Joe cradled the phone.
“Was that Trey?” Marybeth asked.
“Yup.”
“Is it true about Will Jensen?”
“It’s true.”
She shook her head. “I just can’t understand it.”
Joe shrugged at her in a “what can I say?” gesture.
“Did he ask you to transfer?”
Joe tried to read her face. It was impassive, but her eyes sparkled and gave her away. She was intrigued.
“Temporarily.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“What do you think about that?”
“When would you start?”
“I’d leave Monday. The elk opener is next week.”
“In two days?”
She folded her arms, eyes locked with Joe.
Sheridan had changed into a sweatshirt and jeans and brought her world history assignment into the living room so she could spread it out on the coffee table. She noticed that her mother’s back filled the office door, and by her posture Sheridan could tell that her parents were having a serious discussion. Sheridan had assigned levels to her parents’ discussions, and shared them with Lucy.
Level One was simply banter, but sometimes with an edge. During Level One, her parents moved freely around the house, talking as if Sheridan and Lucy couldn’t hear them or didn’t exist. Level Two was when her father was in his office and her mother blocked the door. They could still be overheard, but they didn’t necessarily want to be.
Sheridan watched as her mother stepped into the office and shut the door behind her. As she did, Lucy came down the hall still wearing her flower girl’s dress. That was a difference between Sheridan and Lucy: Sheridan couldn’t wait to change when she got home.
“We’re at Level Three,” Sheridan whispered to Lucy.
“What about?”
“Something about Jackson,” Sheridan said, still whispering. “I didn’t get it all.”
“I’d be more excited if I could go with you,” Marybeth said. “But with school just starting, and all of the shuttling I need to do with the girls, I can’t.” Not to mention Marybeth’s stillfledgling office management business, Joe thought. Marybeth did the accounting and inventory management for the local pharmacy, a new art gallery, and Wolf Mountain Taxidermy.
“Maybe I can call Trey and pass on it,” Joe said.
“Don’t you dare,” she said quickly. “This could be an opportunity. And obviously, Trey thinks highly enough of you to offer you this.”
“I don’t know how long it will last, or if it’ll lead to anything.”
“And we don’t know that it won’t,” she said. “Jackson Hole is about as high profile as you can get in this state.”
Joe knew that Will Jensen had shunned a high profile, but it came with the territory. The department sometimes sent press clippings out when game wardens made the news or were featured in local press. There were twice as many stories about Will Jensen than any other employee.
“Jackson is different,” Joe said lamely. “It’s a whole different animal than Saddlestring.”
Marybeth walked over and sat on his desk. “Are you saying you don’t want to do it?”
“No, I’m not saying that. But now isn’t a very good time to leave you and the girls, even if it’s for a couple of weeks.”
She laughed. There was an edge of bitterness in the laugh that bothered him. “Joe, once hunting season starts, we don’t even see you anyway. It’s not like you’re around to.. .”
“Do my share?” he finished for her, feeling his face get hot.
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
Joe was stung. “For the last two years, I made just about every one of Sheridan’s games,” he said. “I went to Lucy’s Christmas play last year.”
Marybeth smiled, showing she didn’t want to argue.
“And you missed everything else,” she said gently. “Teacher conferences, Lucy’s choir, backtoschool night, Sheridan’s play, the school carnival . . .”
“Only in September and October,” he said defensively.
“And November,” Marybeth said. “But Joe, my point is that you’ll be gone anyway. So if you’re gone here or you’re gone there, it won’t burden us very much. We’re three strong women, you know.”
His neck still burned. Being a good father and husband meant everything to him. He sincerely tried to make up for his absences in the other months, and had started taking Sheridan on patrol with him when he could to make up for the time he was away. He planned to do the same with Lucy as she got older.
“Trey said Phil Kiner can come up in a couple of weeks to fill in,” Joe said grumpily. “So you won’t need to worry about that.”
“We’ll still get the phone calls, though,” she said. “And the drunken hunters who stop by. And a mad rancher every once in a while. That’s just the way it is.”
“Man . . .”
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “There’s no doubt that we’re best when we’re working as partners, Joe.
No doubt. Things are still a little . . . fragile around here.”
He turned his head away, but stroked her thigh, listening.
“But if we’re ever going to provide better for our girls, we’ve got to be willing to take some risks. If this leads to a better job or a better salary for you, it’s something we need to do.”
“You’ll be okay, then?”
She smiled down at him. “For a while, sure. I just hope it doesn’t drag on too long. If it does, you’ll have to come get us and take us with you.”
“You think you’d like Jackson?”
Marybeth shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s got better restaurants. There’s definitely more to do. But I’m not sure I’d want to raise our kids there.”
“I’m not sure either,” he said.
“But you can scout it out for us while you’re there. You can check out the schools, the atmosphere. Then let me know what you think.”
He shook his head. “That’s a decision we’d make together, like everything else.”
“That’s what I mean about being better as partners,” she said.
“I’ll call Trey and tell him I’m in,” Joe said.
Outside the door, Sheridan and Lucy exchanged glances.
“The kids from Jackson are the snottiest kids in the state,” Sheridan whispered. “When we play them we try to destroy them, but we never do. You should see their bus. It’s the best bus there is.”
“But don’t they have skiing?” Lucy asked, wideeyed.
“And a Ripley’s BelieveItorNot museum?”
The door opened suddenly, filled with their dad.
“Show’s over, girls,” he said. “Don’t you have homework?”
He went out to feed the horses. A single pole lamp threw ghostly bluewhite light across the corral. The horses, the paint Toby and young sorrel Doc, nickered when they saw him coming, knowing it was time to eat. Joe tossed them hay and watched them eat, a foot on the rail. The profile of Wolf Mountain was black against a dark sky smeared with stars.
He would miss Wolf Mountain, he thought. And Crazy Woman Creek. And the view he got from his favorite breaklands perch, where he could see the curvature of the earth.
He rubbed his eyes. He was getting ahead of himself here, he thought. It was much too soon to start thinking about things like that. There was plenty to do before he left for Jackson.
As he walked back to the house, he thought about the second call. The one where a man simply breathed until the message ran out. It was likely a crank, or a mistake. But since Joe identified himself on the voice mail, the man had to know whom he was calling. Joe’s number was in the slim Twelve Sleep County telephone book. The caller could be anyone: a hunter Joe had cited, a rancher he had tangled with, even a state or federal employee Joe had been on the opposite side of a land use issue with. Whomever, it was likely someone harmless.
But if he was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks, Joe didn’t want to chance anything when it came to Marybeth and his daughters. He’d need to ask for some help.
Four
After church on Sunday, Joe and Marybeth planned to spend the rest of the afternoon getting him packed so he could leave early Monday. For some reason, both assumed that it would take much longer than it actually did. Joe found himself feeling oddly disappointed that they had completed their task within an hour. He had a duffel bag of red uniform shirts and blue Wranglers, underwear, his Filson vest, coats, heavy parka, and boots. All of the gear he would need was already in his pickup, the place he spent most of his day anyway. Joe roamed the house and the barn, trying to find things he couldn’t do without while he was in Jackson. There was little. He topped off the duffel with a few books he’d not yet read, and a small framed family photo from his desktop that he wished was more recent.
Absently listening to a broadcast of the first week of NFL football on the radio, Joe drove down the twolane highway that paralleled the river en route to Nate Romanowski’s place and did a mental inventory of items in his truck.
His standardissue weaponry consisted of the .308 carbine secured under the bench seat, a .270 Winchester rifle in the gun rack behind his head, and his 12gauge Remington Wingmaster shotgun that was wedged into the coil springs behind his seat. He also had a .22 pistol with cracker shells that was used for spooking elk out of hay meadows.
In a locked metal box in the bed of his pickup were tire chains, tow ropes, tools, an evidence kit, a necropsy kit, emergency food and blankets, bloodspatter and bulletcaliber guides and charts, flares, and a rucksack for foot patrolling. Taped to the lid of the box was a new addition:
Joe’s Last Will and Testament. He had written it out the night before. Not even Marybeth knew about it yet. He wondered idly if Will Jensen had thought to draw one up.
Nate Romanowski lived in a small stone house on the banks of the Twelve Sleep River, six miles off the highway. Romanowski was a falconer with three birds—a peregrine, a red tail, and a fledgling prairie falcon—in his mews. But when Joe drove onto his property, Nate was saddling a buffalo. Joe noticed that Nate was sporting two black eyes, and that his nose was swollen like a bulb.
A few months before, Nate had told Joe about his newfound fascination with bison. It had sprung from reading an article in an old newspaper he had dug out of a crack in the walls of his home. The article was a firstperson account from a correspondent who had just returned from the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo after witnessing an event called “Women’s Buffalo Riding.” Apparently, women contestants mounted wild bison and were turned loose in an arena to see who could stay on the longest. There was a grainy photo of a cowgirl in a dress and baggy pantaloons astride a massive bull. In the photo, though, the bull looked docile. This account fasci
nated Nate, he said, because he had never thought a human could ride a buffalo around. Then he asked himself, Why not me? The idea quickly became an obsession. Sheridan, who received falconry lessons from Nate on Friday afternoons, had mentioned to Joe that Nate had bought a buffalo from a rancher near Clearmont. And here it was.
Joe parked his pickup beside Nate’s battered Jeep and got out. The afternoon was clear and warm, and Joe could hear the hushed liquid flow of the river.
“I couldn’t use a regular saddle,” Nate said by way of a greeting. “The cinches were two to three feet too short. So I had to make my own cinches in order to make this work.”
Romanowski had appeared in Saddlestring three years before. He was tall, rangy, and rawboned, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He had a hawk’s beak nose and piercing, stonecold blue eyes. Most of the people in the county feared him, and several had seriously questioned the basis of Joe’s friendship with a man who openly carried a .454 Casull, an extremely powerful handgun. Nate had come from Montana, leaving a set of suspicious circumstances involving the deaths of two federal agents, and Joe had almost inadvertently proved Nate’s innocence for another murder. Upon his release from prison, Nate had pledged his loyalty to Joe and the Pickett family, and had not wavered in his blind commitment. There were rumors involving Nate’s background that included years in covert operations for a secret branch of the defense department.
While he didn’t know the specifics, Joe knew this to be true. He also knew that Nate was capable of precision violence, and well connected to questionable people and groups throughout the country and the world. Joe had no clear explanation as to Nate’s means of support. All he knew was that he sometimes vanished for weeks (always calling ahead to cancel Sheridan’s falconry lesson) and that he sometimes cautioned Joe about coming out to his place at certain times when, Joe guessed, certain visitors were there. It was something they never talked about, although a few times Nate had offered tidbits. Joe didn’t want to hear them.
The buffalo stood in the center of a newly constructed fourrail corral. The corral was built solidly, but the east side of it was pitched out a little, most likely from the buffalo leaning against it or trying to push his head through.
Joe wondered if the corral would contain the animal if it really wanted out.
Joe draped his arms over the top post and set a boot on the bottom rail. He was impressed, as always, by the sheer size and presence of a buffalo. The bison was a giant brownblack wedge, frontloaded with heavily muscled shoulders and a woolly, blunt head. Bison, he knew, were pure frontwheeldrive creatures, with the ability to accelerate to forty miles per hour from a standing start. Conical pointed horns curled back from its skull. Marbleblack eyes glowed from beneath thick, dirty curls.
Nate tightened the cinch and the buffalo flinched. Joe prepared for a violent explosion, and he found himself stepping back involuntarily. The buffalo turned his head and stared at Nate.
“This is as far as I got last week,” Nate said, looking over.
“What happened to you?”
Nate touched his eye. “He didn’t like the saddle at first.”
“But he does now?”
Nate shrugged. “Not really. But he finally understands what I’m up to, and he seems resigned to the fact. I’ve tried to persuade him it will be fun.”