The Dark Horse

3

October 27, 10:30 P.M.

Her name was Black Diamond Wahoo Sue, and she was not your usual championship cutting horse; first off, she was a she and, secondly, she was dark as a starless night. A gorgeous and rare solid black in coat, mane, tail, and legs, the big gal had won every event in which she had competed and was the best in the cutting, reining, and reined cow-horse circles. The mark of a great mare is her ability to produce horses that are possibly even better than herself; Black Diamond Wahoo Sue had done so to the tune of more than twenty-five million dollars, which went a long way in explaining why she was underinsured at close to a cool five million.

Mary raised her, and she was the horse Mary had ridden at the National Cutting Horse Association championships, her pride and joy, and the thing that Wade Barsad had focused his considerable hatred upon before that fateful night when he’d burned alive not eight horses, but seven.

We walked our party around to the opposite side of the house and down a flat path that shone with mica in the moonlight. The beer supply had run dry; four for him and two for me, after which Hershel Vanskike produced a fire-damaged bottle of single malt Laphroaig, vintage 1968, from behind the fireplace. So far I’d declined, 1968 having not been the best of years for me.

The iron gate was soot-covered but still clung to the archway that framed the desolation of the burnt barn. It must’ve been something before the fire, but there wasn’t much left. The photos in the insurance binder showed a log barn handcrafted with natural timbers and small, mission-style lights inset with amber glass that had given the place a friendly bronze glow. I’m not sure if it was the photography or the story, but the barn was more inviting than the house, or used to be.

The heat must have been terrific, and it was easy to see how the flames had jumped from the barn to the cedar shingles of the house. I stared at the charred timbers and piles of rubble.

It looked like a mass grave.

“Did they leave them in there?”

He socked himself another from the bottle and swung it toward me, a little of the precious, tawny liquor sloshing from the opening at the neck. I held out a hand in abstinence. “No, thanks.”

“Don’t blame you, stuff’s horrible; needs a little Dr. Pepper.” The old cowboy nodded with a liquor-soaked solemn that he’d probably never shown for any human being. “Smelled like cooked horse for days; I can still smell it.” He weaved there for a moment. “I had my rifle ’cause I wasn’t sure what was going on, but you couldn’t even see to shoot the poor things.”

Dog sniffed at the burnt grass, looked at the wreckage, then at the drunken cowhand, and backed up and sat on my boot. “And Wahoo Sue?”

He licked the paper on another cigarette and twisted it together a little unsteadily as I held the bottle for him. “Damn, she was a runner.” He pulled another Blue Tip match from his hatband and lit the cigarette, cupping it in his hand again. “She won that forty-mile Durant-to-Absalom overland race, just run off and left the rest of ’em-first time a woman ever won it.”

He took a puff, and I could hear the soft pop of his inhale. He brought his head up and took the bottle back, his voice taking on an animation that it hadn’t contained before.

“She was a cutter, but that horse would race anything. I seen her race other horses, pronghorn antelope, even pickup trucks on the county road. She wasn’t the biggest, she wasn’t even the fastest, but she had something in her that wouldn’t let her get beat. You can see that in an animal.” He continued to look at me through the faint glow of the ember by his chin and the complex sugars racing through his veins. “And some people.”

“What happened?”

“ ’Bout a week before…” He looked back at what was left of the barn and swigged down a mouthful of single-malt with a squint. “Before this, Wade loaded that horse up into a trailer, laid a. 30–30 in the seat of his truck, and then drove off. He went out onto BLM land, south and east toward Twentymile Butte, toward the Battlement. He come back, but the horse didn’t.”

October 19: eight days earlier, night.

Mary Barsad’s eyes had been open, but I wasn’t sure that anyone was home.

I stepped around the partition wall and could see her perfectly framed in the illumination of the streetlight outside the window-she was standing at the bars, her slender fingers wrapped around the steel.

Her face had turned a little, but she spoke to the diffused light. “Somebody closed the gates.”

I glanced down at Dog and noticed he was looking up at me. “Mary?”

“Did you feed Sue like I told you?” Her voice had a detached, otherworldly quality to it.

“Mrs. Barsad?”

“We’ll have to wrap that tendon on her-it looks like she’s favoring it.” Dog woofed at her, and I gave him a nudge with my leg. She smiled but continued to gaze out of the cell and just to my left.

“Mary, are you all right?”

I watched as her lip trembled and a sob broke loose from her throat. “The horses… there’s something wrong with the horses.”

I didn’t know that much about sleepwalking but had heard that it wasn’t wise to awaken someone in that condition, so I decided to play along. “The horses are fine, I just checked on them.” Dog looked up at me again, and I shrugged.

She turned and was looking me in the face now. “They’re hurt.”

I placed a hand on the bars. “No, I just checked and they-”

She came closer to me and trailed her hands across the surface of the bars as though she were playing a silent harp. “There’s a fire.”

“No, there’s no fire.”

“I smell it… Can’t you smell it?”

Her hand shot out and gripped my sleeve, and Dog mumbled a bark again. “Mrs. Barsad, there’s no fire.” She took a deep breath, and the air caught about halfway. “I just checked, and the horses are all right.” She continued to pick at my sleeve, her eyes imploring. “I think Sue might have aggravated that tendon again, so I wrapped it like you said.”

Her eyes stayed steady with mine and, with three consecutive blinks, the muscles around her mouth relaxed. She finally smiled and let out a cautious laugh. “She’s okay then?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She let go of my sleeve and stood there. “That’s good. She’s tough.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She didn’t move, and I looked into the shine of her eyes. “Maybe you should get some sleep?”

She nodded, turned, and crossed back to the bunk. “You’ll let me know how she is?”

“Yes, of course.”

She sat, tucked her legs back under the county-issued blanket, and turned away from me toward the concrete-block wall. “Thank you, Hershel.”

There was a disassociated quality to the entire conversation, and I stood there thinking about what had been said. I finally nodded, patted Dog on the head, and turned to go back to my office. Vic stood in the doorway with two cups of coffee. “Who the fuck is Hershel?”

I shushed her, and we took our coffee into the reception area near Ruby’s dispatch desk. I took a sip from my chipped Denver Broncos mug and sat on the bench. “She sleepwalks.”

“No shit.”

Vic sat next to me, Dog curled up in front of us, slowly rolling over onto his back. “Do you know anything about that stuff?”

“A little. My brother used to do it.” She sipped her coffee.

“Which one?”

“Michael. When he was a kid he used to get up and walk around the house with this dopey expression on his face. He grew out of it, sorta.” She lowered her mug and looked at me. “My mother says my uncle Alphonse says my father used to do it; it’s supposedly genetic.”

I leaned back and listened to the thin, wooden stays of the bench squeal. “Is it dangerous to wake them up?” I thought about the episode I’d just witnessed.

Vic shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think we could ever get Michael to wake up.” She watched me. “I’m still not sure we have.” I didn’t laugh at the joke, and she continued to study the concern that rested on my face. “What’d she talk about?”

“Horses.”

She petted Dog’s belly with the toe of her boot. “That would make sense. There are environmental factors that can bring sleepwalking on-insomnia, tension, post-traumatic stress disorder, or dissociative states-”

“It all goes back to those horses that got burned alive.”

“That’d be pretty traumatic.” She nodded and took another sip. “For the sake of more than conversation, I’ll ask again, who the fuck is Hershel?”

I chewed on the inside of my lip; it was a habit I would conquer someday. “Sandy mentioned that the man who worked for the Barsads was named Hershel-Hershel Vanskike, to be exact.”

October 27, 11:07 P.M.

Hershel Vanskike took two reasonably steady steps and then planted face-first into the dried grass off the pathway.

Dog turned and glanced up at me, unsure of the situation. I looked at the old puncher lying there, unmoving, and at the broken bottle on the flagstone. “Well, I think he’s had enough.”

Hershel had said he would just ride his horse home, but it was evident that he couldn’t sit a horse let alone ride one. I saw that the aged gelding was tied off to a fence post as I carried the unconscious cowboy to my car. I stood him up against the side of the Lincoln and held him there while I opened the passenger door.

He started mumbling, but I ignored him, stuffed him into the seat, wrapped the seat belt around him, and clicked it in place. I tossed the insurance folder into the back with Dog and then shut the door and looked at the horse. I took a length of yellow nylon rope that the Campbell County sheriff’s office had used to block off the drive and approached the bay. He crow-hopped, laid his ears back, and looked at me.

I stood there with the rope in my hands and tried to figure out what I was going to do when he lowered his head and stretched it out toward me. I didn’t move and watched him as the big, prehensile lips approached my face. I had a brief moment of panic, thinking that he might bite, when he took in a great breath and sniffed at me. I thought he was just smelling me, but I noticed that his breathing was matching my own and that he was breathing my breath. He took a step closer as I threaded the rope through the bridle and looked him in the eye. “You are one weird horse.”

After that, he seemed eager to leave, and I couldn’t blame him, considering the recent incidents.

Dog sat in the back and watched as I drove slowly, keeping the car under five miles an hour, as the bay kept pace behind us with the nylon rope held in my hand, dangling by the door from the open window.

It took the better part of a half-hour to get to the Barton Road corrals, and once we got there, there wasn’t much. An old sheep wagon was parked beside them, and the rounded top of the wagon gave off a silver sheen in the moonlight, bisected by the shadow of a pole where an electric cord was strung from an attached four-way plug. A soft yellow glow overhung the rear door where a few leftover miller moths battered themselves against the bulb inside the dish-shaped, porcelain fixture.

I parked the car and left Hershel sound asleep in the passenger seat.

I gathered the rope into a loop as I walked back to the bay and led him into the corral. After the same ritual of breathing my breath, I untied him. He stood there, waiting to be unsaddled, made a passing sniff, and then allowed me to pull the leather strap on the front cinch and the rear. I hooked the opposite stirrup on the horn and lifted the saddle onto the nearest pole. I took off the blanket and bridle and watched as the bay walked to the center of the fifty-foot ring and kneeled down to roll over, wiggling on his back with all four legs in the air. Half a roll, as the old cowboys say, and you’ve got a thousand-dollar horse; all the way over and you’ve got a fifteen-hundred-dollar one. Hershel’s went over one way and then all the way back-a two-thousand-dollar horse.

It looked like it felt good.

I walked back over to the saddle and pulled the antique repeater from the scabbard. It was indeed the real McCoy. I examined the rough-worn weapon, the brass receiver glowing dully in the starlight as did a small plaque, screwed into the stock, which read CORPORAL ISAIAH MAYS, 10TH CAVALRY, CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR, JUNE 18, 1892. In smaller print were the words GALLANTRY IN THE FIGHT BETWEEN PAYMASTER ROBERT EDWARDS’S ESCORTS AND ROBBERS.

I studied the scratches, chips, and dents-it hadn’t been treated like a museum piece, but it was one. I carried the historic rifle with me to the sheep wagon.

I’m smart about hauling people because I’ve done enough of it. I opened the door of the wagon so that I could carry Hershel to his bed unimpeded, propped the Yellow Boy in the corner, and started to go back outside to the vehicle to get the old cowboy. I stopped when I saw the far wall.

In the haloed light from the bulb behind my head, I could see pictures taped, pictures of Mary Barsad, hundreds of them. I leaned in and took a closer look. They were all from magazines, some dating as far back as the seventies: photographs of the woman when she’d ridden a white stallion during football games, some of her on cutting horses, and a few from when she must have been a print model. I studied the glossy surfaces and the stunning young woman. She had a broad smile and high cheekbones that were emphasized by her thinness, high-sky blue eyes, and long blond hair. She was a beauty, but I had to admit I preferred the edition who was in my jail. She was older and stiffer, but age had seasoned her and her grief had humanized her.

Mary had even starred in a Rainier beer ad. She was seated on a horse and trailed a six-pack tied off with a latigo strap. She had turned and looked at the camera and was all hair, teeth, and sex. Personal tastes notwithstanding, it was enough to stop your heart.

The wall was bordered with more of the little astrology scrolls that I’d used to start the fire at what was left of the Barsad ranch. I glanced around and clicked on a ceramic space heater. It was a desperate and lonely looking place, slightly smaller than the holding cells back at my jail, and the photos only made it worse.

He was still out cold. I carried him in, accidentally knocking his flat-brimmed hat off in the doorway, and laid him on the bunk. I pulled off his boots, shoved his stocking feet under a wool blanket, and pulled the scratchy fabric up to his chin. He sighed deeply as I retrieved his sweat-stained hat and carefully placed it over the pale forehead above the sun-tanned face and closed eyes.

I turned the heater on to medium and switched off the light, closed the door, and walked back to the car. Dog was driving. I had rolled all the windows down on the long trip over, and his head rested on the lip of the windowsill. I petted him and listened to his tail thwack the leather seat. “I’m tired; you tired?”

The tail thumped harder, and I looked at the sky and the condensation from my breath. It was going to get cold, and I was glad I’d turned the heater on for the old cowpuncher.

I was still watching the horizon when the bay in the corral snorted, and I followed his eye back, away from the river. We were both looking south and east, toward Twentymile Butte. It was big country in the thunder basin, a place where a person could get away with a lot and had. Like a giant, high-altitude frying pan in summer, it heated up during the day to well over a hundred degrees, but then, in accord with the extremes of its nature, plummeted past freezing at night. If you were going to kill, it seemed like the place for it.

I could hear the noise of a large vehicle coming up the road behind me. I turned and waited as it crested the hill and slowed to about twenty. The brights clicked on and, with the curve of the road, the headlights were pointed straight at me.

It was a new truck, big and red, a one-ton duellie with an extended cab. It bristled with oversized wheels and tires, fender flares, and a grill guard. It looked for a moment as if the truck were going to stop, but the big Dodge accelerated slightly at the curve, the Cummins diesel clattering along on the gravel road toward the Powder River, and I looked at the reflection of myself in the tinted window as the truck disappeared over the next hill, the next, and the one after that.

It didn’t have any plates.

I tossed the rope onto the passenger-side floor and made Dog move over. As we drove back into Absalom, I mused on the thin line between smitten and stalking. It was obvious that Hershel had some kind of crush on his former employer and I figured it was innocent, but it wouldn’t hurt to have Ruby run a check on the old fellow.

The outpost of a town along the Powder River was still awake when I parked the rental alongside the railroad tracks. I was tired, but I had work to do and it was possible that a portion of the work might be in The AR.

I reached in the open window to get the insurance binder and popped it into the trunk to keep company with my large duffel and a small hard case. I rolled the windows almost up, leaving an opening for Dog, and massaged my temples in anticipation of the headache that was beginning to hit me like a short-handled shovel. I’d have to make an appointment with Doc Bloomfield about these headaches one of these days.

I locked the car, set the alarm so that it wouldn’t go off with movement inside, took a deep breath, and told Dog not to play with the radio; it was our joke-he knew he could play with the radio if he wanted.

It was a mixed lot in The AR, and I had to admit I was a little disappointed to see the middle-aged lawmaker in the Sheridan Seed Company hat behind the bar rather than the young woman. He ignored me as I took the stool nearest the door and propped my elbows on the particleboard. Mercifully, the jukebox was turned down low, and the television was tuned to the weather and on mute.

There were a couple of old ranchers sitting in the gloom at one of the tables, two younger fellows playing eight-ball near the boxing ring, and a large, surly-looking individual in a two-day beard, sunglasses, and a stylish black straw hat at the other end of the bar. He was talking to an elaborately tattooed young woman who held his arm and pressed her hip against his. I smiled and nodded toward them, and they smirked at me.

“What’a ya want?”

I turned, looked at the bartender, and my headache worsened. “The simple, gracious companionship of my fellow man?” He didn’t say anything and continued to stare at me. “Rainier.”

He fished a can out of the cooler and set it on the counter. It was common to have can-only bars in the rougher areas of Wyoming-nobody ever got hurt throwing a can, and nobody in this part of the world ever threw a full one. “Buck-seventy-five.”

I pulled two ones from my jacket pocket and flicked them onto the bar. “Keep the change.” He glanced at me without altering the look on his face and then took the bills and walked away. I’d meant it as an insult, but I wasn’t sure he’d taken it that way. “What happened to the girl who was here this afternoon?”

He punched the numbers on the cash register, and the drawer came open. He shut the drawer and stuffed the money in his shirt pocket. “She don’t work here no more.”

“She quit?” He didn’t answer but continued back to the area I assumed was the kitchen and disappeared.

I sighed and kneaded the back of my neck. There was a piece of paper taped to the bar’s surface announcing the Friday Night Fights, Powder-River-Pound-Down-Tough-Man Contest that had a list of about a half-dozen names.

Jesus wept.

The can was cool, and I held it to my left temple in an attempt to stall the headache that continued to surge there. I wondered if I was doing any good with all of this covert stuff. Then I started wondering about the dubious judgment and apparent difficulties of going undercover in a town of forty people.

“You lost?”

I turned and looked at the surly-looking fellow with the woman attached to his arm and hip, and they both smirked again. I lowered the can. “Nope.”

“I wouldn’t drink that horse-piss on a bet.”

I popped the tab on the can and raised it in salute. “Expense account-don’t want to cost the company too much.”

He lowered his sunglasses and stared at me from under the brim of his stylish hat. With half-eyes evident, he looked like one of those drugstore cowboys who sing shitty songs and sell pickup trucks. “Those insurance companies make enough money, why don’t you buy all of us a drink?”

I sipped my beer. “I’m only here for one.”

He glanced at the bottle blonde. “Seems like I’ve paid enough money in premiums for one lousy drink.”

It was quiet in the bar except for some of the aforementioned modern country music that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up and moved to Branson. I put the can back on the stained surface of the cheap bar and looked at the names listed on the sign-up sheet for tomorrow night’s fights-the first name was of interest. “Like I said, I’m only here for one.”

I heard the stool’s legs rub against the floor as he pushed out and then walked toward me. I waited as he pulled the next seat over and sat facing me. “I can’t believe I have to beg a man to buy me a beer.” He turned and looked back at his girl-friend as she continued to smile with only half her face. “Shit, it’s common decency and western hospitality to buy a round.”

I continued to study the bar and, absently, the sheet of paper. My head was killing me now, and this character wasn’t making it any better. “Well, then, why don’t you?”

He was silent for a second and then continued. “I did… earlier.”

“Well, I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Leave him alone, Cliff.”

I recognized the voice and turned my head just a little to see the green-eyed rancher that I’d met at the bridge earlier in the afternoon.

“Oh, he looks like a big boy. I bet he can take care of himself.”

Mike Niall countered as I looked down and closed my eyes in an attempt to loosen the grip of the pain in my head. “Yep, I bet he can. As a matter of fact, I bet he could stick his boot so far up your ass, your breath’ll smell like Kiwi shoe polish, but you work for me now and if you think I’m going to buck bales by myself tomorrow morning, you’ve got another think comin’.”

I could feel the drunken cowboy’s breath on the side of my face. “Are you a fighter, mister?”

The blonde still looked straight ahead but spoke up. “Kick his ass, Cliff.”

I finished off my beer in one swig and placed the empty can back on the bar. There wasn’t anything here for me, my head hurt, I was tired, and it was possible that I’d lose my patience, so I figured the best thing for it was to go get Dog and duffel and head for my bed, which was only four doors down.

I tried to remember if I had any aspirin in my suitcase.

I started to rise and turn, but he placed a powerful and young hand on my shoulder. I continued up as he stood, and we were very close. I was sober and he wasn’t, and that was probably something he was used to, but I was bigger than he was, and that he wasn’t.

You always register the hands. His were occupied, one on my shoulder and the other hitched in his pocket. And register the eyes. One was focused on my face, and the other a little right.

The mechanics of twenty-four years on the job fall into place in these situations, and you don’t have to think about taking the hand on your shoulder by the base and twisting it in a reverse wrist lock that plants his face suddenly and securely on the surface of the bar, about the second hand that pins his neck, and the boot that kicks his feet out and spreads them so that he has no leverage to resist.

Drunks can be amazingly intuitive, however, and as I stood there thinking, I was sure he could see the entire scenario playing out in my tired face. His eyes widened a little and then stayed set on mine, his hand still on my shoulder. The bottle blonde had turned and was looking at both of us and it dawned on him that he couldn’t back down, not now. “I’m a fighter.”

The rancher spoke again. “Cliff?”

I didn’t say anything, so he repeated it. “I’m a fighter-” He didn’t sound so sure about it this time and pulled his hand off my shoulder. He stabbed a finger at the piece of paper Scotch-taped on the bar. “That’s me, right there, Cliff Cly. Number one on the list, and you know why that is?”

I still didn’t say anything.

“ ’Cause I’m the toughest bastard on the Powder River.” The rancher behind me snickered, and the self-proclaimed toughest man on the Powder River with the weakest lineage shifted over to get a look at him. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

It was silent for a second. “I’m gettin’ a head start on laughing before you get licked. You’re drunk, Cliff. Sit down.”

“Screw you, old man.”

I heard the chair move and could just make out the shot glass Mike Niall had out on the surface of the bar to my right. “Barkeep!” I could see him approaching from the kitchen as the older rancher continued. “Cliff, if I was you I’d save myself for tomorrow night, ’cause I think you got your work cut out for you.”

The young man breathed a response. “I can kick the shit out of every man on that list.” His eyes shifted back to mine. “You wanna put your name on that list, mister?”

“Is there a problem?” The bartender was just at the other side of the particleboard now, and I could see his hands resting on the shelf that held the baseball bat. I was relieved it wasn’t the next shelf down that held the Winchester pump.

Niall was the first to speak. “Gimme another shot, Pat.” The bartender looked at the two of us for a moment more and then reached behind him for a bottle of Wild Turkey. “There’s a couple of those boys you might have a little trouble with.”

“Like who?”

Pat poured, and Niall sipped his shot and returned it to the bar. “Well, that big buck that came in here this afternoon and gave everybody the hard eye for one.” His eyes drifted toward me. “Big Indian fella came in, didn’t say a word to nobody-just put his name on the list and turned around and walked out.”

I smiled, and Cliff Cly misinterpreted. “You think that’s funny, mister?”

I looked down at the list and continued smiling as my headache lessened just a little. It figured that the other toughest bastard on the Powder River with a lineage that stretched back into the history of this country before there was a country would find a way to provide backup even when it hadn’t been requested.

“I asked you a question.”

I looked at the cowboy for a moment more and then stepped past him and toward the door. I left behind the piece of paper on the bar that announced the Friday Night Fights, Powder-River-Pound-Down-Tough-Man Contest, where the last name on the list was Henry Standing Bear.