📔 The Crossing

Riding out for wood he watched his shadow and the shadow of the horse and travois cross those palings tree by tree. Boyd rode in the travois holding the axe as if he'd keep guard over the wood they'd gathered […]

The pitchman swept his cane in a slow acceleration over the heads of the crowd and then suddenly pointed the silver cap toward Billy and the shill.

They collected wood and built back the fire and they fetched rocks to make a trivet and there they set the bucket to boil.

The riders overtook them laughing and circled the cart at a full gallop until one of them took down his reata and dropped a loop over the mule’s head and brought it to a halt.

[…] inside you could see the wires and cables that ran aft to the rudder and elevators and the cracked and curled and sunblacked leather of the seats and in their tarnished nickel bezels the glass of instrument dials glaucous and clouded from the pumicing of the desert sands.

The nails in the rim of the wheel went ratcheting over the leather pawl and the wheel slowed and came to a stop and the woman turned to the crowd and smiled.

As if it were a maze where these orphans of his heart had miswandered in their journey in life […]

He rode his horse with the reins tied and he wore a pistol at his belt and a plain flatcrowned hat of a type no longer much seen in that country and he wore tooled boots to his knees and carried a quirt.

At this the man at the left who’d so far not spoke at all rose laughing and gestured for the two boys to follow and they went with him out of the square and into the street leaving the disputants to their rustic parkbench tertulia.

The wolf paced and circled limping on three legs and then crouched by the iron stake where it seemed she’d made her querencia.