The Last Honest Horse Thief

by Michael Koryta

  The blackness closed on him with that same blitzing power, but this time he didn’t succumb to the desire to turn the lights back on. Instead, he opened the door and stepped out onto the highway and into the cold night. This place was at least four thousand feet higher than the ranch, and the temperature reflected it. He wished he’d brought a jacket.

  “Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first,” his mother would say.

  He started walking.

  The dawn was just beginning to show its first gray light when a rusted pickup appeared behind him. Markus had been walking down the middle of the road because it was farther from the trees and whatever hid behind them. He hurried to the shoulder, but the truck slowed and he felt a cold sinking sensation in his belly.

  They were looking for him. And they’d found him.

  The face that looked out at him from the driver’s window showed no recognition, though, just concern.

  “What in the hell are you doing walking this road in the middle of the night, kid?”

  “It’s almost morning.”

  “Shit. Where’d you come from? Campground?”

  Markus shook his head. “On my way to Silver Gate.”

  “Didn’t ask where you’re headed. Asked where you came from.”

  Markus didn’t say anything. The man in the truck was maybe thirty, with a shock of unkempt blond hair and several days of beard.

  “What’s in your hand?” he said. “That a knife?”

  Markus lifted the window crank. “No.”

  “The hell are you carrying that for?”

  Markus shrugged. The man sighed, rubbed his jaw, and said, “Get in the truck before somebody driving too fast runs you over, or a bear moving too slow does worse.”

  Markus went around and climbed in the passenger side. The man looked at the window crank, sighed again, and shook his head.

  “I’m not gonna ask about that. Where do I take you in Silver Gate?”

  If his uncles were in town, someone at the Range Rider would know. It was a boarding house and saloon. But Markus didn’t want to say that, didn’t really want to say anything. He kept silent, and the man said, “Okay, kid,” and didn’t push.

  They were descending toward Cooke City now, the little town just two miles from Silver Gate, the elevation dropping steadily, and Markus wondered what he would do if his uncles weren’t there.

  Give himself up, he figured. If they weren’t there, if the stronghold hadn’t meant anything to them, or at least not enough, then he’d just go back to the ranch. When the woman from the state came to talk to him, he’d tell her he wanted to stay. Wanted to go to school for a full year. The same school. Wanted a job in the summer, something mechanical.

  He looked for the blue Ford as they cruised slowly through Cooke City. Usually they left it parked outside of Miner’s, or maybe Hoosier’s. Either bar was fine. They’d leave the truck there, but they’d sleep in Silver Gate, keeping enough distance between vehicle and residence to buy a little time in the unlikely event that police managed to come all this way looking for them.

  The truck wasn’t anywhere in town.

  He felt that clenching sensation again, tightening of throat and chest, and for the second time he wondered if maybe he didn’t want to find them after all. He’d done all that could be asked of him, he’d stuck to the plan and figured out his way back to them, and if they hadn’t done the same, then…well, then he could move on.

  They drove out of Cooke City and past a handful of cabins built into the steep slopes above the road and then the cluster of log buildings of Silver Gate appeared, huddled beneath the massive wall of Amphitheater Mountain, the one he’d imagined during all those sunsets.

  The blue Ford was nowhere to be seen.

  “Well, kid? Where do I drop you?”

  The northeast gate to Yellowstone was the next stop, and it was manned by rangers with radios, and it wouldn’t take them long to get him back to the ranch where the state had decided he belonged.

  “Are you going through the park?” Markus asked. His mouth was dry and his voice cracked.

  “Yup. All the way to Gardiner. But you said Silver Gate.”

  “Right. If you could take me just a mile farther and drop me at the ranger…”

  His voice trailed off. He was staring out the window.

  “What are you looking at, kid?”

  “That’s my dog.”

  And it was. Amigo was asleep on the porch of the general store, muzzle resting on his paws, dead to the world. There was no mistaking him. Ronny always said the dog looked as if he’d been assembled from spare parts.

  Markus opened the door and called for him. Amigo lifted a sleepy head, looked in the wrong direction first, then focused on the truck. He rose stiffly, stretched his hips, and ambled off the porch and loped up. He sniffed Markus’s hand and his tail began to wag immediately.

  “In or out, kid,” the truck driver said. “I’ll take you where you need to go, but I’ll be damned if the dog is riding with us. What’s it gonna be?”

  Markus looked up the dirt road past the general store, where a cluster of rundown rental cabins were nestled beneath the mountain, and in the dim light he saw the front end of the truck. His uncles were here. As promised.

  “What’s it gonna be?” the driver repeated. Markus stared at the cabin beside the truck, thinking that the whole thing would have fit in the living room of the house at the ranch. Amigo whined and nudged his hand, seeking more attention.

  “I guess this is it,” Markus said. The words came slowly.

  “Okay then. I don’t know what your deal is, and I don’t need to, but…this isn’t really the place for a kid. If you got another option, I’d take it.”

  “I’m sure I won’t be here long,” Markus said, and he climbed out of the truck and, with Amigo at his side, walked to the decrepit cabin.

  Larry and Ronny were both inside and greeted him with whoops and fierce hugs. The hesitation he’d felt back on the road just minutes earlier seemed like a sin now, another betrayal, like the one at Medicine Wheel. He started apologizing for that straight away and Larry cut him off.

  “She never should’ve had you involved. She knows that. She feels worse about it then you do.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Talked to her. We can’t exactly visit the place. She’s only got nine days left.”

  “The family they put me with thought it was going to be longer.”

  “Nope. Nine days left, then she’ll be out. Then it’ll be back to the way things always were.”

  He said it cheerfully.

  “What if the state doesn’t let that happen?”

  “Hell, son, she’s your birth mother. State ain’t putting a stop to that unless she’s doing you harm. Which of course has never happened. She ain’t winning mother of the year prizes, but she takes good care of you. Even what she was doing up there at Medicine Wheel, that’s all for you. You know that. Money’s hard to come by sometimes. We’ll get it all set right. You want some coffee?”

  He hadn’t had coffee in weeks. Beth always put out milk and juice for him. With scrambled eggs, most days. Sometimes pancakes and sausage. Always the milk and juice.

  He took the coffee.

  “I can’t believe you made it,” Ronny said, and laughed. “Hot damn, Larry, can you believe this?”

  “Of course I can. Resourceful kid. We taught him, didn’t we?” Larry poured a shot of bourbon into his coffee. “I gotta hear about the car, though. A ’55 Chevy, you say it was?”

  So he told them about the car, and soon he was laughing as he explained the way it had run out of gas on the mountain highway.

  “I kept checking the gauge, but it always said full! I should’ve known better, but when the needle’s all the way over, you expect it’s right.” />
  “I don’t blame you a bit,” Ronny said. “And that’s exactly the problem with stealing cars.” He added a split length of soft pine to the fire he’d built in the wood stove, filling the little cabin with warmth and color. “You never know what’s wrong with them! Could be all shined up on the outside, but under the hood, you never know. A hundred years ago, you’d have never had that problem. You’d have looked at a horse and known whether it was worth stealing or not.”

  Larry poured another shot of bourbon into his coffee and frowned. “What if the horse was sick?”

  “Why, it would show that. Symptoms.”

  “Not necessarily. Could be it was just starting to get sick. How would you know then?”

  Ronny sighed with exasperation and turned from the stove to face his brother. “Are you honestly telling me you’d trust a car more than a horse?”

  “I’m just saying, it ain’t ever a sure thing.”

  Markus was sitting on the floor, Amigo at his side, soaking in the warmth from the woodstove, when he said, “Speaking of the car…we’re going to need to get some gas for it.”

  Ronny pointed at him with approval. “Damn smart call. Can’t leave it sitting right on the side of the highway like that, pointing right down the road to where you went. We’ll get it off the road.”

  “That’s not what I mean. We’ve got to take it back. I can’t just steal it. Not from them. I needed the ride, but I’m not keeping it.”

  They both stared at him. Then they exchanged a glance and Ronny said, “You’re smart enough to know that’s a real bad idea, Markus. Real bad.”

  “I’m not stealing it. That car means a lot to him. Has for his whole life, practically.”

  “Then we’ll make sure he gets word of where to collect it.”

  “That’s not enough. I can’t…” He stopped, struggling for the right words.

  “What?” Larry said. “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t have them thinking I’m that bad. As it is, I’m just something in the middle, maybe.”

  “Markus,” Ronny said, “you understand what you’re asking here? We’re both in the wind right now because of a stolen car, and you’re asking us to get behind the wheel of another? A damned relic at that. We would have to be driving a parade float to attract more attention!”

  “Then I’ll drive it and you can follow me. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Son, you’re lucky you made it here. Hats off to you, and damn glad to see you, but you gotta understand the truth of this situation. You took a risk and made it, but you can’t take this one, and you don’t need to.”

  “I didn’t need to take the first one!” Markus shouted. “I could’ve stayed. And not just nine days, either. More than that. Long as I wanted, probably. It was a nice house and there was always good food and she bought me clothes and he made her let me have those westerns because I cared so much about them! It’s the only reason I even made it back, was because of how he saw that I cared about those books, and now…” He sputtered to a stop, gathered himself, and then shouted, “You said you can’t choose your family, but I could! I had a choice, and I came back!”

  Hot tears rose and he blinked them back, ashamed. His uncles looked away. Nobody made eye contact for a few seconds. The only sound was the crackling and popping of the pinewood in the stove.

  “I’ll drive it,” Larry said. Ronny’s face twisted and he started to object but Larry’s stare cut him down.

  “I’ll drive it,” he repeated.

  “Be the stupidest bust you ever took, and that’s saying plenty.”

  Larry shook his head. He still hadn’t looked at Markus. “Nah,” he said. “Even if it goes that way, it won’t be the stupidest by a long sight.”

  They moved the car off the highway as soon as the gas station in Cooke City opened. There they filled two cans and then drove on up to the intersection with the Chief Joseph Highway. Even in daylight, the mountains looked ominous, filled with danger, and Markus couldn’t begin to tell them the way it had felt on the walk.

  When they reached the ’55, Ronny pulled in behind it and gaped.

  “You drove that car all the way up here from south of Powell?”

  Markus had to admit that here under the sun the ’55 did not look anything close to the magical ride it had felt like in the night. The walk didn’t seem as menacing, nor the car as miraculous. Everything was different and couldn’t be explained.

  “It ran fine. Just don’t take it up too fast.”

  “Hell, boy, I have trouble believing it’ll start, let alone run fast.”

  “It’ll start.”

  They poured in the gas, and Markus got behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine growled to life, choked in its initial quest for fuel, then smoothed out. Larry let out a rebel yell that echoed off the mountains and even Ronny had to laugh.

  “Park it down somewhere out of sight and we’ll wait until dark to return it,” he said.

  By then, even Markus was having doubts.

  “You don’t need to go all the way to him, maybe,” he said. “Just get it close. They’ll find it easy enough. And be sure to leave the note.”

  He’d written the note on the back of a title page torn out of one of Larry’s paperback westerns. It was spelled right and said the right things but not enough of them. He didn’t know how to put it all into words.

  “We’ll get it to him, Markus,” Larry said. “You were right. He deserves that much.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Larry squeezed his shoulder and forced a grin.

  “You’re the last honest horse thief, kid. And maybe the first. It’s clearly not your line of work. Just keep it that way, would you?”

  They waited in the cabin until full dark, and then they went back for the car and Larry got behind the wheel. It started on the first try again. They drove out of town and turned right onto the Chief Joseph Highway, headed south. Markus’s worry had progressed to a sickness and he was afraid he was going to throw up. What in the world had he done? All this trouble started because he’d betrayed his mother, now doubled down by setting his uncle up for disaster.

  He’d tried to make the right choices in each case but each time they’d been wrong.

  When they turned onto the ranch road, he was waiting for police cars but there weren’t any. It was dark and lonesome. Ronny pulled onto the shoulder and let Larry go on alone.

  “Stop him,” Markus said. “I was wrong. You gotta stop him.”

  “Can’t now,” Ronny said. “Now we just see how it plays out.”

  They saw Larry turn off the headlights as he approached the drive, and then they couldn’t see any more. Ronny kept checking his watch. After fifteen minutes passed, he swore.

  “Should’ve been back by now.”

  Markus tasted bile, swallowed hard, held it down.

  Twenty minutes.

  “We’re gonna need to roll,” Ronny said.

  “No!”

  “Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s the score. We wait much longer and all three of us will end up in the same way. We wait any longer and eight days from now your mother will be the only Novak not in jail.”

  “Give him five more minutes.”

  “Can’t,” Ronny said, and he had just put the key in the ignition when Markus saw Larry walking toward them.

  “There he is!”

  Larry opened the door and slid in beside Markus as Ronny started the engine.

  “You about lost your ride, brother. That was way too slow.”

  “I was trying to be quiet.”

  “Quiet, my ass. You burned twenty minutes being quiet?”

  “Just get the hell going.”

  They drove to Powell and headed north again. Nobody spoke until they were outside of town and alone on the high
way. Everyone seemed to exhale at once then.

  “I’m glad we brought it back,” Larry said, and he bumped his fist off Markus’s knee. “That was the right thing. I’m sorry you needed to take it in the first place. But I’m damn glad we brought it back.”

  His voice was rough and Markus suddenly understood why he’d taken so long: He’d read the note.

  It was silent for another mile or two, and then it was Ronny who broke it.

  “Eight days from now we’ll go to Sheridan and get your mother,” he said. “Be back together, the whole fam-damily. All of this will be forgotten soon and your scorecard is still clean, kid. First man I’ve known to return a stolen car.”

  He laughed and lit a cigarette and the cab filled with smoke. Markus put his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, felt something hard and cold, and realized what he’d forgotten—the window crank handle.

  “I meant to put this back on,” he said, holding it up. “I figured it’s hard to find a part like that for a car like that.”

  Larry stared at the crank handle and said, “I was foolish enough to return the car. I’ll be damned if I’m going back with a window crank. Guess your scorecard isn’t clean, after all. You’ll have to live with that much.”

  Markus didn’t say anything. He turned the crank handle over, tracing the lines of the old metal, thinking of the way the rancher had laughed when it came off in his hands. He’d laughed until he had tears in his eyes.

  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.

  Markus sat between his uncles, the night road rolling beneath the tires, eight days out from the Sheridan jail and a reunion with his mother. Then, who knew. Another town, probably another state. They would want to put some distance between them and these towns now. He wondered whether the rancher was awake, and Beth. Whether she’d kept the receipts for the clothes she’d bought. He hoped she’d be able to get her money back. He wondered when they’d find the note, and if it would mean anything to them, or if he’d still just be remembered as the foster kid who stole their car.