The Dark Horse

by Craig Johnson

  “No, because technically it’s a mesa.” He turned his head and searched the horizon for justification. “Mister Bandito Negro de los Badlands, you want to know what the difference is?”

  Maybe I had dampened his enthusiasm, because his voice mumbled as he chewed the braided leather and a hand crept down to pet Dog. “Nope, not really.”

  I started to raise an eyebrow, but it hurt my eye, so I settled for nudging him with my elbow. “I shudder for the fate of future generations if your scientific curiosity is indicative.”

  He shook his head at my funny talk. “You gonna feel better if you tell me?”

  I thought about it. “Yes.” He didn’t deign to look at me but threw out an open palm as if to accept the unwanted knowledge. “A butte is taller than it is wide, whereas a mesa, like this one, is wider than it is tall.”

  “What’s Devil’s Tower?”

  I thought about it. “That’d be a butte.”

  He looked puzzled. “Then why did they call this Twentymile Butte?”

  “With respect to all the knowledge that our frontier forefathers carried, a steadfast understanding of geological terms may not have been a strong suit.”

  He nodded, and we listened to the wind. “You ever been up here before?”

  I kept my eyes on the edge of the world, which was to the south. With the vastness of the plateau, it was difficult to tell if we were looking at the edge, but I had my suspicions. “Once or twice.”

  “When?”

  I glanced down at the top of his hat, thankful for a view that didn’t pull at the corners of my eyes, especially the sore one. “When I was about your age.”

  He looked up at me with the stampede strings still in his mouth and continued to pet Dog, who now sat on his foot. “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  He looked around. “Is it the same?”

  “No.” I shrugged back at the dirt path we’d just driven on. “There weren’t any roads, and the only way up was a horse trail that they must’ve built this road over.”

  “Were you hunting Indians?”

  I smiled down at the half-Cheyenne boy. “Nope, as a matter of fact it was Indians who brought me up here.”

  I figured I’d finally hit upon a subject that truly interested him, since he spit out the stampede strings, and looked up at me. “Cheyenne?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m half Cheyenne.”

  “I know.”

  He now turned toward me fully, forcing Dog to reseat himself. “My father was Cheyenne.”

  “Was?”

  “He’s dead.” I nodded, and his next statement was as if we were discussing the difference between buttes and mesas. “He got run over by a train.”

  I stopped nodding. “I’m sorry.”

  He stood there for a while without moving. “Why do people say that?” He took as deep a breath as his young lungs would allow and sighed. “It’s not like I think they drove the train.”

  “Well . . . maybe they’re just sorry for your loss.”

  He nudged Dog and walked past me to the edge of the road. “He lived in Chicago with my mom, that’s where I was born.” He took his frustration out on a few rocks with the toes of his scuffed boots, his hands stuffed tight in his jeans as if he didn’t trust them. “He was a construction worker; he built big buildings and bridges.” I nodded, even though he still wasn’t looking at me, and patted my leg for Dog to come over. “My mom was mad at him because he took me up on one of the bridges he was working on one night. He carried me up on the girders and stood with me over the water, and it was really far down.”

  Dog sat on my foot, and we both looked at the boy. “The water?”

  “Yeah and you could see the reflections in the river from all the lit up windows ’cause it was nighttime.” He turned to look at us. “We flew that night.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, we didn’t really except for maybe one second, but he held me out over the water and told me to not be afraid because even if he dropped me I’d just fly.” He kept looking me in the face, the way only children can without becoming self-conscious. “I closed my eyes for just a second when he held me out there—and I think I really flew, for just a second. Really.” His dark eyes seemed remarkably familiar for just a moment. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  I laughed. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  “You aren’t going to tell my mom about me flying, are you? ’Cause she doesn’t know about that part.”

  “No, I won’t tell her.”

  He continued to study me. “Why’d you laugh?”

  It was a time for truth telling and with children, if you didn’t make the reach, they might learn to stop asking. “I have dreams like that.”

  He smiled back at me, and something passed between us, something old and powerful.

  Hershel approached from around the truck, placing his palms at the small of his back and stretching. “Did you fellas know this is the biggest butte in Wyoming?”

  Benjamin, Dog, and I continued to look at each other and we smiled, but none of us said anything.

  October 30, 4:30 P.M.

  We drove the truck as far as the first high shelves of rock that rose above the plateau, which created a giant series of sedimentary steps leading north. Hershel paired me off with a big bay, about seventeen hands, and watched as I tightened the belly cinch with a quick yank before the gelding could expand his lungs. Satisfied that I knew what I was doing, he assisted Benjamin in saddling the same grulla that I’d seen in front of The AR, as his dun waited patiently by the shade of the horse trailer along with Dog.

  “I give you that big’un so you’d be comfortable, and so he would be, too.”

  I checked the bedroll he’d provided, and the saddlebags I’d brought along. “I appreciate it.”

  “Only one we got bigger is a Morgan from up in Montana, but he can get wonky when you put a saddle on him.”

  The thought of a wonky draft horse on the high plateau was one my rear end was just as happy not to contemplate. “This one got a name?”

  The old cowboy replied with a well-worn sentiment. “Don’t like naming things I might have to eat.”

  “You got any rawhide? Some of the saddle strings on this one are broke offf a little short.” He motioned toward the rear end of the trailer, so I walked back and took some strings from a hook inside the door. Hershel had already established squatter’s rights. There was an antiquated McClellan saddle, along with an old cavalry canteen with the number 10 and the letter G stenciled onto its canvas side. It would appear that Hershel was quite the collector.

  I fixed the strings on my horse’s saddle and tied my horsehide jacket to the bedroll. I found a neckerchief in the inside pocket and knotted the bandana at my neck, slipped a foot in the stirrup, and stepped up, gently flinging a leg over the bay. He took a slight counter to the left but then planted and turned to look at me, probably wondering why it was I was riding him and not vice versa. Then his long face turned south, almost as if he were looking for something in particular. I searched the horizon along with him but saw nothing and turned him along with the others.

  After getting the boy saddled and seated, Hershel checked the sawbuck rigging on the packhorse and the canvas bags filled with supplies, oats, and two five-gallon containers of water, which we especially needed since there wasn’t any on the entire mesa.

  Benjamin gigged his horse and yelped as it crow-hopped a little to the right and shot out about twenty feet before stopping and craning its long neck to inspect the foreign ground.

  Hershel laughed and climbed aboard his own mount, where he readjusted the Henry Yellow Boy in his rifle scabbard and draped the old cavalry canteen I’d seen in the trailer off the horn of his saddle. “You know what they say about a horse bein’ only afraid of two things?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Things that move, and things that don’t.”

  I smiled at the old joke and followed as
he trailed the packhorse from a lead position. The horses fell into a walking pace with Dog going up ahead to stay with Benjamin.

  There are people who prefer the spring and summer on the high plains, but I’m not one of them. My blood quickens, and I begin to sleep better when the cottonwood leaves begin their weekend turn to a varsity gold and a slight skim of frost surprisingly appears on your windshield one morning. I was glad I’d brought my jacket, and only hoped the bay, whatever his name was, didn’t notice that it was made out of horsehide.

  The sky was fading in and out of blue with wide bands of diffused clouds, and it was possible that we’d get a shower or even a blowing skiff of snow from the front that was promised by morning.

  “How’s your head?” Hershel, who had allowed me to ease up on his left, thrust his chin forward and peered at the bandage at my cheekbone and the discoloration around my eye.

  “Still on.”

  He pulled his head back, shook it, and adjusted his reins and his hat. “I sure didn’t take you for the bull-at-the-gate kind of fella.”

  “I haven’t been myself lately.”

  He nodded and the next words carried a little more weight than perhaps they should have. “That’s what I hear.” I turned in the saddle, enough so that I could see him with my good eye and could watch the shifting shadows disappear in the afternoon sun. Benjamin was hanging back, and I could almost hear him listening to our budding conversation. He wasn’t much of an undercover kind of guy either. Hershel pointed with his chin toward the rocky expanse of the trail ahead. “Ben, why don’t you ride on a little and check things out?”

  Recalcitrant even when told to do what he really wanted, Benjamin turned completely in the saddle till both legs draped off one side, his horse continuing to clop forward and paying him no mind. “Why me?”

  The older man squinted into the sun and at the boy like some B-movie support player. “Because you’re the Indian. Go scout.”

  Without another word, the half-Cheyenne warrior leaned back and rolled his leg over the bulletproof horse’s withers. He nudged him with his heels into a slightly faster pace, snugged up his stampede strings, and left us behind. Dog looked back at me; I gestured with my chin and he trotted after the boy.

  I had the feeling I’d just been afforded a glimpse of what the country had been like around a hundred and fifty years ago and turned to look at Vanskike, aware that he’d dismissed the boy for a reason. “What’s on your mind?”

  He spat over his horse’s shoulder and looked at me again as he pulled up his canteen and took a deep swig. “Couple’a things. When you dropped me off the other night?”

  “Yep?”

  He wiped his mouth and hung the canteen back on the saddle horn. “All them pictures on the wall of my trailer?”

  “Uh huh?”

  I watched him as we rode, and it was as if he and the horse were inseparable, with all the hours, days, and years they had most likely had together. He held the reins in one fist while the other hand, trained to rope or relax when there was no roping to be done, lay limp in his lap. “I just didn’t want you thinkin’ I was some kind of pervert.”

  “I don’t, honest.” I stood in the stirrups to stretch my legs. “But if you think your future lies in those little scrolls you buy in the checkout line at Kmart, then I do think you’re crazier than a shit-house rat.”

  He shrugged and then patted the stock of his museum-piece rifle. “My fortune is in this rifle.” He glanced over to see if I had a smart-alec remark about that, and when I didn’t have one, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if it were practice for something he was going to have trouble saying. “I got a buddy in the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department—”

  I let a moment pass. “Okay.”

  “I don’t wanna tell you his name, for obvious reasons, but he told me a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  He readjusted and leaned forward to counter the rise in the path. “He said there was this sheriff from over in Absaroka County—a big fella that’s supposedly one tough customer, but fair.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He also said he knows for a fact that the powers that be made sure that Cliff Cly didn’t have to take no lie-detector test about killing Wade Barsad.”

  12

  October 30, 6:50 P.M.

  I tried to remember the last time I’d camped out but finally gave up. Then I tried to remember the last time my posterior hurt this bad and couldn’t come up with that, either.

  We’d trailed along the northern edge of the plateau and had made camp near the precipice of the stacked shelves of sedimentary rock that had seemed so far away when we were starting out. They formed a sort of natural amphitheater, which is where we set up the tents, careful to keep away from the eight-hundred-foot drop-off that was nearby. We’d put the horses on a picket line, had made and eaten dinner, and were quickly running out of wood to keep the campfire going.

  “There’s a couple ’a old truck skids down where that wellhead is, from where they abandoned the methane, along the second ridge southeast.”

  The young cowboy tipped his hat back, looked into the gloom of a cloudy sunset, and then back at Hershel as he stoked the few remaining pieces of lit wood. “How do I get ’em apart?”

  “They’re old; just break ’em with your boot.” Vanskike watched the boy stand there. “What?”

  Benjamin sniffed. “Wouldn’t it be faster if we all went, then we could get it in one trip?”

  Hershel tossed the last piece of wood into the fire. “What in the heck is the matter with you?” He nodded toward me. “He took care of the horses, I fixed dinner, now it’s time for you to earn your keep.” The boy remained immobile. “What?”

  “I’m goin’.”

  The old cowboy shook his head in incredulity as the boy started off. I yelled after him. “You want a flashlight?” The small figure at the very end of the campfire stopped and walked back as I fished in my saddlebag and handed him the five-cell Maglite. “You run into anything, hit it with this.” I turned and looked at my trusty companion, sprawled beside my bedroll. “Dog.”

  He raised his oversized head and looked at me.

  “C’mon.” He slowly rose and stretched as I put a little more emphasis in my voice. “C’mon.” He came over, but I didn’t feel too sorry for him since he’d had his dinner and the camp’s collective scraps, followed by a considerable amount of my water ration. I nudged him toward the boy with my leg and watched as Benjamin marveled at the weight of the tactical flashlight, clicked the button, and the two of them followed the beam off and into the night. I watched as the flashlight’s single ray cascaded across the rock shelves and over the next rock-strewn ridge. “I don’t think they’re going to be surprised by anything.”

  The old man shook his head and pulled out a small bag of fixings and some papers. “Nope, don’t think so.” He tapped the tobacco into the paper and rolled one and then two cigarettes. A callused and worn hand offered me one. “No, thanks.”

  He nodded, then stuffed it into his mouth and lit it with the last of the Blue Tip matches from his hatband. “This friend of mine I was tellin’ you about back at the trailer, he’s an ol’ boy playing out his string as a special officer here in Campbell County—one of the two that runs the lie-detector for ’em. He only works about two days a week.” He scooted back and sat against a slab of rock that leaned at a perfect thirty-degree angle, and smoked. “I run into him at Mona’s, that little Mexican place down by the highway, this morning while I was puttin’ diesel in Bill’s truck.”

  “What’d he say?”

  The old cowboy rolled to one side and drew up a knee on which to rest his hand, flipping his ashes into the fire. “He asked about that shiny new truck, and I told him it was mine. He said that was bullshit, so I told him about the trip we were taking; told him about you, and he described you right back, down to that chewed-on part of your ear.”

  The bandage under my eye was distr
acting, so I started peeling it off. “Mike Smith?” I studied the bit of blood seepage on the gauze and tossed it into the fire.

  He smiled and didn’t look at me. “I can neither confirm or deny—”

  I figured that Hershel hadn’t learned the neither/nor rule. “What about Cli Cly?”

  He took another deep inhale from the cigarette cupped in his hand. “Said they called him in on a Sunday morning, real early, and told him to get set up. He said pretty soon they brought Cly in and sat him down, so he hooked him up to the machine and started askin’ him what they call—”

  “Control questions.”

  “That’s it.” He nodded and looked into the fire. “Well, after he verifies that the lights are on in the room, his name is Cliff Cly, and that yes, the smirking son-of-a-bitch has lied to people that are close to him, the sheriff comes in with some guy in a suit and has Mike unhook Cly.”

  I tried not to smile, since without the bandage my cheek hurt even more.

  “I just said Mike, didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  “God damn it.” He shook his head and took another drag from his cigarette. “I’m not really good at this undercover stuff.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “Well, they unhook Cliff, and Sandy Sandberg tells Mike that the three of them weren’t ever there.”

  I sat up a little. “Sandy?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about the guy in the suit; Mike have any idea who he was or who he was with?”

  “Nope.” I looked at him and thought about it just as a scattered beam of light wavered from behind us and then down the rocky path. Benjamin dropped an armload of gray, splintered lumber beside the fire, and Hershel looked up at the lad as Dog came over and sat. “That’d be about a third of what we need for the night.”

  “A third?”

  The old puncher’s voice was certain as he flicked more ashes into the fire. “A third.”

  His thin shoulders slumped, and the miniature cowboy trudged away only to stop and look back at Dog. “You comin’?”