"How you all doing today," I said when I was close enough to the veranda.
Everyone stared at me.
"Hot enough for you?" I said.
One of the men, or maybe two, got up and came to the top step. He was maybe six-foot-five, with shoulder-length hair, and he weighed maybe 280.
"Who the hell are you?" he said.
"Spenser. I'm looking for The Preacher."
"No shit," the big man said.
"None," I said.
Men and a few women came out of the other buildings and stood, staring at me. There might have been fifty people. The weight of the Browning on my hip felt mildly reassuring. I would have preferred intensely, reassuring.
"What you want to see The Preacher for?" the man said.
"I'm trying to find out what happened to Steve Buckman," I said.
The big man frowned a little, concentrating, then he smiled.
"Steve Buckman," he said. "He got shot dead."
"I'm trying to find out by whom," I said.
A fat guy on the veranda said, "Whom," and everybody laughed.
I smiled. Easygoing. A guy who could take a joke.
"We heard about that," the big man said. "You're the guy."
"I'm the guy," I said.
"Matter of fact," he said, "Preacher wants to talk with you."
"Good."
The big man turned and walked across the veranda and went through the screen door into the house. In a moment he came back with another man half his size, who radiated an interior kinetic ferocity that made size irrelevant.
"You The Preacher?" I said.
The man nodded once. He was slender and pale and hairless. He had no eyebrows and there was no hint of a beard. He ware a black dress shirt buttoned to the neck, black slacks and black sandals with black socks. Consistent. He had very little chin. His mouth was thin and sharp and sort of underslung, like a shark's.
"I'm trying to find out who shot a man named Steven Buckman."
The Preacher nodded again, once.
"Do you know who did it?" I said.
The Preacher stared at me without speaking. I waited.
Finally he said, "You come out here alone?"
His voice was raspy, and so soft I could barely hear him. But it had a discernible chill.
"I did."
"Who hired you to bother us about Buckman?"
"Nobody," I said. "I'm just a nosy guy."
"We could stomp it out of you."
"Some of you would get hurt," I said.
The Preacher smiled, sort of. He probably meant it to be a smile.
"You got a pair of balls," he said softly. "I'll give you that:"
"Thank you," I said. "Can we sit somewhere and talk?"
The big man with the long hair said to The Preacher, "Want me to stomp his ass?"
"Not yet, Pony."
We all stood without saying anything. It was like one of those awkward pauses in routine conversations where everyone is frantically thinking of something to say.
"We'll take a walk," The Preacher said.
He came down off the veranda. Pony came right behind him. The Preacher shook his head.
"Just me and him," The Preacher said.
Pony looked a little hurt. But he stayed where he was. The Preacher nodded at me, and we walked around the house. There was a view back there. The land dropped away sharply, almost a cliff, and the town and the desert beyond it stretched out like a Bierstadt painting. There was a wooden bench near the edge of the drop-a wide plank nailed on the top of two tree stumps.
"Sit," The Preacher said.
"Nice view," I said.
"Un-huh."
It was a strain listening to The Preacher's barely audible voice.
"You know who shot Steve Buckman?" I said.
"What I know," he whispered, "and what I'll tell you ain't got much to do with each other."
"What do you know about me?" I said.
"Your name's Spenser. You're a private shoo-fly from Boston. Somebody hired you to see who killed Buckman."
"You know a lot," I said.
"I'm supposed to," he said.
"So you have sources in town," I said.
The Preacher was staring out at the view. He had high, narrow shoulders, I noticed. When he sat they sort of hunched up so that seen from below, he'd look like a gargoyle on a medieval tower.
"You let everybody know pretty quick," The Preacher said, "what you was doing here."
I nodded.
"I figure that was on purpose," The Preacher said. "I figure you're poking a stick into the hornets' nest. See what comes flying out."
"Un-huh."
"And now you come poking up here."
"Seemed a good place to poke," I said.
"If you don't get stung."
"Exactly," I said.
The Preacher made his dreadful smile face again.
"What I'm wondering about is how she picked you, all the way from Boston. You famous?"
I nodded.
"For my wit and charm," I said.
"So I figure you must be pretty good," The Preacher said.
"There's that," I said.
"I'm pretty good, myself."
"How nice for you," I said.
"And I got forty men with me."
"Even nicer," I said.
"So you're clear on it."
"So who killed Steve Buckman?" I said.
The Preacher croaked an audible version of his smile. It was like hearing a shark laugh.
"You keep after it," The Preacher said.
"Un-huh."
"Would you believe me if I told you it was nobody from the Dell?"
"Not so much that I'd declare it solved and go home," I said.
"I'll tell you anyway."
"Did you threaten him?"
"I authorized it," The Preacher said.
"Because?"
"Because he wouldn't abide by the rules."
"Your rules?"
The Preacher nodded.
"Dell rules," he said. "You can look out there, and you can see that it ain't a huge fuck of a lot. But it's enough, and it belongs to us."
"Like a carcass belongs to vultures?" I said.
The Preacher smiled without showing any teeth. They were probably pointed.
"Except that it ain't dead," he said.
"And Buckman?"
"We charged him rent for his business. He refused to pay it. He was told there would be a penalty."
"That bring him around?" I said.
"No."
"So?"
"So somebody shot him," The Preacher said.
"Not you."
"Not none of us. We was going to stomp his sorry ass. But we'd rather have him alive and earning so he could pay his rent."
"How about his widow?" I said. "I understand she runs the business now."
"We'll get to her," The Preacher said. "We thought we'd let the murder thing sort of burn out, 'fore we hit on her."
"Grieving widow," I said.
"Sure," The Preacher said.
"Sheriff's detectives," I said.
"Sure."
"So that's the local industry here in the Dell?" I said.
"Living off the town?"
"We was here first," The Preacher said.
"We was?"
"Been people in the Dell since the Mexican War."
"Your ancestors?" I said.
"What you might call spir-it-u-al ancestors," The Preacher said. "Been people like us living here hundred and sixty years."
"Supporting themselves off the town," I said.
"Hell," The Preacher said, "we was the town at first. Then the mine went dry, and all the fucking yuppies moved in. There's the money. Might as well take it."
"Whether they want to give it or not."
"You think lambs want to get eaten by wolves?" The Preacher said.
"So are you really a preacher?"
"I preach," he said.
"What?"
"What do I preach?"
"Un-huh."
"I preach self-reliance," he said. He didn't seem to be kidding.
"You and Emerson," I said.
"Who's Emerson?"
"One of the Concord Transcendentalists," I said.
He frowned. I seemed to be serious.
"Are you fucking with me?" The Preacher said.
"Sometimes I can't help myself."
He stared at me like some kind of reptilian predator. I could feel it in the small recesses of my stomach.
"Could get you hurt really bad," he said.
"How long you been here?" I said.
"I come here about three years ago," The Preacher said. "Found a bunch of degenerate bums, no rules, no ambition, fighting each other over booze and dope and women. I put in some rules, turned them into something."