Thunderhead

Too bad your equipment

Is in disrepair.

Once in the grass, he hobbled several of the lead horses and tied cowbells around their necks, then unsaddled Mestizo and staked him on a thirty-foot rope. At last, he placed himself on top of a rock, rolled a smoke, pulled out a greasy little notebook, and watched the horses settle down to their evening graze.

Nora turned back, surveying the camp with satisfaction. The heat of the day had abated, and a cool breeze rose up from the purling stream. Doves called back and forth across the canyon, and the faint smell of juniper smoke drifted past. Crickets trilled in the gathering twilight. Nora sat down on a tumbled rock, knowing that she should be using the last of the light to write in her journal, but savoring the moment instead. Black sat by the juniperwood fire, massaging his knees, while the others, the work of setting up camp done, were gathering around, waiting for a pot of coffee to boil.

There was the sound of footsteps crunching on sand and Bonarotti came swinging back down the canyon, a sack thrown over his back. He dropped the sack on the cook tarp spread out by the fire. He slapped a grill on the fire, oiled a large skillet, tossed in some minced garlic from his cabinet, and followed this with rice in a separate pot of water. Out of the sack tumbled some hideous, unidentifiable roots and bulbs, bundles of herbs, and several ears of prickly pear cactus. As he worked, Sloane came back into camp from her reco

“Risotto with prickly pear, sego lily, wild potato, bolitas, and romano cheese,” he a

There was a silence.

“What are you waiting for?” Sloane cried. “Line up and mangia bene!”

They jumped up, grabbing plates from the kitchen tarp. The cook loaded down each plate, sprinkling chopped herbs on top. They settled back on logs by the fire.

“Is this safe to eat?” Black asked, only half jokingly.

Sloane laughed. “It may be more dangerous for you, Doctor, if you do not eat it.” And she rolled her eyes melodramatically toward Bonarotti’s revolver.

Black gave a nervous laugh and tasted it. Then he took a second bite. “Why, this is quite good,” he said, filling his mouth.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” intoned Smithback.

“Damn tasty chuck,” mumbled Swire.

Nora took a bite, and found her mouth filled with the creamy taste of arborio rice mingled with the delicate flavors of mushroom, cheese, savory herbs, and some indefinable tangy flavor that could only be the prickly pear.

Bonarotti accepted the praise with his usual lack of emotion. The canyon fell into silence while the serious business of eating began.

* * *

Later, as the expedition made ready for bed, Nora walked off to check on the horses. She found Swire in his usual position, notebook open.

“How is everything?” she asked.

“Mighty fine” came the answer, and then she heard a rustle as Swire removed a gingersnap from his breast pocket and inserted it into his face. There was a crunching sound. “Want one?”

Nora shook her head and sat down beside him. “What kind of a notebook are you keeping?” she asked.

Swire flicked some crumbs off his mustache. “Just some poems, is all. Cowboy doggerel. It’s a sideline of mine.”

“Really? May I see?”

Swire hesitated. “Well,” he said, “they’re supposed to be spoken, not read. But here, help yourself.”

Nora thumbed through the battered journal, peering closely in the mixture of firelight and starlight. There were bits and snatches of poems, usually no more than ten or twelve lines, with titles like “Workin up a Quit,” “Ford F-350,” “Durango Saturday Night.” Then, toward the back of the journal, she found poems of a completely different nature: longer, more serious. There was even a poem that appeared to be in Latin. She turned back to one called “Hurricane Deck.”

“Is this about Smithback’s horse?”

Swire nodded. “We go way back, that horse and me.”

He came tearing down the draw one stormy winter’s night,

A brush-tailed mustang, full of piss and fight.

I saddled up a chaser and laid a rope around his neck,

Corralled him and christened him Hurricane Deck.

Hurricane Deck, Hurricane Deck, hard on the eye and the saddle,

You whomper-jawed, hay-bellied, cold-backed old spraddle,

Only a blind mare could love your snip-nosed face,

Oh, but I tell you, Hurricane Deck could race.

I trained him for heeling, took him on the road,

At Amarillo and Santa Fe we won a load,

He served me well, from Salinas to Solitude,

But Hurricane’s been retired to loading up dudes.

“I need to work on the last stanza,” said Swire. “It don’t sound right. Ends kind of sudden.”

“Did you really catch him wild?” Nora asked.

“Sure did. One summer when I was ru

“Three days?”

“I kept cutting him off from the mountains, circling him back around past the ranch. Each time I picked up a fresh mount. I wore out six horses afore I got a rope on him. He’s some horse. The son of a bitch can jump a barbwire fence and I’ve seen him walk, just as nice as you please, across a cattle guard.”

Nora handed back the journal. “I think these are excellent.”

“Aw, horsehocky,” Swire said, but he looked pleased.

“Where’d you learn the Latin?”

“From my father,” came the answer. “He was a minister, always after me to read this and study that. Got it into his head that if I knew Latin, I wouldn’t raise so much hell. It was the Third Satire of Horace that finally made me light out of there.”

He fell silent, stroking his mustache, looking down toward the cook. “He’s a damn fine beanmaster, but he’s an odd son of a bitch, ain’t he?”

Nora followed his gaze to the tall, heavyset figure of Bonarotti. Postprandial ablutions completed, the cook was now preparing himself for bed. Nora watched as, with finicky care, Bonarotti inflated an air mattress, applied nocturnal facial creams, and readied what appeared to be a hairnet and a facial mask.

“What’s he doing now?” Swire muttered, as Bonarotti began working his fingers into his ears.

“The croaking of the frogs disturbs his rest,” Sloane Goddard said, emerging from the darkness and taking a seat beside them. She laughed her low, husky laugh, eyes reflecting the distant firelight. “So he brought along earplugs. And he’s got a little silk pillow that would turn my great aunt green with envy.”

“Odd son of a bitch,” Swire repeated.

“Maybe,” Sloane said, turning toward the wrangler and eyeing him up and down, one eyebrow raised. “But he’s no wimp. I’ve seen him on Denali in a blizzard with the temperature at sixty below. Nothing fazes him. It’s as if he has no feelings at all.”