Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Author:Edward Abbey [Abbey, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-7953-1748-4
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2011-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

THE MOON-EYED HORSE

When we reached Salt Creek we stopped to water the horses. I needed a drink myself but the water here would make a man sick. We’d find good water farther up the canyon at Cigarette Spring.

While Mackie indulged himself in a smoke I looked at the scenery, staring out from under the shelter of my hat brim. The glare was hard on the eyes and for relief I looked down, past the mane and ears of my drinking horse, to something near at hand. There was the clear shallow stream, the green wiregrass standing stiff as bristles out of the alkali-encrusted mud, the usual deerflies and gnats swarming above the cattle tracks and dung.

I noticed something I thought a little odd. Cutting directly across the cattle paths were the hoofprints of an unshod horse. They led straight to the water and back again, following a vague little trail that led into the nearest side canyon, winding around blackbrush and cactus, short-cutting the meanders of the wash.

I studied the evidence for a while, trying to figure everything out for myself before mentioning it to Mackie, who knew this country far better than I ever would. He was a local man, a Moabite, temporarily filling in for Viviano Jacquez, who’d had another quarrel with old Roy Scobie and disappeared for a few days.

“There’s a horse living up that canyon,” I announced; “a wild horse. And a big one—feet like frying pans.”

Slowly Mackie turned his head and looked where I pointed. “Wrong again,” he said, after a moment’s consideration.

“What do you mean, wrong again? If it’s not a horse it must be a unicorn. Or a centaur? Look at those tracks—unshod. And from the wear and tear on that trail it’s been living out here for a long time. Who runs horses out here?” We were about twenty miles from the nearest ranch.

“Nobody,” Mackie agreed.

“You agree it’s a horse.”

“Of course it’s a horse.”

“Of course it’s a horse. Well thank you very much. And no shoes, living out here in the middle of nothing, it must be a wild horse.”

“Sorry,” Mackie said. “Wrong again.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“Old Moon-Eye is what you might call an independent horse. He don’t belong to anybody. But he ain’t wild. He’s a gelding and he’s got Roy Scobie’s brand on his hide.”

I stared up the side canyon to where the tracks went out of sight around the first bend. “And this Moon-Eye lives up there all by himself?”

“That’s right. He’s been up in that canyon for ten years.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No. Moon-Eye is very shy. But I heard about him.”

Our mounts had raised their heads from the water and shifting restlessly under our weight, they seemed anxious to move on. Mackie turned his horse up the main trail along the stream and I followed, thinking.

“I want that horse,” I said.

“What for?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can have him.”

We rode steadily up the canyon, now and then splashing through the water, passing under the high red walls, the hanging gardens of poison ivy and panicgrass, the flowing sky.

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