“Who’s in charge?”

“Julio Batista and his toady,” Woods said.

Joe thanked him and eased off the blacktop into the ditch and drove toward the front of the line. He could see Batista and Heinz Underwood shouting at someone through the poles of the gate, which was locked up with a heavy chain. Joe couldn’t recall seeing the gate closed before. He pulled parallel with Sheriff Reed’s handicapped van, shut off the engine, and swung out.

Reed was in his chair with the sliding door open, watching the action at the gate with a look of bemusement on his face. When he saw Joe, he arched his eyebrows in greeting.

“Woods told me,” Joe said. “So none of these geniuses made a call to Frank to ask permission to cross his land and set up a command post on it, huh?”

“Apparently not,” Reed said. “They call it an FOB, by the way.”

“So how long have you been waiting here?”

Reed glanced at his wristwatch. “About a half an hour.”

Joe whistled.

“I heard about Bryce Pendergast,” Reed said, his eyes moving to the reddened side of Joe’s face. “I can’t say I’m surprised, though. Pendergast and McDermott have been hanging with the tweaker crowd for a couple of years now, and I guess they thought they’d rather be buyers and sellers.

“Norwood called me a few minutes ago and said those idiots had all the ingredients they needed inside the house—Sudafed, iodine, phosphorus, Coleman fuel, acetone, denatured alcohol, and a bunch of flasks and beakers—but he said it didn’t look like they were in production yet. He said it looked like they were trying to figure out how to cook it, but so far all they’d made were mistakes. It’s a wonder they didn’t blow themselves up.”

“Good thing they didn’t,” Joe said. “There’s a nice old lady next door.”

“Oh—and we have McDermott in jail right alongside Pendergast. We caught him at the Kum and Go, buying a microwave burrito with his last pennies.”

Joe nodded.

“Sounds like you could have gotten yourself killed,” Reed said, concerned.

“Yup.”

“Bear spray, Joe?” Reed asked, incredulous.

“Good stuff.”

Reed grinned and shook his head, then got serious. “I think they could use your help over at the gate. You know Frank pretty well, don’t you?”

“I had breakfast with him yesterday morning.”

“Maybe you could talk some sense into him.”

Joe looked over and saw Batista gesticulating through the rails of the gate.

“Frank’s a stubborn old bird,” Joe said.

“Please, Joe,” Reed said. “Give it a try. We all look kind of stupid just sitting here.”

—

AS JOE TURNED to join Batista and Heinz Underwood at the gate, Reed called after him, “Joe, they canceled their offer of a reward.”

Joe looked over his shoulder, relieved. “Good.”

“Couldn’t get authorization for it, I guess,” Reed said. “Too much red tape.”

“So it wasn’t like they came to their senses and realized it was too heavy-handed,” Joe said.

“Nothing like that.”

“Did they announce it to the press?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Reed said.

“So the word is still out there.”

“I’m hoping they’ll give a statement soon. I heard something about a press conference at the FOB.” He nodded toward the locked gate and added, “Assuming there’s an FOB.”

Joe shook his head, took a deep breath through his nostrils, and approached the gate.

—

FRANK ZELLER STOOD on the other side of the locked gate in his Wranglers, boots, and sweat-stained silver-belly Stetson. He cradled a lever-action Winchester .30-30 rifle that was pointed loosely off to the side. Joe had last seen the weapon the morning before, in Frank’s gun case. It was an old saddle carbine that had belonged to his father. The stock was scuffed, and the bluing was rubbed silver from years of rough use. He knew Frank had a large choice of rifles—every ranch house did—so he wouldn’t have brought the symbolic Winchester to the gate if he didn’t think the situation was profound.

Frank was short, wiry, and had a long craggy face that made him look tall in photos. Cobalt-blue eyes winked out from tanned and wrinkled skin, and his hands were so leathery it appeared he was wearing gloves. He wasn’t a warm or glib man, and he’d burned through two wives, seven or eight kids, and two dozen ranch hands since Joe had been in the valley. Frank Zeller was known for being one of the few remaining scions of the original founding ranches in the area that were still intact, and for not exactly welcoming newcomers. It took three years for Frank to meet Joe’s eyes as they passed on the highway, five years before Frank would raise a traditional single-digit salute of greeting from his steering wheel, seven years before Frank nodded at Joe in town, and nine years before he said Joe’s name aloud. The last two years, though, they actually talked, mainly due to the water-guzzler project Joe had proposed and installed, which Frank approved of.

Like so many western characters Joe had come to know, and despite his demeanor and his constant scowl and rancher uniform of long-sleeved shirts, hat, jeans, and boots, Frank turned out to be a bundle of contradictions. He loved opera and had spent his college years in Italy attending performances at La Scala in Milan; he’d endowed the Zeller Chair of Economics at the University of Wyoming; and he kept a luxury Sikorsky helicopter in a hangar at the Twelve Sleep County Municipal Airport that he piloted himself.

Julio Batista couldn’t have known any of that, though, and certainly not by the way he was talking through the gate to Frank, Joe thought. He caught the end of Batista saying: “. . . we could take this all the way if we have to, Mr. Zeller. What you’re doing here is stubbornly preventing authorized federal law enforcement from engaging in a hot-pursuit investigation of a man who murdered two government employees in cold blood.”

Frank Zeller snorted and rolled his eyes. “So you’ve already convicted him, huh? I thought you had to arrest him first.”

“We need passage, and we need it now.”

Zeller said, “Not through my land, you don’t. Not without a court order and compensation. This is private property, and you aren’t crossing it without my say-so.”

“This is insane,” Batista said to Frank. “I could have you arrested right now.”

“Try,” Frank said, still cradling the rifle but not raising or pointing it. “You bust down that gate and your monkeys will start dropping like flies.”

“Is that a threat?” Batista said, his voice rising. “Did you just threaten me? And was there a racial aspect to the threat?”

“No threat,” Zeller said. “I made a promise.”

“Hey, Frank,” Joe said, interrupting.

Zeller’s eyes shifted to Joe, but he didn’t move his head. “Joe,” he said, his voice flat.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Batista said to Joe.

Joe ignored him.

“These fancy federal boys want to use my ranch to set up some kind of camp,” Zeller said. “They want to track up my meadows with their vehicles, and open up my place to all their friends to come in. They don’t want to talk terms, or deals. They just want me to unlock this gate and stand aside while they roll through like Patton’s army.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Batista whispered.

Zeller said, “When I want to lease forest for my cattle or cut wood to build a new corral, I’ve got to pay these boys a fee. But when they want to charge through my ranch and use it like it was a playground, they don’t want to pay me anything.”

“He’s got a point,” Joe said to Batista.

The administrator’s eyes flashed, and he whispered to Joe, “We don’t have time to negotiate an agreement. It takes months to get this kind of thing through—you know that.”

“You were quick enough with that reward last night,” Joe said.

“That has nothing to do with this,” Batista said, his voice rising again. “I thought you were here to help us.”