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The son of a bitch walked up from the wash.

It was late afternoon, the light going gold and long across the arena. Savannah had a young horse in the round pen, a leggy thing with a shoulder she was bringing back, and I was in the barn door where I could see her and the drive both. I was watching the wrong direction.

He came up out of the back section on foot. Forties. Heavy through the shoulders, and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the wrists in a hundred degrees of heat. I’d have bet money he was the one who’d stood at the bottom of the mine road with his head up that first night. Same build. Same way of holding his chin.

He’d cut her new padlock to get here. He had to have.

I was moving before he reached the round pen. He got there first.

“Ms. McGuire.” Polite. Like a man selling insurance. He had a roll of cash in his hand with a rubber band around it. “Five thousand. Leave the back gate open another couple of weeks. And take down whatever you’ve got on those fence posts.”

He knew about the cameras. That landed cold.

Savannah had reeled the colt in and stood at the rail with the lunge line gathered in her fist. “I don’t know who you are, but get off my land.”

“It’s a lot of money for doing nothing.” He held the roll up over the rail. “Nobody has to get hurt over a dirt road, ma’am.”

“I heard you the first time. Get off my land.”

“I’d think about it harder.”

“I did.”

He reached over the rail and caught her wrist.

I don’t remember the last twenty feet.

I remember my forearm going into his throat and him folding back against the pen. I remember the cash hitting the dirt. His hand was still locked on her. I took his fingers and bent them back the wrong way until the bones gave, two of them, and he screamed, high and ugly, and the young horse went straight up on its hind legs and Savannah had to haul it around to keep it off the rail.

He went for his waistband with his other hand. I got his elbow and put all my weight into it, and his shoulder came out of the socket with a wet pop. The gun fell out of his shirt. I caught it before it hit the ground.

Then I had it under his jaw.

His own gun. His own sweat running down the barrel. He was gray-faced, gasping, one arm hanging wrong.

“She told you,” I said. “Twice.”

“You’re fucking dead,” he wheezed. “You know who you’re fucking with?”

I pushed the muzzle up into the soft part under his chin until his head tipped back.

I wanted to. God help me, I wanted to. It would’ve been the easiest thing I’d done all year. One squeeze and he’d never put his hand on anybody again.

Savannah was ten feet away with a horse spinning at the end of her line.

I took my finger off the trigger.

“You’re going back down that wash,” I said. “You tell Tomas the road’s closed. You tell him the lady doesn’t sell. And you tell him if another one of you touches her, I’m not sending him back in one piece.”

I kicked the roll of cash over. Picked it up. Peeled off five hundreds, folded them and tucked them in my back pocket.

“For her padlock,” I said. “And the fence you’ve been fucking with.”

The rest I stuffed in his shirt pocket. The gun I kept. I dropped the magazine into my palm, racked the round out into the dirt and stuck the pistol in my belt at the small of my back. Then I turned him around by his good arm and shoved him toward the wash.

He went. Stumbling, holding his arm, making a thin noise in his throat the whole way down. I watched until the scrub swallowed him.

When I turned around, she was looking at me.