She hadn’t wanted it, had given up on love and other ephemera, but it came to her regardless. “Never interrupt a story” is the most important tenet of the cowgirl way.Īnyway, there was society, and it was crumbling and the world was on fire, but this girl still loved this boy. But none interrupt now the story has started. The other cowgirls nod, half smile, maybe echo their agreements in silvery telepathic murmurs. It was probably midsummer too, all the dead dog heat coming down, hitting that city asphalt and barreling straight back up.Ī dead dog summer never made nothing better for no one, the palomino says. All their nights were colored by the monstrous smile of flame that draped across the slopes, and the air filled up with smoke and plague and anger and sorrow. The people in the valley city watched as the world got eaten away in tiny bits by plague and violence, and fire coming down the mountain. So disaster struck, but it struck slowly. It was some real tower-of-babel shit, though in a much different desert. Many people did predict it, but the air was full of so many prophecies in that time, flicking through signals and into people’s pockets that no one knew what to pay attention to. Anyway, the disaster could have been predicted. It takes place in one of those old cities, she says, a desert-valley city, just as cities started to come apart at the seams. She leans forward and her eyes are full of sadness or laughter, whichever one of great profundity. Her palomino hair is pale in the firelight. This was back when there were still roads and phones and society and shit, the cowgirl says. And then another one, let’s say the bay, looks out across the flames and thinks or signs or says,Īnd because they are cowgirls, all of them do. After they are finished, one of them, let’s say the palomino, passes a flask of añejo around and all drink from it solemnly. They eat their meatless meal and they drink their coffee. These three cowgirls have no interest in that. It is said those that do risk becoming monsters, strange cannibals with spiny teeth that roam the foothills of the amber mountains, prowling for travelers. They eat their meal, which could consist of biscuits, beans, dried fruit, sunflower seeds, coffee. It is spring, not summer when the fierce storms roar all afternoon long. Tonight, when the cowgirls meet, there are only a few thin clouds, once rosy but now faint and silver, strung across an immense starlit sky. It still rains in this time, a blue-grey flood that awakens green smells and stray flowers, if the poems are to be believed. It is a spring night, the desert air perfect, so they would only need shelter to keep off any unexpected rain. As they care for the horses, the cowgirls build the fire, cook the food, crumble the protective herbs in a ring around themselves and their horses, hang the awning from cactus rib posts. Coincidentally, these are the colors of the cowgirls’ hair as well, though mounts do not match riders. These cowgirls’ horses are bay, black, and palomino. There are still images of them, here and there. Even in the cowgirls’ time, horses are rarities. The cowgirls treat them with great care, as if they are lovers or children. Once they bond with their riders, the bond lasts for life, and when a cowgirl’s mount dies, she loses half of her power. They move as if they are a part of the cowgirl herself, and are trained to fight savagely. However they communicate, they set up camp, each one doing their part, switching between their labors and care of their horses. They had many strange powers, the cowgirls, so telepathy is possible to believe. Should we share the fire? one of them signs or whispers or communicates through thought. In any case they meet in silence, and after a moment all three relax. They are an antique order, the cowgirls, full of arcane secrets, so a covert sign language is only logical. Presumably then, one or all of them makes a cowgirl signal with her or their hand or hands. They do not give away their location, even in their extreme surprise. For the animals, when they roamed there, this desert was a paradise.Īnd the three women are cowgirls, so they know the land like they know their own knuckles. All provide cover for those ancient predators, the coyote, the mountain lion, the javelina, the rattling snake. It is a desert of towering grey-green cactus, spiny trees, twisting washes, boulders which jut here and there. Even though the ridge gives them some vantage, this is not a straightforward desert. It’s hunting time, the light bent in blinding angles. The three women meet, unexpected, startling to all of them, but they make no sound. It is sunset, one of those violent purple-rose-gold western sunsets that people still reference, even after all this time. The cowgirls meet on a slight ridge that rises above the thicket of desert.
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