Open Season (24 page)

“We are over halfway there, Lizzie,” he told her, over and over again in a kind of mantra. “We can either keep going or back our way out. Let's keep going. It's not that far now. It'll get better, I promise. It's okay. Things are just real okay. Everything is not as bad as it seems.”

As the walls eventually receded, the creek became shallow and soon Joe was able to mount again and ride upstream along a sandy bank. The sky didn't seem as gray as it had earlier in the morning, and the little bit of sun that filtered through the clouds warmed and dried them.

When the canyon walls finally opened, the bowl in the mountains was even more lush and untrammeled than Joe had imagined it could be. It was a beautiful, remarkable place. Around the rim of the bowl in all directions were sheer, red rock cliffs, which provided both protection and a windbreak. Thin rivulets of water that looked like old lace streamed down the rock walls from above. Joe imagined that in the spring the waterfalls would have real volume and would fill the bowl with their roar. The old-growth trees were mossy and tall, the foliage thick. Tall grass carpeted the edge of the creek while spring-fed pools full of clean, cold water dotted the creek bottom.

Something cracked in the trees and Joe pulled his shotgun out of the scabbard in a single movement. But even before he had racked the pump, he could see that the sound had come from a huge bull elk who had seen him and was now fleeing through the trees, a shadow moving through the thick timberlike fan blades whirling in front of a light until it was gone. He lay the shotgun across the pommel of the saddle and nudged the buckskin on.

Joe knew what a unique place this was. It was like going back in time, like being one of the first to ride into a natural wonder like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon and not really being able to believe your eyes. Few people in the modern world would ever have the chance to see what he was seeing or experience what he was experiencing.

Or so he thought.

 

He was nearly
past the grassy rise before he realized exactly where he was. Later, when he thought about it, he couldn't really say why he had stopped or how he had found it. It was a feeling he felt on the back of his neck like the lick of a ghost. But when he reined the buckskin and turned in the saddle, he had absolutely no doubt about what was there in front of him.

He was looking at a killing field.

It was a treeless slope that started at the edge of a dark timber stand and continued down until it reached the valley floor. What was peculiar about the field, now thick with dried, tall grass, was its lack of life. There were no birds, and nothing scuttled in the grass. It was dead, and Joe wanted to know why.

The mounds were there. He counted 26 of them. But the holes on the top of the mounds were blocked with new spiderwebs or bits of brush and grass that had blown into them. As Joe walked through the field, from mound to mound, he found the things he had suspected he would. There were spent casings from .22 shells buried in the dirt, as well as shotgun shells. He bent over a dried quarter of elk that was old enough to be skeletal but not old enough that he couldn't see and smell the poison it had been laced with. It was Compound 1080, a deadly substance preferred by those who took the killing of predators very seriously.

He found several M-44 cartridges wired into the carcass of a rabbit. The devices, long illegal, were designed to automatically fire a stream of cyanide into the mouths of whatever tugged on them. The cyanide, which reacted with saliva, would kill within seconds. The cartridges had been fired.

In a kind of stunned fog, Joe gathered what evidence he could. He pulled his camera from a saddlebag and took several rolls of film. Many of the shots, he knew, would be of Clyde Lidgard quality. But he found a scattering of tiny bones pressed into the soft earth of one of the mounds, and he filled a plastic bag with them. He gathered a handful of spent .22 brass for another sack, as well as the M-44 cartridges. Then he sat on a downed tree and simply stared at the field. He tried to imagine what it had looked like when it was teeming with the last colony of Miller's weasels on earth.

 

It was nearly
dusk when Joe cleared the elk camp in a trot and continued down the mountain. The long passage through the canyon had been made almost in a dream, and the buckskin mare seemed to sense that Joe was distracted, so she cooperated. She knew they were going home. Joe's mind was racing, and he was shaky from what he had discovered and from lack of sleep. Several times, he reached back into his saddlebags to confirm that he had in fact gathered the evidence he thought he had gathered. Already, the bowl seemed very far away.

He thought of the implications, which where huge. Terrible acts had taken place up there. They had happened right under his nose, in his jurisdiction, and on his watch. Of course there was now a conspiracy. He doubted that it had started out that way. He guessed that what had happened was a series of incidents and mistakes that had mushroomed into something both big and awful. He didn't know how everything was connected yet, and he wasn't really sure he would be able to find out. But he knew he was now in the thick of it, no matter what. He wondered who out there would surface, once the word got out.

He thought again of the killing field, which both disgusted and depressed him. He was astonished at the thoroughness of the people responsible. First they had started with Miller's weasels and then moved on to killing the outfitters. That progression indicated that perhaps they weren't yet through.

Joe loaded Lizzie into the horse trailer and put the saddle and tack in the back of the pickup. He shared the last of his water with his horse then climbed stiffly into the cab of the truck and started the engine.

When he cleared the timber, the Twelve Sleep Valley opened up below him. In the distance, he could see the early evening lights of Saddlestring like a jewelry box dumped on the prairie. Directly below him was the campground, and the winking yellow lights of hunters' lanterns and propane lamps. Between the two, miles in the distance and hidden in the folds of the foothills, was his house on Bighorn Road.

God, he was angry. He was furious at his own situation and at the people who had put him there. He was enraged when he thought of the killing field and the purposeful, deliberate way a species had been completely wiped off of the face of the earth. In all of his studies and all of the gossip he had heard over the years, this was the first instance he knew of in which there had been a purposeful and determined effort to wholly terminate a species.

It was nearly dark, and it was getting colder. An icy wind raced up the mountain from the valley floor. The sky had cleared to the horizons, but it seemed to be regrouping for later. Long, thin faraway clouds paralleled the western horizon looking like multiple red knife wounds slashed across purpling flesh.

“We have some
beautiful sunsets, don't we, honey?” Sheridan's mom said.

“Yeah,” Sheridan answered blankly. She had other things on her mind.

In the car, on the way to their house on Bighorn Road, Sheridan's mom had asked her to tell her what was wrong. It was just the two of them, she said, and she was getting a little worried about her big girl. She could tell that something was really bothering her, and she wanted Sheridan to tell her what it was. She said Sheridan's eyes looked very tired.

“I'm okay, Mom,” Sheridan said. Her backpack was on the floor of the car. She had brought it, she said, to put her books in. But now it held a full bread sack of table scraps.

“Did you hear some of the things your dad and I discussed last night when he got home?”

Sheridan shook her head no. Her mom seemed relieved. Sheridan was glad it was nearly dark outside, because she knew her mom could read her face. It was as if her mom could tell what she was thinking sometimes. Sheridan felt guilty about not telling her mom about the creatures and the man. Mom was wonderful, and very smart, even though she could be stern. Sometimes she couldn't believe how wonderful her mother was, especially as Sheridan spent more time with Grandmother Missy. Sometimes it seemed like her mom was the adult and Grandmother Missy, Sheridan, and Lucy were the children. But her mom sure could worry, and Sheridan knew how much she would worry if she knew what Sheridan knew. Worrying wasn't a good thing for a woman who was so pregnant. This Sheridan was pretty sure of.

“I want you to feel you can tell me what's wrong, Sheridan,” her mom said. She wasn't letting this go.

Sheridan had part of her problem solved. When they got to the house, Sheridan would go into her bedroom and fill her backpack with some of her own books from her bookshelves. She doubted her mom would want to look at the books to see if they were from the school library. The hard part, though, would be figuring out a way to get outside alone. She had a little flashlight in her backpack for shining under the garage. She hoped she would see them under there, and she hoped they would be all right.

“I think I don't like that house we're staying in,” Sheridan said. “It seems too fancy. It seems like we're living in somebody else's house.”

“I know you feel that way,” mom said. “We
are
living in someone's house. Wealthy people like your grandmother do it all the time, but I realize it's new to you. But isn't it nice to have your own big room for a while? And that TV with all of those channels? What about that wonderful fireplace and all of those books on the shelves?”

“They're all right,” Sheridan confessed. “But I still like our old house better.”

“Sometimes change is good,” her mom said.

“Most of the time it's bad,” Sheridan echoed darkly.

Her mom laughed. “You can be so dramatic, sweetie.”

The car slowed and her mom turned the steering wheel.

“Well, it's still here,” her mom said.

Sheridan looked through the windshield. The house was very dark. It looked like her father's truck was parked where it usually was on the side of the house. But it wasn't her father's truck.

“Wacey must have gone with Dad and left his truck here when they took the horses,” Mom said. “I didn't realize he was going, too.” She turned off the motor.

“Anyway, let's not take all night,” Mom continued. “Grandmother Missy is making lasagna, and we don't want to miss that.”

Grandmother Missy had come to the conclusion that everyone in the family loved her lasagna. The fact that no one finished their dinner hadn't changed her mind. The truth was that the only person who liked Grandmother Missy's lasagna was Grandmother Missy herself.

Sheridan was behind her mother while her mom found the keys, opened the front door, and went in. Mom reached to click on the lights, but she stopped before she did so, and Sheridan bumped right into her.

Her mom didn't move.

“What? . . .”

Suddenly, her mother was bent over and her face was close to Sheridan's.

“Don't turn on the lights, honey. Just be still.” Her mom's voice was urgent—and serious. Sheridan had rarely heard that tone, and it scared her.

“What's wrong?” Sheridan's eyes were wide.

“I don't know for sure,” her mom said. “But I can see some kind of light in the backyard.”

Sheridan couldn't speak. She looked around her mother and could see it, too. Yellow light came in through the kitchen window and swept across the ceiling. Then it flashed the other way.

Sheridan's mom guided Sheridan to the couch and sat her down.

“Just stay here for a second. I'm going to go see what it is.”

Sheridan sat, clutching her backpack. She watched her mom walk through the front room and into the kitchen. Her mother's silhouette was framed by the window.

“Mom . . .”

Her mother turned. “There is a man out there by the woodpile with a flashlight. He's kicking it apart.” Her voice was a tense whisper. “I think he intends to steal our firewood.”

Sheridan was jolted the instant she heard that someone, a man, was in the woodpile. It came to her in a brilliant flash of panic: the truck parked outside, the fact that Mom didn't know about it, the friend of her dad's.

What was his name?

“Mom!” Sheridan screamed, hurtling off of the couch toward the kitchen, even as her mother reached over and clicked on the floodlights that illuminated the backyard.

“Get away from that wood!” her mother yelled, smacking the window with the palm of her hand as if the man were a stray dog rooting through the garbage.

Then the window shattered and there was a sharp crack outside. Her mother was thrown backwards to the floor, her head bouncing hard on the linoleum. Outside, a man was shouting.

Sheridan tossed the backpack aside and fell to her knees, sliding into her mother on the floor. Sheridan put her hands on both sides of her mother's face.

“Oh, Mom ...”

“I'm hurt, Sheridan darling,” her mother said in a clear voice. “He shot me, and I don't think I'm okay. I don't know who it was who shot me.”

Sheridan wailed and buried her head into her mother's breasts. She could feel her mother's strong heartbeat. But Sheridan's hand, which was wrapped around her mother's waist, was warm and wet.

“Oh God,” her mom said, with a choke in her throat. “I can't feel anything. Everything is numb.”

It had all happened so quickly that Sheridan couldn't yet grasp the situation.

Suddenly, her mother was bathed in light, and Sheridan could see her mother's face and the tears in her eyes and the blood, lots of it, spreading across the floor. Her mother looked from Sheridan to the source of the light, and Sheridan followed. “Stay where you are, you two,” the man said, almost calmly. Then he withdrew the flashlight. They heard him trying to get in the locked back door.