Then in the distance he caught sight of the gas flares blazing up against the setting sun, trailing dark smoke in the wind. Methane and sulfur dioxide. The stacks holding the drills in place were crossed with metal pilings, like the neck of a crane perched on the edge of a skyscraper. All that metal looked out of place in the middle of this wild country. As did the men Hawley could see closing down for the day—workmen in hard hats, nothing like the Basques Hawley knew from his days on the ranches, drifting from place to place, living alone in the mountains with the herds, barely a word between them for months, and layers of dirt and sweat so thick on their skin that even the snakes kept off.
There was a twenty-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire running all along Hawley’s old property. He slowed down to look and then he kept going. It was the only fence he’d seen for miles. Even on I-90, where eighteen-wheelers roared down at one hundred miles per hour, the cattle were kept back with just a few wooden posts and maybe a single electric wire. The gas company drilling Hawley’s land had closed up around the property like it was a prison.
Up ahead, Hawley saw a sign nailed to a telephone pole. On it was a picture of a prairie dog, with crosshairs circling its head. Underneath was written: TARGET PRACTICE! And: NEXT LEFT! And: USE OUR GUNS OR BRING YOUR OWN AT PRAIRIE-DOG RANCH!
Hawley took the left. He pulled through the open gate and drove up the road for half a mile or so. The land started out flat but then veered steeply uphill onto a ridge, a curved slope covered in ragged bushes that flattened at the top like a mesa, overlooking the giant fence and towers of burning gas on Hawley’s old property.
Next to a sign marked PARKING was a Jeep with a roll bar and a torn cover and a beat-up SUV. Behind the sign was a three-wheeled camping trailer, the hitch propped up on cinder blocks. The trailer looked like it had been hauled from the ends of the earth. It was small, the sides dented and beaten in, the screens full of holes, an old wooden trough set in front of the door, and, duct-taped to the roof, instead of a satellite dish, was an old-fashioned antenna wrapped in tinfoil.
Hawley turned off the car and waited. Then he heard a rifle shot. And another. His .357 Magnum was on the seat beside him. The shotgun was loaded and set across the dashboard, the rifle covered with a blanket and hidden underneath the front seat. He did not reach for any of them. He waited to see who would come.
A woman, wearing an orange hunting cap and a bathrobe, cracked open the trailer door and peered out at him, then stepped down onto the trough. She was young, with a body made thick with fast, cheap food. The hunting cap was pulled down over her ears. Her ankles were elegant. Her feet bare. Her toenails painted bright green. The robe swung open and revealed a football jersey and a pair of sweatpants cut off at the knee. She motioned to Hawley. He put the handgun in his jacket pocket. He opened the door to the car and stuck his head out.
“They’ve already started,” she said. “Go on through the back.”
“Thanks,” said Hawley. He left his door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. And then he started off in the direction the girl had pointed.
About one hundred yards ahead were six tables and chairs set up for long-range rifle practice. Sandbags and tripods and scopes. There were two men sitting and shooting, and another standing and staring out into the distance with a pair of binoculars. Hawley watched the man clap one of the shooters on the back, then turn and pick up a beer from the table. Frederick Nunn still had the same mustache, heavy, like a finger bent beneath his nose. And Hawley would have known those hands anywhere, fringed at the top with tiny black hairs. Nunn used to scare people with those hands, flexing them while he talked. Now he wrapped them around the can of beer and tipped it back down his throat and then he swallowed and saw Hawley coming. He swallowed again. He picked up the binoculars. Hawley could feel the glass on him and tried to keep his face neutral. He kept walking straight, even when Frederick Nunn put down the binoculars and picked up one of the rifles.
“Sam Hawley,” said Nunn. “I didn’t know you at first.”
The shooters took off their ear protection. One fellow was in his twenties and wore an army jacket and a pair of ear guards that matched, both desert camouflage. The other was at least ten years older and had cratered cheeks and a western-style vest with leather tassels. The shooters were both drunk. But Nunn was not.
“What’re you doing here?” Nunn asked.
“I saw your sign,” said Hawley.
Nunn lifted his nose, like a dog trying to find a scent.
“Everything all right?” said the man in the leather vest.
“Yeah,” said Nunn. “He’s all right. This is Mike, and that’s Ike.”
“Like the candy,” said Hawley.
The men nodded but did not get up. They kept their hands on their guns.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Oh,” said Mike. “There’s no stopping us.” He put his ear guards back on and leaned across the table in his leather vest, setting his eye to the scope. Ike played with one of the zippers on his camouflage jacket but kept his eyes on Nunn and Hawley.
“Fire in the hole!” said Mike. And then he fired. Everyone turned to look. In the distance, Hawley saw a small explosion of fur and guts.
“I thought the dogs were protected,” said Hawley.
“Not anymore,” said Nunn. “Now they’re target practice.”
“That’s good news,” said Hawley, “for you.”
“It’s something,” said Nunn. “People pay me to come try out their guns, before the hunting season starts.”
Hawley looked out over the prairie-dog town. There was no vegetation. Only mounds of dirt and holes and craters to fall into. A dead landscape that belonged someplace dead.
“Who’s the girl?”
“Just a girl.”
“I mean who’s she to you?” Hawley asked.
Nunn looked him over. He spit on the ground. “That’s some beard you got.”
Mike and Ike began shooting, one after the other, misses that sent tiny clouds of dirt up like smoke signals in the distance and occasional hits that blasted blood and innards in tiny splatters across the dried-up earth. Between each bullet Hawley could hear the prairie dogs calling. A chorus of weeps and chattering so loud it drowned out everything but the gunfire.
“Let’s go someplace we can hear each other,” said Hawley.
“All right,” said Nunn.
They walked back to the trailer, but Nunn didn’t ask him in. Hawley could see the girl watching them from the window. Hawley didn’t say anything. He just stood there feeling the Magnum in his pocket and waiting for something else to happen, something that would let him finish what he had come to do.
“You on a job?”
“Yeah,” Hawley said.
Nunn was flexing one of his big hands. He was nervous—Hawley could see that now. Nunn had never been the kind of guy who got nervous. But here he was, staring at Hawley like he was something wild. And maybe he was.
“Who’s the girl?” he said again.
Nunn lifted the rifle and pointed it at him. “What the hell do you want, Hawley?”
“Tell her to come outside.”
“Not until you answer me.”
“You,” said Hawley. “I came here for you.”