But just as he started his truck he saw Wyatt Dixon walk out of the door, strands of silver tape hanging from his wrists, a splintered piece of chair leg still bound to the calf of his leg. His silhouette seemed haloed with light and smoke.
"You don't have it in you, sir. Know what that means? I own you. You and yours. If I've a mind, I'll split your little girl in half and take the bones out of the Holland boy. Once more please pardon my language, but, sir, you done fucked with the devil hisself," he said.
Chapter 19
"He's a Satanist?" I said to Doc the next morning.
"I don't know what he is," he replied.
"What have you done, Doc?"
The sun had not broken above the ridgeline and the house was in shadow. Doc picked up his uneaten breakfast and threw it out the back door.
"I'm going into town. You want to come?" he said.
"No," I said, my anger as thick as a walnut in my throat.
I walked down to Lucas's tent on the river and crouched down and pulled open the flap. He raised his head up from his sleeping bag.
"Anything wrong?" he asked.
"Doc stoked up Wyatt Dixon. I think you should go back to Deaf Smith."
"Why?"
"He made a threatening statement about you and Maisey."
"Fuck him."
"I had a feeling you might say that. Excuse me for waking you up."
"Joan Baez is playing at the university tomorrow night," he said.
I waited for him to go on.
His eyes shifted off mine. "I told Sue Lynn you give us two tickets. Can you let me have forty dollars?"
I went BACK into the house and opened the Mis-soula phone directory and began the long process of trying to contact a federal agent for whom I had no business card. Finally I reached a Treasury Department switchboard in Washington, D.C., and after three transfers was able to leave my name and number.
Then I went to Bob Ward's Sporting Goods and bought a.38 revolver with a two-inch barrel and a clip-on holster and a box of cartridges.
By that afternoon I had heard nothing back from my inquiry at the Treasury Department.
I called the Missoulian and asked for the classified ad department.
"Is there still time to get a two-column boldface in tomorrow's paper?" I asked.
"Yes, I think we can do that. What do you want it to say?" a woman replied sweetly.
"'Amos Rackley, Please Get in Touch. Urgent.' Sign it 'Billy Bob Holland.'"
"That's it?" she asked.
"No. Let me make an addition," I said.
That evening I picked up Temple at the airport. She had been called back to Texas to testify at a trial and I had not seen her since I had impetuously kissed her in the picnic grounds by the river. When she walked off the plane I felt that the best friend I had on earth had just come back into my life.
"Anything happen while I was gone?" she asked.