Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

Sure. All hell's goin to bust loose.

That's right. That particular horse aint even seen you yet.

Oren jerked up his elbows and drew back in alarm from his own off side. Shit, he said. Who's that?

Troy grinned. John Grady drank from his cup and set it back on the table. Why couldnt it be that he's just not used to bein mounted from that side? he said.

It is. But the point is he cant ask the other half of the horse if he's ever seen this man before or get his advice about what to do.

Well it seems to me that if the two sides of the horse aint even speakin to one another you'd have some real problems. The whole horse wouldnt even start off together in the same direction. What about that?

Oren smoked. He looked at Troy. I aint a authority on horses' brains. I'm just tellin you what one cowboy's experience has been. There's two sides to a horse and it's been my experience that what you got to do is work the one side and let the other side go.

I've known some people the same way. Several, in fact.

Yes. I have too. But I think it's somethin they've worked at. A horse comes by it natural.

You dont think you could train both sides of the horse the same?

You're wearin me out.

Hell, that's a fair question.

I suppose you could. Maybe. It'd be hard to do. There would just about have to be two of you.

Well suppose you had a twin brother.

I suppose in principle maybe you could work with a horse thatawap I dont know. But what would you have when you got done?

You'd have a twosided balanced horse.

No you wouldnt. You'd just have a horse that thought there was two of you. Suppose one day he sees you both on the same side. What then?

I reckon he'd think you was quadruplets.

Oren stubbed out the cigarette. No, he said. He'd think the same thing as everbody else.

What's that?

That you're as crazy as a shithouse rat.

He pushed back his chair and rose. I'll see you all in the mornin.

The kitchen door closed. Troy shook his head. Old Oren is losin his sense of humor.

John Grady smiled. He thumbed his plate back from the edge of the table and leaned back in his chair. Through the window he could see Oren adjust his hat as he set out down the drive toward the small house he shared with his cat. As if the dead world past might take pains to notice. He'd not always been a cowboy. He'd been a miner in northern Mexico and he'd fought in wars and revolutions and he'd been an oilfield roustabout in the Permian Basin and a mariner under three different flags. He'd even been married once.

John Grady drained the last dark dregs from the bottom of the cup and set the cup on the table. Oren's all right, he said.

WHEN HE CROSSED at the top of the draw he smelled what the horse had been smelling. A reek of carrion wafted up on some vector of the cooling evening air. He sat the horse and turned in the saddle and tested the air with his nose but the smell had passed and vanished. He turned the horse and sat facing back down the draw and then he put the horse forward again down the narrow cattletrail. The horse watched the cattle moving out before them through the scrub and pricked his ears about.

I'll let you know what it is you need to do, John Grady told him.

A hundred yards down the far side of the draw he smelled it again and he halted the horse. The horse stood waiting.

You wouldnt scout out a dead cow for me, would you? he said.

The horse stood. He put him forward again and they rode down another quarter mile or so and the horse settled into his gait such as it was and paid no more mind to the distant cattle. A little further on and he halted the horse and tested the air. He sat the horse. Then he turned and started back up the way they'd come.

He cut for sign and finally picked up the scent ripe and strong and in the dusk he dismounted and stood looking down at the flyblown carcass of a new calf that had been dragged into the center of a ring of creosote bush in broad open country. There'd been no rain in two weeks and the dragmarks were visible across the gravel and he walked out a ways on the backtrack looking for sand or dirt where there might be a foot track but he didnt find one. He came back and picked up the reins and mounted up and looked out at the surrounding countryside to mark the spot and then rode out and back down the draw.

HE AND BILLY STOOD over the dead calf and Billy walked back out following the dragmarks and stood looking over the country.

How far out did you go? he said. Not far.

It's been a stout somethin to drag that big calf. You think it's been a lion?

No. A lion'd of covered it up. Or tried to.

They mounted up and rode out on the backtrack. They lost the track on the hard ground and picked it up again. Billy followed the track over the gravels by raising or lowering his head and catching a certain angle of the light. He said that the disturbed ground had a different look and after a while John Grady could see it too. The day was cool. The horses were fresh with the morning and the weather and seemed unworried.

Range riders, said Billy. Range riders.

Detectives. Pinkertons. The calf had been cut out and run down and killed in open country. Billy dismounted and walked over the ground. There was blood on the rocks, black from the sun.

You dont think it's just been coyotes? said John Grady. I dont think so.

What do you think it's been? I know what it's been.

What?

Dogs.

Dogs?

Yep.

I aint never seen any dogs out here.

I aint either. But they're here.

In the days that followed they found two more dead calves. They rode the Cedar Springs pasture and they crossed the floodplain below it and they rode the surrounding traprock bluffs and the mesa that ran east toward the old mine. They found tracks of the dogs but they did not see them. Before the week was out they'd found another freshkilled calf not dead a day.

There were some old Oneida number three doublespring traps on a shelf in the saddleroom and Billy boiled and waxed them and they carried them out the next day and buried three of them around the carcass. They rode out before daybreak to check the sets and when they got to the kill the traps were all dug out and lying on the ground. One of them was not even sprung. The carcass itself was little more than skin and bones.

I didnt know dogs were that smart, said John Grady.

I didnt either. They probably didnt know we were that dumb.

You ever trap dogs before?

No.

What do you want to do?

Billy picked up the unsprung trap and reached under the jaw and sprang it with his thumb. It chopped shut with a dead metal sound in the quiet morning air. He cut the wires and wired the rings together and hung the traps over the horn of his saddle and mounted up. He looked at John Grady.

We just aint found where they're usin is all. They might walk in a blind set.

You think Travis's dogs would run em?

Billy sat looking out at the long morning light on the rocks of the mesa. I dont know, he said. That's a pretty good question.

They took a packhorse and carried a kitchen box and their soogans out to the mesa and made camp. They sat drinking coffee from tin cups and watching the coals flare and lapse in the wind's fanning of them. Far out on the plain below the lights of the cities lay shimmering in their grids with the dark serpentine of the river dividing them.

I thought you had other business to attend to, Billy said.

I do.

You think it can wait.

I hope it can wait. I aint sure this can.

Well I'm glad you aint forgot all of your raising.

I aint forgot anything.

You're tired of me gettin on your ass though.

You're entitled.

They sipped their coffee. The wind blew. They pulled their blankets about their shoulders.