Free Dr. Brinkley's Tower by Robert Hough Page B

struggled to banish any thoughts of his predicament from his mind. His only choice was to walk her through the brambles separating the roadway from the banks of the Río Grande.
    â€” Come on, Estrella, he said, taking her lead.
    He stepped into the desert and pulled her along slowly, giving her plenty of time to step her old feet around stones and small rocks and animal burrows. After a hundred metres or so, he heard a sneeze.
    â€” What is it? he asked her in a voice intended to calm. — You managed to catch a cold in this heat?
    The horse shuddered, and that’s when Francisco saw the projection of blood, looking like paint shot from a rifle, on the desert floor.
    â€” Oh, Estrella, he said, again struggling against the panic welling inside him. He took one or two more steps towards the river and heard a strangulated whinny come from the hacendero’s old horse. Francisco took a deep breath and stepped back towards her. Patting the softness between the horse’s sad eyes, he kept saying
Oh, I know, señorita, we’re in a bit of a jam, it’s true, good thing we’re both young and strong.
It was in the middle of this attempt at consolation that Estrella trembled and then slowly lowered herself to the desert floor, her legs folding beneath her like a day-old fawn’s.
    Francisco did the only thing he could do: he walked to the roadway and waited, hoping that some form of help mightcome by. As the heat rose wavering and light blue from the highway, he found his thoughts turning to places he had never seen and things he had never done. After ten minutes or so, he walked back to the tawny mound that was Estrella, only to find that she had lowered her head, apparently unbothered by the intense heat transmitting from the sand. He stroked the fringe of dusty hair hanging over her eyes and said
If you could just hang on a little longer, mi bonita
, at which point he trudged back to the roadway, where he again waited, his eyes reddening from both strong emotion and the reflection of sun off chipped asphalt. When he went back the third time, there was a murky foam on the hot sand in front of Estrella, her eyes motionless against a buzzing of flies.
    Francisco sat on the earth and stroked the poor animal and told her she had done well, that it was his fault for expecting so much from her, and he hoped she could find it in her heart to forgive him. As he spoke, he noticed something so odd as to be impossible: despite the horse’s weight, she barely made an impression in the earth.
Estrella
, thought Francisco,
without the heaviness of our souls we’d all be able to take flight, am I right?
He choked, a rise of emotion that he would not permit; later, when he’d figured a way out of this mess, there would be time for regret and feelings of loss. Instead he hardened himself, unbuckled the straps of the saddle, and pulled it away from the horse’s weathered midsection. He then carried it back to the roadway and put it down and sat on it and waited with a heaviness of heart compounded with feelings of intense worry.
    Francisco looked in every direction. As he did, he forced himself to breathe slowly and take stock of his situation. Hehad nothing at his disposal but a little water and a sack half-filled with tortillas, and he had no idea how long he’d have to ration these items. To deal with this decision, he forced himself to pretend he had nothing. He cleared his mind and thought of Violeta and the village, and as the midday sun began its daily scorching of the earth, he swore he could hear the voices of those familiar to him — male and female, young and old — echoing in the sky’s infinite white.
    Francisco waited, the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes. He had heard of cases in which people trapped in the desert had temporarily gone blind in the harsh, relentless glare, only to be found crawling towards some imagined source of water, a hand waving ahead of