Judas Horse

“Then why were you taking shooting lessons?”

“Shooting lessons?” she says, as if she’d forgotten. “I don’t know. He was coming on to me at the ice-cream store, so I said to myself, ‘Okay, this is different.’ He’s cute, but kind of old.”

McCord skids back down the hill on his heels, carrying a bottle of water and an old shirt.

“Keep him quiet. Sponge him down to cool him off. The rattler’s most likely still around, so watch where you step.”

“Shit,” says Sara, jerking her feet.

“What’s wrong with his eyes?” Flies are walking on the darkened pupils.

“Oh,” says McCord matter-of-factly. “This little baby is blind.”

My stomach lurches. “Are you sure?”

McCord replies, “Yeah,” and passes a hand before the dark violet eyes of the horse, which do not blink. “Could be why he was abandoned. I’m going for the vet.”

McCord turns, but Sara grabs his arm.

“Just shoot him.”

The world goes silent, except for the clicking of crows and the dry maraca rattle of insects in the grass.

“Shoot him,” she insists.

McCord is astounded. “He’s not my horse to shoot.”

“He’s nobody’s horse. Scary, isn’t it?” she taunts, mocking me. “Why not? You have guns in the truck.”

McCord and I find each other’s eyes, if only to affirm that we’re the grown-ups here, not about to be manipulated by an overly indulged runaway brat. What, exactly, does she wish to kill? And what does she know about the acrid smell of the aftermath?

“Taking a life is serious business,” says McCord, and then I am certain of what I have suspected: that he’s been the places I’ve been.

“The horse is going to be blind the rest of its life,” says Sara with disdain. “What’s the point?”

The look between us deepens, not over the suffering of the child or the animal, but something much more tender and sad. McCord and I both know that way out here in the wash there are no landmarks beyond a yellow fire hydrant and a concrete bunker with some pipes in a mesh cage. This is where your heart is exposed, or where it’s buried.

He does not wait, but climbs the ridge.

“Sara!” I am giving orders now. “Get in the truck and go with Sterling.”

McCord looks down from the top of the embankment.

“Sara? Come on now. Come with me.”

And he holds out his hand patiently until she finally scrambles up. He pulls her over the top and the truck disappears.

Space unrolls in every direction. I take a breath full of sage. I sit beside the foal and sponge the blood off its face. Please don’t be in pain. Please forgive me.

The bees hum like a plucked string. I sit beneath a dead oak, against a mud bank where the broken root system is exposed. There are holes and burrows in the mud and it is stained with dried-out algae, like the cross section of a melted civilization. The smell of deadness is rank. The sky is white and far away, the sun a burning locus. Here at the bottom of the riverbed, the lives of the foal and I are as inconsequential as the flash of a mirror in a very great plain.

Hundreds of miles to the north, across a harsh volcanic basin, wild mustangs forage freely, fight, and play — until they are betrayed by the Judas horse for a bucket of grain. I remember how the captured mares would circle the corral, lost in silence, all the subtle scent and body messages with their babies and the stallions snapped.

Beneath my hands, the tiny horse is laboring to breathe. I stay with him, dabbling water with the blood- soaked cloth, as if I could accompany his sightless soul into the greater darkness. I feel a deep and wordless kinship, as if we are bound by some transparent force of kindness. I will not abandon you.

Am I the Judas horse, cynical and beaten? Or the innocent foal?

After a very long time, the amber lights of the veterinarian’s truck show above the ridge.

Twenty-two

July. Intruders are everywhere.

False dandelion invades the perfectly swept orchard floor, no matter how often Stone drives the flail, or makes us rake by hand. We are halfway through the development of the hazelnuts, and tiny larvae of the leaf-roller moth have appeared on the new clusters. Bad news. The larvae cause nut abortions, not a pretty sight. In the still heat of the afternoon, I am up on a ladder setting insect traps, using the work as a cover to check in with Donnato.

I have discovered that poking around the topmost branches of the hazelnuts is an excellent way to conduct a covert conversation. For one thing, it’s great up there. You see things differently, like opening a secret hatch to a world of sky. Rooftops and mountains become your ground — and unlike hiding out in Sirocco’s stall, if Dick Stone ventures into the orchard, you would be the first to know.

“The fifty-caliber casings you found are a match to the slug that killed Sergeant Mackee,” Donnato is saying from L.A. “The shooter is the same as the one at the BLM corrals.” “What about the Native American we took into custody?”

“He had a pretty good alibi. At the time of the shooting, he was in a local emergency room being treated for ulcers. Now we need the weapon.” “The sniper rifle that matches the casings,” I agree, watching a white butterfly skimming perfectly through the leaves.

“Stone has it somewhere. Make a search,” he tells me, “room by room.” “Got it,” I say without enthusiasm.

“You should be ecstatic.”

“About the casings? Yeah, it’s cool.”

“What’s up?”

“Just be straight, okay?”

“Always, buddy, you know that.”

“Do you have an agent tailing me? Because I can’t function that way, and frankly, I resent the hell out of it.” “A federal agent?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“The cowboy? Come on. Good-looking, mid-thirties? He shows up at the corrals, working on the gather? Then he appears again, a mile from the farm, hitting targets like a pro?” “At the same shooting range? You’re kidding. What kind of gun?” “Don’t get excited. It was a hunting rifle, a.308.”

Your handler doesn’t tell you everything. While you’re alone and isolated undercover, the Bureau will be working things from the other end, putting operatives in place you don’t know about. They’ll say it’s for your safety, but it can make you paranoid fast.

“If you don’t like this guy, check him out,” Donnato says.

“I don’t like him,” I reply.

“Search his vehicle, for a start.”

“That would be difficult,” I say. “He’s riding a horse.” Because there, in the heaviest torpor of the day, when stubborn fever becalms the air and the stringed vibration of the bees hits an even riper pitch, Sterling McCord is riding slowly down the sun-soaked lane on a bay, leading the white foal on a halter rope.

It’s the bay mare who rescued me, loaded up with the same silver-encrusted western saddle, but this time