by C. J. Box
“I didn’t see your rig anywhere on the Big Stream,” Joe said. “What did you do, walk here through the National Forest?”
“From the road,” Butch said, peering up and over Joe’s shoulder.
“That’s quite a hike.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“Seven, eight miles?”
“I do twenty a day when I’m hunting,” Butch said without a hint of boastfulness. He was stating a fact. That was something Joe had noticed before when he talked to Butch, whether it was about hunting, or the snowpack, or roads that were still open into the mountains and break lands, or their daughters-no humor, no nuance. Butch was a serious man who didn’t use many words and who seemed to regard small talk as a waste of time and calories. In that regard, Joe found him a kindred soul.
Joe led Toby twenty feet toward Butch and tied the horse to a live tree. While he did, Daisy bounded forward, tail stiffly wagging from side to side, and snuffled Butch’s camo trousers. There was an etiquette about entering another man’s camp, and that was to keep a distance until invited inside. Daisy had broken the rule.
“Daisy,” Joe warned, dropping his voice.
“It’s fine. I like dogs. She hunt?”
“We’ll see,” Joe said. “I’m working with her until bird season, and then I’ll give her a go. Don’t let her eat what you’re cooking.”
“Just heating up coffee,” Butch said. “I already had lunch. You hungry?”
“No, but thanks for asking.”
“I know I’m not supposed to have a fire.”
Joe nodded. There had been an official fire ban since early that summer, placed there by the Forest Service due to the dead trees. The rule was hated by campers and hikers. Dozens of campsites had been closed in the area, and dozens more were rumored to be closed. Joe hadn’t said anything because the fire ban was federally enforced and not in his purview.
When Joe didn’t respond, Butch nodded, then stood there expectantly. Joe wanted to tell him to relax. Instead, he tried for common ground.
“When I left this morning, Hannah and Lucy were still asleep on the living room floor. They like to get out sleeping bags and watch movies, but I think they talk more than they watch,” Joe said. Lucy and Hannah were both entering the ninth grade at Saddlestring Middle School. They’d been friends since grade school and shared the same interests in drama, choir, and dance. Lucy never hesitated to tell Joe and Marybeth that she envied Hannah, who lived in town and could ride her bike everywhere. Unlike her, who was stuck in a state-owned Game and Fish Department house eight miles away from the action on a gravel road.
“Teenagers can sleep,” Butch said.
Joe laughed. “I’ve got three of ’em. Three girls, that is. You’re right-they can sleep.”
“That’s what they seem to do best,” Butch said, his face suddenly wistful. Then: “Hannah used to be my little buddy. I’d get her up before dawn and we’d go out and scout game or go fishing. She kind of lost interest in that when. .”
Joe looked up, waiting for the rest. But Butch had flushed and looked away. And Joe realized the rest of the sentence might have had to do with Lucy.
“Never mind,” Butch grumbled.
Joe let it go. He knew the feeling. His oldest daughter, Sheridan, had accompanied him often into the field when she was growing up. She’d announced once that she wanted to be a game warden herself, or a master falconer, or a horse trainer. That was before Sheridan had completed her first year at the University of Wyoming, though she had yet to declare a major. She could sleep, too, and that’s all she did on the days she wasn’t working as a waitress at the Burg-O-Pardner to earn money over the summer before starting her second year.
April, their seventeen-year-old ward, worked part-time at a western-wear store in retail between bouts of being grounded. And when she was home and grounded. . she slept.
“When did she get there?” Butch asked.
“Hannah?”
“Yeah.”
“Last night some time,” Joe said. “I saw her car parked out front.”
Butch nodded. Then, without preamble: “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you what you’re doing up here.”
Joe explained the line of water guzzlers, then finding the cut fence. As he did, he watched Butch carefully.
There was a slight reaction, a twitch on the corners of Butch’s mouth.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Joe asked breezily.
Butch shook his head and said, “They don’t need to put up fences like that and close the roads. We hunted up here for a hundred years on what is supposed to be public land. Now they berm the access roads so we can’t get in. Tell me what’s public about that?”
Joe didn’t bite, and it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Butch had strong feelings and opinions when it came to access to hunting areas. That wasn’t unusual, either. Citizens in the area and the state took natural-resource decisions personally, and often railed against the public-lands managers who made decisions. Joe had heard the argument countless times, and sympathized to some degree. And because he was a state and not a federal employee, he often found himself in the middle. Which was why he hadn’t brought up the illegal campfire.
Joe looked up and said, “I haven’t called it in yet. No one knows about it except you and me. But I would guess that if a guy went down there with a stretcher and a fencing tool, he could fix it so no one would ever even know it was down. It’s not like the Feds send out line riders to check it.”
Butch looked away. He grumbled, “I hear you.”
“That’s good.”
“So the only reason you’re up here is those guzzler things?”
The question took Joe by surprise. “Why else?”
Butch shrugged. “Sure you don’t want some coffee before I kick the fire out and move on?”
“I’m sure.”
With that, Butch tossed the last of his tin cup of coffee onto the forest floor.
“You need to borrow a stretcher?” Joe asked.
“Naw. I built fence all through high school. I know how to fix a fence.”
“Take it easy, Butch.”
“You too, Joe.”
Joe turned, puzzled by the whole exchange, and untied the reins of his horse and called Daisy back.
As he pulled himself into the saddle, Butch said something Joe didn’t catch.
“What’s that, Butch?”
“I said, thanks for watching over Hannah.”
“It’s Marybeth mostly,” Joe said.
“I guess so,” Butch said, as he shouldered into his heavy pack.
Joe noted how big and heavy the pack seemed to be for a day of scouting.
After checking the last two guzzlers-they were full and operational-Joe rode Toby slowly down the mountain toward his pickup. Daisy lagged behind, exhausted, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. It was hot, mid-eighties, and Joe felt sweat run down his spine and into his Wranglers. Dense cream lather worked out between the saddle and Toby’s sweaty back. As Joe cleared the trees he turned in his saddle to look at the top of the mountain where it went bald above the tree line. There was still snow up there, even in August.
He sighed and settled back into the slow gait of the horse. The previous October, during the first heavy snow of the season, he’d been on top of the summit in his department pickup and had gotten it stuck in a snowfield he never should have tried to drive across. The reason he was up there was to try and assist his friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer and federal fugitive, who was in trouble. In the process, Joe had broken his hand and watched as a wounded Nate drove away. Joe hadn’t heard from Nate since, and given the circumstances and the body count that resulted, Joe didn’t mind. He’d needed the ten months since to heal in body and mind.
Twice he’d ridden with a local tow-truck operator to the top to attempt to retrieve the pickup. Twice they’d been turned back by heavy drifts. The agency had sent up another pickup that s
hould have been sold off because of its condition and the 190,000 miles on the odometer, but until Joe could get his new pickup out, he was stuck with the old one. The situation was the object of jokes and asides at headquarters in Cheyenne because of Joe’s track record with state vehicles. It would be any day now, Joe thought, that a new Game and Fish director would be named by the governor and review his record and give him a call. He hoped to have his pickup out by then, but he wasn’t sure he could make that happen.
Joe heard his old replacement pickup from a distance. The speaker outfit on the hood was patched to the radio inside and broadcast chatter from the mutual-aid law enforcement channel. It was set up like that so a game warden could be kept in communication when he was out of his truck, but Joe couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.
As he rode closer, he was surprised by the number of transmissions, and the frequency of them, even though he couldn’t yet make out the words. That happened only when something of significance occurred-a high-speed chase on the highway, a hot pursuit in the county, or a felony in progress.
He hoped whatever it was wouldn’t involve him. He wanted to get home for dinner with Marybeth and his daughters.
Then he reined up for Toby to pause, and he turned in the saddle and looked far up into the timber on the mountain, where he’d last seen Butch Roberson.
3
Marybeth Pickett was giving an informal tour of the historic Saddlestring Hotel building to her friend and county prosecutor Dulcie Schalk when she heard sirens race up Main Street directly outside. In mid-sentence, she checked her cell phone to see if there were any texts or messages from Joe. When there weren’t, she dropped the phone back into the pocket of her summer dress.
“You do that automatically,” Dulcie said.
“I guess I do,” Marybeth said. “That’s what happens when your law enforcement husband is out there somewhere by himself and you hear sirens.”
“I understand,” Dulcie said.
Marybeth brushed a strand of hair out of her face and wiped her hands on a cloth to remove the dust that covered everything inside. It was hard to stay clean just walking through the old place, and she didn’t want to show up for her afternoon shift at the Twelve Sleep County Library smudged with grime. Dulcie had the same concern with her severe dark business suit.
Dulcie was slim, fit, dark-haired, and tightly wound. Joe considered her a tough prosecutor and too rigid in her approach, but he liked her. Marybeth had never worked with her-or against her-but they shared a mutual interest in western dressage and simply being around horses. When Dulcie’s stable had closed, Marybeth had offered space for Dulcie’s horse at their place, and now they saw each other twice a day when Dulcie drove out to feed Poke, her aging gelding. Dulcie was single and the subject of local barroom speculation about her availability and sexual preferences, though Marybeth knew her friend was straight-but cautious. And in Twelve Sleep County, pickings were slim.
Marybeth’s secret plan was to find a man for Dulcie and set a romance in motion. She was considering possibilities when Dulcie said, “Back to the tour.”
“Yes, where were we?”
Matt Donnell, a local realtor, had approached Marybeth two months before at the library and told her he had just purchased the Saddlestring Hotel structure at a foreclosure auction in Cheyenne. It had once been the finest hotel in the county and the place where anyone of note stayed in the area. President Calvin Coolidge, Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne had all stopped there during its heyday, although it was now hard to believe, given the condition of the building. It was a shambling three-level structure built of knotty pine, with a steep roof and gabled windows, a wide portico where rocking chairs had once lined up, and it gave off an overall impression of faded frontier elegance. It had also been vacant and hulking for ten years.
Donnell’s idea, since home sales were slow and he and Marybeth were dedicated to historic renovation, was to figure out a use for the building that would benefit the community and restore an eyesore into something useful. He also wanted to make some money. He told Marybeth he’d always admired her business sense and entrepreneurship, and asked her if she’d like to become a twenty-five percent partner in his new venture. Since she’d once helmed a small-business consulting firm and had contacts and experience, he said he’d thought of her first.
She’d been surprised by the offer but intrigued by the possibilities. Her current schedule consisted of being the mother of three teenage girls, running the household, taking care of her two horses, and acting as unpaid research assistant, receptionist, scheduler, and sounding board for Joe. Only the library stint helped pay the bills, and family finances were tighter than ever. She knew from experience that uneven partnerships often resulted in tension and angst, but she had no capital to put into the deal. Sheridan was about to start her second year at the University of Wyoming, and both April and Lucy were on deck. Marybeth’s part-time salary at the library was small, and Joe’s game warden salary was hostage to an agency-wide freeze. Because of all that, though, Marybeth was frustrated with their situation-living in the battered state-owned home, scrapping for a better life-and wanted to break out of it. And she wanted to show her daughters that rewards could come by hard work and risk, especially since the only person of wealth they had known was Marybeth’s mother, Missy, who’d acquired a fortune by trading up husbands for richer and richer men.
She told Donnell she’d consider it, and he said he’d get the paperwork going for the Saddlestring Hotel Development Limited Liability Company.
Joe and Marybeth stayed up late that night, and the more she thought about it and they talked about it, the more excited she got. Donnell’s role was finance, compliance, permits, and materials, and her role would be restoration, recruiting, and administration. She loved the idea.
The deal wasn’t in place yet, and Marybeth wanted the advice of her friend before she proceeded, which is why she’d invited Dulcie to tour the building.
“So do you know what the sirens were about?” she asked Dulcie.
“Not yet. If it’s something important, they’ll call me.”
Marybeth slipped a rubber band off a roll of blueprints to show Dulcie the plans.
Dulcie smiled. “If I was married to Joe Pickett, I’d probably be hyperalert as well.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If we do this, we’d have to gut all the old rooms and knock down half of the walls between them,” Marybeth said, tracing with her finger on the blueprints, which were spread over an old door propped up by sawhorses.
“The last owners turned the place into a flophouse for transients and day workers,” she said. “We want to restore it to its old glory.”
She pointed to one spot on the blueprints. “We’d convert the old lobby into a central reception area,” she said. “That way, we can offer the individual office holders a shared receptionist and secretarial services.”
Dulcie nodded approvingly. “So you’re thinking of gathering up some of the folks who are doing business in spare rooms and old houses, then? Architects, lawyers, insurance guys?”
“Exactly,” Marybeth said. “The types who want a turnkey operation in a really cool environment. I know this is the kind of place I wish had been available when I had MBP,” she said, referring to the business consulting firm she’d founded and run for years before the economy sank. “Of course, first we need to get it ready for business.”
Dulcie put her hands on her hips and looked around, squinting. “It would really do wonders for Saddlestring and revitalize the downtown,” she said. “Right now, this place just sits here like an old drunk on the corner. I’m trying to picture what it could be like.”
“You really need to use your imagination,” Marybeth said, deadpan.
There was so much work to be done inside-battered plaster wallboard would have to be replaced, ceilings raised, new plumbing and electricity installed-although they’d recently been encouraged when a structural enginee
r confirmed that the foundation’s overall structural integrity was solid. In order to keep costs low, Marybeth planned to do as much of the preliminary work herself with help from Joe at night and on weekends. Matt Donnell wasn’t much of a hand when it came to carpentry or renovation, although he certainly put in the hours. Matt was better at dealing with local, state, and federal agencies that required permits and approvals. In fact, Matt was meeting with the building inspector and state fire marshal that afternoon. He’d confided to Marybeth that he had great relationships with the right people who could sign off on the permits.
Dulcie pointed at a large bouquet of flowers on the mantel of the old fireplace. “Those brighten up the place,” she said. “Who sent them?”
“Read the card.”
Dulcie read: “‘Congratulations on your new hotel, Marybeth. I’m proud of you. Love, Joe.’”
“Awwwww,” she said.
“I told him we can’t afford flowers right now, but it’s nice.”
“This is the kind of place where I’d love to work,” Dulcie said, imagining it. “It would be so much better than those cells they give us in the county building.”
The Twelve Sleep County Building was also a relic of the 1920s, and it housed her office, two courtrooms, the road and bridge department, and the sheriff’s department.
Dulcie said, “Although I have to say the atmosphere is better there now that Sheriff McLanahan is gone. There isn’t as much secrecy and good-old-boy nonsense.”
Marybeth nodded. McLanahan had been defeated by fewer than ten votes the year before by his deputy Mike Reed. Although Reed was confined to a wheelchair-he’d lost the use of his legs after an on-duty assault-he had a dutiful and sunny personality that buoyed those around him. Plus, he was friends with Joe.
Both of their cell phones erupted simultaneously, and when they realized it, they smiled at each other before taking them. Dulcie turned and walked out of earshot, and Marybeth saw the incoming call was from her house.