Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

He worked his mouth but didn’t say anything else. It was another load of good-looking hay, and I could smell it from twenty feet away even with a crosswind. He spat in the road like he had before and finally spoke. “I heard that sheriff over in Absaroka County got reelected yesterday in a landslide.”

I took a deep breath and flexed the muscles in my broken foot. “Yep, it’s getting so that people will vote for anybody these days.” I could feel his eyes on me, and I tried to think of something else to say, but I was so tired I just sat there. Twenty-four years in office and now at least two more. I started wondering if I’d make it, but he saved me from my thoughts.

“I believe I’ll drive this truck across that new car-bridge.”

I smiled as I studied the vintage vehicle and its substantial load. “Think it’ll hold?”

He leaned forward and spat again, the sepia-colored stream shooting through the rust holes of the truck’s floorboards. “I’m not sure.” He stared hard at the new structure. “But I’m a man who likes to take chances.” I could feel his eyes on me again. “How ’bout you?”

I turned back toward the river, released Dog’s collar, and began petting his broad head. “Me, I’m the cautious type.”

I heard a soft snort before the starter on the big truck ground, the aged motor coughed and caught, and the lumbering vehicle crossed the bridge, turned the corner, and was gone.

Holding my badge in my open hand and looking at the river, I sat there thinking about what Juana had said that night in the motel room about how some of us aren’t meant to cowboy-up. I thought about how many times the heavy piece of metal might skip on the surface of the Powder River if I got the angle just right. I palmed it in my hand and felt the weight of its bond, then opened the back clasp and pinned the six-pointed star to my shirt.

I rubbed Dog’s head again and took off my 10X, turned it over, and studied the sweat stains and the patina of red dust that had gathered on it in the last week.

I flipped it back over and held it by the brim, then suddenly pitched it like a Frisbee. Dog started and made a move to fetch it, but I grabbed his collar, and we both watched as the black hat hung over the void of the Powder River, pitched to one side, and disappeared into the northbound water below.