* It had snowed the previous evening, roads were iced. Which meant there had been wrecks. Which meant Watt assumed he would spend the day writing accident reports. Which meant when he dressed that morning, he chose not to put on his bulletproof vest.

* He had to go check Sweetwater County's fleet of ambulances about 10 a.m. that day. Per state law, if he found anything wrong with them -- burned out taillight, expired tag, faulty blinker, etc. -- he was to yank them off the road. He found problems with every ambulance there, but instead of shutting them down, he told the owner to straighten out the kinks. A few hours later, one of the ambulances would take Watt to the hospital.

He was at a Rock Springs restaurant eating lunch when the call came. He swallowed the last bites of a chili burger, then headed south on Highway 430, looking for a Colorado bank robber heading north.

***

Farnham was a Minnesota man who had washed out of college because of a fondness for cocaine and the debt that followed. He came to Wyoming to earn oil-field wages and get sober. He ended up in Jackson and worse debt -- more than $25,000 worth -- because of a failed business.