The Dark Horse

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 Barsad 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.

I exhaled and my head dropped again, but when I forced my face back up I could see something in the middle of the circle, like the center of a clock with both hands pointing toward midnight.

I knew it was a hell of a lot later than that.

I thought about the teepee circles that were part of the landscape in our portion of the country, but I couldn’t see any of the rocks that the Indians would have used to mark the periphery. And the circle was too big. Even the Crow and Cheyenne family-sized teepees wouldn’t be this large in circumference.

Crop circles maybe, but there were no crops.

The bay pulled up a little way from the edge, then pranced toward it and whinnied. I was just beginning to wonder if it was really a hole and that my tired eyes were playing tricks on me when another lightning strike hit no more that a hundred yards to our right. My horse had had enough, and he bolted to the left. I tried to hang on, but this time he pivoted, slipped, and fell.

I hit on my side like a load of firewood and felt the air push from my lungs with the impact and a sharp pain in my foot as the bay landed on my boot with an audible crunch. I lay there for a second to get my bearings, assess the damage, and generally feel embarrassed about falling off my horse. For a westerner, coming unmounted is as shameful as wearing your pants inside your boots, asking somebody how big their spread is, or pissing on the floor of the Alamo.

The only good thing about the fall and the excruciating pain in my foot was that it cleared my head enough to think about what I was going to do now that the bay was hightailing it north across the hardpan range and disappearing into the darkness. I watched the stirrups bouncing off the horse’s sides in a comical interpretation of a TV western and allowed my head to fall back on the crusted snow. “Damn.”

The hammer of the. 45 was digging into my back, and I started to roll over, when another streak of pain ran up from my right foot. My eyes watered with the hurt, and I wiped at them.

It was then that I saw something at the far edge of the circle. It was something dark and big, and it was rapidly moving my way. I thought it was the owl again, even though it was the wrong color and didn’t seem to be flying, and figured maybe he thought he’d found a culinary bonanza.

I tried to raise my head, but the pain in my cheekbone made it hard, so I just watched as the big creature stamped the ground and rushed forward to snake out its long neck and snap at my head with huge clacking teeth.

Pain be damned, I yanked back and looked up at a thousand pounds of unrivaled fury. It was a horse, but only in the sense that the headless horseman’s horse was a horse. I could hear the clanking of chains where the thing had come unfettered from hell, and I expected fire to blow from its nostrils at any moment.

Unable to move any farther, I lay there on my back and watched as the black beast reared on its hind legs and crashed its hooves to the ground only inches from my foot; it stamped at me over and over again.

I had found Wahoo Sue.

I discovered a reserve I didn’t know I had and dragged myself back on my elbows as the horse screamed at me and whinnied and snapped the air in an attempt to get free from the nylon halter around her head. She was close enough that I could see where it had rubbed her raw and where the dried blood had stained her dark face. The harness was connected to a heavy, rusted logging chain that was in turn connected to a rock in the middle of the circle, and the length of links had torn and chafed the chest, barrel, and rump of the tortured animal.

October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.

Mary Barsad’s hands had come up again, and she had tried to aim an imaginary rifle despite the restraints at her wrists.

“His voice kept telling me to do it, and when I looked at his body lying there on the bed it was as if I already had shot him. It was as if the blood was already there, that I’d already shot him, but the voice was telling me to do it again.”

I moved to my right, placed my hands on the foot rail of the hospital bed, and looked into her face. “You fired the rifle?”

Tears spilled from her lower lids and highlighted her high cheekbones. “Yes.”

“How many times?”

Her head went back as if she’d been struck and then stayed at that odd angle. “Three times.”

I don’t think the expression on my face changed, but the facts had. “Three times.”

“Yes.”

Wade Barsad had been shot six times.

She turned her head toward the light. “He said that he deserved it, said that he deserved to die.”

“Wade.”

“Yes.”

This time she didn’t move. “But the voice that told me to kill him-it was Wade’s.”

October 31, 2:30 A.M.

“She likes you.”

The voice came from the darkness to my left. I could see his outline as I lurched up on one elbow, but I was still having trouble focusing. “How can you tell?”

“ ’Cause she would have killed you if she didn’t. Okey?”

I stared into the darkness. He had come closer, and I could see his shape more clearly. I’d figured it out, but now that I heard the hard nasal voice like flat stones falling and the signature word, it was confirmed.

“How are you, Wade?”

He laughed. “I knew you’d find out; it was just a question of when.” The horse strained against the chain, but this time she directed her fierce aggression toward him. He walked closer but was careful to stay outside of the circle where Wahoo Sue had licked the snow and nibbled everything else in a desperate attempt to stay alive. “She doesn’t like me much, but then the feeling’s mutual.” He squatted down in the running shoes and was holding a roll of duct tape. “Just out of curiosity, when did you know it was me?”

My head slipped to one side, and I could just make out his face. From the photographs I’d seen, it was indeed Wade Barsad. I flexed my foot and caught my breath again as the pain clamped inside my boot-broken, no doubt about it. “Meadowlarks.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Despite the pain, the horse, and the appearance of Wade Barsad, I had to fight against a mounting exhaustion and mumbled. “Meadowlarks.”

He smiled and made a sucking sound with his teeth. “I’m still not following you.” He reached out and shook my shoulder. “Hang in there, Sheriff, I’ve been dying to have this conversation.”

“Different song.”

Wahoo Sue continued to stamp at him, but since he was the one who had staked her, he knew her range. “What?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and I think I was drooling. I tried to wiggle my foot again in an attempt to wake up, but the pain had subsided to a throbbing, and my eyes started to close. “The eastern meadowlark has a song that’s different from the western one.”

He stared at me. “So?”

I tried to concentrate, but my neck muscles had dissolved somehow. “On the phone… Supposed to be your brother back in Ohio, but I heard a western meadowlark.”

He sat back on his ankles. “You’re shitting me. On the cell phone?”

“Yep.”

He was laughing again and leaned back to sit beside me. “Okey, so you’re John J. Audubon.”

I lay back, thinking that it might be my only chance to keep my sidearm, and stared into the heavily clouded sky. “It was your brother, the dentist, in the house-burned up.”

He nodded. “I was getting pressure from my old business associates, and the FBI wanted all of the names and account numbers that I’d written down in exchange for further protection, so I decided to do away with Wade Barsad. I got my brother to fake the dental records for a cut of the insurance money, but I needed a body. Unfortunately for him, it turned out to be his.”

“You walked Mary through it, while she was on the pills-”

“You know, I was worried about the mob and worried about the FBI, but then you showed up and I don’t even know your name. After I saw you with Vanskike and the boy, I figured I’d better dope you up before taking you on, that’s why I didn’t just wait for you at the trailer.”

“Hershel.”

He nodded again. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to kill him, but he ran. And let me tell you, he was some kind of fast when he got going. I had to throw a bullet into him to stop him, and then I thought that I wouldn’t want him to suffer.” Barsad laughed and looked at the horse, whose chains clanked against her efforts to get to him. “So, I finished the job.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the 9 mm semiautomatic. “And now I have to shoot you and make it look like you shot him, and do something with the kid and try to find my missing kite, and I don’t have time for all this.”

His voice touched something off in Wahoo Sue, and she stamped at him again. I turned from the horse and could feel my eyes getting a little wobbly. “Sorry to inconvenience you.”

“Yeah.”

“The boy.”

He gestured with his chin. “He’s in the truck with an old friend of yours.”

“Dog?”

He laughed. “No, not your damned dog. I tagged him with the four-wheeler, so I thought he wouldn’t be any more trouble. Besides, he wasn’t worth a bullet so we drove off and left him.”

I’d allowed my arm to fall to my back and made an attempt to roll toward him as if I were interested in the conversation. “The canteen.”

“Yeah, I wrote the note. It was a calculated risk, ’cause I wasn’t sure if you’d seen the old guy’s handwriting.” He studied me some more. “How are you still awake? It must be your size.”

I could feel my Colt, but I had to get my jacket out of the way to reach it. “I am a little drowsy.”

“You should be; I put enough sleeping pills in that canteen to drop a buffalo.” He started to rise, and I froze my hand. “Anyway, there’s somebody that wants to meet you before you knock off for the night. Okey?” He looked back into the darkness to our left and shouted. “Hey, hurry up if you wanna talk to him.” He looked down at me. “He’s going to love seeing you again-”

Cliff Cly came out of the dark and stood there with Hershel’s Henry rifle in his hands. I was happy to see that he was in pretty rough shape. He ignored me and looked at Barsad. “Where the fuck did you get this?”

A quiet second passed. “I got it off the cowboy.”

Cly looked at the old repeater and then back to Barsad. “You kill him?”

Wade shook his head, and I wondered why he was lying. “No. I told you Cliff, I don’t kill people unless I have to.”

Cly walked over closer and looked down at me. I noticed his face was pretty messed up and he was wearing a neck brace. I could see the individual knuckle marks on his forehead, and the swelling and discoloration around his eye was far worse than mine. I felt a little better.

I looked up at him. “How’s your head?”

He glanced at me in a dismissive manner. “Fuck you.” He turned and shouted to Barsad. “What about this asshole here?”

Barsad’s voice sounded a little farther off, and he must’ve been going toward the truck. “He’s got enough product in him that he’ll overdose, but we’ll shoot him with Hershel’s gun and come up with a story later.” The rodeo cowboy leaned down, holding the. 44 Henry on his thighs with one hand, and started feeling around my jacket with the other. “Check him for a gun. Okey?”

Cly’s face was very near my own. “That’s what I’m doing.” His hand froze against mine as I clutched the Colt at the small of my back.

Barsad’s voice faded. “I’ll get the kid.”

Cly’s eyes and mine locked, and I could feel my muscles tense as I got ready to make one last, desperate move. He didn’t blink and leaned even closer. “Don’t hit me again, you big son-of-a-bitch; the last time you practically took my head off.” He winked and then glanced over his shoulder, looked back at me, and smiled. “Relax, Sheriff, I’ve got us covered, just don’t shoot me. Okey?” He was grinning now. “Hey, kimosabe, can you understand me? I’m on your side.” He studied me for a moment more, and then stood and shouted. “He’s clean.”

I wondered what the hell was going on as Cly stood up. There was a lot of noise, and I listened as at least two doors were slammed. Barsad’s voice carried from the left. “What the hell… where’s the kid?!”

“What’a ya mean?”

There was more noise, and it sounded as if something was slammed into the bed of the truck. “He’s not here, Cliff!”

I tugged at my jacket and pulled the. 45, clearing it from my body but continuing to keep it hidden.

Wade came into my sight, and my ant’s-eye view made them look like giants. “Did you tie him up and put him in the truck?”

“No, there wasn’t time. I just taped him and left him on the four-wheeler.”

“I didn’t see the four-wheeler when I was just back there. Where’d you shittin’ put it?”

He gestured. “It’s back at the…” Just then, I figured I wasn’t the only one who heard it start up. “Oh, fuck.”

Out a couple of hundred yards to the west, I could see the lights of the ATV as it turned and sped away on what I assumed was the road. Barsad took a few steps in that direction but then stopped and looked back at the two of us, then at just me. “Kill him, and I’ll get the kid.”

Cliff shook his head and fumbled with something in his pants pocket as he took a step toward Barsad. “I don’t think-”

Wade must have seen the move; he wasn’t a man to take chances, so he lifted the 9 mm and fired, the bullet hitting Cly squarely in the trunk of his body. He shuddered for a moment, then the big Henry repeater hit the ground and went off, the bullet going into the air, and he collapsed. As he did, I lifted my wavering arm and fired the. 45. I was wide and to the right but kept firing as Barsad made a rapid retreat in the direction of the truck.

I continued to throw rounds in Wade’s general direction, but he didn’t fall. I finished off the clip with a solid thunk as a round hit the truck. I watched as the cab lights came on in the Dodge, but the motor didn’t start. I guess he was fumbling for his keys.

I hit the button and watched as the empty magazine slipped from the Colt, and I slammed in the other one that I had put in my jacket pocket. It was like an out-of-body experience, as though somebody else’s arms raised and fired just as the big Dodge started.

I saw the passenger side window explode as I emptied the clip. Wade Barsad disappeared but only for a moment, and I was monumentally disappointed to hear the motor roar and the duellie spray dirt as its lights bobbed, and he sped away.

The horse was going berserk but was at the far side of the circle and out of sight. I watched as the chain, embedded in the rock, heaved and straightened in a direct line into the darkness. I fell back flat and lay there breathing and thinking-what the hell else could go wrong? I could feel my eyes closing and knew that if I didn’t get up soon, I wasn’t going to be getting up at all.

I looked at the spent semiautomatic in my lap, the slide locked in the open position. I ejected the clip and began refilling it from the loose rounds in my jacket pockets, the cartridge spring making a slight metallic sound as I reloaded.

With each breath I listed a little further, and I might have even fallen asleep if not for Cly, who spoke from the gloom, his words accompanied by a light giggle. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough shooting for one night?”

I’d thought for sure he was dead.

I rolled over on my stomach and began crawling toward him. He was clutching something over his chest. He was still giggling and spitting up a little blood with it as I leveraged an elbow-his face only a couple of inches away. “You should stop laughing; it can’t be good for you.”

He giggled some more. “How bad is it, Deputy Dawg?”

There was a fair amount of blood, but it was low and to the left-intestines, I hoped, not a lung. It was difficult to tell how bad, but he’d live, for a while, at least. I looked at his face. “Who the hell are you?”

He kept giggling and pulled his hand up. I noticed that he was holding his wallet, which he flipped open exposing a badge. His voice was singsong, and he sounded like he was an announcer on a bad fifties TV show. “Why I’m Cliff Cly of the FBI.”