Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

The motor loped into an idle, and we all waited, unmoving. I didn’t know if he’d had time to retrieve his 9 mm from the floor of the truck; even if he had, it wouldn’t shoot through the windshield, so he was going to have to come out.

Barsad attempted to open the door, but with the listing of the massive truck it only lurched about two inches and then jammed into the wooden planks.

I motioned with my chin and raised my voice. “Shut it off.”

Dutifully, the diesel went silent, and it was eerie how I could all of a sudden hear the flow of the river below. I listened as the bridge creaked, and the electric window on the driver’s side whirred and went down. His hand came out holding the 9 mm, and it was one of those wicked little Smith amp; Wesson autoloaders. I watched as he extended his arm out the window and glanced at the Henry rifle lying between us.

He finally looked at me with one hand stretched across the top of the cab, the other pointing the pistol. His voice was a little tight. “This is an interesting situation, don’t you think?”

“Not for me.”

He smiled. “You know, I really hate that horse.”

Wahoo Sue didn’t even give him the benefit of a glance. “That’s all right; I don’t think she cares that much for you, either.”

He smiled again, but it was more of a smirk. “You know, I didn’t really want to kill you.”

“Is that so?”

“Then why would you want to kill me?”

“There’s Hershel Vanskike as a starting point.”

He shook his head. “That wasn’t me, that was Cliff.”

“Cliff Cly is a federal agent. You’re lucky at least he wants you alive.”

There was another squealing creak, and one of the planks under the mighty engine gave way, dropping the truck’s cab at an even more drastic angle and lower into the surface of the bridge. Barsad scrambled to get both hands over the cab but still managed to hold the semiautomatic on us.

Wahoo Sue took a quick two-step back with the noise and then sashayed her substantial rear for a moment, but that was all. I wondered if she wanted to remain close because she was rooting for the truck to fall into the river and, once and for all, kill the son-of-a-bitch.

Again, nobody moved, and again the only sounds were the twisting load of the bridge and the water beneath.

Barsad’s one hand was flat against the roof of the cab, the other, still holding the 9 mm, was hooked on the window channel. He didn’t look quite so smug.

“You know, I don’t know how much longer that bridge is going to hold.”

His eyes flicked up at me, and it was as if he were afraid to move his head for fear of causing the final collapse. “Well, maybe we can make a deal, okey?”

I thought about the old Bidpai parable about the scorpion that makes the deal with the frog to carry him across the river. “I doubt it.”

He studied the gun in his hand. “I’ve got an awful lot of leverage here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of money.”

“So?”

“A lot of money, and even more tucked away.” When I didn’t respond, he breathed a quick but careful breath out. “You can’t tell me that-”

“You know, the longer this conversation is, the greater the chance that you, that truck, and the bridge are going to collapse into the river.” I listened to him breathe. “Now, I don’t particularly care, but maybe you do, seeing as how you went to all the trouble to come back from the dead.” I started untying the riata from the saddle strings of the old McClellan. “From my perspective, it looks like you’ve only got one choice. I’m going to throw you this lariat, but I’m not going to do that till you throw that nifty little Smith amp; Wesson into the river-and I want to hear the splash.”

He glanced up at me, and his fingers tightened on the pistol. “This is an eight-hundred-dollar gun.”

I smiled. “That’s okey, you’ve got plenty of money and more tucked away, right?”

I thumbed the comforting surface of the plaited rawhide in my thumb and forefinger, rolling out the leather hondo and trying to think about the last time I’d thrown a riata. “You know, one of the worst images perpetrated on society is the idea of a cowboy with a gun-you give a real cowboy a choice between a gun and a rope and he’ll take the rope every time, because that’s how he makes his living. No self-respecting cowboy makes a living with a gun.” I tossed the loop out with one hand, uncoiling it through the burner to a sizable length. “Now, I’m no cowboy and it’s been an awful long time since I threw the hoolihan, but you can more than double my chances by grabbing it.” I threaded more of the rope out and kept looking at him, his hand still holding the Smith amp; Wesson. “It’ll take a basic, flat loop with a good wrist twist, finishing with a palm-out release.”

His voice was sounding high and tight. “Look…”

“This old McClellan doesn’t have any horn to dally to, so I’ll just have to brace it off the fork and hope for the best. I don’t know when the last time this rawhide was oiled, so it could just snap like a piece of brittle cottonwood-maybe it’ll hold, maybe it won’t.”

I watched him swallow the last tiny bit of courage he’d been holding between his teeth, and his knuckles whitened around the black plastic grip of the 9 mm. If he was going to do something stupid, then now was the time.

I thought about two dead men, a dying man, a terrorized boy, my dog, a tormented woman, and the tortured horse I now rode.

I leaned a little forward in the saddle and more emphasis came into my voice as my right hand, still holding the coiled lariat, touched Wahoo Sue’s wither and the mare shifted for the first time to consider her tormentor. The black beauty placed a hoof forward and relaxed a rear, kicking the two of us into an almost insulting stance. “And then you’re going to have to depend on this horse; and she may pull, or she may not.”

His fingers twitched, and the butt of the 9 mm autoloader made the slightest of tinny noises against the sleek red surface of the truck’s bodywork. “You know, mister, I never caught your name.”

I straightened in the creaking hundred-and-thirty-year-old saddle and took final aim on his head with the rope. My voice sounded very conversational. “That’s because I never threw it.”

November 7, 11:00 A.M.

I nudged Dog, readjusted my crutches, and propped my Velcro-wrapped broken foot onto the rocks as I sat on the guardrail. I tried not to think about the three-hundred-dollar pair of Olathe boots that had been ruined when the Campbell County Memorial Hospital doctors cut the one off of me. Of course, I could always give the orphan to Lucian and let him stuff some socks in the toe to get it to fit or let them hang it off the gutters of The AR.

The new and improved railing turned the corner where the old car-bridge used to span the distance over the Powder River. I had to admit that what the new bridge lost in dramatic design, it made up for in solid, steadfast boredom. A steel-reinforced, continuous concrete slab with a thick, galvanized pipe railing running about three feet high on either side, it looked like it would survive a direct hit from a cruise missile, but it wasn’t anything I’d want to ride a horse over.

Wahoo Sue stamped a foot. She was in the refurbished horse trailer that I had bought for Hershel and Benjamin that Vic had detached from the Bullet. “Relax. She’s on her way.”

It was cool this afternoon and, even though the sun was shining, it hadn’t overcome the chill of the day. I was wearing my duty jacket, the one with the embroidered star, which protected me from the weather and provided another layer between the crutch pads and my armpits. Doc Bloomfield said I was stuck with the crutches for another two weeks and that I was supposed to keep my weight off of the proximal avulsian fracture of my fifth metatarsal, which sounded a lot more serious than the broken bone attached to my pinkie toe.