Barnum raised a finger to the bartender, a half-blind former rodeo team coach named Buck Timberman. Buck had been a big-time bullrider but had retired after a bull stepped on his head and crushed it, resulting in brain damage. He still wore his national finals belt buckles, though, rotating them so he wore a different one each day of the week. Barnum liked Timberman because Buck was staunchly loyal, even stupidly loyal, and he still referred to Barnum as "Sheriff."

"Changeover time," Barnum said, thrusting his coffee cup forward.

"It's only eleven-thirty," Timberman said, looking at his wristwatch. "You've got a half hour before noon."

"So it's one-thirty Eastern," Barnum growled, "which means we've wasted an hour and a half of drinking time."

Timberman frowned while he drew a beer and poured a shot. "Why Eastern time?"

"Our new friend here is used to Eastern," Barnum said. "Didn't you notice how he said 'here'? He said 'here'like JFK. He's from Boston or someplace, but he's got Virginia plates and a lot of outdoor gear in his rig. Judging by the dirt on that car, I'm guessing he didn't fly and rent, he drove out all the way."

"I ain't seen him in here before," Timberman said, taking the coffee cup and replacing it with the draft and the shot.

"Nope," Barnum said. "He was asking you something a minute ago. What was it?"

Timberman looked over Barnum's shoulder to make sure the tall man wasn't coming back yet. "He's got an interest in falconry. He asked me if I knew of anybody around here who might have birds available. He also asked me if we have a range where he can sight in his hunting rifle. And he wanted to know where the bathroom is."

When the tall man returned he found a shot of bourbon and a glass of beer next to his coffee cup. He looked toward Timberman, who pointed to the ex-sheriff.

"Cheers," Barnum said, raising his shot glass and sipping the top off.

"Thanks are in order," the man said to Barnum, tentatively raising his whiskey, "but it's pretty early in the day."

Barnum said, "It's never too early to treat a visitor to some cowboy hospitality."

The tall man sipped half of his shot, winced, and chased it with a long pull from the beer, never taking his piercing brown eyes off Barnum.

"Who says I'm visiting?" the tall man asked.

Barnum tipped his head toward Timberman. "Buck here said you were asking about falcons."

"So much for the famed confidentiality of the bartending profession," the tall man said evenly. In his peripheral vision, Barnum could see Timberman suddenly look down at his shoes and shuffle away.

"I asked him," Barnum said. "What he told me will be treated with confidence."

The tall man's eyes narrowed. "And who are you, exactly?"

"I used to be the sheriff here," Barnum said.

"To a lot of us," Timberman interjected, "he'll always be our sheriff."

Barnum humbly nodded his thanks to Timberman.

The tall man seemed to be thinking things over, Barnum observed, trying to decide if he was going to say more or take his leave.

"I might be able to help you out," Barnum said.

The tall man turned to Timberman, and the bartender said, "You ought to ask the sheriff."

While the tall man pondered, Barnum closed his newspaper, folded it, and put his reading glasses and gold pen in his shirt pocket.

"Let me ask you this," Barnum said. "Are you looking for a falcon, or are you looking for a particular falconer?"

The tall man's face revealed nothing. "I don't believe we've actually met."

"Bud Barnum. You?"

"Randan Bello."

"Welcome to Saddlestring, Mr. Bello."

Bello picked up his shot and beer, walked down the length of the bar and sat down on a stool next to Barnum. Timberman watched, then went to the far end of the bar to wash glasses that were already clean.

"I'm looking for a falconer," Bello said, speaking low and looking at his reflection in the back bar mirror and not directly at Barnum.

"I know of a guy," Barnum said to Bello's face in the mirror. "He's got a place by himself on the river. Carries a.454 Casull. Is that him?"

Bello sipped his beer. "Could be."

Barnum described Nate Romanowski, and let a half-smile form on his mouth. "If he's the one, he's been a thorn in my side since he showed up in my county. Romanowski and a game warden named Joe Pickett. I've got no use for either one of them."

Bello turned on his stool and Barnum felt the man's eyes bore into the side of his head.

"So you can help me," Bello said.

At the end of the bar, Timberman made a loud fuss over cleaning some ashtrays.

"I can't think of anything I'd rather do," Barnum said, surprised that his bitterness betrayed him.

"I see."

Barnum said, "I understand you're looking for a place to sight in. There's a nice range west of town with bench rests. I could make a call."

"Let me buy the next round," Bello said.

ELEVEN

In Jackson, the funeral service for Will Jensen was being held in a log chapel built to look much older and more rustic than it actually was. Joe sat in the next to last row wearing the same jacket and tie he had worn for the wedding of Bud Longbrake and Missy Vankueren. His clothes were wrinkled from his suitcase. He had arrived a half hour early, to observe the mourners as they arrived, after calling home to find no one was there. There was a dull pain behind his eyes from the bourbon the night before and a practically sleepless night. It was cold in the chapel, and he welcomed the throaty rumble of a furnace from behind a closed door near the altar, indicating that someone had turned up the thermostat.

A brass urn sat squarely on a stand atop a red tapestry in front of the podium. Damn, Joe thought, there wasn't much left of Will, just his ashes in the urn and a framed photo of him in his red game warden uniform. In the photo, Will was saddling one of his horses and turning to the photographer with a loopy smile on his face. Who knew what was so funny at the time? Joe wondered. On the other side of the urn was a framed photo of the Jensen family-Will, Susan, his two sons wearing ill-fitting jackets and ties. The photo looked to be a few years old to Joe because the boys appeared to be the same age they had been when he saw them in the Jensen house for the first and only time. In the photo, the family looked stiff but happy. All those ties made Will, and the boys, uncomfortable, he guessed.

Joe had spent the morning in the office, reading through the first three spiral notebooks and halfway through the fourth. Patterns were emerging. During the deep winter, in January when the notebooks all began, Will spent a good deal of time in the office, writing up reports on often-controversial policy issues that he was required to comment on, and visiting with local ranchers, outfitters, and the Feds. Spring was consumed with more reports and comments, but also preparations for the summer and fall, working with his horses, repairing tack and equipment, signing off on outfitter camp locations, and making recommendations for season lengths and harvests. During the summer months, he was out in the field nearly every day, checking licenses of fishermen on the rivers and lakes, doing trend counts of deer, elk, and moose, or horse-packing into the backcoun-try to check his remote cabin and repair winter damage. Fall, as Joe suspected, was a whirlwind of activity once the hunting seasons started and opener after opener arrived. The pattern in the fall was the lack of a pattern, and at first Joe thought Will was flying by the seat of his pants, dashing from place to place. Will patrolled the front country and backcountry seemingly at random, covering his district in a way that seemed haphazard. One day he would be in the southeastern quadrant in his pickup, the next he would be on horseback in the northwestern corner-where he might be gone for days. But then Joe saw the logic in it, and admired the way Will worked.