Chapter Three

MONTGOMERY DRIVES OUT to Dewey-Humboldt on his next day off. He stops at the only place in town worth being in: Billy Jack’s Saloon, a standalone dive on the side of Highway 69. There are a few vehicles parked in front and alongside the small building, even at eleven o’clock in the morning. A tall metal pole stands next to the saloon with a red beer brand sign hanging at the top and another sign reading BILLY JACK’S SALOON with images of a beer mug and a redheaded woman shooting pool. Wire fence encloses a narrow area of outside seating right next to the front door, and multicolored big-bulb string lights line the roof edges. Part of the saloon’s south side is nothing but exposed wooden boards.

Inside, the bar is on the right, and the pool tables and extra seating on the left. The ceiling above the bar is covered in dollar bills bearing signatures and messages scrawled in black marker. Neon signs advertising beer and liquor brands flow red and green on the walls. There’s a small TV mounted in the left corner behind the bar and another one on the back wall of the saloon opposite the entrance, the older box models instead of flat screens.

Montgomery sits near the middle of the bar, wearing his black cowboy hat.

The bartender, a stocky man in his forties with a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair lining his jaw and upper lip, comes over. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” he says.

“Here I am,” says Montgomery.

“What’ll you have?”

“Cold beer would be good. Bottled. Dealer’s choice.”

The bartender pulls a beer out of the cooler and pops off the cap before setting it in front of Montgomery.

“Thanks,” the cowboy says and starts sipping.

They don’t speak for a few minutes. The bar is quiet enough they can hear the football game on TV, and the bartender turns his back on Montgomery to watch.

“Hey,” Montgomery says, voice low and smoker’s raspy.

The bartender faces him again.

“You ever serve a man by the name of Joel Troutman?”

“Maybe. Tell me what he looks like and I might remember.”

Montgomery saw a photograph of Troutman on the local news last night, on Bill Barbee’s TV. Montgomery doesn’t have a television in his own house, but Sam claims they’ve been running Troutman’s information every day on Channel 5. The bartender’s playing dumb. Montgomery can’t imagine why. He gives him the description he heard on the news, almost word for word.

“Five-foot-ten, dark hair, little bit more on the face than you. Thirty-eight years old. Average build, kinda broad in the shoulders. He’s married. Drives a blue Ford pickup.”

The bartender creases his face in concentration.

“I think he works construction,” Montgomery adds.

“I might know who you’re talking about,” says the bartender.

“You mighta seen him come in with a guy named Ed Decker, if that helps.”

“Shit. I do know who you’re talking about. He did come in with Ed a few times.” The bartender leans toward Montgomery and lowers his voice. “Ed Decker’s dead. Murder.”

Montgomery drinks some of his beer, not reacting beyond a sleepy-eyed blink. He doesn’t feel like a murderer, but he’s not about to protest the bartender’s choice of words.

“What do you want to know about Joel Troutman for?” the bartender says.

“What can you tell me about him?”

The bartender looks at him with his mouth pressed into a tight line. “You said Troutman’s married, right?”

Montgomery nods.

“Pretty sure he come in apart from Ed sometimes, with a woman named Donna. She’s a blonde. Got a nice rack. Only, she don’t wear a wedding ring… And times Joel showed up here with Ed and Ed’s wife, then he was with a brunette.”

Montgomery raises his chin and his eyebrows, swirling the base of his beer bottle above the bar top. “So, Troutman’s been screwing around.”

The bartender looks guilty for tattling, face now speckled with sweat. “Anyway, that’s about the only thing I can think of.”

“You know Donna’s last name? Where to find her? Or somebody who does?”

The bartender shakes his head. “No. But I got something else.”

He walks off to the cash register at the end of the bar, opens the drawer, lifts the money organizer, and pulls something out from under it. When he comes back, he pushes the thing across the bar top with his forefinger.

A crumpled, dirty paper napkin with a phone number—and a pink lip print.

Montgomery looks up at him. “You know this is hers?”

“Yeah. She left it for someone when she was here alone once.”

Montgomery sticks the napkin into his hip pocket and nods. “Thanks.”

The bartender nods and leaves him alone, returning to the back end of the bar.

Montgomery nurses his beer, listening to the soft noises of the television and people talking behind him, thinking first about how all small towns are the same. Then, he moves on to the question he’s been gnawing on like gristle that won’t give. Why is he doing this? Helping the deputy for free. He doesn’t care where Joel Troutman is or where he goes with the sack of money. It’s sure as hell not his job to find him.

But here he is.

Montgomery can name all the things this isn’t about: an irrational fear Troutman will come back and kill him to avenge Ed, guilt over killing a man, some heroic urge to see Troutman brought to justice for the robbery. Sam hasn’t promised him anything as a reward, not that it would motivate Montgomery if he did.

The cowboy drains his beer bottle and leaves a five on the bar before walking out into the bleached daylight. He stands in the parking lot and lights a cigarette, watching the highway and the landscape. Tries to imagine Decker and Troutman scheming up the robbery inside the saloon, drinking one night, just the two of them, tossing around the idea without meaning it yet.

He wonders if they were close friends.

He doesn’t think they were.

*

SAM GIVES HIMSELF an extra half hour to find the Barbee Ranch, and he uses about twenty minutes after asking for directions at the Skull Valley General Store. The ranch is on the western side of Iron Springs Road and north of the town center, past a handful of other homesteads. Sam follows a skinny paved road branching off Iron Springs, then takes a couple dirt paths to the main entrance of Barbee’s property, marked with a sign in the metal archway above the gate reading BLITHE BEE RANCH. He drives in and sees Montgomery standing in the middle of the long, wide, unpaved driveway with his arms crossed, leaning against the back end of his pickup truck. Sam parks his car and gets out, work boots scraping at the gravel. He’s wearing his lined denim jacket because he’d rather be too warm than cold for however long Montgomery’s going to keep him on horseback.

“You’re on time,” Montgomery says as Sam approaches him. “I was going to give you half an hour to be late finding the place.”

“You were going to stand here for half an hour?”

“I was prepared to. Hope you had breakfast. ’Round here, lunch is about noon.”

The dirt drive winds past Montgomery’s pickup and reaches far back into the property. The main house, where the Barbees live, is painted white with forest-green window trim, the roof’s wood shingles a dark, earthy brown. A few large potted plants cover and decorate the front porch, and there’s a rocking bench seat near the front door.

Montgomery leads Sam around the house and across a grassy backyard to a big barn, its double doors already wide open. Sam waits for him as he disappears into the first stall on the right and reemerges leading a horse that’s already been saddled and bridled.

“This one’s yours for the day,” Montgomery tells him.

The horse is a dark-chocolate brown, almost black, with a well-kept blonde mane and tail. He’s never a seen a horse with her colors before, and he’s struck by how pleasing she is to look at. Her body has graceful lines, and her face is kind, black eyes peering at Sam with a look he recognizes from various women he’s known: gentle curiosity.

“Her name’s Cavendish,” Montgomery says, handing him the reins. “Rocky Mountain breed, something special Bill gave his wife. Just about the easiest horse to ride.”

Sam raises his hand to her nose and lets her sniff his palm. “Mrs. Barbee won’t mind me taking her?”

“Nope.”

Montgomery disappears into the stall across from Cavendish’s and comes out leading a buckskin quarter horse. Like Sam’s, the horse is already saddled and bridled. He’s bigger, with a custard-yellow body and a thicker frame, a black mane and tail. He might be the most beautiful animal Sam’s ever seen, and only a minute ago, he thought that honor belonged to Cavendish.

“This is Gold Dust,” says Montgomery. “Best all-around stock horse in Barbee’s stable.”

He looks at the horse with a trace of affection in his eyes, the slightest smile on his lips, holding the reins in one hand. It’s the first time Sam’s seen him pleased with something, and he now realizes that if he’s going to understand and grow close to this man, he’ll have to learn to appreciate horses.

Without being asked, Montgomery moves to hold Cavendish steady so Sam can mount her. It’s been years since Sam rode a horse, and he’s tentative when he sticks his left foot into the stirrup. Montgomery withholds instruction. Sam hauls his weight up onto the mare in one fluid motion, swinging his right leg over her and settling in the saddle. He forgot how high up he’d be. He’s not quite ready for Montgomery to hand over the reins and let go of Cavendish, but he doesn’t object. Montgomery hops onto Gold Dust and, without a word, rides out of the barn ahead of Sam.

Sam follows him. He feels less like he’s riding the horse and more like she’s taking him along with her.

Barbee’s homestead is a hundred acres of deeded land, most of it pasture for the horses, paired with five thousand acres of surrounding land allotted for livestock grazing. With seven horses and fifty-five head of cattle, the ranch is a small operation, one the Barbees chose for their retirement after decades on a much bigger ranch in southeastern Arizona. Headquarters on the deeded land consists of the main house, horse barn, working corrals, garage, storage shed, tack room, and shop. None of the ranch hands live on the property, but there are a couple mobile homes situated at a distance from the back of the main house, used when workers need to stay overnight. Montgomery explains to Sam that the Barbees plan on selling off the cattle when they can no longer take care of them and hold on to some of the horses.

“You ever think about getting your own?” Sam asks as they amble through an open pasture of yellow grass, riding west.

“When I was younger,” Montgomery says. “At some point, I realized loving the work doesn’t mean I want to deal with the responsibility of ownership. Or the commitment. Owning things—it ties you down, makes it hard to move on to somewhere else should you care to.”

The fenced-off grazing pastures stretch the length of a football field behind the Barbee’s house. A patch of yard was saved for grandchildren and their brightly colored playsets. Those pastures open up to wider fields that lead into wilderness, and the fencing disappears from sight in the back of the homestead, reaching far west along the front and the dirt road running parallel. A few of the other horses are scattered throughout the field, long necks sloping to the ground as they nibble on grass, heads lifting to watch the two men ride past them. Montgomery stays ahead of Sam by one horse length, and Sam can tell he’s setting a slow pace to ease him into riding.

They sit the horses at the edge of a plateau that drops into another stretch of plains several feet below and look at the treetops brushing the bottom of the sky and the mountains far beyond them. They breathe in the clear, cool air and don’t say a word for a long time, a single bird crying the only sound they hear. The landscape has more color and beauty out here than in other parts of Skull Valley, including Montgomery’s own little homestead. It feels like they’re a thousand miles from civilization, even this close to the ranch house, and Sam doesn’t have a hard time understanding why a solitary man like Montgomery would choose to disappear into this place. Sam’s job, the hunt for Joel Troutman, a world of robberies and murders might as well belong to someone else now.

Sam glances over at Montgomery’s left hand, resting on his thigh, and notices the bare ring finger again. “You ever been married?”

Montgomery squints into the distance, his face tanned to a peachy brown from so much time spent outside. He’s quiet for so long Sam starts to wonder if he heard the question. “Once,” Montgomery says.

Sam can’t tell if there’s anything in his voice like regret or nostalgia. He looks away from the cowboy. “Me and my ex-wife were together for six years, total. Married four.”

“What was her name?”

Sam looks at him again, almost surprised at the show of interest. “Jen.”

“Jen Roswell,” Montgomery says, as if he sees her out there, somewhere on the horizon line.

“Not anymore,” says Sam, with a touch of wistfulness.

“When’d you split?”

“About a year ago.”

Montgomery looks over at him. “So that’s why you moved to Prescott. Ran away from her.”

“I didn’t run away. We lived in a small town. I thought it’d be easier on her if I left.”

Montgomery turns his eyes back to the land and doesn’t argue.

“What about your ex?” Sam says after a minute. “What was her name?”

“Annalee.” Montgomery speaks the name like it’s something he put on a shelf and hasn’t touched in a long time. “Al for short.”

Sam nods. Cavendish flicks her ears.

“What’s she look like?” Sam asks.

Montgomery smirks and shakes his head. “Good enough for a man to make bad decisions. But it never made much difference to me what she looked like.”

The cowboy starts his horse forward before Sam can ask him to explain.

They ride down the side of the plateau and across another open pasture, continuing into a thicket of cottonwood trees yellowed with autumn. It’s a little warmer now, the sun brighter in the sky.

Sam thinks about his ex-wife as he keeps his eyes on Montgomery’s broad back. Jen is a natural beauty with long, blonde hair. They met in a country western bar one night in Susanville, California—the Lassen County seat. She asked him for a dance, not the other way around, and he surprised her with how good he was. She’s an outdoorsy woman who hikes, jogs, and goes four wheeling. When they lived together, she would take long bike rides on weekend mornings. She never asked Sam to go with her, and he never wanted to.

It’s strange what you remember about someone gone from your life. Jen almost never painted her nails, but when she did, she always picked robin’s-egg blue. She played softball on her high school team all four years but not in college. She has a raised scar about four inches long, starting at the base of her neck on the left side and angling down toward her shoulder blade at a diagonal. She’s wanted a tattoo since she was fifteen, but she could never decide what to get. Her lips were always soft; she used a lot of lip balm but rarely wore lipstick. When she tanned, the freckles surfaced across her face like a dash of cinnamon in a cup of milky coffee.

Sam isn’t paying attention to whether his horse speeds up or Montgomery’s slows down, but they come alongside each other somehow, riding in silence for a few more minutes.

“You think you’ll get married again?” Sam blurts out the question the second it occurs to him.

“Hell, no. Didn’t agree with me the first time.”

“Why not?”

Montgomery only glances at Sam and doesn’t answer.

They ride under the cottonwood trees until they arrive at another clearing, where the mountains reappear in the distance, blue and impenetrable, following the horizon line as far as they can see. A few cows, two black and one brown, stand scattered ahead of them.

“You mind if I give this horse a run?” Montgomery asks.

“No, go ahead,” Sam says, looking over at him.

Montgomery nods and knocks his heels into Gold Dust’s sides, speeding up into a fast trot. He’s yards ahead in a minute or two, and Sam watches him, picturing Montgomery out here alone, day in and day out. He fits the scenery too well, the lone cowboy who’s half wild animal himself, as good as caged at somebody’s dining room table with the forks on the left and the knives on the right. Sam wonders if anybody really knows Montgomery, if Sam can know him, or if the cowboy’s too used to this silent relationship with nature to allow for human closeness. Maybe it’s a futile endeavor, trying to befriend a man like this one, but Sam wants to try. He wants to tread the bottom of the well.

Montgomery rides in a wide arc, from right to left, coming back around toward Sam. The cows don’t flinch or flee as he passes them, knowing when to respond to horseback riders and when to ignore them. Sam runs his hand along Cavendish’s neck, feeling her respond to him, and watches as Montgomery returns.

The men continue on, silent again, walking the horses about as slowly as they can go.

Montgomery drapes the reins across his saddle and digs his lighter and a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. He lights up. “What about you? You looking to find wife number two?”

“I don’t know.” Sam’s answer is more thoughtful than the question. “I don’t know what I want now. I thought I was going to be married to Jen forever.”

Montgomery slips his lighter back into his pocket and smokes. The corners of his mouth quirk up, but the smile dies half-formed.

“What?”

Montgomery turns his head toward Sam, eyes weathered. “Forever’s a lie only people can tell themselves.”

He holds the cigarette in his fingers and looks forward again, smoke squiggling away from his hand.

Sam watches him longer than he should. He wonders if Montgomery really is that cynical. Wonders about the cowboy’s ex-wife, the kind of woman it takes to wrangle a man like Montgomery into marriage. He wants to ask why they split, whose idea it was, if Montgomery hates her or loves her. He holds his tongue because they don’t know each other well enough yet, and Montgomery strikes him as a private man.

They ride deeper into the wilderness, through a grove of black walnut trees with their golden foliage. They catch sight of a mule deer ahead as she pauses to look at them before disappearing. A butterfly trails through the air between them, hovering low near their heads until they’re almost out of the grove. On the other side are more plains, a huge pasture meant for livestock grazing that leads to the hills. They stop the horses with the trees at their backs and take time to look around again.

Perched on a log in the middle of the pasture is a row of lidless jars and beer cans.

“Did you bring it?” Montgomery says, eyeing the log.

Sam reaches into his jacket and pulls his sidearm from the holster on his belt. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t issue weapons to their deputies but requires them to carry their own at all times while on duty. Sam never owned a gun in California except the one Lassen County gave him. Holding this one in his hand now, he still can’t quite believe it’s his, not something he can leave behind with the job.

Montgomery looks over at him, sees the gun in Sam’s hand, and swings off his horse. He walks several yards ahead and stops, feet planted in a wide stance and the wispy grass brushing below his knees.

Sam re-holsters his gun and has an awkward time of dismounting Cavendish, who is unbelievably patient for an animal bearing the weight of a grown man. Once he’s on the ground, Sam’s surprised to feel how sore he is from riding already. He walks up to Montgomery’s side and waits for instructions.

Montgomery brandishes his own weapon, the pistol he used to shoot Ed Decker in the Dog Bowl Diner. Sam remembers it. Stainless steel frame, rich, nutty-brown grip. It’s obvious Montgomery takes good care of the gun.

“Good ol’ Smith and Wesson, forty-five ACP,” he says. “You?”

Sam holds out his gun. It’s a Ruger LCRX .38 Special, a small black revolver loaded with hollow point bullets. The lightest gun Sam’s ever handled and easy to conceal. Maybe a revolver’s a little old-fashioned, and maybe a cop should carry something bigger, heavier, flashier. But Sam liked the Ruger as soon as he picked it up in the gun store.

Montgomery nods at the weapon. “All right.”

He steps forward a couple paces past Sam, squares his stance and his shoulders, and aims his pistol with both hands wrapped around the grip. He stands still for a moment, body relaxed, pointing the gun.

He shoots left to right, hitting only the beer cans, pausing between each gunshot and explosion of aluminum. Birds rush out of the trees behind the men, and the noise echoes throughout the otherwise quiet landscape.

Montgomery stops halfway across the log and turns around to face Sam. “Let’s see how well you know your way around that six-shooter.” He gestures at the targets.

Sam moves past him until he’s within range of the log and aims at the first jar on the left, looking at it through the gunsight and trying to clear his mind. He pulls the trigger and almost misses, hitting the jar near the mouth on the right side. It breaks, but the base remains mostly intact. He moves on to the next jar, thumbs the hammer down on his revolver, and shoots. Bullseye—the jar bursts, pieces of glass flying in all directions, the sound rattling through the pasture.

He misses the next jar on the first shot, hits it on his second try. He burns with embarrassment, feeling Montgomery watching him, but moves on without comment. He hits the next two jars with one shot and stops where Montgomery did, halfway through the targets.

Montgomery steps up along Sam’s right. He doesn’t speak, just looks at the log with his hands on his hips and his gun in the holster. The sun’s higher in the sky now, the landscape brighter and the air a little bit warmer.

“You shoot out here a lot?” Sam says.

“Not a lot. Usually don’t have the time when I’m working, and I don’t want to scare the cows too much. Or the horses.”

He pulls his pistol and shoots his next beer can one-handed. He uses his left hand, Sam notices.

“Bill and I been shootin’ a time or two. Rifles.”

“You hunt?”

“Only when somebody like him asks me to.” Montgomery lifts his cigarette to his mouth again. “I don’t enjoy it. Doing harm to nature. I like a good steak as much as the next guy, but that don’t mean I want to butcher the cow.”

He shoots the next can and the next, body loose and almost lazy. Sunlight curls up in the brim of his hat like a cat content to sleep there, and the plains grass rustles around his legs in the breeze. He lowers his gun and stares at the remaining targets, waiting for Sam to take his turn.

Sam moves to Montgomery’s right and aims for the first jar. Shards of glass left on the log flash when they catch the light, and the jar follows suit, winking at him before he blows it to hell.