“Blood Knot” is the shortest of short stories: one thousand words. Why? Because a newspaper in the United Kingdom requested it, accepted it, and sent a check. But for whatever reason they never ran it, and no one has read it until now. Because of the limitation on the word count, it was a challenge honing this multigenerational encounter down to size. I couldn’t waste a word. And I like the results.
“Shots Fired: A Requiem for Ander Esti” is a Joe Pickett short story written solely for this anthology. It’s about dirtbags encountered in the middle of nowhere that bring about a sense of loss to Joe that almost overwhelms him. The impetus for the tale comes from an experience of my own many years before when I worked summers on an exploration survey crew based out of Casper, Wyoming. Our job (I was the lowly rodman) was to re-survey corners and benchmarks in the practically roadless Powder River Basin near Pumpkin Buttes. It turned out the location for the stake we needed to drive into the ground happened to be exactly beneath the only man-made structure within sight: a sheep wagon. The odds against something like that happening were incredible. Nevertheless, it was my job to approach this lonely wagon of a sheepherder who had likely not seen another human in weeks and knock on the door…
I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
C. J. Box
Wyoming, 2014
One-Car Bridge
The tires of Joe Pickett’s green Ford Wyoming Game and Fish Department pickup thumped rhythmically across the one-car bridge that spanned the Twelve Sleep River. Ahead was the Crazy Z Bar Ranch. Joe was there to deliver bad news to the ranch manager.
It was Saturday in early September during the two-week period between the end of summer in the high country and preceding hunting season openers. The morning had started off with the bite of fall but had warmed by the hour. The groves of aspens in the mountains were already turning gold, although the cottonwoods flanking both sides of the river still held green and full. The river was down but still floatable, and upriver in the distance he caught a glimpse of a low-profile McKenzie-style drift boat rounding a bend. The guide manned the oars, and fly-fishermen clients cast from the front and back of the boat, long sweeps of fly-line catching the sun, toward a deep seam near the far bank.
He held his breath as he did every time he drove across. There were gaps between the two-by-eights that made up the surface of the bridge and he could see glimpses of the river flash by through his open driver’s-side window. The bridge itself was over forty-five years old and constructed of steel girders held together by bolts. Auburn tears of rust flowed down the surface of the steel and pooled in the channels of the I-beams, which had long ago inspired a local fishing guide to deem it “the Bridge of Cries.” It stuck.
Out of view beneath the bridge hung a large metal hand-painted sign:
THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY
FISHERMEN, STAY IN YOUR BOAT
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
BY THE CRAZY Z BAR RANCH
Joe knew from experience they weren’t kidding. Even that time in high water when a raft filled with Boy Scouts capsized on the swells and rocks. Eight sodden but uninjured Scouts and their two Scoutmasters — one with a broken arm — had found the ranch headquarters at dusk. The former manager, following standing orders from the owner, loaded them all into the bed of his three-quarter-ton pickup and drove them to the Saddlestring jail to press charges.
The absentee owner of the ranch, Lamar Dietrich of St. Louis, had the signs put up when he bought the ranch. He meant what he said and played for keeps. And he wouldn’t be happy at all, Joe knew, to hear why Joe had come.
Daisy, Joe’s two-year-old Labrador, raised her head from where she slept on the passenger seat to stare at the Angus cattle that grazed on the side of the dirt road. She was fascinated with cows, and Joe wondered if in Daisy’s mind cows appeared to her as very large black dogs. A tremulous whine came from deep in her throat.
“Settle down,” Joe said, navigating a turn and plunging his truck through a thin spring creek that crossed the road. “Don’t even think about chasing them.”
Daisy looked over at him with a puzzled expression.
“Chasing Dietrich’s cattle is a death sentence. He’s had dogs shot for it. I want to keep you around for a while.”
Daisy lowered her head.
“He’s got a big binder he calls The Book of Rules that sits on a table in the foreman’s house,” Joe said to Daisy. “I’ve seen it, and it’s thick. He expects every one of his ranch managers to memorize it, and he has tabs for every conceivable circumstance and how they’re supposed to deal with it. He’s got tabs on trespassing and road improvement and cattle management and fifty or so other tabs on everything he can think of. If the ranch manager makes a decision that isn’t covered in The Book of Rules, that manager doesn’t stay around very long. There’s a tab on stray dogs. They’re to be shot on sight so they don’t run his cattle.
“So keep your head down, especially if Dietrich is around,” Joe said. “He’s just plain mean.”
Joe had met Dietrich two times over the years, and both encounters were unpleasant. The old man was in his late seventies and appeared shorter than he actually was because his back was stooped and his shoulders slumped forward. Because of the deformity, his head was always down and when he looked up his eyes appeared menacing. His voice was a low soft growl and he didn’t waste words. He had no time or respect for local officials, state game wardens, or incompetent ranch foremen.
Joe had heard that Dietrich had amassed his fortune by negotiating cutthroat deals with urban governments for waste management services. There were thousands of distinctive red-and-yellow Dietrich Waste Management trucks throughout the inner cities of the Rust Belt and the northeastern states. He’d taken on local political machines and organized crime families to secure long-term contracts. Then, like so many extremely wealthy men in America, he had looked around for a safe haven for his cash and opted to sink some of it in real estate and had chosen to buy massive ranches in the West, including this one in Wyoming. The Crazy Z Bar, with tens of thousands of acres of mountainous terrain, pastureland, sagebrush flats, and fifteen premium miles of the Twelve Sleep River snaking through it. The purchase price, Joe had heard, was $22.5 million.
The first time Joe met Dietrich was when the then-foreman of the ranch, under orders from the owner, had strung barbed wire across the river to stop the passage of local fishing guides and recreational floaters. Joe had explained that state law allowed access to all navigable waters, that the land itself was private — even the river bottom itself — but the water was public. As long as the boaters didn’t anchor or step out of their boat, they could legally cross the ranch. Dietrich exploded and ordered his then-foreman to beat up Joe right there and then. The foreman refused, and was fired. Joe filed charges against Dietrich for threatening him, but dropped them when Dietrich agreed to remove his barbed-wire fence.