Badlands Read Online Free Page A

want. I have seen them run up sheer banks, jump high fences, go where they want, them buffalo. Also they are dangerous. Me, I do not want, inspect loads of buffalo. I don’t want Raymond do it, either.
    God damn this bullshit.
    Du Pré started to roll a smoke and then he remembered he couldn’t smoke in the plane, which was a charter out of Billings.
    Yuppies.
    What is a yuppie exactly?
    “Bart,” said Du Pré, “what is a yuppie?”
    Bart thought about it a moment.
    “Remember those clowns who were here back when the wolves were released in the Wolf Mountains?” said Bart.
    “Yah,” said Du Pré.
    “Them,” said Bart.
    Du Pré nodded. Some of them die in the avalanche, Old Black Claws the big grizzly he eat them under the snow. So they are bear shit, we strain what is left out of the meltwater. It is not much, them.
    “One of those barns is the commissary,” said Bart. “They truck in food and clothing and all and sell it there.”
    “You been there?” said Du Pré.
    “Nope,” said Bart, “they let in the state inspectors because they have to. But no one else. There’s a couple of journalists camped out by the gate there. Won’t talk to them, won’t let them in.”
    “We can go on down now” said Bart.
    Du Pré looked out and down and saw a herd of wild horses running toward the badlands where they hid most of the day. They had been grazing longer now because the grass was fresh and hadn’t much food in it.
    “Them,” said Du Pré, pointing.
    The wild horses were running flat out, about twenty of them, with the stallion at the rear and the lead mare out in front guiding the bunch.
    “I see ’em,” said the pilot. “You want me to go closer.”
    “Not too close,” said Bart.
    “Right,” said the pilot.
    Du Pré waited while the plane banked and then it turned and he could see the horses again. Six of them were grullas, backbred to gray with faint stripes like zebras on their withers. Gray on gray, not black on white.
    “What are those?” said Bart, pointing.
    “Spanish horses,” said Du Pré. “Grullas they are called. They are close to wild horses.”
    “Are there any wild horses left?” said Bart.
    Du Pré shook his head.
    “One,” said Du Pré. It has a strange name, Przewalski’s horse. Or something like that. In middle Asia.
    “The Eides never bothered to fence much near the badlands,” said Bart.
    “No water, no grass,” said Du Pré, “no reason a cow go there.”
    “Some cows would go there,” said Bart.
    “Want me to fly the badlands?” said the pilot.
    Bart looked at Du Pré.
    Du Pré nodded.
    The pilot dived down a couple of thousand feet and he leveled the plane. Du Pré could see the horses running flat out, and they dashed into the badlands and down a trail that wound through the small strange buttes and odd formations. The horses never slowed.
    “Over there,” said Bart.
    Du Pré looked out Bart’s window when the pilot banked the plane.
    Four all-terrain vehicles were shooting down the tracks of the horses. The men on them had rifles slung across their backs.
    “Those bastards,” said Bart. “Look at that.”
    The horses were safe and long out of range.
    The pilot circled.
    Two of the all-terrain vehicles were close together and they slowed and stopped. The men on them got out to talk. Then one drove off. The other got back on his four-wheeler and he drove up toward a butte that commanded a view of the trail the wild horses had taken.
    The man took a sleeping bag and a sack from the four-wheeler. He carried them up a trail that wound to the top of the butte.
    “Let’s go back,” said Bart.
    The pilot nodded and banked the plane.
    Du Pré had one last look at the man on the butte, who was looking up at the plane.
    “Those sons of bitches,” said Bart. “There have been wild horses out there since the days of the buffalo. They don’t bother anything that much.”
    Du Pré shook his head.
    “What?” said Bart.
    “They fence that off,” said Du