That was five years ago. Now he chased the wild ones—being accepted into their society was easier than mingling with his own kind. The mornings were hard climbing up from sleep, pained by mended bones, recent wounds, scars that ran deep. He was coming to a bad time, when he would be lamed and crippled, too old to do what so far had given him a rough freedom. He needed to claim land and live in some bare comfort. His bones told him it was becoming a necessity.
The skies spit hail, the clouds rolled overhead like phantom waves, hiding and then revealing the almost full moon. Burn laughed. Burn English, alone since he was thirteen, thinking he could pick out land and build a house, live in the rest of the world, when in truth he couldn’t buy a simple meal or afford a hot bath.
Burn sat against the old cottonwood and ran his fingers through his shaggy hair, sweeping it out of his eyes like a horse’s forelock. He needed a good shearing, never mind a bath and a meal, a house of his own. He snorted and the red roan snorted back.
Burn caught and saddled the roan. It was hunger again, and a strangled anger he could not quench. He smoothed out the still-damp saddle blanket and twisted the cincha to flake off caked salt. He couldn’t afford to gall the roan. Anger goaded him. He was being driven out of his familiar haunts by the damned wire fences. He swallowed against a dry throat, hating the weakness. Fences were inevitable. He knew that not making the same choices as other men gave him no special rights. There was no room for blame—it lay on him and no one else.
When horse and rider slowed at the valley’s entrance, Burn was pleased. The mustangs slept in pairs, one on guard, head hanging, legs locked in readiness; the other tucked neatly on the ground, safe against the high wind and predators.
Burn guided the roan past the water hole, where the moon’s twin floated in the icy pool. An owl spread out its wings and drifted above the reflecting surface. He listened for night sounds—the owl’s cry, a coyote’s call, small rodents brushing through tall grass.
He pushed the roan to follow a faint trail behindthe pool into the cañon’s maw. The trail looped and twisted, presenting many places where he could cut off the possibility of escape. He returned past the pool, checking the different breaks in those high rock walls. He’d have to fence those escapes, a section or two of high rails would keep the wild band in the valley. Dead junipers lay among the rock, a few straight pines that had fallen. He hated building fence.
Burn guided the roan among the sleeping mares. The stallion raised his head in exhausted challenge. Burn rode back to the crude camp, tired enough maybe to sleep. The moon disappeared behind quick clouds. Burn once again hobbled the roan, hung up the gear, rolled in the smelly, wet blanket, and went to sleep quickly, a thin smile on his tight face.
The band was gone for four days and it rained the whole time. Burn shivered in his wet slicker, barely alive inside the saddle blankets and his stinking sheepskin coat. When the horses returned, a mare was in heat and the stallion came courting. As the stallion caught and mounted the mare, Burn had to look away.
He saw the stallion slide off the mare. When she turned her head, whickered, and touched the stallion’s wet muzzle, Burn felt an old ache pulse in his belly, and he wanted to frighten the band and let them run far from his plans.
The next morning they were gone—he guessed for two or three days again. He pulled out a number of dead trees, dug holes with a crude shovel. Had an axe, too—tools of a mesteñero’s trade. He planted posts at three breaks in the rock wall. The band had gone out past the pool, and before that they had come back on the west side. So he put up a five-foot barrier at one of the eastern breaks, and left the two western breaks open, with only the posts to mark his intentions. The horses would return from the west, balk at the posts until the stallion determined the odd objects were no threat, then they would spill into the valley and get back to grazing.
Time worked for him now, time and the harsh spring winds that dried up what winter snow remained. The spring-fed pool was a constant. The stallion knew it, returned his band to it when other water was sucked dry.
The band returned in three days. The lead mare quit at the posts, refused to let the band pass. The stallion came up snorting, pawing at the posts, canon and, when they did not fight or run, he swept past them into the cañon, arrogant in his victory.
The bachelor colts came in from the east. At first they came to the new fence and stopped in a tight group. A dark colt, colored much like his sire, came forward to do battle. Striking wildly, the colt rattled the fence rails but could not move them. He retreated, and, as disciplined as a flight of birds, the bachelors turned and ran to the valley’s wide end. They swept down onto the ripening grass, the dark colt bucking and kicking.
As the colts raced through the grazing herd, the dark colt strayed too close to the stallion, who charged the youngster and caught him on the flank, tore a wide, bloody hole before letting go. The band stayed one day and was gone. Burn tracked sign, read that one horse limped badly.
He worked doggedly on the fence, built a secondpanel, five feet and solid with rails he could bully into place. Blisters covered his palms and fluid seeped into his ragged shirt cuffs. He slept through the night and into the next day. The horses returned to the water, then left two days later. The mares went to the east side and found themselves trapped. The stallion pawed at the rails but there was no escape, so the mares spilled down the sandhills, dodged the furious stallion, and went out through the west gate. The trap was closing.
Burn drove himself to finish fencing the mouth of the valley, sleeping in brief naps when he could no longer carry a railing. He had to rely on the roan’s instinct to warn him. He kept the mustang hobbled in close and studied his attentiveness.
The horse herd came back but the new fence canon galled the stallion. The herd moved past the pool through the narrow cañon. After the horses were gone, the roan whinnied, and a single horse answered. Burn jerked the Spencer from the roan’s saddle, jacked a shell in place, then backed up until he felt a boulder behind him.
“You…I got a Spencer and it ain’t on you yet.”
“Friend, the boss sent me looking for strays,” came an answering voice. “This’s our summer range. I lost track of a few cows …one a big brindle should have a week-old calf with her.”
So, he was on some rancher’s summer grass. It was spring by the months and winter by the cold, so Burn waited, but the rider was shy about making an appearance. Burn thought to shoot, but, with his luck, he’d hit something. He tried again.
“Mister, I ain’t seen a cow, but I seen tracks.”
Burn heard the horse start walking, and pointedthe Spencer down—a friendly gesture, but he could raise and fire quickly. He needed a few more days, a week or two, until the band was trapped and branded.
The horse appeared. A good-headed bay that started when it saw Burn. The rider himself wasn’t as much as his horse—long-legged, curled boots hanging to the bay’s knees, long arms folded across a lean chest, with a round face more like a child’s sitting under a too-big hat. The man looked straight at Burn. Burn drew back his shoulders and thought to raise the Spencer, but it would be a fool gesture of faint pride. The rider wasn’t as young as his round face indicated and he carried deceptive muscle on his lanky frame. He could step down and break Burn in two.