Foster poured some more bourbon for his guest. "I don't know what it's like back East, but out here, if you fight you fight. All the way, boy. Put one right 'tween the fining lights, generally calms your adversary down a mite."

"But then you have to dispose of the body," Mark said, ping his drink. The man bought only cheap whiskey. Well, he probably couldn't afford the good stuff.

A laugh: "Ever hear of a backhoe? How 'bout a nice fire?"

It was believed by some in this part of the state that Foster had killed a fish-and-game cop. As a result, he was leery of local police-and the highway patrol people didn't like him to go a mile over the limit. But though the car had been found-burned out, forty miles away-the body of the missing officer had not, and that was that. There weren't many people around to be witnesses in this part of the state, even with a new house five miles away. Mark sipped his bourbon and leaned back in the leather chair. "Nice to be part of nature, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. It surely is. Sometimes I think I kinda understand the Indians, y'know?"

"Know any?"

'Oh, sure. Charlie Grayson, he's a Nez Perce, hunting guide, got my horse off o'him. I do that, too, to make some cash sometimes, mainly take a horse into the high country, really, meet people who get it. And the elk are pretty thick up there."

"What about bear?"

"Enough," Foster replied. "Mainly blacks, but some grizz'."

"What do you use? Bow?"

A good-natured shake of the head. "No, I admire the Indians, but I ain't one myself. Depends on what I'm hunting, and what country I'm doing it in. Bolt-action.300 Winchester Mag mainly, but in close country, a semi auto slug shotgun. Nothing like drillin' three-quarter-inch holes when you gotta, y'know?"

"Handload?"

"Of course. It's a lot more personal that way. Gotta show respect for the game, you know, keep the gods of the mountains happy."

Foster smiled at the phrase, in just the right sleepy way, Mark saw. In every civilized man was a pagan waiting to come out, who really believed in the gods of the mountains, and in appeasing the spirits of the dead game. And so did he, really, despite his technical education.

"So, what do you do, Mark?"

"Molecular biochemistry, Ph.D., in fact."

"What's that mean?"

"Oh, figuring out how life happens. Like how does a bear smell so well," he went on, lying. "It can be interesting, but my real life is coming out to places like this, hunting, meeting people who really understand the game better than I do. Guys like you," Mark concluded, with a salute of his glass. "What about you?"

"Ah, well, retired now. I made some of my own. Would you believe geologist for an oil company?"

"Where'd you work?"

"All over the world. I had a good nose for it, and the oil companies paid me a lot for finding the right stuff, y'know? But I had to give it up. Got to the point-well, you fly a lot, right?"

"I get around," Mark confirmed with a nod.

"The brown smudge," Foster said next.

"Huh?"

"Come on, you see it all over the damned world. Up around thirty thousand feet, that brown smudge. Complex hydrocarbons, mainly from passenger jets. One day I was flying back from Paris - connecting flight from Brunei, I came the wrong way 'round 'cuz I wanted to stop off in Europe and meet a friend. Anyway, there I was, in a fuckin'747, over the middle of the fucking Atlantic Ocean, like four hours from land, y'know? First-class window seat, sitting there drinking my drink, lookin' out the window, and there it was, the smudge - that goddamned brown shit, and I realized that I was helpin' make it happen, dirtyin' up the whole fuckin' atmosphere.

"Anyway," Foster went on, "that was the moment of my… conversion, I guess you'd call it. I tendered my resignation the next week, took my stock options, cashed in half a mil worth, and bought this place. So, now, I hunt and fish, do a little guide work in the fall, read a lot, wrote a little book about what oil products do to the environment, and that's about it."

It was the book that had attracted Mark's attention, of course. The brown-smudge story was in its poorly written preface. Foster was a believer, but not a screwball. His house had electricity and phone service. Mark saw his high-end Gateway computer on the floor next to his desk. Even satellite TV, plus the usual Chevy pickup truck with a gun-rack in the back window… and a diesel-powered backhoe. So, maybe he believed, but he wasn't too crazy about it. That was good, Mark thought. He just had to be crazy enough. Foster was. Killing the fish-and-game cop was proof of that.

Foster returned the friendly stare. He'd met guys like this during his time in Exxon. A suit, but a clever one, the kind who didn't mind getting his hands dirty. Molecular biochemistry. They hadn't had that major at the Colorado School of Mines, but Foster also subscribed to Science News, and knew what it was all about. A meddler with life… but, strangely, one who understood about the deer and elk. Well, the world was a complex place. Just then, his visitor saw the Lucite block on the coffee table. Mark picked it up.

"What's this?"

Foster grinned over his drink. "What's it look like?"

"Well, it's either iron pyrite or it's-"

"Ain't iron. I do know my rocks, sir."

"Gold? Where from?"

"Found it in my stream, 'bout three hundred yards over yonder." Foster pointed.

"That's a fair-sized nugget."

"Five and a half ounces. About two thousand dollars. You know, people - white people - been living right on this ranch on this spot for over a hundred years, but nobody ever saw that in the creek. One day I'll have to backtrack up, see if it's a good formation. Ought to be, that's quartz on the bottom of the big one. Quartz-and-gold formations tend to be pretty rich, 'cuz of the way the stuff bubbled up from the earth's core. This area's fairly volcanic, all the hot springs and stuff," he reminded his guest. "We even get the occasional earth tremor."

"So, you might own your own gold mine?"

A good laugh. "Yep. Ironic, ain't it? I paid the going rate for grazing land - not even that much 'cuz o' the hills. The last guy to ranch around here bitched that his cattle lost every pound they gained grazin' by climbing up to where the grass was."

"How rich?"

A shrug. "No tellin', but if I showed that to some guys I went to school with, well, some folks would invest ten or twenty million finding out. Like I said, it's a quartz formation. People gamble big time on those. Price of gold is depressed, but if it comes out of the ground pretty pure well, it's a shitload more valuable than coal, y'know?"

"So, why don't you?…"

"'Cuz I don't need it, and it's an ugly process to watch. Worsen drilling oil, even. You can pretty much clean that up. But a mine -no way. Never goes away. The tailing don't go away. The arsenic gets into the ground water and takes forever to leach out. Anyway, it's a pretty coupla rocks in the plastic, and if I ever need the money, well, I know what to do."

"How often you check the creek?"

"When I fish-brown trout here, see?" He pointed to a big one hanging on the log wall. "Every third or fourth time, I find another one. Actually, I figure the deposit must have been uncovered fairly recently, else folks would have spotted it a long time ago. Hell, maybe I should track it down, see where it starts, but I'd just be tempting myself. Why bother?" Foster concluded. "I might have a weak moment and go against my principles. Anyway, not like it's gonna run away, is it?"

Mark grunted. "Guess not. Got any more of these?"

"Sure." Foster rose and pulled open a desk drawer. He tossed a leather pouch over. Mark caught it, surprised by the weight, almost ten pounds. He pulled the drawstring and extracted a nugget. About the size of a half-dollar, half gold, half quartz, all the more beautiful for the imperfection.