Ferg looked like he was going to die. “He said he wanted something to eat, so I went to get a nurse . . .”

I draped the towel from my head to over my shoulders and examined my fingers. The first layer of skin was pretty well shot, and the next was pink and sensitive. My ear hurt, and I hadn’t taken the bandage off for fear of disturbing it, but mostly I felt good, being clean for the first time in a couple of days. “Why didn’t you just ring for a nurse?”

“I tried.”

I thought about going back in the shower and drowning myself. “Where did you see him last?”

“In his room, about five minutes ago.”

I handed him the portable radio, still amazingly clipped to the back of my mud-encrusted Carhartts. “This building is not that big. Have somebody go stand at the northeast corner of the hospital, and you stand at the southwest; either of you spots him leaving, call in. You use your truck radio.” I looked up at Ferg and thought about how he had worked through the better part of the night, probably hadn’t had anything decent to eat in days, and more than likely needed to phone his wife and let her know he was still alive. Donna worked at an insurance firm in town and, after thirty years of marriage, they were still madly in love. On Sunday afternoons, you could see them walking, holding hands, along Clear Creek in the park. “He got away from me, too, don’t feel bad.” I picked up my hat to keep him from feeling self-conscious. “I think I need a new hat. What do you think?”

He looked at me with hazel eyes not too disturbed by self-analysis and struck out for the southwest corner of the building. “Definitely.”

I sat the hat back down on the polished surface of the wooden bench, which was anchored to the floor with three-inch pipe. I guess the administrators figured the doctors and nurses weren’t making enough money and might try to run off with the furnishings. I looked in the bag at my new clothes with a sense of trepidation. If she was angry when she bought them for me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see what size they were, but the jeans were an exact fit, as were the jacket, shirt, socks, underwear, and undershirt.

After I finished dressing, I put my gun belt on, carefully adjusting the jacket so that it covered the majority of it. Then I stuffed my dirty clothes into the bag for later washing or burning, placed my hat on top, and carried it with me into the hallway. Friday, midmorning, and there still wasn’t much traffic at the hospital, which meant that George would have less cover. But, even though the building was small and the staff sparse, there were probably hundreds of places where he could be. I decided to drop my clothes off in Henry’s room, if he was between female visitations, and use it as a base of operations for the hunt for George Esper, take two.

When I got to Henry’s door, I paused to listen and hear if anybody else was in there. I heard voices but, whatever they were saying, it wasn’t postcoital, so I pushed open the door and found George Esper seated in a chair beside Henry. I walked up to the bed opposite George and noticed that he had been crying. “Did it occur to you to say something to my deputy before you went wandering off, George?” He looked sufficiently sheepish and wiped the tears on his bare arm. “I mean, before I put out an all-points bulletin and file a missing persons with the FBI?”

“Thsorry . . .”

“George, here’s the way it works from now on. When I put you someplace, anyplace? I want you to stay there until I come and get you. Do you understand that?” He nodded. “Good, now go back to your room.” He got up and limped toward the door, but before he could get it open I called out, “And stay there.” I listened as the door closed behind him.

“I think George might be a little confused.”

I looked down at him. “Really. I think George is a lot confused.”

“I am serious. I think something might be wrong with him.”

“Other than continual flight syndrome?”

Henry paused for a moment, then folded the sheet down and smoothed the edge. His hands looked strange in this setting, like wild birds accidentally indoors. “Does the family have any history of mental illness?”

“Not that I know of.”

He shook his head. “He seems scattered, and he has no attention span.”

“Concussed?”

“Possibly.” He looked at the empty chair where George had sat. “He wanted to know what he had to do if he wanted to live on the reservation. He thought he might be safer there.”

“That’s confused. He wasn’t that bad on the mountain.” We thought that one over for a moment.

His eyes stayed steady on mine. “He knows about his brother.”

I felt like sitting down. “What did he say? How does he know?”

He shrugged. “It was not anything he said, it was just a feeling. But he knows.”

I studied the polished railing at the side of the bed. “Do you think he was with Jacob when he was killed?”

“I do not know that.” Henry smiled. “I am sorry to be so little help to you, but it is just a feeling. They are twins.”

I leaned against the foot rail and peeled a small piece of the skin from the side of my hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Very well, and yourself ?”

“My hands are falling off and my ear hurts.”

He nodded. “Things could be worse, your ear could fall off.”

“There’s an intraoffice pool; odds are the doctor is going to cut it off.”

“That would be a shame. Your ears are one of your finest features.”

I looked out the window with him. “My thought exactly. They’re gonna get a fight when they come for it.”

He smiled and nodded. “Put me down a fifty on keeping the ear.”

“You’re up against Lucian.”

He continued to look out the window. “He is still calling me Ladies Wear?”

“Yep.”

“Make it a hundred.”

I laughed. “Well, I better call off the manhunt and go talk to George.” I looked down at him again. He really was recuperating quite well and looked as though he could get up and follow me out. “How’s Dena Many Camps doing these days?”

“She is a wonderful and caring young woman.”

I paused at the door. “I don’t suppose George mentioned what room he was in?”

“No.” He still looked out the window, and I wondered how long they would be able to keep him. “He was probably afraid I would come looking for him.”

“Chjakeb’s ded.”

I could feel my eyes sharpen as I looked at the young man. “What makes you think that, George?”

“Thsaw himb.” His lips moved, but no more words came out.

“You saw him?” He nodded his head. “Saw him where, George?”

“Othwe montan . . .”

“You saw him up at Dull Knife Lake?” He shook his head as violently as his bandaged jaw would allow. “Where then?” The tremors continued to wrack his body as his naked legs hung from the bed and shook, the nearest thigh wrapped up in a winding layer of gauze. I wasn’t sure if they had him on anything, but with the head injury it was unlikely. “George, if you know anything? I need you to tell me about it. I’m trying to stop who’s doing this, but I have to figure out who it is before I can do anything.”

“Yhew kan’tsopthm.”

I nodded. “Stop who, George?”

I watched as a finger crept from his hand and pointed toward the window. “Tthemb.”

I felt a continuous charge run up my spine as I turned my head and looked out the window again, my reflected image only inches from my eyes. There was a minivan parked a little farther out, but I could almost swear that George Esper was pointing at my truck. “George, there’s nothing out there but my truck.” He continued to look, but the finger disappeared into his fist. I checked again and looked out to the municipal golf course. Maybe Arnie’s Army was after George. “George, who did you see up there?”

The only thing he said was, “Yhew kan’tsopthm.”

I stood up slowly and gently lowered the Venetian blinds with the cord that had been at my back. George still didn’t move, so I pushed him back in the bed with a hand on his shoulder and pulled the blanket and sheet up to his chin. He still shook as if he were freezing. “Why don’t you try and get some sleep?”

“Yhew kan’tsopthm.”

I looked down at another human wreck and patted his chest. “Well . . . I might just surprise you.”

I made my way through the automatic doors of the emergency room and waved at Ferg, who joined me. We used one of the blond brick walls as a wind block and stood against the building’s entrance. “He’s back in his room. I found him in Henry’s, but he’s back in his.” The air was more than a little brisk, so I flipped the collar up on my new jacket and pushed my hands farther into the pockets. “He’s acting a little strange, so you might want to keep an even closer eye on him. I don’t think he’s dangerous, but he might wander off again.”

“You bet.”

“I notified them at the desk. I’m going to head back over to the office and get things sorted out.”

“You bet.”

I was also willing to bet that Ferg would be sitting on George within the moment. I pulled my keys out, headed over to the Bullet, and looked through the window. I’m not sure what it was I expected to see, an entire Old Cheyenne war party riding shotgun or what. I stood there in the wind, the blowing snow peppering the side of my face with its sting, as I looked into my truck. The rifle was there, a palpable reminder of things I could not see and, beside it, sat a black-and-white box of ammunition for things I could. Vic must have left the box after the tests, a little joke, or maybe she thought I might need it. I wondered mildly what had happened to the Weatherby I had on the mountain or to the Remington that Henry had been carrying.

Was anybody in there? Ever since the mountain, I was careful to look for them out of the corners of my eyes. It seemed as though, if I stood there long enough, they would begin to appear, sitting easily on the leather seats and looking back at me with their hair-bone chokers, their trade cloth tied in their hair, and their closed-mouth smiles. They held the rifle in their laps, waiting for me to get in so they could hand it to me. I leaned against the door and closed my eyes; the glass was cold, but I could think again. I opened my eyes, and they were gone. I stood there for another moment, and I’m not sure if I was making sure they were gone or hoping they would reappear. I turned the key, opened the door, and slid in next to the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead. My hand shook a little as I slid the rifle over and placed the box of ammunition on the seat next to me. The box looked old, as if the edges had been roughed off and the printing had been done by an antiquainted press. The date on the box even read 1876. It felt heavy, and I thought about pumpkins.

I picked up the receiver and punched line two. “Longmire.” I sounded busy and possibly a little angry.

“Sheriff?”

It was Reggie Esper. “Yep, Reggie. Are you still in Deadwood?”

There was a pause. “We are. I told the mine I’d be back yesterday, but we had a lucky streak and decided to stay on ’til Monday. Then this South Dakota Highway Patrolman came to the casino and got us.” Another pause. “Walt, if this is about that damned Pritchard kid, I haven’t let the boys have anything to do with him . . .”

“It’s not about Cody Pritchard.”

Yet another pause. “Well, is it important? I mean I don’t want to cut a weekend short if I . . .”

“It’s important.” I stared at the blotter on my desk and picked up a pen. I looked up at the old Seth Thomas clock on my wall, a plugged-in leftover from Lucian and Red Angus before him. I adjusted it twice a year, and it never lost or gained a second. “It’s a little after eleven, and you could be here by three or so?”

There was a discussion going on in the background. “We’ll leave right after lunch.”

He started to hang up. “Reggie? Make sure you come straight to the sheriff’s office.” He said he would.

I put the phone back, leaned an elbow on my desk, and accidentally hit my ear. I swore and readjusted my hand to my cheek. It hurt to hold the pen, and I clutched my tender fingers in a half claw. I put the Espers down for four o’clock and wrote a note to ask Vic about ballistics. I had to talk to the Curator of Firearms at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, talk to Jim Keller, and call Dave at the Sportshop about Vasques, size nines. I was also beginning to wonder about Lucian and Turk. I started to punch the intercom on my phone, but all the lines were busy. Probably Vic, faxing her resume. I got up and walked out to Ruby’s desk.

She was on the phone too, but she hung up. “Lonnie Little Bird was here looking for you.” She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “He’s sweet.”

“Yes, he is.” I paused for a second. “I’ve got the Espers coming in this afternoon. If they’re running late, can you stick around?”

“Yes.”

“Anything on Jim Keller?”

“Not back from Nebraska yet. But Mrs. Keller has been here twice already today.”

“How’s the kid doing?”

“He’s in the back, asleep. I gave him the old sheriff report books to look at, which would put anybody to sleep. By the way, you have the worst penmanship of any sheriff we’ve ever had since 1881. I thought you’d be glad to know.”

“Who was before 1881?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Nobody; that’s when we first became a county in the territory, about nine years before we became a state. You did hear about that?”

I scratched at my ear and immediately regretted it. “Yep, I remember reading about it in the papers.”

“Stop picking at your ear.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I slouched a little bit. “Do you know what’s happened to Lucian and Turk?”

“They are having lunch down the hill at the Busy Bee. Lucian mentioned something about having a Come-to-Jesus meeting with his nephew.”

“Oh, boy. Anything from Vic on the ballistics at DCI?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“She’s on the phone.” I looked down at all the blinking lights on Ruby’s console. “She’s on all of them.”

“Then she hasn’t, or she is now.” She stayed looking at me.

“We’re not going to be able to keep her, are we?” It was out before I knew I had said it and, when I looked up, Ruby’s electric blues steadfastly joined with mine.

“Why don’t you go have lunch; she’ll be off the phones by the time you get back. Besides, you could use a little religion.”

In its usual perverse manner, the sun had decided to come out and cast a glare without providing any heat. It might get warmer by the end of the afternoon but, for now, it was just plain cold. As I navigated the courthouse steps, I looked up at Vern’s window. He was probably up there still waiting for our lunch, but I could bet that he wouldn’t want anything to do with Lucian’s type of revival meeting, even though I was sure it would carry its own unique version of fire and brimstone.

He had taken it upon himself to merge the two counts into one, which was his judicial latitude, and sentenced Cody and Jacob to a maximum of fifteen years in prison, far to the low side of the five- to fifty-year sentencing guideline. George had gotten the minimum of ten, but it all became academic when the judge had pronounced that the offenders would be incarcerated in a young adult institution in Casper and would therefore receive indeterminate terms. I guess Vern had decided that since they were all first offenders, the rape shouldn’t cost them the rest of their lives; never mind what it had cost Melissa.

Cody Pritchard had turned to his friends in the back of the courtroom and playfully tossed his hat in the air and smiled. With time off for good behavior, Cody, Jacob, and George could see less than two years of soft prison time. Bryan Keller would receive two years of probation and one hundred hours of community service. The young men were once again released without bail, and Vern had nodded quietly in his chambers when I personally volunteered to drive the three of them down to Casper.

He looked up through the top of his bifocals. “Hi, Walt.”

“What’s the number one selling hiking boot?”

“Here?” He thought. “Vasque, maybe Asolo.”

“Most popular size?”

“Nine, maybe ten.”

“Any way to track how many Vasques, size nines you’ve sold in the last year or so?”

He looked at me and sighed. “You’re lucky Sue’s here today. I don’t have time for . . .”

“Make time.” I looked at him for a moment to reinforce it.

“I can ask Sue to go back through the special orders and check the stock, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on names if I were you. If they paid cash . . .”

“I need you to do it now.”

He pulled a pen from behind his ear and tossed it on the counter in defeat. “All right.”

“One other question. Do you remember Jacob or George coming in to buy flies?”

He crossed his arms and exhaled a long, slow hiss. “Maybe a week and a half, two weeks ago?”

“Anybody else here when they were talking about where they were going?” It was a long shot, but I had to play it out.

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Will you think about it?”

“Sure.”

“I mean really think about it.”

“Sure.” Before I could get too far from the counter he said, “Nice clothes.”

I stopped and looked down at my fancy duds. “You help her with the sizes?”

“Did it all on her own.” He smiled. “Somethin’, huh?”

“Yep.” I continued to the door and rested my hand on the brass handle.

“You should be proud of yourself, she’s quite a catch.”

“Yep.” I pulled open the door and started out. “Call me.”

“Anything but the usual.” I closed the menu in one hand and reached it over to her. “I want to apologize for being sharp with you yesterday.”

She took the menu and looked at my fingers. She had been talking to somebody because her next glance was up to my ear. “Feeling experimental, are we?” She reached down and threw two meat patties from a small Tupperware container onto the grill, then dropped a basket of hand-cut potatoes into the fryer. It appeared that hamburgers and french fries were not today’s usual. I asked her about Lucian and Turk. She raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re due a formal, verbal apology. Then I think the former, yet attending, sheriff intends to take a nap in the jail.” Her voice softened. “How’s the Bear?”

I looked up. “I bet he’s out of there by this afternoon.”

“Hard to keep a good man down.”

I reached up to feel my ear. “You have no idea . . .”

She slapped my hand away. “Stop that.” She turned back around and flipped the sizzling patties. “So, where are we on the case?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Inspector Lastrade . . .” And I did. I left out any suspicions I had about Jim Keller, but that was about all. I was looking defeat squarely in the face, and pretty soon the county would be crawling with DCI investigators and Feds. I honestly didn’t think they were going to get any further than I had. Nonetheless, I told her I was considering a career in telemarketing.

She filled a glass with ice and then with tea from a pitcher that sat on the cutting board. “You can make a lot of money.” She flipped a couple of slices of cheese onto the burgers, prepared the buns for reception on an oval-shaped plate, and pulled the fresh basket of fries from the deep fryer, hooking them on the rack to drip dry. My stomach gurgled in response to all the activity, and I was glad she had put on two cheeseburgers. “Okay, unlucky at cards . . .”

I took a long sip of the tea. “Don’t even ask.”

She scooped up the patties, scooting them expertly onto the bun beds, and covered the rest of the plate with french fries. “That bad?” She slid the dish in front of me. “Careful, hot.”

“You know, I used to think I was pretty good at this relationship stuff . . .”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh, Walter.” She shook her head. “You know she’s had a rough life.”

“Yep, I know. She’s having a rough time buying the White Mountains in Arizona right now.” The food, as always, tasted marvelous. Maybe when I was unemployed, I could work part time for Dorothy. She was still looking at me, and I had the feeling I was going to have to go seek employment elsewhere. “What?”

“When her father killed himself ”—she had placed the pitcher on the counter, anticipating another fill—“there were some things going on out there.” The hazel eyes stayed steady under a salt-and-pepper lock.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged. “Just talk. I don’t think her marriage was very happy, either.” She looked down at my rapidly vanishing meal. “How’s the food?”

I stopped chewing long enough to reply, “Marry me?”

“That good, huh?”

Turk was sitting in one of the reception chairs and stood when I came in. Ruby was seated at her desk with her lunch of a watercress sandwich on low-fat seven-grain bread, carrots, and a sliced apple unfolded before her, which looked fresh, healthy, and completely unappetizing. “What’s up?”

He glanced over at Ruby, who was watching him. “Could I speak with you, Sheriff ?” His voice was still nasal with the muffling of the packing and bandages.

“Yeah, sure. You wanna talk in my office?” He nodded and followed me in. I sat at my desk and gestured for him to have a seat. He shook his head and continued standing. He looked like nine kinds of hell; the bruising around his eyes had spread as far back as his side-burns, and it hurt to look at him. “What can I do for you?”

“Uncle Lucian says this is a bad time to have this conversation with you, but I thought you ought to know about my intentions? I put my application in with the Highway Patrol.”

I had to laugh; I couldn’t even keep a hold of Turk. “Really?”

“Yes, sir.” He twitched his face to stop an itch I was sure he was going to have for a while. “Uncle Lucian said it might be for the best.”

I nodded and crossed my arms. “He’s a smart fella, that one-legged bandit uncle of yours.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked back up at me. “He also said that if I ever ran for sheriff, you’d just run against me, win and serve a half a term, and then step down, giving her two years to prove herself.”

“He’s right, I would.” Pretty soon I’d be running the place by myself. “He say anything else?”

I thought I saw just a glimmer of a smile at the corner of his mouth from underneath the droop of his mustache but, with the bandages, it was hard to tell. “He said that masturbation is a wonderful form of stress relief in the workplace and that the wildflowers are beautiful along I-80 in the spring.”

I stuck a peeling hand out to him. He looked at it, then to me. I’m sure we were a handsome pair, him with his nose and me with my hands and ear. “I won’t give you a bad letter of recommendation.”

He took my hand, hesitantly. “Thanks.”

I knew the colonel down in Cheyenne, and he owed me a few favors. “I’ll make some phone calls.”

He shook my hand a little more and then released it. “You really do want to get rid of me.”

“Let’s just say I think it might be a better fit.” I really did. The narrower limitations of vehicular law enforcement along with a more regimented style of department could be just what Turk needed. That or the colonel would never owe me another favor for as long as the state had paved roads.

I looked past him and saw Vic appear in the doorway. She glanced at Turk when he turned to see what I was looking at. “Jesus, you look like shit.”

He turned back to me before he left. “Good luck.” I had no idea he had a sense of humor. I could have asked him about his .45-70, but it didn’t seem pertinent. It wasn’t him, and it wasn’t going to be.

Vic sat in the chair opposite me, propping her feet onto my desk as usual, and arranging a sheath of papers in her lap. I sat back down. “Don’t play with your ear.”

“Sorry.” I returned my hand to my lap. “Henry and Lucian are going even money on whether I’ll lose it. Ballistics?”

She shuffled the papers. “Both leads match, which does not come as a great surprise, both contain the same chemical compound, and both are from the same slug batch, 30 to 1 ratio . . . Same shooter.”

“How are your friends back in Washington?”

She looked at me for a moment. “Quantico.”

“Whatever.” I pulled out a pen, uncapped it, and underlined Jim Keller’s name. “I’ve always wondered why they haven’t tried to lure you back.”

“There’s an opening with the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes Services in the Criminal Investigative Analysis Unit.”

I nodded. “Do you have to say all that every time you answer the phone?”

“There’s also an opening in West Virginia at the FBI Fingerprint Analysis Lab, and there’s always Philadelphia.”

I exhaled slowly. “Well, I didn’t think we were going to be able to keep you forever.”

She looked up from the papers then returned to them, and it was very quiet for a while. “We ran a check on Roger Russell’s gun . . .”

“I didn’t even know you had it.”

She looked back up, allowing her head to drop to one side in dismissal. “Somebody’s gotta run the place while you’re out traipsing around in the woods.”

“And . . . ?”

“Doesn’t match. And we got a call back from the Buffalo Bill Museum. They did acquire a Sharps .45-70 from Artie Small Song more than a year ago.”

I shrugged. “Artie has also been locked up in the Yellowstone County jail since Saturday.”

She made a big show of pulling a pencil from behind her ear and scratching through his name on her papers. “Jim Keller?”

“Nothing.” I put the cap back on the pen and tossed it onto the blotter. “Which brings us to the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead.”

She looked at her notes. “No match, but it’s been fired numerous times. Like a box of shells.”

“Twenty rounds?” She nodded her head. “When?”

“Just over a week ago.”

“Right before the murders?”

“Have you ever looked down the barrel of one of those things after they’ve been shot?”

I thought back to Omar’s. “Yep, once.”

“They lead up real bad. You throw twenty rounds through one of those things without cleaning it, you’re looking to get it blown up in your face.” Her hands rested on her lap. “I looked down the barrel, and you could hardly see daylight.”

My ear itched, but I figured it was a good sign. “So why would somebody do that?”

“Practice?” We looked at each other.

“That lets your friend Henry off. He doesn’t need practice.”

I leaned back in my chair. “When we were up on the mountain, he took the shotgun and gave me the rifle. He said something about not being as good a shot as me.” I stood up. “I better go get that damn thing out of my truck and bring it in here. It turns up missing, I’m gonna be even more cursed than I am now.”

“It’s still in your truck?”

I started around the desk and looked down at the top of her head as she studied her notes. “I forgot about it.” She shook her head, and I reached over and touched her shoulder. “By the way, thanks for the shells.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That old box of shells in my truck, the ones that look about a hundred and fifty years old?” She didn’t move, but the tarnished gold came up slow. “Please tell me you left an aged box of .45-70 ammunition on the seat of my truck?” I waited. “Next to the rifle?”

She didn’t say anything, just sat there looking at me. I think she was checking to see if I was really there. I wasn’t sure myself.