Jock glanced around at the others surrounding the bar. All eyes were focused on the large screen occupying the wall behind where the bartender bustled around filling orders. Jock looked at the score at the bottom of the picture. Close game. Just one run separated the two teams, but it was only the second inning. Plenty of time for them to jostle for position before one or the other won.
The bartender plopped bottles and glasses down in front of both Ralf and him without offering to pour. That was fine with Jock. In fact, drinking directly from the bottle seemed more appropriate to this apparent guy hangout.
He lifted his bottle in a silent toast, and Ralf did the same. Both took swigs just as some members of the small crowd around them started to cheer. Jock looked up to see the screen filled with two players dashing to the next bases. The batter for New York must have hit a double, or at least his teammates were treating it like one.
“Hey,” Jock said to the guy on his left side. “Good game, huh?”
“It’s okay, but it may be over already since the Yanks have scored again.”
“I’m from Seattle,” Jock said, “just visiting here. I wouldn’t mind if the Yanks won. How about you?”
“The Twins are my team,” he said shortly.
“Are you from Minnesota?” Jock asked. “Or do you live here?” He kept his tone light, as if all he was doing was making polite conversation rather than conducting his first interrogation here.
“Neither.” The guy took a swig of his own beer and stared back up at the screen. Interesting, Jock thought. He might just have been lucky enough to start out finding one of the possible anarchists—or sportsmen, as Kathlene was calling them. Although the guy could, of course, just be visiting friends or relatives here, or even have business to conduct in Cliffordsville.
But his disinclination to answer suggested some degree of secrecy. Jock couldn’t rule him out as being one of those hanging out at the old ranch for possibly nefarious purposes.
He felt Ralf elbow him gently and turned toward his aide. “Hey, Jock,” Ralf said. “This is Hal.” He gestured toward the man on his other side. “He’s just visiting town for a while, like us. He’s doing some target practice on a ranch not far from the motel where we’re staying.”
Jock leaned so he could check out Hal from behind Ralf. He held out his hand. “Hi, Hal. Good to meet you. You a hunter?” He kept his tone light and nonjudgmental. Heck, if he were to ask, probably ninety percent of the regular humans who lived in an area like this most likely engaged in hunting, for food or sport or both and probably most complied with the laws. Just because he identified with some of the wildlife they might go after didn’t mean he should give them a hard time about it.
“Sure am,” Hal said. He was a moderate-sized guy and, if Jock were to guess, he probably worked out regularly with weights, judging by the way his arm muscles bulged as he, too, reached around Ralf to shake Jock’s hand.
“Me, too,” Jock lied. “We’re only here for a short time visiting an old friend of mine, but target practice sounds like fun. Any possibility of our joining in?” Of course, they’d have to find reasons not to if it turned out this guy’s target practice wasn’t at the old ranch as part of whatever was going on there.
“Could be,” Hal said. He stood and walked behind Ralf and Jock, approaching the guy at Jock’s other side. That guy didn’t look too pleased, especially when Hal said, “Hey, Nate, we got room to enlist some other hunters?” If Jock wasn’t mistaken, Hal, who was even taller than Jock had first thought and had a substantially receding hairline, half winked toward the man he called Nate.
“Probably not just now,” Nate said, not sounding especially inviting. “But I can check. You guys done much shooting before?”
Jock started making up a whole story of how he’d loved hunting since he was a kid. He added what he thought might help make up this Nate’s mind if he was one of the leaders and the group actually was composed of anarchists. “Thing is,” he ended up saying, “there are so many damned laws about who can own guns and where you can shoot them and what you can shoot where we come from—well, it’s just damned frustrating.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “Where I’m from, too.” He held out his hand. “I’m Nate Tisal.”
Jock introduced himself and Ralf, too.
Tisal appeared to be in his fifties, with a lot of gray in his dark hair and divots resembling parentheses emphasizing the narrowness of his lips. His light brown eyes seemed to study Jock, as if he were trying to dig into his mind and learn what he really thought about hunting and guns.
“Where’s that?” Jock asked in a tone that was studiedly casual yet friendly.
“Another state,” the guy dissembled. “How long you here for?”
Obviously turning the topic back to him, Jock thought. “Just a few days. Ralf and I are on our way to Yellowstone, but I wanted to take the opportunity to visit a friend from my college days who lives here.”
“Who’s that?” Nate immediately shot back.
Jock had already talked about this with Ralf. Since they were likely to be seen in town with Kathlene, who wore her deputy sheriff’s uniform a lot, it would be better to be up front about that so none of the possible anarchists they met would assume they were talking to the authorities about their newest acquaintances.
Even though they would be.
“My old buddy Kathlene Baylor. Who’d a thunk back then that she would go into law enforcement? She’s with the local sheriff’s department, of all things.” He shook his head as if he was totally befuddled by the idea.
“She is?” Despite the casualness of Tisal’s tone, he sounded interested. Worried? Probably not.
“Yeah. I don’t get it. But damned if she doesn’t look good in a uniform.” Jock looked around. “Hey,” he said, and waved toward the bartender. “I’d like another beer. How about you?” He looked at Nate. “I’m buying. And you, Hal?”
Jock paid for a round of beers for the four of them, who were now good buddies. Or at least he had made some inroads, he hoped, into finding out more about these men and those with them—and whether they were, in fact, terrorists or more.
He realized he hadn’t fully established, not yet, that they were among those hanging out at the old ranch. But he’d have bet another round of drinks for everyone there, including the additional dozen or so guys also still at the bar, that these two were part of that group.
And were they anti-law? Anti-government? That remained to be seen.
But with their initial attitude about hunting and guns...well, he couldn’t rule it out, either.
* * *
“Hey, the sheriff’s got a job for you for tomorrow afternoon.”
Kathlene had just gotten back to work, logged in and contacted her partner, Jimmy Korling, who was going to come by and pick her up in their patrol car. She was heading outside to wait for him when Undersheriff George Kerringston hustled from the doorway to catch up with her.
She pivoted to face George. If Sheriff Frawley had personally chosen an assignment for her, it probably involved hanging out in their cruiser on the street where some town muckety-muck’s kid was having a birthday party inside.
George Kerringston had been with the sheriff’s department for twenty years and bragged about that often. He was slightly tall, slightly plump, and all dazed most of the time. Kathlene had wondered whether their old boss, Sheriff Lon Chrissoula, had kept George on out