Not bad at all. He could do a pretty decent impression of Jeff London when he wanted to.
“Greetings,” Ridley Barnes called as he opened the door, and Mark kept the London impression in his voice when he responded.
“How y’all doing, Mr. Barnes?”
Sweet as syrup. Ridley cocked his head, aware that it was an act and not aware of the reason for it. On a porch chair beside the door was a coiled rope, dusted with frost; it looked like it had been left out to dry in the cold air and had frozen. Mark slipped it off the chair and ran it through his hands. Stiff, but not frozen. A fine rope, expensive. It was a static line, designed not to stretch. Ridley probably used it for rappelling. You wouldn’t want much stretch in a cave. Mark kept it in his hands as he walked away from the door and out into the yard. Ridley followed.
“What is this, seven-sixteenths?” Mark said.
“Good guess. You’ve done some climbing, I take it?”
“Not much. Spent some time with ropes, though. Trick stuff.” He slid the rope out of the coil with hands that were long out of practice but still far from forgetting, then looped and twisted a quick noose. “Poor man’s lariat,” he said. “With trick ropes, you use a metal piece called a honda. Brass, usually. But if all you have is the rope, you make do.”
Mark held the rope in his left hand, and with his right hand he flipped over the noose he’d created and gave it a clockwise spin, keeping it parallel to the ground. The rope wasn’t right for the task, and the absence of the honda was noticeable, but he could spin it well enough for the noose to stay open. He dropped his left hand from the rope and kept his right hand spinning it, mostly wrist action, almost like twirling a bicycle wheel. The noose spun in a circle about one foot above the ground. Mark walked with it, testing the feel.
“Impressive,” Ridley said.
“Not really. See that wobble? No good. It’s supposed to be flat.” Mark still hadn’t looked up at him. His eyes remained on the spinning rope.
“Not the sort of trick I’d expect a Florida boy to know,” Ridley said.
“Now, see, there’s your problem. You know that I came up from Florida, that I’ve got a suntan and don’t have a good winter coat, so you assume I’m a Florida boy. But that’s not the truth.”
“So where are you from?”
“Bozeman, Cooke City, Emigrant, Laurel, and Livingston, Montana. Cody, Casper, Bridger, and Sheridan, Wyoming. Ashton, Idaho.”
“Rodeo family or something?”
“Or something.” Mark lifted his gaze from the rope up to Ridley. “My uncle Larry, he was the trick-roper. Damn good at it. Let’s see if I still have any of his touch.”
He kept the rope spinning, the noose flatter now, but his eyes were on Ridley, assessing the distance. He twirled the rope in front of him, bringing it right to left across his body, and then brought it overhead, spinning it faster and a little wider.
Ridley smiled. “Nice. You look like a real cowboy. Question is, can you do that and ride a horse at the same time?”
“Oh, sure,” Mark said, and then he stepped straight toward Ridley and threw the rope, making sure to hold his follow-through, because it had been a long time since he’d done this. Ridley was only ten feet away, though, and he was standing still. Mark had been able to rope a post at that distance when he was eight years old. The toss wasn’t as pretty as it should have been, but it was effective — the noose settled over Ridley’s head and around his shoulders, and Mark gave a quick, snapping tug and cinched it. His timing was a touch off — he’d wanted to catch Ridley around the chest but got him at the waist instead — but it still served the purpose, binding Ridley’s arms against his body. Ridley stumbled forward, caught himself, and then gave another smile, this one less certain.
“Not bad at all. Uncle Larry would be proud.”
“Hell, no, he wouldn’t. He’d have spit tobacco juice at my feet, shaken his head, and told me to do it again. He was a stickler for form.” Mark was pulling the rope forward hand over hand, and Ridley walked toward him rather than resist it, still smiling. “Nobody tips a trick-roper if it doesn’t look good.” Mark stopped drawing the rope in when Ridley was two feet from him, studying the smaller man and his false smile.
“You’re not fond of being caught in a noose, are you?”
“I thought that was a universal trait.”
Mark nodded. “Well, good old Uncle Larry, he was a character, I’ll tell you. And my uncle Ronny? He had some tricks too.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. His were a little different, though. Let me show you one of Uncle Ronny’s tricks.”
Before Ridley could say a word, Mark jerked hard on the rope and brought him stumbling forward, then dipped down and snapped his forehead off the bridge of Ridley’s nose.
“Wh-what the fuck...” Ridley stammered, trying to reel away, the blood already spilling, but then he got caught in the rope and went down. Mark moved in above him, pulled up on the rope enough to get Ridley off the ground, then grabbed him by his belt, spun him, and drove him back until he slammed into the hood of the Ford. Ridley’s ribs connected with the metal, and his breath went out with a grunt. His hands were fumbling for something, had been the whole time, but Mark didn’t care much about his hands because his arms were pinned to his sides, useless. When he saw that Ridley had managed to get a knife out of his pocket and open the blade, he was almost impressed. Now that mistake with the rope, getting him at the waist instead of the torso, was actually working in Mark’s favor. Ridley couldn’t get the knife high enough to do anything with it from a distance, but if Mark hadn’t been paying attention, Ridley might have been able to stick him.
“Now, Ridley,” he said. “A knife at a rope fight? Do you think that is fair?” He shook his head like a displeased teacher and then banged Ridley’s wrist on the fender until the knife fell to the ground. Ridley stopped resisting and rested on the hood, gasping. The blood bubbled in his nose as he tried to get his breath back.
Mark leaned close.
“You understand that I’m going to require her name,” he said. “Not the one she gave me either, no more bullshit and lies. I’m going to need to find the real woman, Mr. Barnes. You understand that, don’t you?”
Ridley began with “I don’t know—” but whatever he was trying to say ended in a sharp gasp of pain as Mark hit him twice under the sternum with a flashing left hand.
“You can’t afford to go that way, Ridley. You really can’t.”
Ridley didn’t speak this time. Just leaned back on the car, submissive, breathing hard and bleeding hard. Mark gave him a minute. After those gut punches, it would take Ridley a while to get any words out. Mark loosened the noose and let the rope drop to Ridley’s feet, freeing him.
“How’d you get the hotel clerk to lie?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a hell of a good trick,” Mark said. “I’ll give you credit there. First the bit with the woman pretending to be Sarah’s mother? That was inspired, sure. But how you got the girl at the hotel in the mix, I don’t know.”
Ridley just stared at him. He had his sleeve pressed against his nose to soak up the blood. His gray hair fanned out in all directions. Mark cupped his hands and blew into them to warm them and said, “I’m going to need her name, Ridley.”
“I don’t kn—”
“Shut up. Do not speak to me unless you’re going to speak the truth. Understand?”
Ridley nodded, which shook some drops of blood loose.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Mark said. “She had to come from you. Because here’s the scenario: I got into town, and I spoke to two people. You and the sheriff. That’s it. The sheriff wasn’t going to roll out somebody pretending to be the victim’s mother, I just don’t see that being an option. Sheriff also never saw my car yesterday. He didn’t know what I was driving, wouldn’t have been able to find me that fast even if he’d wanted to. Nobody knew I was coming to this town, Ridley. So she came from one of two sources, you or the sheriff, and I don’t think it was the sheriff. You going to try and convince me that it was?”