Somewhere south in Sonora

Two weeks later Elbert was closing up the cabin. He had been through all the papers. There was one having to do with the lineage of Ganopol, a running horse, with lines tracing back to Europe and the Near East, and the days when man and horse were mates of the world. Names—feminine names of the desert like those of the Old Testament, for the horse-lines of Araby were kept from mother to daughter and not from father to son—‘The Listening Mares.’ There were sweet meadow names of England ... there was a remark in pencil on one corner of the big sheet:

‘Her pedigree isn’t any longer than a piece of burnt string, and where she got herself from, I’m not prepared to state, but for a horse to sit on and come across with good sense, little Mamie’s mother, old Clara, was sure a triumph of breeding—’

It was almost like a voice. Elbert turned his eyes to the empty cot. It was as if he could see Mr. Leadley looking over the certificate of registration and writing down that remark—not having any one to speak aloud to. A lot of talk about Mamie’s father—too much silence about old Clara, he had probably thought. A little later as Elbert touched a match to some papers in the fireplace, these brief but laborious lines caught his eye:

‘... On looking him over at your request, Bob, I don’t feel troubled about his honesty, but I’m not so sure he’s real bright.’

It was the letter he had brought up trail from Mort Cotton that first day at San Forenso. Another proof that Mr. Leadley had been thinking of sending him down into Sonora for Bart, before the accident in the shaft. He had asked his old partner’s judgment. This reminded Elbert of Mr. Cotton’s first fierce appraisal of him in San Forenso. A low nicker reached him from the corral and a flushed smile came to his face, as he moved out.

Somehow in lifting the wooden pin of the cedar gate, the sense came over him again of the quality of the man whom he had known so well—just a pin of manzanito to hold the gate, but there was an art about the way the knots were cut. The mare came up to him nodding and stepping high with her front feet. She seemed to say that this conspiracy to keep her in the dark had gone far enough; that the time had come for her to know what was going on.

‘... And you’re to be mine, Mamie—from now on!’ Elbert muttered. He had been trying to get used to it for days. ‘What do you think about that? Not very much, I guess.... Not much more than Mort Cotton did, probably.’

The mare wasn’t telling. She was friendly, however, nudging under the arm, nosing at his hands and pockets.

‘Oh, I know what you want—a piece of cake.’

He went back to the cabin. The strangest feeling came over him in the shadows. This was his place to come and go in, but the fact was slow to settle in him. He missed his old friend and didn’t feel quite up to the reality of possession. One man’s whole life—these things represented—and a mare that couldn’t be bought.... There might have been some hope, the doctor had repeatedly suggested, if Mr. Leadley could have been moved down to San Forenso, but the old man had refused to hear to that. He had to come to his own conclusion, apparently. Days of just sitting around—Mort Cotton there, the doctor riding up to the claim every day—about as hard days as the young man had lived through so far.

The last chest was locked, the last cabinet.

Elbert glanced around before shutting and padlocking the outer door of the cabin—a wonder passing through him about sometime coming back—with Bart.... In a sense, this meant his start for Sonora right now. Of course, there were matters to close up in San Forenso—affairs of the Dry Cache, of banks, papers and probate, but Mamie was now to be ridden down trail and it was like the beginning of a new life. From the doorway, he studied the mare’s sculptured head. There she stood, as if listening to sounds which she alone could detect.

Practically his first experience in saddling anything but the wooden horse. The horses he had failed to tarry on at Heaslep’s had been saddled by others—even old Chester on that unforgettable day. He knew the straps and cinches—part of his recent business, and Mamie wasn’t too restive, so far. Funny, Elbert thought, that he should have sold that Pitcairn stock-saddle to himself, after all.

‘Thirty-eight pounds,’ he muttered.

Trouble came to Mamie’s eyes as he undertook to tuck the steel between her teeth. She didn’t like the way he went about it; also it seemed, he had to mash her ears about to get the bridle on. She was nervous as a child being severely washed. Finally the man got his foot in the stirrup and raised himself. With a little dance to the right, the mare glided from under, and stood with trailing bridle-rein, looking at him, confused and incredulous.

‘I guess I couldn’t have stepped up on her in the way she’s used to,’ he remarked.

He tried again. Mamie seemed to have a certain responsibility for him this time, like a mother-hen trying to get on with an unfamiliar chick. But she had her own mysterious forces and impulses to cope with, too. She had been penned-in for altogether too many days and darted out of the corral gate with a suddenness that jerked the man’s body and arm back to keep his place. Mamie’s head flung upward in utter dismay, and the awfulness of having put weight like that on her tender mouth, uncentered Elbert entirely for the time. It was like clashing gears in a fine machine that has been desperately hard to obtain—only ten times—infinitely worse—this, a living thing, cherished from a baby by an old man who had been a horseman all his days.

The saddle kept slipping forward. Elbert hadn’t known at first how to tighten the girths. He didn’t dare to look underneath. At least, there was no blood mixed with the foam around the steel of her bit.... Twenty-two miles down trail, and long before the end, his own agony took the edge of strain from the fierce imaginings of damage he was doing the mare. Mamie didn’t stop to walk; she danced down trail—to friends of hers at Mort Cotton’s ranch. It was as if she expected, when she got there, to hear the voice that had been silent so long. A hundred times Elbert thought of this. His bones crunched; he felt the scald of blood and sweat on his thighs. But once or twice, even in the pain, a flash of splendor went through him—at her arched lathered neck, the lift of power from beneath, some new magic from the earth—

No need to ask the way to Mort Cotton’s place. Mamie veered to the left, at the end of San Forenso’s main street, following the wagon tracks at a show-trot to the wide gateway, where she was welcomed from all quarters at once. Mort Cotton called his greeting from the doorway of the ranch house, as Elbert let himself down, steadying himself before letting go of the pommel. Mort approached. What was left of the younger man withered as those eyes, under the white bushy brows, fixed upon the mare. This was far more severe than being appraised himself.

‘Lucky old Bob couldn’t see her, with the saddle as far back as that,’ Mr. Cotton remarked.

Elbert had ceased to breathe. Raw and angry patches wavered in imagination before his eyes, as the saddle was being removed. Hide and hair unruffled—a flood of thankfulness went through him. He moved around to Mamie’s far side and all looked intact there, too. Mort’s twisted hand was now knuckling down the buttons of the mare’s spine.

‘Thought so, all the weight on her kidneys. Say—’ The old man’s glance had turned to Elbert really for the first time, the sharp eyes settling upon his riding cords. ‘Caked, or I’m a Spaniard! I see you’ve been punished, too. Come on into the house. The boys will take care of Mamie. They know her.’

Elbert obeyed, but made no move to a chair as they entered the cool front room.

‘I led her down part of the way,’ he confessed unsteadily. ‘But she wanted to get here. She’s so much—all the time—’

‘She sure is—so much hoss all the time. I know her. And what you want now, young man, isn’t to hurry away nowhere too sudden, but quarters to cool down in right here, good upstandin’ quarters. And say, I’ve got some hosses for you to do your rough ridin’ on. Mamie’s a bit too fine to break a man in. I’m goin’ to give you some lessons personal, before you leave, and bring you up, so’s you’ll know what you’re ridin’, when you get Mamie under the saddle—’

‘Not at once,’ said Elbert.

‘No, you’ll be walkin’ like a bear for a week yet.’