He aimed at a jackrabbit running across the hardpan, leading it with the sawed tip of the barrel, one eye closed. Then he breathed out a popping sound and lowered the gun. He grinned and smacked Bobby Lee on the shoulder, causing him to spill beer down the front of his shirt. “Relax, enjoy the time you got,” Liam said. “That’s my philosophy. Life’s a party, right?”

Bobby Lee took a drink from his bottle, eyeing Liam with the caution he would show a snake coiled in the shade of scrub brush.

“You spoke up for me when Preacher wanted to rip my ass,” Liam said. “I’m not forgetting that. We’re buds. Crack me a beer.”

DANNY BOY LORCA was squatted behind the jail at sunup Monday morning when Hackberry parked his truck and started inside. Danny Boy’s skin had the dark, smudged coloration of someone who cooked as a matter of course over open charcoal pits or who cleared and burned brush for a living or who worked land that had been blackened by wildfires. His thick hair, cut like an Apache’s, did not look unwashed as much as dull and ash-powdered, the scars from jailhouse-knife beefs of years ago like dead worms on his hands and forearms. He was drawing a picture in the dirt with a sharpened stick.

“What you got there, Danny Boy?” Hackberry asked.

“Face I saw in a dream.”

“You here to see me about something?”

Danny Boy stood up. He wore jeans that were so tight that they looked painted on his body, and a long-sleeve calico shirt notched around the upper arms with purple garters. Stuffed in his clothes, he had the shape of a giant banana. “Pete Flores called me. He needs me to get him a car. Him and Vikki Gaddis want to go to Montana.”

“Come inside.”

“I been dry three days. I’m staying clear of jail for a while,” Danny Boy said, not moving. The sky in the west was a metallic blue still caught between darkness and first light, the horizon layered with a long band of steel-colored clouds that could have been either dust or rain mist. Danny Boy sniffed at the air and stared at the sky as though he had just heard a brief rumble of thunder that had no source.

“I thought we were friends,” Hackberry said. “I thought you trusted me. You think I’ll do you harm?”

Danny Boy’s eyes seemed full of sleep when he looked back at Hackberry. Hackberry could not remember seeing Danny Boy smile, not ever. “Pete said he got away from a guy who was trying to kill him. Somewhere down by Big Bend. He said the guy was at an A.A. meeting in a church. If Pete can get holt of a car, he’s gonna drive straight through to Montana.”

“Where’s Pete staying?”

Danny Boy shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know or he wasn’t prepared to say.

“How about Vikki?”

“Waitressing and playing in a restaurant or a club. I told Pete I didn’t have no money, but he better not be thinking about stealing a car. He says he ain’t going down for the murder of them Oriental women.”

“He won’t. I promise.”

“Last night I dreamed about rain. I woke up and thought it was hitting on my roof. But it was grasshoppers flying into the windmill and the screens. You say Pete ain’t going down for them murders. But Pete was there when they got killed. Guys like Pete have a hard time in jail. They try to go their own way and get in trouble. He’ll be in Huntsville for a long time.”

“Not if I can help it.”

But Danny Boy had lost interest in the conversation in the same way he had lost interest years ago in the promises of most white people. He was staring at the face he had drawn in the dirt. The Apache haircut, the wide brow, the square jaw, and the small eyes all looked like his own. He rubbed the sole of his shoe back and forth across the drawing, smearing it back into the earth.

“Why’d you do that?”

“He’s one of them ancient rain gods. There was a bunch of them living here when this was a giant valley full of corn. But the rain gods went away. They ain’t coming back, either.”

“How do you know that?”

“They got no reason to. We don’t believe in them no more.”

AT EIGHT A.M. Hackberry called Pam Tibbs into his office.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“I have a general idea where Vikki Gaddis and Pete Flores might be. My back is flaring up, and I need you to drive me,” he said.

“You ought to see a doctor,” she said. Her eyes left his. “Sorry.”

“I depend on you because you’re smart, Pam. I’m not patronizing you when I say that.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

He let it pass. “We’ll be back late tonight or maybe tomorrow. Get whatever you need out of your locker.” But he couldn’t let it pass after all. Why did she bother him like this? “I know I don’t have to explain myself. I was trying to…Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Would you get me an aspirin, please? Bring the box.”

At eight-thirty A.M., Hackberry and Pam Tibbs were doing eighty miles an hour down the four-lane, the emergency flasher rippling silently. Hackberry lay back in the passenger seat, half asleep, his Stetson tilted over his eyes, his long legs extended.

Where do you look for a guitar-picking woman in the state of Texas?

Anywhere.

Where do you look for a guitar-picking woman who sings “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” to a beer-joint audience?

In a place that will probably remember the experience for a long time.

Hackberry knew his errand was probably a foolish one. He was out of his jurisdiction and trying to save young people who trusted neither him, his department, nor the system he represented. Cassandra had been given knowledge of the future and simultaneously condemned to a lifetime of being disbelieved and rejected. The wearisome preoccupation of the elderly-namely, the conviction that they had already seen the show but could never pass on the lessons they had learned from it-was not unlike Cassandra’s burden, except the anger and bitterness of old people was not the stuff of Homeric epics.

Hackberry shifted in the seat, pulling his hat lower on his face, and tried to get out of his funk. The cruiser hit a bump and forced his eyes open. He hadn’t realized how far he and Pam had driven. He saw the shapes of mountains in the south and the buildings and planted trees and the planned neighborhoods of a small town spread along the side of a long geological slope that looked as though the land had suddenly tilted into the sky.

“You fell asleep,” Pam said.

“Where are we?”

“Not far from the convenience store where Bobby Lee Motree pulled a semiauto on the night clerk. Did the FBI get you a mug shot of him yet?”

“They will eventually. They have their own problems to deal with.”

“Why do you make excuses for them?”

“Because a lot of them are decent people.”

“I bet they love their grandmothers and they’re kind to animals, too.” She glanced sideways at him, her expression hidden behind her aviator shades, her mouth a flat line.

“My grandfather was a Texas Ranger,” Hackberry said. “He and some of his friends went on a raid into Mexico after Pancho Villa crossed the river and killed a bunch of civilians. My grandfather and his friends attacked a train loaded with Villa’s soldiers. The Texans had captured a Lewis gun. They caught a bunch of those poor devils in an uncoupled cattle car that was rolling downhill. My grandfather said their blood was blowing out of the boards and fanning in the wind like the discharge from a chute in a slaughterhouse.”

“I don’t get your point.”

“My grandfather was an honest lawman. He did some things that bothered his conscience, but you don’t judge a person by one episode or event in his life, and you don’t judge people categorically, either. Ethan Riser is a good man.”

“You really were an ACLU lawyer.”

Hackberry removed his hat and ran a comb through his hair. He could feel his gun belt biting into his hips. “Put it on pause, will you, Pam?”