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cattle go to forage for themselves for months, like ranchers could do in more wide-open country. If they did, the cattle got lost in the timber. So they moved their herds from park to park, plateau to plateau, keeping careful count. The rain and lushness of the terrain invited hoof-rot anddisease born of moisture, so the cattle needed to be inspected and handled more than usual. Jess’s grandfather had established the procedure for counting, moving, and inspecting his cattle. From Washington State he’d bought seed bulls who were bred for wet ground and heavy snow. The quality of Rawlins beef became widely praised, and the ranch prospered due to its management. The high price of beef helped, too.
    Jess, like his father and grandfather, felt proprietary toward the valley, the community, and the ranch. After serving in the Army, he had no doubt, ever, that he would return. Which he did.
    Jess often wondered if he had made the right choice, knowing what he knew now. He also wondered if he’d been the catalyst for things to come, for the decline. Had the spark of exceptionalism died in him? He’d been unable to pass along the sense of eminence he had always felt.
    Maybe, he thought, it had just played out.
    FIONA PRITZLE, behind the wheel of her little yellow Datsun pickup, had a stern, pinched look on her face until she saw him. The change in her demeanor was instantaneous, though for Jess her self-focused scowl remained as an afterimage, even when she stopped at his mailbox and climbed out and grinned at him. How did she know when he would be there, he wondered?
He
didn’t even know from day to day. Fiona had a wide, pockmarked face obscured by heavy makeup. A cloud of perfume was released into the air when she climbed out, and she leaned over the top of the hood, fanning his mail across it as if laying down a winning hand of cards, smiling at him with nice teeth, her best feature. He had, of course, noticed that in the last few months she had been dressing better, putting her hair up, adding lipstick to her mouth. Apparently, she now felt the need not just to deliver his mail but to oversee it.
    “Catalogs,” she said, “three of ’em today. Two for women’s clothing, so you’re still on their list even though they don’t know …”
    He looked at her grimly.
    “And a property tax notice, again,” she said in her little-girl voice, eyeing him suspiciously. “I know I’ve delivered a couple of these to you already.”
    He nodded, nothing more.
    “Jess, I saw Herbert in town.”
    “He moved to town,” Jess said.
    “He waved, but he didn’t stop. Is something wrong?”
    Damn
, he thought. But he repeated, “Just moved to town.”
    She looked at him suspiciously, then gathered up his mail in a stack and handed it to him.
    “This road is getting busy,” she said. “I almost rear-ended a vehicle back there when I came around the corner.”
    He raised his eyebrows, hoping his lack of response would signal her to go away. She had designs on him, he knew. He was over women, though.
    “A Cadillac Escalade with three men in it. They were barely crawling down the road, looking into the trees.”
    He shrugged.
    “Brand-new Idaho plates. Probably more transplants.”
    “There’s a lot of them moving up here,” he said.
    “Most of them are retired cops from L.A.,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve heard that there’s more than two hundred of them overall, and about a dozen on my route alone.”
    “How do you know that?”
    She puffed up. “I put the pension checks in their mailboxes, and police newsletters, things like that. Some of them meet me every day, like you. A couple of real nice guys, real personable. But some of them are just like hermits or something. Like they don’t want to mix with somebody like me. If it wasn’t for their mail, I don’t know if they’d ever come out of their houses. They call North Idaho ‘Blue Heaven’ at the LAPD. Did you know that?”
    Herbert