The Horses of the Wash

Polly woke on the fourth morning to what she was certain was thunder, and there was not a cloud anywhere over the canyon. The sound rolled up the wash and shook the branch under her feet. When she leaned out and looked down, the thunder turned out to have legs. A loose band of horses was running along the flat sand of the wash.

She caught up with a young brown mare at the back of the group. Where are you all going, Polly asked. Nowhere, the mare said, rather pleased with herself. We simply run here. Horses have been part of this canyon for a very long time. Some of us belong to the families who farm the floor, and some of us just belong to the canyon.

The wash was made for it, Polly could see. The sand was soft and level and it ran for miles between the walls, so there was nothing to trip over and no reason to turn. What made her feathers stand up was the noise. The sound of the hooves hit the sandstone on one side, came back off the other, and turned twenty horses into what sounded like two hundred.

When they finally slowed, it was at a shallow braided stream, hardly wider than a footpath, threading down the middle of all that dry sand. The horses stood in it and drank, and the loudest place in the canyon became the quietest. Polly landed on the warm sand beside them and did not say anything at all, which for Polly is unusual.