He followed him back to a small house trailer sitting at the edge of a quarter-acre clearing. A dusty La-z-boy recliner waited next to a fire pit as if waiting for its turn to be burned. The fire was lit, cracking and snapping happily at an iron bar erected over the pit as a makeshift spit. Thick wooden tables flanked the trailer. Frank realized that if the zookeeper made it back into the trailer, that was it. He’d never be able to get inside and keep the man from making a phone call. And Frank had no way of knowing what kind of weapons were stashed inside the trailer.

The zookeeper dropped the empty bucket near one of the tables. He bent over, opened a battered red and white ice chest under the table, and pulled out a cut of meat wrapped in white butcher paper.

Frank circled around the clearing, then dropped to his knees and wriggled under the trailer. He had to pick his way over tangles of barbed wire, fence posts, and rolls of chain link fence. The only thing he could think to try was to maybe get close enough to the zookeeper while the man’s back was turned and crack him across the skull with the tire iron. It had worked for the truck driver.

As Frank crawled closer, holding his breath, watching the trunks of the zookeeper’s legs walk back forth from the table to the fire pit, his left hand came down on something heavy. In the flickering glow of the pale yellow light and the flames from the fire pit, Frank saw that it was a T-square fence post, a thick red steel one, six feet tall, with raised notches along the length for wrapping wire, and two flat blades two feet from the bottom for anchoring it into the earth.

Frank waited for a moment, watching the shuffling legs kick up dust as they approached the table. He tucked the tire iron back into his sleeve, and gently slid the fence post forward. He rose a little, waiting to see if his knees would crack. They didn’t, and he watched the wide legs amble back to the fire pit. Frank burst smoothly and silently from under the trailer like a white shark snatching a sea lion from the surface, whipping the fence post up and over his head.

As the zookeeper stood facing the fire, squeezing ketchup onto a plate of steaming lion steak, Frank brought the fencepost down like he was splitting open a stubborn chunk of firewood. He buried the blade three inches into the man’s skull, driving the jawbone into the collarbone, blowing out all of those chins like an underripe zit.

The zookeeper wobbled a moment. The lion steak landed in the dust. The paper plate drifted into the flames. The zookeeper dropped to his knees and fell face first into the fire. Blood boiled and popped.

The body shivered and twitched for a while. Frank left the fencepost stuck in the head and collapsed into the La-z-boy. He knew he needed to drag the body out of the fire; the smell of burning flesh would get the animals’ attention, and Frank didn’t want any of them getting loose like last time. The zookeeper’s ears were burning now and creamy blue smoke curled around the fencepost as it rose.

Frank left the burning man behind and went into the trailer. When he came out, he was holding a bottle.

“Hell, son.” Sturm’s voice came from the shadows. “I’d say that you killing horses is understatement. You got yourself a genuine talent for killing damn near anything alive to start with.”

“Yeah.” Frank wasn’t surprised to hear Sturm. He tilted the bottle and drank for a solid fifteen seconds, then sat down heavily on the trailer’s steps. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, sweet and rotten at the same time, reminding Frank of a can of frozen orange juice concentrate about a year on the wrong side of the expiration date.

* * * * *

It was Sturm’s idea to feed the zookeeper to the animals.

They dragged the burnt corpse out of the fire and hoisted it onto one of the tables. The clothes and the rubber boots went into the fire. The butchering didn’t take long, only about half an hour to chop the zookeeper into pieces no bigger than a football. It helped that the tools had been well maintained, kept sharp. They dumped the pieces into the five gallon buckets; the fatty meat filled seven of them.

When they were finished, Sturm handed Frank two buckets and said, “Here. Go feed them animals. They could use it. I got a call to make.”

* * * * *

Frank took it slow. He’d ease up to a cage, talking in a relaxed, low voice. “Easy, that’s it, easy does it. Easy girl.” He called all the animals “girl” whether they were female or not.

The big cats watched him warily from a distance, but their flicking tails and attentive noses gave away their hunger. Frank would spear pieces with a long BBQ fork and gently flick the meat through the bars and watch as the cats snatched at it with scary speed and accuracy. Then they’d settle into the darkest corner of the cages and rip at their chunk.

When Frank got back to the trailer, he found Sturm in the La-z-boy, talking on the cell phone. Frank wondered if he was the only person in the west without a cell phone. He kind of wished he hadn’t tossed out the one he found in the car.

Sturm looked up. “Any suggestions for a tranquilizer?”

Frank thought for a moment. “We used Acepromezene at the track. If it’ll calm down a goddamn thoroughbred, it should work here. Ketamine, too, if you can get it.”

“How much?”

Frank shrugged. “As much as you can get.”

* * * * *

Frank returned for the last bucket. Sturm was waiting. The cell phone had disappeared. “Have a seat.”

Frank tossed the bucket under the table, but remained standing. Sturm leaned back, folded one leg over the other, adjusted his jeans, and clasped his hands across his groin. It looked awful prim and proper coming from a guy in a black Stetson. “So. What should I call you? Mr. Winter? Or maybe Mr. Winchester?”

“Call me Frank.”

“And how am I supposed to know what’s true here?”

“The name I gave you is my real name.”

“Is that so.”

“Look, there’s some…people after me. Some connected people, if you follow. Men with friends. Powerful friends. A lion, from here, killed one. Another went into the alligator tank. I don’t know what happened to him. And this,” he nodded at the last bucket, “is the rest of the men who knew I was here. When I was at the fight, at the time, I didn’t think it was smart to give my real name.”

“Hell son, you can call yourself Mary fucking Poppins for all I give a shit. When someone makes money off me—I don’t give a flying shit how much it is, twenty bucks or twenty thousand—I’m going to know how. And why. I make it my business. All I really want to know right now is why you bet against me and my son.”

Using the fencepost, Frank arranged the logs in the firepit into a pyramid shape, then jammed the end of the post into the center of the fire. “Well. You have to understand that it was nothing personal. I’m not exactly from around here.”

Sturm waited patiently.

As he talked, Frank heaped more wood, solid chunks of oak, onto the fire, keeping the fence post in the very heart of the fire. “Your son, he looked liked he worked hard, that’s for damn sure. But it looked like he’d spent a lot of hours in the gym, instead of…” Frank took a deep breath, and shoved the end deeper into the fire. “That other kid, he looked like he’d spent a lot of time getting the shit kicked out of him.” He twisted the fencepost slowly, and deep in the fire, the blades slowly broke away. “You have to understand, when I got to the fight, I didn’t know anything about you, anything about this town. Didn’t know any history.”

Sturm nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the animal cages. “So all that time you were drinking and driving all over God’s creation, them boys never said anything. Okay. Fine. So all I want to know is why.”

Frank shrugged. “It looked like the other kid knew how to fight.”