When the Legends Die (24 page)

“Tom Black is back in the Garden with the rodeo, and the crowds are waiting for him to kill another horse. Black, a full-blooded Indian, is known to rodeo buffs as Killer Tom, Devil Tom, and an assortment of other grim nicknames. He has earned them all. A veteran bronc rider, Tom Black has ridden nine horses to death in the rodeo arena, and at every performance the spectators expect him to kill another one.”

The story went on for another half column, full of vivid detail of which the greater part was only half true. Tom had read that story a hundred times. Apparently the rodeo publicity men kept it mimeographed to hand out to reporters.

The waitress brought the steak and eggs he had ordered and he put the paper aside and ate. Actually, he had been involved in the death of only six horses, counting the one at Aztec. And that one wasn’t even in the records. But several other broncs had to be retired, wind broken or spirit broken, after he rode them. He had to admit that, to himself at least.

He finished his meal, paid his check and went out onto the street. He walked aimlessly until his right knee began to throb. Then he caught a bus and rode to the end of the line, far uptown. He got off, found a bench at the edge of a tiny patch of fenced grass, and watched the pigeons. Two small boys were chasing the pigeons, and when they flew they made a whistling sound that reminded Tom of the doves that used to pick up waste grain in the corrals and sit on the ridge of the barn at the place on the San Juan. Red used to try to shoot those doves with his .30-30 rifle, but so far as Tom knew Red never killed a dove. Meo used to say Red couldn’t hit a horse inside the barn with the door shut, and Meo probably was right. Red wasn’t much of a marksman.

The pigeons flew and circled and came back, and the boys chased them again. Finally the boys tired of that game and came and gawked at Tom. One shouted, “He is too! He’s that Indian that kills horses in the rodeo!” The other one shouted, “That’s a lie! If he’s an Indian, where’s his bow and arrow?” The first one cried, “Stupid! Indians use guns, just like anybody else! If I had my gun I’d shoot him right now! Bang-bang! Powie!” And the other one came up to Tom and demanded, “What’s your name? Are you an Indian?”

Tom ignored him. The pigeons came back and the boys went to chase them again. Tom got up and went over to the bus stop and took the next bus downtown. He could have gone to the arena, like the other riders, but he preferred to be alone. The others spent the whole afternoon at the arena, just talking. Talking business, talking horses, talking women. He had heard all their talk, long ago.

He got off the bus, walked back to the hotel and sat in the lobby for an hour. A hotel lobby was the only place you could be alone in a crowd, alone and unnoticed. Then it was almost suppertime, his suppertime, since he always ate early. He went to the dining room and ate another steak. Then he left a call at the desk, went to his room and lay down and slept. When the phone call roused him and the girl said it was seven-thirty, he got up, showered again to ease the aches and the stiffness in that right knee, and sat relaxing for another half hour. Then he went over to the Garden.

T
HE NIGHT SHOW WAS
getting under way. He got his gear and made his way out to the chutes. The bull riding was going on. Bull riding left him cold. Brahma bulls were mean buckers, but the rider had a surcingle to hold on to. Even at that, bull riding was at least half a matter of luck. And that cowbell on the surcingle made the whole thing seem absurd to him. He began checking his gear, cinches, stirrups, rein, boots and chaps.

The bull riding clamored and clanked to a conclusion. The announcer made his spiel, and the trick riding started. The girls who did the trick riding might just as well have been Broadway showgirls, except that they had learned to ride a horse and do stunts on a special saddle. He had seen all their stunts, and he knew all their faces, whether he had ever seen them before or not.

Finally the last of the girls left the arena and the bronc riding was the next event. The broncs were in the chutes. Riders and helpers were saddling them in a babble of talk, laughter and good-natured curses. Tom had drawn tonight’s number-three ride, two others ahead of him.

He always took his time about saddling, not liking to wait too long before he rode. He went over to Chute Number Three as the number-one rider was announced. A helper was there, holding the big roans head. Tom stepped up onto the chute runway, saddle in hand, and let it down easily, cinches dangling. The roan flinched, but didn’t even try to hunch its back. Saving its strength. Some broncs tried to fight the saddle. Others saved their fight for the rider.

The helper reached between the chute’s planks with the wire and fished for the front cinch, got it, handed it to Tom. He snugged the front cinch while the helper fished for the other ring, on the back cinch. Tom took it, jerked the back cinch tight to force the roan to let out its breath. It wheezed, eased for an instant, and Tom hauled up the front cinch a couple of notches before the roan could catch another breath. Then he let off on the back cinch, kept it just tight enough so the saddle wouldn’t rock.

The crowd was roaring. The number-one rider, a newcomer who had made a spectacular ride last night, apparently was doing all right for himself again. Tom didn’t even look up, but he could hear the stomp of the bronc’s hoofs, the grunting wheezes, the slap of the rider’s chaps. Then the horn blew and the crowd cheered and whistled. Tom glanced up then and saw the rider pivot off the pickup man’s horse, grin at the crowd and wave his hat. Then he unbuckled his chaps, stepped out, slung the chaps over his arm and came back toward the chutes, almost strutting. He was good, and he knew it, a boy on his way up. The pickup men chivied the bronc toward the exit and the announcer started his spiel about the number-two rider.

Tom shook his saddle, testing it, and took up the front cinch another notch. He resined his chaps, remembering when he was a boy on his way up. When the crowds cheered and whistled and stomped for him. When he was riding for points. A long time ago. He checked his spurs, dried his hands on his shirt and got ready to ease himself down into the saddle.

The gate opened at Number Two Chute and out went a hammerheaded black with a rider in a yellow shirt. The crowd began to roar.

Tom let himself down into the saddle and the roan didn’t even hump its back. He felt for the stirrups, felt the hard curve of the metal through the thin soles of his boots. He sensed the taut muscles of the bronc beneath his calves— hard, tense, ready to explode into action. He dried his hands again and glanced at the number-two rider. The hammer-headed black was ducking and side-jumping, and the rider had too short a rein and couldn’t seem to slip it.

A helper laid the bucking strap across Tom’s horse’s back, fished the buckle and fastened it loosely, ready to jerk tight. He handed up the rein, on the left side.

“No.” Tom snapped. “The other side.”

“I forgot,” the helper apologized, and brought the rein around for Tom’s unorthodox right hand.

The crowd groaned. The number-two rider was in trouble. His short rein had jerked him loose in the saddle. The bronc knew it, lunged viciously, side-jumped, and the rider was thrown. The pickup men closed in, drove the bronc toward the exit, and the unlucky rider slowly got to his feet, shaking his head. He dusted himself and walked unhappily back toward the chutes.

The announcer was bellowing, “And now, ladies and gentleman, here comes a rider you all know, at least by reputation. Some call him the Killer, some call him Black Death—he has a whole string of names like that. And he’s earned every one of them!” The crowd had begun to cheer. The announcer waited for the cheers to ease off, then went on. “I don’t have to tell you any more about him, I see. Anyway, here he is, coming out of Chute Number Three—I give you Tom Black, on Sky Rocket!”

The crowd roared again, louder than before, then tensed into silence.

Tom got the signal. The bucking strap was jerked tight around the roan’s flanks. Tom set his spurs well forward, leaned back against the rein, took a deep breath and let it out. He nodded to the gateman, and the gate swung open. The roan called Sky Rocket went out with a lunge and a bellow. Rein taut, spurs raking, Tom Black began his ride.

He had made that ride a thousand times. Sky Rocket was a pattern bucker, three lunges, a side jump, a half spin, then three lunges again.

Tom rode with the rhythm, concentrating on punishment with his spurs and being brutal with the rein at every side jump and spin. Three times the roan followed the pattern, lunge, lunge, lunge, side jump, spin. Then the punishment made it frantic. It tried to duck left, shaking its head, bellowing. Tom hauled its head around, and it lunged again, then tried to duck again. Tom shifted his weight for leverage, and a stab of pain shot through his right knee and streaked to his ankle. In fury at the pain, Tom jerked the bronc’s head up and around by sheer strength. The ankle went numb, and to keep from losing the stirrup he jabbed his foot deeper. The roan squealed and came up, pawing the air. It reared, danced, still trying to spin left, and again he jerked its head around to the right. Neck bowed, it came down fighting, bunched for another lunge.

His right leg now numb from knee to ankle, Tom was jerked forward as the roan struck the ground, head down. It lunged, and he powered its head around as it left the ground. Off balance, it seemed to tangle its feet in the air. Tom felt it begin to fall, still fighting for its feet. He knew it was going, knew he had to get clear. He kicked his left foot free of the stirrup, but his right foot didn’t respond. He grabbed the pommel of the saddle with his left hand, tried to thrust himself clear, but he was still in the saddle as the roan came down with a crash on its right side, rolling with its own momentum.

Tom felt one crushing blow across his hips before his head struck the arena. Then the whole world seemed to explode in a burst of light and pain. Then darkness, nothing.

He had a brief span of semiconsciousness before they moved him, enough to know the sensation of floating in a choppy sea of pain and hear voices all around him. His head was a throbbing balloon and his vision was blurred. Spasms of nausea wrenched at him. Then they gave him injections and the sea of pain began to quiet, even the pain in his chest that almost stopped his breathing. Then he was unconscious again. He never knew how they got him on the stretcher, put the stretcher in the ambulance, took him to the hospital. He never knew how thin was his thread of life for a night and a day and another night.

M
OST OF THE FIRST
week he existed in the half-world of the critically hurt where there is neither night nor day, time nor reality, but only the overlapping periods of confused consciousness and dreams and nightmares. His body fought its battles quite apart from his mind; the transfusions, the injections, the X rays and the merciful surgery were performed on flesh and blood and bone temporarily cut off from the normal processes of awareness. He roused enough from time to time to sense his hospital surroundings and feel the deep, insistent throb of pain in his head and the dull, remote pain elsewhere, but reality never quite overcame the dreams and nightmares. Dreams of boyhood, of his mother and the mountains, of the reservation, Red Dillon’s place and the back-country rodeos. And always the dreams came to a chilling nightmare of falling, of being trapped in the saddle on a bronc that was forever falling but never landing.

Slowly his vitality reasserted itself. As his awareness increased he was restless and resentful. The stir and activity of the ward rasped at his nerves, and when he was lucid enough to enforce his demands they moved him to a private room six floors above the street. There, the first morning of his second week, he wakened at dawn and saw the flame of sunrise in the small patch of sky beyond his window. He watched it, and the memory of another dawn came to him, the dawn when he and his mother, on the flight from Pagosa, bathed in the icy pool of a brook, then sat naked on the rocks and sang the chant to a new day. The rhythm of that chant throbbed in his memory like his own heartbeat for a few moments. Then he tried to move and pain stabbed at his chest and hips and bitterness rose in his throat like his own gorge. He was no longer a boy or a breechclout Indian. He was a grown man in another world, a bronc rider trapped by his own injuries in a world of pain and helplessness.

He was still rankling when a nurse came in. She was plump and had coppery hair and blue eyes and looked to be in her mid-30s. She said, “Good morning! How are we today?” and he immediately resented her ready smile and bubbly air. He frowned at her and did not answer. She lowered the window shade and started to put a thermometer into his mouth.

“Put up that shade,” he ordered.

“But the sun is right in your eyes.”

“I like the sun. Put it up!”

She laughed at him, raised the shade again, then took his temperature and his pulse. She straightened his bed, deft and efficient, then said, “You must be starved. What would taste good for breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“How about poached eggs?”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

“You will be. Nothing tastes good in a hospital, but you have to eat. And poached eggs go down easy.” She filled his water glass and left the room. A little later she came back with a tray of toast, poached eggs and coffee, arranged them on the bed table, saw that he took two capsules—“Happy pills, to sweeten your disposition”—and went away.

The coffee tasted the way burning hay smelled, and he had a flash of memory of the night he burned the barn. Then he remembered the strong, bitter coffee Meo used to make, and the bite of Meo’s chili, and the whole remembrance of the place on the San Juan came back to him. He thrust the memories away and ate the toast and the eggs, hungry as the nurse had said he would be. Then he slept.

The next morning when the copper-haired nurse came in and asked him how he was, he demanded, “What’s your name?”

“Mary Redmond.” She moved to lower the window shade.