Nate lowered the binoculars. “Nope.”
“Think they’re gone or using the sheriff to draw us in and ambush us?” Joe had used the same tactic two years before when he’d bound a wanted man to lure in his would-be assassin. It had been one of the most shameful decisions he’d ever made, even though he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do it again, given the circumstances.
“If we get sucked in and ambushed using the same trap,” Joe said, “it’s not poetic justice, but it’s something like it.”
Nate shook his head. “My guess is those boys are running back into the mountains. They probably came down to disable the vehicles and didn’t expect to get surprised by the sheriff.”
“Or us,” Joe said.
Nate said, “And I bet they’re wondering why they picked the only day in Wyoming history without wind to start a couple of cars on fire. Normally, we might not even see the smoke.”
Joe drove to Baird and hit the brakes and leaped out. He could feel the heat from the burning pickup on his back.
Baird was conscious, his eyes wide open, his mustache twitching. He was hugging the tree because they’d cinched Flex-Cuffs around his wrists on the other side of the trunk. And, as Nate had mentioned, there was an arrow shaft sticking out of his left buttock. Joe recognized the craftsmanship of the arrow and knew it had been made by the Grim Brothers. He could see the rawhide where the shaft was bound to the point next to the Wrangler label on Baird’s jeans. The arrow wasn’t deep at all, although Joe guessed it probably hurt.
“Sheriff,” Joe said, “you’ve got an arrow sticking out of your butt.”
“Why, thanks, Joe. I was wondering what it was bothering me back there.”
“You want me to pull it out or cut you down first?”
“Cut me down, please.”
As Joe removed his Leatherman tool and opened the blade, he said, “How far are the brothers ahead of us?”
Baird nodded toward the forested slope on the other side of the burning pickups. “Maybe thirty minutes,” he said.
“They on foot?”
Baird nodded. “They are, but they cover ground like demons. I saw them coming out of the trees at me on both sides, but they were so fast I didn’t get a chance to fight them off.”
“I understand,” Joe said, cutting the plastic cuffs free. “I’ve tangled with them and lost, just like you.”
Baird stepped away from the tree and rubbed hard on his wrists. His Stetson had fallen off, and strands of his wispy black hair reached down from his brow to his upper lip. As he rubbed his wrists, the arrow shaft danced up and down.
“So,” Joe said, “do you believe me now?”
Baird reached up and pushed his stringy hair back. “I was waiting to see how long it took you to ask me that question.”
As the two men looked at each other, Nate strode behind Baird toward the burning vehicles in the camp. As deft as a swallow plucking a gnat from the air, Nate reached out and pulled the arrow from Baird.
“Ouch, goddammit!” Baird said, spinning around. “Who said you could do that?”
Nate smirked, handed Baird the arrow, and continued on his way.
“THEY HAD NO INTENTION of killing you,” Joe said to Baird a few minutes later, as he helped the sheriff limp to a downed log to rest on. “Or you’d be dead.”
“I know,” Baird agreed. He straddled the log and leaned over it so his chest rested against the bark. His wound was open to the sky.
“Same with me,” Joe said to the sheriff. “For whatever reason, they did some real damage, but they didn’t feel compelled to finish the job.”
“It would have been easy,” Baird said, then gestured over his shoulder toward his wound. “This thing hurts. How bad is it?”
Joe said, “This is when you find out who your friends are,” looking at the trickle of fresh blood coming out of the wound.
“Just don’t let that friend of yours near me again,” Baird said.
Joe grimaced and turned for his pickup truck to get his first-aid kit.
JOE RIPPED another strip of tape to bind the compress to the wound while doing his best to avoid looking at Sheriff Baird’s bare butt, which was stunningly white. As Joe applied the tape, Nate came down out of the trees.
“Did those boys say anything?” Nate asked Baird.
“Like what?”
Nate shrugged. “Anything at all? Like, Stay off our mountain, sheriff, or Damn, where’d you come from?”
Baird shook his head. “Nothing at first. It’s like they could communicate through hand signals or something. They never said a word the whole time. Until the end, I mean.”
Joe paused, said, “What did they say at the end?”
Baird cleared his throat, coughed up a ball of phlegm, and spat it away. “After they cuffed me to that tree, I expected them to just cut my throat and leave me there. One of ’em got right behind me and kind of whispered into my ear. He said, ‘The only reason we’re letting you live is so you can tell anybody who will listen to leave us the hell alone.’”
“That’s all?” Joe said.
“Pretty much. He repeated himself, though. ‘Just leave us the hell alone.’ Then he stepped back and said, ‘This is to show you how serious we are,’ and shot me in the butt with that arrow. I could tell he took it easy on me, though. He barely shot that at me with much force. I mean, he could have done all kind of damage.
“I don’t know which one it was who shot me,” Baird said. “It’s not like they introduced themselves. And you know they look and dress exactly alike. The only difference between them was one of them had a bandage taped on his face, on his chin.”
“That would be Caleb,” Joe said. “Meaning Camish was the one who talked to you and shot you with the arrow.”
Baird said, “Well, Caleb didn’t talk. I got the impression maybe he couldn’t anymore.”
“Did he look wounded any other way?” Joe asked. “Did he appear to move stiffly or hang back, anything like that?”
“Not that I noticed,” the sheriff said.
Joe shook his head. How could he shoot the man square in the chest and cause no harm?
Baird turned his head around toward Joe. “You know, I gotta tell you, I was scared at first. But when he said, ‘Just leave us the hell alone,’ I felt sorry for them in a weird way. Even though they did this to me. Ain’t that strange? Maybe it’s because I think that way myself a lot these days.”
Nate was close enough to hear Baird’s question, but he didn’t respond. To Joe, he said, “I saddled the horses. They’ve got an hour on us at best and they aren’t on horseback. This may be the closest we’ll ever get to them.”
Joe nodded and felt his scalp twitch again from fear. He tried to hide his face from Nate.
“We’d best get going,” Nate said.
“I heard you,” Joe said. He told Baird to pull up his pants.
AS THEY RODE UP out of the camp where the vehicles still burned, they could hear the distant thumping of a helicopter to the east. The chopper was coming to get Baird and whisk him away to Rawlins, Laramie, or Cheyenne. Various state troopers and DCI agents were on their way as well, but hours behind them.
Baird’s handheld had been propped against the log he was resting on and the volume was up. As Joe saddled the packhorse and packed gear into the panniers, he heard the chatter pick up as word spread of the ambush of Baird. Sheriff’s departments from four Wyoming counties and two Colorado counties were mobilizing. DCI, FBI, and ATF were being contacted. There was even speculation about contacting the governor’s office to request the National Guard.
Joe said to Nate, “By this time tomorrow, this camp will be a small city.”
Nate said, “I’m not a city-type guy.”
THEY RODE THEIR HORSES UP into the mountains. Joe led, followed by Nate and the packhorse.