April, their seventeen-year-old ward, worked part-time at a western-wear store in retail between bouts of being grounded. And when she was home and grounded. . she slept.
“When did she get there?” Butch asked.
“Hannah?”
“Yeah.”
“Last night some time,” Joe said. “I saw her car parked out front.”
Butch nodded. Then, without preamble: “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you what you’re doing up here.”
Joe explained the line of water guzzlers, then finding the cut fence. As he did, he watched Butch carefully.
There was a slight reaction, a twitch on the corners of Butch’s mouth.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Joe asked breezily.
Butch shook his head and said, “They don’t need to put up fences like that and close the roads. We hunted up here for a hundred years on what is supposed to be public land. Now they berm the access roads so we can’t get in. Tell me what’s public about that?”
Joe didn’t bite, and it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Butch had strong feelings and opinions when it came to access to hunting areas. That wasn’t unusual, either. Citizens in the area and the state took natural-resource decisions personally, and often railed against the public-lands managers who made decisions. Joe had heard the argument countless times, and sympathized to some degree. And because he was a state and not a federal employee, he often found himself in the middle. Which was why he hadn’t brought up the illegal campfire.
Joe looked up and said, “I haven’t called it in yet. No one knows about it except you and me. But I would guess that if a guy went down there with a stretcher and a fencing tool, he could fix it so no one would ever even know it was down. It’s not like the Feds send out line riders to check it.”
Butch looked away. He grumbled, “I hear you.”
“That’s good.”
“So the only reason you’re up here is those guzzler things?”
The question took Joe by surprise. “Why else?”
Butch shrugged. “Sure you don’t want some coffee before I kick the fire out and move on?”
“I’m sure.”
With that, Butch tossed the last of his tin cup of coffee onto the forest floor.
“You need to borrow a stretcher?” Joe asked.
“Naw. I built fence all through high school. I know how to fix a fence.”
“Take it easy, Butch.”
“You too, Joe.”
Joe turned, puzzled by the whole exchange, and untied the reins of his horse and called Daisy back.
As he pulled himself into the saddle, Butch said something Joe didn’t catch.
“What’s that, Butch?”
“I said, thanks for watching over Hannah.”
“It’s Marybeth mostly,” Joe said.
“I guess so,” Butch said, as he shouldered into his heavy pack.
Joe noted how big and heavy the pack seemed to be for a day of scouting.
After checking the last two guzzlers-they were full and operational-Joe rode Toby slowly down the mountain toward his pickup. Daisy lagged behind, exhausted, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. It was hot, mid-eighties, and Joe felt sweat run down his spine and into his Wranglers. Dense cream lather worked out between the saddle and Toby’s sweaty back. As Joe cleared the trees he turned in his saddle to look at the top of the mountain where it went bald above the tree line. There was still snow up there, even in August.
He sighed and settled back into the slow gait of the horse. The previous October, during the first heavy snow of the season, he’d been on top of the summit in his department pickup and had gotten it stuck in a snowfield he never should have tried to drive across. The reason he was up there was to try and assist his friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer and federal fugitive, who was in trouble. In the process, Joe had broken his hand and watched as a wounded Nate drove away. Joe hadn’t heard from Nate since, and given the circumstances and the body count that resulted, Joe didn’t mind. He’d needed the ten months since to heal in body and mind.
Twice he’d ridden with a local tow-truck operator to the top to attempt to retrieve the pickup. Twice they’d been turned back by heavy drifts. The agency had sent up another pickup that should have been sold off because of its condition and the 190,000 miles on the odometer, but until Joe could get his new pickup out, he was stuck with the old one. The situation was the object of jokes and asides at headquarters in Cheyenne because of Joe’s track record with state vehicles. It would be any day now, Joe thought, that a new Game and Fish director would be named by the governor and review his record and give him a call. He hoped to have his pickup out by then, but he wasn’t sure he could make that happen.
Joe heard his old replacement pickup from a distance. The speaker outfit on the hood was patched to the radio inside and broadcast chatter from the mutual-aid law enforcement channel. It was set up like that so a game warden could be kept in communication when he was out of his truck, but Joe couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.
As he rode closer, he was surprised by the number of transmissions, and the frequency of them, even though he couldn’t yet make out the words. That happened only when something of significance occurred-a high-speed chase on the highway, a hot pursuit in the county, or a felony in progress.
He hoped whatever it was wouldn’t involve him. He wanted to get home for dinner with Marybeth and his daughters.
Then he reined up for Toby to pause, and he turned in the saddle and looked far up into the timber on the mountain, where he’d last seen Butch Roberson.
3
Marybeth Pickett was giving an informal tour of the historic Saddlestring Hotel building to her friend and county prosecutor Dulcie Schalk when she heard sirens race up Main Street directly outside. In mid-sentence, she checked her cell phone to see if there were any texts or messages from Joe. When there weren’t, she dropped the phone back into the pocket of her summer dress.
“You do that automatically,” Dulcie said.
“I guess I do,” Marybeth said. “That’s what happens when your law enforcement husband is out there somewhere by himself and you hear sirens.”
“I understand,” Dulcie said.
Marybeth brushed a strand of hair out of her face and wiped her hands on a cloth to remove the dust that covered everything inside. It was hard to stay clean just walking through the old place, and she didn’t want to show up for her afternoon shift at the Twelve Sleep County Library smudged with grime. Dulcie had the same concern with her severe dark business suit.
Dulcie was slim, fit, dark-haired, and tightly wound. Joe considered her a tough prosecutor and too rigid in her approach, but he liked her. Marybeth had never worked with her-or against her-but they shared a mutual interest in western dressage and simply being around horses. When Dulcie’s stable had closed, Marybeth had offered space for Dulcie’s horse at their place, and now they saw each other twice a day when Dulcie drove out to feed Poke, her aging gelding. Dulcie was single and the subject of local barroom speculation about her availability and sexual preferences, though Marybeth knew her friend was straight-but cautious. And in Twelve Sleep County, pickings were slim.
Marybeth’s secret plan was to find a man for Dulcie and set a romance in motion. She was considering possibilities when Dulcie said, “Back to the tour.”
“Yes, where were we?”
Matt Donnell, a local realtor, had approached Marybeth two months before at the library and told her he had just purchased the Saddlestring Hotel structure at a foreclosure auction in Cheyenne. It had once been the finest hotel in the county and the place where anyone of note stayed in the area. President Calvin Coolidge, Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne had all stopped there during its heyday, although it was now hard to believe, given the condition of the building. It was a shambling three-level structure built of knotty pine, with a steep roof and gabled windows, a wide portico where rocking chairs had once lined up, and it gave off an overall impression of faded frontier elegance. It had also been vacant and hulking for ten years.