ELECTRIC HORSEMEN

VIRGINIA RANGE, NEVADA

Lost some pocket change at a table in Reno first. Nothing dramatic.

Cards did what cards do, and I did what a man does when they stop cooperating. One more hand, because the next one surely owed me something. Then one more after that. Then I quit and walked out with less than I'd walked in with and no real complaints.

Green felt under my forearms. Chips clicking. That soft plastic slap of cards hitting the table. No clocks and no windows, which I've decided is less an accident than a business model. The dealer's hands moved at the same speed whether I won or lost. He had watched a few thousand strangers make my exact decision and hadn't reacted to a single one of them. Behind me a slot machine went off for somebody else, loud enough that half the room turned around to look at a stranger winning the kind of money I'd just handed over in installments.

Nobody made me sit down, and nobody was making the house deal me a better hand. The house never lied about the odds. It built everything around them, handed me a free drink, and let me do the rest myself.

Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, the same year it cut its divorce residency requirement to six weeks. Governor Fred Balzar signed both bills the same day. Two industries built on people leaving something behind: your money in one, your marriage in the other. Nevada isn't picky which.

I walked out into daylight that took a second to adjust to. Cigarette smoke gave way to sage. The air conditioning gave way to plain Nevada heat, and the slot machines kept going in my head for another mile or two. Reno shrank in the rearview. The pavement narrowed. The Sierra showed up once the signs quit.

Horses have been loose in the Virginia Range for generations, through the mines, the roads, the subdivisions, the roundups, the drought, and every argument anyone has had about what to do with them. Nobody was riding them. Nobody had them working.

Found two stallions going at it, maybe seventy yards out. Real, not posturing. Teeth into shoulder, front hooves striking, dust coming off the scrub with every collision. I pulled alongside with the camera out the window in one hand and the wheel in the other, close enough to hear it, not just see it.

One of them broke off mid-fight and ran. He didn't look back to see who'd won. White coat catching the light hard enough to hurt, old scars across the shoulder, ribs working at a dead sprint, mane flat back, one eye visible and fixed somewhere past the frame. No rider. No halter. No tack of any kind. A body that had clearly paid for whatever let it move like that.

Didn't know if it was fleeing or winning. Still don't.

I'd bought four hours of not knowing what happened next. Driving out, I got pleased with myself and decided the horse had bought the same thing. I was proud of that thought for about a mile. Not quite.

Mine came with a limit: four hours, a loss I could afford, a drink I never touched because I was too busy watching the cards. Nobody sold that horse anything. He just lived inside the terms.

Didn't stick around to see who won.