Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  “Did you bring him a carrot?”

  “You said I couldn’t before a race,” she reminded him.

  “That was the old Luke.”

  A few minutes later Joe Drinkwater walked by, leading the big gray Ghost Rider. Joe glanced over at Luke and Billie and shook his head, as if in apology, and kept walking. Billie watched the colt as it walked, the muscles in the haunch and shoulders rippling beneath the silver-flecked coat.

  “Jesus, that’s a good-looking horse,” Billie said.

  Luke looked at the horse and then back to Billie. “I ever tell you about the time I went to the prom over at Danton?”

  “You went to a prom?” Billie asked.

  “Yup. There was this girl over there that asked me. She thought I was a young Brad Pitt.”

  “You went to a prom with a blind girl?”

  “You ain’t near as funny as you think, Billie,” Luke said. “Her name was Sherri and it was a night. I rented a tuxedo at that place in Marshall. Before the big dance, we were standing in the lineup thing with all the other couples and I’m staring at these girls and I’m thinking—man, there’s some good-looking women here. They were all done up in their fancy dresses, and the hair and the flowers—what do you call them—corsairs?”

  “Corsages,” Billie said. “A corsair is a pirate.”

  Luke shrugged. “So anyway, a week or so later, Sherri comes around with a bunch of pictures from that night.”

  “Why would a blind girl have pictures?”

  “You can stop that anytime,” Luke said. “I’m looking at these pictures of all these pretty girls and goddamn, don’t I realize that I was with the prettiest one of the bunch.” Luke looked pointedly past Billie to Cactus Jack.

  Billie turned toward the horse and goddamn if Luke wasn’t right. “Whatever happened to Sherri?”

  “I borrowed her old man’s Lincoln one night without asking and rolled it over six times on Westfield Road. Sherri married an insurance salesman and moved out of state.”

  Billie shook her head. “I’m sure that’s what you consider a happy ending.”

  She and Jodie headed for the walking ring while Luke led Cactus Jack to the saddling barn. Billie had been watching for Marian but didn’t see her. She had even thought she might stop at the farm sometime in the past few days but she hadn’t. Billie wondered if she was sticking to the same routine as when Cactus Jack had won twelve days earlier. Billie was aware of how superstitious people were about such things. She’d been thinking about it that morning, as she’d gotten dressed in precisely the same clothes as last time the colt had raced, right down to her underwear.

  She spotted Reese Ryker, turned out like a fried chicken huckster, in the saddling barn with Joe Drinkwater. Luke had Cactus Jack thirty feet away. The colt was relaxed and loose as always. The big gray Ghost Rider appeared antsy, sidestepping away from the saddle and tossing his head.

  In the walking ring minutes later, Luke stood with Tyrone as the horses paraded in the circle. Billie and Jodie were at the rail a few yards away. Luke’s eyes never left Ghost Rider as the horse moved around the circle. The big gray was restive, fighting the bit and shaking his head.

  “Well?” Tyrone asked as the walker stopped Cactus Jack beside them.

  “Stay with him,” Luke said and he didn’t say anything else.

  The race was announced as the horses were led out onto the track. Luke walked with Billie and Jodie to the rail, as before. Reese Ryker climbed up to the grandstand, where he stood with Caldwell as the entries were being loaded into the gate. The field had been increased from ten to twelve horses to accommodate the two late additions. There was a feeling on the air that the race was now nothing more than a joke. Billie heard one man say that Ghost Rider would win by fifty lengths.

  Billie promised herself that she wouldn’t look at the tote board and she promptly broke that promise. Ghost Rider was listed at one to five while the handicapper appeared to agree that Cactus Jack had no business even being there and had him at ninety-nine to one, as high as the tote board could list. The real number could have been twice that.

  The bell rang and a dozen horses burst from the gate. As they rounded the first turn all twelve were bunched up, striving for position. Coming into the stretch a minute and a half later, ten of them had been left in the dust. There were two gray horses all alone out front and both had been sired by Saguaro.

  Tyrone had listened to Luke and parked Cactus Jack a length behind Ghost Rider all around the track, staying just off his hip, stalking him. Both horses had accelerated at the three-quarter pole to leave the field behind. Two hundred yards from the finish line, Tyrone moved his horse outside and once again the colt had erupted. Ghost Rider spotted Cactus Jack on his flank and he too responded with a burst of speed. He held off the challenger until ten yards from the finish and then Cactus Jack caught him with a huge lunging stride at the wire. It looked like Cactus Jack by a nose. The crowd was roaring with excitement, the noise deafening. Nobody there had expected anything like the finish they’d just seen, and if the hordes weren’t specifically cheering for Cactus Jack, they were definitely cheering against the interloper Ghost Rider. Billie looked expectantly at Luke.

  “Did he catch him?”

  Luke wasn’t sure. “I think he got him on the stride.”

  In the grandstand, Reese Ryker turned on Caldwell. “Photo finish!” he barked. “Get your ass down there.”

  The steward had already called for a photo. Caldwell hurried to the booth, with Reese on his heels. As soon as they entered, they knew there was a problem.

  “That camera again,” the steward said.

  “What do you have?” Caldwell asked.

  “I have them a few yards from the wire and then nothing.”

  Down on the track the photo finish sign was blinking, advising all bettors to hold their tickets. Luke had walked out onto the track as Tyrone brought the colt back. Joe Drinkwater, waiting for his own horse, came over to shake Luke’s hand.

  “Good job, Luke,” he said. “That’s a hell of a horse.” Then he looked over to where the jockey was bringing Ghost Rider back to the wire. Whatever Joe saw, he didn’t like.

  Billie and Jodie were by the rail, watching. Billie still didn’t want to allow herself to believe they’d won, not yet. Superstitions.

  In the booth the steward was running the tape back and forth but the image wasn’t there. After a moment Reese took Caldwell by the elbow and pulled him outside.

  “My horse won that race,” he said.

  “It really didn’t look that way, Reese.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  Caldwell exhaled. “What if we call it a dead heat? That covers our asses.”

  “Fuck you and your dead heat,” Reese snapped. “That horse did not beat Ghost Rider.”

  Caldwell shook his head and started to move away, thinking he might just walk out the front door and out of there forever.

  “You want that PR job or not?” Reese demanded suddenly.

  And Caldwell turned back to him.

  A minute later Ghost Rider was announced as the winner, although the track didn’t produce a photo, something nobody present had ever seen before. There was sustained booing from the crowd, shouts that the fix was in. Billie leaned against the rail, her pulse pounding. Jodie reached out to her and held her hand. The prices came up on the board. Ghost Rider returned two dollars and ten cents on a two-dollar bet to win, while Cactus Jack, the longest shot in the field by far, paid eighty-seven dollars to place.

  Reese Ryker strolled down to the finish line to get his picture taken with his horse. As he got there, Joe Drinkwater was straightening up from the dirt, where he’d been looking at Ghost Rider’s right front leg. His face was ashen.

  “We have a problem,” he said.

  “Later,” Reese said, waving him off.

  After the picture was taken, Reese headed straight for the rail, where Billie stood with Luke and the girl. None of them were saying a
nything.

  “That little colt of yours ran a good race,” Reese told Billie.

  “He won the race,” Luke said. “You cheating sonofabitch.”

  Reese ignored him. “Listen, this is just business now, Billie. You and I can come to an agreement and I’ll set fire to that demand note today. I can make you a very good offer on the colt right now. Which means you can keep your farm.”

  “Do you have any idea what you are?” Billie asked.

  “What will you take for him right now?”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Billie said. “I mean that. You are out of your mind—aren’t you?”

  “Not at all. You need to be rational here. I’m trying to save your farm. Isn’t this what your father wanted, Billie? I’m offering you something here.”

  “So am I.”

  The voice came from off to the side. Billie turned to see Marian striding toward them, a strange look on her face—an expression that was somehow fierce and yet oddly content at the same time. Reese looked at her in annoyance.

  “Do you mind?”

  “I do mind,” Marian said calmly. “I mind everything about you. If I was a man I’d knock you on your ass.” She turned to Billie. “How’d you like to sell me ten percent of Masterson Thoroughbreds?”

  Billie took a minute. “What’s going on?”

  “Do you remember that twenty-dollar bill that Elvis didn’t sign?” Marian asked. “Well, after Cactus Jack lost the first time out, I told myself I needed to put up or shut up. So I bet that twenty dollars on the horse to win a week ago. That ticket paid over eleven hundred dollars. I took that eleven hundred and bet it on Cactus Jack today.”

  Reese was getting impatient. “That’s wonderful, grandma. You almost had a great story there. Too bad the horse didn’t win.”

  Marian took a measured beat. “I bet it to place.”

  Reese started to speak, then his eyes went to the tote board to look at the prices.

  “Don’t strain your brain, dipshit,” Marian told him. “It comes to just over fifty thousand dollars. And if you call me grandma again, I will knock you down.” She turned and offered the ticket to Billie. “Like I said, I want to buy a piece of your stable, Billie. What do you say?”

  Billie looked from Reese to Marian. “I say welcome aboard, partner.”

  “Good,” Marian said. “I’ll let you get back to your conversation with Mr. Ryker.”

  Billie tucked the ticket in her shirt pocket. “Oh, I think he and I are done.”

  Reese seemed to feel that way, too. He walked away as if dazed.

  “Goddamn, that felt good,” Marian said. “I must be getting mean in my old age.”

  That night Billie and Marian sat on the deck of the farmhouse, drinking Woodford Reserve. Luke had gone into town for steaks and more beer, and he was picking Tyrone up on his way. They had trailered Cactus Jack back to the farm after the race, as Luke didn’t want to race him again for a month. Before they left the track, they’d heard a rumor that Ghost Rider had pulled up lame after the race.

  “I think we should enter Cactus Jack in the Mercedes Mile,” Luke had said. “And then—who knows? Maybe the Breeders.”

  “Easy now,” Billie had told him. But she’d been thinking the same thing.

  Now she and Marian sipped the whiskey and watched as Jodie led the gray colt across the pasture to the pond to drink, the horse following the little girl much the same way the mongrel mastiff did.

  “What’s going to happen there?” Marian asked.

  “With the girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know,” Billie admitted.

  “Doesn’t sound as if her mother is up to the task, in jail or out,” Marian said. “I know some people in the foster child field. That is, if you’re interested.”

  Billie looked out over the farm as dusk crept through the pines and across the fields. Marian watched her for a long while, seeing her father in the woman as she hadn’t before.

  “Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you have it,” Marian said. “And sometimes you don’t know what you want until you don’t have it.”

  Billie sipped the smooth whiskey. “You talking about the farm, the horse, or the kid?”

  “Looks to me like it’s a package deal,” Marian said. “How does that suit you?”

  Billie smiled. “Right down to my boots.”

  Acknowledgments

  AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE, A number of talented people contributed a helping hand in getting this book in print.

  First off, many thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and particularly to talented editor/horsewoman Lilly Golden for her unwavering belief in this book.

  My appreciation to Diane Turbide, Shelley MacBeth, and Lupe Velez for sage advice, unvarnished opinions, and loyal support.

  And a special shout out to Rick Smith—a middling amateur barber but a whiz when it comes to reverse mortgages and demand loans and all that stuff the writer knows absolutely nothing about.

  About the Author

  INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED NOVELIST AND SCREENWRITER BRAD Smith is the author of twelve novels, including The Return of Kid Cooper, winner of the 2019 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America; One-Eyed Jacks, short listed for the Dashiell Hammett Award, and All Hat, adapted to a feature film starring Keith Carradine, Luke Kirby and Rachael Leigh Cooke. Smith’s writing draws on his wellspring of experiences working across Canada, the U.S.A., and Africa at a variety of jobs—including railway signalman, carpenter, bartender, truck driver, ditch digger, school teacher, farmer, maintenance electrician and roofer. He now lives in a ninety-year-old farmhouse in southern Ontario.

  Also by Brad Smith

  The Return of Kid Cooper

  A Novel

  Paperback / $16.99 US/ $22.99 CAN (available now)

  ISBN 978-1-948924-53-5

  WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA 2019 SPUR AWARDS WINNER!

  “Smith has written tight, fast-paced novels his entire career…and reading one is like riding a thoroughbred.”

  —The Chronicle Herald

  The year is 1910. Nate Cooper is an old-school cowboy who spent thirty years in a Montana prison for a wrongful murder conviction. Upon his release, he hardly recognizes his world—horses are giving way to motorcars, his girlfriend has married his best friend, and his nemesis is running for governor. Some things haven’t changed. The Blackfoot are still being forced from their land. Nate’s moral compass is true and unwavering: he does all the wrong things for all the right reasons. With grit, determination, a quick trigger finger, and the help of the woman he used to love, Nate sets out to settle the score.