The Dark Horse
( Walt Longmire - 5 )
Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson
The Dark Horse
1
October 27, 11 A.M.
It was the third week of a high-plains October, and an unseasonably extended summer had baked the color from the landscape and had turned the rusted girders of the old bridge a thinned-out, tired brown.
I topped the hill and pulled the gunmetal Lincoln Town Car alongside the Pratt truss structure. There weren’t very many of them in the Powder River country, and the few bridges that were left were being auctioned off to private owners for use on their ranches. I had grown up with these old camelback bridges and was sorry to see the last of them go.
My eyes were pulled to the town balanced on the banks of the anemic river and pressed hard against the scoria hills like the singing blade of a sharp knife. The water, the land, and the bridge were sepia-toned, depleted.
I told Dog to stay in the backseat and got out of the car, slipped on my hat and an aged, burnished-brown horsehide jacket, and walked across the dirt lot. I studied the dusty, wide-planked surface of the bridge and, between the cracks, the few reflecting slivers of the Powder River below. The Wyoming Department of Transportation had condemned and, in turn, posted the bridge with bright yellow signs-it was to be removed next week. I could see the abutments that they had constructed off to the right on which the new bridge would soon rest.
A Range Telephone Cooperative trailer sat by a power pole holding a junction box and a blue plastic service phone that gently tapped against the creosote-soaked wood like a forgotten telegraph, receiving no answer.
“You lost?”
I turned and looked at the old rancher who’d pulled up behind me in an antiquated ’55 GMC, the kind that has grill-work frozen in a perpetual sneer. The big truck was overladen with hay. I tipped my new hat back and gazed at him. “Nope, just looking around.”
He kicked at the accelerator and eased the Jimmy into a lopsided idle as he glanced at Dog, my late-model car, and the Montana plates. “You workin’ methane?”
“Nope.”
He squinted at me to let me know he wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth, his eyes green as the algae that grows on the tops of horse troughs. “We get a lot of them gas and oil people out here, buying up people’s mineral rights.” He studied me, sizing me up by my new black hat, boots, and freshly pressed blue jeans. “Easy to get lost on these roads.”
“I’m not lost.” I looked at his load, at the sun-dried, tiny blue flowers intermixed with the hay and the orange and cobalt twine that indicated it was weed-free; idiot cubes, as we used to call the seventy-pound bales. I stepped in closer and put a hand on the hay, rich with alfalfa. “Certified. You must have a pretty good stretch of bottom land around here somewhere.”
“Good enough, but with the drought, this country’s so dry you have to prime a man before he can spit.” As if to emphasize his point, he spat a stream through the rust holes in the floorboard of the truck and onto the road, the spittle approaching the same tint as the river.
I nodded as I glanced down at the stained pea gravel. “A buddy of mine says that these small bales are what broke up the family ranches.” I looked back up at the cargo-two and a half tons at least. “You buck a couple thousand of these in August and your mind starts to wander; wonder as to what the heck else you could be doing for a living.”
His eyes clinched my words. “You ranch?”
“Nope, but I grew up on one.”
“Where ’bouts?”
I smiled, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my jeans, glanced at his rust-orange, heavily loaded flatbed, and then at the dilapidated structure that spanned the distance between here-and there. “You gonna drive this truck across that bridge?”
He spat into the dirt again, this time near my boots, and then wiped his mouth on the back of his snap-buttoned cuff. “Been drivin’ the car-bridge for sixty-three years; don’t see no reason to stop.”
Car-bridge; I hadn’t heard that one in a while. I glanced back at the yellow WYDOT signs and the decrepit condition of the doomed structure. “Looks like you’re not going to have much choice as of next week.”
He nodded and ran a hand over his patent-leather face. “Yeah, I reckon they got more money down there in Cheyenne than they know what to do with.” He waited a moment before speaking again. “The state highway is about four miles back up the road.”
“I told you, I’m not lost.”
I could feel him watching me; I’m sure he was looking at the scar above my eye, the one on my neck, that little part of my ear that was missing, my hands, and most importantly, trying to get a read on the insouciance that goes along with a quarter of a century spent with a star pinned to my chest. I nodded, glancing back across the bridge before he had a chance to study me longer. “Is that a town, down there?”
“Sort of.” He snorted a laugh. “Halfway between woebegone and far away.” He continued to study me as I watched the dust drifting across the warped and swirled surface of the dried-out planks. “Used to be called Suggs, but when the Burlington and Missouri came through they decided that it ought to have an upstanding, proper, biblical name.”
I continued to look at the town. “And what’s that?”
“Absalom.”
I laughed and thought that one of those railroad engineers must have had a pretty good sense of humor or been from Mississippi. But then it occurred to me that Faulkner hadn’t been walking, let alone writing, when the railroads came through here.
He continued to look at me through the collection of wrinkles that road-mapped his eyes. “Something funny?”
I nodded. “Do you read the Bible, Mr…?”
“Niall, Mike Niall.” I noticed he didn’t extend his hand. “Not since my mother used to make me. And there ain’t nobody that makes me do much of anything in about seventy years.”
Seven years longer than he’d been driving the car-bridge, I figured. “You should read it, Mr. Niall, if for no other reason than that historical reference. Absalom was King David’s son-the cursed one who turned against him.”
I started back toward the rental car, and there was a pause before he spoke again. “I wouldn’t go down there if I was you; it’s not a friendly place.”
I opened the door of the Lincoln, tossed my 10X onto the passenger seat, and looked back at him from over the top, and especially at the. 30–30 carbine in the truck’s rifle rack behind his head. “That’s all right; I’m not looking for friends.”
I started to climb into the driver’s seat but stopped when he called out to me again. “Hey youngster, I didn’t catch your name.”
I paused for only a second, continuing to look down the valley at the small town. “I didn’t throw it.”
I drove off the pavement to the edge of a dirt street alongside the railroad tracks and pulled the rental under the shade of an abandoned mill that read BEST OUT WEST, but maybe not so much anymore. It was true that they had changed the name of Suggs to Absalom in an attempt to elevate the town and pull it from a dubious past, but I couldn’t help feeling that whatever its name, it had been surviving on borrowed time and the bill had come due. I left the windows down just a bit for Dog and got out across from the only obvious commercial establishment in the town.
The AR had been The BAR at some point in its past, but poor carpentry and the ever-prevalent wind had changed its name; that, or the B had decided to move on to a better hive. There were a few used-up motel rooms connected to the building on one side with a few unconnected cabins on the other, the entirety attached by an overhang that marginally protected the wooden walkway.
Through the opening between the main building and the
cabins, I could see a propane tank in a weedy backyard and, attached to makeshift gutters with baling wire, cowboy boots that gently twisted in the breeze like loose appendages. There was a hand-printed sign that read ABSALOM BAR-WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS THE THRILLS BEGIN.
Indeed.
The truck I parked behind had a half-dozen dogs in the bed, border collie/blue heeler mixes that all came over to growl at me as I made my way around to the front of my car. The red merle in the corner snapped and missed me by only eight inches. I stopped and turned to look at all of them, still growling and snarling, and saw that Dog had raised his head from the backseat to balefully inspect the herding dogs the way timber wolves inspect coyotes.
There were still hitching posts in front of The AR, which was handy because there were horses in front of The AR. A snippy-looking grulla and a sleepy quarter horse stirred as I placed a boot on the wooden steps. The mouse-colored one had a cloudy eye and turned to look at me with his good one, while the grade went back to napping in the September sun, his right rear hoof raised in relaxation like some pre-Technicolor-era starlet being kissed. I stuck out a hand, and he brushed the soft fur of his nose across my knuckles. I thought about a circle around an eye and the last horse I’d been this close to and how he had died.
“In this country, we don’t touch a man’s horse without asking.”
I dropped my hand and turned to look at the voice. “Well, technically, he touched me.” I stepped the rest of the way onto the boardwalk and looked down at the cowboy, aware that a two-foot height advantage is always handy in dealing with antagonists, especially ones that are ten years old.
The little outlaw tipped back on the heels of his boots and looked up at me with dark eyes. “You’re big.”
“I didn’t plan it.”
He thought about that for a while and then looked disapprovingly at my new, pinch-front hat. “You lost?”
I sighed softly and continued toward the door. “No.”
“Bar’s closed.”
He said everything as if it were an absolute that would brook no argument; I wondered if he was related to the green-eyed rancher at the condemned bridge. I turned to look at him with my hand on the doorknob. “Do you frequent this establishment a great deal?”
He placed a fist on his hip and looked up at me, as if I should already know what it was that he was going to say. “You talk funny.”
I stood there looking at the black hair sticking out from all angles like a murder of crows trying to escape from underneath the stained cowboy hat. I thought about another kid from a number of years ago with a head like a pail-just as impenetrable and about as empty. “Is everybody in this town as polite as you?”
He paused for a second and stuffed the already chewed-on leather stampede strings that were dangling from his hat into his mouth, saving him from spitting on the road like the old rancher. “Pretty much.”
I nodded, looking at the plastic sign in the window that read CLOSED, then turned the knob and stepped into The AR. “Must make for gracious living ’round these parts.”
The AR was like most of the public drinking establishments in northern Wyoming, which bear a great resemblance to the establishments of southern Wyoming and everywhere else in the West, except that this one had a makeshift boxing arena to the left of the central U-shaped bar, with an elevated plywood platform, steel fencing poles in the corners, and two strands of calf-roping ropes strung around it.
On a shelf above the bar was a television set tuned to the Weather Channel with the sound off. Weather was always a safe subject in this part of the world-everybody was interested, everybody enjoyed the bitching, and nobody could do anything about it. A more-than-middle-aged man sat on a mismatched chair at one of the small tables to the right of the particleboard bar and smoked a cigarette. He was reading the Gillette newspaper.
“Bar’s closed.”
It was a female voice, with the same cocksure intonations as the kid’s, so I ignored the man reading the News-Record, just as he ignored me. I looked around at the all-but-empty room. “Beg your pardon?”
“Bar’s closed.”
The voice had come from behind the counter, so I walked over and looked down; I could just see the punt end of a baseball bat, the butt of an old Winchester pump on one of the shelves, and a young woman. She was bantam-sized and was mopping up water from under the beer coolers with a dish-rag. She looked at me beneath a confection of black hair pulled back with a wide elastic band. She had mocha-colored eyes, and her skin tone was the same as the boy’s-maybe Indian, maybe, on closer inspection, from somewhere in Central America. “Bar’s closed.”
“Yep, I got that.” I tipped my hat back and raised a hand in submission. “And before you ask, I’m not lost.”
She threw the rag onto the floor with a plop of exasperation. “Then what do you want?”
It was silent for a moment. “I was wondering if there were any rooms available in the motel.”
She rose to her feet and leaned on the bar, where she grabbed another rag from a pile and wiped her hands. “Nothing but rooms available. Nobody wants to stay here without air-conditioning and satellite television.” She glanced at the man seated at the small table, who was still smoking and reading. “Pat? Man’s wanting a room.”
He didn’t look up and continued to cover most of his face with a hand on which was an enormous, gold Masonic ring that seemed to hold the cigarette smoke in a sustained orbit. “Full.”
The young woman glanced at me, then at him, and then shrugged as she went back to the leaking cooler. I turned to the man. He was overweight and dressed in overalls, a short-sleeved print shirt, and a trucker-style ball cap that read SHERIDAN SEED COMPANY.
“No rooms at all?”
He glanced up at me, but for only a moment, and flicked some ashes into the glass ashtray that advertised THUNDERBIRD HOTEL, LAS VEGAS, NEV. “Booked up.”
The young woman’s voice rose again from behind the bar. “What about number four?”
He continued reading. “Toilet’s busted.”
She spoke again as I leaned against the bar. “We got a toilet in here, he could just use that.”
He sighed and flashed a dirty look in her general vicinity. “S’against the law, room’s gotta have a working toilet.”
She stood back up, tossed the new now-sopping rag into a galvanized trash can, and ripped a half-dozen paper towels off a roll on the counter. “What law is that?”
He looked at her and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. “The you-gotta-have-a-crapper-in-any-room-you-rent law.”
“Whose law is that?” The quick-draw flash of temper in her eyes and the barest trace of an accent was significantly Latin.
He pushed his chair back and folded the newspaper, slipping it under his arm. “Mine.”
She turned the entirety of her attitude toward me, and I was briefly reminded of my daughter. “You paying in cash?”
I blinked. “I can.”
The attitude shifted back to the lawgiver, and I was just as glad to be relieved of it. “You haven’t paid me in two weeks because you haven’t had any money.” He continued to look at her through sloped eyelids. “Well, here’s money.” She walked to the bar-back at the wall, plucked a key from a full rack, and slammed it on the counter between us. “Thirty-two dollars and ninety-five cents.”
I nodded, looking at the key still covered by her hand. “For a room without a toilet?”
She glanced up at me from below the accentuated eyebrows and through the dark lashes. “You can forget about the ninety-five cents, and I’ll eat the tax.”
I reached for my wallet. “What the governor doesn’t know won’t hurt him?” She didn’t say anything and ignored the older man completely as I handed her two twenties. “I might need the room for more than one night.”
“Even better. I’ll keep your change as a deposit.”
I took the key and turned toward the door. “Thanks… I think.”
“You want a dri
nk?”
The older man hadn’t moved; he still stood in the same place and was watching me. I turned and looked at her. “Thought the bar was closed.”
She smiled a stunner of a smile with perfectly shaped lips. “Just opened.”
October 17: ten days earlier, evening.
They’d brought her in on a Friday night. The jail had been empty. It usually was.
One of the ways we supplemented our budget allotment was to import prisoners from the overcrowded jails in other counties. They did a brisk business, especially in Gillette, which was in Campbell County, and I provided high-security, low-amenity lodging for a portion of their tax base.
Dog and I had slept the previous three nights at the jail. Sleeping in a holding cell was a pattern I had developed when I was feeling discontented, and I had been feeling this way since Labor Day, when my daughter, Cady, had left for Philadelphia.
I leaned against the wall and could feel my shoulders slope from their own weight as I watched Victoria Moretti. My deputy was easy on the eyes, and I liked watching her. The trick was not getting caught.
Vic filled out the transport of prisoner forms, dotted a vicious “i,” and snapped the pen back onto the clipboard. She handed it back to the two deputies. “For them to send two of you, this Mary Barsad must be pretty dangerous.”
The young man with the ubiquitous cop mustache ripped off the receipts and gave them to Vic. “Dangerous enough to fire six shots from a. 22 hunting rifle into the right side of his head while he lay there asleep. Then, for good measure, she set the house on fire.”
The other deputy interrupted. “Allegedly.”
The first deputy repeated. “Allegedly.”
Vic glanced at the papers and back at them. “That’d do it.”
Wyoming law states that incarcerated females must be supervised at all times by a female docent or a matron, neither of which aptly described Vic, but she had the third watch and would until Mary Barsad was transferred back to Campbell County for trial in three weeks. It was an understatement to say that she wasn’t thrilled.
The Dark Horse wl-5 Page 1