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He could see it in her eyes.

Engrossed in his thoughts, Edgar didn't hear Kerney drop over the corral fence.

"Mr. Cox," Kerney said politely.

Surprised, Edgar turned his head.

"Mr. Kerney."

He looked back at Cody, who was moving in on Babe for another try. He didn't want to think about Eugene, Jose Padilla, or any of it. Not now.

Kerney remained silent.

Edgar got tired of waiting.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, his blue eyes searching Kerney's face.

"I thought you'd like to know about Jose Padilla.

Seems he is from around these parts."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No, his daughter did. Padilla died last night."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"She also told me why Padilla came back. He thought his father was murdered."

"That's pretty unlikely."

"Why do you say that?"

Edgar paused, rubbed his palm along the smooth corral railing, and tried to stay calm. Cody's throw snaked out and the noose snapped against Babe's neck. The horse whinnied and skipped back from the boy.

"Let the noose open up before you throw it," Edgar called.

"Remember the circle. Don't let the noose flatten out."

Cody nodded glumly and walked toward the mare, coiling his lariat for another throw.

"Why do you say Don Luis wasn't murdered?" Kerney asked.

"Because he died in a fall with his horse."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. Don Luis was an old man who went into the mountains alone once too often. He got caught in a blinding spring snowstorm and tried to find his way home. His horse plunged off a ridge.

Dropped a good sixty, seventy feet. Took Don Luis with him."

"Where did this happen?"

"Near Elderman Meadows. They didn't find his body for two weeks."

"What was he doing up there?"

"His sheepherder quit on him to take a WPA job building roads for the county. He hired a replacement, but the man didn't show. When the storm blew in, he went to check on the herd. He needed those sheep. He planned to sell them at the end of the season to pay a banknote and taxes. He was trying to hold on and get through the Depression, just like everybody else."

"What happened to the sheep?"

"Stolen. Most folks figured the sheep had been rustled before Don Luis left the hacienda."

"Was the crime ever solved?"

"No."

"Ever hear of a place called Mexican Hat?" Kerney asked.

"Can't say I have," Edgar answered.

"I hear you've been released from your position."

"That's true."

"Will you be staying on in Catron County?"

"Probably not."

Edgar watched Cody. He was all tensed up again and twirling much too hard.

"I didn't think so. Not many jobs hereabouts."

Cody let fly, and the lariat whipped out and snapped Babe in the eye.

The horse bawled, pitched back on her hind legs, forelegs flailing, and headed straight for Cody, who stood frozen in position.

Before Edgar could react, Kerney grabbed the lasso from the fence post and ran toward the mare, measuring the distance to the horse, spinning the lariat in a tight loop at his knee parallel to the ground. He let it go and the noose caught the mare by the forelegs. He yanked it tight and the horse went down hard on her side less than a foot in front of Cody.

Babe was on her back kicking in the air when Edgar scooped up Cody.

Kerney released the mare. She got up, shook herself off, snorted, and trotted away.

"Where did you learn that trick?" Edgar asked, holding Cody tightly in his arms.

"A fellow by the name of Bias Montoya taught it to me when I was a boy."

"Well, I thank both you and Mr. Montoya. That's some damn fine roping,"

"You're welcome."

He stroked Cody's head.

"Are you all right, cowboy?"

Cody's eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying.

"Yeah.

That was scary."

"It scared me, too," Edgar said.

"Is there anything else we need to talk about, Mr. Kerney?"

"I don't think so," Kerney replied.

Edgar stuck out his hand.

"Well then, good luck to you, and thanks again."

Kerney shook his hand and left, wondering what it would take to shake out Edgar's secret. He was damn sure there was one. Maybe Edgar had all the family skeletons locked in a closet that required a special key.

In Doming, Kerney went looking for a smuggler.

South of town, along the state highway, in view of the Tres Hermanas Mountains twenty miles distant, he found a mailbox with the right numbers at a roadside business that had gone under. The old farmhouse, bordered by cotton fields on three sides, had a front yard filled with rows of sagging wooden bins that once contained rocks for sale to the tourist trade. Signs at either end of the yard, the painted letters faded by the desert sun, welcomed rock hounds to the defunct establishment. There was a Keep Out sign posted on the front door of the house. Kerney parked and looked in the windows as he walked around the building. The rooms were empty except for some litter and a thick carpet of sand on the plank floors. Nobody had been inside for a good long time.

The wire strands to the back fence were filled with fluffs of raw cotton from the last harvest. In front of the fence was a level spot of sand and gravel near a utility pole with an electric meter attached to it. A dented propane tank sat on the other side of the site.

It was clear that a house trailer had been recently moved off the property. The tracks of the truck that had hauled it away were barely filled in with drifting sand.

Kerney kicked at the sand with the toe of a boot, pissed off at himself for taking too long to follow up on Juan's lead. It was another dead end, and he was getting tired of running into walls. He looked down the road. About half a mile away, at the intersection of the highway and a county road, was a farm equipment and supply business. Beyond that, cotton fields gave way to desert that ran up against the dark groundmass of the Tres Hermanas.

At the dealership, a metal-skin building with a large plate-glass window that bounced the sun into his eyes, he stood next to a hundred-thousand-dollar tractor and talked with the owner. Clancy Payne was in his sixties. He had a cheerful smile and a trace of a West Texas twang. He shook his head and said he didn't know much about the man up the road. Kerney learned that his target, Leon Spence, had sold the house trailer and moved to Tucson. Other than that, and a belief that Spence was a traveling salesman of some sort, Mr. Payne knew nothing more.

"When did Spence move out?" Kerney asked.

"I don't know when he left, but they hauled the trailer away over the weekend," Clancy replied.

"Were you open for business on Saturday?"

"I sure was, but I didn't see Spence, if that's what you're wondering."

"What kind of car does Spence drive?"

"He's got two vehicles. One of them is a Toyota four-by-four sport utility and the other is a four door Chevy. A Caprice, I think it is.

The Toyota is a dark blue and the Chevy is white."

"New Mexico plates?"

"Yeah, but don't ask me for the license numbers. I can't even remember my own."

Laid out on a grid, Deming ran parallel to the interstate until it petered out at both ends of the main street. On a smooth desert plain, broken only by low sand mounds and shallow arroyos, the locals fought the starkness of the land and lost the battle.

There would never be enough greenness, no matter how many trees were planted or lawns were sodded, to combat the sparseness, dryness, dust, and wind that constantly wore at the town.

With all of that going against it, Deming had been discovered by working-class retirees on limited pensions, and new, inexpensive subdivisions were pushing back the cotton fields, as the city touted its resurgence with billboards and bumper stickers.