to poke fun at Bob’s anomalous anatomy. When you’ve been the best at something, nothing less ever seems good enough.
The 450-mile trip home was a hellish drive in a howling spring snowstorm. It took him thirteen and a half hours to get back to Vanadium. Buster was outside when he saw Bob’s truck pull up, still covered in ice and snow. Buster had the presence of mind to make himself scarce when he saw what Bob’s glazed eyes looked like. The house was a mess. The kids had runny noses, and everyone was screaming. His autistic son, Bob Jr., was singing the hook to a pop song in a black lady’s falsetto—over and over again. Bob started counting to ten. His mouth was dry, and his breath was putrid from the white crosses and the bile of his own bad temperament. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. Mary was in the kitchen—noisily grinding walnuts for an order of banana cake, which had to be ready by six. Bob tried to stand there nonchalantly like the loose-jointed, laconic cowboy he used to be. At this very moment, he was of two minds. He was either going to call upon all of his strength to act normal, tell his wife he had won a little bit of money, or he was going to take the Hamilton blender and bash her head with it.
Buster was standing on the back of Bob’s pickup throwing a lasso at his surrogate roping steer. Over and over again he flung it, tied it off on one of the aluminum cleats on the perimeter of the truck bed, jumped down and wrestled it to the ground and tied its wooden legs. That’s when he heard the screams from inside the house. He left his rope tied to the steer and ran inside. The kids were all crying. Mary, a deep purple gash above her right eyebrow, was being dragged from room to room. Buster didn’t know what to do. He had never confronted a full-grown man before. He stood there and watched as Bob punched her and kicked her. Suddenly, he found himself flying across the living room in slow motion and into the back of Bob Boyle’s legs. Buster threw him down, took a stretch of rope from his belt and quickly cinched it around Bob’s ankles. Mary woozily got up and went to the kitchen where she retrieved two ten-inch Calphalon fry pans and clanged Bob’s head on both sides until his blood rolled off the catalogue-promised non-stick surface. She was able to get in three more cymbal crashes before Bob worked the ropes off his feet, broke her nose and ran howling like a banshee out of the house.
He started up his truck and hit the gas sending a rooster tail of loose gravel up against the building. His ears were ringing as he tore down Possum heading for Piñon. Bob had no idea that he was dragging the practice steer—still tied to the truck. Up ahead, the Red Hat Produce man was backing up the street to make a delivery. Bob put his foot down on the brake, but his boot went right to the floor. He smacked into the tailgate of the produce truck going fifty miles an hour. He survived the actual collision, but then, the momentum of the surrogate steer sent it flying through the back window of the cab. The bull’s sharp horns, which Bob had attached with baling wire, smashed through the glass. One of them pierced the back of his neck, passed through his brain stem and out of his astonished mouth.
Sheriff Dudival arrived on the scene, and, together with Mary and Buster’s testimony, worked out the cause of death. Bob was not able to stop the truck because his brake line had been cut.
“Mary says you put up a pretty good fight with Bob. Is that true?”
“Ah don’t rightly rem’ber much ’bout it.”
“Do you know how the brakes on a vehicle work, son?”
“Yesssir. Ya put yer foot down on the petal and that’s what stops ’er.”
“Do you have a pocket knife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I see it please?”
Buster dug around in his jeans and came up with a rusty old pocketknife.
“You didn’t cut those brake lines with this pocket knife, did you son?”
“No sir. Ah did not.”
The sheriff ran his thumbnail along the blade to see if there was any residue.
“Okay,” said the sheriff handing it back to him. “You can go back inside now.”
There was an inquiry into Bob’s death. The sheriff had noted in his journal that the brake line on Bob Boyle’s vehicle had been chewed through by a marmot… Marmots, as groundhogs are called in the area, often chewed through the under-hoses of cars left parked outside for a long time. It was possible that a marmot chewed through the brake line of Bob Boyle’s truck; however, no one in his or her right mind believed it. Dudival, himself, kept a little piece of the questionable brake line in his evidence safe. Ultimate cause of death: brain trauma caused by bull’s horns.
Anyone you talked to in Vanadium was now convinced that Buster had not only killed Carlito Dominguez and Gil Svendergard, but Bob Boyle, as well. The question that weighed most heavily was why Sheriff Dudival was protecting him.
Mary had decided that Buster’s presence in the house would only be a constant reminder to her children of what had happened to their father. At the inquest over Bob’s death, she informed Sheriff Dudival of her decision. As one might imagine, Buster had become difficult adoption material.
As she tearfully left the courtroom, Mary stopped to kiss Buster goodbye. Banged up as she was, Mary was already Looking Better Without Bob—which should have been the title of a country and western song. She hugged Buster and held him close for an embarrassingly long time.
“You’re my hero,” she said, and slipped something into his hand. When Buster looked down, he saw that she had given him Bob’s championship rodeo buckle.
“Aw, Jiminy, Mrs. Boyle, Ah cain’t take somethin’ like this… A feller’s gotta earn it.”
“Believe me,” she said, “…you did.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Stumplehorst Outfit
The Women’s League of Vanadium was quickly running out of good Christian homes for Buster. Sheriff Dudival, who until now had worked behind the scenes on Buster’s behalf with no less cunning and resourcefulness than a Vatican cardinal-prefect, begged the League to give him one more chance to place Buster before they sent him off to the county orphanage.
He had one last good idea, the Stumplehorst family. The Sheriff would have to bring to bear all of his powers as a salesman, for this was not an easy sell. What he had in his favor was that it was round-up time, and the Stumplehorst Ranch usually paid for temporary hands. With Buster’s adoption, all it would cost them to have another able-bodied wrangler would be room and board. Sheriff Dudival scribbled that thought down on a napkin as he waited to meet Skylar Stumplehorst for breakfast at the High Grade.
“Can he ride a horse?” It was obvious that Stumplehorst knew very little about Buster.
“He’s probably the best rider and roper in this county now that Bob’s dead.”
“We have some strange hands in the bunkhouse, but I don’t think there’s a killer among ’em.”
“No one’s been able to prove he’s killed anybody.”
“I don’t want to die. Is that so unreasonable?”
“Stumplehorst, you’re not afraid of that boy; you’re afraid of what your wife is going to say if you make a decision without consulting her.” This was a sore point with Skylar Stumplehorst. Skylar Anderson had been a two-bit cowboy until he
