The English Horses

When horse and rider slowed at the valley’s entrance, Burn was pleased. The mustangs slept in pairs, one on guard, head hanging, legs locked in readiness; the other tucked neatly on the ground, safe against the high wind and predators.

Burn guided the roan past the water hole, where the moon’s twin floated in the icy pool. An owl spread out its wings and drifted above the reflecting surface. He listened for night sounds—the owl’s cry, a coyote’s call, small rodents brushing through tall grass.

He pushed the roan to follow a faint trail behindthe pool into the canon’s maw. The trail looped and twisted, presenting many places where he could cut off the possibility of escape. He returned past the pool, checking the different breaks in those high rock walls. He’d have to fence those escapes, a section or two of high rails would keep the wild band in the valley. Dead junipers lay among the rock, a few straight pines that had fallen. He hated building fence.

Burn guided the roan among the sleeping mares. The stallion raised his head in exhausted challenge. Burn rode back to the crude camp, tired enough maybe to sleep. The moon disappeared behind quick clouds. Burn once again hobbled the roan, hung up the gear, rolled in the smelly, wet blanket, and went to sleep quickly, a thin smile on his tight face.

The band was gone for four days and it rained the whole time. Burn shivered in his wet slicker, barely alive inside the saddle blankets and his stinking sheepskin coat. When the horses returned, a mare was in heat and the stallion came courting. As the stallion caught and mounted the mare, Burn had to look away.

He saw the stallion slide off the mare. When she turned her head, whickered, and touched the stallion’s wet muzzle, Burn felt an old ache pulse in his belly, and he wanted to frighten the band and let them run far from his plans.

The next morning they were gone—he guessed for two or three days again. He pulled out a number of dead trees, dug holes with a crude shovel. Had an axe, too—tools of a mestenero’s trade. He planted posts at three breaks in the rock wall. The band had gone out past the pool, and before that they had come back on the west side. So he put up a five-foot barrier at one of the eastern breaks, and left the two western breaks open, with only the posts to mark his intentions. The horses would return from the west, balk at the posts until the stallion determined the odd objects were no threat, then they would spill into the valley and get back to grazing.

Time worked for him now, time and the harsh spring winds that dried up what winter snow remained. The spring-fed pool was a constant. The stallion knew it, returned his band to it when other water was sucked dry.

The band returned in three days. The lead mare quit at the posts, refused to let the band pass. The stallion came up snorting, pawing at the posts, canon and, when they did not fight or run, he swept past them into the canon, arrogant in his victory.

The bachelor colts came in from the east. At first they came to the new fence and stopped in a tight group. A dark colt, colored much like his sire, came forward to do battle. Striking wildly, the colt rattled the fence rails but could not move them. He retreated, and, as disciplined as a flight of birds, the bachelors turned and ran to the valley’s wide end. They swept down onto the ripening grass, the dark colt bucking and kicking.

As the colts raced through the grazing herd, the dark colt strayed too close to the stallion, who charged the youngster and caught him on the flank, tore a wide, bloody hole before letting go. The band stayed one day and was gone. Burn tracked sign, read that one horse limped badly.

He worked doggedly on the fence, built a secondpanel, five feet and solid with rails he could bully into place. Blisters covered his palms and fluid seeped into his ragged shirt cuffs. He slept through the night and into the next day. The horses returned to the water, then left two days later. The mares went to the east side and found themselves trapped. The stallion pawed at the rails but there was no escape, so the mares spilled down the sandhills, dodged the furious stallion, and went out through the west gate. The trap was closing.

Burn drove himself to finish fencing the mouth of the valley, sleeping in brief naps when he could no longer carry a railing. He had to rely on the roan’s instinct to warn him. He kept the mustang hobbled in close and studied his attentiveness.

The horse herd came back but the new fence canon galled the stallion. The herd moved past the pool through the narrow canon. After the horses were gone, the roan whinnied, and a single horse answered. Burn jerked the Spencer from the roan’s saddle, jacked a shell in place, then backed up until he felt a boulder behind him.

“You…I got a Spencer and it ain’t on you yet.”

“Friend, the boss sent me looking for strays,” came an answering voice. “This’s our summer range. I lost track of a few cows …one a big brindle should have a week-old calf with her.”

So, he was on some rancher’s summer grass. It was spring by the months and winter by the cold, so Burn waited, but the rider was shy about making an appearance. Burn thought to shoot, but, with his luck, he’d hit something. He tried again.

“Mister, I ain’t seen a cow, but I seen tracks.”

Burn heard the horse start walking, and pointedthe Spencer down—a friendly gesture, but he could raise and fire quickly. He needed a few more days, a week or two, until the band was trapped and branded.

The horse appeared. A good-headed bay that started when it saw Burn. The rider himself wasn’t as much as his horse—long-legged, curled boots hanging to the bay’s knees, long arms folded across a lean chest, with a round face more like a child’s sitting under a too-big hat. The man looked straight at Burn. Burn drew back his shoulders and thought to raise the Spencer, but it would be a fool gesture of faint pride. The rider wasn’t as young as his round face indicated and he carried deceptive muscle on his lanky frame. He could step down and break Burn in two.

“I been watching you some the last few days. You got a lot of work done all by yourself. You caught any of them bronc’s yet? By the way, the name’s Davey Hildahl and I ride for the L Slash.”

The bay stretched down for a bite of grass and Hildahl let his boots swing out of the heavy stirrups. His eyes said he was no stranger to the work; they watched Burn carefully. Burn’s mustang hobbled up to greet the visitors, but the bay paid no attention.

Hildahl tried again. “Now my horse, he’s got the right idea. Past noon it is…going to be past the next meal if I don’t keep better time. Some eating don’t look like it would hurt you neither, and it sure would make me good company. Coffee’s always a good place to start.”

Burn raised the Spencer, let it drift before settling on the bay’s chest.

The visitor shook his head. “That ain’t friendly. You got to eat same as me. Even if you sleep out here with the bronc’s. Try letting that Spencer look at the ground again.”

Burn spoke: “No cause to come down on a man doing his job.” He was as surprised by his voice as was the visitor. Hadn’t spoken to a two-legged beast in three weeks, and now he was snapping. “Hildahl, ride on if I don’t suit you.” He allowed the Spencer to point south again, and Hildahl let out that breath.

“All I was asking was about a brindle cow and if you got a biscuit or two I could chew on. I get hungry riding up here . . . never do pack enough grub to last. Besides, you’re on Meiklejon’s land. He owns title to all you can see.”

Burn got angrier. “Not the horses he don’t! I tracked ’em, and I’ll brand and ride ’em. They’re mine!” He tried to settle his temper, but this mealy son-of-a-bitch.…Ah, hell, Burn thought.

The man seemed to understand. “Horse chaser…since you ain’t give me a name yet…maybe I won’t say nothing about the bronc’s and your fencing. Not for a while anyways. In your traveling, you seen this big brindle cow and her calf?”

Burn steadied the Spencer against his thigh as he spat out the words. “I saw sign two days past, going north. Big cow dragging afterbirth. Couldn’t tell if she was brindle.”

“Thanks, horse chaser, for the report. Ain’t been up north…never figured she’d strike out for there…ain’t much graze. But if she’s in trouble…hell, cows ain’t too bright.” Hildahl’s long fingers picked up the reins and instantly the bay was ready. The horse took several steps, then Hildahl stopped it, swung around in the saddle, and stared at Burn. “Now I know you been out here too long, horse chaser, and I know you think you own that band. But I still don’t have a name for you. I’ll set real peaceable, so you don’t have to raise that damned Spencer.”

Burn told the short truth of the matter. “I come up from Texas following these mustangs. The name’s Burn