stayed in their camps. The roads had already deteriorated and were either marble-slick or mushy, depending on the terrain. He decided to get out of the area while the option was still available. On the way back he winched out a crew of hunters stuck in a ditch and followed them down to the main road.
Once he reached home, Joe left his boots and yellow slicker in the mudroom, put his hat crown down on his desk, and called Game and Fish Headquarters in Cheyenne and asked for the Wildlife Biology Section. He told a technician about the package he had sent them and asked whether the contents had been examined yet. He was asked to hold.
From his chair, he could smell coffee from the kitchen, and he could hear the murmuring of Marybeth and her mother at the table.
At last a man identifying himself as the chief biologist came on the line. Joe had heard of him but had never met him. Joe listened to him and felt his scalp twitch.
'What do you mean you don't have it?' Joe asked.
'Exactly that,' the biologist said, the righteous annoyance of a higher rank apparent.
'No one here has seen it or recalls receiving it. How did you send it to us?'
Joe described the small box wrapped in brown paper and tape.
'You sent it regular mail? Not UPS? Not Federal Express? Not registered mail?'
the biologist fired at Joe. 'So there's no receipt. You sent it so there was no way to trace it?'
Joe felt his temper rise. He kept his voice low and even.
'I called ahead and was instructed to send it by mail,' Joe said. 'I was told that in these days of limited state budgets, we were to avoid extravagances like Federal Express.'
'Who told you that?' the biologist asked flatly.
'I think it was you,' Joe said. The voice sounded the same. 'I called you the day I found it.'
There was a long, frustrated sigh over the telephone. 'Well, we don't have it.'
'Can you look again? It's important,' Joe said.
'Nothing I've had examined has ever been lost before, either from there to here or from here to there.' There was a long silence. 'Sure, we can look. But no one here recalls getting it.'
He asked Joe to confirm the address he sent it to and the section. He asked Joe if he had put enough postage on the parcel.
Joe started to answer when the biologist asked him to hold again because he said someone might have found it. Joe sat back in his swivel chair with the receiver up to his ear. He recalled how the boys in Cheyenne often felt about the wardens in the field and vice versa. Vern had warned him about it years ago--how the agency directors sometimes felt that field wardens would go native and forget they were state employees, that the wardens would start to think of themselves as advocates for local ranchers or hunters or boosters. Some of the Cheyenne brass thought of the field wardens as prima donnas out there with their fancy trucks, guns, and badges. Like they were local celebrities rather than subordinates. But the resentment could be mutual. Joe had never placed a call to headquarters before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m.' knowing that anyone he needed to talk to would only be in during those hours. He might start the day by patrolling the Bighorn break lands at 5 A.M.' but things were different in Cheyenne. Biologists got paid the same whether they found a package or didn't find it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sheridan and Lucy playing in the living room. Lucy was being a dog or something and was raising up on her hind legs for an invisible treat that Sheridan was giving her. It was cute. Marybeth had said the night before that the girls seemed to be doing extremely well and that the Ote Keeley incident had not seemed to upset them. Marybeth said both girls had spent the last two days playing near the woodpile in the backyard and never even mentioned what had happened there. She said Sheridan, Miss Emotional, had even been consistently sunny. Marybeth said she was beginning to feel that maybe there would be nothing to worry about after all.
'Nope, sorry,' the biologist said as he came back to the telephone. 'We found a package and opened it, and it was a piece of a dead eagle a warden sent us from Ranchester to see if it had been shot.'
Joe cursed under his breath. The biologist agreed to call him if the package ever showed up.
***
Joe walked into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Marybeth and Missy were sitting at the table and stopped talking when he walked in, confirming that they had been talking about him. He filled his cup and turned and leaned against the counter. Marybeth looked radiant, and she smiled at him. Missy was smiling, too, and she looked at him with a kind of detached respect he had not seen from her before. Neither was about to ask him about the job offer or what he thought about it. Yet. They were both trying to gauge his mood.
Lucy crawled into the kitchen on all fours and propped up on her haunches near the table with her mouth open. Missy fed her a piece of a waffle from a plate. Joe guessed this routine had been going on most of the morning.
'There's your treat, little doggie,' Missy said.
'I'm not a doggie,' Lucy said over her shoulder as she scooted back into the living room to be with her sister.
'I don't know what's going on, but the girls are being angels,' Marybeth told Joe.
'Maybe their grandmother brings out the best in them.'
Joe laughed, and Missy gave Marybeth a look. The telephone rang in the office, and Joe excused himself to answer it. There was silence on the other end after Joe identified himself. The barely perceptible hiss in the line indicated it was long distance.
'You don't know me.' It was a woman's voice.
'I work at headquarters in Cheyenne.' Her voice was steady, but nervous. She was barely audible.
Joe reached behind him without looking and closed the office door. It was now quiet in the room. He sat down at his desk.
