The Dark Horse

by Craig Johnson

  It was a partially moonlit night; the pale deadness of her heavenly body pitched back and forth between the clouds, one minute illuminating the scrub sage and sparse tufts of buffalo grass, and the next, hiding her face completely. The snow had slackened for the moment, but I was betting that wouldn’t last.

  The road was slightly rutted and nothing had attempted to grow again in the running depressions that the oilmen had grooved in their hurry to drill. Environmentalists had pointed out just how fragile the crusted surface of the high desert is and how it would take hundreds of years for the land to repair itself. I could see where the drillers had forged new roads across the tundra in an attempt to make money in a place where time equaled cash and expedience meant jobs. I hoped that they had blown an engine.

  The four-wheeler had made my tracking a little easier by staying on the main road, but I figured with the advantage of an internal-combustion pace, they had a good forty minutes on both Hershel and me. Dog’s prints came and went as if he’d been trailing the ATV but hadn’t wanted to be seen—that, or I’d watched too many episodes of Rin Tin Tin.

  I let out a deep sigh and watched as my breath joined with that of my horse and trailed southeast, following the road. My hands and face had gotten a little numb, which at least made my cheekbone feel a little better, if nothing else. It was snowing harder and the flakes stuck to the right side of everything, including the horses and me but, with the perversity and volatility of Wyoming weather, it seemed to be getting a little warmer. There were flashes of lightning in the clouds to the west, and it was possible that the wet snow would turn to rain.

  I switched hands and discovered an old pair of buffalo gloves my wife had given to me decades ago in my between-seasons jacket pocket. I pulled the gloves on, tied off my scarf at my throat a little tighter, and cranked my hat down again, dipping my head a little to protect my exposed ear and busted cheek. Now I looked the part completely and remembered why I didn’t like cowboying.

  I pulled at the stiff collar of my jacket to try to protect the side of my face and could feel the ache at the top of my once-frostbitten ear.

  The road turned west after a few miles, and it was a relief to be facing the wind. I dipped my head down and rocked back and forth as the bay plodded on. The urge to hurry ran through my blood like fractured streaks of lightning imitating the bursts overhead, and I thought about Benjamin and the dust devil; but the packhorse couldn’t take speed, and all I’d find was an empty trailer for my troubles anyway.

  We continued on, and I could just see something in the sporadic lightning that continued to illuminate the mesa.

  It had to be the horse trailer.

  I nudged the bay, and we came to the wide spot of the road at a trot. The trailer was as we’d left it, except that there was a pile of blankets, some feed buckets and ropes, a half bag of oats, and Hershel’s prized canteen near the back of the end stall. The rear door of the trailer was held open with a hooked rubber strap, but not enough to stop it from rhythmically tattooing against the metal flanks.

  Upon closer study, there was also a fluttering piece of paper on top of the blankets with a large rock holding it as a paperweight.

  Something moved on the top of the trailer, and the bay spooked again. I reeled him in with a wrap on the reins, my free hand on the Colt at my back. The next uneven streak of lightning revealed the horned owl. He was seated on the sliding rail of the horse trailer, and he was about half the size of Benjamin. He turned his gigantic head and stared at me with eyes as gold as others I knew.

  “Hello again.” He didn’t move and continued to stare at me for a moment; then he looked disgusted and flew off. I watched and listened to his wings slap the air as he circled south. “I was just kidding about holding my calls.”

  There was no dun horse tied off or inside the trailer.

  The tiny alarms began ringing in the distance in my head, and I could feel the familiar cooling of my face and the stillness of my hands. I pulled the big Colt from the small of my back and wheeled the bay into a tight circle where I could see the surrounding area.

  The packhorse balked along with the pony, but then they both circled around and looked off into the darkness south, just as they all had when we’d first arrived and saddled up. I didn’t know what to look for as I peered into the remoteness of the south mesa. I knew that they couldn’t see as well as I could but that they could feel more.

  I wondered what, or who, they were feeling.

  13

  October 30, 10:00 P.M.

  The pencil was blunt and Hershel’s handwriting and spelling was pretty bad, but I could still make out the gist of it.

  Sherif,

  Raydio did not work and truck was gone when I got here.

  Dropped off the xtra stuff and went down hill and back to town. I

  spose Bill decided he needed his truck after all. Your dog was here,

  his leg is hurt, and he’s limping bad so I threw him over the saddle

  and took him.

  Hershel

  PS: I lef the canteen for you but took the radio just in case it works, and will be back soon with the calvry.

  I studied the note. It was odd that he’d misspelled the word “radio” the first time but then spelled it correctly in the postscript.

  I tied my bay and the grulla off to the trailer and unloaded the packhorse. There wasn’t that much water left, so I just emptied the plastic containers into the buckets, collected the canteen for myself, and took the flashlight over toward the head of the trailer. There were boot prints and ones from running shoes, and I shined the Maglite in the granules of gritty snow that had collected in them. I placed one of my feet beside one of the boot prints—it was definitely from a shoe that was a couple of sizes smaller than my own.

  I circled around the other side of the trailer and picked up the four-wheeler’s tire marks, which circled to the left and back to the road. When I got to the two-track dirt road, I could see that Hershel had made for town, but the ATV and duellie both turned and went east.

  Dog’s prints were everywhere, and it was difficult to tell which were new ones and which ones were from before.

  I stood there for a moment, registering what it all meant.

  I walked past the back of the trailer to where Benjamin and I had stood earlier. I looked off to the south and remembered the turnoff that we had seen that was just ahead. I started walking and pulled Hershel’s canteen from my shoulder, unscrewed the top, and took a swig. It tasted like a Civil War mud puddle, and I was immediately sorry I’d given the horses all the water. I screwed the cap back on and slung the canteen over my shoulder.

  The tracks continued to the cutoff and then abruptly turned. Whoever had the boy had gone south, but had the truck met the four-wheeler, followed them, or gone ahead?

  No matter what had happened, the boy was south.

  I went back to the trailer with the idea of writing a note but then couldn’t find anything to write with. I hung the canteen over the horn of the bay’s saddle, pulled the extra ammunition and clip I’d brought in the saddlebags, and dumped it all into the pockets of my jacket. The wind had stopped but the cloud cover was getting heavier, and it looked like there might be more precipitation.

  I buttoned up my jacket, re-gloved, put a foot into the stirrup, and saddled up. I hadn’t been on horseback this much in years. I felt the weight of the large-frame Colt against the small of my back and started off. I followed the road with the flashlight beam leading the way. I looked into the darkness south and watched as the lightning continued to pound the Battlement like artillery fire.

  I clicked the Maglite off, flipped up the saddlebag cover, and dropped it inside.

  No sense advertising.

  October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.

  I had placed my hat on the handle of the semiautomatic, crossed my arms, and softly exhaled, afraid I would break the spell.

  “The voice told you to go in the house?”

  Mary Barsa
d studied the bedsheets, her eyes wide and staring, as if she was seeing that night over again. “Yes, he said for me to go into the house.”

  “You said ‘he’ again.”

  She thought, and I watched her. “It’s always the same voice, a male voice.”

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes. I mean, it’s familiar.”

  “Who is it?”

  She took a deep breath of her own, and you could see the frustration tensing her body. Her eyes searched the sheets, and her brow furrowed, the lines deep between her eyes. I was afraid that she would lose the story, and she almost panicked at losing the story herself. “I went into the house, and I remember that he’d killed my horses—Wahoo Sue, my horse.” There had been a catch in her breath, and she plucked at the blanket before she spoke again. “The bedroom, I remember going into the bedroom, and it was strange because the lights were off.”

  I spoke gently. “Was he asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  Even more gently. “But if he was—”

  “No. He always slept with the lights on, because he said he could. It had something to do with the time he’d spent in prison, like those little lists of paper he kept.”

  “The kites?”

  “Yes, there was a particular one that he accused me of taking, and I think I did. . . . Once, just to see what it was.”

  October 30, 10:35 P.M.

  There’s nothing romantic about a dead body, and the romantic poets notwithstanding, there’s nothing romantic about death.

  About thirty minutes down the road, the bay skittered to the left and tried to rear. I was getting tired of his nervousness and was prepared. I wrapped the reins again and stayed put, allowing the big horse to back away but not turn and run. Something was out there a little ahead, something the horse didn’t like. I didn’t want to chance riding him closer, but I didn’t relish the idea of walking around out here, trying to find him in the dark, either. The closest thing I could find to tie him off to was a sprig of dead blue sage—it was brittle but looked strong enough to hold the bay unless he was really determined.

  I stepped off, comforting him with my voice and wishing I knew his name. “Easy, easy boy—”

  I thought of reaching into my saddlebag for the Maglite, decided against it, and then changed my mind, figuring that if there were someone out there, they probably already knew I was here. I got the flashlight and then unclipped and slipped the .45 from the pancake holster at my back. I clicked off the safety and spoke to the horse again, looking into the white of his eye. “Easy, easy now.”

  I ran my eyes over the surrounding area, left the horse, and continued down the dirt road. Twenty yards further, I could see that there was a spot where the big Dodge had slid to a stop and then continued. I clicked on the tactical flashlight and could plainly see that there were running shoe prints again. It was the driver who was wearing them, and I could see where he’d yanked the truck to a lurching stop, jumped out of the cab, and run around the back.

  I followed his tracks into the scrub weed and Johnson grass. There were boot tracks now as well, and it appeared as if the booted man had jumped from the passenger side and then been chased by the man in running shoes.

  There wouldn’t be anybody coming to my rescue tonight.

  I found his hat first, lodged against one of the skeletal hands of dead sage. The battered beaver fur was brim up and the hat struggled against the dry branches, unable to escape their grip. I could see the stained, white sateen of the liner beckoning like the whites of the horse’s eyes I’d just left.

  I picked up the hat, rescuing it from the cruel, punishing wind of oblivion.

  He was another twenty yards from the road. He must have been trying to angle toward the trailer. He’d been shot in the back and then again in the back of the head at close range, both, from the look of the wounds, 9 mm. His hands were duct-taped together.

  I squatted by the old cowboy and nudged my own hat up, running my gloved hand across my face and placing the other on his shoulder to steady myself and maybe to provide some solace to his soul. I suddenly felt very tired. “Well, hell.”

  Evidently, Hershel had jumped from the truck and tried to run for it, but whoever he was attempting to escape from had chased after him and placed one of the 9 mm slugs between the old cowboy’s shoulder blades and slightly to the right. As the puncher had tried to crawl away, the shooter had calmly walked over, lowered his weapon, and finished the job.

  “I’m so sorry, Hershel.”

  I crouched there for a while, because it was the only thing I had the energy for. I watched one of the stark flashes of lightning strike no more than a mile away, the quick succession of explosive noise and reverberation through my boots telling me to move. I sighed and took one last look at the old cowboy, wondering how much blame I carried for his demise. It wasn’t how the old fellow should’ve passed, on the mesa, executed. I made a promise to myself.

  October 30, 10:52 P.M.

  I piled some rocks on top of Hershel’s hat and sat there on the side of the road. Who would’ve wanted to do such a thing? I felt another wave of sadness and that peculiar weariness that only overtakes you with the weight of a world gone bad. I took a deep breath and pushed off from the ground. I felt like the stack of rocks.

  I looked back in the distance and thought about how easy it was to lose a body in this country, how quickly the scavengers and the weather could dispose of it, and scatter you. I also thought of something Bill Nolan had said in his truck about personal history—if nobody remembered you, were you ever really here?

  I made a silent promise to not forget Hershel and then slowly approached the bay that had grown more skittish with the proximity of the lightning. “Easy, easy now—”

  Despite recent developments or maybe because of them, I again felt a wave of exhaustion as I hooked a hand on the horn of the saddle and draped the .45 Colt over the seat. I pushed my hat back again and placed my damaged cheek against the cool leather of the saddle and just stood there. I could smell the rich, earthy scent of the leather, the horse, and the strong ozone of low-slung clouds.

  Something was troubling me, something that tied all these events together dot to dot like one of those games that kids get on restaurant menus.

  I turned my face and saw something move to the south. Probably the owl again. Maybe he had been delivering a message after all.

  There was another lightning strike—it was close—and the bay lurched just a few inches but enough to strike the saddle against my injured cheek. I stood there for a moment more with my eyes closed, breathing through the pain, and thought about the ferocious burst of the big owl’s wings on the trail and at the trailer—but it wasn’t the owl, it was something else, something similar.

  I guess my mind wasn’t working.

  I stowed the Colt in the holster at my back, fixed my hat and pulled the dead man’s canteen from the saddle horn, unscrewed the top, and took another draught. It still tasted bad but with more of a bitter, metallic taste than mud puddle—it was probably from the liner. I replaced the canteen, looking at the beads on its face with the twin bird insignia. I thought that what was bothering me was about a bird but not about an owl, and I thought about the meadowlark I’d seen sitting on Kyle Straub’s sign outside the hospital when I had been questioning Mary last week.

  It was something about the meadowlark, something about it not sounding right.

  One strike of lightning followed another in succession, and I felt the tingling of intimidation in being the tallest point on the big mesa; then I slipped a boot into the stirrup and made myself taller.

  The bay behaved and only took a few steps to the left to avoid the smell of the dead man. I swayed in the saddle for a moment and felt a mild nausea. It must have been a drop in blood pressure from the exertion and the exhaustion. I’d seen enough dead bodies, but maybe Hershel had deeply ingrained himself in my psyche in the short time I’d known him. One thing I knew was that the world was a
little bit poorer from his loss and that it was my job tonight to right the scales.

  I yawned, cursed, and thought about the meadowlark again. Why was it my mind had suddenly decided to mimic the horse I rode and jump left?

  I thumbed my eyes. Was it Hershel’s dead body the horses had sensed at the trailer or was it something else?

  Maybe it was the meadowlark. . . . Why the hell was I continuing to think about the damn meadowlarks? I started with a jerk at the thought, so that the bay stopped and looked back at me.

  I pulled the reins through my fingers, kneed him just slightly to get him going again, and looked at the canvas cover of the canteen, at the stenciled letters faded from the years.

  I was tired.

  It was two meadowlarks.

  I looked down, and my head began nodding with the rhythm of the horse as he continued on. The next volley of lightning struck even farther south, down near the tip of the mesa, so the horse didn’t pay too much attention.

  Two meadowlarks.

  One’s voice was right, the other was not. There are two types, eastern and western, and they do not sing the same song—similar, but not exactly the same. Where had I heard an eastern meadowlark lately? Evidently I was thinking of Cady and my trip to Pennsylvania and, more importantly, the conversation we’d had on the phone at the bar. I kept riding south but was having trouble remembering why. It wasn’t about birds. It was something about a boy, a dead man, and a horse.

  It felt like I’d been traveling a long way. My head kept nodding until my chin poked into my breastbone. I yanked my head up and opened my eyes, and I was unsure if it was real or a dream.

  The road was gone, and a thin layer of snow, less than an eighth of an inch, covered the ground and vegetation for as far as I could see into the gloom, except for a perfect circle of dark ground where there was no snow and where nothing grew. The bay stopped and looked at the scene with me. There were no struggling tufts of grass, no sage, nothing. It was as if some flying saucer had landed on top of the mesa, burned all the undergrowth and the thin skim of snow, and then had gone.