will for you to float to the take-out.”
Nate didn’t want the Mad Archer anywhere near his house. If the man was as unstable as Joe claimed, his friends Paul and Stumpy were suspect as well. Men who hunted together shared certain characteristics and values, and this was guilt by association with the Mad Archer. Nate had never been troubled making judgments of this kind.
Plus, he’d been seen and the men would talk. Which meant the minute they were gone, he’d have to clear out.
The Mad Archer glared, his fists clenched at his side. As Nate neared the shore, his boot slipped off a river rock and he had to wheel and crow-hop to keep standing.
Then before Nate could look back over his shoulder at the boat and the three men to confirm they were floating downriver, he heard a single whispered word: “Now.”
Nate spun around in the river and reached across his chest for his weapon. The soles of his boots again slipped on the moss-covered rocks, and he stumbled to his left but not far enough. An arrow tipped with a razor broadhead sliced through the air and hit him between his left shoulder and clavicle.
The figures in the boat who had been still just a moment before were now a blur of motion. The gargoyle was sliding a pump shotgun out of a saddle scabbard that had been hidden beneath his boat seat. The old man Paul was awake and standing, and his long coat was open and he was swinging the muzzle of a military-style carbine toward Nate.
The Mad Archer cursed because his shot had been misplaced due to Nate’s stumble, and he was frantically fitting a second arrow into the nock of his bow before drawing the bowstring back again. Because both the old man and the Mad Archer were now standing, the boat pitched slightly from side to side.
Although his left shoulder screamed with pain, Nate pulled his big revolver out from its holster and cocked the hammer and leveled it with a single motion and fired.
The first bullet hit the Mad Archer in the right center of his wide forehead and blew his orange hat straight up into the air. His body collapsed forward across the casting platform.
Nate cocked the revolver on the down stroke from its tremendous kick and swung it left and shot the old man through the heart. Old Paul stiffened and sat straight back onto his swivel seat. His rifle fell into the water. Blood, bits of bone, and tissue pattered across the surface of the water behind him. He slumped forward into the same posture he’d assumed before.
Stumpy the Gargoyle nearly had his shotgun clear of the scabbard, and he looked up at Nate and their eyes met for an instant before he was hit under the right armpit with such great impact that it threw his body to the other side of the boat. The bullet exited clean and smacked the surface of the water a few inches from the other bank, nearly taking out the mother duck.
Nate staggered onto the gravel bank. His ears rang from the three explosions, and the hum blocked out any natural sound. The entire left side of his body felt as if he was hooked up to pulsing electric cables. He holstered his weapon and touched the feathered end of the arrow that was buried in his body. He looked over his left shoulder and could see the bloody tip of the razor broadhead poking out. The arrow was stuck fast, but as far as he could tell it hadn’t pierced a major artery or broken bone. All that was destroyed was shoulder muscle.
Out on the river the drift boat turned slowly from left to right and rocked slightly from the fallen crashes of the three dead bodies that were crumpled within it. The still air smelled of acrid gunpowder and the metallic odor of pooling blood.
The mother duck and her ducklings continued downriver in an undulating line, speeding up to get as far away as they could from the disturbance.
On trembling legs, Nate approached one of the thick old cottonwoods that hugged the bank of the river. As he neared it he turned so he faced the water and his back was to the trunk. Slowly, he stepped backward until he felt a jolt of pain as the tip of the broadhead bit into the soft gray bark. Reaching up, he grasped the aluminum shaft with both hands to steady it and leaned back with all his weight, burying the arrow as far as he could into the wood and pinning himself to the tree.
Standing as still as possible, Nate stripped the fletching off the back end of the arrow until it was smooth. Then he took a breath, gritted his teeth, and walked forward, letting the arrow slide through his shoulder.
When it was clear, he glanced over his shoulder at the bloody shaft that remained embedded in the tree trunk. Hot blood coursed down his skin in both front and back, and his shirt was stained dark with it.
As he lurched toward his home for his medical kit, he noted that the boat had drifted away a few hundred yards downriver and was spinning slowly in the current.
He cursed himself. Like the deer and elk in the valley, he hadn’t anticipated the threat to come from the water. Or from locals.
2
The next morning, a Wyoming game warden swung his green Ford pickup and stock trailer into a pull-through site in Crazy Woman Campground in the Bighorns and shut off the motor. He glanced at his wristwatch-0900, a half hour before he was to meet the trainee-and checked for messages on his cell phone. There were none.
It was Monday, October 22, the heart of elk-hunting season in the mountains. Although opening day had been a week before, the lack of heavy snow meant the hunters wouldn’t be out in force yet because they couldn’t track the herds.
He got out and pulled his gray wool Filson vest over his red uniform shirt and buttoned it up. Over the right breast pocket of the vest was a two-inch brass pin that read joe pickett game warden. On his shoulder was a patch embroidered with a pronghorn antelope. His badge, pinned over his heart, indicated he was GF-48-number forty- eight of the fifty-two game wardens in the state, ranked by seniority. He had once been up to number twenty-four before being fired and later rehired. Unfortunately, when they sent him the replacement badge, he was relegated to starting in the numeric system again. He’d thought about contesting it, but when he considered going up against the thoughtless maw of the bureaucracy it didn’t seem worth the trouble.
Joe exhaled a small cloud of condensation. The morning had not yet warmed above freezing, and the sun hadn’t risen high enough to melt the scrim of frost on the pine tree boughs all around him or the frozen mat of grass. He loved the snap of a fall morning in the mountains.
The stock trailer door moaned as he opened it, and he led both geldings, the older paint Toby and sprightly young sorrel Rojo, out of the trailer and around the side of it and tied their halters to the barred windows. He saddled Rojo and slid his shotgun into the right saddle scabbard and a scoped Winchester. 270 into the left. The saddlebags were already packed with maps, permits, gear, and lunch, and he lashed them to the skirt of the saddle. Toby pawed the ground and blew through his nostrils impatiently, wanting to get going.
“Soon,” Joe said to his wife’s horse. “Just chill.”
Joe Pickett was in his mid-forties, lean, and of medium height and build. He wore a battered gray Stetson and faded Wranglers over lace-up outfitter boots. His service weapon that he rarely drew, a. 40 Glock 23, was on his hip, along with handcuffs and a long cylinder of bear spray. A citation book jutted from his back pocket.
With the hot engine block ticking behind him, Joe Pickett leaned against the grille of his unit and speed-dialed his daughter Sheridan, a freshman at the University of Wyoming. She’d been at school since late August.
Her phone rang five times before she picked up.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Sleeping in on your birthday?”
“No, Dad. I just got back to my room from the shower. I don’t have class until ten on Mondays.” Her voice was clear but she sounded tired, he thought. “Mom already called me, but I guess you know that.”
He smiled. Since Sheridan had been born at 6:15 a.m. nineteen years before, Marybeth always woke up her daughter at exactly that time on her birthday. It used to mean opening her bedroom door and rousting her. Now it was an early-morning call. He pictured her in her dormitory room in Laramie with wet hair, speaking in a low tone so she wouldn’t wake her roommate.
“You guys aren’t going to do that forever, are you?” Sheridan said softly but with a slight exasperated edge. “I mean, no one in their right mind is up at that hour here. Some people are just getting in. ”
