The Last Honest Horse Thief

by Michael Koryta

  “They’re great,” he said, putting as much enthusiasm into his voice as possible. It wasn’t hard, because they were great. Nicer clothes than he’d ever had before to start school, and more of them.

  “I think the sizes are all right, but try them on to make sure,” she said.

  He tried them on. They all fit. They were clean and comfortable and modern looking, the clothes of a kid from a good house, or at least one with a washing machine and an ironing board. He’d blend in better, certainly. Truthfully, he wanted to pause longer in front of the mirror when he was wearing one of the new shirts, a blue button down that Beth said matched his eyes, and he thought of Ruby, getting ready for school in Cody. She wouldn’t be in Powell, but there might be a girl like her.

  He thanked Beth repeatedly, saw the quiet happiness in her face, and then he put the clothes away neatly and carefully in the bureau in his bedroom, taking more care folding them than he usually did. On his way downstairs, she called him into the kitchen. She’d picked up a quart of ice cream in town, and had a bowl waiting on him. He joined them at the little table and ate the ice cream and laughed at her story of driving behind a truck that had an old sofa in the bed, and a dog stretched out on the sofa.

  “Only in Wyoming,” she said, and shook her head and sighed. Markus finished his ice cream and washed the bowl and headed for the garage again, not realizing until he’d stepped outside and saw the rising moon that he’d missed another sunset. The western horizon line held only a sliver of gray light, and the mountains were already hidden by darkness.

  In the barn, beneath the warm glow of the shop light, he ran the generator tests with his heart tight as a fist in his chest. All along he’d told himself that it was fixable, because he’d believed the rancher’s promise that the problem was electrical. But if a part in such an old engine had failed then there would be no fixing it. Not easily, anyhow. Not before school.

  But how bad would that be? It’s a nice school, they say, and what if there’s a girl like Ruby, or at least like Sarah? Maybe a friend like Matt, back in Kalispell. Or Nate in Bozeman. So you wait a few weeks, that’s all.

  The first recommended test was to inspect the armature parts for shorts. The instructions: “Check armature for shorts by placing on growler and with hack saw blade over armature core, rotate armature. If saw blade vibrates, armature or commutator is shorted. Recheck after cleaning between the commutator bars and if saw blade still vibrates, armature is shorted and must be replaced.

  Markus wondered how many modern repair manuals instructed you to test an engine component with a hacksaw blade. Plenty of people wouldn’t even have one. The rancher did, though. Three hacksaws, with replacement blades for each. Markus took one of the blades down, slipped off the cover so the metal was bare, and carried it back to the armature, which was already resting on the growler, which was plugged in. He held the blade close, and felt the vibration in his fingertips before he saw the motion.

  A short.

  Two options left. Either the short was caused by dirt, and could be fixed with a careful cleaning, or the armature was toast and had to be replaced. However long that took.

  You’ll be in school for a while, that’s for sure. And maybe those parts from a car like this are real hard to find, or real expensive. Then you’ll be stuck.

  The voice in his head struggled to put the right amount of negativity into that idea. Instead, it was almost hopeful, and he felt ashamed, and tried to refocus on words Larry had once said, at that creek below Medicine Wheel, right before it had all gone bad.

  You gotta have a plan, and you gotta take care of the people you ride with. And your family.

  He used an old toothbrush and some fine-grain sandpaper to clean the corrosion. He was sure it wouldn’t work. There was some build-up there, yes, but not enough to bring the whole ancient engine to a stop. He was wasting time and effort cleaning the old thing, only to put the hacksaw blade back to it and feel the same vibration, the shivering metal in his fingertips a physical promise that he’d still be on this ranch when the school bus arrived.

  When he had the corrosion cleaned away, he retrieved the hacksaw blade and lowered it to the metal core, waiting for the faint tremble.

  If saw blade still vibrates, armature is shorted and must be replaced.

  There was nothing. He pulled the blade back, studied it as if there was something wrong with it, and then lowered it again.

  Nothing.

  He set the blade down, stunned. That was all? Just dirt? The car wouldn’t even attempt to start just because a little bit of grit built up on a small piece of a large engine? It seemed impossible.

  Might still be impossible. He wouldn’t know until he had the armature installed again.

  It took him two hours to get the generator put back together, following the detailed illustration in the manual, making sure he had every bearing and gasket set right. When it was fixed back in place, the thru bolts anchoring the frame, he saw no mistake to his work. It looked just as it had before he took it apart, only cleaner. And it had passed the test with the growler and the hacksaw blade. First there’d been a vibration, then there’d been none. That was one of his mother’s favorite words, vibration. She used that one a lot when she was pretending to be Snow Creek Maiden. She talked about the vibration of the earth, of the body, of everything. Her imagined messages from the dead always came from the vibrations.

  The memory unsettled him, and he wished the book had used another word for the hacksaw blade test. It had been the right word, though. The only word. The engine had told him what plagued it through a vibration, and he couldn’t argue that. As he slid behind the steering wheel, he almost believed he was about to test more than the armature. Because of the message in the vibration, it now seemed like a test of his mother’s promises, and those were always lies.

  He held the key in his hand and looked at the 500-page shop manual and thought about all that it contained and he knew that he couldn’t have fixed anything. Not simply by scraping a little corrosion off one component of that massive engine.

  He turned the key.

  The motor cranked, growled, coughed…and caught.

  It was running.

  For a few minutes he just sat there, stunned, listening to it, waiting for it to fail. It ran on, smooth, and he was so transfixed by the sound that he jumped and shouted when the rancher rapped his knuckles off the glass of the driver’s window. Markus hadn’t even seen him enter. He cut the engine, reached for the window crank, turned it…and the crank fell off in his hand.

  He lifted the crank and looked back at the rancher, helpless, still trapped behind the glass, and at the sight the old man doubled over with laughter and pulled the door open. By then, Markus was laughing, too. It was the first time they’d shared a laugh, and he felt a sudden warmth toward the man.

  “I got it all fixed,” he said, “but then this broke?”

  “Oh, my goodness.” The rancher wiped his eyes. “That was some perfect timing, I’ve got to say. The look on your face…” He laughed again, cleared his throat, and shook his head. “The window crank ain’t much of a problem in the grand scheme, Mark. You got the engine running. Damn all, that is impressive!”

  Markus climbed out of the car and followed him around to stare down under the hood. Suddenly, he felt as surprised by it as the older man sounded. The engine looked imposing, infinitely complex. And he’d fixed it.

  “You were right,” he said. “It was an electrical problem.”

  “I’d have never gotten it fixed. Never.” He clapped a hand on Markus’s shoulder, the first time he’d touched him since an awkward handshake on the first day, and it reminded Markus of being with his uncles, that warm pride he’d feel when they were impressed by a trout he caught or a cast he’d made.

  “It’s late now,” the rancher said. “Later than either of us should be up. I was in bed when I he
ard the noise and I didn’t trust my ears, didn’t think it was possible. So let’s get some sleep, and in the morning, first thing, we’ll take her out for a ride.”

  “All right,” Markus said. He was thinking of the promise he’d made with himself.

  “You did a great job, Mark. A great job. When I tell folks about this…you’ll have as much good, honest work waiting for you next summer as you want, I can guarantee you. Next summer and beyond.”

  Next summer and beyond.

  The words chased him into the house and floated around him in the dark bedroom. He’d never considered he could be here so long. Part of him felt sick with the idea—a year on the ranch, a year of school in Powell, a year without seeing Larry or Ronny. Or his mother.

  But another part…

  He lay in the dark on that soft mattress, smelling the clean house around him, always tinged with lemon oil that Beth used on the furniture and at night mingled with the rancher’s muscle liniment, and he thought of the way the days here had gone, the rock-steady consistency of them. Meals at the same table and same times, sleep in the same bed. He’d been proud of himself for how well he’d tolerated the place, but the truth was, it hadn’t been hard to tolerate.

  The truth was, it was a nice way to live.

  They’d be my family now.

  He sat up in the bed, pushed the covers off, and went to the window. The moon was high in a clear sky, and he knew the way it would look in the peaks, putting an electric blue tint up where the snowmelt remained year-round.

  Gotta remember your sense of honor, just like the men in those books. You gotta have a plan, and you gotta take care of the people you ride with. And your family.

  He opened the bedroom door soundlessly and stepped into the hall and listened. The rancher was snoring, sleeping hard. Markus returned to the bedroom, closed the door, and went to the bureau to dress. He selected the new blue shirt but didn’t have it even half buttoned before he took it back off, folded it carefully, and replaced it. He dressed in the clothes he’d worn on the day he’d arrived, and then he made the bed, smoothing down the corners just the way Beth had shown him, and he carried his shoes so that his footsteps made no sound as he walked downstairs and slipped out into the night.

  The rancher had heard the engine the first time, but he’d also said he wasn’t asleep yet, just in bed. The barn was far enough from the house that the noise shouldn’t be overloud, and it was a cool enough night that the windows were closed. If Markus moved fast, he’d have a good head start. Not that the rancher wouldn’t be able to close the gap in his truck, a nice Ford F-350.

  It occurred to Markus then, for the first time, that if he’d wanted to take this route, he always could have. The keys to the F-350 were in a drawer in the kitchen, along with the keys to Beth’s SUV. It would have been easy to steal a reliable vehicle and head for the hills, but instead he’d made his bargain with the ancient car in the barn. Maybe that felt more honest, somehow, because he’d earned it.

  Or maybe you don’t really want to leave, and that was your excuse.

  He took the license plate off the truck and put it on the old car. There were three five-gallon gas cans in the barn, and he emptied all of them into the tank. He didn’t know what mileage the old Chevy would get, but it couldn’t be good. All he had to do was make it to Powell, and fill her up there. He had enough money for a full tank, maybe two.

  He backed the ’55 slowly out of the barn, braked, and looked up at the house.

  Every window was dark.

  Could park it and go back up and get some sleep in that warm, soft bed. Wait for the woman from the state to visit, see how much longer it’ll be. Doing this, maybe it’ll just make things worse.

  But he could hear his Uncle Larry again, down below the Medicine Wheel on the day it had all gone bad, telling Markus that you didn’t get to choose your family, you just dealt with them.

  He knew that was true.

  All the same, his throat was tight while he drove through the ranch gates. It had not been a bad home. It had been, in fact, the best one he’d ever known.

  But you didn’t choose your family.

  He waited for lights to appear behind him. Either the high-set headlights of the F-350, or the colored flashers of a police car.

  Neither did.

  The night road was empty and black as a skillet top, and he was alone on it. He thought the fastest way to travel might be to head east and pick up the interstate in Sheridan, take I-90 into Montana and then west to pick up 212, the highway that wound through steep switchbacks over the Beartooth Pass and led all the way to Silver Gate. He knew from past experience that interstate travel chanced more police encounters, though, and while he felt confident enough as a driver—he’d been behind the wheel several times before, Larry coaching him, at least until Larry fell asleep—he didn’t like the idea of the higher speeds. As it was, the ’55 seemed appropriately named: any faster than that and the car’s subtle tremors would become violent shaking. At fifty or below, though, it cruised well enough, and the engine hadn’t so much as skipped or misfired. Even the growl of its exhaust sounded good, almost cheerful, as if the car was pleased to be back on the road. For so long, it had just sat, forgotten. Well, maybe not forgotten. What had the rancher said?

  There was a time it meant something to me just having it in the corner of my eye. Like a reminder of what I’d been once. Not that I wanted to be that again. I just liked to see it there in the corner of my eye, and know that it had been real once.

  Light rose ahead, sodium vapor lamps marking the tiny town of Powell. He saw a gas station and knew that he should pull over and fill up. He hated the idea of stopping, though, fearing that his first stop would be his last, that someone would prevent him from returning to the car as soon as he left it. The car felt magical now, this old relic that had allowed him to heal it with just some care and cleaning. Now it carried him through the empty roads beneath a three-quarter moon and toward the peaks of the Beartooths.

  He looked at his fuel gauge, and to his astonishment saw that the tank was full. These old cars were apparently better on gas than everyone said. That removed any thought of a stop.

  He drove on.

  The next road between him and the Beartooth Highway was the Chief Joseph Highway, named after the real Nez Perce chief. It was a beautiful road that cut through the mountains where once Joseph and his band had evaded the US military, fleeing—just like Markus—north. They were headed for Canada. They hadn’t made it.

  Markus was hoping for better luck.

  As the road began to climb and the switchbacks started, he grew nervous about his driving, slowing to twenty, then fifteen. It was sometime around three in the morning, and the ’55 was the only car on the mountain road. He was relieved by that. The idea of someone bearing down behind him and a logging truck headed toward him on these narrow, steep curves was frightening. No lights came, though. It was as if the night had hidden him away. He remembered one of Larry’s stories about the Sioux at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, how some of them had believed their horses were magical, bulletproof. That was how the ’55 felt now. That it was running at all was improbable; that it was running so smoothly, impossible.

  At the top of the road, in a place called Dead Indian Pass, he finally took his eyes off the road to look at the gas gauge again.

  Full!

  Unbelievable. He thought of all the commercials he’d seen and conversations he’d listened to criticizing the fuel mileage of old cars. Newer was always better, they said. Maybe not, though. The ’55, his magic ride, not only galloped through the night, but it nursed each precious gallon of gas.

  The Chief Joseph Highway ended in an intersection with 212, high in the Beartooth Mountains and, for the first time on the drive, Markus smiled. He was one left turn away now. A left turn and ten miles. Maybe not even that. The remaining miles were steep a
nd desolate, but there weren’t many of them, and the old Chevy sipped fuel like it was champagne.

  He made the left turn and had gone maybe two hundred yards when the car died.

  It went without warning. One second cruising smoothly, the next coasting to a silent stop. The headlights gleamed. He shifted into park and turned the key. The engine cranked but didn’t catch. He tried again, mystified, and then finally he realized what should have been obvious from the start—you didn’t drive through mountains like this in any car, let alone one with an old V-8, without watching the needle creep toward empty.

  The fuel gauge was broken.

  Ahead of him, the road was visible for maybe thirty feet. He flicked on the high beams, got an extra five feet. Blackness ahead and at the edges. Bear country. There’d been a grizzly mauling not far from here last summer. And there were wolves. The packs reintroduced to Yellowstone would range up the Soda Butte sometimes. Larry said they wouldn’t attack a human, but Ronny said it depended on circumstances.

  He turned the headlights off to conserve the old Delco and the darkness hit him like a blindside tackle. He put the lights back on right way. Took a few breaths. For the first time, he was scared.

  It wasn’t a long walk ahead. Four or five hours. But the things he knew occupied the night up here were frightening things, and the ones he didn’t know, worse still.

  He looked around for a weapon, thinking of all the hammers and chisels and long-handled screwdrivers he’d left in the workshop. Even a socket wrench, one with good weight, would feel nice in his hand. The only thing he could find was the window crank handle that had fallen off. He picked it up, knowing it was ridiculous, but, still, better than nothing.

  “Can’t just sit here,” he said aloud, and his voice sounded high and tiny in the empty car and he wished he hadn’t said anything. With a final, deep breath, he turned the lights off again.