Butch would have some hard questions to answer.

—

THE FIRE PIT Butch had built was cold, the rocks from the fire ring kicked away. Joe dismounted and tied Toby to a tree and carefully walked around the camp. He identified his own boot prints, Daisy’s prints, and large waffle-like impressions from Vibram hunting-boot soles, which he attributed to Butch. But he couldn’t discern which direction Roberson had gone after breaking his camp.

“Butch?” he called out.

He stopped and put his hands on his hips and looked west, into the thousands of acres of National Forest. Most of the roads within it had been closed, so it would be tough to drive inside. Butch had grown up in the area and had hunted the mountains all his life. Beyond the summit were succeeding waves of mountains, canyons, and heavy timber wilderness.

Joe smiled bitterly. Twelve Sleep County got its name because the Indians said it took “twelve sleeps” to walk or ride a horse from the west side of the mountains to the eastern slope. That was a lot of rough country.

—

JOE PHOTOGRAPHED THE CAMP, the tracks, and what was left of the fire pit. He had a feeling there would be local, county, state, and federal people who would want to look at them. As he did, he questioned himself on the conversation he’d had with Butch Roberson. Had he deliberately missed something? Had his familiarity with Butch made him less than cautious?

He sighed and powered down the digital camera. Then he untied Toby and cantered him down to his pickup so he could drive to Butch’s lot at Aspen Highlands.

5

BECAUSE HIS HOUSE ON BIGHORN ROAD WAS MIDWAY between Big Stream Ranch and the highway he’d need to take to get to Dull Knife Reservoir, Joe stopped long enough to let Toby out into the corral and dump the horse trailer. Poke, Dulcie’s gelding, greeted Toby by playfully biting him on the butt. Toby kicked back at Poke and missed. Rojo, Marybeth’s other horse, watched the two of them imperiously from the corner of the corral.

Joe’s district was considered a “two-horse” district by the department, meaning he received reimbursement for horses, tack, food, and vet bills. It was a two-horse district because of the vast size of it—more than 1,800 square miles. He was also in charge of a department snowmobile, a boat with an outboard motor as well as a drift boat, and a four-wheel ATV. And, of course, his assigned pickup, which was stuck on top of a mountain and he might never retrieve.

As he put the three horses out to pasture, he heard Marybeth’s van drive up the road and swing into the driveway in the front. He checked his watch—4:38 in the afternoon—and wondered why she was home so early.

As he unhooked the trailer hitch from the ball on his pickup, he heard Marybeth park in front. She was apparently on a break from work. Then the back door opened and slammed shut, and she emerged from the house. He thought she looked lovely: blond, slim, compact, with green eyes and nice cheekbones.

“Hey,” he said, cranking the trailer hitch up and over the ball of his truck.

“You saw Butch Roberson?” she asked.

He stood and wiped away a drip of sweat that coursed down the side of his face from his hatband. “How’d you know that already?”

“Dulcie told me. She said you called it in.”

“Yup.”

“Joe, did you hear what happened?”

“Some of it,” he said, repeating the reports he’d heard over the radio.

“Do they think Butch had something to do with it?”

“That’s my impression,” Joe said. “It’s still too early to say. I’m not sure anyone knows anything yet.”

“How did he seem to you?” she asked, concerned.

Joe shrugged. “Strange. Different. Spooked, I guess.”

“But he didn’t tell you anything? He didn’t confess?”

“Nope. And he didn’t shoot me, either.”

“I don’t think that’s funny, Joe.”

He grinned.

“Hannah is inside,” Marybeth said, gesturing toward the house. “I haven’t talked with her yet. She doesn’t want to talk. I don’t know what’s going on at their house, but apparently law enforcement is there questioning Pam.”

“Man,” Joe said, shaking his head. It was strange to be so close to people who were apparently under suspicion.

“I feel so bad for Hannah,” Marybeth said, as if reading his mind. “I don’t think she really knows what’s going on.”

“Maybe I’ll know more in a while,” Joe said, telling her his intention to go back up into the mountains to Aspen Highlands. “I guess I didn’t realize they’d bought a lot up there.”

“Pam mentioned it to me,” Marybeth said. “She said they’d scraped together enough to buy some land to build their retirement home. I don’t think they’ve started building anything yet, though. I don’t think they can afford to. The construction business hasn’t exactly been booming around here, as you know.”

“Could be worse,” Joe said. “They could be trying to restore a historic hotel.”

Marybeth’s glare caught him off guard, and he realized he’d hit a nerve.

“I was just joking,” he said, feeling his ears flush hot.

“I’m not amused,” she said.

“I’ll call when I know something,” he said, giving her a good-bye kiss that she returned without much enthusiasm.

“Hannah’s staying for dinner and maybe for the night,” Marybeth said. “When my shift is over, I’ll come back and feed everyone.”

“Sheridan and April are home?”

“They will be soon. Sheridan gets off at six, and April’s off at six-thirty. Sheridan’s supposed to pick April up.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” he said. “And go ahead and start dinner without me.”

“Ah,” she said. “I hoped you’d be home.”

“That’s the way it goes,” he said, climbing into the cab of his pickup. Daisy was already there.

—

JOE TOOK HAZELTON ROAD up into the Bighorns to Dull Knife Reservoir. Dust hung in the air on the gravel road—there had been plenty of traffic before he got there—and the waning sun fused through it to give the scene a burnished orange cast. Trees closed in and opened into mountain meadows and closed back in again, and he regretted his ill-timed joke with Marybeth about the hotel. It wasn’t necessary, and he didn’t harbor any resentment toward her or the prospect of the project. In fact, he trusted her business acumen and admired her tenacity, and sometimes wished he didn’t love his job and these mountains so much, so he could focus his ambition on enterprises that would better benefit his family.

“Remind me to apologize,” he asked Daisy. Daisy looked back as if she understood.

—

HE TURNED OFF the gravel road to a graded two-track at a sign in the trees announcing the Aspen Highlands development. The road plunged down into a wooded swale, then leveled out at the bottom as it got closer to the reservoir. Dull Knife had been created years before by damming the Middle Fork of the Powder River and flooding the creek basin. A smattering of cabins had been built on the east and west sides, but Aspen Highlands was obviously more preplanned. The roads through it were wide and straight and graded, and there were already a dozen or so homes built on two-acre lots in the trees.

The Roberson property was easy to find because of the collection of law enforcement vehicles he could see parked in the grass just off one of the spur roads. There were three sheriff’s department SUVs, a pale green U.S. Forest Service pickup, and a highway patrol cruiser. Joe swung in off to the side of the vehicles, told Daisy to stay, and cracked the windows for her.

It was a beautiful afternoon: warm, still, almost sultry. The air was fused with pine, pollen, and wildflowers. Joe could also get a whiff of the tawny surface of the reservoir itself.