All The Pretty Horses Part 16

The horses had grouped again at the far end of the pen and stood rolling their eyes and running their heads along each other's necks.

They got one thing goin for em, said Rawlins.

What's that.

They aint had no Mexican to try and break em.

John Grady nodded.

They studied the horses.

How many are there? said John Grady.

Rawlins looked them over. Fifteen. Sixteen.

I make it sixteen.

Sixteen then.

You think you and me could break all of em in four days?

Depends on what you call broke.

Just halfway decent greenbroke horses. Say six saddles. Double and stop and stand still to be saddled.

Rawlins took his tobacco from his pocket and pushed back his hat.

What you got in mind? he said.

Breakin these horses.

Why four days?

You think we could do it?

They intend puttin em in the rough-string? My feelin is that any horse broke in four days is liable to come unbroke in four more.

They're out of horses is how come em to be down here in the first place.

Rawlins dabbed tobacco into the cupped paper. You're tellin me that what we're lookin at here is our own string?

That's my guess.

We're lookin at ridin some coldjawed son of a b.i.t.c.h broke with one of them d.a.m.ned mexican ringbits.

Yeah.

Rawlins nodded. What would you do, sideline em?

Yep.

You think there's that much rope on the place?

I dont know.

You'd be a woreout sumbuck. I'll tell you that.

Think how good you'd sleep.

Rawlins put the cigarette in his mouth and fished about for a match. What else do you know that you aint told me?

Armando says the old man's got horses all over that mountain.

How many horses.

Somethin like four hundred head.

Rawlins looked at him. He popped the match and lit the cigarette and flipped the match away. What in the h.e.l.l for?

He'd started a breeding program before the war.

What kind of horses?

Media sangres.

What the h.e.l.l is that.

Quarterhorses, what we'd call em.

Yeah?

That roan yonder, said John Grady, is a flat-out Billy horse if he does have bad feet.

Where do you reckon he come from?

Where they all come from. Out of a horse called Jose Chiquito.

Little Joe?

Yeah.

The same horse?

The same horse.

Rawlins smoked thoughtfully.

Both of them horses were sold in Mexico, said John Grady. One and Two. What he's got up yonder is a big yeguada of mares out of the old Traveler-Ronda line of horses of Sheeran's.

What else? said Rawlins.

That's it.

Let's go talk to the man.

THEY STOOD in the kitchen with their hats in their hands and the gerente sat at the table and studied them. in the kitchen with their hats in their hands and the gerente sat at the table and studied them.

Amansadores, he said.

Si.

Ambos, he said.

Si. Ambos.

He leaned back. He drummed his fingers on the metal tabletop.

Hay dieciseis caballos en el potrero, said John Grady. Podemos amansarlos en cuatro dias.

They walked back across the yard to the bunkhouse to wash up for supper.

What did he say? said Rawlins.

He said we were full of s.h.i.t. But in a nice way.

Is that a flat-out no do you reckon?

I dont think so. I dont think he can leave it at that.

They went to work on the green colts daybreak Sunday morning, dressing in the half dark in clothes still wet from their washing them the night before and walking out to the potrero before the stars were down, eating a cold tortilla wrapped around a scoop of cold beans and no coffee and carrying their forty foot maguey catchropes coiled over their shoulders. They carried saddleblankets and a bosalea or riding hackamore with a metal noseband and John Grady carried a pair of clean gunny-sacks he'd slept on and his Hamley saddle with the stirrups already shortened.

They stood looking at the horses. The horses shifted and stood, gray shapes in the gray morning. Stacked on the ground outside the gate were coils of every kind of rope, cotton and manilla and plaited rawhide and maguey and ixtle down to lengths of old woven hair mecates and handplaited piecings of bindertwine. Stacked against the fence were the sixteen rope hackamores they'd spent the evening tying in the bunkhouse.

This bunch has done been culled once up on the mesa, aint it?

I'd say so.

What do they want with the mares?

They ride em down here.

Well, said Rawlins. I can see why they're hard on a horse. Puttin up with them b.i.t.c.hes.

He shook his head and stuffed the last of the tortilla in his jaw and wiped his hands on his trousers and undid the wire and opened the gate.

John Grady followed him in and stood the saddle on the ground and went back out and brought in a handful of ropes and hackamores and squatted to sort them. Rawlins stood building his loop.

I take it you dont give a particular d.a.m.n what order they come in, he said.

You take it correctly, cousin.

You dead set on sackin these varmints out?

Yep.

My old daddy always said that the purpose of breakin a horse was to ride it and if you got one to break you just as well to saddle up and climb aboard and get on with it.

John Grady grinned. Was your old daddy a certified peeler?

I never heard him claim to be. But I d.a.m.n sure seen him hang and rattle a time or two.

Well you're fixin to see some more of it.

We goin to bust em twice?

What for?

I never saw one that completely believed it the first time or ever doubted it the second.

John Grady smiled. I'll make em believe, he said. You'll see.

I'm goin to tell you right now, cousin. This is a heathenish bunch.

What is it Blair says? No such thing as a mean colt?

No such thing as a mean colt, said Rawlins.

The horses were already moving. He took the first one that broke and rolled his loop and forefooted the colt and it hit the ground with a tremendous thump. The other horses flared and bunched and looked back wildly. Before the colt could struggle up John Grady had squatted on its neck and pulled its head up and to one side and was holding the horse by the muzzle with the long bony head pressed against his chest and the hot sweet breath of it flooding up from the dark wells of its nostrils over his face and neck like news from another world. They did not smell like horses. They smelled like what they were, wild animals. He held the horse's face against his chest and he could feel along his inner thighs the blood pumping through the arteries and he could smell the fear and he cupped his hand over the horse's eyes and stroked them and he did not stop talking to the horse at all, speaking in a low steady voice and telling it all that he intended to do and cupping the animal's eyes and stroking the terror out.

Rawlins took one of the lengths of siderope from around his neck where he'd hung them and made a slipnoose and hitched it around the pastern of the hind leg and drew the leg up and halfhitched it to the horse's forelegs. He freed the catchrope and pitched it away and took the hackamore and they fitted it over the horse's muzzle and ears and John Grady ran his thumb in the animal's mouth and Rawlins fitted the mouthrope and then slipinoosed a second siderope to the other rear leg. Then he tied both sideropes to the hackamore.

You all set? he said.

All set.

He let go the horse's head and rose and stepped away. The horse struggled up and turned and shot out one hind foot and s.n.a.t.c.hed itself around in a half circle and fell over. It got up and kicked again and fell again. When it got up the third time it stood kicking and s.n.a.t.c.hing its head about in a little dance. It stood. It walked away and stood again. Then it shot out a hindleg and fell again.

It lay there for a while thinking things over and when it got up it stood for a minute and then it hopped up and down three times and then it just stood glaring at them. Rawlins had got his catchrope and was building his loop again. The other horses watched with great interest from the far side of the potrero.

These sumbucks are as crazy as a s.h.i.thouse rat, he said.

You pick out the one you think is craziest, said John Grady, and I'll give you a finished horse this time Sunday week.

Finished for who?

To your satisfaction.

Bulls.h.i.t, said Rawlins.