The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

C. J. Box Power Wagon

From The Highway Kind

A single headlight strobed through a copse of ten-foot willows on the other side of the overgrown horse pasture. Marissa unconsciously laced her fingers over her pregnant belly and said, “Brandon, there’s somebody out there.”

“What?” Brandon said. He was at the head of an old kitchen table that had once fed a half-dozen ranch hands breakfast and dinner. A thick ledger book was open in front of him, and Brandon had moved a lamp from the family room next to the table so he could read.

“I said, somebody is out there. A car or something. I saw a headlight.”

“Just one?”

“Just one.”

Brandon placed his index finger on an entry in the ledger book so he wouldn’t lose his place. He looked up.

“Don’t get freaked out. It’s probably a hunter or somebody who’s lost.”

“What if they come to the house?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess we help them out.”

“Maybe I should shut off the lights,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “They probably won’t even come here. They’re probably just passing through.”

“But to where?” she asked.

She had a point, he conceded. The old two-track beyond the willows was a private road, part of the ranch, and it led to a series of four vast mountain meadows and the foothills of the Wyoming Range. Then it trailed off in the sagebrush.

“I saw it again,” she said.

He could tell she was scared even though there really wasn’t any reason to be, he thought. But saying “Calm down” or “Don’t worry” wouldn’t help the situation, he knew. If she was scared, she was scared. She wasn’t used to being so isolated — she’d grown up in Chicago and Seattle — and he couldn’t blame her.

Brandon found a pencil on the table and starred the entry he was on to mark where he’d stopped and pushed back his chair. The feet of it scraped the old linoleum with a discordant note.

He joined her at the window and put his hand on her shoulder. When he looked out, though, all he could see was utter darkness. He’d forgotten how dark it could be outside when the only ambient light was from stars and the moon. Unfortunately, storm clouds masked both.

“Maybe he’s gone,” she said, “whoever it was.”

A log snapped in the fireplace and in the silent house it sounded like a gunshot. Brandon felt Marissa jump at the sound.

“You’re tense,” he said.

“Of course I am,” she responded. There was anger in her voice. “We’re out here in the middle of nowhere without phone or Internet and somebody’s out there driving around. Trespassing. They probably don’t even know we’re here, so what are they doing?”

He leaned forward until his nose was a few inches from the glass. He could see snowflakes on the other side. There was enough of a breeze that it was snowing horizontally. The uncut grass in the yard was spotted white, and the horse meadow had turned from dull yellow to gray in the starlight.

Then a willow was illuminated and a lone headlight curled around it. The light lit up the horizontal snow as it ghosted through the brush and the bare cottonwood trees. Snowflakes looked like errant sparks in the beam. The light snow appeared as low-hanging smoke against the stand of willows.

“He’s coming this way,” she said. She pressed into him.

“I’ll take care of it,” Brandon said. “I’ll see what he wants and send him packing.”

She looked up at him with scared eyes and rubbed her belly. He knew she did that when she was nervous. The baby was their first, and she was unsure and overprotective about the pregnancy.

During the day, while he’d pored over the records inside, she’d wandered through the house, the corrals, and the outbuildings and had come back and declared the place “officially creepy, like a mausoleum.” The only bright spot in her day, she said, was discovering a nest of day-old naked baby mice that she’d brought back to the house in a rusty metal box. She said she wanted to save them if she could figure out how.

Brandon knew baby mice in the house was a bad idea, but he welcomed the distraction. Marissa was feeling maternal, even about mice.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “I grew up in this house.”

The old man hadn’t died at the ranch but at a senior center in Big Piney, population 552, which was eighteen miles away. He’d gone into town for lunch at the center because he never missed it when they served fish and chips, and he died after returning to his table from the buffet. He’d slumped forward into his meal. The attendants had to wipe tartar sauce from his cheek before wheeling him into the room where they kept the defibrillator. But it was too late.

Two days later Brandon’s sister, Sally, called him in Denver at the accounting firm where he worked.

“That’s impossible,” Brandon said when he heard the news. “He was too mean to die.”

Sally told Brandon it wasn’t a nice thing to say even if it was true.

“He left the ranch to us kids,” she said. “I’ve talked to Will and Trent and of course nobody wants it. But because you’re the accountant, we decided you should go up there and inventory everything in the house and outbuildings so we can do a big farm auction. Then we can talk about selling the ranch. Trent thinks McMiller might buy it.”

Jake McMiller was the owner of the neighboring ranch and he’d always made it clear he wanted to expand his holdings. The old man had said, “Over my dead body will that son of a bitch get my place.”

So...

“Do I get a say in this or is it already decided?” Brandon had asked Sally.

“It’s already decided.”

“Nothing ever changes, does it?” Brandon asked.

“I guess not,” she said, not without sympathy.

Will and Trent were Brandon’s older brothers. They were fraternal twins. Both had left home the day they turned eighteen. Will was now a state employee for Wyoming in Cheyenne, and Trent owned a bar in Jackson Hole. Both were divorced and neither had been back to the ranch in over twenty-five years. Sally, the third oldest, had left as well, although she did come in from South Florida to visit the place every few years. After she’d been there, she’d send out a group letter to her brothers confirming the same basic points:

The old man was as mean and bitter as ever.

He was still feuding with his neighbor Jake McMiller in court over water rights and road access.

He was spending way too much time drinking and carousing in town with his hired man Dwayne Pingston, who was a well-known petty criminal.

As far as the old man was concerned, he had no sons, and he still planned to will them the ranch in revenge for their leaving it.

The brothers had been so traumatized by their childhood they rarely spoke to each other about it. Sally was the intermediary in all family business, because when the brothers talked on the phone or were in the presence of each other, strong, dark feelings came back.

Like the time the old man had left Will and Trent on top of a mountain in the snow because they weren’t cutting firewood into the right-size lengths. Or when the old man “slipped” and branded Trent on his left thigh with a red-hot iron.

Or the nightmare night when Will, Trent, Sally, Brandon, and their mother huddled in the front yard in a blinding snowstorm while the old man berated them from the front porch with his rifle out, accusing one or all of them of drinking his Ancient Age bourbon. He knew it, he said, because he’d marked the level in the bottle the night before. He railed at them most of the night while sucking down three-quarters of a quart of Jim Beam he’d hidden in the garage. When he finally passed out, the family had to step over his body on the way back into the house. Brandon still remembered how terrified he was stepping over the old man’s legs. He was afraid the man would regain his wits at that moment and pull him down.

The next day, Will and Trent turned eighteen and left before breakfast.

When their mother started complaining of sharp abdominal pains, the old man refused to take her into town to see the doctor he considered a quack. She died two days later of what turned out to be a burst appendix.

When the Department of Family Services people arrived on the ranch after that, the old man pointed at Sally and Brandon and said, “Take ’em. Get ’em out of my hair.”

Brandon had not been back to the ranch since that day.

“It’s a car with one headlight out,” Brandon said to Marissa. “You stay in here and I’ll go and deal with it.”

“Take a gun,” she said.

He started to argue with her but thought better of it. Everyone in Sublette County was armed, so he had to presume the driver of the approaching car was too.

“I wish the phone worked,” she said as he strode through the living room to the old man’s den.

“Me too,” he said.

Apparently, as they’d discovered when they arrived that morning, the old man hadn’t paid his phone bill and had never installed a wireless Internet router. The electricity was still on, although Brandon found three months of unpaid bills from the local power co-op. There was no cell service this far out.

Brandon fought back long-buried emotions as he entered the den and flipped on the light. It was exactly as he remembered it: mounted elk and deer heads, black-and-white photos of the old man when he was a young man, shelves of unread books, a lariat and a pair of ancient spurs on the wall. The calendar behind the desk was three years old.

He could see half a dozen rifles and shotguns behind the glass of the gun cabinet. Pistols inside were hung upside down by pegs through their trigger guards. He recognized a 1911 Colt.45. It was the old man’s favorite handgun and he always kept it loaded.

But the cabinet was locked. Brandon was surprised. Since when did the old man lock his gun cabinet? He quickly searched the top of the desk. No keys. He threw open the desk drawers. There was a huge amount of junk crammed into them and he didn’t have time to root through it all.

He could break the glass, he thought.

That’s when Marissa said, “They’re getting out of the car, Brandon. There’s a bunch of them.” Her tone was panicked.

Brandon took a deep breath to remain calm. He told himself, Probably hunters or somebody lost. Certainly it couldn’t be locals, because everyone in the county knew the old man was gone. He’d cut a wide swath through the psyche of the valley where everyone knew everybody else, and the old-line ranching families — who controlled the politicians, the sheriff, and the land-use decisions — were still royalty.

As he walked to the front door, he smiled at Marissa, but he knew it was false bravado. She looked scared and she’d moved behind the couch, as if it would protect her.

He pulled on one of the old man’s barn coats that hung from a bent horseshoe near the front door. It smelled like him: stale cigarette smoke, gasoline fumes, cows. The presence of the old man in that coat nearly caused Brandon to tear it off. He shoved aside the impulse and opened the door.

Three — no, four people were piling out of a dented white Jeep Cherokee with County 23 plates. So they were local after all, he thought.

The driver, who was standing outside his door waiting for the others, was tall, wiry, and bent over. He looked to be in his seventies and he wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and pointed black boots. He saw Brandon and grinned as if they were old friends.

An obese woman grunted from the back seat as she used both hands on the door frame to pull herself out. For a moment her feet stuck straight out of the Cherokee while she rocked back and threw her bulk forward to get out of the car. She had tight orange-yellow curls and wore a massive print dress that looked to be the size of a tent.

Two younger men about Brandon’s age joined the wiry older one while they waited for the fat woman. One of the younger men had a shaved head, a full beard, and tattoos that crawled out of his collar up his neck. The second man looked like a local ranch hand: jeans, boots, Carhartt coat, battered and greasy KING ROPES cap.

Brandon stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind him. He could feel Marissa’s eyes on his back through the curtains.

He said, “What can I help you folks with? There’s no need for all of you to get out.”

The wiry man continued to grin. He said, “You might not remember me, Brandon, but I sure as hell remember you. How you doing, boy?”

Brandon frowned. There was something familiar about the man, but whatever it was was inaccessible to him at the moment. So many of his memories had been locked away years before.

“Do I know you?”

“Dwayne Pingston. I remember you when you were yay high,” he said, holding his hand palm down just below his belt buckle. “I don’t blame you for not remembering me from those days, but I was close to your old man.”

Brandon nodded. Dwayne Pingston.

The Dwayne Pingston who Brandon had discovered butchering a deer out of season in the garage. The Dwayne Pingston who’d lifted Brandon off his feet and hung him by his belt from a nail while he finished deboning the animal.

“This is my lovely wife, Peggy,” Pingston said, nodding the brim of his hat to her as she struggled to her feet next to the car and smoothed out her dress.

“My son, Tater,” he said, and the man in the jeans and ball cap looked up.

“And my buddy Wade,” he said, not looking over at the bald man.

“Nice to meet you all,” Brandon said. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I guess you could say I’m here to collect a debt,” Pingston said.

Brandon tilted his head. “A debt? You know the old man passed a couple of weeks ago, right?”

“Oh, I heard,” Pingston said. “They wouldn’t let me out to attend the service, though.”

“What kind of debt?” Brandon asked. “I’m officially going through his books now, and he didn’t leave much of anything.”

“Tell you what,” Pingston said, moving over to Peggy and sliding his arm around her. “Why don’t you invite us inside so we can discuss it? If you haven’t noticed, it’s snowing right now and it’s getting colder by the minute. I nearly forgot how much I didn’t miss Big Piney until I stepped outside this morning and the hairs in my nose froze up.”

Pingston started to lead Peggy toward the front steps and the two other men fell in behind them.

“Hold it,” Brandon said. “My wife’s inside, and we really weren’t planning on any company. She’s expecting our first baby, and now isn’t a good time. How about we discuss whatever it is you want to talk about tomorrow in town?”

“I wanted to talk about it with you today,” Pingston said, still smiling, still guiding Peggy toward the porch, “but when I called they said the phone was disconnected. So we had to come out in person. I didn’t realize Peggy’s Jeep had a headlight out. Those are the kinds of maintenance things I used to take care of before they sent me away.”

Sent me away, Brandon repeated to himself in his head. They wouldn’t let me out to attend the service.

“Really,” he said. “You folks need to get back in your car and we’ll meet tomorrow. How about breakfast or something?”

“Won’t work,” Pingston said, withdrawing his smile. “I got to hit the road first thing in the morning. I’m only here for the night.”

“That’s not my problem,” Brandon said. “Look, there’s going to be a legal process in regard to everything my dad left behind. You need to contact his lawyer about your debt — not me.”

Pingston shook his head. “Brandon, you’re the one I want to see. We don’t need no lawyers in this.”

Wade with the shaved head stepped out from in back of Pingston. “Open the door,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

His glare sent a chill through Brandon that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. Wade was tall and solid and the bulk of his coat couldn’t hide his massive shoulders.

“Give me a minute,” Brandon said. “Let me talk to my wife.”

“Don’t take all day,” Pingston said. “It ain’t getting any warmer.”

Brandon entered the house and shut the door. Marissa was still behind the couch, rubbing her belly almost manically.

“They want—”

“I heard,” she said.

“I’m not sure what to do,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Pingston used to work for the old man. My guess is he wants back pay or something like that. Knowing the way my dad was, they probably had some kind of dispute.”

“What did he mean, they wouldn’t let him out to attend the funeral?”

Brandon shrugged, because he didn’t want to answer.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, incredulous. “Invite them in?”

“What choice do I have?”

Before she could answer, the front door opened and Tater poked his head in.

“Look, folks, my mom is standing out there in the freezing snow. She’s gonna get pneumonia and die if she don’t come in here and warm up.”

Brandon looked from Marissa to Tater to Marissa. She was saying No with her eyes.

“Come on, Mama,” Tater said over his shoulder. Then he walked in and stepped aside so Peggy and Pingston could enter, one after the other. They couldn’t do it shoulder to shoulder because Peggy was too wide.

“Thank you kindly,” she wheezed. Her cheeks were flushed and she labored the four steps it took to reach a recliner, where she settled in with a loud sigh.

Pingston came in behind her and looked around the house. Wade slipped in behind him and shut the door.

“Hasn’t changed much,” Pingston said, removing his hat and holding it by the brim with both hands in front of him.

“Please,” Brandon said, moving from Marissa closer to Pingston. “There’s nothing I can do for you. All I can do is make a recommendation to the lawyers on selling the assets and either splitting up the estate or selling it. I couldn’t write a check from his account if I wanted to.”

Pingston smiled as he nodded his head. “That’s just blah-blah-blah to me, Brandon. We don’t need lawyers to settle up accounts. We can do this man-to-man.”

Brandon didn’t know what to say.

Wade had positioned himself in front of the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Tater stood behind Peggy and had opened his coat. Brandon wondered if Tater had a weapon tucked into the back of his Wranglers and had opened his coat to get at it more quickly.

Suddenly Marissa said to Pingston, “You were in prison, weren’t you?” It was an accusation. “You just got out.”

Pingston shook his head sadly and looked down at the hat in his hands. “I’m afraid so, ma’am. It isn’t something I’m proud of, but I paid my debt to society and now I’m back on the straight and narrow. Peggy here,” he said, nodding toward his wife, “waited for me for the past five years. She struggled, and it wasn’t fair to her. Now I’ve got to make things right with her and my boy.”

“Make things right?” Brandon asked cautiously.

“Now you’re gettin’ it,” Pingston said.

“So how do we make things right?”

“You were in prison with him?” Marissa said to Wade.

“We shared a cell,” Wade said. “We got released within a couple of days of each other last week. I’m just here to support my buddy Dwayne.”

“Support him,” Marissa echoed.

Brandon looked over at his wife and implored her with his eyes to please let him handle things. But she was glaring at Wade.

“You people need to leave this house,” she said. “You have no right to be here.”

Wade raised his eyebrows and shook his head. Nobody moved.

Peggy asked Marissa, “How far are you along, honey?”

It broke the tension slightly. Brandon looked on.

“Seven and a half months,” Marissa said.

“Boy or girl?” Peggy asked Marissa.

“A little boy. Our first.”

“Well, God bless you,” Peggy said. Her face was strangely blank, and it didn’t match her words, Brandon thought. “The last thing you need right now is a bunch of stress in your life, I’d bet.”

Marissa agreed with a pained smile.

“That’s what I thought,” Peggy said. “So what I’d suggest to you is to talk to your husband here to get this thing over with. Then we’ll all be out of your hair and you can get on with your life. How’s that sound?”

As Marissa thought it over, Pingston said to Brandon, “It ain’t gonna be as bad as you think. It’s going to be downright painless.”

Brandon and Marissa exchanged a glance, and Brandon said, “So what is it you want with us?”

“First of all,” Pingston said, “I need to tell you a little story. It’ll explain why I’m here.”

“Go ahead,” Marissa said.

“Six years ago this area was booming with oil-field workers. That’s before the bottom dropped out of the market. I’m sure you know about that,” he said. “Them boys had more money than they knew what to do with, and for a short time there were four banks in town. Now we’re back to one, as you probably noticed.

“The old man resented the hell out of the oil boom, because none of it was on his land. Plus he didn’t like it that a bunch of out-of-staters had moved into the valley and they were acting like big shots. As far as your old man was concerned, they didn’t deserve to run the county.

“Well, somebody got clever and hit one of the Brink’s trucks after it picked up a bunch of cash at one of those fly-by-night banks they had then. Nobody got killed, but the driver and the guard were pistol-whipped and tied up and the thieves stole all the cash out of the back of the truck. Something like a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, if I recall. It was quite the big story in Sublette County: an armed robbery at gunpoint.”

“I remember reading something about that,” Brandon said. Maybe in one of Sally’s letters?

“At the time it happened I’d just told the old man I was quitting the ranch to seek employment in the oil patch,” Pingston said. “I thought to myself, why should I bust my ass for that mean old bastard when I could get a job driving a truck or delivering tools for twice what I’m making out here? Peggy deserved a better life, and Tater was in junior high at the time. So why should I put up with that old bastard?”

Brandon shrugged.

Pingston continued, “The old man didn’t like that. He knew the word was out up and down this valley that he was a bastard to work for and he didn’t pay much. So he said he needed help around here and he wouldn’t let me quit. He said I had to pay off all this damage he claimed I’d caused when I worked for him — wrecked trucks, cattle that died during the winter, anything he could think up at the time and pin on me. You know how he was,” Pingston said.

“I do,” Brandon said.

“I told him to shove all that up his ass,” Pingston said. “I didn’t owe him a damned thing. You can imagine how well he took it. The last I seen of him, he was limping toward this house to get his gun so he could kill me. He was so mad smoke was coming out of his ears. So I jumped in a ranch truck and beat it toward town. It was that old ’48 Dodge Power Wagon that had been here forever. I figured I’d leave it in town for the old man to pick up later.”

Pingston paused and looked around the room. Brandon guessed that Wade, Peggy, and Tater were about to hear a story they’d heard many times before even if Brandon and Marissa hadn’t.

“The sheriff’s department intercepted me before I could even get to Big Piney,” Pingston said. “Lights flashing, sirens going, the whole damn deal. The old man must’ve reported a stolen Power Wagon, and they had me on that. But before I could explain I was fleeing for my life they had me face-down in the dirt and I was being arrested for that armed robbery and for hurting them two Brink’s guys.”

Pingston lowered his voice now for effect. He said, “The old man said it was me who did that Brink’s job. He told the sheriff some bullshit about me being gone the day it happened and that he’d suspected it all along. If you remember the sheriff and the judge here at the time, you know that ranchers like your old man pretty much told them what to do and they did it.

“Supposedly the sheriff found a pistol in my duffel bag in the truck that matched what was used in the armed robbery, but I always suspected he planted it there after the fact. I was in prison in Rawlins at the Wyoming State Pen before I knew what hit me, just because I quit my job here. Your old man put it to me, and hard.

“To make matters worse,” Pingston said, “Peggy had to get a job to survive, and the only one she could find was at the senior center.”

Peggy spoke up. “So two or three times a week I had to ladle the gravy on your old man’s lunch and pretend I didn’t know what he’d done to my Dwayne,” she said. “There he was with that big roll of cash he always kept in his pocket for buying drinks for politicians, but he never missed a free lunch at the senior center with old folks who didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I’d look out from behind the counter at your old man holding court with his cronies and think of my Dwayne down in Rawlins surrounded by murderers and rapists.”

She turned to Marissa. “Honey, you may think having a child is hard. But what’s really hard is putting a fake smile on your face and serving the man who put your husband away.”

Wade shifted his weight and sighed. It was obvious he was bored by the story he’d no doubt heard a thousand times before.

Brandon said, “If you’re asking me to make you whole out of the proceeds of the ranch, I don’t know how I can do it. There are liens on the equipment and the cattle, and the old man hadn’t paid any bills in months. He might have always had a roll of cash on him, but he didn’t use it to pay off his debts. All those people are filing claims, and they get their money first when everything gets sold. I sympathize, but I just don’t know what I can do.”

Pingston stared at Brandon for a long time. Finally he said, “I kind of figured that.”

“So why are you here?” Marissa asked, exasperated.

“I want that ’48 Power Wagon,” Pingston said.

“What?” Brandon asked. A wave of relief flooded through him, but he tried hard to conceal it.

“It’s a goddamn classic,” Wade said.

Pingston nodded and said, “People don’t realize what a workhorse that truck was. The greatest ranch vehicle ever made. Three-quarter-ton four-by-four perfected in WW Two. After the war, all the rural ex-GIs wanted one here like they’d used over there. That original ninety-four-horse, two-hundred-and-thirty-cubic-inch flathead six wouldn’t win no races, but it could grind through the snow and mud, over logs, through the brush and willows. It was tough as a damn rock. Big tires, high clearance, a winch on the front. We could load a ton of cargo on that son of a bitch and still drive around other pickups stuck in a bog.”

Brandon shook his head, puzzled. “That’s what you want?”

Pingston nodded. “Look, I suppose you’re thinking that if I restored that beast to its former glory, I could make a lot of money on it, and you’re right. I’ve seen where some of ’em sell for seventy thousand or more in cherry condition. But I don’t give a crap about that. I want to fix it up and get it running. This one is too damned beat up to ever amount to much.”

“Then why do you want it?”

“It means something to me,” Pingston said. “That was the truck I drove every damned day I worked on this ranch. Twelve years, Brandon. I know that truck as intimately as I do Peggy.”

Peggy smirked at that. Brandon thought that odd.

Pingston said, “I know when to downshift going up a vertical hill, how to power through six-foot drifts, how to use that winch to pull myself up the side of a damned cliff. If I ever go elk hunting again, that’s the vehicle I want to take.

“Plus,” Pingston said with a wink, “it’s the truck I borrowed to go to town when your old man sent me up the river. I like the idea of that old bastard rolling in his grave knowing I’m riding around in high style in the Power Wagon he owned all his life. It gives me a small measure of satisfaction, if you know what I mean.”

Marissa said, “If we give you the truck, will you all go away?”

“That was rude,” Peggy said. She folded her thick arms over her bosom.

Brandon said, “I should discuss this with my brothers and sister, you know. We all have a say in how the assets are divided up.”

That’s when Wade stepped forward and said, “We don’t have the time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Brandon saw Marissa tense up and move back.

Brandon said, “If I give it to you, how are you going to get it out of here? I doubt it’ll start after all these years. I don’t even know if it still has a motor in it — or tires. And I don’t even know if it’s in the shed out there.”

“Oh, we brung a tow rope in the Jeep,” Pingston assured him.

Brandon hoped that the Power Wagon was not only in the shed but also in good enough shape for them to take it away that night. He was still basking in the relief he’d felt at the words I want that ’48 Power Wagon.

Even if it didn’t make any sense. Four people to retrieve a truck? In the snow? At night?

“If it’s there, it’s yours,” he said to Pingston.

Wade grinned and said, “Let’s go check it out.”

“I’m going too,” Tater said.

“No,” Pingston said sharply. “You stay here with your mother and Marissa.”

And Brandon felt the fear creep back inside.

“Why don’t you all come with me?” Brandon asked.

“No,” Pingston said sharply. “Peggy don’t need to stand around outside in this weather while we mess around with an old truck.”

But Brandon heard, I want my son to stay in here and keep an eye on Marissa so she doesn’t try anything.

When he looked over at his wife, Marissa nodded to him and mouthed, Go.

It took a while for Brandon to locate a set of keys in the old man’s desk that might open the old shed. While he searched, Wade kept a close eye on him from the door. More than once, Brandon caught Wade glancing toward the gun cabinet.

“Okay,” Brandon said when he found a ring of ancient keys. “I can’t guarantee anything, but one of these might work.” None of them were marked or labeled.

“We’ll follow you,” Wade said, closing in behind Brandon as he left the room.

Brandon pulled on the ranch coat and looked over his shoulder at Marissa. “Back in a minute,” he said.

She nodded, but her mouth was set tight as if holding in a sob.

Pingston and Wade followed Brandon outside into the snow. It was coming down harder now and the flakes had grown in size and volume.

He led them away from the house toward a massive corrugated-metal shed where the old man kept his working ranch equipment as well as the hulks of old tractors and pickups that no longer ran. The pole light that had once illuminated the ranch yard had long ago burned out, so Brandon had to peer through the snowfall to find the outline of the shed against the snow.

“I told Wade I wasn’t sure if I have the right key,” Brandon said in Pingston’s direction.

Pingston didn’t reply.

The shed had a side door but it was clogged with years of weeds that were waist-high, so he figured it hadn’t been used in a while. Brandon walked through the snow to the big double garage doors that were closed tight. A rusty chain had been looped through the handles and secured with a padlock.

Brandon bent over and tried one key after another in the lock.

“I need some light,” he said. “Did either of you bring a flashlight?”

Instead of answering, Wade extended a lighter in his hand and flicked it on. The flame lit up the old padlock in orange.

The next-to-last key on the ring slid in, and Brandon turned it. Nothing.

“Jerk on it,” Pingston said.

Brandon did and it opened. Tiny flakes of rust fell away from the lock into the snow below it. He closed his eyes with relief. Wade reached over his shoulder and pulled the chain free.

“Okay, step aside,” Pingston said, reaching forward with both of his hands and grasping the door handles. He groaned as he parted them. The old door mechanism groaned as well.

“Give me a hand here,” Pingston said to Wade. The two men wedged themselves into the two-foot opening and each put a shoulder to opposite doors. With a sound like rolling thunder, the doors opened wide.

Brandon watched Pingston walk into the shed and disappear in the dark. A wall of icy air pushed out from the open doors. It was colder inside the shed than outside, Brandon thought. Then a single match fired up in the corner and he saw Pingston’s finger toggle a light switch. Above them, two of four bare bulbs came on.

“See, I remembered where the lights were after all this time,” Pingston said.

“Good for you,” Wade said without enthusiasm. “You figured out how to operate a light switch.”

The shed layout was familiar to Brandon, and much of it was the same as it had been. Some of the equipment was so old it looked almost medieval in the gloom. Thrashers, tractors, one-ton flatbed trucks without wheels, a square-nosed bulldozer, a faded wooden sheep wagon as old as Wyoming itself, a lifetime of battered pickups. And there, backed against the far sheet-metal wall, was the toothy front grille and split-window windshield of the ’48 Power Wagon. It sat high and still on knobby tires, its glass clouded with age, the two headlamps mounted on the high wide fenders looking in the low light like dead eyes.

“Son of a bitch,” Pingston said. “There it is.”

Wade blew out a sigh of relief.

“How you doin’, old girl?” Pingston said to the truck. He approached it and stroked the dust-covered hood. “It looks like the old man backed it in after they arrested me and it hasn’t been moved since,” he said.

Brandon put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. He said, “Then I guess my work is done here.”

“Not so fast,” Wade said, stepping over and placing his hand on Brandon’s shoulder. Then to Pingston: “Check it out.”

Check out what?

Pingston nodded and opened the front door of the Power Wagon and leaned inside. Brandon was surprised how obedient Pingston had been to the command. Then he realized Wade was actually the one in charge, not Pingston.

“What’s he looking for? The keys?” Brandon asked.

“Shut up.”

Brandon pursed his lips and waited. He could see Pingston crawl further into the cab and could hear the clinks of metal on metal.

After a long few moments, Pingston pushed himself out and looked to Wade. Pingston’s face was drained of color.

“It’s not there,” he said in a weak voice. “The tools are on the floorboard, but the toolbox is gone. The old man must have found it.”

Wade closed his eyes and worked his jaw. Brandon felt Wade’s hand clamp harder on his shoulder. Then Wade stepped back quickly and kicked Brandon’s legs out from under him. He fell hard, half in and half out of the shed.

When Brandon looked up, Wade was crouching over him with a large-caliber snub-nosed pistol in his hand. The muzzle pressed into his forehead.

“Where is it?” Wade asked.

“Where is what?” Brandon said. “I don’t have a clue what you’re looking for.”

“Where. Is. It?” Wade’s eyes were bulging and his teeth were clenched.

“Honest to God,” Brandon said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t been in this shed for years. I wasn’t even sure the Power Wagon was here. I have no idea where the keys are.”

He tried to rise up on his elbows, but the pressure of the muzzle held him down.

“Fuck the keys,” Wade said. He barked at Pingston, “Look again.”

Pingston practically hurled himself into the cab of the truck. His cowboy boots stuck out and flutter-kicked like he was swimming.

“Don’t lie to me or I’ll kill you and your wife,” Wade said, and Brandon didn’t doubt it. “Where is it?”

Brandon took a trembling breath. He said, “This is my first day back on this place. I have no idea what you’re asking me. I’ve not been in this shed. You saw how rusty that lock was, Wade. It hasn’t been opened in a long time.”

Something registered behind Wade’s eyes. The pressure of the muzzle eased, but he didn’t move the gun.

“My old man was in this shed since I was here last. Hell, Dwayne Pingston was in this shed after I left. I don’t know what you’re looking for. I’m an accountant, for God’s sake.”

Wade appeared to be making his mind up about something. Then his features contorted into a snarl and he withdrew the revolver and hit Brandon in the face with the butt of it. Brandon heard his nose break and felt the hot rush of blood down his cheeks and into his mouth. Wade struck again and Brandon stopped trying to get up.

Wade got off him and Brandon tried to roll to his side, but he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was blacking out, but he fought it. For some reason he thought about the fact that the only violence he had ever encountered in his life was here on this ranch. And Marissa was back in the house...

His head flopped so he was facing into the shed. Through a red gauzy curtain, he watched Wade stride toward the Power Wagon with the gun at his side.

And he heard Wade say to Pingston, “You stupid, miserable old son of a bitch. I knew I should have never believed you about anything. You kept me on the hook for years so I’d watch your back inside.”

Pingston said, “Wade! Put that down.”

Pop. Pop.

Brandon didn’t want to wake up, and each time he got close, he faded back. He dreamed of freezing to death because he was.

He groaned and rolled to his side and his head swooned. He threw up on the sleeve of the old man’s ranch coat and it steamed in the early-morning light. His limbs were stiff with cold and it hurt to move them. His face throbbed and he didn’t know why. When he touched the area above his right ear he could feel a crusty wound that he couldn’t recall receiving.

But he was alive.

He gathered his knees under him and pushed himself clumsily to his feet. When a wave of dizziness hit him, he reached out and grabbed the end of the open shed door so he wouldn’t fall again.

It took a minute for him to realize where he was and recall what had happened. He staggered toward the Power Wagon, toward the pair of boots that hung out of the open truck door.

Dwayne Pingston was dead and stiff, with a bullet hole in his cheek and another in the palm of his hand. No doubt he’d raised it at the last second before Wade pulled the trigger.

Brandon turned and lurched toward the open shed door.

The morning sun was streaming through the east wall of willows, creating gold jail bars across the snow.

The Jeep was gone, but Tater’s body lay face-down near the tracks. Peggy was splayed out on her back on the front porch, her floral dress hiked up over blue-white thighs. Both had been shot to death.

“Marissa!”

He stepped over Peggy’s body like he’d once stepped over the old man. The front door was unlocked, and his eyes were wide open and he was breathing fast when he went inside.

His movement and the warmth of the house made his nose bleed again, and it felt like someone was applying a blowtorch to his temple. He could hear his blood pattering on the linoleum.

“Marissa!”

“Oh my God, Brandon, you’re alive!” she cried. “I’m in here.”

She was in the old man’s den.

When he filled the door frame and leaned on it to stay up, she looked up from behind the desk and her face contorted.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “You look awful.”

He didn’t want to nod.

Five tiny hairless mice, so new their eyes were still shut, wriggled in a pile of paper scraps on the desk in front of her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Checking on my babies.”

It was incomprehensible to him. “What happened?”

She shook her head slowly and said, “When I heard the shots outside I ran upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. All I could think of was that you were gone and that I’d be raising this boy by myself.

“I heard Tater yell and run out, then Peggy followed him. There were more shots and then I heard a car drive away. I didn’t unlock my door and come out until an hour ago. I went outside and saw you lying in the snow and I thought you were gone like the others.”

Brandon said, “And the first thing you did after you saw me was check on the mice?”

“They’re helpless,” she explained. Then he noticed her eyes were unfocused and he determined she was likely in shock. She’d succumbed to her maternal instincts because she didn’t know what else to do. His other questions would have to wait. He hoped their baby had no repercussions from her terror and tension throughout the night.

“I’ll get the car,” he said.

“Can I bring the babies?”

He started to object but thought better of it.

“Sure.”

As he turned he heard her say, “There’s a towel in the bathroom for your face.”

Brandon was shocked at the appearance of the person who looked back at him in the mirror. He had two black eyes, an enormous nose, and his face was crusted with black dried blood. A long tear cut through the skin above his right ear and continued through his scalp.

Wade, he thought. Wade had stood over him after he’d shot Pingston and fired what he’d thought was a kill shot to his head. He’d missed, though, and the bullet had creased his skull.

He looked like he should be dead.

When Brandon went outside he saw that Wade had left them a present: all four tires on their minivan were slashed and flat, and there was a bullet hole in the grille and a large pool of radiator fluid in the snow.

When he shook his head, it ached.

Then he turned toward the shed.

When he went inside, long-forgotten memories rushed back of observing the old man, Pingston, and various other ranch hands working on equipment, repairing vehicles, and changing out filters, hoses, belts, and oil and other fluids. The old man thought it was a waste of time and money to take his equipment into town for repair, so he did it all himself. Those were the days when a man could actually fix his own car. And as the men worked, Brandon would hand them the tools they requested.

It had been another world, but one Brandon eased back into. A world where a man was expected to know how a motor worked and how to fix it if necessary.

The battery in the Power Wagon was long dead, so he borrowed the battery from his minivan and installed it. The air compressor in the shed sounded like an unmuffled jet engine, but it sufficed to inflate the tires. He filled the Dodge’s gas tank from a five-gallon can he found in the corner. Then, recalling a technique the ranch hands had used on especially cold mornings, he took the air filter off the motor and primed the carburetor with a splash of fuel.

Like they were for all ranch vehicles, the keys had been left in the ignition. He opened the choke to full and turned the key and was astonished that the truck roared to life.

The Power Wagon reminded Brandon of a grizzly bear that had emerged from its den. It shook and moaned and seemed to stretch. The shed filled with acrid blue smoke. Pingston had been right when he’d inferred that the old truck was indestructible.

When Brandon eased it out through the doors, he saw Marissa standing open-mouthed on the front porch.

It was a rough ride, and Brandon couldn’t goose it past thirty-five miles an hour. Blooms of black smoke emerged from the tailpipe. The heater blew dust on their legs when he turned it on. The cab was so high that the ground outside seemed too far down. He felt like a child behind the massive steering wheel.

He’d forgotten what it was like to drive a vehicle without power steering or power brakes. He didn’t so much drive it as point it down the road and hold on tight to the steering wheel so the vibration wouldn’t shake his teeth loose.

On the way into Big Piney, he glanced over at Marissa, who was holding the box of mice in her lap.

“When did you go into the shed?” he asked. He had to raise his voice over the sound of the motor to be heard.

“Yesterday, after I found the nest of mice.”

“How did you get in? The doors were locked.”

“The side door wasn’t locked. The one with all the weeds? That was open and I went right in.”

He nodded and thought about it.

She said, “Are you accusing me of something, Brandon? Your tone is mean.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching over and patting her thigh. “I’m just confused. There are three dead people back there and my head hurts.”

“It was Wade,” Marissa said. “Peggy told me after the three of you left. Wade was behind it all.”

“I get that. But what were they after?”

Then, before she could answer, he reached into the box of mice and grasped a fistful of the shredded paper. He downshifted because the brakes were shot, and he eventually pulled over to the side of the dirt road and stopped the Dodge. The motor banged away but didn’t quit running. He could smell hot oil burning somewhere under the hood.

“What is it, Brandon?” she asked.

The strips of paper in his hands were blue and old. But when he pieced them together he could see the words “Trust,” “Security,” and “Stockman’s” printed on them.

He said, “Stockman’s Security Trust. That’s the bank that got hit years ago. These are bands that held the piles of cash together. Where did you find them, Marissa?”

“I told you,” she said. “They were in the nest. I didn’t even look at them.”

He tried not to raise his voice when he asked, “Where was the nest?”

“It was in the back of this truck. When I found it and realized their mom wasn’t around, I looked for something to put them in so I could save them. There was a toolbox under the seat of the truck, so I poured all the tools out and put the babies in the box. Brandon, why are you asking me this?”

He sat back. The water tower for Big Piney shimmered in the distance.

“Pingston did that armed robbery and hid the cash somewhere inside the Power Wagon. Probably beneath a fender or taped to the underside. He got pulled over and arrested before he could spend it or hide it somewhere else. And all these years he thought about that money and worried that the old man would find it — which he did.”

Marissa seemed to be coming out of shock, and she registered surprise.

“Either that,” Brandon said, “or my old man was in on the robbery all along and fingered his partner. That way, he could always have a big roll of cash in his pocket even though the ranch was going broke. We may never know how it all went down.

“Pingston told his cellmate Wade about the cash and promised him a cut of it when they got out. I heard Wade say something about protecting Pingston inside, and that makes sense. Wade kept Pingston safe so they could both cash out. Only the money wasn’t there, and Wade thought his old pal had deceived him all along. He went berserk and killed Pingston, then Pingston’s family.”

Brandon put the truck in gear and turned back onto the road. “We’ve got to let the sheriff know to look for Peggy’s Jeep so they can arrest Wade and send him back to Rawlins.”

“Why didn’t he kill us and eliminate all the witnesses?” she asked.

“He thought I was dead,” Brandon said. “I think maybe he panicked after Peggy and Tater were down and just got the hell out of there. Maybe chasing down a pregnant woman was too much even for Wade.”

“Or maybe,” she said, “he thought he was stranding me out there to freeze to death without a car, that bastard.”

As they entered the town limits of Big Piney, Brandon had to slow down for a dirty pickup that pulled out in front of them. The legs of a massive elk stuck straight up from the bed, and sunlight glinted off the tines of the antlers.

Marissa said, “I can’t believe you grew up here.”

Brandon patted the steering wheel and said, “We’re keeping the Power Wagon. I don’t care what my brothers or sister say about it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. Then: “Maybe because I got it to run again with my own two hands.”