* * *
AT QUITTING TIME, I called the number Wade Benbow had given Mr. Lowry.
“Hello?” Benbow said.
“You wanted to talk to me, Detective?”
“I need your help. I’d like for you to come out to my house. Now.”
“I was fixing to drop by Jo Anne’s workplace.”
“What’s stopping you from doing both?”
His metal-roofed log house was high up on a hill and deep in the woods above the opening to Ratón Pass. Down below I could see a motel, its neon lights already on, and to the north the sloping brick streets of Trinidad and the glimmering of the sun’s reflection on the magical razor-blue mountain that rose like a tombstone above the city.
Benbow stood on the porch, wearing a beat-up bomber jacket, half-top boots, and a slouch hat, a revolver tucked inside his belt. A can of beer was balanced on the porch rail. In back a pickup truck was parked in a paintless, ancient garage so narrow in its construction it resembled a coffin.
“Want a beer?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Come in back. Let’s see what kind of shot you are.”
“What’s this about, Detective?”
“Call me Wade.” He stepped down from the porch with his can of beer and began walking around the side of the house. “Coming?”
“I have to leave in the next fifteen minutes.”
“What’s the urgent situation in fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll think of something,” I replied.
The backyard was sliced with the shadows of pine trees, a cold wind puffing out of a dry creek bed that threaded through an arroyo behind the house. I thought I saw a mountain lion jump across the rocks in the creek bed and clamber uphill through the tree trunks.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“They come down sometimes. They think this country is still theirs. There’re things up on that hill that are worse than cougars, though.”
“Like what?”
“This was the northern tip of a Comanche empire. They did things with fire it’s better not to think about. I can show you tipi rings and the remains of human bones up there, some of them children’s.”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Detective.”
“Wade.” He pulled the revolver from his belt. It was a .357 Magnum snub. “See that bucket on the post about twenty feet up the creek? Think you can punch a hole or two in it?”
“Expensive ammunition for target practice.”
He handed me a pair of earplugs wrapped in cellophane. “Since I contracted the big C, I find myself less inclined to worry about the cost of bullets.”
I aimed with both hands, my feet slightly spread, and fired six times before I lowered the weapon. I pulled the plug from one ear.
He took a sip of his beer. “You learn to shoot at Braille school?”
I looked back at the bucket.
“I’m joking,” he said. “You’re heck on wheels, Broussard.”