belongings and vehicles. Nate’s disabling of almost all of the sheriff’s Sno-Cats and snowmobiles had prevented any attempt at chasing them down. All that was left were their deserted homes, dozens of exiting snowmobile tracks, and the smoking remains of Wade Brockius’s trailer.
“You tried to save him,” Elle Broxton-Howard said, putting her arm around Joe.
“Yup,” he said. He hadn’t been thinking about Dick Munker.
“Too bad about that little girl.”
Joe shook her arm off and walked far away from her, far away from everybody. He couldn’t even speak. He stared at the smoldering carcass of the trailer. It had scorched the snow and exposed the earth beneath it—dark earth and green grass that didn’t belong here. Melted snow mixed with soot had cut miniature troughs, like spindly black fingers, down the hillside. When he stared at the black framework, all he could see was the face of April Keeley as he last saw her. She was looking out of the window, her head tucked under the chin of her mother. April’s face had been emotionless, and haunted. April had always been haunted. She had never, it seemed, had much of a chance, no matter how hard he and Marybeth had tried. He had failed her, and as a result, she was gone. It tore his heart out.
Joe stood there as the snow swirled around him, then felt a wracking sob burst in his chest taking his remaining strength away. His knees buckled and his hands dropped to his sides and he sank down into the snow, hung his head, and cried.
PART FOUR
Snow Ghosts
Thirty-four
Two months had passed, and except for an occasional morning dusting, it hadn’t snowed. Even in March, normally the snowiest month of the year in Wyoming, it didn’t snow. A combination of high-altitude sunshine and warm Chinook winds that swept down and roared across the face of the Rockies had melted the snow on the valley floor, although there were still six to ten feet of snow in the mountains.
At the Sovereign Citizen compound, the disabled Sno-Cats still sat as silent hulks. The empty trailers, campers, and vehicles of the Sovereigns hadn’t been removed either, and probably wouldn’t be until late spring, when the mountain roads were open and tractors and flat-bed trucks could get up there.
Except for investigators and a very few journalists, there had been almost no visitors to the compound since it had erupted. For all practical purposes, it looked the same as it had on that day in January.
An internal Forest Service investigation had been launched immediately to determine whether or not policies had been breached and regulations followed. The FBI announced a similar investigation into the actions of Special Agent Dick Munker.
Robey Hersig had tentatively put out feelers to the attorney general in Cheyenne about an investigation on a statewide level. He was rebuffed on the basis that it was a federal matter.
Wade Brockius was among those found in the burned trailer. His body lay on top of Jeannie Keeley’s as if he had been trying to shield her, and April’s body was found beside her mother. Eunice Cobb’s body was also found and identified. She had been the victim who had run burning from the trailer. The Reverend B. J. Cobb announced that he intended to file a wrongful-death suit against the U.S. Forest Service and the FBI, and that he would start a legal expense fund based at his church. Cobb had been told to expect that the suit would take as long as five years to culminate in a trial, if it ever went that far.
Cobb had noisily objected to the “internal” nature of the investigations carried out by the federal agencies. He called for an independent investigation instead and proposed that the U.S. Justice Department should form a task force. His proposal gained no traction.
In the meantime, Melinda Strickland had remained in Saddlestring. She had been named interim district supervisor, and had taken over Lamar Gardiner’s office and desk. Two female employees had already filed a grievance, claiming that Strickland had hurled books at them in a rage.
Joe and Marybeth Pickett paid for the funerals of April and Jeannie Keeley with money they didn’t have. Although they still had legal bills from the lawyer they had hired to get April back, they went further into debt to pay for the plots and coffins in the Twelve Sleep County cemetery. The plots were located next to the grave of Ote Keeley, the murdered outfitter who had been buried in his pickup four years before. The fact that they paid for the funerals raised some eyebrows in Saddlestring, and it became a topic of conversation at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant.
The “Shoot-out at Battle Mountain,” as it had been dubbed, faded quickly as a mainstream national news story, and didn’t linger much longer than that within the state and region, except within pockets of the suspicious and dispossessed. Robey Hersig explained to Joe that the reasons for this had been the inaccessibility of the compound, the lack of media buildup, more pressing war news, and the absence of television coverage. Without visuals, Hersig said, there was no news. He gave the late Dick Munker credit for that.
Therefore, what happened at Battle Mountain didn’t rank in the national conscience with Waco, Ruby Ridge, or the Montana Freeman standoff. Although the incident raged through Internet forums and simmered beneath the surface throughout the Mountain West, the lack of good information relegated the story to the back pages of newspapers. Robey told Joe that a few of the Sovereigns who had fled that day had contacted journalists in different parts of the country to offer their stories, but were generally deemed less than credible.
Melinda Strickland was hailed as a hero in a long-form feature in
As a result, Broxton-Howard’s U.S.-based publicist parlayed the segment, which showcased his client’s good looks, her on-screen presence, and an accent that seemed to have grown more refined and pronounced since she left Saddlestring, into a series of talk-show and twenty-four-hour cable-news bookings. Elle Broxton-Howard could now be seen on television several nights a week as a paid analyst specializing in gender and environmental issues.
Since January, Broxton-Howard had left three messages for Joe on his office answering machine. She still wanted to do his story, she said. She “smelled” a six-figure movie option. They could work out the details later, when they met, she said. Joe had yet to return her calls.
One night, while Marybeth was idly channel-surfing, Broxton-Howard’s face appeared on their television screen. Marybeth scowled at Joe and quickly changed the channel.
Bud Longbrake’s wife, the woman who had been Nate Romanowski’s secret lover and who had gone on a world cruise, sent divorce papers from somewhere in Nevada to her husband. He signed them. A week after that, Missy Vankueren moved to the Longbrake ranch.
Nate Romanowski had vanished. Joe was surprised to find out that Nate had not been identified by the assault team as the man who had fired on them. His bulky snowmobile suit and helmet had disguised him. They mistakenly assumed that the shooter had been a Sovereign who had somehow
