After a long pause, Eldon said, “I don’t remember. Seven, maybe eight times.”

“Nine times,” Brenda corrected him, then looked from Joe to Reed to Dulcie with wide-open eyes to hammer home her point. “Six times since we’ve been married. We don’t know what it is, or why it is. Whether Eldon has some kind of smell that attracts poisonous snakes or what. But if three men are walking across a pasture and one of them gets bit—it’s Eldon. I don’t know how many times he’s been out hunting with clients or on a septic tank job when he calls me on the radio and says, ‘Brenda, I got bit again.’ So I drop whatever I’m doing and take him to the hospital for treatment. But the thing is, all that venom has affected his memory. He can’t remember days or dates anymore. So when he says Dallas has been home for a day or a week, well, you can’t really believe him.”

She turned to Eldon and said, “Sorry. I had to tell them.”

He didn’t react.

Brenda looked directly at Joe and said, “Dallas used to love that girl of yours. Eldon and I met her at the National Finals in Las Vegas last year and the two of them couldn’t have been happier. That’s the kind of boy he is: Dallas bought our plane tickets and put us up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Eldon hadn’t been on a plane in years.

“You should have seen them together, Mr. Pickett. He doted on her. Just doted on her. They were like the Barbie and Ken of the rodeo set. Now, I don’t know what happened between them. Dallas doesn’t talk about things like that. I know she watched him like a hawk when other girls were around. He told me once she got real jealous for no reason, and he thought she was smothering him. Dallas has always been the social type, and I’m sure she didn’t appreciate that very much. I think that’s why he broke it off with her, that jealousy. I’m guessing she didn’t take it well at all. I’m just speculating, but I’m a pretty good observer of human nature. April is as fierce as she is good-looking, and I can’t see her just shrugging her shoulders and moving on.”

Joe shook his head, not understanding. Dulcie picked up his cue.

“Did April try to get back at him somehow?” she asked.

“Oh, he never told me anything like that,” Brenda said. “But I think the breakup affected him. It happened just before Houston, which is probably why his head wasn’t in the game and he got bucked off and hurt so bad.”

“So it was April’s fault?” Joe asked. He’d once again broken his agreement by speaking up, and Reed gave him a disapproving look.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Brenda said, looking aghast. “I just meant that he didn’t ride with the kind of total confidence and concentration he’s known for. You can watch the tape of it and see for yourself. I’m not blaming that poor girl for anything at all.”

“So he came home alone,” Reed broke in. “Did you two pick him up at the airport?”

“He drove,” Eldon said.

“He drove back from Houston with broken ribs?” Joe asked, incredulous.

He noted that Brenda again gripped Eldon’s thigh with her hand. This time, she appeared to be applying real pressure, but the man looked ahead stoically.

“Like a lot of boys around here, Dallas has a thing about his pickup,” Brenda said. “He’d never leave it, no matter what. He never likes to be without it. Even if he was dying, he’d drive. Imagine how tough that kid must be. He drove from Houston to Saddlestring all alone with broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. I don’t know how he did it.”

Joe raised his eyebrows and caught Dulcie’s eye. The dislocated shoulder was new information. She’d caught it also.

“Which arm is dislocated?” she asked Brenda.

“His left, thank goodness,” Brenda said. “That’s because he has to grip that bull with his right hand. So he’ll still be able to do that.”

Joe visualized the act he’d seen many times. Bull riders lowered themselves carefully into a steel chute filled with a two-thousand-pound animal. Often, the bull was so big there was barely enough clearance on either side of it for the cowboy to mount it. A flanking strap lined with lamb’s wool was cinched to the rear quarters of the bull with an easy-release snap. After the cowboy had jammed his gloved hand into the opening of his bull rope, which was cinched around the middle of the bull, the gate was opened. It was a common misconception that the flanking strap was attached to the bull’s genitals, when it wasn’t at all. As much as trying to get the rider off its back, the bull was just as concerned about ridding himself of the flanking strap, which was alternately pulled tight and released and served as an irritant. It took a tremendous amount of upper-body strength and balance for a rider to stay on the bull while it spun, twisted, and bucked.

That kind of upper-body strength, Joe knew, could produce a hell of a beating.

“So how long has he been home?” Reed asked them.

“Three days, two nights,” Brenda said with finality. “And from what I understand from your deputies, poor April was just found this morning. And since she definitely wasn’t with us, that means she got here with someone else.”

She pushed the bulk of her weight forward on the chair and leaned across the desk toward Reed.

She said to the sheriff, “I hope you find whoever did it and put that man in a cage. And if he resists arrest and gets himself shot in the process, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that. Dallas feels the same way.”

“Then where is he?” Joe asked. “Why isn’t he here now?”

Brenda’s eyes flashed when she turned to Joe. There was real anger there, and it surprised him.

“Eldon is right,” she said. “You people look down on folks like us. I see it all the time. When Eldon and Bull take their pump truck out, the property owners act like it’s their fault they’re swimming in their own feces. I saw it when I talked to your wife in the library about supporting our effort to recognize the fact that this town produced a national champion bull rider named Dallas Cates. She just looked at me and nodded her head like she couldn’t wait for me to leave and go back to whatever rock I crawled out from under. And I could see you all setting a trap for that poor kid and putting him in your jail. That’s why Eldon and I came down here. We wanted to set the record straight before you jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

She narrowed her eyes and said, “Dallas was at home when April was beat up and dumped outside of town. She fell in with the wrong crowd. That wasn’t his fault. He’d be here right now if he was healthy enough to drive into town with us. I know you’re thinking that if he drove here all the way from Houston then he should be able to drive the twenty miles from our place, but it isn’t like that. Dallas is the toughest kid you’ll ever meet. He gritted his teeth and drove all the way from Houston in terrible pain, but he didn’t let it get to him until he was home and safe. It’s like he stored up all that pain and waited to let it hit him, and it has now. With all of his injuries and maybe months of recuperating ahead of him, Dallas fought the pain and drove all the way back here to a town that refuses to appreciate anything he’s accomplished.”

To Joe, it was a tour de force of smoke and misdirection. Reed was right. Brenda had coached Eldon on what to say, but Eldon had fouled it up so she had to step in and take over. Brenda was running the show and she no doubt ran the family. Now he knew what he was dealing with.

“Even in his condition, he wanted to come into town with us and see April,” Brenda said, tears forming in her eyes. “He wanted to make sure she was okay, but I told him to stay.”

“Why?” Dulcie asked her.

“Because I know how you people could stack the deck against him,” Brenda said, narrowing her eyes again. “He’s on pain meds and you could get him to say something and twist it back around on him later.”