On Swift Horses
On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl is a lyrical debut set in the postwar American West, where Muriel and Julius, bound by family yet driven apart by yearning, navigate lives of quiet rebellion. In 1950s San Diego, Muriel, a newlywed, trades a staid existence with her husband, Lee, for the thrill of horse racing, her bets a secret lifeline to a bolder self. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Julius, Lee’s restless brother, drifts into gambling and a hidden love with Henry, a man who sees through his guarded exterior. As Muriel’s winnings grow and her heart strays toward Clara, a stablehand, Julius’s high-stakes world unravels in violence. Their paths—marked by dust, neon, and unspoken longing—converge in a bittersweet reckoning, forcing both to confront the cost of freedom. Pufahl’s prose shimmers with atmospheric beauty, weaving a tale of identity, desire, and the vast, unforgiving West that shapes them. A story of risks taken and lives remade, it lingers like a desert wind.
Buy the book on AmazonHighlighting Quotes
- 1. “She wanted to feel the world rush toward her, to feel its weight and its speed.”
- “The desert was a place to lose yourself, and Julius had been lost a long time.”
- “There was a kind of freedom in the risk, a kind that made the air taste sharp and new.”
Chapter 1 A Quiet Life Slips Into Shadow
Muriel stood at the edge of her new life, a dusty bungalow in San Diego stretching out before her like a promise she wasn’t sure she’d meant to keep. The air carried the tang of salt from the Pacific and the faint sweetness of citrus groves, a world away from the flat, wind-scoured plains of her Kansas childhood. She’d come here with Lee, her husband of mere months, a man whose steady hands and quiet devotion had seemed like enough when they’d left behind the graves of her mother and the memories of a harder time. The Korean War had just released him, and with it came dreams of a modern life—highways unfurling across the West, a house of their own, a future painted in the bright hues of 1956 America. But beneath the surface of this fresh start, something restless stirred in Muriel’s chest, a longing she couldn’t name.
Lee worked long days at the factory, his brow furrowed with the effort of building something solid, while Muriel took a job at the Heyday Lounge, a weathered bar near the Del Mar racetrack. She poured coffee and cleared ashtrays, her ears attuned to the rough voices of the men who gathered there—retired jockeys, bookmakers, and trainers, their talk a tangle of odds and horseflesh. They spoke of thoroughbreds with names like Gingersnap and Stud Loco, their words laced with a gritty poetry that snagged on Muriel’s imagination. She listened, unnoticed, as they debated the quirks of the track and the whims of luck, their confidence a stark contrast to the careful life she’d begun to lead. At home, Lee spoke of a suburban plot, a place to plant roots, but Muriel felt the walls of their bungalow closing in, the air too still without the wildness she’d once known through her mother’s free spirit—a woman now lost to her—or the fleeting presence of Julius, Lee’s younger brother.
Julius had been part of their plan, or so Lee had hoped. The three of them were meant to forge this new life together after the war, brothers bound by blood and Muriel tied to them both by marriage and something less defined. But Julius was a shadow cast long and unpredictable, a man who’d emerged from the Navy with secrets he wouldn’t share and a restlessness that pulled him away. He’d appeared once, briefly, his dark eyes catching Muriel’s in a way that made the world feel briefly vast again, before vanishing into the haze of the West. Lee missed him, his absence a quiet ache, but for Muriel, Julius was a spark—a reminder of a life less tethered. She didn’t yet know what she wanted, only that the steadiness of Lee’s love, though warm, left an emptiness she couldn’t explain.
One afternoon, as the sun dipped low and painted the Heyday’s windows gold, Muriel overheard a tip—a horse, they said, was off its feed but had a fire in its legs that no one else saw. She lingered over the words, turning them over like stones in a riverbed. That night, alone in the bungalow, she traced the shape of a decision. The next day, she slipped away to the racetrack, her heart pounding as she placed her first bet. The horses thundered past, tall and obdurate, their hooves kicking up dust that stung her eyes. When her horse crossed the line ahead of the pack, a thrill coursed through her, sharp and alive. She tucked the winnings—small, but hers—into a tin behind a picture frame, a secret she kept from Lee. It wasn’t about the money, not yet. It was about the taste of risk, the way it woke something dormant within her, whispering of a world beyond the bungalow’s walls.
Meanwhile, Julius drifted into Las Vegas, a city rising from the desert like a mirage, its neon lights pulsing against the night sky. He found work at a casino, perched above the gaming floor in a hidden walkway, watching for cheats through a haze of cigarette smoke. The tourists below craned their necks to glimpse atomic tests blooming in the distance, their awe a strange counterpoint to the quiet desperation of the tables. Julius moved among them, his hands quick and his mind sharper, a gambler by nature who’d learned to read men as easily as cards. He carried the weight of his past—a discharge from the Navy under whispers he wouldn’t repeat, a life lived in the margins—but here, in this city of illusion, he felt a flicker of belonging. Muriel and Julius, bound by blood and unspoken yearning, stood at the edge of their separate worlds, each reaching for something the other couldn’t yet see.
The chapter closed on Muriel standing in the dusk, the racetrack’s roar still echoing in her ears, and Julius gazing out over Vegas, the desert wind tugging at his coat. Two lives, tethered yet apart, began to shift beneath the weight of their own quiet rebellions. The West stretched vast before them, promising everything and nothing, its horizons as elusive as the dreams they chased.
Chapter 2 The Language of Horses and Chance
The racetrack became Muriel’s secret cathedral, its grandstands rising like pews against the San Diego sky. Each morning, as Lee left for the factory, she’d linger over coffee, the bungalow’s silence pressing against her ribs, before slipping out to the Del Mar. The air there thrummed with life—sweat-soaked jockeys barking orders, horses snorting as they were led to the gate, the crowd’s murmur swelling into a roar as the bell clanged. Muriel stood among them, a slight figure in a borrowed hat, her eyes tracing the sleek lines of the thoroughbreds. She’d learned their language quickly, not the clipped jargon of the trainers but something deeper—the way a horse’s ears flicked when it was eager, the coiled tension in its haunches before it surged. It was a code she cracked alone, her winnings growing in that hidden tin, each dollar a brick in a wall between her and the life Lee envisioned.
Lee noticed nothing at first. He came home with dust on his boots and stories of assembly lines, his voice steady as he spoke of a house in the suburbs, a plot with a lemon tree out back. Muriel nodded, her hands busy with supper, but her mind galloped elsewhere. The Heyday Lounge fed her obsession, its patrons a rough choir of gamblers and horsemen whose tales she memorized. One night, a wiry man with a scar across his knuckles leaned close, his breath sour with whiskey, and muttered about a mare named Lucky Strike. “She’s off the books,” he said, “but she’ll run like hell tomorrow.” Muriel felt the words settle into her, heavy and bright. The next day, she wagered more than she ever had, her pulse a drumbeat as Lucky Strike streaked past the finish, her winnings a thick fold of bills she tucked away with trembling hands. She told herself it was curiosity, a game, but the thrill was a hook in her flesh now, pulling her further from the bungalow’s neat order.
In Las Vegas, Julius moved through the casino’s underbelly like a ghost, his days measured by the click of dice and the shuffle of cards. The hidden walkway above the floor was his perch, a narrow spine of wood and glass where he watched the players below—tourists clutching cocktails, locals with hollow eyes, all chasing a win that rarely came. His job was to spot the cheats, the card-counters and sleight-of-hand artists, but he saw more than that. He saw the hunger in their faces, the same hunger he’d carried since the Navy cast him out, branded with a dishonor he wouldn’t explain, not even to Lee. The desert city suited him, its garish lights and endless reinvention a mirror to his own restless soul. He lived in a boardinghouse near Fremont Street, its walls thin enough to hear the neighbors’ fights, and spent his nights roaming the Strip, losing himself in the clamor.
One evening, a man approached him outside the Sands, his suit crisp despite the heat. “You’ve got sharp eyes,” he said, offering a cigarette. Julius took it, wary but intrigued, and listened as the man spoke of a game—off the books, high stakes, no questions. Julius followed him to a back room thick with smoke, where men in loosened ties threw chips across a table, their laughter sharp as broken glass. He sat, his hands steady, and played. The cards fell in his favor, and by dawn, he’d doubled his pay, the weight of the cash a ballast against the drift of his days. But it wasn’t enough. He thought of Lee, of Muriel, of the life they’d planned before he’d veered off course. He wrote a postcard—brief, vague, mailed from a box on Boulder Highway—telling them he was alive, working, fine. He didn’t mention the men he’d met, the ones who watched him now with interest, or the way gambling had become his pulse.
Muriel found the postcard on the kitchen table one afternoon, Lee’s fingerprints smudged on its edges. “He’s okay,” Lee said, relief softening his face, but Muriel felt a jolt—Julius’s scrawl was a thread tugging at her, a reminder of the wildness he carried. She didn’t tell Lee about the races, about the tin now heavy with her secret hoard. Instead, she went back to the track, her bets bolder, her senses sharper. The horses spoke to her in ways Lee never could, their power a promise of escape she hadn’t yet admitted she craved. Across the desert, Julius dealt another hand, the cards whispering their own language, one he understood too well. Brother-in-law and sister-in-law, they chased their separate gambles, the distance between them growing, yet their paths inexplicably entwined by the risks they took.
The chapter ended with Muriel at the rail, dust coating her shoes as a horse named Thunderbolt stumbled, its rider cursing, and her money lost for the first time. She stood there, breathless, not with defeat but with a strange elation—the stakes had risen, and she was still in the game. In Vegas, Julius pocketed his winnings, the back room’s shadows clinging to him as he stepped into the neon night, the desert wind carrying the faint echo of hoofbeats neither of them could hear.
Chapter 3 Love Burns Beneath a Desert Sky
The San Diego nights grew warmer, the air thick with the scent of eucalyptus and the distant hum of the freeway carving its way through the West. Muriel’s days at the Heyday Lounge blurred into a rhythm of clinking glasses and muttered odds, but it was the racetrack that held her now, its pull as undeniable as gravity. She’d grown deft at reading the horses, her bets no longer hesitant stabs but calculated risks, her winnings stacking up in the tin until it bulged against the frame of Lee’s old family photo. Yet something else stirred beneath her careful secrecy—a hunger sharpened by the memory of Julius’s fleeting visit, his dark gaze that had seen her in a way Lee never did. She told herself it was nothing, a flicker of the past, but each postcard from Vegas, sparse though they were, fanned the ember into a quiet flame.
Lee remained oblivious, his world narrowing to the factory and the dream of a house with a picket fence. He’d taken to sketching floor plans on napkins, his pencil tracing rooms Muriel couldn’t imagine filling. She smiled at his enthusiasm, her voice soft with agreement, but at night, alone in their bed, she lay awake, her fingers tracing the edge of the mattress where Julius had once slept during his brief stay. The bungalow felt smaller, its walls a cage she hadn’t noticed until now. One evening, as Lee dozed beside her, she slipped out to the porch, the sky a bruise of purple and gold, and imagined Julius out there in the desert, free in a way she wasn’t. The thought lodged in her, tender and dangerous, and when she returned to the track the next day, her bet was reckless—a long shot named Dust Devil that won by a nose, the payout enough to make her breath catch.
In Las Vegas, Julius’s life had taken on a jagged edge. The back-room games had become his crucible, the stakes climbing with each hand he played. He’d fallen in with a crew—men with hard eyes and quick tempers, their money dirty but plentiful. They saw his knack for cards, his cool head under pressure, and kept him close. But it was outside the tables, in the neon-soaked nights, that Julius found something else. He met Henry at a bar off the Strip, a lean figure with a voice like gravel and a smile that cut through the haze. Henry was a drifter, a man who’d seen the war’s end from a different angle, and their first conversation stretched into hours, the air between them crackling with something unspoken. They walked the desert’s edge that night, the stars sharp overhead, and when Henry’s hand brushed his, Julius didn’t pull away.
Their connection deepened in stolen moments—motel rooms with peeling paint, a truck idling under a Joshua tree, the vastness of the Mojave swallowing their secrets. Henry spoke little of his past, but his touch carried a weight Julius hadn’t known he craved, a tenderness that stood in stark relief to the brutality of the games he played. He began to see Lee and Muriel through a new lens, their life together a distant shore he’d abandoned. Yet the guilt gnawed at him—Lee’s trust, Muriel’s quiet strength—and he buried it beneath the rush of the cards and Henry’s low laughter. One night, as they lay tangled in sheets, Henry whispered, “You could leave this, you know,” but Julius only stared at the ceiling, the desert wind rattling the window, knowing he was too deep to turn back.
Muriel’s own heart strayed further with each trip to the track. A woman appeared in her orbit—Clara, a groom with calloused hands and a voice like a song, her presence steady amid the chaos of the stables. They met by chance, Clara offering a tip on a colt named Midnight Run, and soon their talks stretched beyond horses. Clara saw Muriel’s restlessness, her hunger, and didn’t look away. One afternoon, under the shade of a pepper tree, their fingers brushed as Clara handed her a cigarette, and the air shifted. Muriel felt the heat of it, the pull of something forbidden, and though she returned to Lee that night, her thoughts lingered on Clara’s steady gaze. The tin grew heavier, her secret life richer, but the lies pressed against her chest, a weight she couldn’t shake.
The chapter closed with Muriel watching Dust Devil gallop past, her winnings clutched tight, and Julius slipping out of Henry’s arms to face another game, the desert sky ablaze above them both. Love had crept into their lives, unbidden and fierce, a flame that illuminated the risks they took and the truths they hid. The West held them in its vast embrace, its promises as fleeting as the wind, and neither could see how close they stood to the edge.
Chapter 4 A Trail of Dust and Hidden Truths
Muriel’s world had split open like a seam unstitched, the racetrack now as much her home as the bungalow she shared with Lee. The tin behind the picture frame brimmed with cash, its weight a secret she guarded with every glance over her shoulder. She’d grown bolder, her bets sharper, her instincts honed by months of watching the horses and listening to the Heyday’s rough-edged prophets. Clara had become a steady presence, her quiet strength a tether in the storm of Muriel’s double life. They stole moments near the stables, sharing cigarettes and silences that spoke louder than words, their connection a fragile thread spun from glances and half-spoken truths. One evening, as the sun bled red across the horizon, Clara murmured, “You’re chasing something bigger than horses,” and Muriel felt the words pierce her, exposing the ache she’d buried since Julius left.
Lee sensed a shift, though he couldn’t name it. He’d begun to linger at the supper table, his eyes searching hers, his talk of the suburban house growing tentative. “You’re quiet lately,” he said once, his voice gentle but edged with worry. Muriel brushed it off, blaming the heat, but the lie sat heavy between them. She’d started slipping out at night, claiming errands, her footsteps leading her to the track or to Clara’s cramped room above a tack shop. The money grew, and with it, a plan took shape—an escape, vague but insistent, whispering of a life where she could breathe free. Yet the bungalow held her still, Lee’s steady love a chain she couldn’t yet break. She wrote to Julius in her mind, letters she never sent, asking if he’d found what she couldn’t.
In Las Vegas, Julius’s nights burned brighter and darker all at once. The back-room games had escalated, the men he ran with now demanding more—more wins, more loyalty, more of him. Henry remained his anchor, their stolen hours a refuge from the violence simmering beneath the casino’s sheen. But the desert had teeth, and Julius felt them closing in. One night, a game went sour—a player accused of cheating, a knife flashing in the dim light—and Julius stepped in, his voice low but firm, diffusing the tension with a gambler’s calm. The crew saw his worth, but their trust came with a price. “You’re one of us now,” the man in the crisp suit said, his smile cold, and Julius knew he’d crossed a line he couldn’t uncross.
Henry saw it too. Under a sky streaked with stars, he pressed a hand to Julius’s chest and said, “They’ll eat you alive if you let them.” Julius wanted to argue, to cling to the rush of the cards and the weight of the cash, but Henry’s words lodged deep. He thought of Lee, of the brother he’d left behind, and of Muriel, whose face flickered in his memory like a lantern in fog. A postcard arrived from San Diego—Lee’s handwriting, steady and plain, asking him to visit, to come home. Julius tucked it into his pocket, unanswered, but the pull of it gnawed at him. He and Henry drove into the desert one dawn, the truck’s engine rumbling as they watched an atomic test bloom on the horizon, its light searing the truth into Julius: he couldn’t outrun what he’d become.
Muriel’s own reckoning crept closer. A trainer at the Heyday, half-drunk and sharp-eyed, caught her scribbling odds on a napkin, his grin sly. “You’re no waitress,” he said, and though he laughed it off, the words rattled her. She doubled down, betting big on a horse called Starlight Promise, its odds long but its gait electric. The race was a blur—hooves pounding, dust rising, Clara’s hand brushing hers in the stands—and when Starlight crossed the line, Muriel’s haul was enough to change everything. She hid it in the tin, her heart racing, but the victory felt hollow. That night, Lee found a stray betting slip in her coat, his silence louder than any question. “What’s this, Muriel?” he asked, and the air between them cracked, the truth spilling out in fragments she couldn’t hold back.
Across the miles, Julius faced his own fracture. A game turned bloody—a cheat caught, a gun drawn—and Julius’s quick hands saved the night, but not without cost. Blood stained his shirt, not his own, and the crew’s grip tightened. Henry waited outside, his face pale, and when Julius emerged, he whispered, “We’re done here.” The desert wind howled as they stood together, the postcard from Lee burning a hole in Julius’s pocket. Muriel and Julius, bound by blood and secrets, teetered on the edge of collapse, their trails of dust converging toward a truth neither could outrun.
Chapter 5 The World Expands, Then Closes In
Muriel stood in the bungalow’s kitchen, the betting slip still crumpled in Lee’s hand, the silence between them a chasm she’d dug with every wager and every lie. The tin sat heavy behind the picture frame, its contents a fortune built on secrets, but now it felt like a millstone. Lee’s eyes, soft with hurt, searched hers. “How long?” he asked, and she told him—haltingly at first, then in a rush—about the races, the horses, the money, though she kept Clara locked tight within her, a truth too raw to share. Lee listened, his face hardening, then softening again, and when she finished, he said, “I thought we were building something.” The words cut deeper than anger could, and Muriel saw the life he’d dreamed of—a house, a family, a quiet love—slipping through her fingers like sand.
She fled to the track the next day, the roar of the crowd a balm to her churning heart. Clara found her there, her presence steady as ever, and they stood shoulder to shoulder as a horse named Wild Ember thundered past, Muriel’s last big bet. It lost, spectacularly, and with it went half her hoard, but the sting was fleeting. Clara’s hand found hers, warm and sure, and Muriel felt the world crack open—a glimpse of freedom, of a life unbound by the bungalow’s walls. She returned to Lee that night, her resolve firm, and told him she couldn’t stay. Not as his wife, not as the woman he’d hoped she’d be. He didn’t fight her, his silence a kind of grace, and when she left with a suitcase and the remains of her winnings, the West stretched vast before her, its promise bittersweet.
In Las Vegas, Julius’s reckoning came swift and brutal. The crew had grown restless, their games bloodier, and when a deal soured—a stash of cash lost, a man left bleeding in an alley—they turned on him. He’d seen it coming, the way their eyes narrowed, their hands twitched, but he stayed too long, tethered by the rush and Henry’s faith. The beating was quick, fists and boots in a dim back room, and when they dumped him in the desert, the sand was cool against his bruised skin. Henry found him at dawn, his truck kicking up dust as he pulled Julius into his arms, his voice breaking. “We’re leaving,” he said, and Julius nodded, too battered to argue, the postcard from Lee still crumpled in his pocket.
They drove west, the Mojave blurring past, until San Diego rose on the horizon. Julius hadn’t planned to return, hadn’t known if Lee would welcome him, but the pull of family—of the brother who’d never stopped waiting—was stronger than the desert’s grip. Muriel was gone by then, her absence a shock Lee bore quietly, his sketches of the suburban house abandoned on the table. Julius arrived, limping, Henry at his side, and Lee’s embrace was wordless, a forgiveness Julius hadn’t earned but took anyway. The bungalow felt hollow without Muriel, its walls echoing the life they’d all lost, but Julius stayed, Henry with him, their love a fragile new root in the wreckage.
Muriel drifted north, Clara beside her, the road unfurling like a ribbon through California’s valleys. The races faded behind her, their thrill replaced by the steady heartbeat of a life she could claim as her own. She thought of Julius sometimes, of Lee, of the West that had shaped them all—its vastness a mirror to their longing, its harshness a forge for their truths. Julius, too, looked back, his hands scarred but still, Henry’s presence a quiet redemption. The novel closed on these twin souls, their worlds expanded by risk and love, then closed in by the choices they’d made, the desert wind a faint whisper of what might have been.
The story lingered in the air, a meditation on the cost of freedom and the beauty of lives lived at the edge. Muriel and Julius, bound by blood and broken by their own desires, found their endings not in triumph or ruin, but in the quiet aftermath of becoming. The West, with its highways and horses, its neon and dust, held them briefly, then let them go, its vastness a canvas for their fleeting, indelible marks.