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was a paperback novel laid facedown to mark his place and a paper boat filled with biscuit crumbs and squeezed-out honey packets. Anna had called clear six minutes earlier by her dashboard clock. Thigpen bad been parked on this knoll considerably longer than that. "No harm done," she said easily. The man seemed displeased by her reaction. Whether he'd been hoping for a row or a piteous whine, she couldn't guess. Getting neither, he felt the need to gain some psychic ground. "Alligators are pretty easy to move once you get the knack," he said. "Sounds like a useful knack to have in these parts," Anna replied mildly. "How do you do it?"
    "Oh. There's a number of ways. You learn 'em as you go." Thigpen hadn't the foggiest idea. A good person would have let him off the hook. Anna hadn't had enough sleep to qualify. "What's your favorite?" she asked with genuine interest. "Mine? Oh, I don't know "
    "Aw, come on, help a Yankee girl out," she cajoled.
    She could see the gears grinding behind his high, unlined brow.
    "The best way's you find a dead chicken. They like chicken. Then you hold it a ways in front of them, and they'll follow you anywhere, like big old dogs."
    "You do that? You lead them with dead chickens?" Thigpen nodded. "Now, that I'd like to see," Anna said honestly.
    Adding a few banalities lest he realize she'd been leading him down the garden path, she took her leave. Time would tell whether or not Randy Thigpen was going to be a supervisor's nightmare. He clearly wasn't a dream come true.
    The Port Gibson Ranger Station was a low white building set off the west side of the Trace. Asphalt and chain-link fence struggled against some truly fine old pin oaks and nearly succeeded in giving it a soulless governmental look.
    The structure was H-shaped, with the hollow parts of the H as open porticos. To the left were garage doors, both open, where maintenance worked on the many machines needed to groom the ninety miles of roadway in the district. To the right was a windowless block, the purpose of which Anna couldn't guess. A patrol car was parked in front of the east-facing portico. By process of elimination, she deduced this heralded the presence of Bartholomew Dinkin. Dinkin was a complete blank, and Anna harbored a hope he would inspire more confidence than his compatriot.
    Walking quietly from habit, she crossed the concrete and let herself into the ranger station. As she slipped through the door, a blast of cold stale air hit her. Though the day was fine, mid-seventies with a breeze, the air-conditioning was cranked up-or down-till the office hovered at sixty-eight. Cranked was an apt description. The building had not been designed for central air, and two aging window units, poked unattractively through either end of the tunnel-like office, clattered and clunked through their duties.
    The staleness comprised two competing elements: grease and supercooled cigarette smoke. To Anna's left was a small, untidy office, full of morning sunlight forced through dirty windows. In front of her, in the long dark core of this ungraceful suite, were two old wooden desks butted up against one another so they formed a single surface, chairs on opposite sides, a makeshift partners' desk.
    At the nearer one sat the green and gray lump that had to be Field Ranger Bartholomew Dinkin. He wasn't as fat as Thigpen, but he was in the running. By the looks of what remained of his breakfast-three sausage biscuit wrappers and two of the cardboard packets used to serve up hash browns-he was competing for the heavyweight title. Dinkin carried the bulk of his weight "behind the counter," as a shopkeeper in New York had described the phenomenon to Anna. A lot of green polyester-wool blend had been procured to cover the poster At his elbow was an ashtray half full of cold butts. A teensy-weensy ache began behind Anna's left ear.
    Bull by the horns, she thought, and closing the door, moved into her new territory. "Hey," she warned him of the