We stood there, and I could feel her legs stiffen. What if Barsad had parked the truck and was now pointing the semiautomatic at us?
Enough was enough; I raised the. 44 and jacked the lever-action. I wasn’t sure what Wahoo Sue’s response to gunfire from close proximity would be, but it had to be better than being shot or run over by a seven-thousand-pound truck.
I heard the bellow of the diesel, so he hadn’t parked; I pivoted Wahoo Sue in the direction of the alley, but he sounded much closer.
The fence to my left blew apart as the Dodge crashed through and veered. I spun Sue into a rearing turn at the other side of the walkway as the duellie slid through the lot, occupying it with the front wheels turned toward us. Barsad had the 9 mm out but he miscalculated the distance to the propane tank, and I watched as the impact forced the pistol out of his hand and onto the floorboards where he would have to take the time to look for it. I could see that the utility tank had lurched off its concrete blocks and sat at a thirty-degree angle.
In a movie, it would’ve blown up. But we weren’t in a movie and it didn’t, and I could see Wade throwing the Dodge into reverse and swinging back.
I realized that I was trying to lose a truck in a three-block town, but my options were limited. I could get off and shoo the mare away, but my mobility was questionable to say the least, and once I got off the big black horse, there wasn’t anything to say she’d let me back on her.
Shooting the truck from the moving horse was an option but not nearly as easy as it appeared in most westerns. I’d known many an individual who had learned that by shooting either themselves or their horse; besides, the FBI wanted him alive, so it was a last resort.
I looked back up the paved main street that headed north when I suddenly remembered the Range Co-op phone jack at the junction box next to the bridge. Would it still be there? Would the bridge still be there?
If I were trying to outthink myself, however, that’s the direction I’d go.
I started to gig Wahoo Sue, but she’d already read my mind. It would take a while for Barsad to disentangle himself from the propane tank and the fences and get back on the road, and by that time I hoped to be up the rise and out of sight. Wahoo Sue was at an immediate disadvantage on the blacktop, so I reined her to the right, where there was a broad dirt walkway for horses-an advantage of small-town Wyoming.
I looked back as we got to the top of the rise overlooking Absalom and could see no activity in the streets below. The population must’ve slept like the dead or more likely didn’t want to be involved. The early morning sun was throwing a diffused glow through the clouds at the horizon, and the shadow of the mill cast across the town like a closed door.
By my calculations, it would take us less than two minutes to get to the bridge, but you can travel a lot of distance fast in a turbocharged pickup truck. We started around the long, guardrailed bend that led to the bridge, and I could feel the big mare gaining speed as she went into that extended gallop that felt like she was rotating the earth. Maybe she knew, maybe she could sense that this was our last shot-the only way we were going to get away. “So-o-o girl, go-o-od girl. Goo-od girl, go-o-od.”
It was my father who had taught me to talk to animals. I wondered who had taught Mary Barsad. He said they understood a hell of a lot more than you think they do. I remember him speaking to the horses he shod in a low and reassuring voice, explaining what he was doing to them; he said it was one of the things we owed them for their absolute, unreserved, unswerving loyalty. He said the outside of a horse is always good for the inside of a man.
In spite of the pressing circumstances, I could feel the ascension of my spirit as we galloped alongside the two-lane strip that led away from Absalom, and that feeling doubled when I saw that the old kings-bridge system of girders still spanned the Powder River and that the Range Co-op trailer that Steve Miller had been working from was still parked by the pole.
I wasn’t sure if the water coming from my eyes was in relief or from Wahoo Sue’s velocity, but either way we now had a shot. The dirt trail beside the asphalt was growing narrower, and by the time we got within a hundred feet of the bridge we were forced onto the pavement, so I slowed the big dark horse to a canter.
The sun had stopped making much of an effort to get through the overcast, and the flat light of the Powder River country was doing its best to rob me of the slim glimmer of hope I’d been stoking. It became completely quelled as I slowed Sue at the blinking yellow lights that had been attached across the chest-high, wooden fence with which they’d blocked off the bridge.
There was a large banner that had been strung across which read DO NOT CROSS-IMPORTANT STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS HAVE BEEN REMOVED-DO NOT CROSS.
I looked at the other side of the river and could see that the blue plastic auxiliary phone was still attached to the junction box and was gently tapping against the pole.
I sighed deeply, and then Sue did, too. I looked around, but the hillside to our left was too steep to ride. I walked her over to the edge of the road, where an old, creosote-poled guardrail stood against the edge of the drop-off. It was a good hundred feet to the surface of the slow-moving river, which looked like zinc in the gray light. There were large slabs of sedimentary rock but no trail and no way down.
I sighed again, and Sue turned her head to look at me, possibly wondering what it was we were going to do next. I wondered about that, too.
I walked her back, the ghostly sound of her hooves echoing off the hardtop, and looked at the surface of the bridge. The warped, weatherworn planks were still the same color as the water below and looked as they had when Bill and I had driven across them only a few days ago. The only thing that looked different was that the giant rivets that held each plank had been undone, and I wondered about the support trusses and the joists underneath.
It was possible that the only things they’d removed were the attachments to the concrete buttresses and that the structure was basically intact. It was also possible that, although it wasn’t capable of supporting the weight of a modern vehicle, it could support the weight of a man and horse.
The thing to do would be to dismount, break through the barricade, and walk Wahoo Sue across on the loose planks. It would provide some excitement of its own considering my broken foot, but there was no way I was leaving her on this side, not by herself, not after we’d come so far together.
I started to disengage my swollen foot from the stirrup when, from the road leading back to town, I heard the distinctive clatter of the Cummins diesel. I turned in the thin saddle, looked back, and could clearly see the reflection of the headlights on the vintage guardrail.
After not finding us in town, he’d taken a chance and headed north.
As Vic would say, fuck me.
Wahoo Sue knew what was coming and pivoted on the hard asphalt to meet it head on. I raised the. 44 Henry repeater from its comfortable resting place on my lap but then stopped.
I looked at the height of the barricade and got that light-in-the-balls feeling I always had when I was thinking about doing something colossally stupid. There was a barricade on the other side as well, and the length of the bridge between.
About sixty feet-it would have to be enough.
Hell, I knew she could do it; damn, I wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly sprouted wings and flew us across. The question was the bridge, and whether or not it would not only hold the weight of the two of us but the weight of the two of us at impact and speed.
I trotted her back toward the hillside to give us a straight trajectory and could feel the big mare stiffen as I gave her time to consider what it was I was asking her to do. Could she jump? Would she? If not, I was looking at a lonely header into the thick wooden planks and a possible crashing descent into the twelve-inch-deep water a hundred feet below.