On The Rocks

Copyright©Jerry McDonnell,2008

Published: South Dakota Review; Summer 2008, Vol. 46, No. 2

by

Jerry D. McDonnell

He wasn’t laughing, but all he could sadly see through his tears was this coyote image from a Road Runner cartoon, Willy being Coyote, but just now panic was running in on Darryl like a sudden squall. Jumping off his horse, Darryl Bent ran back along the pack string on the narrow ledge called a trail. A landslide section of ground was giving way beneath Willy’s hooves. Willy rode the four feet of earth down off the trail like an elevator stopping on an upper floor of the steep, rocky drop off. Now teetering on a small rock the size of a dinner plate, all four of Willy’s hooves together like a ballet dancer on point, this 15 hand, well fed, mountain conditioned horse carrying 100 pound alfalfa hay bales on each side of its Decker pack saddle calmly looked up at Darryl as if it was all in a day’s work. A steep rockslide dropped 500 feet or more below Willy into a narrow canyon. Things didn’t look good; gravity was looking like a winner. The quarter-inch, pigtail hemp rope attached to the rear of Willy’s packsaddle ran taut between the horse and Harry the pack mule behind him. Harry, completing the cartoon, stretched his neck out over the precipice toward Willy and sure enough, things got worse. Willy’s balancing act was of short duration; gravity exercised its option. Harry, not the scholar of the bunch, rather than break his quarter inch connection to the other twelve animals in the pack string, chose to follow Willy calmly off the cliff like he just didn’t want to miss out on the trip. Darryl, knife drawn, reached out for the pigtail connecting Kansas to Harry, but before he could cut the rope, Kansas, a veteran 17 hand trail mule, simply jerked his head back and snapped the pigtail. Darryl noticed the accusatory look from Kansas’s wild eyes before he turned his attention to the fate of the Willy and Harry bouncing down the rockslide like beach balls.

Darryl’s mind wasn’t working up to snuff. His emotions took command; his system did a bear hug seize up. He couldn’t breathe; his lungs felt frozen, his heart was hammering hard. Adrenaline took over and carried him down the rockslide leaping from top to top of boulders like a mountain goat.

The big white horse called Willy was draped on the rockslide like spilled flapjack batter, blood trickling out of his mouth; his packsaddle was still cinched on, but the hay bales were strewn down the hundred-yard drop from the trail above like macabre Halloween decorations. Harry, laying a few yards from Willy, wasn’t breathing.

Darryl, tears streaming, drew his .44 magnum pistol from his shoulder holster and pointed it at Willy’s heart and lung boiler room. Darryl couldn’t help it, he laughed through his tears remembering that old Laurel and Hardy line, “Well, Stanley, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” As the shots echoed in the canyon the first snowflake of winter fell from a gray November sky, and Darryl swung around looking for what he felt was watching him.

Early December, at the end of the guiding season, the Saturday night gathering had migrated to the Ponderosa Bar after a few warm up drinks at the Rainbow. The slick, wood grained bar lined with loose change and damp bills from sweating beer bottles and empty shot glasses in front of the elbow to elbow wide brimmed Resistol and Stetson adorned buckaroos, the smoke, the knocking of pool balls, the click of chips on the poker table, and the jukebox wailing about trucks, horses, women and something to do with friends painted the Saturday night. Darryl was too busy throwing a punch to pick up the details. His fist landed solid on Jack’s nose doing damage to Darryl’s hand. Darryl was bent holding his hand when the fist caught him on the chin and the sound of teeth cracking played in his sound system. Darryl recovered and tackled Jack, resulting in the two rolling across the floor through the grimy mess of muddy and snow boot tracks, spit, and a few cigarette butts. The bar dog, a 60 pound mutt that looked like a sorta collie with some value added hound dog or retriever, casually stepped aside as the two men rolled by him.  The rest of the crowd, same as the dog, stepped indifferently around the two idiots rolling on the bar room floor, not missing a lick in their conversation. Luke, a tall man whose head had to duck into doorways, had biceps like footballs and legs like beer kegs and who was always trying to impress Mave, the cocktail waitress, picked them both up by the back of their leather belts, and held them up for a moment like pieces of meat on a slaughterhouse hook before he knocked their heads together cymbal like and shouted, “Do you want me to drop your carcasses here or out in the alley?” Darryl and Jack didn’t answer for a second and then Darryl, having trouble breathing as his big Montana prize winning rodeo belt buckle was cutting into his diaphragm, eked out, “Here’ll do.” As he hit the floor, he looked up at Luke’s head towering just shy of 7 feet said, “What’d ya drinking, Luke, I’m buying.” 

“Next rounds on me,” Jack echoed, getting to his feet.

“He’s more retriever,” Jack grimaced.

“Hound Dog, value added,” Darryl said around the finger in his mouth inventorying his teeth.

Luke stepped between the two and cuffed them both up side the head, “One more word about that dog and you’ll be flying through that door and eating snow. Now do the routine.” The men shook hands. Darryl motioned to Dell the bartender who filled the three shot glasses with Wild Turkey and put up three more bottles of Rainer.

Jack held his full shot glass up. The three men clicked glasses. “Here’s to Willy and Harry,” Jack said.

Darryl, lips taunt, nodded his head, “To Willy and Harry.” Then he stared past his beer bottle and empty shot glass into the walnut stained bar finding the nothing he was looking for. Jack made a nod to Dell down the bar to fill the shot glasses. Jack and Luke put Darryl between them, friendly palms on his shoulder, held up their full shot glasses and Luke said, “Fuck it. This one’s for America.”  Dell rang a cowbell until he had most everyones’ attention and hollered, “Half hour till closing and you all go back out to pasture.”  Darryl slammed his Wild Turkey down, slapped the bar with his palm and walked out the door into the snowy night; pulling his fir lined denim coat collar up and snuggling down his Resistol, he howled at a half moon peeking through a dark hole and then took off at a gallop down the road, running from what he felt was chasing him.

When Darryl woke up he spit straw, shivered and pulled the short blanket smelling of horse up to his chin. How he got into the barn he didn’t remember, but the straw lined stable floor wasn’t the best choice for a night’s December lodging. A ray of morning light through the loft window gave him a view of the rafters high above. Darryl squinted one eye and tried to guess where he was and whose barn this was. Coffee smells aroused his interest as the stable door opened and before him stood the prettiest gal he’d ever seen drunk or sober. Her denims snuggled close, and her curves moved easy showcasing her long black hair. She had one of those slightly round faces with full lips on soft skin that urged close contact. “Morning Sally,” he voiced, attempting to gain some dignity while trying to sit up.

“Morning it is. I’m surprised you recognize it,” she said handing him a steaming mug.

“How’d I . . . “

“I bailed you out.”

“Bailed . . .”

“Sam was understanding. Besides, he didn’t want your smelly carcass in the jail. And I didn’t want it in the house. What you been rolling in? I seen hogs come to dinner better groomed. And give over that blanket. My horse’ll never wear that thing again after you’ve contaminated it. Too short to cover your boots and brain at the same time anyway, which in your case seem to be interchangeable.”

“What I do?”

“Do? Nothing right, that’s what. Sam picked you up in the middle of the road, howling loud enough and real enough to set off Mr. Hobson’s kennel in chorus which in turn stampeded Mr. McClachy’s Angus herd that tore through a fence which earned you a charge of double D’s, disorderly and disturbing. Sam was going to lock you up till he smelled you. He called me, since you still live here off-season. I hauled you here in the bed of the truck figuring a stall was your due even if you only have two legs. Drink your coffee, come to the back porch, shed your clothes, all of them, drop them in the number nine tub and only then can you come inside and corrupt the shower. I’ll see if I can get the bloodstains out of your duds. Water’s hot. After, you might get some breakfast, if you pass the smell test. Clean clothes are laid out.”

“Sally you’re a darling. I should ask you to marry me again.”

“I should be so desperate. Don’t tarry. I’ve better things to do than sit for a worthless no good whiskey brain even if he’s good looking, which just now you ain’t.”

“We’re good together. Hell I’m only 38 and so are you. We’ve got time.”

“The key word is ‘were.’ Use some of that time to grow up.”

“How many years we been broke up?”

“Enough. Maybe five . . . or six,” Sally shook her head and gave a hopeless grin. “Just get your butt inside and clean up. I’ve got to go to town.”

And yet I still live here, Darryl thought, looking around the barn that was now familiar as he staggered to his feet and mouth open turned to Sally to say something, but she was gone. Head spinning, looking around the barn, he was trying to remember what he was supposed to do next. The only thing he was sure of just now was that he had lost something but didn’t know what it was. His most vivid memory was running from something last night, something that shot a shiver of fear from a primal past.

New Year’s day Sally woke up next to Darryl in her bed trying to regret what she had allowed to happen, but to no avail. The New Year’s Eve party had been a wholesale train wreck, leaving several bars with minor damage and ending up at Sally and Darryl Bent’s house after the annual midnight rodeo at Luke’s corral. Luke kept two retired rodeo horses that he and Darryl and Jack owned as partners. This rodeo trio hung up their spurs from the bareback bronc riding circuit 10 years ago. Five years ago they heard a certain two horses were to be turned out . . . or done in. Part of it was the challenge but mostly it was admiration. These two horses, Quiet Time and In Your Pocket, had never allowed either Luke or Jack or many others to stick the 8 seconds; Darryl had only lasted once on Quiet Time. On New Year’s Eve it had become tradition to give the two broncs a go. The horses were getting on, 17 years or so each, but they still liked to buck and the boys still thought they were tough enough for a go. It was watching Darryl ride each New Year’s Eve that always stirred the home fires in Sally. They met after a rodeo, Darryl winning top money that week. In a bar, of course.  For Sally, New Year’s Eve around the corral was sorta like an anniversary. Last night Darryl had even stuck on In Your Pocket for the first time. Finding Darryl in her bed wasn’t unexpected, in fact, reluctant to admit it, she had been more or less looking forward to the event. She thought what the hell, it’s not infidelity, we’re still married, if that fella that married us was legit, and we still live together for reasons she didn’t want to think about just now. And with that she pulled back both legs and kicked Darryl out of bed. He thumped on the hardwood floor like a paratrooper hitting the ground.   “Get out of my bed,” she said, “It’s a new year. Did we ever . . . do we have a marriage license?”

Darryl got off with a fine and repairing Mr. McClachy’s fence at his cost in materials and labor and some kennel work for Mr. Hobson and only had to spend one night in jail for another night of bad decisions before he hunkered in to winter over in town. January to March often found Darryl in the library or reading books at home, when he wasn’t doing odd jobs for people or repairing saddles and tack or getting drunk or trying to win Sally back full time. As to the latter, the best he had maintained was residence in the house, if not her bed, which he figured was better than not being there and it held him to the opinion that all wasn’t lost. He did manage to stay out of jail the rest of the winter and began volunteering every Wednesday afternoon in the library reading stories to little kids, something it turned out to Sally’s, and many other people’s surprise, that he had won appreciation. After reading aloud from the popular kids’ books Darryl told stories about life on the trail in the backcountry with his pack string and hunting tales.  He began all his stories with, “Out There in the Out There.”

After a reading of words on a printed-page story the kids began calling, “Tell us out there in the out there.”  Darryl would put his Resistol back on, tilt back the brim, sit on the floor with the kids fanned out before him, start with a grin and slowly become serious, “Out there in the out there, one early morning just after first light, I came across a hard luck porcupine laying on his back side along the trail, his carcass split wide open from butt to throat with a neat clean slice like a surgeon, his entrails—the guts— still steaming from his body heat laid out neatly beside him and nothing was left but hide and quills, all his meat gone. I looked up and not more than a stone’s throw was a wolverine standing before me looking deep into my eyes licking his lips.” Then Darryl would pause. “Sharpening his claws on a rock,” Pause again. He would continue the story if he heard the kids call for more. And if they called for more Darryl’s artistic license went over the speed limit allowing the story that began with authenticity to feed on itself and the moods of the kids that day. The stories usually started with an actual event and then became fantasy traveling to mysterious unknown reaches of the mountains where evil or good met head to head or to pleasant valleys where all the animals and humans lived and worked together or to places where greedy people in control, which Darryl called the Yellow Horned Meanies, enslaved the people, which called to action all the horses, mules and bears and all the wild and domestic animals to come save them. The porcupine and the wolverine tale was real but then it ventured into fantasy. But he was careful. Some experiences that he had seen or sensed in the mountains that he couldn’t explain he kept not only from the kids but everyone else as some of those feelings, like someone is watching you, had followed him into town at last season’s end and he didn’t know if he should fight it or embrace it. He kept a great many things close to his chest that were out there in the out there, rationalizing that it gave him a leg up on what some call the natural world. Towns were like divorcees, not attached to the out there. It was weird and a little scary. Like what was he running from in that December night at seasons end? 

Darryl’s popularity with the kids grew like the weeds of a wet, warm summer, despite the fact that a few mothers were at first reluctant to give their approval to the likes of him. But he was good looking and a few of the mothers had formerly, in days before Sally, been more than intimate with Darryl, which in turn raised some red flags among subsequent fathers. It was a small town. Secrets of local social history were rare gems.

As the winter progressed Darryl’s fear of his mysterious feelings were mostly gone. Outside of the kids and his Sally project, his Montana winter passed colder than a gave up spinster and slower than the law. As Spring began to show color Darryl was whistling as he wrangled his pack mules and riding stock from winter range and began working and shoeing them. Town in the winter was passable, but in the summer it was time to be out there in the out there.

On a sun filled July morning on the trail coming down from setting up his fall camp, Darryl’s empty, twelve-head pack string was laying hooves calmly behind him on Sonny, his lead horse, giving him time to reflect. Passing by last year’s rockslide disaster, all he could see was a few tuffs of hay that survived last season’s snow pack, the only signs remaining of Willy or Harry. At the direction of the forest service, after it became impossible to get enough wood down on the rockslide to cremate the animals, he had had to dynamite the animals. It didn’t set right with him, but the forest service were neighbors, so to speak, got to get along.

Looking back over the “D” rings of the Decker pack saddles for balance he saw that the two replacement pack mules he had picked up at auction were fitting in nicely. He named them Uno and Dos like he did in Vietnam whenever his unit got replacements. A pair of golden eagles were putting on an air show overhead; the trail of Willy and Harry’s demise had been traveled safely and with regularity for over a month: the season was booked with clients that were going to show up; the camp was almost set up; he had spotted four trophy bull elk in the last week and Sally had agreed again to be camp cook for the season. If things got any better he figured he’d have to quit living before the let down got too high. That was until a few weeks ago. But now, as he gentled the string toward the end of this section of bad memories, he’d figured what he’d been seeing in the next short mile or so was a curse.

At the end of the cliff section the trail changed dramatically, dropping into a deep, damp, wooded pocket where the sun never shared its light. Darryl had never seen a warm blooded creature in that section, not a squirrel or a chipmunk or a bird or even a vole. Nothing seemed to exist in this dark wooded section except moss hanging on silent trees, mushrooms, ferns and chilled air. He’d been using this trail for many years, but never until this season had he seen each trip coming back down the trail what he’d been seeing lately. And it wasn’t only him, the pack string and his riding horse, Sonny, confirmed it. Darryl wasn’t a dude. He knew, like any old packer, that the best sensory instrument a fella can have are your horses and mules. The ears of those animals are radar without a plug in.  Just follow the ears of your riding horse and the behavior of all the other animals, domestic and wild, and you’ll see all you can see and then some. Your horses and mules can point an elk thousands of yards up the hill you would never see if you ignored those ears. Many times humans and their science can’t sense what animals sense, like the weather. A fella didn’t need a radio weather report to know when to leave the high country for the winter. The elk will move out of the high country about two weeks before the first heavy snow no matter if that first snow be early or late; don’t hold that calendar to specifics. In spring pasture the stock will give a 24-hour advance notice by running around like people going to a fire sale. Darryl was sure that animals have a birth right barometer and maybe some science from on the job training.

And that’s why the next section of trail was working Darryl’s mind. He’d been seeing something a fella didn’t want to fess up to around the Ponderosa Bar early in the evening before alcohol dementia set in.

Coming down out of the high country with packsaddles empty except for the canvas manties and cargo ropes, the pack animals and riding stock were enjoying the trip. Despite its dangers, the vistas were rewarding on the rockslide. It was like a small scale Grand Canyon. The rapids in the creek far below, the eagles, the sunshine, and the breezes dancing through the canyon supplied the sound effects. The horses and mules were ears up, almost prancing. “Settle down there Little Mike. Trudy, you keep your nose in your own business,” Darryl talked to them, reminding them to pay attention to business, and they listened. But when the animals moved into that dark pocket they matured quick, all frivolity came to a halt. The animals had their heads down, furtively sneaking stealthy looks from side to side, walking like they had just been sent to their room without dinner. The forest pocket was quiet; the trees seemed to be watching, the only sounds were the soft pad of hooves on the trail and the tinkle of the bell on the caboose mule’s cinch strap. Never did one hear the chirp of a bird, the chatter of a squirrel, or see a shrew zipping across the trail or the tracks of anything other than horseshoes. The dim light didn’t cast any shadows. It was like a heavy hand was holding every living thing down and was about to close into a fist. Once through these dark woods the trail breaks out into a meadow. On the edge of woods where the meadow began was the sharp dividing line between light and dark, the sun giving back lighting like a window from a dark room. Off to one side toward the light of the meadow on the edge of light and dark is where Darryl had been seeing an apparition sitting on a large downfall about 4 feet in diameter and 20 feet long. At first Darryl thought it was a trick of the light, the woods being full of such tricks.

Darryl had been rationalizing this apparition for a month since it was only 4 miles or so from the road and backpackers often camped in the last mile or so since it gave access to a couple of natural hot spring pools along the cold creek. But he’d never seen any campers here and as he had been seeing this apparition each trip a feeling of fear, reinforced by the pack string, had set in. Again looking back over the animals he found them more than quiet. They were all looking at him like they needed a hug; like they are asking can I sleep with you Daddy monsters are in the closet? It was becoming spooky; it was time to put an answer to this apparition business.

Darryl had given it some thought; he had been on a fairly regular schedule, passing through this section about three in the afternoon. On this day he had come down the trail a few hours later. The sun, or at least the light that was always in the meadow at 3 P.M., had already set over the ridge. But there it was anyway, in a dimmer light, but there it was. Darryl saw it just as Sonny’s ears pointed to the image a hundred yards or so off through the trees. Then Sonny tensed and put his head down and the pack string froze, not a muscle moving, none of them even trying to grab a mouth full of vegetables along the trail. And there it was. It looked like a little man sitting on the deadfall holding a harp. What put a tingle up Darryl’s imagination was that this man, or this thing, looked like it had horns. Darryl had never seen it move, had never stopped long enough to give it a good look, had never seen movement like a fella looks for when hunting, but now Darryl thought he saw this little man’s horned head move. Seeing false movement in the woods when hunting hard is not uncommon. Sometimes a fella maybe thinks he sees what he’s been looking too hard to find. However, considering the regularity and the actions of the animals, Darryl thought that imagined movement and tricks of light theories may need an adjustment. He was tired, but not that tired. He dismounted, tied up Sonny, took his camera from his saddlebag, opened his coat and unsnapped the strap on his .44 magnum pistol in his shoulder holster just in case he wanted to make some noise. He looked back at the string to reassure them. They were standing sculpture quiet looking right at him with hang-dog defeated looks, including the two new pack mules, which didn’t comfort him none. Darryl turned back to the apparition. It was still there and he got a little start when he swears he saw the harp thing move. Choices were few: continue or get the hell out of  here.

Oh, the hell with it, he thought. It has to be something easily explained. He started walking toward this mystery, camera at the ready, but light was fading and the backlighting of the meadow wasn’t promising a good picture. He had a built in flash, but like most flashes they only covered up to 10 or 15 feet. Fifty yards and closing and he swore he saw the thing turn and look at him. Its eyes were red. Against hope he raised the camera, looked back towards the pack string, turned back, focused and shot the picture. The image was in the viewfinder, but when he lowered the camera it was gone. Kansas, one of the biggest mules, sounded out a series of he-haws and stamped his hoof. It was the first time Darryl had heard any animal in the string make so much as snort in that dark pocket of woods. Darryl wasted no time in getting back to the string in and a matter of minutes they were out of the trees in the wide-open, well lit, meadow. The animals were prancing again, trying to sneak a bite of vegetation when convenient, a flock of birds circled, and a squirrel chattered from his tree. He wasn’t religious in the listen to the words pass the plate sing the hymn sense, but Darryl felt like he just came back from somewhere else. The next jolt came from immediately to his right. On a rock 30 feet high alongside the trail stood a young woman facing full front, legs shoulder width apart, standing solid. Wearing only skin and pubic hair, she had her hands on her hips and stood there like she was queen of the realm. Darryl tipped his hat, and she blew him a kiss. Stopping was an option being considered when Truddy, the caboose mule, brayed. Darryl always figured mules and horses aren’t like people, they don’t talk unless they have something to say, and while he was thinking this his heart stopped briefly as the young nymph vanished like a bad ride gave you a taste of dirt. The spookiest part was that the nymph looked somewhat like Sally. Looking back at the sunny side of the log yards back on the edge of the meadow, it was vacant of little men with horns and harps.

As the hunting season commenced trips in and out of the camp occurred only every 10 days taking clients in and out, but the apparition on the log was always there, every trip, no matter the time of day or if it was cloudy or sunny. Darryl never again ventured in for a closer look, and only one client apparently even had the ability, if that’s what it’s called, to see it. Darryl told him it was a light trick, but the man also noticed how the pack string acted and wanted to know more. Darryl passed it off, saying that the animals always quieted down in dark and heavily forested sections of trail. The man didn’t push the issue, both adhering to the creed that certain things among men are discussed reluctantly. With discussions put to rest, Darryl continued to ride on through the dark place the rest of the season, mouths and coats buttoned up, eyes mostly straight ahead, shirttail straight out behind him, the string, urged on by Sonny, almost in a trot till they got into the meadow, but the nymph never showed again.

At season’s end on Darryl’s last trip carrying the last of the camp down out of the high country, Sally came out with him, exhausted after a season of cooking day and night. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the apparition to her. Riding behind the pack string on Joker, the oldest riding horse of Darryl’s stock, Sally was satisfied, tips had been good, hunter success had been 70 percent and everyone had gotten along. Joker was 23 years old and the most trail wise riding horse of the herd. Joker could take a rider on any trail in the over million or so acres of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness area blindfolded day or night fair or storm. Riding Joker one could wrap the reins around the saddle horn and be on automatic pilot free to sight see. Sally had lagged behind most of the way leaving considerable distance between Darryl’s string and her to take in the sights after being stuck in camp and the cook tent for over two months. Thanks to Joker’s radar ears she had seen several elk. A few miles back a black bear sow and her fat little cub ran across the trail in front of her, the fat under their sleek fur rolling back and forth with their trot like packs on the mules settling in balance. It was one of those reward sights one could tell to the grandkids, a picture developed in the mind that will never fade with age. Sally tucked the memory behind a smile. On the rock slide section of trail, Joker had been surefooting along, but then stopped without prompting at the spot where Harry and Willy had gone over the cliff. The horse looked down into the canyon and gave what Sally described as a quiet purr. Sally stroked him on the neck; he looked back at her before resuming his walk.

Entering the dark section of trail, the pack string already ahead in the meadow, Joker hurried his pace. When Sally first saw the apparition she shrugged it off, but as they go closer her first impression lost value. Then she noticed Joker was ignoring it, no ears pointing, but he broke into a trot. Sally took the reins from the saddle horn and transfixed her attention back to this object. Curious, she tried to rein up Joker; he was reluctant, danced a bit, and uncharacteristically reared up, his front hooves a few feet off the ground as to let his judgment on the matter known. Determined, Sally set the bit enough to send the message and Joker stood still and gave a quiver. Sally gazed at the apparition, shook her head, and emitted a nervous chuckle. Figuring a light trick as it was on the edge of the well-lit meadow, she decided to edge Joker off the trail and ride toward this sight. Joker wouldn’t have any part of it. He reared, turned, bucked a bit and Sally, giving in to his trail wisdom, chose to heed his behavior. She’d tell Darryl about it and they could solve this mystery together. Maybe take a picture. It might be another good tale to tell. In a matter of minutes they were out of the dark into a meadow full of light.

Darryl was holding the pack string some yards ahead, his eyes fixed on a big rock. The pack string also held their gaze in the same spot. Sally urged Joker into a canter to catch up, wanting to tell him what she had seen in the dark woods. Darryl, still in the saddle, had his camera snapping shots. Focusing where the camera was pointing and all the pack animals were looking, Sally let out a soft, frightened cry and held her hand over her heart. At the foot of the rock were Willy and Harry, the two dead mules. It had to be them, but it couldn’t be them, they were dead. Dynamited, blown to hell or heaven or wherever dead animals go. But there they were. No saddles, no halters, just the two of them. And then they were gone, just like that, right before everyone’s eyes. Sally rode up along side Darryl, her mouth open, trying to speak. She pointed back at the log on the edge of the dark woods and the meadow and then at the rock.

“I know, I figured you’d, hoping . . . ” Darryl said, “Took a picture. Had it developed. Got a log, some bark, maybe a mist. Been seeing it all season.” Darryl looked up at the sky. “Large dark clouds are moving in. It’s a thunderhead coming on us. It’ll pass.  I think I’ll name those two new mules Biscuit and Happy.”

“Un huh,” Sally said urging Joker down the trail.

 “Wanta get married again?  This time more legal, license and all.”

  “You let that pack string stand with full packs much longer they’ll lay down on you,” Sally said as she rode by him, blowing him a kiss, taking the lead toward home. Over her shoulder she smiled, “Next Friday after we’ve got the stock out to winter pasture,”

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