Joe had always considered Eldon Cates to be an aggravating throwback who would someday foul up. When he did, Joe wanted to be there.

Bull was another story. Bull was bigger and dumber than his dad, and two years earlier, Joe had caught the son and his unpleasant wife, Cora Lee, red-handed with a trophy bull elk in the back of their pickup three days before the season opener.

Bull’s hunting rig could be identified instantly because it had been retrofitted as a kind of rolling meat wagon. He’d welded a steel pole and crossbeam into the bed and strung a steel cable and hook from a turnbuckle. With the device, Bull could back up to a big-game carcass, hook the cable through its back legs, and hoist it up in order to field dress and skin it on the spot.

Bull’s scheme had been to kill the bull prior to the arrival of two hunters from Pennsylvania. If either of the two hunters didn’t get their own trophy bull elk, Bull was going to tag the carcass with their license and let them take it home, thus guaranteeing a one hundred percent successful hunt. The Pennsylvania clients hadn’t been in on the scheme, from what Joe could determine.

Judge Hewitt was a hunter himself, and he came down hard on Bull Cates.

The violations had cost the outfitter several thousand dollars in fines, the forfeiture of his rifles and pickup, and the loss of his outfitter’s license from the state association. Bull was bitter and claimed Joe had “deprived him of his livelihood” and that he would someday even the score. Cora Lee acted out during the sentencing and hurled epithets at Joe and Judge Hewitt and was forcibly removed from the courtroom by deputies.

It wasn’t uncommon for a game violator to talk big in bars about getting even with the local game warden, and Bull wasn’t the first to ever make threats. For Joe, it was part of the job. He knew that in the past the threats had always dissipated with the onslaught of the next morning’s hangover.

Nevertheless, for months after, Joe had taken measures to avoid running into Bull and Cora Lee. There was no reason to pour fuel on the embers. Joe wasn’t as young as he used to be, and Bull had six inches and fifty pounds on him.

So when Joe would see Bull’s pickup—a 2007 Ford F-250 with a DULL KNIFE OUTFITTERS decal crudely scraped off the driver’s-side door—in the parking lot of the grocery store, he would drive around the block until it was gone. When the vehicle was parked in front of the Stockman’s Bar, Joe would keep driving.

When there were no hunting seasons open, the Cateses operated C&C Sewer and Septic Tank Service. C&C stood for “Cates & Cates.” It was a dirty job, pumping out rural septic tanks. The Cateses owned several circa-1980 pump trucks, and Joe often saw them on remote roads in the spring and fall. When he spotted one in front of him on the highway, he gave it a wide berth.

“So you know Bull, all right,” Reed said with a chuckle. “Did you ever run across Timber, the second son?”

“Timber?” Joe said. “What’s with these names?”

“If you think Bull is a problem, he’s a piece of cake compared to son number two. Timber was a hell of a high school athlete. He was quarterback in the late eighties, the last time the Saddlestring Wranglers won state, back before you came into this country. Timber walked on at UW, and he might have played eventually, but he got into some kind of bar fight at the Buckhorn in Laramie and they threw him off the team. Unfortunately, he moved back home. And he was crazy. He’d get so violent when he drank, it would take four of us deputies to get him down. When he discovered meth, he got even worse. Finally, he was arrested up in Park County for carjacking some old lady on her way to Yellowstone Park because he’d run out of gas and he wanted her Mustang. Lucky for all of us, Timber is doing three years in Rawlins. I hear he isn’t exactly a model prisoner, or he would have been out and back here by now.”

Reed took a deep breath. “However . . . I got word from a buddy of mine, a prison guard, that Timber could be released any day now. I’ve sent a memo to my guys to keep an eye out for him. My guess is he’ll go straight home to Mama. Then it’ll be a matter of time before he gets in trouble again.”

“Then there’s Dallas,” Joe said.

“Then there’s Dallas,” Reed echoed.

Joe had met him four months ago at his house. Dallas had been invited there by April, who at the time had worked at Welton’s Western Wear. Dallas was a local hero, winner of the National High School Finals Rodeo, then the College National Finals Rodeo, and at that time he was in second place in the standings in bull riding and bound for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. His lean, hard face was so well-known among rodeo fans that his likeness was used to sell jeans in western stores, and he’d visit local retailers to promote the brand when he wasn’t riding bulls. That’s how Dallas and April met.

Dallas Cates was shorter than Joe, but had wider shoulders, and biceps that strained at the fabric of his snap-button western shirt. He had a compact frame that suggested he was spring-loaded and ready to explode at a moment’s notice. His neck was as wide as his jaw, and he projected raw physical power.

There was a two-inch scar on his left cheek that tugged at the edge of his mouth in an inadvertent sneer. Supposedly, Dallas got the scar when he jumped from a moving snowmobile onto the back of a bull elk, in an attempt to wrestle the animal to the ground like a rodeo cowboy did with a running steer. The sharp tip of one of the antlers had ripped Dallas’s cheek. Joe didn’t know if the story was true, but he’d heard it several times.

Dallas was also somewhere on the periphery of a terrible crime that had occurred when he was an all-state wrestler for Saddlestring High School, when a girl was abducted, raped, and dumped outside of town by at least four high school–aged suspects. Unfortunately, the victim, named Serda Tibbs, couldn’t identify her assailants because she’d been slipped a date-rape drug that rendered her unconscious. Were there four of them, or five? Four seniors were arrested, tried, and convicted. None of the four would finger Dallas Cates, even though several other students anonymously claimed Cates was the ringleader. That was the power Dallas held over the other student criminals.

“So have you met the matriarch, Brenda Cates?” Reed asked Joe, cocking his head as he pulled into his designated parking spot on the side of the county building.

The way he’d asked, Joe surmised, held significance.

“No. Marybeth’s met her at the library. Brenda wanted her support on creating signs to post at the entrances to town bragging about Dallas.”

Reed nodded. “She wants signage put up declaring Saddlestring the ‘hometown of PRCA bull-riding champion Dallas Cates.’”

Joe snorted.

“Let’s just say she’s very proud and protective of her family,” Reed said as he swung his seat around and lifted himself into his wheelchair in a single fluid motion.

Before Joe could ask what that meant, Reed’s cell phone burred and the sheriff held it up to his ear. He listened for a minute, then asked, “What about Dallas?” before listening more and punching off.

“What about Dallas?” Joe asked.

“That was my deputy. Dallas’s parents say he’s laid up and can’t make the trip into town right now. But Eldon and Brenda Cates themselves should be here any minute. They’re being very cooperative, I’m told.”

Joe said, “I’ll bet.”

Sheriff Reed said, “If Dallas Cates is that banged-up and has actually been home for a while, he might not have been the one, Joe.”

“I want to see him. I want a doctor to evaluate his condition.”

“We can do that,” Reed said, “and we will. But first I think we should hear out Eldon and Brenda, don’t you?”

Joe agreed.

“Brenda is the one you should be interested in,” Reed said, arching his eyebrows and sliding the van door open.