Hard Twisted

by C. Joseph Greaves

  That’s all right. Maybe you can come visit soon, and that’ll be gift aplenty. In fact, maybe we could wait right here while you run and—

  That’s enough, Goulding told her.

  The wind gusted and the pinto horse backed and fidgeted and Palmer walked him in a circle.

  Go ahead and open it, baby.

  Lottie tore at the paper. She opened the lid and lifted a baby doll pink and naked from the box and pressed it to her shirtfront.

  Do you like it?

  She nodded, her eyes tightly closed.

  What do you say? Palmer chided her as Mike turned with a hand to her mouth and ran back to the car.

  Goulding kicked at the ground. Well, he said, I guess we’ll be getting on. I’ll put tobacco on the list.

  He walked to the driver’s door and stopped there and nodded once to Palmer, who nodded in reply. When the doors had closed and the engine started, the Chevrolet swung wide in the roadway, leaving in its wake a swirling cloud that when it cleared left only the boy still standing with his hat in his hand and his foot on the running board.

  It was a Thursday late in February when the coast was next clear and they drove the bleating sheep in through the bottleneck, Lottie on Henry and Palmer on the little pinto, and no sooner did she close the gate behind them than the snow began to fall.

  She trailed the flock into the canyon with her collar raised and her hat brim lowered as the sheep jostled and cried and fell away in a mad rush toward water, leaving her alone with no sound but her horse’s footfalls on the frozen hummocks and these yet muffled by the lightly falling snow.

  The ride was several miles along a narrow bench shaped to her left by the horseshoe bends of the river gorge and to her right by the red mesa rising from its steep buttresses of talus. She passed by tilted boulders pocked with ancient petroglyphs, and she passed the old Seeps campground where stone dolmens stood as mammoth cairns to mark the river’s progress.

  By the time she’d reached the dugout the storm had already passed, and she dismounted and moved among her charges counting heads. She shooed the bellwethers and divvied up the sub-herds and noted the various markers. When her count was finally finished, she walked to where Palmer sat huddled and shivering by the fire, like something swept in with the flock.

  They’s four missin, she told him.

  Four? You sure it ain’t three? Or six?

  Speckles’ bunch is missin one, and Blackie’s bunch is missin one, and—

  All right already, you’re givin me a headache.

  He’d fished his makings from his pocket and was rolling a smoke with stiff and frozen fingers.

  I’ll take the wagon, she told him. I’ll need help if they’s one needs liftin.

  Shit! He flung the half-rolled cigarette and stood and wiped his nose with his sleeve. I said I was comin, didn’t I?

  Back outside the cattle gate, Lottie drove the buckboard north and east along the mesa while Palmer, riding Henry, cut a straight path eastward toward the Garden. The snow had already melted and the ground was soft in places and she looked for tracks or sign left since the thaw. The buckboard rasped and sawed as the Appaloosa horse marked a steady pace with Lottie rising at intervals to scan the broad horizon.

  She was almost to Bell Butte when she heard the engine sound. She whoaed the horse and stood again listening. Then she sat and clucked and turned the wagon back again toward the canyon.

  Palmer and Henry were stopped and listening, skylighted on a low rise. She rolled to a halt beside them, and he nodded in the direction they faced.

  You hear it?

  It sounded like Mr. Oliver’s car.

  Palmer leaned and spat. That’s what I thought. Shit.

  What’re we gonna do?

  You got the rifle back there?

  I think so.

  He stood down and loosed the catchrope and tied Henry to the back of the wagon.

  Move, he said as he climbed over the wheel with the pistol in his hand. He laid it on the floorboards by his feet.

  Put that away before you get us both shot.

  Shut up.

  He hawed the Appaloosa forward, and they crossed the rolling plain tilting and jostling in the direction of the roadway. From there they headed westward, and as they wove their way along the escarpment, they came at last upon the open cattle gate. Farther on they encountered the first of the sheep streaming outbound from the canyon.

  Goddamnit.

  Soon the sheep were flowing past on both sides of the wagon. Farther still they saw the old sheriff on his walking horse, cutting and shouting and swinging a lariat.

  You son of a bitch! Oliver bellowed as the wagon pulled abreast. He dropped a loop and swung the rope, lashing at Palmer’s face. Palmer ducked, blocking the rope with his arm as he bent for the gun.

  Don’t!

  Palmer came up firing.

  His first shot blew a pink cloud into the air and onto the neck of the walking horse. Lottie screamed as the Appaloosa reared in its traces, sending the other shots wild.

  The walking horse bolted. Palmer turned and reached for the rifle, and when he found it, he jumped clear of the wagon.

  More shots rang out behind her. Lottie grabbed the reins, turning in time to see Palmer in a firing crouch and Henry backing on the catchrope and the Oliver horse snubbed and twisting as the sheriff drew a rifle from his scabbard. The old man tried to turn his horse, but his arm fell limp and his lone shot went wide as he toppled from the saddle.

  Clint!

  The echo of the final gunshot died among the boulders. The only sounds remaining were the bleating of the sheep and the tinkling of bells and the wind in the river gorge below them. Palmer rose and wiped his face with his shirtsleeve.

  You see that? He gestured with the rifle. Whoo!

  He sauntered toward the walking horse, which stood now with its head lowered and its reins trailing beside the fallen rider.

  Lottie clambered down and rushed to where the sheriff lay splayed on his side. Palmer rolled him with a foot. Blood was everywhere.

  Is he dead?

  The old man’s forehead was scraped where he’d fallen. His mouth was open and his eyes were senseless and red mud was caked in his mustache and on his eyebrow.

  He’s dead all right. I guess he wasn’t so tough after all.

  Palmer’s eyes scanned the trail by which they stood.

  You seen what happened. Self-defense is what it was.

  He left her stunned and staring, and he walked back to the buckboard. He returned holding his pistol by the barrel.

  Take it, he said.

  What for?

  I want to see you shoot him.

  What?

  Shoot him. Hit him right there in the chest.

  She backed a step. You’re crazy.

  Maybe I am and maybe I ain’t. But I’m not stupid.

  What are you talkin about?

  I’m talkin about you and me are in this together. Here. Take it.

  She would not take the gun. He set down the rifle and grabbed her arm and marched her forward to where the body lay. He pressed the gun into her hand, and when she would not grip it, he closed his fingers onto hers and sighted the barrel and squeezed off a shot.

  Her eyes were closed and she was already crying when she felt the cold steel of the trigger and the buck of the second shot; heard the loud report and its lesser echo ringing across the gorge.

  She found herself on her knees. The gun was gone and Palmer was standing beside her.

  Get up, he told her. Don’t be a goddamn baby.

  The lariat rope lay coiled by the roadside. Go get that, he told her, and he shoved her, and she ran stumbling for it as Palmer belted the pistol and sheathed the sheriff’s rifle in its scabbard and walked the sheriff’s horse to Palmer’s own rifle on the ground.

  Give it here. Hurry up.

  He handed off his rifle, and the reins, and then he bent and paired the old man’s boots, working a loop around the ankles. He played
out the rope, backing as he went, until he stepped into the stirrup of the sheriff’s horse, swinging his leg over the saddle.

  You pick up anything falls off him.

  He dallied the rope and put the horse forward. When the slack caught, the sheriff’s body jerked and dragged into the roadway.

  Palmer rode slowly with his tiptoes in the stirrups, and Henry backed and blew as first the bloody horse and then the bloody body with its arms raised in a futile show of surrender slid past the wagon.

  Lottie stowed the rifle as she climbed into the buckboard. She popped the reins, and the Appaloosa followed the grisly procession, clopping for a hundred yards or more until Palmer left the trail again, angling the walking horse toward the river gorge.

  Go on ahead, he called to her as he dropped from the saddle. I’ll be along in a minute.

  She watched him as he worked the rope and freed the dead man’s feet. Then he bent and leaned and dragged the lifeless body toward the precipice.

  He rode in at a gallop to find Lottie still in the springseat with her head bowed and her hands between her knees. Henry turned his head to watch as Palmer skidded to a halt and dismounted the bloody horse.

  Lottie looked down at him where he stood, man and horse both wild-eyed and hard-breathing and damp despite the chill.

  You had no cause, she said quietly.

  Palmer stripped the bridle and the saddle, leaving them in a heap where they fell. He smacked the horse across the flank, and the horse bolted and bucked once on its way to join with its fellows out among the cattle and the smattering of sheep that still grazed within the canyon.

  Listen to me, Palmer said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her sideways on the seat.

  You’re hurting me!

  You don’t know the meanin of hurt, sister. Not till you been to prison and lived in a cage and had your head stove every day and your ass whipped every night for night on end. And I’ll tell you one thing that you’d better believe, and it’s this right here.

  He pulled her farther across the seat until their faces almost touched.

  If I go to prison, then you go to prison. But lucky for both of us, I ain’t goin back to no prison.

  She fell as he released her, tumbling and landing hard and scrambling wet and muddy to her feet. She ran for the dugout. She slammed the door behind her and knelt in the darkness, watching through the door crack as Palmer retrieved the rifle and levered a shell. He walked to the line shack and kicked the door open.

  He emerged moments later, the rifle on his shoulder. He climbed atop the Oliver car to scout the canyon east and west, then he climbed down again, sheathing the rifle in Henry’s saddle scabbard and bending to work his fingers at the catchrope.

  She crawled back into sunlight.

  What’re you doin?

  He cursed the knot and drew his jackknife from his pocket.

  Where you goin?

  He swung into the saddle and sawed the horse in a circle.

  The old man wasn’t alone! Looks like your boyfriend’s on the loose!

  Palmer ate furtively with the rifle across his lap. His back was to the dugout, and his eyes, alert and unblinking, swept the canyon floor until the light faded, and then he sat apart from the fire until the fire died and there was no light at all. When the moon rose low and cloud-veiled in the east, shadows reappeared among the stock, and when Lottie saw him again, it was his dark shape moving among the cattle like an Indian.

  When she’d finished her cleanup, she walked out to where she’d seen him last and called into the darkness.

  Clint? C’mon, Clint. It’s freezing out here!

  Shhhh!

  The sound came from behind her. She turned to see him moving toward her in a crouch, the rifle in both hands. Like the soldier he once was. Or claimed once to have been.

  You can’t stay out here all night.

  Beats gettin knifed in your sleep.

  She looked where he was looking, up the darkened canyon toward the bottleneck.

  What’re we gonna do?

  I don’t know about you, but I figured to wait until sunrise and then hunt his ass some more.

  That ain’t what I meant.

  I know what you meant. You just go on to bed and let me worry about it.

  She lay in the dugout wide-awake like some Lazarus interred. Seeing in the darkness the old sheriff’s body. Feeling the cold weight of the gun. Hearing the report. Smelling the blood, and the death.

  She closed her eyes, listening for any sound but that of her own breathing, and if she slept at all, it was the brief and dreamless sleep of the condemned.

  At the first hint of daylight she sat upright.

  The morning was cold, and clear, and when she crawled forth from the dugout, she found the sheriff’s walker tied to the buckboard with both rifles fitted to the saddle.

  Clint?

  The horse lifted its head.

  Clint!

  Hands grabbed her from behind. She shrieked and spun to see Palmer grinning crazily in the half-light, the pistol in his waistband and his eyes glowing in the new dawn like fox fire.

  Come to wish me luck?

  She grabbed hold of his shirtfront. Listen, Clint. Just listen a minute. It was self-defense like you said, and there ain’t nobody but you and me to swear to it. We could ride out to the Lees or down to Mike and Harry’s. Right now, we could ride.

  He pried her hands away.

  You’re forgettin a thing or two, darlin.

  Like what?

  Like we already throwed his body over a cliff, remember? Like he used to be the sheriff. Like ever juror in a hundred miles of here is his goddamn cousin. Like these horses is stole, and we’s fugitives from two states, and we been all this time usin phony names.

  I’m scared, Clint. I’m scared real bad.

  He glanced up-canyon, to where the sun lay low over the vermilion cliffs.

  Most important thing you seem to have forgot is your boyfriend Jake. The reason he ain’t come back is cuz he’s hidin somewheres. Yonder’s his horse. That means he’s afoot, and he’s just waitin for us to leave so’s he can ride out and turn us in. That’s what ought to be keepin you awake.

  Maybe we could talk to him.

  Talk. Palmer leaned and spat. A little late for talk. We got no choice but to see this all the way through.

  He released her wrists. Then he unhitched the walking horse and swung into the saddle.

  Pack up that car, he said, positioning the rifles. Take whatever we’ll need for three days’ drivin. I shouldn’t be too long.

  He turned the horse, and pressed down his hat, and set off at a canter.

  The noon breeze carried hints of the spring to come.

  Lottie had laid the bedrolls side by side and had placed upon each of them a single change of clothes. To his she’d added his satchel and his bridle and some food items from the wagon. To hers she’d added her Christmas doll and her father’s leather Bible. She’d knelt and rolled them both, then tied them off and carried them to the backseat of the Oliver car.

  She’d next walked among what sheep were there, calling to them by name and telling them each good-bye. That they were the lucky ones, here inside the canyon. That soon they would be reunited with their bandmates.

  When noon had passed without sign of Palmer, she’d found the knotted hackamore and retrieved Henry’s saddle from the car and tacked the faithful horse for what she knew would be the final time. She’d stood before him and offered him her shirtfront, but the horse had bent instead to crop the grass at her feet.

  She was twenty minutes in the saddle when she heard a sound that might have been a gunshot. She kicked Henry forward, riding hard until at last she could see movement up ahead among the distant boulders of the Seeps camp, and there she brought the horse up short.

  What she saw were the shapes of a man and a horse, both now still, both small against the tumbled rocks.

  And then the man was holding something in his hands.

 
And then the man was chopping at something on the ground.

  Chapter Ten

  AS LONG AS IT AIN’T HERE

  BY MR. PHARR: I’m hot in Utah?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: To which the old man replied, You’re no hotter in Utah than you are here?

  BY MR. HARTWELL: Hearsay, Your Honor, and grossly prejudicial.

  BY MR. PHARR: An adoptive admission, Your Honor.

  THE COURT: Counsel will approach.

  (A CONFERENCE WAS HELD AT SIDEBAR.)

  BY MR. PHARR: What did the accused say when the old man told him you’re no hotter in Utah than you are here?

  A: He didn’t say nothing.

  They followed the dry wash of Gypsum Creek, keeping where they could to the hard and rocky parts, and in the morning they entered Monument Pass from the east with two tires flat and one wheel bent and wobbling.

  When they reached Goulding’s trading post, only the old Chevrolet was parked under the thatched lean-to. A trio of horses were hitched to the corral. A thin thread of smoke hung over the stone building.

  Palmer drew the pistol and checked it and told her to stay put, but she ignored this and opened her door, so he warned her not to speak once they were inside.

  The door to the trading post was open, the bullpen empty. Palmer called into the wareroom, and then they climbed the stairs together to find them all at breakfast, Mike standing by the cook-stove and Harry in his usual seat and a woman in a dime store cowboy hat staring openmouthed at the dirty and wild-eyed man with the gun.

  A word, said Palmer to Goulding, gesturing. In private.

  They descended to the empty bullpen, where Harry stood with his long arms folded and Mike waited behind him, backlit in the doorway.

  What the hell’s going on? Goulding demanded. Who’s minding the sheep?

  Had us a patch of trouble, Palmer told him. Oliver’s dead, and so’s that Shumway boy.

  Mike raised a hand to her mouth.

  Afraid there wasn’t no help to it. The old man trampled the sheep, and then he hard-twisted Johnny Rae. When he drew down on me, I shot him off his horse and drug his body over the cliff. The boy too. We left the wagon and the horses in the canyon. The gate’s open, so my guess is the sheep are back inside by now.