C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe stayed like that for a long time. His head and face ached sharply, and as his shock wore off, the kicks to his arms, shoulders, neck, and back began to pound.

Moaning, he managed to lean against the brick wall and vertically crabwalk up until he could balance on his feet again. He probed at his head for blood, but didn’t find any. He hoped like hell Sollis wouldn’t drive by again and see him. He wanted no one to see him.

As he limped to his pickup, Joe looked at his right hand-the one that had twisted Bud Jr.’s ear nearly off-as if it belonged to someone else. Like Nate, maybe.

Bud Jr. had fought like a wild man. Partly out of self-defense and partly out of something inside him that was of greater intensity than Joe’s urge to protect himself. In a way, he admired Bud Jr., while he felt ashamed of himself both for the pressure he’d applied and for opening himself up for the attack.

Angry with himself, Joe climbed into his pickup. He looked into his own eyes in the rearview mirror, wondering who was looking back.

Ten minutes later, when he thought he’d recovered enough to find his voice again, he dug his phone out of his pocket-it was undamaged-and it rang before he could call Marybeth. The display indicated it was his wife calling him .

“Hi,” he croaked.

She paused. “Joe, are you all right?”

“Dandy,” he said.

“Your voice sounds different.”

He grunted.

“Look,” she said, “I had to call you right away. There’re some things about the company Rope the Wind that I find really fishy. I’ve been on the Internet all afternoon, and I can’t find the answer to some questions that just pop right out at me.”

“Like what?” he said. He shifted in his seat because the places on his back where Shamazz had kicked him were sore. He’d had his ribs broken before, and he knew they’d not been fractured. Overall, he was okay, but it would be a while before he knew if anything was bruised or damaged.

“I located the original articles of incorporation application online at the secretary of state’s office,” she said. “Earl wasn’t originally on the board five years ago. Five years is an eternity as far as wind energy companies go. Five years is ancient .

“The chairman and CEO was a man named Orin Smith,” she said. “He listed his address as a post office box in Cheyenne. So of course the next step was to find out what I could about Orin Smith and see if I could connect him to Earl.”

Joe hmmmmmmm’d to keep her going.

She said, “I came back with thousands of hits. And this is where it gets strange. Orin Smith is apparently the chairman and CEO of hundreds of companies incorporated in Wyoming. They run the gamut from energy companies like Rope the Wind to crazy ones like ‘Prairie Enterprises,’ ‘Bighorn Manufacturing,’ ‘Rocky Mountain Internet,’ ‘Cowboy Cookies’. all kinds of companies.”

Joe grunted, and said, “A couple of those sound sort of familiar.”

“I thought so, too,” she said, “but that’s the really weird thing. They’re just names. They sound like companies you hear about, but they don’t really exist.”

Joe shook his head, “What?”

“None of them seem to produce anything. There’s no record of them after incorporation. Beyond the name itself, these companies just seem to be sitting there.”

“I’m lost,” he said.

“I am, too. I don’t get it. And I don’t understand at all how Earl Alden came into the picture.”

Joe said, “We might be really going the wrong direction here. This doesn’t seem to fit any kind of scheme I can think of.”

“I know.”

Then she said, “But I found one thing of interest.”

“Yes?”

“I think I know where we can find Orin Smith.”

“Fire away,” he said.

“He’s in federal custody in Cheyenne. It’s amazing what one can find with a simple Google search of a name.”

“What are the charges?”

“Let’s see,” she said, and Joe could hear her tapping keys. “Securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, international money laundering to promote specified unlawful activity, money laundering. on and on. Eleven counts in all.”

“Which agency’s got him?”

“FBI.”

“Good,” he said, putting his pen down. “Someone owes me a favor there.”

Before he punched off, Joe said, “Ask your mother what she knows about Bud Jr. being back in town. I think she’s hiding something.”

“Bud Jr.? You mean Shamazz?”

“Yeah. I just had a run-in with him in town. I didn’t get the best of it and I lost him.”

He resolved to tell more her about the encounter later. Much later.

“Call me with what she says,” Joe said.

“When will you be home?”

“I won’t,” he replied, looking into the visor mirror at the swelling and bruises beginning to show on his cheekbone and jaw. “I’m driving all night to Cheyenne to talk to Orin Smith.”

As he drove south out of Saddlestring, he scrolled through the contact list on his phone until he found the name for Special Agent Chuck Coon.

“Now, run, ” Nate Romanowski said to Johnny Cook and Drennen O’Melia.

“Man,” Drennen said, “you can’t make us do this. It’s cruel.”

“You can’t,” Johnny echoed.

Nate arched his eyebrows and said low and breathy, “I can’t?”

He’d silently marched them a mile east from Gasbag Jim’s place, in the direction of the Wind River Range, with the informant, Lisa, the dark-haired girl who’d learned their names and made the identification, in tow. She was coffee-and-cream color with dark eyes and high cheekbones. Her large breasts swelled against her white tank top. Short, muscular but shapely legs powered her through the sagebrush. She dangled a pair of strappy high heels from her finger because they hurt to walk in.

Nate guided Johnny and Drennen’s progress by gesturing at them with the muzzle of the.500 Wyoming Express the way a trainer instructs bird dogs with hand signals. The sun was behind them at eye level, minutes before dusk, and the four of them cast long shadows across the sagebrush and dried cheat grass. Johnny Cook was still in his underwear and boots.

“What do you mean, run?” Drennen asked. “You gonna shoot us in the back?”

Nate shrugged. He said, “I’m giving you more of a chance than you deserve. It’s an old Indian trick. You ever heard of Colter’s Run?”

“Colter’s what?” Johnny said.

“I have,” Lisa offered. “Blackfeet, right?”

“Right,” Nate said to her over his shoulder. Then he turned his attention back to the two men. “Eighteen-oh-eight, at the site of the present day Three Forks, Montana. The Blackfeet captured John Colter, the first white man to discover Yellowstone Park. They didn’t know what to do with him: kill him like they’d just done to his partner John Potts, or strip him naked and let him run. They decided on the old Indian trick, and gave him a few feet head start before they chased him down. What they didn’t know was that Colter was fast . He managed to outrun all the warriors except one. As he got close to the river, the Blackfoot who kept up threw his spear at Colter but missed, and Colter snatched it up and used it on the poor guy, killing him.

“Then Colter jumped into a river,” Nate said, “and over the next few days managed to elude the entire band by hiding in driftwood snarls along the banks while the Blackfeet searched for him. Eventually, Colter got away and worked his way back east over the next few years. In the end, he married a woman named Sallie.

“So,” Nate said, “a happy ending for John Colter.”