The Dark Horse

by Craig Johnson

  Dog lay down and placed his head on his massive paws. I nudged him with my boot. “C’mon, earn your keep.”

  The boy patted his leg, just as I had. “C’mon.” He slowly got to his paws.

  “Good boy.” Dog trotted off after him as I pushed my hat back and came clean. “Not as if you didn’t know, I’m not Eric Boss. My name is Walt Longmire, and I’m sheriff of Absaroka County.”

  Hershel turned, and I watched as the flickering light planed off the hard surfaces of his chin and cheekbones. “Longmire did you say?” I nodded. “By God, I think I know your people—your father have a place north of here?”

  “He did.”

  “Passed?”

  “Quite a while back.”

  “You got the place leased out to the Gronebergs?”

  “Yep.”

  He shook his head some more and flipped the butt into the fire. “Well, I’ll be damned . . . you’ve come home.” The old cowboy pulled the second of his cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “So, what are you doin’ out here after so long?”

  I thought about how much I wanted to reveal to Hershel, how much the cowboy already knew and, if I trusted him, how far did that trust go? If Cliff Cly didn’t take a polygraph, which Sandy Sandberg said he did, and somebody stepped in to keep it from happening—there were only a few possibilities of what that could mean. It was either Sandy, who wasn’t playing fair, or it was the Feds who had taken a hand. If it was the Feds, then in what capacity? Wade Barsad had been under the auspices of the witness protection program, but why would they have brought an agent in? To pressure Wade on the names and money he’d absconded with from his business associates along the Garden State Parkway and in Ohio?

  I figured a good offense was the best defense and decided to try a little lie detecting of my own. Seeing as how clinical psychologists had come to the conclusion that the machines were only correct about 61 percent of the time—only slightly better than random—I took a chance with the police officer’s best friend: instinct. “Hershel, are you involved in any way with this foolishness?”

  “No.” He seemed shocked that I’d ask. “No, I’m not.”

  I believed him. “Good.” I gathered my legs beneath me and stood. I walked a little stiffly to the edge of the precipice and looked out over the Powder River country. The harvest moon was just beginning to stare at the hills, and the long shadows from the rocks and few junipers cascaded through the draws and gulleys toward the Bighorns.

  It was a stark beauty, but you can’t come home again, no matter what Hershel said. I could feel an urgency to get back to my proper place in the rolling hills under the mountains. Before I could, though, I was obligated to Mary to find the truth. She had become my trust when Sandy had sent her to my jail, and I was bound to find out what happened the night that Wade Barsad was killed.

  Something felt wrong, and that itch without an ability to scratch was needling me from somewhere in my subconscious. “I need you to tell me everything that happened that night.”

  “I already did.”

  I pulled my hat down against the wind and turned to look at him. “No, you didn’t really, and when we talked, no offense, you were drunk.” He pulled at a long earlobe, stuck the cigarette that he’d been holding into his mouth, and lit it with a piece of smoldering firewood. “I know that Mary was there. I know that you were there, and I know that Bill Nolan was also there. Now, was there anybody else there?”

  He looked up at me. “No, nobody.” Then his eyes dropped to the fire as he thought about it. “I mean Wade but he was dead.”

  “When you got there, Mary was in the yard with the rifle on her lap?”

  “Yep.”

  “The breech was open on the .22, and the magazine was empty?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then what?”

  He flipped the half-smoked cigarette into the fire. “I took the rifle away from her and went into the house.” He looked up at me to make sure this is what I wanted to hear, but I said nothing. “He was in there.”

  “Where?”

  “Layin’ across the bed.”

  “He was dead, you’re sure?”

  “God, yes. She’d shot him in the head.” He corrected himself. “He’d been shot a half-dozen times, and there was so much blood that it soaked the mattress and poured off onto the floor.”

  “Did you touch him or anything in the room?”

  He was adamant. “No, I just backed out of that room; I mean, Jesus, the barn was on fire, she was sittin’ out in the yard like it’s all a dream—”

  “You had your gun with you, didn’t you say?”

  He gestured toward the repeater lying across his saddle. “I had that Henry. When I got woke up by the fire, I brought it along ’cause I didn’t know what the situation was, and I learned a long time ago that unknown situations with a gun are better than unknown situations without one.”

  Boy howdy. “What’d you do with the Yellow Boy?”

  “Left it in the scabbard on my horse, tied out at the fence; that horse wasn’t goin’ anywhere near that fire.”

  I crossed my arms and looked into the flames licking up and around the broken and splintered wood, which reminded me that Benjamin and Dog were due back soon. “So after you left him in there, and her on the lawn, what’d you do?”

  “I ran over to Bill Nolan’s and got him.”

  “You didn’t think to use the phone at the Barsads?”

  He looked genuinely discomforted. “I didn’t—”

  I interrupted, saving him the embarrassment. It wasn’t unusual in just such a situation for any of us of a certain age to forget about modern conveniences, or mistrust them, and simply run for help. “You wake Bill up?”

  “No. He was in his kitchen.”

  I looked up on the ridge at the horses milling about. “Had he been drinking?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep, why?”

  I leveled with him. “I’ve known Bill for an awfully long time, and in this current reincarnation I think it’d take three men and a boy to get a bottle away from him.”

  Hershel nodded. “He drinks, there’s no two ways about that.”

  “Do you have any idea who might be leaving fifths of whiskey for him on his porch?”

  He looked honestly surprised. “Nope, but if you find out, sign me up.”

  I looked past our camp and beyond the horses on the picket line, back over the rocky hillside, and spoke mostly to myself. “Why would he be sober that one night?”

  October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.

  I had watched as the words stuck in her bandaged throat, finally tumbling from her half-opened mouth.

  “It was as if I wasn’t alone, like somebody was there, leading me to where I needed to be, helping me to do it.”

  I got up from the windowsill and approached the hospital bed with my hat in my hands. “Do you remember getting the rifle from the cab of Wade’s truck?”

  Her head remained still for a moment and then shook in a hesitant manner. I didn’t think it was her lacerated throat that caused her to be careful. “I remember walking to the truck, but then it was as if the gun just appeared in my hands.”

  I looked down at her profile and pondered the stark difference between the uncertainty of her story and the clarity of the sunshine that made a perfect trapezoid on the tile of the hospital floor on the other side of the bed. “Then what happened?”

  “There was a storm, and the wind was blowing.” She paused and cleared her throat with the words that spilled out again. “The door was open, banging against the side panels, and I thought about how it was probably going to break, but that I didn’t care.” She shook her head, a piece of her blond hair getting in her mouth. She tried to wipe it away but the leather restraints at her wrists would only allow her hand to go so far. I leaned over and helped her, my hand looking large next to her fragility. “The fire was reflecting off the glass, and I was tired. I wanted to ju
st drop the rifle, but he kept telling me to keep it in my hands; that I was going to need it.”

  “He?”

  She lifted her head a bit too quickly, and I could tell the effort was hurting her throat. “It was like somebody was there, keeping me moving.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t remember—I mean, they weren’t there, not really.”

  “You said he.”

  She dropped her head and had spoken softly, looking at the sunshine that was still pounding through the window. “A voice, from my dreams . . .”

  October 30, 7:52 P.M.

  Hershel glanced over his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  I continued to allow my eyes to play over the star-sprayed horizon. There weren’t as many as usual and the Milky Way didn’t show its whole stripe, but I felt like I always did when I looked at the night sky, as though I were falling backward. “That boy’s been gone too long.”

  Hershel stood and joined me on my side of the fire. “Probably just dawdlin’.”

  I raised my fingers to my mouth and whistled long and clear. “Dog!”

  Nothing.

  I walked over to my saddlebags and pulled out my .45 and a handheld radio. I handed him the radio, and he stared at the walkie-talkie. “You stay here in case he comes wandering in, and if I don’t get back in twenty minutes, dial that thing up and call the Sheriff ’s Department.”

  “Which one?”

  I called over my shoulder. “Mine!”

  I scrambled my sore legs and rear end up the pale, moon-glowed surface of the rocks, thankful I’d worn my rubber-soled boots but wishing I had a flashlight of my own. At the top of the ridgeline, the horses stepped back, reading my mood, but then nosed toward me, eager to be a part of whatever was going on and hoping for treats.

  I walked past them, reaching a hand out and steadying the nearest, who was my bay. I stood there for a moment, listening to the soft caress of the high-altitude breeze and then, in the distance, to the unwelcome sound of a great horned owl.

  As I made my way to the left, over the first ridge, I thought about the messengers of the dead and the owl feathers on the rifle that Henry Standing Bear had entrusted to me. I remembered how Dena Many Camps had unbraided her hair in the presence of the old Sharps, and another who, for a different reason, didn’t want the old rifle in her home. Owls were supposedly not a sign that death was imminent, but were envoys from beyond, and I sometimes felt as though I was on their regular delivery route.

  In the faint moonlight, I could see the boy’s boot prints along with the tracks from Dog, whose paws could’ve easily been mistaken for a wolf’s. Benjamin had followed the draw where a few scraggly stands of sage had valiantly attempted to grow, but where the odds and annual rainfall were against them.

  The trail curved further to the left and played out into an open area with a two-track path leading east and, eventually, south and west to join the only road off the mesa. There was an old wellhead on the flat with the usual refuse left from a wildcat operation. There were loose stacks of rusted pipe, lathe, and wire snow fence that gave an indication of the era in which the drilling must have taken place, and a sealed slab where the actual rig must have been.

  The truck skids that Hershel had earmarked for firewood were piled against one of the rock walls, a few of them scattered across the chalky ground and broken apart from the boy’s efforts.

  No Benjamin.

  No Dog.

  I slipped a little on the scrabble of the downslope and started toward the broken woodpile where it looked like the boy had been. What if he’d lost his way and fallen over the steep cliffs of the mesa? What if he’d slipped into one of the deep crags or fissures in the surrounding rock? What if he was hurt? Wouldn’t Dog have returned? Shouldn’t I be yelling his name? Why was I holding my sidearm?

  I knew the answer to all of these things before I saw the dull glow of the Maglite buried in the pile of splintered wood. I crouched down and pulled the flashlight from the debris. I shook it once, and the beam grew brighter as I shined it around the surrounding area. There were prints, a lot of them. The boy’s boot trail led to the woodpile along with Dog’s, but there were others from a pair of running shoes, about a size 11, and a pair of boots, maybe a size smaller. I stood and shined the beam forward and could see that there had been some kind of altercation where someone had fallen, and there had been a struggle and more of a fight leading away.

  The footprints ended at tire tracks left by a large four-wheeler, which must have been parked along the edge of the rock wall. The fat marks of the ATV followed the road heading southeast, and Dog’s prints followed.

  October 30, 8:22 P.M.

  The radio wouldn’t reach the repeater-tower across Antelope Basin and only mocked us with a crackling static; maybe it would get reception farther south. I clicked it off to save battery power and handed it up to the old cowboy.

  Hershel watched me from horseback as I finished saddling the bay and tied off my saddlebags. I pulled a large-frame clip-on holster from the closest bag and slipped it at the small of my back. It was getting gusty and almost cold, so I put on my jacket. “You’re going to be a hell of a lot faster than I am across broken ground; just don’t break your neck in the process.”

  He looked apprehensive but nodded. “I’ve got a tough neck.”

  I steadied the bay and checked the reins on the packhorse and Benjamin’s pony. Hershel had already had the majority of our gear loaded up and ready to go by the time I’d gotten back to our camp; evidently, he had come to the same inklings I’d had. “The service road from the abandoned drilling site appears to go southeast but turns and arcs back toward the main road where we parked the truck and horse trailer?”

  He nodded. “Yep. It’ll take longer for you, especially trailin’ a pack line.”

  I pointed at the device. “Then check that radio and see if you can raise my department. If you can’t get anything, load up your horse, get in that truck, haul your ass down to Absalom, and start making phone calls to get us some backup.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll follow the tracks and see where they took him. I’ve got a suspicion Dog trailed after them.”

  He looked down the ridge that fell toward the dark and endless surface of the mesa, his hand playing on the old brass receiver of the Henry, still in its sheath. “That’s a lot of territory.”

  I slipped a boot in the stirrup and saddled up, the bay pivoting right but not so much this time; apparently he was getting used to my weight. “I’ve got tracks, and there’s only one way off this rock.”

  The old cowboy sat there in the saddle. “Well, there’s two, but let’s try and stick with the one.” He didn’t look up and, after a second, he slapped the worn leather reins against the gelding’s rump and the powerful horse leapt forward, the shoes on his hooves raking sparks from the rocks as he disappeared across the ridge west and into the night.

  I led my horse forward, along with the packhorse and the silent reminder of the riderless pony, and they steadied only when I pulled us east along the rocks in the opposite direction. We picked our way down the same draw that I had covered on foot, past the struggling sage, and I think the horses were as relieved as I was when we got to the flat area at the wellhead. I strung us toward the woodpile, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but the site looked just as it had.

  I pulled the flashlight from the saddlebag and checked the far side of the well where the pipes were stacked and a few fifty-gallon drums lay rusting on their sides. I circled back to the tracks to my right and stopped where the four-wheeler had been parked. I shined the Maglite along the patterns in the dirt, and I could see that the driver had hit Dog, but not badly enough to keep him from following. I could see the spot where he’d rolled and then where he had righted himself. He must have hurt his right rear leg, but a contract is a contract and he had limped off after the ATV.

  October 30, 8:40 P.M.

  About a mile down t
he two-track and between the buckshot breaks, it had begun to snow—not hard, but enough so that if it increased, the ground would be covered and the tracks would be lost. I spurred the horses forward.

  I thought about the running-shoe prints at the wellhead and tried to think whom I’d seen lately with that style of footwear. Cliff Cly had on motorcycle boots the first time I’d met him in the bar but was wearing tennis shoes during the fight. Bill Nolan had worn boots the entire time I’d seen him and, as near as I could remember, Pat from the bar had also worn hard shoes.

  I rode on and thought about the latest turn of events. Why take the boy? Had he seen something? Was he leverage against Juana because she’d seen or done something? Was it about Hershel, since he and the boy were so close? Was it about me?

  One thing was for sure, it was an open declaration of war. Whoever was doing these things wasn’t locked up in the Absaroka County jail, and whoever it was couldn’t stay behind the scenes any longer. I’d turned up the heat, and now a boy was missing, and possibly dead due to my efforts.

  I turned and looked at the empty saddle on the grulla.

  I felt miserable, cranked my hat down against the increasing wind, and followed the single road that emptied itself onto the hardpan surface of the dry, endless stretch of flat badland called the Battlement.

  I had to admit that in my current mood, it was the perfect place for me.

  My horse’s ears pricked and something blew up from one of the clumps of sage and came straight at us in a monumental burst of gray feathers and talons. The bay went berserk and reared on his hind legs and the two other horses tried to bolt, but I held on and was able to withstand that little rodeo. After I got them turned and settled a bit, I watched as the great horned owl I’d been hearing flapped his way south and across the hardpan of the Battlement with a five-foot wing-span.

  I took a deep breath and watched him, the messenger from beyond, as the Cheyenne called them. “Hold all my calls, will you?” The bay was still a little skittish but settled back into a steady walk as I rolled my hips and tried to gain a new seat that would give my own seat a little relief.