The Dark Horse wl-5

by Craig Johnson

  “So-o-o girl, easy girl. Don’t worry; we’re not going until the train passes.” I patted her neck with the knotted, black mane blowing over my fingers, and she quieted long enough for the final coal car to rock past, with the small electronic device that had taken the place of a caboose attached to the last coupler.

  And there, idling on the other side of the track, was the red Dodge and the late, great Wade Barsad.

  16

  October 31, 7:00 A.M.

  Wade Barsad looked up at the same time I did, and as surprised as I had been to find him alive, he was just as surprised to see me not dead. Evidently, he’d circled around.

  The bells were still clanging and the arms of the railroad crossing were still down and blockading the road. In that tiniest of seconds before they rose, I considered the two options open to me-raise the. 44 or get moving. Evidently, the FBI wanted Barsad alive, so just pulling the Henry and doing more ventilation to the cab of the Dodge was a choice, but one not without possibly unseen consequences, both legal and mortal.

  At Berkeley, during his aborted college career, Henry Standing Bear used to race automobiles on foot for a hundred feet. He would almost always win. He explained to me that unless the vehicle is set up and properly geared for that type of short-distance racing, a relatively capable human being is faster. A driver has the delay of human response but also that of the vehicle. A car weighs at least a ton, so you’ve got to get its weight up and moving, whereas the human being just runs. Henry says he got beat only once, and that was in an ill-advised, tequila-induced race with a ’64 Fair-lane T-Bolt.

  I’m not as fast as Henry, never was, but I had Wahoo Sue, and I don’t think I’ve ever moved my heels faster, despite the pain in my foot, than when I drove them into the mare’s sides. We shot forward like we were racing to beat two minutes at the Kentucky Oaks.

  There was only one direction to go and that was the way Sue and I were already headed-it would take Barsad away from Benjamin and Henry, cause him to have to turn, and get me into town where I might be able to either stop him or get help.

  We shot diagonally through the blockade arms and flashed past the Dodge, the dirt and gravel surface of Upper Powder River Road matching well with the dark horse’s steel shoes. In the blur I could see him scrambling for something in the seat and figured he was going for his pistol, but we were too fast, and the last I saw of him, he’d abandoned that thought and had thrown the big Dodge into reverse.

  There was a slight rise in the dirt road leading to the town proper, the shadow of the grain mill and twin silos overlooking the rest of the place from their roost alongside the railroad tracks. There were a few abandoned buildings on the south side of town, ramshackle structures that had long ago decided to join the horizontal landscape, but the only lights that were on were the few dusk-to-dawn lamps that overhung Absalom’s three blocks.

  Wahoo Sue barreled up the rise, and I took the time to give a glance back toward the tracks to see the Dodge spraying gravel in pursuit. It was at least another three hundred yards to The AR and the center of town, but what was I going to do then? Leap off the horse and run into the bar, leaving her to the mercy of Wade Barsad? As I felt the pain in my foot, wedged in the metal stirrup, running might not be the best option anyway.

  I’d worry about it if I got there.

  I crouched against Sue’s neck, loosened the reins completely, and gave her her head. The mare gained speed as we hit the flat, and she must’ve seen him or smelled him because, even though she should have been absolutely worn out, Wahoo Sue accelerated into that breath-snatching velocity that she’d exhibited on the mesa.

  I shot a look over my right shoulder and felt my right hand stealing onto the brass receiver of the. 44 Henry. Barsad was less than a hundred yards away and gaining, the roar of the turbocharged Cummins diesel clattering up the isolated streets; it sounded as if the train had made a U-turn.

  I looked back at the road ahead and the remaining distance.

  No way.

  We were not going to make it and, if we did, he was going to be on us as we got there-we’d just be crushed by the grill guard and run over.

  My mind raced along with us and thoughts streaked across my brain like the chain lightning on the mesa sky. The railroad tracks were to my right, with the majority of town to the left, so there was no chance there, but the interior doors of the granary hung open with a ramp leading inside the cavernous building, and there was a chance there.

  I glanced back again and could see the truck was now only a hundred feet behind us. He’d think we had to stop or that we’d have to veer left and up one of Absalom’s side streets. Instead, I yanked the reins to the right and sailed Wahoo Sue up the ramp. One of the doors hung loosely while the other rested on its side against the building, providing an opening you could drive a horse through or a truck driven at a sensible speed.

  Wahoo Sue trusted my judgment implicitly, and we blew from end to end without hesitation with the diesel breathing down our collective necks.

  Wade wasn’t as lucky-he was going too fast, and with the added wideness of the duellie and the lift of the elevated scales, he clipped the hanging door and a compressor just inside the opening, causing the Dodge to carom off the opposite side and shed a fiberglass rear fender. He fought to correct his trajectory, but with the force of his speed, he tipped a wheel off the ramp and slid sideways another fifty feet with his brakes locked.

  I reined left at the other side, gave the mare her lead again, and we galloped up the road beside The AR toward the tiny library/post office. Another quick glance behind, and I could see the headlights of the Dodge in the sedimentary streams of airborne dust, and the diesel bellowed as Barsad extricated himself from the granary.

  The pay phone outside the log building that served as the library/post office was clearly too far in the open to use. I wheeled Sue around the corner across the dried-grass lot and headed back south out of view of the main street. I pulled her up short. There was no way I could outrun Barsad on the open road, but in the confines of the little town I figured I could use the maneuverability of the horse against him.

  I settled the mare, lathered in sweat and snorting, and I couldn’t help but think that she knew who he was and what the consequences would be if he caught us. She raised her head with the large, soft ears pivoting and listened along with me. We could hear the diesel as it sped up the hill; then I saw the red Dodge pass between two buildings and slow down on the street I’d just left.

  I walked Sue, trying to cool her down a little, countering Barsad’s progress by continuing back around the log structure and down the hill. If I could make it to the bar, I could possibly find a safe place for the horse and make a call.

  I stopped Wahoo Sue at the lower side of the building, and we listened as the diesel continued up the hill and, as I’d hoped, turned left. I continued down and tracked Barsad by listening to the sound of the Dodge’s engine as he turned again, but somewhere a block south.

  I gently kicked her to a canter as I got to the next alley and turned toward the back of the bar. If I could hide Sue behind the building and get inside to make a phone call, I’d be able to get help to all the people who were counting on me.

  I guided her into the lot behind The AR just as the red truck drove by the end of the alley we’d just been on. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen us, but I pulled the horse up to the back-door mudroom and hoped not. There was nowhere else to go. We stood next to one of the decayed, lath privacy fences that sided the dry-grass lot, as well as the thousand-gallon propane tank, which was the size of a small Japanese minisubmarine, sitting along the side of the fence to my left.

  The racket of the diesel continued to echo off the hills and through Absalom. It sounded as if he’d stopped somewhere to my right and was now idling. I pulled my hat down and thought about using the Henry rifle on the Dodge’s tires.

  Sue pivoted her head and began backing up. I hadn’t asked her to do that, and I ducked under the eave o
f the building as she continued to back away into the narrow walkway between the bar and the unconnected rooms. I wasn’t sure what she was up to, but she hadn’t failed me so far.

  We stood there, and I could feel her legs stiffen. What if Barsad had parked the truck and was now pointing the semiautomatic at us?

  Enough was enough; I raised the. 44 and jacked the lever-action. I wasn’t sure what Wahoo Sue’s response to gunfire from close proximity would be, but it had to be better than being shot or run over by a seven-thousand-pound truck.

  I heard the bellow of the diesel, so he hadn’t parked; I pivoted Wahoo Sue in the direction of the alley, but he sounded much closer.

  The fence to my left blew apart as the Dodge crashed through and veered. I spun Sue into a rearing turn at the other side of the walkway as the duellie slid through the lot, occupying it with the front wheels turned toward us. Barsad had the 9 mm out but he miscalculated the distance to the propane tank, and I watched as the impact forced the pistol out of his hand and onto the floorboards where he would have to take the time to look for it. I could see that the utility tank had lurched off its concrete blocks and sat at a thirty-degree angle.

  In a movie, it would’ve blown up. But we weren’t in a movie and it didn’t, and I could see Wade throwing the Dodge into reverse and swinging back.

  I realized that I was trying to lose a truck in a three-block town, but my options were limited. I could get off and shoo the mare away, but my mobility was questionable to say the least, and once I got off the big black horse, there wasn’t anything to say she’d let me back on her.

  Shooting the truck from the moving horse was an option but not nearly as easy as it appeared in most westerns. I’d known many an individual who had learned that by shooting either themselves or their horse; besides, the FBI wanted him alive, so it was a last resort.

  I looked back up the paved main street that headed north when I suddenly remembered the Range Co-op phone jack at the junction box next to the bridge. Would it still be there? Would the bridge still be there?

  If I were trying to outthink myself, however, that’s the direction I’d go.

  I started to gig Wahoo Sue, but she’d already read my mind. It would take a while for Barsad to disentangle himself from the propane tank and the fences and get back on the road, and by that time I hoped to be up the rise and out of sight. Wahoo Sue was at an immediate disadvantage on the blacktop, so I reined her to the right, where there was a broad dirt walkway for horses-an advantage of small-town Wyoming.

  I looked back as we got to the top of the rise overlooking Absalom and could see no activity in the streets below. The population must’ve slept like the dead or more likely didn’t want to be involved. The early morning sun was throwing a diffused glow through the clouds at the horizon, and the shadow of the mill cast across the town like a closed door.

  By my calculations, it would take us less than two minutes to get to the bridge, but you can travel a lot of distance fast in a turbocharged pickup truck. We started around the long, guardrailed bend that led to the bridge, and I could feel the big mare gaining speed as she went into that extended gallop that felt like she was rotating the earth. Maybe she knew, maybe she could sense that this was our last shot-the only way we were going to get away. “So-o-o girl, go-o-od girl. Goo-od girl, go-o-od.”

  It was my father who had taught me to talk to animals. I wondered who had taught Mary Barsad. He said they understood a hell of a lot more than you think they do. I remember him speaking to the horses he shod in a low and reassuring voice, explaining what he was doing to them; he said it was one of the things we owed them for their absolute, unreserved, unswerving loyalty. He said the outside of a horse is always good for the inside of a man.

  In spite of the pressing circumstances, I could feel the ascension of my spirit as we galloped alongside the two-lane strip that led away from Absalom, and that feeling doubled when I saw that the old kings-bridge system of girders still spanned the Powder River and that the Range Co-op trailer that Steve Miller had been working from was still parked by the pole.

  I wasn’t sure if the water coming from my eyes was in relief or from Wahoo Sue’s velocity, but either way we now had a shot. The dirt trail beside the asphalt was growing narrower, and by the time we got within a hundred feet of the bridge we were forced onto the pavement, so I slowed the big dark horse to a canter.

  The sun had stopped making much of an effort to get through the overcast, and the flat light of the Powder River country was doing its best to rob me of the slim glimmer of hope I’d been stoking. It became completely quelled as I slowed Sue at the blinking yellow lights that had been attached across the chest-high, wooden fence with which they’d blocked off the bridge.

  There was a large banner that had been strung across which read DO NOT CROSS-IMPORTANT STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS HAVE BEEN REMOVED-DO NOT CROSS.

  I looked at the other side of the river and could see that the blue plastic auxiliary phone was still attached to the junction box and was gently tapping against the pole.

  I sighed deeply, and then Sue did, too. I looked around, but the hillside to our left was too steep to ride. I walked her over to the edge of the road, where an old, creosote-poled guardrail stood against the edge of the drop-off. It was a good hundred feet to the surface of the slow-moving river, which looked like zinc in the gray light. There were large slabs of sedimentary rock but no trail and no way down.

  I sighed again, and Sue turned her head to look at me, possibly wondering what it was we were going to do next. I wondered about that, too.

  I walked her back, the ghostly sound of her hooves echoing off the hardtop, and looked at the surface of the bridge. The warped, weatherworn planks were still the same color as the water below and looked as they had when Bill and I had driven across them only a few days ago. The only thing that looked different was that the giant rivets that held each plank had been undone, and I wondered about the support trusses and the joists underneath.

  It was possible that the only things they’d removed were the attachments to the concrete buttresses and that the structure was basically intact. It was also possible that, although it wasn’t capable of supporting the weight of a modern vehicle, it could support the weight of a man and horse.

  The thing to do would be to dismount, break through the barricade, and walk Wahoo Sue across on the loose planks. It would provide some excitement of its own considering my broken foot, but there was no way I was leaving her on this side, not by herself, not after we’d come so far together.

  I started to disengage my swollen foot from the stirrup when, from the road leading back to town, I heard the distinctive clatter of the Cummins diesel. I turned in the thin saddle, looked back, and could clearly see the reflection of the headlights on the vintage guardrail.

  After not finding us in town, he’d taken a chance and headed north.

  As Vic would say, fuck me.

  Wahoo Sue knew what was coming and pivoted on the hard asphalt to meet it head on. I raised the. 44 Henry repeater from its comfortable resting place on my lap but then stopped.

  I looked at the height of the barricade and got that light-in-the-balls feeling I always had when I was thinking about doing something colossally stupid. There was a barricade on the other side as well, and the length of the bridge between.

  About sixty feet-it would have to be enough.

  Hell, I knew she could do it; damn, I wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly sprouted wings and flew us across. The question was the bridge, and whether or not it would not only hold the weight of the two of us but the weight of the two of us at impact and speed.

  I trotted her back toward the hillside to give us a straight trajectory and could feel the big mare stiffen as I gave her time to consider what it was I was asking her to do. Could she jump? Would she? If not, I was looking at a lonely header into the thick wooden planks and a possible crashing descent into the twelve-inch-deep water a hundred feet below.

 
I spoke to her in the same steady voice I’d used on the mesa. “I know you’re tired, and I know you’re sick, but we’ve got another hundred feet between us and safety. If we can make it across, then we’re done-I promise.” I swiveled my head to look back down the road and could see the damaged Dodge wheeling around the corner. “I promise.”

  I dug my heels into Wahoo Sue and let her rip. “Yaaah!”

  I almost fell off but got myself positioned as the barricade and bridge swallowed the view. I was in close, but when the mare gathered herself and leapt, I was even closer and was pressed hard against her withers. In that one brief second, we were flying.

  From my perspective, it felt as if we’d cleared the blockade by fathoms, and the next instant we were clattering across the length of the bridge. I was expecting the world to fall from beneath us, and I remembered a blood spatter and another saddle with a smooth and shiny surface, worn by both human and beast in a sacred bond of speed. At that one moment it came to me that if we died like this, there could be no bitter or better end.

  I felt the pressure of her second leap, the world was silent, and it was almost as if we hung there between heaven and earth while the spirit of Wahoo Sue decided which firmament we would join.

  We pounded onto the pavement of the Powder River Road like sledgehammers on Rodin’s doors to hell, and I could feel her steel shoes sliding on the slippery surface of the worn and cupped road.

  She slowed to a canter on the dirt and grass that made up the supply lot where WYDOT and Range had parked their equipment. Dust floated up from the dry ground as I reined Wahoo Sue into a tight turn and looked back across the bridge through the clouds of talcum scoria that filled the air.

  Barsad hadn’t seen the blockade or had decided to ignore it, and scattered the sawhorses, two-by-fours, and signs in every direction as he charged across the bridge in the three-ton vehicle. I watched as the surface separated with the lateral movement and the planks split and began falling into the water. The truck’s undercarriage dropped, and his momentum stopped as the wheels fell and the Dodge became high-centered on its axles while the diesel motor wailed like some Tyrannosaurus rex buried in tar.