What're we doin?

Thought I'd check out the grazin allotments. Figure who to talk to.

He returned to where she waited, and he took the reins from her and led the wasted horse afoot.

Now what?

I don't know about you, but I could stand me a hot bath and a soft bed.

Three women on a park bench besieged by children were chatting and laughing, and the women stopped laughing and the children stopped playing when they saw the strangers approach.

They joined their fellow lodgers for breakfast. There was an English couple en route to Phoenix, and a roughneck up from
Mexican Hat. A young Mormon family from Salt Lake in town to visit kin, and an earnest missionary, younger still, working his way south to Mexico.

The women talked of the food, and the weather, and the sere beauty of the country, while the men spoke of Wall Street, and of Baer versus Carnera, and of sundry world affairs. They all talked, even the children, of Dillinger's latest exploits.

Lottie, who knew nothing of bulls or bears or King Leopold, followed their conversation with darting eyes. None asked her age, or her views, or her relationship with the wiry man who laughed easily and tousled the children's hair and seemed so at peace with the world.

The horse had been stabled out back with the dairy cows, and now it lifted its head and nickered at Lottie's appearance. It had been curried and brushed, but not by her, and a yellow salve had been applied to the suppurating blister on its flank.

Look at you, she cooed, entering the stall and offering her hand to the whiskered lips, the suction-cup nostrils. The horse nosed at her shirtfront, and as she bent to whisper her secret, its ears flattened and pricked again at the sound of the barn door opening.

Girl and horse both turned to the figure of the old hotelier, backlit in silhouette.

You been ridin double on that horse?

Yes, sir.

For how long?

She started to answer, but did not.

Never mind, the man said, and the door slid closed behind him.

After an hour spent among the maps and the dusty ledgers, they left the stone courthouse and walked back to the hotel, which was, in truth, little more than a bungalow in a block of lesser bungalows set in the tidy village street grid. They found their room door locked, and the kitchen empty, and in the barn out back they found their clothes and bedrolls piled in the straw.

Palmer set down his satchel. So much for your Christian charity.

What happened?

I guess you might say the room and board come to more'n I expected.

You mean we's busted again?

Palmer toed through his bedroll. Flat as a flitter.

The horse lifted its dripping muzzle from a bucket.

What're we gonna do?

Well. It's like old H.P. used to say. When all your tolerable prospects is exhausted, you could always try workin' for wages.

He rode out at the noon hour, horse and rider fully outfitted, and in his absence Lottie roamed the streets and wandered the little downtown area at whose center the courthouse stood. Men touched their hats at her approach, and women turned and eyed her departure with maternal solicitude.

By dusk she had thrice circumnavigated the town, and now she sat on the cold curbstone across from the hotel and watched the shadows of the boarders within moving as a Punch-and-Judy in the lit upper windows. A woman stopped in passing to ask if she was all right.

I'm just waitin, Lottie told her.

Have you a place to sleep?

I got me a bedroll. It's in the barn just yonder.

The woman squatted beside her. She had a kind and weathered face. She said she was a volunteer with the Red Cross, and that she had a spare bedroom in her home nearby for just such emergencies, but Lottie assured her that there was no emergency, and that her father would soon return, and that she would be all right.

When night finally fell and the hotel windows all had darkened, Lottie hugged herself and rose and squinted north and south into the empty street. Another hour passed. Then, as by the errant force of her entreaty, there materialized in the darkness not a horseman in the road but a phantom afoot on the sidewalk, a sepulchral wraith bearing before it in outstretched arms some limp and boneless cohort.

Lottie backed as she rose.

Here, the woman said, draping the housecoat over her shoulders. I think we've had quite enough of this foolishness.

The widow Redd watched over her spectacles as Lottie rolled and snipped the cotton bandage and applied with great solemnity the barbed metal clips. She proffered the finished bundle for the woman's inspection.

That's fine, dear. Just like that.

A clamor erupted in the kitchen, and the woman set aside her work and started to rise but called instead for an explanation, the timbre of her voice summoning out of bedlam first silence and then the docile quiescence of children preparing the evening meal.

I don't know who it was that said many hands make for light work, the woman sighed, settling back into her seat. But I know it wasn't a mother.

Lottie smiled. Yes, ma'am.

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

No, ma'am. I was firstborn, and my mama died when I was three.

I'm so sorry. But perhaps that explains it.

Ma'am?

Your father's intolerable behavior. One must never underestimate the civilizing effect that a woman can have on a man raised among horses and livestock. Mark my words, a grown man without a wife is like a gander without a goose. Only half as tidy and twice as noisy.

Lottie giggled. Yes, ma'am.

Another outburst from the kitchen arose and subsided.

You sure was lucky, havin six healthy young 'uns.

The woman's eyes twinkled. Six still at home. Ten all together.

Each resumed her respective office, Lottie rolling and cutting and the woman stripping muslin from the bolt on the floor beside her, each listening to the low babble and purl of the kitchen voices.

Ma'am?

Yes, Johnny Rae?

What's it like? Havin babies, I mean.

The woman peered over her glasses. She removed them and set them on the table.

My dear, the miracle of childbirth is the Lord's special gift to all womankind. In a lifetime of lesser achievements, the arrival of my firstborn was my proudest and happiest moment on earth. I know that makes me sound like some dotty old dowager, but someday, the good Lord willing, you'll know exactly what I mean.

But don't it hurt?

Hurt? Pshaw. Pain is corporeal and fleeting and is a woman's lot in life. But the joy of motherhood? She closed her eyes and touched a hand to her breast. The joy of motherhood is a thing that lives in the soul and lasts a thousand lifetimes.

Palmer appeared in the doorway on Lottie's third morning in the warmly chaotic household of her widowed benefactress; a bloodshot and dirty Harlequin in calfskin gloves and a sagging red kerchief, the bay horse grazing hungrily on the lawn behind him.

Beggin your pardon, ma'am, he said, removing his hat, but I believe you got somethin belongs to me.

They rode out that same afternoon, doubled as before, with food in their bedrolls and the great blue horizon beckoning in all directions. Palmer smoking and scouting the country and Lottie slumped behind him, turning to glimpse over her shoulder the receding Monticello skyline.

He'd hired on with a cow outfit up on the Blue, he told her, until trouble, his old trail partner, had found him out again. Allegations were made over some missing liquor, and he, being the new man, had fallen under suspicion. A small misunderstanding that might easily have been resolved but for the mulish intransigence of the foreman, leaving wages unpaid and scores, therefore, unsettled.

They followed the dirt road south until they'd cleared sight of the town and come to an old wagon track that crosscut through the stunted cedars heavy with mistletoe. Here Palmer pulled rein and turned the horse and drew his foot from the stirrup.

Hop down, he told her.

What for?

On account I said so is what for.

She dismounted and stood on the dusty selvage. She looked up at Palmer in the saddle, and at the rising of the cedar forest, and at the darker blue pleating of the mountain beyond.

Now what?

Untie that coffeepot.

She worked the saddle strings while Palmer leaned and opened his valise, arching his back and snugging the revolver into his waistband. He lifted the canteen and drank from it, the water dribbling onto his filthy shirtfront. He wiped at his mouth and doffed his hat and slung the canteen strap over his shoulder in the manner of a Mexican bandolier.

You just keep out of sight, he told her. And be ready to ride.

You could just let it be.

What?

Is it worth gettin yourself shot over two days' wages?

The horse stamped. Palmer looked at her and looked at the mountain and leaned and spat in the dust.

Darlin, he said, I thought you might of knowed me better by now.

She started at the sound of the hoofbeats. There were two sets by her reckoning, moving at a trot. She stood and took up the coffeepot just as Palmer appeared in the roadway before her.

He sat astride the bay horse, but now with a catchrope dallied to his saddle horn and a sleek buckskin filly side-wheeling in the cross-trail behind him. The new dun horse was groomed and saddled, her stirrups pinioned to the horn. She wore no bridle,
but Palmer, or someone before him, had knotted the woven catchrope into a mecate.

Get on, he said, wiping his face with a shirtsleeve. She's green, but she'll pony.

Where'd she come from?

He twisted in his saddle and sighted the tree line above them.

Can you just this one time do what you're told?

She took down the stirrups and slid her whole hand under the latigo.

No time for that. Let's go.

Resting the coffeepot on the pommel, she stepped into the stirrup and hopped once and swung herself into the saddle. The saddle was huge and the stirrups were overlong and she reached them only on tiptoes.

Anyone come past here while I was gone?

I don't think so. I fell asleep.

Gripping the horn, she leaned and rocked until the saddle again was centered. Palmer, meanwhile, had uncoiled the catchrope and held it in his gloved fist.

You ready to ride?

She shifted forward and regripped the horn with her free hand. I'm ready.

He touched his heels to the bay horse, and they moved off in tandem, the bay loping and the buckskin trotting easily behind. He some cowboy Quixote in his gaudy kerchief and bandolier, and she his loyal Panza, her head bobbing, her kettle held aloft as though awaiting some signal to serve him.

They quartered the sun across the southern horizon, traversing the high plain and dropping down over the pass. Palmer turning
to mark her, or the road behind her. They saw no cars and no other riders.

We get you a proper bridle and we could see us some of this country, he called to her. It don't take much money to live on the hoof.

On the outskirts of Blanding they picked their way into a side wash that grew into a narrow canyon. They followed the canyon westward, Palmer leaning or standing in the stirrups to read the silted washbottom.

The canyon forked and forked again, the air cooling as the walls rose higher around them leaving sunlight stranded on their upper palisades. The footing was soft and crusted in places where water once had run. After a while the horses perked and quickened, and they heard the lilting trickle of a spring.

They entered a massive chamber of red-rock walls draped in trailing moss where seepwater bled from the cool sandstone to pool in greenish puddles. The floor of the chamber was hardened sand, with a ring of firestones at its center.

They stood down from their horses and unsaddled them and left them loose to drink. Lottie was tired and sunburned, and she slumped with her back to a rock slab while Palmer knelt with the horses, wetting his kerchief and dabbing his banded forehead.

Need to get you a hat.

Lottie nodded, her eyes still closed.

How do you like that claybank?

She didn't respond.

I'm talkin to you.

Ain't they gonna come lookin for her?

Palmer rose and crossed to his soogan. He squatted and felt
within it, removing a stoppered whiskey bottle. The new horse lifted its head.

Don't worry about that, Palmer told her, uncorking the bottle and drinking and wiping his face on a shirtsleeve. I run the whole remuda. By the time they finish countin noses, we'll be long gone.

Lottie was silent. Palmer rose again and crossed to stand above her.

What is it?

Nothin.

Like hell nothin. You gonna sull up now cuz I pinched you a nice ridin horse?

I ain't sulled.

The hell you ain't. He drank again and turned and studied the horses where they stood with their heads lowered. Don't think I don't know what you're doin.

I ain't doin nothin.

Yes, you are. You're settin there all high and holy and you're passin judgments on me.

Am not.

He walked to where the new horse was standing and set down the bottle and gripped her roughly by the mane, lifting her head and leading her in a circle to where Lottie had risen and stood now with her heart in her throat.

You don't want this horse, is that it?

She didn't respond. Palmer drew the pistol from his waistband and cocked it and took aim at the horse's head.