But there was no cell-phone signal, which wasn’t unusual this far out. He closed the phone and dug out his handheld radio from the saddlebag. The static over the air made it impossible to establish communication with the dispatcher in Cheyenne 310 miles away. He squelched it down but still couldn’t find a clear channel. There were squawks and snippets of conversation going on, but he couldn’t determine the subject matter or the agencies of the law enforcement personnel doing the talking. He sighed and turned off the unit. He vowed to replace the batteries when he got home and request a new radio that worked better. This one, he thought, was shot.
—
HE WAS LATER ASKED why he hadn’t simply ridden down the mountain to his pickup and used the radio inside the cab to report the fence and request assistance. But at the time, he hadn’t even considered it because he couldn’t have known with foresight what he’d find. Cutting a fence was a nuisance and a misdemeanor but not a major crime requiring backup. Plus, he was a Wyoming game warden, one of fifty-four in the entire huge state. He patrolled his five-thousand-square-mile district alone, and it was normal to be so far away from other law enforcement that it was pointless to call them. He was used to dealing with armed citizens in the outback on his own, and he routinely handled situations that would require backup procedure in urban settings.
What he said when asked was, “It was just a cut fence.”
—
SO HE WALKED Toby through the middle of the gap into the timber, from private land into public land, with Daisy trailing.
The lodgepole pine forest was close, and the trunks closely packed. The canopy was open only in spots where there was rampant pine-beetle kill and the needles had dried, curled, and dropped from the branches to create a three-inch cushion of rust-colored carpet on the forest floor. The pine-beetle infestation had occurred slowly and predictably over the past fifteen years, sweeping from north to south along the Rocky Mountains. From New Mexico to British Columbia, the tiny insects burrowed into lodgepoles and deposited the larva and fungus that eventually killed the trees while they stood. Joe had read estimates that more than three million acres of trees in Wyoming were infested, and he’d seen entire mountainsides colored burnished red from dead standing timber. The only way to stop the invasion, he’d heard, was if the temperature dropped to thirty or forty below for several days in a row during the winter, which would kill the larvae. Either that or spraying the trees with insecticide when they began to show signs of infestation. The weather hadn’t cooperated, and forestry officials had been too paralyzed by budgets and bureaucracy to seriously mount a defense. Now it was too late, and there were tens of millions of acres of dead standing trees like so many unlit cigarettes . . . just waiting for a match.
Joe didn’t even want to think of what it would be like when the fires started. When they did, the Forest Service would be blamed for letting it happen. Joe didn’t think that was entirely fair, even though he was jaded enough to know that even if the service was blamed there would likely be no firings of employees or officials, because that rarely ever happened in the federal system. Nature was nature, he thought, and it was bigger than any regional forester or forest supervisor, even if he wasn’t sure they’d agree with that assessment.
As he was contemplating Armageddon as the result of fires stretching from Canada to Mexico, he smelled wood smoke. It hung thin and acrid in the mountain air.
Joe turned Toby’s head slightly to the northeast in the direction of the breath of wind that carried the smoke. The smoke was too thin and close to be from a forest fire, he thought. Daisy had noted it, too, and Joe assumed by the string of drool from her mouth to the pine needle carpet that there must be an accompanying food smell too faint for him to notice.
—
WHEN THE DRY CAMP came into view, Joe shouted, “Good afternoon.”
Although it looked like he could have gotten closer before speaking, he wanted the occupant of the camp to know he was coming. There was nothing worse than startling a likely armed man in his own camp, Joe knew.
In the clearing ahead, Joe could see a man wearing bulky camo clothing and squatting over a small fire with his back to him. A bulging pack hung on the branch of a dead pine, but there was no tent, horse, or ATV that Joe could see.
At the sound of Joe’s greeting, the man wheeled around and shifted his weight toward the pack. That’s when Joe saw the scoped rifle leaning against the dead tree.
“How’re things going?” Joe asked in a friendly tone. As he did, he pressured Toby’s right ribs with his leg so the horse would sidestep slightly and put a couple of trees between him and the man in the camp. That was another thing he’d learned long before: never approach a stranger head-on. Always come a little from the side so the scene was off-balance.
The man stood up slowly and turned toward Joe. His posture was tense, as if he were coiled up. Smoke from the small fire outlined his body.
Joe recognized him.
“Butch?”
“Joe?”
Butch Roberson looked to be equal measures startled, aggressive, and somehow regretful. As if he were resigned to what he would have to do next.
Butch was stocky and barrel-chested, with deep-set brown eyes, a three-day growth of heavy beard, and a wide bony jaw that made his head seem even larger than it was. He had black hair flecked with gray and a once broken nose that made him look like a fighter. He had a way of standing bent slightly forward with his arms stiff at his sides that suggested he would launch into an attack at any provocation. Until he opened his mouth, that is, and his soft-spoken tone belied the package.
Butch owned Meadowlark Construction in Saddlestring, a small company that built a few houses but mainly did renovations. He was Joe’s age, mid-to-late forties, and Joe knew him because Butch was the father of Hannah, Joe’s youngest daughter’s best friend on earth. He’d seen Butch mainly at Lucy’s plays and concerts, and the two had chatted at school functions and when one or the other was sent to pick up his daughter at the Pickett or Roberson home. But since Hannah had obtained her special learner’s permit and could drive a beat-up old sedan to the Pickett house herself, he’d seen less of her parents the past year.
Joe liked Hannah, and so did Marybeth. Hannah had recently expressed an interest in horses, and Marybeth was thrilled to have some help feeding and grooming in the corral behind their house.
Joe knew Butch to be a hard worker, a devoted husband and father, and an outdoorsman who lived to hunt and fish. In that respect, he wasn’t unusual at all in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming.
Because the only times they’d talked were at social functions related to their daughters, Joe found it awkward to find Butch hunched over a fire miles from the road.
Butch seemed to find it unsettling as well, Joe thought, because the look on his face was one Joe had never seen before.
Joe said, “What brings you up here?”
Butch seemed to be searching for the answer, and Joe noted the quick flick of his eyes in the direction of the rifle. Joe hoped it had been involuntary. Men confronted by game wardens in the wild often displayed tics and gestures that were uncharacteristic in the normal day-to-day. The innocent ones, the men who hunted and fished within the regulations and took pride in their ethics and sportsmanship, often displayed signs of nervousness and anxiety because they were disturbed at the possibility of being under suspicion. It was the boastful, overly friendly and outwardly confident backslappers, Joe had found, who were more likely guilty of something.