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maybe.”
    “Never heard of it,” said the Sheriff.
    “It’s back of the old Mission church in Toussaint,” said Du Pré. “Where all the drunks freeze to death their families too poor to bury buried.”
    “Why there?”
    “What?”
    “Why behind the Catholic church?”
    “The poor people around here are mostly Catholic,” said Du Pré.
    “Are you Metisse?”
    Du Pré nodded.
    “Well, what are they? Indians?”
    This son of a bitch here since ’75 and he don’t know what Métis are, Du Pré thought. “Red River breeds, they come down here after the Rebellion in 1886, some come before, this was the old buffalo hunting grounds. Come down in their Red River carts, get winter meat. The Métis were Cree and French, little English maybe. You know all them stories about the voyageurs? Métis.”
    “What rebellion?” said the Sheriff. “I thought the Red River was in Texas or something. John Wayne did a movie, yeah.”
    Du Pré had seen it, pretty good movie.
    “Red River of the North,” said Du Pré, “flows to Hudson Bay. See, I think the Missouri only flow like it does now since the last glaciers, ten thousand years or so. It used to flow into the Red River of the North.”
    “Red River Rebellion?”
    So Du Pré told him about poor crazy Louis Riel, the saint, who led the rebellion and the English hung him. About little Gabriel Dumont, Riel’s general, who would have destroyed the British troops but Jesus told Riel not to let Gabriel do it. The priests betrayed Riel to the English, Dumont tried to rescue Riel, bring him down to Montana. So for all his days thereafter Gabriel Dumont never once again spoke to priests.
     So the Métis come here. Big families, couple horses, little blankets, a kettle, a wooden plow, a hoe, an ax.
    “We still here,” said Du Pré. “Still poor, still Catholic.”
    He left the Sheriff, drove off to his first inspection, small one, but he wanted to take his time. He didn’t exactly think that the rancher was a thief, but he didn’t exactly think that he wasn’t, either.
    He found them ready, a couple of stock haulers waiting. They ran the cattle by him, the brands looked OK, except for two might have been worked over a little.
    “My youngest sort of screwed them up,” said the rancher. “Had to touch up these two later … ”
    The story sounded OK, didn’t sound OK, maybe, maybe not, was it worth skinning the steers, seeing what the original brand was. Du Pré subtracted the added scars, couldn’t come up with a brand he knew.
    Du Pré nodded. Not enough right now, but if someone came up missing a few head he’d be on this guy. He was half on him now. But you can’t say “Judge, I have this feeling … ”
    “OK,” said Du Pré, “everything’s in order.”
    Or maybe the kid did screw them up, I’m just out of order.
    The rancher tucked a chew in his lip.
    “Du Pré,” said the rancher, “seen in the Tribune about you finding that plane wreck and the rest of the Headless Man. Said you thought that the killer would be found pretty soon.”
    Du Pré nodded. That asshole reporter, don’t get the quotes right that he likes, he makes them up.
    “How’s the investigation going? Any suspects?”
    Television. What did those new shows call bad guys? Perps?
    Jesus.
    “I didn’t say that,” said Du Pré. “I don’t know what the Sheriff is doing.” Neither does the Sheriff.
    “Oh.”
    “I look at cow asses,” said Du Pré. “They just didn’t have anybody to send so I went. I don’t know much.”
    “Oh.”
    “Well,” said Du Pré, “I got to go.”
    “Want some coffee?”
    “No, I got another shipment, I got to run.”
    Du Pré drove away.
    Perps.
    Shit.
    The next three shipments were all out of the same corrals, small lots of fifty or a hundred head. And a banker waiting to take the checks from the cattle buyer. Guy in lizardskin boots. Some banker.
    The ranchers were going under, for sure, all working as long-haul truckers, just raising a few