Joe nodded and poured some coffee in a mug to deliver to Sheriff Barnum out in his Blazer.
"I just wish it wouldn't have happened here," Marybeth said. "I know these things happen but why did he have to come here, to our house? Right to our house?"
It's not our house, Joe said to himself. It belongs to the State of Wyoming. We just live here. But Joe didn't say that and instead went out the front door after a quick "I'll be right back."
Barnum was signing off from a conversation, and he angrily hung up the microphone in its cradle on the dashboard. Joe handed him the cup of coffee, and Barnum took it without a word.
"What we know so far is that Keeley went into the mountains with two other guides to scout for elk and set up their camp last Thursday," Barnum said, not looking directly at Joe.
"They have an outfitters camp up there somewhere. They weren't expected back until tomorrow so nobody had missed them yet."
"Who were the other guides?" Joe asked.
"Kyle Lensegrav and Calvin Mendes," Barnum replied, finally looking at him.
"You know 'em?"
Joe nodded. "I've run into them a few times. Their names have come up along with Ote Keeley s in connection with a poaching ring. But nobody's caught them doing anything as far as I know." Joe had once had a beer in the Stockman Bar with both of them. They were both in their mid-thirties, and both mountain-man throwback types. Lensegrav was tall and thin, and he wore thick glasses mounted on a hooked nose. He had a scraggle of blond beard. Mendes was short and stout, with dark eyes and a charming, flashbulb smile. Pickett had heard that Mendes and Ote Keeley had been in the army together and that they had both served in Desert Storm.
"Well, nobody's seen Lensegrav or Mendes," Barnum continued. "My guess is that they're trying like hell to get out of state because they shot their good old pal Ote Keeley right in the chest a couple of times, for whatever reason."
"Or they're still up in the mountains," Joe said.
"Yup." Barnum paused, pursing his lips.
"Or that. The word is out to the Highway Patrol statewide to watch out for 'em. Problem is I don't know yet what they're driving. Keeleys truck and horse trailer are up at Crazy Woman Creek where they left it. We're trying to find out if one of them took a vehicle up there as well."
Joe nodded at Barnum and said "Hmmmm." There was an uncomfortable minute of silence.
Sheriff Barnum was an institution in Twelve Sleep County, and he had been in office for 24 years. He rarely had opposition when he ran for election, and in the few times he had, he'd taken 70 percent of the vote. He was a hands-on sheriff, involved in everything from civic organizations to officiating at high school football and basketball games. He knew everybody in the county, and they in turn knew and respected him. Very little got by Sheriff Barnum. Over the years, he had become a storied and colorful character. Specific incidents had become legend. He had put a .357 magnum bullet into the eyebrow of a ranch foreman who had just used an irrigation shovel to bludgeon to death his own mother, brother, and a Mexican hired hand. He had taken Polaroid snapshots of cows who had apparently been mutilated by alien beings who had arrived on earth in cigar-shaped flying objects. He had arrested a Basque sheepherder in his sheep wagon and confiscated a ewe named Maria that had been dyed pink. He had once turned back two dozen Hell's Angels en route to Sturgis, South Dakota, by firing up a 24-inch chain saw while straddling the yellow line on the highway.
"Your office should have called me this morning," Joe said abruptly. "I was closer to the scene than anyone else."
Barnum sipped the coffee and squinted at Joe as if sizing Joe up for the first time.
"You're right," Barnum answered. Then: "Wasn't it Ote Keeley who took your gun away from you while you were giving him a citation?"
"Yes, it was," Joe replied, feeling his ears flush hot.
"Strange he came here," Barnum said.
Joe nodded.
"Maybe he wanted to take your gun away from you again." Barnum smiled crookedly to show he was joking. Barnum was wily, no doubt about it. Joe hardly knew the sheriff, but Barnum had already tweaked one of his weak spots. There was a moment of hesitation before Joe asked if Barnum planned to investigate the elk hunting camp.
"I would, but right now I'm screwed," Barnum said, banging the dashboard with his fist.
"That camp is in a roadless area so we can't get to it. Our chopper's on loan to the Forest Service so they can fight that fire down in the Medicine Bow Forest. Tomorrow night's the earliest we could get it back.
"And my horse posse guys are all in the mountains already because they're all getting' ready to go hunting." Barnum looked over at Joe, exasperated. "We can't get to that camp unless we hoof it, and I'm not walking."
Joe thought it over for a moment. "I know a guy who knows where that elk camp is located, and I've got a couple of horses."
Barnum began to object, then caught himself. "Well, I don't see why not, since you're volunteering. How soon could you get going?"
Joe rubbed his jaw. "This afternoon. I've got to fetch my horse trailer and get outfitted, but I'm pretty sure I could get on the trail by about two or three."
"Take my guy McLanahan," Barnum said. "I'll get on the radio and tell him to grab his saddle and some heavy artillery and get his lazy butt out here. You guys might run into some bad business up there, and I want to make sure you've got 'em outgunned."
Barnum grabbed his microphone but halted before he spoke into it.
"Who is it who knows where that hunting camp is?" Barnum asked.
"Wacey Hedeman,"Joe replied.
"Wacey Hedeman?" Barnum hissed. "He's declared that he's going to run against me in the next election, that blow-dried son of a bitch."
Joe shrugged. Wacey was the game warden in the next district but had patrolled in the Twelve Sleep area temporarily after Vern left and before Joe was assigned the position. Wacey had once mapped out all of the licensed outfitters' elk camps along the Crazy Woman drainage.
"Goddamnit," Barnum spat vehemently. "I hate it when things turn cowboy." Barnum cursed again, then turned away to radio his dispatcher.
Wacey didn't answer the telephone in his home office and didn't respond to the radio call, but Joe had a good idea where to find him. Before he left in the truck to find Wacey, he kissed Marybeth and his girls good-bye. Lucy gave him a bored kiss. She didn't approve of him leaving the house at any time for any reason, and this was how she showed it. Because she was so much younger and was wise beyond her years--she had absorbed, as if by osmosis, many of the lessons her older sister had learned the hard way--Joe often treated Lucy as a fellow adult conspirator, fighting the many emerging preadolescent forces other animated older sister.
Sheridan and Lucy were confused by why they had to leave their house. Marybeth was telling them how exciting it would be to stay in a motel, but they weren't yet convinced.
Joe stopped at the door and turned back. Sheridan was watching him closely.
"You okay, honey?" Joe asked her.
"I'm okay, Dad."
"Next time you say you see a monster, I'm going to believe you."
"Okay, Dad."
"You remember who's coming tomorrow night, don't you?" Marybeth asked.
He had not thought about it at all with everything that had happened that morning.
"Your mother."
"My mother," Marybeth echoed. "So we'll be back in the house by then. Hopefully, you will, too."
Joe grimaced.
***
While her mother PaCked a suitcase in the bedroom, Sheridan did exactly what she had been told not to do and went to the dining room window to watch. However, before she did, she made sure that Lucy was still wrapped in her blanket on the floor watching television. Lucy would gladly tell