SIXTEEN

Gabey, can I have your hat? I’m burning up.”

“Sure. It’s dirty.”

“I know.”

And when Gabriel asked about it, as we swatted away the flies and, practically naked, took those horses so slowly along the trail, I told him what happened to me up on that mountain, and how his sister had found me there. And how it felt. Like she brought me back to life.

“Did you make love to her?”

I think Gabriel was just curious, that maybe he wanted to know something hidden about his sister, about me. And at first, I found myself automatically forming the truth, no, with my mouth. Then I thought to lie for some reason and tell him yes. Then I kind of got mad at Gabriel.

“How could you even say something like that about your sister?” I sighed. “That’s between me and her, anyway.”

“Well, I’d tell you.”

“I don’t think I’ll live that long, Gabey.”

“You know, that’s a shame, too. And I was just about to offer my best friend Troy Stotts that he could ride my horse and me take on that old cripple Arrow.”

I smiled, knowing that Gabriel was just teasing.

“Am I the only person you told about your going away like that?” Gabe asked.

“Yep.”

Gabriel pulled back on Dusty, who turned in the path, stopping both horses and riders. He swung his leg over the top of the saddle and got down onto the trail, wiping away the sweat on the insides of his bare legs with his palms.

“Here, Troy. I’ll switch you.”

Gabriel held the reins on Arrow as I got down. “Are you sure?”

“No, but you can ride him anyway.” And then Gabe was up on Arrow, whose protesting backpedaling signaled that he had already eased into the thought of going riderless. “And besides, Dusty’s about the only horse around that I haven’t seen you fall off yet so I’m thinking today’s going to be his big chance.”

I was thankful for the cooling shade of the big trees here, and for the more comfortable gait and disposition of the buckskin. I could see the spot where the trees cleared away, far ahead, the bright sunlight reflecting from the yellow and dry grasses, where the old Butterfield stage marker stood, and the small trail linked onto the dirt road heading east.

“You know she’s in love with you, Troy.” He said it kind of like it was a question.

“Man, can you stop talking about your sister and me?”

I was embarrassed that Gabe was so straight with me, and at the same time I guess I felt a kind of pride that he knew, and felt, too, that someday we would be bound together by something more than just our friendship.

“Well, it’s true, in case you didn’t know. Or in case you were wondering.” Gabe rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Anyway, it’s okay with me.”

“Oh. That’s a relief,” I said, and I tried to change the subject, but I knew he would bring it back again. “You remember what you told us about your dad giving me the horse? How do you know about that?”

I held Dusty back and Gabe prodded Arrow up next to us.

“He didn’t tell me it or nothing, but my dad’s like a horse witch or something, like my grandfather was. But you know, Troy, because sometimes there are certain horses that can talk to you, and some people can talk to just about any horse. Like my dad can. And you. That’s why I said that about him giving you Reno. I just made it up ‘cause I was just trying to tease you about Luz.”

“Oh.” I looked out down the trail.

“You don’t need to tell me. I mean, if you love her. Because I already know. That’s what brought you back here when you left; otherwise Reno would’ve made you go away.”

you disappear

Gabriel stretched his arms out and yawned. Arrow lowered his head into the grass to the side of the trail. “One day, will you take me up there?”

“To that cabin?”

I looked at Gabriel.

“Sometimes I feel like I need to go back there, almost like it’s calling me to prove that it wasn’t just a weird dream or something. But if you just want to go up there and fish, we could go anytime. And Gabe, you won’t say anything, will you?”

“About where you went?”

“No. About her.”

Gabe held out a fist and I punched his knuckles.

“Gabe?”

“What?”

“Why do you act like you’re scared of her?”

Gabriel smiled. “She can beat me up, Troy.”

“I think you let her.”

“Okay,” he said. “But she never lets up on me, either. I think it’s ‘cause I’m the boy, and that’s what our dad always wanted. So she always had to prove she was tougher and smarter. Then I guess he ended up realizing that she really was.”

“She’s just trying to fool you, Gabe,” I said. “ ‘Cause she knows how good you really are. And she thinks that one day your dad’s gonna see you’re good enough to run that ranch. She told me.”

“She did?”

“I swear it.”

Gabriel yawned again, pretending not to think about what I just said. “Was it tough coming home?” By the time he said it, Arrow was already back to stumbling his front right foot on the ground, feigning a trip every few steps, which would inevitably lead to a more stubborn protest to come.

“Not at all.”

“He’s not going to move, Troy.” Gabriel exhaled in frustration above the stubborn Arrow’s lowered, pretending-to-eat head. “I think we’re going to have to walk ‘em again for a while.”

“We’ve been gone for an hour now and we haven’t even gotten to the dirt road yet. Tom’s likely already home and dressed by now.”

“You should’ve never offered up Reno for him. That Tom Buller owes you more than he’ll ever be able to pay back.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. Arrow flinched at Gabe’s prodding.

“Well,” Gabriel said, “you saved his life when he got bit. And you’d do anything for him, and stick up for him and his dad. You’re such a good friend to him.”

“And he would do anything for me,” I said, then let out a sigh watching Arrow win the silent argument with Gabriel. “I never understood how someone who can ride like Tommy would settle for a horse like that Arrow. If you want yours back, I’ll take him.”

“It’s okay. Walking’s walking anyway. And I guess old Arrow thinks its kind of funny about us being stuck out here in our underwear, too.” Gabriel paused. “Remind me next summer if we all spend the night out after ‘49ers Day that we need to bring some extra clothes.”

“Yeah. And you remind me not to let Tom Buller talk us into drinking beer, too.”

“I could do that.”

We walked along slowly, Gabriel taking an occasional swig from his canteen. The stage marker was just ahead, and alongside it, the wider, level dirt road leading east into Three Points and Holmes beyond. On the right of the trail, a circle of light cut through an opening created in the space between a sapling and a taller, drooping pine tree. In that circle, the stone marker rose, reflecting the sunlight of the open roadway.

“Hey Troy, look at this.” And Gabriel bent down and grabbed an apricot-sized stone off the ground. “Gabriel Benavidez paints the outside corner of the plate with a vicious side-arm curve.”

Gabriel fired his arm from below his waist, sending the rock up and then down, then cutting sharply in to the left to sail cleanly through the opening and whack! into the left edge of the marker, splintering shards of flagstone off into the sunlight.

“Bet you can’t get one in there.”

“I might as well just pay you up front as soon as take that bet.” But I picked up a rock anyway. “Why don’t you play ball in the league in Holmes?”

“I don’t like it enough, I guess.” Then he yawned. “Why don’t you go to church?”

“I guess there are a few people around who’d ask the same thing about you.”

“I go enough.”

“For what?”

And I hurled my rock, but couldn’t get it past the little sapling. “Okay. I guess that’s five more dollars. Between you and Tom, you guys are going to take all my pay.”

“Yeah. Well, you could dot the ‘i’ in Butterfield with that bolt action of yours.”

And I admired my friend for his willingness to overlook my shortcomings.

We had miles to go, the two of us walking alongside those two tall horses. We were out of the woods and back in the sunlight that spilled onto the tree-lined road. A dark stripe of sweat soaked through the band of Gabe’s hat. I took it from my head and wiped my hair back, thinking of Luz, remembering how she combed my hair with her fingers when I fell from my horse, and how much I wished she was there with me right at that moment. I waved the hat in front of me.

“Sorry, Gabe.”

“For what?”

“Your hat,” I said apologetically, showing him the sweat stain.

“It’s character.”

“Want it back?”

“Uh, I don’t think so, Troy. You know the sun doesn’t bother me too much. You’re pretty red, though.”

Gabe was always brown-skinned, even in winter. In summer, he just got darker while his hair got lighter. He never seemed to sweat too much, either.

“I shouldn’t’ve left my hat in that truck.”

“Yeah, and if we didn’t leave the lights on, we’d be trailering this lazy horse out of here.”

“Let’s get up on ‘em again.”

“Why don’t we just tie Arrow here and both ride Dusty?”

“Gabe,” I said, and I know I was smiling, “just think of how ridiculous that would look if anyone saw us.”

Gabriel laughed out loud. “I must be delirious.”

We heard the boom of thunder atop the mountains across the lake. Gabe looked up at the sky, over his shoulder, that little gold chain glinting for a moment as though it could have been the lightning bolt that made the sound.

“It poured on me one night when I was up in that cabin. I never seen it rain so hard in summer.”

“Were you scared?”

“Lots of times. But not ‘cause of the rain.”

Gabe looked back up toward those two granite fingers, the thick gray clouds swelling and inflating above them, crucifix dangling backward between his shoulder blades like some kind of protective charm against the sound of thunder.

“I had a lot of weird dreams up there, I think, because I got so tired and stayed up so many days in a row. I got scared at nights, being awake. Thinking that something was out there, following me. But I got most scared during the day sometimes because it was so quiet and a lot of times I thought I’d see things that weren’t there.”

“Like what?”

“You know. You just think you see a person, or an animal or something moving through the trees out of the corner of your eye. But it turns out to be nothing.”

“I couldn’t’ve stayed up there that long by myself. That’s really scary.”

“But I kept telling myself, it’s not anything real that’s scaring me. The real stuff I could handle, no problem. It was just working myself up about thinking things. Or dreaming them.”

We had talked about dreams plenty of times around the fire. I remembered how it was Tom Buller who’d said that he never had dreams; that he just slept and then woke up. And I envied him for that, too, and knew that it must have been the snake medicine in him; that beginning every day like he was breaking out of some dead cast-off shell of himself, forgetting about it, born again; alive and not afraid.

I wished I could be like that.

How about a scary story, boys?

The fire was dying down to writhing orange worms.

What’s the scariest dream you’ve ever had?

No one was ready to answer that. I was getting sleepy, staring at the coals.

I had this dream. I was in the woods, alone. I saw Gabe, sleeping under a tree, glowing white, curled up like a baby. I walk up to him, quietly, and he turns onto his back and sits up. His eyes are all white like the eyes on a marble statue. He looks at me, and he’s asking me why did I kill him. And I said, because I wanted to be the only son. But I’m also thinking—you know, with the not-dreaming part of my brain—that it’s like the story from this book I read about this guy whose kids get murdered by another child of his from a different woman. And then I’m looking up the trunk of this huge tree—a redwood, and it turns into these pointy, tall doors on a cathedral.

Man, Stotts, you’re weird.

The doors fall open, and then they slam shut, and they’re the lid of my mother’s coffin, and then the belly of a big white plane, upside down. I’m sitting on Reno, looking up. I know Gabey’s gone, even though I’m not looking down at where he was. Reno starts to back away and he steps into a squirrel hole. Remember when he did that, and we thought he’d break his leg? Then the hole gives way and we both fall underground. It’s like a dark dirty cave and I can see the roots of the tree like they’re dripping down from the ceiling. Then I got too scared and it woke me up.

About the scariest dreams I have are going to church or school in my underwear.

You guys are both messed up.

Okay, then what about you, Tommy?

I don’t have dreams.

Running out of chewing tobacco.

And he sleeps standing up.

There was another clap of thunder.

“You know when we went out after that big cat?”

“I won’t forget that.”

“Well, I’m sorry about what I did, Troy. But I wasn’t scared. I don’t think I was.”

“You still holding on to that?” I asked. “I don’t mind saying it scared the hell out of me.”

Dusty nudged my shoulder with a sticky nose. “And Gabe?”

“Yeah?”

“I felt horrible about that. I still do. About what I said to you.”

“It’s okay, Troy.”

“Can’t get mad at Gabe Benavidez for being Gabe Benavidez.”

“Sure you can. My dad does all the time. I know he’d like me more if I was like you. Or Tom.”

“I don’t think so, Gabe. Your dad loves you, he’s just a tough guy who wants you to be tough, too,” I said. But I knew that Gabriel would never be the kind of man his father pictured running the ranch, and felt sorry, too, that Mr. Benavidez couldn’t see what I did in his son.

I cleared my throat. “When we get up a little closer by Three Points, let’s try to ride the horses around through the woods south so we don’t have to go past anyone. Then we can cut up to the Foreman’s house and borrow some clothes from Tommy.”

“I bet he only owns one pair of pants. And they’re gonna be dirty,” Gabe said.

“Then they’re mine. Sorry,” I said, and Gabriel smiled.

I tilted his hat back on my head. The sun was dropping behind us now, our shadows stretching in front of us. The thunder over the mountains had died out, and clouds dotted across the sky, high up, like splatters off an oversoaked paintbrush.

“Troy,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about something that’s kind of funny. You know how you’re always walking like that with your head up, looking straight ahead. Well, I’ve been noticing something and I think we should consider it.”

“What?”

“Well, it just struck me that we didn’t ride here yesterday ‘cause me and Tom trailered Arrow and Dusty to the fire pit. But I’m seeing these three sets of hoofprints heading west, going the other way. See ‘em?”

I looked down. I should have noticed them, but it was one of those things that’s just invisible until someone rubs your face in it.

“And I think these ones here are Doats ‘cause he’s got that prancy foot up front. See?”

We stopped moving and looked at the dust covering the old dirt road. I turned back to face west. I had just assumed, believed, that Chase would have gone back east—toward Three Points—and I felt so stupid now that I realized they’d come out on the road ahead of where we were, but had gone the other way, toward the bluffs at the shallow end of the lake.

“Chase went this way and Luz and Tommy must have followed him.”

Gabe looked at me like he had already figured that out. “So. We should just keep going anyway,” Gabe said. “It won’t take too much longer to get around to Tommy’s and get some clothes. Then we can get after them if Tom and Luz aren’t back by then.”

“I can’t stand that guy.”

I looked back down the road from where we had come, trying to imagine where the three of them could have gone; towards that west end of the lake where the rocky bluffs rose up. I exhaled a disappointed sigh. “Let’s follow ‘em.”

“Aw hell!”

But that was all he said before we turned around and headed west.