The English Horses

and pine needles. The bridle was a broken ring bit and long-plaited reins. Davey wondered how English ever rode the gray with such a rig. Even the blankets were worn, mended by a craftsman’s hand. The gear told English’s story.

Katherine watched the doctor climb in his buggy and hurry along. Had other patients he said, and was still angry with Mr. Meiklejon’s messenger, who had bullied and threatened the good doctor into leaving a sick man to come to the L Slash. The doctor admitted to Katherine that he did not know how English had survived.

The belly wound was infected, he said, although the liberally applied flour had been the only remedy for uncontrolled bleeding. If the patient were not on the verge of starvation, then he might hold out some encouragement. As it stood, there was little hope.

With instructions to keep the wound clean, the man quiet, so the bleeding would not restart, the doctor drove away, to deliver a baby ten miles downcanon and then patch up a driver who got drunk and shot himself in the foot. “Pray, Miss Katherine. Like I am certain you have been praying. For it will take a miracle.”

Katherine did not have to be told about infection. Bathing him was one thing she could do. So she washed his face and hands with cool water, and wiped at the edges of the belly wound, even gently sponging along the deep cut on the leg and buttocks where she could reach. As she gingerly manipulated him, the mustanger seemed to help. His body twitched, an arm rolled out of the way. It was impossible, but she was certain, as she washed his face again, that he touched his tongue to the side of his mouth where she laid the damp cloth, and even once tried to speak. All of this was her imagination, yet she believed he was aware of her presence.

She fell asleep in the rocking chair and didn’t see the closed eyes open, the head move against the suffocating pillow. The feverish eyes searched until they found Katherine in her chair. Then the head dropped back into its cradle, using the last of a dimming energy.

The doc had come and gone when Davey returned. No one was in the ranch yard, so Davey put up his two mounts and hung English’s gear from the stable rafters, stuffing the few clothes and camp gear into a burlap sack that he stored in a tin-lined chest. Mice around here would eat almost anything.

He knocked at the kitchen door. No one answered, so he pushed in, sure that English was dead. He was quiet as he walked back to the small room. She was there, curled in her familiar rocker, hair fanned over the chair railing and around her face, reaching her shoulder. Davey knelt beside her, let his fingers reach toward but not touch her. He couldn’t believe the hair’s richcolor—light from a ray of sun streaked the long threads. His breath caught in his throat; he pulled back, stood up slowly.

On another impulse he put his fingers to English’s jaw, near the joining with his neck. He didn’t know why it was important the man lived. Everything died, some sooner and harder than others. But he wanted this one man to live. Davey was tired of being the philosopher; he counted Burn English a friend.

His hand placed on Burn’s shoulder felt bone, not flesh. The face and hands were burned from weather, making English look more Indian than anything else. The eyes opened. Davey’s fingers were sticky from the man’s fever. Those eyes stared without blinking, then closed, and Davey let out a big gulp.

“He’s asleep, Davey. Doctor Lockhart left a bottle of laudanum and said to use it liberally, as any thrashing would open the wounds. He also said to spoon broth into Mister English whenever possible. He’s much too thin.” She let her head sink back on the rocker’s support. “But we know that, don’t we. His chances aren’t good. Lockhart said without your quick acting with the flour, he would be dead now.” She stuttered on the next words. “Thank you.”

A vein throbbed in Davey’s temple and he wanted to rub it but was afraid to stop her talking.

“I’ll fix you a meal, Davey. He’ll sleep a while. We need to get you fed.” It wasn’t much, but she had spoken his name.

Time slowed. A week passed since they had brought in the mestenero and he was still alive. Meiklejon didn’t come out of his room much. Souter gave the orders as usual, but there was no shadow of the boss behind him. Davey figured the man was carrying some big guilt over the accident.

Souter told Davey to harness up a team and go to Datil for the Socorro supplies. He picked a team of good sorrels, part draft, part mustang, harder than hell to drive, but tireless, steady travelers once they got lined out. It was a long stretch between the ranch and Datil by wagon road, about twenty extra miles. Souter gave the job to Davey to get him off the ranch before he started up more fights.

Just yesterday the doc had swung past, come in from near Omega where a woman had lost her husband and two children to the smallpox. Doc had washed up well before he went in to see English. Wounds were septic, Lockhart said. Badly infected—couldn’t be helped—couldn’t be treated except to wash them with heated water, use laudanum to dull the pain, and keep hoping for the best. The belly wound was worse, the smell enough to make a strong man puke. The doc was bitter, dark-tempered when he asked did Davey have another trick like the flour to save English’s life. Then the doc stared down at Burn, shook his head. Spoke his mind to his patient.

“Son, I don’t know what good we’ve done you. Your suffering ain’t fair, boy, and for that I’m sorry.” Brutal words that laid on more guilt.

Before he left, Lockhart put a bigger bottle of laudanum on the table. Spoke directly to Miss Katherine with a special slowness. “Be careful, miss. Too big a dose can kill him, weak as he is.”

When the doc was gone, Souter had taken charge. He sent Red for a curandera, wife to Enselmo Ortega, a sheepherder in Quemado. She’d come to help and she’d come with her own ideas. She was going to use plants from the land, she said. Sage and purple coneflower. It was only after English had his belly wrapped and packed with the herbs, and smelled decent, that Davey caught up the sorrel team and left on Souter’s errand.

He felt the team’s sudden tiredness through the lines and let them come to a walk. They’d reached the base of the mountains, a long way still from Datil. This stretch of the road was sided with pine and some fir, scatterings of meadows where he imagined deer would come in at dawn to feed. It was too peaceful, tempting a man to draw the team off the road, unhitch, and let the tired horses graze while he rested his back at a tall tree, chewed a bit of grass himself, and tried to make sense of the past weeks and the endless raw anger raging within him. Instead, Davey drove on, mindless and numb.

He came out of his self-pity once when a dark colt with a ragged white scar appeared on a ridge, to the side of the team. The colt whinnied. Davey stopped the team and the off-sorrel whinnied back. It was the mestenero’s orphan mustang—maybe he was lonesome for company and Davey could rope him, bring him in for English to see.

The colt snorted, lowered his head, then flicked his tail and was gone. Davey hoped it wasn’t a bad sign.

Chapter Thirteen

The supplies were piled up outside the small hut that served as a sometimes post office. It was well past dark when Davey got in, and he loaded up alone, tacked a note to the door saying Thanks to the driver and that the L Slash had what they needed. He turned the now docile team around, headed once more for home.

He had to stop around three in the morning, by his crude reckoning. It was god-awful dark. His eyes burned, but mostly the team needed a drink and a few minutes rest and some grass, before they tackled the long uphill pull to the L Slash cutoff. It wasn’t a long trip home in miles, no more than five or so, but whatever Meiklejon had ordered was heavy, and Davey could read that the team was working too hard at each small rise.

So he slipped their bits and let them graze a half hour while he built a smoke and leaned on a wheel, knowing if he laid down or even sat with his back up against something solid, he’d sleep and be even more late getting in.

By the time he reached headquarters, Davey was nodding over the lines as the team set a good trot, eager