Thieves' Dozen d-12 Page 4

  "He'll be in one of these three barns," the old coot said. "I'm pretty sure."

  So they entered a long structure with a wide central cement-floored aisle spotted with dirt and straw. A few low-wattage bare bulbs hung from the rough beams above the aisle, and chest-high wooden partitions lined both sides. These were the stalls, about two thirds occupied.

  Walking through this first barn, Dortmunder learned several facts about horses: (1) They smell. (2) They breathe, more than anything he'd ever met in his life before. (3) They don't sleep, not even at night. (4) They don't even sit down. (5) They are very curious about people who happen to go by. And (6) they have extremely long necks. When horses in stalls on both sides of Dortmunder stretched out their heads toward him at the same time, wrinkling their black lips to show their big, square tombstone teeth, snuffling and whuffling with those shotgun-barrel noses, sighting at him down those long faces, he realized that the aisle wasn't that wide after all.

  "Jeepers," Kelp said, a thing he didn't say often.

  And Dire Straits wasn't even in there. They emerged on the other side, warm, curious horse breath still moist on Dortmunder's cheek, and looked around, accustoming themselves to the darkness again. Behind them, the horses whickered and bumped around, still disturbed by this late-night visit. Far away, the main farmhouse showed just a couple of lights. Faint illumination came from window openings of nearer structures. "He has to be in that one or that one," the old coot said, pointing.

  "Which one you want to try first?" Dortmunder asked.

  The old coot considered and pointed. "That one."

  "Then it's in the other one," Dortmunder said. "So that's where we'll try."

  The old coot gave him a look. "Are you trying to be funny, or what?"

  "Or what," Dortmunder said.

  And, as it turned out, he was right. Third stall in on the left, there was Dire Straits himself, a big, kind of arrogant-looking thing, with a narrower-than-usual face and a very sleek black coat. He reared back and stared at these human beings with distaste, like John Barrymore being awakened the morning after. "That's him," the old coot said. More important, a small sign on the stall door said the same thing: DIRE STRAITS.

  "At last," Kelp said.

  "Hasn't been that long," the old coot said. "Let me get a bridle for him." He turned away, then suddenly tensed, looking back toward the door. In a quick, harsh whisper, he said, "Somebody coming!"

  "Uh-oh," Dortmunder said.

  Turning fast, the old coot yanked open a stall door-not the one to Dire Straits-grabbed Dortmunder's elbow in his strong, bony hand and shoved him inside, at the same time hissing at Kelp, "Slip in here! Slip in!"

  "There's somebody in here," Dortmunder objected, meaning a horse, a brown one, who stared at this unexpected guest in absolute astonishment.

  "No time!" The old coot was pushing Kelp in, crowding in himself, pulling the stall door shut just as the light in the barn got much brighter. Must be on a dimmer switch.

  "Hey, fellas," a male voice said conversationally, "what's going on?"

  Caught us, Dortmunder thought, and cast about in his mind for some even faintly sensible reason for being in this brown horse's stall in the middle of the night. Then he heard what else the voice was saying:

  "Thought you were all settled down for the night."

  He's talking to the horses, Dortmunder thought.

  "Something get to you guys? Bird fly in?"

  In a way, Dortmunder thought.

  "Did a rat get in here?"

  The voice was closer, calm and reassuring, its owner moving slowly along the aisle, his familiar sound and sight leaving a lot of soothed horses in his wake.

  All except for the brown horse in here with Dortmunder and Kelp and the old coot. He wasn't exactly crying out, "Here, boss, here they are, they're right here!" but it was close. Snort, whuffle, paw, headshake, prance; the damn beast acted like he was auditioning for A Chorus Line. While Dortmunder and company crouched down low on the far side of this huge, hairy show-off, doing their best not to get crushed between the immovable object of the stall wall and the irrepressible force of the horse's haunch, the owner of the voice came over to see what was up, saying, "Hey, there, Daffy, what's the problem?"

  Daffy, thought Dortmunder. I might have known.

  The person was right there, leaning his forearms on the stall door, permitting Daffy to slobber and blubber all over his face. "It's OK now, Daffy," the person said. "Everything's fine."

  I've been invaded! Daffy whuffled while his tail dry-mopped Dortmunder's face.

  "Just settle down, big fella."

  Just look me over! Have I ever had ten legs before?

  "Take it easy, boy. Everybody else is calm now."

  That's because they don't have these, these, these. . . .

  "Good Daffy. See you in the morning."

  Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, Daffy mumbled, while trying to step on everybody's toes at once.

  The owner of the voice receded at last, and the old coot did something up around Daffy's head that all at once made the horse calm right down. As the lights lowered to their former dimness and the sound of thumping boots faded, Daffy grinned at everybody as though to say, I've always wanted roommates. Nice!

  Kelp said, "What did you do?"

  "Sugar cubes," the old coot said. "I brought some for Dire Straits, didn't have time to give one to this critter before that hand got here."

  Sugar cubes. Dortmunder looked at the old coot with new respect. Here was a man who traveled with an emergency supply of sugar cubes.

  "OK," the old coot said, shoving Daffy out of his way as though the animal were a big sofa on casters, "Let's get Dire Straits and get out of here."

  "Exactly," Dortmunder said, but then found himself kind of pinned against the wall. "Listen, uh, Hiram," he said. "Could you move Daffy a little?"

  "Oh, sure."

  Hiram did, and Dortmunder gratefully left that stall, hurried along by Daffy's nose in the small of his back. Kelp shut the stall door and Hiram went over to select a bridle from among those hanging on pegs. Coming back to Dire Straits' stall, he said softly, "Come here, guy, I got something nice for you."

  Dire Straits wasn't so sure about that. Being a star, he was harder to get than Daffy. From well back in the stall, he gave Hiram down his long nose a do-I-know-you? look.

  "Come here, honey," Hiram urged, soft and confidential, displaying not one but two sugar cubes on his outstretched palm. "Got something for you."

  Next door, Daffy stuck his head out to watch all this with some concern, having thought he had an exclusive on sugar-cube distribution. Whicker? he asked.

  That did it. Hearing his neighbor, Dire Straits finally realized there was such a thing as playing too hard to get. With a toss of the head, moving with a picky-toed dignity that Dortmunder might have thought sexually suspicious if he hadn't known Dire Straits' rep, the big black beast came forward, lowered his head, wuggled and muggled over Hiram's palm and the cubes were gone. Meanwhile, with his other hand, Hiram was patting the horse's nose, murmuring, rubbing behind his ear and gradually getting into just the right position.

  It was slickly done, Dortmunder had to admit that. The first thing Dire Straits knew, the bit was in his mouth, the bridle straps were around his head and Hiram was wrapping a length of rein around his own hand. "Good boy," Hiram said, gave the animal one more pat and backed away, opening the stall.

  After all that prima-donna stuff, Dire Straits was suddenly no trouble at all. Maybe he thought he was on his way to the hop. As Daffy and a couple of other horses neighed goodbye, Hiram led Dire Straits out of the barn. Dortmunder and Kelp stuck close, Hiram now seeming less like an old coot and more like somebody who knew what he was doing, and they headed at an easy pace across the fields.

  The fences along the way were composed of two rails, one at waist height and the other down by your knee, with their ends stuck into holes in vertical posts and nailed. On the way in, Dortmunder and
Kelp had removed rails from three fences, because Hiram had assured them that Dire Straits would neither climb them nor leap over. "I thought horses jumped," Dortmunder said.

  "Only jumpers," Hiram answered. Dortmunder, unsatisfied, decided to let it go.

  On the way out, Hiram and Dire Straits paused while Dortmunder and Kelp restored the rails to the first fence, having to whisper harshly the length of the rail at each other before they got the damn things seated in the holes in the vertical posts, and then they moved on, Kelp muttering, "You almost took my thumb off there, you know."

  "Wait till we're in the light again," Dortmunder told him. "I'll show you the big gash on the back of my hand."

  "No, no, honey," Hiram said to Dire Straits. It seemed there were other horses in this field, and Dire Straits wanted to go hang out, but Hiram held tight to the rein, tugged and provided the occasional sugar cube to keep him moving in the right direction. The other horses began to come around, interested, wondering what was up. Dortmunder and Kelp did their best to keep out of the way without losing Hiram and Dire Straits, but it was getting tough. There were five or six horses milling around, bumping into one another, sticking their faces into Dortmunder's and Kelp's necks, distracting them and slowing them down. "Hey!" Dortmunder called, but softly. "Wait up!"

  "We got to get out of here," Hiram said, not waiting up.

  Kelp said, "Hiram, we're gonna get lost."

  "Hold his tail," Hiram suggested. He still wasn't waiting up.

  Dortmunder couldn't believe that. "You mean the horse?"

  "Who else? He won't mind."

  The sound of Hiram's voice was farther ahead. It was getting harder to tell Dire Straits from all these other beasts. "Jeez, maybe we better," Kelp said and trotted forward, arms up to protect himself from ricocheting animals.

  Dortmunder followed, reluctant but seeing no other choice. He and Kelp both grabbed Dire Straits' tail, way down near the end; and from there on, the trip got somewhat easier, though it

  was essentially humiliating to have to walk along holding on to some horse's tail.

  At the second fence, there was another batch of horses, so many that it was impossible to put the rails back. "Oh, the hell with it," Dortmunder said. "Let's just go," He grabbed Dire Straits' tail. "Come on, come on," he said, and the horse he was holding on to, which wasn't Dire Straits, suddenly took off at about 90 miles an hour, taking Dortmunder with him for the first eight inches, or until his brain could order his fingers, "Retract!" Reeling, not quite falling into the ooze below, Dortmunder stared around in the darkness, saying, "Where the hell is everybody?"

  A lot of horses neighed and whickered and snorted and laughed at him; in among them all, Kelp's voice called, "Over here," and so the little band regrouped again, Dortmunder clutching firmly the right tail.

  What a lot of horses-more than ever. Hiram, complaining that he didn't have that much sugar anymore, nevertheless occasionally had to buy off more intrusive and aggressive animals, while Dortmunder and Kelp had to keep saying, as horses stuck their noses into pants pockets and armpits, "We don't have the damn sugar! Talk to the guy in front!"

  Finally, they reached the last fence, where Hiram suddenly stopped and said, "Oh, hell."

  "I don't want to hear 'Oh, hell,'" Dortmunder answered. Feeling his way along Dire Straits' flank, he came up to the horse's head and saw Hiram looking at the final fence. Because this was the border of the property, on coming in Dortmunder and Kelp had left the rails roughly in their original positions, though no longer nailed in place, and now the press of horses had dislodged them, leaving a 12-foot gap full of about the biggest herd of horses this side of a Gene Autry movie. More horses joined the crowd every second, passing through the gap, disappearing into the darkness. "Now what?" Dortmunder said.

  "Apples," Hiram said. He sounded unhappy.

  Dortmunder said, "What apples? I don't have any apples."

  "They do," Hiram said. "If there's one thing horses like more than sugar, it's apples. And that"-he pointed his chin in disgust-"is an orchard."

  "And that" Kelp said, "is a siren."

  It was true. Far in the distance, the wail of a siren rose and fell, and then rose again, more clearly. "Sounds exactly like the city," Dortmunder said, with a whiff of nostalgia.

  Kelp said, "Aren't those lights over there? Over by the road?"

  Past the bulk of many horses stretching their necks up into apple trees to eat green apples, Dortmunder saw the bobbing beams of flashlights. "Over by the van, you mean," he said. The siren rose, wonderfully distinct, then fell; and during its valley, voices could be heard, shouting, over by the flashlights. "Terrific," Dortmunder said.

  "What happened," Hiram said, "is the owner. The orchard owner."

  "He probably lives," Kelp suggested, "in that house we saw across the street from where we parked."

  "Across the road," Hiram corrected.

  "Anyway," Kelp said, "I guess he called the cops."

  Beyond the bobbing flashlights, which seemed to Dortmunder to be moving closer, red and blue lights appeared, blinking and revolving. "State troopers," Dortmunder said.

  "Well, we'll never get to the van," Hiram said. Turning around, looking past Dire Straits' shoulder, he said, "We can't go back that way anymore, either."

  Dortmunder turned to look and saw many more lights on now in the main ranch building and the outbuildings. The ruckus over here had attracted attention, maybe; or, more likely, the owner of the orchard had phoned the owner of the ranch to say a word or two about horses eating apples.

  In any event, it was a pincer movement, with the orchard people and the state troopers in front and the ranch people in back, all moving inexorably toward the point occupied by Dortmunder and Kelp and Hiram and Dire Straits.

  "There's only one thing to do," Hiram said.

  Dortmunder looked at him. "That many?"

  "It's time to ride out of here."

  Kelp said, "Hiram, we'll never get to the van."

  "Not drive. Ride." Saying which, Hiram suddenly swung up onto Dire Straits' bare back. The horse looked startled, and maybe insulted. "Grab mounts," Hiram said, gripping the rein.

  "Hiram," Dortmunder said, "I don't ride horses."

  "Time to learn, Bo," Hiram said unsympathetically. Bending low over Dire Straits' neck, whamming his heels into Dire Straits' rib cage, Hiram yelled into Dire Straits' ear, "Go, boy!"

  "I don't ride," Dortmunder said, "any horses."

  With Hiram on his back, Dire Straits walked over to the nearest apple tree and started to eat. "Go, boy!" Hiram yelled, kicking and whacking the oblivious thoroughbred. "Giddy, damn it!" he yelled, as flashlight beams began to pick him out among the branches and leaves and green apples.

  "I never did have much luck with horses," Dortmunder said. Out in front of him was a scene of mass, and growing, confusion. As the siren's wail continued to weave, horses shouldered their way up and down the tight rows of gnarly apple trees, munching and socializing. Human beings uselessly yelled and waved things among them, trying to make them go home. Because green apples go right through horses, the human beings also slipped and slued a lot. Hiram, trying to hide in the tree Dire Straits was snacking off but blinded by all the flashlights now converged on him, fell out of the tree and into the arms of what looked very much like a state trooper, who then fell down. Other people fell down. Horses ate. Lights stabbed this way and that. Back by the breached fence, Dortmunder and Kelp watched without pleasure. "That reminds me of the subway," Dortmunder said.

  "Here comes that truck," Kelp said.

  Dortmunder turned, and here came a pair of headlights through the night from the ranch, jouncing up and down. "I do understand pickup trucks," Dortmunder said and strode toward the lights.

  Kelp, saying, "John? You got something?" came trailing along.

  Dortmunder and the pickup approached each other. As the vehicle neared, Dortmunder waved his arms over his head, demanding that the thing stop, which it did, and a s
leepy young guy looked out at him, saying, "Who the hell are you?"

  "Your goddamn horses," Dortmunder said, his manner outraged but disciplined, "are eating our goddamn apples."

  The fellow stared at him. "You aren't Russwinder."

  "I work for him, don't I?" Dortmunder demanded. "And I never seen anybody so mad. We need light back there, he sent us down, get your portable generator. You got a portable generator, don't you?"

  "Well, sure," the fellow said. "But I was gonna-"

  "Light," Dortmunder insisted. Around them, half-awake and half-dressed ranch employees made their way toward the center of chaos, ignoring Dortmunder and Kelp, whose bona fides were established by their being in conversation with the ranch's pickup truck. "We can't see what we're doing back there," Dortmunder said, "and Mr. Russwinder's mad."

  The young fellow clearly saw that this was a time to be accommodating to one's neighbor and to one's neighbor's employee. "OK," he said. "Climb in."

  "We'll ride in back," Dortmunder told him and clambered up into the bed of the pickup, which was pleasantly aromatic of hay. Kelp followed, eyes bright with hope, and the pickup lurched forward, jounced around in a great circle and headed back toward the ranch.

  The pickup seemed to think it was a horse; over the fields it bucked and bounced, like a frying pan trying to throw Dortmunder and Kelp back into the fire. Clutching the pickup's metal parts with every finger and every toe, Dortmunder gazed back at the receding scene in the orchard, which looked now like a battle in a movie about the Middle Ages. "Never again," he said.

  Ka-bump! The pickup slued from field to dirt road, a much more user-friendly surface, and hustled off toward the barns. "Well, this time," Kelp said, "you can't blame me."

  Dortmunder looked at him. "Why not?"

  The cowboy behind the wheel slammed both feet and a brick onto the brake pedal, causing the pickup to skid halfway around, hurl itself broadside at the brown-plank wall of the nearest barn and shudder to a stop with millimeters to spare. Dortmunder peeled himself off the pickup's bed, staring wildly around, and the maniac driver hopped out, crying, "The generator's in here!" Off he went at a lope.