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more often than not mumbling to himself in Mexican.
    But he’d never shot anyone else as far as I knew. Five or six years before, he’d said he’d come damn close when a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses took him on as a project. It was his driveway rather than his artillery that had discouraged them in the end.
    Reuben Fuentes’s cabin was twenty-four feet on a side. The flat roof was traditional rock and dirt on logs and latillas. When it leaked badly in strategic spots, he’d made repairs with black plastic weighted down with discarded tires.
    I parked near the remains of a ’48 GMC pickup truck and got out of the county car. An archaeologist was going to have a lark when he excavated Reuben’s front yard in a thousand years. Nothing had gone to the county landfill. When he’d somehow accidentally punched a hole in his washbasin in 1952, he hadn’t thrown it away. He took an ice pick and punched a couple dozen more holes. He’d used the thing as a bean colander until the rust flakes showed up in his stew. Then the blue porcelain had been flung outside to rest with everything else…the old shoes, the busted axe handle, the myriad tin cans, the GMC and four of its cousins, the other washbasins from other decades.
    The place was quiet. Reuben’s ’73 Ford Bronco was parked beside the cabin, nestled between an old school bus and what had probably been a chicken coop. I made my way to the door, ready for the chorus of barks from Reuben’s three mutts.
    I hesitated, listening. The hasp wasn’t closed where Reuben normally hung his padlock but the slab-wood door was pulled tightly shut. I knocked and waited.
    “Reuben!” I called. Whatever ailments the old man suffered, deafness hadn’t been one of them. I rapped again. “Reuben! It’s Bill Gastner.” I turned and surveyed the yard and surrounding trees. The dogs would have greeted me if they’d seen or heard me. I stepped away from the cabin and walked along the cluttered two-track that led past the Bronco.
    The vehicle’s hood was warm, but not more than the hot sun would bake it. I took a deep breath, wishing I had something other than the aroma from fragrant juniper needles for refreshment. I set off down the two-track toward the pastures.
    Fifty yards beyond the cabin I reached the first barbed wire fence and stopped. To my left, the fence gate was open. I squinted into the sun. Ahead of me was a thousand acres of rough country where Reuben had once pastured his cattle. As far as I knew, he didn’t own a single steer anymore.
    I was damned if I was going to hike the countryside looking for the old man. He was probably sitting in the shade of a piñon somewhere, smoking his pipe, pulling on a whiskey bottle, and watching me.
    I turned and started to walk back to the cabin. I hadn’t taken ten steps when I saw him, one hand outstretched to rest against the rough stones of the cabin wall. He waited in the shade as I approached.
    “Good morning, Reuben,” I said. Almost in slow motion, he released his grip on the wall of the house. I wasn’t sure that he recognized me. He turned his head slightly and I pushed my Stetson back on my head so the brim didn’t shadow my face.
    “ Señor ,” he said. “ ¿Cuando va a venir Estelita? ”
    I relaxed a little. That was his standard question on those dozen or so occasions each year when I spoke with him. His grandniece had spent considerable time with Reuben, especially after Rosa’s death. The old man had been one of Estelle’s major worries when she’d accepted a job with a sheriff’s department up in the northern part of the state. It had been her mother who had finally convinced her to leave Posadas…and convinced her that the old man would do just fine without her. And he had.
    I smiled at him. “ La semana próxima ,” I said, exhausting most of my abilities to speak Mexican. Estelle was not coming that next week. Reuben had forgotten that we were driving south for the christening of Estelle’s