Free Shots Fired by C. J. Box

fur shack, and the corrals.
    Jim wept as he approached the front door and pounded on it.
    â€œWho is it?” Ezra asked from inside.
    Jim couldn’t speak. He sunk to his knees and thumped the door with the crown of his head.
    The door opened and Jim fell inside. For the first time since he’d left, he felt warmth on his face.
    And Ezra said, “You don’t look so good, Jim.”
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    T HROUGH THE VIOLENT, roaring, excruciating pain that came from his frostbitten skin thawing out, Jim had crazy dreams. Hedreamed Ezra had shaved, bathed, and put on clean clothes. He dreamed Ezra had re-chinked the logs and fireplace until they were tight with mud and straw and had emptied his chamber pot, swept the floor, and put the cabin in order. He dreamed Ezra awakened without hacking or spitting or even talking.
    He thought,
I’m in heaven
.
    But he wasn’t.
    Jim painfully rolled his head to the side. Ezra was sitting at the table, finishing his lunch of roast Emily. Ezra’s face was shaved smooth and freshly scrubbed. His movements were spry and purposeful. His eyes were clear and blue.
    Ezra said, “I didn’t think you’d come back. I thought you’d make it to Fort Bridger because you’re just so goddamned stubborn.”
    Jim couldn’t speak. The pain came in crippling waves.
    â€œI got the arrows out, but your flesh is rotten, Jim,” Ezra said. “You know what that means.”
    Jim knew. He closed his eyes. The pain reached a crescendo and suddenly stopped. Just stopped.
    Ezra’s voice rose and was filled with emotion. “You ain’t exactly the easiest man to live with, neither,” he said.
    And with that, Jim died, a victim of his success.



I n the midnight forests of the Bighorn Mountains, below timberline, all movement and sound ceased with the approaching roar. Elk quit grazing and raised their heads. Squirrels stopped chattering. The increasing roar caused the ground to tremble. And suddenly the stars blacked out as the huge aircraft skirted over the mountaintops, landing lights blazing, landing gear descending, the howl of jet engines pounding downward through the branches into the earth itself. The tiny town of Saddlestring, Wyoming, was laid out before the nose of the plane like a dropped jewelry box, lights winking in the night against black felt, the lighted runway just long enough for a plane this size to land on, but just barely.
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    T HE NEXT MORNING, Nate Romanowski slipped out of Alisha Whiteplume’s quilt-covered bed on the Wind River Indian Reservation, pulled on a loose pair of shorts, and searched through the cupboards of her small kitchen for coffee. He tried not to wake her. There were cans of refried beans and jars of picante sauce, home-canned trout in Mason jars, but no coffee except instant.
    As two mugs of water heated in the microwave, he opened the kitchen blinds. Dawn. Early fall. Dew and fallen leaves on the grass, dried into fists. A skinned-out antelope buck hung to cool from the basketball hoop over the garage.
    Nate was tall, rangy, with sharp features and a deliberate, liquid way of moving. His expression was impassive, but his pale blue eyes flicked about from the hollows of his sockets like the tongue of a snake. Sometimes they fixed on an object and forgot to blink. Alisha said he had the eyes of a hunter.
    â€œWhat are you doing out there?” she said from the dark of the bedroom.
    â€œHeating water for coffee. Want anything in it?”
    â€œNot instant. There’s a can of coffee under the sink in the bathroom.”
    Nate started to ask why she kept coffee in the bathroom, but didn’t.
    â€œBobby has been coming over in the morning and stealing it,” she said in explanation. Bobby was Alisha’s brother, knownto Nate as Bad Bob. “I hid it so he has to go steal it from someone else.”
    Nate found a