The Dark Horse

6

October 28, 6:11 A.M.

I waited quietly in the back of the Campbell County sheriff’s cruiser, tried not to concentrate on the multitude of stains on the seat, and watched as the former and now retired Absaroka County sheriff and the current and very active Campbell County one explained to a deputy why it was he couldn’t arrest me. The deputy didn’t seem happy with the turn of events but, with less than a year on the job and facing close to a half-century of experience, he didn’t have much recourse.

Sandy laughed with Lucian, and they came over to the parked car where they both got in the front. They turned and looked at me through the wire mesh that divides the arrester from the arrestee, both grinning like possums.

My old one-legged boss shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ.”

I shrugged as best I could with the handcuffs on, nodded toward him, and looked at Sandy. “What, you decided you needed backup?”

He smiled and glanced at Lucian. “He said you were most likely lost, and we should go look for you.” Everybody liked Sandy, and if you didn’t, all he had to do was smile and you would. “He also said it was likely that people would be shooting at you.” I didn’t say anything, and he continued. “That deputy of mine wants to put you in jail some kind of bad.”

“I refused to give him any ID and didn’t offer a whole lot of information. I told him I’d just wait for you. I take it he doesn’t know who I am?” The young man was watching us from the walkway of The AR.

Lucian interrupted. “He thinks you’re Dillinger, but then he couldn’t find his pecker in a pickle jar.”

Sandy folded his arms over the back of the front seat. “So, what happened?”

I told them.

“Holy crap.” He sighed.

I leaned forward. “What’d Pat say?”

“The owner?” I nodded. “He says he was closing up the place and that he heard something in the back and went to check it out.”

“With the shotgun?”

The sheriff of Campbell County snorted. “He didn’t mention that part, till we asked him how the window got blown out and onto the road.”

I looked at him. “And?”

Lucian laughed. “He says somebody drove by, threw a few shots into the bar, and kept going. Says it happens periodically when he makes folks pay up their tab-said he always throws a few rounds back at ’em just to dissuade ’em of the activity.”

I readjusted my weight. “And the part about being unconscious when the deputy got there?”

“Says he slipped and hit his head.”

“In the mudroom. In the back?”

“Said that’s where he usually goes when folks are shootin’ up the front.”

I pushed my cuffed hands to the side. “Well, since he’s not saying anybody hit him, do you think he has any idea who did?”

Lucian chimed in again. “Hard to say, but since you displayed yourself in a rather dramatic fashion and announced to any and all, including the fella in the truck, that you were a sheriff, it might be time for you to get the hell outta Dodge-red, white, or blue.”

I looked at Lucian and thought about the woman in my jail as it grew silent in the cruiser. “Have you been to the jail?”

“Mine?”

“Mine.” Our eyes met, and I was always struck by the darkness in his pupils; maybe I needed to get him and Saizarbitoria together. “You meet her?”

His voice changed, growing softer. “Yes, I have.”

“Do you think she’s guilty?”

He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nostrils like a shotgun blast. “She’s burnin’ bridges in her head; I’m just not sure if he was one of ’em.” He studied me. “What’s that got to do with horseshit and hat sizes?”

“Everything.” He made a noise in his throat. “Somebody taught me that, a long time ago.”

It was quiet, and neither of them looked at me.

“Well.” The ex-sheriff of Absaroka County sniffed and thumbed his nose. “Never did any of this undercover crap-you’ve got a lot of people worried that you’re gonna fool around and get yourself killed out here.”

I thought that the old sheriff had been sent out to check on me, but I didn’t figure on him admitting it. I changed the subject to save him any further embarrassment. “What’s everybody else in the motel say?”

There was a pause as Sandy prepared to speak; Lucian and I both looked at him. “Not a whole heck of a lot.” He scratched his neck and placed one of his sun-leathered hands on the dash, the heavy, curved, Cuban bracelet on his wrist blinking in the morning sun. “There’s a little tattooed girl that says you beat up her boyfriend, but other than that it’s business as usual out here on the Powder River-ain’t nobody sayin’ nothin’.”

“Who called 911?”

“Anonymous, female, from the pay phone outside the post office/library up the hill.”

I thought about it and could only come up with one name. “You’ll run a check on the Dodge?”

“Yep.” The hand on the dash reached for the mic.

“One more thing?”

He and Lucian turned back to look at me. “Yeah?”

“Get these damned handcuffs off.”

October 21: seven days earlier, evening.

I’d followed Dog, who had made a habit of trotting to the holding cells.

Mary Barsad was running her hand across his back. She was sitting on the floor beside the bars and looked up when I came in. “Nice dog; where’d you get him?”

“From a friend.”

“Didn’t they want him anymore?”

I thought about what to say. “Um, no.” It was still early, and Vic was going to be back soon, so I pulled one of the folding chairs over and sat.

She looked back to study him. “What kind of dog is he?”

I shrugged. “When there’s bacon around, I’d swear he was part wolf.”

“St. Bernard and some German shepherd, I’d say.” She scratched under his neck. “Something else, but I’m not sure what.”

“You know a lot about animals.”

She breathed a soft laugh. “Yes, but evidently I’m a poor judge of human beings.”

I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Which brings to mind a question.”

The more-than-blue eyes came up. “Please don’t ask me why I got mixed up with Wade.”

We sat there looking at each other. “You know, my daughter was in a bad relationship back in Philadelphia, and I’ve developed a theory on that.” She continued to gaze at me. “I think our hearts are the most fearless organ we’ve got, considering how often they’ll make the same mistake, over and over again.”

She continued to study me. “You do know the heart is just a muscle, right?”

I smiled. “Then maybe we’re getting stronger from the exercise.”

Her eyes had broken contact with mine. “Or you just lose another piece.”

October 28, 10:10 A.M.

The first cup of coffee I could get was at the auction at Bill Nolan’s place. It was from a catering service out of Wright called the Chuck Wagon, and thankfully they didn’t know me. I took my two ham and egg sandwiches and my coffee back over to the rental car and fed Dog his breakfast through the window.

The majority of the items to be auctioned were in a large, tin-sided indoor arena with the heavy equipment parked in a row along a fence line. I wandered up and took a look. I wasn’t alone; there was a pretty good crowd of ranchers who had arrived early. It was late in the season for an auction, and the majority of the chores that these newer-looking implements would be used for were already done for the year. Prices would be low, and if you needed a swather, baler, or tractor for next year, now was your chance.

I exchanged a few nods but thankfully didn’t recognize anybody. I kept an eye partially peeled for a red Dodge duellie-so far, nothing.

I was always generally ill at ease at these types of things, feeling as though auctions were like picking over bones. I couldn’t help but remember the one at my parents’ place after they had passed. I’d gone through their things and hadn’t kept much, but when it came time for the auction I’d had a strong impulse to bid on everything like some museum curator attempting to keep the collection whole.

I still owned the place but hadn’t been back there much since.

“See something you like?”

I turned and found Juana and Benjamin watching me as I mindlessly fingered a Massey Ferguson model 775 swather-at least, that was what was decaled on its peeling side. “No, this looks too much like work.”

“Didn’t you say you were born on a ranch?”

I looked at her. “Not to you.”

She smiled and watched me as Benjamin studied the equipment. “Did you sleep okay?”

“No, but the toilet worked magnificently and so did the shower.” I inclined my head toward the little outlaw. “How are you this morning, young man?”

She nudged him with her hip, but he ignored both of us and pushed his hands deeper into his jean pockets. “He’s mad, because I won’t buy him and Hershel a horse trailer.”

“Hershel’s here?”

She nodded toward the tin building. “Inside, inspecting the trailer.”

I nudged Benjamin’s ever-present hat. “You two outlaws run together?”

He nodded and began speaking quickly. “He says we’re going up to the Battlement someday; it’s a butte where the dinosaurs are buried and the teepee circles are and where the secret graves are for the buffalo soldiers and the Indians that-” He quieted suddenly, remembering that he was in midpout.

I watched him as he looked at his mother. “Hey, I was just getting interested.”

He ducked his head and stared at the ground. “We can’t get there without a trailer; it’s too far for the horses, and there’s no water.”

“I’ve heard of the place; its south and east of here, isn’t it? Out on Twentymile Butte?”

He was chewing on the stampede strings again but spit them out to answer. “Yeah.”

I nodded, and we all walked along the equipment and toward the indoor arena, Benjamin hanging back. After a few moments, Juana spoke again. “I understand there was some excitement down at the bar last night?”

“I don’t know; I slept through most of it.”

She continued to watch me. “And that would be why they arrested you?”

I didn’t say anything; she continued to stare at me. “They released me on my own recognizance.”

She raised an eyebrow, but let it go at that. “You look tired.” I nodded again as we walked toward the more recreational items that were to be auctioned later in the morning. “Are you coming to the fights tonight?”

I laughed, because I’d forgotten all about it. “I thought I saw someone on the list I know.”

“The Indian?” I turned and looked at her as more than a little mischief played in her baking-chocolate eyes. “He asked about you, or somebody who looked like you.” She pulled herself up to a towering five-foot-four and quoted with a flat Cheyenne accent, mimicking Henry’s down to the excluded contractions: “A large man with a large dog who probably looks like he would rather be somewhere else.”

“That’d be me. What else did he say?”

She smiled the perfectly formed grin; her lips were pink today. “He said that you used to be his sidekick but that you had gone bad.”

“Uh huh.”

“That you had stolen his dog.”

“Hmm.”

“And that he had tracked you from the Northwest Territories and was now going to have to kick your ass.”

I sipped my coffee and glanced at a ’60 short-bed half-ton that looked like a refrigerator on wheels and was remotely familiar. There was a man standing with the hood up, talking to a maybe thirty-year-old. I casually steered our path in that direction.

“Rebuilt, with only thirty-two thousand miles on her, floor shift and a heavy-duty suspension. I bought her off a rancher north of here.”

Juana leaned on the fender and looked up at the man who was speaking, as I stood a little away. “Hi, Bill.”

“Hey, chica.” He grinned right back at her. “How are you?”

The younger man, seeing an avenue for escape, wandered off.

Bill Nolan watched the man walk away. “Kids. If it ain’t got a satellite radio and cruise-control, they ain’t interested.”

She turned partially toward me. “Bill, do you know Eric Boss?”

He paused for the briefest of seconds and then stuck out his hand. “You’re the insurance guy that’s got everybody all worried.”

It didn’t fully appear that he remembered that we’d gone to a Powder River, one-room schoolhouse, classes separated by three years and a long time ago. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“Oh, any kind of authority makes ’em nervous around here.” He hadn’t changed enough that I wouldn’t have known him; still thin as a fence rail but with a few more years. A born car salesman, his father, Sidney, had owned the Powder River Red Crown Service Station along the river and to the north, and his mother had made peach ice cream that she sold for a nickel a cone.

I remembered that Bill had had an uncanny ability as a child: he could imitate coyotes. It was a talent he’d acquired when his father built two guest cabins near the service station on the banks of the river. The dudes were always disappointed whenever the animals weren’t making noise every night, so Sidney sent his son out to the riverbank to imitate them. He was good at it, and I wondered whether he could still do it.

The years had carved fissures and grooves in his face; he was about a head shorter than me and weighed about a third. His hair had gone a becoming silver, but the eyebrows were still jet-black and probably his most predominant feature. “You lookin’ for a truck, Mr. Boss?”

“No, I’m afraid not, but I would like to ask you a few questions, if I could?”

“Well, now I’m worried.”

I glanced at Juana and Benjamin, but she was determined to stay; she folded her arms and leaned against the old truck. “I was just wondering if you could tell me a few things about your relationship with the Barsads?”

He looked around from beneath the bushes of eyebrow, and the meaning was clear. “This sounds like it’s going to be a lengthy conversation, and I’m kinda busy today with the auction…”

“We could talk some other time?”

Juana moved Benjamin away as Nolan closed the hood on the truck. “That’d be handy. I’ve got some more stuff to get packed up over at the house, so I’ll be there later in the afternoon. I’ve got a couple of cans of iced tea in a cooler-refrigerator should be gone by then.”

“That’d be fine.”

He was already looking past me to where the auctioneer was setting up inside. “Around two then?”

“You bet.”

He nodded a perfunctory nod and walked past us; Juana hadn’t moved so far as to be out of earshot. “Still rounding up all the usual suspects?”

I gave her a long look with a smile at the end. “Why don’t you give that almost-associate degree of yours a rest.”

October 22: six days earlier, morning.

It had been the third number with a Youngstown area code that I’d tried. The first was a home phone where I’d left a message, and the second was an office answering service where I’d left another.

“I’d like to speak to Wendell Barnecke?”

“Speaking.” There was a mumbled pause, and I got the feeling I’d interrupted the dentist’s lunch.

“Mr. Barnecke, I’m sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming-”

“Is this about my brother?”

Vic and Ruby were in my office and were listening and watching me from across the desk; the dentist was on conference, which might’ve explained the bad connection, but the connection didn’t muffle the fact that Wade’s brother sounded officious.

“Well, yes it is.”

“Then I really don’t have anything more to say. I told the detectives that he…” There was a pause, and I listened to the noise that accompanied the man’s voice along with what sounded like gusts of wind. “Who did you say you were with?”

I reached down to ruffle Dog’s ears; touching the beast was a comfort. “Sheriff’s Department, Absaroka County, Wyoming.”

“Sheriff, look… you’re the sheriff of what county?”

“Absaroka. I’m assisting-”

“That’s not the county Wade lived in.”

“No, but-”

“Look, I don’t know anything about my brother’s business dealings, his life, anything, okey? So I wish you people would stop contacting me. I’ve told you everything I know. I haven’t even spoken to him since he was here in Youngstown, six years ago.”

“Then how is it you know what county he lived in, Mr. Barnecke?”

There was a longer pause, and I looked across the desk at the two pairs of female eyes watching me. “Sheriff, I’ve been doing nothing but answering questions about my brother with the FBI and the Ohio state police investigators-not to mention your own DCI people and detectives from the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department.”

I looked down at the report on my desk. “Wendell-do you mind if I call you Wendell?”

“Yes, I do.” An even longer pause, and I could hear the ten-note song of a meadowlark. It sounded nice, wherever Wendell Barnecke was having his lunch. I pictured him sitting on a bench beside some pond in a park where the deciduous trees had just begun to change to red and yellow; then I started hoping that a maple would fall on him. “No, you may not use my familiar name. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you-”

I cut him off before he could get much further with his tirade. “Did you know his wife?”

“Which one?”

“Mary, the one we have in custody?”

His voice changed tone. “No, I’m afraid I’ve never met her.”

“Well, the situation being what it is-”

“Sheriff, can I tell you something, a little hard-won knowledge?”

“Sure.”

He spoke slowly. “Just for the record, I don’t know who killed my brother, but whoever did probably had a pretty good reason for doing it.” I could hear the rustling of what must have been the wrappings from his lunch. “I grew up with him and, at the risk of incriminating myself, I’m glad he’s dead.”

“I see.”

“I never met his most recent wife, but I’m sure she’s a fine woman.” His tone changed again but stayed prim. “I’m sorry for her situation, and I’m even sorrier that she ever met my brother, but people get what they choose in life.” He sighed, and there was more paper rustling. It sounded like he was packing up his food; evidently, I had ruined his lunch. “Now, if there isn’t anything else?”

“Are you aware that there was a large insurance claim that could result in a substantial amount-”

He laughed, and it was not kind. “Are you joking, Sheriff? Whatever amount of money Wade might’ve made from all his wheelings and dealings out there, he most assuredly owed more than that to somebody, somewhere. I’m still paying off some of his debts here. He owed everybody, and I’m sure that when all the parties concerned are through picking the financial carcass clean, there will be nothing left but debt for anyone who had anything to do with my brother. That was the way he did business.”

“Mr. Barnecke, you mentioned your brother’s other wives?”

“Sheriff, do you mind if I ask what all these questions are about? My understanding was that there was pretty conclusive evidence that his most recent wife killed him and that she had confessed to the crime.”

I thought about Mary Barsad, who was only two rooms away. “Well, the evidence is inconclusive, but Mrs. Barsad did confess-”

He interrupted. “Then what is this all about?”

Saizarbitoria, holding a cardboard tray of food from the Busy Bee, appeared in the doorway. “There are some questions that-”

There was a loud sigh. “If there are questions, then why hasn’t the FBI asked them, or the state police investigators, or the Campbell County sheriff, for that matter?”

I glanced up at Vic, who shook her head. “Well-”

“Why am I talking to you?”

I stared at the red button. “I thought you might be interested, concurrent with the investigation-”

“Sheriff, I’ve got a news flash for you-I don’t give a shit. Okey? Wade’s dead and from all the information I’ve been getting, it sounds like his wife did it. Now, unless you’ve got some more information that I don’t know about?”

Vic, Ruby, Saizarbitoria, and Dog all looked at me. “No, I don’t.”

“Then I’d like for you to copy down this phone number.” I picked up a pen and dutifully jotted the number. “That’s my attorney, Sheldon Siegel, any more contact you wish to have with me can be done through him. Now, if there isn’t anything else, I’ve got to attend to an impacted molar and a root canal.”

After bidding a not-so-fond farewell, I was glad I wasn’t having any dental work done in Youngstown, Ohio, this afternoon. I looked up at my attentive staff and, as I’d expected, Vic was the first to speak.

“What a fucksicle.”

Ruby adjusted her reading glasses. “Doesn’t appear to be a great deal of love lost there, does it?”

Sancho looked at all of us. “I take it the brother was less than cooperative?”

I stood but left my hat on my desk. “You could say that.” I crossed to the doorway and took the prisoner’s lunch from him.

The Basquo handed the receipt to Ruby and looked at me. “You going to try today?”

Despite our brief conversation, Mary Barsad was on the fourth day of trying to starve herself. Dog followed me back to the holding cells and to the bag of food that would most likely go uneaten.

She was sitting in her usual position when I turned the corner, and I pulled the folding chair over to sit with her. She momentarily uncovered her face from her hands to glance at Dog but then once again disappeared behind the long, thin fingers.

“Lunch.” I opened the bag on my lap and looked inside. “Grilled cheese sandwich, fries with seasoned salt, a salad, and an apple.” Dog looked at me expectantly, having been the beneficiary of Mary Barsad’s resistance so far. “You know, I’m going to stop giving your food to Dog-he’s getting fat.”

She didn’t say anything.

I took a breath. “Mary, if this situation continues I’m not going to have any choice but to have you transferred back to the Campbell County jail and then to Lusk and the women’s prison, where you will be forcibly fed with a tube.”

She still said nothing, and her hands remained covering her face as I sat there holding her lunch. Maybe it was the phone conversation I’d just had, or the situation she was putting me in, but I was getting a little irritated. “You don’t talk, you don’t eat-what exactly do you do?”

To my surprise, her hands slipped down a little. Her voice was perfectly reasonable. “Haven’t you heard? I shoot people in the head.”

The unearthly azure eyes had focused on me for the first time in ninety-six hours; I thought about another tall blonde I’d been unable to save and swallowed a little of my past.

October 28, 10:33 A.M.

Hershel was looking at the horse trailer Benjamin wanted that neither of them could afford. “How you feeling?”

A somewhat unfocused picture of hung over, he turned and looked at me as he rolled himself a cigarette. “So, why did you let my twelve-year-old horse step on my head?”

“I think it was that twenty-year-old scotch that stepped on your head.” I looked at the powdered paint that was flaking off of the four-stall horse trailer. “What’s it worth?”

The old cowboy shrugged, and I think it hurt. He pulled the trademark Blue Tip match from his hat and lit the hand-rolled cigarette. I counted six matches in his hatband and figured Hershel was pacing his cigarettes these days. “ ’Bout a thousand, maybe.”

Two shotgun stalls with butt-bars and a rotten wooden floor, questionable tires, and broken plastic windows-I figured the auctioneers would be lucky if they got seven-fifty. Benjamin scuffed a boot in the sand of the arena. “I heard you were thinking of taking this little outlaw up to the Battlement?”

Hershel looked at the boy and then back to the faded cobalt paint of the vintage trailer. “Might as well be a million.” He smiled bitterly at Benjamin with his missing teeth. “I’m so stony broke that if they was sellin’ steamboats on the Powder River for a dime apiece, all I could do is run up and down the bank yellin’ ain’t that cheap.”

I glanced at Juana and she rolled her eyes, and the two of us watched the auctioneer attempt to get another twenty dollars out of a manure spreader before moving on to the object of our two cowboys’ affection. “Why do you suppose Nolan is selling his place?”

She leaned against the trailer and pushed her hair back behind her ears. “He was going to get rid of it because he didn’t want to deal with any more of Wade’s crap.”

I joined her and leaned against the trailer. Bill looked pretty satisfied; evidently the sale was going well. “Has anybody told him that’s not much of a problem anymore?”

“Yeah, but I think he got used to the idea of selling the place, so he’s just going ahead with it.”

The familiar auctioneer’s voice echoed in the confines of the building. “Now we have a prime example of a nineteen-and-sixty-eight, dubya-dubya brand, straight-load, bumper pull trailer. What do I hear, what do I hear! Gimme a thousand to start, a thousand to start! Here we go!”

We weren’t particularly going, because no one was bidding.

Larry Brannian was the auctioneer. He was from my county, and from where I stood I could read BRANNIAN AUC-TIONEERING SERVICES, DURANT, WYOMING, on the PA system. He was a comfortable old cowboy and the best auctioneer in the state, with a turquoise and coral bolo tie that bobbed up and down on the freshly starched opening of his white dress shirt when he spoke. He was a little embarrassed at having opened the bid too high. “Eight-fifty, do I hear eight-fifty, eight-fifty, eight-fifty, eight-fifty-”

The crowd remained unmoved.

“Seven-hunerd, seven-hunerd dollars for this fine piece of equipment with tires that…” He peered to get a better look at the bald and dry-rotted tires to our left. “Tires that hold aieeer!” There was a smattering of laughter from the crowd as his eyes caught mine, and he laughed. “Well, we must have some trouble around here somewheres.” I ducked my head and pulled my hat down just a little; I looked behind me as if Larry must’ve been talking about somebody else. The auctioneer was nothing if not quick on the uptake and rapidly changed the subject back to matters at hand. “Seven-hunerd?”

Another disaster averted, I watched the abject misery that passed between Benjamin and Hershel as the old cowpuncher started to raise his hand but then thought better of it. A spotter raised his arm and pointed toward an area we couldn’t see, which was blocked by the trailer itself. “Hup!”

“I got seven-hunerd, seven-hunerd, gimme seven-fifty?”

Mike Niall, who was leaning against the far wall, raised his head and nodded. Another spotter caught the gesture. “Hup!”

“Seven-fifty. Do I hear eight-hunerd?”

He looked back at the party we couldn’t see to the right, and the spotter rang out again. “Hup!”

“Eight-hunerd. Eight-hunerd. Do I hear eight-fifty?”

Mike Niall raised the brim of his sweat-stained straw Resistol and spat on the sand-covered floor.

“Hup!”

“I got eight-fifty.” Brannian looked toward the mystery bidder, and his spotter cried out again. “Hup!”

“Nine-hunerd, nine-hunerd! Now we’re talkin’! Rubber mats, padded walls, hay manger, and a tuck-under saddle rack!” The spotter swung back toward Niall, but you could see the rancher’s will was rightly weakening.

I watched Hershel and Benjamin, cowpokes separated by a good sixty years but joined in a brotherhood of horseback and by a thing we all shared, the want of a journey to a mystical place.

“Nine-hunerd once!”

There was a lesson my mother had instilled in me at an early age, which had been reinforced by my experience in Vietnam and by my twenty-four years as sheriff of Absaroka County. She said that I should protect and cherish the young, the old, and the infirm, because at some point I would be all of these things before my own journey ended.

“Nine-hunerd twice!”

So far, I was two for three.

I raised my hand above the crowd.

“Hup!”

I left it there as a tall, handsome Cheyenne man peeked around to see who he was bidding against now. The young woman and the two cowboys looked up at me in surprise. Henry Standing Bear glanced at our little group and shrugged. Hired on faith, one is obliged to be more than expected.