"Have you been listening to your radio this morning?" Sheriff McLanahan asked Joe. "I saw your truck in the parking lot."

Joe shook his head. "I'm off duty."

Because Marybeth and Lucy were in the wedding, they had left the Picketts' small state-owned home early that morning in Marybeth's van. Joe had brought Sheridan in his green Ford Game and Fish pickup after breakfast, but he hadn't turned on his radio during the drive.

"Then you haven't heard that they found a game warden dead over in Jackson," McLanahan said.

Joe felt a shiver run through him. "What?"

Sheridan had quickly become bored with Lucy and her friends in the play area that had been put up far enough away from the reception that the children wouldn't bother the adults. The placement had Missy's stamp all over it, Sheridan thought. A swing set had been erected, as well as smaller-sized tables and chairs complete with plastic tea sets.

She wandered away from the play area and the reception into the makeshift parking lot. It was tough being thirteen. Too old to play, too young to be considered one of the adults. Her parents were fine, she thought, they never treated her with disrespect, although her mother was starting to bug her in ways she couldn't yet say. In a situation like this, with adults all around, she was patronized. She climbed into her dad's pickup truck and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. At least she finally had contact lenses and didn't look so much like a geek, she thought.

Absently, she clicked on the radio. It was set to the channel reserved for game wardens and brand inspectors. She sometimes liked to listen to the interplay between the men and the dispatchers, usually women, at the headquarters in Cheyenne. There was a surprising amount of activity on the radio for a Saturday morning in early September.

"The Jackson game warden," McLanahan said, following Joe and Marybeth to their table. "Found him dead this morning in his house."

"Murdered?" Joe asked. He felt Marybeth tense up.

"Naw. Ate his own gun."

Marybeth gasped.

"Forty-four Magnum," McLanahan said. "Not much left of his head, is what I hear."

Joe was out of his chair and three inches from McLanahan's face. He hissed, "That'll be enough with the details right now in front of my wife."

McLanahan feigned hurt and surprise. "Sorry, Joe. I thought you'd want to know."

The new sheriff turned and left, heading for his table on the other side of the yard.

"Joe, was he talking about Will Jensen?" Marybeth asked.

"No," Joe said, confused. "It couldn't have been. He must have his information about half-right, as usual."

Marybeth shook her head. "I remember when we met Will and Susan. Remember their kids? Sheridan and their son tore around their house while you and Will talked at their kitchen table."

It made no sense to Joe. Jensen was a rock, a larger-than-life man who was considered one of the best there ever was within the department. Will Jensen was what game wardens wanted to be, the kind of man Joe aspired to be.

"I remember thinking," Marybeth continued, looking up at Joe, "I remember thinking how much they were like us."

Joe sat back down, shaken. "Let's hold off on this until we find out what the situation really is. Remember, all the information we've got at this point is from Deputy McLanahan."

"SheriffMcLanahan," Marybeth corrected gently.

Joe looked up, saw Sheridan running toward them from the cars, her blue dress flapping.

"All I know is that Will Jensen did not commit suicide," Joe said bluntly. "That's not possible."

"Joe…"

"Dad!" Sheridan gushed, stopping in front of them, breathing hard from her run. "Guess what I just heard on the radio?"

THREE

The drive back to their home from the wedding took place in the soft light of pre-dusk that deepened the greens of the meadows and blazed the muffin-shaped haystacks with bronze, as if they were lit from within. The ranch country rolled toward the mountains like swells in the ocean, shadows darkening in the folds of the terrain. Joe had noticed the soft bite of approaching fall, and now he could see that a few cottonwoods in the river valley were beginning to turn.

Sheridan was silent and sleepy in the passenger seat. Marybeth followed Joe in her van, giving him plenty of distance on the dirt road so that the dust his pickup kicked up would settle back down.

"It's pretty," Sheridan said. "This shouldbe my favorite time of year."

"It's the best time, I think."

"Maybe someday I'll agree with you," she said. "But I've got the blues."

Joe knew what Sheridan meant. His daughter had begun junior high the week before, which meant a new school, a new schedule, and many more students. Her load of homework had tripled from the year before. And she was trying out for the volleyball team. Because Lucy and Sheridan now had different school schedules, Marybeth spent much more time driving them from place to place, delivering them or picking them up after school or activities. Joe had been taking Sheridan to school, and she put on a brave face for him, but he knew she was nervous and emotional about the change.

Joe loved the fall, even though it meant that big-game hunting seasons would soon be under way and he'd be in the field checking licenses and hunters from before sunrise until well after dark for nearly two and a half months. It was his busiest time as a game warden, and often exhausting. But, as always, he would throw himself into it, establish his rhythm. And, as always, he would find himself a little disappointed when it was over and fall surrendered to winter. He loved working hard, being outside, feeling his senses tingle as he approached a hunting camp not knowing who or what to expect. For two months, nearly every single human he encountered would be armed. These were men who lived their lives solely for the reward in the fall of their one-week or two-week hunt. They wanted to drink hard, eat like soldiers after a year-long march, hunt a pronghorn antelope, mule deer, elk, or moose, and burn out all of the primal energy and desire that they'd stored up during the previous year of humiliation and frustration. Sometimes, he encountered men in the field who didn't want to meet a game warden that day. That's when things got interesting.

Now, though, Joe was tired; he had eaten and drunk too much, even danced a few dances with Marybeth, Sheridan, and Lucy. Missy, flushed with wine, had dragged him from their table to the springy dance floor. As it turned out, it was her next-to-last dance before she joined Bud in his black Suburban and headed for the tiny Saddlestring airport. The newlyweds would take the seventeen-passenger commuter plane to Denver, then fly to Italy for their honeymoon. They would be gone for ten days. Bud would be back in time for the fall roundup when they moved their cattle from the mountain grass to the valley floor.

But as he drove, Joe could not stop thinking about Will Jensen, wondering what the circumstances could have been that made him kill himself. It didn't make sense to him. Will had been tough, levelheaded. Devoted to his family and his job. Or at least that's what Joe had thought.

The Picketts lived in a small two-story house eight miles from Saddlestring on the Bighorn Road. The house was owned by the state, and had been their home for six years. It sat back from the road behind a recently painted white fence. There was a detached garage that housed Joe's snowmobile and the family van, and a loafing shed and corral in back for their two horses. The Saddlestring District was considered a "two-horse" district, meaning that the department budgeted for at least two horses, tack, and feed. From the front yard, the southern face of Wolf Mountain dominated the view. Between the house and the mountain, the East Fork of the Twelve Sleep River serpentined through a willow-choked meadow toward the main river and town.