The Outlander (33 page)

“Though one man may overpower another, two can withstand him. And a
cord with three strands is not quickly broken.”

Some men were clearly satisfied with this turn of events, enjoying a day
at worship without a fist fight, while others seemed a little dejected. An old fellow
started up a hymn on his accordion, an ancient and shabby instrument, its wheezing and
rhythmic squeaking like old bedsprings in the throes.

And then, quite suddenly, it stopped.

At first, the Reverend didn't hear the murmuring at the back. He
kept talking, but the murmur became louder. Men were looking over their shoulders. The
disturbance went through the crowd in a ripple. Those closer to the Reverend began to
twist round to look.

“What is that?” One fellow stood up and squinted curiously
into the stope's darkness. There were a few aggrieved murmurs from his colleagues
nearby, translating into a request for him to shut up. But then he pointed, his voice
sharp. “What in Jesus is it?”

All the men turned, some with hands to their brows as if to shade their
eyes from an invisible sun that bore down on them in this echoing excavation. Before
them stood what at first looked like an animal at the tunnel's mouth, a furred and
pinheaded form standing upright, like a bear scenting the
stale air
— as if any animal, no matter how demented or conniving, could have taken the
elevator down to that level. There was silence among the men. The Bible in the
Reverend's hand slowly sunk till it hung at his side. A look of resignation spread
across his features, for he knew what stood there.

The creature swayed a little, drunkenly, and then it stepped forward and
spoke. “Don't let me disturb you,” the widow said.

Pandemonium.

THE WIDOW HAD
dragged the table outside into the
sunshine and she and the Reverend sat playing gin, he constantly shuffling and
reshuffling, dissatisfaction radiating from him, the widow watching him with interest.
Many things in his life came easily, but cards was not one of them. It was as if some
curse drove bad cards into his hand, and even if he got good cards, he didn't know
what to do with them.

“There!” he said triumphantly and put down a card.

The widow snapped down one of her own and took his. He frowned. The trees
overhead shook in a breeze, and tiny drops of watery resin rained down on the card
players, the scent of pine pungent on the air. The widow leaned back in her seat and
sighed happily. He began to put down a card, then brought it slowly back to his chest,
giving her a suspicious look. Eventually, he put it down. An eight. The widow snapped
down a ten and took his card. The game went on like that until she had won.

“You must give me a chance to get you back,” he said.

“All right,” Mary said. “You deal.”

As they played, and as he slowly lost again, there came through the trees
gusts of warmth that spoke of summer.
She took off one of her boots
and set her foot upon it, then slowly worked the other one off.

“Bonny,” she started, “do you think I dare go
shopping?”

“Why not?”

“You know why.” She had a blurred memory of one old miner
seizing her by the coat collar and shouting in her face. She wasn't even sure how
she had got out of the mine.

“If you want to go out, go out.”

“But what if . . .”

“They know they'd have to deal with me. That's your
card.”

She took up his card.

“By the way, where is the stuff now?” he said.

“Stuff?”

“Whatever drug Mac gave you.”

Her heart leaped with surprise. But of course she should have known
he'd guess what had happened, and he would know immediately where she had got the
dope. She hung her head and could not meet his eye.

“He took it back.”

“All of it?”

“Oh, Bonny, I'm sorry —”

“How in the world could it be your fault? I'll speak to Mac
later.”

She put down a six.

He put down a jack. His hand hovered over it in disbelief for a moment,
and then he took them both up. “You hear voices, don't you?”

This stopped the widow cold. Her cards dropped to her lap and she covered
her face.

“There's nothing shameful in it,” he said.

“Yes, there is.”

“
Not
to me.” He said it quietly but firmly.

“Did I say something, did I speak out loud?”

“No.”

“Well,” she huffed, “how did you guess, then?”

“I saw it on your face.”

Slowly she retrieved her cards and organized them with trembling hands,
for the surprise had made her clumsy. She couldn't believe it — she had
almost convinced herself that she was free of these poisons, these terrible visits.
There had been no voices for so long now, no visions . . . all right, there had been one
in the kitchen. But no more than a shape in the corner of her eye, and she was pretty
sure she had neither started nor turned to look nor given it the slightest attention.
Just as the Ridgerunner had suggested, she now ignored them. So perhaps it wasn't
that she didn't have them any more, but that she put them out of her mind,
concentrating instead, with patient meditation, on the real. Or rather, what she guessed
to be real. How to know? How to tell?

The Reverend reached out and took her hand in his own, warm and solid.

“I'm not crazy,” she said.

“I know you're not.”

DURING THE NIGHT
there was gunfire, unmistakable small
cracks that sawed back and forth along the pass.

“Bonny!” Mary groaned. “What is that?”

“Nothing.”

“Sounds like guns.”

The Reverend shifted violently on his tick and cleared his throat.
“One of those boys,” he said, “probably shooting at a bear.”

“What boys?” She waited for him to answer. Her eyes closed.
Soon, she was just as asleep as he was.

The next morning, the Reverend arrived downstairs to find his breakfast
set out on the table and the widow once again nowhere to be found. He went outside and
peered around. Nothing. He sat at the table and touched his metal plate — warm,
the porridge still steaming. Finally, she came through the back door and the Reverend
suppressed a surge of gladness.

“I was just sick out behind the house,” she said.

“What? Why?”

“It's the funniest thing. The feeling just came over
me.”

“How do you feel now?” he asked.

“Oh, fine, just fine.”

He grinned at her and shook his head.

“What?” she said.

“You're not a complainer, are you?”

“Oh, you should hear me,” she said, smiling. But she was
pleased. It was the closest thing to a compliment she'd heard since . . . she
thought for a moment. John had once told her her hair was soft. A maid had exclaimed at
the quality of her needlework, but that girl had gushed at nearly everything, even
common sparrows on the windowsill. A neighbour girl had said she looked lovely in her
wedding dress. Not a word from her father about the dress or the wedding or anything.
And her grandmother had merely been at pains to keep her from smearing the rouge on her
lips. “It's simply got
everywhere
,
darling,” the old woman said, bending close with a damp handkerchief.
“You look like a mad dog.”

Well, compliments did not come often to her. She was surprised at how
delicious it felt. She went to the stove and took up the pot and spooned a little extra
oatmeal out for the Reverend.

After coffee and a pipe, they set off together for the open grassland to
the west, a single wide alpine meadow rimmed by trees and streaked with purple flowers,
in the middle of which stood a small corral for horses, surrounded by a crowd of men,
some of them sitting atop the fence, others leaning and gazing between the rails at the
beauty that stamped and nodded and blew within.

“Here he comes!” cried one of the men, and the Reverend raised
his hand and went among them. The Cregans were everywhere, four of them in the paddock
with the horses, ropes over their shoulders. They stepped among the milling animals,
amid the eddying dust, skilfully separating one or another individual should a buyer
wish a closer look. Many of the horses now wore hackamores, but they wore the lashings
awkwardly and seemed affronted by them. In truth, these animals were long broken, but
they had been so recently liberated and run together like a pack of wild ponies that the
chill of freedom had blown through them already, and they were now an obstinate lot.

The widow clambered up the fence and gazed at the mess within. Men and
horses churning together, the Cregans' hats bobbing up and down, lost among the
moving shoulders and rumps.

She'd never seen that many horses together. Her father had never
kept more than two old ones, though the stable
was large enough for
more. Her grandmother could remember when all six stalls had been full, and buggies were
backed into the barn one after another till the last one's traces stuck out the
doors into the rain. Everyone had their own horse, and they were given names like Little
Boy and Marathon. Her great-grandfather had been a horse-hater. He beat his animals and
enjoyed it; his dying words to his sons included the hope that they would no longer have
to deal with “goddamned horses,” and within ten years he had his wish. Some
of the animals were lost in a blizzard; a few were sold; many fell sick with unknown
maladies, defied the vet's efforts, and died. These tales had had a melancholy
effect on Mary as a child, and she'd wandered the barn, filled with existential
gloom. The bridle of each departed horse hung rotting on the slat walls, and the stalls
seemed imprinted with absence.

Until she was married, she'd never ridden anything but a
“girl's horse”— gentle animals, usually old and slothful by
temperament. Once married, she was introduced to a wholly different species: massive,
powerful monsters with hairy forelegs and broad backs, stupid beasts with ferocious
tempers. No one ever risked walking behind them. She remembered one such horse, annoyed
by something, kicking the broadside of a wagon without warning, a mighty wallop that
rocked the thing and sent goods flying off both sides. It took the men a day to repair
the bent axle.

“That one,” said a voice. It was Sean Cregan, standing close
to her where she hung over the fence. “She's the best of the lot.”

He pointed to a nondescript quarter horse pacing the far side of the
paddock. It stepped low, watchful, its head down as if ducking from view. It was a
stocky mare, almost homely,
and it seemed to vanish and then
reappear, the least noticeable animal among the others.

“Look,” he said. “Just watch her.”

One of the older Cregans was bearing down on another young horse, a
beautiful chestnut-coloured animal that balked and hopped, swinging from side to side,
exposed by the bodies of the others. The man held his rope shoulder high, the lasso set
to snap out into the air. As if on cue, the little mare darted forward, almost invisible
among high-held heads and stale dust and the whistles of men. She cut laterally across
them all, and in response the group of horses moved organically, reconstituting like
mixing dough. The quarry fell back and was obscured by others. The boy checked his toss
and the rope fell short. Annoyed, he reeled the lasso back in. The mare was gone.

“That's a smart animal,” Sean said. “She'll
be the last to sell, but she's the best one. You get her on your side, you can
really do some work.”

“Who did you steal her from?” the widow asked.

“God,” he said.

“You're smart, aren't you?” she said,
grinning.

“I don't mean to be.”

He reached up and took two of the widow's fingers, held them in a
gentle grasp. She let him do it. His dark skin, her slim fingers disappearing into his
loose fist, hidden among the folds, the scars, the lines, the astonishing wear of his
hand. It wasn't a salacious gesture, but neither was it tender. It was covetous.
Why am I letting him?
she thought. She looked into his feral face, saw the
sly question there, hooded but brazen, and felt a stab of yearning and regret. It welled
up in her, disastrously raw. Disastrous because she desired not this
man, but another. Oh to kiss the face, to find the tongue, to give her breast to
him and look down and watch. And the rest, the taut, agonizing joy. As helpless as water
to the pull of gravity, the widow's heart ran to William Moreland. Pooling there,
wasted, unwanted. And so, wrath followed desire. How foolish it was to allow a man in,
how terrible his power once you did.

The Cregan boy watched the riot of emotion pass over her, trying to read
its meaning.

Behind them, a voice rose above the others, loud and exasperated, and the
widow yanked her hand away and clambered down the rungs of the fence. In a moment, the
Cregan boy was lost among the horses.

“How come I pay full price and he doesn't? How come a Indian
doesn't pay?”

“He's paying, don't you worry,” said the
Reverend.

“Look at him! He can't buy shit. Where's his
money?”

The Reverend gestured to the man in question. “Tell him what
you'll pay me with.” The man said something in Crow.

“There,” said the Reverend. There were a few chuckles from the
crowd.

“In other words,” said a third voice, “mind your own
business.”

“Fuck that. It is my business — I want that horse he's
got!” It was a good horse, anyone could see that.

“Pick another one.”

“I don't
want
another one.”