The shooting stopped. Hackberry had pulled back to the edge of the trash pile, and Pam was somewhere off to his left, in the shadows or behind the concrete foundation of the destroyed house. In all probability, the shooter was changing magazines. Hackberry got down on his hands and knees, then on his stomach. He heard a metallic click, like a latching steel mechanism being inserted into a socket. He extended his.45, gripping it with both hands, his elbows propped in the dirt, the pain along his spine flaring into his ribs.

Hackberry saw the chrome-sheathed lizard-skin boots of the shooter move from behind the back tire. He sighted down the long barrel of his.45 at the place where the blue-jean cuff of the shooter’s right pants leg met the top of his foot. He pulled the trigger.

The shooter screamed when the 230-grain round tore through his boot. He fell to the ground and yelled out again, holding his destroyed foot and ankle, blood welling through his fingers, his other hand still gripping his weapon.

Pam Tibbs ran toward the truck, her pump shotgun held in front of her, the safety off, lifting the barrel, stepping sideways in an arc around the hood of the truck, almost like an erratic dancer, coming into position so that she stood in full view of the shooter. All the time she was yelling, as though to a man with neither sight nor hearing, “Give it up! Give it up! Give it up! Do it now! Do it now! Throw it away! Hands straight out on the ground! You must do it now! No, you do not do that! Both hands in the dirt! Did you hear me?”

Then she squeezed the trigger. Five feet away, the man who would not release his weapon ate a pattern of buckshot as wide as his hand and watched his brains splatter across the side panel of his truck.

When Hackberry got to her, she had already jacked the spent shell from the chamber and was shoving another one into the magazine with her thumb, her hands still trembling.

“Did you see the other guy?” he said.

“No, where is he?” she said. Her eyes were as round as marbles, jittering in their sockets.

“I didn’t see him. We’re exposed. Get behind the truck.”

“Where’s Collins?”

“In the cave. Get behind the truck. Did you hear me?”

“What’s that sound?”

“What sound?” he said. But the.45 rounds he had fired had left his ears ringing, and he couldn’t make out her words.

“It’s that idiot Dolan,” she said.

They couldn’t believe what they saw next. Nick Dolan’s SUV had veered off the dirt track, swinging wide of the concrete slab on which the stucco house had once stood, and was now coming full-bore across the hardpan, rocks and mud flying up into the undercarriage, the frame jolting on the springs.

“Has he lost his mind?” Pam said.

Nick Dolan plowed through the tent closest to the mountain, ripping it loose from its steel pins, wrapping the polyethylene material and destroyed aluminum poles across the grille and hood. But inside the sounds of the tent tearing and the tie ropes breaking and the steel pins whipping back against the SUV, Hackberry had heard a solid weight impact sickeningly against the SUV’s hood.

Nick slammed on his brakes, and the tangle of material and tent poles and a broken cot rolled off his vehicle into the dirt, with the body of the second Hispanic man inside.

“I saw him go into the tent. He had a gun,” Nick said from the window. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck.

“Your wife could have been in there,” Pam said.

“No, we saw Collins take her into the hole in the mountain. Let’s get up there,” Nick said.

Vikki Gaddis sat in the passenger seat, and Pete Flores sat in back, leaning forward against the front seat.

“Y’all stay where you are,” Hackberry said.

“I’m going up there with you,” Nick said.

“No, you’re not,” Hackberry said.

“That’s my wife,” Nick said, opening the door.

“You’re about to find yourself in handcuffs, Mr. Dolan,” Pam said.

Hackberry dumped the spent shells from the cylinder of his revolver into his palm and reloaded the empty chambers. He motioned to Pam Tibbs and began walking with her toward the mountain, ignoring the three new arrivals, hoping his last words to them had stuck.

“You don’t want to wait for the locals?” she said.

“Wrong move. I’m going straight up the path. I want you to come in from the side and stay just outside the cave.”

“Why?”

“Collins won’t shoot if he thinks I’m alone.”

“Why not?”

“He has too much pride. With Collins, it’s not about money or sex. He thinks it’s the twilight of the gods and he’s at center stage.”

Nick Dolan and Vikki Gaddis and Pete Flores were all getting out of the SUV.

“You three get right back in your vehicle and drive back toward the road and stay there,” Hackberry said.

“To hell with that,” Nick said.

“Sheriff, give me a weapon and let me go up there with you,” Pete said.

“Can’t do it, partner. End of discussion,” Hackberry said. “Ms. Gaddis, you keep these two guys here. If you want to see Mrs. Dolan come out of that cave alive, don’t mess in what’s about to happen.”

Hackberry began walking up the path alone, while Pam Tibbs cut across the green and orange and gray tailings that were strung down the incline, carrying her shotgun at port arms.

Hackberry paused at the cave’s entrance, his.45 holstered, the Beretta still tucked inside the back of his gun belt. He smelled a dank odor like mouse droppings or bat guano and water pooled in stone. He felt the wind coursing over his skin, flowing into the cave. “Can you hear me, Collins?” he said.

There was no answer. Hackberry stepped inside the darkness of the cave as though slipping from the world of light into one of perpetual shade.

The body of a man lay behind a boulder. The wounds in his chest and stomach and legs were egregious. The amount of blood that had pooled around him and soaked into his sheep-lined leather coat and bradded orange work pants seemed more than his body could have contained.

“You can do a good deed here, Jack,” Hackberry called out.

After the echo died, he thought he heard a rattling sound in the dark, farther back in the cave.

“Did you hear me, Jack?”

“You’re backlit, Sheriff,” a voice said from deep in the cave’s interior.

“That’s right. You can pop me any time you want.” Hackberry paused. “You’re not above doing a good deed, are you?”

“What might that be?”

“Mrs. Dolan has children. They want her back. How about it?”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“I don’t think you’re a man who hides behind a woman.”

“I don’t have to hide behind anyone. You hear that sound? Why don’t you come toward me a little more and check out your environment?”

“Rattlers are holed up in here?”

“Probably not more than a couple of dozen. Just flatten yourself out against the wall.”

“Your voice sounds a little strange, Jack.”

“He’s had an anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter. It may be fatal,” a woman’s voice said.

“You shut up,” Collins said.

“Is that right, Jack? You want to go to a hospital?” Hackberry said.

But there was no answer.

“I was a navy corpsman,” Hackberry said. “Severe anaphylaxis can bring on respiratory and coronary arrest, partner. It’s a bad way to go, strangling in your spit, your sphincter letting go, that sort of thing.”

“I can squeeze this trigger, and you’ll be a petroglyph.”

“But that’s not what this is about, is it? You’re haunted by the women and girls you killed because your act was that of a coward, not because you robbed them of their lives. You don’t want redemption, Jack. You want validation, justification for an act you know is indefensible.”

“Sheriff Holland, don’t bait this man or try to reason with him. Kill him so he doesn’t kill others. I’m not afraid,” the woman said.

Hackberry gritted his teeth in his frustration with Esther Dolan. “That’s not why I’m here, Jack. I’m not your executioner. I’m not worthy of you. You already said it-I’m a drunk and the sexual exploiter of poor third-world women. I’ve got to hand it to you, for good or bad, you’re the kind of guy who belongs to the ages. You screwed up behind the church, but I think the order for the mass shooting came from Hugo Cistranos and wasn’t your idea. That’s important to remember, Jack. You’re not a coward. You can prove that this morning. Turn Mrs. Dolan loose and take your chances with me. That’s what real cojones are about, right? You say full throttle and fuck it and sail out over the abyss.”