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Hernandez?”
    She studied me, stiffening and saying nothing at first. “What are you insinuating?”
    “Just what I asked—how well did you know Miguel Hernandez?”
    Still folding her arms around herself, she took a few steps toward the marble fireplace, a remnant from when librarians used to check out books using a card-catalog Dewey decimal classification system. “We slept together. I guess that’s pretty well, huh?”
    Standing, I tucked my shirttail in, careful to avoid the wound. “Keasik, I’m honestly not trying to pry—it’s just that in the course of an investigation I’m going to need to get the lay of the land and I’m going to have to ask some questions that might not be pleasant.”
    “You knew.”
    “I suspected.” I chose my next words carefully. “You seem to have an emotional investment in all this.”
    “He was my friend.” I stared at her, waiting. “And maybe a little more.”
    “How long had you known him?”
    “A couple of years; since the incident in Colorado.”
    “And that was with the Department of Labor job there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you know of anyone who would wish him harm?”
    She crossed back toward me. “Tons of people; he was a political dissident and was on the forefront of decent treatment of nomadic tradesmen.”
    “In Chile?”
    She gestured with her arms wide. “And here.”
    “I guess what I’m looking for are individuals who had both a method and motive—if he was murdered. First off, someone who could’ve been placed in the Bighorn National Forest within the last forty-eight hours, which limits the suspects.”
    “Some of the people who hired him could want him dead.”
    I took a breath and shook my head. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the Extepare family and they’ve got a few rough edges, but I don’t see them hanging their own shepherd.”
    “Someone else, then.”
    “Who else does he know up here?”
    “He worked for some other ranches in Wyoming.”
    “Can you get me the names from the Colorado Department of Labor?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Well, that’s a start.” Standing, I shrugged on my jacket. “I will talk to Abarrane first thing in the morning. Is there anyone else he may have had contact with, other than yourself?”
    “I really wouldn’t know.” She studied on the subject, finally pulling her fingers through her hair. “I know he’d come into town every couple of months, but I wasn’t with him, so I don’t know who he could’ve met.”
    “I’ll check into it.”
    She grinned. “Well, there’s a Basque bar in town.”
    “Yep.”
    She became even more excited. “And a Basque bakery.”
    “I know that too. I live here.”
    “Right.” Her enthusiasm dampened, she dropped her head and the smile. “I guess you get that a lot. Junior G-men who want to help?”
    Ignoring the question, I thought of something else. “But he wasn’t Basque.”
    “No.”
    “Then why would you mention the Basque establishments in town and not, say, the Mexican restaurant?”
    Her eyes stayed steady on me. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
    “I try to be thorough, but you still haven’t answered my question.”
    “He had more in common with the Basques than the Mexicans, I suppose. He was always kind of old world, if you know what I mean, at least that’s what his reading tastes were.”
    Remembering that I had taken the books from the herder’s wagon, I brought them back into the room and pulled the handwritten poem from the book of poetry. “Any idea whose handwriting this is?”
    She studied it. “No.”
    “Not his?”
    “No.”
    I took the piece of paper back and studied it. “I’m no expert, but I’d say it was a feminine hand, wouldn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    I nodded and placed the sheet back into the book, lodging it under my arm.
    She cocked her head and reached out to tap the binding. “What do you think it means?”
    “I don’t know, but to be honest it’s more important to ask all the questions than to