Craig Johnson - The Dark Horse

He looked unsure as we listened to the train pass the crossroads and begin rocking through town. “Henry Standing Bear is Cheyenne. I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”

He looked seriously at Henry and finally nodded. “Okay.”

I gave him one last squeeze on the shoulder. “You’ve done really well, and we’re all really proud of you.” He continued studying me with the dark eyes, and just for a moment, I studied the likeness between the boy and the man who held him. “You’ve impressed me so much, you know what I’m going to do?” He didn’t say anything until I pulled the piece of metal from my shirt pocket that had been tucked away with the horse treats.

He looked at it, dull and heavy in the just morning light. “Is that a badge?”

I nodded, the sound of the train matching the pulse of my blood. “Raise your right hand.” He did as I requested. “Now repeat after me: I, Benjamin Balcarcel, promise to stay in this culvert with the Bear until the sheriff comes back and gets me.” He repeated it. “So help me God.” He repeated that part, too. I pinned the gold-plated star onto his shirt. “But if you leave the culvert, you go back to being a regular citizen and I’m going to be really upset.” He looked uncertain. “You don’t have to repeat that part.”

“Okay.”

“You’re deputized; just stay here.”

“Okay.”

Henry smiled and lowered Benjamin to the ground and watched as he put his hat back on, walked over and took Dog by the collar, and returned to his horse. Dog wagged, and the bandito saluted and looked down at my badge as the Bear thumped his chest with a fist and then pointed his index finger down-Cheyenne sign-talk for hope/heart.

I made the same gesture and walked Wahoo Sue past them and onto the narrow, dirt path into the diffused light of the morning where I could see the cars of the coal-laden BNSF flashing by. I glanced back over my shoulder and into the culvert and could see that the boy hadn’t moved from Henry’s side. I turned in the saddle, the mare tripped off into a quick trot, and in no time we were moving briskly.

The path followed the river pretty closely, and the reflection of the sunrise broke in the shallow and lazy water. We gradually climbed to the surface of the road above and the railroad tracks. Gradual was good because it would give me a chance to look back toward Wild Horse Road and the direction from which Wade Barsad would most likely be coming in his quest to find Benjamin.

Wahoo Sue wasn’t completely happy with the proximity of the hopper cars pounding by on the elevated tracks, the clanging bells, or the hooded, flashing red lights, and was even unhappier as we grew closer. The trail, thankfully, drew up a good forty feet from the tracks themselves, and I was just as happy to wait a sensible distance away on a slightly skittish horse anyway.

I turned and looked back east, but the road was empty. With the noise of the train and the claxon bells, there wasn’t much chance of my hearing him, even in the diesel, but I would be able to see Barsad from a long way off. If he did appear from that direction, I’d pretty much made up my mind to shoot right in order to lead him away from the boy, follow the tracks in the opposite direction of the train until I got to the end, then jump across and find a cross-country route into town. That’s what I was planning to do; what Wahoo Sue was planning might be something entirely different, but she’d been awfully well-behaved up to now.

I glanced past the protective barriers that sat lowered across the road, and then at the cars, trying to gauge how many remained, but with the curve in the tracks I simply couldn’t see. Some of the damn things were four miles long, but a substantial number of the coal hoppers had already passed, so I figured at most I was only a minute or two away from crossing.

I looked back over my shoulder again, but with the rising sun, it was getting hard to see through the diffused light from the east. I threw a hand over my brow but, as near as I could tell, the road remained empty.

I pivoted in the saddle again, and Wahoo Sue took it as a command and turned with me. I took advantage of the situation to give Wild Horse Road my undivided attention. The mare took a few steps, and then planted, to give the road as much study as I had.

Nothing.

I looked at her and leaned down to stroke the side of her neck. “So-o-o girl, good girl.” I glanced back, could see that the last hopper car was approaching, and wheeled the dark horse around. She misinterpreted again and thought I wanted to advance into the tail end of the passing train, so she took a few crow-hops sideways and slightly reared.

“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.

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.