Page 54 of Three-Inch Teeth

DALLAS CATES HAD outlined his story because Soledad kept prompting him to do so. Even as he did it, Cates had the suspicion that Soledad already knew the details.

He’d started at the beginning, growing up as the youngest brother of three on the family property outside of Saddlestring that served as the headquarters for Dull Knife Outfitters and C&C Sewer and Septic Tank Service. His parents were Eldon and Brenda, third-generation blue-collar locals from the county. Later, a sign at the gate was added that the property was also the birthplace of PRCA World Champion Cowboy Dallas Cates.

The older Cates brothers, Bull and Timber, were bigger, duller, and more brutish than Dallas, who was a star athlete and the unabashed favorite of his mother, Brenda, who had also conceived of and hung the birthplace sign. His mother was his biggest cheerleader and fan, and she hadn’t believed any of the sexual assault rumors about her youngest son, and especially not those involving the game warden’s middle daughter, April.

When those allegations surfaced, the Cates family circled the wagons around Dallas, starting a cycle of incidents and misunderstandings that escalated far beyond anyone’s expectations.

Even though it was later proven that Dallas hadn’t assaulted April, that hadn’t stopped his persecutors.

Timber and Bull were eventually killed, and Bull’s wife, Cora Lee, was, too. Eldon had broken his neck when he was shoved into a deep hole, and Brenda became a quadriplegic. She was eventually sentenced to the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk.

Dallas had been convicted of trumped-up charges at the height of his rodeo career, in the same year that he had won $243,187 in saddle bronc competitions and was destined once again to lead in the standings going into the NFR in Las Vegas.

While in prison, Cates had been denied permission to visit Brenda during her last days on earth, while at the same time the family property had gone into receivership for nonpayment of the mortgage and accrued property taxes that were well beyond what Dallas could accumulate in prison.

But his tormentors—the people who had banded together to destroy him and his family and seize their property—were still out there. Those self-righteous, smug bastards. Something Brenda had once told him would forever stick in his mind. She’d said, “It don’t matter what you’ve done in your life. They will always think of us as white trash.”

The judge. The local sheriff. The county prosecutor. The game warden. That falconer and his wife. Winner came along later, but he was of the same mindset.

Soledad had listened to it all, then he’d asked a question: “Do you understand what a Venn diagram is?”

Cates had confessed that he didn’t.

“A Venn diagram is a representation that shows the logical relation between names, words, or symbols. You put all those items up on a board and then you draw circles around the ones that create a common set.”

“Okay,” Cates had written back.

“In the Venn diagram representing Dallas Cates and Axel Soledad and the people who screwed them over and ruined their lives, there is a set of names that overlap.”

Soledad had then gone on to detail the specific set that contained the names Dulcie Schalk, Joe Pickett, and Nate Romanowski and his wife.

“Where we don’t overlap is the sheriff in your case and a person named Geronimo Jones in mine,” Soledad wrote.

“The sheriff is dead,” Cates wrote. “But the others are still out there.”

“And in my case,” Soledad said, “Geronimo Jones is still very much alive. The last time I saw him was after he and Joe Pickett practically blew my legs off with shotguns and left me to bleed out in the dirt in downtown Portland. If it wasn’t for an activist who happened by who believed in my mission and drove me to an underground clinic, I wouldn’t be here today. But that really set me back, and it set back our cause.”

“Our cause?” Cates had asked.

“There are a lot of guys with me. They’re lying low now, waiting for me to activate them. Then we can finish what I started.”

He explained that there were sleeper agents all across the country, but especially in the South, Mountain West, and Texas. They were people no one would suspect.

“I’m talking leading community members, more than a few politicians, and even some cops,” Soledad said. “We’re all pissed off and we’re in position.”

“Are you talking about this ‘taking down Washington’ thing again?” Cates asked.

“Yes. The political atmosphere isn’t what it was a couple of years ago, but the rage is still there. As long as the spooks are running everything for their own best interests …”

And Cates heard, blah-blah-blah.

*

“SO WHAT YOU’RE saying,” Cates had finally ventured, “is that we work together on eliminating the common names. Then you can restart your little war.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t hate our country enough, though,” Cates said. “I kind of like it. I don’t get involved with politics.”

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