Hold of the Bone (25 page)

“You control her. Don't panic and don't let her panic.” She trains a judicious eye on Frank. “You spooked yourself, didn't you? It's easy enough to do. But Buttons is a good horse. She's been on this trail so many times she could do it blindfolded. This would be a lot easier if you'd just relax and trust her.”

“Easy for you to say. You ride like you're part of the horse.”

“Do you think I'd bring you here if I thought you'd get hurt?”

“I don't know.” She brings Buttons to a quick stop. “Would you?”

Sal stops beside her. “No. I wouldn't.”

The horses shift their weight while the women hold each other's gaze. For no discernible reason, Frank believes Sal. The belief springs purely from instinct, from that whispery knowing of the blood and bone.

Frank nudges Buttons ahead. The
portrero
rises gently into a dappled forest of east-leaning pines. The horses step without sound onto a carpet of brown needles. Sal stops and drops from her mount. The dogs sit and pant, glad for the rest. Sal loops her reins around a branch and looks expectantly at Frank.

“Am I supposed to get off?”

Sal nods. “Do you need help?”

Her legs feel like wood blocks glued to the saddle and she grumbles, “A ladder would be nice.”

Sal moves toward her, but Frank waves her off. Squelching a very natural fear of being neither on nor off an unpredictable quarter-ton beast, she loosens her right foot from the stirrup. With a deep breath she swings an aching leg over Button's rump and kicks her. The horse knickers but doesn't move. Frank starts to slide off, realizing too late that her left foot is still in the stirrup. She lands awkwardly, holding to the saddle and praying Buttons won't move as she works her foot free.

Sal chuckles. “Give her a good scratch under her cinch or saddle. That way, she'll start to expect something good when you get off.”

Stifling a groan at the ache in her ass, Frank scratches the big horse with genuine appreciation. Sal feeds them each an apple. Frank starts to loop the reins around a pine, but Sal points to the dead tree in front of Dune. “Tie her there. You don't want to get sap on the reins.”

She offers Frank the canteen. The water is warm and metallic, but Frank drinks greedily. She notices Sal takes a sip only before stashing the canteen back into a saddle bag. The dogs get nothing, nor do they seem to expect it. She looks around while Sal rolls a cigarette.

They are on the ridge, but not quite at the top. A wall of gray granite rising over the pines deepens the shade of the hurst. As if from memory, it comes to Frank that this is a good and safe encampment; no one is likely to approach from the narrow ridge above, nor from the steep slopes below. There is only the
portrero
to be watched. She frowns, wondering how she knows that. Sal offers the cigarette. Frank shakes her head. Wind sifts through the boughs, bringing the scent of sun-warmed pine and tobacco. And something else. Frank lifts her nose to the air. It smells faintly of the sea.

Sal toes a hole through the needles. She takes one more drag and spits on the cigarette. It goes out with a hiss and she pinches off the wet end and puts the butt in her pocket. She walks past and in the dim light of the copse she seems like an ethereal conjuring. Frank wants to touch her, to make sure she is real, but Sal is already disappearing through the trees. The wind brushes Frank's arm. She jumps and trots stiffly to catch up. Ahead of her, Sal boosts Cicero up onto a ledge, and after lifting Kook onto the boulder she looks back at Frank. Bone stands beside Frank and Sal tells her before clambering onto the boulder, “You'll have to help him up.”

Frank looks at the head-high rock, then at Bone. “Not gonna bite me, are ya?”

He looks up at her, wagging his stump. Frank pats the rock like she saw Sal do, and Bone stands against it. She shoves him up and over the ledge, then pulls herself up using cracks and footholds. Boulders clog the way, but none Bone can't maneuver himself. He hops over the bare granite and she follows, emerging into a shallow bowl at the top of the ridge. A solitary bush grows on one side and the dogs sprawl in its sparse shade. Sal scrambles onto the far lip of the bowl and holds a hand to Frank. She takes it. It is rough and brown and dry and Frank has the crazy notion that Sal is more of the land than of human origin.

“Whoa.” Frank is on the dizzying verge of the mountain. It falls away below her, down hundreds of feet through brush and boulder, gradually fanning into jagged folds of ridge and canyon. She backs from the edge. Cicero leaps onto the granite bench and stands proudly, chest puffed like he's posing for a hunting magazine.

Sal sits on the edge of the world, legs dangling. She pats the flat rock. “Come sit.”

“I'm good right here.”

Sal fishes the half-smoked butt from her pocket and lights it. She takes a drag and holds it out. The cigarette is tempting. Frank is reminded again that with one quick shove Sal could disappear her so that even the coyotes and crows couldn't find her. Still she steps forward. She sits cross-legged, a couple feet from the edge, and takes the cigarette. The smoke is cool and tastes sweetly of mint. She takes
a second drag before passing it back. “I'm really not much of a smoker—a pack'll last me a year—but this is good stuff.”

Sal nods. “It's my julep blend.”

“You make your own tobacco?”

“Yes. It's easy. It grows wild near the ranch house.”

“You have everything you need here, don't you?”

“Pretty much.”

The wind races up the flank of the mountain face, carrying the scent of salt and rainless brush. It kisses Frank's head and ruffles her hair. She shades the westerly sun from her eyes and points. “That purple on the horizon, is that the ocean?”

“Yes.”

Impelled by the endless vista, she scoots closer to the edge. “It's so wild here.”

Sal nods, mashing out the cigarette. “Down there it's too foggy and up here it's too dry. The Lucias are just miserable enough to keep most people out.”

“But not you.”

Sal cocks her head at Frank, and it's hard to tell where her eyes leave off and the sky begins.

“This place is wild until you get to know it. Then you can never leave.”

Cicero settles behind them with a sigh. The breeze sifts through a small pine above the bowl. Frank squints at the smudge of sea and far canyons crowded with redwood and fir, the sere, wind-burned peaks dotted with only the hardiest shrubs.

Sal nudges and points. “Look. A condor. Two of them!”

A pair of plank-winged birds skim into view below them. Frank's head swims with déjà vu. She places her palms on the rock to steady herself. Sal is saying she has seen them only once before. “When I was young. Before they had tags and radio wires.”

The big birds glide north and disappear.

“Do you know why the vulture family is bald?”

“What?”

“They don't have feathers on their heads. Do you know why?”

“Uh, to keep their heads clean because they stick 'em in dead things?”

“Nope. It's because a long time ago the sun started falling to earth. It was getting so close that it was burning the people that lived here and they cried for someone to carry the sun back up into the sky.”

Frank relaxes back on her elbows, taking some of the pressure off her aching ass.

“Fox jumped up and grabbed the sun, but it was too hot and he dropped it. That's why he has a black mouth to this day. Raven said, ‘Give it to me' and started to fly off with it, but the sun charred all his feathers and he finally dropped it. After a while Vulture said, ‘I'll give it a try,' and she picked up the sun and off she went, straight up into the sky. Higher and higher she flew. Her feathers started burning, but Vulture kept flying up and up.

“Her feet caught fire, and all the feathers burnt off. But Vulture held onto the sun. The feathers on her head burst into flames and turned her skin red. But Vulture held on to the sun. She flew higher and higher, until she was just a speck in the sky, and when she couldn't go any farther Vulture finally let go off the sun, But she'd flown so far and so high the sun stayed right where she dropped it. Poor Vulture. She was so badly burned that her head feathers never did grow back. And she is still so exhausted from that long-ago trip that she has to glide wherever she goes instead of fly.”

Frank claps and Sal smiles.

“I haven't told that story in years. It was Cassie's favorite. She'd make me tell it over and over.”

Frank remembers, “She said to get you to tell me about the
zopilotes
.”

“She said that?”

“Uh-huh. Said you were a great storyteller.”

Sal hugs her knees and looks toward the ocean. Clearing her throat, she starts. “I told you the Santa Lucias aren't hospitable to most people, but long before there were roads and cars along the coast, there were always a few intrepid souls called to scratch out a living between the mountains and the sea. They were hardy folks, as tough as the land. For the most part they lived in shacks at the foot of the mountains, on bluffs above the ocean just wide enough to grow beans and corn on and keep a few chickens, maybe even a cow.”

Frank lies back and closes her eyes, the sun a benediction upon her face.

“They worked hard on their little plots of land, scratching out a meager living between the storms that battered the coast in winter and the fog that shrouded it in summer. They had simple wants and means, but a couple times a year they would saddle up their horse, if they were lucky enough to have one, and make the journey to one of the few towns along the coast. If they didn't have a horse—well, then they walked. There was no smooth paved highway back then, just a muddy or dusty horse trail, depending on the season, that hugged the edge of the sea. It was no path to be traveling in the dark or a storm.

“But one day a man did just that. He'd been in town to get the flour, salt, and a bolt of cloth his wife had asked for. He'd purchased all his supplies and still had a little money left over, so he thought it couldn't hurt to have a whiskey at the bar before the long ride home. Well, the one drink turned into two, and then three, and when he was finally out of money the man toddled out of the bar and started climbing onto his horse.

“It so happened that a scoundrel who'd been watching the man lay his coins on the bar followed quietly behind. Just as the man tried pulling himself up into the saddle, the scoundrel grabbed his reins, pulled a knife, and demanded the man empty his pockets lest his throat part sides.

“Now, a man who lives alone with the Santa Lucias at his back and the Pacific Ocean at his feet is hardly going to be intimidated by a rascal with a knife. So, pretending to empty his pockets, the man reached into his coat and in a flash of gleaming steel he slit the scoundrel from navel to chin, and off he galloped into the falling night. Though home was a hard half-day ride, the man didn't slow. He whipped his horse, following the trail by a sliver of moonlight. He rode and rode, and as he rode the fog crept in. It gathered off the ocean and crawled toward land, keeping time with the horse and rider until at last it pulled ahead to lay as thick and heavy over them as a brand-new blanket.

“The man slowed his horse to a trot, then a walk, until the horse balked and would move no more. Certain he could hear the pounding
of hooves behind, the man kicked his horse and whipped him on. The horse took one faltering step, then another. The man gouged his spurs into the horse's belly, urging him on, and the horse complied. Too late the man realized his mount was slipping. The horse tried to scrabble back to solid ground, but all its hooves could find were air. With a horrible screaming, beast and rider fell onto the broken, wave-swept rocks. The horse ceased its struggle, but the man was alive and in great pain. He tried to stand, but his legs twisted under him and he knew, in the darkness and wet salt air, that he would rise no more.”

Sal stops to pull out her pouch and roll a smoke. After it is lit, she continues.

“Throughout the night, the dawn, and the next night, the man lay on the rocks in his terrible pain and screamed, but even if someone had been passing by the edge of the cliff, he was too far down and the ocean too loud for them to hear his cries. Yet cry he did. He howled piteously in his pain and thirst. On the second sunset, the man began to lick the salt spray on the rocks. He knew it would hasten his end, and the wet saltiness did little to slake his thirst, but he had to speak once more before his black and swelling tongue forever filled his mouth.

“So with his last breath he cried out to his animal gods, begging forgiveness for killing the scoundrel who had tried to steal his horse and hard-earned goods. He begged for mercy—not for himself but for his wife and children back home, that the gods might keep them well and free from harm despite his sins. And the man fell back upon his broken legs and as he looked up into the clouded sky he saw a patient line of
zopilotes
gathered upon the cliff above, and as he watched, a lone vulture took flight from the cliff and flew south, toward his wife and small children, toward his humble cabin in a sheltering arm of the mountains. The man closed his eyes and flew with the
zopilote
.”