Stovepipe looked into the plastic bowl. “Hey, I remember chipping in on this pen for you. That’s a nice one, all right. Looks like they ran outa room for the words though, the way they spelled ‘service.’ ”
“Keep your fucking hands off it,” Barnum said, turning toward the hallway and gripping the top of his pants so they wouldn’t fall down around his ankles.
He expected to see Wendy at the reception desk. Instead, a matronly, darkhaired woman looked up.
“May I help you?” “Where’s Wendy?”
“She’s been reassigned. May I help you?”
“Reassigned where? Who are you?” He was surprised he hadn’t heard of the move, and hurt that McLanahan hadn’t bothered to consult him about it.
The receptionist cocked her head in annoyance. “Back to dispatch, I believe. Now, should I know you?”
Deputy Reed had apparently heard the exchange because he poked his head over the top of his cubicle and said, “Donna, this is Sheriff Barnum.”
“Oh,” she said. Barnum caught the shadow of revulsion that passed over her face, and he was shocked by it.
“I’m here to see McLanahan,” Barnum said, unable to bring himself to say Sheriff McLanahan.
Donna quickly looked down at a sheet in front of her for his name.
“I don’t have an appointment,” Barnum said, adding, “I shouldn’t need one.” He looked to Reed, expecting to see him smiling or nodding, but Reed had sunk back down behind his cubicle.
Donna picked up her phone, pushed the intercom button, and announced to McLanahan that “Mr. Bud Barnum”
was here to see him.
“No,” Donna said into the phone, avoiding Barnum’s eyes and lowering her voice, “he just came in.”
“Fuck it,” Barnum spat, and strode through the batwing doors at the side of the reception desk. As he passed Reed he looked over, but Reed pretended not to see him. A new deputy—Barnum couldn’t recall his name—watched him cross the office with contempt on his face. Barnum entered his old office and closed the door hard behind him.
McLanahan looked up and gestured toward a chair on the other side of his desk. My old desk, Barnum thought.
“So, what brings you here, Bud?”
Barnum sat down, grateful to be able to let loose his grip on the top of his pants.
“I was thinking about reporting something to you,” Barnum said in his most gravelfilled voice, “but after the way I’ve been treated since I walked into this building, I’m starting to wonder why I’m wasting my time.”
McLanahan smiled coldly, his eyes on his old boss. “We take security a lot more seriously than we used to around here, Bud. We don’t have a choice about that.”
“That son of a bitch Stovepipe took my belt.”
“Sorry, but I told him no exceptions.”
“Even for me?”
McLanahan raised his palms in a “what can I say?” gesture.
“Why’d you replace Wendy?” Barnum asked. “I promoted her to that desk job.”
“Things change, Bud,” McLanahan said, running his fingers through his thick hair. “As sheriff, I need to make hard decisions.”
“Was it a hard decision to get your hair permed?”
McLanahan sat forward and narrowed his eyes. “Bud, I’m trying to be civil here . . .”
“What’s that cost, anyway? Thirty bucks? Forty? You could just get your head wet and go stand in the wind for the same effect.”
McLanahan looked away. “I’m kind of busy right now.
Is there a point to any of this?”
Barnum sat silently, seething. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.
“I groomed you for this job,” Barnum said. “I overlooked your fuckups and taught you everything you know.
Now that you’ve got the job, you’ve forgotten who got you here. What about some respect? A little acknowledgment?”
McLanahan finally turned his head back around and met his eyes. “Your exit wasn’t exactly pretty. A lot of stuff came out. You’re lucky I didn’t pursue it after I got elected.”
Barnum felt something inside him pop.
“What do you mean, pursue it?” he shouted.
“Bud, lower your voice or I’ll have you thrown out of here,” McLanahan cautioned.
“You’ll have me . . . what?” Barnum hissed, scrambling to his feet. “I can’t believe your disloyalty, you little prick.”
The sheriff glared back, his face tight with anger. Barnum decided to try a different approach. “Look, McLanahan—”
“That’s Sheriff McLanahan. Now get out.”
Barnum’s rage returned to a boil. He looked down to see that his hands were trembling. How easy it would be to dive over the desk and sink his fingers into McLanahan’s windpipe, he thought.
“I’m leaving,” Barnum said, his voice a whisper. “I came here to do something good, to tip you off about something. But it seems you know it all now. You don’t need my help.”
“If you came in to report a crime, sit down out there with Deputy Reed and give him the information. You know how the procedure works,” McLanahan said evenly.
Barnum turned and walked out, feeling the eyes of Reed, the new deputy, and Donna on him.
Just let it happen, he thought. Just let the killing take place. Let McLanahan and his department of clowns try to figure it out. Maybe next time they’ll show me a little more respect.
Back on his stool at the Stockman’s, Barnum was still shaking. His anger had turned into selfpity. When Timberman walked down the length of the bar with a carafe of coffee, Barnum gestured toward a bottle of Jim Beam on the back bar and said, “Double shot, Beam and water.”
When Timberman stopped and looked at his wristwatch, Barnum said, “And don’t screw around. This isn’t the only bar in town.”
Part Four
In many places, human hunters have taken over the predator’s ecological role.
Michael Pollan, “The Unnatural Idea of Animal Rights,” The New York Times Magazine, November 10, 2002
Grub first, then ethics.
Bertolt Brecht, 1898–1956
Twenty Six
The sun was setting and the moon was rising and both anchored opposite ends of the cloudless sky when Joe turned his saddle horse and packhorse from the spine of the Continental Divide into what was unmistakably Two Ocean Pass. It was still and cold as he rode into the meadow, the only sounds the muffled footfalls of his animals in the thick, matted grass.
He reined to a stop and simply looked around. It was as Susan Jensen had described it, he thought, only more so. He could see why Will had chosen this place. Two Ocean Creek flowed narrow and clean through the meadow and split at a lone spruce. One channel flowed east, toward the Atlantic, the other west, toward the Pacific. Over the lip of the pass was the vast Yellowstone drainage and the Thorofare, the wildest and most remote wilderness in the Lower 48. The vastness was stunning: a rough carpet of dark trees and startling blue mountains as far as he could see in every direction. Surrounding him were landmarks he identified from his map: Box Creek, Mount Randolph, Mount Leidy, Terrace Mountain, Jackson Peak. Joy Peak was called that because it looked like a nipple. To the south, the crystal blades of the Tetons sliced up at the sky.
It had taken an entire day of steady riding to get there, and the light was fading. He had ridden through two snow squalls, a half dozen streams, and a surprise encounter with a skinny black bear who had not heard him ride up because she was so intent on extracting every last grub from a rotten log. The bear had thankfully run away, crashing loudly through the timber. Joe was pleased that his horses showed no fear and were, in fact, calmer than he was when it happened. The sight of the bear had reminded him to load his shotgun with slugs. The butt of the shotgun was now within quick reach in the saddle scabbard. Will may have preferred his .44 Magnum, but Joe felt much more comfortable with the shotgun. His bear spray was clipped on a lanyard that hung from his neck.
He embraced the wilderness around him as he would his daughters and welcomed the real danger and beauty it presented. He felt alive, and alert, in contrast to how he’d felt since his arrival in Jackson. He could not completely remove himself from that world, but he tried to put it on a back burner to be dealt with later. But it refused to go away.
There was Beargrass Village, and Don Ennis. Joe had no doubt, having reread Will Jensen’s files and notations, that Will had planned to eventually turn down the project. Joe’s own conclusions were the same, unless some new information came to light or Ennis agreed to radically alter his plans. Ennis must have known how Will was leaning, just as he must know how Joe would interpret the same data.
Beargrass Village was not an inevitability carved out of the mountains by the sheer will of Don Ennis and his investors.
It had major problems, and both Will and Joe recognized them. Whether Don Ennis would accept Joe’s analysis remained to be seen. Joe doubted it, based on his meeting with the developer. A battle loomed. How far would Don Ennis go to win it?
And then there was Stella. At the thought of her, Joe felt himself slump a bit in the saddle. Stella was an enigma, although she showed no waffling in regard to what she said she was after. While she said she was looking for authenticity, she had chosen the life of pretense—married to a man who possibly hated her and living with him in the resort town of Jackson Hole. He wondered what kept her there and why she had chosen Will. Had it been merely an attraction for a man in uniform? Joe didn’t think so.
It was more, much more. Almost as if she had passively accepted being categorized by others because of her beauty and circumstances (whatever they had been) and was only now realizing she could change them. When Will died, she found his replacement in Joe Pickett, or so it seemed.
Why did she stay in his thoughts? Was the danger she offered as attractive to him as her manner and beauty? Susan Jensen had called her a predator. Maybe she was, Joe thought. So why didn’t he mind being prey?
He couldn’t answer the questions, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. Instead, he shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts away. Concentrating on the terrain and the sky, he breathed the cool mountain air as deeply as he could. He listened to the breath of wind in the treetops and the footfalls of his horses and the warm squeak of leather on leather from his saddle.
After picketing the horses in the meadow and setting up camp for the night, Joe dug the funeral urn out of a pannier and carried it down the slope to the creek. He’d been thinking about how to do this, and hadn’t come to a decision. Should the ashes be scattered on the ground, in the water, or in the wind? He chose the wind, shaking the ashes out gently, watching as the last shaft of sun lit up the graywhite powder before it settled in the grass.
“Rest in peace, Will. I mean that.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
By midmorning the next day, Joe had visited four outfitter camps and was working his way north toward the state cabin. Before riding into the camps, he had followed Trey’s advice and straightened up the diamond hitches on his packhorse. The camps were clean and the outfitters pleasant and professional. There was a guide for every two hunters, licenses and permits were valid, and food was hung up away from the camps, as per regulations. The outfitters seemed pleased to meet him, and offered him meals and coffee. They were free with information about where they thought the elk were, the locations of other camps, and the quirks of other outfitters. Like most taciturn outdoorsmen, who barely spoke in town, the outfitters couldn’t stop talking. All agreed that snow was needed to get the herds moving south toward them.
“Have you run across Smoke yet?” was the most common question. It was asked with combinations of amusement, condemnation, and awe.
As Joe rode out of his sixth camp of the day, he noticed how much his head had cleared from the day before. Whether it was the air, the elevation, or the isolation, he didn’t know. But he felt normal again, without the fog that seemed to have moved into his brain since his arrival in Jackson. Maybe he’d just needed to get into the mountains, be alone, do good work.
The possibility that Will’s death hadn’t been a suicide never really left him, though. Neither did his feeling of being disconnected from Marybeth and his family. He thought how Marybeth and the girls, especially Sheridan, would love this, and he wished somehow they could be with him.
At the rate he was going, he thought he could make it to the state cabin by late afternoon. His plan was to stay at the cabin for at least two nights and check out the rest of the outfitter camps in the Yellowstone drainage from there. When the trail split, he absentmindedly neckreined his horse to take the right fork, and was two miles from the main trail when he realized his mistake. The path had faded into a narrow game trail as it switchbacked up through the trees. The timber was too thick to turn his horses around— especially the wide load of the packhorse—so he continued to climb in search of a clearing. The incline got worse as he climbed, the horses laboring with the pitch. He leaned forward in the saddle, waiting for a break in the dark timber to signal that he’d reached the top.
When the trees finally thinned and the sky broke through, he stopped the horses on a small grassy shelf to let them rest. While they did, he took his map and walked to the top of the rise to figure out where he was. He noted the mountain landmarks he’d identified earlier. With his fingertip, he traced his location to the state cabin and found he had inadvertently taken a shortcut. If he continued down the other side of the mountain he could ride up Clear Creek drainage and approach the cabin from the side, shaving off at least eight miles and making up for the time he’d wasted on the wrong trail. The route would be rugged, as there wasn’t an established horse trail, but his horses had shown they were more than up to the task.
Climbing back into the saddle, he flinched with familiar pain in his knees caused by riding for a day and a half, and headed northwest.