Page 96 of The Drifter

Five. The word went through me like ice water. Half the clock burned and no sign of her. The trail ran on ahead of us to the rim of the world.

"Faster," I told the gray, right down into his laid-back ears. I don't know what he heard in it—the fear, maybe; a horse can smell fear and this once it worked for me instead of against—but that animal found another gear that had no business being in him. He flattened out and ran, and the beat of him went from a drumline to one long roll of thunder. I quit being a rider and became a thing the horse had decided to keep.

The curve came up fast.

I knew it was coming—the trail bent hard west around a shoulder of rock where the arroyo pinched in. We were carrying too much speed. I felt him gather and commit and there was nothing to do but ride the choice. His hindquarters slid. The whole back half of him broke loose on the loose rock, washing wide toward the drop, dust exploding off his hooves. I threw my weight into the turn, low and inside, and that surefooted son of a bitch got one hoof onto solid ground, then another, clawed his balance back out of the air, and slung us through the bend still at a dead run.

And in the half-second of the turn, hanging off the inside of that horse with the world tilted, I glanced back down our dust.

Something was coming.

A blur. Low, flat to the ground, eating our trail at a speed nothing on two legs owns. Tan.

We came out of the curve and the trail straightened. I looked back again, and it resolved—ears pinned, body stretched into a single line of purpose, running like the ground was helping.

Max.

Something kicked in my chest. Cash. Cash hadn't gone back to any airplane. Cash had turned that truck around the second he was out of sight, and his dog was on my trail carrying my brother's intent the way the horse was carrying mine.

"MAX!" I yelled it back down the wind. I had no way to know what a dog understands, and I have believed my whole life that they understand more than we've got the humility to credit. "GO FIND MAMA! FIND HER!"

The dog didn't check. He accelerated.

He came up our left side like we were standing still—the gray saw him and spooked, tried to break stride and swing his head, wanting to fight or fly. I hauled the mane and drove my legs in and shouted "KEEP GOING!" and the horse, wonder of the day, kept going—and Max went past us. Past a running horse. He hit the trail ahead and stretched even flatter and pulled away, a gold streak on the pale caliche, and was gone over the next rise with his shadow chasing him.

The watch. Seven minutes.

Fuck.

Three minutes and an unknown distance, and my whole world narrowed down to the trail and the drumbeat and the rise coming up ahead—the long one, the big swell of ground I used to top as a boy and stand on, looking down the far side at more empty country, learning again that he wasn't on it.

The gray took the rise at a run. The far side dropped away.

And there was a form on the trail.

Small, and far, and walking. Walking away from me, down the middle of the trail, slow, like a woman out taking the air.

A woman. In a nightgown. In slippers, in the middle of West Texas, a mile of scrub in every direction, her white-streaked hair loose and bright in all that sun.

My heart came up my throat and stayed there.

Max reached her first. I watched it from the closing distance—the dog braking out of a dead run into a gentle circle, coming around in front of her, and the small figure stopping, and looking down at him. I was near enough now to see her put out one hand toward him, unafraid, the way she'd put out her hand to every animal that ever crossed that ranch.

Then, the gray and I came thundering up. I checked him hard. He slid and danced and I was off his back before he'd stopped moving⁠—

Eight minutes, thirty seconds.

—hitting the ground at a run, the horse rearing and kicking out behind me, done with the entire enterprise. I didn't care, he'd done his part. I ran the last stretch of that trail toward my mother.

She turned around.

She was holding something against her chest, cradled in both arms the way you'd hold a cat. A small pack, dark nylon, hard-cornered. And from it ran a short chain, bright in the sun, up to a steel cuff closed around her right wrist.

She saw me, and her whole face opened up.

"Clint?" she said. "Is that you?"

The world went quiet.