"How about I buy you a beer?" I said.

"No, thank you, sir. I aim to dance. Sue Lynn don't mind. She and me has bellied up before in what you might call private-type situations."

Lucas's hat was pushed back on his head and his hands hung awkwardly at his sides. There were red circles, like apples, in his cheeks.

"What's with you, man?" he said to Wyatt Dixon.

"I'm a great admirer of womanhood, son. I respect every part of their God-made bodies, and this 'un here done won my heart a long time ago. Now go over yonder and sit down and drink you a soda pop. Ask your daddy to tell you about my sister, Katie Jo Winset. Her fate was a great Texas tragedy."

Dixon reached out with two forked knuckles toward Lucas's nose, but Lucas stepped backward and slapped Dixon's hand away, disbelieving the insult to his person even as it took place. Dixon smiled and glanced toward the purple glow on the hills, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the evening, then lowered his hand between Lucas and Sue Lynn and fastened it on Lucas's scrotum. That's when Lucas hit him.

The blow knocked Dixon's hat off his head, but the grin never left his face.

"I still got your package in my hand, boy. You want, I can tear it out root and stem," he said.

I swung my fist into Dixon's ear but it was like hitting stone. He turned his head slowly toward me, his ear bleeding, his right hand tightening on my son's genitalia.

"I'm gonna come for you, Mr. Holland. You'll smell me in the dark, then you'll feel my hand fasten on you, and the next day you'll be somebody else," he said.

I swung my fist into his mouth and felt the edges of his teeth cut into my skin. Then his friends were upon me.

The fight rolled through the concession area. I can't describe what happened with any certitude, because since I had been a young boy anger had always affected me in the same way whiskey does a drunkard. I would hear whirring sounds in my ears, then I would be inside a dead zone filled with shards of red and yellow light, a place where I felt neither physical pain nor any form of moral restraint.

I remember being knocked into the side of a horse tank, of hearing hooves thudding inside the livestock pens, then picking up a shaved wooden pole, about four foot in length, and smashing it into the face of a man who had a swastika tattooed between his eyes. I kicked a man who was on the ground, hard, in the spleen, and again in the head. Women were screaming, an overweight rent-a-cop was flung into a water puddle, and I swung the wood pole like a baseball bat and saw blood fly against the canvas side of a tepee and saw the man I'd hit fall on his knees and weep.

But it was Wyatt Dixon I wanted. As in a dream, I flailed at my attackers, but the source of my rage stood on the edge of the fray and grinned, adjusting the garters on his sleeves, one ear leaking a scarlet line down his jawbone.

The rent-a-cop struggled to his feet from the water puddle, wheezing for breath, his uniform flecked with mud. The strap on his revolver had popped loose and the checkered handle protruded loosely from the holster, the heavy, brass-cased rounds fat and snug inside the cylinder.

I pushed someone out of the way and reached for the revolver. Then I heard horse's hooves and suddenly the side of an enormous buckskin mare knocked me senseless into a rick fence.

I stared up from the ground at the silhouette of the rider. He was huge, the backs of his hands traced with scar tissue, his face a mixture of pity and incomprehension.

"I ain't playing with you, son. I'll whip you with a blackjack if I have to," he said.

Then I felt the world come back into focus and saw Temple and Lucas bending down toward me, touching me with their hands.

"Why, how you doin', Sheriff?" I said to the man on horseback. "You like Merle Haggard?"

Chapter 14

My wrists were cuffed behind my back, and I was put in a holding cell at the county jail, where I stayed, without being booked, until early the next morning.

Sheriff Cain walked down the corridor behind a trusty who was wheeling a food cart from cell to cell. The sheriff picked up a Styrofoam container of scrambled eggs and tiny sausages and a cup of coffee and a cellophane-wrapped plastic fork from the tray and set them on the apron of the food slit.

"Them three skinheads you whacked with that pole are still in the hospital," he said.

"Gee, I'm sorry to hear that," I replied.

"I was gonna ride in the parade last night. I was really looking forward to it. Somebody should glue warning labels on you. You're a traveling shit storm."

"Do I get out of here?"

"You got a bloodlust, Mr. Holland. I seen it in your face."

"I don't apologize for it."

"Then I hope you can live with it, 'cause it'll plumb eat you up. A federal agent wants to talk with you. When he's done, I'll kick you loose," the sheriff said, and walked away heavily, like a man who knew his knowledge of the world would never have an influence upon it.

I sat down on the bench in the cell and drank from the Styrofoam coffee cup. Amos Rackley, the ATF agent who had told me he'd break my nose off if I put it in government business again, walked to the cell door and propped his arms across a horizontal iron plate, then removed them and dusted off his sleeves.

His face was smooth-grained and handsome, his sandy hair neatly parted. He took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and kept clicking the button on top with his thumb.

"Can you explain to me what your son is doing with Sue Lynn Big Medicine?" he said.

"Dancing, the last time I saw her."

"You were an officer of the federal court. You know how our operations work. You know the danger that certain individuals are exposed to. Where's your judgment, man?"

I set the Styrofoam cup down on the bench and stood up. My khakis and leather jacket and boots were powdered with dust, my body sore and stiff all over from the fight at the concert.

"Y'all are still after the Oklahoma City bombers. You don't care about the rape of a teenage girl. You don't care about the assault on my son's person. You lost friends in the Murrah Building and I can understand the feelings you have now. So I don't want you to take it personally when I tell you to go play with your pencils and stay out of my life."

He bit his lip and looked down the corridor at nothing, then fixed his eyes on me again.

"You know what I wish, Mr. Holland? That I could forget who I was for just ten minutes and stomp the living shit out of you," he said.

Two NIGHTS LATER Doc was in Missoula, buying groceries, when an electric storm rolled up the Blackfoot canyon. Bolts of lightning crashed on the ridges above the house, bursting ponderosa trees into small fires that flared and died in the rain. Then the storm passed and the rain stopped and black clouds sealed the sky, flickering with lightning that gave no thunder. Just above the river, the mountainsides were hung with mist, the air sweet with smoke from wood-stove pine.

Bears had been in the garbage before sunrise that same day and had pushed against the windows with their paws, trying to slide the glass. Now a sow and two cubs came down out of the trees on the far side of the river and waded into the shallows and crossed the deepest part of the current by jumping from boulder to boulder until they lumbered belly-deep into the water on the near side and walked dripping up the bank past the garden.

Maisey went into the bathroom and undressed for her shower, then heard the garbage cans rattle. She rubbed the moisture off the window glass and looked out at the log barn and saw the bears ripping the bungee cords off the garbage can tops and pulling the vinyl bags out with their teeth. One of the cubs dug into a split bag and flung the garbage backward through his hindquarters.