Winterkill

Joe sniffed and shrugged. “Maybe. It was too hard to tell.”

Marybeth shivered, but Joe doubted it was from the cold.

That afternoon, Joe smashed his pickup through snowdrifts on the dirt road to Nate Romanowski’s house by the river. In the bed of the pickup were flattened, road-killed jackrabbits that Joe had collected on the highway, and two pheasants from his freezer. Blowing snow flowed like floodwater over the brush, obscuring Romanowski’s house and the mews.

On the bank of the river, Joe stopped and opened his door, which snapped away from his grasp as the wind took it and threw it wide open. He leaned against the wind and snow, clamping his hat on his head, and carried the burlap sack of rabbits and pheasants to the river’s edge. He tucked the carcasses between large round river stones so they wouldn’t blow away. While he did this, he searched vainly in the howling sky for a glimpse of Nate Romanowski’s hawks. If they were there, or watching him from the gorge, he couldn’t see them.

As he drove home, his fingers thawing, he hoped the birds were still around and would find the food he had left them.

He was fulfilling one of Romanowski’s requests. It was time to get working on the other one, he thought, now that he knew more. Now that he knew that Nate Romanowski had been telling the truth.

Fifteen

The next morning, Joe got a call from a local rancher who complained that elk had knocked down his fence and were in the process of eating the hay he had stacked to feed his cattle during the winter. When Joe arrived at the ranch, the elk had eaten so much hay out of the rancher’s haystack that it leaned precariously to one side, ready to topple. The small herd of elk, lazy and satiated, had moved from the stack to the protection of a dark windbreak of trees. Because the animals of Wyoming were the responsibility of the state, ranchers called game wardens when elk, moose, deer, or antelope ate their hay or damaged their property. The warden’s job was to chase the animals away and assess the harm done. If the damage was significant, the rancher was due compensation, and Joe would have to submit the paperwork.

Using a .22 pistol loaded with cracker shells, Joe drove toward the sleeping elk while firing out the window. The cracker shells arced over the animals and popped in the air. It worked: The herd rumbled out of the meadow and back toward the mountains, through the place in the barbed-wire fence that they had flattened to get in. It’s going to be a busy winter of chasing elk out of haystacks, Joe thought. The heavy snow in the mountains would drive them down for feed, and the worst snows of the year, usually in March and April, were still to come.

At least elk are usually pretty easy to clean up after, Joe thought. Moose were far worse. Moose were known to walk through a multi-strand barbed-wire fence as if it were dental floss and drag the fence along with them, popping the strands free from the staples in the posts like buttons from a ripped shirt.

After chasing the elk away, Joe stopped by the rancher’s small white house. The rancher, named Herman Klein, was a third-generation landowner who Joe knew to be a good man. Klein had told Joe before, after a similar incident, that he wouldn’t mind feeding the elk if the damned things didn’t get so greedy.

As Joe pulled into the ranch yard, Klein walked out of the barn, where he had been working on his tractor. He wiped grease from his hands on his Carhartt coveralls and invited Joe in for coffee. After they had performed the winter ranch ritual of leaving their boots and heavy coats in the mud room before walking in stocking feet to the kitchen table, Klein poured Joe a cup of thick black coffee. While Mrs. Klein arranged sugar cookies on a plate, Joe filled out a report to submit to the Game and Fish Commission confirming the loss of hay and the damage to the fence. Joe didn’t mind doing this at all. He considered Herman Klein a good steward of the land, a thoughtful manager who improved the range and riparian areas on both his private and leased land.

“Joe, can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” Joe said, as he finished up the damage claim.

Klein tapped the morning Saddlestring Roundup on the table. “What in the hell is going on in Saddlestring these days?”

The headline read SECOND FEDERAL EMPLOYEE ASSAULTED. There was a photo of Melinda Strickland holding a press conference on the steps of the Forest Service office the day before, deploring the “outrageous attack” on Birch Wardell of the BLM by “local thugs.”

“Is there really a movement afoot to go after the Forest Service and the BLM?”

Joe looked up. “That’s what she seems to think, Herman.” The press conference itself was a unique event in Twelve Sleep County.

“Is she serious?”

“I think she is.”

“That’s complete bullshit,” Klein snorted, shaking his head.

“Herman!” Mrs. Klein scolded, placing the cookies on the table. “Watch your language.”

“I’ve heard much worse,” Joe smiled.

“Not from Herman, you haven’t.”

His cell phone was burring in his pickup when Joe climbed in. He plucked it from its holder on the dashboard.

“Game Warden Joe Pickett.”

“Joe Pickett?” asked a female voice he didn’t recognize.

“That’s what I said.”

“Please hold for Melinda Strickland.”

Joe moaned inwardly. Strickland was the last person he wanted to talk to. He was placed on hold. Background music played. He identified the song as “Last Train to Clarksville” by the Monkees. Only the U.S. Forest Service would have a waiting tape that old, he thought.

He held. Maxine watched him hold, and minutes passed. He assumed that when the President of the United States wanted to talk with the President of Russia, this was how it worked.

“Joe?” It was Melinda Strickland. She sounded chirpy.