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observed a young Native American male lying approximately twenty feet from Mr. Bell’s position by the pumps. This young male appeared to have sustained a wound in his side and was in a prone position on his back.”
    “Did you attempt to provide emergency aid at this time?”
    “No, ma’am. At that time, we were advised by Mr. Bell that he was receiving hostile fire from a location in the vicinity of the propane tank on his property. I studied that area and did observe figures in that vicinity.”
    “And you made no attempt to reach the wounded male?”
    “I identified myself as a law officer to the people by the propane tank. I was then fired upon by one of those individuals.”
    “What kind of fire did you receive?”
    “It was arrows, ma’am.”
    Ballard picked up the Pearlcorder and shut it off.
    “Arrows! Some Indians shot at you with
arrows
, Beau?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Well—how dangerous could that have been? Toys.”
    “Vanessa, Finch Hyam’s got them in his evidence kit. You go look at ’em.”
    She shook her head and turned the machine back on.
    “You confirm that the fire you received was—were arrows?”
    “Yes, ma’am, arrows. So we again secured a tactical defensive position”—Eustace was trying to restrain a smile—“and we commenced to deploy for a flanking maneuver.”
    “Did you execute this flanking maneuver, Sergeant?”
    “No, ma’am. At that time, Mr. Bell was attempting to return fire from his position, and I felt it was necessary to attempt to stop him from returning fire.”
    “Why was that, Sergeant?”
    “Because Mr. Bell was discharging a twelve-gauge shotgun in the direction of a fifteen-thousand-pound tank of liquid propane gas, and I considered this course of action to be unwise.”
    “Why did you consider it unwise?”
    “Why did I—jeez, Vanessa!”
    “Please answer the question.”
    “I considered it unwise because this tank has a dual-steel wall that can be punctured by a double-ought ball fired at a short range. Each twelve-gauge shell of double-ought contains twelve steel balls, each ball being of approximately .38 caliber and leaving the muzzle at approximately eleven hundred feet per second with a normal choke. I considered it to be highly likely that one of the double-ought balls being fired by Mr. Bell in the direction of that tank would penetrate the skin of that tank, thereby causing a violent rupture of said tank, resulting in the rapid dispersion of highly volatile gaseous material with a high explosive value, and that a blast of that magnitude would be likely to kill and injure anyone within the blast radius.”
    “Are you in a position to
know
the blast radius of a fifteen-thousand-pound propane tank, Sergeant McAllister?”
    “I am, ma’am. I witnessed such a blast while working as atruck driver for Steiger Freightways in 1971. I witnessed a head-on collision between a propane tank truck and a touring bus on Interstate 94 outside Miles City, Montana, on the second day of July of that year. At the time of the blast I was approximately one half-mile away, and the blast wave blew in the front windshield of my truck and caused severe injury to myself and my co-driver, who subsequently died of her wounds.”
    There was a long silence in the room.
    “So yes, I would say I know something about the kill zone of a propane tank. Ma’am.”
    Ballard shut off the recorder again.
    “Eustace, did you know about this?”
    “Yeah. Sorry, Vanessa. I didn’t think it would come up.”
    Ballard looked at Beau for a long time.
    “You never told me about this, Beau.”
    “It’s not the kind of thing you bring up over lunch.”
    “Is this the … Doc Hogeland worked on her, didn’t he? I remember the … she was in the Sweetwater burn unit for a while, wasn’t she? Her name was—”
    “Alice Manyberries. She was a Crow Indian.”
    “I—didn’t Custer County prosecute on that? Contributory negligence? Wasn’t there also a