Painted Horses

by Malcolm Brooks

  “Anything for a pretty girl.”

  “Ho ho. Sense of humor still intact. Tell me H, whatever got into you with that passel of farm nags? Guys like you and me, we wouldn’t figure to be any different than two beans in a stewpot. You sent as many scrubs to the can as I did, back in the old days. Then you get all high-minded and charitable on us.” The man with him wore an almost luminous white Stetson, a hat of plainly better quality than anything else in the vicinity, also a bespoke suit of decidedly nonwestern origin. Savile Row, more likely. What on earth was he doing here?

  “You still rousting mustangs, Jack?”

  “What passes for ’em. Ain’t a thing like it used to be.”

  “Never is, is it.”

  Allen shrugged. “All what you make of it, I guess.”

  “Why Jack. You sound downright melancholy.” He was moving now, stepping away, not looking at her at all.

  “Didn’t figure you for a sentimental streak. That’s for sure.”

  “Paint fumes.”

  “How’s that?”

  John H circled the air around his ear with a finger. “It’s the paint fumes, Jack.”

  “Oh yeah. An artist. I forgot.”

  John H was walking away now, putting layers of the crowd between them. She noticed the source of his carriage then, his martial rigidity. He moved with the slightest stage of a limp.

  Allen raised his voice. “See you soon, H.”

  Over his shoulder he said, “Thanks for the warning,” and he was gone.

  Catherine wanted to vanish herself. At the very least she now fully regretted the kohl—the man beside Allen seemed unable to stop staring. She took the reins. “What was that about?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you have witnessed a ghost. Also what you might call a turncoat.”

  “His name is John Barb,” Catherine supplied. He’d said so, that day in the canyon.

  Jack Allen snickered. “That what he told you?”

  She looked at him. She felt a spike of ire that Jack Allen should have some inside knowledge into this particular subject. She felt startlingly, dangerously territorial, as though he were not simply his usual arrogant self but something altogether worse, something more along the lines of, say, another female.

  “A Barb is a horse, little darlin. A type of horse. Sort of a Spanish Arabian. Mister H was having some fun with you.”

  Catherine realized she was glaring at him. To her surprise Jack Allen turned a little wary. She felt a wicked spasm of delight.

  “Hey now. I’m just the messenger here.” He looked at his compatriot, still staring at Catherine. Catherine knew in a flash who he was and she thought, I do have secrets to hide from you.

  “I knew him in the war. Before that, even—we both rode for the canners, used to run in the same circle. Italy, though. I knew him real well in Italy.” Allen pronounced Italy as though it were a two-syllable word. It-lee.

  “Miss Le Mat. I’m Dub Harris.” He held out his hand and she shook it, as briefly as she could. “This character mean anything to you?”

  Catherine flustered through a shrug. “He’s a good dancer.”

  “But you haven’t, say, put him on retainer as well. Yet another local expert.”

  “That reminds me,” said Allen. “Where’s that smart-mouthed little friend of yours?” He shifted his eyes to Harris. “I think I’ve nearly got her ready to assimilate.”

  “You realize she’s barely done with high school.”

  Allen shrugged, began his usual deft construction of a cigarette. “We’re on reservation time. Polite society this ain’t. And no, H ain’t working with Miss Lemay.”

  “I’ve met him a few times, always randomly.”

  “This is mighty big country for randomly.”

  Catherine wasn’t sure what to say. “In all honesty, I’m a little amazed by that myself.”

  “H ain’t working with nobody, be my guess. I’d say he’s living down in that canyon you aim to flood, living like a critter one step ahead of extinction.”

  “You and I need to talk, by the way. Soon. Billings.”

  Catherine nodded, already conjuring ways to avoid this.

  “Which means he’s still running from the firing squad as well.”

  Now he had her attention. Even Dub Harris ignored her.

  “Well Jack. Don’t leave us hanging.”

  Allen lit up with his Zippo. Catherine noticed for the first time the emblem on the side. Two sabers, crossed into an X.

  “By the time we got into the war the US horse cavalry was nothing but a memory. Remudas sold off, tack destroyed, stables torn down. Who needs horses when you have tanks and planes and jeeps.

  “Then we invade Naples and it rains for a month. The Krauts are all screwed into the mountains, the roads so shot even the jeeps can’t move. Lo and behold, the only way to take care of business now is on a horse. Military intelligence, right?

  “Anyway. They corralled a bunch of us wild and woolly types for stock requisitions. Put us on recon details, supply trains, horse patrols. Most entertainment I’ve ever had. Quantrill’s Raiders revived. I could tell you stories.”

  Crossed sabers. Blue shirt. You know. The words spun in Catherine’s brain like objects in a tornado. Behind her on the flatbed the band keyed up again, hesitant plucking of banjo and bass.

  “H should’ve been 4F anyway, with that knee. Hell, even outside that we were bound to become a burr on the government’s hide. A pack of saddle tramps in a tank and air war.”

  Dub Harris said, “I had no idea we used horses in the war. I knew the Russians and Poles did, but what can you expect. They’re still in the Stone Age.”

  Jack Allen didn’t seem to hear him. “We break the Gothic Line, the Krauts retreat north, and we get a new set of marching orders. Real ones, as in march into France on your own two feet.” Now he did look at Harris, looked at him with what seemed to Catherine the taunting look of a jackal. Harris seemed unfazed. “You want primitive? I’ll give it to you.”

  He shifted to Catherine, same penetrating look. “Reckon H didn’t cotton, because the last time I knew anything about him he’d just deserted his outfit in a combat zone. Your mystery man tucked tail and ran. You follow me? Reckon his name’s still on a list. Reckon he knows it well as I do.”

  The band was in full swing now and the dancing couples whirled. Catherine had a goofy grin on her face that she couldn’t control, and she watched the dancers out of sheer desperation. Something resembling a jitterbug despite the incongruent twang of the tune. She felt as though someone had cracked a hilarious joke in a crowded room and everyone got the punch line, everyone but her.

  She was still watching the dancers but not hearing the music at all when Harris put into words a thing she wondered herself. “So what the hell does H stand for?”

  Jack Allen wracked his brain. “Now that’s a good question. Don’t recall ever knowing, exactly.” He laughed a little, only to himself. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it. Mother’s maiden name or something, which would make him part equine.” Harris had formed the question but Allen looked at her, and she narrowed her lined eyes and looked back. Her grin was gone.

  “H,” he said. “Reckon it stands for horse.”

  John H

  III

  His name is Malloy but you ladies can call him the worst goddamn day of the rest of your short and pathetic life, from now on the first word out of your cock holster will be sir, the last word will be sir, and so forth. John H has not been off the train five minutes before Malloy spies the saddle.

  “What does this look like, Private Dumbfuck, the junior miss riding competition?” The harangue is no doubt just getting started except someone farther down the line bursts out laughing and before John H knows it the whole bunch of them are pounding push-ups on the station platform.

  Spring, 1943. John H has been working on a ranch outside Buffalo, Wyoming, when a draft notice directs him to Camp Hale, Colorado. He gathers on the military train that most of t
he others are experienced skiers from Minnesota and Vermont, and he wonders if he’s been assigned to the wrong unit. He’s explained he has a weak knee and this doesn’t register either. Eventually the train chugs into an alpine valley and whines past a squat run of stables. He picks up a whiff of livestock, and takes heart.

  He is not here to ski but to acquire mule-packing skills. Many of the recruits including John H have been summoned without basic training, so urgent is the need to make this mountain force operational. They will receive their rudiments on site, under the tutelage of this bullnecked drill instructor.

  John H sees his saddle come off the floorboards and he comes up himself and goes right back down with a blinding pain in his knee. Blind luck. He struggles back to his feet and this time Malloy plants a sharp finger in his chest.

  “Hold it right there, private.”

  “I need my saddle.”

  “What part of the first word out of your mouth don’t you understand.”

  “It’s my saddle.”

  “Does your mother know she raised a imbecile?”

  John H feels his neck go scarlet. “Sir. That saddle is all I have. Sir. It has kept me out of a soup line. Sir.”

  “Now then. Maybe you ain’t as stupid as you look. You ladies listen up. For a few short weeks you belong to me. You make me proud—and I mean every sorry-ass one of you—and missy here might get her saddle back.” He withdraws his finger. John H still can feel the prod. As Malloy stalks off with the Furstnow he looks back and says, “What do you have in this thing, lead?”

  The next few days consist of various marching drills with full battle packs. Twice in the night they are wrenched from sleep by the shriek of a whistle, made to gear up and march overland. John H can barely bend his knee after the second day but thinks constantly of his saddle and resolves to limp his way through.

  The limp attracts the attention of Malloy who presumes a bluff. John H becomes his special project, singled out for this, berated for that.

  They are issued rifles, .30-06 Garands with twice the heft of the saddle guns John H is accustomed to. First Malloy demonstrates not the accuracy or power of the weapon, but its club-like properties close-in.

  “Say you’ve got a Jap looking to surrender after a fight and he’s unarmed, hands in the air, and it turns out to be a ruse like this here.”

  John H is elected to portray the sneaky Jap. Malloy orders him to make a grab for the rifle. “For real, now.”

  As soon as his fingers close around the action Malloy shoves forward to set him off balance, then pivots the buttstock forcefully around, braking the swing near enough to John H’s face to generate a flinch. “Bam,” Malloy barks. “Right in his Jap kisser. Even got his eyes to slant.”

  Two hours later they’re on the rifle range for live practice, facing a line of targets a hundred yards off. Malloy paces behind them, shouting that they will not load until instructed to do so. An assistant moves along, dispensing clips to each soldier.

  Though a Garand rifle has little recoil it is unquestionably the loudest thing John H has ever heard, sending its bullet out the barrel not so much with a roar as an earsplitting metallic shriek. He’s flinched on the trigger twice from the racket around him and resolves to steady himself.

  He pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Pulls again, still nothing. He steps back and puts his hand over his head, sees Malloy’s livid face descending.

  John H starts to explain his gun is jammed, but half in his stride Malloy reaches out to snatch the rifle away. John H forgets to unbalance the Jap with a shove, but he gets the second step exactly right. Malloy’s fingers close around the rifle, and the buttstock blurs like the kick of a mule.

  A crunch of bone and Malloy folds like empty overalls, piles on the ground in a heap. John H hands his jammed rifle to the assistant.

  He spends two weeks in the brig down at Carson, wobbling between unhinging boredom and withering self-punishment. He’s convinced his saddle is now permanently lost and for this he can’t forgive himself.

  He wakes up one morning to see his old CBC foreman standing before him, wearing army khakis and a regulation mustache in place of the erstwhile handlebar. John H thinks he’s still dreaming.

  “It’s your lucky day, sunshine.”

  John H gets up and follows, not convinced he’s actually awake. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re transferred to horse cavalry. How’s your Italian?”

  John H shakes his head. “There ain’t a horse cavalry. I checked when I got drafted.”

  The foreman walks toward a Dodge army sedan. Only now does John H notice his sergeant’s stripes. “I ran you boys like a slave driver, kept you in line like mother superior, but did I ever once lie to you?”

  John H shakes his head.

  “Then I guess there’s a horse cavalry.”

  “There’s something else. They took my saddle.”

  The foreman looks at him. “I spring you out of a court-martial, and that’s what you’re worried about?”

  A week later he leaves on a merchant marine vessel out of New York, saddle beneath his bunk. He disembarks at Palermo, Sicily.

  In the fighting of the previous month the terrain of the island and its terraced vineyards set modern warfare if not on its head then certainly two steps back. Trucks and tanks could not follow the troops to the fighting in the mountains. As the supplies ran out, some shrewd quartermaster from the old school requisitioned farm mules to pack beyond the jeep line.

  With invasion of the mainland imminent even a fool can look across the narrow Strait of Messina, see mountain after mountain and read into the future. The future stands on hooves.

  John H has been assigned to a provisional cavalry unit, sent here because he knows horses. He trains in mounted tactics under veteran horse soldiers, men who reminisce about Black Jack Pershing and the US Army polo team. Some of the stock is requisitioned from the Italian army, some gathered haphazardly. John H’s Furstnow is the envy of the outfit.

  He happens one evening to walk by the open wall of the regimental smithy, sees the molten glow of a horseshoe in the dim interior. Sparks jump like fireflies when the hammer strikes. The shoe goes into a water can with a whoosh of sound and a voice floats out from the soot.

  “Hey cowboy. Want a beer?”

  John H takes a step closer. His eyes adjust and he sees the smith, a lanky, smoke-begrimed character with a tractor cap turned backward. “You joking?”

  “About the beer? Mister, I never joke about the beer. Plumb dangerous. Come here.”

  The blacksmith steps through the back. In the light John H can see the man is not much his senior, that he wears identical private’s stripes yet carries himself as though he owns the place. He lifts a board from a well cover and proceeds to haul on a twine running down the shaft. A glass jug emerges, nearly full with amber-colored beer.

  The farrier takes a long swallow, then passes the jug to John H. “It’s even cold.”

  Also no joke. John H takes in a long pull, this simple pleasure enough to make him want to weep. He passes the jug back. “How did you wrangle that?”

  The farrier grins. “The barter system.”

  He calls himself Yakima McKee, the handle unexplained as he hails from Ogden, Utah, and claims no Indian blood. McKee deflates all notions of the laconic Westerner—he has a loud, raucous laugh, keeps himself in stitches with an endless monologue about a place called Nauvoo and the golden-headed angels who live there.

  Though assigned to the recon unit McKee spends much of his time in the smithy, shoeing stock and modifying tack. He is the most able fabricator John H has ever met, converting a Phillips packsaddle into a machine gun carrier, devising a way to pack three dozen mortar rounds onto a single mule.

  He claims as a child to have known the famous arms designer John Browning, or as McKee refers to him, John Moses.

  As in, “John Moses would shit bricks if he could see the way we’re defiling this here masterpiece of his.” He
refers specifically to the 1911 automatic pistol, the standard-issue sidearm. Army protocol mandates the pistol be carried decocked, its hammer on an empty chamber.

  McKee disapproves mightily, expounds at length in the barracks one evening, a dissertation accompanied by a lot of arm waving. “It’s a durn travesty. It’s an insult to the idea. A mustache on the Mona Lisa. Why even have a repeating pistol?”

  McKee’s eyes flash around his audience and he drafts the first three who happen to be wearing holsters. “You, you, and you—line up there and throw it down.”

  The three look at him warily, wondering if nutty McKee has finally cracked altogether. “What are you talking about,” says one.

  “Fill yer hands. You know? Draw?”

  “Come on Yak. Three against one? You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Try me.”

  The three drag themselves over to humor him, also to put an end to this ridiculous tirade. “When?” says one.

  “Whenever.”

  One undoes the flap and begins to pull his pistol, and the others duly prodded pull theirs as well. McKee hasn’t moved.

  “Looks like we got you.”

  “You gonna rack a round into those chambers? Otherwise you got nothing.”

  The three look at each other uncertainly, and then one shrugs and moves to work the slide.

  McKee’s gun clears its holster in a blur and when it comes level John H can see the hammer is already drawn back, McKee’s thumb already flicking the safety off. He says, “Bangbangbang.”

  After that, everyone in the unit carries his pistol with a round already chambered, hammer cocked and safety locked in the manner of God, John Moses, and Yakima McKee.

  In September the horse and pack units unload from a transport vessel on the Salerno beachhead and grind inland at midnight in a convoy. They see splinters of light in the mountains and surmise a storm, then realize they’re seeing the muzzle flash of guns. A sergeant from a different division walks out of the darkened village and tells them to watch what they touch and where they walk, that the retreating Krauts have mined the bridges and the roads and every other goddamn thing as well.