Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

“Did she show any remorse?”

“Nope, just said it like she was talkin’ about the weather.” He studied me for a moment longer. “You sure do ask a lot of questions about people, for a guy that’s concerned with the insurance. You tryin’ not to pay?”

“No.”

“He’s dead, and she’s goin’ to prison; who gets the money?”

“You tell me.”

“He’s got a brother back in Youngstown.”

“Son-of-a-bitch?”

He nodded his head. “Most likely.”

We both laughed. “I’m just curious.” I took a sip and changed the subject. “She was good on horseback?”

He warmed to that line of conversation and smiled. “You ain’t never seen anything like it. She was Junior Cutting Title in Las Vegas, National Cutting Horse Association Super Stakes Champion. Brother, she was the best I ever seen-and I seen some.” He took the last swallow of his beer and crushed the can in his hand. “She could separate a horsefly from a cow’s ass.”

I took a breath of my own and was sorry to take us back to the sadness. “Why burn all the horses?”

The older man resumed petting Dog, then stopped and shook his head with his eyes closed. “I’ll be damned…”

“What?”

His eyes opened, and he looked up at me. “You insured the horses, too, didn’t you?”

I hadn’t insured anything, but Eric Boss had. “Well…”

“And her?”

I strained to understand. “Mary?”

“No, her.” I continued looking at him blankly as the fireplace crackled and popped with small explosions. “Them horses… Barsad didn’t burn ’em all.”

October 27, 10:30 P.M.

Her name was Black Diamond Wahoo Sue, and she was not your usual championship cutting horse; first off, she was a she and, secondly, she was dark as a starless night. A gorgeous and rare solid black in coat, mane, tail, and legs, the big gal had won every event in which she had competed and was the best in the cutting, reining, and reined cow-horse circles. The mark of a great mare is her ability to produce horses that are possibly even better than herself; Black Diamond Wahoo Sue had done so to the tune of more than twenty-five million dollars, which went a long way in explaining why she was underinsured at close to a cool five million.

Mary raised her, and she was the horse Mary had ridden at the National Cutting Horse Association championships, her pride and joy, and the thing that Wade Barsad had focused his considerable hatred upon before that fateful night when he’d burned alive not eight horses, but seven.

We walked our party around to the opposite side of the house and down a flat path that shone with mica in the moonlight. The beer supply had run dry; four for him and two for me, after which Hershel Vanskike produced a fire-damaged bottle of single malt Laphroaig, vintage 1968, from behind the fireplace. So far I’d declined, 1968 having not been the best of years for me.

The iron gate was soot-covered but still clung to the archway that framed the desolation of the burnt barn. It must’ve been something before the fire, but there wasn’t much left. The photos in the insurance binder showed a log barn handcrafted with natural timbers and small, mission-style lights inset with amber glass that had given the place a friendly bronze glow. I’m not sure if it was the photography or the story, but the barn was more inviting than the house, or used to be.

The heat must have been terrific, and it was easy to see how the flames had jumped from the barn to the cedar shingles of the house. I stared at the charred timbers and piles of rubble.

It looked like a mass grave.

“Did they leave them in there?”

He socked himself another from the bottle and swung it toward me, a little of the precious, tawny liquor sloshing from the opening at the neck. I held out a hand in abstinence. “No, thanks.”

“Don’t blame you, stuff’s horrible; needs a little Dr. Pepper.” The old cowboy nodded with a liquor-soaked solemn that he’d probably never shown for any human being. “Smelled like cooked horse for days; I can still smell it.” He weaved there for a moment. “I had my rifle ’cause I wasn’t sure what was going on, but you couldn’t even see to shoot the poor things.”

Dog sniffed at the burnt grass, looked at the wreckage, then at the drunken cowhand, and backed up and sat on my boot. “And Wahoo Sue?”

He licked the paper on another cigarette and twisted it together a little unsteadily as I held the bottle for him. “Damn, she was a runner.” He pulled another Blue Tip match from his hatband and lit the cigarette, cupping it in his hand again. “She won that forty-mile Durant-to-Absalom overland race, just run off and left the rest of ’em-first time a woman ever won it.”

He took a puff, and I could hear the soft pop of his inhale. He brought his head up and took the bottle back, his voice taking on an animation that it hadn’t contained before.

“She was a cutter, but that horse would race anything. I seen her race other horses, pronghorn antelope, even pickup trucks on the county road. She wasn’t the biggest, she wasn’t even the fastest, but she had something in her that wouldn’t let her get beat. You can see that in an animal.” He continued to look at me through the faint glow of the ember by his chin and the complex sugars racing through his veins. “And some people.”

“What happened?”

“ ’Bout a week before…” He looked back at what was left of the barn and swigged down a mouthful of single-malt with a squint. “Before this, Wade loaded that horse up into a trailer, laid a. 30–30 in the seat of his truck, and then drove off. He went out onto BLM land, south and east toward Twentymile Butte, toward the Battlement. He come back, but the horse didn’t.”

October 19: eight days earlier, night.

Mary Barsad’s eyes had been open, but I wasn’t sure that anyone was home.

I stepped around the partition wall and could see her perfectly framed in the illumination of the streetlight outside the window-she was standing at the bars, her slender fingers wrapped around the steel.

Her face had turned a little, but she spoke to the diffused light. “Somebody closed the gates.”

I glanced down at Dog and noticed he was looking up at me. “Mary?”

“Did you feed Sue like I told you?” Her voice had a detached, otherworldly quality to it.

“Mrs. Barsad?”

“We’ll have to wrap that tendon on her-it looks like she’s favoring it.” Dog woofed at her, and I gave him a nudge with my leg. She smiled but continued to gaze out of the cell and just to my left.

“Mary, are you all right?”

I watched as her lip trembled and a sob broke loose from her throat. “The horses… there’s something wrong with the horses.”

I didn’t know that much about sleepwalking but had heard that it wasn’t wise to awaken someone in that condition, so I decided to play along. “The horses are fine, I just checked on them.” Dog looked up at me again, and I shrugged.

She turned and was looking me in the face now. “They’re hurt.”

I placed a hand on the bars. “No, I just checked and they-”

She came closer to me and trailed her hands across the surface of the bars as though she were playing a silent harp. “There’s a fire.”

“No, there’s no fire.”

“I smell it… Can’t you smell it?”

Her hand shot out and gripped my sleeve, and Dog mumbled a bark again. “Mrs. Barsad, there’s no fire.” She took a deep breath, and the air caught about halfway. “I just checked, and the horses are all right.” She continued to pick at my sleeve, her eyes imploring. “I think Sue might have aggravated that tendon again, so I wrapped it like you said.”