Windows To The World

Dark Horse  
by Craig Johnson

 Dark horse: noun   A usually little known contender that makes an unexpectedly good showing

              Walt Longmire has been the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming for many years and as the time for re-election is at hand he is confronted by an active campaign by a newcomer who claims to be a man “ wants to make a difference”.  Longmire is the kind of man who has always made a difference but after 25 years on the job he finds himself at a crossroads. He has had a difficult few years helping his only daughter get on her feet again after a brush with death and he is reluctantly becoming emotionally entangled with Victoria his under sheriff.

A prisoner has been delivered to his jail that has confessed in triplicate to the murder of her husband who was reported to having locked up all her prized horses in a barn and set it on fire. But Longmire believes in her innocence. This woman who is utterly indifferent to her fate strikes a chord in the sheriff because after all is said and done what is important to him is that his job is to protect the innocent.

For this reason he goes undercover as an insurance agent to the county where he grew up, where his parents had their ranch and crosses a broken down bridge into a town with the biblical name of Absalom, a very unfriendly town, a town without pity. Naturally it is not too long before his cover is blown.

 


So who are the other players? Is it Walt’s old friend Bill, or the old ranch hand who idolized Mary, or the bar owner, or the drunken cowboy who keeps threatening to beat Walt up?

In Absalom, Walt is out of his natural element, and away from his resources, which amplifies the feelings of helplessness sometimes felt in law enforcement. Fortunately his friend Henry Standing Bear has come to town to be some support.


Longmire  realizes that the key to the entire scenario is the manipulation of Mary in some way. There are other people in the town that considered the death a happy and welcome event. Most of these have past lie detector rests. But Mary was not herself because she had routinely taking Ambien, a sleeping medication known to be dangerous, with drawn at one point by the FD and then rereleased with stronger warnings similar to Lunesta. This was because people behave aberrantly while on it, sleep walking, driving cars while asleep and other bizarre behavior

He is drawn into several dangerous situations in which he has to call upon his police training and that of certain parts of his youth and past which stand him in good stead.  Following his instincts he sorts through the clues, straightens out the twists and turns, and plays the cowboy in the end to catch the bad guy.

When asked, Craig Johnson says that if Gary Cooper would answer his call, he would make a good Walt Longmire on the screen. In these stories the laconic wit and muted sarcasm raise the prose out of the ordinary. A man of few words, Longmire can sing if he has to. He likes Tex Owens  CATTLE CALL.