The Horse Whisperer

'And how's Gracie?'

There was a pause and he heard A

'Oh. I don't know.' Her voice was low now, presumably so that Grace wouldn't hear. 'I see how she is with Tom Booker and Joe, you know, the twelve-year-old? They get on really well. And with them, she seems fine. But when it's just the two of us, I don't know. It's gotten so bad she won't even look at me.' She sighed again. 'Anyway.'

They were silent for a while and in the distance he heard a wail of sirens out in the street, on their way to another nameless tragedy.

'I miss you, A

'I know,' she said. 'We miss you too.'

Chapter Nineteen

A

As she came out from paying, someone called her name and she looked around and saw Diane getting out of her Toyota at the other row of pumps. A

'So you do sometimes give yourself a break from that telephone after all,' Diane said. 'We were begi

A

'Heck, well I can do that for you,' Diane said. 'I've got a bunch of things to do in town. Is she up at the Bellview Medical Center?'

'Yes, but honestly, you don't want—' 'Don't be silly. It's crazy you driving all that way.' A

On her way back to the ranch A

She traveled north and looked out over the plains to her right where the black shapes of the cattle stood out against the pale grass like the ghosts of buffalo from another age. Ahead on the blacktop, the sun was already making pools of mirage and she lowered the window and let the wind blow her hair back. It was the second week in May and at last it felt as if spring had really come and wasn't just kidding. When she swung left off 89, the Rocky Mountain Front loomed before her, topped with cloud that seemed squeezed from some galactic can of chantilly. All that was missing, she thought, was a cherry and one of those little paper umbrellas. Then she remembered all the faxes and phone messages that would be waiting for her when she got back to the ranch and realized a moment or two later that the thought had eased her foot on the gas pedal.

She'd already used up much of the month's leave she'd asked Crawford Gates to give her. She would have to ask him for more and she wasn't looking forward to it. For despite all his talk about how she should feel free to take off as much time as she needed, A

He had criticized Lucy Friedman's lounge lizard piece which A

When she drove over the hill and down past the corrals, she saw Tom's yearlings ru

Inside, she found two new phones beside her computer. The answering machine showed four messages and there were three faxes, one of them from Lucy Friedman. As she began to read it, one of the new phones rang.

'Hi.' It was a man's voice and for a moment she didn't recognize it. 'Just wanted to see if it worked.'

'Who is this?' A

'I'm sorry. It's Tom, Tom Booker. I just saw the phone guy leaving and I wanted to see if the new lines worked.'

A

'I can hear they do, one of them anyway. I hope you don't mind him letting himself in.'

'Of course not. Thank you. You really needn't have.'

'It's no big deal. Grace said her dad sometimes had trouble getting through.'

'Well, it's very kind of you.'

There was a pause and then, just for something to say, A

'She could have taken her in too if we'd known.'

A

Twenty minutes later she was back at her table and had one of the new lines rigged up for the modem and the other exclusively for the fax. She was just about to call Lucy who was in a new fury about Gates, when she heard footsteps on the back porch and a light tapping on the screen door.

Through the haze of the screen she could see Tom Booker standing there and he started to smile as he caught sight of her. He stepped back when A

'The answer's no,' she said.

'You don't yet know what the question is.'

'I think I can guess.'

'You can?'

'I think so.'

'Well, I kind of reckoned seeing as you've just saved yourself forty minutes driving down to Choteau and then some forty more driving back and all, you might feel inclined to blow a little of it on taking some air.'

'On horseback.'

'Well. Yeah.'

They looked at each other for a moment, just smiling. He was wearing a faded pink shirt and over his jeans those old patched leather chaps he always rode in. Maybe it was just the light, but his eyes seemed as clear and blue as the sky behind him.