“Happy hour,” she said, placing the four beers down on the table with a thud. To Latta: “As if you didn’t know.”
Latta grinned. “Shawna, this is Joe. Joe, this is Shawna.”
By the way Latta and Shawna exchanged looks, Joe guessed there was some history between them. He said, “Nice to meet you.”
“No problem,” she said, as if the pleasure was all his. She assessed Joe with a practiced eye from his boots to his hat. Her eyes caught on his wedding ring and hung there for a long second before regaining momentum and proceeding up his arm to his face. By the time she met his eyes she’d dismissed him.
“Shawna here was the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association barrel-racing champion of the world back in 1997,” Latta said.
“Back when I was younger and weighed less than my horse, anyway,” she said. “Give me a holler if you boys need a reride on them beers.” She didn’t look back over her shoulder at Latta as she returned to the bar and her high-backed stool to watch the conclusion of the race.
“Quite a charmer,” Joe said, sipping his beer. He hadn’t expected a glass, and it was the kind of place where they didn’t even ask.
“We kind of had a thing a few years ago after my wife left. You know what you hear about barrel racers in the sack? Well, it’s true,” Latta said with a defensive grin.
“I didn’t mean to insult her or you,” Joe said quickly.
“You didn’t,” Latta said. “She’s pretty rough around the edges. I get that.”
Joe didn’t know Latta was divorced. In fact, he didn’t know much about him at all. There were fifty-two game wardens in the state, and they were a different lot, Joe knew. Some kept in touch with other game wardens and worked shoulder to shoulder with them, some closely followed the goings-on at headquarters and reported back, and some kept completely to themselves. Latta kept to himself. Divorce was a common casualty within the profession, mainly due to wardens’ long hours, remote postings, and poor pay. Joe had expected Latta to make departmental small talk and ask him about their new director, LGD, and the changes coming at the agency, but he didn’t.
“So,” Latta said, slipping on his stoic law enforcement game face so smoothly Joe felt a tug in his gut, “why are you here? They should know by now I’m not looking for any help. I’ve been doin’ my job up here for twenty-three years without once getting written up. But I do my own thing. I don’t even like trainees breathing down my neck. If they got a problem with me or the way I’m doing my job, they should tell me direct. They shouldn’t send you up here to spy on me.”
Joe said, “I’m not here to spy on you.”
Latta probed into Joe’s eyes for a tell. Joe let him.
“So why are you here?”
“LGD has a burr under her saddle when it comes to game wardens creating more public access with walk-in areas on private land. She knows there aren’t any up here; I guess she thought I could help you out.”
Latta looked away. So there was something Latta was hiding or suspecting, Joe thought. He didn’t have enough information or familiarity with Latta to guess what it was.
“Now I feel kind of stupid,” Latta mumbled. “I thought… well, it’s pretty well known you’ve done some work on the side for the governor, Joe. You don’t exactly have a low profile, with all the stuff you’ve gotten involved in over the years. So when I hear the famous Joe Pickett is coming to shadow me for a couple of weeks, well…”
Joe thought, Famous Joe Pickett. He couldn’t even comprehend the words.
Instead of letting Latta speculate further and maybe get closer to the truth, Joe said, “Back there when we released those birds you said this place is a whole different world. What did you mean by that?”
Latta paused, then finished his first beer and set it aside. He reached for the second. “I guess every district is unique in its own way. I bet you’ve got plenty of war stories to tell about yours.”
“I do,” Joe said, “but we aren’t talking about my district right now.”
Latta grinned sheepishly, caught at trying to divert the question in a clumsy way. He said, “Well, have you been up here before?”
“Just to pass through.”
“It’s a tough place to live,” Latta said. “In some ways it’s got all a certain kind of man could ask for. In other ways, it’s got nothing at all.”
Joe waited for a moment, and said, “You’ll have to unpack that for me.”
“It’ll take a little while,” Latta said, looking over in an attempt to get Shawna’s attention. “In fact, it’s going to take another round.”
“None for me,” Joe said.
“Shawna,” Latta boomed, “we need a reride.”
“There was a time when Medicine Wheel County looked like it was gonna be in the big leagues,” Latta said, leaning forward toward Joe across the table. “We’re talkin’ turn of the last century. There was a big-ass gold-mining operation up here, and coal mines that employed hundreds of people. You passed most of those old places on the road you came on today. The owners of the gold mine were named Eric and Maïda Wedell. They were one of the richest families in the state at one time and the town of Wedell was a big shit. Now look at it.”
Joe recalled the historical plaques he hadn’t stopped to read.
Latta said, “This place at one time was booming. Gold, copper, coal, oil — there were even two big-time lumber mills and a hell of a logging industry. There are old logging roads everywhere in the hills. Copper was a big one. All three of the towns grew like crazy — Medicine Wheel and Wedell were rivals, trying to be the biggest. Sundance was the smallest of the three towns in the county then. If you look at the old newspapers, which I’ve done, you’ll see that Medicine Wheel had an opera house and an orchestra, and Wedell right here used to have a dance hall where they brought in big-time entertainers from California and New York. Hell, they had Lily Langtry and Houdini right here in this town at one time. Medicine Wheel had a morning paper and an evening paper — one for Republicans and one for Democrats.
“I mean, what did you see when you drove here today?” Latta said. “Pretty mountains, streams, wildlife out the wazoo. The weather isn’t as severe as where you live, and the wind doesn’t blow like it does in Cheyenne, Casper, or Rawlins. Some people might say these mountains don’t compare to the Bighorns, the Winds, the Tetons, or the Snowy Range, and they don’t. These are nice gentle mountains. You won’t fall off a cliff here or die from exposure, and we don’t have all the damned wolves and grizzlies that will chew your ass off. This is paradise compared to them places. Tourists used to come through here on their trips between Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. Rich guys from the Midwest used to build second homes here because it was just so damned scenic and mild.”
Four more beers arrived, just as Joe had finished his first. Latta thought nothing of it, and grasped his third by the neck.
“Take it easy, cowboy,” Shawna cautioned as she returned to the bar.
“You know me,” Latta said.
“And that there’s the problem,” she countered. One of the patrons at the bar guffawed and turned quickly away.
Latta ignored her and the patron. He told Joe, “Medicine Wheel County in 1920 had a population of seventy thousand folks — bigger than Cheyenne or Casper or any other damned place in Wyoming. There was even an effort to move the state capitol from Cheyenne up here. Of course, the Union Pacific Railroad ran Wyoming then, and they nixed the idea. But the old-timers around here still hate Cheyenne for that.”