I suppose that played in our favor.

“The heat is more worse in the canyons,” said the rancher. His Italian was thick and his English sometimes hard to understand. “You water the horses?”

“Wherever we could. Some of the troughs were dry.”

“A day like this heat, no water, a horse gets lathered. A man, too . . . a woman.”

The rancher spoke as if he’d seen it before, inexperienced riders wearing out themselves and their animals in the heat. When that happened, well, all you could do was shrug. He held his palms out flat in front of him, shoulders hunched. Johnny shook his head.

“It’s my fault . . .” Johnny said.

No one corrected him.

The sun bore down, not just hot but brutal. The trail got pretty steep in places. Johnny explained how it had been. How, farther on, he and Frank had gotten off their horses and scrabbled up the rock. They made it okay. It was on the return loop, traveling through shadier country, when things went wrong.

We were approaching that spot now.

“You were drinking?” asked the cop.

“He had a flask . . .”

Johnny stopped.

It was a harmless-seeming stretch of trail that wound its way around the edges of a grove, then through a copse of those tall, wig-headed cypress trees that grow in the Italian countryside.

Oaks huddled down at the bottom, a stone building, open fields.

“Here?”

“No, farther on . . .” He nudged his chin toward the oaks. His eyes clouded. For once, Johnny wasn’t smiling. “But here, this spot, we changed mounts . . . I can show you . . .”

Johnny took out his phone and passed it around. Frank sat high in the saddle, bridle in hand, posing for the grainy photo. He didn’t wear a riding helmet but a wide-brimmed hat, like that of an Argentinean gaucho. He looked sweaty, tired, old as dirt. There were large sweat stains underneath his arms, and his brow was damp. The wry expression was gone. He looked punch-drunk.

Probably it wasn’t just alcohol.

Johnny carried all kinds of things in his pouch.

“I should have said no,” Johnny said. “But he was pretty insistent. You know how he could be . . .”

I glanced toward the oaks and the outbuilding farther along. I imagined Frank spurring the stallion down the trail.

“Old man they do foolish things,” the rancher said. He looked at me in my bright blouse and capris, my sunglasses, my headband and designer mules. The carabiniere looked me over, too.

“Not that I blame your husband,” the rancher said. “That stallion, he was not some easy beast . . .”