Lonesome Animals by Bruce Holbert

turned the morning fire’s dying coals, then dumped the coffee over them. The day was still cool, but yesterday’s closeness had given way to a high pressure and the blue above. He closed his eyes, resting them from the smoke. He recalled with envy the
vision his first Indian scouts possessed. They perceived brown and green hues no one other than Indians parsed out, as well as shapes likely to move and the shapes they would move through.
    Strawl had enlisted with the army at sixteen. There, he drank whiskey and fought and habituated the Denver guardhouse. What enraged Strawl was everything: all a little and no thing more than another. His belly was constantly filling. The result was one day he’d take what a man shouldn’t and an hour past not endure people acting human, then the fisticuffs would commence and cease, and another man would lie in a bleeding heap, and suddenly his living was up to Strawl. Some looked pleading, some looked trustful, and others just waited for him to make up his mind.
    Finally, the commandant ordered he either discharge or transfer. He chose the latter and rode mail patrols in Astoria, Oregon, for nine months, fishing and digging clams on the Pacific beach with each pass he earned.
    He found the ocean a comfort. The hushing of the constant surf and the wind teeming with the unperfumed odors of all that was alive or dying underneath the swells steadied his heart and quelled his mind like knowledge of the everlasting for believers. From the ocean he drew the only spiritual guidance he could lay claim to, though he could not name it. A stomach ulcer converted him to teetotaler, and, in truth, he was happy for the excuse. Drinking he did not do partway, and drunkenness smothered his memory and conscious self like a blanket over a fire. But his body continued, fanned by winds he did not comprehend though the wreckage and black eyes following were evidence enough of their strength.
    Twice during his stint he was accosted by bandits and neither time surrendered his bundle. In the second instance, he pistol-whipped a gold panner and turned him over to the authorities bent in half across his saddle. When the Tonasket colonel needed a policeman, he was promoted sergeant and reassigned.

    Strawl watched the dew burn off in the warming morning. He lit a cigarette. The stovepipe over Marvin’s cabin issued smoke as either he or his wife kindled the stove for breakfast.
    Stick was fresh and Strawl mounted and pointed him north. He rode game trails, letting the horse sort out a direction when they gave way to meadows or bald hills where the deer and elk didn’t require paths. Morning’s cool graduated into a warmth approaching pleasant, then a heat that put Stick into a lather until Strawl drew rein. The sun disappeared more hastily than it had risen; sunset stretched over the country for a rusty and luminous breath, then darkness stretched back, and with it the sweat ringing his hat and spattering his shirt chilled him. Strawl camped on a ridge beyond Granite Mountain’s sightlines and, he hoped, past the scent capacity of mastiff hounds.
    The next morning, he rose and circled the mountain until he found an opposite ridge that permitted him a view of Rutherford Hayes’s cabin door while keeping him upwind of the dogs. He tied Stick to a tamarack trunk and rested in the tree’s thin shade until Hayes opened the door. Strawl put two bullets in the porch’s lowest step. The man broke for the house. He emerged with a rifle as thick as a fencepost.
    â€œPut the dogs away, Root,” Strawl shouted.
    The man’s head turned, hunting Strawl’s direction.
    â€œIf I wanted you shot, you’d be bleeding already. No harm will come to you.”
    â€œWho are you?” the man shouted.
    â€œRussell Strawl.”
    â€œSheriff Strawl?”
    â€œI got no paper on you and no inclination to take you past the front porch. I want a word is all.”
    â€œCome