“You took a gun to a saloon?” the judge said.

“Your honor,” I began.

“Shut up, Mr. Holland,” the judge said. “You carried a gun into the Oxford?”

“I don’t remember,” Johnny said.

The judge rubbed his mouth. He was old and sometimes irritable but not an unfair man. “I’m letting you go on your own recognizance. Come back in here on a firearms charge, I’m going dig up the jail and drop it on your head. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Johnny said.

We walked outside into the brilliance of the morning, sunshine on the hills above the town, birds flying through trees on the courthouse lawn, the noise of traffic, a world of normalcy as dissimilar from life inside a jail as the quick are from the dead.

That is, except for the presence of Wyatt Dixon, who was now sitting up in the shade, sailing playing cards into his inverted hat. His pale eyes looked up at us, a matchstick rolling in his teeth.

“Know that dude?” I asked Johnny.

“You betcha I do,” Johnny said. “He was shacked up with a girl on the res. Her ex and a couple of his Deer Lodge buds decided to remodel Wyatt’s cranial structure. One of them walks with a permanent limp now. The other two decided to start new careers in Idaho.”

Johnny reached down, picked up a small pinecone, and threw it at Wyatt’s head. “Hey, boy, I thought you were in the pen,” he said.

“Hell, no,” Wyatt said, his eyes looking at nothing, his matchstick flexing at an upward angle.

We walked to the corner, then crossed the street to my office. I didn’t speak until we were a long way from Wyatt Dixon.

“Why not just put your necktie in the garbage grinder?” I said.

“Telling a man you’re afraid of him is the same as telling him he’s not as good as you. That’s when you have trouble. Fellow as smart as you ought to know that, Billy Bob,” Johnny said. He hit me on the shoulder.

“Why were you carrying a gun?” I said.