I went BACK into the house and opened the Mis-soula phone directory and began the long process of trying to contact a federal agent for whom I had no business card. Finally I reached a Treasury Department switchboard in Washington, D.C., and after three transfers was able to leave my name and number.

Then I went to Bob Ward's Sporting Goods and bought a.38 revolver with a two-inch barrel and a clip-on holster and a box of cartridges.

By that afternoon I had heard nothing back from my inquiry at the Treasury Department.

I called the Missoulian and asked for the classified ad department.

"Is there still time to get a two-column boldface in tomorrow's paper?" I asked.

"Yes, I think we can do that. What do you want it to say?" a woman replied sweetly.

"'Amos Rackley, Please Get in Touch. Urgent.' Sign it 'Billy Bob Holland.'"

"That's it?" she asked.

"No. Let me make an addition," I said.

That evening I picked up Temple at the airport. She had been called back to Texas to testify at a trial and I had not seen her since I had impetuously kissed her in the picnic grounds by the river. When she walked off the plane I felt that the best friend I had on earth had just come back into my life.

"Anything happen while I was gone?" she asked.

"A little bit. Doc garroted Wyatt Dixon with Lucas's guitar strings and taped him to a chair and came within an inch of blowing up him and his house with butane gas."

"You're making this up?"

"I wish Doc had finished what he started."

"Say again?"

"Dixon said he might take Lucas's bones out. Those are the words he used," I said, and felt myself swallow.

Temple put her suitcase into the bed of my truck and got into the cab. I started the engine and drove out on the highway. The hills across the river looked low and humped in the sunset and the sky was dull gold and flecked with dark birds. I felt her watching the side of my face.

"Don't be too hard on Doc," she said.

"He wants it both ways. He whips a rope on these guys, but he's not willing to go to the tree with them."

"You better hope he doesn't."

We didn't speak for several moments. Then I said, "Do you want to have supper?"

"I ate on the plane. Another time, okay?" she said, and smiled wanly.

"Sure," I said, and pulled into the parking lot of her motel on East Broadway, not far from Hellgate Canyon, which had been named by Jesuit missionaries after they saw the litter of human bones left from the Blackfoot ambushes of the Flatheads.

She hefted her suitcase out of the truck bed and yawned. The wind was cool and the light had gone pink on the trees that grew along the crest of the canyon and I could see white-water rafters bouncing through the rapids on the river.

"Can you come in a minute?" she said.

"Sure," I said, and walked behind her into her room.

She set her suitcase down and shut the blinds and closed the door and turned on the lights. She sat on the edge of her bed and looked into space for a moment, and I could see the fatigue of the trip seep into her face.

"Maybe I should come back tomorrow," I said.

"No, stay," she said, and pulled off her loafers and unscrewed her earrings and set them on the night-stand. Then she took a breath and smiled and let her eyes rest on mine. "It's been a long day."

"I guess it has," I said, and saw an ice bucket and two drinking glasses on the desk. "I'll get a couple of sodas if you like."

"No, that's all right," she said, and lifted her large shoulder bag onto her lap. "A friend of mine got ahold of Carl Hinkel's sheet. I thought we should go over it."

"Hinkel's sheet?"

"Yeah. This guy recruits ex-cons like Lamar Ellison and Wyatt Dixon over the Internet. He was a college professor once, can you believe that?"

"You wanted to go over Hinkel's sheet?"

"You'd rather not do it now?"

"Hinkel's a bucket of shit, Temple. Who cares what his history is?"

"I just don't believe I've come back to this," she said.

The next morning was Saturday and I went into town by myself and ate steak and eggs in a cafe by the rail yards, then took a walk across the Higgins Street Bridge and along the river by an old train depot that was now used for offices by an environmental group. The walkway by the river was still deep in shadow, the runoff loud through the cottonwoods and willows. I didn't hear the car that pulled off the bridge and drove down a ramp and stopped behind me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a car door open and a crew-cut blond man in a suit suddenly running at me, his arm outstretched. I turned and ripped my elbow into his face and felt the bone break in his nose.

He cupped his hands to his face and an unintelligible sound came out of his mouth. His white shirt was splattered with blood and his eyes were filled with pain and rage. His hand went inside his suit coat and closed on the butt of an automatic pistol.

I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and tore my.38 from its clip-on belt holster and slammed him against the front of his car and wedged the.38 into his mouth, my hand still gripped on his wrist. He gagged on the two-inch barrel and I pushed it deeper into his throat, bending him back against the car. Blood and spittle ran from his mouth and I heard the automatic fall from his hand onto the cement.

Then someone pressed a pistol against my temple.

"Let Jim go, Mr. Holland," Amos Rackley said.

"Kiss my ass. You take that gun away from my head," I said.

"You're not in a bargaining position," he replied.

"Watch this," I said. I fitted my left hand on the throat of the man called Jim and shoved the.38 deeper into his mouth and cocked the hammer with my thumb, the cylinder actually clacking against his teeth now. "You take your piece away from my head or I'll empty his brainpan on the hood."

Rackley lowered his gun. I released the man named Jim and stepped away from him.

"You fucking lunatic," Rackley said.

"You jump out of cars at people and pull guns on them, this is what you get," I said.

"What do you call this?" he said, and reached into the backseat of his car and shoved the morning newspaper at me. It was folded back to a red-circled classified ad that read, "Amos Rackley, Please Get in Touch. I Don't Feel Like Cleaning Up Your Mess- Billy Bob Holland."

"I think you're deliberately letting Wyatt Dixon and Carl Hinkel stay in circulation so they'll lead you to other conspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing. In the meantime they're hurting innocent people."

"You just assaulted a federal agent," he replied.

"There're must be twenty spectators watching this from the bridge. I wonder what they'll have to say about who assaulted whom. You want to get a news reporter down here?"

"You're threatening me?"

"It's not a threat, Mr. Rackley. You point a gun at me again and I'll pick your cotton."

He tossed the newspaper at my face. The pages broke apart in the wind and blew down the walkway. His fellow agent cleared his mouth of blood and spat it on the cement, then bent over and retrieved his automatic and replaced it into its holster. There was a large red knot on the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," I said.

"Blow me, Gomer," he replied.

I slipped the.38 back into its clip-on holster. I saw his eyes travel to the holster's position on my belt.

"It's unconcealed. I don't need a permit for it. Welcome to Montana," I said.

That night I took Temple to the Joan Baez concert at the university. The auditorium was packed, the air stifling. But the crowd didn't care. They were wild about Joan. George McGovern was in the audience and she introduced him as an old friend. She was sweating in the lights, her clothes sticking damply to her skin. Finally she touched her wrist to her brow in desperation and said, "I have to be honest with you. I've never been so hot in my life. Sweat is actually running down the backs of my legs."