Thunderhead

He knelt there, by the old books, for what seemed a long time. Then at last he gripped the volume in both hands, carried it to the orange couch, opened it carefully, and began to read.

34

AS THEY EMERGED FROM THE GLOOM OF the slot canyon into the cottonwood valley, Nora could tell at a glance something was wrong. Rather than being scattered indolently across the sparse grass, the horses were bunched together by the stream, snorting and tossing their heads. She quickly sca

Swire snugged the revolver into his belt and led the way to the horses. “You take Compañero,” he said to Smithback, reaching for a saddle. “He’s too dumb to be scared.”

Nora found her own saddle from among the pile, located Arbuckles, and threw it over his back. Then she held the horses still while Swire knelt to remove the shoes. He worked in silence, using a chisel to get underneath the clinched end of each nail and bending it straight, taking great pains not to clip or crack the nailhole. Once all the nails were straight, he pried the shoe from the hoof with a clinch cutter. Nora found herself impressed by his skill: shoeing and unshoeing a horse in the field without an anvil was neither a common nor desirable practice.

At last he stood up, wordlessly handing Nora fresh nails along with the shoes, hammer, and clincher. “Sure you can do this?” he asked. Nora nodded, and the wrangler gestured for Smithback to mount.

“There was a lot of wind in the valley last night,” Swire said, cinching the saddle tight and handing the reins to Smithback. “Maybe that’s why there ain’t no tracks down here in all this loose sand. Might have better luck on top, or down the far side.”

Nora secured the saddlebags, tested the saddle’s fit, then swung up. “Smithback’s going to need a gun,” she said.

After a moment, the wrangler silently handed over his pistol, along with a handful of bullets.

“I’d rather have the rifle,” the writer said.

Swire shook his head. “If anybody comes over that ridge, I want to have a good bead on him,” he replied.

“Just make sure it isn’t us,” Smithback said as he mounted Compañero.

Nora looked around for a final time, then turned to Swire. “Thanks for the horses.” She nosed Arbuckles away from the group.

“Just a minute.” Nora turned back to see Swire looking at her evenly.

“Good luck,” he said at last.

They rode away from the stream, angling across the uneven land toward the heavy bulk of the ridge ahead, in shadow despite the bright morning sun. Over the thin murmur of the stream and the call of the canyon wrens, Nora could now hear a different sound: a low, steady drone, like the hum of a magneto. Then they topped a small rise and two low forms came into view: the remains of Hoosegow and Crow Bait. A black cloud of flies hung over them.

“Jesus,” Smithback muttered.

Arbuckles began to prance and whi

“What are you doing?” Smithback asked.

“I’m going to take a minute to look more closely.”

“Mind if I stay here?” Smithback asked in a strained voice.

Dismounting and giving her reins to Smithback, Nora walked back over the rise. The flies, disturbed by her approach, rose in a roaring, angry mass. The high winds had scoured the ground, but here and there she could make out old horse tracks and some fresher coyote prints. Except for the marks of Swire’s boots, there were no human footprints. As Swire had said, the entrails had been arranged in a spiral pattern. Brightly colored macaw feathers, shockingly out of place in the arid landscape, protruded from the eye sockets. The carcasses had been stabbed with some painted and feathered twigs.

As she was about to turn away, she noticed something else. A circular patch of skin had been cut from the foreheads of both horses. Examining these more closely, Nora saw that similar patches had been removed symmetrically from a spot on either side of the horse’s chests, and from two more spots on either side of their lower bellies. Why there? What could this possibly mean?

She shook her head and retreated from the killing ground.

“Who could do such a thing?” Smithback asked as she remounted.

Who indeed? It was the question Nora had been asking herself for the last hour. The answer that seemed most likely was too frightening to contemplate.

Within twenty minutes they had reached the base of the ridge. In another twenty, following the gentle trail up, they crested the top of the Devil’s Backbone. Nora brought the horses to a stop and dismounted again, gazing slowly over the vista ahead. The great divide looked out over thousands of miles of slickrock canyons. To the north, she could see the distant blue hump of Barney Top, and to the northeast, the silent sentinel of the Kaiparowits.

And, directly ahead, were the narrow vicious switchbacks that led down the face of the hogback ridge. Somewhere at the bottom lay Fiddlehead, Hurricane Deck, and Beetlebum.

“Tell me we’re not really going down that again,” Smithback said.

Nora remained silent. She dismounted and took a few steps from the horses, scouring the patches of sand that lay among the rocks. There were no signs of a horse; but then, the wind at the top of the ridge would have swept them away.

She looked back down the way they had come. Though she’d kept a careful lookout as they climbed, she had seen nothing but old hoofprints. She shivered; she knew very well there was no other way into the valley. And yet, somehow, the mysterious horse killers had left no sign of their passing.

Tearing her eyes away, she looked back around to the steep trail ahead of them, leading down the front of the Devil’s Backbone. It seemed to simply disappear over the edge into sheer space. She knew it was always more dangerous to descend than to ascend. The terrifying memory of how she’d scrabbled at the cliff face, feet kicking in dead space, returned with redoubled force. She rubbed her fingertips, now free of bandages but still tingling with the memory.

“I’m going to hike down a ways on foot,” Nora murmured. “You wait here.”

“Anything to stay off that trail,” Smithback said. “I can’t imagine a worse way down a cliff than that. Except falling, of course. And at least that’s faster.”

Nora began to pick her way down the steep trail. The first part, all slickrock, not surprisingly showed no signs of the mysterious rider. But when she reached the rock strewn part of the trail, she stopped: there, in a small patch of sand, was a fresh hoofprint. And it was from an unshod horse.

“Are we going down?” Smithback asked with a distinct lack of enthusiasm as she returned to the top of the ridge.

“Yes,” she replied. “Swire wasn’t seeing things. Somebody did come up here on horseback.”

She took a deep breath, then another. And then she began carefully down the ridge, leading Arbuckles. The horse balked at the lip of the trail, and after some firm coaxing Nora got him to take one step, and then another. Smithback followed, leading Compañero. Nora could hear the horse snorting, the scrape of bare hoof on stone. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the trail ahead, breathing regularly, trying to keep them from straying over the edge into the infinite space below. Once, instinctively, she looked over: there was the dry valley below, the strange rock formations like tiny piles of pebbles, the stunted junipers mere black dots. Arbuckles’s legs were shaking, but he kept his head down, nose to the ground, and they inched their way down. Having been up the trail before, Nora was now aware of the most difficult spots, and worked to guide her horse past them when it was most necessary.