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sometimes.”
    â€œSir?” I said.
    â€œCan’t keep them down on the farm is what I mean. Or at least I can’t keep my daughter there. Damn if that gal isn’t a pistol.”
    His language and use of allusion, as always, were almost impossible to follow. “What can I do for you?” I said.
    â€œI just want to pay her fees and take her off your hands.”
    â€œIf she wants to discharge me as her attorney, that’s up to her,” I replied.
    He cleaned the blade of his penknife on a crumpled piece of paper and put the knife away. He smiled. He was a stout, sandy-haired, sanguine-faced man, with manners that struck me as genuine. He clucked his tongue. “My daughter is a source of endless worry to me, Mr. Holland. Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do?” he said.
    â€œI will.”
    â€œThank you,” he said, rising to shake hands. His grip was meaty and powerful, his eyes direct. “Did she leave with that Indian boy?”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œTake exception to my vocabulary if you want. But that fellow American Horse is trouble. Not because he’s an Indian. His kind tear things down, not build them up. You know I’m right, too.”
    â€œI don’t know that,” I said, nonsensically.
    â€œEach to his own. Thanks for your time,” he said. “Tell that daughter of mine she’s fixing to drive her old man to the cemetery or the crazy house.”
    Â 
    BY THAT AFTERNOON no charges had been filed in the invasion of Johnny American Horse’s home, not against him, nor against the surviving member of the assassination team that had obviously been sent there to kill him.
    Long ago, even before I fell in love with her, I had come to think of Temple Carrol as one of the best people I had ever met, certainly the most fun, perhaps the most beautiful, too. Her social attitudes were blue-collar, in the best sense, her personal loyalty unrelenting. She loved animals and hated those who would abuse them, thought all politicians worthless, and carried a nine millimeter in her purse. Bad guys messed with her once.
    That evening she showed her P.I. badge to the deputy sheriff standing guard in front of Michael Charles Ruggles’s hospital room.
    â€œYou can’t come in,” he said.
    â€œReally?” she said, flipping open her cell phone. “Let’s call the sheriff so you can tell him you’re countermanding his permission. He’s at the county commissioners’ meeting now.”
    The nurse had left the blinds open inside the room so the man in bed could see the blue light in the evening sky and the rooftops of the town and the chimney swifts that swooped and darted above the trees. His head was propped up on the pillow, one cheek heavily bandaged; an IV was clipped to an index finger. When Temple entered the room, he tried to push himself higher up in the bed in order to look at her more directly. His face winced peculiarly at the effort, as though the tissue were dead and had been touched alive by electrical shock.
    â€œLooks like you’re doing pretty good for a guy who has forty stitches in his cheek and two stab wounds in the chest,” she said.
    â€œWho the hell are you?” he said.
    â€œGal who doesn’t want to see it put on the wrong guy. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”
    â€œAnswer the question, bitch.”
    Temple held a capped ballpoint and a yellow legal pad in her hands, the cover folded back as though she were about to start taking notes. She sat down in a chair by the bed, placed the ballpoint in her shirt pocket, and closed the legal pad. She looked idly into space a moment.
    â€œLet me line it out for you,” she said. “You tried to whack out a Native American political leader. You tried to do it in the middle of a United States government reservation, which shows how smart you are. You also managed to do these things