“Supposedly there were three prospectors who snuck into this area after it had been cordoned off by the military as Indian territory. As the tale goes, they found gold, a lot of it, but as is human nature, they then fell in on each other. After the altercation, the only one left was a Swede by the name of Jonus Johanson.”

“He would be the dead one?”

I examined the board in my hands, running my thumb across the ridges made by the engraved letters. “Nobody knows what happened to him, but a man traveling alone, supposedly with a lot of gold, surrounded by scoundrels and profiteers of every stripe . . . I wouldn’t think his odds were very good, but it’s just a story.”

She glanced around, I guess half hoping to see a timber-supported opening in the hills. “If those men found the mine, then it must be true.”

“Not really—it’s probably just an old, shallow-shaft coal mine, a rarity in these parts; but still, as Dorothy Johnson once said, ‘when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’” Nudging my chin toward the Bighorns, I started back toward the Bullet. “If they found gold, it would’ve been closer to the mountains, but actually there’s really not much geologic evidence of any gold anywhere in the area.” I opened the door and looked back at the two of them. “Fool’s gold, I’d say.”

“Have you seen it?”

“What?”

“The mine.”

“Once, when I was a kid out with my father.” She opened the passenger-side door and let Dog hop in. “We were fishing and I got bored, so I went for a walk over a few ridges.”

She climbed in and stretched the safety belt over her chest. “Through the draws?”

“Yep.” I glanced over my shoulder at the endless series of hills. “You get in some of these big draws and you can’t see the mountains; I was young, maybe six or seven, and not paying attention, and pretty soon I was lost. I got turned around and thought I was heading back, but then I saw an opening in a hillside with timbers and supports.” I climbed into the truck, set the board with the etched names, faded with time and weather, across the center console between us, and fastened my own seat belt. “I was a kid so of course I went over and looked into it, but it was dark.” I shook my head. “Threw a few pebbles in the opening but couldn’t hear anything. Anyway, I got bored again and kept walking.” I closed the door and started the Bullet. “Around dark, my father found me heading down Cook Road in the wrong direction. He was pretty mad, but I distracted him by telling him about the mine. We went back and looked for it a few days later; saw an old lineman’s shack, but I never could find the mine opening again.”

She glanced through the windshield at the fork in the road. “So, where to?”

I pointed my thumb at the arrow on the board that pointed to the left, next to the worn white letters in the reddish wood that read LONE ELK. “The road less traveled, I suppose.”

I pulled out and drove over a few more ridges and then hit a straightaway that seemed to stretch to the horizon.

“But you saw it? I mean, it’s out here.”

“The mine?” I thought about it, but the memories were vague. “Or maybe I just dreamed it.” I smiled at her. “I’m getting like that, you know. I think I know things from my past, but it turns out I just think that I know them; my youth is becoming a mythology to me.”

She shook her head. “Just for the record? You say some of the strangest shit sometimes.”

I went back to studying the road, because ahead is where the trouble usually is waiting. “Comes from having an overly active imagination.”

Vic leaned forward in her seat. “Is that somebody?”

“Yep, I think it is.” I began slowing the Bullet in an attempt to not powder whoever it might be—being afoot was a daring feat this far out.

I eased to a stop and rolled my window down; I could tell the young man thought about making a break for it but then realized that he might’ve waited a little too long—he might outrun two cops, but he wouldn’t outrun the Bullet. “Howdy.”

He shifted the backpack on his shoulder as if it were the weight of the world, and maybe it was, at least to him. His voice didn’t carry much enthusiasm as he studied the hills, one eye swollen, the skin underneath blackened. “Hey.”

“Where are you going?”

He shrugged.

“Just headed out for the territories, huh?”

He turned his head, the long tendrils of black hair whipping across his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Vic snickered as I explained. “Oh, just something the old-timers used to say.” I watched him some more—one tough cookie, as my father would have said. “Reno’s nice; ever been to Reno?”

The eye that wasn’t damaged narrowed, and he was unsure if I was poking fun at him. “Where’s that?”

“Nevada.”

He took his time answering. “Is that where you’re headed?”

“No, we’re headed for your house.”

He sighed and kicked at a chunk of red shale in the road with the toe of a Chuck Taylor sneaker. “That’s the one place I don’t want to go.”

I nodded and glanced at my undersheriff. “Well, we’re lost and were hoping you could help us out.”

He lip-pointed over his shoulder. “S’that way.”

“We might miss it.”

He sighed again, bigger this time, and then trudged in front of my truck and around to Vic’s side like a condemned prisoner. She opened the door and got out, forcing him to the center. He climbed in, setting his backpack on the transmission hump as Dog swiped a tongue as broad as a dishwashing sponge up the back of his head. “’The fuck?”

Dog sat back and looked at him the way dogs have looked at boys for centuries—half-feral kindred spirits.

“That’s Dog; I’m his.”

The kid nodded toward Vic. “Are you hers, too?”

“I’m not so sure that’s an appropriate question for you to be asking.” I pulled out. “Where’d you get the shiner?”

“The what?”

“Black eye.”

He touched his face. “What did you call it?”

“A shiner. The term can be traced back to a couple of origins; some say it was an Irish term for the beating you’d get if you didn’t keep your equipment shiny, others that it was because the discolored, swelled tissue appears to have a shine to it.”

He shrugged. “All I know is that if you make a smart remark to my uncle, you get one free of charge.”

I drove, and he continued to study us; then he turned toward Vic, even going so far as to shift in the seat.

She stared back at him. “What?”

“You’re hot.”

“Um, thanks.”

“My uncle Randy and me were talking about you . . . he thinks you’re hot, too.”

Vic glanced at me. “That’s nice.”

“We watch TV, and he always says that the TV cops are too pretty, that making them look like that is bullshit, but he said you were an exception.”

“Oh.” She smiled at him. “So, what are cops supposed to look like?”

He nodded my way. “Like him.”

I nodded. “Thanks.” I drove and thought it might be prudent to change the subject. “You know, I used to run away a lot when I was a kid.”

“I’m seventeen, and I’m not runnin’, just goin’.”

I nodded. “Does your family know you’re going?”

“No.”

“Well, then, within the narrow purview of the law, that would be termed as running.”

Crossing his arms, he slumped in the seat. “What, and that’s against the law?”

“Pretty much.” I rested an elbow on the sill. “So, why are you running away?”

“I’m not so sure that’s an appropriate question for you to be asking.”

Vic snickered some more as we made a small rise; at the base of one of the many draws, where the two ridges met, a large, Dutch-shouldered house sat nestled against one of the hills with a sprawling barn and an assortment of outbuildings, corrals, and chutes, along with a small bridge spanning Wallows Creek.

“Is this it?”

He didn’t say anything, slumped, and looked at his lap as if we were taking him back to a gulag. I slowed to look at the mailbox, but there was only a number and no name. “Let’s go find out.”