The Dark Horse

by Craig Johnson

  Cliff Cly of the FBI would live and was recuperating in Denver. The DOJ had come down pretty hard on him, but I’d gone to bat for the wayward and inventive agent, explaining that if he hadn’t done what he’d done, I probably wouldn’t be here. He’d been replaced by a more businesslike man who was now up at the Barsad place supervising a crew that was sifting through the debris in an attempt to find Wade’s kite.

  The bureau was still attempting to put pressure on Barsad to give up his friends, but so far he wasn’t talking. Evidently, with two life sentences hanging over him, Wade wasn’t feeling any need to be cooperative. Maybe he was looking for a plea bargain, but with the two murders, that was a stretch. He’d most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, but the Feds still wanted the names to pursue racketeering charges against those on the list. As we might all well imagine, Wade’s memory had gotten a little vague since being arrested.

  The missing kite was still missing.

  I yawned and covered my mouth with my hand as a metallic sand-colored Escalade came into view and made the turn across the river.

  Bill Nolan was innocent, except for taking a few too many sleeping pills with his nightly gifts of rye and leaving the keys in his new truck for anyone to drive. The thing had been totaled, and the last I’d heard he was still going to Denver and was buying a hybrid.

  Pat, the bar owner, was so far only charged with conspiracy. I guess he thought he was going to get a lot of money being in business with Wade Barsad, but like everybody else, all he would get was time.

  I thought about Sandy Sandberg as the Caddy rolled across the new bridge. I’d have pinched his neck there in the hospital, but he raised a hand, smiled down at my broken foot, and explained how he’d been sworn to silence by the FBI division chief. I forgave him but told him I found it interesting the confidences he chose to share and the ones he chose to keep. Anyway, I’d called in a favor, and Boss Insurance was found liable for the claim on the Barsad place, in light of the fact that the sheriffs of two Wyoming counties signed affidavits saying that the probable cause of the fire was most likely lightning.

  I rested my foot back on the ground and pivoted as best I could to greet the SUV. Dog stopped sniffing guardrails and began wagging his tail in anticipation of its arrival.

  The Escalade pulled to a stop at the other side of the road and, before it could be put into park, the passenger door flew open and a four-foot sheriff’s deputy scrambled out. Benjamin and Dog met at the middle of the road where Dog jumped and put his paws on the boy’s shoulders, sending the two of them tumbling to the surface of the road.

  I raised my voice. “Easy, he’s not completely indestructible.”

  Juana climbed out of the same door. “Who are you talking about, Benjamin or Dog?”

  I watched as a tall, blond woman got out on the other side of the Cadillac. She answered the question. “Both.”

  The Guatemalan bandita walked straight up to me. “You get left here alone?”

  I nodded. “Dog and me; Vic ran Henry down to his truck with a new fuel filter.”

  She looked at my face and my foot. “You’re a mess.”

  “Yep. How’re they treating you up at ground zero?”

  Her face immediately animated. “It’s really interesting. They’re going through everything, because they’re pretty sure the list was in the house. They’re sifting through the ash and that’s not so exciting, but—”

  “She’s asking so many questions they can’t get anything done.”

  I looked at the tall woman as she rested her hands on Juana’s shoulders and then grazed one down to pet Dog’s broad head as he and Benjamin joined the group.

  She looked a lot better out of the orange CCDOC jumpsuit, and she had put on a few pounds but still looked thin enough to make the wind whistle. Doc Bloomfield had removed the last bandage from her throat, and she had tied a silk scarf that was covered with yellow poppies around her neck as camouflage. Her hair was down and pinned with a hand-etched silver barrette, and it looked as if she had put on a little makeup. In an attempt to augment her lack of body fat and insulation, she had put on a down vest which she wore over a turquoise fleece that made the blue of her eyes bluer somehow. You could see why the old cowboy had plastered his walls with her photographs. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m living in a sheep wagon until they get through with my house, but I’m okay.”

  I smiled as the horse nickered behind her. “Hershel would’ve liked that.”

  Mary glanced down at the rifle, which was still leaning against the railing. After a moment, she smiled back up at me, and it was heartfelt. “He didn’t have any family that I can locate, so I thought I’d scatter his ashes on the bluff overlooking the river.”

  “He’d like that, too.” I stood as the horse nickered again, this time more persistently. I carefully lifted my leg over the guardrail, moved to the right, and adjusted my crutches under my arms. “If you don’t mind grabbing that Henry, I think there’s somebody back here that wants to see you.” Second smile, possibly even brighter than the first. Wahoo Sue stamped her hooves, banged against the sides of the trailer, and whiffled in full voice. “I had the veterinarian, Mike Pilch, check her out, and he said she was in surprisingly good shape, considering all she had been through.”

  Mary’s hands went up to the openings in the side of the trailer like leaves attempting to find sunshine. The big mare stamped again and began running the sides of her head against the long fingers that now twined their way into the trailer. I could still see the pulsing, blue blood of the woman’s temples as it coursed its way back to her heart. Her voice was soft. “So-o-o girl, good girl.”

  I rested the rifle in my lap and gave them a little while. “So—”

  She turned to look at me. “So what?”

  “What are you going to do with the ranch?”

  There was no hesitation. “Rebuild it.” She continued to stroke Wahoo Sue. “It was always my dream, my place—not his.” She glanced over her shoulder toward Absalom. “It’s a good little town; it just had a few bad characters in it.”

  The bandita leaned against the trailer and looked at me. “There’s just one thing I can’t figure out.”

  Leave it to the associate degree.

  “What’s that?” I ran my hands over the old repeater and adjusted my hat.

  “Why did Wade try to kidnap Benjamin?”

  “Wade couldn’t afford to have very many of those kites around, but it was the only insurance he had for when he resurfaced again—and with his track record he would have. Without it, the mob would’ve eventually killed him, so he had to stick around till it turned up. Even drugged, Mary knew that list was important and took it and then passed it off to Hershel, but as near as I can figure there must’ve been a witness. Wade couldn’t get at Mary, Hershel wouldn’t tell him, so that left only one person who might know where the information was.”

  I studied the boy as I wrestled my pocketknife from the front of my jeans and laid the historic, lever-action carbine in my lap. “Or maybe Benjamin here knew something.” I smiled at the boy. He ducked his head and started chewing on the stampede strings. “Am I right?”

  He looked at all of us. “I’m not supposed to say.”

  “Because you promised?” He nodded, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. “But the man who made you promise is gone, right?” He nodded some more but didn’t say anything. “Now, as a sworn deputy of Absaroka County, you’re not supposed to keep secrets from your boss.”

  He finally spoke. “Yes, but a promise to el hombre muerto is a sacred trust.”

  I put up a hand. “That’s okay, you don’t have to say anything. I wouldn’t want you to betray him.” They all watched as I placed the point of my knife in the slot of one of the tiny screws that attached the commemorative brass plate to the stock of the .44 Yellow Boy. “One of the things a man holds very dear is his fortune.” I looked into the dark eyes of the boy. “Right?”

 
He nodded. “Right.”

  I loosened the one screw, handed it to Benjamin, and started on another as I looked at the name on the brass plaque. “The fellow who originally had this rifle didn’t fare too well in the end, but your fortune is your fortune.”

  The boy watched as I unscrewed another and handed it to him. “The next fellow that had it didn’t end up too well, either, but he was a heck of a guy while he was here, wasn’t he?”

  Benjamin nodded solemnly.

  “And when he used to say that his fortune was in this rifle, he meant more than the amount of money it’s worth, didn’t he?”

  The boy continued to nod as I handed him the last two screws and used a fingernail to delicately pry up the small brass plaque. There, embedded in a carefully routed groove, was one of the tiny scrolls that Hershel used to pick up from the checkout line at Kmart.

  I used the point of my knife to lift the end of the plastic encapsulated fortune and pulled it out into my hand. I put the knife on the surface of the horse trailer’s fender, carefully slid the tiny roll of paper from the cellophane sleeve, and unrolled it from end to end, holding it with my fingertips.

  The writing, so small you could barely make it out with the naked eye, stretched from end to end, front and back.

  I glanced up at them and then carefully rolled Wade Barsad’s kite and slipped it back in the clear plastic sleeve.

  Mary backed up the Escalade and guided the hitch to my horse trailer. Juana watched as I carefully placed the paper fortune into my shirt pocket and then reattached the plaque onto the repeater that had first belonged to a buffalo soldier and then to a cowboy. “How long have you known about the rifle?”

  “Since we camped on the mesa. He kept repeating that line about his fortune being in this Henry, and I think that was his way of telling me without telling me.”

  She looked stymied. “Why didn’t he just tell you?”

  I thought about it as I lifted the Yellow Boy and propped it on my knee. “I don’t know. He was careful, and he didn’t know me, at least not well enough to actually tell me, I guess.”

  She looked at Benjamin, who was playing with Dog in the dry lot across the road. “But he knew you were a sheriff.”

  “That didn’t count for much in the old cowpuncher’s worldview.” She still looked confused. “Hershel was like a lot of the old boys from this part of the country—he didn’t trust a title. With him, you had to earn it.”

  She smiled the perfectly formed smile. “Well, you did that.”

  I looked toward the hills east, and to the Battlement at Twentymile Butte rising above the Powder River plain. “No . . . if I’d really earned it, he’d be here with us.” Before she could say anything else, I continued, “So, any of those bureau types giving you a hard time about being illegal?”

  She glanced over her shoulder as Mary got out to hook up the trailer electricals to the Cadillac. “No, I’ve got a protectress, and she has lawyers who are working for my citizenship.”

  I nodded. “So what are you and Benjamin going to do?”

  “Benjamin is going to go to school, and I’m going to work for Mary and get my degree. Then I think I’ll go down to Laramie and finish up—maybe work for the FBI someday.” I didn’t say anything, waiting for her to throw the signature fist to her hip just as she had on the first day I’d met her. “What?”

  I shrugged in the face of Latin attitude. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  As Juana went to collect Benjamin and Dog, Mary came back to open the upper hatch of the trailer’s Dutch door so that Wahoo Sue could hang her head out. Mary stepped up on the railing at the fender, and I watched as the horse stuck her muzzle out to her as she exhaled. I smiled to myself as Mary gently slipped her arms around the big mare’s neck. Sue, in turn, dropped her head and pulled the woman against the side of the trailer in a sort of armless hug.

  “Hell of a horse.”

  She turned to look at me. “Yes, she is.”

  Her eyes stayed with me, even as I studied the brass plaque on the heavy rifle. “Mary, I’ve got a question about the list. I think Hershel got it from you.”

  It was quiet for a moment, and the only sound was the mare’s hard shoes on the wooden surface of the trailer floor. “Me?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty positive. You were the only one who knew what that list was other than Wade, and I doubt he gave it to Hershel.” I could tell she was thinking. “You might’ve done a lot of things you weren’t aware of under the influence of those sedatives.”

  She didn’t move, and even her slender hands, which were still entwined in the horse’s mane, were still. “Including kill a man?”

  I took a breath and felt tired. “Nope, not that. I’ll tell you what I think happened, and then you can decide about it and see if it finally falls into place.” I swallowed and started in. “I think Wade drugged his brother and shot him, then brought you in there and had you shoot a dead man, a man who looked remarkably like Wade and a man, deep down, you wanted to be rid of.”

  “But how did he get his brother out here? He hated Wade.”

  I shrugged. “He had financial problems of his own, and Wade convinced him that they could extort more money from their old business partners. That’s the problem with dealing with people like Wade Barsad—once they get something out of you, they’ve got something on you, and they’re always going to come back for more.” I thought about the man’s brother. “At least, that’s one scenario.”

  She stepped down but kept a hand on Wahoo Sue’s nose. She looked at me, but said nothing.

  I crutched my way back across the road and sat on the guardrail with the newest addition to my ever-growing collection of priceless weapons in my lap and watched as the Escalade crossed the bridge and pulled away. I was really tired now and hoped that Vic would be back with my truck soon so that I could go home and take a nap.

  I called to Dog and followed the trail of dust as Mary rounded the far corner of the Powder River Road and she and Juana and Benjamin and Wahoo Sue disappeared. I held my star in my hand and allowed my eyes to travel toward the mountains. The diffused clouds dappled back from the Bighorns and abandoned the sky to the pale blue of fading fall.

  “You lost?”

  I’d been so caught up in my musings that I hadn’t even heard the old five-ton GMC 500 pull up. I leaned the Henry against the guardrail and sat there holding on to Dog’s collar. “Nope.”

  Mike Niall had another load of hay and surprised me by cutting the engine on the big flatbed. I listened to the motor tick and waited.

  His strong profile looked toward the mountains. He was empty of emotion but full of dignity. He had yet to actually look at me, but I suppose he’d noticed the old Henry as he’d pulled up. “Expectin’ trouble?”

  I tipped my hat back. “Always.”

  He worked his mouth but didn’t say anything else. It was another load of good-looking hay, and I could smell it from twenty feet away even with a crosswind. He spat in the road like he had before and finally spoke. “I heard that sheriff over in Absaroka County got reelected yesterday in a landslide.”

  I took a deep breath and flexed the muscles in my broken foot. “Yep, it’s getting so that people will vote for anybody these days.” I could feel his eyes on me, and I tried to think of something else to say, but I was so tired I just sat there. Twenty-four years in office and now at least two more. I started wondering if I’d make it, but he saved me from my thoughts.

  “I believe I’ll drive this truck across that new car-bridge.”

  I smiled as I studied the vintage vehicle and its substantial load. “Think it’ll hold?”

  He leaned forward and spat again, the sepia-colored stream shooting through the rust holes of the truck’s floorboards. “I’m not sure.” He stared hard at the new structure. “But I’m a man who likes to take chances.” I could feel his eyes on me again. “How ’bout you?”

  I turned back toward the river, released Dog’s collar, and bega
n petting his broad head. “Me, I’m the cautious type.”

  I heard a soft snort before the starter on the big truck ground, the aged motor coughed and caught, and the lumbering vehicle crossed the bridge, turned the corner, and was gone.

  Holding my badge in my open hand and looking at the river, I sat there thinking about what Juana had said that night in the motel room about how some of us aren’t meant to cowboy-up. I thought about how many times the heavy piece of metal might skip on the surface of the Powder River if I got the angle just right. I palmed it in my hand and felt the weight of its bond, then opened the back clasp and pinned the six-pointed star to my shirt.

  I rubbed Dog’s head again and took off my 10X, turned it over, and studied the sweat stains and the patina of red dust that had gathered on it in the last week.

  I flipped it back over and held it by the brim, then suddenly pitched it like a Frisbee. Dog started and made a move to fetch it, but I grabbed his collar, and we both watched as the black hat hung over the void of the Powder River, pitched to one side, and disappeared into the northbound water below.