Being allies with a man like Nate made Joe uncomfortable at times because it went against his instincts. Nate was a strange man, a frightening man. But at times like these, he needed a guy like Nate, who was always a man of his word and didn’t care about appearances, constraints, or even the law.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Joe said, standing.
“Don’t go crazy over in Jackson,” Nate cautioned.
“This from a man who is trying to ride a buffalo around.”
Joe smiled.
“If you need help, call me.”
Joe stopped at the door and looked back. “And vice versa.”
That night, Joe sat at his desk and made a list of ongoing projects and the status of each to email to Phil Kiner in Laramie. Maxine sat curled at his feet, knowing, like dogs always knew, that she would be abandoned soon and making him feel as guilty as possible for it by staring at him with her big brown eyes. The whole evening had been that way.
It had started at dinner with a melancholy pot roast and vegetables Sheridan complained were undercooked. Joe recognized her attitude for what it was: She was at an age where if she was angry with her father or mad at the world in general she took it out on her mother, who was the disciplinarian in the family. Lucy’s way of showing her disapproval for his leaving was to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there, which to Joe was even worse.
He looked over his long email message. He knew he would forget things, and there was no way he could provide the background necessary on specific hunters Phil may have a problem with, or the idiosyncrasies of individual landowners. It was strange, Joe thought, not knowing for sure if he was coming back to his district.
Fi ve A traveler going from east to west over the Bighorn Mountains has three choices of routes: U.S. 16 through Ten Sleep Canyon and Worland, U.S. 14 descending through Shell Canyon and Greybull, and U.S. 14A, via the Medicine Wheel Passage and on to Lovell. Joe chose 14A not only for the challenge of its switchbacks but for the view he would get when he broke over the top of the range and saw the vista of the Bighorn Basin laid out flat, brown, and endless. He chewed gum to help his ears pop as they clouded with elevation, and looked over frequently to check on Maxine, his Labrador, who he’d left at home until he could scope out his new district. Fine, gritty snow peppered his windshield at the tenthousandfoot summit, the snow appearing from a virtually cloudless light blue sky.
His feelings were decidedly mixed. The memory of the morning with his young family stayed with him. Sheridan and Lucy had been dressed for school and scrambling along the countertop in the kitchen, assembling their lunches. Marybeth was preparing for a day of bookkeeping at the pharmacy. She wore khaki slacks and a sweater, her blond hair cut shorter than she had ever worn it. He liked it but still wasn’t used to it. Joe had stood stupidly near the mudroom entrance, watching them. Their goodbyes had been a little frantic because they could all hear the school bus lumbering down Bighorn Road. After the girls were on the bus and the doors were shut, Joe and Marybeth walked to his pickup, which was fully packed and ready to go.
“Call me often,” she had said.
“As often as I can,” he said, kissing her.
“In fact, call me when you get there. So I know you made it all right.”
The scene was less than dramatic. So why did he feel that something seminal had happened? Why did he feel both guilty and elated?
As he descended the western slope, the snow vanished as suddenly as it had appeared and the temperature began to rise quickly. By the time he hit the flats, heat was shimmering on the old asphalt highway and roses were growing in boxes in downtown Lovell, which he left in his rearview mirror.
A squawk from his radio interrupted Joe’s thoughts. He picked up the handset. It was dispatch calling with a message from Trey. The meeting place that morning would need to be changed. There was a bear problem.
Trey Crump was waiting for Joe in his pickup, which was parked in the trees at the culmination of a rugged twotrack road, four miles from Dead Indian Pass. After Joe pulled up next to Trey’s pickup, his supervisor got out of his truck and climbed in with Joe. Joe grasped the big man’s hand.
Trey looked larger than he really was, with a squarish block of a head, a thick mustache going gray, and heavy jowls. A big belly strained against his uniform shirt. He was a terse man in aura and appearance, but his deepset, compassionate eyes gave him away as the romantic he really was. Joe liked and admired Trey, but he rarely saw him in person. Trey wore badge number 4, meaning he had the fourth highest seniority within the division. Joe had recently received his new badge, moving from 52 to 44. Since there were only fifty five full fledged game wardens —and thirty five trainees not yet assigned a district—Joe was proud of his new badge number. With Will Jensen’s death, Joe would now be badge number 43. He felt more than a pang of guilt for even thinking about that.
Trey apologized for not meeting Joe for breakfast at the Irma Hotel in Cody, but said he had received a 5 a.m. callout for a problem grizzly bear that had been breaking into cabins in the Sunlight Basin. The suspect bear was named Number 304, and he was well known in the area. That morning, the 450pound grizzly had pushed down a steelreinforced door, entered a cabin and dismantled it, ripping the cabinets from the wall and tossing a castiron stove from the kitchen into a bedroom.
“This is a bad situation,” Trey said, his voice deep and filled with gravel. “I could use your help.”
Joe could see the roofs of some of the cabins below in the heavy timber, and a culvert bear trap set up in a sundrenched meadow. The trap was designed on wheels so it could be pulled behind a vehicle to the problem area and baited with a roadkilled deer or antelope. When the bear entered the metal opening and tugged on the bait, a heavy steel door crashed down and locked. The trap, with the angry bear in it, could then be hitched to a pickup and driven away to a remote location, where the bear would be released. Either that, or euthanized on the spot if the Interagency Grizzly Bear Management Team pronounced a death sentence on the animal.
Joe grimaced. He had had enough of grizzly bears the year before, when a runaway from Yellowstone had beelined for the Bighorns. He’d seen firsthand what an animal like that could do to a man.
“We’re overwhelmed with bears right now,” Trey said with a heavy sigh. “Three different callins came in just this morning. That’s why I’m alone here—my bear guys are off on the other calls. They wanted to stay here to help me with 304 because we all kind of like the guy, and we hate to see him go.”
For the first time, Joe noticed that Trey’s scoped rifle was out and lying across the hood of his supervisor’s truck on a pair of old coveralls.
