Trey Crump, Joe’s district supervisor, said he saw the writing on the wall and took early retirement rather than submit to Pope’s new directives for supervisors. Without Trey, who had also been Joe’s champion within the state bureaucracy, Joe now had been ordered to report directly to Pope. Instead of weekly reports, Pope wanted daily dispatches. It was Pope who had nixed Joe’s request for a new pickup and instead had sent one with 150,000 miles on it, bald tires, and a motor that was unreliable.

Joe had been around long enough to know exactly what was happening. Pope could not appear to have a public vendetta against Joe, especially because Joe’s star had risen over the past few years in certain quarters.

But Pope was a master of the bureaucratic Death of a Thousand Cuts, the slow, steady, petty, and maddening procedure-misplaced requests, unreturned phone calls, lost insurance and reimbursement claims, blizzards of busywork-designed to drive an employee out of a state or federal agency. And with Pope, Joe knew it was personal.

“DAD!”

Joe realized Sheridan was talking to him. “What?”

“How can he tune out like that?” Julie asked Sheridan, as if Joe weren’t in the cab.

“I don’t know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Then: “Dad, are we going to stop and feed Nate’s birds? I want to show Julie the falcons.”

“I already fed them today,” he said.

“Darn.”

Joe slowed and turned onto a dirt road from the highway beneath a massive elk-antler arch with a sign hanging from chains that read:

THUNDERHEAD RANCHES, EST. 1883.

THE SCARLETTS

OPAL

ARLEN

HANK

WYATT

Julie said, “My grandma says someday my name is going to be on that sign.”

“Cool,” Sheridan replied.

Joe had heard Julie say that before.

EVEN THOUGH JOE had seen the Thunderhead Ranch in bits and pieces over the years, he was still amazed by its magnificence.