Wild Horses and Other Stories

Wild Horses and Other Stories

by

Joseph Dylan

Copyright 2011 Joseph Dylan,

All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0479-0

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Contents

Wild Horses

The Testament of Edwin Duchenne

The Last Stand Bar

The North Fork

The Thoroughfare

The Hill People

The River is Wide

Dana Ormond

Wild Horses

The sun was but a dull smudge, low in the Western sky, when he crawled under the schoolhouse, providing little light. In the morning, rain came, gathering as scattered virga to the west. At noon, the drizzle became sleet and then wet snow falling from low, gray clouds in still air. By late afternoon it started to clear. Pale sunlight shone on snow that clung to the steep slopes of the Bookcliffs. No snow remained in the schoolhouse yard or the treeless low hills of shale. Braids of water formed in the arroyo that curved around the schoolhouse. His shirt and jeans were wet and muddy. Shards of glass tore his clothes as he crawled towards the light of kerosene lamps seeping through the cracks of the sagging floor near the door of the schoolhouse. As much as he wanted to, he could not turn back. The muffled and opaque voices became clearer and clearer as he inched forward.

Goddammit, I know where they went. It was the first distinct sentence he heard, but he didn’t know who was speaking. That bastard took them, that’s where they went.

You don’t know that for sure. Bob Thistlewaite spoke. He recognized his voice. Thistlewaite owned the ranch that bordered the southern fringe of his grandfather’s spread.

It had to be Hawkins. He’s the only one who could have done it.

A lot of people could have taken them.

Goddammit, I know who took them!

You had better be damned sure. You’d better be damn sure before you start accusing someone of stealing your horses? Sagging above him, the pine floorboards creaked as the weight of the men shifted back and forth emitting small clouds of dust that floated down across his face, twice nearly making him sneeze.

I know it was him. Last week, I ran into him on the ridge above our place. He told me that he was tracking that cougar that had been around Merrill’s. Nick Taylor was the man speaking. Taylor’s ranch was east of his grandfather’s. At first I believed him. Wilson told me that a cougar killed one of Merrill’s calves last week. I didn’t think anything more of it until my horses were gone.

Well, you’re going to need a lot more proof than that. He didn’t know who was speaking now. Cold and weary, and sick with a sourness in his stomach he had never felt before, he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out under the schoolhouse. The shivering he could not stop he feared would give him away. Because he still could not hear the men clearly, he inched farther into the cold darkness, pausing finally when the flickering light of the kerosene lamps shone on his shirtsleeves.

When did you realize they were gone? said Thistlewaite.

Thursday morning when I went out to saddle up my quarter horse, the corral gate was open and my two quarter horses were gone. I checked the gate twice before I went to sleep that night. I always check it at least once before I go to bed.

But you never saw him take the horses, though, did you?

If I’d come to steal your horses, you’d think I’d ever let you see me?

Dammit, there’s nothing funny about this. Did you see him or not?

Of course I didn’t see him.

Could you see where the tracks went, Nick? He thought it was Bill Ferguson, another rancher, speaking.

There were tracks alright, three sets of them. They led to Blaine’s place, and then over to Owl Creek. They crossed there, just before the big hogback, but then I lost them. From there he could have taken them straight to Merrill’s. I think there are up there right now or he moved them on somewhere else.

Since Merrill had his stroke, he hasn’t gotten around like he used to, said Ferguson. Before that, hardly a thing moved on Merrill’s place without him knowing about it.

Yeah, but Wilson would have, said Thistlewaite. Wilson was Merrill’s foreman. I think Wilson would have seen them if they were on Merrill’s place for any length of time.

Not if he hobbled them in one of the meadows below the ridge line. Since the herd is in the higher pasture, Wilson probably doesn’t go by there much.

It’s where I would have taken them if I had to keep’em out of plain sight for two or three days. Hank could not be sure who was speaking.

Everyone believed he stole those horses in Montrose three years ago, added still another man.

They never proved it, said Thistelwaite.

It was never proved, but everyone knew who done it. He realized the man was Buck Miller, who until then hadn’t spoken. Sam Miller, Buck’s son, was his closest friend at school.

I said it was never proved.

It was never proved because they never caught him, and they never caught the horses. Nick Taylor paused. I knew he’d be trouble when he came back last summer.

You could hang a dozen men around here on just rumor, said Thistlewaite.

I think he’s up at Merrill’s place now. Merrill was his grandfather and the man they were talking about was his father. He had already walked as far as the church and cemetery on his way home when Sam Caldwell, another boy in his class who was his friend, had caught up with him, grabbing his shirtsleeve. There are men back at the schoolhouse talking about your dad, he told him. About something he did.

This is a matter for the sheriff, said Thistlewaite. I talked to him yesterday. He’s due back tomorrow morning.

It can’t wait until tomorrow.

He’s not going anywhere tonight with that storm coming in.

I wouldn’t bet on that, said Miller. He’s a pretty slick one.

Well, I don’t want any part of this. Neither should any of you. Let the sheriff deal with it tomorrow. It’s his job. At least that’s what we pay him for. The door opened. From beneath the schoolhouse, he watched Thistlewaite ride away.

They hung that rustler they caught in Delta, last year, didn’t they, said Taylor.

His worn boots found little purchase on the muddy shale. As he ran, damp branches of Juniper brushed against his jeans. The pounding in his chest echoed in his ears. How he crawled out from under the schoolhouse, he didn’t know. He ran on legs that no longer seemed his own. The nausea that began under the schoolhouse finally overcame him. He kneeled beside the trail and vomited. In the darkness he rose and continued along the blurred outline of the path. Moonlight glimmered on cottonwood leaves dimpled in the mud. Branches reached out to catch his feet while rocks rose out to block them, and he stumbled several times. Once he fell hard, driving his body into the trail, pressing his face into the mud. His right knee ached where it struck a rock. By now, more limping than running, he cut wide of the main house on his way to the log cabin next to the pasture behind it. His father sat at the table as he ran into the house. His mother stood beside him serving dinner.

Hank, what did I tell you about running into the house?

Some men, he gasped. Some men were talking about you, at the school house. He couldn’t catch his breath. They were talking about… Before he could complete the sentence, his father stood, gathering his coat, hat, and Winchester, and bounded out the door. His father was a short and wiry man, outsized in his sheepskin coat. Slick was never a word he would have used to describe his father. He watched his father saddle his quarter horse. As his father pulled himself onto the saddle, his mother came out of the cabin. She passed him his bedroll and she shoved a cloth containing several rolls of bread into one of his saddlebags.

Don’t concern yourself over this, he said. She flinched as if she had been slapped. For a moment she was at a loss to say anything.

Don’t concern myself. She bit her lip. That’s all you’ve got to say. You got some nerve, Jimmie…You promised me….Jimmie, But she didn’t complete the thought. Then she sighed. You promised.

We’ll discuss it later, Meg.

There ain’t going to be a later. When you ride out tonight, Jimmie, you just keep riding; keep riding and don’t come back. She turned and walked back towards the house, her arms wrapped tightly about the shawl, not glancing back once.

He was twelve now and he stood to the whithers of the horse. Stubble was overtaking his father’s mustache and mud caked to the cuffs and knees of his father’s jeans. When his father looked at him there was a thin smile, and a quick wink. What it meant, he wasn’t quite sure. He was entangled in a conspiracy he knew nearly nothing about and he would never completely understand. The wink and the smile implied that he and his father were bound in this together: them against the world.

You look after your ma, Hank. Mind what she tells you.

You’re coming back, ain’t you, pa?

I’m coming back, Hank. You can count on that. I’ll be back soon enough. He tousled Hank’s hair, damp with the sweat of his flight from the schoolhouse. We’ve still got a lot of hunting and fishing to do, don’t we?

Then he was gone. The sound of the quarter horse thrashing though the wet brush continued long after he disappeared into the darkness. For the first time since it all unfolded beneath the schoolhouse, he cried. He was still crying quietly when his mother wrapped her arm around him, and led him back to the house.

The stew his mother set in front of him went untouched. Neither of them spoke. There was sufficient clarity the moment he ran through the door of the cabin. Nothing was spoken the night his father rode off when they lived in Montrose, either. For days after that, adults stopped talking when he entered the room. Upon his departure, they spoke again in hushed tones. Imagining what they were saying, he realized what his father had done. He knew it even if he could not completely acknowledge it. Nothing had to be said, because he knew, and his mother knew he knew. There was no point in asking his father, though he wanted to: no matter what he said, he couldn’t be sure it was the truth.

The stomping and braying of horses, and the muffled voices of men outside, woke him from a fitful sleep a few hours later. When his mother opened the door, Miller stood before her looking more confused than angry. His eyes were damp and blood-shot, and Hank realized he was drunk. Dim, flickering outlines of three or four men still astride their horses appeared behind Miller. The breath of the horses rose and faded into the cold night air. For several moments their raspy breathing was the only sound he heard.

Meg…. Before he could say another word, his mother cut him off.

Ain’t you a sorry sight, Buck. Merrill always said you were a fool, and now you’ve finally proved him right. Her voice was hard and resolute, but her hand trembled on the door. He’s not here and he’s not coming back. What’s the world come to with grown men sneaking around in the middle of the night. You’re no better than he is. Now get out. Get out and don’t come back.

The framed picture wedding picture of her and his father, which hung next to the door, fell when she slammed the door. Shattered glass spread across the floor.

Get back to bed, Hank. She knelt picking up the broken glass in her flannel nightgown. The light brown hair that spilled across her shoulders already had a streak or two of gray. You got a long day tomorrow.

Outside, the voices slowly faded. What they were saying, or what they were thinking, he could only imagine. But he knew the answer his mother gave them was the only answer she would ever give them, and he sensed they knew it, too. The men would return; of that he was certain. He was less certain his father would ever come back. They would return, but not to the house. They would bide their time waiting for him, conducting their vigil silently from the behind the pines that skirted the hills or the rocks on the canyon rim. Quietly, the horses retreated back to town, their retreat marked by the howl of a solitary coyote. When he finally fell asleep again, he dreamed of horses, and in the dream his father rode a bay one, his father’s horse and the other horses rising and falling as they galloped across the desert, rising and falling as they followed the contours of the low hills and shallow arroyos, until they slipped beneath the horizon. When his mother woke him, it was still dark, and it was cold. His breath hung in the air as he dressed. By the time he got to breakfast, she was already gone. The frayed palisades of the Bookcliffs emerged in the early morning light. Outside, ice rimmed the hoof prints where rain had gathered the night before. He split cordwood stacking it next to the cabin. His fingers felt thick in the icy cold, but the cold he didn’t mind. The cold focused his thoughts on other things. Merrill’s horses watched mournfully while he mucked out their stalls.

Concentration failed him when he returned to the schoolhouse the next week, the week after he eavesdropped on the angry ranchers. He begged his mother not to make him go back to school, but she would have none of it. The words that Miss Hayes, his schoolteacher, spoke were drowned out by the voices of the ranchers as they stood above him. As she spoke, he could smell the damp wood and taste the bitter sourness at the back of his throat that was his fear. Nor could he concentrate on the words and sentences in his textbooks. Words on their pages in the textbooks were just as indecipherable as the words his teacher spoke.

Schoolmates spoke to him self-consciously, and they avoided him in class, at recess, and on the way to and from school. As he walked to and from school, he searched the ridgelines and behind the trees and rocks looking for the men who came to the cabin door. But if they were there, they were as elusive as the mountain lion that preoccupied Wilson, Merrill, and the neighboring ranchers.

More than a few times, he passed the sheriff heading towards the ranch while he was walking to school. The sheriff always nodded his head, tipped his hat and asked him how he was doing. Hank dutifully assured him he was well, but he felt unwashed by the sins of his father. The sheriff never asked him about his father. If the sheriff ever spoke to either his mother or Wilson, neither one mentioned it to him.

Merrill homesteaded the ranch. In the county courthouse, he signed for the land. He plotted the survey lines and he dug and planted the fence posts. From the posts, he strung barbed wire. He built his home from lodgepole pines and spruce he fell on the higher slopes of the Bookcliffs, Most of the cattle he now owned descended from the thirty he purchased at auction in Grand Junction, the same summer he built his house. After nearly three decades, no one could think of Merrill or his ranch without thinking of the other. Following his wife’s death, he remained there alone, unbraced over the years by worsening arthritis and the shaking cough of a consumptive. This siege of ailments nearly ended months before their return. While Merrill stood talking to Wilson that spring, his face slackened, and his words spun off, untethered. He survived the stroke the doctor said would kill him, but his speech continued to spill out as mangled bits and phrases, his right leg remained weak and unwieldy, and his right arm hung lifeless, almost as though an afterthought. Trying to understand the old man, for Hank, was as tedious as journeying across deep, sucking mud. Wilson assumed more and more of the burden of managing the ranch. By the time they returned to the ranch, Merrill could negotiate level ground with a stubborn list. Traversing the porch steps, though, still required intermittent support. With assistance, unwelcome and unsolicited, he rode each day. Daily he checked the pens and corrals, accompanied by his two old Blue Heelers who padded about limping beside him, at times looking as crippled as he was. With his one good arm, he tossed feed to the livestock. On most matters, Merrill no longer advised Wilson to do. By the time Merrill thought of it, Wilson had already done it.

Each evening before his mother delivered Merrill’s dinner to him. Each day she picked up his mail and bought goods and groceries. Several times a week, she cleaned his house and did his laundry. To Merrill, though, these domestic entreaties were more like intrusions. His mother never lingered at Merrill’s. Defiant adolescence tore a deep rift between them, one too wide and deep for either of them to bridge when she rode off with his father. Merrill’s hatred of the man formed the very foundation of her love of the man, or so he believed. The man’s no good, Merrill told her. The man’s no good, and he’ll leave you as sad and as bankrupt as any soul here in the valley.

A Justice of the Peace married them the day after they rode off together. His mother was sixteen years old; his father was five years older. That a decade passed before they returned to Merrill’s did nothing to ease the old resentments, and the austere pride she and her father shared prevented any easy familiarity. Her relationship with her father was circumscribed by the tangled geometry of her marriage, stifling it before it could ever be redeemed. No one ever explained these family problems to Hank, but they were no less real, no less palpable than a cold winter wind. Merrill’s stiff, unyielding nature was more than matched by his daughter’s inherent tenacity. The reason she gave people for returning to the ranch was her father’s health. To Hank, though, his grandfather to get on well enough alone, and nothing in his behavior seemed to indicate otherwise. Were it not for his father’s problems, Hank sensed his mother never would have returned to the ranch. At first, Merrill ignored their presence. With the passing weeks, though, he spent more and more time watching and then talking to Hank as he followed Wilson around the ranch.

Three years before, they lived on a ranch bordered by the Gunnison River outside of Montrose. As a wrangler and a farrier, there was always work for his father. Through the summer and fall, things went well in Montrose, but with the short days of winter, his father became sullen and withdrawn, collapsing in on himself, and then the drinking began again. It was an unfortunate, but familiar pattern. More times than he cared to remember, just as his life seemed to be settling into a normal routine, his father’s drinking tore it apart. In the past there were episodes his father drank for only a few days, recovering enough to resume his normal duties without missing more than a day or two. But the drinking grew and persisted in Montrose, taking on new proportions, undermining Hank’s life more and more each day. Soon, he knew his father would either be fired or would simply quit. It was only a matter of time.

For days, not a single word passed between his parents. His father barely hung on at work, while his mother sent him off to school earlier each day and off to bed earlier each night. The shouting erupted before his father had barely shut the door the evening his mother discovered money she had stashed beneath the mattress was missing. Money his mother stashed as their life’s savings. He heard the front door swing open again, and then there was the sound of shattering glass as he realized that his mother had flung his father’s bottle of whiskey out. Out of the corner of his window, he saw his father grab his mother’s wrist; pulling her towards him, he caught her with the open hand of his other arm. He slapped her once, backhanded with his right hand. She stepped back and wiped the small amount of blood from her lip. You ever touch me again, she said.

If I ever touch you again, just what...

Don’t say I never warned you. She walked out of the room.

As his strength and stamina diminished, work went undone or was poorly performed as he arrived late and went home early. His fellow workers complained. Anger swelled from real or imagined slights, and arguments sparked quickly into fights. Men who once considered him a casual friend avoided him, and they were hesitant and guarded when they did run into him. At work, they posted themselves as far away from him as possible.

The long decline came quietly one night in March. Wind that sounded like the swell of rising and falling voices, rattled windows and gusts of wind drove small flakes of snow through the doorjamb, as the last winter storm of the season pushed through the valley. No one yelled that night. They hardly spoke. From his bedroom, he could hear his father gathering his things and leaving. For scarcely a moment or two, his father appeared in front of the cabin. Turning into the wind and falling snow, he rode out.

I don’t know when he’ll be back, his mother said. "I don’t know