Out of Range (6 page)

“Really?” Joe said. “That sounds like hunting.”

Trey chuckled. “It’s not hunting, Joe. The way Will described it to me, it’s more like personally getting to know the animal you’re about to slaughter and have ground up into burger. So you can feel his pain, or something. Shit, I don’t know.”

“I told you there was an objection to you going over there to fill in,” Trey said almost casually, while Joe dug into packs in the back of his truck for jerky and granola— their dinner that night.

“From who? The governor?”

Trey smiled. Joe had once arrested the governor for fishing without a license. The governor had never forgotten it, and had been vindictive.

“Two more months,” Trey said, grinning. “Two more months and that guy is out of there.”

Governor Budd was termlimited. He had all but left the state, lobbying for a new job in Washington with the administration. So far, he hadn’t received one. His unpopularity, even within his own party, had apparently preceded him.

“Some people are even predicting that the Democrat will win,” Trey said. “So prepare for hell to freeze over.”

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ll be glad he’s gone,” Joe said. “Or that I didn’t appreciate how you’ve stood by me all these years.”

Trey waved Joe off and leaned against the grille of his green truck, gnawing on a piece of jerky. After he had washed it down with water, he had more to say. “Joe, I want you to find out what happened to Will. Now, you can’t do a fullfledged investigation. The sheriff and the police department are already doing that, or have completed it by now.”

Joe had assumed this was coming. He had hoped it would be.

“But I need to know what happened. What drove him to kill himself.”

“Do you think it was murder?”

Trey shook his head. “Nothing I’ve heard indicates it was anything other than suicide. What I want to know is what was so damned bad that Will felt the only way he could handle it was to shove a gun in his mouth.”

“I’ll find out what I can.”

“Report back to me. Even if you can’t figure anything out. We may never know what was in that man’s head.” Trey sighed. “If we can find out something, maybe I can help the next guy. I don’t know. But when you’ve got a man who seems perfectly suited for the job, with a beautiful wife and great kids, and something like this happens, well . . .”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Joe said.

Joe felt Trey’s eyes on him. He could tell what Trey was thinking. The description of Will Jensen that Trey had laid out could also be used to describe Joe Pickett.

The receiver chirped. Joe and Trey looked at each other. The bear had come back. Trey said they should saddle up his horses and go after it.

The signal was strong as night came, and they camped near a stream. It was strong throughout the night and in the morning. Bear number 304 was working his way back to the cabins. Trey predicted they would be on him by noon. They weren’t.

It was late afternoon when the signal strength on Trey’s portable scanner went “allbars” and both horses began to snort and dance, smelling the bear. The sun had just dropped behind the mountains. The fall colors were muted in shadow, and it had gotten colder.

Joe looked up and could see the ridge where they had originally parked, and thought it remarkable that the bear had led them back where the chase had begun. He had heard that bears often did that when injured, choosing familiar terrain over unfamiliar. Or maybe 304 was hungry again.

When he got a nowrecognizable whiff of the bear, he found himself clutching up, and could feel his limbs stiffen. He dismounted and led his horse to a tree where he could tie him up. Trey did the same.

Trey walked over to Joe and whispered, “We need to stay within sight and range of each other. If he goes for one of us, the other one has to shoot. If it’s up to you, Joe, aim in back of his front shoulder for a heart or lung shot.

Don’t shoot him in the head. I’ve heard of slugs bouncing right off.”

Joe nodded, didn’t meet Trey’s eyes.

“You okay, Joe?”

“Fine.”

Trey lifted the receiver, slowly sweeping it in front of him until he found where the signal was strongest. Joe looked up, following Trey’s arm. A dense pocket of aspen stood alone on a saddle slope of low gray sagebrush. The bear was too big to hide in the brush, so it had to be in the aspen grove. As if reading his thoughts, Trey gestured toward the trees.

Joe jacked a shell into the chamber of his shotgun and quickly loaded a replacement into the magazine. He put his thumb on the safety as he walked, ready to flip it off and shoot.

They approached the pocket of aspen. Joe could hear a slight cold wind ripple through the crown of branches, sending a few yellow leaves skittering down. He could also hear the signal from the receiver. Before plunging into the grove, he looked over at Trey. Trey mouthed, “Ready?” and Joe tipped his hat brim.

...

The smell of the bear was strong in the grove, hanging like smoke about three feet above the ground. It was dusk. Joe wished they had entered the aspen at least a half hour before, when there was more light. He promised himself that if they didn’t find the bear within ten minutes he would call to Trey and they would pull out and wait for morning.

Even though Trey had been twenty yards away when they entered the aspen, Joe couldn’t see or hear him now in the dense trees.

Joe noticed a nuance in the smell of the bear—the metallic odor of blood. He walked slowly, breathed deeply and as quietly as possible. He didn’t want the sound of his own exertion to fill his ears and make him miss something.

He felt it before he saw it, and spun to his left, his boot heel digging into the soft black ground beneath the fallen leaves.

The grizzly sat on his haunches, looking at him from ten feet away. Joe saw the silvertipped brown fur, some of it matted with black blood, saw the bear’s chest heave painfully as he breathed. Joe stared into the eyes of the bear, and the bear didn’t blink. The bear’s eyes were black and hard, without malice.

Joe raised the shotgun and thumbed off the safety. He put the front bead of the muzzle on 304’s chest, right on his heart. And he didn’t fire.

Even when the bear falsecharged and popped his teeth together in warning, Joe didn’t pull the trigger.

But Trey Crump did, the explosion sounding like the whole aspen grove went up. 304 flinched as if stung by a bee, and roared, his mouth fully open so Joe could see the inchlong teeth and pink tongue. Trey fired again and the bear toppled forward, dead before he hit the ground.

As they rode toward their vehicles in the dark, dragging the carcass of the grizzly behind them, Trey asked, “Why didn’t you shoot, Joe?”

Joe didn’t want to answer, and didn’t.

Because he was looking me straight in the eye, that’s why. Because I found out I can’t kill a bear when he is looking me straight in the eye.

That night, they ate big steaks and drank beer after beer at a guest lodge in the foothills of the mountains. Oldtimers at the bar had heard the story and sent over rounds of drinks for the game wardens. They, like Trey, admired old 304. But the bear had to go. A fed bear was a dead bear.

Joe left Trey at the bar and found a pay phone outside. It was cold as he shoved quarters in, and he could see his breath as he said, “Hello, darling,” to Marybeth.

“Where are you?” she asked. Even colder.

He leaned back and looked at the sign out near the highway. “Someplace called the T Bar.”

“In Jackson?”

“No,” he said. “By Cody.”

“Cody. Joe, why are you there? Why aren’t you in Jackson? Why didn’t you call like you said you would?”

Joe said, “Didn’t you get the second message from dispatch?”

“What message?”

He told her the whole story, but he could tell by her tone she was still furious with him. As he told her how scared he had been when he walked up on the grizzly, she said, “Sheridan has been an absolute beast. I can’t even talk to that girl anymore.”

Joe paused. “Marybeth, are you listening?”

“For three days I’ve been worried about you. Do you know what that’s like?”

“No,” Joe said, looking out at the highway. “I guess I don’t.”

He didn’t know if he was angry, guiltstricken, or both.

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Trey was watching him as he reclaimed his stool at the bar. “Everything okay?”

“Marybeth didn’t get the second dispatch message. She didn’t know where I’ve been.”

“Uhoh.” Trey shook his head. “I wonder if my missus got it?”

“You better call her,” Joe said.

“So I can look as miserable as you?” Trey said. “I think I’ll have another beer.”

The next morning, as he crossed the Shoshone River out of Cody, Joe felt ashamed of himself. He had not slept well in his motel room, despite a few too many beers. He tried to reassess where he was in time and place in regard to his new assignment. He was four days behind schedule, and he had not yet had a chance to really talk everything over with Marybeth, without distractions. He had frozen when he should have fired. He convinced himself that if the bear had gone after Trey, he would have reacted well and started blasting. Of course he would have, he thought. He had pulled his weapon and fired in anger before. Once, he had hit a man from a long distance, but he hadn’t known it at the time. But he had never faced someone, or something like a bear, looking him straight in the eye.

Later, he felt the shroud lifting. The guilt he had felt earlier about leaving Marybeth and the girls was still there, but the challenge of what he was about to face surged hot and steady. He already missed his family, but the residue of the telephone call with Marybeth remained. It had not been a good conversation.

Sure, she had a right to be worried and angry. But he had wanted to talk with her, tell her how tough it had been to go facetoface with that bear, and what he had done. Instead, it had all been about her. She made him feel guilty. She always made him feel guilty. He knew the last five years had been tough on her. She’d gone through more than anyone deserved. But would there ever be a time when he didn’t have to walk around on eggshells? When she didn’t seem to blame him for what their life had become?

He was being unfair. Despite everything, he loved her.

Without her he would spin off the planet. He needed her to ground him.

But he looked forward to the change. He looked forward to his new district.

Had the pressures in Saddlestring, and in the house, really gotten to him to this degree, he wondered, that the prospect of riding up alone on armed men in a hunting camp seemed like a boy’s holiday? He tried to shake that thought out of his head. He tried to make an argument that it was good to have a mission, good to have a tough assignment. It was good to be trusted by Trey, to have been chosen out of the other fiftyfive game wardens for the hottest, most highprofile district.

As he drove up the canyon, he watched the signal on his cell phone recede to nothing, followed by a digital no service prompt.

Here we go, he thought. Here we go.

Seven

Even though he should have been prepared for them, even though he had seen them dozens of times in photos, paintings, movies, on postage stamps, and in person, Joe still felt his heart skip a beat when the timber opened up on the road south of Yellowstone Park and the Tetons filled up the late afternoon vista. Mount Moran in particular, with its commashaped glacier of snow, burned bright in the cloudless sky. The dark, rounded shoulders of the Bighorns, his mountains, had been replaced by the glittering silverwhite Tetons, which thrust upward like razoredged sabers trying to slice open the sky. He felt like he was switching his comfortable horizon with a new, dazzling, hightech model.

He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing those mountains without feeling a flutter in his stomach each time he looked. It was hard, Joe thought, not to be intimidated by the Tetons. There were no other mountains like them in the world; so new, sharp, and lethal that foothills hadn’t yet had the courage to approach them. He wondered if Will Jensen had ever gotten used to them. How could something that dramatic ever really provide the comfort of familiar scenery?

Traffic south to Jackson through Grand Teton National Park was heavy, and Joe became part of a long parade of vehicles. The highway was choked with huge recreational vehicles helmed by older drivers who apparently thought the fiftyfivemileperhour speed limit was a challenge they wouldn’t dare confront. He settled in, unable to pass because the exodus of tourist traffic in the oncoming lane was just as dense. Driving cautiously, he knew that the sighting of a moose, elk, or bear from the highway would instantly cause visitors to hit their brakes and, without pulling over to the shoulder, pour out of their vehicles with cameras and camcorders. On his left the ground rose in a gentle swell toward the Gros Ventre Mountains. On the raised flats, barely visible from the road, were old dude ranches. The movie Shane had been filmed on one of them, Joe remembered. It was the only movie he and his father had ever agreed on, maybe the only thing they had ever agreed on. Then he realized something that both scared and exhilarated him: This was his new district. As far as he could see in every direction, from the Tetons to the west, Gros Ventres to the east, Yellowstone Park to the north, to the town of Jackson ahead of him to the south, was his new responsibility.

Jackson was just a couple of hundred miles from Saddlestring, Joe thought, but it was a world apart.

The big new twostory state building had a parking lot in front for visitors and a private lot in back for employees of various agencies. Joe cruised through the staff lot, looking for a parking space, but they all appeared to be designated. The only open one he saw was marked for w. jensen. Even though there wasn’t anywhere else available behind the building, he chose not to use it. Not yet. Instead, he wheeled around the front, parked between two RVs, and entered the building through the double doors.