C. Box - Nowhere to Run

As Joe parked and swung out of his truck, he heard the solid thump of a kick and the squeal of the kicked in the pen. It didn’t take long for horses to start establishing the pecking order.

Willie Shoyo wore a King Ropes cap, a green snap-button cowboy shirt, a big buckle with an engraving of a Shoshone rose, and crisp Wranglers tucked into the tops of scuffed Ariat boots. He stood near the corral with his boot on the bottom rail and crossed arms on the top. His hands seemed darker and older than the rest of him, the skin on the back of his hands like coffee-stained leather. Joe thought he had a pleasant face-smooth and round, with sharp dark eyes. Willie’s horses were prized as great cow ponies, and a few had won money in team penning competitions.

Willie said to Nate, “Alisha told me you’d like to rent a few horses.”

Nate said, “Three or four, we haven’t decided.”

“Three,” Joe said. “Geldings. Two for riding and one for packing. I haven’t had much luck with mares in the mountains.”

Willie sized up Joe for the first time and nodded. “I’ve got plenty of geldings to choose from.”

Alisha Whiteplume drove up as Joe looked over the horses in the pen. She got out of her car and stood still appraising Nate with her hands on her hips. Nate ambled over to her, and she didn’t change her expression or posture.

Shoyo had watched the interaction as well. He said, “I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Pickett. Mares can be too emotional at times, even though most of them want to please you. But you can never make them completely happy, in my experience.”

Nate looked over from where he stood with Alisha to Joe and Shoyo and said, “Are we talking about horses here?”

They were all stout quarter horses, sorrels and paints with white socks and all of stolid disposition. Joe wished he’d brought Marybeth because she knew horses better than he. All of the geldings looked good to him.

“How about those three?” he said to Willie, gesturing toward a Tobiano paint, a sorrel, and a red roan.

Willie nodded his head. “Those are good ones,” he said. “Calm and a little dumb. Bombproof.”

“Good.”

Nate hadn’t paid any attention to the transaction, but stood outside the pen nuzzling Alicia. Joe helped Willie cut the three from the herd and shoo the unpicked horses out of the pen through the gate. The released horses ran hard to join the others out in the grass, raising plumes of dust behind them like the tails of comets. The three remaining snorted and paced and looked offended not to be allowed to go with the rest of the herd.

Willie told Joe, “The three horses you picked are named Washakie One, Washakie Two, and Washakie Three.”

“You’re kidding,” Joe said.

Willie shook his head. “I’m not.” He pointed out toward the foothills. “Washakie Four through One Hundred Forty-two are out there grazing.”

Joe smiled, “Got it. It’s easier to remember their names when they’re all named Washakie.”

Shoyo said, “I know each one by color and personality, but they come and go so often I quit giving them individual names.”

Said Joe, “Will you take a government voucher for the cost?”

A frown passed over Willie’s face.

“It’s a state voucher,” Joe said quickly, realizing what the deal was, “not a federal one.”

“So I can’t charge you three times the going rate, then?” Shoyo lamented. He looked as offended as Washakie One, Two, and Three.

“Sorry.”

The cloud passed, and Willie said, “Okay, then.”

From near the pickup, Alisha said, “Uncle Willie, are you sure you want to do this? You’ve heard what happens to Joe Pickett’s horses, haven’t you? They meet the same fate as his vehicles.”

“Thanks, Alisha,” Joe said, his face flushing. He wanted to argue, but he had no argument.

“I’ve heard,” Willie said. “We can hope these horses bring you more luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Joe said.

Willie said, “I understand you need a couple of saddles and a pack saddle outfit, too, because you lost yours with your horses. I can lend you those.”

“Thank you,” Joe said.

“I’m doing this as a favor to my favorite mare,” Willie said, glancing toward Alicia and talking loud enough so she could hear. “I mean my favorite niece .”

“What’s he talking about?” Alisha asked Nate suspiciously.

Nate shrugged and said to her, “I don’t understand all this horse talk. You know that.”

As Joe and Nate approached Muddy Gap, towing the horses in the horse trailer, and took the highway toward Rawlins, the Green Mountains loomed like sleeping lions on the horizon. Nate said, “I don’t see where the woman fits. Do you think she’s up there with those brothers voluntarily, or is it some kind of Stockholm-syndrome type of deal? Is she a hostage, a kidnap victim, or a willing accomplice?”

Joe shook his head. “First, we don’t know if it’s Shober or if she’s still okay. She could be anybody.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nate said dismissively.

Said Joe, “If you saw those brothers in person like I did, there’s no way you’d think anyone in their right mind would stay with them willingly. They creeped me out.”

“Maybe you didn’t meet them in the best circumstances,” Nate said.

Joe shrugged. “Diane is a puzzle. I don’t see how those guys could have taken her up into the mountains if she didn’t want to go. She didn’t seem to fear them nearly as much as she regretted letting them down by taking me in. Are you thinking she’s the key to all of this?”

Nate sat back and sighed. “No. I can’t figure out how she fits. Or why, of all the places on earth, she’d end up there.”

Joe grunted.

Nate said, “Well, she had to know people were looking for her a couple of years ago, right? So even if those Grim Brothers grabbed her and kept her captive at the time, from what you said she was moving around of her own free will. If nothing else, she could just up and outrun those knuckleheads.”

“If it was even her,” Joe said wearily.

“And if it isn’t,” Nate asked, “then who is it?”

“Don’t know.”

“If it isn’t, how are you going to tell Mrs. Shober?”

Joe cringed.

After a few more miles, Joe said, “Nate, I want to thank you for coming along. I couldn’t do it without you.”

Nate said, “We haven’t done anything yet except rent some horses.”

Joe didn’t say anything.

“This thing spooked you, didn’t it?”

No response.

“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Nate said. “You got your butt kicked over and over. These guys ran circles around you up there and took everything you had, including your confidence. I can tell. You don’t want to go up there for revenge as much as to see if you can get your courage back, isn’t that it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Joe said, swerving to avoid hitting a jackrabbit that darted out onto the blacktop. There were so many dead, flat rabbits on this stretch of road that the asphalt looked cottony in places, as if the rabbits had been violently hurled down to the pavement from the sky in a fit of pique.

“Like I said, they kicked your butt up one side of the mountain and down the other,” Nate said.

“You’re really irritating sometimes,” Joe mumbled.

“But what I can’t figure out is why they didn’t finish the job,” Nate said, looking over and locking his eyes on the side of Joe’s face. “They had you down from that shotgun blast, but they didn’t follow up. Guys like that, who hunt for a living, would know to find you in the grass and cut your throat or put one or two into your head. Why didn’t they do that?”