“Everett Hitch,” he said.

Like he was tasting it.

He asked me had I done much gun work, and I said I had done some, but no law officering. And he asked me what I had done, and I told him.

“West Point,” Cole said-not impressed, just recording it, like he did, and filing it.

“You didn’t like soldier boyin’?” he said.

I told Cole that I liked some of it. I liked the men, and sometimes, on mounted patrol, I liked the space, and how far you could see, and the way it seemed like possibility was rolling out ahead of us. But most of the time, I said, it was sort of crampsome.

“Nothin’ can cramp you,” Cole said, “if you don’t let it.”

And I told him I thought that was right, which was why I quit soldiering and rode off to see what possibilities there might be. He nodded at that. I don’t know if it meant he understood, or if it meant he approved, or if he was registering again. And filing.

“You quick with a handgun?” Cole asked.

I said I could shoot, but what I was really good with was the eight-gauge. Cole smiled.

“If she could pick it up,” Cole said, “my Aunt Liza could be good with an eight-gauge.”

I agreed that it was hard to miss with an eight-gauge.

“You ever hear of me?” Cole said.

I said I had. Cole took out a bottle of pretty good whiskey and two glasses, and poured us a drink. And we drank that drink and a couple more.

“I need somebody to back me up,” Cole said. “You and the eight-gauge want the job?”

“Sure,” I said.

Which is how, fifteen years ago, I got to be a peace officer and Virgil Cole’s deputy. Which was why I was with him now, still carrying the eight-gauge, walking the horses down a long, shale-scattered slope toward Appaloosa.