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Finally, he let him stop.
He tried to walk up to him, but the roan would have none of that. He reared and offered to strike.
Don’t come any closer, man. Keep your distance.
Blue drove him some more. He caused the horse to move and then set his own movements in harmony with him. Slowly, finally, their lone dances began to form a bond between them. Both of them relaxed into the rhythm. They stayed the same distance apart—the roan seemed comfortable with exactly that amount of space—and they moved together.
At last, the roan began to acknowledge Blue with his ears, his eyes, and his arched rib cage curving away from him. Blue smiled so wide it felt like he hadn’t used those muscles for years. He took a deep breath and moved, this time farther away from the roan.
The colt followed him. The skin on Blue’s arms turned to gooseflesh, as if the animal had already come close enough to blow his breath down the back of his neck.
The farther he went, the more the horse closed the gap between them. He had hooked on. Blue made himself take another deep breath. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.
He walked toward the middle of the pen. The roan stayed with him. He stopped. The horse came closer, then he stopped, too, ears pricked, watching Blue.
The colt stood still and let him walk up to him.
The old thrill rose in Blue’s blood and, with it, memories of other days, other places, other horses. They galloped back to him, flooding through his mind. So many horses and so many days and weeks and months and years without any of them in the flesh.
He still had trouble believing that this was real. It was.
And now was the test of this invisible connection. Now was the time to make it physical, to make it so it would be true and lasting.
Murmuring to the colt, Blue laid a hand on him. He started rubbing him along the top of his neck. He watched both ends of the horse at once and he knew that he could keep touching this colt only if he did it in a way that was fitting to the roan.
That way was going to be very, very carefully. A wrong move could get him a kick in the belly or a hoof upside his head, but if he listened to what the horse had to say to him, that wouldn’t happen. He pinched along the roots of the colt’s mane as another horse would nibble him, and used the coiled lead rope to rub him, too.
The roan said it felt good. Very, very good. He let his head drop and his eyelids droop. Blue rubbed his back and his flanks and went back to his neck again.
One more time, then he let the halter and rope fall to the ground. He laid his hand on the sweaty withers and let his weight lean on the colt while he held his other hand out for the horse to take in his scent. Slowly, the colt swung his muzzle around, snorting lightly, scattering drops of moisture into Blue’s palm like fresh rain.
They settled there. Their breathing fell into an identical, untroubled pattern, in and out. With their warm flesh and blood pressed together, the thunder power living under the hide of the horse flowed through Blue—into his arm and through his heart down into the Mother Earth beneath his feet.
MICAH HELD to the old cowboy custom of eating in silence and that was a relief to Blue. He was able to pick at his food and drink the hot coffee but he couldn’t think about anything except the colt and he sure as hell didn’t know what to say. He really didn’t want to ever talk about it, even if he knew how.
He’d held himself apart, kept himself isolated, breathed and thought and eaten and stayed alone for ten long years, and an outlaw horse had breached the wall. Being connected to another living being, human or horse or dog, was something so new now that he could barely recall how to deal with it.
As soon as they pushed back from the table and started clearing away, Micah’s flood of words started again just like somebody had turned on a faucet.
“Tell you the truth,” he said, as he limped to the sink with his plate and the skillet, “I ain’t never seen nobody git his hands on a horse by throwing a halter at him all day.”
He cackled in delight, shaking his head.
“Them boys over at Little Creek wouldn’t believe it if they seen it with their own eyes. I’m near eighty years old and I never seen nothing like it.”
“I can’t take credit for the horsemanship,” Blue said. “Buck Brannaman gave a demonstration in Tulsa one time when I was a teenaged kid. He worked ’em horseback, too.”
He set his plate on the counter by the sink and carried the remains of the loaf of bread in its plastic sack to the battered cupboard where Micah got it. It all felt strange. A kitchen was a foreign country to him now.
“I heard that name,” Micah said. “They say he’s a hell of a hand with a horse.”
“He is.”
Blue glanced around the room after he closed the antique cupboard. He slid his fingertips over its punched tin door as if he were reading Braille.
Any part of a home was unknown to him now. This one smelled rich and ripe with age, with the ghosts of long-dead wood fires drifting out of the chimney and the gleam of low lamplight in the front room.
It recalled Auntie Cheyosie’s cabin way back in the woods in Oklahoma. Way back in another life. Way back when Tanasi Rose was alive. She had taken him with her to see the wise old woman many times during his childhood.
Rose wouldn’t have killed herself, maybe, if Auntie Cheyosie had still been alive. Or if Dannie had been.
But he had been.
Yeah, Bowman, but you might as well have been dead. What comfort were you to her, locked up in a cage a thousand miles away?
“I’m gonna wrangle these here dishes,” Micah said suddenly, “you go on in yonder and clean up.”
Blue glanced at him. The old man’s sharp gaze met his. What had Micah seen on his face?
Micah set the skillet down with a thump.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll show you the room and what’s in it. There’s duds you can wear instead of them sweaty ones.”
He limped past Blue and gestured for him to follow.
“We’ve had ever’ size of hired hand in the world pass through here one time or another and I reckon half of ’em left somethin’ behind. Boots, hats, coats, warbags, you name it, we got it.”
Blue crossed the hallway behind him and Micah led the way into a room with two windows, a bed, a chest of drawers, and a closet with the door standing open. Assorted clothes hung on hangers and a jumble of boots covered the floor.
“Help yourself,” Micah said. “Gordon’s known for running ’em off pronto if they give any lip or if they ain’t up to working fourteen hours a day seven days a week with a smile on their face for a wetback’s wage. If they leave somethin’ behind, ain’t no way they come back after it when he told ’em never set foot on the ranch again.”
“Nice guy,” Blue said.
Micah chuckled.
“Oncet in a great while,” he said. “Oncet in a high lonesome blue moon, you might say.”
He limped to one of the windows and banged on the sides of it with his fists to loosen it in the frame.
“You ain’t workin’ for Gordon, remember that,” he said. “I got my own operation here.”
He wrenched at the bottom of the window with both hands and then slid it up. The fresh, cold night poured in.
“Air this room out a little bit,” the old man said.
Two windows. One open. Doors open all the way to the front porch.
If he couldn’t sleep inside the walls, he could sleep outside—blankets were piled on the bed. He was tired. Tireder physically than he had been for years. It felt good.
But before sleep he needed the feel of hot water sluicing down his back and the smell of clean clothes—not prison clothes—in his nostrils.
“Bathroom down the hall,” Micah said, and limped past him to the door. “Holler if you need anything.”
“Right. Thanks.”
The old man stopped and made a quick turn of his stiff body so he could see Blue.
“You’ve got him now and he’s gonna make you a mount that won’t quit,” he said. “You done a helluva job today.”
His voice held traces of envy and regret. But mostly happiness, satisfaction.
“Thanks,” Blue said. “It took a while. You didn’t have to stay out there all that time.”
The old man’s bushy eyebrows lifted.
“Never know when I might could lend a hand,” he said, with a shrug.
That touched Blue. Nobody had been concerned about his safety for a long, long time.
Micah hesitated, then he said, “Whenever you want, we can get horseback and take him to a bigger pen.”
We.
“That’ll work,” Blue said. “If you furnish the horses.”
Micah grinned.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “Don’t worry, this is your deal. I won’t get in your way, son.”
Blue returned the grin as Micah left him.
Blue thought about the old man while he unbuttoned his shirt.
Son. We.
Being robbed of a ranch—even this ranch—was nothing. Not compared to being robbed of a father.
CHAPTER THREE
BLUE WOKE in the middle of the night in a cold fit of fear. He sat up, hands fisted, until the memory drifted up out of his sleep. He had turned over without hitting the wall and it had scared him awake.
A bright fall of moonlight poured in through the window. The sturdy old room lay peaceful around him.
A real bed, standing on legs, instead of a bunk hanging from the wall. Real quilts, instead of a scratchy blanket. Micah’s house.
The whole of yesterday came flooding back to him.
The Splendid Sky. He was on the Splendid Sky for the first time in his life. He had thought about how that would be since he was old enough to imagine anything—how the land and the house would look and how his father would act. When Blue was really little, in most versions of that daydream, Gordon would explain that he had inadvertently lost track of Rose and her children, and rejoice at finding them again.
Blue hadn’t been very old when he’d trashed that little fantasy.
He stared into the curtain of moonlight. Gordon was out there now. Within striking distance.
Blue reached for the clothes Micah had given him and dressed. Loath to risk waking the old man, he ducked out through the window, crossed the porch on the balls of his feet, and stepped off into the space and the brightness.
The night was all space, calling to him like a talking drum. It pumped power into his veins, it set a steady beat going in his blood like the need to dance. Dances and women and horses. Those had made him feel so alive, sometimes he’d thought his heart would burst with the joy of breathing, of being. Until now, he had forgotten completely how that felt.
But he might have a chance to come back to it. The inside of his body hurt as if his heart and all his organs were almost gone to atrophy and the night had begun forcing life back into them. He had horses again, and if luck and God stayed with him as they had in bringing him here, he would have dances and women in his life once more. Maybe even joy.
When Gordon was gone from the face of Mother Earth, then he would feel joy.
He crossed the yard through the shadows of tree limbs floating on the grass. The breeze ruffled his still-damp hair across his shoulders. It sent such a cool freshness into him that he gasped a quick, shivery breath.
Last night he’d been buried alive. Tonight he could fly. Last night he had only memories of moonlight and starlight. Tonight he could fill his eyes with them and rub them into his skin.
Tonight he could look down right at the place where Gordon Campbell slept. He could bail off this hillside and run all the way to the main house and confront him with his sins right now. He savored the thought. But first, he had to plan. He was not going back inside for killing someone who needed to be killed.
Dawn was coming in the air. He felt it as he walked across Micah’s road and headed for the edge of the west-facing bluff. Far away, down the valley, a cow bawled. Another one answered. Then, from still farther away drifted the lingering, lonesome howl of a coyote.
Gooseflesh popped up on his arms. Twice blessed by the wild ones—by the sight of the deer and the sound of this coyote—he didn’t know how he’d survived so long shut up inside. The beat of his heart quickened again.
He was here, through no plan of his own, so it was meant to be. He was here in the perfect place to find out Gordon’s habits and the best way to get to him. The perfect place to do what he had to do.
Here where he should’ve lived all his life. Where, if that had happened, his mother and sister would be at this very moment. Alive and beautiful.
Here in this enormous land that smelled of pine trees and sweet grass and snow on the mountains and dust and horse from the pen where he’d left the roan. He walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down. The moonlight glinted off a long body of water on the west side of the valley. All over the east side, man-made lights shone like harsh imitations of stars. The arms of the mountains formed a cradle to keep it all safe.
Had his mother ever seen this? Had Gordon ever brought his young lover to this spot on the bluff to look down on his kingdom?
Had she been happy while she was with Gordon? Had loving him made her happy? When she was a seventeen-year-old on her first job, falling in love with her boss?
Even if it did at the time, why didn’t she quit loving him later, when she was so alone and unhappy? She could’ve stopped if she’d tried. Over the years, she could’ve married—and loved—any one of a half-dozen good men.
Blue pushed away the old grief and guilt and stared down into the valley at the scattering of steady-burning farm lights standing guard over every building. Security lights.
Gordon was in there behind them. Feeling secure.
For a long time, Blue stood watching, memorizing as much as he could see while the stars faded and the moon began to set. As soon as he could ride the roan outside a pen, he would take him up along the ridge that crossed the road from the highway. That lowest crest circled to the west and south from Micah’s place to form the rim of the valley. He would learn the lay of it and every road and trail into and out of the headquarters.
He would gather some gear in case he had to run into the mountains and some cash money in case he didn’t. He would have Micah take him up on the highway and into town one of these days soon and leave him for a while so he could start pricing things. He hadn’t bought anything in so long he didn’t remember how to make a deal.
He turned and started back to Micah’s. The rising sun was painting the sky pink. The wind reached out to blow his hair back from his face. It was going to be a fine, free day, and a man could never tell how many of those he would be given.
He watched the streaks in the sky go from pink to red, then to orange and purple and blue. This dawn made all of the colors, every color, seem like a separate wonder. His fingers itched to paint. He needed to buy more supplies.
Yes, he’d have a chance to paint a little bit before he took care of Gordon.
And he wanted time to get the colt going well, whether he got to keep him or had to sell him. Whichever way that went, he would need the most he could get out of the horse, in either money or performance.
