When she was standing knee-deep in the water and had relaxed enough to bob her head around, checking out the scenery, he reached into the tubular boot he had strapped to his saddle and extracted the components of his fishing rod. The mare looked back at him with curiosity, but stood quietly as he assembled the rod.

He had ridden her only a dozen times, but she was naturally sensible and bright. She would make the pharmacist’s daughter a good, safe mount. She brought her head up the first time he cast, and danced a little as he reeled it in, her muscular body tense beneath him. But when she saw that this process was not so different from having a rope thrown from her back, she relaxed again. The true test would come when he hooked a trout.

J.D. relaxed as well. He cleared his mind as he found his rhythm with the rod. The sun shone down, warm on his back. The water chuckled and hissed as it rushed on its way to the Yellowstone River. The air was sweet with the scent of the grass, sharp with the vaguely metallic undertone of the water. The cottonwood and aspen leaves quivered and chattered. The reel whined as he cast, clucked when he cranked the line back in to try again. A kestrel hovered over the far bank, beating its blue wings furiously as it waited for the perfect second to drop on its prey in the grass below.

Nothing was biting. J.D. reeled in and waded the mare across to the opposite bank. She climbed out and they moved downstream sixty yards. This time when he asked her to step down into the stream, she didn’t hesitate. He patted her and talked to her, then took up his rod and started fishing again. An hour passed this way. When he couldn’t get a nibble in one spot, they would move down to another, crossing from bank to bank, sometimes walking downstream in the shallows. He had no desire to run into the owner of the Bronco, but the best spots happened to be downstream. J.D. figured he would try his luck until someone came along, then they would start back for home. The ranch was an hour’s ride and the afternoon shadows were already growing long.

As they moved closer, he recognized the truck. Miller Daggrepont’s name and the titles he had bestowed on himself were emblazoned across the driver’s side door in three lines of gold gay-nineties-style lettering: MILLER DAGGREPONT, ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW, DEALER IN ANTIQUITIES. Miller wouldn’t hike up a mountain to hunt for mushrooms unless they were lined with gold. He was a fisherman, but there was no sign of him along the banks of the Little Snake.

J.D. frowned, more at Miller’s imposition on his thoughts than out of any concern for the lawyer’s whereabouts. Thoughts of Daggrepont brought thoughts of the land Mary Lee had inherited, and, therefore, brought thoughts of Mary Lee. They were through. He should never have gotten tangled up with her in the first place.

He cast his line, flicking it at the edge of a brackish spot in a bend of the creek. Here the bank had eroded away over the years, creating a marshy pool that filled with water every spring and during hard rains. Rushes and cattails grew in profusion. More than one lunker had been caught browsing at the border between the pool and the stream.

J.D. snapped his wrist and swore as his fly went sailing into the tangle of growth. Thoughts of Mary Lee had broken his concentration. He jerked back on the line, hoping it would come free without a lot of trouble. It didn’t. He tried reeling it in slowly, but succeeded only in tightening the line against whatever the fly had snagged. He waded the mare across to the other bank, let her climb ashore, and stepped down off her. Reins in one hand, rod in the other, he moved toward the marshy spot, wishing the mare were far enough along in her training to ground-tie reliably.

He decided to take his chances as he reached the stand of cattails without freeing the damned line. If he had to wade out into the muck, he didn’t want her with him. The bottom was soft and muddy, and she would likely become frightened as her footing sank beneath her. Fear could spoil a young horse as quickly as mistreatment. He dropped his reins and backed away from her, scowling at her as she started to follow. He took an aggressive step toward her. She stopped and tossed her head, ears pricked as she watched him turn back toward the bank.

Reeling in more line, he stepped off into water thigh-deep, flushing a blue-winged teal out of its cover. The duck flew up with an angry squawk, wings pummeling the air like a fighter shadow-boxing. Glancing back over his shoulder, J.D. checked to see that the mare hadn’t spooked. She watched him with interest, and he maintained eye contact for just a second to let her know he hadn’t forgotten her. As he waded forward, his left knee connected unexpectedly with something solid, and he lost his balance. His right foot slipped in the mud and he went down… landing squarely across the body of Miller Daggrepont.

“Jesus, I’ve hauled dead cattle out of rivers easier than this.” Deputy Doug Bardwell sloshed through the reeds, waist-deep in water, trying to get a better hold on the body. “Hey, J.D., you wanna throw a rope around him and drag him out with that yellow mare?”

Quinn brought his head up from examining the foot-prints in the soft ground of the bank and glowered at his deputy. “Peters, get in there with him and haul the body out the other side of the slough. I don’t want any more tracks on this bank than we already got. Look at this mess,” he grumbled, turning back to his task. “God knows how many people been out here since it rained, tramping up and down.”

J.D. was hunkered down beside him, frowning at the ground. “I reckon there’s been a few, but see here in this area? Looks to me more like two people maybe scuffling around. Don’t see these kind of tracks anywhere else along the bank.”

“Still don’t mean nothing,” Quinn said, tipping his hat back to scratch through his wheat-colored hair. “Could have been two people milling around, digging through their tackle boxes, for all we know. Besides,” he said, standing and stretching out his bad knee, “looks to me like ol’ Miller had himself a heart attack and fell in. You see the way he was clutching his chest?”

They walked around to the far side of the pool, where Bardwell and Peters were struggling with Daggrepont’s lifeless body. Rigor mortis had yet to set in, and the lawyer’s massive weight and rotund shape made their task as much fun as moving a stranded whale.

“Jesus, Bardwell!” Quinn barked. “Don’t be pulling on his arm that way! Get your legs under him and push!”

Groaning with the effort, the deputies hauled the dead man onto the bank.

“Man.” Bardwell heaved a sigh and sat himself down half a foot from the body. “My daddy always said the only good lawyer was a dead lawyer. Guess he never had to move one.”

“See here?” Quinn said, crouching down by Daggrepont. He pointed to the right hand that was frozen in a death grip over the dead man’s sternum, clutching a wad of his brown madras plaid western shirt and the ends of his bolo tie. “That’s called a cadaveric spasm. Means he was hanging on that way when he died. Had a bum ticker, you know, Miller did.”

“Ain’t no wonder,” Peters commented. He had his face behind a 35mm camera and was clicking off photos of the corpse. “You ever see that man eat? I’ve had feeder cattle couldn’t pack it away the way Miller could.”

“He’d’a ate them too if he had a chance,” Bardwell said as he pulled his boots off and dumped the water out of them.

J.D. let their banter roll off him. He knelt beside the body, studying every detail. A dark uneasiness had settled over him as he waited for Quinn to arrive after calling from Daggrepont’s car phone. Daggrepont had been Lucy’s lawyer. Mary Lee had it in her head that there was something fishy about Lucy’s death. His own take on that scenario had been to let dead dogs lie. Bryce’s pal had taken the blame, which was a hell of a lot better than Del taking the blame. But now Daggrepont was dead, and J.D.’s gut told him there was more to it than a bum ticker.