She smiled bravely. "Thank you.'
'I mean, packing up all your computer and fax and all's going to take a week or two.' She laughed and he had to look away from her for fear of betraying the ache in his chest at the thought of her leaving. He shoved the car into gear and smiled and bade her good-night.
Since then Tom had done better in avoiding being alone with her. He'd thrown himself into the work with Pilgrim with an energy he hadn't been able to summon since his earliest clinics.
In the mornings he worked him on Rimrock, moving him round and round the corral until he could go from a walk to a lope and back again as smoothly as Tom was sure he once had and until his hind feet fit faultlessly the prints of his fore. In the afternoons Tom went on foot and worked him on a halter. He worked him in circles, stepping in close and turning him, making him roll his hindquarters across.
Sometimes Pilgrim would try and fight it and back away and when he did this Tom would run with him, keeping in the same position until the horse knew there was no point running because the man would always be there and that maybe after all it was okay to do what was being asked of him. His feet would come still and the two of them would stand there awhile, drenched in their own and each other's sweat, leaning on each other and panting, like a pair of punched-out boxers waiting for the bell.
At first Pilgrim had found his new urgency puzzling, for even Tom had no way of telling him there was a deadline now. Not that Tom could have explained why he should be so determined to make the horse right when in so doing he would deprive himself forever of what he most wanted. But whatever he made of it, Pilgrim seemed to draw on this strange and relentless new vigor and soon he was as much a party to the endeavor as Tom.
And today, at last, Tom would ride him.
Pilgrim watched him shut the gate and walk to the middle of the corral, carrying the saddle with the bridle looped over his shoulder.
'That's right old pal, that's what it is. But don't you take my word for it.'
Tom laid the saddle down on the grass and stepped away from it. Pilgrim looked off to one side for a moment, pretending it was no big deal and he wasn't interested. But he couldn't stop his eyes from coming back to the saddle and after a while he stepped forward and walked toward it.
Tom watched him come and never moved. The horse stopped about a yard away from where the saddle lay and reached out almost comically with his nose to sniff the air above it.
'What d'you reckon? Gonna bite ya?'
Pilgrim gave him a baleful look then looked back at the saddle. He was still wearing the rope halter Tom had made for him. He pawed the ground a couple of times then stepped in closer and nudged the saddle with his nose. With an easy movement, Tom took the bridle off his shoulder and held it in both hands, sorting it. Pilgrim heard it clink and looked up.
'Don't you go looking all surprised. You saw this coming a hundred miles away.'
Tom waited. It was hard to imagine this was the same animal he'd seen in that hellish stall in upstate New York, severed from the world and all that he was. His coat gleamed, his eyes were clear and the way his nose had healed gave him a look that was almost noble, like some battle-scarred Roman. Never, Tom thought, had a horse been so transformed. Nor so many lives around one.
Now Pilgrim came to him, as Tom knew he would, and gave the bridle the same ritual sniffing he'd given the saddle. And when Tom undid the halter and put the bridle on him, not once did he flinch. There was still some tightness and the faintest quivering in his muscles, but he let Tom rub his neck and then move his hand along and rub the place where the saddle would go and neither did he step away nor even toss his head at the feel of the bit in his mouth. However fragile, the confidence and trust Tom had been working for were set.
Tom led him around with the bridle as they'd done so often with the halter, circling the saddle and stopping eventually right by it. Easily, and making sure Pilgrim could see his every move, he lifted it and placed it on the horse's back, soothing him all the while with either hand or word or both. Lightly he fastened the cinch, then walked him to let him know how it felt when he moved.
Pilgrim's ears were working all the time but his eyes showed no white and every now and then he made that soft blowing sound that Joe called 'letting the butterflies out'. Tom leaned down and tightened the cinch then laid himself across the saddle and let the horse walk some more to know his weight, all the time soothing him. And when, at last, the horse was ready, he eased his leg over and sat in the saddle.
Pilgrim walked and he walked straight. And though his muscles still trembled to some deep untouchable vestige of fear that perhaps would always be there, he walked bravely and Tom knew that if the horse sensed no mirrored trace of it in Grace, then she might ride him too.
And when she had, there would be no need for her or her mother to stay.
Robert had bought a travel guide to Montana at his favorite bookstore on Broadway and by the time the Fasten Seatbelts sign pinged on and they started their descent into Butte, he probably knew more about the city than most of the thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-six people who lived there.
A few more minutes and there it was below him,'the richest hill on earth', velevation five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five feet, the nation's largest single source of silver in the 1880s and of copper for another thirty years. The city today, Robert now knew, was a mere skeleton of what it then was, but 'had lost nothing of its charm', none of which however, was immediately apparent from the vantage of Robert's window seat. It looked like someone had stacked luggage on a hillside and forgotten to collect it.
He'd wanted to fly to Great Falls or Helena, but at the last minute something had cropped up at work and he'd had to change his plans. Butte had been the best he could do. But even though it looked on the map a huge distance for Annie to drive, she'd still insisted on coming to meet him.
Robert had no clear picture of how the loss of her job had affected her. The New York papers had slavered over the story all week. GATES GARROTS GRAVES, one of them blazed, while others gave new spin to the old gag, the best of which was, GRAVES DIGS ONE FOR HERSELF. It was odd to see Annie cast as victim or martyr, as the more sympathetic pieces had it. It was even odder how nonchalant she had been about it on the phone when she got back from playing cowboys.
don't give a damn,' she'd said.
'Really?'
'Really. I'm glad to be shot of it. I'll do something new.'
Robert wondered for a moment if he'd called the wrong number. Perhaps she was just putting on a brave face. She said she was tired of all the power games and the politics, she wanted to get back to writing, to what she was good at. Grace, she said, thought it was terrific news, the best thing that could have happened. Robert had then asked about the cattle drive and Annie said, simply, that it had been beautiful. Then she'd handed him over to Grace, fresh from her bath, to tell him all about it. They would both be there to meet him at the airport.
There was a small crowd of people waving as he walked across the asphalt, but he couldn't see Annie or Grace among them. Then he looked more closely at the two women in blue jeans and cowboy hats who he'd noticed laughing at him, rather rudely he thought, and saw it was them.
'My God,' he said as he came up to them. 'It's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid!'
'Howdy stranger,' Grace drawled. 'What brings you into town?' She took off her hat and threw her arms around his neck.
'My baby, how are you? How ARE you?'
'I'm good.' She clung so tight Robert choked up with emotion.
'You are. I can see. Let me look at you.'
He held her away from him and had a sudden memory of that limp, lusterless body he'd sat watching in the hospital. It was hardly credible. Her eyes brimmed with life and the sun had brought out all the freckles on her face. She seemed almost to glow. Annie looked on and smiled, clearly reading his thoughts.