The Dark Horse

by Craig Johnson

  They were lined up four deep at the bar, and Pat’s entrepreneurial skills had been tested when the bleachers borrowed from the Gillette American Legion baseball team had collapsed under the weight of the faithful. No one had been hurt; after all, God looked out for children, animals, and drunks. They’d brought in all the folding chairs from the community hall and had even torn the particleboard from the broken window so that more patrons could be seated on the porch.

  I scanned the place for somebody who might blow my feeble cover but didn’t see anybody I knew except Bill Nolan and Henry, who had continued to ignore me until I volunteered to corner for him, seeing as how no one else seemed to be willing.

  The bag gloves didn’t provide too much protection for Henry’s hands, but he could get them in where regular boxing gloves wouldn’t go, and the Bear advanced through his first match. In his second, he landed a return punch in Gary Hasbrouk ’s left side, which continued his theory that he could systematically left-hand his opponents to death. He then caught the man with an uppercut from out of Lame Deer that lifted him a solid eight inches from the plywood platform. In a model of sportsmanship yet unseen in the Powder-River-Pound-Down, the Cheyenne Nation stepped back to allow Hasbrouk to stretch his jaw and to try to remember what planet he was on, after which Henry sighed and reapproached his opponent.

  Hasbrouk swung and missed the Bear by two feet and then squared off with one of the towel men. Henry stepped back again and looked at the referees. Mike Niall, Pat, and some thin man I didn’t know decided to call it a technical knockout as the crowd roared with disapproval.

  Their behavior would have disgraced the Circus Maximus.

  I ushered the Cheyenne Nation to the narrow hallway where I’d earlier talked with Cady on the pay phone and watched as the redoubtable Bear hid his swollen paw by keeping a shoulder between his hand and me. He’d made it to the final round as had Cliff Cly, who was standing in the ring and was exhorting the crowd.

  In his first match, the rodeo cowboy cum ranch hand had knocked D. J. Sorenson out with one punch. In his second, a quick feint to the right kidney, and Ken Colbo let his guard down. Cly hammered him with a sweeping roundhouse that caught the wide-faced man in the side of the head. Colbo’s jaw grew slack for a blink, and then he crumpled forward on his knees. Cly unceremoniously pushed him back with a knee of his own, and the sound of the back of the man’s head hitting the plywood platform carried across the crowded and noisy room.

  I led the Bear farther into the hallway and spun him back by grabbing his shoulder. “All right, if you’re bound and determined to do this, he drops his right when he pulls back from a jab—” He wasn’t paying attention and continued to keep his left hand where I couldn’t see it. “Let me have a look.”

  He held the afflicted hand under his armpit. “No.”

  In the entire evening so far, it was the first moment our eyes had met. “Henry, enough.”

  He made a face. “What?”

  I leaned in close. “Stop this before you get hurt.”

  He turned his shoulder so that I couldn’t see and smiled at my glare. “We may be too late.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “What?” He continued to smile at my discomfort and his. “I am helping.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I am, whether you are aware of it or not.”

  You could always depend on Henry to be the straw that stirred the collective drink. I shook my head. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to take you out back and beat the crap out of you myself. Let me see your hand.”

  “No.”

  For the second time in the conversation, our eyes met. “Let me see it.”

  The smile faded, and his face became cigar-store-Indian immobile. We stood there like that, unmoving, and then I turned back toward the makeshift ring with the white bar towel in my hand.

  I caught the eye of the three unofficial officials as I sidled against the crowd. Niall leaned over and spit in the nearest spittoon and then looked up at me with a questioning look on his face.

  “His hand is broken.”

  He shook his head. “What?”

  I leaned in a little closer, watching as Cliff Cly approached, sipping a beer from his gloved hand. He gargled a little and then swallowed. I continued to speak to the rancher in a low voice. “The Indian’s hand is broken. He can’t fight.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.” He gave a worried glance around the room. “That’s not good.”

  Cly trailed his elbows on the top rope and looked down at us. “What’s the holdup?”

  Niall looked at the soon-to-be champion by default and nodded toward me. “He says the Indian’s hand is busted, and he can’t fight.”

  He swallowed the beer in his mouth, the sneer spreading across his lips. “That’s bullshit.”

  I kept my eyes on the rancher. “His left is useless; there’s no way he’ll be able to continue.”

  Niall shrugged. “Well then, he forfeits his five hundred dollars, and Cliff here becomes champion.”

  I felt something nudging me in the side and turned to see the toe of Cliff Cly’s boot poking me in the ribs. “He’s a chickenshit—just like you.” He took another gulp of his beer and looked down at me.

  I thought about what good a quality, grade-A ass whipping would do the man. “Another time.” I turned back to the ring judges.

  “That’s what I told your daughter.” I ignored him and started to speak to Niall, but Cly interrupted again. “On the phone, she was coming on to me pretty hard, so I told her the next time she was in state I’d give her the high hard one.”

  That’s when he spit the beer on me.

  I stood there for a second, hoping that he hadn’t done what he did, but the persistent tickling of used beer and spittle dripped off my hair and onto my shirt.

  I can’t be sure, but I guess it was about then that I looked back up at him and thought about Henry, the election, Mary Barsad, the investigation, my father’s homestead, but mostly about Cady, all of it ganging up on me—and something just broke.

  My hand was on the ropes before I could think about what I was doing, and it was like my muscles were intent on a little trip and my mind was just along for the ride. Cly backed away as I ducked under the top rope, and he watched with a cocky interest as I wrapped the corner towel around my right hand.

  As I wrapped my other hand, he kicked his head sideways, stretched the muscles in his neck, shuffled a few steps, and moved to my left. “C’mon, old man.”

  The crowd was going nuts, but I could barely hear them. I felt the familiar coolness in my face and the steadiness of my hands as the rational qualities of my nature and the extended panic attack of the unimaginable deserted me.

  I stepped in close to keep him from getting the maximum leverage of his swing and then watched as he bobbed and weaved into a Dempsey roll. He slipped to his right with my jab and then delivered a powerful undercut to my unprotected side.

  I grunted and then reset my footing, lowering my elbow to block the punch that immediately followed. Cly ignored my footing and applied both hands into my ribs, and that was a mistake.

  The clacking of Cliff Cly’s jaw sounded like the snap-shuffle of a deck of cards, and he staggered back. I stood there in the center of the ring, and he moved toward me with a great deal more caution this time.

  The temptation to pound the living daylights out of the younger man was great, but I was betting I’d drawn enough attention to myself by just being in the competition.

  Cliff came barreling in, maybe thinking that if he got in tight I wouldn’t be able to use my greater reach. He crouched, and I figured he was going to put it all on the line with one good, solid strike. I was right except that he did so with his head and not his hands, swiftly flinging the back of his skull up and into my face in a debilitating head butt.

  I had seen it coming in that last second and turned, but the majority of the force deflected from my nose and into my left cheekbone and bro
w. The effect was a blinding amount of blood that flowed from the cut at my cheek.

  I backed away, swiping at my eye with one of my toweled hands. It hurt and felt like half my face had ballooned to the size of a softball. I smeared the blood back with the shoulder of my shirt, and I was relieved to make out shadows moving in the rapidly closing eye, but for now I was effectively blind to my left.

  He had come out better in the impact, but not by much. He shook his head—evidently he had come close to knocking himself out with the illegal move. When he looked up and could finally get a read on me, he smiled at the damage to my face.

  Cly stepped forward and feinted with his left but brought a jab back up with his right; when he withdrew from the punch, he dropped his guard just as I’d told Henry he would.

  I responded with a quick jab from my left. He was off balance and started to fall away. I could have just let him go, but I was tired and angry and wanted it really over. I stepped after him and watched with my one eye as he raised his right to block the anticipated left that had stung him twice. It was another mistake, and his last for the evening, as I’d anticipated his move and had already brought a roundhouse haymaker down into the side of his head.

  You can hit a man in a lot of different ways, ways I’d learned in the rough-and-tumble high-plains bars as a boy, ways I’d learned in the inner trenches of Big Six football, in the Marine Corps, and in more than a quarter-century in law enforcement. You can hit a man to embarrass him, hit him to blood him, hit him to knock him down, or you can hit a man to lay him out.

  To my absolute dishonor, I hit Cliff Cly with the intention of the last.

  His jaw bounced off his chest, and I could see that his neck muscles didn’t work just before he pitched over backward, taking the metal pole at the corner, three lengths of rope, and at least two other people with him.

  There is a sound that bodies make when they hit the ground, and there is no way to describe it. I’ve heard that sound in motels, bars, football, and battlefields, and it is this sound that brought me back.

  There was a great deal of screaming, yelling, and confusion as I approached to see if he was still breathing; he was, but he lay still, with only his chest moving. I guess he had been the crowd favorite and there must have been a lot of money placed on his potential victory, because as I stood there a folding chair clattered against the back of my head and a few more flew onto the platform. I stumbled out of the ring and started pushing my way toward the back hallway, but even with my limited view from one eye, I could see that the entire crowd was now involved in nothing short of a melee. I tripped over another folding chair and went down as the mob swallowed me.

  I started to get up, but a familiar hand planted itself against my chest, and the Bear ducked as more chairs sailed into the ring. There was a crash of glass near the bar, along with more screaming and yelling, and I could hear fighting that didn’t sound like the kind sanctioned by the Powder-River-Pound-Down. Henry crouched guard over me and pushed someone away while dodging an airborne bottle that smashed on the floor and showered us with shards.

  I was staring at his hand as he continued to smile like the Cheyenne always do in battle. I tried to blink my left eye but couldn’t tell if I had, and then allowed my head to fall back to the floor as he asked in a perfectly conversational tone, “Did you know your daughter is getting married?”

  10

  October 29, 11:55 P.M.

  In 1948, at the Jimtown Bar, two hundred yards north of the Cheyenne Reservation, Hershel Vanskike killed a man. He was involved in a side-room billiards game when two traveling gentlemen from Chicago noticed the sport and asked to buy in. It was inquired as to whether they had the where-withal to join the game, and they assured the local cowboys that they did.

  The cowhands, not assured, asked them to exhibit the funds. The gentlemen from Chicago displayed over two thousand dollars in small bills.

  Thus assured, the locals agreed to let them participate, but after a few hours of losing and drinking too many whiskeys, the Chicagoans grew irritable, and one of them, whose name was John Boertlein, began abusing an Indian rancher who was seated at the bar. He poked the Indian with a pool cue and asked the “chief ” what the locals did for fun around these parts.

  The middle-aged Cheyenne ignored him and continued drinking, slowly bringing the pungent liquid to his lips with his elbows seemingly attached to the bar.

  The man from Chicago told the “chief ” that he had plenty of wampum and jabbed the Indian with the pool cue again, leaving a small, blue chalk dot on the Cheyenne’s white shirtsleeve.

  The bartender took a step away, bracing his hands on the bar.

  Boertlein prodded the Indian again and asked if he knew where he and his friend, whose name was Bud Ardary, could find a few squaws for the night. He left another blue mark.

  The Cheyenne remained silent and took the final sip from his shot glass.

  Bud Ardary, the other gentleman from Chicago, broke from the pool table to join in on the fun. Boertlein poked the Indian on his other arm but still didn’t get any response. Instead, the Cheyenne put his empty glass back on the bar surface, tipped his hat to the bartender with his right hand, and rose. Boertlein, sensing that he was about to be totally ignored, grabbed the Indian by the shoulder as the Cheyenne turned toward him, but the Indian stepped by him and headed for the door.

  John Boertlein had a puzzled look on his face as he stood there.

  Ardary pulled his friend toward him in time to see a thin line of red blooming across his buddy’s dress shirt where the blade of a knife with an edge like a scalpel had sliced the Chicagoan’s abdomen.

  Ardary pulled a pistol as the Indian opened the door, and Hershel Vanskike, realizing that the last man to draw his gun in these situations was likely the first to end up dead, snatched a natty little .32 from his own waistband. Ardary fired at the Cheyenne as he stepped through the door. He missed. Sensing some movement to his right, he then extended his .38 toward the pool players, and Vanskike pulled the trigger on the .32.

  I looked up at the big Indian seated next to me. “Damned Indians, they always get you into trouble.”

  He nodded. “I think that was my Uncle Art, the one who moved up to Rocky Boy.”

  I looked back at the report. “I can see why he moved.”

  It was viewed as a clear-cut case of self-defense, and the autopsy revealed three more bullets from previous altercations, but Vanskike still received nine months in the county jail. There were also the usual amount of D&Ds on his record and public intoxications with a smattering of aggravated assaults, but most of Hershel’s criminal activities had tailed off a good thirty years ago when the old outlaw had grown accustomed to painting the town beige. Other than the incident at the Jimtown Bar, the only really troubling item was the one involving a rented house in Clearmont.

  As for our involvement in the present altercation, no one questioned why Henry and I were arrested by the Absaroka County deputy and not the Campbell County one.

  Just north of town across the condemned bridge, Victoria Moretti pulled the Bullet off to the other end of the dirt lot that WYDOT and Range Telephone were using, along a fenced pasture and to the side of what appeared to be an abandoned, yet familiar, green pickup.

  The Cheyenne Nation and I sat on the tailgate of his truck as Vic doctored his and then my broken face from the first-aid kit from my truck. My undersheriff squinted at my swollen eye and pulled at my cheekbone, her investigation inflicting a considerable amount of pain. “Does it hurt?”

  I leaned back a little, trying to get away from her probing fingers. “It didn’t till you started fussing with it.”

  She stood her ground with her arms folded and looked at me. She wore a light fleece jacket, and she had the collar turned up against a repeated tide of cool air floating down from across the Bighorns. You could almost see the slight trails of breath leaving her mouth—almost. “He needs to get that hand X-rayed, and you need stitches.”


  “Just pack it full of that antibiotic stuff and bandage me up.”

  “You need stitches.” I didn’t say anything else, just continued to look at her through one and a half eyes. “Walt, you’re being an asshole.”

  I took a deep breath, sighed, and I think I might’ve even smiled. “I do it rarely, but you’ve gotta admit that when I make an effort, I’m pretty good at it.”

  She shook her head as she delved through the kit for the requisite supplies. “What in the hell came over you?”

  “I was feeling manly.” I listened as the breezes played the dry, burnished grass like a mandolin and thought that maybe it was the oncoming winter, or maybe it was what Henry was reading in the file, or the fact that my left eye was almost completely swollen, but even though I felt tired, I was still willing to rise to the occasion. I sighed deeply and looked up at the Cheyenne Nation. “He supposedly burned a house down in 1992?”

  “He was charged, but then it was dropped.”

  Henry read further in the glow of Vic’s Maglite, which he held in his good hand as she continued to assess my injury. “He was supposedly out of town, but according to the Sheridan County sheriff there was reason to believe that he was the arsonist.”

  Vic knocked my knees apart to get better access, and I listened to the creaking of her gun belt as she pushed against my legs.

  The Bear read aloud. “ ‘Large, high-relief alligatoring of charred wood, crazing patterns of irregular glass, and depth of charring indicate the use of an accelerant. . . . Line of demarcation and spalling of the masonry indicates suspicious point of origin.’ ”

  Vic looked up. “What? They had Sparky the fuckin’ arson expert working over in Sheridan?”

  He snorted. “It gets better. Guess who the investigating officer was?”