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threw the rest of the liquid into the fire. With his boot, he spread the embers out and kicked dust on them. “I got to move the sheep,” he said. He went to the plastic tub and put the coffeepot inside.
    I poured my coffee on the fire and offered Kuwany the mug. “Thanks for the coffee and the osha.”
    â€œYou keep the mug,” he said. “I don’t need it.”
    â€œNo, I’m all done. It’s empty.” I set the cup down and started to go.
    â€œChildren died out there,” he said to my back as I was walking away.
    I turned to look at him.
    â€œThey got treated so bad that even some of those ones that lived, their souls left their bodies and couldn’t never get back in, even after those kids came home. Some kids tried to get away, but they never made it home. That place is evil. We don’t go near it. I bet that wasn’t no cougar. I bet it was a ghost.”
    â€œYou believe the children who died are ghosts now?”
    â€œNo. Not the children. The soul-eaters. If I see a cougar or a wolf around here”—he looked down at Mountain—“I’m going to kill it.” He picked up his rifle from the ground and turned and walked toward the sheep.
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    I arrived late for a meeting at the BLM. Roy was in the middle of briefing the field staff on the growing problem of all-terrain vehicles—ATVs—on BLM land. “Folks, we’ve been directed to crack down on this problem,” he said as I came in the room. I took a chair in the back, moving as quietly as I could.
    Mountain, who had just drunk voraciously from the bucket we kept for his water dish, plopped down on the floor beside me and gave a loud groan. Everyone laughed.
    â€œJamaica, I’m giving you a mandate as the Taos field office’s resource protection agent to find and cite anyone illegally using an off-road vehicle on BLM land. I want to send a message to the public that it won’t be tolerated. It’s doing irreparable damage to the environment, and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
    A terrible smell began to migrate upward from where Mountain lay on the floor. Several people wrinkled their noses, others waved their hands in front of their faces, and one woman said, “Phew!”
    Roy got a whiff of the stink and said, “Eddie, that would be the aftermath of your deer sausage from that buck you got. That dog-gone wolf ate the whole log in one sitting. I didn’t even get to try a bite of it.”
    After the meeting, I put a call in to Department of Game and Fish agent Charlie Dorn to report the wounding of a female cougar with dependent cubs. Since the shooting had occurred on the Tanoah reservation, neither Dorn nor I had jurisdiction, but if it had happened elsewhere, Charlie assured me it was a violation of the law, even for a hunter with a lion tag. I offered to talk to any nearby private landowners about setting humane traps for the lions so we could rescue the injured cougar and her cubs. Before I could do that, I needed to find out who the landowners were.
    Roy came up to me as I was filling out an incident report on the events of the previous day and night. He fished a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “That’s your cell phone number. Better turn it on and plug it into your car charger. I gave that number to that FBI gal, Langstrom. She’s going to call you after she gets the medical examiner’s report.”
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    It was late in the afternoon by the time I got to the Taos courthouse to investigate ownership of the lands abutting the Pueblo Peña parcel.
    As I was entering the courthouse, a man wearing an army camouflage uniform brushed past me on his way out, bumping into my sore shoulder. He rushed on without turning back, and I stopped inside the door, wincing as I clutched my upper arm to quiet the pain. I noticed a couple waiting in the lobby. She wore a strangely mismatched