“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?”
