Then she saw something outside that quickly brought her back to earth. Something had moved in the woodpile; something tan and lightning fast had streaked across the bottom row of logs and darted into a dark opening near the base between two lengths of wood.
The sheriff and the younger man were still talking, and they had their backs to the fence and the woodpile. What she had seen was just behind them, only a few feet away, but it didn’t look like they had noticed anything. They hadn’t even turned around. She could see nothing now. A ground squirrel? Too big. A marmot? Too sleek and fast. She had never seen this kind of animal before, and she knew every inch of that yard and every creature in it. She even knew where the nest of tiny field mice was and had studied the wriggling pink naked mouse babies before their eyes opened. But this animal was long and thin, and it moved like a bolt of lightning.
Sheridan gasped and jumped when her Mom spoke her name sharply behind her. Sheridan turned around quickly but her mom was looking sternly at her and not at the woodpile through the window. Sheridan didn’t say a word when her mom guided her away from the window, through the house, and to the car.
As her mom backed out of the driveway and Lucy sang a nonsense song, Sheridan watched over her shoulder through the back car window as the house got smaller. As they crested the first hill toward town, the little house was the size of a matchbox.
Behind the matchbox house, Sheridan thought, was a woodpile. And in that woodpile was the gift her imagination had brought her.
PART TWO
Determination of Endangered Species and Threatened Species
Sec. 4. (a) General.- (1) The Secretary shall by regulation promulgated in accordance with subsection (b) determine whether any species is an endangered species or a threatened species because of any of the following factors:
[(1)] (A) the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range;
[(2)] (B) overutilization for commercial, [sporting,] recreational, scientific, or educational purposes;
[(3)] (C) disease or predation;
[(4)] (D) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms;
or
[(5)] (E) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence.
—The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982
5
There were 55 game wardens in the State of Wyoming, an elite group, and Joe Pickett and Wacey were two of them. Wacey had received his B.A. in wildlife management while bull-riding at summer rodeos before Joe had graduated with a degree in natural resource management. Three years apart, both had been certified at the state law enforcement academy in Douglas and both had passed the written and oral interviews, as well as the personality profile, to become permanent trainees in Jeffrey City and Gillette districts respectively, before becoming wardens. Each now made barely $26,000 a year.
As Joe drove down the two-lane highway toward the Eagle Mountain Club, he thought of how the morning had violently changed course. Ote Keeley had ridden down from the mountains in the middle of the Pickett family Sunday routine. It was a routine that had moved with them as they relocated throughout the state. It continued to Baggs in Southern Wyoming, then to Saddlestring as he worked under the high-profile Game Warden Vern Dunnegan, then to Buffalo when Joe took on his first full-fledged post as game warden. There had been six different state-owned houses in nine years, five different towns. All of the homes—and especially this one—had been plebeian and small. They were careful at headquarters not to give the taxpayers the idea that their hunting license fees were going toward elaborate homes for state employees. The Pickett house was built into the mouth of a small canyon on a lot that included a barn, a corral, and a detached garage. They had brought their family routine back to Saddlestring district after Vern suddenly retired from the state and Joe finally got the job he wanted most, in the place he and Marybeth liked the best.
It was a job Joe almost didn’t get. Vern had recommended Joe and had used his influence at headquarters to get Joe an interview with the director. In what Joe and Marybeth later called “one his larger bonehead moves,” Joe had written the wrong date for the appointment with the director in his calendar and simply missed it. When Joe screwed up, he tended to do it massively and publicly. The director had been furious for being stood up and it was only through Vern’s intervention that Joe was able to later meet with the director and secure the post.
Both Marybeth and Joe had commented how much bigger the house had seemed to be when Vern and his wife occupied it, back when Joe worked under Vern and he and Marybeth would visit. They both remembered sitting in the shaded backyard, sipping cocktails while Vern barbecued steaks and Vern’s attractive wife, Georgia (they had no children), mixed drinks and tossed salad inside. The house at that time seemed almost elegant in a way, and both Joe and Marybeth were envious. The future seemed so bright then. But that was two children and a Labrador ago, and the same three-bedroom home was filled. After only four months in the house it seemed to be shrinking. The baby would make the house even smaller. And everything about it was falling apart. The shelf life for a state-owned and -constructed home was short.
Today was, he knew, likely to be the last Sunday for at least three months that he would be able to cook breakfast for his girls and read the newspapers—and now he hadn’t even been able to do that. Big game hunting season in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming, would begin on Thursday with antelope season. Deer would follow, then elk and moose. Joe would be out in the mountains and foothills, patrolling. School would even be let out for “Elk Day” because the children of hunters were expected to go with their families into the mountains.
Hunters began before dawn, and Joe would begin before dawn. Hunters could legally take game up to a half an hour after dark, and Joe would be out among them until well after that, checking permits and licenses, making sure that the game was tagged properly, that laws weren’t broken, and that private land wasn’t trespassed on. In Wyoming, the people owned the game animals, and they took their ownership to heart. Joe took his job just as seriously.
He thought about Sheridan saying “Better take your gun,” and it bothered him. Sheridan had certainly noticed his Sam Browne belt and the pistol in it when he came home every night. His .270 Winchester rifle rested permanently in the window gun rack of the department green Ford pickup he drove. They knew that his job entailed carrying a gun with him. But never had either child ever suggested he go out and shoot something. Maybe they didn’t realize what he really did all day. He had heard Sheridan say in passing that her Dad “saved animals” for his job. He liked that definition, even though it was only partially true.
Joe slowed on the highway to let a herd of pronghorn antelope cross. He watched as they ducked under a barbed-wire fence and continued their journey toward the foothills, toward Wacey Hedeman’s district.
Wacey and Joe had both been trained in the field by Vern Dunnegan at different times. Vern told anyone who would listen that they were his “best boys.” Because their districts adjoined each other—the warden in the Saddlestring district and the warden in the Basin district—Wacey and Joe often teamed up on projects and investigations. They built hay fences together, shared horses and snow machines when needed for patrol, called on each other for support if necessary, and traded notes. As a result of spending many predawn hours together in one or the other’s trucks, Joe had come to know Wacey well. They had even become friends, of a sort. Wacey fascinated Joe at the same time he repelled him. Wacey knew the county and was intimate with ranchers and poachers alike. Wacey was an ex-rodeo cowboy who had an easy, oily charm that worked on just about everyone, Joe included. Even Marybeth seemed to enjoy Wacey, although she startled Joe once by saying that she didn’t trust him.
Some of the things Joe knew about Wacey would have confirmed her opinion, but he kept them to himself.
Joe turned his pickup off of the highway into the entrance of the Eagle Mountain Club. A uniformed guard in a
white clapboard guardhouse waved at him to go through, and the motorized wrought-iron gate swung wide. But as Joe drove forward, the guard suddenly swung out of the door of the house and approached his window.
The guard was in his late fifties, and his uniform strained across his belly.
“I thought you were somebody else when I waved at you,” the guard said, bending his head to the side so he could see into the truck.
“You thought I was Wacey Hedeman,” Joe said. “He has a truck just like this. I’m here to see Wacey.”
The guard stared hard at Joe. “Have you been here before?”
“Once, with Wacey.” Joe let his voice drop. “Now please let me through now. There was a homicide near Saddlestring, and I need Wacey’s help on it now.”
The guard stepped back but took a moment to wave Pickett through. In his rearview mirror, Joe watched the guard step into the road and write down Joe’s license plate number on a pad he took from his pocket.
The Eagle Mountain Club was an exclusive private resort on a hilltop overlooking the Big Horn River. From what Wacey had told him, initial dues to the club were $250,000 and members joined by invitation only. The Eagle Mountain Club had only 250 members, and new members joined only when old members died, dropped out, or were denied privileges by a majority of the members. This had happened only twice to Joe’s knowledge, once to the famous televangelist who “baptized” a housekeeper by inserting the neck of a vodka bottle into her and then dunking her in the club-stocked trout pond and the other time when a member, a former astronaut, was found guilty of beating his wife to death with a bronze replica of the Lunar Landing Module. The club had a 36-hole golf course that fingered through the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, as well as a private fish hatchery, shooting range, airstrip, and about 60 multimillion-dollar homes that had been constructed when a million dollars was an obscene amount of money. The one thing the exclusive membership had in common was a passion for privacy. Few people in the state even knew about the Eagle Mountain Club, and access to it was purposely difficult. It was more than 200 miles from the nearest city of any size—Billings, Montana—and more than 500 miles from Denver.
The Eagle Mountain Club was nearly vacant in the fall, and Joe encountered no vehicles or golf carts on the road. Few residents stayed during the winter, and most were already gone. As he drove along the wide empty roads bordered by manicured lawns with the Bighorns looming all around him, Joe got the sense of being on top of the country that spread out around him. It was a false oasis hidden away on a mountaintop in Wyoming, a high and dry place where the grass grew only because of nonstop, unrepentant irrigation and where all of the food in the four-star restaurant was flown in from other places. Joe felt that this place didn’t belong, and he knew it was there for precisely that reason. The Eagle Mountain Club predated the recent flight to the Rocky Mountains by rich celebrities by about 30 years.
Homes were set back off of the road, and most were hidden by trees. There were no street signs, and driveways to homes were marked by brass plaques imbedded in the pavement with the owners’ last names. When he saw the name Kensinger, he turned.
Wacey’s muddy green Ford pickup was parked at a rakish angle on the side of the massive two-level log home. Joe parked behind it and got out. His footsteps on the pavement were the only sound he could hear. Joe knocked on the door.
The wide oak front door swung open, and Wacey stood in it and squinted at Joe with a sour expression on his face. Wacey was still thin and compact—a bull rider’s body—and his mouth was hidden under a thick auburn gun-fighter’s mustache. The only thing he was wearing was his red chamois Game and Fish shirt.
“Take your pants off and come on in, Joe,” Wacey said in a whisper. “That’s what I did.” A slow full-face grin started near his corners of his blue eyes.
Someone inside the dark house, a woman, asked Wacey what he was doing.
“My colleague Joe Pickett from the Saddlestring District is here,” Wacey said over his shoulder. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Behind Wacey, in the gloom, Joe saw the form of a very white and naked woman pass. He heard her bare feet slap across the marble floor.
To Joe, Wacey mouthed the name “Aimee Kensinger.” Then: “She really does like us wardens.”
Despite himself, Joe smiled. Wacey was something else. Wacey had once told Joe that Aimee Kensinger, the trophy wife of Donald Kensinger of Kensinger Communications, had a thing for cowboy-types in uniform. Joe knew Wacey had been spending a lot of time of late at the Eagle Mountain Club. He also knew that Wacey’s visits coincided with Donald Kensinger’s business trips.
Wacey stepped out on the porch and eased the door closed behind him.
“What’s going on?” Wacey asked. “I was right in the middle of something.”
Joe knew what. There was a wet stain on the front tail of Hedeman’s shirt where his erection stretched out at the fabric like a tent pole. Hedeman followed Joe’s eyes.
“That’s kinda embarrassing,” Wacey said. “Guess I’m leakin’ a bit. She’ll make a guy do things like that when they aren’t used to it.”
Joe Pickett told Wacey what had happened that morning. He confirmed that Wacey did know where Ote Keeley’s elk camp was located on the Twelve Sleep Drainage. He told Wacey about the cooler, and Wacey seemed interested.
“Ote Keeley. He was that guy ...”
“Yup,” Joe answered sharply.
“When do we need to get going?” Wacey asked.
“Right now,” Joe said. “Right now.”
“I gotta call Arlene,” Wacey replied, referring to his wife.
“Maybe you ought to do it from the truck.”
Wacey again started his slow, infectious smile. He winked at Joe and nodded his head toward the door.
“She’s gonna finance my campaign for sheriff,” Wacey said in a conspiratorial voice. “And when it comes to sex, she’ll try just about anything. She even shaved herself this morning. You ever mess around with a woman who is shaved clean as a whistle? It’s weird. Sort of like a little girl, but not a little girl at all, you know? You just don’t realize how big and ripe those lips are down there unless you can really see ’em.”
Joe nodded uncomfortably.
Aimee Kensinger came out of the house wearing a thick white robe.
Joe said hello. He had met her once at a museum fund-raiser dinner Marybeth had taken him to, but he knew she didn’t remember him. He hadn’t been in his uniform.
“Hello, officer,” Aimee Kensinger said. It was a purr, a self-conscious, very obvious purr. Joe was both alarmed and aroused.
Aimee Kensinger had a wide-open healthy face framed by a bell of dark hair. Her feet were bare and her calves were trim. She wore no makeup, but her face was still flushed from whatever Wacey and she had been doing inside.
“Forget it, babe.” Wacey said gently to her, giving her a brotherly punch on the arm. “He’s married.”
“So are you, honey,” she said.
“It’s different with Joe, though,” Wacey answered, shrugging as if he couldn’t understand it himself.
“Good for you,” she said. Joe couldn’t tell if she meant it or not.
6
The command post that had been established at the Crazy Woman Creek Campground had quickly become chaos. The murder of Ote Keeley and the possibility of an armed camp of suspects had ignited the imagination of the entire valley. A crowd had formed in the campground including off-duty Saddlestring police officers, volunteer fire department members, the mayor, the editor of the weekly Saddlestring Roundup, even elderly officers of the local VFW armed with Korean War-era M-1 carbines. Two local survivalists had shown up in battle fatigues with specially modified SKS Chinese assault rifles and concussion grenades hung from web belts. Sheriff Barnum didn’t mind the crowd; he reveled in it. His makeshift office was established in a stout-walled Cabela’s outfitter tent. His desk was a card table. Someone (Joe guessed one of the Korean War vets) told him t
hat when he sat at the table and smoked, he reminded them of General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh. Barnum enjoyed the comparison and mentioned it to anyone who would listen.
Joe Pickett and Wacey Hedeman saddled their horses and shook the hands of well-wishers while they waited for Deputy McLanahan to arrive. Joe had brought up his six-year-old buckskin mare named Lizzie. Joe felt like he and Wacey were star athletes of the local football team. Men clapped them on their shoulders and whacked them on the butt as they walked by. Many said they wished they were going along.
McLanahan arrived armed for a small war, and the gear he had brought would have been fine if the three of them were setting off on a land offensive with four-wheel drives and transport trucks. Unfortunately for McLanahan, this was a designated roadless area of the national forest and the only access was by foot or horseback. In his Blazer and horse trailer, McLanahan had brought hundreds of pounds of bulky outfitter tents, sleeping bags, a propane stove, blankets, cast-iron skillets, Dutch ovens and frying pans, radio equipment and a chuck box filled with plates and utensils that weighed more than 150 pounds by itself. The back of the Blazer was stacked with guns—Joe imagined McLanahan cleaned out the gun cabinet in the sheriff’s office. He saw several high-powered sniper’s rifles with night-vision scopes, semiautomatic carbines loaded with armor-piercing shells, a couple of MAC-10 machine pistols, M-16 automatic rifles, and semiautomatic riot shot-guns. “Typical Barnum overkill,” Wacey had scoffed loud enough to be heard by the crowd in the camp. A few people laughed. “Supporters,” Wacey whispered to Joe.
Barnum had ordered the three horsemen to “take as much as they could,” and McLanahan had loaded down the canvas panniers while Joe and Wacey stared at each other in puzzlement. Barnum made it clear that he was assuming command of the operation and that the two Game and Fish officers were subordinate to the county sheriff, which was officially true in this circumstance. He “strongly advised” that both equip themselves with more firepower. Both had sidearms—Joe had his never-fired-in-anger-and-once-swiped-by-Ote-Keeley Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, and Wacey had his 9mm Beretta semiautomatic. Finally, Wacey was persuaded to strap to his saddle one of the carbines in a scabbard. Both had pitched in to help McLanahan, who was a boyish-looking former college ROTC officer, to load the panniers on the two packhorses so they could finally leave.