The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2017 by Ian Stansel

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stansel, Ian, author.

  Title: The last cowboys of San Geronimo / Ian Stansel.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016047296 (print) | LCCN 2017009702 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544963399 (hardback) | ISBN 9780544963412 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Widows—Fiction. | Husbands—Death—Fiction. | Sibling rivalry—Fiction. | Fratricide—Fiction. | Revenge—Fiction. | Horse trainers—Fiction. | California—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Westerns. | FICTION / General. | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.T3664 L37 2017 (print) | LCC PS3619.T3664 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047296

  Cover design by Christopher Moisan

  Cover photograph © Florian Kainz, Getty Images

  v1.0617

  In memory of my sister Kelly—

  a real horsewoman

  One

  What are you doing, brother?

  These words clung to the gnarled oak of Silas’s consciousness, climbing, nesting, making themselves at home. He set his bones in the driver’s seat of his truck and shut the door. Fifty yards away his brother, Frank, lay dead in the dirt, a bullet buried in his chest. Clean heart shot. Silas always had been a hell of a marksman. But now his hands shook and his shoulders petrified and his legs went numb. He looked through the passenger window in the direction of Frank’s body but saw only the density of the forest and the darkness of the predawn light.

  What are you doing, brother?

  After all these years, Frank was gone, put down, but for all the twisted relief—even joy—Silas had expected based on the hundreds of fantasies he’d indulged in regarding this very occasion, he felt no lighter. It wasn’t sadness or grief he felt, not regret either, but a deep and frightening nothingness. He kneaded his empty legs, tried to massage some life back into them. On the seat next to him were Frank’s Marlboros. Silas picked up the pack, opened the lid, and inhaled the scent of tobacco. Nausea descended upon his gut. He flung open the door and vomited onto the ground, detonating a plume of dry dust.

  He went to the trailer hitched to the back of his truck. The horse inside whinnied at the sight of her rider out the window. She wanted to get out, and Silas was ready to oblige her. The back gate creaked open and Silas set a hand on the horse’s rump. “All right, girl,” he managed. His stomach threatened to erupt again, but he held it off, taking deep breaths of the air in the trailer. This was the scent of his life: horsehair and manure and leather. He led the horse—a fine bay Hanoverian called Disco—out of the trailer, tacked her, and hoisted himself atop. He had bigger horses than this one, but Disco was bright and loyal. She’d never thrown him in the three years he’d been riding her, never once acted out on the lead or tied in the barn aisle. She didn’t spook easily and seemed to enjoy a bit of adventure. She’d become his go-to for the annual hunts he put on, and she went up hills and over hedges with zeal. And this was just what he needed.

  Leaving the gate down, the driver’s side door ajar, and his brother dead in a small clearing, he pressed his legs into his horse’s flanks, and the rhythmic drumming of the horse’s hooves on the ground made Silas feel something, a familiar jostling of his body, at least. He would take it.

  A half hour later he emerged from the woods at the south edge of his own property and took the horse down a dry creek bed, avoiding the town proper just in case any of his few neighbors were up at that odd hour. It wasn’t unthinkable. Though residents in the area numbered only a couple hundred, they were an ambitious bunch. Cyclists. Runners. Folks heading up to Point Reyes for the day or down into San Rafael or Sausalito or the city. He edged the south border of the reservoir and took the Indian Hill Road loop northward. At the uppermost finger of the reservoir he dismounted and let his horse drink her fill. Silas unscrewed the lid of his thermos and drank two cups of coffee, black and still steaming in the moist morning. Silas took a moment to meditate on the beauty of the place. The persistent aroma of eucalyptus hung thickly in his nostrils. A wild peacock called from a nearby field. The grass on the hills all around him waved and reflected the sunrise light and shone persimmon orange.

  For the past three decades Silas Van Loy had thought of little aside from horses, women, wine, and killing his brother, Frank. In his hazy imaginings of this last occupation’s aftermath, there was always more time for the first three. He would kill Frank in whatever way his mind conceived in that particular moment and then continue on with his business, training the yearlings and greenhorns that ambled into his barn, giving lessons, taking students to shows, and then, in the nighttime, visiting local taverns and wine bars and working his cowboy charm on the women, perhaps getting a taker on an invitation back to his trailer. But now that Frank was gone he realized his naiveté. Other than the horse he rode he would have little to do with the gorgeous beasts for the foreseeable future. As for women, riding away from his spread in Nicasio in the wee hours of the morning, the sun making its initial announcements over Mount Tamalpais to the east, he found his desire for them depressed in a way it hadn’t been since before his inaugural hard-on at the age of ten, when Alice Carpenter, a homely, squinch-faced girl, lifted her skirt to reveal dust-colored panties bagged around her little buttocks. He was leaving his life behind, his past and his present. The horses, his thirst, and his desires would all have to wait.

  In planning this ride, this getaway, he had come to understand how ill-equipped he was. He had tens of thousands of dollars’—perhaps a hundred thousand dollars’—worth of tack and equipment, but did he have saddlebags, something so simple as saddlebags? He finally found a set, hard and dusty and cracked; a rare Western staple in the English riding world of Marin County, they’d been unused for thirty years now. He recognized them as his father’s and marveled at how they’d managed to end up there in his tack room all these decades later, how he must have moved them himself without a thought of ever using them. He packed in a few T-shirts and underwear, an extra button-down, a spare pair of jeans, a toiletry set, and a farrier kit for such occasion as Disco’s hooves might need a bit of tending. He rolled a sleeping bag and pillow and strapped them to the back of his saddle. In addition to his coffee thermos, he carried a canteen of water and a leather wine bota he’d purchased two decades before in Basque Country and into which he’d funneled a liter of a decent Napa cabernet. For such occasion as he might need a bit of drowning.

  He finished his coffee and mounted Disco and continued north, emerging from the bowl of the reservoir, feeling exposed, unmoored in the absence of trees. Crossing Red Hill Road, he was startled by a car coming quick aro
und a bend. It was light enough now, and the car was close enough, that in the split second he looked, he could make out that the driver was a woman, brunette. He wondered what she could see of him. He pressed Disco into a quicker trot and pulled his Stetson lower over his face and directed the horse into a dry, brown channel between two hills. The road seemed to take on some significance, as if it were a boundary line—the first of many—and now that he was past it, he was that much farther away from what had been his life. But Silas also knew that it was just a road, same as any other, and that he was only covering ground. Even if he hadn’t the foggiest notion where he was going.

  Behind him, the sound of the car passed by and he was left in the shush of the wind purling over the grass.

  Two

  Within minutes of her return to the house from the hospital, and before the police came by for their interview, Lena received a phone call. Carly. Old friend.

  “Jesus, I just heard,” Carly said. “My God, Lena. It can’t be, can it.”

  Lena, exhausted, said, “Yes.”

  “My God,” Carly said again. “What are they saying? I mean, do they have any idea?”

  “They don’t know.” Lena listened to herself talk as if eavesdropping on a casual acquaintance.

  “Are they talking about the brother?” Carly knew some of their past. Hell, anybody in the horse world within three counties knew of the trouble between the Van Loy brothers.

  “They are.”

  “Jesus. That guy. And to think I just saw him.”

  Lena’s thoughts clarified, focused. “When?”

  “Earlier today. This morning. Do you think I should tell the police?”

  Her back stiffened. “Where did you see him?”

  “A few miles north of Nicasio. At least I think it was him. I’m pretty sure. He was riding. I saw him cross over Red Hill Road. Seemed to have a good bit of gear with him.”

  “Back toward Nicasio?”

  “No, north. Jesus, do you think I should call the cops?”

  “Anyone with him?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. Lena, really, should I call the cops?”

  Lena said, “No.” Then lied: “They said they already have him. I’ll tell them what you saw.”

  By the time they came to talk to her, the cops had already theorized that Silas had an accomplice and had left the state. They were in her living room, two uniformed deputies from the sheriff and one in a blue suit who introduced himself as Detective Ortquist. What an odd name, Lena thought. She wondered what kind of name it was, its country of origin, all the while marveling at her ability to think of something so trivial right then.

  Their speculation on Silas’s whereabouts came to Lena in the form of questions: Did she ever hear Silas talk about a specific place he’d like to go? Were there countries he tended to visit? Who were his friends?

  This last one was particularly amusing. Aside from women who came around for a while here and there, Silas didn’t have friends. As for places he might be, Lena told the cops he’d been to France and Spain and Germany—to buy or sell or show horses—and also that she believed he’d been to Tokyo and perhaps Costa Rica. Lena answered the cops’ questions as directly as she could but never told them what she knew: that he was not out of the country nor with an accomplice. The bastard was alone and on a horse.

  He had a day’s head start, and she was there in her kitchen after having spent fourteen hours being talked at by police and nurses and doctors and family and friends. Not much Lena could do about the bureaucracy of death and dying, so she would have to live with the facts of the situation. But it was in her mind, sometimes at the back, sometimes elsewhere, that he was getting away. Silas. Her husband’s brother and murderer.

  It was Riley who, later that night, said, “Where do you think he is?”

  Riley had driven up from Menlo Park as soon as he heard, with Cindy and the twins following a couple hours later. Back at the hospital, Lena had fallen apart. Crying. Legs giving out. Riley, a good boy, always had been, caught her, said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’ve got you,” and she felt his hands, big like Frank’s but not callused like Frank’s, under her arms, then over her shoulders after she’d regained her footing, and they stayed there in that position, at least in her memory, for the next two hours. But in reality her spell had lasted only a moment. She appreciated Riley’s hands on her, but the truth of it was that, after the initial collapse, she did not need them. She could stand perfectly well on her own.

  Now at the kitchen table, Lena and her son were dipping significantly into a bottle of Scotch.

  Lena said, “Silas? I haven’t given it any thought.” Not the worst lie she’d ever told, probably, but a lie all the same.

  Riley said, “I want to kill him.”

  She took a drink. “Do you, now.”

  Cindy and the twins were upstairs, and Riley was speaking idly of murder.

  “Don’t you?”

  “In fantasies, of course. Not in real life.” Now, she thought, perhaps this was the worst lie she’d ever told.

  “Well, I want him caught. Obviously. The cops must know it was him.”

  She said, “I imagine so. Unless they’re stupider than anyone gives them credit for.”

  One of the boys cried out upstairs, a protest against bedtime, though it was well past ten. Lena looked at the clock on the range. Nearly eleven. Kid was overtired. Everyone was. Long, terrible day.

  Then Riley said, “They’ll get him.”

  Lena said nothing.

  Riley said, “I want to see him. In a courtroom. I want to see his face when he gets sent away. I want to see the motherfucker.”

  She said, “Dear.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I lost my husband today.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The only thing I want right now is to sleep.”

  Riley said, “I’m just . . .” He let his words trail off.

  Lena stood, said, “I’m going up.” She left an amber puddle in the bottom of her glass and kissed Riley on the top of his head and said, “Don’t stay up too long.”

  ⟱

  She got a few hours of sleep, rose at half past four, regretting that last glass of whiskey, dressed in near silence, then crept past Riley’s old room where he and Cindy and the twins slumbered, descended the stairs, and set her feet, one after the other, into the hundred acres of compacted pasture that separated the house from the horses. The night air was wet and penetrating. She cinched the collar of her fleece up to her chin, slipped on the old nylon puffer vest she’d carried from the house, and fished a knit cap from the pocket. By ten the sun would be high and the air warm, but for now the dampness snaked its way through the weave of her jeans.

  She switched on only the lights she needed to see. The horses woke and turned in their stalls and angled their heads over the doors and puffed clouds of gray breath into the open corridor. Lena forwent her usual greetings in the interest of stealth and mourning. The horses watched sleepily as she made her way down the aisle. She’d packed her saddlebags and a backpack and sleeping roll the night before and stashed them in the tack room. She hoisted her sturdiest saddle and transferred it to the post outside Pepper’s stall. The horse grumbled amiably and hoofed the floor as Lena opened the door to his stall.

  “Come on, boy,” she whispered, slipping a halter over his ears and running a hand over his wide white blaze. Pepper was a big boy, over sixteen hands, with a quick takeoff. Son of a bitch could hit a gallop like it was nothing and leave your stomach in the dirt thirty yards back. But he was a sweetheart. Now, at this ungodly hour, he offered Lena a hot gust of breath through his nostrils. She clipped on a crosstie, said, “Just a little ride for us this morning.”

  “Hey,” came a voice from the mouth of the barn aisle. Rain.

  “Hi,” Lena said, trying not to sound alarmed or nervous. “Did I wake you?”

  Rain said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “No. Nor could I.”

 
; “Saw the light come on.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No. Like I said, I couldn’t sleep anyway.” She passed a hand over her face and pushed some stray hairs back. A habit she had at the start and end of days. “Riding?”

  “Thought I might.”

  “Early.”

  “It is that.”

  “Should I make coffee?”

  Lena said, “You should go back to bed.”

  Rain shrugged. “I’m up now.”

  She went to the first stall and rubbed the mare’s forehead. Rain—Autumn Rain Nelson on her W-9—had come to the stable at just fourteen, taking lessons and cleaning stalls as partial payment, riding others’ horses when owners were away for more than a few days, keeping their horses from getting stiff or lazy. At nineteen she started giving lessons at the summer camps they ran for the rich kids of Marin. Lena supposed she’d liked Rain from the start because she wasn’t one of those well-off children of well-off parents. Though they lived, somehow, in this most affluent of counties, her parents seemed to be fairly regular folks—her father a VP at an auto-parts manufacturer and her mother a mortgage underwriter—albeit with enough California hippie in them to name their daughter Autumn Rain. She liked Rain because Rain loved horses enough to want to shovel their shit.

  Rain dropped out of San Francisco State halfway through her second year, moved into the apartment above the office, and took over keeping the books. Her parents reluctantly accepted the decision, though according to Rain they still expected her to get over her “horse thing” and return to school—even four years later, when at just twenty-three she basically ran the place, doing everything from giving lessons to ordering feed to making sure the crew was cleaning the stalls and paddocks properly. Rain, Lena had decided long ago, was a real horsewoman. Whether her parents understood it or not, she was in it for life. She couldn’t keep away from the animals, instinctually touching them whenever one was near. When a new horse came to the barn, Rain would move to it as if in a trance, running her prematurely red and raw hands over its neck and withers, kneeling and grasping its legs. The animals were her religion. Boyfriends, girlfriends, education, the prospect of a more reliable income—all of these had been laid down and sacrificed to the equestrian gods.