else then he would pinch them; if they were lost then he would find them; and if they were long buried then he would dig them up. Between the information in Erasmus Grey’s book and Lex’s own natural talent for getting what he wanted, he would have those Creatures? as many of them as he possibly could.
The enchanted ship took three days to reach Dry Gulch. They soon left the sea behind them and, as they journeyed on, the landscape became less green and more brown and scrubby. Lex knew they were getting close when cactuses and tumbleweed started to appear an awful lot.
He used the first day to fine-tune the skills Jesse had taught him back at the Majestic: card-shuffling, poker- playing, pistol-twirling, knife-spinning, coffee-drinking, bean-eating and so on. Of all these things, it was bean-eating that Lex disliked the most. Not because he had anything against beans per se, it was simply that Jesse insisted he eat them without a spoon.
‘Don’t find spoons out in the desert,’ he’d said.
Which was all very well, but eating a can of beans without a spoon meant getting yourself in a terrible mess. With a hell of a lot of effort, Lex might have been able to do it neatly but the problem was that no cowboy would make any effort whatsoever, and that meant that Lex couldn’t either. He would even be expected to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and belch loudly once he’d finished!
‘For such a pernickety fella, I’m surprised you chose this line of work,’ Jesse remarked.
Lex’s obsession with cleanliness was his one flaw as a conman, but he kept his feelings under control? he was disciplined enough to grit his teeth and bear it. He’d always had a thing about being clean, even as a small child. When his grandfather had taken Lex and his brother to the fair, Lex had wanted to do anything and everything there was to do? except for the goo slide. Kids could go down a slide and land in a big pool full of slimy goo at the bottom. It was extremely popular but Lex threw a very loud tantrum as soon as his grandfather merely suggested he might like to go on it.
After the first day of travelling, Lex had his first go on Rusty. They were confining the griffins inside several times a day so that Jesse could take the horse up on deck and let him get some fresh air and exercise. Lex had never been on a horse before in his life (unless you counted the pony at the fair). There had been a horse back at the family farm but that had just pulled the wagon. And now Lex had only two days to learn how to ride.
It did not quite turn out to be the piece of cake he’d expected. There was more to it than just sitting there on the horse’s back. It had to look right, too.
‘You gotta look like you were practically born in the saddle,’ Jesse said. ‘Like you and the horse are one living thing. Don’t hold the reins so high. Lean back in the saddle more. And don’t be lookin’ down at the horse like that all the time? look straight ahead at where you’re goin’.’
After an hour of walking around the deck, Lex began to feel more comfortable in the saddle. It was what came next that was more tricky. Walking was one thing? the other three gaits were something else altogether. First, Lex had to learn how to squeeze with his legs so that Rusty would pick up into a trot and, later, a canter. This required more strength than he would have thought. Fortunately, Lex did have fairly strong legs as a result of all the rope-climbing and building-scaling he did all the time as the Wizard. But the other problem? the most major one? was trying to stay on the horse’s back. It turned out that trotting and cantering were much bouncier gaits than walking.
Lex fell off. A lot.
The first time it happened, he’d taken a corner too sharply, his foot had fallen out of the stirrup and then he’d lost his balance. Over the side of the horse he went, landing on the deck on his back with a horrible thump. It was like all the air had been driven out of his body with a club. Lex would never have believed that falling from such a relatively-low height could hurt so much. Thankfully, he’d managed to avoid hitting his head but pain shot through his back and his right arm. He’d heard of people falling from horses and breaking their backs or snapping their necks, paralysing themselves for the rest of their lives and, for an unpleasant moment, he had a clear vision in his mind of that happening to him. Lex knew he would never be able to live life in a wheelchair? never!
A shadow fell across him, and Jesse’s unconcerned voice said, ‘Well, get up then. Ain’t no use just lying there gasping like that. Best thing to do when you fall off is to pick yourself up and get right back on. That’s if you want to carry on at all, of course.’
Lex dragged himself to his feet. Aside from being stiff and sore he appeared to be unharmed. He practically snatched the reins from Jesse and said, ‘Of course I want to carry on!’
He put his foot into the stirrup and swung himself back up into the saddle.
‘It probably ain’t strictly necessary, y’know,’ Jesse said, watching him. ‘I mean, you won’t be on horseback once you’re inside Dry Gulch House, will you? It just looks better if you turn up on one, that’s all. And you can get away with walkin’ for that. You don’t have to go galloping right up to the front door.’
But that wasn’t good enough for Lex. He knew full well how important first impressions were. He’d read enough cowboy books to know that the single most important part of pulling this scam off successfully would be for him to be at ease with his horse. Whether that ended up being a five minute performance or a five day one, Lex didn’t care. Jesse was right? going to all this bother was probably unnecessary. Probably. But Lex didn’t work with ‘ probablys ’. And that was why he always won.
He had no intention whatsoever of arriving at Dry Gulch House any way other than on horseback. He might only have one shot at this and he wasn’t going to blow it just because mastering horse riding was difficult for a city kid. He would dearly love to be able to leap out of the saddle mid-ride and actually stand on the horse’s back whilst holding the reins as it cantered along. But if he didn’t have time to learn how to do that then, by heck, he was at least going to learn how to canter and gallop.
He fell off Rusty quite a lot that day. Time and time again, in fact. But he sustained no serious injuries and was rather annoyed when, about five hours after he’d started, Jesse announced that it was, ‘Time for a break.’
‘I don’t want a break!’ Lex snapped. ‘I want to carry on until I get it right!’
‘That may be,’ Jesse replied calmly. ‘But Rusty needs to have a break and get some food and water in him. After he’s had a rest, you can carry on in the afternoon. If you still want to.’
Lex thought that last sentence had been spoken in rather an odd tone and he found out why a moment later when he dismounted. His legs were like jelly. As soon as his feet hit the deck, his knees buckled and he collapsed into an untidy heap on the ground. Jesse laughed heartily. ‘Always strikes newbies like that,’ he said. ‘Not used to it, see?’
‘I’ll get used to it fast enough!’ Lex snapped, dragging himself upright with some difficulty. The truth was that every muscle in his body ached? both from the numerous falls and from the extended amount of time he’d spent on Rusty’s back.
‘Go take a hot bath while I see to Rusty,’ Jesse said. ‘I know you’re right fond of soap and if you have a bit of a soak in the tub then your muscles won’t seize up so bad.’
Lex stomped off to the bathroom feeling annoyed, no less because of the fact that Jesse was right. If he ended up so stiff he could hardly move then that wouldn’t exactly help his image as a cowboy, either.
After having a long bath, he went back on deck that afternoon and spent another few hours on Rusty. By the end of that day he had improved immensely? and was able to get the horse to trot and canter on command, whilst managing not to fall off. He still bounced around in the saddle a lot. But he didn’t fall off. It was a start, and he still had all of the next day to practise. Lex would have liked to keep on riding all night but Jesse, blast him, insisted that Rusty ought to rest, and so should Lex. But Lex had no time for resting. He spent much of that night practising with his cards, knives and pistols. He even had another crack at eating beans straight from the tin and drinking some ridiculously strong black coffee.
After a couple of hours’ sleep, Lex was up bright and early the next day to get back to work on Rusty. He no longer fell off? now it was just a question of getting it to look right. Cantering in particular took Lex some time to get the hang of. It wouldn’t do for him to be bouncing around in the saddle, perilously close to falling off at any moment.
‘You gotta move with the horse,’ Jesse kept saying.
‘Yes, I understand that!’ Lex snapped. ‘It’s what I’m trying to do!’
He had not expected learning horsemanship to be so difficult. He’d seen people on horses before and it had always looked so easy? like the horse was the one doing all the work and the rider simply sat there. The reality was not like that at all. But, at around five o’clock that afternoon, something shifted and suddenly it all seemed to click.
‘There!’ Jesse yelled. ‘That’s it! You’re doing it!’
