“So I can’t charge you three times the going rate, then?” Shoyo lamented. He looked as offended as Washakie One, Two, and Three.
“Sorry.”
The cloud passed, and Willie said, “Okay, then.”
From near the pickup, Alisha said, “Uncle Willie, are you sure you want to do this? You’ve heard what happens to Joe Pickett’s horses, haven’t you? They meet the same fate as his vehicles.”
“Thanks, Alisha,” Joe said, his face flushing. He wanted to argue, but he had no argument.
“I’ve heard,” Willie said. “We can hope these horses bring you more luck.”
“I’ll need it,” Joe said.
Willie said, “I understand you need a couple of saddles and a pack saddle outfit, too, because you lost yours with your horses. I can lend you those.”
“Thank you,” Joe said.
“I’m doing this as a favor to my favorite mare,” Willie said, glancing toward Alicia and talking loud enough so she could hear. “I mean my favorite niece.”
“What’s he talking about?” Alisha asked Nate suspiciously.
Nate shrugged and said to her, “I don’t understand all this horse talk. You know that.”
AS JOE AND NATE APPROACHED Muddy Gap, towing the horses in the horse trailer, and took the highway toward Rawlins, the Green Mountains loomed like sleeping lions on the horizon. Nate said, “I don’t see where the woman fits. Do you think she’s up there with those brothers voluntarily, or is it some kind of Stockholm-syndrome type of deal? Is she a hostage, a kidnap victim, or a willing accomplice?”
Joe shook his head. “First, we don’t know if it’s Shober or if she’s still okay. She could be anybody.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nate said dismissively.
Said Joe, “If you saw those brothers in person like I did, there’s no way you’d think anyone in their right mind would stay with them willingly. They creeped me out.”
“Maybe you didn’t meet them in the best circumstances,” Nate said.
Joe shrugged. “Diane is a puzzle. I don’t see how those guys could have taken her up into the mountains if she didn’t want to go. She didn’t seem to fear them nearly as much as she regretted letting them down by taking me in. Are you thinking she’s the key to all of this?”
Nate sat back and sighed. “No. I can’t figure out how she fits. Or why, of all the places on earth, she’d end up there.”
Joe grunted.
Nate said, “Well, she had to know people were looking for her a couple of years ago, right? So even if those Grim Brothers grabbed her and kept her captive at the time, from what you said she was moving around of her own free will. If nothing else, she could just up and outrun those knuckleheads.”
“If it was even her,” Joe said wearily.
“And if it isn’t,” Nate asked, “then who is it?”
“Don’t know.”
“If it isn’t, how are you going to tell Mrs. Shober?”
Joe cringed.
After a few more miles, Joe said, “Nate, I want to thank you for coming along. I couldn’t do it without you.”
Nate said, “We haven’t done anything yet except rent some horses.”
Joe didn’t say anything.
“This thing spooked you, didn’t it?”
No response.
“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Nate said. “You got your butt kicked over and over. These guys ran circles around you up there and took everything you had, including your confidence. I can tell. You don’t want to go up there for revenge as much as to see if you can get your courage back, isn’t that it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Joe said, swerving to avoid hitting a jackrabbit that darted out onto the blacktop. There were so many dead, flat rabbits on this stretch of road that the asphalt looked cottony in places, as if the rabbits had been violently hurled down to the pavement from the sky in a fit of pique.
“Like I said, they kicked your butt up one side of the mountain and down the other,” Nate said.
“You’re really irritating sometimes,” Joe mumbled.
“But what I can’t figure out is why they didn’t finish the job,” Nate said, looking over and locking his eyes on the side of Joe’s face. “They had you down from that shotgun blast, but they didn’t follow up. Guys like that, who hunt for a living, would know to find you in the grass and cut your throat or put one or two into your head. Why didn’t they do that?”
Joe shrugged. “I’ve been wondering that since I woke up in the hospital.”
Said Nate, “I guess maybe Camish was worried about Caleb since you shot him, or they were both tending to ‘Terri Wade’ or Diane Shober or whoever the hell she is. But it doesn’t jibe. They should have hunted you down and finished the job. Then they should have burned your body and buried the remains so deep no one would ever find you. That’s what I would have done.”
Joe said, “Not that you have experience in that sort of thing.”
“I do, though.”
“Nate, I was being sarcastic.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Nate said. “Back to my point. Why didn’t they finish you off?”
Joe looked over. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe they aren’t as bad as you think?” Nate said.
“Not a chance,” Joe said. “They’re worse. They’ve got a woman up there against her will. And who knows what else we’ll find?”
Nate rubbed his chin. “Maybe we’ll find that lady wants to stay.”
“No way,” Joe said again.
“Another thing,” Nate said. “They called you a government man. I find that interesting. Not a game warden or a fish cop or whatever. But a government man.”
Joe said, “I’ve been called everything else, but I’ve never been called that before.”
“But that’s what you are.”
“I guess I never thought of myself that way,” Joe said. “I’m surprised they used that choice of words.”
Nate smiled slyly. “That says something about their worldview, doesn’t it?”
Before Joe could answer, his phone rang again. He expected a 777 number but saw on the display it was from MBP Management. Joe opened the phone, said, “Yes?”
She said, “Has the governor found you yet?”
“No.”
“He called here a few minutes ago. When I told him you weren’t here, he didn’t sound very happy.”
“I can imagine,” Joe said.
“He said he’s been trying to reach you all day.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“When he asked me where you were, I couldn’t lie to him,” Marybeth said. “I mean, he’s your boss. And he is the governor.”
Joe considered telling her it was better to apologize, but thought better of it and said, “I understand.”
“He asked what you were driving and which route you were taking.”
Joe frowned. “He did?”
“That’s not all,” she said. “He told me this thing is blowing up all of a sudden and he needed to find you. Then he hung up. You know how he is.”
The cutoff toward Rawlins was ahead, and Joe tapped the brake to release the cruise control so he could swing into the turn. “Yup,” Joe said, “I know how he is.”
He closed his phone and dropped it to the seat. They topped a rise before dropping down into Rawlins. When they crested the hill, Joe saw the blue and red wigwag lights, the phalanx of state trooper vehicles, and the long row of eighteen-wheelers directly ahead, all waiting to pass through the roadblock.
“Oh, no,” Nate said, sitting up straight.
Joe looked over and saw his friend strip off his shoulder holster and cram it beneath the bench seat like a high-schooler hiding his open container.
“I’m not going back to Cheyenne,” Nate said softly.
Joe considered braking and turning around, but he was on a one-way exit and the ditches on either side of the road were too steep for him to pull the horse trailer through without high-centering the rig.