Crossing the Line by Clinton McKinzie Page A

leapt in the truck while I was removing the license plates and then I had to drag her out by the collar. After that she loped after the Pig when I drove up the dirt track toward the gate. She seemed a little frantic in her desire to accompany me, but I was too excited at getting out to think much about it. I didn’t yet know her well enough to understand that she could smell trouble. I let her in the truck, then drove her back to the camp.
    She stood on my cot at the cabin’s window after I locked her in. I could feel her yellow eyes on me until I was out of the hollow and through the barbed-wire gate.
    I’d been tempted to take her, but I figured that she might draw too much attention. People in this part of the country have a thing about wolves. They think they slaughter cattle for sport and will run off with small children if given half a chance. The federal reintroduction of wolves had some ranchers calling for armed secession. And last month Mungo hadn’t exactly done her part for the species’ PR by biting an arsonist who died moments later falling off a cliff. Even though her role in the accident had never become public, the surprising autopsy results sparked a belief among many that the man had leapt off the cliff to escape an onslaught of wild wolves.
    So I drove alone in the rattling Pig on the dirt roads west to Potash. In the rearview mirror the sun was red-faced and looking scared as it floated down onto the sharp spires of the Winds.
    I came out of the hills and into town just as it was getting dark. I saw no people or moving cars until I hit the first bars.
    There were two of them anchoring the north end of the main street. The one on my left was called Wild Willy’s. The one on the right didn’t appear to have a name, and, unlike Willy’s, it didn’t appear to have much business. Both were squat one-story brick structures illuminated by only the neon beer signs in the windows.
    Big dusty pickups and a couple of American-brand SUVs were parked all around Wild Willy’s. A group of five Anglo men stood outside the door, wearing boots and Carhartt work clothes and baseball caps. They might have been talking, but as I drove slowly past they stopped and stared my way. I rode on, feeling suspicion and maybe a little menace in their gazes.
    They once might have worried me, but I’d been in Wyoming long enough to know that the redneck attitude was mostly a pose. They might look xenophobic, but, on an individual level, people in Wyoming are pretty accepting. In Riverton, they’d put placards in their windows saying “Not Welcome Here” when the World Church of the Creator moved to town to espouse white-supremacist views. In Casper, they’d surrounded the church during Matthew Shepard’s funeral and stared down the gay-haters from Kansas who came to celebrate the young man’s murder.
    The main drag was again empty of both people and cars. Its entire two-block length was lit by only a couple of scattered streetlights. The shops with their empty or boarded windows lined the street. Only a couple of pawnshops with heavily barred windows seemed to have much merchandise to offer—mostly guns and electronics. The largest building in town was an old theater, but its marquee was empty, and I noticed a piece of plywood nailed over the door.
    A one-story sandstone courthouse faced the street. It had some graffiti prominently scrawled across the front to one side of the double doors. On the far side of the courthouse there was a separate entrance and a small lamp lighting a sign that said “Town Marshal.” A patrol car was parked by the door. I knew that the town currently employed only one part-time peace officer. He had to single-handedly deal with the bar brawls and drunk drivers until the state highway patrol could arrive from Pinedale or Lander—both almost a hundred miles away—to back him up. From the vibe I was getting from this town, if I were him I’d just lock myself in there.
    Under normal