Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
AUGUST 21
Chapter 1
AUGUST 22
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
AUGUST 23
Chapter 14
AUGUST 26
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
AUGUST 27
Chapter 17
AUGUST 29
Chapter 18
AUGUST 30
Chapter 19
AUGUST 31
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
SEPTEMBER 2
Chapter 22
SEPTEMBER 5
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
SEPTEMBER 6
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
SEPTEMBER 7
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
SEPTEMBER 8
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
SEPTEMBER 14
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
SEPTEMBER 15
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
SEPTEMBER 20
Acknowledgements
ALSO BY C. J. BOX
THE JOE PICKETT NOVELS
Nowhere to Run
Below Zero
Blood Trail
Free Fire
In Plain Sight
Out of Range
Trophy Hunt
Winterkill
Savage Run
Open Season
THE STAND-ALONE NOVELS
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
Blue Heaven
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2011 by C. J. Box
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Box, C. J.
Cold wind / C. J. Box
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-48646-7
1. Pickett, Joe (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Game wardens—Fiction.
3. Wyoming—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.O87658C
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To the memory of David Thompson . . . and Laurie, always
AUGUST 21
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
—AGE-OLD MEDICAL SCHOOL ADMONITION
1
He set out after breakfast on what would be his last day on earth.
He was an old man, but like many men of his generation with his wealth and station, he refused to think of himself that way. Deep in his heart, he honestly entertained the possibility he would never break down and perhaps live forever, while those less driven and less successful around him dropped away.
In fact, he’d recently taken to riding a horse over vast stretches of his landholdings when the weather was good. He rode a leggy black Tennessee walker; sixteen and a half hands in height, tall enough that he called for a mounting block in order to climb into the saddle. The horse seemed to glide over the sagebrush flats and wooded Rocky Mountain juniper-dotted foothills like a ghost, as if the gelding strode on a cushion of air. The gait spared his knees and lower back, and it allowed him to appreciate the ranch itself without constantly being interrupted by the stabs of pain that came from six and a half decades of not sitting a horse.
Riding got him closer to the land, which, like the horse, was his. He owned the sandy and chalky soil itself and the thousands of Black Angus that ate the same grass as herds of buffalo had once grazed. He owned the water that flowed through it and the minerals beneath it and the air that coursed over it. The very air.
Although he was a man who’d always owned big things—homes, boats, aircraft, cars, buildings, large and small corporations, race horses, oil wells, and for a while a small island off the coast of North Carolina—he loved this land most of all because unlike everything else in his life, it would not submit to him (well, that and his woman, but that was a different story). Therefore, he didn’t hold it in contempt.
So he rode over his ranch and beheld it and talked to it out loud, saying, “How about if we compromise and agree that, for the time being, we own each other?”
As the old man rode, he wore a 40X beaver silverbelly short-brimmed Stetson, a long-sleeved yoked shirt with snap buttons, relaxed-fit Wranglers, and cowboy boots. He wasn’t stupid and he always packed a cell phone and a satellite phone for those locations on his ranch where there was no signal. Just in case.