Joe chuckled. “How are things going, kiddo? Are you settling in? Making some friends?”
“Both, I guess,” she said. “The classes are the easy part. You know how that goes. I know a lot of kids here from high school, but everything’s different. I miss you guys…” she said, then caught herself.
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “We miss you. I miss you.”
“April doesn’t,” Sheridan said with a laugh. April was their sixteen-year-old foster daughter who had taken over Sheridan’s vacant room. Previously, she’d had to share it with fourteen-year-old Lucy. Marybeth, Joe’s wife, had discovered a bag of marijuana in April’s underwear drawer during the move. Battle lines had been drawn. April had been grounded and had one week left before she could go anywhere other than school, and they’d confiscated her cell phone. But having her at home all the time was no picnic for the rest of the family, either, because no one could darken a room like a sullen April. Lucy did her best to avoid April and all the drama by staying late at school for rehearsals and keeping her bedroom door closed at home.
“I just know she’s wearing all my clothes and using all my stuff without asking,” Sheridan said. Joe thought about it and recalled April wearing one of Sheridan’s sweaters just the day before. “She’ll stretch everything out with her big… chest.”
“No comment,” Joe said. Then: “What about friends?”
“A couple,” Sheridan said. “One girl in particular named Nadia. We’ve got a couple of classes together and we started hanging out. She’s pretty cool.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Maryland somewhere. She says she really likes Wyoming.”
“Wait to see what she says this winter,” Joe said. “There’s already some snow in the mountains here.” Then: “Hey-you’re coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”
“At this point, yes,” Sheridan said with hesitation.
Joe felt his ears get hot. “What do you mean, ‘At this point’?”
“Nadia asked me if I wanted to go east with her. I’ve never been east before. I’d like to see D.C.”
Joe tried to think of what to say.
“Her parents will cover the ticket,” Sheridan said quickly.
“It’s not that,” Joe said. “I think your mom and your sisters would like to see you. In fact, I know they would.”
Silence.
“You’re making me feel guilty,” she said.
“That’s my job.”
He heard Sheridan chuckle again. “It might be cool coming home without having Grandmother Missy around.”
Joe nodded. Marybeth’s mother was supposedly on a world cruise, burning through some of the money she’d inherited from her former husband’s death. Joe had encouraged her never to come back.
“Talk to your mother about Thanksgiving,” Joe said.
“I will.”
As they talked, Joe looked up to see a banged-up green Game and Fish pickup with state plates turning into the campground off Hazelton Road. His trainee had arrived. Joe waved at the pickup, and it turned into the pull- through and swung around the stock trailer.
“Hey!” Joe shouted. “Watch those horses.”
The driver hit the brakes with his front bumper just eighteen inches from Rojo’s hock, then reversed so he could park in back of the trailer. The trainee looked fresh-faced and humiliated already.
“Where are you?” Sheridan asked.
“Up in the mountains. Area thirty-three and thirty-four-Middle Fork and the Upper South Fork Twelve Sleep River areas. It’s time I get out and check all the elk-hunting camps up here. Unfortunately, the department assigned me a trainee to tag along. He looks to be about your age but dumb, based on how he drives.”
Sheridan said, “You know, Dad, I miss going with you to do stuff like that.”
The statement caught him by surprise. “You do?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I miss the mountains, and our horses. I even miss Nate, even though he sort of hung me out there as far as our training goes.”
Sheridan had been an apprentice to the master falconer. At one point, she’d desperately wanted to fly her own falcon, but circumstances and Nate’s situation had prevented it.
“Maybe someday,” Joe said, doubting there would be a someday. “Sheridan, I’ve got to go before this trainee does something stupid. But happy birthday, kid.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He closed the phone and dropped it into his vest pocket as the trainee appeared from around the horse trailer. He was short and stocky, with a thatch of brown hair with highlights in it. He had a square jaw and a nose that had been broken and a walk with an athletic spring in it. He seemed easygoing and eager to please, and he didn’t look much older than Sheridan. A good-looking kid, though, Joe thought.
“Joe Pickett?” the trainee asked.
Joe nodded.
“I’m Luke Brueggemann. I’m your trainee. Sorry about nearly hitting your horses.”
“You’d have had to answer to my wife if you had,” Joe said. “And believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
Brueggemann nodded. He had a large duffel bag thrown over his shoulder. His red uniform shirt was fresh out of the box, as were his denims.
“Can I say, sir,” Brueggemann said, “it’s a real thrill for me to meet you. I’ve heard about you over the years.”
Joe took Brueggemann’s measure. He remembered being a trainee sixteen years before, when he was right out of college. His mentor had been a man named Vern Dunnegan, and it was in the days when game wardens often made their own law within their districts. He’d learned more from Dunnegan than he’d wanted to. But some of the legitimate skills and lessons from those years still stuck with him.
“I hope it was good,” Joe said.
“Most of it,” Brueggemann said, grinning and looking away.
“Are you from around here?”
The trainee nodded. “I grew up in Sundance,” he said. Sundance was located in Wyoming’s Black Hills country, in the northeast section of the square state. “Then I worked with my uncle as a commercial fisherman in Alaska to get money for college. When I came back, I did my four in Laramie and graduated with a wildlife biology degree.”
“Good for you,” Joe said.
“Thank you.”
“My daughter’s at UW now,” Joe said. “I was just talking to her.”
“Go, Pokes,” Brueggemann said, nodding in recognition.
“That’s Toby,” Joe said, gesturing toward the paint horse. “Do you know how to put on a saddle?”
By his expression, Joe could tell Brueggemann had never been this close to a horse before.
“Here’s what you need to know about horses: the front end bites and the back end kicks and the middle bucks you off,” Joe said. “Come on, I’ll show you. And after we get Toby saddled, you need to go through that big bag and figure out what you can tie behind the saddle, because that’s all the storage you’ll have.”
With both horses saddled and ready, Joe spread a topographical map across the hood of his Ford and pointed at the eleven outfitter camps they would try to inspect over the next two days. Brueggemann paid close attention, and stubbed a finger near one of the first camp locations.
“Isn’t that a road that goes right to it?” he asked.
Joe nodded.
“Then why don’t we drive there?”
Joe looked at him. “Are you nervous about the horses?”
Brueggemann hesitated, but his answer was obvious: “A little.”
“I understand,” Joe said. “Always be cautious around horses. As soon as you start to count on them, they’ll stab you in the back.”
