He had traveled east, into Colorado where he got a job on a guest ranch for the summer, but it was only for the summer and it didn’t pay much. He had tried to talk his way into a management position there, but the management wasn’t all that impressed with him or his skills, and sent him on his way as soon as the season was over in September. From there he traveled north to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He took a job as a bartender at a ski resort, but was quickly fired for making improper advances toward the manager’s wife. He stayed in Jackson for a time, picking up an odd job here and there, before finally deciding to make his way south. He had planned on going to Southern California to see if he could get into the movies, something he had always wanted to do, or even to Mexico where, with the little money he had set aside, he could live relatively high on the hog for a while before having to come back and get another job.

Chad thought hard about his current situation. He would never admit it to anyone, not even to himself, but he was afraid of Henry McBride. He had been afraid of him since the first day they met. Henry had seen through him right from the start, just as Topher had, and Chad knew it. In fact, Chad had been so paranoid about accidentally running into Henry on this current trip to California, he had chosen to take the northern route through Nevada, along I-80, instead of the southern, more direct one on I-15. The last thing he had expected when he stopped into the Cattlemen’s Bar that night was hearing Henry was in the area, only twenty or thirty miles from where he currently stood. Had Henry not been safely riding line out in the middle of nowhere, Chad would have left his beer on the bar and been five miles down the road before the door closed behind him.

The more beer Chad drank, the more it was beginning to become clear to him that—just as Henry had warned—he may have to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life because that damned old man actually could show up anywhere. In the background, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” gushed from the jukebox, and Chad knocked back the rest of his fourth beer. He stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar and motioned for Lou to bring him another. He began to seethe inside as he thought about how Henry McBride had taken his job, his woman, and now his freedom to go wherever he wanted. He was halfway through his fifth bottle before Chad convinced himself he would have no peace as long as Henry McBride was alive, and that if he were to ever get control of his life back, drastic steps were going to need to be taken.

“Okay, Dave,” Topher finally said, pushing himself up from his stool. “That’s it for me. I’m gonna take a piss, then I’m headin’ back to the ranch. You want a ride?”