The Horse Whisperer Read online

  “I’m sorry. It was important.”

  He turned to see Annie coming in. She was wearing a big denim shirt and her hair was combed back, still wet from the shower. It made her look boyish.

  “That’s okay.”

  She went to get the coffee and topped up her cup. Then she came over to him and did the same to his without asking.

  “You’ve been to see him?”

  She put the coffeepot down but stayed standing in front of him. She smelled of soap or shampoo, something expensive anyway.

  “Yes. I just came from there.”

  “And?”

  Tom still didn’t know how he was going to break it to her, even as he started to speak.

  “Well, he’s about as wretched as a horse can get.”

  He paused a moment and saw something flicker in her eyes. Then over her shoulder he saw Grace in the doorway, trying to look as if she didn’t care and failing miserably. Meeting this girl just now had been like seeing the last picture of a triptych. The whole had become clear. All three—mother, daughter and horse—were inextricably connected in pain. If he could help the horse, even a little, maybe he could help them all? What could be wrong with that? And truly, how could he walk away from such suffering?

  He heard himself say, “Maybe we could do something.”

  He saw the relief surge into Annie’s face.

  “Now hold on, ma’am, please. That was only a maybe. Before I could even think about it, I need to know something. It’s a question for Grace here.”

  He saw the girl stiffen.

  “You see, when I work with a horse, it’s no good just me doing it. It doesn’t work that way. The owner needs to be involved too. So, here’s the deal. I’m not sure I can do anything with old Pilgrim, but if you’ll help, I’m prepared to give it a go.”

  Grace gave that bitter little laugh again and looked away as if she couldn’t believe he could make such a dumb suggestion. Annie looked at the floor.

  “You have a problem with that Grace?” Tom said. She looked at him with what was no doubt meant as contempt but when she spoke, her voice quavered.

  “Isn’t it like, obvious?”

  Tom considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think it is. Anyway, that’s the deal. Thanks for the coffee.” He put his cup down and walked toward the door. Annie looked at Grace who turned away into the living room. Then Annie came hurrying after him into the hall.

  “What would she have to do?”

  “Just be there, help out, be involved.”

  Something told him he shouldn’t mention riding. He put his hat on and opened the front door. He could see the desperation in Annie’s eyes.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said. “You ought to get the heating checked out.”

  He was about to step out when Grace appeared in the living room doorway. She didn’t look at him. She said something but it was so low he couldn’t catch it.

  “I’m sorry Grace?”

  She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes flicking sideways.

  “I said okay. I’ll do it.”

  And she turned away and went back into the room.

  Diane had cooked a turkey and was carving it as if it deserved it. One of the twins tried picking a piece and got his hand slapped. He was supposed to be ferrying the plates over from the sideboard to the table where everyone else was already seated.

  “What about the yearlings?” she said. “I thought that was the whole idea of not doing clinics, so you could work with your own horses for a change.”

  “There’ll be time for, that,” said Tom. He couldn’t understand why Diane seemed so riled.

  “Who does she think she is, coming out here like that? Just assuming she can force you into it. I think she’s got one hell of a nerve. Get off!” She tried to slap the boy again but this time he got away with the meat. Diane raised the carving knife. “Next time you get this, okay? Frank, don’t you think she’s got a nerve?”

  “Oh hell, I don’t know. Seems to me it’s up to Tom. Craig, will you pass the corn please?”

  Diane made up the last plate for herself and came and sat down. They all went quiet for Frank to say grace.

  “Anyway,” Tom went on after it was said, “Joe here’s going to be helping me with the yearlings. That right Joe?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not while you’re at school you’re not,” Diane said. Tom and Joe exchanged a look. No one spoke for a while, everyone just getting on with helping themselves to vegetables and cranberry sauce. Tom hoped Diane would let the matter drop, but she was like a dog with a bone.

  “I guess they’ll want feeding and all, out here all day long.”

  “I don’t reckon they’ll expect that,” Tom said

  “What, they’ll go forty miles into Choteau every time they want a cup of coffee?”

  “Tea,” Frank said. Diane shot him an unfriendly look.

  “Huh?”

  “Tea. She’s English. They drink tea. Come on Diane, give the guy a break.”

  “Does the girl’s leg look funny?” Scott said, through a mouthful of turkey.

  “Funny!” Joe shook his head. “You are one weird kid.”

  “No I mean, is it like, made of wood or what?”

  “Just eat your food Scott, okay?” Frank said.

  They ate in silence for a while. Tom could see Diane’s mood hanging above her like a cloud. She was a tall, powerful woman, whose face and spirit had been hardened by the place she lived in. Increasingly as she moved into her mid-forties, she had about her an air of lost opportunity. She’d grown up on a farm near Great Falls and it was Tom who’d first met her. They dated a few times, but he made it clear he wasn’t ready to settle down and was anyway so seldom around, that it just petered out. So Diane married the younger brother instead. Tom was fond of her, though sometimes, especially since his mother moved to Great Falls, he found her a touch overprotective. He worried now and again that she gave him more attention than she did Frank. Not that Frank ever seemed to notice.

  “When you figuring on branding?” he asked his brother.

  “Weekend after next. If the weather picks up.”

  On a lot of ranches they left it until later, but Frank branded in April because the boys liked to help and the calves were still small enough for them to handle. They always made an event of it. Friends came over to help and Diane laid on a spread for everyone afterward. It was a tradition Tom’s father had begun and one of many Frank kept going. Another was how they still used horses for much of the work other ranchers now used vehicles for. Rounding up cattle on motorcycles wasn’t the same somehow.

  Tom and Frank had always seen these things the same way. They never disagreed about the way the ranch was run, nor anything else for that matter. This was partly because Tom thought of the place as more Frank’s than his. It was Frank who’d stayed here all these years while he traveled, doing his horse clinics. And Frank had always been the better businessman and knew more about cattle than he would ever know. The two of them were close and easy together and Frank was genuinely thrilled about Tom’s plans to get more seriously into horse rearing because it meant he’d be around the place more. Though the cattle were mainly Frank’s and the horses Tom’s, they discussed things and helped each other out whenever they could. Last year, when Tom was off doing a chain of clinics, it was Frank who had supervised the building of an arena and exercise pool that Tom had designed for the horses.

  Tom was aware suddenly that one of the twins had asked him a question.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Is she famous?” It was Scott.

  “Is who famous, for heavensakes?” Diane snapped.

  “The woman from New York.”

  Diane didn’t give Tom the chance to answer.

  “Have you heard of her?” she asked the boy. He shook his head. “Well then, she isn’t famous is she? Eat your food.”

  SIXTEEN

  THE NORTHERN EDGE OF CHOTEAU WAS
GUARDED BY a thirteen-and-a-half-foot-tall dinosaur. Pedants knew it to be an Albertasaurus but to everyone else it looked pretty much like a regular T. rex. It kept watch from the parking lot of the Old Trail Museum and you got to see it just after you passed the sign on Route 89 saying WELCOME TO CHOTEAU&—NICE PEOPLE, GREAT COUNTRY. Conscious perhaps of the immediate damper this might put on such a welcome, the sculptor had shaped the creature’s steak-knife teeth into a knowing grin. The effect was unsettling. You couldn’t tell if it wanted to eat you or lick you to death.

  Four times a day, for two weeks now, Annie had traversed this reptilian gaze as she drove to and from the Double Divide. They would go out at noon after Grace had done some schoolwork or spent a grueling morning at the physical therapist’s. Annie would drop her off at the ranch, come back, hit the phones and the fax, then head out again at about six, as she was doing now, to collect her.

  The trip took about forty minutes and she enjoyed it, especially, since the weather had turned, the evening ride. For five days the skies had been clear and they were bigger and bluer than she’d ever known skies could be. After the afternoon frenzy of phone calls to New York, driving out into this landscape was like plunging into an immense, calming pool.

  The trip was a long L shape and for the first twenty miles, north along 89, Annie’s was often the only car. The plains stretched endlessly away to her right and as the sum arced low, toward the Rockies on her left, the winter-worn grass around her turned to pale gold.

  She turned west onto the unmarked gravel road that went in a straight line for another fifteen miles to the ranch and the mountain wall beyond. The Lariat left a cloud of dust behind it that drifted slowly away in the breeze. Curlews strutted on the road in front then glided away at the last moment into the pasture. Annie lowered the visor against the sun’s dazzle and felt something inside her quicken.

  In the last few days she had started coming out to the ranch a little earlier so that she could watch Tom Booker at work. Not that the real work with Pilgrim had started yet. So far it had been mostly physical therapy, building up the horse’s wasted shoulder and leg muscles in the swimming pool. Round and round he swam, with a look in his eyes as if he were being chased by crocodiles. He was staying out on the ranch now, in a stall right by the pool, and the only close contact Tom had so far had with him was getting him in and out of the water. Even so it was dangerous enough.

  Yesterday Annie had stood beside Grace and watched him get Pilgrim from the pool. The horse hadn’t wanted to come out, fearing a trap, so Tom had walked down the ramp till he was up to his waist. Pilgrim had thrashed around and soaked him and even reared up over him. But Tom was totally unfazed. It seemed miraculous to Annie how the man could stand so calmly close to death. How could one calculate such margins? Pilgrim too had seemed baffled by this lack of fear and soon staggered out and let himself be ushered to his stall.

  Tom came back to Grace and Annie and stood dripping before them. He took off his hat and poured the water from its brim. Grace started to laugh and he gave her a wry look that made her laugh even more. Then he turned to Annie and shook his head.

  “She’s a heartless woman this daughter of yours,” he said. “What she doesn’t know is next time she’s the one going in.”

  The sound of Grace’s laughter had stayed in Annie’s head ever since. On the way back to Choteau, Grace had told her what they had been doing with Pilgrim and the questions Tom had asked about him. She had told her about Bronty’s foal, about Frank and Diane and the boys, how the twins were a pain but Joe was alright. It was the first time she’d talked freely and happily since they’d left New York and Annie had to try hard not to overreact and to just let it happen as though it were nothing special. It hadn’t lasted. Driving past the dinosaur, Grace fell silent, as if it reminded her how nowadays she behaved toward her mother. But at least it was a start, thought Annie.

  The Lariat’s tires scrunched now on the gravel as she came around the ridge and curved down into the valley under the wooden Double D sign that marked the start of the ranch’s driveway. Annie could see horses running in the big open arena by the stables and as she got nearer she could see Tom riding among them. In one hand he had a long stick with an orange flag on the end and he was waving it at them, making them run away from him. There were maybe a dozen colts in there and mostly they kept close to each other. There was one among them though who was always alone and now Annie could see it was Pilgrim.

  Grace was leaning on the rail next to Joe and the twins, all of them watching. Annie parked and walked over to them, ruffling the heads of the dogs who no longer barked when she arrived. Joe smiled at her and was the only one who said hello.

  “What’s going on?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, he’s just driving them around some.”

  Annie leaned on the rail beside him and watched. The colts bolted and swerved from one end of the arena to the other, making long shadows on the sand and kicking up amber clouds of it that trapped the slanting sun. Tom moved Rimrock effortlessly after them, sometimes stepping sideways or backward to block them or open up a gap. Annie hadn’t seen him ride before. The horse’s white-socked feet made intricate steps without any visible guidance, steered, so it seemed to Annie, by Tom’s thoughts alone. It was as if he and the horse were one. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. As he came past, he tipped his hat and smiled.

  “Annie.”

  It was the first time he hadn’t called her ma’am or Mrs. Graves and to hear him, unprompted, speak her name pleased her, made her feel accepted. She watched him move off toward Pilgrim who had stopped like all the others at the far end of the arena. The horse stood separate and was the only one sweating. The scars on his face and chest stood out in the sunlight and he was tossing his head and snorting. He seemed as troubled by the other horses as he was by Tom.

  “What we’re doing here Annie, is trying to get him to learn how to be a horse again. All the others already know, see? That’s how they are in the wild, herd animals. When they’ve got a problem, like they have now with me and this flag, they look to each other. But old Pilgrim here has plumb forgotten. I’m the rock and they’re the hard place. He thinks he hasn’t got a friend in the world. Turn ‘em all loose in the mountains and these guys would be fine. Poor old Pilgrim though, he’d be bear bait. It’s not that he doesn’t want to make friends, he just doesn’t know how.”

  He moved Rimrock in on them and lifted the flag sharply, making it crack in the air. The colts all broke away to the right and this time, instead of breaking left like before, Pilgrim went after them. As soon as he was clear of Tom though, he separated and again came to a halt on his own. Tom grinned.

  “He’ll get there.”

  The sun had long gone by the time they had Pilgrim back in his stall and it was getting cold. Diane called the boys in for their supper and Grace went in with them to pick up a coat she had left in the house. Tom and Annie walked slowly over to the Lariat. Annie felt suddenly very aware of their being alone together. For a while neither of them spoke. An owl flew low over their heads toward the creek and Annie watched it melt into the dark of the cottonwoods. She felt Tom’s eyes on her and turned to look at him. He smiled calmly and quite without embarrassment and the look he gave her wasn’t the look of a virtual stranger, but of someone who’d known her for a very long time. Annie managed to smile back and was relieved to see Grace coming toward them from the house.

  “We’re branding here! tomorrow,” Tom said. “If you two want to come and give a hand.”

  Annie laughed. “I think we’d just get in the way,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But as long as you don’t get in the way of the branding iron it doesn’t matter too much. Even if you do, it’s a nice-looking mark. Back in the city you might be proud of it.”

  Annie turned to Grace and could see she was keen but trying not to look it. She turned back to Tom.

  “Okay, why not?” she said.

  He told her they’d be s
tarting around nine the next morning but they could show up whenever they liked. Then they said good-night. As she pulled away up the driveway, Annie looked in the rearview mirror. He was still standing there, watching them go.

  SEVENTEEN

  TOM RODE UP ONE SIDE OF THE VALLEY AND JOE the other. The idea was to pick up stragglers but the cows needed little more inducement. They could see the old Chevy down in the meadow where it always parked at feeding time and they could hear Frank and the twins hollering and banging the bag of cow cake on its lowered rear end for them to come and get it. They streamed down from the hills, calling in reply while their calves scrambled after them, calling too, anxious not to be left behind.

  Tom’s father used to raise pure Herefords, but for some years now Frank had raised a Black Angus-Hereford cross. The Angus cows were good mothers and suited the climate better because their udders were black, not pink like the Herefords, so they didn’t get burned by the sun bouncing off the snow. Tom watched for a while as they moved away from him down the hill, then he turned Rimrock to the left and dropped over into the shaded bed of the creek.

  Steam rose off the water into the warming air and a dipper took off and flew straight upstream ahead of them fast and so low that its slate wings almost skimmed the surface. Down here the calling of the cattle was muted then lost in the soft splashing of the horse’s feet as he moved up to the top of the meadow. Sometimes along here a calf would get tangled in the thick willow scrub. But today they found nothing and Tom eased Rimrock back onto the bank then loped him up into the sun at the top of the ridge and stopped.

  He could see Joe on his brown and white paint pony way over on the other side of the valley. The boy waved and Tom waved back. Below, the cattle were funneling down to the Chevy, flooding around it so that it looked from here like a boat on a seething pool of black. The twins were tossing out a few pellets of cake to keep the cows interested while Frank clambered back into the driver’s seat and started to pull slowly away back down the meadow. Lured by the cake, the cattle surged after it.