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.
'Notice anything?' Grace said.
'You mean apart from everything?'
She did a little twirl for him and he suddenly got it.
'No cane!'
'No cane.'
'You little star.'
He gave her a kiss and at the same time reached out for Annie. She too had taken off her hat now. Her tan made her eyes seem clear and so very green. She too seemed transformed, more beautiful than he could ever recall. She stepped in close and put her arms around him and kissed him. Robert hugged her till he felt he had control of himself and wouldn't embarrass them all.
'God, it seems a long time,' he said at last.
Annie nodded. 'I know.'
The journey back to the ranch took about three hours. But though she was impatient to show her father around and let him see Pilgrim and introduce him to the Bookers, Grace enjoyed every mile of it. She sat in the back of the Lariat and put her hat on Robert's head. It was too small for him and looked funny, but he left it perched there and soon had them laughing with an account of his connecting flight to Salt Lake City.
Virtually every other seat had been taken by a touring tabernacle choir who had sung the entire way. Robert had sat squeezed between two voluminous women altos with his nose buried in his Montana guidebook, while everyone around him boomed 'Nearer My God To Thee'. Which, at thirty thousand feet of course, they were.
He got Grace to rummage in his bag for the presents he'd bought for them both in Geneva. For her he'd got a massive box of chocolates and a miniature cuckoo clock with the strangest-looking cuckoo she'd ever laid eyes on. Its call, Robert conceded, was more like a parrot with piles. But it was absolutely authentic, he swore; he knew for a fact Taiwanese cuckoos, especially hemorrhoidal ones, looked and sounded precisely like that. Annie's presents, which Grace also unwrapped, were the usual bottle of her favorite perfume and a silk scarf all three of them knew she'd never wear. Annie said it was lovely and leaned across and kissed him on the cheek.
Looking at her parents, united side by side before her, Grace felt true contentment. It was as though the final pieces of her fractured jigsaw life were falling back in place. The only space that remained was riding Pilgrim. And that, if all had gone well today at the ranch, would soon be filled too. Until they knew for sure, neither she nor Annie was going to mention it to Robert.
It was a prospect that both thrilled and troubled Grace. It wasn't so much that she wanted to ride him again but that she knew she must. Since she'd been riding Gonzo, no one seemed to doubt that she would do so - provided, that is, Tom thought it safe. Only she, secretly, had doubts.
They were not to do with fear, at least not in its simple sense. She worried that when the moment came she might feel fear but was fairly sure that if she did she would at least be able to control it. She worried more however that she might let Pilgrim down. That she wouldn't be good enough.
Her prosthetic leg was now so tight it gave her constant pain. On the last few miles of the cattle drive it had been almost unbearable. She hadn't told a soul. When Annie noticed how often now she left the leg off when they were alone, Grace had made light of it. It had been harder to pretend to Terri Carlson. Terri could see how inflamed the stump was and told her she urgently needed a new fitting. The trouble was, nobody out West did this type of prosthetic. The only place it could be done was New York.