"THE JACKSON GAME warden," McLanahan said, following Joe and Marybeth to their table. "Found him dead this morning in his house."
"Murdered?" Joe asked. He felt Marybeth tense up.
"Naw. Ate his own gun."
Marybeth gasped.
"Forty-four Magnum," McLanahan said. "Not much left of his head, is what I hear."
Joe was out of his chair and three inches from McLanahan's face. He hissed, "That'll be enough with the details right now in front of my wife."
McLanahan feigned hurt and surprise. "Sorry, Joe. I thought you'd want to know."
The new sheriff turned and left, heading for his table on the other side of the yard.
"Joe, was he talking about Will Jensen?" Marybeth asked.
"No," Joe said, confused. "It couldn't have been. He must have his information about half-right, as usual."
Marybeth shook her head. "I remember when we met Will and Susan. Remember their kids? Sheridan and their son tore around their house while you and Will talked at their kitchen table."
It made no sense to Joe. Jensen was a rock, a larger-than-life man who was considered one of the best there ever was within the department. Will Jensen was what game wardens wanted to be, the kind of man Joe aspired to be.
"I remember thinking," Marybeth continued, looking up at Joe, "I remember thinking how much they were like us."
Joe sat back down, shaken. "Let's hold off on this until we find out what the situation really is. Remember, all the information we've got at this point is from Deputy McLanahan."
"Sheriff McLanahan," Marybeth corrected gently.
Joe looked up, saw Sheridan running toward them from the cars, her blue dress flapping.
"All I know is that Will Jensen did not commit suicide," Joe said bluntly. "That's not possible."
"Joe..."
"Dad!" Sheridan gushed, stopping in front of them, breathing hard from her run. "Guess what I just heard on the radio?"
THREE
The drive back to their home from the wedding took place in the soft light of pre-dusk that deepened the greens of the meadows and blazed the muffin-shaped haystacks with bronze, as if they were lit from within. The ranch country rolled toward the mountains like swells in the ocean, shadows darkening in the folds of the terrain. Joe had noticed the soft bite of approaching fall, and now he could see that a few cottonwoods in the river valley were beginning to turn.
Sheridan was silent and sleepy in the passenger seat. Marybeth followed Joe in her van, giving him plenty of distance on the dirt road so that the dust his pickup kicked up would settle back down.
"It's pretty," Sheridan said. "This should be my favorite time of year."
"It's the best time, I think."
"Maybe someday I'll agree with you," she said. "But I've got the blues."
Joe knew what Sheridan meant. His daughter had begun junior high the week before, which meant a new school, a new schedule, and many more students. Her load of homework had tripled from the year before. And she was trying out for the volleyball team. Because Lucy and Sheridan now had different school schedules, Marybeth spent much more time driving them from place to place, delivering them or picking them up after school or activities. Joe had been taking Sheridan to school, and she put on a brave face for him, but he knew she was nervous and emotional about the change.
Joe loved the fall, even though it meant that big-game hunting seasons would soon be under way and he'd be in the field checking licenses and hunters from before sunrise until well after dark for nearly two and a half months. It was his busiest time as a game warden, and often exhausting. But, as always, he would throw himself into it, establish his rhythm. And, as always, he would find himself a little disappointed when it was over and fall surrendered to winter. He loved working hard, being outside, feeling his senses tingle as he approached a hunting camp not knowing who or what to expect. For two months, nearly every single human he encountered would be armed. These were men who lived their lives solely for the reward in the fall of their one-week or two-week hunt. They wanted to drink hard, eat like soldiers after a year-long march, hunt a pronghorn antelope, mule deer, elk, or moose, and burn out all of the primal energy and desire that they'd stored up during the previous year of humiliation and frustration. Sometimes, he encountered men in the field who didn't want to meet a game warden that day. That's when things got interesting.
Now, though, Joe was tired; he had eaten and drunk too much, even danced a few dances with Marybeth, Sheridan, and Lucy. Missy, flushed with wine, had dragged him from their table to the springy dance floor. As it turned out, it was her next-to-last dance before she joined Bud in his black Suburban and headed for the tiny Saddlestring airport. The newlyweds would take the seventeen-passenger commuter plane to Denver, then fly to Italy for their honeymoon. They would be gone for ten days. Bud would be back in time for the fall roundup when they moved their cattle from the mountain grass to the valley floor.
But as he drove, Joe could not stop thinking about Will Jensen, wondering what the circumstances could have been that made him kill himself. It didn't make sense to him. Will had been tough, levelheaded. Devoted to his family and his job. Or at least that's what Joe had thought.
THE PICKETTS LIVED in a small two-story house eight miles from Saddlestring on the Bighorn Road. The house was owned by the state, and had been their home for six years. It sat back from the road behind a recently painted white fence. There was a detached garage that housed Joe's snowmobile and the family van, and a loafing shed and corral in back for their two horses. The Saddlestring District was considered a "two-horse" district, meaning that the department budgeted for at least two horses, tack, and feed. From the front yard, the southern face of Wolf Mountain dominated the view. Between the house and the mountain, the East Fork of the Twelve Sleep River serpentined through a willow-choked meadow toward the main river and town.
As Joe entered the house, he glanced through the open door of his tiny office near the mudroom and saw that the message light was blinking on his answering machine. At this time of the year, Joe got a lot of calls. Hunters, fishers, ranchers, outfitters, and citizens called any time of the day or night. Most assumed Joe worked out of an office in some kind of Game and Fish Department building. The reality was that his office was a tiny room in his own house. Marybeth and Sheridan served as unpaid receptionists and assistants, and even Lucy answered the phone or the door at times. In a state and community where men greeted each other on the street during the fall by asking, "Got your elk yet?" the game warden played a prominent role.
He sat down at his desk and loosened his tie, watching as Marybeth and Lucy passed by his open door. Both were carrying huge bouquets of flowers from the wedding that Missy had insisted they take with them. Joe's office filled with the scent of flowers.
There were three messages. The first one was from Herman Klein, a rancher on the other side of Wolf Mountain. Klein reported that the elk were already moving down out of the timber and eating his hay. Since he had requested more elk fence be constructed around his stacks the previous year, he was hoping that contract crews would be out soon, before winter. Joe cursed and made a note on his pad to call his fence contractor in the morning and follow up with Herman Klein. One of the few responsibilities that had become easier for Joe since he started was that he no longer had to construct elk fence himself, but could contract locally for it. Unfortunately, the local contractor was unreliable.
The second call was strange. Joe could hear a man's labored breathing and faint, tinny music in the background, but no words were spoken. It went on like that until the time allotted for the message ran out. Joe looked at the telephone handset with puzzlement, then erased the message. It was the third such call in the past month. That was too many calls to assume a mistake or a misdial. But there was nothing he could do about it.
The last message was from Trey Crump, Joe's supervisor in Cody.
"Joe, it's Trey. I assume you've heard by now that Will Jen
sen took his own life over in Jackson."
Joe sat up in his chair. Now it was absolutely confirmed.
"We still don't know all of the details yet," Trey continued, sounding weary and sad, "but the ME in Teton County ruled out any foul play. The method of death was obvious, I guess."
There was a long pause. Then: "The Teton District isn't a district we can allow to be vacant for even a few days. The elk season opens up at the end of next week, two weeks before yours does. There's way too much action over there, and too much crap going on to leave it go."
Joe's heart jumped. The year before, he had put in a request to be considered for a new district. Twelve Sleep County seemed like a slowly closing vise. Too much had happened there. Although Joe still loved the Bighorns, and his district, he knew that in order to advance within the department he might have to move. If nothing else, he and Marybeth had discussed relocating to a place with more opportunities.
"The director called me this morning and asked me for a recommendation for a temporary game warden. I recommended you," Trey said, laughing tiredly. "I thought he was going to shit right there. But I told him there are only two men I could recommend for an area as hot as Teton. One of them is you. The other, God bless him, was Will."
Joe looked up. Marybeth leaned against the doorjamb, trying to read his expression.
Trey said, "I already talked to Phil Kiner in Laramie. He's got a trainee with him so he can break loose and come up to Twelve Sleep in a couple of weeks for the deer and elk openers. He trained up there when he first started out, so he knows the country in a general way. He's not you, but he'll get along okay. But I'd like to ask you to get over to Jackson as soon as you can. Can you do it? Call me as soon as possible, let me know."
Joe cradled the phone.
"Was that Trey?" Marybeth asked.
"Yup."
"Is it true about Will Jensen?"
"It's true."
She shook her head. "I just can't understand it."
Joe shrugged at her in a "what can I say?" gesture.
"Did he ask you to transfer?"
Joe tried to read her face. It was impassive, but her eyes sparkled and gave her away. She was intrigued.
"Temporarily."
"Are you going to do it?"
"What do you think about that?"
"When would you start?"
"I'd leave Monday. The elk opener is next week."
"In two days?"
She folded her arms, eyes locked with Joe.
SHERIDAN HAD CHANGED into a sweatshirt and jeans and brought her world history assignment into the living room so she could spread it out on the coffee table. She noticed that her mother's back filled the office door, and by her posture Sheridan could tell that her parents were having a serious discussion. Sheridan had assigned levels to her parents' discussions, and shared them with Lucy.
Level One was simply banter, but sometimes with an edge. During Level One, her parents moved freely around the house, talking as if Sheridan and Lucy couldn't hear them or didn't exist. Level Two was when her father was in his office and her mother blocked the door. They could still be overheard, but they didn't necessarily want to be.
Sheridan watched as her mother stepped into the office and shut the door behind her. As she did, Lucy came down the hall still wearing her flower girl's dress. That was a difference between Sheridan and Lucy: Sheridan couldn't wait to change when she got home.
"We're at Level Three," Sheridan whispered to Lucy.
"What about?"
"Something about Jackson," Sheridan said, still whispering. "I didn't get it all."
"I'D BE MORE excited if I could go with you," Marybeth said. "But with school just starting, and all of the shuttling I need to do with the girls, I can't." Not to mention Marybeth's still-fledgling office management business, Joe thought. Marybeth did the accounting and inventory management for the local pharmacy, a new art gallery, and Wolf Mountain Taxidermy.
"Maybe I can call Trey and pass on it," Joe said.
"Don't you dare," she said quickly. "This could be an opportunity. And obviously, Trey thinks highly enough of you to offer you this."
"I don't know how long it will last, or if it'll lead to anything."
"And we don't know that it won't," she said. "Jackson Hole is about as high profile as you can get in this state."
Joe knew that Will Jensen had shunned a high profile, but it came with the territory. The department sometimes sent press clippings out when game wardens made the news or were featured in local press. There were twice as many stories about Will Jensen than any other employee.
"Jackson is different," Joe said lamely. "It's a whole different animal than Saddlestring."
Marybeth walked over and sat on his desk. "Are you saying you don't want to do it?"
"No, I'm not saying that. But now isn't a very good time to leave you and the girls, even if it's for a couple of weeks."
She laughed. There was an edge of bitterness in the laugh that bothered him. "Joe, once hunting season starts, we don't even see you anyway. It's not like you're around to ..."
"Do my share?" he finished for her, feeling his face get hot.
"That's not what I was going to say."
Joe was stung. "For the last two years, I made just about every one of Sheridan's games," he said. "I went to Lucy's Christmas play last year."
Marybeth smiled, showing she didn't want to argue. "And you missed everything else," she said gently. "Teacher conferences, Lucy's choir, back-to-school night, Sheridan's play, the school carnival..."
"Only in September and October," he said defensively.
"And November," Marybeth said. "But Joe, my point is that you'll be gone anyway. So if you're gone here or you're gone there, it won't burden us very much. We're three strong women, you know."
His neck still burned. Being a good father and husband meant everything to him. He sincerely tried to make up for his absences in the other months, and had started taking Sheridan on patrol with him when he could to make up for the time he was away. He planned to do the same with Lucy as she got older.
"Trey said Phil Kiner can come up in a couple of weeks to fill in," Joe said grumpily. "So you won't need to worry about that."
"We'll still get the phone calls, though," she said. "And the drunken hunters who stop by. And a mad rancher every once in a while. That's just the way it is."
"Man..."
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "There's no doubt that we're best when we're working as partners, Joe. No doubt. Things are still a little ... fragile around here."
He turned his head away, but stroked her thigh, listening.
"But if we're ever going to provide better for our girls, we've got to be willing to take some risks. If this leads to a better job or a better salary for you, it's something we need to do."
"You'll be okay, then?"
She smiled down at him. "For a while, sure. I just hope it doesn't drag on too long. If it does, you'll have to come get us and take us with you."
"You think you'd like Jackson?"
Marybeth shrugged. "I don't know. It's got better restaurants. There's definitely more to do. But I'm not sure I'd want to raise our kids there."
"I'm not sure either," he said.
"But you can scout it out for us while you're there. You can check out the schools, the atmosphere. Then let me know what you think."
He shook his head. "That's a decision we'd make together, like everything else."
"That's what I mean about being better as partners," she said.
"I'll call Trey and tell him I'm in," Joe said.
OUTSIDE THE DOOR, Sheridan and Lucy exchanged glances.
"The kids from Jackson are the snottiest kids in the state," Sheridan whispered. "When we play them we try to destroy them, but we never do. You should see their bus. It's the best bus there is."
"But don't they have skiing?" Lucy asked, wide-eyed. "And a Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not museum?"
The door opened suddenly, filled with their dad.
"Show's over, girls," he said. "Don't you have homework?"
HE WENT OUT to feed the horses. A single pole lamp threw ghostly blue-white light across the corral. The horses, the paint Toby and young sorrel Doc, nickered when they saw him coming, knowing it was time to eat. Joe tossed them hay and watched them eat, a foot on the rail. The profile of Wolf Mountain was black against a dark sky smeared with stars.
He would miss Wolf Mountain, he thought. And Crazy Woman Creek. And the view he got from his favorite break-lands perch, where he could see the curvature of the earth.
He rubbed his eyes. He was getting ahead of himself here, he thought. It was much too soon to start thinking about things like that. There was plenty to do before he left for Jackson.
As he walked back to the house, he thought about the second call. The one where a man simply breathed until the message ran out. It was likely a crank, or a mistake. But since Joe identified himself on the voice mail, the man had to know whom he was calling. Joe's number was in the slim Twelve Sleep County telephone book. The caller could be anyone: a hunter Joe had cited, a rancher he had tangled with, even a state or federal employee Joe had been on the opposite side of a land use issue with. Whomever, it was likely someone harmless.
But if he was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks, Joe didn't want to chance anything when it came to Marybeth and his daughters. He'd need to ask for some help.
FOUR
After church on Sunday, Joe and Marybeth planned to spend the rest of the afternoon getting him packed so he could leave early Monday. For some reason, both assumed that it would take much longer than it actually did. Joe found himself feeling oddly disappointed that they had completed their task within an hour. He had a duffel bag of red uniform shirts and blue Wranglers, underwear, his Filson vest, coats, heavy parka, and boots. All of the gear he would need was already in his pickup, the place he spent most of his day anyway. Joe roamed the house and the barn, trying to find things he couldn't do without while he was in Jackson. There was little. He topped off the duffel with a few books he'd not yet read, and a small framed family photo from his desktop that he wished was more recent.