by C. J. Box
One of Rulon’s first decisions was to choose a new Game and Fish director. The Board of Commissioners lined up a slate of three candidates—Pope included. The governor’s first choice was a longtime game warden from Medicine Bow, who died of a heart attack within a week of the announcement. The second candidate withdrew his name from consideration when news of an old sexual harassment suit hit the press. Which left Randy Pope, who gladly assumed the role, even declaring to a reporter that “fate and destiny both stepped forward” to enable his promotion. That had been two months ago.
Trey Crump, Joe’s district supervisor, said he saw the writing on the wall and took early retirement rather than submit to Pope’s new directives for supervisors. Without Trey, who had also been Joe’s champion within the state bureaucracy, Joe now had been ordered to report directly to Pope. Instead of weekly reports, Pope wanted daily dispatches. It was Pope who had nixed Joe’s request for a new pickup and instead had sent one with 150,000 miles on it, bald tires, and a motor that was unreliable.
Joe had been around long enough to know exactly what was happening. Pope could not appear to have a public vendetta against Joe, especially because Joe’s star had risen over the past few years in certain quarters.
But Pope was a master of the bureaucratic Death of a Thousand Cuts, the slow, steady, petty, and maddening procedure—misplaced requests, unreturned phone calls, lost insurance and reimbursement claims, blizzards of busywork—designed to drive an employee out of a state or federal agency. And with Pope, Joe knew it was personal.
“DAD!”
Joe realized Sheridan was talking to him. “What?”
“How can he tune out like that?” Julie asked Sheridan, as if Joe weren’t in the cab.
“I don’t know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Then: “Dad, are we going to stop and feed Nate’s birds? I want to show Julie the falcons.”
“I already fed them today,” he said.
“Darn.”
Joe slowed and turned onto a dirt road from the highway beneath a massive elk-antler arch with a sign hanging from chains that read:
THUNDERHEAD RANCHES, EST. 1883.
THE SCARLETTS
OPAL
ARLEN
HANK
WYATT
Julie said, “My grandma says someday my name is going to be on that sign.”
“Cool,” Sheridan replied.
Joe had heard Julie say that before.
EVEN THOUGH JOE had seen the Thunderhead Ranch in bits and pieces over the years, he was still amazed by its magnificence. There were those, he knew, who would drive the scores of old two-tracks on the ranch and look around and see miles and miles of short grass, sagebrush, and rolling hills and compare the place poorly with much more spectacular alpine country. Sure, the river bottom was lush and the foothills rose in a steady march toward the Bighorns and were dotted with trees, but the place wouldn’t pop visually for some because it was just so open, so big, so sprawling. But that was the thing. Because of the river, because of the confluence of at least five significant creeks that coursed through the property and poured into the Twelve Sleep River, because of the optimum diversification of landscape within a thousand square miles, and the vast meadows of thick, nutrient-enriched grass, the Thunderhead was the perfect cattle ranch. Joe had once heard a longtime rancher and resident of the county, Herbert Klein, say that if aliens landed and demanded to see a dog he would show them a Labrador, and if they demanded to see a ranch, he would skip his own and show them the Thunderhead.
It was also an ideal ranch for wildlife, which posed an opportunity for Hank, who ran an exclusive hunting business, and a problem for Joe Pickett.
“Look,” Sheridan said, sitting up.
A herd of pronghorn antelope, a liquid flow of brown and white, streamed over a knoll ahead of them and to the right, raising dust and heading for a collision with the pickup.
“They don’t see us yet,” Joe said, marveling, as always, at the graceful but raw speed of the antelope, the second-fastest mammal on earth.
When the lead animals noticed the green Wyoming Game and Fish pickup, they didn’t stop or panic but simply turned ninety degrees, not breaking stride, their stream bending away from the road. Joe noted how Sheridan sucked in her breath in absolute awe as the herd drew parallel with the pickup—the bucks, does, and fawns glancing over at her—and then the entire herd accelerated and veered back toward the knoll they had appeared from.
“Wow,” she said.
“‘Wow’ is right,” Joe agreed.
“Antelope bore me,” Julie said. “There are so many of them.”
For a moment he had been concerned that the lead antelope was going to barrel into the passenger door, something that occasionally happened when a pronghorn wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. That was all he needed, Joe thought sourly, another damaged pickup Pope could carp about.
That’s when the call came over the mutual-aid channel.
Joe said, “Would you two please be quiet for a minute?”
While the entire county was sheriff’s department jurisdiction, game wardens and highway patrolmen were called on for backup for rural emergencies.
Sheridan hushed. Julie did too, but with attitude, crossing her arms in front of her chest and clamping her mouth tight. Joe turned up the volume on the radio. Wendy, the dispatcher, had not turned off her microphone. In the background, there was an anxious voice.
“Excuse me, where are you calling from?” Wendy asked the caller.
“I’m on a cell phone. I’m sitting in my car on the side of the highway. You won’t believe it.”
“Can you describe the situation, sir?”
The cell-phone signal ebbed with static, but Joe could clearly hear the caller say, “There are three men in cowboy hats swinging at each other with shovels in the middle of the prairie. I can see them hitting each other out there. It’s a bloody mess.”
Wendy said, “Can you give me your location, sir?”
The caller read off a mile marker on State Highway 130. Joe frowned. The Bighorn Road they had just driven on was also Highway 130. The mile marker was just two miles from where they had turned onto the ranch.
“That would be Thunderhead Ranch then, sir?” Wendy asked the caller.
“I guess.”
Joe shot a look toward Julie. She had heard and her face was frozen, her eyes wide.
“That’s just over the hill,” she said.
Joe had a decision to make. He could drive the remaining five miles to the ranch headquarters, where Julie lived, or take a fork in the road that would deliver him, as well as Sheridan and Julie, to the likely location of an assault in progress.
“I’m taking you home,” Joe said, accelerating.
“No!” Julie cried. “What if it’s someone I know? We’ve got to stop them.”
Joe slowed, his mind racing. He felt it necessary to respond, but did not want to put the girls in danger. “You sure?”
“Yes! What if it’s my dad? Or one of my uncles?”
He nodded, did a three-point turn, and took the fork. He snatched the mic from its cradle. “This is GF forty-three. I’m about five to ten minutes from the scene.”
Wendy said, “You’re literally there on the ranch?”
“Affirmative.”
There was a beat of silence. “I don’t know whether Sheriff McLanahan is going to like that.”
Joe and the sheriff did not get along.
Joe snorted. “Ask him if he wants me to stand down.”
“You ask him,” Wendy said, completely breaking protocol.
AS THEY POWERED up the two-track, Joe could see that Sheridan and Julie had huddled together.
“Can you keep a secret?” Julie whispered, loud enough for Joe to hear.
“Of course I can,” Sheridan said. “You know that. We’re best friends.”
Julie nodded seriously, as if making up her mind.
“You can’t tell your parents,” Julie said,
nodding at Joe.
Sheridan hesitated before answering. “I swear.”
“Swear to God?” Julie asked.
“Come on, Julie. I said I promise.”
“Tighten your seat belts, girls,” Joe cautioned. “This is going to be bumpy.”
The scene before them, as they topped the hill, silenced Julie and whatever she was going to tell Sheridan. Below them, on the flat, there were three pickups, each parked haphazardly in the sagebrush, doors wide open. Inside the ring of trucks, three men circled each other warily, raising puffs of dust, an occasional wide swing with a shovel flashing the late afternoon sun.
Out on the highway, two sheriff’s department SUVs and a highway patrolman turned from the highway onto an access road, their lights flashing. One of the SUVs burped on his siren.
“Jesus Christ,” McLanahan said over the radio, as the vehicles converged on the fight. “It’s a rodeo out here. There’s blood pourin’ outta ’em . . .”
“Yee-haw,” the highway patrolman said sardonically.
Joe thought the scene in front of him was epic in implication, and ridiculous at the same time. Three adults, two of them practically legends in their own right, so blinded by their fight that they didn’t seem to know that a short string of law-enforcement vehicles was approaching.
And not just any adults, but Arlen, Hank, and Wyatt Scarlett, the scions of the most prominent ranch family in the Twelve Sleep Valley. It was as if the figures on Mount Rushmore were head-butting one another.
It was darkly fascinating seeing the three of them out there, Joe thought. He was reminded that, in a situation like this, he would always be an outsider looking in. Despite his time in Twelve Sleep County, he would never feel quite a part of this scenario, which was rooted so deeply in the valley. The tendrils of the Scarlett family ranch and of the Scarletts themselves reached too deeply, intertwined with too many other people and families, to ever completely sort out. Their interaction with the people and history of the area was multilayered, nuanced, too complicated to ever fully understand. The Scarletts were colorful, ruthless, independent, and eccentric. If newcomers to the area displayed even half of the strange behavior of the Scarletts, Joe was sure they’d have been run out of the state—or shunned to the point of cruelty. But the Scarletts were local, they were founders, they were benefactors and philanthropists—despite their eccentricities. It was almost as if longtime residents of the area had declared, in unison, “Yes, they’re crazy. But they’re our lunatics, and we won’t have anyone insulting them or judging them harshly who hasn’t lived here long enough to understand.”
Arlen was the oldest brother, and the best liked. He was tall with broad shoulders and a mane of silver-white wavy hair that made him look like the state senate majority floor leader he was. He had a heavy, thrusting jaw and the bulbous, spiderwebbed nose of a drinker. His clear blue eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows that were black as smears of grease, and he had a soothing, sonorous voice that turned the reading of a diner menu into a performance. Arlen had the gift of remembering names and offspring, and could instantly continue a conversation with a constituent that had been cut off months before.
Hank, the middle brother, was smaller than Arlen. He was thin and wiry with a sharp-featured bladelike face, and wore a sweat-stained gray Stetson clamped tight on his head. Joe had never seen Hank without the hat, and had no idea if he had hair underneath it. He remembered Vern Dunnegan, the former game warden in the district, warning Joe to stay away from Hank unless he absolutely had the goods on him. “Hank Scarlett is the toughest man I’ve ever met,” Vern had said, “the scariest too.”
Hank had a way of looking coiled up when he stood still, the way a Brahma bull was calm just before the chute gate opened. Hank was an extremely successful big-game guide and outfitter, with operations in Wyoming, Alaska, and Kenya. His clients were millionaires, and he was suspected of using less-than-ethical means to assure kills of trophy animals. Hank had been on Joe’s radar screen even before Joe was assigned the Saddlestring District, and Hank knew it. All the game wardens knew of Hank. But Joe had never found hard evidence of any wrongdoing. Hank’s legend was burnished by rumors and stories, such as when Hank single-handedly packed a two-hundred-pound mountain sheep twelve miles across the Wind River Mountains in a blinding snowstorm. Or Hank crash-landing a bush plane with mechanical problems into the middle of a frozen Alaskan lake, rescuing two clients, amputating the leg of one of them while they waited for rescue. And Hank dropping from a tree onto the back of a record bull moose and riding it a quarter of a mile before reaching forward and slitting its throat.
Wyatt was the biggest but the youngest. His face was cherubic, without the sharp angles his brothers’ had. Everything about Wyatt was soft and round, his cheeks, his nose, the extra flesh around his soft brown eyes. He was in his early thirties. When people within the community talked about the historic Scarlett Ranch, or the battling Scarlett brothers, it was understood they were referring to Arlen and Hank. It was as if Wyatt didn’t exist, as if he was as much an embarrassment to the community as he was, no doubt, to the family itself. Joe knew very little about Wyatt, and what he had heard wasn’t good. When Wyatt Scarlett was brought up, it was often in hushed tones.
Joe was close enough now that he could see Arlen clearly. Arlen was bleeding from a cut on the side of his head, and he shot a glance over his shoulder at the approaching vehicles. Which gave an opening to Hank, the middle brother, to swing and hit the back of Arlen’s head with the flat of his shovel like a pumpkin on a post.
Julie screamed and covered her face with her hands.
Joe realized what he was thrusting her into and slammed on his brakes. “Julie, I’m going to take you home . . .”
“No!” she sobbed. “Just make them stop! Make them stop before my dad and my uncles kill each other.”
Joe and Sheridan exchanged glances. Sheridan had turned white. She shook her head, not knowing what to say.
Joe blew out a breath and continued on.
ARLEN WENT DOWN from the blow as the convoy fanned out in the sagebrush and surrounded the brothers. Joe hit his brakes and opened his door, keeping it between him and the Scarletts. As he dug his shotgun out and racked the pump, he heard McLanahan whoop a blast from his siren and say, in his new cowboy-slang cadence, “DROP THE SHOVELS, MEN, AND STEP BACK FROM EACH OTHER WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. EXCEPT YOU, ARLEN. YOU STAY DOWN.”
The officers spilled out of their vehicles, brandishing weapons. The warning seemed to have no effect on Hank, who was standing over Arlen and raising his shovel above his head with two hands as if about to strike it down on his brother the way a gardener beheads a snake.
Joe thought Arlen was a dead man, but Wyatt suddenly drove his shoulder into Hank and sent him sprawling, the shovel flying end-over-end through the air.
“Go!” McLanahan shouted at his men. “Go round ’em up now!”
“Stay here,” Joe said to Julie and Sheridan. His daughter cradled Julie in her arms. Julie sobbed, her head down.
Joe, holding his shotgun pointed above the fray, stepped around his truck and saw three deputies including Deputy Mike Reed rush the three prone Scarlett Brothers. Reed was the only deputy Joe considered sane and professional. The others were recent hires by McLanahan and were, to a man, large, mulish, quick with their fists, and just as quick to look away if an altercation involved someone who was a friend of the Sheriff’s Department—or, more specifically, McLanahan himself.
Arlen simply rolled to his stomach and put his hands behind his back to be cuffed, saying, “Take it easy, boys, take it easy, I’m cooperating . . .”
Wyatt, after watching Arlen, did the same, although he looked confused.
It took all three deputies to subdue Hank, who continued to curse and kick and swing at them, one blow connecting solidly with Deputy Reed’s mouth, which instantly bloomed with bright-red blood. Finally, after a pepper spray blast to his eyes, Hank curled up in the dirt and the
deputies managed to cuff his hands behind him and bind his cowboy boots together with Flex-Cuffs.
AFTER TWO YEARS as county sheriff, McLanahan still seemed to be somewhat unfinished, which is why he had apparently decided in recent months to assume a new role, that of “local character.” After trying on and discarding several personas—squinty-eyed gunfighter, law-enforcement technocrat, glad-handing politician—McLanahan had decided to aspire to the mantle of “good old boy,” a stereotype that had served his predecessor Bud Barnum well for twenty-four years. In the past six months, McLanahan had begun to slow his speech pattern and pepper his pronouncements and observations with arcane westernisms. He’d even managed to make his face go slack. His sheriff’s crisp gray Stetson had been replaced by a floppy black cowboy hat and his khaki department jacket for a bulky Carhartt ranch coat. Rather than drive the newest sheriff’s department vehicle, McLanahan opted for an old county pickup with rust spots on the panels. He bought a Blue Heeler puppy to occupy the passenger seat, and had begun to refer to his seven-acre parcel of land outside the city limits as his “ranch.”
McLanahan squatted down in the middle of the triangle of handcuffed brothers and asked, “Can one of you tell me just what in the hell this is all about?”
Joe listened.
“Mama’s gone,” Hank said, his voice hard. “And that son-of-a-bitch there”—he nodded toward Arlen—“thinks he’s going to get the ranch.”
McLanahan said, “What do you mean she’s gone? Like she’s on a vacation or something?”
Hank didn’t take his eyes off of Arlen. “Like that son-of-a-bitch killed her and hid the body,” he said.
“What?” McLanahan said.
There was a high, unearthly wail, an airy squeal that seemed to come down from the mountains. The sound made the hairs on Joe’s neck stand up. It was Wyatt. The big man was crying.