Then: “So you’ve shot your wad, Batista. Now you’re going to have to decide if you want to face me one-on-one like a man, or are you going to send that helicopter you promised?”
Farkus turned to McLanahan. He said, “There isn’t any helicopter, is there?”
“Nope. There never was.”
“I wonder if this changes our strategy?”
McLanahan shrugged. “I’d guess we’ll keep heading for that canyon. What I can’t figure out is why he called them. Now they’ll get a fix on this location.”
Farkus shivered. He hadn’t thought of that. He wondered how long it would be before a missile came screaming at them out of the sky.
“Let’s hope Butch was right that they only had one for the time being,” McLanahan said. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t order up some more.”
Farkus barely heard him because as he watched, something strange was happening to Butch Roberson. He had started to glow.
“Look,” Farkus whispered.
Where before Roberson could be seen only because his form blocked out the stars, he was now bathed in slight orange. Farkus could see Butch’s features and clothing. When Farkus leaned to the side and looked out at the forest from between the rocks, he saw that the trees had begun to glow orange as well.
“Oh my God,” Butch said into the handset. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Without giving Batista a chance to reply, Butch powered down the handset and threw it down the mountain. Farkus heard it strike a branch, then hit a rock a beat later.
“Let’s go,” Butch said to them.
“What’s happening?” Farkus asked. “What’s out there?”
Butch Roberson shook his head. He said, “First they put up fences and blocked all the roads to the public. Then they sat on their butts behind their desks and watched pine beetles kill millions of trees for thousands of miles.
“Now,” Butch said, his face a mask of weariness, “they’re going to burn it all down and maybe us with it.”
“The missile started a fire?” Farkus asked.
“That’s what he’s saying, genius,” McLanahan said sharply.
29
JOE URGED TOBY DOWN THE MOUNTAIN IN THE DARK but let his horse choose the route. Toby chose well and stayed on a well-established game trail that skirted most of the hazards and kept them out of situations where they’d need to back out. It was mindless riding except for the occasional branch Joe had to duck under, and he spent the next two hours letting facts and questions about the situation float through his mind, hoping they would somehow string together into some kind of plausible thread that would explain why he was there and what he was doing and what Butch Roberson had set in motion. He’d learned over the years to let his subconscious work on problems, and more often than not it had led to good results. Thunderclap-like revelations came not when he was puzzling them over or talking them out, but while he was putting up elk-fence on a rancher’s hayfield or cleaning out his garage or taking a shower.
So he focused on the task at hand—getting down the mountain in the dark and relying on Toby to get him there—and let his mind try to make order out of disorder.
The rapid response by the EPA the same day of resuming construction of Butch’s home still nagged at him. It was as if someone on-site had been poised and ready to make the call. Pam had not identified any business competitors or personal enemies whom she thought capable of such an act, and Joe couldn’t imagine someone in the valley harboring such hatred toward Butch—and such patience—that he or she wouldn’t be known. Everybody knew everything about each other in Saddlestring, and word would have been out if someone was gunning for Butch, Joe thought. So it must have been someone unknown to Butch, or someone he’d never suspect—and someone who had the power to fire up Batista.
Then there were the acts that followed the murders; acts that seemed desperate and out of character for Butch. Burying the two agents on his own land, then disposing of their car in the canyon. Neither was well thought-out, and Butch must have known that both would quickly be discovered within days if not hours. Both pointed straight at Butch, except something didn’t jibe in the sequence for Joe.
Butch didn’t come off as a runner, Joe thought. After shooting the agents, it seemed much more in character for Butch to drive to the sheriff’s office and turn himself in. Or even turn the rifle on himself. But to run?
And who lent a ride to Butch as far as the Big Stream Ranch? Was it an innocent, or someone complicit in the murders? As far as Joe knew, no one had stepped forward to admit they’d given the newly infamous fugitive a ride.
There were plenty of locals Joe knew who had animus toward the Feds and who would be sympathetic to Butch’s situation. But despite that, how many would actually assist an armed man who had just committed a double homicide? Who would potentially implicate themselves in such a crime out of empathy for Butch?
Joe thought about what Butch had gone through in the past year, how he’d been persecuted to the point that his mental health and his family were nearly destroyed. He wondered why Pam had kept the situation to herself—both the compliance order and Butch’s depressed reaction—while the pressure built. And how Hannah had remained close friends with Lucy but had never given away what was going on in her own home between her mom and her dad.
And there was something else, and Joe wasn’t sure he wasn’t attaching more significance to it than it warranted. But he now thought about how Butch had looked at him the other afternoon, the way his eyes seemed to implore something to Joe that Joe couldn’t read at the time. Joe had sensed guilt or panic, but now he thought it might have been something else. It was as if Butch thought Joe might somehow understand, which Joe didn’t at the time and wasn’t sure he did now.
Understand what? Joe thought. Why did Butch think Joe would understand why he was acting that way? Even though they got along well, the basis of the relationship between Butch and Joe was based on the fact their daughters were best friends. Outside of that, Joe didn’t think the two of them would be any closer than any local Joe met in the field or around town.
Then he recalled the layout and details of the two-acre lot. The Kubota tractor. The plot of dug-up ground where the agents were found. The surrounding homes in the trees of the subdivision. The shot-up target Butch had used to sight in his rifles and blow off steam.
That’s when Joe thought the unthinkable. A thread tied together what he knew.
And he didn’t like it one bit.
—
HE WAS JOLTED out of his dark theorizing when he heard the cracking of branches directly in front of him. Toby’s ears pricked up, and Joe could feel the horse tense between his legs. Something was coming up the game trail fast and hard in the dark, and it was not concerned with stealth.
He strained forward in the saddle, squinting in hope of seeing better through the gloom. His headlamp wouldn’t throw light far enough into the trees to see anything yet.
Behind him, one of the agents lost control of his horse when the mount started crow-hopping and the man fell heavily to the ground with a shout.
The sound of twigs and dry branches breaking rose in volume, and a small constellation of glowing blue lights like manic fireflies filled the trees. They were eyes reflecting back from his headlamp.
Elk—cows and calves and spikes and bulls—were suddenly pouring up through the forest. Heavy antlers of the bulls, still in velvet, thunked tree trunks with the sound of muffled baseball bats. Joe watched the herd draw close and part around him like a river coursing around an island, only to rejoin farther up the mountain.