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.
I spoke to her in the same steady voice I’d used on the mesa. “I know you’re tired, and I know you’re sick, but we’ve got another hundred feet between us and safety. If we can make it across, then we’re done—I promise.” I swiveled my head to look back down the road and could see the damaged Dodge wheeling around the corner. “I promise.”
I dug my heels into Wahoo Sue and let her rip. “Yaaah!”
I almost fell off but got myself positioned as the barricade and bridge swallowed the view. I was in close, but when the mare gathered herself and leapt, I was even closer and was pressed hard against her withers. In that one brief second, we were flying.
From my perspective, it felt as if we’d cleared the blockade by fathoms, and the next instant we were clattering across the length of the bridge. I was expecting the world to fall from beneath us, and I remembered a blood spatter and another saddle with a smooth and shiny surface, worn by both human and beast in a sacred bond of speed. At that one moment it came to me that if we died like this, there could be no bitter or better end.
I felt the pressure of her second leap, the world was silent, and it was almost as if we hung there between heaven and earth while the spirit of Wahoo Sue decided which firmament we would join.
We pounded onto the pavement of the Powder River Road like sledgehammers on Rodin’s doors to hell, and I could feel her steel shoes sliding on the slippery surface of the worn and cupped road.
She slowed to a canter on the dirt and grass that made up the supply lot where WYDOT and Range had parked their equipment. Dust floated up from the dry ground as I reined Wahoo Sue into a tight turn and looked back across the bridge through the clouds of talcum scoria that filled the air.
Barsad hadn’t seen the blockade or had decided to ignore it, and scattered the sawhorses, two-by-fours, and signs in every direction as he charged across the bridge in the three-ton vehicle. I watched as the surface separated with the lateral movement and the planks split and began falling into the water. The truck’s undercarriage dropped, and his momentum stopped as the wheels fell and the Dodge became high-centered on its axles while the diesel motor wailed like some
Tyrannosaurus rex
buried in tar.
He gunned the motor in desperation, but the three-hundred-and-fifty horses couldn’t do what my one had.
I drifted Wahoo Sue back toward the end of the bridge and looked down at the Henry rifle, which I had lost on the side of the road with the impact of our landing and which, with my broken foot, might as well have been on the other side of the Bozeman Trail. I turned the big black horse sideways so that we could both watch the show.
The motor loped into an idle, and we all waited, unmoving. I didn’t know if he’d had time to retrieve his 9 mm from the floor of the truck; even if he had, it wouldn’t shoot through the windshield, so he was going to have to come out.
Barsad attempted to open the door, but with the listing of the massive truck it only lurched about two inches and then jammed into the wooden planks.
I motioned with my chin and raised my voice. “Shut it off.”
Dutifully, the diesel went silent, and it was eerie how I could all of a sudden hear the flow of the river below. I listened as the bridge creaked, and the electric window on the driver’s side whirred and went down. His hand came out holding the 9 mm, and it was one of those wicked little Smith & Wesson autoloaders. I watched as he extended his arm out the window and glanced at the Henry rifle lying between us.
He finally looked at me with one hand stretched across the top of the cab, the other pointing the pistol. His voice was a little tight. “This is an interesting situation, don’t you think?”
“Not for me.”
He smiled. “You know, I really hate that horse.”
Wahoo Sue didn’t even give him the benefit of a glance. “That’s all right; I don’t think she cares that much for you, either.”
He smiled again, but it was more of a smirk. “You know, I didn’t really want to kill you.”
“Is that so?”
“Then why would you want to kill me?”
“There’s Hershel Vanskike as a starting point.”
He shook his head. “That wasn’t me, that was Cliff.”
“Cliff Cly is a federal agent. You’re lucky at least
he
wants you alive.”
There was another squealing creak, and one of the planks under the mighty engine gave way, dropping the truck’s cab at an even more drastic angle and lower into the surface of the bridge. Barsad scrambled to get both hands over the cab but still managed to hold the semiautomatic on us.
Wahoo Sue took a quick two-step back with the noise and then sashayed her substantial rear for a moment, but that was all. I wondered if she wanted to remain close because she was rooting for the truck to fall into the river and, once and for all, kill the son-of-a-bitch.
Again, nobody moved, and again the only sounds were the twisting load of the bridge and the water beneath.
Barsad’s one hand was flat against the roof of the cab, the other, still holding the 9 mm, was hooked on the window channel. He didn’t look quite so smug.
“You know, I don’t know how much longer that bridge is going to hold.”
His eyes flicked up at me, and it was as if he were afraid to move his head for fear of causing the final collapse. “Well, maybe we can make a deal, okey?”
I thought about the old
Bidpai
parable about the scorpion that makes the deal with the frog to carry him across the river. “I doubt it.”
He studied the gun in his hand. “I’ve got an awful lot of leverage here.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, I’ve got a lot of money.”
“So?”
“A lot of money, and even more tucked away.” When I didn’t respond, he breathed a quick but careful breath out. “You can’t tell me that—”
“You know, the longer this conversation is, the greater the chance that you, that truck, and the bridge are going to collapse into the river.” I listened to him breathe. “Now, I don’t particularly care, but maybe you do, seeing as how you went to all the trouble to come back from the dead.” I started untying the riata from the saddle strings of the old McClellan. “From my perspective, it looks like you’ve only got one choice. I’m going to throw you this lariat, but I’m not going to do that till you throw that nifty little Smith & Wesson into the river—and I want to hear the splash.”
He glanced up at me, and his fingers tightened on the pistol. “This is an eight-hundred-dollar gun.”
I smiled. “That’s okey, you’ve got plenty of money and more tucked away, right?”
I thumbed the comforting surface of the plaited rawhide in my thumb and forefinger, rolling out the leather hondo and trying to think about the last time I’d thrown a riata. “You know, one of the worst images perpetrated on society is the idea of a cowboy with a gun—you give a real cowboy a choice between a gun and a rope and he’ll take the rope every time, because that’s how he makes his living. No self-respecting cowboy makes a living with a gun.” I tossed the loop out with one hand, uncoiling it through the burner to a sizable length. “Now, I’m no cowboy and it’s been an awful long time since I threw the hoolihan, but you can more than double my chances by grabbing it.” I threaded more of the rope out and kept looking at him, his hand still holding the Smith & Wesson. “It’ll take a basic, flat loop with a good wrist twist, finishing with a palm-out release.”
His voice was sounding high and tight. “Look . . .”
“This old McClellan doesn’t have any horn to dally to, so I’ll just have to brace it off the fork and hope for the best. I don’t know when the last time this rawhide was oiled, so it could just snap like a piece of brittle cottonwood—maybe it’ll hold, maybe it won’t.”
I watched him swallow the last tiny bit of courage he’d been holding between his teeth, and his knuckles whitened around the black plastic grip of the 9 mm. If he was going to do something stupid, then now was the time.
I thought about two dead men, a dying man, a terrorized boy, my dog, a tormented woman, and the tortured horse I now rode.
I leaned a little forward in the saddle and more emphasis came into my voice as my right hand, still holding the coiled lariat, touched Wahoo Sue’s wither and the mare shifted for the first time to consider her tormentor. The black beauty placed a hoof forward and relaxed a rear, kicking the two of us into an almost insulting stance. “And then you’re going to have to depend on this horse; and she may pull, or she may not.”