Another long stare at each of them. Then the bartender said: “You guys look smart. If you want my advice, I’d finish your drinks and go on out. This isn’t a good place for you, I guarantee it.”

“How about answering a few questions first?”

“No thanks.”

“Aren’t you curious to know why we’re interested in Rivers?” Watts asked.

“Not particularly. He’s a loudmouth asshole.”

“We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

At this the bartender fell silent. Watts could see he wanted to ask how Rivers had died, but he didn’t.

“He was murdered,” Watts added.

Now he could see the bartender was even more intrigued. He stuck out his hand. “Sheriff Homer Watts.”

The bartender, taken by surprise, took the hand. “Bob Glen.”

“Yeah,” Watts went on. “Rivers was assassinated. In the hospital, if you can believe it. Some guy came in and injected a deadly drug into his IV.”

Glen said nothing.

Watts removed a glossy of the killer. “This guy.”

Glen looked at it. “Shitty photograph,” he said. “Can’t see his face.”

“That’s the problem. Look, Mr. Glen, we’re not here to bust anyone’s balls or get into politics. We want to find out who killed Rivers. That’s all.”

Glen leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Look, if I answer a few questions, will you guys get out? I’ve had enough trouble in here already, and I don’t want my place trashed again.”

“Sounds like a deal,” said Watts. “Do you know if Rivers was involved in looting or selling of relics?”

“Yeah, he used to brag now and then about how he’d dug up some ruin, found pots and shit like that.”

“And did he ever say who he was selling to? Or working with?”

“I got the impression he was working for himself. He was too fucked up back then to work with anyone. But after he got out of the Graybar Hotel, he stopped coming around. I sort of got the idea he’d straightened himself out—”

“Fee-fi-fo-fum!” came a drunken voice from behind them. Watts turned to see three guys in full cowboy regalia coming up, boots thumping, spurs jingling. All three had the rough red faces of the drinking class, and he recognized them as the Sturgis brothers. They had a ranch out in Arabela, where they had set up concrete bunkers, shooting ranges, obstacle courses, a solar panel array, a ten-thousand-gallon fuel tank, and an arsenal of weapons, all ready for the coming apocalypse. They weren’t real cowboys, just a bunch of doomsday-prepper assholes who illegally overstocked their federal grazing allotments, for which they paid almost nothing—anti-government guys on the government dole. They rounded up their cows with ATVs and airhorns and didn’t even own horses.

“I smell the blood of a fed,” the drunken man finished, coming up to Morwood, the other two crowding around his stool. Morwood looked the man up and down, saying nothing.

The bar had gone quiet, and the other patrons were looking their way, some standing up to get a better view.

“Hey, Sturgis,” said Watts, “we don’t want any trouble, okay? We’re just asking a few questions about a homicide. This guy.” He pulled out the glossy of Rivers.

Sturgis swiped the glossy out of his hand and flicked it away like a Frisbee.

Morwood stood up. Watts could see all three of the Sturgis brothers were open-carrying, as usual. Everyone in the bar, it seemed, had a piece strapped on. He was glad he was wearing his brace of six-guns.

Morwood remained surprisingly cool for a guy in his late forties and not in especially good shape facing a giant gorilla of a man. “Do you really want to go there, Mr. Sturgis?”

“Yeah, I do. I really want to go there.”

There was a long silence while the two of them looked at each other. Then Sturgis reached out and plucked Morwood’s shield hanging on the lanyard. “Remember Ruby Ridge,” he said, and leaned over and spat on it.

Now the silence in the bar was total. Watts waited, tense, ready to reach for his Peacemakers. He had no idea what Morwood would do next or what might happen.

Slowly, almost leisurely, Morwood pulled the lanyard over his head, and then—hands out at his sides in a nonthreatening posture—he walked still closer to the gorilla. “Well, I really don’t want to go there. So we’ll be leaving now. Maybe we’ll see you boys another time.”

All eyes were on the faces of the two men staring each other down. Only Watts noticed that as Morwood was speaking he was also deftly and quietly polishing his badge on Sturgis’s loose shirttail.

After a tense silence, Morwood turned and walked to the saloon doors, Watts following. Behind them, catcalls and whistles erupted. At the entrance, Morwood looked back.

“Remember Oklahoma City,” he said in an iron voice.

They crossed the parking lot and Morwood got into his truck, Watts sliding into the passenger seat. When they were out on the highway, Watts turned toward Morwood. The FBI agent’s face was neutral, collected, smooth, showing no sign of what had just transpired.

“That took self-control,” Watts said.

“Yes. It did.”

“That was assault, cut-and-dried.”

“Absolutely.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Watts said, “what are you going to do about it?” He didn’t add that he, personally, would likely have punched the lights out of the son of a bitch; but, he had to admit, that would have taken them all into unknown territory.