Dr. Harrington arrived one day, accompanied by Lacey and Arriaga and their wives. There was a picnic on the rim at evening and a liberal flow of wine, beer, Pepsi-Cola. From white-haired Keaton Lacey, a gentleman bowman and gunner, Henry learned that one of their favorite Arizona game ranges would soon be closed to hunting.

How come?

Lacey explained: An outfit called Lovers of Fur Bearers has received a big bequest from some millionaire animal sentimentalist in California. They bought out the cow ranch at the mouth of Turkey Creek Canyon. That means they control access to about ten-by-ten miles of state land and federal land. Sixty-four thousand acres. They’re gonna make it what they call a wildlife preserve. Closed to hunting.

That’ll make a lot of people very unhappy.

It makes me unhappy.

Those critter freaks are going to need a gamekeeper.

They sure are. About a dozen gamekeepers. Well-armed gamekeepers. Drunk and ignorant suicidal gamekeepers.

Sounds like work for you, Lacey. You and Hooligan.

We’re not that drunk and ignorant.

Henry drove into town on his next day off and applied for the position himself. He would soon be a family man, needing steady employment. He was interviewed by Mr. Joseph S. Harlow, III, stockbroker by trade, who occupied an office suite on the top floor of the Pioneer Building in downtown Tucson, only two blocks in fact from the green spittoons, rancid air, creaky floorboards and eroded slate pool tables of the Dirty Shame Saloon. But what an abysm yawned between.

Mr. Harlow, gray-haired and square-headed, peered at Henry over spectacles lowered to the tip of his nose. Feet on desk, he clipped the tip from a Macanudo, passed a lighter to Henry, brushed copies of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Audubon magazine and the Sierra Club Bulletin to the side. Henry lit his cigar—a huge fat gentleman’s smoke of a quality to which he was not, actually, fully accustomed.

Any background in law enforcement, Mr. Lightcap?

Henry mentioned his year and a half with the Military Police in Italy, his six months with the Border Patrol in Big Bend, Texas, his seven or eight intermittent years as a park ranger in Utah, Arizona, Montana, Florida.

Six months with the Border Patrol?

Yessir.

Why only six months?

I didn’t really like the work.

You’re a liberal, I suppose?

No sir, I’m a bigot. It was shooting those damn Mex cows with the hoof-and-mouth disease that got me down. Can’t stand the noise a hollow-point bullet makes when it hits a living body.

A brief pause.

Married? Yessir; twice. Divorced? Yep; once. Children? None on the streets; one in the oven.

Pause. Lightcap and Harlow puffed on their great rich turdlike cigars, blowing ragged clouds of smoke at the ceiling. Portofino fog.

Are you a Harvard man, Mr. Lightcap?

Me?

You’re wearing a Harvard tie.

I am? Henry looked down and lifted the crimson pennon, like the parboiled tongue of a cow, that dangled from his collar. He gazed at the thing in wonder. A gift from my mother-in-law, he explained. The Snag. No sir, as a matter of fact I went to school in New Mexico.