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.”