by Tyler Keevil
Pat Delaney hopped up. ‘What the fuck?’ he said, pointing.
‘It’s just something that happened,’ Jake said.
‘On the way down,’ I added, helpfully.
Mark was giggling. Maria was standing in the doorway, her mouth open in awe and alarm, clutching two drinks. She held them out and asked, ‘Anybody want a whisky sour?’
‘Fuck the drinks,’ Pat said. ‘Put that shit on the flatscreen.’
Ricky plugged in his laptop and rewound the clip (by this point we were all standing up) and played it on the big screen. It was an extract of a newscast, off CBC. We’d become national news, by then. At first we couldn’t hear so Ricky tapped up the audio. A severe-looking news anchor with a picket-fence hairline was talking about Shenzao, and behind him garish graphics flashed: Stolen Racehorse. He said that one of the thieves had been identified and that the horse had been spotted in transit, on a boat, headed for Washington State.
‘The bandits claim,’ he said, ‘that they are doing it for altruistic reasons.’
They cut to the clip of Jake, spouting that nonsense about animal welfare and saving Shenzao from a lifetime of cruelty. He was talking right to the cameras, hamming it up, and you could tell it was him, all right. After that there were a few interviews with Kelly and her bridesmaids, who said that we were real gentlemen and called us ‘charming and generous’.
The news anchor chuckled as they cut back to him. He said that one of the gentleman outlaws was thought to be Jake Harding, a known associate of the Legion gang, and anybody with information regarding the horse’s whereabouts should call in (a hotline number started scrolling across the bottom of the screen). The clip ended frozen on an image of Shenzao.
In the house, it went completely quiet. Pat Delaney clutched his head and said, ‘What the fuck is this shit?’ He just actually couldn’t believe it. His mind was completely blown. It looked as if he was trying to hold his brain inside his skull.
‘We told you,’ Jake said. ‘The horse jumped overboard.’
‘And we had to fish it out.’
‘A hen party just happened to be there.’
‘And you didn’t fucking tell us?’ Delaney shouted.
Jake and I looked at each other. Jake shrugged.
‘Well, we knew you’d be pissed.’
Mark was still giggling, but it sounded slightly hysterical, now. Ricky said that the clip already had over a million hits. Novak drifted over from the door, taking up position to the left of Delaney. He had his hand in his coat pocket again. Ready for his orders.
‘This screws up everything,’ Pat said. ‘They know who you are, and they’ve linked you to us. How long before they come to the ranch?’
We could all agree on that, at least: not very long at all. Maria, seeing the turn things were taking, made a last play on our behalf. She went to Pat and put one of her whisky sours in his hand and told him he needed to take it easy.
‘Just calm down and have a drink, honey,’ she said.
Pat, he just threw the drink at the wall, where it exploded in a burst of glass and ice.
‘Would you fucking shut up about your drinks and get out of here?’
Maria scurried back to the kitchen, mouse-like, and I figured that was it.
‘We’re going to have to get rid of the horse. Ditch it or fucking kill it.’ Pat started pacing back and forth, partially muttering, blinking and just looking completely strung out. ‘We could shoot it and bury it, maybe. Out back in the woods.’
‘You’re not going to kill the horse, Pat,’ Jake said. ‘Get real.’
Pat spun around, as if he couldn’t believe Jake had spoken. He stomped over there and grabbed Jake by the collar with both hands and started shouting: ‘Get real? Fucking get real? I’m going to kill it and you and your fucking retard brother. How real is that, huh?’
Jake didn’t answer. He just kneed Pat as hard as he could – right in the nuts – and as Pat doubled over Jake grabbed his head and started punching down at him repeatedly. It was awkward and messy and weird and things just sort of snowballed from there: Mark running over, trying to get between them, and Ricky shouting coked-up gangster shit, but what really terrified me was the sight of Novak moving in, quick and predatorial, a pistol in his hand.
Nobody was paying much attention to me, and so I just ran straight at him. I don’t know the first thing about fighting, but I wasn’t trying to fight: I simply body-checked him from behind, totally blindsiding him, hitting him with the full force of my two hundred and ten pounds. We slammed together into the crokinole table and bounced back onto the floor and beer glasses shattered all over us and the gun skittered away across the room. It was insane. Delaney was screaming something about murdering us both and around then, in the middle of all that chaos, the lights went out.
Chapter Forty-One
Maria had done it. When things started to turn sour she had gone straight to the switch in the kitchen and just reached up and tripped the power. It was a desperate and ingenious thing to do. Out at the ranch, there were no streetlamps or other sources of artificial light: only the houselights, and when they went out the whole place was thrown into darkness. The shouting and screaming didn’t stop – it got louder and more intense. I knew Novak was somewhere in front of me and when I got up and tripped over something soft I kicked at it a few times, as hard as I could. I heard grunting, a cry of pain. Then I bumped into a different person and felt something smash into my face. A fist, I think.
‘Tim!’ Jake was shouting. ‘Tim!’
‘Jake!’
‘Mark!’
‘Pat!’
All us brothers were calling to each other, in our confusion and our need. Somebody – Ricky I think – started shouting about getting a flashlight or a phone or something, anything. I floundered around, fell over the sofa, cracked my head on a chair. Picking myself up, I saw the faint outline of the window, the starry night outside. I knew the door was beside that.
‘Poncho!’ Jake called, from near it.
I headed that way, banging my knee brutally, and en route came up against somebody. I raised my dukes, ready to throw, before Jake said my name and I knew it was him.
‘We got to get out of here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
The other guys kept on yelling and floundering around. You could hear Novak or Pat or one of them moaning in pain. While all that carried on Jake eased open the door and we slipped outside, where we could actually see a little better. The storm clouds had parted and a gibbous moon glowed in the sky, lighting up the porch and vehicles and, further on down, the bunkhouse and stable. We ran to the edge of the porch and jumped off together, landing hard in the snow, and got up and started sprinting.
‘You got the keys to the truck?’ Jake said.
‘Forget the truck. There’s no room. We’re taking the horses.’
‘The horses?’
‘Sam’s got them ready. It’s all good.’
‘This is fucking crazy.’
We sprinted down there in the snow, full-tilt, not dressed for the cold at all: we weren’t even wearing jackets. I looked back once but so far nobody had followed us. The house was still completely dark. Amid the chaos, they possibly hadn’t even figured out that we’d snuck away yet. We burned past the bunkhouse and hurtled towards the barn, panting heavily and breathing big plumes of frost-breath. My socks and the cuffs of my jeans were covered in little balls of snow, like white bobbles, and I could feel the wet cold leaching in.
At the barn we flung open the doors, and they swung wide to reveal Sam: standing there in her riding outfit – boots, jacket, tuque, gloves – and holding three sets of reins, with our horses waiting obediently behind her. All of them saddled up and ready to ride.
‘Are we going?’ she asked.
‘You bet we’re going,’ I said.
‘Right now,’ Jake said.
She looked at us. ‘What about your jackets and boots and clothes?’
‘No time,’ I said. ‘Th
ey’re coming.’
Jake was already scrambling to get on Thunder. I tried to follow suit but had some trouble mounting Old Marley. Somehow, with Sam’s help, I floundered my way into the saddle. Sam handed Jake his reins, and asked him what had happened. He explained in a nutshell: ‘They want to kill us and maybe the horse too, so we got to get the hell going.’
Sam didn’t argue or debate that logic. She just put a foot into the stirrup and hopped up onto Shenzao, and as soon as she was sitting in that saddle she looked calm and ready.
‘Okay,’ Jake said, giving her the go-ahead to lead us out.
Sam turned Shenzao and trotted out through the stable door. We crossed the drive to the paddock gate, which was already open (Sam had thought to do that ahead of time) and entered the field beyond. As we did I heard shouting, and I looked back. I could see shadows moving around out front of the bunkhouse. That’s where they’d gone looking for us. They had no reason to think we’d go to the stable, or that we’d be riding out on horseback. The craziness of our plan helped some: it was so outrageous we took them completely by surprise.
‘Stop!’ somebody shouted. Mark, maybe. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
One of the shapes started running down towards the paddock.
‘Let’s give it some gas,’ I said.
Sam heeled Shenzao, who loped across the field, kicking up big bursts of powder. In the moonlight it was surprisingly bright, surprisingly clear. You could see the shadows of the horses in the snow and you could see beyond the fence to the trees. Jake followed just behind Sam, hunched forward in his saddle, and I brought up the rear. Every so often I checked over my shoulder. They couldn’t catch us – not on foot. By the time they got to the paddock we’d already reached the gate on the far side. Sam slid from the saddle to open it, and once we were through we could see that they’d stopped chasing after us. They’d given up.
The first fifty yards made for tough going. That part of the trail was uneven and narrow, and the trees on either side stood so close together that their branches created a canopy, blotting out the moonlight. We couldn’t see as much and the dark made the horses nervy, but Sam knew the way and knew how to handle them. We just had to follow her. And once we came out onto the parks trail – the wider section that had been better maintained – we could see the way more clearly, the moon lighting up the strip of snow like a bar of ivory. From there the trail carried on in the direction we’d ridden that afternoon.
Sam held up at the junction. ‘Do we keep going?’
‘We got to go over the top, make it to town.’
Jake was referring to the pass we’d reached earlier. Sam looked that way, tilting her head back, gauging the challenge. The peaks up there were now laden with snow.
‘I’ve ridden it in the snow before, but not at night.’
‘Do you think we can make it?’
‘Don’t see why not.’
‘Okay, Calamity,’ he said. ‘Lead the way.’
‘What do we do in town?’ I asked.
‘Go by car, or cab – any vehicle that will get us to the boat.’
She twitched the reins and said, ‘Go on,’ and Shenzao shook her mane and started off up the track. Through the snow Sam set a careful but efficient pace: moving along at a steady canter. I had a strange sense of déjà vu, since we were retracing our own steps, but it was as if we’d entered an alternate world, a twilight version of where we’d been earlier that day – and it was hard to believe it had only been that day. The trees now all seemed to have shrivelled in on themselves, the branches snow-boughed and bent towards the ground. I could see the shapes of the horses and riders in front of me but the covering of snow muffled the sounds of the horses’ hooves in a way it hadn’t done earlier.
Within twenty minutes we’d reached the beginning of the incline up the valley, and shortly after came the series of switchbacks as the slope steepened. Beneath me Old Marley worked diligently and we made good progress. The cold, however, presented a problem. It was actually a reasonably mild night – maybe six or seven below – but it felt a lot worse, the way the two of us were attired. I at least had a hoody, but Jake didn’t even have that: he only had a long-sleeved T-shirt. He huddled up in the saddle, trying to retain body heat.
‘You’re gonna freeze, man,’ I called ahead.
Sam held up, turning Shenzao to look back.
‘There’s riding blankets in my saddle pack,’ Sam said.
‘Can you get those out, Calamity?’ he asked.
She had two of them. Jake wrapped one around himself, and I got the other. We had to drape them over our shoulders, like cloaks or capes. They were woven from coarse wool, but not particularly thick. It wasn’t much, considering the conditions, but it was something. Sitting there, as we waited for Sam to remount, Jake looked across at me and grinned.
‘They’re like ponchos, Poncho,’ he said.
‘You heard the news, Lefty. We’re real outlaws, now.’
‘What news?’ Sam asked, gathering her reins.
As we rode, we explained to Sam about what had happened at the house. Talking helped. We needed the distraction. The cold got worse the higher we went, partly on account of the altitude, and partly because we were more exposed to the wind, which had real bite to it. A frosty numbness crept into my bad hand, and I had a hard time keeping a hold of the reins. I took to sort of wrapping the edges of the blanket around my palms.
We reached the point on the trail where we could see down to the ranch. The lights were back on now. But I could only make out one vehicle: the truck. Not either of the SUVs.
‘They’re looking for us,’ I called ahead.
Jake turned in his saddle to see. ‘Guess that’s to be expected.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Hope they don’t find us.’
We were safe, so long as we were in the mountains. Higher up, the snow got deeper and that slowed us down. On the final stretch leading up to the pass the snow reached the horses’ knees and they had to really struggle through it. Old Marley’s breathing grew ragged. That section took us twice as long as it had earlier in the day. My watch said quarter past midnight, and I figured we’d been riding for about an hour. My ass was saddle-sore and my toes stung by cold and my fingers had curled into claws. I thought they might be frostbit, and that worried me. I damn sure didn’t want to lose any more digits.
Jake and I fell a little behind. Sam had to wait for us at Larch Mountain Pass, the spot we’d reached earlier in the day. From up there you could make out the lights of Elma, sparkling like a spider web stretched across the terrain to the north.
‘How you holding up, Poncho?’ Jake asked me.
‘I’m cold, Lefty. I can’t feel my hands.’
‘Here,’ Sam said. ‘Have my gloves.’
‘No way, darling.’
‘I got liners. I’m fine. You’re not dressed at all.’
It was true. We’d really messed that part up. Jake was visibly shuddering and his teeth were chattering and the skin of his face was white as the surrounding snow.
‘Is there only the one way down?’ Jake asked.
Sam shook her head. ‘Three ways.’ She pointed. ‘One heads south, to a little town called Porter. That’s maybe only forty minutes. The other drops down to the highway, and a parking lot near Elma, which me and Tim passed today. That’s about an hour. The third way heads north along this ridge. It winds towards a recreation area, and comes out east of Elma.’
‘How far’s that?’
‘That’s like four hours.’
Jake shook his head. ‘No way. We got to get down before we freeze.’
‘What if they’re waiting?’ I said.
‘Will they know these trails?’ Jake asked her.
‘Pat and Mark will.’
He looked at me. ‘Elma or Porter?’ I asked.
‘They might expect us to go for the closest one. So Elma.’
‘If we can make it without you getting hypothermia.’
‘I’m okay,’ he said.
‘Here, Jake,’ Sam said, and handed him her tuque. He accepted it, and I could tell by that just how cold he was. He fit it on his head, over his bandana, and it looked mighty odd on him: this bobble-head tuque with rainbow stripes.
‘Go on, Sam,’ Jake said. ‘Get us to Elma.’
The route down wasn’t as hard going as the route up. Instead of sharp switchbacks the trail wound back and forth more gently down the slope. The path was wide, about six feet across, and the ground was relatively even. I came up with a solution for my hands that seemed to help: I would hold the reins in one hand while tucking the other in my opposing armpit, and when the exposed hand became clumsy and useless I would switch. I also moved the blanket up over my head, instead of just draping it around my shoulders, since I remembered reading somewhere about losing all your heat through your scalp. That seemed to help, some.
‘Jake,’ I called.
He looked back.
‘Put your blanket over your head, man. Over your head.’
It took him a few seconds to figure out what the hell I was talking about, but once he did he imitated me, so that the pair of us must have looked like poor travelling pilgrims.
From then on, we simply had to endure the cold, which was scathing and merciless and, when the wind picked up, sliced through the flimsy defence of my blanket. In time the numb sensation in my hands spread – to my toes, my nose, my tailbone – and I no longer felt discomfort so much as a kind of dull resignation. I knew that was probably bad, but it didn’t seem to matter. I’d settled into the hypnotic rhythms of the ride, and the tranquillity of the setting, so lifeless and still.
To keep from drifting off, I concentrated on Sam and Shenzao. The white of the horse against the white of the snowscape was a mesmerizing sight. My awareness of everything else faded out, and I held onto that image, that vision. Every so often Sam looked back at us and it seemed to me, the longer we went on, that each time she looked back she appeared more and more like Sandy. I think I even imagined at times that I was following Sandy. That I’d crossed over to some other place, some higher plane, and that our sister had returned on that ghost of a horse to guide us safely through, away from all our sorrows and to a better life.