“Don’t forget to ask him about the WAC program!” Director LGD called out to Joe while he quickly gathered his backpack and climbed out of the SUV. There was a real strain of desperation in her voice.
As he walked across the brown grass toward the steps of the building, he again thought there was no way he could ever work among the politicians. He’d rather be on top of a windswept mountain with the likes of Dave Farkus.
Lois Fornstrom, the governor’s personal secretary, recognized Joe immediately and waved him through the anteroom to Rulon’s office. Several people sat in worn lounge chairs, obviously waiting for a word with the governor. A stocky man in an ill-fitting suit with a briefcase on his lap objected, saying he had been waiting for two hours. To Joe, he looked like a lobbyist of some kind — a slickster.
“He’s come all the way from Saddlestring,” Fornstrom said without sympathy.
“I came from Arlington, Virginia!” the man said, red-faced.
Joe stayed out of it and smiled at Fornstrom and entered Rulon’s private office. He closed the door behind him.
The governor was on the phone when he entered, and he looked up and waved Joe toward one of two chairs in front of his desk. Joe took off his hat and put it crown-down on the other chair and waited.
The governor had two offices — a larger public room used for bill signings, press conferences, and small groups, and this close and intimate office, which was dark, book-lined, and cluttered with memorabilia. A buffalo skull embedded with an ancient stone arrowhead dominated the wall behind the governor, and a tooled John Wayne Winchester Model 1873 lever-action carbine rested on a deer antler mount. Rulon had once told Joe he kept it loaded. Joe didn’t doubt it.
Rulon said into the phone, “You read the legislation, so why are you asking me? It says if you send any of your agents into our state to enforce federal gun laws, we’ll arrest them and throw them into the pokey. That’s what it says, that’s what I signed, and that’s what we’ll do.”
Rulon looked up at Joe and shook his head, exasperated. He loved giving it to the Feds. And the voters loved when he did it.
“That’s right,” Rulon said to whoever was on the other end, “and don’t start with the ‘gun culture’ canard. We don’t even have a gun culture in Wyoming. It’s just part of who we are. Our murder rate is damned low, too. You folks might learn something from that where you are. So spare me your lectures.”
Joe could hear a raised voice on the other end of the phone, and Rulon rolled his eyes and studied the ceiling. Joe looked up, too, and for the first time saw the dozens of pencils stuck into the ceiling tile. They looked like icicles hanging there. No doubt the governor had tossed them up there over the years, and many stuck.
“Our time is up,” Rulon said, suddenly impatient. He leaned forward in his chair, and the person on the other end continued to make his case.
“Tell you what,” Rulon said, “send them up here. Try me out to see if we’re serious. How about that?”
The governor slammed down the phone and said to Joe, “ATF bastards.”
“Ah,” Joe said.
“The damned Cowboy Congress hung me out to dry with this one. Sure, I signed it. But the Feds aren’t pleased.”
Joe knew Rulon’s description of the Wyoming legislature was Cowboy Congress. But he said it with some affection.
The moment the phone was cradled, Rulon had punched the DO NOT DISTURB button. And just that fast, the issue with the man from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was behind him.
“Good to see you, Joe.”
“Thank you, Governor.”
Rulon asked about Marybeth, about Saddlestring, about Sheriff Reed in a perfunctory manner. It was how he always established common ground. Wyoming had so few residents the governor practically knew them all, and familiarity was essential to his success and popularity, Joe knew.
“How are you getting along with your new director?” Rulon asked, probing Joe’s face with intensity.
“Fine, I guess. She picked me up at the airport this morning.”
“Really?” Rulon asked, immediately suspicious.
“She asked me to relay a message—”
“Auuugh,” Rulon groaned, cutting Joe off. “Is it about those damned Bambi-hugging stations of hers?”
“She called them Wildlife Appreciation Centers.”
Rulon rolled his eyes. “She thinks I’m made of money. Everybody does. I wish I could relive the day I let the fetching Mrs. Rulon convince me to name her good friend and fellow rabble-rouser Lisa Greene-Dempsey as the Game and Fish director. It was kind of a difficult time in our marriage, and… enough about that. We all make mistakes. Even me, as surprising as that may sound.”
Joe bit his tongue.
“Okay, to the business at hand,” Rulon said, shooting out his sleeve to check the time on his wristwatch. Joe knew it to be a signal to be quiet and listen.
“We have ten minutes before we’re interrupted,” Rulon said.
“Okay.”
“How much do you know about Medicine Wheel County?”
Joe’s heart sank. For a game warden, it was a district that was assigned as punishment.
“Am I being sent there?”
“So you’ve been there?”
“Passed through it on the way to South Dakota years ago,” Joe said.
Rulon said, “Those people up there… are peculiar. I don’t say that about many places in this state, and what I say in this room stays in this room, right?”
“Right.”
The governor swiveled in his chair and addressed the top right corner of a huge framed state map on the east wall.
“Those people up there are insular, inbred, cranky, and they didn’t vote for me in the last election. So to hell with them, I say. They remind me of hill people from somewhere else. More of them are on welfare and assistance per capita than any other county in the state. I don’t like them, and they don’t like me.”
Joe nodded that he understood what Rulon was saying even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it.
“It’s a shame, too,” Rulon said, “because that country up there is damned beautiful. It’s just too bad those cranky bastards live in it, collecting government checks. I’d just ignore them the best I could, except there’s a problem up there.
“Have you ever heard the name Wolfgang Templeton?”
Joe felt a twinge. He had heard the name, but he wasn’t sure he could recall the details. It wasn’t an easy name to forget. Rulon didn’t wait for Joe to conjure up his recollection.
“Templeton is a mystery man, an enigma,” Rulon said. “Nobody seems to know where he came from or where he got his money. But six years ago, he bought this magnificent old place — the only way I can describe it is as a castle — deep in the heart of Medicine Wheel County. It’s called Sand Creek Ranch. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard plenty. You can research the history of it later. We don’t have time for that now.
“Anyway, this Templeton has bought up most of the private holdings up there. He’s got his own little fiefdom, but he keeps completely to himself. No one up there — those cranky bastards — will say much about him other than they seem to revere the guy. Or they’re scared of him — one of the two.”
Joe was intrigued. Not that large landholdings weren’t often purchased by wealthy out-of-state owners — they were. But an extremely wealthy man buying up most of an impoverished county — that was unusual. Then it came to him, what he’d heard…
“The Feds suspect Templeton of being involved in organized crime,” Rulon said. “Actually, that’s not exactly right. They have suspicions that Templeton is operating some kind of extremely high-end murder-for-hire business. They’re very vague about what it is they think he’s involved in or what he’s under suspicion for. But for the last three years, they’ve been sniffing around and asking questions and bothering me. They assume since he lives in Wyoming that we must know about him, and they wonder why we don’t cooperate.”