by Lee Child
He came back into the dormitory room. One of the guys had hauled himself upright and was sitting with his head turned, watching the bathroom door. His back was as pale as his front, and it had more healed fractures showing through the skin. The ribs, the right scapula. Either this guy spent a lot of time getting run over by trucks, or else he was a retired rodeo rider who had passed his career a little ways from the top of his trade.
“Storm coming,” the guy said.
“What I heard,” Reacher said.
“Inevitable, with a temperature like this.”
Reacher said nothing.
“You hired on?” the guy asked.
“I guess,” Reacher said.
“So you’ll be working for us.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I’m Billy,” the guy said.
The other guy moved up on his elbows.
“Josh,” he said.
Reacher nodded to them both.
“I’m Reacher,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“You’ll do the scut work for us,” the guy called Billy said. “Shoveling shit and toting bales.”
“Whatever.”
“Because you sure don’t look like much of a horse rider to me.”
“I don’t?”
Billy shook his head. “Too tall. Too heavy. Center of gravity way up there. No, my guess is you’re not much of a horse rider at all.”
“The Mexican woman bring you in?” Josh asked.
“Mrs. Greer,” Reacher said.
“Mrs. Greer is Rusty,” Billy said. “She didn’t bring you in.”
“Mrs. Carmen Greer,” Reacher said.
Billy said nothing. The guy called Josh just smiled.
“We’re heading out after supper,” Billy said. “Bar, couple hours south of here. You could join us. Call it a get-to-know-you type of thing.”
Reacher shook his head. “Maybe some other time, when I’ve earned something. I like to pay my own way, situation like that.”
Billy thought about it and nodded.
“That’s a righteous attitude,” he said. “Maybe you’ll fit right in.”
The guy called Josh just smiled.
Reacher walked back to his bed and stretched himself out, keeping still, fighting the heat. He stared up at the red-painted rafters for a minute, and then he closed his eyes.
The maid brought supper forty minutes later. She was a middle-aged white woman who could have been a relative of Billy’s. She greeted him with familiarity. Maybe a cousin. Certainly she looked a little like him. Sounded like him. The same genes in there somewhere. She greeted Josh with ease and Reacher himself with coolness. Supper was a pail of pork and beans, which she served into metal bowls with a ladle taken from her apron pocket. She handed out forks and spoons, and empty metal cups.
“Water in the bathroom faucet,” she said, for Reacher’s benefit.
Then she went back down the stairs and Reacher turned his attention to the food. It was the first he had seen all day. He sat on his bed with the bowl on his knees and ate with the spoon. The beans were dark and soupy and mixed with a generous spoonful of molasses. The pork was tender and the fat was crisp. It must have been fried separately and mixed with the beans afterward.
“Hey, Reacher,” Billy called over. “So what do you think?”
“Good enough for me,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Josh said. “More than a hundred degrees all day, and she brings us hot food? I showered already and now I’m sweating like a pig again.”
“It’s free,” Billy said.
“Bullshit, it’s free,” Josh said back. “It’s a part of our wages.”
Reacher ignored them. Bitching about the food was a staple of dormitory life. And this food wasn’t bad. Better than some he’d eaten. Better than what came out of most barracks cookhouses. He dumped his empty bowl on the cabinet next to his toothbrush and lay back down and felt his stomach go to work on the sugars and the fats. Across the room Billy and Josh finished up and wiped their mouths with their forearms and took clean shirts out of their footlockers. Shrugged them on and buttoned them on the run and combed through their hair with their fingertips.
“See you later,” Billy called.
They clattered down the stairs and a moment later Reacher heard the sound of a gasoline engine starting up directly below. The pick-up, he guessed. He heard it back out through the doors and drive away. He stepped into the bathroom and saw it come around the corner and wind around the horse barn and bounce across the yard past the house.
He walked back through the dormitory and piled the three used bowls on top of each other, with the silverware in the topmost. Threaded the three cup handles onto his forefinger and walked down the stairs and outside. The sun was nearly below the horizon but the heat hadn’t backed off at all. The air was impossibly hot. Almost suffocating. And it was getting humid. A warm damp breeze was coming in from somewhere. He walked up past the corrals, past the barn, through the yard. He skirted around the porch and looked for the kitchen door. Found it and knocked. The maid opened up.
“I brought these back,” he said.
He held up the bowls and the cups.
“Well, that’s kind of you,” she said. “But I’d have come for them.”
“Long walk,” he said. “Hot night.”
She nodded.
“I appreciate it,” she said. “You had enough?”
“Plenty,” he said. “It was very good.”
She shrugged, a little bashful. “Just cowboy food.”
She took the used dishes from him and carried them inside.
“Thanks again,” she called.
It sounded like a dismissal. So he turned away and walked out to the road, with the low sun full on his face. He stopped under the wooden arch. Ahead of him to the west was nothing at all, just the empty eroded mesa he had seen on the way in. On the right, to the north, was a road sixty miles long with a few buildings at the end of it. A neighbor fifteen miles away. On the left, to the south, he had no idea. A bar two hours away, Billy had said. Could be a hundred miles. He turned around. To the east, Greer land for a stretch, and then somebody else’s, and then somebody else’s again, he guessed. Dry holes and dusty caliche and nothing much more all the way back to Austin, four hundred miles away.
New guy comes to gate and stares right at us, the boy wrote. Then looks all around. Knows we’re here? Trouble?
He closed his book again and pressed himself tighter to the ground.
* * *
“Reacher,” a voice called.
Reacher squinted right and saw Bobby Greer in the shadows on the porch. He was sitting in the swing set. Same denims, same dirty T-shirt. Same backward ball cap.
“Come here,” he called.
Reacher paused a beat. Then he walked back past the kitchen and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.
“I want a horse,” Bobby said. “The big mare. Saddle her up and bring her out.”
Reacher paused again. “You want that now?”
“When do you think? I want an evening ride.”
Reacher said nothing.
“And we need a demonstration,” Bobby said.
“Of what?”
“You want to hire on, you need to show us you know what you’re doing.”
Reacher paused again, longer.
“O.K.,” he said.
“Five minutes,” Bobby said.
He stood up and headed back inside the house. Closed the door. Reacher stood for a moment with the heat on his back and then headed down to the barn. Headed for the big door. The one with the bad smell coming out of it. A demonstration? You’re in deep shit now, he thought. More ways than one.
There was a light switch inside the door, in a metal box screwed to the siding. He flicked it on and weak yellow bulbs lit the enormous space. The floor was beaten earth, and there was dirty straw everywhere. The center of the barn was divided into horse stalls, back to back, with a perimeter track lined w
ith floor-to-ceiling hay bales inside the outer walls. He circled around the stalls. A total of five were occupied. Five horses. They were all tethered to the walls of their stalls with complicated rope constructions that fitted neatly over their heads.
He took a closer look at each of them. One of them was very small. A pony. Ellie’s, presumably. O.K., strike that. Four to go. Two were slightly bigger than the other two. He bent down low and peered upward at them, one at a time. In principle he knew what a mare should look like, underneath. It should be easy enough to spot one. But in practice, it wasn’t easy. The stalls were dark and the tails obscured the details. In the end he decided the first one he looked at wasn’t a mare. Wasn’t a stallion, either. Some parts were missing. A gelding. Try the next. He shuffled along and looked at the next. O.K., that’s a mare. Good. The next one was a mare, too. The last one, another gelding.
He stepped back to where he could see both of the mares at once. They were huge shiny brown animals, huffing through their noses, moving slightly, making dull clop sounds with their feet on the straw. No, their hoofs. Hooves? Their necks were turned so they could watch him with one eye each. Which one was bigger? The one on the left, he decided. A little taller, a little heavier, a little wider in the shoulders. O.K., that’s the big mare. So far, so good.
Now, the saddle. Each stall had a kind of a thick post coming horizontally out of the outside wall, right next to the gate, with a whole bunch of equipment piled on it. A saddle for sure, but also a lot of complicated straps and blankets and metal items. The straps are the reins, he guessed. The metal thing must be the bit. It goes in the horse’s mouth. The bit between her teeth, right? He lifted the saddle off the post. It was very heavy. He carried it balanced on his left forearm. Felt good. Just like a regular cowboy. Roy Rogers, eat your heart out.
He stood in front of the stall gate. The big mare watched him with one eye. Her lips folded back like thick rolls of rubber, showing big square teeth underneath. They were yellow. O.K., think. First principles. Teeth like that, this thing is not a carnivore. It’s not a biting animal. Well, it might try to nick you a little, but it’s not a lion or a tiger. It eats grass. It’s an herbivore. Herbivores are generally timid. Like antelope or wildebeests out there on the sweeping plains of Africa. So this thing’s defense mechanism is to run away, not to attack. It gets scared, and it runs. But it’s a herd animal, too. So it’s looking for a leader. It will submit to a show of authority. So be firm, but don’t scare it.
He opened the gate. The horse moved. Its ears went back and its head went up. Then down. Up and down, against the rope. It moved its back feet and swung its huge rear end toward him.
“Hey,” he said, loud and clear and firm.
It kept on coming. He touched it on the side. It kept on coming. Don’t get behind it. Don’t let it kick you. That much, he knew. What was the phrase? Like being kicked by a horse? Had to mean something.
“Stand still,” he said.
It was swinging sideways toward him. He met its flank with his right shoulder. Gave it a good solid shove, like he was aiming to bust down a door. The horse quieted. Stood still, huffing gently. He smiled. I’m the boss, O.K.? He put the back of his right hand up near its nose. It was something he had seen at the movies. You rub the back of your hand on its nose, and it gets to know you. Some smell thing. The skin on its nose felt soft and dry. Its breath was strong and hot. Its lips peeled back again and its tongue came out. It was huge and wet.
“O.K., good girl,” he whispered.
He lifted the saddle two-handed and dumped it down on her back. Pushed and pulled at it until it felt solid. It wasn’t easy. Was it the right way around? Had to be. It was shaped a little like a chair. There was a definite front and a back. There were broad straps hanging down on either side. Two long, two short. Two had buckles, two had holes. What were they for? To hold the saddle on, presumably. You bring the far ones around and buckle them at the side, up underneath where the rider’s thigh would be. He ducked down and tried to grab the far straps, underneath the horse’s belly. He could barely reach them. This was one wide animal, that was for damn sure. He stretched and caught the end of one strap in his fingertips and the saddle slipped sideways.
“Shit,” he breathed.
He straightened up and leveled the saddle again. Ducked down and grabbed for the far straps. The horse moved and put them way out of his reach.
“Shit,” he said again.
He stepped closer, crowding the horse against the wall. It didn’t like that, and it leaned on him. He weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. The horse weighed half a ton. He staggered backward. The saddle slipped. The horse stopped moving. He straightened the saddle again and kept his right hand on it while he groped for the straps with his left.
“Not like that,” a voice called from way above him.
He spun around and looked up. Ellie was lying on top of the stack of hay bales, up near the roof, her chin on her hands, looking down at him.
“You need the blanket first,” she said.
“What blanket?”
“The saddle cloth,” she said.
The horse moved again, crowding hard against him. He shoved it back. Its head came around and it looked at him. He looked back at it. It had huge dark eyes. Long eyelashes. He glared at it. I’m not afraid of you, pal. Stand still or I’ll shove you again.
“Ellie, does anybody know you’re in here?” he called.
She shook her head, solemnly.
“I’m hiding,” she said. “I’m good at hiding.”
“But does anybody know you hide in here?”
“I think my mommy knows I do sometimes, but the Greers don’t.”
“You know how to do this horse stuff?”
“Of course I do. I can do my pony all by myself.”
“So help me out here, will you? Come and do this one for me.”
“It’s easy,” she said.
“Just show me, O.K.?”
She stayed still for a second, making her usual lengthy decision, and then she scrambled down the pile of bales and jumped to the ground and joined him in the stall.
“Take the saddle off again,” she said.
She took a cloth off of the equipment post and shook it out and threw it up over the mare’s back. She was too short and Reacher had to straighten it one-handed.
“Now put the saddle on it,” she said.
He dropped the saddle on top of it. Ellie ducked underneath the horse’s belly and caught the straps. She barely needed to stoop. She threaded the ends together and pulled.
“You do it,” she said. “They’re stiff.”
He lined the buckles up and pulled hard.
“Not too tight,” Ellie said. “Not yet. Wait for her to swell up.”
“She’s going to swell up?”
Ellie nodded, gravely. “They don’t like it. They swell their stomachs up to try to stop you. But they can’t hold it, so they come down again.”
He watched the horse’s stomach. It was already the size of an oil drum. Then it blew out, bigger and bigger, fighting the straps. Then it subsided again. There was a long sigh of air through its nose. It shuffled around and gave up.
“Now do them tight,” Ellie said.
He pulled them as tight as he could. The mare shuffled in place. Ellie had the reins in her hands, shaking them into some kind of coherent shape.
“Take the rope off of her,” she said. “Just pull it down.”
He pulled the rope down. The mare’s ears folded forward and it slid down over them, over her nose, and off.
“Now hold this up.” She handed him a tangle of straps. “It’s called the bridle.”
He turned it in his hands, until the shape made sense. He held it against the horse’s head until it was in the right position. He tapped the metal part against the mare’s lips. The bit. She kept her mouth firmly closed. He tried again. No result.
“How, Ellie?” he asked.
“Put your thumb in.”
>
“My thumb? Where?”
“Where her teeth stop. At the side. There’s a hole.”
He traced the ball of his thumb sideways along the length of the mare’s lips. He could feel the teeth passing underneath, one by one, like he was counting them. Then they stopped, and there was just gum.
“Poke it in,” Ellie said.
“My thumb?”
She nodded. He pushed, and the lips parted, and his thumb slipped into a warm, gluey, greasy socket. And sure enough, the mare opened her mouth.
“Quick, put the bit in,” Ellie said.
He pushed the metal into the mouth. The mare used her massive tongue to get it comfortable, like she was helping him, too.
“Now pull the bridle up and buckle it.”
He eased the leather straps up over the ears and found the buckles. There were three of them. One fastened flat against the slab of cheekbone. One went over her nose. The third was hanging down under her neck.
“Not too tight,” Ellie said. “She’s got to breathe.”
He saw a worn mark on the strap, which he guessed indicated the usual length.
“Now loop the reins up over the horn.”
There was a long strap coming off of the ends of the bit in a loop. He guessed that was the rein. And he guessed the horn was the upright thing at the front end of the saddle. Like a handle, for holding on with. Ellie was busy pulling the stirrups down into place, walking right under the mare’s belly from one side to the other.
“Now lift me up,” she said. “I need to check everything.”
He held her under the arms and lifted her into the saddle. She felt tiny and weighed nothing at all. The horse was way too wide for her, and her legs came out more or less straight on each side. She lay down forward and stretched her arms out and checked all the buckles. Redid some of them. Tucked the loose ends away. Pulled the mane hair out neatly from under the straps. Gripped the saddle between her legs and jerked herself from side to side, checking for loose movement.
“It’s O.K.,” she said. “You did very good.”
She put her arms out to him and he lifted her down. She was hot and damp.
“Now just lead her out,” she said. “Hold her at the side of her mouth. If she won’t come, give her a yank.”