Page 1 of Ransom
The wind had beenrestless since before sunup, working the dust around the yard in low spirals that came apart and put themselves back together somewhere else. Galahad stood at the far end of the paddock with his ears pinned and his teeth bared at nothing, daring the air itself to come closer.Mal día para un mal caballo.Sierra had asked twice already if I wanted him moved to the back pen before the new arrival showed, and twice I'd told him no. If the boy Aguilar was bringing couldn't stand near a mean horse on his first day, he wasn't the boy Aguilar said he was.
The land had been Lujan land before there was a New Mexico to put it in. Before there was a Mexico, even. My mother's people had been here longer than that, in the pueblo on the other side of the ridge, and they would be here after the rest of us were dust. The land let them stay. The land had let my father's people stay too, eventually, after enough of them died learning what it would not tolerate. I had grown up knowing where my line stopped and the pueblo's began and which fences could be crossed andwhich couldn't, and I had grown up knowing the land kept its own counsel about all of it. Pae Saco sat in the middle, a working ranch on paper and something else underneath, and the ground I stood on had taken men I knew and would take more before it was done with me. I'd learned young to give it what it asked for and not look too long at what it didn't.
The cruiser turned off the highway just after noon. I leaned against the porch rail and watched it bounce up the long dirt road, trailing a cloud the wind grabbed and scattered east toward the mesa. Aguilar had brought his personal vehicle, not a squad car. A small kindness. The boys in the bunkhouse had history enough with law enforcement without a black-and-white rolling up the drive.
He'd called the night before from his kitchen, after his wife had gone to bed, the way he called when the file in his hand wasn't going to find its way to a desk. Eighteen, he'd said. Brother in the ICU. Lightning. He'd gone after the man who'd told them to stay in the field with a tire iron. Caved his face in. If this went through the system, he'd be looking at assault with a deadly weapon if the guy survived, murder if he didn't. He was young enough that the prison system would chew him up and spit him out meaner for it if he went.
But he wasn't going to prison, and there wasn't going to be any paperwork on any desk at the precinct about Ransom Lanza. Not if I had anything to say about it.
The cruiser stopped near the porch and sat there a moment, engine ticking. Aguilar killed it and didn't get out. Long pause. Long ride.
The passenger door opened first. The boy came out fast, already moving, head down, shoulders pulled tight against his spine like he was carrying something heavy under his shirt. He ignored me, and the mountains and all the things people usually looked at when they came up the drive for the first time. He cutstraight across the yard toward the barn, like something in there had called him by name.
Aguilar got out. "Hey. Hey, hold on."
I lifted a hand. "Leave him."
"Rafe, that horse of yours is in the paddock and this kid's already got an assault charge I'm trying to make disappear."
"I said leave him."
I came down the steps. Aguilar pulled his hat off and rubbed the back of his neck. He had the look of a man who'd been arguing with his conscience the whole drive up and still wasn't sure who'd won. I'd seen that look on Luis Aguilar before. He always brought the conscience with him, and he always took it home with him afterward, and I'd never once made him put it down.
"Tell me again," I said. "In daylight."
"Eighteen. Name's Ransom. Brother's at UNM. Heart stopped for six minutes. They got him back, but he's not coming back, you understand me?"
"I understand."
"They put him in the back of a pickup in the rain. Boy did CPR on his own brother the whole drive. When the verdict on the brother came out, he drove forty minutes to the man who'd told them to stay out and worked him over with a tire iron. Started with his hands. Used the iron when his hands wore out."
There it was.Started with his hands.Aguilar had given me that detail twice now, on the phone and in person, because he wanted me to hear it. A boy who came in swinging the iron from the start was a different animal from a boy who used what his body had first and only reached for the metal when his body wore out.
Across the yard, the boy had reached the paddock fence. He stood with both hands on the top rail, his back to us, his whole body aimed at Galahad.
"He talk on the way here?"
"Not a word. Three hours and not a word." Aguilar put his hat back on. "I've brought you angry kids before, Rafe. This one isn't angry. This one is something else. I don't have the word for it."
I had the word. I'd had it for a while. Anger was loud. Anger threw punches and broke windows, and burned itself out. What this boy had carried into my yard was quieter than anger, with a longer fuse. You didn't put a fuse like that out by sending it to Los Lunas to learn worse from worse men.
"Vete a casa, Luis," I said. "Te llamo en la mañana."
He glanced back and forth between me and the boy before putting his hat on and getting back into the car. He pulled away in a trail of dust.
I walked to the paddock quietly so as not to disturb whatever was about to happen.
The boy had climbed the fence. He sat on the top rail with his boots hooked on the second rung and his forearms on his knees, watching Galahad intently. Up close, he was smaller than I'd expected. Wiry, almost, like most boys about to become men.
Galahad stared back at Ransom, ears pinned, nostrils wide. Every line of him saying what he said to everyone:come closer and find out.
I stopped a few paces from the fence. "He bites."
The boy glanced at me. Up close, he had pale, hard eyes that seemed older than the rest of him. A bruise was yellowing along his jaw. His knuckles were split and scabbed over, the left hand worse than the right.
"Good," he said, and dropped into the paddock.
Galahad charged.
