The Horse Whisperer

There was a small crowd of people waving as he walked across the asphalt, but he couldn't see A

'My God,' he said as he came up to them. 'It's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid!'

'Howdy stranger,' Grace drawled. 'What brings you into town?' She took off her hat and threw her arms around his neck.

'My baby, how are you? How ARE you?'

'I'm good.' She clung so tight Robert choked up with emotion.

'You are. I can see. Let me look at you.'

He held her away from him and had a sudden memory of that limp, lusterless body he'd sat watching in the hospital. It was hardly credible. Her eyes brimmed with life and the sun had brought out all the freckles on her face. She seemed almost to glow. A

'Notice anything?' Grace said.

'You mean apart from everything?'

She did a little twirl for him and he suddenly got it.

'No cane!'

'No cane.'

'You little star.'

He gave her a kiss and at the same time reached out for A

'God, it seems a long time,' he said at last.

A

The journey back to the ranch took about three hours. But though she was impatient to show her father around and let him see Pilgrim and introduce him to the Bookers, Grace enjoyed every mile of it. She sat in the back of the Lariat and put her hat on Robert's head. It was too small for him and looked fu

Virtually every other seat had been taken by a touring tabernacle choir who had sung the entire way. Robert had sat squeezed between two voluminous women altos with his nose buried in his Montana guidebook, while everyone around him boomed 'Nearer My God To Thee'. Which, at thirty thousand feet of course, they were.

He got Grace to rummage in his bag for the presents he'd bought for them both in Geneva. For her he'd got a massive box of chocolates and a miniature cuckoo clock with the strangest-looking cuckoo she'd ever laid eyes on. Its call, Robert conceded, was more like a parrot with piles. But it was absolutely authentic, he swore; he knew for a fact Taiwanese cuckoos, especially hemorrhoidal ones, looked and sounded precisely like that. A

Looking at her parents, united side by side before her, Grace felt true contentment. It was as though the final pieces of her fractured jigsaw life were falling back in place. The only space that remained was riding Pilgrim. And that, if all had gone well today at the ranch, would soon be filled too. Until they knew for sure, neither she nor A

It was a prospect that both thrilled and troubled Grace. It wasn't so much that she wanted to ride him again but that she knew she must. Since she'd been riding Gonzo, no one seemed to doubt that she would do so - provided, that is, Tom thought it safe. Only she, secretly, had doubts.

They were not to do with fear, at least not in its simple sense. She worried that when the moment came she might feel fear but was fairly sure that if she did she would at least be able to control it. She worried more however that she might let Pilgrim down. That she wouldn't be good enough.

Her prosthetic leg was now so tight it gave her constant pain. On the last few miles of the cattle drive it had been almost unbearable. She hadn't told a soul. When A

Grace was determined to hold out. It would only be a week or two at most. She would just have to hope that the pain wouldn't distract her too much and make her less good when the moment came.

It was the cusp of evening when they left Route 15 and headed west. Before them the Rocky Front was stacked high with thunderheads which seemed to reach out over the gathering sky toward them.

They drove through Choteau so that Grace could show Robert the dump they'd first lived in and the dinosaur outside the museum. Somehow he'd come to seem neither as big nor as mean as he had when they arrived. Nowadays Grace almost expected him to wink.

By the time they reached the turn off 89, the sky was vaulted with blackening cloud like a ruined church, through which the sun found fitful access. Cruising out along the straight gravel road to the Double Divide, they all fell silent and Grace began to feel nervous. She wanted so much for her father to be impressed by the place. Perhaps A

The dust-cloud they had stirred from the road overtook them and drifted slowly ahead, dispersing gold on a stark burst of sun. Some horses grazing down by the cottonwoods that fringed the nearest bend of the creek raised their heads to watch.

'Wow,' Robert said. 'Now I know why you guys don't want to come home.'

Chapter Twenty-nine

A

The rush of water drowned the constant low rumble of thunder outside. A

The air was hot and heavy and brought no relief. It was almost dark, though long before it should be. The clouds were a bilious black veined with yellow and so low they seemed to compress the very earth.

Robert and Grace had been gone almost an hour. A