An hour later and twenty miles away, a man named Tuff Montegue clucked his tongue to get his horse moving and pointed the gelding north, toward the timber. It was nearly dusk, and Tuff had the blues. He sang "Night Riders' Lament," his favorite cowboy song: While I was out a-ridin' The graveyard shift midnight till dawn, The moon was as bright as a reading light For a letter from an old friend back home…
Despite his current profession, which was ranch hand for the Long- brake Ranch, Tuff despised riding horses. He had nothing against them personally, and enjoyed singing and listening to songs about them, but he preferred tooling around in a ranch pickup. Nevertheless, he was a cowboy. A real one. In his mid-fifties, he looked the part, because he was the real number. Droopy mustache that curled to jawline, sharp nose, weathered face, sweat-stained Gus McCrae hat, Wranglers that bunched on his boot- tops and stayed up as if by a trick of magic over his nonexistent butt.
He liked to tell people, especially tourists who bought him a whiskey in the Stockman's Bar, that he was the only bona-fide cowboy left in the Bighorns that spoke American. It was sort of true, since most of the ranchers couldn't find cowboys anymore except from Mexico, South America, or wannabes from former East Germany and the Czech Republic. Even when he left the profession, as he often did, he found himself coming back. Between stints at five different ranches in Park, Teton, and Twelve Sleep Counties, Tuff had been a satellite-dish salesman, a mechanic, a surveyor's assistant, a cellular-phone customer-service representative, and a mountain man in a chuck-wagon dinner theater in Jackson Hole, where his job, every night, was to ride a horse into the tent where the tourists were and select a "wife" and toss her over his shoulder. This had resulted in a back injury when he stupidly selected a young mother the size of a heifer (she was one of those women who looked slim sitting down but had beer-keg thighs hidden under the table) and he had crashed beneath her weight. The injury had been a stroke of luck, because up until recently he had collected disability payments and didn't have to ride horses or do much of anything except occupy a barstool at the Stockman's. But the damned chuck-wagon dinner show, owned by a large family of Mormons, was disputing his injury. Apparently one of the owners had reported that he had seen him riding a mechanical bull in a saloon in Cody. Which was sort of true also, although Tuff wanted to know what a good Mormon had been doing in a bar in the first place. Until the matter was resolved, he had to once again seek employment.
But that was only part of the reason why Tuff had the blues. Another big contributing factor was that it was Friday night and he was stuck on the ranch and couldn't go into town. Since his DUI arrest the previous week-his third in two years-his driving privileges had been revoked. The only other Longbrake employee, a Mexican national named Eduardo, was laid up in the bunkhouse with a broken leg from falling off a damned horse. Therefore, Tuff had no ride. That, and the fact that Bud Longbrake, the peckerhead, followed the letter of the law and refused to let Tuff use a ranch vehicle even within the ranch itself, where no law enforcement would ever see him. Tuff knew that if Bud Longbrake wanted to make a case about allowing him to drive only on his private roads, Sheriff Barnum and the highway patrol wouldn't object. But Bud Longbrake, who seemed to care a hell of a lot more about the needs and wants of his fiancee, Missy, than the operation of his own place, had not made meeting with the sheriff a priority. Shit.
Despite his predicament, Tuff smiled to himself. The weekend before had been something. It had almost been worth the DUI on the way home. The barmaid at the Stockman's, Evelyn Wolters, had set up a threesome after the bar closed. Tuff, Evelyn, and Jim Beam in one bed. What a night that had been. He wished he could remember certain parts of it more clearly. It had been at her apartment, a studio over the VFW, within walking distance of the Stockman's. Evelyn had been doing something besides alcohol, but he wasn't sure what. Whatever it was, it was fine by him, because she had been a tigress. She was no looker-his age, skinny legs that were just skinny, not shapely, pendulous breasts that hung down and swung back and forth like oranges in tube socks-but she had been wild. It had been her idea to use the neck of the bottle that way once it was empty.
He had left Evelyn promising to be back in a week, and she had told him she was already looking forward to it. Tuff had said he was, too, but the truth was he was tired and drunk as hell. It would be several days before he had his energy, and his urges, back. He kept wondering if some of the things he recalled she had done-and let him do to her-were more a result of his delirium and fantasy than what had actually taken place. But the more he thought about it, and he thought about it often, the more he convinced himself that the acts had actually happened. It was the first time he had done some of those things since he'd been on shore leave in the navy. And then he had to pay for them. Evelyn, though, seemed to enjoy it. Which made him think: woo-hoo!
But now he was literally grounded. He had called and left messages for her at the bar, but she hadn't returned them. No doubt she had heard about the DUI. It had been in the Saddlestring Roundup, that one with the cattle mutilations in it. He had hoped that maybe with all of the hullabaloo about the dead cows she had missed the weekly police-blotter. Unfortunately, the police report was usually the only thing in the paper everybody read. And she was probably at the Stockman's now, damn it, targeting another lone drinker. Giving him a couple of whiskeys on the house, like she had done with him. Then, when the bar closed at two, she would grab his hand and a fifth of Jim Beam and take him up the street to her apartment. It should have been him, Tuff thought. He leaned forward in his saddle and hit his horse between his ears so hard that his hand stung. The gelding crow-hopped, but Tuff was prepared for it and had a good hold on the saddle horn. The horse recovered and resumed slow-walking to the dark timber, exhibiting no malice toward its abusive rider. Which was another reason Tuff disliked horses. They were stupid.
So, after a week of herding the cattle down from the mountains into the holding pens near the ranch, they had counted and come up with ten missing cows. Ever since the cattle mutilations had been reported on the Hawkins Place, Bud Longbrake had been acting paranoid. He ordered Tuff and Eduardo to ride the timber and see what they could find or spook out. Eduardo had found six strays the day before, prior to falling off of his horse. Tuff had found none. Bud had put the screws to Tuff, telling him that he wasn't holding up his end.
"I want those cows found, Tuff," Bud had said, leaning over the breakfast table with his palms flat on the surface. "Dead or alive."
Tuff had said, Then go find 'em yourself, you pussy-whipped phony!
No, he hadn't said that. But he had thought that. And someday, when he retold the story in the Stockman's Bar, that was how it would be recalled.
Tuff wished he had more light, but the sun was now behind the mountains. He blamed the horse for delaying him. The gelding had a smooth ride, but was the damned slowest walking horse he had ever ridden. He could have walked up the draw faster his own self, he thought. And if he could have taken one of the ATVs, he would have been goddamned back by now and watching television in the bunkhouse with Eduardo. Shit.
Tuff reached back on the saddle and unbuckled a saddlebag that was stiff with age. His fingers closed around the smooth, cool neck of a fifth of Jim Beam. He had his memories of Evelyn Wolters, and this brought them back. He cracked the top and drank straight from the bottle. It was harsh, but tongues of familiar fire spread through his chest and belly. Sometimes, he thought, his memories-and what he could do with them-were almost better than the real thing. But he needed that original foundation before he could embellish them to his liking.
He rode up the mountain slowly. He stared in resentment at the back of the gelding's head, settling on the bony protrusion between the horse's ears. He fired mental curses at the spot, hoping some would soak through into the gelding's brain. Not for the first time, he wondered what a fencing tool would do to the skull of a horse.
He rode the fence line, just like the song. The reins were in his left hand and the bottle was in his right. It was turning into a cold night. There was a hint of moisture in the air-probably brought with the cloud cover-that accentuated the smell of dry, dust-covered sage leading up into sharp pine. He smelled his own breath. Not pretty.
The gelding was breathing hard as he climbed a rocky hill toward a stand of aspen trees. Not that the horse was moving any faster-he had only one speed, which was similar to four-wheel drive low-and Tuff was just about ready to call it a night. With no stars or moon, he would not be able to see whether there were strays on this saddle slope or not. And damned if he would use his flashlight. He wasn't that dedicated.
He wished he could find the missing cows, though, to get Bud Long- brake off of his back.
The aspens stood out from the dark timber that climbed up the mountain into the sky. The aspen leaves had turned already, and were in that stage between yellow-red and falling off. The aspens soaked up what little light there still was, making the stand look like a tan brushstroke on the huge, dark landscape.
"Whoa."
Tuff stopped the gelding and got his bearings. He slid one boot out of the stirrup so he could twist in the saddle and look around. It was easy to get lost up here, he had learned. But he wasn't. Far below were the crystal- clear blue lights of the ranch yard. Twenty-five miles farther, the lights of the town of Saddlestring shimmered in wavering rows.
He turned back, looking at the aspens. He saw movement in the trees. Or was it a drunken illusion? Tuff wiped his eyes with his sleeve and looked again. This had happened before, him seeing things while he was drinking. But this time there was something authentic about it, something that made his chest clutch. Movement again. Something, or somebody, moved from one tree to another. The form was thicker than the tree trunks, but once hidden it seemed to meld into the darkness. He heard a twig snap, and his horse, who suddenly pricked his ears, confirmed the sound.
He let his breath out slowly. Certainly, it was deer or elk. But game animals didn't hide, they ran. Under him, his horse started wuffing, emitting a deep, staccato, coughing sound. He feared that sound-all horsemen feared that sound-because it meant trouble was imminent. His horse, his slow-moving, docile horse, was about to throw off hundreds of years of domesticity and become a wild animal again.
Suddenly, the gelding crow-hopped, nearly unsaddling Tuff. His balance was goofy because of his position and the bourbon.
"What in the hell is wrong with you?" he growled, taking an empty swing at the gelding's ear with the flat of his hand.
Unlike before, the horse didn't shrug off his action. In fact, the horse began backpedaling down the slope in a panic.
"Damn you, what's the problem?" he shouted. The gelding was backtracking down the mountain much faster than he had walked up. Tuff tried to turn him, to face him away from whatever had spooked him in the aspens. Sloshing bourbon on his bare hand, Tuff tried to grasp the reins near the bit in the gelding's mouth to jerk him around hard. The bourbon splashed out of the bottle and into the gelding's eye, igniting the horse and making him explode into a wild, tight spin.
Tuff clamped down with his thighs and held on. His hat flew off. He let the bottle drop-not something he wanted to do-and found himself knocked forward in the saddle, hugging the gelding's neck. He had lost the reins, and several things flashed through his mind. With the reins down, the lunatic horse could inadvertently step on them as he spun and jerk both of them to the ground, breaking their necks. He thought of his broken bottle of Jim Beam. He imagined what he must look like, spiraling down a rocky slope in the dark, hugging the neck of a horse. He thought of how unbelievably strong and powerful a horse-a 1,000-pound animal- was when fully charged, like now.
Even as he spun, faster and harder than he had ever spun before, even when he used to rodeo, he wondered what had made the horse spook. Bears could do it, he knew. The smell of a bear in the wrong circumstances could make even a good ranch mount go crazy. This horse is going to fall, Tuff thought, and I'm going to get hurt real bad.
And then the horse tripped on something, recovered momentarily, then bucked. Tuff was thrown through the air-he could feel the actual moment of release when no part of his body was in contact with the saddle or the horse-and time seemed to literally slow down as he went airborne until it fast-forwarded as he flew face-first into a cold, sharp rock and heard a crunch in his ears like a door slamming shut.