Craig Johnson - The Dark Horse

He looked at all of us. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“Because you promised?” He nodded, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. “But the man who made you promise is gone, right?” He nodded some more but didn’t say anything. “Now, as a sworn deputy of Absaroka County, you’re not supposed to keep secrets from your boss.”

He finally spoke. “Yes, but a promise to el hombre muerto is a sacred trust.”

I put up a hand. “That’s okay, you don’t have to say anything. I wouldn’t want you to betray him.” They all watched as I placed the point of my knife in the slot of one of the tiny screws that attached the commemorative brass plate to the stock of the. 44 Yellow Boy. “One of the things a man holds very dear is his fortune.” I looked into the dark eyes of the boy. “Right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

I loosened the one screw, handed it to Benjamin, and started on another as I looked at the name on the brass plaque. “The fellow who originally had this rifle didn’t fare too well in the end, but your fortune is your fortune.”

The boy watched as I unscrewed another and handed it to him. “The next fellow that had it didn’t end up too well, either, but he was a heck of a guy while he was here, wasn’t he?”

Benjamin nodded solemnly.

“And when he used to say that his fortune was in this rifle, he meant more than the amount of money it’s worth, didn’t he?”

The boy continued to nod as I handed him the last two screws and used a fingernail to delicately pry up the small brass plaque. There, embedded in a carefully routed groove, was one of the tiny scrolls that Hershel used to pick up from the checkout line at Kmart.

I used the point of my knife to lift the end of the plastic encapsulated fortune and pulled it out into my hand. I put the knife on the surface of the horse trailer’s fender, carefully slid the tiny roll of paper from the cellophane sleeve, and unrolled it from end to end, holding it with my fingertips.

The writing, so small you could barely make it out with the naked eye, stretched from end to end, front and back.

I glanced up at them and then carefully rolled Wade Barsad’s kite and slipped it back in the clear plastic sleeve.

Mary backed up the Escalade and guided the hitch to my horse trailer. Juana watched as I carefully placed the paper fortune into my shirt pocket and then reattached the plaque onto the repeater that had first belonged to a buffalo soldier and then to a cowboy. “How long have you known about the rifle?”

“Since we camped on the mesa. He kept repeating that line about his fortune being in this Henry, and I think that was his way of telling me without telling me.”

She looked stymied. “Why didn’t he just tell you?”

I thought about it as I lifted the Yellow Boy and propped it on my knee. “I don’t know. He was careful, and he didn’t know me, at least not well enough to actually tell me, I guess.”

She looked at Benjamin, who was playing with Dog in the dry lot across the road. “But he knew you were a sheriff.”

“That didn’t count for much in the old cowpuncher’s worldview.” She still looked confused. “Hershel was like a lot of the old boys from this part of the country-he didn’t trust a title. With him, you had to earn it.”

She smiled the perfectly formed smile. “Well, you did that.”

I looked toward the hills east, and to the Battlement at Twentymile Butte rising above the Powder River plain. “No… if I’d really earned it, he’d be here with us.” Before she could say anything else, I continued, “So, any of those bureau types giving you a hard time about being illegal?”

She glanced over her shoulder as Mary got out to hook up the trailer electricals to the Cadillac. “No, I’ve got a protectress, and she has lawyers who are working for my citizenship.”

I nodded. “So what are you and Benjamin going to do?”

“Benjamin is going to go to school, and I’m going to work for Mary and get my degree. Then I think I’ll go down to Laramie and finish up-maybe work for the FBI someday.” I didn’t say anything, waiting for her to throw the signature fist to her hip just as she had on the first day I’d met her. “What?”

I shrugged in the face of Latin attitude. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

As Juana went to collect Benjamin and Dog, Mary came back to open the upper hatch of the trailer’s Dutch door so that Wahoo Sue could hang her head out. Mary stepped up on the railing at the fender, and I watched as the horse stuck her muzzle out to her as she exhaled. I smiled to myself as Mary gently slipped her arms around the big mare’s neck. Sue, in turn, dropped her head and pulled the woman against the side of the trailer in a sort of armless hug.

“Hell of a horse.”

She turned to look at me. “Yes, she is.”

Her eyes stayed with me, even as I studied the brass plaque on the heavy rifle. “Mary, I’ve got a question about the list. I think Hershel got it from you.”

It was quiet for a moment, and the only sound was the mare’s hard shoes on the wooden surface of the trailer floor. “Me?”

“I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty positive. You were the only one who knew what that list was other than Wade, and I doubt he gave it to Hershel.” I could tell she was thinking. “You might’ve done a lot of things you weren’t aware of under the influence of those sedatives.”

She didn’t move, and even her slender hands, which were still entwined in the horse’s mane, were still. “Including kill a man?”

I took a breath and felt tired. “Nope, not that. I’ll tell you what I think happened, and then you can decide about it and see if it finally falls into place.” I swallowed and started in. “I think Wade drugged his brother and shot him, then brought you in there and had you shoot a dead man, a man who looked remarkably like Wade and a man, deep down, you wanted to be rid of.”

“But how did he get his brother out here? He hated Wade.”

I shrugged. “He had financial problems of his own, and Wade convinced him that they could extort more money from their old business partners. That’s the problem with dealing with people like Wade Barsad-once they get something out of you, they’ve got something on you, and they’re always going to come back for more.” I thought about the man’s brother. “At least, that’s one scenario.”

She stepped down but kept a hand on Wahoo Sue’s nose. She looked at me, but said nothing.

I crutched my way back across the road and sat on the guardrail with the newest addition to my ever-growing collection of priceless weapons in my lap and watched as the Escalade crossed the bridge and pulled away. I was really tired now and hoped that Vic would be back with my truck soon so that I could go home and take a nap.

I called to Dog and followed the trail of dust as Mary rounded the far corner of the Powder River Road and she and Juana and Benjamin and Wahoo Sue disappeared. I held my star in my hand and allowed my eyes to travel toward the mountains. The diffused clouds dappled back from the Bighorns and abandoned the sky to the pale blue of fading fall.

“You lost?”

I’d been so caught up in my musings that I hadn’t even heard the old five-ton GMC 500 pull up. I leaned the Henry against the guardrail and sat there holding on to Dog’s collar. “Nope.”

Mike Niall had another load of hay and surprised me by cutting the engine on the big flatbed. I listened to the motor tick and waited.

His strong profile looked toward the mountains. He was empty of emotion but full of dignity. He had yet to actually look at me, but I suppose he’d noticed the old Henry as he’d pulled up. “Expectin’ trouble?”

I tipped my hat back. “Always.”