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He has my order from the day Delilah first said that man's name: 'If he comes near the gate, get his plate and call me. Don't open it for him.'

"Get his plate," I tell Hector. "Then let him through."

Hector comes back on a minute later and reads me the Texas plate he's written down. I type it into my phone.

"He's coming your way, boss," Hector says.

I want that man where I can see his hands. If Hector turns him around, Coleman Whitlock will know by midnight that I was waiting for him.

I key the radio again. "Beckett."

Beckett is behind the barn with Delilah. He's wearing an earpiece, so nothing I say comes out of a speaker against that wall. He clicks his radio once to tell me he's listening.

"The man Delilah described is coming in," I say. "Keep her still."

Beckett clicks his radio again. He heard me.

Beckett walked her out to the back wall a while ago, before Hector ever saw the diesel. She's standing in the dark at a knothole beside the chained back door, and Beckett is behind her with his rifle held low.

If she hears a voice she knows, she'll squeeze his arm, and he'll write down the time.

Once that man is inside my barn, he's mine to watch.

Headlights come up the cedar road. Gil Strackbein parks his stock truck in the ditch at the end of the line, and the diesel noses in beside it.

Gil hauls cattle out of Kerrville for half the sale barns in this county, and he's bet at my fights for years.

The two of them walk up to my gate together.

"He's with me, Knox," Gil says. "He hauls for some of the same outfits I do."

On a card night, no stranger gets through my gate unless a regular vouches for him. Gil just vouched for a man who fits every word Delilah gave me about Dutch.

Either Gil's a fool, or he's the one carrying word of my barn up Whitlock's hill.

"How long you known him, Gil?"

Gil looks at the diesel instead of me. "A while."

Gil has never answered a question that short in his life. I let it go, but I won't forget it.

"Name?" I ask the stranger.

He takes the cigar out of his mouth and coughs, wet and deep, before he answers. "Dutch."

He doesn't need to ask mine. Delilah said it in Whitlock's cellar, and Dutch heard her.

This is the man who found her lying in a ditch. He finished his cigar standing over her before he put his boot on her ankle. She told Torres all of it at my kitchen table on Thursday, and I heard every word.

My hands close into fists at my sides. I make them open again.

"Betting table's under the loft," I tell him. "Bets close when the bell rings."

Dutch puts the cigar back in his teeth and walks past me across the lot. Gil follows him without looking at me.

I swing the lot gate shut behind them and walk into my fight barn.

The generator runs out in the cedar at the end of a long cord. Inside the barn, it's only a low hum under the noise of the crowd.