So whatever it was, Joe knew he would find out what was bothering her when Marybeth was good and ready to tell him.
He waited half an hour and finished his coffee. When she didn't come downstairs, he pulled on his hat, called Maxine, and walked outside to his pickup to go to work.
6
JOE CALLED IT "PERCHING." Perching was patrolling in the break lands in the foothills of the Bighorns, where the sagebrush gave way to pines, driving his truck up rough two-tracks to promontories and buttes where, with his Redfield spotting scope mounted to the side window, he could scope flats, meadows, and timber blow downs for game, hunters, hikers, and fishers. After two years on the job, he was still locating new adequate perches throughout his district, which consisted of 1,500 square miles of high plains steppe, sagebrush flats, craggy break lands, and mountains. These raised vantage points, where he could "sit and glass," generally had some kind of road to the top that had been established over the years by ranchers, surveyors, or hunters. Perching is what Joe had done for the past few days, since Marybeth's outburst. He had left early, stayed late, and filled the hours between with routine patrolling of his district in the strange season between hunting and fishing activity Even if he patrolled every working hour, Joe knew he could never adequately cover his 1,500square mile district. But it was an important part of his job.
At night, he had worked late in his small office near the mudroom at home, updating logs and reports, writing out a comprehensive purchase request from headquarters for the goods and equipment he would need in the coming fiscal year (saddles, tack, new tires, roof repair, etc.) and waiting for Marybeth to come to him and explain what had happened that morning. They still needed to talk and clear the air. Every time he heard her walk by his door, he paused, hoping she would enter and close the door behind her and say "About the other morning .. ." He didn't push her, either, although the incident hung around the house like an unwelcome relative. Several times, he wanted to go to her, but he talked himself out of it. The guilt he felt about her injury and the subsequent loss of their child, was like a blade, ever poised, near his heart.
That morning, after the girls had left for school and the silence between them seemed to approach white noise, he told her about his encounter with Jim Finotta. She listened, and seemed grateful to be discussing anything except what he wanted to discuss. Her eyes probed his while he talked.
"Joe, are you sure this is something you want to pursue?" she asked.
"He poached an elk. He's no better than any other criminal. If fact, he's worse."
"But you can't prove it, can you?"
"Not yet."
She stared at a spot behind Joe's head. "Joe, we're within sight of getting our debts paid for the first time since we've been married. I'm working Two jobs. Is this the time you want to go after a man like Jim Finotta?"
Her question surprised him, although it shouldn't have, and it momentarily put him off balance. Marybeth was nothing if not a pragmatist, especially when it came to her family
"I've got to check it out," Joe said, his resolve weakened. "You know that."
A slow, resigned smile formed on her face. "I know you do, Joe. I just don't want you to get in trouble again."
"Me neither."
And for a moment, he could see in her expression that she wanted to add more. But she didn't.
***
It was rare to find many people about in the mountains in the late spring and early summer, when unpredictable squalls could sweep down from the Continental Divide in buffeting waves of wet snow, and when the snowmelt runoff was still too foamy, cloudy, and violent to fish or swim in. Crusty drifts of snow still lay in draws and swales, but had retreated and regrouped from the grass and sagebrush into the safe harbor of thick wooded stands.
Maxine slept on the passenger seat, her head resting on her forepaws, her brow crinkled with concern from whatever peril she was dreaming about.
Hazelton Road, the route to the site of the cow explosion, cut upward through the timber to the west and there was a small streamside campground, empty except for a single vehicle that was partially obscured by trees. Near the vehicle was a light green dome tent. Joe zoomed in on the tent and the campsite with the spotting scope, feeling like a voyeur. Through a shimmer caused by the distance and warmth, he could see people sitting at a picnic table. Two stout women, one with a mass of thick brown hair and the other with short straight hair, sat on opposite sides of the table. Between them, on the tabletop, were pieces of equipment Joe couldn't identify from this distance. Their heads were bent over whatever they were doing, so Joe could not see the face of either woman.
Joe zoomed out and moved the scope through the rest of the campground. Empty
Upstream, though, a reed-thin man with a straggly beard and baggy trousers cast a spinning lure into the boiling creek. The man stood bolt upright, with one shoe on shore and the other on a rock in the stream. Joe smiled to himself. No fishing vest, no tackle box, no creel, no waders, no stoop to his back as he sneaked up on a promising pool. This man did not look like a fisherman any more than Joe looked like a cricketeer. The stream was wild and would calm down, clear, and become fishable in about six weeks, in mid-July Now, it was swelled past the banks with spring runoff, and lures cast into it would rocket down the stream with the fast flow and hang up in streamside willows.
Nevertheless, fishers were required to have both licenses and state habitat stamps, even if it was unlikely that a fish could be caught, as was the case here. Joe's job was to make sure fishermen had licenses. He zipped the spotting scope in its case, rolled up the window, and started the truck, which woke Maxine from her worrisome adventure.
***
One of the stout women at the picnic table turned out to be a man wearing thick dreadlocks that cascaded across his shoulders and down his back, but the woman looked vaguely familiar. Both turned to him as he stepped out of his pickup in the campground. They had been reassembling a well-worn white gas camping stove on the table, and the man seemed frustrated by it.
Joe left Maxine in the truck in case the campers had dogs of their own and approached them on a moist, pine-needled path. Their vehicle was a twenty-year-old conversion van with California plates. He introduced himself, and the couple exchanged a furtive glance.
The two were purposely ragged looking. He wore khaki zip-off trousers that were fashionably blousey and stained, and an extra-large open shirt over a T-shirt.
"Raga," the man said, wiping his hands on his pants and standing. "This is Britney. We can't get our stove to work."
"You could use the fire ring instead," Joe offered, pointing to the circle of fire-blackened rocks. "It's real early in the year and there are no fire restrictions as yet."
"We don't do fires." The man called Raga snorted. "We don't do charred flesh. We're low-impact." It was said as a kind of challenge, and Joe had no desire to follow it up.
"Raga?" Joe asked.
"It's short for Ragamuffin," the woman said abruptly Her voice was grating and whiney. Joe turned to her, and the sense of familiarity was stronger.
Raga shook his hair and tilted his head back, and looked down his long nose at Joe. "This is Britney Earthshare. It's not her real name, of course, but it's the name she goes by. You might have seen her in the press a couple of years ago. She lived in a tree in Northern California to protest the logging of an old-growth forest."