Page 84 of Ransom
"You New Mexicans sure got a funny way of showing affection. You know, I never courted a man whose horse tried to kill me."
"First time for everything," Ransom said, standing and offering me a hand. I took it and let him pull me up into another kiss, shorter this time.
"All right," he said when he was done with me. "Get on your horse, Ranger."
We mounted up. Ransom turned Galahad and started him down the slope. Faye followed without my having to ask her to.
"Why's your horse named Galahad?"
"Wasn't my idea. Rafe names them. And he's not my horse so much as I'm his person."
I smiled to myself. "I like that way of thinking about it."
The track widened on the way down. I pushed Faye up alongside Galahad. Ransom didn't look at me. He kept his eyes on the track.
"Ransom."
"Yeah."
"Whatever Cap says tomorrow, I'm coming back."
He didn't answer right away. The horses' hooves struck the caliche. Somewhere down the slope a coyote opened up. Another one answered, and the answer ended on a high note that hung a second longer than it should have.
"All right," he said.
And we rode down from the ridge.
I stomped out ofCap's office pissed off with nowhere to put it.
Pissed at Cap, who'd just done me the worst kind of favor a man can do for another man. Pissed at Rex Rawlins, who'd been getting away with murder my entire adult life and apparently several other people's lives besides. Pissed at myself for not seeing it coming. A man who's been a cop as long as I have should not be surprised when his captain knows things. That was on me.
I was also pissed at the carpet, which had not done anything to me but was there.
Charlene said something on my way past her desk. I don't know what. I think I nodded. By the time I hit the waiting room, Ransom was already standing, hat on. He fell in behind me without a word. Good. I would've bitten his head off if he had, and he knew it. It annoyed me. I would've enjoyed biting his head off.
I got into the truck on the passenger side. He got in on the driver's side and didn't put the key in.
"That bad?"
I shook my head. "Do not talk to me, cowboy. Not yet."
He put the key in and drove.
Forty-five minutes outside El Paso, I was finally calm enough to talk. "He gave me time."
Ransom looked over. "Time?"
"Said do what you need to do, and we'd talk when it was done. He's going to pull my badge after this, Ransom. No two ways about it."
I knew it might happen when I crossed the border. I knew it when I drove out to Pae Saco to look at the body, and when I lied to the sheriff at the morgue, and when I was elbow deep in the dead judge. But knowing it and hearing it from my captain were two different things.
After a while, he glanced at me.
"You good?"
"No."
"All right."
