The Cold Dish

Henry figured that the reason the Cheyenne had always ridden Appaloosas into battle was because by the time the men got there, they were so angry with the horses they were ready to kill everything.

He mulled that over. "Sheriff Connally woulda let us shoot 'em." I reached over and took his coffee away from him. "Yep. Lucian probably would have done the job himself, but we're living in more enlightened times." I drained his cup and handed it back with a smile. "Ain't it grand?

It is another beautiful evening here at the Red Pony bar and continual soirée, how can I help you?

I don’t know what the exact physical dynamics are that cause a shower curtain to attach itself to your body when you turn on the water but, since my shower was surrounded on all sides by curtains, I turned on the water and became a vinyl, vacuum-sealed sheriff burrito.

I sometimes forgot about how spiritual Henry was. I had been raised as a Methodist where the highest sacrament was the bake sale.

There are only three major vote getting days in Absoroka County, and I can't remember the other two. "Oh God, no. It's Pancake Day." I thought about shooting myself. I could see the headlines: Sheriff shoots self, unable to face pancakes.

It's only pre-marital sex if you plan on getting married.

Aristotle said that some minds are not vases to be filled, but fires to be lit.

He had his mother’s looks, his father’s temper, and nobody’s brains.

Ain't nothing wrong with shootin' folks, long as the right ones get shot

I think there was an awful lot about him that I thought I knew, but the truth was I was just coloring in the missing parts with colors I liked.

I'd say the depths of his stupidity have yet to be plumbed, and yours is comin' up fast on the inside turn.

Artists are always good for conversation, so long as you want to talk about their art.

Interesting office management skills, kind of a 'violence is not the answer so I'm going to beat the shit out of you philosophy.

I was brought up on a ranch but, because of my father, the romance of guns had somehow escaped me. In his eyes, a gun was a tool, not some half-assed deity. Guys who named their guns worried him and me. I

Seeing her again was like unearthing an emotional library card with a lot of overdues.

Scientists say there is a noise that snowflakes make when they land on water, like the wail of a coyote; the sound reaches a climax and then fades away, all in about one ten-thousandth of a second.

Cop tricks pale in comparison with mother tricks.

Maybe he was what Lucian would have turned out to be if the old sheriff hadn't have lived in such interesting times. A couple of years in a Japanese prison camp might be just what Turk needed. But I didn't have a bridge over the river Kwai for him to build so we had to settle for Powder Junction.

I thought about Vic being rich. She already had the fuck-you attitude; fuck-you money might be too much.

I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth . . .” Dickens. “. . . The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end . . .” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway. Ernie

He didn’t sound particularly drunk, but Bob’s a professional, so you never can tell.

I looked at her, looking being one of my better law-enforcement techniques.

There were clouds at the mountains, and the snow pack reflected the sour-lemon sun into one of the most beautiful and perverse sunsets I had ever seen. The clouds were dappled like the hindquarters of an Appaloosa colt, and the beauty kicked just as hard.

I could just see that little bandy rooster straightening his belt and buttoning up his old Eisenhower jacket as he got out and walked on two then solid legs up to the ancient, black-primer Dodge. I could see him pushing his old campaign hat back with a thumb, like he used to do, and leaning on the back of the Dodge’s windowsill as the window rolled down. “Hey, Chief.” He wasn’t joking; Frank Red Shield was a chief of the Northern Cheyenne. “I pulled you over ’cause you’ve got a couple ’a taillights out back here.” He said the old chief ’s eyes twinkled, and he patted Lucian’s arm that rested on the car. “Oh, that’s okay. I thought you were pulling me over ’cause I didn’t have no license.” Lucian said he nearly bit his lip to bleeding trying to not laugh until Mrs. Red Shield slapped her husband across the chest and said, “Don’t pay no attention to him, Sheriff. He don’t know what he’s sayin’ when he’s been drinkin’.

The older I get, the more I think I look like a Muppet. Cady vehemently disagrees with this assessment, but she’s fighting her own battle with this particular gene puddle.

There’s a kind of cocksure attitude that overtakes a man in the presence of the dearly departed, a you’re-dead-and-I’m-not kind of perspective.

I thought about how you could kill a victim only once, but how a crime scene could die a thousand deaths.

I always wondered about men who spent their time trying to anticipate and know a fish in a world where man’s knowledge of each other could only be called scarce. It just seemed to be gratuitously ignorant for any man to think that he could think like a fish.