Dan had aimed the clicker. Sit with him, Ella had said, and Saul sat. They watched a dance show as they ate eggs fried in bacon grease. The final competition, two couples left, one green, one white. The female dancers were slim, bursting bodices, skirts that lifted for lovely legs, dips and knees in air, swirling. The men were fairies. Maul nodded. She meant nothing by it.

“I bet they killed him,” Maul said. “The deputy.”

“The green pair was clearly superior,” Ella said.

“’Course they killed him.”

“Which was the better team was obvious. The better team was the green team.”

“How’d they kill him, though?”

Now, the horseshoe was all metallic echo, whereas then, the band had pulsed on for the dancers.

“The sorrel is a horse of a lifetime for Saul,” she said. “He’d have waited at the cabin for that horse for a year.”

“Don’t lose track,” he said. “Did they shoot that deputy? Slit his throat?”

“They had grace, the green dancers. That indefinable element,” Ella said, the horseshoe chiming chiming, sparks flying up for her if she turned to see, which she didn’t. She’d watched the dance from the kitchen, making lists. The men had leaned closer to the TV. “I’ve heard of people falling in love with their captors.”

“Stockholm syndrome,” Maul said.

“Eat that,” Ella had said to Dan, as the music switched from foxtrot to tango. “You could stand to eat a little more.”

“But what to do with the body once the deputy’s dead?” Maul said. “Lots of places in the mountains to hide a corpse.”

“How in hell?” Dan had said when the white team won the enormous trophy, almost weeping over it, half his face shoved on a bag of frozen peas. “How in hell?”

“You aren’t listening to what I’m telling you,” Ella said.

“You aren’t listening,” Maul said.

“I wished they’d hurry with the shoe,” she said.

“Killin’ a deputy,” Maul said. “What balls. I ain’t got ’em.”

White balloons had fallen around the white couple, the green couple having disappeared as if they were never there. The balloons were part of the victory procedure. A true theft of that trophy, Ella said Saul had said, getting up from the couch. He had so many things to do. The dance contest was over. An old dog rose and slinked to the kitchen.

On the ridge, Saul banged steel, the shoe clanged.

“What happened to the green couple?” Maul said.

“You don’t care,” Ella said.

“You won’t tell me anyway.”