She crow-hopped to the right, then gathered her big haunches and launched in one great leap. And she was like a missile. I held on as we veered to the right and away from Cliff Cly. He screamed after us as we rushed by.
“Hi-yo Silver, away!”
15
October 31, 3:55 A.M.
Two quick strikes, and we were at speed.
I’d been on fast horses or, what I thought were fast horses, but nothing like Wahoo Sue. I felt like my ears were going to touch behind my head.
We’d veered back west and had collided with the road like it was a wall, the big mare’s hooves hammertoeing into the hard surface of the mesa like twelve-pound sledges. I had never been on a horse whose pace was so ferocious, yet whose gait was like a twenty-dollar shave. I could feel the blood and energy that passed between us like an electric current, and it was almost as if the poison was being pulled from my body and cast to the dirt and dust flying behind us. I was enhanced and could feel the wind on my skin unlike I had for some time.
I had never succumbed to the idea of a horse as transportation and was always quick to point out that machines, when you turned them off, stopped eating.
But they didn’t have a heart.
As I’d slung my two-hundred-forty-odd pounds onto the mare’s back, I’d been worried about her weakened state, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. Feral and unfettered, Wahoo Sue was doing what she did best, what came natural to her-running within an inch of her life and mine.
I could see the road stretching to the horizon north like the tensioned string on a gigantic basalt banjo. I slipped my heels in and down, and I rode close, like some grotesque jockey, and dipped my head at her withers to catch my breath-she was that fast.
We galloped past a smattering of rocks that were scattered across the surface of the two-track where something had run into them; I only hoped that it was Barsad and not Benjamin. The road canted slightly to the left, and I assumed that in less than twenty minutes we would be heading into the final furlong with the horse trailer as the finish line.
I became aware of something breaking trail across the gnarled brush of the mesa to my right. I had a brief twinge of panic, thinking it might be Barsad in the truck, and thought about trying to raise the Henry rifle, but there wasn’t any way he’d be off the road. I thought it could be Benjamin, but there were no lights, and finally, in the slight sliver of moonlight, I could see it was another horse.
My horse with no name.
He was doing his best, and you could see the stirrups, reins, and even the canteen bouncing with a comic effect. He tried to close the apex of our trajectory, but she was just too fast. I was glad to see he was still alive and unhurt, but the last I saw of him, he had joined the road but was falling away. Wahoo Sue must’ve been aware of him also, because she shifted into an even higher gear, and I thought about the old cowboy and how happy he’d be if he could see her now. I settled in for the straight shot to the trailer.
The voices were back again, the old me and everyone else; as fast as Wahoo Sue was, she couldn’t escape my anxieties. Where would Benjamin go?. Where could he go to escape the truck? He’d have to stay off-road; it was the only advantage he’d have in avoiding the much faster vehicle, but how could he when there was only one way down?
A quick jarring as Sue stumbled for a single hoof strike, and I almost dropped the heavy rifle. I had to pay attention so that when we got to the main road, I’d be able to steer her to the water buckets at the trailer.
As near as my rambling mind could tell, we’d been at a full gallop for miles, so I tried to pull her back into a canter. At first she wouldn’t hear of it, lunging forward whenever I pulled on her mane and repositioned my feet. Wahoo Sue had two speeds-fast and damn-well faster.
I tried a second time and could feel her relax a little and finally loosen into a comfortable lope, but after a few more minutes I saw the four-wheeler in the middle of the road. I could only hope that the damn thing had run out of gas. I pulled the dark horse up as close as she’d go and looked down.
There were truck treads beside the ATV, but also a pair of miniature boot tracks leading off into the sagebrush. There were no other footprints, especially ones from running shoes, and it looked like Barstad hadn’t even bothered to get out of the truck when he had passed.
That cagey kid had gone to ground and had been smart enough to get away from the road. His Cheyenne half was showing.
Now, where would he go?
October 31, 4:15 A.M.
I could see the regular shape of the horse trailer. I knew there wouldn’t be any feed left, but I was hoping that the grulla and the packhorse hadn’t gulped all the water. As we made the turn onto the main access road leading to the cliffside trail down from the mesa, however, I could see that the other horses were gone.
I pulled Wahoo Sue up beside the line where I’d tied the two animals. I could see the fresh tracks where either Benjamin or Barsad must have retrieved them. I was betting on the kid, as the horse tracks scattered toward the road and continued back down from the mesa, but there were marks from the truck as well.
Damn.
First things had to come first or Sue might collapse under me, and I’d be ineffectively afoot. I directed the big mare over to the black rubber buckets that still hung on the side of the trailer. As I’d suspected, the ones that had held the grain were empty, but as I had hoped, the water containers were three-quarters full. I watched as she submerged half her nostrils and sucked in the water like a sump pump.
I patted her neck and then slipped off the side, took one half-step, and collapsed, dropping the rifle and slamming my head against the trailer only to slide down and lay there propped against one of the tires.
I’d forgotten about my broken foot.
Sue skittered away only a short distance to the next pail, and I listened with my hat over my face as she emptied the other bucket. After three deep breaths, I could feel the pain in my foot lessening, but I felt like I was sinking into the hard ground. In my mind’s eye, I could see the surface growing farther and farther away as I slipped through the hardpack of the mesa, passing through geologic time, each layer sporting one of those nifty little signs that WYDOT plants along the cut bank sections on the highway: Quaternary, present-day; Tertiary, 1.8 million years ago; Cretaceous, 65 million years ago; Jurassic, 144 million years ago.
Something moved my hat and water dripped in a practical deluge onto my chest and face. I raised a hand to readjust it and looked up at her. “Did you swallow any of it?”
She moved to my right a little, rustled a few oats that the other horses had dropped on the ground, and pulled up a few stalks of dry grass. She chewed and watched me.
I took another deep breath and could feel another wave of exhaustion. I could see myself rolling over and passing out. The boy. The dead man. The bleeding man. The jailed woman.
I crunched my abdominal muscles with a substantial effort and pulled up my good foot, digging the heel of my boot into the ground and pushing myself along the side of the trailer. I propelled myself up and over the wheel well, pushed back on the fender, and sat there.
I looked off to the south expecting to see the bay, but there was nothing there and he must’ve stopped to take a break. Lazy bastard; he didn’t deserve a name. Wahoo Sue continued to nibble at the ground. I wasn’t looking forward to hauling myself on her bare back again and remembered that Hershel had that McClellan saddle in the trailer stall. It was old, hard, and likely dry-rotted, but it had to be better than my ass.