"Why don't we just throw the bag of shit?"

"'Cause it might not break the glass. You know? It doesn't do much good if it just splatters all over the top. They can just rinse it off."

Kimble had heard enough. He jumped on Mrs. P's back and, steering with leg aids alone, walked her over toward their horses. They didn't hear the mule at first, but as she neared the horses they whinnied and the two men heard.

"What's that?"

"Something's at the horses!"

Kimble leaned across and pulled the reins off the bush. He kicked heels to Mrs. P's side and took off at a gallop, leading the horses back to the road.

He could hear shouting over the pounding hooves but couldn't quite make out what they were saying. At the county road, he headed south, toward town. He dropped back to a trot. He could hear the men behind, still running. He smiled. When he got to the Socorro road and started to bear left toward town, the horses tugged on his reins and tried to stay on the county road.

"Huh," he said. They'd long ago outdistanced the men on foot. "Whoa. Hold up there." He dismounted and, lighting a match, he examined the horses and their markings until he was sure he'd recognize them in the future. Then he removed their bits and bridles and hung them safely on the saddle horns.

"Get!" he said, slapping them lightly on their butts.

They didn't need to be told twice. As before, they moved off across the main road, continuing south along the county road. They were picking up speed, like "horses headed for the barn," so Kimble jumped back on Mrs. P and followed them.

They turned through a wooden gate arch a few hundred yards down the road. The sign said, "Robinson Ranch" and showed their brand, a Bar-R, capital R with a line underneath.

Kimble turned Mrs. P around and went back to the crossroads, where he found a stand of trash elms to hide in. The moon was coming up and casting long thin shadows across the ground when two men came limping up the road. Even with the moon up, it was hard to see their faces, but Kimble remembered their voices.

"I'll kill the sonofabitch if it's the last thing I do."

"Yeah. You've said that. Which sonofabitch is that?"

"Well, it's gotta be one of the heathens at the center, right?"

"You've said that, too. What if it's not? What if it's the Metal Man?"

"Shut up."

"Why? Don't you believe in the Metal Man?"

"DON'T SAY HIS NAME!"

"Huh?"

"Don't say his name. Especially at night! You know, just shut up, period."

Like their horses, the two men walked across the Socorro road and went in the direction of the Bar-R Ranch.

Kimble waited another few minutes and then, when he could hear them no more, turned Mrs. P around and went back to bed.

THE next morning, two days after his under-the-bridge meeting with Hodges, Kimble rode Mrs. Perdicaris west from the Zen Center, and, using the county roads to swing wide, entered Pecosito from the west about midmorning, when the traffic was heaviest.

Even if he didn't know where the heliograph office was, he couldn't have missed it. The five-story tower was the tallest structure in town. He left Mrs. P in the alleyway behind the heliograph office and stepped in.

There were three clerks working the counter and a few people waiting in line. The delivery boys sat on benches in a small room off to the side, though two of their number turned a crank, powering the vertical conveyor with hanging boxes that entered the ceiling on one side of the room, ran across two large pulley wheels, and rose back through the ceiling, carrying messages to and from the top of the tower where the Morse operators worked.

"Will-call for O'Hara," Kimble said.

The clerk looked at a series of cubby holes with message slips and said, "Sorry. Don't have anything...."

"Here it is-DU O'Hara?" said the clerk at the back of the room emptying the boxes on the conveyor. "Just came down."

He passed the slip forward. "Right. Long one. That must've cost a pretty penny." He entered the message number in his register. "Sign right there, please."

Kimble scrawled O'Hara on the line. He took a quick glance at the message and nodded. It was ostensibly about a series of medical procedures and their cost, the portion covered by the TMS, and the copayments.

Code. He folded it away and put it in an inner pocket. "Thanks." He stepped out the door into the street and turned sharply to the right.

Steve Bickle was riding down the street and it was clear from the way he straightened in the saddle and turned his head that he'd seen Kimble.

Amateurs.

Kimble passed the alley entrance where Mrs. P waited, walked briskly to the corner and, once he turned it, sprinted to where a gap between two stores led back to the alley. There was a chest-high wall but he was over it and gone before Bickle reached the corner.

He mounted Mrs. P and, back beside the helio office, looked out the alley entrance. Bickle had gone on around the corner. He turned Mrs. P in the opposite direction and trotted away, turning off the main road as soon as he could. He twisted through the smaller residential roads until he was back by the main irrigation ditch where it flowed back into the Pecos south of town.

Here, under a willow on riverbank, he took Mrs. P's hackamore off, pulled a worn, thin leather-bound edition of Departmental Ditties from his saddlebag and, while the mule cropped weeds, decoded the heliogram.

Well, he thought, surprised. Colonel Q.

KIMBLE returned to town after dark, wearing his good clothes, dark suit, and a dark red shirt with a mandarin collar, and low boots. He wore his hair slicked down and large, dark-framed glasses with slightly tinted lens. By the time he got to town he was wearing a blister on his left heel.

Damn boots.

The suit was good in the shadows, but when he hit the oil-lamp-lit main road, the beggars came out. "Young sir, could you spare a bit for food. My children are hungry, my wife needs a doctor." Kimble had passed by many of these people during the day, and they'd assessed his patched clothing and worn moccasins and let him walk on. But now they blocked his way and tugged at his sleeves.

His money was in a hidden pocket in his jacket, so he wasn't worried much, but as he neared the theater district, he felt a hand dip into his side jacket pocket and he took the wrist and turned quickly away, sinking. The man came stumbling around and Kimble turned again, taking the man's fingers back over his own forearm hard. The man tumbled over in an awkward flop and Kimble swiveled again, forcing the man face down, his knee locking the arm.

The beggars around him backed away. Kimble took a good look at the man's face and laughed. It was Pierce, his would-be hijacker from back on the Puerco. He tried to struggle and Kimble leaned into the pin.

"You'll break it!"

"No," Kimble said quietly. "First the shoulder socket will tear. You won't be able to use the arm without surgery and serious rehab. Not for feeding yourself, picking your nose, and definitely not picking any pockets. I thought you learned your lesson back on the Puerco, Pierce."

There was a stirring up the street and Kimble saw the beggars fading away as a city deputy pushed through a forming crowd. Kimble dropped the arm and stooped suddenly, lifting Pierce to his feet.

The deputy pulled a billy club from a loop on his belt. "What's going on here?"

Pierce's eyes widened as he saw the deputy and he glanced sideways at Kimble, then at the street, looking for a way out.

Without taking his hand off Pierce's arm, Kimble started brushing the dust off Pierce's shirt. "You all right there, friend?" He turned toward the deputy as if just seeing him. "I'm afraid I wasn't looking where I was going and I bumped this poor man clean off his feet."

The deputy raised his eyebrows. "You sure? This man's a thief. Had him up before the magistrate just yesterday for suspicion. It could've been a setup, a distraction for one of his pals."

Kimble made a show of patting his pockets. "Nothing missing. Besides, I came up behind him and accidentally tangled his feet. Not like he targeted me." Kimble leaned forward and sniffed. "Doesn't smell like he's been drinking." Though Pierce could sure use a bath. "Really, Officer, just me being clumsy." He let go of Pierce's arm. "Isn't that right, friend?"

"I guess," said Pierce. "I mean, I was walking across the road and the next thing I know I'm all sprawled in the dirt. He helped me up."

The deputy laughed and said to the pickpocket, "Maybe you should check your pockets." He stepped back and said louder, "Nothing to see here. Get along with you." He was staring at the more ragged beggars as he spoke and tapping the billy club meaningfully against the palm of his hand.

Kimble let go of Pierce's arm. "You're sure you're okay, there?"

"I'm, uh, fine." Pierce was staring at him with a perplexed expression on his face. "See you later?"

He still doesn't recognize me. It was the suit and glasses.

Kimble gave him a big smile and said, "You can be sure of it."

HE bought a ticket to the last showing of Blood and Laughter: "Episode 56." There were plays and shows running he would have rather watched, but he wasn't planning to watch the show. As soon as the houselights were shaded and the stage lights came up, he left his aisle seat before the audience's eyes adjusted to the dark. He slipped up the stairway to the balcony and entered the third private box without knocking.

It was a four-seat box. Colonel Q and a hooded person were sitting in the front two seats. The back two were empty. The person in the hood jerked when the door opened but Kimble heard the colonel say, "Eyes front. You're watching the show."

Kimble dropped to the floor and crawled forward, sitting with his back to the solid balcony balustrade, facing Colonel Q. The man in the hood was Hodges.

Christ!

Before he said anything, the colonel said quietly, "Sorry, Hodges is a fuckup, but he knows more about this situation than I do. I can give you a precis, but if you have questions, I thought it better if you got the answers directly."

Kimble sat still. "Do you think you were followed?"

"No. We left the fort in my wife's buggy. Hodges wore her hooded cape. I stationed my aide-de-camp in town and we looped a couple of blocks. He signaled all clear the second and third time around. Also, I'm not an idiot."

Kimble grinned. "No, sir, you're not." He left unsaid who he thought was.

"Our first hint of the problem," the colonel said, "was an inquiry from a rancher in Texas, searching for his missing son. Roberto Mendez, the son, was headed for Pecosito with three wagons of territory-safe water-filtration units. It was his own venture. He'd borrowed the money from his parents. His drivers were schoolmates, fresh out of high school. They were going to leverage the investment for a year to pay for college."

"Were all the boys missing?"

The colonel gestured at Hodges, who answered, "Yes. They hadn't been heard from for three weeks when the family started asking. We have a record of them going through access control at Andrews, and they were remembered at two different water holes. But then nothing." He was speaking quietly, but he was hunched slightly and his eyes darted sideways to the colonel as he talked.

"Satellite archives?"

"They looked, but there's too many wagons in the territory. And three is a pretty common number. It was a dry spell, too, but our patrol didn't find any sign of them leaving the road. Those filters don't weigh much, but they piled them high."

"Unless the tracks were hidden," Kimble added.

The colonel spoke. "That's one possibility. The real problem is that while the boys weren't heard from, some of those water filters did show up-at two different stores here in town."

"Other peddlers do carry water filters."

The colonel said simply, "Serial numbers."

"Ah. And what do the vendors say?"

The colonel gestured to Hodges again, who said, "They bought them from an itinerant peddler and he is long gone."

"Fell off the back of a truck, no doubt. You believe them?"

"Hard to say. They're established vendors. Upstanding citizens and all."

"Still no sign of the boys, though?"

"None. We considered they were just avoiding paying back the money, using this to get away from home, but one of them was engaged to be married. They were top of their class-not exactly the kind of boys you'd expect to rip off the parents who backed them."

"How about the wagons-anything special about them?"

The colonel glanced at Hodges again.

"Yes and no," Hodges said. "They were boat-tight Conestogas-a little fancy, but common enough around here-but the father said the sides of the wagons had been marked with his ranch's brand, both sides, right behind the driver's box. Melted in good, then filled with contrasting paint."

"What brand?"

"Rocking sunrise."

"I'm not picturing it. Semicircle below, the rocker, right?"

"Yes. Joined by smaller half-circle above with three rays at ten, twelve, and two o'clock."

Obviously you couldn't use a metal branding iron in the territory, but the marks were still used, whether applied with a ceramic "iron" or indelible dye writ large and renewed annually. Wire fencing was another casualty of the infestation, so open range grazing was common. Some form of tagging was necessary.

"You've looked, obviously."

"Yes. We have a territorial alert out."

"And for the boys, of course," added the colonel.

"Of course."

"It's not just that one time, though, right?"

"Right. There've been three others," said Hodges.

The colonel added, "That we know about."

Hodges flinched. "Yes, sir." He took a deep breath. "A party that was headed for the capital left from Midland-Odessa last month. We tracked them on the same route that Mendez took and further, to one more asequia where the keeper remembered them. But then nothing. Two of the women and one of the men were doctors going for a tour with the TMS. One of them was an internist who was bringing experimental diagnostic packs-metal-free biotech for blood work. The Medical Service launched that inquiry. We haven't seen any of the medical gear resold, but a coat ended up at a local flea market."

"Identified how?"