“Eriksson dealt the play and got what he deserved. You saved my life, Pam. Don’t let a sonofabitch like that rob you of your life.”

“You can be pretty hard-edged, Hack.”

“No, I’m not. Eriksson was a killer for hire.” He cupped his palm around the back of her neck. “He preyed on the defenseless and used what was best in people to turn them into his victims. We’re the children of light. That’s not a hyperbole.”

Her eyes wandered over his face as though she feared mockery or insincerity in his words. “I’m not a child of light, not at all.”

“You are to me,” he said. He saw her swallow and her lips part. His palm felt warm and moist on the back of her neck. He removed it and hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “I’d really like to go to that rodeo. I’d like to buy some candied apples and caramel corn at the fair, too. Anybody who doesn’t like rodeos and county fairs has something wrong with him.”

“Get mad at me if you want,” she said. She put her arms around him and hugged herself against him and pressed her face against his chest and her body against his loins. He could smell the perfume behind her ears and the strawberry shampoo in her hair and the fragrance of her skin. He saw the windmill’s blades ginning in the starlight, the disen gaged rotary shaft turning impotently, the cast-iron pipe dry and hard-looking above the aluminum tank. He rested his cheek on top of Pam’s head, his eyes tightly shut.

She stepped away from him. “Is it because you feel certain people shouldn’t be together? Because they’re the wrong age or color or gender or their bloodline is too close? Is that how you think, Hack?”

“No,” he replied.

“Then what is it? Is it because you’re my boss? Or is it just me?”

It’s because it’s dishonorable for an old man to sleep with a young woman who is looking for her father, he thought.

“What did you say?”

“I said nothing. I said let me buy you a late supper. I said I’m happy you came by. I said let’s go to the fair.”

“All right, Hack. If you say so. I won’t-”

“Won’t what?”

She smiled and shrugged.

“You won’t what?” he repeated.

She continued to smile, her feigned cheerfulness concealing her resignation. “I’ll drive,” she said.

THAT NIGHT AFTER she dropped him off, he sat for a long time in his bedroom with the lights turned off. Then he lay down on top of the bedcovers in his clothes and stared at the ceiling, the heat lightning flickering on his body. Outside, he heard his horses running in the pasture, their hooves heavy-sounding, swallowed by the wind, as though they were wrapped in flannel. He heard his garbage-can lid rattle on the driveway, blown by the wind or pulled loose from the bungee cord by an animal. He heard the trees thrashing and wild animals walking through the yard and the twang of his smooth wire when a deer went through his back fence. Then he heard a noise that shouldn’t have been there, a car engine in closer proximity to his house than the state road would allow.

He sat up and slipped his boots on and went out on the porch. A car had pulled off the asphalt and driven onto the dirt track beyond the northern border of his property. The car’s lights were off, but the engine was still running. Hackberry went back into the bedroom and removed his holstered revolver from under his bed and unsnapped the strap from the hammer and let the holster slide off the barrel onto the bedspread. He walked back outside and crossed the yard to the horse lot. Missy’s Playboy and Love That Santa Fe were standing by their water tank, frozen, looking to the north, the wind drifting a cloud of dust across them.

“It’s okay, fellows. We’re just going to check this guy out,” Hackberry said, walking between them, the white-handled.45 hanging from his left hand.

As Hackberry approached the north fence on the pasture, the driver of the car shifted into gear without apparent urgency, the lights still off, and turned in a circle, dead tree branches and uncropped Johnson grass raking under the car’s frame. Then he drove in a leisurely fashion onto the asphalt and continued down the road, clicking on his headlights when he passed a clump of oaks on the bend.

Hackberry went back to the house, set his revolver on the nightstand, and gradually fell asleep. He dreamed of a rodeo bull exploding out of a bucking chute. The rider’s bones seemed to be breaking apart inside his skin as the bull reared and corkscrewed between his thighs. Suddenly, the rider was in the air, his wrist still tied down with a suicide wrap, his body over the side, whipped and dirt-dragged and flung into the boards and finally horned.

Without ever quite waking from the dream, Hackberry reached for his revolver and clenched its white handles in his palm.

PREACHER CONSIDERED HIMSELF a tolerant man. But Bobby Lee Motree could be a challenge.

“Holland is an old man,” Bobby Lee said over the cell phone. “When he was running for Congress, he was known as a drunk and a gash hound. He got religion after he started representing a Mexican farmworkers’ union, probably because he’d already screwed up everything else he touched. His first wife dumped him and cleaned out his bank account. His second wife was a Communist organizer of some kind. She died of cancer. The guy’s a loser, Jack.”

Preacher was sitting at a card table in the shade behind his stucco house, watching a lizard crawl across the top of a big gray rock while he talked. The table was spread with a clean cloth. On top of the cloth, Preacher had disassembled his Thompson machine gun. Next to the disassembled parts were a can of lubricant and a bore brush and a white rag stained yellow with a fresh application of oil. While he talked, Preacher touched the oiled surface of the Thompson’s barrel and studied the wispy tracings his fingerprints left on the steel.

“Listen, Jack, if it’s not broken, you don’t fix it,” Bobby Lee said. “The guy couldn’t even save his own grits. Liam would have capped him if that cunt of a deputy hadn’t shown up.”

“Don’t use that term around me.”

“We’re talking about popping a Texas sheriff, and you’re worried about language?”

Preacher wiped his fingertips on the gun cloth and studied a hawk flying above the mountainside, its shadow racing across the slope.

“You there?” Bobby Lee said.

“Where else would I be?”

“I’m just saying Holland is a retread and a rural schmuck who surrounds himself with other losers. Why borrow trouble?” Bobby Lee said.

“The man has the Navy Cross.”

“So, rah-rah, he’s a swinging dick. Maybe he ran in the wrong direction.”

“You have a serious problem, Bobby Lee.”

“What’s that?”

“You come to conclusions without looking at the evidence. Then you find reasons to justify your shoddy conclusions. It’s like inventing a square wheel and trying to convince yourself you like your wagon to ride a little rough.”

“Jack, you smoked a federal agent. You want to add another cop to your tally? They not only execute in this state, they have beer parties at the prison gates when they do it. I’m risking my life throwing in with you. We’ve got Hugo and Artie Rooney to deal with. Then there’s Vikki Gaddis and the soldier boy. What’s next, dropping a hydrogen bomb on Iran?”

“I’ll handle Artie Rooney.”

“You ought to get laid. You know what Hugo said? I’m quoting Hugo, I didn’t say it, it’s Hugo talking, not me. He said, ‘Preacher’s last sexual encounter was a visit to his proctologist.’ How long has it been since you got your ashes hauled?”

Preacher watched the lizard’s throat puff out in a red balloon on the rock. The lizard’s tongue uncoiled and wrapped around a tiny black ant and pulled the ant into the lizard’s mouth. “I’m glad you’re on my side, Bobby Lee. You have loyalty in your lineage. That’s why General Lee stuck with the state of Virginia, isn’t it? Loyalty has no surrogate. Blood will out, won’t it?”