on my cell phone or through my dispatcher and telling me that you’re planning to find me?” Joe said, his voice rising. “Have you ever thought about that, Nate? Instead of scaring the hell out of me by chasing me across the prairie?”
Nate didn’t respond right away, which was his way. Joe noticed that Nate was wearing his side-draw shoulder holster.
“So,” Nate said, a smile tugging on his mouth, “where’s your bear?”
hey left Nate’s Jeep in the ditch and, after working Joe’s pickup out of the badger hole, Nate and Joe sat side by side on the bench seat in Joe’s truck and churned forward through the prairie in the half-light of the last ten minutes of dusk.
“The bear might be out here,” Joe said, “but I don’t think the bear is the key to the mutilations.”
Nate shrugged. “This is one of those instances where reasonable people can disagree.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Explain.”
Nate chuckled again, which sounded somewhat false.
“Things are happening with the investigation,” Nate said. “I can tell by your mood. You’re . . . jaunty, all of a sudden. A little excitable also, I’d say. If you give me the background I’ll be able to let you know if I’m still in the ballpark or not. But I’ve had a few thoughts lately and a few more dreams. I’ve talked to some Indian friends.”
Joe shot Nate a look. He knew Nate had contacts on the reservation. The mutual interest was falconry, which the Shoshone and Arapaho admired.
“So you need to tell me what’s going on,” Nate said.
Joe checked the GPS unit. They were close. So far, he was pleasantly surprised that they’d paralleled the worst draws in the breaklands, and hadn’t been confronted with any ditches that stopped their progress.
“Things are getting interesting,” Joe said, and told Nate about his confrontation with Barnum and Portenson, his interview with Montegue, and the meeting with Sheriff Dan Harvey.
“Okay,” Nate said, after listening carefully. “There is something here.” “So what is it?” Joe asked.
Nate shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. But something ought to fit with something else. Tanner Engineering may be the place to start. But, Joe . . .”
“What?”
“Don’t dismiss what I said earlier. About the energy booms and the fact that the murders and mutilations seem to come when the ground is being tapped. Or that the bear may be more than a bear. That bear is here for a reason.”
Joe waved Nate away, as if swatting at a fly. “Nate, let’s not even go down that road. It’s crazy.”
Nate clammed up, stung by Joe’s attitude. Silence hung heavily in the cab.
“Okay, Nate, I haven’t dismissed it completely,” Joe said, sorry he’d snapped. “But I still can’t see where it connects.”
They hit another badger hole, which pitched the pickup like a sailboat in a choppy swell.
Nate said, “It probably doesn’t. That’s my point. I feel like there are things happening on different levels of reality but all at the same time. We happen to be in the right place at the right time where different levels of conflicts are overlapping.”
“What?”
“You should open your mind a little.” “Perhaps.”
Both Nate and Joe watched the GPS unit. They knew they were moments away from contact.
“What did you say that area code and telephone number was?” Nate asked, changing the subject. The pickup nose was pointed toward the sky, into a swirl of early-evening stars. When they broke over the rise Joe expected to see the bear. They were that close.
“Nine-one-oh something,” Joe said. “Fayetteville, North Carolina. Wherever that is.”
Nate laughed. “Here’s a guy in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, asking where North Carolina is.”
“We’re just about over the top,” Joe said. “Get ready for I don’t know what.”
“Nine-one-oh,” Nate said suddenly. “That’s the area code for Fort Bragg. The army base. I spent some time there. Forget Fayetteville, Joe. Think Fort Bragg.”
With that, Joe felt another door open. As it did, they topped the hill and looked down on an immense flat basin that was lit up in the moonlight. He saw no bear. But in the center of the basin was a sheep wagon. There was no pickup next to the wagon, only a few white sheep, their backs absorbing the light blue moonlight. The sheep wagon was prototypical of the models that used to be found all over the Rockies: a compact living space mounted on wheels that could be pulled by a long tongue hitch and stationed amid the herds. It was the nineteenth-century precursor to the RV. There was a single door at the rear of the wagon, and a single window over the bunk-shelf near the front. A wood-stove chimney pipe poked out of the rounded top.
Joe stopped and checked the coordinates. “This doesn’t make any sense,” Joe said. “What?” Nate asked.
“We’re here. This is where the bear boys said they caught the grizzly’s signal. Right here. But I don’t see anything besides the wagon and the sheep.” Nate leaned forward, looking back and forth from the GPS display into the basin. “Unless I’m wrong,” he said, “our bear is inside that sheep wagon.” Joe turned his head toward Nate. “This is really strange.”
Nate nodded.
“Do you have a lot of bullets for that gun?” Joe asked.
Nate arched his eyebrows. “I do. I just hope I don’t have to use them.” Joe stopped the truck twenty yards
