He expected to see the flattened grass black with congealed blood, as was usually the case when he found animals that had been poached. The entry wound was often hard to see but the exit wound would bleed and drain into the turf, leaving a black-and-red pudding. But there was no blood underneath the moose at all, only more insects, madly scrambling, running from sunlight.
Joe stepped back and looked around. The grass was lush and thick in the meadow, and he noticed, for the first time, that there were no tracks of any kind in it. When he looked back on the slope he had walked up, his own footprints were glaringly obvious in the crushed, dry grass. It appeared that the moose had chosen the center of the meadow to suddenly drop dead. So what could possibly have removed the animal’s genitals, glands, and face? And not left so much as a print?
He pulled the bandanna from his mouth and let it hang around his neck. His necropsy kit was in his pickup, which was a one-hour walk away. Dusk would be approaching soon, and he had promised Marybeth he would have the girls home in time for dinner and homework. Tomorrow, when he returned, he expected that with the kit and his metal detector he would find a bullet or two in the carcass. Usually, the lead caught up just beneath the hide on the opposite side of where the animal had been shot.
Joe walked back to where Sheridan and Lucy were standing. They had moved back down the hill from the meadow, close enough that they could watch him but far enough away that the smell of the carcass wouldn’t make them sick to their stomachs. Jeff and Cindy were nowhere in sight.
As they worked their way down the slope to Crazy Woman Creek, his girls fired questions at him.
“Who killed the moose, Dad?” Lucy asked. “I like moose.” “Me too. And I don’t know what killed it.”
“Isn’t that strange to find an animal just dead like that?” Lucy again. “Very strange,” Joe said. “Unless somebody shot it and left it.” “That’s a crime, right? A big one?” Sheridan asked.
Joe nodded, “Wanton destruction of a game animal.”
“I hope you find out who did it,” Sheridan said, “and take away all of his stuff.”
“Yup,” Joe agreed, but his mind was racing. Besides the mutilation and the lack of tracks around the animal, something else bothered him that he couldn’t put his finger on. But as the three of them walked downstream, he saw a raccoon ahead of them splash through a pool and vanish into a stand of trees. The raccoon had found one of the dead fish that Jeff had “released.”
Suddenly, Joe stopped. That was it, he thought. The bull moose had been dead for at least several days, lying in the open, and nothing had fed on it. The mountains were filled with scavengers—eagles, coyotes, badgers, hawks, ravens, even mice—who were usually the first on the scene of a dead animal. Joe had discovered scores of game animals, which had been lost or left by hunters, by the squawking, feeding magpies that usually marked a kill. But the moose looked untouched, except for the incisions.
As a big fist of cumulous clouds punched across the sun and flattened the shadows and dropped the temperature by a quick ten degrees, Joe heard a snapping sound and turned slowly, looking back toward the meadow where they had found the moose. He could see nothing, but he felt a ripple through the hairs on the back of his neck.
“What is it, Dad?” Sheridan asked. Joe shook his head, listening.
“I heard it,” Lucy said. “It sounded like somebody stepped on a branch or a twig. Or maybe they were eating potato chips.”
“Potato chips,” Sheridan scoffed. “That’s stupid.” “I’m not stupid.”
“Girls.” Joe admonished them, still trying to listen. But he heard nothing beyond the liquid sound of the flowing breeze through the swaying crowns of the pine trees. He thought of how, in just a few moments, the mountain setting had changed from warm and welcoming to cold and oddly silent.
2
It was a half hour before dusk when they arrived at their small, two-story, state-owned home eight miles out of Saddlestring. Joe swung the pickup off Bighorn Road and parked it in front of the detached garage that needed painting. Sheridan and Lucy were out of the passenger door even before he set the brake, rushing across the grass in the front yard into the house to tell their mother what they had seen. Maxine bounded behind them but paused at the door to look back at Joe.
“Go ahead,” Joe said, “I’m coming.”
Assured, the Labrador bolted into the house.
After putting the rods, vests, and cooler into the garage, Joe walked around the house toward the corral. Toby, their eight-year-old paint gelding, nickered as soon as Joe was in sight which meant he was hungry. Doc, their new sorrel yearling, nickered as well, following the older horse’s lead. Joe shooed them aside as he entered the corral, then fed them two flake sections each of grass hay. He filled the trough and checked the gate on his way out. While he did so, he wondered why Marybeth hadn’t fed them earlier, because she usually did.
As he opened the door at the back of the house, Sheridan stormed out of it in a dark mood.
“Did you tell your mom about the moose?” Joe asked her.
“She’s busy,” Sheridan snapped, “maybe I should have made an appointment.”
“Sherry . . .” Joe admonished, but Sheridan was out the back gate toward the corral.
He turned and entered the kitchen. Marybeth sat at the kitchen table wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, surrounded by manila files, stacks of paper, facedown open books, a calculator, and a laptop computer. Boxes of files were stacked on either side of her chair, their lids on the floor. She was concentrating on her laptop screen, and barely acknowledged him as he entered the kitchen.
“Hey, babe,” he greeted her and swept her blond hair away from the side of her face and kissed her on the cheek.
“Just a second,” she said, tapping on her keyboard.
Joe felt a pang of annoyance. It was obvious that nothing was cooking on the stove, and the oven light was dark. The table was a shambles, and so was Marybeth. It wasn’t as if he expected dinner on the table every night. But she had asked him to be home early with the girls, for dinner, and he had lived up to his part of the bargain.
