“I had a hell of a night, Sheriff. There wasn’t anybody around when I got here. I came this far to look. I meant to turn around and head back, but then from that direction…”

He pointed across the stream, toward the coulee wall beyond which he had found Jim Golly’s hidden homestead. The tractor road emerged on the opposite bank. From there it arced through tall thistles across unused pasture, then bent sharply and headed parallel to the stream across a scree of sandstone below a bluff and disappeared into heavy forest.

“… I heard gunshots. I heard someone whistling and a dog barking. I shouldn’t have left the car here, I guess, but I didn’t want to get stuck driving across, and there was nobody around. I decided to wade across and quick-see. I know I shouldn’t have left the car…”

“I don’t care about the car, Dick. We’ll get you a new one.”

She felt short of breath and sick to her stomach again. The small relief of night had already dissolved in the new day’s thick heat.

“Release the tail door and give me Deputy Luck’s keys. Then what happened?”

As she opened Luck’s gun vault, Bender said behind her, “Well, when I got into the woods over there, I found some bloody clothing hanging in a tree. So I kept going.”

Luck’s tactical rifle had been the sheriff’s own, back when she was the rookie. Still, she fumbled with it.

“I figured Daniel Greevey ran out of somewhere over there, gunshot, throwing off clothes to slow down a dog. He stole those rubber boots here. He took off on the Goodgolly buggy and got tossed out where we found him. So I figured what I was hearing might be someone else over there getting chased like Greevey was.”

Bender opened the trunk of his ruined car and lifted out his own rifle. She still fumbled with her old weapon. How did the magazine load again? And the scope had been rotated for storage. How did she align it?

“It’s sod buildings in there, Sheriff. It’s goddamn pioneer times. Dark as hell. Somebody moaning inside one. I found Hubbard’s truck and Fanta’s car. But sure as hell Grape’s little Toyota didn’t get across this crick. Too much water here. That truck could handle this, but Fanta must have gone in another way, maybe a backup route since the trouble here yesterday, maybe followed whoever lives back there.”

“Jim and Faith Golly,” she said. Her chin dripped sweat. Her slick hands felt like someone else’s. But finally the magazine clicked into place.

“When I came back, I found my car like this, and there were lights on inside Goodgolly’s house. A vehicle took off, a hot new engine.”

“Rickreiner,” she said, “looking for Patience.”