“There’s an old logging road up there,” Latta said. “He’s probably standing on top of the seat of his four-wheeler so he can see us.”
“Do you know him?”
“Not sure. But it might be Bill Critchfield. He’s kind of the ringleader of the bunch. If it’s him, he’s probably poached more deer, elk, and birds in these hills alone than any other guy besides Gene Smith, who’s his best buddy. They live up in Wedell, but they spend a lot of their time down here.”
Joe said, “Have you ever caught him?”
“Twice,” Latta said wearily. “Caught him and Smith dead to rights while they were gutting out a dry doe on a sunny day in June, and another time with twenty dead pheasants in the bed of Critchfield’s pickup. Judge Bartholomew let them skate both times. You ever run into Judge Ethan Bartholomew?”
“Nope.”
“Good thing,” Latta said. “He has a way of making a game warden feel… kind of useless.”
“So what do you want to do now?” Joe asked while he folded up the damp canvas cover.
“Nothing to do,” Latta said. “Let’s release the birds and hope like hell they’ll take to cover in the canyons between here and Wedell before Critchfield and Smith wipe ’em out.”
Joe paused. “It’s that bad around here, huh?” He called Daisy in, and she bounded into the cab of his pickup.
“It’s a whole different world,” Latta said.
“Sounds like a plan. Not a good plan, but a plan,” Joe said. “I don’t like the idea of releasing these birds so they can be poached out. That just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Yeah,” Latta said with a shrug. “Used to bother the hell out of me, too. But we can’t take these birds home. My backyard isn’t big enough.”
It was meant as a joke, but Joe didn’t laugh.
Joe said, “Maybe we could set up surveillance and catch them in the act. With me here, you’ve just doubled your forces.”
Latta responded with a frown. “Yeah, and we can drag their sorry asses in front of Judge Bartholomew, who will say we entrapped them or some such bullshit. Naw,” Latta said, nodding toward the crate, “let’s let ’em go.”
“You’re the man in charge,” Joe said, shaking his head and leaning down to open the crate.
Daisy watched and whined as if tortured inside the cab of Joe’s truck while 150 pheasants shot out of the crate one by one like fireworks and soared into the dark timber on the north side of the meadow. Within three minutes, the crate was empty. Joe could see a few of the birds perching in the trees at the edge of the meadow, taking in their new surroundings.
“Good enough for government work,” Latta said, nonchalantly.
Joe was surprised Latta had chosen to release them all at once in the same place, and not disperse them throughout the drainage. But Latta was the local warden and he was running the show.
When Joe paused at the door of his pickup to take off his gloves before getting in, he heard a distant grinding and then a two-stroke motor fire up. The four-wheeler whined away in the trees.
“There goes Bill Critchfield back to tell his buddies so they can load their shotguns and charge up their spotlights,” Latta said with bitter resignation.
“Well,” Joe said, puzzled by what had just taken place, “I guess I’ll go find my motel and check in before it gets too late.”
“Where you staying?”
“The Whispering Pines Motel in Medicine Wheel,” Joe said.
Latta nodded but seemed troubled. “That’s the place that had a fire a month ago. Maybe you didn’t hear about it, but some poor guy from Cheyenne died in one of the cabins when it burned down during the night.”
Joe said, “Yeah, I heard about that. But I figure, what are the odds of the same place burning down twice?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Latta said. Then: “I live in Wedell. How about I buy you a beer at the Bronco Bar on your way to Medicine Wheel? Believe me, that motel won’t be full this time of year. In fact, you’ll probably be their only customer.”
“I could do that,” Joe said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” Latta said, putting his hands on his hips and surveying the darkening timber surrounding them, as if looking for additional spies. “Maybe you can tell me why Cheyenne wants you to ride along with me up here for a couple of days. It ain’t like I don’t have a good handle on my district.”
Joe nodded. Latta was already suspicious. He had a right to be, Joe thought.
But Joe had some questions of his own.
9
The downtown of Wedell was a single block of slumped and decaying storefronts, most of them boarded up. The only paved street was the old state highway that halved the few remaining businesses — a dollar store, a convenience store, a gas station with twenty-four-hour pumps, the ancient post office, a craft store/rock shop/hardware store, and the Bronco Bar, which was situated in the dead center of the block. Unpaved residential roads spurred off the old highway and led to a mishmash of double-wide trailers, clapboard homes, and a few two-story brick Victorian houses that towered over the rest of the community, looking like royalty that got off at the wrong stop.
Hard pellets of snow bounced off Joe’s pickup hood and windshield as he pulled in next to Jim Latta’s vehicle in front of the saloon. There were few other cars or trucks on the street, and no pedestrians. The pending darkness and the low cloud cover made Wedell seem particularly gloomy, although the neon Coors and Fat Tire Ale signs in the windows of the bar looked inviting.
He told Daisy to be patient, and followed Latta inside. Three patrons, all men wearing ball caps and muddy boots, sat at the long bar that ran the length of the room. They had bottles of beer in front of them, and they were all watching the Speed Channel as if they had money riding on who would win the three-month-old Pure Michigan 400 NASCAR race being replayed on the screen. All three glanced over at the two game wardens in their red uniform shirts, and their looks held just long enough to confirm that none of them were in trouble. When they were assured Latta and Joe weren’t looking for them, they shifted back to the race.
The bar itself was typical, Joe thought: dusty elk, bear, deer, and pronghorn antelope heads on the walls, yellowing Polaroid shots of drunken patrons from years before thumbtacked to the rough-cut timber walls, a hand-drawn poster above the bar mirror with the details of a raffle for a .270 Winchester rifle to benefit the local Gun Owners of America chapter. An old sign with frontier-style writing read:
A jukebox in the corner played Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.”
The woman behind the bar, who had big blond hair and an overfull figure and a wide Slavic face, said, “What can I get you, Jim?” to Latta.
“I’ll have a Coors Light,” he said, slipping into the farthest of two booths from the bar itself. To Joe, he said, “I’m watching my girlish figure.”
“Make it two,” Joe said to the bartender.
She plucked bottles from a cooler behind the bar and twisted off the caps. As she did, the sleeves of the black long-sleeve Henley she was wearing slid back to reveal Popeye-sized forearms from opening a lot of beer bottles in her career, Joe guessed.
Joe sat across from Latta. They were far enough away from the bar and the NASCAR race was loud enough that they wouldn’t be easily overheard.
The bartender came out from behind the bar with four bottlenecks gripped between the fingers of her right hand and hanging down like sleeping bats. In her left she had a plastic basket of bright yellow popcorn. Her shirt read DON’T FLATTER YOURSELF, COWBOY, I WAS LOOKIN’ AT YOUR HORSE, and she wore a silver buckle the size of a dinner plate.