“He won’t stop with that shooting. I called ATF and told them he has automatic weapons. I’m sure of it. Probably machine guns. He’s some kind of gun nut. People don’t appreciate the sound of gunfire when we’re serving dinner at the Inn. That’s not what they come up here for. We have a glass-enclosed massage area—cost a fortune—faces that nut’s place. We’re trying to run a business here,” Cooley said. The accountant looked up the road toward Phelps’s cabin. “Besides, we’re afraid of him. He’s crazy and no doubt violent.”

Quentin finished buttoning up his jean jacket. His anger had passed as quickly as it had come. He held the package up against his chest. “I wish you hadn’t done that, Mr. Cooley. That’s going to make for trouble. People around here like to take care of their own problems. I told you I would talk to Chuck about his gun range. He’s reasonable. I can work this out, if you just give me a chance. The gun range is legal. I’ve told you. But maybe we could get him to use it just in the morning or something?”

“Sheriff, I like you. You have tried. I know you have, but Jesus Christ, the man’s a nut. They said they’d come out here and investigate. Sorry. But I think you local people are a little slow. I know he’s a local and all. I’m just trying to get along here.” Cooley nodded, put the Range Rover in gear and drove off. He turned around in Chuck Phelps’s driveway and raced down the road toward town.

You aren’t trying very hard, Quentin thought. All the rich city people that were moving in were the same, they all said they wanted to fit in, until it came time to fit in. Then it was always their way or the highway.

Quentin stood on top of a fallen pine tree and surveyed the road into the Phelps’s ranch. He saw no footprints or fresh snowmobile tracks. He looked down at the cabin, a good hundred yards down the snow-bound road. No smoke from the chimney. The cabin was small, hand-built by Chuck. He’d started it the summer he got back from the Marine Corps. His parents had lived in the original ranch house until they died a few years ago.

The sheriff looked to his left. He saw the original Phelps place two hundred yards to his right. A fancy Los Angeles plastic surgeon had bought it as a summer place. The original turn-of the-century two-story ranch house had been completely remodeled. It had a home theater and an indoor swimming pool, people said, a third story had been added, too. The doctor was rumored to have spent five million dollars on the renovations. A chimney was throwing off smoke from a small caretaker’s cabin in back of the doctor’s place.

Quentin climbed off the tree and onto the other side of the barricade. His cowboy boots pushed through the deep snow. He knew from experience it was going to be a trudge to the cabin as Chuck purposefully kept the road un-plowed. He started out lifting his knees high, his jeans getting wet in the fresh snow. The wind picked up, blowing from the east.

He remembered the Phelps family in the ‘70s when Chuck’s father was still alive. Crusty old Phelps used to call him “Kid.” Chuck Phelps’s old man wore jeans and cowboy boots his whole life and could count the times he’d been further than Sacramento. Quentin remembered, too, the picnics in the meadow with several generations of both families, huge plates of food, yellow jackets, and the smell of wild flowers blooming in June. After their parents died Chuck’s sister had sold off her share of the ranch for a lot of money, moved to San Francisco and married a tight-ass professor. Chuck stayed on, living on his veteran’s benefits.

One of Chuck’s several dogs, a big German shepherd, started barking loudly. The dog came out from behind the cabin, bounding through the snow. His chest buried, the dog struggled to get to the sheriff. Quentin stopped. He tried to remember the dog’s name.  A Border collie came up behind the shepherd.

“Ronny, good dog.” Quentin called the shepherd’s name, clapping his hands together. The shepherd stopped barking when he heard his name called, then started running again, his tail wagging. He got within ten feet of Quentin. Big white strings of saliva hung from the dog’s open mouth.

“Ronny! Good dog. Come here . . .  Good dog!” The shepherd came forward in slow hops, its chest sending snow flying. Quentin patted the animal on the head when he reached him.

“Good dog. Where’s your master, huh? Where’s Chuck?” The dog barked twice, then took off running back toward the cabin, recognizing Quentin. The dog’s black fur was covered with snow powder.

   Quentin could feel the cold and wet through his jeans. He followed the dogs to the cabin’s front door. The stairs were covered in new snow, a sure sign that Chuck was gone.

The cabin door was crude and had big hand-forged hinges. Quentin knocked twice. Chuck had given them a key, which Quentin carried, but he didn’t use it. The little porch had firewood stacked up neatly next to the window. No lights were on inside.

Quentin turned around. Chuck had worked to make a clearing in front of the cabin on all sides. Quentin remembered one day, in mid-summer, coming down the road in his father’s car just to say hi. Chuck was out in the field in just a pair of shorts and a chain saw. It was right after he had married Marie.

“What the hell are you doing, man?” Quentin had said.

“Field of fire,” Chuck said.

“Field of fire?”

“Yup.”

“Man, you’re back home. This isn’t Vietnam,” Quentin had told him.

“I know that. But it’s going to get bad. All those riots in the cities. You wait and see,” Chuck said. “Just wait.”

“You didn’t come to the wedding. Marie and I were looking for you,” Quentin said.

Chuck put down his chain saw. It was blazing hot and he had wood chips and sweat and pine pitch sticking to his big upper body. His eyes were soft. Not the eyes of a man who had done several tours of duty in Vietnam and stayed in the Marine Corps, doing twenty years.

“I’m sorry about that, Quentin. I didn’t have no clothes for that. How’d it go?” Chuck asked. He killed the engine to the chain saw and all they could hear was a woodpecker’s euphonic tapping; the summer morning held a clear, soon-to-be hot sweetness.

“You know. Lots of people. Church in Nevada City was crowded,” Quentin said.

Chuck walked toward the car and they met out in the field and shook hands. Chuck’s greasy black Giants cap was pulled down low over his forehead.

“How’s married life? You got a sweet girl there in Marie. You’re a lucky guy.”

“It’s better than being shot at,” Quentin said. They both smiled at the joke.

“I figure a hundred yards is good enough—360. What do you figure? No sappers going to sneak up on my ass,” Chuck had told him.

Quentin had looked at Chuck squatting on the dirt, wearing his jungle-style combat boots. He was still back there. He hadn’t come home at all, Quentin realized.

Quentin turned around and knocked again on the cabin’s door, this time loudly. He tried the door. It was locked. He pulled the key to the place that Chuck had given Marie before she died, telling her it was important that her family have a key to the cabin. It was still a mystery as to why he’d given it to Marie in the hospital. She’d made Quentin promise to carry the key with him and he had. It was one of the last things they’d talked about. He unlocked the door and poked his head in.

“Chuck, you at home? It’s Quentin, I’ve got your mail!”

No answer. Chuck had obviously gone out. It was what Quentin had expected. Chuck was probably out deer hunting and forgot to tell Mordecai to hold the mail, or he’d gone to San Francisco to visit his sister, which he did once a year.