He sorely misses his mustang now. Though it was its locomotory aspect that he most valued on the way here, now it’s his thoughts that are most afflicted by the horse’s absence. Astride it, he always seemed to know where he wanted to go, what he was meant to do. It even, oddly, made him feel rooted somehow, and thus somebody, somebody with a name, even as they drifted, he and the horse, uncompassed yet resolute, across this boundless desolation. The creature was a living part of him, which fit him as if born with him like his hat and boots, but it shared his miseries, too, his pains and hungers, absorbing some of them as rags might stanch a wound. And he’d got used to the view. Down here on the ground, he feels somewhat blinkered, things risen up around him that used to be mapped out below at some safer remove.
Not that he was gentle toward that evil-eyed bandy-shanked old cayuse, as he referred to it in his more sentimental humors. He respected it and shared what little he had with it, but it possessed a wayward mind of its own, and when it got too refractory, he had to take the whip to it or dig his spurs bone-deep into its flanks and haul on the bit till its mouth frothed and bled. Couldn’t let the dumb beast beat him.
Though in the end it did. They’d been out under that scorching sun for what seemed like years when they struck upon a fresh watering hole: just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. The rim of it was littered with the bleached bones of men and horses and he supposed it might be poisoned so he let the horse drink first to see what would happen. Nothing did, so he joined the horse at the edge, drinking with his face in the water and then from his hat. The water was clean and sweet and so cold it made his teeth ache. He soaked himself, filled his canteen, and got ready to move on, but the horse had contrary notions and wouldn’t budge from the spot. This was stupid, there was nothing to eat, no protection from the blistering sun, and anyway it made no larger sense, but the cantankerous thing seemed ready just to give it all up and toss in there with all those other anonymous bones. He talked to it, cajoled it, cursed it, kicked it, tried to lead it away on foot, yanked on its ears and bridle, used the horsewhip on it, his rifle stock, but the useless old scrag would not move; it was as still and stubborn as stone. Then, after he’d been whipping it mercilessly until his arms were ready to drop, he saw that what he was beating was stone and the damned horse was over on the other side of the hole, head down, still serenely lapping up water. He was furious. He whistled sharply at the perverse beast and it stepped toward him, into the water, and disappeared. In panic, he dove in after it, but the hole was only a foot deep and he hit the bottom hard. The water was warmer now and tasted salty and stung his eyes. When he could see again, he saw that the horse was standing in the same place where he’d been beating it before and the stone was gone. So he shot it. Enough was enough. On its side, the wounded animal kept quivering and kicking at the air and it had a pitiful expression on its face, so he put the rifle to its ear and finished it off. That was when, looking up from what he’d done, he first spied this town shimmering out on the horizon. He left the saddle and trappings behind on the dead horse, figuring to come back for them later, and set off walking across the desert toward the town, exhausted from his mad struggle, his legs heavy as sandbags, half dozing even as he stumbled along, regretting what he’d done of course, man always hates to lose his horse — and then one black moonless night, a night not unlike this one, there he was, slumped in the saddle, with the mustang plodding along under him like always, a dreadful thirst upon him like he’d been sucking salt, and his canteen empty.
As though provoked by his retrospections, there’s a faint snort and whinny up the street. Can’t see a thing in the black night, but he heads that way, pausing to cut a coil of frayed rope off the saloon hitching post. He’s not at all sure what he’ll find, maybe another wild horse wandered into town, even his old mustang resurrected again, but, whatever it is up there, he estimates that, if he can see it, he’ll appropriate it and ride it out of here. The flat shapes crowding in on him as he passes them seem less like buildings than their absence, like black gaps in the world, and he recollects walking this way under the noonday sun and having the sensation even then of other buildings lurking like shadows behind the buildings he could see. Not that he credits such apprehensions. The usual jitters of the ingenerate gunfighter, he’s familiar with such false hauntings.
Now, as he proceeds, gripping his rifle in one hand, rope in the other, he can make out a dim eery glow up ahead of him, and he recalls that it was up here somewhere that he first witnessed the beautiful widow lady, the one the men call the schoolmarm, though things may have got shifted about some on the street since last he walked it. Maybe, he thinks, maybe she’s set a light out in her window, a light lit just for him, knowing he’s out here and all alone and in need of some human comfort. The prospect of seeing her again spurs him on, such that soon he’s broken stride and is fairly bolting along, a sudden urgency upon him and a fear of the darkness at his back — and a fear for her, too, she may be in trouble again, it’s not easy for a woman like her out here, anything might be happening, and he’s the sheriff now, isn’t he?
He’s barreling up the black street at full pelt, his head a farrago of dire yet lubricious visions, when it suddenly appears before him and paralyzes him in midstride: a majestic white stallion, more than twenty hands tall, glowing spectrally in the night from the light of the full moon, which has slid suddenly into view as if from behind a cloud in the cloudless sky. It is the most beautiful yet terrible thing he’s ever seen, a powerful bluff-breasted giant of a horse, lofty in carriage, scornful of all it surveys, most particularly scornful of him, standing there in the dark street, utterly awestruck, his knees gone to jelly, his heart hammering in his ears, and he realizes that to bestride such a noble and worshipful creature was the sole reason he came out here in the first place, must have been, if in fact he did come out and was not born here. Just how he is going to capture such a wondrous beast with this miserable coil of weather-rotted rope is not clear to him, however, and when the horse snorts thunderously and rears high above him, its head haloed in its streaming milk-white mane and its mighty forelegs pawing the air as though to punch holes in the night, even that falls from his hands. Before setting its hoofs back down on earth, the great white stallion lets forth a trumpeting whinny that seems to come cascading down upon him from the very dome of the sky, echoing and resounding from all directions as though to pin him there, stunned, where he stands. As the horse snorts and paws the ground, preparing to come at him, its red eyes ablaze as if inside its cranium were a fresh-stoked furnace, he knows he can do no other than to stand his ground, exhibiting a seeming bravado, whereas in truth it’s sheer terror that has petrified his limbs and nailed him to the spot. He hears the galloping hoofs before he sees the creature move, and then as suddenly it is upon him and his heart feels violently trammeled but his body remains upright and all is instantly dark and the moon is gone and the white horse, too, and he is alone once more in the vast empty night.
His deputy, who is a goateed fat man with a flattened nose, finds him there in the middle of the dusty street, still rigid and locked in his boots, at high noon. Ho, sheriff, he says, picking up the dropped rope and looping it over a cocked arm and handing him his fallen rifle, we got a problem. The wimmenfolk in town is kickin up a awesome aggravation. It’s jest only about gittin raped too reglar by the goddam savages, but their pants is on fire, it’s a genuwine uprisin. I reckon mebbe yu better oughter talk to em.