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marabou fly clasped in the jaws of the tying vise bolted to the table.
    â€œWell, this fishing guide works out of the Kingfisher, he’s going around calling himself Cutthroat Bob. Like cutthroat trout. And he’s got long hair like me. And . . . and the fucker’s selling a fly out of the shop he calls ‘Cutthroat Bob’s Busty Baitfish.’ Isn’t that, like, copyright infringement? Can you do something about it?”
    â€œI don’t think so, no.” She put her hands behind her head and took in the dead soldiers on the table. “Isn’t it a little early to be knocking them back?”
    Sam smiled, showing the Vs ground into the enamel of his front teeth, a result of nipping monofilament leader tippets instead of using clippers. “I got women problems,” he said.
    â€œTell me about your women problems.”
    â€œI can’t see how you’d be interested.”
    â€œThen why did you put your hands under the table when I drove up.”
    He looked hard at her, then deliberately brought his hands up and folded them amid the scattered feathers. Like everything else about Sam Meslik, the hands were oversized, the backs matted with hair. Sean Stranahan had told her that he’d seen Sam remove the skull ring from his pinkie and pass a quarter through it. She saw that the knuckles on his right hand were scraped, the one at the base of the middle finger was grotesquely swollen.
    â€œThere were witnesses,” he said. “I was defending myself.”
    She waited.
    Sam shrugged. “I was in the Silver Dollar, cowboy comes through the door, says I been six-inching his girl. I tell him redo the math and maybe we’ll talk. Add a few inches. He takes a swing, I put him down.” He took a pull from a bottle of Moose Drool. “Long story short.”
    â€œThis would be when?”
    â€œNight before last.”
    â€œWere you?”
    â€œGreasing the Robusto? Number one, Nicki wasn’t his girlfriend. You can ask her. Number two, it was none of his business.”
    â€œYou didn’t answer my question.”
    â€œYou don’t like me much, do you, Sheriff?”
    â€œNo, I like you well enough. I just have a hard time believing you’re for real. I think you’re so far into this persona you’ve created that you don’t know who you are. You’re one of those people who can’t draw the line between fact and fiction. My jail’s full of them. For the life of me, I can’t see what Sean sees in you.”
    â€œAnd I can’t see what he sees in you. That makes us even.”
    â€œBack to this woman you fought over. You called her Nicki.”
    â€œShort for Nanika. He fought over her, not me. Nicki worked for me this summer, did some guiding, kept the shop open while I was on the river. She didn’t have any place to stay, so I let her crash in the barn. It doesn’t look like a hell of a lot from the outside, but the guy I bought it from plumbed it and it’s got running water.” He spread his hands. “It’s good digs unless the roof collapses. I’ve been staying on a cot in the shack, but this winter I plan to beam the barn up, put in a woodstove and move in myself.”
    â€œWhy would this guy think you were, ah, six-inching her, as he put it?”
    â€œMaybe because she’d lived here this summer. I don’t know what Nicki told him. We haven’t been buckle to buckle since mid-July. Anyway, it was a long time before he met her.”
    â€œSo you did sleep with her?”
    Sam shrugged.
    Martha mimicked him and waited.
    â€œIs your own love life that boring? You ought to take off your badge and draw one down once in a while. I’ve heard sex is good for middle-aged women, keeps their juices flowing.”
    â€œHumor me.”
    â€œThere isn’t much to tell.” He shifted his shoulders, the big slabs of muscle rippling under his T-shirt, the