Not a lot of people know that there is a great salt lake and accompanying salt plain in Oklahoma; most folks are only familiar with the famous one in Utah. But the one in Oklahoma is no shoddy thing. Just a spit north of Jet, Oklahoma, the great salt flats start, the enormous and impressive remainder of a massive saline lake. Like the salt flats in Utah, they are white as snow and as flat as a board, but unlike the salt flats in Utah, Oklahoma’s salt flats have treasure buried beneath them. Tiny crystals known as hourglass crystal grow here and nowhere else in the world, and if you are the sort to dig for treasure, you can bring your whole family to dig them up. Just make sure you hose your vehicle down afterward, because salt’s not good for any set of wheels.
Pete’s family had gone to dig up these rare selenite crystals one spring not long ago, and Pete remembered the unrelenting sun, the grit of salt and sand caught in his pants legs, the intimate joy of finding a crystal and holding it to the light to see the hourglass of time within it.
“Look, I told you, he’s waking up,” Tony said.
The image of Oklahoma’s salt flats slowly became the starry sky over Bicho Raro.
“I need you to go,” said a mild female voice. It was Beatriz, though Pete’s gaze had not yet focused on her. “It’s dangerous for us to speak.”
“Fine, lady,” Tony said. “My legs want to get out of here for a while anyway.” The ground rumbled as he stepped over them both and walked into the night.
Pete and Beatriz were left alone.
Pete went to press his hand to his chest, only to discover that he had already done it, so he pressed a little harder. He was lying on his back in the gritty dirt, and from the vague ache on the back of his head, he guessed (correctly) that he had gotten there in an expedited way. Beatriz was crouched beside him, holding her skirt carefully to keep the wires she had collected inside the makeshift holder. The air smelled like roses for no reason that either of them could tell. This was because Luis had emptied a wheelbarrow of spent blossoms from Francisco’s warehouse in this field, and Pete had made an accidental bed of them.
“You fainted,” Beatriz told him.
He looked at her through slitted eyes, worried about his heart, but it seemed that now that the sight of her had knocked him on his back in the dirt, looking at her more didn’t seem to cause any more hurt. You can only get shocked so many times by the same thing, after all. He said, “I’ve got a hole in my heart.”
“Do you fall down a lot?”
“Only when I’m surprised.”
“Do a lot of things surprise you?”
“Not really.”
Because Pete was still dazed from striking his head on the rose-petal-strewn ground, he didn’t offer his name nor ask hers, and he did not think to begin polite conversation. And because Beatriz was already uncomfortable about the truck and because she was not as empathetic as someone else might have been in the situation and because she was trying not to look at his elbows, she did not think to introduce herself or even allow Pete to stand up as she raised the sore subject of the truck’s ownership. Instead, she merely explained that she had heard he was working for the truck but that her mother had not realized when she made the deal that Beatriz had resurrected it and gotten it running again and was using it for her own purposes. Only at the end of this monologue, when he was still looking at her dazedly, did she realize she had not solicited his thoughts.
“And so I’m open to your thoughts,” she finished.
Pete said, “Antonia—your mother—told me it wasn’t running.” But even as he said it, he knew Beatriz’s account was true, as the truck had been parked in multiple places since he’d arrived there, which was why he had not yet been able to examine it. Because he was a kind soul, this immediately triggered a conflict. He desperately wanted the truck, of course, and was unable to imagine what he might do without it. But he also could not imagine simply taking the truck out from underneath Beatriz if she had indeed invested so much work in it; it wasn’t fair, and if Pete was anything, he was a fair person.
This dissonance distressed him so much that he thought he could feel his very core beginning to tremble. The ground seemed to be whispering softly against his spine with the movement of some deep and unwinnable debate.
In reality, this was because Salto, driven to madness by the lack of radio in the stable, had broken through the walls of his stall and had just rioted the previously sleeping cattle gathered near the barn. They now stampeded directly toward Pete and Beatriz, the stallion at their head. He was an enormous horse, nearly eighteen hands tall, and as chestnut as a violin. The cows were red as dirt with white faces and had horns for hanging men on. There were many of them.
Beatriz did not wait for Pete to move; she simply grabbed his leg and dragged him out of the animals’ path just in time. The wire she’d gathered for her antenna scattered across the ground as she fell on her backside. Dust churned over them both, but all of their insides remained where they belonged. Pete sat up just in time to see the cattle slowly wind to a halt as they reached a fence line. Salto, on the other hand, sailed right over it.
Beatriz had no feelings for Salto either way, but she knew as well as any other Soria that his rare and pricey seed put food on their table.
She pushed up from the ground and ran.
“What are you doing?” Pete shouted.
“Getting that horse back!”
Pete leaped to his feet, stepping hard into his boot to put it back on, as Beatriz had nearly pulled it off in her hurry to drag him free of the stampede’s path. Then he, too, broke into a run—only he ran for the Mercury.
This was the moment their love story began.
It may seem like madness for a young woman to chase a runaway horse, as a galloping horse travels at twenty-five miles an hour and a galloping woman travels at only fifteen. But runaway horses rarely have a purpose, and young women chasing them often do. When combined with the asset of a young man in a station wagon, the question of catching the horse becomes a matter of when, not if.
But when was still a long distance off.
The Mercury did not start straightaway—it turns out that it is not good for cars to be jostled by giants—and by the time Pete got the engine running and the headlights on, both Beatriz and Salto were out of sight.
“Sorry, Tony,” he said, although Tony was still quite a distance away, having given them space as Beatriz had requested. Pete headed off in the direction the horse and the young woman had gone.
Several hundred yards away, Salto was pelting across the scrub with the enthusiasm of a horse that had been kept in a stall for too many years. Beatriz was not keeping up, but she still had him in her sights by the time Pete drove up alongside her. The station wagon scuffed to a halt and without pause Beatriz climbed into the passenger seat.
“We should try to cut him off,” she said quite calmly, although she was out of breath. “Is there anything like a rope in here?”
“I don’t know,” Pete replied. “This isn’t my car.”
Beatriz squeezed between the seats to look in the back, striking her head on the roof as the Mercury experimented with gravity. Tony did not have a rope in the backseat of his car, nor in the cargo area, where Pete had spent a night. As she rummaged, Pete overtook Salto and skidded to a halt before him. The stallion, however, merely leaped over the station wagon like the cow over the moon.
“Gee,” Pete said.
As he hit the gas again, Beatriz climbed back into the front seat. She was holding a revolver—an enormous Ruger Single-Six with a dark wood grip and a long, long barrel. It would have appeared at home in a very good Western movie and was large enough to have been purchased by a man who judged cars with a tape measure.
Pete was scandalized. “You’re not going to shoot him?”
“This was in the back,” Beatriz said. “It was cocked. That’s very dangerous.”
“It’s not my gun!”
Beatriz closed it away in the glove box as Pete tried once more to block Salto with the station wagon. Again the horse sailed over them.
“Just follow him,” Beatriz said. “He’ll tire eventually.”
“What will you lead him back with?”
Beatriz held up a silk tie that she had found under the passenger seat along with a large quantity of marijuana, a fifth of whiskey, and a small stack of cash. So Pete and Beatriz and Salto traipsed over the county as the stars moved slowly overhead and the mountains told stories to themselves. An hour into the night, Salto caught the scent of mares, and his journey took on a renewed focus. The stallion led the Mercury through the maze of abandoned stick buildings that used to be a mining camp, and the force of his passion caused already weak porches to collapse upon themselves. Then he careened through a muddy creek bed that sighed as it was galloped through and then driven through. Then past an abandoned general store and an empty house with a leaning, ghost-toothed picket fence out front. Then back into the desert hills.
Antelope joined them briefly, surrounding the car with hooved animals before they remembered their wildness and disappeared into the night. Far overhead, an upwardly mobile owl that had chased the whisper of a miracle far up into the atmosphere spotted the Mercury down below and dove after it. The owl was so far above the Earth that it had thought the station wagon was small enough to be prey; once it discovered its mistake, it peeled off just before hitting the windshield.
Beatriz watched it fly away. “You don’t have darkness in you, do you?” she asked.
“Just the hole in my heart,” Pete replied.
As the night cantered on, the stallion covered hundreds of acres to a ranch many miles away, only vaguely known by the occupants of Bicho Raro. The sign over the gate read double d ranch, and the gate was closed. Salto leaped it with aplomb and disappeared between the barns as mares sang winsomely from inside one of them.
Beatriz and Pete exchanged a glance. Pete knew nothing about this ranch, because he was from Oklahoma. Beatriz knew nothing about this ranch, because she did not own any roosters. In 1962, appearing at a ranch at night without warning was a good way to get shot. But in 1962, allowing a stallion to pillage another person’s barn was also a good way to get shot. Pete and Beatriz weighed these options.
Pete stopped the vehicle.
“Lotta cars,” he said. Because there were indeed a healthy number of vehicles parked in the drive on the other side of the gate.
“A lot of lights,” Beatriz added, because each barn had a glowing orange light on it.
“Well, that’s okay,” Pete said, but doubtfully. “Because we’re not doing anything criminal.”
They clambered over the gate.
Double D Ranch was owned by a lady of some years named Darlene Purdey. She had run it for years with her lady friend Dorothy Lanks, and for decades, the two of them had done everything together: farmed, knitted, cooked, kissed, cleaned. But Dorothy had the nerve to die first, and since then, the ranch had fallen into disrepair. Either the changing weather or Darlene’s grief turned the soil to ash, and nothing would grow. Pushed by desperation and cold with bitterness, Darlene now paid the bills by running an underground cockfighting ring. Her prize fighter, General MacArthur, was undefeated, and she used him to extort money from all of the locals who came with their own roosters and betting money.
Beatriz and Pete discovered this only when Salto made a grand entrance into the barn Darlene was currently using as a cockpit. She and another rancher crouched in the middle of a ring made of cardboard and scrap wood. Two dozen other men and women of varying ages watched from the outside of the ring. Staticky music played over a radio somewhere in the building. Wood shavings and blood and Salto hovered in the air over the fight.
Cockfighting is a very old blood sport. Typically, it involves animals bred for this purpose, a particular variety called a gamecock, as ordinary roosters will often give up the fight and turn away when they realize they are going to be bested. The gamecocks generally have their combs and wattles removed to prevent their opponent from gaining an advantage, and before the fight, their owners strap a blade to one of the creature’s legs to allow it to draw blood more freely. It is illegal in many countries, including the one Pete and Beatriz were in at the moment, as it is considered cruel to encourage animals to fight to the death.
Darlene’s rooster, General MacArthur, was unusual as he was an ordinary leghorn rooster still in full possession of his wattle and comb that fought bare-legged. Nonetheless he was undefeated and was preparing to defend this title in the moment Salto burst into the fight, Pete and Beatriz quick behind him.
One does not like to generalize, but the ranchers involved in illegal cockfighting at the time shared a certain personality type, which was how Pete and Beatriz came to find themselves facing a dozen drawn weapons.
“We’re here for the horse,” Beatriz said.
Darlene Purdey said, “This is by invitation only.”
“We were just leaving, ma’am,” Pete said. “Sorry for interrupting your night.”
Salto, who had just completed a quick circuit of the barn in search of mares, now headed back for the door. Beatriz snagged his halter as he attempted to sweep past her. She maintained her composure as he dragged her a few feet.
“No one invited you or a horse,” Darlene said. Before Dorothy had died, she wouldn’t have spoken to anyone this way, nor tolerated guns pointed at even late-night visitors, but her heart had gone to salt along with her land. Now she found that bloodshed and suffering drowned out the sound of her grief, and although the past Darlene would have taken their side, the present Darlene was considering making these newcomers regret interrupting her fight.
“You want this, Dolly?” asked the man crouched in the ring with her, pulling out a revolver. This was Stanley Dunn, and his heart had been salt longer than it had been flesh.
He cocked his gun.
People had died for lesser infractions in this part of Colorado.
Outside the barn, an enormous commotion stole everyone’s attention. The sound was multifaceted: roaring and squeaking and wailing and scratching. No one in the barn besides Beatriz knew what was causing it: dozens of owls suddenly attracted to the powerful sense of a miracle in the making. The darkness in Darlene alone would have been sufficient to gather them, and with Beatriz Soria in such close proximity, a miracle seemed imminent.
There would be no miracle. Firstly, Beatriz would not perform a miracle on the unwilling. Secondly, it was forbidden to perform a miracle where other people could get hurt, even if they were all the sort of people to stand around and watch chickens kill each other for fun. Thirdly, Beatriz didn’t want to.
Pete used the distraction of the noise as an opportunity to snatch General MacArthur by his tail feathers. As the rooster pecked and kicked, Pete drew him close to his chest and took a step back toward the door.
“Don’t shoot!” Darlene shouted. “Kid, you’re going to be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Pete said truthfully. “I said it before. We just want to go.”
Beatriz was not sorry. She did not feel that their transgression warranted the threat of physical violence. When the guns didn’t lower, she nudged Pete toward the night. She told the rest of them, “We’re leaving. Nobody shoot or my friend strangles your rooster.”
This was how Pete and Beatriz came to recover Salto and find themselves in possession of a fowl hostage. They escaped from the ranch and rode away with more horsepower than they’d arrived in: Beatriz riding Salto with a rein made of Tony’s fine black tie, and Pete riding behind her in the Mercury with a rooster in the passenger seat.
It was not until they were miles away from Double D Ranch that the two slowed their pace. Pete drove the Mercury alongside Salto, who trotted far more demurely now that he had accomplished several years of galloping in just a few hours. Dawn glimmered. They had chased and escaped all through the night; they’d run clear around Alamosa and now had to go through it to get back to Bicho Raro. Every animal that had joined them in their chase was now sleeping, and every person who had been sleeping while they were away was now awake.
Beatriz looked at Pete through the driver’s side window; he smiled.
He smiled is a good line for almost any kind of story. Beatriz found she liked the way he looked: sturdy and true, responsible and square. The night had left his white T-shirt dirtier than it had begun, and his neatly combed hair was no longer quite so neat—but it had only served to wear down the outer layer of kindness to reveal that there was only more kindness beneath. She smiled.
She smiled is a good line for almost any kind of a story, too. Pete found that he liked the way she looked: silent and apart, intentional and intelligent. The night had unparted her evenly parted black hair and she had a bit of chicken blood on her skin, but the disrepair of her appearance only served to reveal that her interior had remained cool and unruffled.
“I’ve never stolen anything,” Pete confessed.
“You didn’t steal that chicken,” Beatriz replied. “You repurposed him. You did steal that car, though.”
Pete was already falling in love, although he would have denied it if asked. Beatriz was, too, although she did not believe herself capable and would have denied it as well. The morning light looked good upon them both.
“We never decided what to do about the truck,” Pete said, struck into memory by the trucks parked near Alamosa’s small downtown.
Beatriz thought for a moment before saying, “I think you should come with us tomorrow night and see what we’re doing with it.”
“I reckon that sounds all right.”
“Let’s go back home now.”
“Wait,” Pete said. “I’ve gotta get Tony a radio.”