“You got any rawhide? Some of the saddle strings on this one are broke offf a little short.” He motioned toward the rear end of the trailer, so I walked back and took some strings from a hook inside the door. Hershel had already established squatter’s rights. There was an antiquated McClellan saddle, along with an old cavalry canteen with the number 10 and the letter G stenciled onto its canvas side. It would appear that Hershel was quite the collector.
I fixed the strings on my horse’s saddle and tied my horsehide jacket to the bedroll. I found a neckerchief in the inside pocket and knotted the bandana at my neck, slipped a foot in the stirrup, and stepped up, gently flinging a leg over the bay. He took a slight counter to the left but then planted and turned to look at me, probably wondering why it was I was riding him and not vice versa. Then his long face turned south, almost as if he were looking for something in particular. I searched the horizon along with him but saw nothing and turned him along with the others.
After getting the boy saddled and seated, Hershel checked the sawbuck rigging on the packhorse and the canvas bags filled with supplies, oats, and two five-gallon containers of water, which we especially needed since there wasn’t any on the entire mesa.
Benjamin gigged his horse and yelped as it crow-hopped a little to the right and shot out about twenty feet before stopping and craning its long neck to inspect the foreign ground.
Hershel laughed and climbed aboard his own mount, where he readjusted the Henry Yellow Boy in his rifle scabbard and draped the old cavalry canteen I’d seen in the trailer off the horn of his saddle. “You know what they say about a horse bein’ only afraid of two things?”
“What’s that?”
“Things that move, and things that don’t.”
I smiled at the old joke and followed as he trailed the packhorse from a lead position. The horses fell into a walking pace with Dog going up ahead to stay with Benjamin.
There are people who prefer the spring and summer on the high plains, but I’m not one of them. My blood quickens, and I begin to sleep better when the cottonwood leaves begin their weekend turn to a varsity gold and a slight skim of frost surprisingly appears on your windshield one morning. I was glad I’d brought my jacket, and only hoped the bay, whatever his name was, didn’t notice that it was made out of horsehide.
The sky was fading in and out of blue with wide bands of diffused clouds, and it was possible that we’d get a shower or even a blowing skiff of snow from the front that was promised by morning.
“How’s your head?” Hershel, who had allowed me to ease up on his left, thrust his chin forward and peered at the bandage at my cheekbone and the discoloration around my eye.
“Still on.”
He pulled his head back, shook it, and adjusted his reins and his hat. “I sure didn’t take you for the bull-at-the-gate kind of fella.”
“I haven’t been myself lately.”
He nodded and the next words carried a little more weight than perhaps they should have. “That’s what I hear.” I turned in the saddle, enough so that I could see him with my good eye and could watch the shifting shadows disappear in the afternoon sun. Benjamin was hanging back, and I could almost hear him listening to our budding conversation. He wasn’t much of an undercover kind of guy either. Hershel pointed with his chin toward the rocky expanse of the trail ahead. “Ben, why don’t you ride on a little and check things out?”
Recalcitrant even when told to do what he really wanted, Benjamin turned completely in the saddle till both legs draped off one side, his horse continuing to clop forward and paying him no mind. “Why me?”
The older man squinted into the sun and at the boy like some B-movie support player. “Because you’re the Indian. Go scout.”
Without another word, the half-Cheyenne warrior leaned back and rolled his leg over the bulletproof horse’s withers. He nudged him with his heels into a slightly faster pace, snugged up his stampede strings, and left us behind. Dog looked back at me; I gestured with my chin and he trotted after the boy.
I had the feeling I’d just been afforded a glimpse of what the country had been like around a hundred and fifty years ago and turned to look at Vanskike, aware that he’d dismissed the boy for a reason. “What’s on your mind?”
He spat over his horse’s shoulder and looked at me again as he pulled up his canteen and took a deep swig. “Couple’a things. When you dropped me off the other night?”
“Yep?”
He wiped his mouth and hung the canteen back on the saddle horn. “All them pictures on the wall of my trailer?”
“Uh huh?”
I watched him as we rode, and it was as if he and the horse were inseparable, with all the hours, days, and years they had most likely had together. He held the reins in one fist while the other hand, trained to rope or relax when there was no roping to be done, lay limp in his lap. “I just didn’t want you thinkin’ I was some kind of pervert.”
“I don’t, honest.” I stood in the stirrups to stretch my legs. “But if you think your future lies in those little scrolls you buy in the checkout line at Kmart, then I do think you’re crazier than a shit-house rat.”
He shrugged and then patted the stock of his museum-piece rifle. “My fortune is in this rifle.” He glanced over to see if I had a smart-alec remark about that, and when I didn’t have one, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if it were practice for something he was going to have trouble saying. “I got a buddy in the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department-”
I let a moment pass. “Okay.”
“I don’t wanna tell you his name, for obvious reasons, but he told me a few things.”
“Like what?”
He readjusted and leaned forward to counter the rise in the path. “He said there was this sheriff from over in Absaroka County-a big fella that’s supposedly one tough customer, but fair.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He also said he knows for a fact that the powers that be made sure that Cliff Cly didn’t have to take no lie-detector test about killing Wade Barsad.”
12
October 30, 6:50 P.M.
I tried to remember the last time I’d camped out but finally gave up. Then I tried to remember the last time my posterior hurt this bad and couldn’t come up with that, either.
We’d trailed along the northern edge of the plateau and had made camp near the precipice of the stacked shelves of sedimentary rock that had seemed so far away when we were starting out. They formed a sort of natural amphitheater, which is where we set up the tents, careful to keep away from the eight-hundred-foot drop-off that was nearby. We’d put the horses on a picket line, had made and eaten dinner, and were quickly running out of wood to keep the campfire going.
“There’s a couple ’a old truck skids down where that wellhead is, from where they abandoned the methane, along the second ridge southeast.”
The young cowboy tipped his hat back, looked into the gloom of a cloudy sunset, and then back at Hershel as he stoked the few remaining pieces of lit wood. “How do I get ’em apart?”
“They’re old; just break ’em with your boot.” Vanskike watched the boy stand there. “What?”
Benjamin sniffed. “Wouldn’t it be faster if we all went, then we could get it in one trip?”
Hershel tossed the last piece of wood into the fire. “What in the heck is the matter with you?” He nodded toward me. “He took care of the horses, I fixed dinner, now it’s time for you to earn your keep.” The boy remained immobile. “What?”
“I’m goin’.”
The old cowboy shook his head in incredulity as the boy started off. I yelled after him. “You want a flashlight?” The small figure at the very end of the campfire stopped and walked back as I fished in my saddlebag and handed him the five-cell Maglite. “You run into anything, hit it with this.” I turned and looked at my trusty companion, sprawled beside my bedroll. “Dog.”