The Last Westerner, A Book by Chilton Williamson Jr.

When I joined her in the pool she splashed water over my head and rubbed my shoulders and back with a vigorous circular motion. I worked her over the same way and she ducked her head below the surface of the water and came up after nearly a minute blowing, laughing, and shaking her hair out. She looked very lovely, her eyes green behind the darkened fringe of her wet hair, and I reached for her and kissed her and held her hard against me and kissed her again while we relaxed together in the water which felt cool and fresh, infinitely pleasant. The waves made a plashing sound within the echoing chamber of the cave. I let her go finally and lay back with my shoulders fitted to the curving edge of the tinaja while Jody traced my collarbone with the tip of one finger.

"If you're from southern New Mexico and you're not Spanish, Mexican, or Indian, you're a blue-eyed, red-blond, peckerwood redneck like me."

"After the Civil War, the Federal troops and the Yankee carpetbaggers from the North chased Southerners like my family west of the Mississippi and the Red Rivers. We kept going and moved in on the Mexicans and Indians beyond the Pecos."

"You know a lot about history, don't you?"

"Only what I learned from my father--and his father. They read more than most college graduates."

"What is it about people who don't know their history--?"

"Are condemned to repeat it. And the people who do know history are condemned to foresee it." An even more terrifying idea, when you think about it.

"I wish we'd thought to bring the wine with us," Jody said.

"I had my hands plenty full as it was getting down, thank you."

"And I was thinking you'd do anything for me, Jeb."

"Anything is a big word, my dear."

She stepped up from the basin and stood erect under the overhang, her wet body gleaming like bronze in the red light of the setting sun.

"I'm almost dry already," she said. "I don't need a towel."

Jody combed her hair out straight and we pulled our clothes on. I picked up one boot and looked at it. Then I reached for the other.

"I'm carrying these up."

"If you think it will make it easier for you. Don't step on a prickly pear."

While she unpacked supper I gathered wood from the juniper forest and built a fire on the caprock at the edge of the cliff. When it was burning well I brought the magnum of wine from the picnic box and drew the cork. The wine was dry as the desert air, fragrant as juniper smoke. I poured two tin cups full and passed one of them to Jody.

"Thank you," she said. "You smell somewhat better than you did an hour ago."

"You always smell good."

"You're a liar. But always such a gentleman."

We drank the wine and I filled the cups again. Jody uncovered the food and served supper. She had brought cold lamb, pinto beans in gravy, potato salad, and a loaf of French bread she had wrapped in foil to warm on the coals. Sitting on folding camp stools to eat, our feet braced on the bare rock, we held the sagging paper plates between our knees, taking care not to spill any of the wine. When we were through eating I built the fire back and set the pot to boil for coffee. I poured the last of the magnum bottle and we carried the cups to the cliff edge and sat with our legs hanging over while we waited for the water to boil. The track of the vanished sun was still bright in the sky, the evening star gleamed, and a cool breeze sprang up, fanning the fire until I heard the sparks shoot up to meet the falling darkness.

Jody placed her hand on my knee.

"I don't suppose you thought to bring your harmonica."

"I'll get it from the truck."

She lay on the rock with her head in my lap while I played "The Meeting of the Waters," one of the most beautiful songs I know, and "The Bard of Armagh," which made her cry. I played "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" and "Sweetly She Sleeps, My Alice Fair," also by Foster, and then Jody wanted "Kathleen Mavourneen."

"I want to hear the words," she said.

"I'll sing them for you then, if you'll get off my diaphragm first."

You can't handle "Kathleen Mavourneen" from a sitting position; a song like that takes guts to sing. I stood up, blew B-flat on the harmonica, and began.

Kathleen Mavourneen! the grey dawn is breaking,
The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill;
The lark from her light wing the bright dew is shaking,
Kathleen Mavourneen! what, slumb'ring still?
O, hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever?
Oh, hast thou forgotten this day we must part?
It may be for years, and it may be forever;
Oh, why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
It may be for years, and it may be forever;
Then why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?

You sing that so beautifully," Jody said.

"It's too beautiful a song to spoil. And too beautiful a night."

"Do we have any wine left?"

"It's all gone. Jeb Stuart sang that song the morning he was killed at Yellow Tavern."

"He must have been a very brave man, General Stuart. Were you really related to him?"

"Did you have any close calls when you worked as a range detective?"

"One fairly close one, anyway."

Her head was in my lap again.

"I was investigating the disappearance of some cattle from a ranch in Elko, Nevada. They were being cut out of the herd by a rider from Wyoming who was shipping them home to his ranch, where his wife and her mother would alter the brands and turn them out with their own herds. The girl knew I was onto them."

"We rode out together to have a look at the herd. She was getting ready to shoot me when the brand inspector showed up."

"How did you know she was going to shoot you?"

"You're a brave man, aren't you, Jeb Ryder?"

"As brave as I have to be. Bravery is just ignoring feelings that ought to be ignored."

"I love you so for being brave. You would do anything for me--wouldn't you, Jeb?"

"I'd do my best, anyway."

"I know it, darling," Jody said.

For the Fourth of July Jody and I pulled Tortuga over to Cortez, Colorado where he was entered in the show there. We left the ranch at a little before eight in the morning when the sun was burning the dew from the grass and the canyon smelled of warming rock and the wet alfalfa. She had on black jeans that fitted her like pantyhose, the silver concho belt I had bought for her in Durango, and a green sik shirt. Her straw-colored hair was pulled back and fastened with a black ribbon at the nape and a new straw hat came down over one eye like a long wink. From behind the steering wheel Jody leaned across the truck seat, took the hair at the back of my neck between her fingers, and pulled gently.

"Your hair's growing out again behind," she said. "Otherwise you look very handsome this morning."

Tortuga ran the hundred miles to Cortez in place, causing the truck to ride as if there was water in the gas line or the fuel pump was about to go. We climbed out of the canyons onto the bench and turned east at Monticello across the Great Sage Plain with the sun in our eyes, and in the summer haze above the rolling pinto bean fields and cedar forests. At Dove Creek birds roosted away from the heat in the tops of the grain elevators standing over the quiet town where only the taverns and package stores and a couple of gas stations were open for business.

Celebrating the Fourth is like admiring photographs of an aging beauty queen before she became a courtesan and began to put on weight. In Cortez they had flags suspended from the iron lamp posts and there was a serious traffic jam along the main street. Tour buses going to Mesa Verde waited at the stoplights and the street was crowded with tourists crossing from one side to the other to visit the shops and restaurants. Tourists of every age were dressed in short-pants, T-shirts, and sneakers with ankle-socks as if it was some kind of uniform, and quite a few of them wore fanny packs under their stomachs. Every summer now is a kind of invasion, and in the winter time there are the skiers. Some day I'm going to run off and live with the Indians.

"Look at all the kangaroos," I said.

"You know-- that's exactly what they look like, kangaroos."

"Kangaroos with weak legs."

"Kangaroos with no legs at all."

We followed the secondary streets back to the highway and drove to the showgrounds east of town. The parking area was already crowded. Goodlooking girls excercising their horses raised clouds of dust outside the arena and Jody drove carefully to avoid the animals being worked around by their owners as they stood snubbed beside the trailers. We unloaded Tortuga away from the crowd where the sagebrush began, and while Jody curried him down I brought him a drink from the water barrel and began fitting the Powder River panels together. Before I had the pen finished Jody was warming the horse up in an open field beyond the parking lot. Blue smoke drifting over from the concession stands carried the smells of hotdogs, hamburgers, and fry bread.

"We're on our way over to the arena now," Jody said as she rode up.

"I'll be along when I get the pen together."

"Hurry, then. And don't forget the videocam."

The videocamera was the closest thing there was to a sore point between us. I detest cameras generally, videocameras in particular. Cameras encourage people to forget what it was they were supposed to be looking at, while videocameras protect them from seeing anything at all. My previous effort at taping an equine event had produced an hour-long docudrama whose highlights included a Big Mac box tacking about on the ground under a stiff breeze, the open beer can I held in my left hand, and finally--for three or four uninterrupted minutes-- my shirted armpit. Jody had given me careful instruction since then, so I was expected to do better this morning. When I had the panels in place finally I took the videocamera from the truck, walked over to the stands, and climbed to the top bench for a clear view of the arena. The painted board, blistered by the sun, was already uncomfortably warm. I spread my bandana handkerchief on it and sat looking away to the mountains over in Colorado. The mountains were streaked with snow still, the thin sky above them was pale and cold-looking, and suddenly, for the first time in years, I missed the Southwest--the real Southwest--with its blue pinyon-juniper forests, yucca flats, sandstorms, and the terrible dry heat. A few people, not many, were taking seats lower down in the stands. Peruvian paso classes are a lot like amateur theatrics, attended mostly by friends and relatives of the performers. Just beyond the entrance gate Jody sat Tortuga proudly, the two of them looking magnificent. The horse had been fired a few minutes before by the mares but she had managed to get him relatively calm again. I settled the videocamera on my right shoulder and attempted to hold them in focus as they maneuvered in the arena with the other contestants, the sleek horsehair coats and elaborate saddles ornamented with Spanish American silver shining under the hot sun. When they halted the judge announced, and Jody and Tortuga had won first place. I climbed down from the stands and met them at the exit. Jody looked exultant while the horse, wearing the blue ribbon against his cheek, appeared bored.

"His first win," Jody said. "Aren't you just so proud of us both, Jeb?"

I gave her thigh a squeeze and slapped the glossy neck.

"He's not Tortuga, he's a Spanish grandee. A conquistador."

"I thought he was named for the town," I told her.

A handsome woman, another of the contestants, with bright black eyes and a thin nose, wearing her black hair in a thick braid down her back, smiled as she rode past on a fine-looking gray wearing a red ribbon pinned on the cheek strap.

"She's Indian," I said when the woman was out of hearing.

"You've seen Indians before, haven't you?"

"Not on one of these fancy land tortoises. I thought the Indians had better sense."

"She has plenty of sense. Probably she drives a newer model truck than you do, too."

Jody unsaddled the horse, brushed him, and put him into the Powder River pen. We sat together on the dropped tailgate of the truck to eat the lunch she had brought and afterward felt sleepy from the sun and the wine we had drunk.

"I'm ready for a nap," Jody suggested.

"We could go ahead and check into the motel now."

"I wouldn't want to leave Cortez alone here in the pen."

"We can drive by the stables and drop him there, if you wish."

"His next class is at three o'clock. That's only two hours from now."

"You brought the padlock, didn't you?"

"A lot of good that would do if someone wanted him badly enough."

"He'll be all right for a couple of hours. I'll leave the radio going in the dressing room."

"Let's go then. I really could use a nap."

At the motel they gave us a room on the second floor where the housekeeping carts stood along the row of open doors around the balcony while the maids finished making up inside. Jody hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside handle of the door and drew the curtains. Her body in the half light looked pale and diffuse as if I was seeing her underwater.

"You don't have a spare ounce of flesh anywhere."

"Am I too skinny, do you think?"

"Of course you're not too skinny."

"Perhaps some day I'll want you to get me fat. If I'm ever going to have a child it will have to be soon now. But not too soon, darling. I have enough to do at this point in my life just keeping the Bar Nun safe from the farm credit agent."

We slept for an hour and a half and dressed in the airconditioned chill.

"I'm glad we don't have to drive home tonight," Jody said. "I want to eat a big dinner and go dancing. Will you take me out dancing, Jeb? I want to have fun, and get drunk."

When we left the motel the glaring heat seemed to rise up from the ground. The No Vacancy sign out front had been switched on and the traffic was heavy in both directions along the thoroughfare. Getting back to the show grounds took time on account of the cars slowing to turn out at the fast food joints and the Indian jewelry stores. By the time we arrived there Jody's face under the straw hat was damp with perspiration and she looked exasperated. The kangaroos wandered everywhere, patting the horses and trying to offer them things to eat.

"Oh damn!" she exclaimed as we approached the trailer.

Two people, a man and a boy about sixteen, stood with Tortuga inside the pen. The boy had one hand on the horse's withers and the other on his chest, while the man stood back several paces, holding his chin in his hand to observe the horse. Both of them were Indians.

"What do they think they're doing?" Jody cried.

"You there," I shouted, "come away from that horse!"

The Indians looked at us, and at each other. Then, moving deliberately, they climbed over the top of the pen and began to walk slowly away without having said a word.

"What's the big interest in the horse?" I called after them.

The man stopped and turned about, while the boy kept walking. The kid wore short pants and had his cap on backwards, like any American teenager.

"Nice horse," he said. "Just looking."

"Well, you do your looking from the outside, please. His owner doesn't want anyone in the pen with him. He's a stallion. If he was to kick you, she'd be the one held responsible."

The Indian faced me, deadpan behind mirror sunglasses. Even without the glasses his eyes would be as expressionless as the rest of his face, which was small and rather narrow for a Navajo.

"Horse looks perfectly gentle to me," he said.

He turned on his heel and walked away after the boy, not hurrying.

"What gall," Jody said as she got out of the truck.

"Probably they were just curious. They never saw anything like Tortuga before."

"He doesn't look that different from any other horse when he's standing still."

"Who knows what's different to an Indian?"

"Poor Cortez," she said, rubbing the long face. "He took his first blue ribbon and now he's like any other celebrity--his fans won't leave him in peace anymore."

She refused to leave the horse by himself in the pen and I went alone to watch Dago O'Grady ride in a bronc-busting event. The bronc riding was interrupted when a cowboy from the Bronx got stepped on and had to be removed from the arena by ambulance after receiving emergency medical treatment. Dago himself came off well before the buzzer sounded. I walked around to the chutes and found him seated on a step of the stairs going up to the announcer's box, punching up the crown of his old felt hat with his fist.

"The New Yorker's horse was Number 32," Dago said.

"Naw," Dago told me, "I'd of busted that horse, all right. I'd of ridden him to the buzzer and past it."

"Maybe you'll get lucky again and draw him yourself tomorrow," I suggested, and watched as the sarcasm flew over his head like a hat in a windstorm.

Jody had the pen apart and stacked when I got back. While she loaded the horse I mounted the panels on the trailer and then we drove to the boarding stables. The stables were under a mile from the showgrounds within sight of the highway. For twenty dollars a night you had a clean dry pen, a half-bale of alfalfa hay, and a can of sweet grain. Jody led Tortuga into one of the corner pens, slipped the halter, and kissed him on the nose. "Hasta luego," she told him.

We showered at the motel and had a drink from the bottle of whiskey I had brought along. Then we dressed in fresh clothes. Jody asked me to fasten the buttons up the back of her blouse. I did up the buttons, then undid them all the way down again and set my mouth on her bare shoulder.

"What are you doing, Jeb?" she asked.

"Let's not go out tonight."

"But I'm hungry. Aren't you?"

"Very hungry. We can order out later and eat. Afterward."

"Absolutely not. We're going to meet Dago downtown and have a wonderful supper and watch the fireworks. And then you're going to take me dancing."

"A trained bear looks better than I do on the dance floor."

"Fake it then. That's what other men do."

We ate at Nero's because Jody said they served real Italian food there. Dago O'Grady was waiting for us at the bar as we arrived, drinking Jack Daniel on the rocks and trying to make time with the barmaid. While the waitress was still taking our drink order Dago picked up the menu and opened it.

"I can't eat this wop food," Dago told her. "Can I get just a steak here?"

"Have another drink first, Dago," Jody told him. "Jeb and I are going to have one, maybe two drinks before we even think about eating, the way civilized people do."

He sat looking like the Dying Gaul as we drank and ignored our conversation. The wide brim of his hat kept brushing the head of the woman seated behind him until she rose and changed her place at the table, giving Dago a killing look as she did it. Finally we ordered supper. I had veal piccata, Jody had spaghetti with pesto sauce and pine nuts, and Dago ate the twenty-four-ounce steak with fried potatoes and onions. We were sitting afterward over coffee and brandy when a party of German tourists dressed like Hopalong Cassidy sat at the table next to ours and one of the men asked Dago if he had ever been down into the Grand Canyon.

"Hell no," Dago told him. "What would I ever want to do a thing like that for?"

I paid for the three of us and we left the restaurant. People standing in the vestibule, waiting for a table, stepped aside for us as we passed. Obviously Cortez had been what they call discovered since I saw it first thirty years ago. Outdoors it was warm still and the sky behind Ute Mountain had a wash of color in it. Jody put her arm through mine and leaned into me as we went around the corner to the truck, followed by Dago. Her breath smelled of whiskey and she was already a little drunk.

We drove out to the fairgrounds with Dago on the end of the bench seat and Jody squeezed in between us on top of the floor shift. Men stood in the road at the entrance to the field swinging flashlights in wide descending arcs like trainmen to direct the traffic. I found a parking place on a height of ground a little above the field and we sat in the truck with the lights switched off, passing a bottle of schnappes between us in the darkness. The first rocket to burst caught Jody with her head thrown back and her lips around the long neck of the bottle. Her face faded into shadow as petals of fire drifted down and then there was a thud and whiz before the second clap of sound, the glare, and the colored lights raining out of the black sky.

"That one was a beauty," Jody said.

One rocket followed another up and burst, singly at first, then in clusters, the oriental firestorm building to a climax above the invisible desert that had been home to the mysterious Anasazi and later roamed by the more or less peaceable Utes before being conquered by bearded invaders wearing steel suits and riding horses. Now the conquistadores too were gone and we were celebrating the end of a story growing out of the jungles of Yucatan and the darkness of unrecorded time--if it was the end. I felt Jody's hand on my knee and a violent flash of light revealed Dago O'Grady, his face a livid green, scowling ahead through the windshield.

"Look, how lovely!" Jody exclaimed. "Is that normal?" she added in a doubtful voice as a spear of white light broadened suddenly at its base and then exploded into a mushroom cloud of orange and yellow fire.

"The fire department just blowed theirselves up," Dago announced in a satisfied voice.

I pressed the truck through the rubberneckers and got away from the field before the emergency vehicles arrived. The main stockpile had failed to go up and already the flames were subsiding. In town I found space on a side street around the corner from the bar and parked there.

"I'll leave you folks here and get on back to the motel," Dago said.

"Don't be silly," Jody told him. "We appreciate your company, Dago. Besides, it's only just past eleven."

A drugstore cowboy seated on a stool inside the door took fifteen dollars apiece from us before stamping the backs of our hands with ultraviolet ink. The bar was the forward part of a much larger room running from the street all the way to the alley behind the building. We worked past it through the crowd to a table beneath the stage at the back of the room where the western swing band was taking a break. I pulled Jody's chair out for her and she took a seat at the table between Dago and me. The band was three men dressed in cowboy clothes and a girl wearing a long calico dress and her long mahoganny hair piled on her head. The girl was extremely pretty. Dago said something I couldn't hear to her from the floor but she gave him a blank stare and turned away again to her colleagues. When the waitress came with the drinks Jody took her purse out and paid for them. She was still wearing the straw hat over one eye in a sort of Western imitation of Veronica Lake. All the men at the tables around us were looking at her.

"They're a really great band," Jody said. "The girl plays a mean fiddle."

"That's nice of her. But not really necessary."

"You'd love to take that long hair down, wouldn't you? One pin after the other."

"She wouldn't need to wear a thing else."

"You're not trying to make me jealous, are you?"

"It might keep you from noticing I have two left feet."

Jody leaned to brush my cheek with her mouth.

"It doesn't matter to me how you dance. You do everything else so marvelously well. For me, you're absolutely the perfect man."

Out on the dance floor couples were dancing to rock music being jockeyed by the bartender. The music on top of the human roar made it difficult to hear what anyone was saying and I was beginning to wish we were out of here already and home in bed, which is the only kind of dancing I ever cared about. The musicians took their positions on the stage finally and the bartender killed the rock music. In addition to the fiddle were an accordion and the two accoustic guitars. While the lead singer introduced the set I went to the bar for another round of drinks. Jody and O'Grady were talking with their heads close together as I returned to the table, but he shut up before I got back there. Jody acted tired and had circles under her eyes. She closed them when the band started playing and swayed her shoulders in time to the music while Dago drew up an empty chair with the toe of one boot and rested his crossed heels on the seat. At the beginning of the third number Jody put her face against mine.

"Will you dance this one with me?" she requested.

She took me by the hand and led me onto the dance floor among the swirling, dipping couples.

"This is an easy one," Jody said as I felt for her waist. " We practiced this step over Memorial Day-- remember?"

A ladies' man I knew in the service used to say that dancing is the way to a woman's heart, and I have been afraid ever since he might be right. We started off together and I was just beginning to feel the rhythym, a little, when the music stopped.

"You're doing beautifully," Jody encouraged.

The swing band really was wonderful and I could have sat comfortably at the table all night, drinking scotch and listening to--and watching--that girl play the fiddle. They began a new number and Jody led me patiently through a series of complicated calisthenics I didn't know from a Highland Fling or a Watusi wardance.

"I told you you really were a dancer, didn't I?" she demanded when the torture ended finally. "Do you mind if we sit down for a minute? It's awfully hot and stuffy under these lights."

We found Dago O'Grady, still with his boots up, behind a fresh drink. "I didn't know if you folks was wantin another," he said, "so I didn't order."

"There's plenty of single women here tonight," Jody told him. "Why don't you take one of them out on the floor?"

He looked glum. "I don't feel like dancin."

"The trouble with you is, you need to be married. We're all of us too old to have to break the ice again every night."

Dago took a long drink of the whiskey and set the glass down hard on the table.

"Guy I used to know in Vegas," he said. "Had all the money in the world, millions and millions of dollars. Spent his summers on a ranch up in Montana, near Bozeman. Ever weekend used to send a Lear jet to bring a call girl out from Vegas. Cost several thousand bucks for the plane, another couple thousand for the girl. Most beautiful girls in the world. Guy said to me one time, says, 'Dago, I don't pay these girls to come out here. I pay them to leave.'"

Jody and I danced again and it went better this time. The guitars strummed rocking on their heels, the accordian swayed from side to side crunching out the notes, and the fiddle sawed the air with her elbow and tapped the toe of her little black boot peeking out from under the flouncing hem of her skirt. The girl's face glistened with perspiration under the hot lights as her hair began to come apart behind her ears. Jody's step slowed and she felt heavy in my arms.

"Let's go sit," she suggested. "I need to rest again."

I offered to buy her another drink but she refused it. The whiskey had made us both sleepy and I thought of our silent motel room with its wide bed, the turned-down spread over smooth sheets. Jody drank the melted ice water at the bottom of the glass and I gave her a look.

"Yes," she agreed, "I suppose we should go."

Then she turned to Dago.

"Dance this last one with me, Dago, before they finish the set."

Jody snatched the straw hat from her head and dropped it on its crown at the center of the table among the empty glasses. She did not look wilted anymore but erect and vibrant. She led Dago onto the dance floor, faced him, and offered him her hand. They were off on the downbeat, swinging, spinning, reeling, and bowing among the other swaying couples. Like a fine horse and rider or a loving couple joined in love they moved as a single body, taking possession of the floor until the fiddler, inclining her body and leaning out above the fiddle, appeared to address herself and her music to them alone. The dance went on, a rush of music and motion and passion that felt as if it would continue forever until, suddenly, it stopped. For a long moment Jody and Dago stood facing one another--she the taller of the two by nearly a head--before she let go his hands and returned ahead of him to the table. The silk shirt stuck to her back between the shoulder blades, her green eyes were bright, and she was breathing hard. Jody swept up the hat from the table and clamped it down straight on the back of her head.

"Now we can go," she said.

We undressed quickly in the room and got in bed together under the top sheet with our bodies touching all the way down.

"I'm not certain I want to be married again, Jeb."

"You told me I was your perfect man."

"Well. I suppose you are."

"You asked me to be your stud. I want to have a child. Or two."

"We don't have to be married for you to give me a child."

It shocked me, of course. Ranchers are usually conservative people, the women especially. But this is 1999. So all I said was, "It would look a hell of a lot better on the pedigree."

"I don't know. It isn't something we have to decide right now tonight, is it?"

"I'm drunk," Jody said. "Do you still want to make love to a drunk woman, Jeb?"

"I always want to make love to you."

"Then go put something on. You're not going to be a stud tonight, anyway."

"I'm going," I said.

In the morning there was an overcast. Jody woke up with a headache and went into the shower without saying a word. She stayed under for twenty-five minutes and emerged with her hair wrapped in a towel and another one around her middle. Silently she dried and combed her hair, made up, and dressed while I watched the weather channel on the television. They were forecasting the return of hot weather later in the week, with severe afternoon and evening storms.

"Just in time for my second cutting," Jody remarked in a voice like deadly nightshade growing underneath a rock.

We went for breakfast downtown at a diner where the food was all grease and salt and the girls skidded the heated plates at you along the counter the way waitresses used to do in the movies back when I was a kid. The fried eggs and ham tasted wonderful and there wasn't a health faddist, jogger, or mountain biker in the place. The coffee was strong enough to galvanize a Basque sheepherder three weeks dead. When I suggested to Jody that she drink some she barked at me, saying that coffee only made her feel worse. She ate an enormous breakfast and drank a glass of soda water afterward.

The overcast had lowered until it appeared balanced on the cone of Ute Mountain and the day began to look like rain. I waited at the curb while Jody unlocked the passenger door and got up beside her in the truck.

"Are we ready to go for Tortuga now?"

"His name is Cortez--damn it!"

I could tell from the way she said it she was starting to feel better.

Every stoplight on the way out of town turned red when she looked at it. The traffic was awful and people crowded the crosswalks. Beyond the big new motels that had been cow pasture a couple of years ago we came up behind a tour bus grinding along and spraying exhaust. When Jody pulled out to pass the driver accelerated suddenly, forcing her to drop behind again.

"You dirty sonofabitch," she said.

The bus was ahead of us as we approached the turnoff, the stables plainly visible from the highway behind a row of Navajo willows. Jody pulled off and drove slowly up the dirt track. Dust clouds raised by the loading horses obscured the pens and the horse trailers backed around in the ranch yard. When we were still a hundred yards from the stables she stopped the truck and set the parking brake.

"I'm not getting myself into another traffic jam. Are you coming with me? Or would you prefer to wait here?"

"I'm coming with you, of course."

She took the halter and lead from the seat and we walked on together toward the pens. Many of them were vacant already behind the swung-out gates. The dust rising all around made it difficult to see anything clearly.

"Where is Cortez?" Jody asked suddenly, in a voice that sounded completely unlike her.

"He's there somewhere. You can't see the pen from here."

"I can see it," she insisted. "He isn't there, I tell you. He's gone."

"Someone took him," Jody said.

She began running as I followed at a slower pace. The gate of the pen stood open and the fresh tracks of the horse led through it and mixed with the confusion of tracks beyond.

Jody said, "The Indians took him."

She looked as if she were going to cry.

"You used the padlock, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. The padlock's gone."

I put my arm around her shoulders.

"Maybe Dago pulled him home with his horse."

"Dago wouldn't do a thing like that without telling me. He doesn't have a key, anyway."

Jody threw the lead and halter in the dust and kicked them. Her face caved in and collapsed altogether, and then she did cry.

I embraced her, holding her rigid body hard against me until she grew calmer and relaxed somewhat in my arms. Then I put one hand beneath her chin and raised her ruined face to mine.

"I'll go after him for you and find him and bring him back, if it takes the rest of the summer to do it."

"You'll never find him. He doesn't even carry a brand."

"It's what I used to do for a living," I said, staring across her shoulder toward the dry desert cliffs. "You remember?"