His face seemed to reach a conclusion in his thought process. “Y’all eat breakfast?” he asked.

“Not yet. How about tanking down some pork chops and buttermilk biscuits with us?”

“Sure I’m not barging in?”

“Not at all.”

“Want to wet a line later on?” he said.

“You got it.”

I could have learned a lot from Lucas.

MONDAY MORNING I called the educational foundation in Denver and tried to extract an explanation from the personnel there for the retraction of Lucas’s scholarship. I was put on hold twice, cut off once, and finally told by a man with a sonorous voice that a clerical error had been made, that Lucas was ineligible for the particular award that had been given him, and that he could apply in another category. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” he said.

“That’s my son you’re jerking around,” I said.

“Thank you for your inquiry,” he replied, and quietly hung up.

An hour later, I received an office visit from Brendan Merwood. He was a strange man, one I had never understood. His skill as a trial lawyer was well known throughout the Northwest, but he seemed to have no principles whatsoever. He was a glad-hander, a sycophant, and a toady for every meretricious enterprise in the state, as though his own merits and well-earned success as an attorney brought him no sense of validation. Even his pro bono work seemed to be a public exercise in self-flattery. Now, he sat in my office like a battle-scarred feral hog, reeking of aftershave lotion, effusive with so much goodwill that I believed Brendan Merwood was a genuinely frightened man.

“I think you got a bum deal on this bail bond business,” he said. “You tried to help Johnny in good faith, and look what happened. Both of you thought he’d be there for trial and never saw this tragedy with the federal agent in the making.” He shook his head to show his sense of mystification at the unfairness of the universe. “I just don’t think innocent folks should get hurt like this. That’s why I want to help.”

“What are you trying to tell me, sir?”

“You and I both know this is all connected in some way with ecoterrorism. Somebody is sitting on those materials that were stolen from Global Research. Those materials have got to get back into the right hands-either the government’s or the owner’s. Are my words getting through here, Billy Bob? Talk to Johnny’s wife. She’ll listen to you.”

“No, she won’t.”

He crossed his legs and pulled at one knee, as though it were injured, his eyes lifting toward the ceiling. “Once in a while you have to make a concession. You make the concession and you move on. That’s how the world works. This is a good community. We don’t need all this trouble,” he said.

“My wife and I didn’t cause it. But somebody is doing his best to destroy us.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I guess people fight with the weapons that are available to them.”

“So do I.”

“I’ve heard about your history in Texas. I don’t think that’s going to work here, my friend. Believe it or not, I’m on your side,” he said.

“I think in your way you probably are. So thank you for coming in, Brendan. Tell the man you work for I’ll kill him if he tries to hurt my family.”

He shook his finger back and forth. “This conversation is one in which we didn’t communicate very well. That’s the only memory I’ll have of it. If Johnny gets in touch with you, tell him to surrender himself or to call me. I don’t want that boy hurt. God’s truth on that,” he said.

He left my office, shaking his head profoundly.

THAT AFTERNOON, as I pulled into the dirt drive at Johnny’s house, I saw Amber unloading boxes of groceries from her Dakota. I followed her into the back of the house without being invited. She had swept the floors clean of splintered wood and broken glass and had placed a throw rug over the stain where Seth Masterson had died.

“That’s a lot of food,” I said.

“Not in the mood for it, Billy Bob,” she replied.

“Brendan Merwood was in my office this morning. He knows you have the records that were stolen out of Global Research. He wants you to give them up.”

“The day Global gets its goods back is the day Johnny gets his death warrant signed. What a life, huh, boss?”

One sack on the table was filled with first-aid supplies.

“You don’t think you’re being watched or followed?” I said.

“They try. I don’t think they do a very good job of it. Did you see those telephone workers by the crossroads? I wonder why they all have the same haircut.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate them,” I said.

But my words were useless. I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her sort out the canned and dried food and medical purchases that she was obviously taking to Johnny. I wondered how long it would be before she was in the crosshairs of a telescopic lens.

“How badly is he hurt?” I asked.

“Bad enough.”

“Amber, you need to be aware Temple and I are about to lose our home. Johnny’s tribal bondsmen double-crossed him and us.”

Her back was turned to me. She paused in her work a moment, as though she were about to speak. Then she wrapped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in a towel and placed it deep in a cardboard box.

“Did you hear me? Others are being hurt as well as you and Johnny. Seth Masterson got set up and blown into a pile of bloody rags because he tried to save Johnny and you from yourselves.”

This time she turned on me. “How serious do you think anthrax is? Or bubonic plague or the Ebola virus? Forget about the fact it’s down in the Bitterroot Valley. How do you feel about this stuff being used on human beings?” she said.

“That’s what they’re messing with at Global?”

“They’re the bastards who gave Saddam Hussein part of his biological warfare program.”

“Turn over your material to the media. You can do it anonymously.”

“It would never see the light of day.”

“I tried,” I said.

“Yeah, you did. Go burn a candle to yourself. I wish the tribal bondsmen hadn’t shafted you. One of them just made a down payment on a new house. Not on the res, either, since he’s obviously moving up in life. You got screwed and so did we and so did your friend the FBI agent. I don’t have anything else to say, except ta-ta. That’s the way it shakes out sometimes.”

I went back outside, got in my Avalon, and turned around on the edge of the yard. The air was dry and I could see a smoky sheen rising into the sky from fires that were burning close to Glacier National Park. Amber came out on the porch and waved for me to stop. The anger and self-manufactured cynicism had gone out of her face, replaced by a vulnerability I didn’t normally associate with her.

“Do you ever hear from my father?” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

“He was in town. I thought he might have called.”

“Sometimes my answering machine is off when the office is closed.”

“He’s mad about my marrying Johnny, but he always checks on me through third parties. That’s why I was asking,” she said.

I wanted to tell her to be careful, to wrap herself in whatever spiritual shield ancient deities could provide her. But how do you caution a fawn about a cigarette a motorist has just flipped from his car window into a patch of yellow grass, or tell a sparrow that winged creatures eventually plummet to earth?

THAT EVENING Temple and I moved about the house in silence, clicking on the cable news, clicking it off again when the other entered the room, busying ourselves in our self-imposed solitude with inconsequential chores, as though our feigned solemnity were a successful disguise for our depression and mutual resentment.

It was dusk, the valley purple with shadow, when she finally spoke out of more than necessity. “Wyatt Dixon called the house today. He wanted to talk to you.”