Open Season (7 page)

McLanahan nodded and wandered away to dig through his panniers.

“Jesus,” Wacey complained after McLanahan was gone. “Havin' him on the payroll is like havin' two good men gone.”

“Take it easy on him,” Joe said.

Wacey grunted and chewed his sandwich. “I'll be interested to find out what was in that cooler Ote had with him.”

“Yup.”

“I suppose it coulda been anything,” Wacey continued. “Of course it might not mean a goddamn thing in the end, I guess.”

Joe nodded. Then he reeled off the number of ranch houses between Crazy Woman Creek and the Pickett home that Ote Keeley could have gone to for help.

“There was a reason he came to our house,” Joe said. “I just don't know what it could be.”

“You're gonna send that cooler and those shit pellets to Cheyenne to get it checked out?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we'll know,” Wacey said.

“Then we'll know,” Joe echoed.

“Could be nothin',” Wacey said. “Could be one of those things we just never know, and the only guy who knows is stupid, dead Ote.”

“Maybe Ote was bringing you a couple of beers,” Deputy McLanahan said from the dark as he approached. “Maybe that's what was in that cooler. Maybe he thought you guys would pop a couple and forgive each other.”

“Excuse me, McLanahan,” Wacey said. “Did you get Barnum?”

McLanahan told Joe and Wacey that he had talked with Sheriff Barnum and told him of their status. He said Barnum had located the helicopter and the earliest it could get back up to Saddlestring was tomorrow afternoon. There had been no sightings as yet of the other two outfitters, Kyle Lensegrav or Calvin Mendes.

“Guess who else was down there at command central?” McLanahan asked, the light reflecting off his teeth.

Neither spoke.

“Vern Dunnegan!” McLanahan's voice was a mix of excitement and awe.

Joe noted that Wacey had looked sharply at him to check his reaction. Joe didn't flinch.

“Vern says, ‘Be careful, boys. Make me proud.' ”

“What's Barnum say?” Joe asked.

“Barnum says, ‘Don't fuck up and make me look bad.'” McLanahan laughed.

Vern, like Barnum, was a kind of legend—the most popular and influential game warden ever in the area, as well as a force in the community. The kind of guy who had coffee with the city councilmen at 10 each morning in the Alpine Cafe and who was not only tougher than hell on poachers and game violators but was also known to fix a few tickets and let a few locals off the hook. Even though he was primarily a state employee, Vern always like to think of himself as an entrepreneur. He boasted that he had 31 years of business experience. Vern was always involved with something in town, whether it was the local shopper newspaper, a video store, satellite dishes, or a local radio station. Vern always owned a share and had a partner or two. For whatever reasons, the partners always left town and Vern ended up with the enterprise. Then he sold it and moved on to the next venture. Some said he was a good businessman. Most said he was nakedly greedy, and he systematically looted each company until the partners left out of disgust and fear. Vern Dunnegan had cast a big shadow. So big, Marybeth had said, that Joe had yet to see much sunlight in the Twelve Sleep Valley as far as the community went. Vern had supervised both Wacey and Joe, and he had tutored them both in the ways of the field. No one knew more about the ways and means of poachers and game law violators—or about the vile side of humans out-of-doors—than Vern Dunnegan.

It was Vern's shadow that had probably prevented Joe from being notified that morning about the incident in the campground at Crazy Woman Creek. Vern had resigned six months earlier to go to work for a large energy company as a field executive in “local relations,” whatever that was. The rumor at the time was that Vern had more than tripled his salary.

 

They discussed the
plan and the possibilities. They would move in on the elk camp in the predawn from three directions and close in. Wacey said he would communicate with Joe and Deputy McLanahan with hand signals. If anyone was in the camp, they would surround and disarm them as quickly as possible.

“We don't know if these two had anything to do with Ote getting shot,” Wacey said. “Ote may have wandered out of camp on his own, run into some kind of trouble, and made the midnight run to Pickett's house. These two might not even know where he is or what's going on.”

“On the other hand ...” interrupted McLanahan, barely able to contain his excitement of the possibility of being part of some real action.

“On the other hand, they may have gotten drunk with old Ote and got in a fight and shot him a couple of times,” Hedeman finished. “So we've got to be prepared for just about anything.”

“If they're involved they might not even be there,” Joe said. “They might have cleared out last night and they're in Montana by now.”

 

Joe lay in
his sleeping bag but couldn't sleep. He doubted the other two could either. The stars were out, and it was colder than he had expected it to be. He could see his breath in the starlight.

His revolver was within reach on the side of his sleeping bag, and he reached down in the dark and felt the checkered grip.

Joe thought of his girls. It was only 9:30, although it seemed much later. Both girls would be in bed, but probably not asleep. More than likely, they would be pretty wound up in that motel room. Sheridan would be reading or gabbing to her bear. She used to do that at night with her kitten, and before that, her puppy. Marybeth would be reading Lucy a story or cuddling her until she drifted off. Sheridan would no doubt be checking the motel window for the approach of more monsters.

He wondered how this incident would affect his girls, especially Sheridan. It was one thing to look for monsters and another thing to actually see them. Ote's sudden appearance had somehow thrown a new curve on things, and Joe knew Marybeth would be thinking about that. The sanctity of their little family had been violated. Ote's blood would remain on the walk for months—and in their memories forever. Joe wondered what kind of cleaning substance he could buy that would remove bloodstains from concrete. How would Lucy remember this day? Would it make her more cautious, more suspicious? Would Sheridan wonder if her parents—especially her dad—could actually protect her from harm after all? The relationship between a father and his daughters, Joe had discovered, was a remarkably powerful thing. They looked to him to accomplish greatness; they expected it as a matter of course because he was their dad and therefore a great man. Someday, he knew, he would do something less than great and they would see it. It was inevitable. He wondered at what age his luster would dim in Sheridan's eyes and then in Lucy's. He wondered how painful it would be for them all when they recognized it.

Joe Pickett had two passions. One was his family and the other was his job. He had tried as best he could to keep them separate, but that morning Ote Keeley had forced them together. Joe now looked at both differently and what he saw pained him. Marybeth had never actually complained about the way her life had gone since marrying Joe Pickett. Her frustration appeared in random sighs and sometimes hopeless facial expressions that she probably didn't even recognize as such—but Joe did. Marybeth had been on a career path—she was a bright and attractive woman. But by marrying Joe in college, having children, and moving around the state with him from one beat-up house to another, her life had turned out differently than she, or her hard-driving mother, imagined. Marybeth deserved a certain standard, or at least a permanent home of their own; Joe had not been able to provide either. It was eating at him, taking a million tiny bites. When she talked on the telephone to her old college friends who were traveling and managing businesses and enrolling their children in private schools, she would be blue for weeks afterward, although she wouldn't admit it. While he loved his job—he was, after all, nature boy—the guilt he felt this morning when he learned that they couldn't even afford a motel room in town still shrouded him. The exhilaration of the mountains right now brought a hard-edged sense of regret and confusion. His belief that what he did was
good
—and that he was good at it—would not put his daughters through college or allow his wife to ever take a real vacation.

Joe shifted to try to get more comfortable. He tried to think of other things but he couldn't. Joe tried to imagine what Marybeth would think if she could see him now, on a manhunt with his hand on his revolver and two (heavily armed) men sleeping next to him. It was a boyhood dream coming true; good guys pursuing bad guys. He couldn't deny the excitement that was keeping him wide awake. It would be hard to describe to Marybeth how he felt right now. He wasn't sure she would understand.

He wondered what Marybeth, the protector of his career who had never understood what Joe saw in Vern (or Wacey, for that matter), would think of Vern being back in Saddlestring. Joe tried to stave off the resentment he felt toward Vern. Vern had been good to him and had recommended him for the Saddlestring district. It wasn't Vern's fault that everybody seemed to think Vern hung the moon when it came to setting the standard for a local warden.

Too much to think about, and no conclusions to be reached.

He raised up on an elbow and in the faint light of the stars, could see Deputy McLanahan walking away from the camp to relieve himself. McLanahan couldn't sleep either.

As he stared up at the hard white stars—there were so many of them that the night sky looked gauzy—Joe realized that if things were to change for him and his family,
he
probably would have to change. Marybeth and his girls deserved better than what they had; to give them more, he would have to give up the other thing he deeply loved.

But first there was the matter of a dead man in his backyard and an elk camp a few miles away.

Wacey sighed deeply. He was snoring. He seemed to be exhausted. Joe wished he could sleep like that.

At six a.m.,
they had rolled up their sleeping bags in silence, saddled up, and followed Wacey up and over the summit into the creek bottom where the elk camp was. No one had brought breakfast.

Joe was alert but not completely awake. Although he knew he must have slept, he could not recall actually waking. He had slipped in and out of a kind of cruel half-consciousness that was vivid with dreams and episodes that didn't connect.

Joe followed Wacey down a horse trail toward the camp. It was still dark enough that Wacey's worn denim jacket was out of focus. Deputy McLanahan followed Joe. No words had yet been exchanged that morning.

They tied up their horses in a stand of lodgepole pines. Wacey poured dusty piles of oats into the grass for the horses to eat and to distract them and keep them quiet while the three men walked the rest of the way up the trail to the camp. It was an hour before dawn and the mountain air was crisp. The cold that had settled in for the night was just beginning to retreat through the trees and up the slopes.

They were upon the camp in less than thirty minutes. Canvas outfitters' tents came suddenly into view, blue-gray smudges against the dark grass and trees, and when they did, Wacey dropped into a hunter's squat and Joe and McLanahan followed suit. They kept hidden from the tents by a hedgerow of three-foot young pines.

Wacey leaned into Joe and McLanahan and whispered that McLanahan should flank left and Joe right. Wacey would continue down the horse trail and hide behind a granite spur just inside the periphery of the camp. When they all found good cover where they could see into the camp, they would wait until it was light. Wacey said he would ask the outfitters to come out with their hands behind their heads. If only he spoke, he said, the outfitters wouldn't know how many men were out there. Joe was impressed by Wacey's take-charge attitude and command of tactics. Wacey seemed to be a natural and comfortable leader, and he had led them straight to the elk camp without a map. He had taken command and was not shy about it. Joe had not seen this side of Wacey before.

“Did you see the horses?” Wacey asked, in a low whisper. “There's two of 'em in a corral.” Joe shook his head no. He had dropped too quickly to see anything more than the tents.

“There's probably somebody in camp after all,” Wacey said, looking to both Joe and McLanahan. “Those horses are likely to notice us before the outfitters do, so keep quiet and close to the ground and out of sight.”

McLanahan let out a long breath that rattled at the end of it and mindlessly caressed the stock of his shotgun with his thumb. He was anxious and probably scared. McLanahan's face no longer had the kind of whiz-bang enthusiasm for action in it that Joe had seen the night before. Joe understood.