They were expecting him at the stables at about four, but when he got to Penn Station he found there was an earlier train and decided to take it. The more daylight there was when he saw the horse, he thought, the better. Also, this way maybe he could get a little look at the animal on his own first. It was always easier when the owners weren't breathing down your neck. When they were, the horses always picked up on the tension. He was sure the woman wouldn't mind.
Annie had wondered whether to tell Grace about Tom Booker. Pilgrim's name had barely been mentioned since the day she saw him at the stables. Once Annie and Robert had tried talking to her about him, believing it better to confront the issue of what they should do with him. But Grace had become very agitated and cut Annie off.
'I don't want to hear,' she said. 'I've told you what I want. I want him to go back to Kentucky. But you always know better, so it's up to you.'
Robert had put a calming hand on her shoulder and started to say something, but she shrugged him off violently and yelled 'No Daddy!' They left it at that.
In the end, they did however decide to tell her about the man from Montana. All Grace said was that she didn't want to be up in Chatham when he came. It was decided therefore that Annie would go alone. She'd come up by train the previous night and spent the morning at the farmhouse, making calls and trying to concentrate on the copy wired by modem to her computer screen from the office.
It was impossible. The slow tick of the hall clock, which normally she found comforting, was today almost unbearable. And with every long hour that limped by she became more nervous. She puzzled over why this should be and came up with no answer that satisfied her. The nearest she could get was a feeling, as acute as it was irrational, that in some inexorable way it wasn't only Pilgrim's fate that was to be determined today by this stranger, it was the fate of all of them. Grace's, Robert's and her own.
There were no cabs at Hudson station when the train got in. It was starting to drizzle and Tom had to wait for five minutes under the dripping iron-pillared canopy over the platform till one arrived. When it did he climbed into the back with his bag and gave the driver the address of the stables.
Hudson looked as though it might once have been pretty, but now it seemed a sorry sort of place. Once grand old buildings were rotting away. Many of the shops along what Tom supposed was its main street were boarded up and those that weren't seemed mostly to be selling junk. People tramped the sidewalks with their shoulders hunched against the rain.
It was just after three when the cab turned into Mrs Dyer's driveway and headed up the hill toward the stables. Tom looked out at the horses standing in the rain across the muddy fields. They pricked their ears and watched the cab go by. The entrance into the stable yard was blocked by a trailer. Tom asked the cabdriver to wait and got out.
As he edged through the gap between the wall and the trailer he could hear voices from the yard and the clatter of hooves.
'Git in! Git in there, damn you!'
Joan Dyer's sons were trying to load two frightened colts into the open back of the trailer. Tim stood on the ramp and was trying to drag the first colt inside by its halter rope. It was a tug-of-war he would easily have lost had Eric not been at the other end of the animal, driving it forward with a whip and dodging its hooves. In his other hand he held the rope of the second colt who was by now as scared as the first. All this Tom saw in one glance as he stepped around the side of the trailer into the yard.
'Whoa now boys, what's happening here?' he said. Both the boys turned and looked at him for a moment and neither answered. Then, as if he didn't exist, they looked away again and went on with what they were doing.
'It's no fucking good,' Tim said. 'Try the other one first.' He yanked the first colt away from the trailer so that Tom had to step quickly back against the wall as they went by. At last Eric looked at him again.
'Can I help you?' There was such conten in the voice and the way the boy eyed hin. down that Tom could only smile.
Thank you. I'm looking for a horse called Pilgrim. Belongs to a Mrs Annie Graves?'
'Who are you?'
'My name's Booker.'
Eric jerked his head toward the barn. 'Better go see my mom.'
Tom thanked him and walked away to the barn. He heard one of them snigger and say something about Wyatt Earp but he didn't look back. Mrs Dyer came out of the barn door just as he got there. He introduced himself and they shook hands after she'd wiped hers on her jacket. She looked over his shoulder at the boys by the trailer and shook her head.
'There are better ways to do that,' Tom said.
'I know,' she said, wearily. But she clearly didn't want to pursue it. 'You're early. Annie's not here yet.'
'I'm sorry. I got the early train. I should have called. Would it be okay if I had a look at him before she gets here?'
She hesitated. He gave her a conspirator's smile that stopped just short of a wink, meaning that she, knowing about horses, would understand what he was about to say.
'You know how sometimes it's, well, kind of easier to get a fix on these things when the owner's not around.'
She took the bait and nodded.
'He's back here.'
Tom followed her around the back of the barn to the row of old stalls. When she got to Pilgrim's door,
she turned to face him. She looked agitated suddenly.
'I have to tell you, this has been a disaster from the beginning. I don't know how much she's told you, but the truth is, in everybody's opinion except hers, this horse should have been put out of its misery long ago. Why the vets have gone along with her I don't know. Frankly, I think keeping it alive is cruel and stupid.'
The intensity took Tom by surprise. He nodded slowly and then looked at the bolted door. He'd already seen the yellowy-brown liquid oozing from under it and could smell the filth beyond.
'He's in here?'
'Yes. Be careful.'
Tom slid the top bolt and heard an immediate scuffle. The stench was nauseating.
'God, doesn't anyone clean him out?'
'We're all too scared,' Mrs Dyer said quietly.
Tom gently opened the top part of the door and leaned in. He saw Pilgrim through the darkness, looking back at him with his ears flattened and his yellow teeth bared. Suddenly the horse lunged and reared, striking at him with his hooves. Tom moved swiftly back and the hooves missed him by inches and smashed against the bottom door. Tom closed the top and rammed the bolt shut.
'If an inspector saw this, he'd close the whole damn place down,' he said. The quiet, controlled fury in his voice made Mrs Dyer look at the ground.
'I know, I've tried to tell—' He cut her off.
'You ought to be ashamed.'
He turned away and walked back toward the yard. He could hear an engine revving and now the frightened call of a horse as a car horn started blaring.
When he came around the end of the barn he saw one of the colts was already tied up in the trailer. There was blood on one of its hind legs. Eric was trying to drag the other colt in, lashing with the whip while his brother, in an old pickup, shunted it from behind, honking the horn. Tom went up to the car, flung the door open and dragged the boy out by the scruff of his neck.
'Who the fuck do you think you are?' the boy said, but the end of it came out falsetto as Tom swung him sideways and threw him to the ground.
'Wyatt Earp,' Tom said and walked right on past toward Eric who backed away.