The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo

by Ian Stansel

He said hello to her and she turned and he watched her eyes widen and then narrow, and then she turned back to her friends.

  “When was the last time we talked?” he said, though he knew it didn’t matter and that this was a stupid thing to say. She ignored him. In that moment he truly did want to speak with her, to talk as he remembered them talking on that morning of the fox hunt. He missed her, missed days spent at the old place in San Geronimo and nights at their cottage. He missed the blissful inebriation of youth and friendship. Then a half moment later he was filled with anger, as if it were her fault those days had passed, her fault the brothers had declared war on each other, her fault that time trudged on despite all. This swirl of emotion came out as a flimsy bit of smart-assery: “I guess we aren’t going to be friends, then.” He hated himself even as he said it.

  Then, just as he lifted a foot to pivot away, put his full drink on the bar, and leave, Lena turned again and said, “You tell me this. You tell me what the hell it is with you two. What makes you idiots so dead set on destroying each other?”

  A reasonable question, though not one Silas had any way to answer. In lieu of anything more thoughtful, and to avoid standing silent any longer than he had already, he said, “We’re just brothers, I guess.”

  A few nights later he called Stephanie Coats and she came to his trailer. They made love and drank a glass of wine. She said, “So you going to tell me what that was all about last time I was here?”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  “I almost didn’t come back.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “I was scared shitless, you know. Who was that out there?”

  Silas took a drink, luxuriating a moment in the berry notes, the slight heat precipitating through his chest. “My brother,” he said. He knew he shouldn’t say anything, but to have someone care enough to ask him was too much to resist. And he wanted to tell someone. He’d been wanting to since the second his conversation with Frank had ended. My brother came to see me, he wanted to tell a pair of ears. He wants me to kill him.

  “We aren’t close,” he told Stephanie.

  “I gathered as much,” she said. “What did he want?”

  “A favor,” he said. “Nothing.”

  They made love again, but she couldn’t stay the night, said she was meeting her son for breakfast early the next day and needed to be fresh. Silas felt a sour roiling in his gut at the thought of being left alone. He poured another glass of wine.

  At her car Stephanie said, “You know, I’ve got a life. My job, my son. It’s quiet and small but I like it, and I have to be careful about what comes into it. I don’t know what this business with your brother is, but it seems off. Regular people don’t have secret meetings in the middle of the night. They don’t pull out a gun because their brother stopped by. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “Of course I do. You go on, sweetheart.”

  “I really do like you.”

  “I’ll be seeing you around. No hard feelings.”

  That night he decided he would do it. He was tired. Tired of trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. Tired of trying to come up with ways to do the deed and get away. He was tired of the past always flitting about in the ether of his mind, and, he realized, taking in the sight of his expansive landholdings, he was tired of the present, so leaden and dull. He would do it and he would leave it all behind and he would get away but not for long and that was fine by him.

  Silas had heard talk that Frank was heading up to Sebastopol to preview some horse or another going up for auction the next week, and he figured his brother would leave early to get a jump on the morning traffic. Silas drank nothing the night before. He packed his saddlebags, filled his bota. He strode the aisles of his stable, the sleepy horses barely taking note of him. Then one blue roan angled her head over the stall door and Silas fetched a bag of carrots from the barn fridge. The other horses perked up at the sound of the carrot’s snap and began agitating for their own midnight snack, which Silas happily provided. He fed them and rubbed them and spoke quietly of his love for them. After all these years, how he loved the whole goddamn species. At a quarter to four he tacked up Disco and led her into the trailer, already hitched to the truck out front.

  Finding Frank that morning was simpler than he’d imagined. A good part of him had been hoping he wouldn’t find his brother driving up Sir Francis Drake in that dumpy Ford. But he did. Coming around a curve just past Lagunitas. The night still black everywhere save for the thinnest sliver of brightening eastern sky. Silas pressed the pedal down, mindful of Disco in the back. Even with the weight of the trailer behind him, he easily overtook Frank. Then he slowed and cut diagonally across the lanes. He got out quickly, before Frank could piece it all together, and he pointed the gun. Frank’s window was open and he was smoking a cigarette.

  “Put the truck on the shoulder, Frank, and kill the engine.”

  Frank tapped an index finger on the steering wheel and closed his eyes for a moment, then eased his truck over.

  “Flashers on?” Frank said.

  “No,” Silas said. His heart was beating wildly.

  “I don’t know. People cut across these lines pretty brazenly. It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

  “That’s their problem. Quit fucking around and get out and get in mine. Driver’s side.”

  Frank dragged on his cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and lit another. “All right.”

  They drove, Frank smoking to the filter. Coughing into the crook of his arm. Silas saw the dirt turnoff, said, “Go down there,” and pointed. Frank wheeled off the pavement and onto the canopied path. They continued in silence, slowly, the trees becoming denser on either side, the little light there had been on the road diminishing even further. The headlights swung across the ground. The trailer bounced behind them and Silas winced at every clanging of the metal body and hitch.

  “You better hope for a turnaround,” Frank said. But Silas wouldn’t need it.

  “Here,” Silas said. His hands were shaking and sweating and his legs felt weak. “Get out.”

  He held the gun and directed his brother into the woods. They walked until they could not see the truck and trailer behind them and it was as if they were a hundred miles from anything, though from years of horseback wandering, Silas knew that these woods could open up anywhere with little warning.

  It was Frank who finally spoke. “I think this is far enough.” He turned and faced Silas. “Go on, now.” Silas raised the gun and tried to steady his hand. Seconds passed, nearly a minute. The gun felt like an anvil.

  Then Frank said, “What are you doing, brother?”

  “Don’t make me do this, Frank.”

  “I’m not making you do a thing. I’m asking you.”

  “There’s a chance.”

  “This is my chance. And you been wanting to do it for years. This is what you call a win-win. Jesus, you can’t even take what you want when it’s handed to you? Now do it, goddamn it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m not going to be able to keep arguing for it much longer. This is the time. Right now.” Frank stood stone-still save for the unsteady rise and fall of his chest. What chaos lived within the silence of that predawn. What dissonance rang through Silas’s head. Though he couldn’t have said just how, he knew that the end of his own life had begun.

  Frank said, “If you’ve ever loved me, you’ll do this.”

  And Silas squeezed the trigger. He’d always been a crack shot.

  ⟱

  It was midmorning when he got to the water, the clouds suspended above in a solid slate block. To the north and the south the beach was flanked by a curving scrim of low cliffs. Sandy trails cut through the beach grass up to the higher elevations. The water came to shore in regular, nearly deafening crashes. Past that, the Pacific Ocean. “Well, fuck,” Silas said to the salt air.

  He dismounted, the sand collapsed beneath his feet, and a deep, satisfying ac
he radiated through his legs and back. A gust of wind almost pushed him over. He pulled his bota from its saddle hook and took a long drink. The wine was warm and tasted of leather. He quickly drained the last of it and felt nausea in his empty stomach. He slid Disco’s saddle and saddlebags from her, revealing a back slicked with sweat. He rubbed her with a curry comb and picked her hooves clean, dumping clumps of forest dirt into the beach sand. Silas removed his boots and walked down into the surf. The pain of the cold shot through past his knees, but it served only to elevate the strange, black euphoria that had overtaken him. He sensed that he was not standing merely at the edge of a continent, but at the precipice of death itself. Here he understood that he’d defined his life in relation to his brother, first as his mentor, then as his partner, then as his rival. And no drink, no horse, no pile of money, no Stephanie Coats was ever going to replace this man who had made Silas’s life a life at all. And now that he was gone, Silas was empty. His feet went numb in the icy water and he felt the grotesque bliss of nothingness.

  In a stupor, he returned to Disco. The horse was his last connection to his life, his lone tether to the world. He ran his fingers over the strap of her bridle and watched Disco’s jaw work around the bit. He remembered a time as a boy when he’d placed an old length of dowel rod between his teeth and pressed it back, wanting to know what it felt like for the horse. Not good. He removed her bridle.

  “How’s that?” he said. “You’ve never seen the ocean before, have you?” He gave her a slap on the rump and she trotted a few steps down the beach, then slowed to a carefree amble. Silas sat and fished his last bottle of wine out of the saddlebag in the sand, opened it, and drank. The horse made it fifty yards down, then stopped, turned, and, motionless, watched Silas. They remained there for some time—Silas had lost the capacity for counting minutes—and the horse still did not move and Silas slowly made his way through half the bottle and felt the well of emptiness within him deepen when from the end of the beach opposite Disco came another horse, another rider. Silas didn’t know if he’d perhaps fallen asleep and was dreaming it, or if he’d gone ahead and died on his own and this was the other side of that mortal gate, or if maybe this was just simply happening. The horse and rider came closer and he saw that it was a woman. She wore an English helmet and dusty rust-colored chaps and jodhpur boots. She could have been just about any student he’d had over the past three decades. She brought her horse slowly to where he sat, then stopped.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Rain,” the rider said.

  “The fuck kind of name is that?”

  “I work for Lena and Frank,” she said.

  Silas took a good long drink. “I knew I knew you from somewhere. This is some coincidence, isn’t it.”

  “No,” the girl said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t guess it is.”

  And then he spied the nickel pistol in her hand.

  Eighteen

  Lena spotted them from atop a bluff just south of the beach. She knew at once it was Rain. Sweet, loyal, foolish girl. Lena retrieved Detective Ortquist’s card from her jeans pocket. The man didn’t pick up until the fifth ring, an eternity passing between each.

  She said, “I found Silas.” The connection was better than back in the woods, but it still crackled and constantly seemed about to cut off.

  “Lena?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re with him?”

  “I’m looking at him.”

  “Does he see you?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Hard to say. On the coast. I might have seen a mile marker back at the highway, fifty maybe. Somewhere around there, I’d venture.”

  “Jesus, that puts you north.”

  “Covered some ground.”

  “Stay where you are. Do not approach him. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “You’re staying put?”

  She thought she might have until he used this phrase, which made her think of a dog, beat down and obedient. Stay. She hung up and tucked the phone deep in the saddlebag, then exhumed her gun.

  She pressed into Pepper’s flanks and they took a hither-and-thither trail as fast as they could, sometimes ducking out of sight of the beach, sometimes in full view, though it seemed that neither below noticed her. She reached the beach and squeezed the horse into a canter. Moving across the sand, she began to make out the details of the scene: Rain atop Major, Silas on the ground, both with arms outstretched, guns in hand. Down the beach a horse stood naked and untethered.

  Halfway there, she saw Silas take note of her. Corner of his eye. Slight twitch to the left let her know he saw her. She got to them. Major held his head high, watching Silas sidelong. Rain seemed to crumble almost imperceptibly at Lena’s approach.

  Lena stopped, her gun trained on the man. “Put it down.”

  Not looking away from Rain, he said, “Hello, Lena. You been following me all this way?”

  “Lena,” Rain said. Just the word, her name, and it sounded like a plea.

  “Put it down, Silas, goddamn it, or I’ll shoot you right here. She isn’t a part of this.”

  “Tell that to her trigger finger.”

  Lena said to Rain, “Put it down, sweetheart.”

  “No,” Rain said.

  “Silas, put your goddamn gun down and then she will.”

  “What about you?”

  “Mine’s staying up for the time being.”

  Silas said, “Well, shit,” and lowered the barrel of his own gun into the sand.

  Lena said to Rain, “You go on and get out of here.” Rain’s gun was still up, still trembling terribly. Something awful going on inside her, Lena thought. All that adrenaline and blood rushing through. She went on, “Go on and get hold of that horse. Poor thing’s liable to wander off to the highway and get blasted by some tourist.”

  Rain said, “Did you call the cops?” Voice quavering.

  “They’re on the way. I would have stayed back except for you idiots down here in a standoff. Go on, now, girl. You’ve done your bit.”

  Rain let her gun down and slipped it into her saddlebag. She looked once at Lena, who nodded, then extended a rein out, made her way along the top edge of the surf’s reach.

  Lena said to Silas, “Toss your gun,” and he did so without care, the pistol landing silently in the dry sand ten feet away. She said, “You should be ashamed of yourself, pointing a gun at that girl.”

  “She pulled hers first.”

  “Don’t be a baby. And what the hell are you thinking, letting that animal wander off, putting it in such danger?”

  “Thought she could use a little freedom for once. We’re all in danger.”

  “Aren’t you a poet all of a sudden.”

  Silas shrugged and took a swig from a bottle of wine. Let out a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. He said, “Look at you all the way out here. Woman, you’ve got a hell of an admirable grieving process.”

  Gulls cawed nearby, out of Lena’s sightline, behind her.

  “Why’d you kill my husband, Silas?”

  He hesitated. Then: “It’s complicated.”

  “It isn’t. You said so yourself. You’re brothers. This is just what you do to each other. What I want to know is why now.”

  Silas took a drink, and Lena found herself taking note of the wine’s disappearance with each swallow. She raised the gun higher, made him remember it, but still he said nothing.

  She said, “Here’s something you don’t know, you shit. He was dying. All you did was snatch a few last months from him. That’s all. Your big revenge for whatever wrong you think was done to you, all for a shitty handful of weeks.”

  Silas stared blankly at Lena. His face did not change, did not contort or twist, did not betray any jolt of new understanding. Lena suddenly suspected that this was not a surprise to him, that perhaps somehow Silas knew of Frank’s illness. Perhaps Frank told him in th
e moments before Silas shot him.

  “I should kill you,” she said.

  “Guess you probably should. Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  “Is that what you want?” she said. “That why you’re here?”

  “I wanted to see the water.”

  “There’s that poet again.”

  “Go ahead and do it, then, if you’re going to do it,” Silas said firmly, nearly yelling.

  Her arm ached under the weight of the gun. Was this why she’d searched him out through the woods? It was what she’d told herself, told Rain, told that woman back on the highway. But here in front of her husband’s murderer, she felt none of the anger she’d been counting on. In her imagining of this moment she’d figured she would simply be someone else—not Lena, not Riley’s mother or her mother’s daughter or even Frank’s wife, but some strange and wild being capable of avenging a murder. Capable of killing a person. But she found herself there on that beach. Herself and none other. And she herself felt nothing but the deepest, most desperate sadness of her life. A sadness that eclipsed all else.

  Silas said, “I’m not gonna be able to keep arguing for this for long.”

  “Arguing for what?” Lena said. “What are you blathering about, you old drunk?” But of course she knew. And she knew she wasn’t about to shoot an unarmed man, blotto, sitting on his ass in the sand.

  A commotion down the beach alighted in Lena’s periphery. Rain, still on Major, had Silas’s bay with a lead rope looped around her neck, but the mare was dancing away from the other horse, alternately trying to pull free of the rope and, failing at that, to turn her backside to Major.

  Lena called, “Can you halter her?”

  “Can’t get to it,” Rain yelled back.

  Silas said, “Your girl needs some help.”

  “Shut up,” Lena said.

  Silas raised the bottle of wine, said, “To the hounds.”

  “Shut up,” she said again. Rain continued to struggle to get the animals under control. Lena’s plan, inasmuch as she had one, was crumbling. Not a small part of her, though, felt a relief at the business down the beach. Securing a loose horse was something she’d done a hundred times before, and the idea of the relatively simple act offered her an element of comfort in the midst of everything else. She said, “You going to run for it?” Silas just shook his head and took another drink.