riding the range, he might've stuck with it. If he could've come back to the bunkhouse after a day of roping and branding and watched some sex and shooting, he might back in Wyoming today.
Might. bly ..... Probably not.
Truth was, he was never cut out to be a cowboy. Not a real one. He had the knowledge, he had the skills, he had the talent but he didn't have the temperament. There was only so much of that lonesome self-suffcient don'tneednuthin'butmy-horse crap he could take. It looked heroic as hell in the movies. When John Wayne and Alan I.add rode tall in their saddles, afraid of nothing and nobody, he couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be like them. But the reality of the cowboy life, working ten hours at a stretch, not being able to bathe for days at a time, eating shitty food, sleeping in worn bedrolls on top of rocks and ruts, being bitten alive by bugs, waking up in the middle of the night and listening to the farting of the animals and the sound of other men beating offmthat was something else.
He needed people, noise, light, civilization. He liked cowboying, but he had to admit that he was a dude at heart.
That was why he felt so lucky to have gotten in at the Rocking DID. ,
He'd been up in Payson for the rodeO when he'd heard through the grapevine that a dude ranch was opening down in Rio Verde and that the owner was looking for a horseman to manage the stables. He'd never heard of Rio Verde, had never done any stable work or horse maintenance for an animal other than his own, but the promise of a clean bed, a steady paycheck, and access to a hotel style swimming pool sounded mighty good. The other cowboys laughed off the idea, deriding it as pansy work, but he'd immediately hitched a ride to Globe and then to Rio Verde, where he lied through his teeth to the ranch manager who interviewed him. The manager was a city boy, and though Terry thought the man would catch on to him eventually, he figured he would have a good relaxing few weeks of work before anyone discovered that he wasn't qualified for the position. Only no one ever discovered it. He knew more about horses than anyone else who worked at the ranch, more than Hollis or any of his employees, more than any of the guests, and apparently that was good enough. And, of course, in time, he had learned by experience, through trial and error, and actually had become qualified for the job.
Now he was damn good at it, if he did say so himself.
The stables were separated from the rest of the ranch by a short stretch of artificially landscaped desert, a football-field-length section of ground that featured all of Ari zona's most famous and photogenic desert shrubs and cacti placed in well-thought-out order. The stables were located away from the eating, sleeping, and recreation areas in order to foster the impression that this was an actual working ranch--and to ensure that guests weren't disturbed by the sounds and smells of horses. They could feel like real ranch hands when they fed the animals, when they saddled up and rode the preexisting trails, but when they returned to their rooms or went to the dining hall or the pool, they needed to be able to leave that all be hind. They were paying for fantasy, not reality.
Terry had been thinking a lot about fantasy lately, about ghosts and monsters, legends and rumors. He was sup posed to be a rough, tough hombre, and for the most part he played the role well, but he'd become increasingly nervous the past few weeks about these nightly checkup runs. Ordinarily, he enjoyed his last lone visit to the stables. each evening, relishing the time spent with the animals His animals. It was here that he allowed himself to look with pride upon his accomplishments of the day, and it was here he felt most acutely his contribution to the success of the ranch. Since the murder of Manuel Torres, however, that peace of mind had been disintegrating. Each time he went out here now, the desert seemed darker, the stable area more deserted. More than once, he had thought that if something came for him here, no one at the ranch would hear it. Hi body would not be found until morning. Terry was not an overly superstitious man. He didn't have the type of imagination that saw aliens in every falling star or creatures in every shadow. But he had seen and heard enough over the years that he did not automatically dismiss such things out of hand. He'd heard tell of cursed Indian ground, haunted stretches of road, ghost towns that were home to actual ghosts. He knew the stories about the Mogollon Monster up in the Rim Country, had heard firsthand abut the dangers of staying too long in the Superstitions. He did also known Manuel Tortes, and the old mechanic's death had hit him hard.
Manuel had worked on most of the vehicles here at the ranch, had been the one to rebuild the engine on his own pickup, and Terry could not get used to the idea that all of his blood had been sucked out through a bite in his neck. No matter how you looked at it, that just wasn't something that was possible for a human being to do. That was the work of a vampire. Vampire talk was all around town, in the feed store, in Basha's, at First Interstate, practically every place he went. Hollis forbade such talk at the ranch, determined to keep his guests out of earshot of local news, but there was talk here too. Ran McGregor, one of the trail guides, had whispered to him the other day that he'd seen a coyote lying off in the brush that looked like all its innards had been sucked out, that looked like a pelt laid over a skeleton.
Maybe he was reading interpretations into things that weren't there, but it seemed to him that the horses had been a bit skittish lately too, and that worried him. He knew that animals were more attuned to changes in their environment than people were, more instinctive in their perceptions, and he couldn't help wondering as he came out here each night if something was out there in the darkness waiting for him.
For the past few weeks, and especially the past week, since the kids' bodies had been found in the river, his nightly rounds had been much less thorough than they usually were.
He reached the back of the stables and grabbed the raring at the side of the building as he slid down the dirt incline to the front. Before him, a long row of horse stalls stretched into the darkness, the identical black squares above the bottom gates through which the heads and necks of the horses usually protruded now empty. He stood there for a moment, not sure if he should proceed or hightail it back to the lighted safety of his quarters. Something was definitely wrong.
Ordinarily, when the horses heard him slide down the short slope at the side of the building, they became restless, whinnying and snorting, moving around in their stalls, anticipating the late-night snack he usually fed them. But tonight there was nothing, no snuffling or snorting, no sticking of heads out the open top halves of stalls .....
There was something else wrong too, something different something he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Terry reached over, next to the closed door of the tool room, and turned the metal knob on the outside wall. The knob clicked, and the series of overhanging lights above the stalls winked into existence.
There was a stirring in the first stall and Jasper, the ranch's largest sorrel stallion whinnied and poked his head around the edge of the opening.
'Hey, Jasper,' Terry said. He walked over and patted the horse's head.
The fear he'd felt a moment before was gone, but the sense of unease remained.
Terry looked around. There were shadows outside the stable yard, areas of fuzzy blackness surrounding the saguaros and palo ver des troughs of darkness in the low ditch running parallel to the riding trail. There was no moon. It would be up in the early morning and would hang there pale and emasculated in the blue light of day until sometime around noon, but for now it was nowhere to be seen, and the world was black, the combined brilliance of billions of stars failing to make even a dent in the dark desert night.
' Behind him Jasper whinnied, a quiet sound of fear, the -familiar warning noise he made when he could smell something he didn't like but had not yet seen it. The horse shuffled, backing into the wall of his stall, causing the old boards to make a cracking, creaking sound. Other than that, the stable area was quiet. No sounds from the other horses.
No faint music from the guest rooms of the ranch. No barking dogs.
No cicadas.
Terry knew now why he had felt so nervous, why something had felt so wrong. The cicadas were silent. Their familiar background chirruping, something he took for granted and usually didn't notice at all, was missing, and it was the absence of that sound which had set him on
What could sea're cicadas into silence? - ....... :
It was a good question, but he did not want to know the answer. He found himself thinking of Manuel lying in the arroyo, of those kids' bodies trapped in cottonwood roots by the edge of the river. Cicadas didn't scare. They just didn't. They could be startled and temporarily hushed, but they got used to situations almost immediately.
If a person walked up to a tree in which the insects were roosting, they would shut up for a second, then would start up again, instantly adapting to the person's, presence.
But the cicadas had been silent now for over five minutes
Terry realized that he had not heard a single sound from any of the stalls other than Jasper's, and he limped
