All the Pretty Horses

evening he came upon her returning on the black Arabian down the ciénaga road.
    He reined in the horse and it stopped and stood trembling and stepped about in the road slinging its head in a froth from side to side. She sat her horse. He took off his hat and passed his shirtsleeve across his forehead and waved her forward and put his hat back on and reined the horse off the road and through the sedge and turned so that he could watch her pass. She put the horse forward and came on and as she came abreast of him he touched the brim of his hat with his forefinger and noddedand he thought she would go past but she did not. She stopped and turned her wide face to him. Skeins of light off the water played upon the black hide of the horse. He sat the sweating stallion like a highwayman under her gaze. She was waiting for him to speak and afterwards he would try to remember what it was he’d said. He only knew it made her smile and that had not been his intent. She turned and looked off across the lake where the late sun glinted and she looked back at him and at the horse.
    I want to ride him, she said.
    What?
    I want to ride him.
    She regarded him levelly from under the black hatbrim.
    He looked out across the sedge tilting in the wind off the lake as if there might be some help for him in that quarter. He looked at her.
    When? he said.
    When?
    When did you want to ride him?
    Now. I want to ride him now.
    He looked down at the horse as if surprised to see it there.
    He dont have a saddle on.
    Yes, she said. I know.
    He pressed the horse between his heels and at the same time pulled on the reins of the hackamore to make the horse appear uncertain and difficult but the horse only stood.
    I dont know if the patron would want you to ride him. Your father.
    She smiled at him a pitying smile and there was no pity in it. She stepped to the ground and lifted the reins over the black horse’s head and turned and stood looking at him with the reins behind her back.
    Get down, she said.
    Are you sure about this?
    Yes. Hurry.
    He slid to the ground. The insides of his trouserlegs were hot and wet.
    What do you aim to do with your horse?
    I want you to take him to the barn for me.
    Somebody will see me at the house.
    Take him to Armando’s.
    You’re fixin to get me in trouble.
    You are in trouble.
    She turned and looped the reins over the saddlehorn and came forward and took the hackamore reins from him and put them up and turned and put one hand on his shoulder. He could feel his heart pumping. He bent and made a stirrup of his laced fingers and she put her boot into his hands and he lifted her and she swung up onto the stallion’s back and looked down at him and then booted the horse forward and went loping out up the track along the edge of the lake and was lost to view.
    He rode back slowly on the Arabian. The sun was a long time descending. He thought she might overtake him that they could change the horses back again but she did not and in the red twilight he led the black horse past Armando’s house afoot and took it to the stable behind the house and removed the bridle and loosed the cinches and left it standing in the bay saddled and tied with a rope halter to the hitchingrail. There was no light on at the house and he thought perhaps there was no one home but as he walked back out down the drive past the house the light came on in the kitchen. He walked more quickly. He heard the door open behind him but he didnt turn to look back to see who it was and whoever it was they did not speak or call to him.
    The last time that he saw her before she returned to Mexico she was coming down out of the mountains riding very stately and erect out of a rainsquall building to the north and the dark clouds towering above her. She rode with her hat pulled down in the front and fastened under her chin with a drawtie and as she rode her black hair twisted and blew about her shoulders and the lightning fell silently through the black clouds behind her and she rode all seeming unaware down through the low hills while the first spits of rain blew on the wind and onto theupper pasturelands and past the pale and reedy lakes riding erect and stately until the rain caught her up and shrouded her figure away in that wild summer landscape: real horse, real rider, real land and sky and yet a dream withal.
    T HE DUEÑA A LFONSA was both grandaunt and godmother to the girl and her life at the hacienda invested it with oldworld ties and with