Windshield wipers, operating at high speed, smeared the ooze over the glass, making it impossible for Kerney to see into the vehicle. He walked to the porch, sat on the step, and started cleaning the asphalt gook from his hands with a rag drenched in paint thinner. The fumes of the solvent made him sneeze, and he covered his nose with sticky fingers. Before he could go in and clean his face, the car plowed through the last puddle by the gate and rolled to a stop on the packed gravel driveway. It was a new, slick-top police cruiser with emergency lights mounted on the front bumper. Even close up, with the wipers going full blast, the man behind the wheel was obscured by a grimy film of dirt. In Kerney's time at the ranch-well over a year-this was the first visit by a cop.

A stocky man in a white uniform shirt got out and stood behind the open door of the cruiser, with the engine still running. He wore a tribal police badge over the left pocket of the uniform shirt and a Sam Browne belt with a. 357 pistol in a high-rise holster.

From the waist down he wore blue jeans and cowboy boots. The two men stared at each other cross the ten yards that separated them.

"Goddamn mud," Terry Yazzi muttered, reaching in to turn off the engine. Kerney stood up and said nothing as Terry left the car and walked toward him. In the cabin the tape deck recycled once again and the lyrical first movement of the concerto began anew. Terry stopped three feet from Kerney, his eyes avoiding contact. Instead, he looked at the foreman's cabin, a white clapboard box with a small covered porch, then switched his gaze to the ranch house behind it, nestled at the base of a mesa. He took in the horse barn and corral off to one side across a small meadow, and the upended chair in front of the cabin porch. He compressed his lips and finally looked at Kerney. As he opened his mouth to speak, Kerney hit him flush on the jaw, knocking him flat on his ass. The blow made Terry's teeth ache. He got to his feet and brushed himself off.