Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

“Risotto with prickly pear, sego lily, wild potato, bolitas, and romano cheese,” he announced impassively.

There was a silence.

“What are you waiting for?” Sloane cried. “Line up and mangia bene! ”

They jumped up, grabbing plates from the kitchen tarp. The cook loaded down each plate, sprinkling chopped herbs on top. They settled back on logs by the fire.

“Is this safe to eat?” Black asked, only half jokingly.

Sloane laughed. “It may be more dangerous for you, Doctor, if you do not eat it.” And she rolled her eyes melodramatically toward Bonarotti’s revolver.

Black gave a nervous laugh and tasted it. Then he took a second bite. “Why, this is quite good,” he said, filling his mouth.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” intoned Smithback.

“Damn tasty chuck,” mumbled Swire.

Nora took a bite, and found her mouth filled with the creamy taste of arborio rice mingled with the delicate flavors of mushroom, cheese, savory herbs, and some indefinable tangy flavor that could only be the prickly pear.

Bonarotti accepted the praise with his usual lack of emotion. The canyon fell into silence while the serious business of eating began.

* * *

Later, as the expedition made ready for bed, Nora walked off to check on the horses. She found Swire in his usual position, notebook open.

“How is everything?” she asked.

“Mighty fine” came the answer, and then she heard a rustle as Swire removed a gingersnap from his breast pocket and inserted it into his face. There was a crunching sound. “Want one?”

Nora shook her head and sat down beside him. “What kind of a notebook are you keeping?” she asked.

Swire flicked some crumbs off his mustache. “Just some poems, is all. Cowboy doggerel. It’s a sideline of mine.”

“Really? May I see?”

Swire hesitated. “Well,” he said, “they’re supposed to be spoken, not read. But here, help yourself.”

Nora thumbed through the battered journal, peering closely in the mixture of firelight and starlight. There were bits and snatches of poems, usually no more than ten or twelve lines, with titles like “Workin up a Quit,” “Ford F-350,” “Durango Saturday Night.” Then, toward the back of the journal, she found poems of a completely different nature: longer, more serious. There was even a poem that appeared to be in Latin. She turned back to one called “Hurricane Deck.”

“Is this about Smithback’s horse?”

Swire nodded. “We go way back, that horse and me.”

He came tearing down the draw one stormy winter’s night,

A brush-tailed mustang, full of piss and fight.

I saddled up a chaser and laid a rope around his neck,

Corralled him and christened him Hurricane Deck.

Hurricane Deck, Hurricane Deck, hard on the eye and the saddle,

You whomper-jawed, hay-bellied, cold-backed old spraddle,

Only a blind mare could love your snip-nosed face,

Oh, but I tell you, Hurricane Deck could race.

I trained him for heeling, took him on the road,

At Amarillo and Santa Fe we won a load,

He served me well, from Salinas to Solitude,

But Hurricane’s been retired to loading up dudes.

“I need to work on the last stanza,” said Swire. “It don’t sound right. Ends kind of sudden.”

“Did you really catch him wild?” Nora asked.

“Sure did. One summer when I was running a pack string at the T-Cross up in Dubois, Wyoming, I heard talk about this buckskin mustang that nobody could catch. He was an outlaw, never branded, always broke for the mountains when he saw riders. Then that night I saw him. Lightning spooked him, sent him right past the bunkhouse. I chased that son of a bitch for three days.”

“Three days?”

“I kept cutting him off from the mountains, circling him back around past the ranch. Each time I picked up a fresh mount. I wore out six horses afore I got a rope on him. He’s some horse. The son of a bitch can jump a barbwire fence and I’ve seen him walk, just as nice as you please, across a cattle guard.”

Nora handed back the journal. “I think these are excellent.”

“Aw, horsehocky,” Swire said, but he looked pleased.

“Where’d you learn the Latin?”

“From my father,” came the answer. “He was a minister, always after me to read this and study that. Got it into his head that if I knew Latin, I wouldn’t raise so much hell. It was the Third Satire of Horace that finally made me light out of there.”

He fell silent, stroking his mustache, looking down toward the cook. “He’s a damn fine beanmaster, but he’s an odd son of a bitch, ain’t he?”

Nora followed his gaze to the tall, heavyset figure of Bonarotti. Postprandial ablutions completed, the cook was now preparing himself for bed. Nora watched as, with finicky care, Bonarotti inflated an air mattress, applied nocturnal facial creams, and readied what appeared to be a hairnet and a facial mask.

“What’s he doing now?” Swire muttered, as Bonarotti began working his fingers into his ears.

“The croaking of the frogs disturbs his rest,” Sloane Goddard said, emerging from the darkness and taking a seat beside them. She laughed her low, husky laugh, eyes reflecting the distant firelight. “So he brought along earplugs. And he’s got a little silk pillow that would turn my great aunt green with envy.”

“Odd son of a bitch,” Swire repeated.

“Maybe,” Sloane said, turning toward the wrangler and eyeing him up and down, one eyebrow raised. “But he’s no wimp. I’ve seen him on Denali in a blizzard with the temperature at sixty below. Nothing fazes him. It’s as if he has no feelings at all.”

Nora watched the cook slip gingerly into his tent and snug down the zipper. Then she turned back to Sloane. “So tell me about your recon. How is it upcanyon?”

“Not so good. A lot of dense willow and salt cedar brush, with plenty of loose rock.”

“How far did you go?”

“A mile and a half, maybe.”

“Can the horses make it?” Swire asked.

“Yes. But we’re going to need brush hooks and axes. And there isn’t much water.” Sloane glanced down at the remnants of the group, lounging around the fire drinking coffee. “Some of them are going to be unpleasantly surprised.”

“How much water?”

“A pothole here and there. Less as you go up. And that’s not all.” Sloane reached into a pocket and pulled out a map and a penlight. “I’ve been studying the topo. Your father found Quivira somewhere upcanyon, right?”

Nora frowned, unaware that Sloane had brought along maps of her own. “That’s about right.”

“And we’re here.” Sloane moved the penlight. “Look what’s between us and Quivira.”

She moved the penlight to a spot on the map where the elevation lines came together in an angry black mass: a ridge, high, difficult, and dangerous.

“I know all about that ridge,” Nora said, aware of how defensive she must sound. “My father called it the Devil’s Backbone. But I don’t see any reason to get everyone worried prematurely.”

Sloane snapped off the light and refolded the map. “What makes you think our horses can make it?”

“My father found a way to get his horses over that ridge. If he could do it, we can.”

Sloane looked back at her in the starlight; a long, penetrating look, the amused expression never leaving her face. Then she simply nodded.

18

THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER A BREAKFAST ONLY a little less miraculous than its predecessor, Nora assembled the group beside the packed horses.

“It’s going to be a tough day,” she said. “We’re probably going to be doing a lot of walking.”