The Dark Horse

15

October 31, 3:55 A.M.

Two quick strikes, and we were at speed.

I’d been on fast horses or, what I thought were fast horses, but nothing like Wahoo Sue. I felt like my ears were going to touch behind my head.

We’d veered back west and had collided with the road like it was a wall, the big mare’s hooves hammertoeing into the hard surface of the mesa like twelve-pound sledges. I had never been on a horse whose pace was so ferocious, yet whose gait was like a twenty-dollar shave. I could feel the blood and energy that passed between us like an electric current, and it was almost as if the poison was being pulled from my body and cast to the dirt and dust flying behind us. I was enhanced and could feel the wind on my skin unlike I had for some time.

I had never succumbed to the idea of a horse as transportation and was always quick to point out that machines, when you turned them off, stopped eating.

But they didn’t have a heart.

As I’d slung my two-hundred-forty-odd pounds onto the mare’s back, I’d been worried about her weakened state, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. Feral and unfettered, Wahoo Sue was doing what she did best, what came natural to her-running within an inch of her life and mine.

I could see the road stretching to the horizon north like the tensioned string on a gigantic basalt banjo. I slipped my heels in and down, and I rode close, like some grotesque jockey, and dipped my head at her withers to catch my breath-she was that fast.

We galloped past a smattering of rocks that were scattered across the surface of the two-track where something had run into them; I only hoped that it was Barsad and not Benjamin. The road canted slightly to the left, and I assumed that in less than twenty minutes we would be heading into the final furlong with the horse trailer as the finish line.

I became aware of something breaking trail across the gnarled brush of the mesa to my right. I had a brief twinge of panic, thinking it might be Barsad in the truck, and thought about trying to raise the Henry rifle, but there wasn’t any way he’d be off the road. I thought it could be Benjamin, but there were no lights, and finally, in the slight sliver of moonlight, I could see it was another horse.

My horse with no name.

He was doing his best, and you could see the stirrups, reins, and even the canteen bouncing with a comic effect. He tried to close the apex of our trajectory, but she was just too fast. I was glad to see he was still alive and unhurt, but the last I saw of him, he had joined the road but was falling away. Wahoo Sue must’ve been aware of him also, because she shifted into an even higher gear, and I thought about the old cowboy and how happy he’d be if he could see her now. I settled in for the straight shot to the trailer.

The voices were back again, the old me and everyone else; as fast as Wahoo Sue was, she couldn’t escape my anxieties. Where would Benjamin go?. Where could he go to escape the truck? He’d have to stay off-road; it was the only advantage he’d have in avoiding the much faster vehicle, but how could he when there was only one way down?

A quick jarring as Sue stumbled for a single hoof strike, and I almost dropped the heavy rifle. I had to pay attention so that when we got to the main road, I’d be able to steer her to the water buckets at the trailer.

As near as my rambling mind could tell, we’d been at a full gallop for miles, so I tried to pull her back into a canter. At first she wouldn’t hear of it, lunging forward whenever I pulled on her mane and repositioned my feet. Wahoo Sue had two speeds-fast and damn-well faster.

I tried a second time and could feel her relax a little and finally loosen into a comfortable lope, but after a few more minutes I saw the four-wheeler in the middle of the road. I could only hope that the damn thing had run out of gas. I pulled the dark horse up as close as she’d go and looked down.

There were truck treads beside the ATV, but also a pair of miniature boot tracks leading off into the sagebrush. There were no other footprints, especially ones from running shoes, and it looked like Barstad hadn’t even bothered to get out of the truck when he had passed.

That cagey kid had gone to ground and had been smart enough to get away from the road. His Cheyenne half was showing.

Now, where would he go?

October 31, 4:15 A.M.

I could see the regular shape of the horse trailer. I knew there wouldn’t be any feed left, but I was hoping that the grulla and the packhorse hadn’t gulped all the water. As we made the turn onto the main access road leading to the cliffside trail down from the mesa, however, I could see that the other horses were gone.

I pulled Wahoo Sue up beside the line where I’d tied the two animals. I could see the fresh tracks where either Benjamin or Barsad must have retrieved them. I was betting on the kid, as the horse tracks scattered toward the road and continued back down from the mesa, but there were marks from the truck as well.

Damn.

First things had to come first or Sue might collapse under me, and I’d be ineffectively afoot. I directed the big mare over to the black rubber buckets that still hung on the side of the trailer. As I’d suspected, the ones that had held the grain were empty, but as I had hoped, the water containers were three-quarters full. I watched as she submerged half her nostrils and sucked in the water like a sump pump.

I patted her neck and then slipped off the side, took one half-step, and collapsed, dropping the rifle and slamming my head against the trailer only to slide down and lay there propped against one of the tires.

I’d forgotten about my broken foot.

Sue skittered away only a short distance to the next pail, and I listened with my hat over my face as she emptied the other bucket. After three deep breaths, I could feel the pain in my foot lessening, but I felt like I was sinking into the hard ground. In my mind’s eye, I could see the surface growing farther and farther away as I slipped through the hardpack of the mesa, passing through geologic time, each layer sporting one of those nifty little signs that WYDOT plants along the cut bank sections on the highway: Quaternary, present-day; Tertiary, 1.8 million years ago; Cretaceous, 65 million years ago; Jurassic, 144 million years ago.

Something moved my hat and water dripped in a practical deluge onto my chest and face. I raised a hand to readjust it and looked up at her. “Did you swallow any of it?”

She moved to my right a little, rustled a few oats that the other horses had dropped on the ground, and pulled up a few stalks of dry grass. She chewed and watched me.

I took another deep breath and could feel another wave of exhaustion. I could see myself rolling over and passing out. The boy. The dead man. The bleeding man. The jailed woman.

I crunched my abdominal muscles with a substantial effort and pulled up my good foot, digging the heel of my boot into the ground and pushing myself along the side of the trailer. I propelled myself up and over the wheel well, pushed back on the fender, and sat there.

I looked off to the south expecting to see the bay, but there was nothing there and he must’ve stopped to take a break. Lazy bastard; he didn’t deserve a name. Wahoo Sue continued to nibble at the ground. I wasn’t looking forward to hauling myself on her bare back again and remembered that Hershel had that McClellan saddle in the trailer stall. It was old, hard, and likely dry-rotted, but it had to be better than my ass.

I picked up the Henry and pushed away, hopping around the trailer to the back gate, which still hung open, attached with the rubber strap. I pulled the extra blanket out and looked at the torturous device. It was surely intended for someone half my size and even then looked like it would rend a man in two. George B. had seen the Hungarian model used in the Prussian service and made a few modifications; in 1859, the United States adopted the McClellan saddle. It had afflicted cavalry soldiers all the way to the Second World War.

Wahoo Sue had followed me, and I felt for the last horse treat in my shirt pocket. I pulled it out and said the magic words, “So-o-o girl, good girl.”

She nuzzled me; I gave her the treat and then draped the blanket onto her back. She didn’t move but just stood there, chewing. I reached in and lifted the light saddle with one hand, flipping the far stirrup up over the seat. There was a hand-plaited riata attached to the far side of the saddle that looked like it might’ve been from a more modern age, but not by much.

Wahoo Sue looked at the primitive saddle and then back to me.

“I know it looks like it came from a rummage sale, but it’s all we’ve got.” I leaned the Henry against the doorway, ran the single strap of the McClellan carefully underneath her belly, and said a silent prayer. I pulled the strap up and attached it at the disclike fender. Now that I was handling it, I felt that the leather was supple and soft and saw a patina of saddle soap. I thought again about the old cowboy and glanced south; of course he had taken care of it.

I felt another relapse of chemical fatigue descending from my head into my upper chest like a cold rain, and rested my head against the side of the leather seat. After a moment, I took a deep breath and hopped to the back gate of the trailer to see what we had in the way of bridles.

The only thing I saw was an ancient, plaited, rawhide hackamore, but at least it had reins and a headstall and might not rub her in the same spots as the stable halter had.

I looped the reins over her head, adjusted the fiador so that it rested on the ungalled portions of the horse’s skin, and picked up the rifle. There wasn’t any horn on the McClellan, but there was more of a rise than that on an English saddle, so I grabbed the fork and cantle and pulled myself up with one quick hop and a lot of scrambling.

She didn’t move.

I looked east and could see the solid platinum of the rising sun, which looked like the horizontal filament of a halogen lamp. The force of the flat light illuminated the underside of the clouds, and they looked like gray crinoline. The heavens were giving me a quick look up their skirt.

I looked south, where one man was dead and another was dying, then pulled the reins and wheeled the black toward the road off the mesa. With one quick “hyaa” we took off, and brother, at speed. I’d needed superhuman assistance and had gotten it from her, even if it was like driving a Ferrari with a shoelace.

We turned the corner and dropped off into the darkness of the mesa’s west side, where the sun hadn’t yet made an appearance and, as far as I could see, there was nothing on the horizon.

The scoria road was rough, but the larger chunks of red rock had been kicked off to the sides, and Sue was making full use of her speed and of gravity. In the far distance, I could see the dusk-to-dawn lights of Absalom and, with so much happening, I almost couldn’t believe it was still there. I knew Wahoo Sue’s thoughts were the same as mine, and we shifted into that rarefied speed that no other horse in the surrounding counties, and maybe no other horse in the country, could match, especially in a straight line at distance.

October 31, 6:30 A.M.

We made the Echeta Road without incident, and I still didn’t see any traffic, so I eased Sue into a comfortable canter and we loped our way north and west toward Absalom, the power poles on the side of the road contrasting darkly against the gray sky like six thousand crucifixes leading from Capua to Rome.

About halfway to town, I could see a truck sitting on the side of the road, but even with the gloom of early morning, I could see it wasn’t the Dodge. I rode up beside the battered ’63 and looked around for the Cheyenne Nation. The windows were up, but I could see my thermos on the seat, along with a sleeping bag, a canvas sack full of grocery items, and a small backpack.

I shook my head. Evidently, Henry, following his pinpoint intuition, had been on his way to the mesa; unfortunately, it appeared that Rezdawg had decided to take a rest on the way. This close to Absalom, Henry must have decided to hoof it back to town or had caught a ride with either man or beast. Knowing Barsad’s knack for self-preservation, I was sure he hadn’t picked up the big Indian, but Benjamin might have.

Wahoo Sue pawed the ground; she was in a hurry to get going, but my exhaustion was catching up to me. I shook my head and studied the raw dirt.

I could still see the hoof prints where the little grulla had stayed on the right track, and the packhorse and Hershel’s gelding looked to have followed. I could also see that the horses’ tracks were over the duellie’s, so Benjamin must have followed Barsad. That was a good sign.

October 31, 6:39 A.M.

I was sure that Wahoo Sue would have tired, but she must have been so happy to be free of her shackles that she continued on at a brisk clip as we topped a rise that looked across the triangle of land where the abandoned old town, deemed too-wicked-to-survive by the railroad, had existed.

There were a few old stone foundations and a broken-down and partially petrified wagon missing two wheels which had augered into the soft bottomland, and there, in the old cemetery that Hershel, Benjamin, and I had passed on our way out of town what seemed like a century ago, were two horses.

It was Hershel’s dun and the packhorse.

I slowed Sue and, even though the mare didn’t want to diverge from our path into town, she turned, and we approached the other horses at a trot. They were both munching on the grassy hillside but raised their heads to look at us as we rode up.

My eyes played over the surrounding area in hopes of seeing another horse with a boy astride or Henry Standing Bear, and also hoping that I wouldn’t see a red Dodge duellie, but there was nothing to indicate where anyone was or where they might’ve gone. There was only the faint glow of yellow dawn on the cardboard cutout hills with the clouds still pressing close from overhead. After being on the mesa, everything in the valley felt close and looked like a page out of a child’s pop-up book.

Sue wanted to get back to the main road, but I gigged her up the hill toward the cemetery. The old iron gate that stretched across the opening was still closed and, with the current atmosphere, the gothic letters that spelled ABSALOM probably should have had another line for ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

There were markers, mostly the small, set-in-the-ground type, but there were also a couple of larger mausoleums with elaborate stonework. A few sun-faded plastic floral arrangements were bowed by the wind and lay close to the ground-they looked like leftovers from the original Memorial Day, if they’d had plastic back then.

I walked the black beauty along the iron fence with the pointed stanchions and then looked at the two roads-the one that continued on to town and the one that shot due west toward the Barsad place. Nothing.

I’d just started to turn the mare when my eye caught some movement in the gully that ran underneath the large culvert that circumvented the road a couple of hundred yards away. I steadied Wahoo Sue and looked hard into the shadows, saw movement again, and a familiar figure.

The Cheyenne Nation.

I smiled and watched as Henry stood there long enough to make sure I saw him; then he turned and went back into the wide mouth of the corrugated steel opening. I checked the horizon, urged Sue into a quick canter, and then slowed her to a trot, staying on the walking path that brought me down to the drain.

Henry stood there with Dog, who was sitting on his foot with the nonchalance of a man waiting for a bus. “You have been out stealing horses?”

“Bringing them back from the dead.” I slowed Wahoo Sue to a walk. “Have you seen the boy?” He looked behind him at a diminutive figure on a small horse in the circular end of the culvert. “Benjamin?”

He approached, but his horse was limping. The boy raised his hat and looked at me. He was crying, and the tears made rivers in the red dust on his face. I nudged the big black and pulled up opposite him as he reached out with both arms. I swept him up and planted him facing me on my lap. “Are you all right, Mister Bandito Negro de los Badlands?” He nodded but didn’t say anything and buried his face in my shirt, the battered cowboy hat falling backward to hang from his neck by the stampede strings. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him in close as Henry reached up and patted his back. “It’s all right, Benjamin, everything’s going to be okay.”

He shivered and sobbed some more, but his face turned sideways and looked up at me. “The dead man, he chased me.”

“Yep, I know.” I took a breath and smiled. “When’s the last time you saw him?”

He blurted the words out in a bunch. “I saw his truck and tried to outrun him, but Concho hurt himself, so I brought him under here.”

“Smart thinking.” I looked down at Henry. “Have you seen the truck since then?”

He nodded. “He drove over the bridge-twice.”

“Which direction, the last time?”

He pointed east toward the road to the Barsad place. I figured about a half-mile in the other direction from town. It would be the safest thing to leave the boy here with Henry rather than risk Barsad catching us on the road, especially with Benjamin’s horse being lame and mine sure to tire.

Benjamin was staring at the antique rifle in my hands. “Is that Hershel’s gun?”

In the distance I could hear a train whistle as I nudged the boy’s head back with my chest and looked down at him. “I borrowed it.”

The little bandit knuckled his fingers into his eyes and wiped them with a sleeve.

I glanced at the narrow path on the other side of the culvert that clung to the banks of the Powder and could hear the BNSF approaching. I plucked Benjamin up and lowered him into Henry’s waiting hands. “Does this trail go all the way into town?”

The Cheyenne Nation shook his head. “No, it joins the road at the railroad crossing.”

“I was afraid of that. How far does it go?”

“A quarter-mile.”

A half-mile to a phone but, even with a train between us, my odds were getting better. I just had to keep from getting trapped between Barsad and the train.

Henry watched as I thought, and as usual, he was reading me verbatim. “We will stay here.”

Benjamin’s legs straddled the big Indian’s side as Henry continued to hold him, but the boy’s voice carried concern. “Stay here?”

He looked unsure as we listened to the train pass the crossroads and begin rocking through town. “Henry Standing Bear is Cheyenne. I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”

He looked seriously at Henry and finally nodded. “Okay.”

I gave him one last squeeze on the shoulder. “You’ve done really well, and we’re all really proud of you.” He continued studying me with the dark eyes, and just for a moment, I studied the likeness between the boy and the man who held him. “You’ve impressed me so much, you know what I’m going to do?” He didn’t say anything until I pulled the piece of metal from my shirt pocket that had been tucked away with the horse treats.

He looked at it, dull and heavy in the just morning light. “Is that a badge?”

I nodded, the sound of the train matching the pulse of my blood. “Raise your right hand.” He did as I requested. “Now repeat after me: I, Benjamin Balcarcel, promise to stay in this culvert with the Bear until the sheriff comes back and gets me.” He repeated it. “So help me God.” He repeated that part, too. I pinned the gold-plated star onto his shirt. “But if you leave the culvert, you go back to being a regular citizen and I’m going to be really upset.” He looked uncertain. “You don’t have to repeat that part.”

“Okay.”

“You’re deputized; just stay here.”

“Okay.”

Henry smiled and lowered Benjamin to the ground and watched as he put his hat back on, walked over and took Dog by the collar, and returned to his horse. Dog wagged, and the bandito saluted and looked down at my badge as the Bear thumped his chest with a fist and then pointed his index finger down-Cheyenne sign-talk for hope/heart.

I made the same gesture and walked Wahoo Sue past them and onto the narrow, dirt path into the diffused light of the morning where I could see the cars of the coal-laden BNSF flashing by. I glanced back over my shoulder and into the culvert and could see that the boy hadn’t moved from Henry’s side. I turned in the saddle, the mare tripped off into a quick trot, and in no time we were moving briskly.

The path followed the river pretty closely, and the reflection of the sunrise broke in the shallow and lazy water. We gradually climbed to the surface of the road above and the railroad tracks. Gradual was good because it would give me a chance to look back toward Wild Horse Road and the direction from which Wade Barsad would most likely be coming in his quest to find Benjamin.

Wahoo Sue wasn’t completely happy with the proximity of the hopper cars pounding by on the elevated tracks, the clanging bells, or the hooded, flashing red lights, and was even unhappier as we grew closer. The trail, thankfully, drew up a good forty feet from the tracks themselves, and I was just as happy to wait a sensible distance away on a slightly skittish horse anyway.

I turned and looked back east, but the road was empty. With the noise of the train and the claxon bells, there wasn’t much chance of my hearing him, even in the diesel, but I would be able to see Barsad from a long way off. If he did appear from that direction, I’d pretty much made up my mind to shoot right in order to lead him away from the boy, follow the tracks in the opposite direction of the train until I got to the end, then jump across and find a cross-country route into town. That’s what I was planning to do; what Wahoo Sue was planning might be something entirely different, but she’d been awfully well-behaved up to now.

I glanced past the protective barriers that sat lowered across the road, and then at the cars, trying to gauge how many remained, but with the curve in the tracks I simply couldn’t see. Some of the damn things were four miles long, but a substantial number of the coal hoppers had already passed, so I figured at most I was only a minute or two away from crossing.

I looked back over my shoulder again, but with the rising sun, it was getting hard to see through the diffused light from the east. I threw a hand over my brow but, as near as I could tell, the road remained empty.

I pivoted in the saddle again, and Wahoo Sue took it as a command and turned with me. I took advantage of the situation to give Wild Horse Road my undivided attention. The mare took a few steps, and then planted, to give the road as much study as I had.

Nothing.

I looked at her and leaned down to stroke the side of her neck. “So-o-o girl, good girl.” I glanced back, could see that the last hopper car was approaching, and wheeled the dark horse around. She misinterpreted again and thought I wanted to advance into the tail end of the passing train, so she took a few crow-hops sideways and slightly reared.

“So-o-o girl, easy girl. Don’t worry; we’re not going until the train passes.” I patted her neck with the knotted, black mane blowing over my fingers, and she quieted long enough for the final coal car to rock past, with the small electronic device that had taken the place of a caboose attached to the last coupler.

And there, idling on the other side of the track, was the red Dodge and the late, great Wade Barsad.