Joe raised the shotgun and waited until Vern was far enough away that the shot pattern wouldn't be tight. Then he shot him in the hip. Vern dropped like a rock.
'Jesus!' Vern cried, writhing on the ground. 'I can't believe you shot me in the ass!'
'It was the least I could do,' Joe said. 'If you try to get up, I'll shoot you again.'
Joe found Wacey's pistol in the grass, and tucked it in his belt. He walked back to the porch and squatted on the pavement. Wacey was balled up with his back against the door. His good arm was pulling a smashed leg to his chest. His wounded arm, now a hamburger-like stump pulsing gouts of arterial blood, flopped about like a broken wing. Wacey s eyes were wide, and his mouth was fixed in a waxy snarl.
'Can you hear me, Wacey?' Joe asked.
Wacey grunted and nodded through the pain.
'Wacey, the only reason I didn't kill you for what you've done to my family is because if you were dead, you wouldn't think about it much,' Joe said. 'Do you understand what I'm saying? I want you to be able to think about what you've done to my family, and to me, and to those outfitters. Not to mention the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.'
'Get an ambulance!' Wacey hissed through chattering teeth. 'I'm bleeding to death!'
'Do you understand what I'm saying?' Joe asked again, calmly.
'Yes! Goddamn you!' Wacey spat. He was trembling violently.
'No,' Joe said, standing.
'Goddamn you to hell, Wacey. And take Vern Dunnegan along on the same
horse.'
Joe picked up Sheridan and carried her around the house and through the front yard to Bighorn Road. He put her down near the gate.
'Dad, look,' Sheridan said, pointing down the road toward Saddlestring.
Evelyn had done what she said she would. County sheriff's vehicles were roaring down the road from town, Barnum's Blazer in the lead with the siren and lights on.
Joe leaned his shotgun against the picket fence and stepped out onto the gravel road. Sheridan stayed with him. She was his shadow. He guessed that she might be his shadow for a very long time.
PART SEVEN
Epilogue
Spring.
Or at least what passed for spring in Wyoming, a place with only three legitimate but not independent seasons: summer, fall, and winter. Spring was something that occurred in other places, places where flowers pushed up from the soil during May when I it warmed, places where leaves budded and opened on hardwood ; trees, places where flowers exposed themselves like sacrifices to the sun. Places where it was unlikely that after those leaves and flowers emerged, 10 inches of heavy, wet, and unpredicted snow would fall and would cynically, sneeringly, kill every living thing in sight and stop all movement.
Through the slush, Joe drove home on the Bighorn Road from the Crazy Woman Campground and thought that in his entire life in the Rocky Mountains he had never really experienced what spring was in other places, or truly appreciated what it stood for.
To him, and to the big game animals he was in charge of, spring was a particularly cruel natural joke: a season created and devised to remind living beings that things were often not what they seemed and that they had no real power or influence over it no matter how well educated, technologically advanced, or intuitive they had become. It was a season designed to remind the living that it wasn't safe to presume anything.
Dawn.
He entered the house as silently as he could, taking off his Sorel packs in the mudroom and exchanging them for his fleece slippers, hanging his parka, muddy Wranglers, and red chamois shirt on the nail in exchange for his robe, and tossing his Stetson onto the closet shelf.
It was Sunday, and it was his job to make pancakes. He had left the house very early in response to a cellular telephone request from the campground, where the Defenders of Nature group had called him in a panic to report that 'a hyped-up black or grizzly bear' was rooting around their tents. He had responded and arrived at the camp and quickly determined that the bear was actually a moose and that the moose was gone. The Defenders of Nature were dissatisfied with his conclusion, and they had tried to convince him that the snuffling sounds they had heard around their dome tents meant danger and not mere curiosity, but with a flashlight Joe had shown them the moose hoof prints and the still-steaming moose excrement near the fire pit, evidence that had led to his determination.
The Defenders were outraged at the sudden heavy snow, and they seemed to blame Joe for it since he was a local. The Defenders--based in Arlington, Virginia, and encamped for nearly two weeks to monitor Miller's weasel recovery efforts and wholly suspicious of anybody or anything local (this was, after all, the backward land of miners, loggers, ranchers, developers, and hunters)--had grudgingly accepted Joe's hypothesis and had returned to their $800 sleeping bags.
With a whisk, Joe mixed eggs, flour, baking soda, and buttermilk into a bowl. He tested all of the heating elements to make sure the ones he replaced were now working. He greased the cast iron skillet and set it on the stove to warm up.
