There’s nothing like cold silence to make you feel ill at ease.  Beth, with her obsidian hair pulled back in a ponytail and her emerald-green eyes sharpened by anger, stared at Butch in disbelief.  A young man walked out from behind the arena, breaking the chill between husband and wife.  I figured that he was the person who yelled at me to get down when the gunshot blasted through the truck window.  I guessed that he was a little over six feet tall, as I watched him walk toward us with the confidence of a steed.  His hair matched that of his mother, but his eyes were Alexandrite – a mixture of emerald and amber.  I understood in an instant the strife of sibling rivalry.  He pulled the leather glove off his right hand and extended it to me.  “The name’s Wyatt.  You must be Miss MacIntosh.”  He had a surprisingly lovely, deep voice.

“Mac.  Nice to meet you.”  I held his glance a second too long and sensed the redness of embarrassment emerging, like a scab pulled off too soon.  I turned toward Butch, who had flipped on the outside lights and had started pulling the shards of glass from the truck window. “Why did Chance Baker quit representing you?  Is there something that I should know about?”  This was not a rhetorical question, of course.  I knew that he owed me an explanation.  However, Butch kept his back to me and continued his clean-up duties.

“No.  It’s a normal greeting in these parts to shoot at you when getting out of a truck,” Wyatt said.  “Makes you feel real welcome.”

“Stop it, Wyatt,” Beth said. 

“You should have told her, Dad.”  Butch didn’t respond.  Instead, he methodically picked the glass out of the window and fetched a large push broom from the garage.  Beth followed, whispering to him while gesticulating wildly, leaving me staring uncomfortably at Wyatt’s boots.  I felt guilty – like I’d just caused a marital fight.  But my guilt was overridden by the fact that I’d just been shot at – and no one seemed to give it a whole lot of thought.  Wyatt motioned for me to follow him to his truck.  While Butch and Beth continued their standoff in the garage, Wyatt yelled to them, “We’ll be in Spotted Horse.”

* * *

The drive was short, but the weather changed dramatically in that small space of time.  Large raindrops splashed on the windshield, interrupted only by blinding flashes of lightning.  I was mesmerized by the sound of the raindrops as they splashed violently against the windshield of Wyatt’s truck.  I didn’t feel like making small talk, and I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject of why Chance Baker quit being the Andersons’ lawyer, so I just watched intently as each spherical drop collapsed upon itself upon impact.  As the splattered raindrops quickly streamed together forming tributaries of water across the windshield, Wyatt reached down and flipped on the wipers.  My focus quickly changed to the speed of the wipers swishing back and forth.  They made a scraping sound each time they swayed back in Wyatt’s direction.   As if he felt the need to talk over the annoying noise, he finally spoke up.  “Did you know that lightning kills more people on the east coast but starts more fires in the west?”  I didn’t know.  Wyatt continued to bridge the gap of silence.  “And a bolt of lightning reaches fifty thousand degrees – five times hotter than the sun?”  As we drove, the wind picked up and soon the rain was blowing sideways and the thunder boomed loudly in perfect timing with each bolt of lightning.  The storm gained strength suddenly.

“This storm is getting severe!” I said.

Wyatt shrugged his shoulders and said, “Not technically ‘severe.’  A severe thunderstorm must have wind gusts of at least fifty-seven miles per hour.  You can see that the rain is falling pretty straight most of the time.  But it is a good one, I’ll admit.  Looks like we’ll get a good inch of rain out of this one – and boy, do we need it.  Drought is killing us.  Six years without snow pack.  Did you know that one inch of rain is about the same as five inches of snow?  We didn’t accumulate five inches of snow the entire winter.  Never seen it so dry before.  Maybe God is getting us back for sucking all the water out of the earth with this coalbed methane gas operation.”

“You know a lot about weather.”

“A rancher has to know a lot about weather.  Weather has its own personality in Wyoming.”  We pulled into the parking lot of the Spotted Horse Saloon, which was a bar, café and grocery store combined in what might have been a barn at one time.  “Did you know that this place was named after a Cheyenne Indian chief?”  I didn’t.  In fact, the more I played the “did you know” game with Wyatt, the more I realized that I didn’t know a whole lot of the things he knew.  He was quite a trivia conversationalist, which was kind of a fun way to pass the time.  After several “Silver Bullets,” which was what he called the Coors Light beer that he ordered for us, I walked around the place, amused by the collection of old junk and historic photos that cloaked the walls.  One sign in particular caught my eye: 

May your horse never stumble, Your spurs never rust, Your guts never grumble, Your cinch never bust; May your boots never pinch, Your crops never fail, While you eat lots of beans, And stay out of jail.

“Do you think your parents will show?” I asked after three beers in two hours.  I kept looking at the door whenever it opened, expecting Butch and Beth to join us.

“Doubt it at this point.  Probably havin’ a rip-roaring fight.  They’re behind the eight ball with this methane gas play.  Most of their ranching friends have made a bundle from it and don’t care about the land anymore.  Dad has lost business from having them trucks running all over the pastures, and he’s afraid to speak out.  But the ranch is being destroyed and those MethZap people won’t listen to reason.  Hell, we’ve tried everything with them.  They just don’t give a damn about the land and the livestock and the water.”

“I was reading Chance’s notes yesterday.  Tell me about this Rowdy Rodiger character?  Do you know him?”

“Know him?  Hell, I went to school with him since he was knee high.  He’s a sneaky, sly, skinny, creepy little son-of-a-gun.  A good argument for natural selection, if you ask me.   Calls himself a ‘landman’ and hires himself out to methane gas operations as a ‘facilitator’ to the ranching community.  The only thing that bastard facilitates is his wallet.”

“So, you and Rowdy aren’t high school buddies, I take it.”  I smiled at Wyatt sideways, unwinding with the help of the beer.  I hadn’t eaten much all day and the booze was going to my head.  Wyatt reminded me of Greg in that he was a great conversationalist.  Greg was worldly and better traveled and perhaps more ‘book smart,’ but Wyatt was interesting and charming and knew a lot about the environment.  I intentionally hadn’t asked about his relationship with Greg.  I knew that they didn’t get along that well, and I didn’t want to alienate him.

“No.  Rowdy and me aren’t buddies.  I think the little sawed off shit is who has been shooting at us.”

“Shooting at us?”

“It’s not the first time we’ve taken fire at the ranch.  Chance Baker got shot at and damn near lost his left ear.  That’s why he quit.  Dad’s been shot at twice.  And now, you,” Wyatt said, as he pulled out a circular canister of Copenhagen and took a pinch of tobacco between his index finger and thumb.  He shoved the tobacco under his lower lip and slid the can back into his jean pocket.  Wyatt must have noticed the disgust on my face.  “Never seen a guy chew before?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen lots of people chew.  I tried it once in high school and immediately threw up.  That stuff is awful.  And it gives you cancer of the mouth.  Not to mention gum recession and -”

“All right, mother.  I get it.”  He grabbed a napkin from under my beer glass and spit the wad of chew into it.  He wiped his teeth clean and tossed the napkin over the bar and into the garbage can.  “Better?” he asked.  I nodded.

“Why didn’t your dad tell me about Chance?  I think that’s a pretty important detail when deciding to take a case, don’t you?  I mean, most lawyers think about whether they can win the case, whether they’ll get paid, whether they have the expertise to handle it, things of that nature.  We usually don’t contemplate whether we’ll be shot down in broad daylight.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about why lawyers take cases.  What I do know is that my dad didn’t tell you because he didn’t think that it was important.  He didn’t think it would scare you off either way because he says that you have guts – and that’s why he chose you.  He knows you won’t back down.  Although I have no idea why a pretty thing like you would get mixed up in this big ugly mess.  If I were you, I’d head back to Jackson Hole where all them celebrity-types hang out.  This ain’t no place for you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.  I’m not going to be intimidated,” I said, probably half-heartedly.

“My dad says you remind him of himself when he was younger.  He’s not named after Butch Cassidy for nothing.”

“He’s named after Butch Cassidy?”

“Hell, yes.  His real name is William.  His foster dad started calling him ‘Butch’ when he was a kid because he was fearless and wouldn’t back down from nothing.”

“I hate to admit this,” I said, “but I never saw that Butch Cassidy movie, so I don’t know that much about him.”

“See, Butch Cassidy was born Robert Parker, but in the late 1800’s, he met up with a Utah cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy.  A strict Mormon upbringing didn’t set well with young Robert Parker a/k/a Butch Cassidy, so Parker picked up a few of Mike Cassidy’s tricks.  They called him ‘Butch’ because he worked at a butcher shop before he robbed a bank in Telluride.  After that, he went back to horse stealing in Wyoming.  Now, my dad isn’t a horse thief or nothing like that, but Butch Cassidy was sort of revered as a Robin Hood of sorts around these parts.  He made good with politicians so that he could go about his cattle rustling business and legend has it that he never shied away from a challenge.  He was shot at and put in jail and all sorts of things.  He even holed himself up in the rocks south of here for a long time to avoid being caught.  My dad’s kind of like that.  He’s a survivor.  And he thinks you are too.” 

“Well, I may be a survivor, but I don’t get paid enough by Harry to get shot at on the job.  Believe me, it’s happened before.  I told Harry that I needed a nice, civilized case.  No more criminal law for me.  Harry told me that this would be a great case for me – relatively easy to prove that MethZap breached the Surface Damage Agreement and easy to prove damages.  This is supposed to be one of those ‘open and shut’ deals that I could probably get a good settlement before trial.  No gunshots.  No broken bones.  No car chases.  Just plain and simple litigation.” 

“Nothing in life is ‘open and shut.’  There’s always something else happening on the sideline.  Especially in this town.  There’s so much gossip around here that I can hardly tell the truth from the bullshit.  That’s why I live out here on the ranch.  Not much action out here, but at least I know what the cows are thinking.”

“What does Greg think of all of this?”

“Greg?  Hell if I know.  I never talk to the guy.  You know more about him than I do.”

“Well, he must talk to your dad sometimes.  He must have encouraged your dad to hire me, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?  Of course he did.”

“When was the last time you talked with my brother?”

“A few weeks ago, before I moved here.  He was on assignment in New Orleans – some Mardi Gras thing. Then he had to go back to South America to wrap up some other story he’d been working on.”

“That’s interesting,” Wyatt said, as he escorted me out of the Spotted Horse Saloon.  The rain had stopped and the air smelled fresh and damp.

“Why?” I asked as I crawled into the cab of his pickup truck.

As he started the engine and threw it in reverse, he said, “Because I’ve seen Greg in Sheridan a few times during the last month hanging around with Sherman Todd.”

Wyatt glanced at me as he made his comment, like a tennis player putting a little extra spin on his backhand, just to see how I’d handle it.  I thought about it for a second.  Greg traveled all around the world with his job, and it wouldn’t be unusual for him to have a few days off, but he swore to me that he’d been working like a dog for the past month and that is why he hadn’t had time to visit me in Jackson. 

“I’m sure it’s nothin’,” Wyatt said.  “Anyway, we have bigger problems to think over.  Was that crazy Mrs. Becker at the meeting tonight?”  I shrugged my shoulders.  I didn’t know who she was.  “She’s the one who’s threatening to sue us for killing her kid.”

“For what?”

“Dad didn’t tell you about that one either?”  I shook my head.  This was getting scarier by the moment.  “This crazy lady named Louise Becker had a ten-year-old son who was loony in the head just like her.  Everyone knows it.  The kid always went to one of those ‘special’ schools.  Well, she’s claimin’ that her son ate beef from one of my cows and that it gave him ‘mad cow’ disease and that is why he was nutty and that it killed him.  I never fed my cattle meat-bone meal or nothin’ of the sort.  She’s full of malarkey, that lady, but now she’s rantin’ and ravin’ all over town about it, scaring half the folks around here to death.  I’m sure the lawsuit is on its way.  Dad said that you’d probably be able to handle that too.  If my cows have any kind of disease, it is because of the crappy water all over the ranch that’s poisoning everything in its path.  If she sues me for the mad cow, I’ll cross-sue MethZap.  How’s that for crazy?”

Unfortunately, in the world of litigation, it sounded quite sane.