Dead Horses

by David Knop

  A mixture of black bear, Kuhaya in my language, and grizzly tracks covered the ground. Scat-covered leaves littered the imprints of round pawprints of the black bear. Away from the house and visible fifteen feet away, the eight-inch paws of Grizz invoked a vision of the mass of horribilis. My .38 possessed meek stopping power and would only piss off an animal as large as this.

  Kuhaya and Grizz had come and gone from the area, so why was this all here? Why would competitors—they ate the same things and even each other—pick a scratching spot in the same place? And why would shy, territorial animals like bears choose a rub so close to each other and human habitation?

  Questions or not, I had to sleep. Inside, I locked the rear and front doors to block visitors, human or otherwise. Oso’s place was messy but homey. Sleep hit me like a bucket of rocks.

  “Get up.”

  “What the—” I patted around the bed for my pistol, expecting the worst.

  No Name, man mountain, loomed over me. “Relax.”

  “You.” Sleep had not released my wits. “What?”

  “Let’s go,” No Name said, halfway out the front door. “Now.”

  I pocketed my .38 and stumbled in a haze to the pickup. When No Name floored Oso’s pickup down the dirt road faster than its curves allowed, an adrenalin jolt woke me up with a shock. “Jesus, man.”

  No Name paid no attention to me as he leadfooted through turns, narrows, and sidehill cuts toward San Juan high country. Memories of Wolf howled in my stitches.

  We passed former mining towns sporting wild-west motifs for tourists and skiers. Along the highway, abandoned mills and grayed skeletons of big-beam elevator headframes crowded both sides of the highway. Rusted gears, ore buckets, ore cars, cables, pipes, water tanks, and corrugated metal sheets littered the ground. Mounds of rust and yellow-brown tailings covered hillsides and meadows. Drooping field grass circled dead, silver-stained ground in places. A yellow stream hugging the motorway rushed away into the valley we’d come from.

  One hundred fifty years of ecological abuse of such a beautiful place would’ve brought tears to my eyes if No Name hadn’t broken into a four-wheel slide around a curve bordering a hundred-foot drop. The old truck’s lap belts did little to prevent me from slamming against the door with each sliding turn. I swallowed my stomach and crushed the handle and wondered if I could survive a deliberate bailout through the side window.

  As the highway climbed, vegetation gave way to rock and fields of summer snow. I spotted Mount Sneffels, figured we were headed toward Red Mountain Pass on US-550 not far from Ouray. In the distance, a natural gas tanker labored uphill behind us. “Where we goin’ in such a goddamn hurry?”

  No Name said, “Found ‘em.”

  For a second, I feared he meant the rock face dead ahead, but he steered back on track. I asked, “Found who?”

  “Chivs.”

  “Chivingtons?” Jean Reel had briefed me on the group as well as the other conspirators she was investigating: Chivs, punks, cops, and Utes. The alliance of four had nothing in common except greed, the great unifier.

  In 1864, Colonel John Chivington led his Denver thugs to kill 150 Cheyenne and Arapahoe old men, women, and children. The modern-day namesakes, part of the plot to disrupt the Ute’s hospital groundbreaking, were just haters and killers hiding behind their snow-white agenda.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on? My job is to ID Ute Traditionalists. Why’d you track these people down?”

  No Name looked at me, smiled, stopped the truck, and hopped out from behind the wheel next to a track leading uphill. He fiddled with the hubs of the front tires and twisted them into four-wheel operation.

  When he jumped back in, I cocked my .38. “You better be on the level.”

  “You gonna like this,” he said, with a smirk on his face.

  He gunned the engine and four-wheeled up a track I wouldn’t take a horse. As we climbed, the engine whined in low gear, while the rough terrain jerked me side to side. Each time the truck’s oil pan met a rock, I winced and imagined sparks licking the gas tank.

  We arrived at a cut in a peak close to a scrub cluster that could hide the pickup. At this altitude, the sun blinded, and each step required a double draw of air. Ahead, Bighorn stared at me, flashed his rump, then disappeared over a boulder. Mats of small purple flowers emerged from between jagged granite cracks. Tortured, wind-burned pine and fir clumps leaned easterly. Even plants struggled to live on this barren ground.

  No Name pulled two rifles from behind the seat, jerked them out of their scabbards.

  “What’s that for?” I asked, between pulls of air.

  No Name scratched his nose, seemed to assess my sanity, then handed me a bolt action .308 with a scope and sling. He walked off.

  I exhaled. I wasn’t too happy holding an unfamiliar rifle after shooting a cop, but No Name didn’t leave me much choice. I hurried after him, wheezing like grandma’s washing machine.

  Near a precipice overlooking a lower plain, he crouched, then lay prone. I did the same. He pointed to a log cabin edging a pine forest 1,500 yards downhill. He shouldered his rifle and peered through the scope. I raised to the sitting position and used a hasty sling to steady my aim. I adjusted the scope focus as I waited for my heartbeat to slow.

  The scope was a good one and I got a close look at men drinking beer outside the cabin. Some were armed with rifles, some with sidearms. A few of them wore Civil War era military-style gray coats.

  “How’d you find these people?” I asked.

  No Name offered up no answer. No surprise.

  In a couple hours of watching, we learned little more than the group, twenty-four men by my count, liked beer. I began to wonder why we were here. I checked out the surrounding area. Our eagle’s perch offered an unobstructed view of whatever it was we were waiting for.

  A seventeen pickups parked in a dirt lot in front of the cabin. I spotted six Harleys mixed in. Two of the trucks had horse trailers attached. My heart pumped a little faster. Nothing moved in either trailer, but even if I’d seen a horse, the distance prohibited the clear identification of breed. The chance I’d found my horse killers was an unwise leap of logic. But I tucked it away in my mind.

  I was about to ask No Name, why he’d tracked these hoods, when a sable black ‘64 Impala SS Rag Top, pulled up to the cabin. Four men rode inside. I recognized the car, I knew the driver, too. The wait was worth it.

  The Impala’s horn sang the theme from “Grand Theft Auto,” a video game my son had become attached to years back. A few people stood; most paid no attention to the newcomer.

  “How in hell did a car that low get up a bad road?” I asked.

  “Blacktop comes all the way up,” said No Name.

  A few men gathered by the driver’s side as four cholos stepped out of the Impala radiating gangbanger ‘tude. The driver moved into view. Ángel “Wookie” Gutierrez. Wookie’s appearance at the hideout of a violent gang was no surprise, he knew where the money was.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Know them?”

  “That prick stole my Jeep.”

  Wookie and his posse talked with the Chivingtons and drank for an hour. Through my scope, the conversation seemed civilized and calm. The fact that a group of racists would talk at length to a cholo meant something big and profitable was going down. They even shook hands. Wookie and his crew got back in the Impala and headed down the road, dipping and jumping out of sight.

  “We gotta follow Wookie. That banger is in the middle of Reel’s case,” I said.

  “No way.” No Name shook his head.

  “Why?”

  He pointed to a rocky trail twisting below us. “Take thirty minutes to get there. Not gonna catch ‘em.”

  Downslope, the trail had more hairpins than a hairdresser’s styling kit. In this part of Colorado, motorways came in two variations, up or down. “Damn.”

  By now the snow caps and hillsides
glowed gold in the late sun. The temperature dropped with the light.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Reel’s gotta know what we’ve just seen.” I trotted back toward the pickup, rifle strapped at my shoulder, No Name on my heels.

  Shots rang out by the time we made it to the truck.

  Chapter 21

  At the cabin, flashes of light followed by a burst of popping and snapping created a surreal light and sound show. The cold mountain evening served up distinct shouts and screams, even at this distance. I glanced at No Name. He looked away.

  Wind-borne guttural rumbles mixed with the cries reminded me of last night’s Sun Dance mayhem.

  “We gotta see what’s going on down there,” I said to No Name.

  “No.”

  “You hear it?” I asked.

  “Thought you was gonna see Reel.”

  In his face, I said, “As soon as we find out what’s going on down there.”

  No Name climbed into the truck. We drove back down the road we’d used earlier, the ruts and potholes more unexpected and treacherous in the low light. We made a few hairpin turns, then parked in a thicket three hundred yards from the cabin we’d stared at all day.

  We watched from cover of the brush. I expected some talk from the building, but none came. The idea of a silent killer, Grizz maybe, waiting close by spooked me with visions of disappearing behind his teeth in chunks.

  Rifles at the ready, we crept toward the cabin stopping every few yards to listen. Moans came from inside.

  An infinity of stars lit the sky but their light provided no warning for the body I tripped over as we approached the building. The poor bastard was gutted, his backbone visible through the gaping hole in his abdomen. The copper smell of blood and rank stench of feces steamed from the body. No dead man is my enemy, but I dismissed sadness over his fate. This was no time to morn or even respect the dead. My icy cold attitude, as feigned as it was necessary, spread tension to my shoulders and ached in my arms.

  Scrub pine trees dotted the approach to the log structure and No Name and I used them as cover until we hugged the side of the building. Someone groaned. The interior lights were on. A quick peek through the window showed men inside: two on the floor, and one sitting at a table in a dazed stare, blood pooling at his feet. I spotted a pair of boots and legs inside, their owner partially hidden under the window.

  I checked my cell to call 911 but the screen showed black. No Name pulled his phone, gave thumbs up, and headed in a crouched run for the far tree line.

  While he found a place to make the call, I checked on the wounded through the window. The man half-hidden beneath the window had not moved. The man at the table had dropped his head, arms splayed out front. One of the two on the floor had crawled to a couch. A blood trail marked his route. The other, on his knees, leaned against a chair and stared off somewhere, his jeans ripped and soaked dark with blood. Everyone I could see, alive or dead, was armed, but those I couldn’t see bothered me the most.

  I wanted backup. No Name and I needed to enter the building from different sides simultaneously to throw the occupants off guard. But he’d not returned, so I scouted the area keeping an eye out for more Chivingtons. Out front, I checked the Chivs’ trucks and pocketed the keys I found in the ignition.

  At the back window again, I waited. Time passed and I began to worry. No Name had either run off, sought a place with better reception, or bumped into a Chivington. Or Grizz.

  I couldn’t yell for him, so I scrambled to higher ground, a place he might have chosen for better reception. The surrounding area alternated dark and darker and blanketed all detail. Dread constricted my throat, making me cough. I covered my mouth; noise was the last thing I needed.

  Maybe he’d gone to the truck. I cut across treeless ground toward the thicket where we’d parked. The truck was where we’d left it, but No Name was nowhere to be seen. I checked the ignition. No keys.

  A snort and a grumble like ball bearings dropping on a bass drum. Then a deep, back-of-the-throat growl. I froze. Cold, wet droplets of sweat formed at the base of my spine. I scanned my surroundings.

  Chuffs as loud as air brakes echoed against the hills. A growl as loud as a jet made me jump. I edged toward the truck, knowing the animal could hear my pounding heart and rapid breath. Every step took a lifetime. Sweat stung my eyes as I cursed my shaking legs.

  Grizz’s eyes glowed green from behind scrub, then vanished.

  I jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Grizz could sniff all he wanted, the smell of gasoline would disguise my adrenaline stink. I flashed the headlamps. I pounded the old truck’s horn, but the fucking thing was dead. I exhaled, watched the cabin, and listened.

  The truck rocked from a deafening impact on the driver’s side. Glass showered my face. When I reached for my eyes, my rifle slipped to the floor. Shards protruded from the window frame like crystal canines.

  A massive head exposing two-inch fangs shoved through the broken window, inching toward me. Grizz roared. I pressed against the passenger door ready to kick at the animal’s muzzle until I was dead. Grizz retreated, then returned, paw reaching ahead of snapping jaws.

  I scraped the rifle toward me with my foot. I grabbed it by the barrel, but the weapon’s sling caught under the dash and caused the stock to drag against the floor mats. I struggled to extract the weapon and get the stock to my shoulder.

  A massive paw, railroad spikes for claws, missed me by inches, then crashed against the steering wheel. As I pulled at the rifle, claws inched closer followed by nose, teeth, and eyes red with rage. Another swing missed and raked the dashboard. His violent thrashing pinned his shoulders for a split second. I jabbed at his eyes with stiff fingers. He yelped and jerked away.

  The truck shook like a ragdoll as he tried to withdraw, but jagged shards of the window frame stabbed at his neck while he struggled. Blood coated the window frame and splashed on me. I pulled at the rifle to free it, but the tangled sling held fast. Grizz’s earsplitting roar deafened me.

  The shaking sprung the passenger door and I tumbled out like a bag of rocks, landing flat on my back. I rolled and took off toward the cabin.

  Grizz roared and yelped, stuck in the truck window as I sprinted the three hundred yards to the cabin, fear my energizing partner.

  The rear door was locked. I kicked the entry open, entered, slammed the door shut, then jammed the closest chair under the knob.

  I backed against the wall, evaluating the opposition, calculating my chances. Fortunately, of the four men in the room, only one pair of eyes stared my way. A Chivington, a hater, eyes rolling, and delirious. A pool at his feet meant he probably didn’t have long to live. I said, “Grizz’s still out there.”

  “Who the fuck’re you?” slurred the man. An empty Beam bottle lay next to him.

  The other man on the couch hadn’t raised his head since I barged in. The man at the table hadn’t moved, neither had the man against the wall under the window. “Are they dead?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Injun.”

  A hall led off to my left and I listened for others in the building. “Anyone in the other rooms?”

  “Your ass.” He raised his weapon.

  “You picked a bad time to act hostile. It’s me or Grizz.” My heart beat in my temples.

  Click. Color bled from his face. He dropped the empty weapon.

  “You don’t look so good,” I said, stifling my relief.

  “My legs.”

  “I’ll find a bandage,” I said.

  The two back bedrooms were empty but, I found stiff, filthy towels in a bathroom smelling of urine. The man’s wounds were torn so deep I could see bone. I wrapped them as best I could.

  He looked at me with curiosity. “You the one killed Deputy Jones?”

  “That what you think?” I continued binding, applying pressure until he cringed.

  “Fuck yeah, it’s you, Injun. Ponytail, height, boots. All that sh
it.”

  I finished wrapping and tucked the towel ends. Blood began to seep through, and I doubted the rags would stop the bleeding. Unless the EMTs arrived soon, he would most likely bleed out.

  He smiled. “Yeah, you’re the guy. Awesome, dude.” He chuckled then surrendered to a deep cough. He spit. “Yeah, Jones was an asshole,” he said. “Got a cigarette?”

  His demeanor was odd for a dying man. “You a cop?” I asked. He could’ve been a plant.

  “Gotta be a cop to smoke?”

  When something scratched at the door, I put up a hand. I inched toward the door.

  The man slumped in a pool of blood at the table had not moved since I entered the room. I grabbed his AK-47, then I pulled out the mag, checked and slipped it back in, regretting the click. I stood by the doorway, rifle at the ready. It squeaked open.

  The AK snicked when I cycled the charging handle. I put pressure on the trigger when a grunt came from behind the door. A hand slid from behind the door and gripped the edge. No Name’s head squeezed in. “Let me in, man,” he said. I removed the chair and he stepped in.

  “Party’s already started,” I said.

  “Big-ass bear come up when I was callin’. Climbed up a rock and he run off. Better reception up there, anyway. EMT’s here in thirty minutes.”

  “Hey, Leslie, you got a cigarette?” asked the man on the couch.

  “What’s he doing here?” asked No Name.

  “Know him?” I asked.

  “Dillard Johnston. Dilbert’s more like it. Flatlander from Limon. Busted his ass at playoffs back in the day. Fourteen zip. Fuckers had no defense and their special teams was more like special ed.”

  Johnston said, “You only scored twi—”

  “Your running back couldn’t hold a football shoved up his ass.”

  “Take it outside with Grizz, you wanna talk football,” I said.