Joe placed the shotgun muzzle down on the floorboard and marked the location on his GPS for later. He called Daisy back into the cab and hoisted himself behind the wheel. He performed a three-point turn on the grounds of the campsite to head back down the mountain. There was an hour of daylight left and he thought there was no reason he shouldn’t make it. Going down the switchback road would be faster than coming up. The only thing he had to worry about was not pushing too hard and sliding his tires off the rocks and the truck into the trees.
As he turned the wheel and pointed the nose of the pickup toward the slot, it suddenly filled with a pair of headlights that blocked the exit.
Joe recognized the pickup immediately by the steel pole and crossbeam in the bed: it belonged to Bull Cates.
—
IT HAPPENED FAST, so fast Joe almost didn’t have time to react.
Bull slammed his truck into park and bailed out with a semiautomatic rifle loaded with a large magazine, the driver’s-side door thumping the rock wall because it was such close quarters. He had to step back to close the door to give himself a shooting lane.
Joe considered flooring the accelerator of his own pickup in the hope that the head-on collision would knock Bull’s vehicle out of the entrance. But Bull’s truck was a three-quarter-ton four-wheel-drive, and Joe drove a half-ton Ford F-150. At best, he might push Bull’s vehicle back a few feet but he would probably injure himself in the process. Instead, Joe reached for his shotgun.
But Bull was faster. There was a sharp crack, a hole in Joe’s windshield at eye level, and searing pain on the right side of his head.
He flopped more than dove to his right, pinning Daisy to the bench seat.
Bull was firing as quickly as he could pull the trigger.
Round after round punched through the windshield and exited through the back. Slivers of glass were everywhere, on Joe’s clothing, in Daisy’s coat, all over the seat, on the floorboards. As he writhed, trying to get even lower, he saw bright red blood on Daisy’s head and shoulders, lots of it, but she didn’t seem to be hurt.
Then he realized the blood was coming from him. Nothing bled like a head wound.
Bull apparently leveled his aim and Joe felt the bullets thump into the grille of his pickup and actually rock it back and forth on its springs. A bullet caromed off the front hood into the shattered windshield and the entire plate of glass imploded and fell into the cab like a collapsed roof.
Joe tried to recall how long the magazine was on Bull’s rifle and tried to guess how many rounds he had left. He knew his truck had been hit at least twenty times, maybe more.
He reached up to the side of his head with his right hand and when he took it away it was covered with blood. He could actually hear it pattering on the fabric of the bench seat when it wasn’t pouring onto Daisy. Joe couldn’t tell how badly he was hit. His right eye socket was filled with blood and he wiped it clean with his shirtsleeve to clear his vision. He recalled once encountering a hunter who flagged him down because he said he had a terrible headache. Turned out he had shot himself in the head. He died before the EMTs could arrive.
Suddenly, the cab filled with acrid steam. He recognized the smell as fluid pouring from the radiator through bullet holes onto the hot engine. It stung his eyes and made Daisy whimper.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
The pickup jerked with every shot, and it was remarkable how fast the punctured tires deflated.
Then silence.
—
TWENTY SECONDS OF SILENCE. Snow fell inside the cab through the frame of the missing windshield.
Joe could only guess what Bull was doing. Approaching the truck? Reloading? Waiting for Joe to rise up and look around so he could finish him?
Although his ears were ringing from the rifle shots, Joe heard a metal-on-metal sound and then the distinctive snap of a bolt being engaged.
Reloading.
Daisy whimpered again and Joe realized he was crushing her. He repositioned himself so she could breathe more easily. As he did, slivers of glass tinkled from the seat to the floorboards.
“Hey, game warden, are you in there?” Bull called.
Joe didn’t respond.
“Good thing I took the long way home tonight and ran across them tire tracks in the snow. I followed them all the way here, but I didn’t think it would be you.”
The voice didn’t sound any closer. Joe imagined Bull was still near his own truck, probably still on the side of it, since he’d been able to reach into the cab for his second magazine.
“I told you I’d get even with you for taking away my livelihood,” Bull said. “I just never figured you’d come to me.”
After a beat, Bull said, “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
Joe didn’t raise his head. He held Daisy down with his right hand and searched through the broken glass on the floor for his shotgun. When he closed his hand around the grip, he felt the piercing bite of dozens of tiny slivers of glass in the flesh of his palm.
Because she didn’t like being confined, Daisy moaned.
Bull obviously heard it and mistook it as coming from Joe. He said, “What do you know? It sounds like you’re hurt. I thought I got you with that first shot.”
Joe pulled the shotgun closer to him.
“Since you seen that van, there was only one way this could go,” Bull said. His voice was growing louder. He was cautiously approaching Joe’s pickup. Joe could hear boots crunch in the snow.
Joe was at an odd position: facedown on the seat with a dog underneath him and the shotgun at his side. It would be difficult to scramble around to defend himself.
Slowly, he rolled to his back and squared his shoulders. He used Daisy as a pillow. He raised the shotgun so it was next to him on the seat, pointing toward the driver’s-side door.
The crunching got closer.
Joe lowered his eyelids, but didn’t shut them tight.
There was a beat of silence, then the top of Bull’s face appeared in the driver’s-side window. It vanished before Joe could react.
He waited, then Bull slowly raised back up. Joe saw the crown of Bull’s cowboy hat with a dusting of snow on it, then the brim. Then Bull’s narrow-set eyes. When Bull saw Joe’s condition, saw the blood, his eyes scrunched in a smile.
Joe raised the muzzle and shot Bull in the forehead and he dropped out of view.
The sound of the discharge within the cab was so loud, all Joe could hear was a dull buzzing in his ears.
—
HE SAT UP and pulled on the door handle and kicked it open with his boot. The body, not two feet from the truck, thrashed in the snow for thirty seconds, then went still. A river of blood steamed through the snow like hot syrup. Bull died with the top half of his head gone and his arms and legs splayed out as if he were making a snow angel. The .223 Ruger Mini-14 tactical rifle lay at his side. The barrel was still so hot from all the firing, it had melted the snow around it.
Joe slid down from the seat. When his boots hit the ground, he swooned on rubber legs and he grasped the side mirror for support. Daisy jumped out and went straight to the body, sniffing it from top to bottom, her tail working like a metronome.
He was still holding the mirror bracket for support when he looked at his reflection. He thought, No wonder Bull thought I was dead.
Thick rivulets of blood covered his entire face. His collar and the front of his shirt were black with blood, and when he turned his head he could see where blood was still pulsing out of an ugly slash just above his right ear. He touched the wound with the tips of his fingers and found it numb. The bullet had broken skin and exposed a white line of slick bone. He’d never seen any of his skull before.