The Horseman

by Anna Jeffrey

  Sarah, Wyatt and Jericho had just walked out onto the front porch when a shiny, late-model pickup Sarah had never seen before came to a stop in the driveway. A man wearing a button-down shirt, a bomber jacket and a big Stetson stepped out of the pickup.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Hatch.” The stranger offered his right hand and lifted off his hat. The two men shook. “I was in the area and thought I’d drop by and say happy holidays. Brought you a little gift.” He handed Jericho a brown envelope the size of a notebook.

  “Uh, thanks,” Jericho said, taking the envelope. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  “Just wondering if you’ve given any thought to what we talked about the other day.”

  “You did all the talking, Mr. Barton. I just listened.” Jericho placed his hammy hands on his hips. “We’ve been busy. My hired man come down with the flu and I’ve been picking up the extra work. I haven’t had time to think about it.”

  Clyde had a cold, all right, but not the flu. He had worked every day as far as Sarah knew. Who the hell was this Barton dude who made Jericho tell a fib?

  “Oh, sorry to hear that,” Mr. Barton said, resetting his hat and looking out over the big pasture beyond the barn. This morning, no grazing cattle were visible. Just an unfettered sea of grass leading away toward a distant row of gray-brown growth. “This sure is a pretty place,” Mr. Barton said, shaking his head. “I’m told the native grasses around this part of the state used to be waist-high.”

  Uh-oh. A little zing passed through Sarah’s midsection. The word “buyer” flashed in her mind like a neon sign. Just like that, she and Wyatt could be homeless again.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jericho said. “Look, I don’t want to waste your time and I don’t want you to waste mine. If I decide to do something, I’ll let you know after Christmas. Right now, we gotta take my grandson to school.”

  Mr. Barton opened his pickup door. “I’d like to bring a colleague out to look around if you don’t mind. Sometime after Christmas, maybe.”

  Jericho hesitated, then nodded. “Well ... I guess I don’t mind him looking around, long as you understand I’m not agreeing to anything.”

  Mr. Barton cocked his head and showed his palms. “Oh, absolutely, Mr. Hatch.” He said good-bye, climbed back into his pickup and drove away.

  Sarah met Jericho at the bottom of the porch steps. “Who is that, Jericho?”

  Jericho started for his pickup where Wyatt waited. He handed Sarah the envelope Mr. Barton had given him. “We need to talk about it, but let’s wait ’til later.”

  With another groan, Jericho hitched himself up onto the driver’s seat. Sarah scooted in beside Wyatt. “You okay, Jericho?”

  “Lumbago’s bothering me some. Must be that storm comin’ in.” He cranked the engine and headed toward the bus stop on the highway.

  Jericho drove with his hands at ten and two. Sarah studied his profile for a few seconds. His shoulders slumped slightly, his belly hung over his belt buckle. Deep crow’s feet showed at the corners of his eyes and deep wrinkles framed his mouth. He must have been a good-looking guy at some point past. Now, he was getting old. Sarah had to face that. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Damn. She had been on the verge of tears all morning.

  They arrived at the same time as the school bus. Sarah stepped down from her side of the pickup to let Wyatt out. He jumped down and ran to meet his friends. They all disappeared behind the bright yellow bus’s folding doors.

  “He’s grown a lot this year,” Jericho said as Sarah climbed back onto her seat. “He’s almost as tall as you are. Wish Bonnie could see him.”

  An image of Bonnie standing in the kitchen at the stove laughing and cooking barged into Sarah’s mind and she shuddered.

  Then, she and Jericho were on their way to Fisher’s house. She was able to drive herself, but her damaged right leg was still weak and driving on the highway was not entirely safe. ... Yet. ... But it would be. Most of her many doctors had told her the strength would come back eventually if she kept up the physical therapy and had no more rotting flesh.

  She believed that unflinchingly. For a person’s life to be made up of only cherry pits wasn’t fair. Sometimes, a person had to get a whole cherry. No matter how bad circumstances had gotten for her at various stages in her life, Sarah had never abandoned faith that they would get better.

  “That guy that was at the house, he looked like a banker,” she said. “I’ve never seen him around town before.”

  “He’s from Dallas. I ’magine he’s got more money than a banker.”

  Sarah turned the brown envelope over in her hand. “Okay if I look at this?”

  “That’s why I handed it to you.”

  She opened the flap and pulled out a wall calendar for the coming year. It was made up of thick and slick pages. She didn’t know much, but she could tell it was an expensive publication. At the bottom of the page was a logo that looked like a tree enclosed inside a circle with small subdued lettering under it: B2B.

  A creepy sense of foreboding passed over Sarah’s shoulders. She studied the calendar and its beautiful landscape photographs. “What’s B2B?

  “One of them environmental groups. I think it stands for Border to Border. They’re not from around here. They’re not even from Texas. Barton says they’re tied up with one of those outfits from the West Coast. A conservancy outfit he calls it.

  Sarah might not know what a conservancy outfit was, but she knew the definition of the word “conserve.” Uneasiness nudged her. Jericho wasn’t the most talkative person she had ever met, but self-preservation that was a dominant element of her personality told her she needed to find out what was going on. She had been plagued with nosiness her whole life and more than once, it had saved her from going down the wrong path. “What is that?”

  “They buy land. They’re buying up a long strip all the way from the Canadian border in Montana to the Texas Coast. They’ve been working at it for years. That real estate guy in town has heard of ’em. He told me who they are. They don’t like cattle grazing or fracking for oil. They want to turn the land back to the way it used to be before ranching and oil well drilling came along.”

  “Why that was over a hundred years ago. How do they know how it was? Besides, it would take forever. What would they use it for?”

  “To look at, I guess. I’m not crazy about selling to them. Nobody else around here has done it. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing my neighbors a favor if I did. This is Texas. Except for family, ain’t nothing much more precious to a landowner than his land. Guess somebody told ’em I’m in trouble.”

  “Yeah? Most likely the local banker. Elmer says he’s got his nose in everybody’s business.”

  More silence. Sarah chewed on her lower lip.

  “Listen, Sarah,” Jericho said, his tone portentous. “I’m at a place where I’m about to lose this ranch to the credit union. If they take it, I’ll end up without a dime in my pocket. The price of cattle was way down this year. I didn’t make enough out of the sale in October for the whole payment, much less enough to keep this place a-going for another year.”

  None of this was news to Sarah. Jericho owed Capital Farm Credit a lot. He had borrowed against his land to pay, among other things, her medical bills. She wore a cloak of guilt for putting one of the few human beings who cared about her in jeopardy.

  Every day and night she wracked her brain for ideas to scrape together enough money together to help Jericho and pay off the various doctors and hospitals that had saved her life and limb. He had kept the exact amount of the debt to himself. Medicaid had paid for a lot, but her bills had still settled out at a six-figure number. Against an amount like that, the pitiful pay she made at City Grocery was like spitting in the ocean.

  “They can’t take it just like that, can they?” She snapped her fingers. “Don’t they have to go through a whole legal rigamarole?”

  “I guess. I’d have to hire a lawyer. More money that I ain’t got.
In the end, I still lose it.”

  “What—what are you—are you gonna do?” She tried to keep a tremble out of her voice, but it was there nevertheless.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet. What Barton’s offering me ain’t a real good deal, but so far, it’s better than I what the neighbor’s come up with.”

  “You mean Marshall.”

  Marshall McDowell, Jericho’s neighbor on the west side, had been trying to buy him out ever since Bonnie died. His son would be getting out of the army soon and claimed to have arranged for the financing. But every offer he had made had a fatal flaw—not enough money.

  “Barton’s offer is probably better than I’d get if I did business with that real estate agent from Fort Worth that comes out here sniffing around all the time. And I wouldn’t have to pay anybody a commission.”

  “What about those investment people out of Fort Worth and Dallas that are crawling all over these pastures all the time. They’re always in town drinking coffee and eating at the café. Sometimes they stay in the motel.”

  “They’re worse than Marshall. They don’t want to buy it. They want me to give it to ’em. Since I don’t own any mineral rights, it’s not worth them speculating on. I gotta get as much outta the place as I can. I gotta have enough money to live even if I don’t own this ranch.”

  For fear of breaking down and bawling, Sarah gave no reply.

  “I got no idea what they’d do with the place if I sold it to ’em,” Jericho said to the windshield. “At least, I know what Marshall would do. He’d buy the cows, too. He likes my black baldies. At least I’d have a little money in my pocket from the cows.”

  Sarah made a hard swallow and nodded.

  The turn into Fisher’s driveway lay just ahead. Jericho slowed. “Sarah, you and Wyatt are the only family I got now. I wouldn’t even talk to anybody about selling if I could figure out how to give you the place. But that wouldn’t solve the problem. The bank would still have to be paid. The mortgage is on the land. My back’s against the wall. If I was young again, I’d—” He stopped and sniffed, yanked his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his nose.

  “Why do you want to do this all of a sudden?” Sarah said. “Have you made a plan to go somewhere or what?” She couldn’t keep a quiver out of her voice.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m tired, Sarah. My heart just ain’t in it anymore. Hasn’t been since Bonnie left me. Everywhere I look I see her or hear her. Something she did. ... Something she said. ...”

  Sarah swallowed the ball of tears that had gathered in her throat.

  “Beth’s been talking to one of those retirement places up in Abilene,” he went on.

  Beth Martin was a widow in town Jericho had been spending time with for the past few months. It was the first time ever Jericho had a girlfriend, if you could call a seventy-year-old woman a girlfriend

  “She wants to move up there and she wants me to move, too. Maybe a change would do me good.”

  “What would you do in a place like that, Jericho? You’d go crazy.”

  And how would you pay for it, Jericho?

  “Oh, a fancy place like that’s too expensive for me,” he said, as if he had read her mind. “But if I cleared enough above what I owe the bank, I could maybe buy a little place in town. We need to talk about what you and Wyatt would do if I took Marshall up on his offer.”

  “You don’t need to worry about what I’d do, Jericho. I’m just grateful you gave us a place to live all these years. I know I owe you.”

  “It’s the least I can do, Sarah. It’s kind of my fault you’re in the predicament you’re in. It’d break my heart to see you homeless again. Bonnie’s, too.”

  “My problems aren’t your fault, Jericho. You didn’t plant that rattlesnake in that flower bed. I’d have to try to find a job. I mean a real job that pays more than minimum wage. If I found a good job, I’d take care of you and Wyatt both.”

  “You don’t need to be worrying about taking care of me. You won’t find a decent job in Roundup.”

  “Boy, am I aware of that. I could move to Abilene or maybe even move back to Fort Worth. That’s where I started out.”

  “Well, we need to talk about it and figure out what to do. But let’s keep it between you and me, okay? I don’t want to worry Wyatt with it. And I don’t want the people in town knowing about it.”

  He eyed the sky through the windshield. “Might be the last day for good weather. Hard to believe it’ll be thirty degrees by tomorrow night. Might have to shut the horse clinic down.”

  The temperature was chilly but forecast to rise to the seventies later in the day. Sarah, too, looked out the windshield at a sky that was electric blue and dotted with high white scud. Jericho was better at forecasting the weather than the TV weather people. She chose to believe him. “So I heard.”

  They talked no more until they reached the entrance to Fisher’s place where he turned onto the long driveway and bumped along the rough two-track. Mr. Fisher opened his office in town at eight o’clock, so he and Tiffany were not at home.

  Rudy stood at the barn watching them approach. He was such a contradiction. He wasn’t really a wild horse the way the Wyoming mustangs were wild; he just behaved badly, like a little kid that threw tantrums to get attention.

  “Well, there he is,” Jericho said. “Looks almost like he’s waiting for you. I’m just reminding you, even if this expert can turn him into a good horse, he don’t belong to you. He don’t belong to nobody.”

  Jesus, will you stop reminding me? Sarah vowed to make Tiffany contact Burke the Jerk and talk to him about his horse. “I know that, Jericho.”

  Fortunately, for all his anti-social antics, Rudy wasn’t hard to catch. Jericho helped saddle and load him into the trailer and they motored on up the highway to the turn-off to Beckman’s. Once there, Jericho helped her unload Rudy, then laboriously climbed back into his pickup. “I’m telling you again, you’re wasting your time and you could get hurt. You’d better think about what you’re doing.”

  On that parting note, he drove away, leaving Sarah in the worst state of mind she had experienced in a long time. Leading the horse over to the hitching post by the barn, she whipped herself into a mood where she could at least be civil to the people around her. She tied Rudy, all the while scanning her surroundings. Would the day ever come when she didn’t constantly search for fuckin’ snakes?

  When she joined the crowd around the arena, the day’s work had already begun and everybody was watching and listening as Troy talked to a woman who must not be local. Sarah had never seen her. The topic of discussion was a fancy-looking roan mare with stocking feet.

  “... You see, you’ve got her scared of you.”

  “When she bucks with me, I’m the one who’s scared,” the woman said. “Why would she be scared? Believe me, Mr. Rattigan, I treat her really well. She has nothing but the best of everything. I brought her to this clinic because I just want her to stop bucking. If she doesn’t, I’m going to have to get rid of her.”

  Sarah’s jaw tightened. She hated hearing somebody talk about getting rid a horse as if it were a pair of shoes that didn’t fit. She studied the woman. Expensive dude ranch clothing and boots, southwest-style jewelry, also expensive, and phony fingernails. Sarah had seen dozens like her at rodeos, all dressed up in the latest cowgirl fashion, chasing after cowboys and no idea what a real cowboy was or what cowboying was all about. Jericho was a real cowboy and a woman like her wouldn’t give a man like him the time of day.

  “So, you’re both scared,” Troy was saying. “You’re afraid Daisy’s gonna buck you off and she’s afraid she’s gonna do something wrong. You tell her to go fast, then when she does, you panic and yank back on the reins and she bucks, right?”

  “Well ... yes. It’s like she’s out of control.”

  “Has she bucked you off?”

  “Well ... almost.”

  Hah, Sarah thought. The truthful answer was probabl
y yes, but the woman was embarrassed to admit it.

  “If you’re not comfortable at a gallop or even a lope, then don’t tell her to do it.”

  “Duh,” Sarah mumbled.

  The women on either side of her, neither of whom she knew, turned their heads toward her and glared. Sarah shrugged. “Just saying.”

  “I don’t tell her that,” the woman Troy was talking to was saying. “Or at least I don’t think I do.”

  Mr. Rattigan led the horse around with its left side to the woman and held on to the headstall. “Go ahead and mount up. Let’s take a look.”

  The horse balked and fidgeted when the woman tried to mount. Finally seated, she gripped the reins and pulled them up tight. The horse backed its ears and snorted and did a little crow hop.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Troy said, still holding on to the headstall. “Go ahead and dismount.”

  The woman complied. “You see what I mean?” she cried. “If I’d stayed on her, I don’t know what she would’ve done. She’s—”

  Troy lifted his palm and stopped her. “It hurts her when you yank the reins up tight like that and she doesn’t like being hurt. She doesn’t know where you’ll go next with the pain.”

  Instantly, Sarah thought of Rudy and the scars on his face and rump. No wonder he didn’t like people.

  “A horse is sensitive,” Troy went on. “It survives by its instincts. It senses your emotions, your fears. If a feather touches its back, it feels it. Daisy here is not dumb, nor is she mean. She knows she’s prey. And she recognizes you’re a predator. When her instincts tell her you’re uptight and then you’re rough with her right off the bat, she thinks she’s done wrong, but she doesn’t know what she’s done.

  “She’s already had a taste of the pain you can cause her, so she wants to get along with you. If she feels you want to go fast, she’s determined to please you, so she steps out. Then you’re afraid of going fast and you yell at her and yank her back. That’s when she panics and tries to buck you off. You’re no longer her friend. All she can think about is saving herself by escaping you.”