Looking down, he saw the dirt was more sand than soil. The red grains clouded the tips of his shoes and stained the leather the color of dried blood. The dusty plains expanded on either side of the young man’s field of vision, fading into the rusted hills of the desert. The last village was three miles behind, the next some miles ahead. The reservation was centered on the old river, which now ran dry half the year. He was without water and he did not care. A cold wind stirred in the West, blowing the dirt around him into small storms. He could have lifted his scarred hand to cover his face, but he did not feel the cold sand in his hair. He heard the pounding of horses and knew it was only in his mind. The sound increased to a frantic drumming and the man remembered the horses of his ancestors, painted and undying. He often heard the beat of hooves, the whisper of horse breath, and the sigh of memory when the wind was cold and came from the north.
Turning away from the bloodied clouds, the man stopped and inspected the ground that lay before him. A carcass of something long dead had thrown itself across the dirt. The ossified tracks of coyotes and carrion cavorted in the petrified mud, carving the earth into twisted and convulsing patterns. The carcass had once been a wild horse. The hide, sunbleached and faded, bore familiar configurations; a stripe of yellow ochre and dark tanned eddies spun across the wasted skin. The hammering of hooves sounded loud above the rising wind. Flashes of memory and things that had been and that which had not flared in his mind. Painted horses galloped in the windborne sand and sank back into the earth. The man paused and then continued across the desert.