He looked back over his shoulder in time to see Jack whisper something to Mel. Mel jumped off the stool, disappeared into the back and Mike thought, oh fuck. He stood. “Okay, boys. Settle up for your drinks and hit the road. While you can still see straight. Okay?”

“Relax, chico. We’re not quite done here.”

Chico? He hated it when people did that. You don’t want to call a Mexican man a little boy.

Out of the corner of his eye Mike saw him. He’d known he would. Preacher had come out of the kitchen and stood behind the bar next to Jack, arms crossed over his massive chest, those big, black eyebrows drawn together in a frown that only Preacher could effect with such a look of menace. The diamond stud in his ear seemed to twinkle. Jack had sent Mel for him. They were ready to mix it up with these guys, defend the place.

Mike absently worked his shoulder a little bit, loosening it up. He couldn’t remember hearing about a bar fight around here. Certainly not since Preacher had come on full-time. You’d have to be drunk and stupid to get into it with him.

These guys looked pretty fit. Lots younger by average than Jack, Preacher and Mike. But they’d been doing a lot of drinking, whereas that evening shot before closing had yet to be poured for the crew running the bar. The home team had been on coffee.

As Mike knew, Jack hated it when his bar got messed up. It was a sacrifice he’d make if threatened, but it made him very unhappy. Maybe he’d stay behind the bar and just let them wander off. Or maybe he’d enjoy a little fight, having had the kind of summer he’d had.

“Come on, boys. Get going. You really don’t want to mess this place up…” Mike said.

The hunters exchanged looks, then slowly stood. They began to move away from the table, having left no money to pay for their drinks, which was a sure clue trouble was coming. The one in the group closest to Mike whirled suddenly, landing a blow right to Mike’s face. It sent him skittering backward, his hand to his lip, ending up against the bar. He said, “Oh, you’re going to hate yourself.”

He wound up and hit back, left-handed, sending his assailant flying into his boys, knocking two of them off balance.

It started. Preacher and Jack were around the bar before Mike even delivered his first blow. Preacher knocked two heads together, Jack landed a blow to one gut, another jaw. Mike grabbed up his attacker, decked him again and then sent him into another guy, downing them both. Someone came at Jack with a ready fist, which Jack caught easily, twisted his assailant’s arm around his back and shoved him into his boys. In less than two minutes, six partially inebriated young hunters were on the bar floor, spread over some broken glasses and amidst toppled chairs and two tables. All of them were moaning. Besides that first blow to Mike’s face, they hadn’t even managed contact. The heartiest of the bunch got back on his feet and Preacher grabbed him by the front of his jacket, lifted him off the floor and said, “You really wanna be this stupid?” He instantly put up his hands and Preacher dropped him.

“Okay, okay, we’re out of here,” he said.

“It’s too late for that, guys,” Mike said. He yelled, “Paige!” She stuck her head into the bar. “Rope!”

“Aw, come on, man,” someone said.

“Just get ’em the hell out of here,” Jack said, disgusted.

“Can’t,” Mike returned. Then to the hunters, “Hell, I tried to warn you. You don’t want to mess with the women. You don’t want to fight. Not around here. Jesus,” he said in disgust. “Shit for brains.”

Mike explained to Jack that not only were these boys too drunk to drive down the mountain, they might get down the road and claim they’d been jumped. Since they had all the bruises and the home team had only sore knuckles, it just wouldn’t be smart to take that kind of chance. Better to let the police handle things now. Fifteen minutes later each one of them was tied to a porch rail out front, and a half hour after that three sheriff’s deputies were standing around the front of the bar, assessing the damage.

“Merciful God,” Deputy Henry Depardeau said. “Every time I turn around, somebody’s getting beat up or shot around here!”

“Yeah, Henry, we’re awful sorry,” Jack said. “We hardly ever have any trouble.”

“And what was it this time?” he asked impatiently.

“That one,” Jack said, pointing. “He threw the first punch. That was so frickin’ rude, don’t you think? You can see, it was just out of line. You know?”

“You’re taking up way too much of my time!”

“I’ll buy you dinner one of these days, how about that? You and your boys just drop in anytime.”

“Yeah, yeah. All right, let’s load ’em up. I sure hope you boys have yourselves licenses and your deer tag.” By the droop of one hunter’s head, it looked as if there were going to be more fines. It made Jack laugh. “Aw, man,” Henry said. “Poachers are usually quiet and polite so they can slip in and out of here unnoticed. I should book you for stupid.”

Hope McCrea, a feisty old widow, was almost a daily visitor at Jack’s. She liked to have a Jack Daniel’s and a cigarette at the end of the day. She’d often sit up at the bar next to Doc, but there were times Mike talked with her a while.

“You know I hired Mel to come up here, right?” Hope asked Mike one night.

“I heard that, yeah,” he said.

“I’d like you to come out to the house to talk about something. A proposition.”

“Well, Hope.” He grinned. “That sounds real interesting….”

“A job, you young fool,” she said, pushing her too-big glasses up on her nose. But she had a toothy smile for him just the same.

“I don’t want a job, Hope,” he said.

“We’ll see. Jack will tell you how to get there. Tomorrow. Four o’clock.” She stamped out her cigarette and left.

Mike drove out to Hope’s house the next day because Jack had said it might be at least worth listening to. Hope was seventy-seven and had been widowed for over twenty years. She had given Mel a contract for a year, paid her out of her own accounts plus the cabin she was living in, now with her husband and child. After that one-year contract was exhausted, Doc had pulled Mel into his practice and they’d managed a modest salary for her without help from Hope, which was exactly what Hope had intended. Mike had learned this from Jack.

Now, according to Jack, what she wanted was a town cop, and she hoped the same thing would happen—that she would pay him a salary from her savings for a year and the town would realize it was a positive addition and manage to pull together enough for his salary.

Hope lived about five miles out of town in a big old Victorian home that she and her husband had bought fifty years ago. They’d never had children and so had filled the place up with junk. “I’ve never been inside,” Jack had told Mike, “but the rumor is that Hope hasn’t thrown away a thing in seventy years.” After her husband died, Hope had sold off the acreage to her neighbors for farming and grazing land.

He pulled up to the remarkable old house and found her on the porch with her coffee and cigarettes and a folder full of papers. When he stepped up on the porch, she greeted him with a victorious smile and said, “I knew I would get you eventually.”

“I don’t know what you’d be getting, Hope. I have no idea how to be a small-town cop.”

“Who does? But you have lots of law enforcement experience, and clearly we can use it. Lately we seem to have had our share of problems.”

“Not from Virgin River people, however.”

“What’s the difference? If it happens in Virgin River, it becomes our problem.”

“What have you got there?” he asked, indicating the folder.

“Just paperwork. I had to get a little legal help from a county attorney. Here’s what I can do—I can hire you as a local security officer, a constable. Even though you’ve graduated from one of the toughest police academies in the country, you wouldn’t be recognized by the state as an official law enforcement officer, but that really doesn’t matter. If you run across a lawbreaker, you detain them and call the sheriff, just like you’ve been doing. You’re not prevented from investigating. Hell, any private investigator can do the same. You should visit the sheriff’s department, Fish and Game, California Department of Forestry, the Highway Patrol and some of our neighbor towns who have their own local police departments. Introduce yourself. Believe me, they’ll all appreciate any help, with all the territory they have to cover in these rural towns.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” he asked.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about speeding tickets.” She laughed. “You’ll figure it out. Assess the needs of the town. It’s a law-abiding place—there shouldn’t be too much stress. But, as has happened a couple of times too recently, if we get some real trouble, I want an experienced police officer around.” She lit another cigarette. “You don’t have to keep a jail. You shouldn’t need flashing lights or a bulletproof vest.”

“When would you expect me to be on duty?” he asked.

“I expect, if you’re around, you’re on duty. I understand everyone needs time off, needs to get out of Virgin River sometimes. If you’re around five or six days a week, that’s five or six more days a week than we’ve had. Let’s just hope our crime sprees fall on your work days.”

All that came to mind was a trip to Santa Rosa for lunch every couple of weeks. Something he hoped would become even more frequent. “Sounds like a paid vacation,” he said.

“With any luck,” she said. Then she opened the folder and showed him a one-year contract that displayed a pathetic salary.

“Not exactly a paid vacation,” he said. But then, he’d been looking for something to do, and it wasn’t necessary that he find work. He had his retirement and disability income, plus a little savings. “Why do you do this?” he asked. “First Mel, now me?”

“Hell, someone has to mind the needs of this town. This town is disorganized—I have to think what to do about that. And we’re growing, if only a little.” She took a drag. “I’m not going to last forever, though sometimes I’m afraid I might.”

She slid a badge across the table to him. It said Virgin River Constable. “I had that made five years ago. Nice, isn’t it?”

“You expect me to wear this?”

“You want to keep it in your pocket until you need it? You don’t have to wear a uniform or anything. You wouldn’t be the only guy in town carrying a sidearm or rifle. But I recommend you generate some forms so you can write up reports when you actually do something. There ought to be records. Want me to buy you a filing cabinet?”

He grinned at her. “Yeah. That would be nice. It doesn’t have to be big. And business cards, please. So I can be sure anyone who might need to call me knows my number.”

“Done.” She smiled back at him, holding out her pen. “For now, just drive around. Sit on the porch at the bar and talk to people. Fish a little and think. Think what your job is going to be—you’d know more about that than me.”

What a kick, he thought. The constable. Hah. For six hundred completely law-abiding citizens. “I feel like Andy of Mayberry,” he said.

“That’s a damn good place to start,” she said, pointing the pen toward him.

He didn’t take it. “Not just yet,” he said. “Let me get the lay of the land, then we’ll talk about this contract.”

“You planning to try to negotiate?” she asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I have a feeling that would be useless. But before I make a commitment to you, to the town, I’d like to find out how receptive my fellow cops are to having someone like me in the mix. Let me visit around a little. Lotta type A’s in law enforcement, Hope. Some wouldn’t take a rope from a guy like me if they were in quicksand. If that’s going to be the case, I should just save you the time and money.”