out early to check the cows in the high valley, while James and Dot had gone for mail at the railhead. Alice, the mule, was braying in the distance. Jones headed in her direction.
The gray was on her side in the pasture, tongue out, bloating badly, breathing fast and shallow. Sometime during the night, she had broken into the field of dew-covered plants, and made a feast of it. Alice was running frantic circles around her, still braying.
The old man moaned from deep inside as he dropped to his knees beside her. Her belly was swollen twice normal size, rising above her backbone on the left flank. He knew she was dying and nothing he could do would save her. He had seen other horses die from the lush green forage of the whites.
The People thought it was the magic of white witches that killed their horses. He knew better. The killer was gas that blew the guts open. It was an ugly death. He didn’t want the gray to go through the agony.
He pulled the little pistol from its hiding place and sat next to her, stroking her head, and thinking back over the years they had been together. They had ridden through the worst of his life. She had never let him down. He admired her toughness and loyalty. His throat was tightening and he knew it was more than admiration he felt. The little mare was in terrible pain, panting hard, sweat covering her body.
The Mexican squatted near her middle and placed his hands on the enormous belly and felt around, drumming with his fingertips on the tight skin. Chaco approached the old horse slowly, sniffing her and whining, then he sat beside the Mexican, shivering. Mannito continued feeling the horse’s stomach. Jones watched him. The little man pressed with his hand at a spot between the stifle and the ribs and the gray squealed and tossed her head. Alice darted in and nipped at him. The old Mexican waved her off.
‘Leave the horse be!’ Jones snarled.
Mannito ignored him, continuing to explore the belly; then he stood and trotted off toward the barn. Chaco followed. When he returned, he was carrying a small wooden box. He squatted and rummaged inside it, pulling out strange-looking metal instruments and setting them to the side, until he finally found what he wanted. It looked like a foot-long hat pin. Jones didn’t like the determined look on the old Mexican’s face. He cocked the derringer. The gray was suffering enough, he wasn’t about to let the Mexican torture her more.
Mannito pulled his hat off, tossing it behind him and rolling up his sleeves. His hair was a dead white color. Jones was watching him closely.
‘Keep your hands off her.’
Jones placed the pistol’s muzzle against the gray’s skull.
Mannito dropped to his knees between the animal’s legs. She was kicking in her death throes. Alice darted in again, nipping at him. He paid no attention.
Mannito drummed once more with the tips of his bony fingers on the swollen loin, listening for the organs below. Time was running out, he knew. He turned his head toward Jones, concentrating, trying to visualize the critical spot.
Staring up at the old giant, Mannito knew that they were friends, even if Samuel Jones wasn’t consciously aware of it. The idea of this friendship with Jones seemed an odd thing to the little Mexican. Nevertheless, he was sure it existed. It didn’t matter that Jones had never uttered a single kind word to him. Kind words were nothing. The two of them shared, Mannito knew, far more than words, shared more than just their two long lives. They instinctively understood one another. And understanding, he had always felt, was the foundation of true friendship. The evidence was everywhere. They had both lost their wives, lost most of their children, had lived hard existences, in solitude, far away from their own kind. They were poor men, but men who possessed another kind of wealth: they believed in something far greater than themselves. That was true wealth. These things, Mannito felt, bound them as amigos.
As further proof of their friendship, Mannito recalled that since Jones’ arrival, the old giant had silently shared the barn work: tossing hay, cleaning stalls, and filling water troughs. Mannito greatly respected this about his friend. Though deathly ill, he was no loafer. He was a man of character who mindfully paid his own way. The week before, Mannito had found his burro, Peso, carefully brushed and curried, the animal’s hooves cleaned and polished, and its little weathered halter expertly spliced with fresh rawhide. He had thanked Jones. But the old man had simply ignored him. Still, they both knew. Mannito smiled to himself as he stared at Jones, pleased that he recognized these little signs that betrayed their friendship.
From that day forward, Mannito had talked to him whenever they were in the barn. Jones never answered but Mannito sensed that he listened and calculated and weighed the things he said. These one-sided conversations cut the loneliness. He wished Jones had longer to live. Wished that he would acknowledge their friendship.
‘I’m warning!’ the old man bellowed, pointing the pistol at Mannito, and struggling to stand. ‘You hurt her and I’ll splatter you all over this ranch.’
Mannito looked back at the old horse. He knew his friend Jones would not shoot him but he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t turn the little gun on himself if they lost the gray. Mannito’s hands were shaking. He had never tried to save a horse with the bloat. The long, thin metal trocar was slippery in his sweating hands.
He looked up at Jones and tried to smile, prayed silently to Jesus’ Mother, then leaned forward and plunged the huge pin into the gray’s paunch. Jones raised the little pistol; then he heard a loud shhhhhhishing and watched in amazement as the mare’s belly shrank like a punctured ball.
Even more astonishing was the effect on the old horse. She stopped panting and moaning and lay still on the grass. Minutes later, she struggled to her feet and started to graze again, as if nothing had happened. Jones pulled her away from the wet plants and looked down, stunned, at the little Mexican. Mannito just squatted and grinned up at him, then began to laugh, looking like a small wrinkle-faced monkey, enormously tickled that he had saved the old horse.
‘Damn bueno thing, right?’ the Mexican said, holding up the large pin. ‘A damn good thing.’
Chaco was dancing on his hind legs. Alice was sniffing the gray. Jones nodded, still shocked at the mare’s miraculous recovery. Mannito held out his small hand for the rope that was looped around the horse’s neck.
‘I walk. She needs to move. I watch her. Muy bueno,’ he said, running his hands over the old pony. ‘I walk,’ he said again, sticking his hand closer to Jones.
Jones looked at the man’s hand, then his face. He still looked stunned.
‘I walk,’ Mannito said once more.
Jones continued to look at him. Finally, he handed him the rope. He nodded at the little man again, but said nothing. It was enough. Mannito understood.
‘It was nothing, viejo,’ the Mexican said.
Darkness was falling hard. Baldwin and Lily hadn’t returned from checking the herd in the high pastures. Jones was growing concerned. Baldwin was smart enough. Since the night of the sandstorm, Jones had noticed that he had been wearing his pistol and sticking close to his oldest daughter. But the man wouldn’t believe that anyone but a love-struck cowboy had chased his Lily. Jones had tried to convince him otherwise. So had Mannito. But he wasn’t listening. Jones studied the rust-colored mountains surrounding the little valley, hoping the rancher’s stubbornness hadn’t got him and the girl into trouble somewhere out on the trail.
Hard-headed and hard to scare, Baldwin was like most of the men who built things out of this wilderness. That was why the People had such a
