Nicholas Evans: The Horse Whisperer

Now, as he stood drinking at the plateau pool, she felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher's yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.

And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he'd stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.

Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they'd all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that's where they'd done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to 'get her head together'. Jesus.

Well, she'd show them. She had the matches and she'd show them. It would go up like paper. And they would find her charred black bones in the ashes and then they'd feel sorry. Oh yes, then they'd feel sorry.

It was hard to know how much of a start she had on them. Tom knew a young guy on the reservation who could look at a track and tell you how old it was, near as damn it, to the minute. Frank knew more than most about such things because of his hunting, a lot more than Tom, but still not enough to know how far ahead she was. What they could tell however was that she was riding the horse as hard as hell and that if she kept it up he'd soon be on his knees.

It seemed pretty clear she was heading for the summer pastures, even before they found his hoof-marks in the caked mud at the lip of the pool. From riding out with Joe, she knew the lower parts of the ranch pretty well, but the only time she'd been up here was on the cattle drive. If she wanted a bolt hole, the only place she'd know to head for was the cabin. That is, if she could remember the way when she got up into the passes. After two more weeks of summer, the place would look different. Even without the whirlwind that - judging by her progress - was going on in her head, she could easily get lost.

Frank got down from his horse to take a closer look at the prints at the water's edge. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. Tom got down too and held the horses so they wouldn't spoil what evidence there was in the mud.

'What do you reckon?'

'I don't know. It's kind of crusted already but with a sun this hot that don't say too much. A half-hour, maybe more.'

They let the horses drink and stood mopping their brows and looking out across the plateau.

Frank said, 'Thought we might get a sight of her from here.'

'Me too.'

Neither spoke for a while, just listened to the lap of the horses drinking.

'Tom?' Tom turned to look at him and saw his brother shift and smile uneasily. 'This is none of my business, but last night, Diane… well, you know she'd had a drink or two and, anyway, we was in the kitchen and she was going on about how you and Annie were, well… Like I say, it's none of our business.'

'It's okay, go on.'

'Well. She said one or two things, and, anyway, Grace came in, and I'm not sure, but I think maybe she heard.'

Tom nodded. Frank asked him if that's what was going on here and Tom told him he reckoned so. They looked at each other and some refraction of the pain in Tom's heart must have shown in his eyes.

Frank said, 'In pretty deep, huh?'

'About as deep as it gets.'

They said no more, merely turned the horses from the water and set off across the plateau.

So Grace knew, though how she knew he didn't care. It was as he'd feared, even before Annie had voiced the fear this morning. When they were leaving the party last night he'd asked Grace if she'd had a good time and she'd barely looked at him, just nodded and forced a token smile. What pain she must be in to have gone off like this, Tom thought. Pain of his making. And he took it inside him and embraced it in his own.

At the crest of the ridge they expected again to see her but didn't. Her tracks, where they could see them, showed only a slight slackening of pace. Only once had she stopped, some fifty yards from the mouth of the pass. It looked as if she'd pulled Pilgrim up short then walked him in a small circle, as if she was deciding or looking at something. Then she'd gone on again at a lope.

Frank reined to a halt just where the land began to tilt sharply upward between the pines. He pointed at the ground for Tom to look.

'What do you make of that?'

There were not one set of hoofmarks now but many, though you could read Pilgrim's clearly among them because of his shoes. It was impossible to tell whose were the fresher.

'Must be some of old Granola's mustangs,' Frank said.

'I guess so.'

'Ain't never seen 'em this far up before. You?'

'Nope.'

They heard it as soon as they reached the bend about halfway up the pass and they stopped to listen. There was a deep rumble which at first Tom took to be a slide of rocks somewhere up in the trees. Then they heard a high-pitched clamor of screams and knew it was horses.

They rode, fast but cautious, to the top of the pass, expecting any moment to come face to face with a stampede of mustangs. But aside from their upward tracks there was no sign of them. It was hard to tell how many there were. Maybe a dozen, Tom thought.

At its highest point, the pass forked like a pair of tight pants into two diverging trails. To get to the high pastures you had to go right. They stopped again and studied the ground. It was so churned with hooves in all directions, you could neither pick Pilgrim's among them nor know which way he or any other horse had gone.

The brothers split up, Tom taking the right and Frank the lower one left. About twenty yards up Tom found Pilgrim's prints. But they were heading down, not up. A little farther up was another great churning of earth and he was about to inspect it when he heard Frank call out.

When he reined up next to him, Frank told him to listen. For a few moments there was nothing. Then Tom heard it too, another frenzied call of horses.

'Where does this trail go?'

'I don't know. Ain't never been down here.'

Tom put his heels into Rimrock and launched him into a gallop.

The trail went up then down then up again. It was winding and narrow and the trees crowded so close on either side that they seemed to be whipping back the other way with a motion all their own.

Here and there one had fallen across the trail. Some they could duck and others jump. Rimrock never faltered but measured his stride and cleared them all without brushing a branch.

After maybe half a mile the ground fell away again then opened up under a steep, rock-strewn slope into which the trail had etched itself in a long upward crescent. Below it the ground fell sheer, many hundreds of feet, to a dark netherworld of pine and rock.

The trail led to what appeared to be some vast and ancient quarry, carved into the limestone like a giant's cauldron that had cracked and spilled its contents down the mountain. From this place now, above the hammering of Rimrock's hooves, Tom heard again the scream of horses. Then he heard another and knew,' with a sudden sickening, that it was Grace. It wasn't until he pulled Rimrock up in the cauldron's gaping mouth that he could see into it.