Tahoe Heat

by Todd Borg

  He looked, squinted his eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “That’s Hannah?” Lily said in a loud voice.

  “Shh,” Ryan said.

  The group below didn’t hear us.

  I watched a bit longer. One of the guys, a man with a shaved head, turned to reach for another beer. I realized it was Tory, the nephew of Lana, the young man who showed animosity toward me as he instructed me in how to ride the big horse named Paint.

  Tory leaned next to Hannah, whispered something in her ear. The sound of her giggle rose up to us.

  There was a split in our trail. We took the fork that led north, away from the little party down below.

  NINETEEN

  I decided to take a chance, and invited Ryan and Lily to join Street and me for dinner with Diamond and Maria.

  “Lily can meet Maria’s horses,” I said. “One of them is a Mustang.”

  Ryan looked shocked that I would invite them someplace.

  “But they don’t know we’re coming,” he said.

  “She’ll be glad to have you and Lily,” I said, hoping it was true. “But Spot takes up most of the back seat of the Jeep, so you’ll have to drive, too.”

  I put Spot in the Jeep, Ryan put Lily in his SUV, and we drove up to the highway. Just after we’d gotten up to speed, I saw a movement in the forest well back from the east side of the highway, not far from the drive up to Lana and Tory’s house and stable.

  I pulled over and stopped, got out of the Jeep.

  Ryan pulled up behind me. He got out.

  “What are you doing?”

  I walked over to his SUV, opened the passenger door and reached for Lily’s hand.

  “I saw something move in the forest. I couldn’t see what it was. But we know there’s a wild Mustang out there.”

  Lily’s sad eyes got wide.

  I waited for the traffic to pass, then trotted with Lily across the road. The bank was steep, so I picked her up and scrambled up to the edge of the forest. Ryan followed.

  I stopped, set Lily down and put my fingers to my lips. We stood near a large pine and peered around the tree trunk.

  The forest of summer evening was mostly in shadows. Nothing moved. Maybe whatever I’d seen decided to leave after it watched us run toward it from the cars.

  Or maybe, it was standing motionless, making itself invisible to humans. Our eyesight is stellar compared to many animals, but only if the light is bright. I saw nothing but dark trees and bushes and boulders.

  We waited. Lily got restless. I decided to give up. But first it made sense to walk farther into the forest just to be sure.

  I took Lily’s hand again. We’d moved only eight or ten yards when we saw through to a distant open area where the lowering sun streamed in through the trees. There, in the blaze of golden sunlight, stood a horse, its head high, its mane ruffling in the breeze.

  I picked Lily up and pointed to be sure she saw it.

  “Heat!” she said in a loud, excited whisper.

  The horse nodded its head twice, then turned and vanished into the forest.

  We all stopped at Street’s lab at the bottom of Kingsbury Grade. Street seemed delighted to see Lily and Ryan, and she gave them the quickie tour, skipping over some of her grosser bug stuff. Then we piled back into the cars, went up and over the summit, and dropped down 3000 feet to Carson Valley. Spot had his head out the right rear window, eager to catalog every smell as the cool, pine-scented air of evening in the mountains was replaced by the warm, verdant, ranch smells of the valley. The cattle of late summer were numerous and heavy, all of them with their mouths to the ground, living up to their rep as world-class eating machines. They were predominantly black with a few of the Oreo-cookie, white-band-around-the-middle type thrown in for variety.

  We followed the back roads through hay country, past the towns of Minden and Gardnerville and Dresslerville, where Ryan grew up with many of the Washoe Tribe, then headed into desert lands as we made the gentle climb up the east side of the valley. At one point, I saw a white pickup following well back behind us. It looked similar to a truck that had followed us down Kingsbury Grade. When we turned from the gravel road off onto a dirt road and then into Maria’s two-rut drive, the white pickup was not in sight.

  Maria’s old, single-wide trailer home sat at the crest of a patch of dry, sloping ranchland surrounded by desert dotted with sagebrush. I saw no evidence of an irrigation system, yet her land had grass - albeit dried to a mat of brown - and the nearby land didn’t, so the lay of the land must funnel the rare rains her way.

  We pulled up and parked between the Green Flame - Diamond’s hot-lime Karmann Ghia that he’d been given after I managed to get his Orange Flame blown to pieces - and Maria’s camo-rusted, ancient Dodge pickup, the one I’d borrowed in June to help hide the TV talk show lady from the men who were trying to kill her.

  Stretching down below Maria’s trailer was her ranch, five acres divided by a grid of fencing that was arranged around a small modern barn. The design allowed her to use the various fenced areas as paddocks for the horses. In one fenced area near us was a big black horse, his head over the fence, ears forward, curious about visitors. Behind him in the next paddock over, was a pair, one light tan with a dark brown mane, and the other a mix of brown and white. An unseen horse neighed from the barn. It was obvious that Maria’s heart, like her investment dollars, were in the horse accommodations, not the accommodations for people.

  Below Maria’s fencing, the open desert stretched off toward the ranches and housing developments of Carson Valley and ended with the backdrop of the Carson Range, the 10,000-foot mountains that comprise the south and east sides of Lake Tahoe and are geologically distinct from the shorter but more-jagged mountains of the Sierra Crest that line Tahoe’s West Shore.

  I let Spot out of the Jeep, and he loped off toward the large black horse. The horse apparently had no fear of the largest of dogs, and he stretched his head out toward Spot.

  Street took Lily’s hand. Lily’s sadness appeared to evaporate in the thick excitement of horses up close.

  “Is this a ranch?” Lily asked.

  “Yes,” Street said. “I bet Maria will show you the horses.”

  “Do you want to pet the horse?” I asked Lily.

  She nodded with vigor.

  I picked her up and held her so she could reach his forehead. Her response was the same as when she met Spot. No fear. Natural trust. She reached out her tiny hand and gave the horse the softest, gentlest caress he’d ever had.

  Spot reached up his nose to sniff the horse’s nose, but stayed interested only for a moment. Then he turned and began to explore as if he’d lived with horses all his life.

  I set Lily down and went to fetch a bottle of wine out of the back of the Jeep. Street brought Lily. Ryan kept his distance behind. As we knocked at the thin door, the flimsy trailer wall rattled with the knock.

  Maria opened the door. Although Diamond lent me her pickup two months before, we’d only recently met. I remembered her huge, bright smile beneath dark eyes and black eyebrows and blacker hair that curved around her head in a voluptuous swirl.

  “Owen and Street! I’m so glad to see you again!” She gave Street a big hug, engulfing Street’s thin body with her own, meatier form. “And Owen!” she said turning to me and reaching up. “Praise Mother Mary, you are still as tall as when I met you two weeks ago!”

  I bent down and she locked her arms around my neck as if she were saying hello to a long-lost friend.

  “And who are these two delightful people?” she said as if nothing could be better than uninvited guests.

  “Maria, this is Lily,” I said. “Lily, Maria.”

  Maria bent down as if to pick Lily up or give her a big hug. But Lily put out her hand.

  “Well, hello, Lily,” Maria said. She shook the little hand. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Lily said.

  Maria turned to Ryan,
who was air-washing his hands at high speed.

  I introduced them.

  Ryan made a little wave and a nod, but stayed back.

  Maria was smooth. If she realized who Ryan and Lily were from things Diamond had said, she didn’t show it. “You must come in. Welcome to the castle of the Ponderosa Pomposo!”

  We went through the narrow doorway one at a time, Street leading, holding Lily by the hand, me ducking to remain attached to my head, and Ryan following.

  The air inside was filled with a luscious mix of cooking smells.

  “Of course you know this handsome gentleman,” Maria gestured toward Diamond who was folding a newspaper as he stood up from a tattered built-in couch at the end of the eight-foot-wide room that comprised the kitchen, dining, and living area of the trailer, a room that was about the size of the bathroom in Ryan’s master suite. “I found him hanging around my back porch, so I gave him a saucer of warm milk. Now he won’t leave me alone.”

  Diamond nodded at us. He didn’t look pleased to see extra guests.

  “Señor Martinez,” Maria said. “Perhaps you could serve libations.”

  “You want a starter beer?” he said. “Or do we go straight to margaritas?”

  I chose the beer. Street said she’d hold for a bit.

  “Ryan?” Diamond said.

  “Um, sure. A beer would be okay.”

  Diamond opened Tecates for Maria and me and Ryan and himself and a soda for Lily. We all toasted. Ryan lurked by the door.

  Maria set out bowls of chips and salsa and bean dip.

  We chatted about cooking and her ranch and, at Street’s and my insistence, Maria told us of her long journey, from life as a young, uneducated Mayan girl working on a coffee farm in the Mexican state of Chiapas near the border of Guatemala, to working as a waitress in Carson City. She scraped pennies for two decades, and eventually bought the five-acre scrap that no one believed was good for anything. But she anticipated the growth of Carson Valley and knew it would make a good horse-boarding ranch.

  And, at Maria’s insistence, Street told of her journey as a 14-year-old runaway from a disastrous childhood in Missouri, and how she worked her way through school, culminating in a Ph.D. in Entomology from UC Berkeley.

  Then both Maria and Street proclaimed great embarrassment as Diamond and I counted up the parallels of two young women on their own, without support, making a place in the world starting out with no tools or skills, only astonishing determination, common sense, and intelligence.

  “We can change the subject now, sí?” Maria’s eyes flashed like black flames.

  “Sure,” Diamond said.

  Marie turned to me. “Diamond said you have seen a horse in the woods.”

  At that came a woof at the door. Maria opened it and invited Spot in, hugging and kissing him. It took several minutes before we got Maria and Spot separated, with Spot settled in a big curve on the living room rug. Lily sat on the floor and leaned on Spot. Ryan stayed standing, obviously uncomfortable with the close surroundings. With Spot taking up most of the floor space, we completely filled the tiny trailer. I restarted the conversation.

  “There is a horse that’s been sighted in Tahoe’s forests. He’s running free. Ryan has seen him before. Lily and I just got our first glimpse of him an hour ago, but others have seen him more often. People claim he’s a wild Mustang.”

  “Up in Tahoe?” Maria started to shake her head, then stopped. “What does he look like?”

  “We only saw him from a distance, and it was getting dark, but my first impression was that he seemed strong and agile. And a little smaller than some horses.”

  “How small? Like a pony?”

  I stood up, bending my neck a little to avoid hitting my head on the trailer ceiling, trying to visualize. I put my hands out in front of my face. “Your big black horse out by the barn,” I said. “He’s about this high.”

  “Sí. His name is Captain. He belongs to Laura Danner. She’s an airline pilot based in San Francisco, but she has a home in Carson Valley. She’s gone a lot, so she boards him here.” She paused. “Do you know the gaited breeds?”

  “All I know about horses is that they are beautiful and they run fast.”

  “Ah. You have perfectly described the most wonderful animals on the planet. Captain is a Tennessee Walking Horse, what we call one of the gaited breeds. It is a name we give to horses with a particularly comfortable gait. He can do a running walk, one foot always on the ground, so smooth it’s a dream. You can ride a gaited horse all day long.”

  “What is a breed called if it isn’t gaited?”

  “They are the trotting horses. Good for all of the wonderful things that horses can do. But smooth? No. It’s amazing how Captain...” Maria caught herself and stopped. “Sorry. Captain and me, I’m... Enamorado. Anyway, you were saying?”

  “I think Captain’s eyes would be about even with mine.”

  “Yes, when he holds his head up high and proud. He’s a tall boy, sixteen hands.”

  “But Heat’s eyes would be down here.”

  “Heat?” Maria said.

  “Glennie Gorman, the local reporter,” Diamond said. “She named him Heat because he likes to stand in the sun. A guy on the East Shore put up a website about Heat. Glennie has been posting updates about Heat sightings on the site.”

  Maria nodded. “A horse named Heat. I like it. So Heat is about fourteen hands,” Maria said. “What else does he look like?”

  “I don’t have a horse vocabulary, but I would say his conformation is a little stocky. Not real thin.”

  “Not like a Thoroughbred,” Maria said.

  “The race horses,” I said.

  “Sí. Race horses were bred for speed. That’s why they have those long, thin legs and big strong hindquarters.”

  “Heat looks strong,” I said, “but he seems all about function. Like if he fell, he’d just get back up. He wouldn’t break a leg just by running too hard.”

  “Sounds like a Mustang. They are very stout. Strong hooves, teeth, good coat. The opposite of delicate. They can survive and thrive where fancier horses would never make it. They can also go places that would make other horses crazy. Climb trails up steep rocks that I could never scramble up on all fours. I have a Mustang. You want to meet her?”

  We all nodded and followed Maria outside.

  “You think Heat is a stallion, a gelding, or a mare?” Maria asked as we walked down toward the barn.

  “I wouldn’t know without seeing him up close. Is there a way to tell from a distance?”

  “Attitude. Horses are like people. The boys think they’re important. The girls tend to be kinder. The geldings are boys who have been castrated. Take away the sex, you get much less attitude. That’s why people like geldings so much.”

  Diamond was walking on the other side of Maria. His frown was significant.

  “Then I’d guess that this guy’s a gelding,” I said. “But Mustangs are wild, so gelding isn’t a choice, correct?”

  “If he’s really wild, it wouldn’t be.”

  “And if he’s a stallion, he’d be, what? Acting out more?” I said.

  “Male horses get real focused on hierarchy. The stallion in charge gets all the girls in the area, his own harem, and the other stallions have to keep their distance.”

  “I don’t like it when the toughest guy gets the girl,” Diamond said. “Girls should have more sense.”

  “They don’t have a choice. And it’s not always the toughest physically who are in charge. It’s the one with the most attitude. Sometimes the stallions don’t even fight over the girls. They just have shouting matches.”

  “You mean the males whinny at each other?” Street said.

  “Sí. They squeal. The one who squeals the loudest and longest often wins the contest.”

  Street, giggling, looked first at me, then at Diamond. “That’s rich,” she said, laughing some more.

  I looked at Diamond. “Laughing at our expense,” I said. �
��I don’t squeal. Do you?”

  “Never squeal,” Diamond said, shaking his head.

  Lily swung her head back and forth from me to Diamond to me. Ryan stayed behind us.

  “It’s pretty silly to watch,” Maria said. “But the shouting contests save horses from getting injured or even killed, so it kind of makes sense. The horse who wins the shouting match gets the girls.”

  Diamond was shaking his head. “Why do you say the girls don’t have a choice?”

  “Because it’s forced servitude. The stallion is, how do I put this politely, uncomfortably demanding. The girls have to submit. But this social hierarchy of horses may explain why horses have developed such a close relationship with people.” She turned to Street. “I’m sorry, my English is still not all the way there. You are a scientist. What is it when two different kinds of animals benefit from each other?”

  “Symbiosis,” Street said. “A symbiotic relationship.”

  “Yes. That is people and horses. Like people and dogs. When people are in control, horses have to serve their needs and can no longer run free. But then the horses eat better, get water easily, live more comfortable lives, and they don’t have to fight off predators or even each other.”

  “Most herd animals just run from predators, right?” I said.

  “True. But with horses, the stallion’s job is to protect the mares and the foals. If a predator comes near, look out. You’ve heard the ancient legends about putting a tiger in the ring to fight a stallion and getting stomped to death by the stallion? They can kick from behind and stomp from the front. A horse is an amazing fighter.”

  Maria walked up to Captain, who was still reaching over the fence. She put her cheek against his forehead and hugged his head, her arms reaching up, hands clasping over his neck just behind his ears.

  She let go of Captain’s head and turned toward the barn.

  “Back to Heat,” I said. “You said that Heat wouldn’t be a gelding if he were in the wild. You think he’s domesticated?”

  “Heat could be a runaway from some horse owner in Tahoe. Then Heat would likely be a gelding or a mare. For years there have been problems with too many wild horses. So both the people who don’t like Mustangs and the people who love Mustangs have a desire to thin the wild population. The main way is adoption programs. We have one here at the Carson City Prison. They catch the excess Mustangs and bring them to the prison. The prisoners take care of them, give them a good diet, gentle them, and, when they’re ready, the Mustangs are put up for adoption.”