The pickup truck accelerated and kept coming up the road, spooking the horses in the pasture. Molly was inside the cabin, broiling a trout dinner that we had invited Albert and Clete to share with us. I watched the pickup truck turn in to the lane that led to our cabin, and I knew in the same way you know a registered-mail delivery contains bad news that I had sorely underestimated the significance of Clete’s encounter with the security personnel on the ranch owned by a man named Wellstone.

“Can I help you?” I asked, rising from my chair on the porch.

The two men who had gotten out of the truck cab looked exactly as Clete had described them. The one with the recessed eye socket stared up at me, a faint grin on his face. He wore a short-sleeve print shirt outside his slacks. “My name is Lyle Hobbs,” he said. “That yonder is Albert Hollister’s place, is it?”

“What about it?” I said.

He glanced at the Louisiana tag on the back of my pickup truck. “Because the owner of that Cadillac parked up yonder told me he wasn’t working for any bunny huggers. But that’s not so. That means he lied to me.”

“He doesn’t work for anyone. At least not in this state.”

“My instincts tell me otherwise. I hate a lie, mister. It bothers me something awful.”

I let the implication pass. “Maybe you should go somewhere else, then.”

The other man, who was unshaved and had thick, uncut black hair with a greasy shine in it, stepped in front of his friend. “What’s your name, boy?” he said.

“What did you call me?”

“I didn’t call you anything. I asked you your goddamn name.”

I heard Molly come out on the porch. The eyes of the two men shifted off me. “What is it, Dave?” she said.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“You tell Mr. Purcel he’s sticking his nose in the wrong person’s business,” Lyle Hobbs said. “Mr. Wellstone is an honorable man. We’re not gonna allow the likes of Mr. Purcel to besmirch his name. You tell him what I said.”