“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.