MONTEZUMA CREEK, Utah – In Cordell Wright’s nightmares, two suspected cop-killers are looking his way, licking their chops.

It’s not just that his mobile home is in the current hot zone of this on-again, off-again manhunt that stretched into its 44th day Saturday.

It’s his adjoining business – Montezuma Well Service – and the 12 water trucks he keeps parked in a neighboring lot not 100 feet from the San Juan River.

Authorities think murder suspects Alan "Monte" Pilon and Jason McVean have a thing for water trucks.

This whole cat-and-mouse game started when the fugitives allegedly stole a water truck in Ignacio May 28 and drove it to Cortez. The search shifted to Montezuma Creek last week after a 9-year-old girl reported seeing two men fitting the suspects’ descriptions checking out another water truck parked along the San Juan River in this Navajo oilfield community.

Police say they scurried back into the dense tamarisk and olive trees along the river after spotting her. Tracks indicated they headed west along the San Juan’s muddy banks.

Wright’s truck fleet sits two miles west of the site where the girl spotted the suspects. The rusted, gap-filled fence that guards them brushes up against the riverside vegetation police think is offering McVean and Pilon protection.

Wright locks his mobile home double tight at night, propping a chair up against the door. But lately he has been leaving the keys in the ignitions of his 12 trucks, doors unlocked.

"They can have a truck if they want one," Wright said. "I’m just afraid that one of those guys will come and get a truck, and then decide that I’m a threat."

Like others in this section of southeastern Utah, Wright and his wife, Lecia, are about ready for the hunt to end. They say they’re tired of police raising their hopes with talk of imminent capture, only to have the duo elude the dragnet once again.

"It doesn’t renew your faith in law enforcement," Lucia Wright said.

The last time officers were sure they had them was Friday morning, when Navajo Tribal Police Chief Leonard Butler declared, "Today we will end it."

That after similar, confident pronouncements by police officials in Colorado and Utah every so often that they were "closing in."

"It needs to end somewhere," said Montezuma Creek resident Gloria Nelson. "It’s like a volleyball game. First they have them, then they don’t, then they have them again.

"We’re all tired and frustrated."

As it has been over the past week, Saturday’s temperatures topped 100 degrees. A quick dip in the San Juan would be nice, she said, but nobody is venturing to the river with the ongoing search.

In Bluff, 15 miles downstream, residents are ready for all the excitement to end. The search was moved there June 4 after one of the suspects – Robert Mason – shot a San Juan County, Utah, deputy before turning the gun on himself.

The tiny hamlet was evacuated for two days while the search for his alleged cohorts continued around town. Now the hunt is creeping west towards Bluff again after a month-long reprieve.

"Sure we’re tired of it," said Jim Ostler, owner of the Cow Canyon Trading Post in Bluff. "It does play with your emotions."

He said twice in the past 10 days he has been in Farmington on business, only to find himself racing home early after his wife would call, fearing that new manhunt developments would force the closure of roads leading into Bluff.

Marylin Tsosie, who lives on the south bank of the San Juan seven miles west of Montezuma Creek, said twice she has had to evacuate her family to nearby Blanding because of the search. She said the movement has forced her each time to abandon the sheep she keeps on her land, something she would rather not do.

"This is getting too old," Tsosie said. "If (the fugitives) come up here, I’m going to put them to work.