by C. J. Box
"Jesus Christ," Trey said when they could see the bear huddled at the back of the trap, his eyes blinking against the artificial light. "He's even bigger than the last time I saw him."
"Is it 304?" Joe's voice was weak, as if the presence of the bear had sucked something out of him. The bear filled the back of the trap; his huge head hung low, his nose moist and black. A stream of pink-colored saliva hung like a beaded ruby necklace from his mouth to the half-devoured roadkill on the floor of the trap. The bear was frightened, and breathing hard, which made the trap rock slightly back and forth.
"Yup, it's him."
On the seat between them was a tranquilizer gun loaded with a dart filled with Telazol. Once the bear was down, Trey had told Joe, they would need to confirm 304's ear tag and inject the animal with a lethal dose of euthanol to kill it.
Joe drove close to the steel gate on the trap and turned the wheels slightly, giving Trey a good shot at the bear.
"I hate this," Trey said, cocking the tranquilizer gun and aiming it out the window. "I hate this with all of my heart."
The gun popped and Joe saw a flash of the dart through his headlights as it flew into the back of the trap. Joe couldn't see where the dart hit within the thick fur of the grizzly, but he heard the bear grunt.
"Hit it?" Joe asked.
"I'm pretty sure I did."
"How long before he's down for the count?"
"Five minutes."
They waited ten. Joe couldn't tell if the bear was sleeping or not. He could still see eyes reflecting the light, still see the stream of saliva.
Trey said, "I think we're okay now," and slid out of the truck with his shotgun loaded with slugs and a kit containing the lethal dose of euthanol. Joe exited the driver's side with his weapon, and the two game wardens approached the front of the trap. Joe could hear the bear breathing, and the odor was very strong and mixed with the smell of blood from the roadkill. They snapped on their flashlights. Trey shone his on the locking mechanism of the trapdoor, while Joe trained his on the bear.
What Joe saw scared him to death. The grizzly not only blinked at the light, but turned his head to avoid it.
"Trey ..." Joe whispered urgently.
"Shit.'" Trey hollered, wheeling around. "The gate didn't lock!"
The grizzly bear roared and charged the front of the trap with such speed and force that the unlocked gate blew wide open, the steel grate clanging up and over the top of the culvert. Joe had never seen an animal so big move so fast, and he knew that if the bear chose him as a target there was nothing he could do about it. He found himself backing up toward the truck while raising his shotgun and he felt more than saw Trey blindly fire toward the huge brown blur as the bear ran toward the dark timber.
304 crow-hopped the instant Trey's shotgun went off as if kicked from behind, then kept going. Joe aimed at the streaking form, saw it, lost it, and didn't pull the trigger.
For a moment, they both stood and listened to the bear crash through the timber with the sound and subtlety of a meteorite. Joe was surprised he could hear anything over the sound of his own whumping heartbeat.
IT TOOK NEARLY twenty minutes for Trey and Joe to calm down and assess the situation. Joe was glad it was dark so that Trey wouldn't see his hands shaking.
He held the shotgun close to him, listening for the possible warning sounds of the bear doubling back on them, while Trey examined the trapdoor to try to figure out why it didn't work.
"I don't know what went wrong," Trey said morosely, pulling himself clumsily back to his feet and snatching his shotgun from where he had leaned it against the trap, "but it looks like I might have hit that bear. There's a splash of blood out here on the grass."
They followed the bear's churned-up trail through the meadow to where it entered the trees. There were flecks of blood on blades of grass and fallen leaves. Joe felt his heart sink.
"We've got a wounded grizzly and there's nothing more dangerous than that," Trey said, his voice heavy. "We've got to hunt him down."
Trey called dispatch and gave the dispatcher their coordinates. "We'll stay out here until we find him. Please call my wife and Marybeth Pickett in Saddlestring and tell 'em what the situation is. Oh—and call Jackson Hole. Tell 'em Joe Pickett is going to be a little late for his new job."
FOR THE NEXT three days they drove the primitive back roads, pulling Trey's horses in a trailer, tracking the wounded bear. They found where he had fed on a rotting moose carcass, and picked up his track where he had crossed a stream. The bear had tried to break into another cabin—they could see deep gouges on the front door and the shutters as well as a gout of blood on the porch. Joe found it remarkable and sickening how much blood this bear had lost, and both he and Trey kept expecting to find the bear's body any minute. Joe admired the big bear nearly as much as he feared it. He would have liked to simply let it go and die in peace, if there was a guarantee that the bear would die.
The tension in the situation, and between Joe and Trey, thickened. Trey admonished himself for taking a wild shot that wounded the bear, and Joe felt that Trey was blaming him for not firing. Joe blamed himself as well, and replayed the bear escape over and over in his mind as he rode. He wasn't convinced that he had frozen, but he sure hadn't shot the bear. Things had happened so quickly that he hadn't had a sure shot. Had he?
ON THE SECOND afternoon, they lost the signal. They drove to the highest hill they could get to and parked. The only thing they could do, Trey said, was hope the bear wandered back into range of the receiver.
"We might as well get right to it while we're waiting," Trey said, his tone even more rock bottom than usual. "We've got a hell of a mess in Jackson, Joe. I want you to know what you're getting yourself into."
Joe nodded.
Trey made a pained face. "I'm getting more than a little concerned that some of my game wardens are letting the pressure get to them. I wish I knew how I could help them deal with it. But I don't."
Joe asked, "What do you mean?" But he knew. In the past year, a game warden at a game check station in the Wind River mountains had gotten into an argument with his son, shot him, then turned the pistol on himself. No one knew what the argument was about. Another game warden in southern Wyoming, assigned to a huge, virtually uninhabited district, simply vanished from the state. He was later found in New Mexico at the end of a three-week bender. He would tell anyone who would listen to him that the locals had been out to get him, that he had run for his own life. A departmental investigation could find no evidence of his charges, and he was dismissed.
Unlike any other law enforcement personnel Joe was aware of, game wardens were literally autonomous. They ran their own districts in their own way. Monthly reports to district supervisors like Trey were required, but because supervisors had districts of their own to contend with, they rarely micromanaged game wardens in the field. This was one of the many aspects of his job that Joe valued. It was about trust, and competence, and doing the right thing. But this kind of autonomy brought a secret lonely hell to some men, and ravaged them.
"It's not like there never was any pressure, back in the old days when I started," Trey said. "We had poaching rings, hardheaded landowners, plenty of violent knuckleheads to deal with. But we didn't have the political stuff as much."
"Is that what you think happened with Will?" Joe asked. "He let it get to him?"
Trey nodded. "I'm not sure, of course. He never really said that, except for the occasional bitching that we all do. But Jackson is such a hot spot for that kind of thing. The most extreme are there, it seems. Hunters versus animal-rights types. Developers versus environmentalists. Rich versus poor. Out-of-state landowners versus local rubes. Bear-baiting poachers versus happy hikers. Shit, and it's not just local, either. It's national and international. I'm afraid he thought that just about everyone wanted a piece of him, or had a gripe with how he did his job. He never told me that, but all you have to do is read the papers to see what he was in the middle of.
"Jackson is unique, Joe," Trey continued. "Everything there is ramped up. All of the different issues are hotter. Jackson is Wyoming's very own California, for better and worse. Things that happen there will eventually influence the rest of the state and beyond. Everybody knows that. It's why the big wars start there. Whoever wins those wars knows that no one else will fight as hard anywhere else. It's the front line."
Joe let Trey go on, knowing how rarely the man went on. Joe had been chosen as Trey's confidant, and he accepted his role with little comment.
Trey looked up and locked eyes with Joe. "Will Jensen, in the end, must have been a very troubled soul. I ache for the guy."
Joe said, "I've got to say that the last man I would have guessed to do this was Will."
Trey nodded. "Me too. He was a goddamned rock for years. But something happened to him over the last six months. I don't know what it was."
Trey slumped forward for a moment, silent, then got out of the truck for a while and scoped the trees and meadow for a sign of the grizzly. The late afternoon sun cast shadows in the timber. Joe watched him, turning over in his mind what Trey had just told him.
"I wish 304 would come out where we can see him," Trey said, getting back in.
"About Will," Joe prompted. "The last six months."
Trey slumped against his seat. "Like I said, something happened to him. He didn't send in most of his reports, for one thing. The one or two I got were sloppy as hell. He got arrested for DWUI, twice at least. I think there may have been other incidents where the local cops let him off. I even heard something about him getting physically removed from some big-shot party when he tried to start a fight."
"Will?" Joe asked, shocked.
"Will. And I just found out his wife and kids moved out on him."
"Susan left him?"
Divorce was rampant within the families of game wardens, Joe knew, worse than for police officers. It went back to the nature of the job, the remote, state-owned homes, the single-mindedness most game wardens brought to their jobs (Joe included), and growing outside pressure. Plus, when he first became a game warden, Joe had quickly learned that some women liked men in a uniform. He had always resisted them. But he knew he wasn't perfect. Will Jensen, though, had been close to perfect. That's why he'd been assigned to Jackson.
Trey said, "I kick myself now, because I should have seen it coming. I should have gotten my fat ass over the mountains and talked with him. Maybe I could have helped him."
"Don't beat yourself up," Joe said. "Will obviously didn't ask you for any help."
"Would you?" Trey shot back.
Joe didn't think very long on the question. "Probably not."
Trey nodded triumphantly. "Of course you wouldn't. None of my guys would. Nobody talks about what's going on in their heads."
Joe noted that Trey, even in his concern, couldn't say the word feelings.
"But something happened to Will during the last six months," Joe said. "That's pretty fast, when you consider it."
Trey agreed. "I think so too. Unless he just bottled everything up and then it blew."
AS THE SUN notched between two peaks, Trey unfolded a map on the seat between them. There was still no signal from the bear.
"There are two districts out of Jackson," Trey said, pointing with a stubby finger. "South Jackson, which extends down through the Hoback Mountains and curls up like an 'L.' The North Jackson District, Will's old district, the one you'll be covering, extends from town all the way up to Yellowstone Park and over to the Continental Divide."
Trey stopped his finger on the staccato line indicating the Divide. "Right here, at Two Ocean Pass."
Joe did the math. The North Jackson district was 1,885 square miles, most of it spectacular, roadless mountain wilderness.
"The biggest area in the district is accessible only by horseback," Trey said. "It's considered the most remote area in the continental U.S. This is where the elk come down out of Yellowstone on their natural migration routes, and also where the outfitters have established camps. There's a state cabin up there owned by the department that you can base out of. You'll have thirty-seven outfitters to look after, and some of them are the crustiest guys you'll ever meet. Some of them are the most honorable men you'll ever run across. We have problems there with bear and elk baiting, salting mainly. I'm sure Will kept some files on them. You've heard of Smoke Van Horn?"
"Sure," Joe said.Van Horn was the loudest, most cantankerous outfitter in Wyoming. Newspapers sometimes referred to him as the Lion of the Tetons. Van Horn had theories about game management, trophy hunting, and how the state and federal government were screwing up his wilderness through wrong-headed policies thought up and administered by incompetent bureaucrats. He loved to show up at public meetings and take over, accusing the department or any other authority present of mismanagement and gross neglect. He had even self-published a tome called How the Pricks Deny Me a Living. He also claimed to be the most successful outfitter in the state, with a success ratio exceeding 98 percent.
"This is Smoke's country," Trey said ominously. "As well as the headquarters for animal-rights activists, wolf lovers, big-shot developers, politicians, movie stars, all kinds of riffraff."
Joe listened and nodded.
"The thing about the district is how big everything is," Trey said. "The elk herds are larger than anything you've ever run across in the Bighorns. There are fourteen thousand elk between Yellowstone and Jackson. Instead of the herds of forty or fifty that you're used to, you may get in the middle of herds up to three hundred. So you're going to encounter more hunters concentrated along the migration routes than you've probably ever seen before. There are also more grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions than anywhere else."
Joe nodded. He could feel his excitement building, as well as his trepidation.
"Remember one thing," Trey said. "Before you ride into those outfitter camps, stop and retie your packs on your horses. Make sure the hitches are perfect. You know how to tie a diamond hitch?"
Joe said he did.
"That's one way they measure you right off. If you've got good animals, and if the horses are packed tight with beautiful hitches, they'll think you know what the hell you're doing, even if you don't. You've got to gain their respect early on."
Joe was inwardly pleased that he had brought a well-worn copy of Joe Back's Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails, the Bible of horse packing.
Trey said, "There's some new thing going on there too, something called 'the Good Meat Movement.' Will laughed about it at first. He thought it was just another Jackson thing."
"The Good Meat Movement?" Joe asked.
Trey waved his hand to dismiss the notion. "Something about rich people wanting to get back to basics, to be there when their food is raised, killed, and packaged."
"Really?" Joe said. "That sounds like hunting."
Trey chuckled. "It's not hunting, Joe. The way Will described it to me, it's more like personally getting to know the animal you're about to slaughter and have ground up into burger. So you can feel his pain, or something. Shit, I don't know."
"I TOLD YOU there was an objection to you going over there to fill in," Trey said almost casually, while Joe dug into packs in the back of his truck for jerky and granola— their dinner that night.
"From who? The governor?"
Trey smiled. Joe had once arrested the governor for fishing without a license. The governor had never forgotten it, and had been vindictive.
"Two more months," Trey said, grinning. "Two more months and that guy is out of there."
Governor Budd was term-limited. He had all but left the state, lobbying for a new job in Washington with the administration. So far, he hadn't received one. His unpopularity, even within his own party, had apparently preceded him.
"Some people are even predicting that the Democrat will win," Trey said. "So prepare for hell to freeze over."
"I'd be lying if I didn't say I'll be glad he's gone," Joe
said. "Or that I didn't appreciate how you've stood by me all these years."
Trey waved Joe off and leaned against the grille of his green truck, gnawing on a piece of jerky. After he had washed it down with water, he had more to say. "Joe, I want you to find out what happened to Will. Now, you can't do a full-fledged investigation. The sheriff and the police department are already doing that, or have completed it by now."
Joe had assumed this was coming. He had hoped it would be.
"But I need to know what happened. What drove him to kill himself."
"Do you think it was murder?"
Trey shook his head. "Nothing I've heard indicates it was anything other than suicide. What I want to know is what was so damned bad that Will felt the only way he could handle it was to shove a gun in his mouth."
"I'll find out what I can."
"Report back to me. Even if you can't figure anything out. We may never know what was in that man's head." Trey sighed. "If we can find out something, maybe I can help the next guy. I don't know. But when you've got a man who seems perfectly suited for the job, with a beautiful wife and great kids, and something like this happens, well..."
"It doesn't make sense," Joe said.
Joe felt Trey's eyes on him. He could tell what Trey was thinking. The description of Will Jensen that Trey had laid out could also be used to describe Joe Pickett.
THE RECEIVER CHIRPED. Joe and Trey looked at each other. The bear had come back. Trey said they should saddle up his horses and go after it.
The signal was strong as night came, and they camped near a stream. It was strong throughout the night and in the morning. Bear number 304 was working his way back to the cabins. Trey predicted they would be on him by noon. They weren't.
IT WAS LATE afternoon when the signal strength on Trey's portable scanner went "all-bars" and both horses began to snort and dance, smelling the bear. The sun had just dropped behind the mountains. The fall colors were muted in shadow, and it had gotten colder.