“Just scouting elk,” Butch said, finally.

Joe nodded. “Nothing wrong with that. Did you find ’em?”

Butch chinned over his left shoulder in a vague westerly direction. “Six-by-six and a six-by-seven and a dozen cows and calves,” he said, meaning bulls with six and seven points on their antlers.

“That’s encouraging,” Joe said, climbing down. “I need to get up here and do an elk trend count soon. But it’s good to hear that you found some.”

Butch nodded, but his eyes stayed hard on Joe’s face, like he was expecting another shoe to drop.

Joe grunted again as he stood on the ground. His lower back joined his knees and thighs in the pain parade. But he thought it important to dismount, get on Butch’s level, so he wouldn’t seem imperious by talking down to him.

“I didn’t see your rig anywhere on the Big Stream,” Joe said. “What did you do, walk here through the National Forest?”

“From the road,” Butch said, peering up and over Joe’s shoulder.

“That’s quite a hike.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“Seven, eight miles?”

“I do twenty a day when I’m hunting,” Butch said without a hint of boastfulness. He was stating a fact. That was something Joe had noticed before when he talked to Butch, whether it was about hunting, or the snowpack, or roads that were still open into the mountains and break lands, or their daughters—no humor, no nuance. Butch was a serious man who didn’t use many words and who seemed to regard small talk as a waste of time and calories. In that regard, Joe found him a kindred soul.

Joe led Toby twenty feet toward Butch and tied the horse to a live tree. While he did, Daisy bounded forward, tail stiffly wagging from side to side, and snuffled Butch’s camo trousers. There was an etiquette about entering another man’s camp, and that was to keep a distance until invited inside. Daisy had broken the rule.

“Daisy,” Joe warned, dropping his voice.

“It’s fine. I like dogs. She hunt?”

“We’ll see,” Joe said. “I’m working with her until bird season, and then I’ll give her a go. Don’t let her eat what you’re cooking.”

“Just heating up coffee,” Butch said. “I already had lunch. You hungry?”

“No, but thanks for asking.”

“I know I’m not supposed to have a fire.”

Joe nodded. There had been an official fire ban since early that summer, placed there by the Forest Service due to the dead trees. The rule was hated by campers and hikers. Dozens of campsites had been closed in the area, and dozens more were rumored to be closed. Joe hadn’t said anything because the fire ban was federally enforced and not in his purview.

When Joe didn’t respond, Butch nodded, then stood there expectantly. Joe wanted to tell him to relax. Instead, he tried for common ground.

“When I left this morning, Hannah and Lucy were still asleep on the living room floor. They like to get out sleeping bags and watch movies, but I think they talk more than they watch,” Joe said. Lucy and Hannah were both entering the ninth grade at Saddlestring Middle School. They’d been friends since grade school and shared the same interests in drama, choir, and dance. Lucy never hesitated to tell Joe and Marybeth that she envied Hannah, who lived in town and could ride her bike everywhere. Unlike her, who was stuck in a state-owned Game and Fish Department house eight miles away from the action on a gravel road.

“Teenagers can sleep,” Butch said.

Joe laughed. “I’ve got three of ’em. Three girls, that is. You’re right—they can sleep.”

“That’s what they seem to do best,” Butch said, his face suddenly wistful. Then: “Hannah used to be my little buddy. I’d get her up before dawn and we’d go out and scout game or go fishing. She kind of lost interest in that when . . .”

Joe looked up, waiting for the rest. But Butch had flushed and looked away. And Joe realized the rest of the sentence might have had to do with Lucy.

“Never mind,” Butch grumbled.

Joe let it go. He knew the feeling. His oldest daughter, Sheridan, had accompanied him often into the field when she was growing up. She’d announced once that she wanted to be a game warden herself, or a master falconer, or a horse trainer. That was before Sheridan had completed her first year at the University of Wyoming, though she had yet to declare a major. She could sleep, too, and that’s all she did on the days she wasn’t working as a waitress at the Burg-O-Pardner to earn money over the summer before starting her second year.

April, their seventeen-year-old ward, worked part-time at a western-wear store in retail between bouts of being grounded. And when she was home and grounded . . . she slept.

“When did she get there?” Butch asked.

“Hannah?”

“Yeah.”

“Last night some time,” Joe said. “I saw her car parked out front.”

Butch nodded. Then, without preamble: “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you what you’re doing up here.”

Joe explained the line of water guzzlers, then finding the cut fence. As he did, he watched Butch carefully.

There was a slight reaction, a twitch on the corners of Butch’s mouth.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Joe asked breezily.

Butch shook his head and said, “They don’t need to put up fences like that and close the roads. We hunted up here for a hundred years on what is supposed to be public land. Now they berm the access roads so we can’t get in. Tell me what’s public about that?”

Joe didn’t bite, and it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Butch had strong feelings and opinions when it came to access to hunting areas. That wasn’t unusual, either. Citizens in the area and the state took natural-resource decisions personally, and often railed against the public-lands managers who made decisions. Joe had heard the argument countless times, and sympathized to some degree. And because he was a state and not a federal employee, he often found himself in the middle. Which was why he hadn’t brought up the illegal campfire.

Joe looked up and said, “I haven’t called it in yet. No one knows about it except you and me. But I would guess that if a guy went down there with a stretcher and a fencing tool, he could fix it so no one would ever even know it was down. It’s not like the Feds send out line riders to check it.”

Butch looked away. He grumbled, “I hear you.”

“That’s good.”

“So the only reason you’re up here is those guzzler things?”

The question took Joe by surprise. “Why else?”

Butch shrugged. “Sure you don’t want some coffee before I kick the fire out and move on?”

“I’m sure.”

With that, Butch tossed the last of his tin cup of coffee onto the forest floor.

“You need to borrow a stretcher?” Joe asked.

“Naw. I built fence all through high school. I know how to fix a fence.”

“Take it easy, Butch.”

“You too, Joe.”

Joe turned, puzzled by the whole exchange, and untied the reins of his horse and called Daisy back.

As he pulled himself into the saddle, Butch said something Joe didn’t catch.

“What’s that, Butch?”

“I said, thanks for watching over Hannah.”

“It’s Marybeth mostly,” Joe said.

“I guess so,” Butch said, as he shouldered into his heavy pack.

Joe noted how big and heavy the pack seemed to be for a day of scouting.

—

AFTER CHECKING the last two guzzlers—they were full and operational—Joe rode Toby slowly down the mountain toward his pickup. Daisy lagged behind, exhausted, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. It was hot, mid-eighties, and Joe felt sweat run down his spine and into his Wranglers. Dense cream lather worked out between the saddle and Toby’s sweaty back. As Joe cleared the trees he turned in his saddle to look at the top of the mountain where it went bald above the tree line. There was still snow up there, even in August.

He sighed and settled back into the slow gait of the horse. The previous October, during the first heavy snow of the season, he’d been on top of the summit in his department pickup and had gotten it stuck in a snowfield he never should have tried to drive across. The reason he was up there was to try and assist his friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer and federal fugitive, who was in trouble. In the process, Joe had broken his hand and watched as a wounded Nate drove away. Joe hadn’t heard from Nate since, and given the circumstances and the body count that resulted, Joe didn’t mind. He’d needed the ten months since to heal in body and mind.