Land of Wolves (15 page)

“Yep.”

We made the gravel cutoff that leads underneath the ranch gate and the sign that read E
XTEPARE
. “Jeez, this place really is out in the middle of nowhere.” She leaned forward as we drove on, looking for some signs of life in the sprawl of outbuildings. “And don’t say ‘yep.’”

Pulling to the left, I circled the empty sheep paddocks and parked in front of the dark house. I figured they were in bed as with all good ranchers, but the ever-present Travelall was missing.

Dog jumped into the front and watched as Vic met me at the steps. She unsnapped the safety strap on her sidearm. “If he comes out with a shotgun, I’m leading his ass.”

I reached up and knocked on the wooden screen door, the screening strong enough to hold back a wildebeest. There was no response, so I knocked again.

We waited, and then I saw a light come on to our right. After a moment, Wilhelmina arrived through the living room and unlocked the door, carefully opening it wide.

Slipping off my hat, I leaned in. “Wil, it’s Walt Longmire.”

Pulling her nightgown tighter around her neck, she peered up at me. “Who?”

“The sheriff.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“We’re looking for Abe—is he around?”

She glanced back toward the bedroom. “He’s in bed,”

“Can we speak with him?”

Her tired eyes came back to me. “He’s awful worn out.”

“I’m sure he is, but I still need to speak with him, if I could?”

She stared at me for a moment more and then turned and disappeared as Vic leaned against the other side of the door. “She gonna go get the shotgun?”

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time, but Wilhelmina, now wearing a bathrobe, finally came to the door again and looked up at me. “I can’t find him.”

“You mean in bed?”

“Yes.”

“Is there some other place he might be?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced around. “Is it lambing season?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I get confused.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He sometimes sleeps in the lambing shed during lambing season.”

I nodded and reached out and placed my hand on hers to calm her. “Mrs. Extepare, have you seen Liam?”

Her face brightened. “Liam, he’s my grandson.”

“Yes, ma’am, have you seen him?”

“He sleeps with us.”

“Is he with you now?” She began looking around, so I specified. “In your bed—is Liam in your bed now?”

Without another word, she turned and trundled off only to return a few moments later. “He’s not there either.”

Vic and I looked at each other. “So, both Liam and Abe are missing?”

Wilhelmina’s eyes tightened. “Abe is missing?”

I glanced at Vic again and sighed. “Mrs. Extepare, do you mind if I use your phone?”

“So, I hear you almost pounded the living crap out of Les Harris last night at the wolf meeting.”

I snugged the receiver a little closer to my ear. “And where did you hear that?”

The Basquo laughed. “Oh, pretty much everywhere, but mostly from his wife, who came in here to lodge a formal complaint.”

“Sarah.”

“Yeah, that’s her.” There was a pause. “Say, isn’t he the one that dropped an elk out of season over in Washakie County last year?”

“Yep.”

“Probably trying to feed that wife of his. Boy, she was pissed, Boss.”

Sighing, I turned and watched Vic and Wilhelmina playing cribbage. “Well, in the meantime, run the plates on Abe’s International and get them out to the highway patrol in adjacent counties.”

“Will do.”

I hung up the old rotary dial phone and smiled at myself. “How’s the game going?”

“She’s cheating.”

Wil looked up. “I am not. She just doesn’t know the rules.”

Vic accepted another card and smiled. “Evidently the rules change west of the Mississippi.”

I sat in the empty chair. “Mrs. Extepare, are you sure you don’t know where Abe and Liam might’ve gone?”

“Hah!” She moved her peg, displaying some more cards for Vic’s benefit. “They go fishing.”

I glanced up at the old wall clock, a tarnished starburst model from the seventies that indicated it was creeping up on midnight along with the next century. “Kind of late for fishing.”

Chuckling to herself, she drew another card. “They like to get an early start.”

I sighed and took a cookie from the plate on the table—oatmeal raisin, one of my favorites. “Where do they go fishing, Wil?”

She waved a hand. “Down south, near one of the sheep camps.”

“Powder River?”

She studied her cards. “Uh huh.”

Realizing we’d be searching an area roughly 19,500 square miles, I attempted to narrow the field. “North Fork?”

“Nope.” She hooted, laid down more cards, and advanced her peg on the antler board. “No fish up there.”

“Middle Fork then?”

“Yes, but they go all over.” She glanced at me. “Do you like fish?”

“Um, sure.”

“I don’t—tastes fishy to me.”

Realizing she wasn’t joking, Vic and I shared a look. “Right.”

“Don’t like the bones either.”

“Wil, as much as I hate breaking up the game, I’m afraid that
Vic and I are going to have to be going.” She looked crestfallen, but I continued. “So, you don’t have any idea where they might be, or any way to get in touch with them?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t seen Donnie either?”

“Who?”

“Donnie, your son-in-law.”

“No.” She took a cookie for herself. “He’s a good boy, our Donnie. He brings me pecan log rolls from the Howard Johnson.”

“But you haven’t seen him recently?”

She glanced at me, confused. “Howard Johnson?”

“No. Donnie, your son-in-law.”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Yep.” I stood. “Wil, have you got somebody who comes and stops by when the boys are out fishing?”

She nodded, still munching on the cookie. “Mrs. Reynolds, the hired woman, she’ll be here at eight. I don’t like having people in my home.” She snuck a peek at Vic. “Unless they play cribbage.”

We whistled south on the highway at an even hundred. Vic glanced out the window at the darkness, intermittently broken by my revolving blue lights. “So, do we call Double Tough and get him out of bed?”

“Nah, let him sleep.”

She reached back and petted Dog. “What, he needs the shut-eye?”

I shook my head at the bad joke. “Powder Junction is only
ten miles ahead, and I figure as crazy as that ol’ Basquo is, he wasn’t likely to navigate the canyon at night with his grandson in that old Travelall.”

“Great place to hide a body.”

“With the kid in the car?”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“None of this does.”

She numbered off a finger. “One, we’ve got a dead shepherd, Miguel Hernandez, who was killed.”

“Possibly killed.”

“Who tied up the mule then?”

“He hangs himself and the mule wanders off as mules have a habit of doing and goes back to the wagon where his buddy is and some Good Samaritan ties him off.”

“The fuck.” She studied me, more than a little incredulous. “Nobody would’ve come forward with that information after all the stuff that’s been in the press?”

I veered into the passing lane with lights and siren at full force and effect and then swept back into the right-hand side of the road. “Mountain folk are different.”

“Can we at least agree that the shepherd in question is dead?”

I shrugged.

Another finger came up. “Next, we have a missing father from Colorado who is related to the rancher who employed the shepherd.”

I shrugged again.

Another finger came up. “The same rancher who has a habit of surreptitiously running off with his grandson.”

I shrugged yet again.

“From a family who is known to take target practice on law enforcement.”

Tired of shrugging, I grunted.

“None of this looks good for ol’ Abe. I mean the dad had a card from the perv-hunter in his car, and the granddad has a history of running off with the kid. Anyway, I’m thinking the shepherd found out about ol’ Abe and got whacked and then the son-in-law found out about it and got whacked.”

“That’s a lot of whacking for an old man.”

“Hell, I’m expecting Larry the wolf to get whacked by ol’ Abe at any minute.” She slipped a cookie from her duty jacket and began gnawing on it before splitting it in two and handing half back to Dog, who sat with his head hanging between the front seats. “So, what do we do when we find them?”

“Separate them and bring in child services.”

“That doesn’t help us with the missing father.”

I studied the road ahead. “So, we think the father is dead?”

“We haven’t found him. Where the hell could he be?”

“It’s a big county.”

“He’s dead, Walt. Like you always say, ‘Buried in a shallow grave and shit off a cliff by a coyote.’”

“If he is then, whoever killed him doesn’t care if we know it—as a matter of fact they might as well be advertising the fact by leaving his car, never mind his personal items all over the motel room.”

“Meaning?”

“They’re desperate.”

“Who’s desperate?”

“Good question, but whoever it is it makes them even more dangerous.”

I took the exit at Powder Junction and was surprised to see one of our vehicles parked at the base of the ramp along with a Wyoming Highway Patrol cruiser on the other side. Pulling to
a stop between them, I rolled down my window and glanced at Double Tough. “What, are you guys having a convention?”

He got out and came over, leaning on my door. “Saizarbitoria called in, so I got up and came over.” He gestured with his chin toward Scott Kirkman, the HP currently assigned to Absaroka County, who now fully occupied Vic’s window. Double Tough’s wayward glass eye looked a little skyward. “Scott was passing through when the call came in, so we took up a post in town but then decided to come up—been here for about an hour, but so far, nothing.”

Reaching in behind my seat, he swiped at Dog’s nose, who reciprocated by grabbing his hand and holding it. “All right.” I leaned forward and nodded. “We’ll head up the Middle Fork and see if we can spot that old International parked at any of the access trail heads.” I looked back at DT. “You guys stick it out here.”

He tried pushing off but couldn’t move. “Roger that.”

“We’ll eventually take the main road up to Hazelton and then double back off the mountain into Durant. If you don’t hear from us in a couple of hours, we’ve spotted them and parked, so somebody come in and back us up.”

“You’re sure he’s on the Middle Fork?”

“It’s what his wife, Wilhelmina, said . . . well, sort of.”

DT glanced over the top of my truck toward the Bighorns. “Still a lot of snow up there.”

Vic interrupted. “And?”

“Lot of runoff from the snow melt—the fish are going to be fighting for their lives in that current and you’d need a beacon on your fly to get ’em to bite.”

She glanced back at me. “Translation?”

“It’s doubtful that they’re fishing.”

“Right.”

Turning back to Double Tough, I nodded. “Anything else?”

He smiled his goofy, lopsided smile, and I could still see the fire damage on his face. “Could you have Dog let go of my hand before you drive off?”

Vic leaned back in her seat as we made the turn and headed west. “The color of DT’s eye still looks fucked up.”

“Vic.”

“What?” She glanced out the window. “So, Middle Fork?”

“Pretty much.”

“I would’ve thought ol’ Abe would’ve had more imagination than that.”

“There’s good fishing down here when the water isn’t like a tsunami.”

“So, other than to hide—why here?”

“Sometimes that thing a man is looking for when he goes fishing is fish, sometimes not.”

Trailing red dust in the darkness behind us for a few miles, we rounded a number of curves and hit a straightaway before slowing at the first turnout where a metallic-green International Travelall was parked near a scrabble field with only a minimal piece of footpath visible, leading down into the howling darkness of a gaping canyon.

Vic turned and looked at me. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Aiming my spotlight, I played it across the vehicle and then the rim and into the darkness, so vast it swallowed the light. “Outlaw Cave Canyon.”

“Well, you’d have to be an outlaw to want to go down there in the dark.” She pulled out her cell phone, looked at it, and then
held it up and out the window in a futile search for a signal. “Nothing.”

I nodded, turning my spotlight back and switching it off. “The actual cave is on up, not too far from where the old Smith cabin used to be.”

“Smith.”

“I know, imaginative, huh?” We climbed out with Dog, and I met her at Abe’s vehicle. I aimed the Maglite inside but didn’t see anyone.

“So, who were the outlaws?”

“Nobody knows. Some say Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but there’s no irrefutable proof as to who was actually there, just some old rawhide beds and a few broken sticks of furniture.”

“And that’s the Hole-in-the-Wall?”

“Not exactly.”

She walked to the edge and looked down as Dog sniffed around the International. “So where is the Hole-in-the-Wall?”

“Some say it’s an opening in the Red Rocks a little north of here and some say it’s just a small depression on the rim out on Willow Creek Ranch where the gang used to run stolen cattle.”

“Which one do you say it is?”

Joining her at the rim, I looked into the darkness along with her. “The one on the backlot at 20th Century Fox.”

She extended a hand. “Gimme the flashlight, smart-ass.”

“Why?”

“I’m going down there.”

I folded my arms, knowing how fast her hands were. “Not without me, you’re not.”

She gestured toward the slope. “What is that, about a mile down, and then a mile back up? You’re in no shape to do that.”
I didn’t move, and she unsnapped her holster, pulling her sidearm and aiming it at my foot. “Gimme the flashlight or I’m shooting you in the foot.”

Dog barked and head-butted her.

“No, you won’t.”

“Walt.”

Starting off, I slapped a thigh for Dog to follow and then played the beam on the narrow trail. “C’mon, if you want.”

I could hear the water of the Middle Fork down below, that and the breeze that fluttered the new, chartreuse leaves of the cottonwood trees that had just broken free a week ago. The leaves flickered an almost radioactive color green and twirled like a kaleidoscope caught in the light of the flashlight, sending me back to a time when I was a kid, fishing with my father, and was first getting to know this canyon.

“What are you reading, son?”

I lowered my book and looked at him. “
The Outlaw Trail—A History of Butch Cassidy
.”

He threw out another graceful cast, one that it seemed to me any trout in the ten-mile length of the Middle Fork of the Powder River would’ve been happy to lay into, even this early in the season. “The Charles Kelly book?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, his gray eyes following the fly as it drifted near the opposite bank on a cool March morning with the melting snow wetter than a well, the hanging droplets clinging to the undersides of the bushes. “Good book. He wrote it when there were still people around who knew the Wild Bunch, primary research material being the best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that my signed first edition?”

“Yes, sir.”

Giving up on the cast, he stripped the five-weight line in and prepared to present another to the finicky fish. “You’ll make sure to keep it dry and that it returns to my study undamaged.”

“Yes, sir.”

Watching the ripples that swept just under the skim ice of the water where the sun reflected like a jewel case, I kept wondering why we were here. I guess because it was uncommonly warm for the time of year and my father had gotten one of his wild hairs and decided we should go fishing. We’d tromped through the snow and broke a trail down to the river, where he stood and I sat, having scraped the snow from a boulder.

He flicked the rod tip forward, but just as he did the wind came up, and carried the Gray Hackle Peacock into the bushes on the other side. “March in Wyoming is a useless month where all you can do is wish the wind would stop blowing.” He yanked, but the fly stayed stuck. “Little wonder to me that Spurinna the haruspex warned Caesar of the ides of March.” He yanked again, but this time the leader broke, the gossamer line falling to the water without the lure. “Damn.”

He pulled another fly from the small wool patch on his vest as I asked about the outlaw. “He never killed anybody?”

“Butch Cassidy?” Sliding his glasses onto his nose, he slipped the leader’s tippet through the eye of a fresh fly, expertly tying a clinch knot and clipping the tag end with a small tool that hung from his vest. “Nope, and he said he never robbed an individual, just banks and railroads that he said had been robbing people for years.”