Pamela Ryder
I figured likely they'd be hunting me south to Hidalgo and more south onto Mexico where most desperados like me like to go. So I went north—we went north—following along the foothills for a time, then crossing the Gila, then turning east to the banks of the Rio Grande, me and the piebald Indian pony I found with his nose in the feed bucket in the livery of Silver City. I took him to be a Choctaw–I'd seen the breed before. And this one—the one I took to be my own—he had little ears the Choctaw horses have and a nose dished in just a bit and a double mane: one black as crows and over that another one pure white and nearly to his withers and all straggly wild between his ears. And one thing he had I never did see in a horse. A little bit of blue there in the brown of his eye. Just on the right. Just there. Small enough you'd have to get in nearly eye to eye to see it, but I seen it and right then I give him his name. Cielo. Sky. His name to be just set in my mind but never would I say it, not with the way my life was going and not knowing how long he'd be mine for. Cielo then, for however long we'd be keeping on. And we were keeping on. Five days and nights went by following the river through some rough country with boulders tumbled down clear to the banks and hardly a place for the Choctaw to set his foot. But we kept on until the bluffs bottomed out and we crossed where the river ran muddy red and easy. With two rivers behind me I figured us clear enough of Silver City and likely safe enough away to be hunting work in the ranches, but none would have me. Not a one. Always the same it was: someone telling me I'm too puny to take on as a hand. Too young. Too risky. Sorry Billy, but when the law comes hunting you down you'll be nothing but trouble, so you'd better get on. But before I'd get on there'd be someone talking to me about the Choctaw. What a fine face he had, and you don't come by so many piebalds nowadays except if you're an Indian, and so forth. Wherever we went was someone saying if I might be selling that horse. I swear that pony he didn't like such talk and set to stamping and twisting around. Once bent his neck clear around and took a nip of my foot where it set in the stirrup. He was smart a fellow as I ever did see, those ears of his turning at the littlest sound—a ground squirrel scratching in the mesquite, a jaybird calling in a pinyon. And unspookable too, standing still as a stone when I was in the saddle taking aim and shooting at some dinner. Stayed put the same when I bed myself down and nearly froze those nights on a sandy bar or tucked myself under some overhang, and soon I'd be asleep to the talk a river makes when it's open and sliding over stones and the sound of him pulling at the winter grass on the bank. Or stepping in the shallows where the thin icy places are crackling and tinkling under his foot. Giving a little snort if the wind came up or tree limb creaked. Good as any hound you might keep to keep watch. Come morning, he was close by me, us both drinking from the river where a flock of merganser ducks out in the cold midcurrent were swimming and dipping under, then popping up and shaking the wet off their shaggy headfeathers. Gulping down the little fishes still wriggling in their mouths and diving again the way they do, disappearing, escaping along the river bottom. And me cold and hungry on the bank with nothing better to do than be betting myself where one of them will come up. Maybe there, by that big gray rock? Or will it be that shady spot there where a willow branch sweeps clear down to the water? Or might he been swimming upstream making his way against the current just to fool my fool ass while I'm standing here watching ducks and should be getting on, or did he already come up somewheres downstream when I wasn't looking or so far off I missed him. And while I'm guessing and wondering, why up he pops, and wouldn't you know it, he's never where you'd think he be, no never. I watch a while until they'd done diving and dipping this stretch of river and the whole flock starts to skitter and run—yes sir I said run with those paddly feet right along the surface, never sinking, never going under as long as they kept on running, flapping and slapping with the sunlit water sparking off their wings and then up, up, they go and gone. I knew then how it would be for me from then on: running as long as I had left in this life to be running, escaping across this dry and dusty desert earth as fast as I can before I sink into it, because I'll never get off the ground. My Mam, she warned me. Billy, she said, those splayed-out shoulder blades you've got are wings stuck in, folded up wrong-ways inside but never to be doing no good the way they are. So that's the way I am and always will be. And never would I know the way to set them loose to lift me up and get me gone. So I saddle up that Choctaw and I go.