Force of Nature

6

It was unnaturally dark on the wide, rutted roads of the Wind River Indian Reservation because, Nate guessed, someone had once again decided to drive around and shoot out all the overhead lights. He confirmed his suspicion when he heard the crunching of broken glass from the shattered bulbs beneath the tires of the Jeep as he slowly cruised down Norkok Street toward Fort Washakie. Despite the chill of the evening, he kept his windows down so all his senses could be engaged. Dried leaves rattled in the canopy of old trees and skittered across the road. The last sigh of the evening sun painted a bold red slash on the square top of Crowheart Butte in his rearview mirror.

In the 1860s, Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone tribe ended a war with the encroaching Crow by fighting one-on-one with Chief Big Robber, the Crow leader. Washakie killed Big Robber and cut his heart out and stuck it on the end of his war lance in tribute to the fallen enemy. Hence the name of the butte. The reservation itself was huge, 2.2 million acres — the same size as Yellowstone Park. It was home to 2,500 Eastern Shoshone and 5,000 Northern Arapaho. In the old cemetery Nate drove past the last shard of sun glinting off rusted metal headboards and footboards that reached up out of the ground. Because the Indians interred their dead on scaffolds and the Jesuits insisted on burial, a compromise was reached: the bodies had been buried in their deathbeds.

Nate felt a sudden dark pang as he looked over the cemetery when he thought of Alisha, his lover. He had left her body on scaffolding of his own construction just two months before. He hadn’t been back to the canyon where she’d been killed. He’d never go back.

All that remained of her except for his memories was the braided strand of her hair tied to the barrel of his .500 Wyoming Express revolver.

As Nate slid down the roads in the dark, he glanced at still-life scenes of the residents through their windows. For some reason, the Indians seldom closed their curtains. He saw families gathered for dinner, people watching television, and in the lit-up opening of a single-car garage, a pair of young men in bloodied camo skinning a mule deer.

Alice Thunder’s faded white bungalow was located just off Black Coal Road, and Nate cruised by it without slowing. Muted lights were on inside, and her GMC Envoy was parked under a carport on the side of her house. She lived alone there, and it appeared she didn’t have company.

He did a three-point turn in the road and came back and turned onto a weedy two-track behind her house and parked where his Jeep couldn’t be seen from the road.

Nate padded up the broken concrete walk to her back entrance and tapped on the metal screen door. Dogs inside yipped and howled, but through the sound he could feel her heavy footfalls approach. She didn’t turn on the porch light but stood behind the storm door and squinted at him. Small mixed-breed dogs boiled around and through her stout legs.

“Is that you, Nate Romanowski?” she asked.

He nodded and leaned his head against the peeling doorframe. His legs felt suddenly weak from his injury.

“If I invite you in this house, am I committing a federal crime?”

“Maybe,” Nate said.

She yelled at her dogs to get away from the door, then cracked it open. He smelled a waft of warm air mixed with the smell of baking bread and wet dog hair.

“Get in here before someone sees you,” she said. “You’re hurt, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, letting her lead him into the kitchen. Four or five dogs sniffed at his pants and boots. Alice Thunder was not a hugger or a smiler or an open enthusiast.

“Do you want to sit?” she asked, gesturing toward the table. She’d not yet set it for her evening meal.

“I brought you some ducks,” he said, handing over the burlap sack.

“I love duck,” she said.

“I remember you saying that. Careful, they’re live.”

“I’ll twist their heads off in a minute,” she said, ushering him to the table. “We can eat two of them. Do you want to eat duck?”

He sat heavily. His shoulder pounded at him, each pulse of blood brought a stab of pain. “Duck would be good,” he said.

Alice Thunder was short and heavy, and her face was the shape and size of a hubcap. She had thick short fingers and a flat large nose and warm brown eyes. As the receptionist for the Indian high school for twenty-two years, she knew everyone and everyone knew her. She’d befriended Nate’s lost lover Alisha when she’d moved back to the reservation to teach, and after Alisha’s grandmother died, Alice Thunder had stepped in. Alisha’s high school basketball photo was balanced on the top of her bookcase. Nate knew the two of them were related in some way, but he wasn’t sure of the details. It was often the case on the reservation.

Her house was small, simple, and very lived-in. There were few pictures on the walls and a noticeable lack of gewgaws. Unlike some of the other Indian homes Nate had been invited into, there were no romantic portrayals of noble Plains Indians or rugs depicting maidens or warriors. Only the doll made of bent, packed straw and faded leather clothing on a shelf hinted at sentimentality. She’d once told Nate that her grandfather, an important tribal elder, had made it for her when she was a child.

“First I’ll kill the ducks,” Alice said, “then I’ll see what’s wrong with you. And I’m telling you now I want to eat most of the duck fat. I hope you don’t want any.”

“I already know what’s wrong with me,” Nate said. “I just need some help with the dressing. And you can have all the duck fat.”

“So why are you bleeding?”

“I got shot with an arrow.”

“Where’s the arrow?”

“I pulled it out.”

Alice Thunder paused at the back door with the sack of ducks and looked Nate over slowly. He couldn’t tell whether she was amused at him or puzzled, or both. She had a way of making her face still while her eyes probed.

“Did you think an Indian woman would be able to help you more than the docs at the clinic because you were shot with an arrow?”

He said, “I can’t go to the clinic.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “You’re an outlaw, I almost forgot.” Then she bumped the back door open with her big hip and went outside to kill and clean the birds.

The little dogs gathered at the back door to whine and watch.

He sat without saying anything when she came back into the kitchen with three bloody duck breasts. She dipped them into a bowl of buttermilk, dredged them in flour and cornmeal, and dropped them into a cast-iron skillet bubbling with melted lard. She covered bits of bright-yellow fat in the flour as well and dropped them into the lard to create rich cracklings.

“Take off your shirt and let me take a look at your wound,” she said over her shoulder. “Was it an Indian who shot you?”

“No,” Nate said. “A redneck.”

“There are Indian rednecks.”

“This wasn’t one of them,” he said, rising painfully and reaching up with his right hand to unzip his vest.

Alice never said “natives” or “Native Americans.” She always said “Indians.”

While the duck breasts sizzled, she turned around and put her hands on her hips and closed one eye as she observed the bloody compresses he’d taped on himself.

“Sloppy,” she said. “But keep it on until after we eat. Then I’ll change it.”

Nate looked away as she stripped the old bandage and bathed the wounds with alcohol swabs and taped them.

“Does it sting?” she asked.

“It does,” he said, and chinned toward her ticking woodstove. “Make sure to burn the old bandages and everything you’re using to clean me up. Don’t leave a trace of it in your house.”

She paused, then continued cleaning. “You don’t want to leave your DNA?”

“That’s right.”

“But you’ve been here in the past. I can’t get rid of everything you might have touched.”

“You don’t need to,” he said. “Just the blood.”

“I don’t think there’s any infection,” she said, shuffling her feet so she could get a good look at the holes in front and back, “but I’ve got some antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs I’ll send with you. I’m not a doctor. You may need to go see one.”

He grunted his thanks. Finally, he asked, “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

She said, “I think I know. I heard about the boat they found in Saddlestring. Everybody’s heard about that.”

“I suppose so.”

“There is one thing I want to know,” she said.

He waited.

“Why did you come to me? Why didn’t you go to see your friend, the game warden, and his wife?”

“Too risky,” Nate said.

“But you don’t mind risking me?” she asked. It was a flat statement, and not accusatory.

“I’ve been meaning to come by for a long time,” he said. She stood aside as he got to his feet and pulled his shirt and vest back on. His shoulder ached, but the binding was tight and clean, and he gained a bit more movement in his left arm.

Nate went out the back door and returned with his duffel bag. He unzipped it and gave her a block of cash.

Alice took it from him and put it quickly on the table.

“It’s ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I wanted you to have it.”

She shook her head. “Are you buying my silence?”

“No. I want you to use it however you see fit. But maybe you’d consider using some of it in Alisha’s memory. Maybe a scholarship fund for her students, or memorial or something.”

Surprisingly, he noted moisture in her dark eyes. “I miss her,” she said.

“I miss her, too,” he said, and gave her a thin braid of Alisha’s hair. It was similar to the strand he’d attached to his gun. She took it from him and sniffed it and worked it through her fingers and held it there.

“It’s my fault, I know that,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place. I know that.”

“Tell me what happened,” she asked. “I’ve heard rumors, but no one else was there.”

Nate said, “Two intruders breached my security and attacked the place I lived. Alisha was visiting for the weekend. I was outside when it happened. Alisha wasn’t. She didn’t suffer, at least.”

“But you have,” she said. It was a statement.

“If my life was more normal …”

Alice shook her head as if to discount him. She said, “Don’t take all the blame. You’re talking to someone who lives in a place that’s never been normal. It’s not so unusual to me, and it wasn’t unusual to her. She would have followed you anywhere, I’m sure.”

“I found the men who did it,” Nate said. “I put them down.”

She looked away.

“I need to go,” he said.

She stepped aside. As he neared the door, she said, “A man came by the school last week and asked about Alisha. But I knew he was really asking about you.”

Nate paused and turned. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” she said. “I told him Alisha no longer worked there, that she had left the school and the res.”

“But no more than that?”

“No. Then I waited. He acted kind of put-out and asked me where he could contact her. I told him I didn’t know. He asked me if I knew anyone who might know of her location. Any friends, for example.”

Nate leaned against her kitchen counter, waiting for more.

She continued, “He asked me, doesn’t she have a friend who is a falconer? Did I know where he can be reached?”

He arched his eyebrows.

“I told him I didn’t know where you were. And I didn’t, either. I told him if he wanted to try and find you he should ask the local game warden, Joe Pickett.”

Nate felt a chill. “You mentioned Joe?”

“I thought that might make him go away. He seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t really want to talk to a law enforcement officer.”

“Describe him,” Nate said.

She closed her eyes, as if conjuring up an image. “Tall, white, maybe six-foot-two or — three. He was older than you by ten years or so, but in good shape. He had light brown hair and blue eyes. His eyes were set close together, and he had a long thin nose. High cheekbones, but Scandinavian, not Indian. His face was angular and his mouth was small. He had a mouth like a pink rose, I thought. Like he wanted to kiss somebody. But he gave me a bad feeling.”

She opened her eyes.

Nate nodded. “Did he give you a name?”

She said, “Bob White.”

Nate snorted.

“It seemed like a fake name,” she said.

“It is. Did you see what he was driving?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t look out in the visitor’s parking lot. I didn’t think of it until later, and by then he was gone.”

Nate asked, “How much vacation time do you have?”

She cocked her head to the side, puzzled at the question. “I have a lot,” she said. “I never take any days off.”

“Alice,” he said, “I want you to take some of that money and go someplace you always wanted to go. Take a couple weeks. Just please promise me you’ll go away for a while.”

“Do you think he’ll come back? Do you think he’d hurt me?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t know, but we don’t want to take a chance.”

She thought about it. “I always wanted to go to Austin and see the bats. You know, the bats that come out every night from under that bridge and fly? I like bats.”

“Then go to Austin,” he said. “See the bats. And when you get bored with them, go somewhere else and see some other bats. Just get out of this place for a while.”

She looked at him for a long time. Her face never moved.

“Start packing tonight,” Nate said.

“Who is this man?” she asked.

Nate said, “Someone I used to work with. And believe me, he’s not someone you want to see again.”

He recalled Large Merle’s last words, and it all made sense to him.

They’ve deployed.

7

After leaving Alice Thunder’s home, Nate saw lights through the roadside trees and turned in to an alleyway that led behind the small lighted building. The sign in front flickered from ancient fluorescent bulbs inside, but it read bad bob’s native american outlet. It was a convenience store at the junction that sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. Three old pickups were parked at odd angles in front. One, an older model blue Dodge, had its back end aimed to the side and Nate could read the bumper sticker. It showed a graphic of four Apaches holding rifles and it read homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492. Another sticker read my heroes have always killed cowboys.

Bad Bob, the owner of the pickup, also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men gathered to talk and loiter and Bob held court. On the side of the store was one of the few remaining pay telephone booths still in operation on the res. Nate pulled up next to it and dropped two quarters into the slot and punched numbers.

“Dispatch,” answered a woman with a nasally voice.

“Hey,” Nate said. “I need to report a game violation. Is this the hotline I’m supposed to call?”

“It can be,” she said. “This is the general state dispatch center, but we can take your information and forward it to the proper agency. What is your name, where are you calling from, and what is the nature of the call?”

He hesitated for effect, then said, “My name’s not important, but I’m calling from a pay phone in Twelve Sleep County. I just saw a crime, and I want to report it.”

Nate described a scenario where someone in a pickup with a spotlight — he used Bad Bob’s vehicle for inspiration — was firing indiscriminately at a herd of mule deer just off Hazelton Road near Crazy Woman Creek. He said it was awful, and gave her the location.

“When did this happen?” she asked.

“Just a few minutes ago,” he said. “I just got to a phone. You’ve got to send someone up there.”

“Are you sure you can’t give me your name?” she asked. “We might need to follow up and contact you for better directions.”

“The directions are perfect,” he said.

“I’ll contact the game warden in the district and relay your report,” she said. “I can’t promise he’ll be there right away, though. It’s a huge district, and he may be off duty right now.”

“Thank you,” Nate said.

“Thank you for calling the Stop Poaching Hotline,” she said, obviously reading from a screen.

When Nate hung up the phone, he looked up to see Bad Bob coming around the corner of the store holding a lever-action rifle. Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a wide oval face pocked with acne scars. His hair was black, and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing a Denver Broncos jersey, baggy trousers, and unlaced Nike high-tops. When he saw Nate, he said, “Jesus!” and jumped back and raised the rifle.

Nate didn’t reach up for his weapon. He said, “Bob, it’s me. Put the rifle down.”

“You fuckin’ scared me, man,” Bob said. “I heard something and I was going out back to see if them bears were in my Dumpster again. I’ve been asking the tribe for some bear-proof garbage cans for months, and they keep saying they’ll bring some, but here we are and I still got damn bears.” He patted the rifle. “I’m gonna smoke one if I catch him and make me a bearskin rug.”

Bad Bob was Alisha’s brother. Nate hadn’t seen him since her death.

“I’m sorry about your sister, Bob,” Nate said.

Bad Bob lowered the rifle and lowered his voice. “Yeah, she was always too good to be true, you know.”

Nate didn’t respond to that. Bob was Alisha’s older brother, and they’d had a strained relationship and rarely spoke to each other. Alisha had left the reservation after high school, got a degree, married, and moved comfortably in Denver social circles. After her divorce, she’d returned to the res on a mission to try and help the students move up and out. She believed in entrepreneurship and individualism, and fought against a group mentality. Bob, on the other hand, rarely ventured off the res and gave talks encouraging the tribes to secede from the union. But he never mailed back a government check, either. The convenience store had been passed down from an uncle who died of cancer, and it had become Bob’s headquarters. The sign in front lured white tourists into the store so Bob could insult them face-to-face.

Bob said, “I heard that the couple of guys who did it are taking the dirt nap.”

“They are,” Nate said.

Bad Bob nodded with satisfaction. “So what are you doing here, man? I thought you left the country.”

“I’m passing through,” Nate said. “Just using your phone before I leave.”

“Why don’t you come in? I got some coffee on, and there’s some wine getting passed around in there.”

“No, thanks,” Nate said. “I’ve got to go. But I’ve got one question for you.”

Bob leaned the rifle against the brick wall of his store and walked forward and slumped against Nate’s Jeep and looked down at his shoes. “You want to know when you’ll be getting some of that loan back, I know. But times have been really tough around here. When there’s all that unemployment out there outside the res, you can imagine what it’s like inside. Shit, I run credit accounts for all these mooks until government check day and then I just hope they’ll come in and pay off their tabs.”

“It’s not that,” Nate said. “I was wondering if you or any of your friends have seen a guy.” He described “Bob White.”

Bad Bob took a long time answering. “I think he might have got gas last week,” he said. “At least it sort of sounds like him, man. All you white people look alike to me.” Bob grinned.

“Not now,” Nate said impatiently. “Was it him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He pulled out front, gassed up his rig, and left. We didn’t have a conversation, really. Oh — he asked how to get to the school.”

Nate nodded. It would have been the same day the man met Alice Thunder.

“What was he driving?”

Bob rubbed his chin. “I’m trying to remember. Oh, yeah, It was a nice rig, one of these crossovers; part luxury car and part SUV. An Audi Q7. First one I’ve seen on the res. It was dark gray or blue.”

“Plates?”

“I don’t remember, but I think if they was out-of-state I would have noticed. But maybe not.”

“Anybody with him?”

“Naw,” Bob said. “He was alone. But I do remember he had a bunch of shit piled in the backseat. Gear bags or luggage or something. Nobody could have sat back there because there wasn’t room.”

Nate asked, “How did he pay?”

“Cash,” Bob said. “That I remember. Not many people pay in cash these days, they all use cards. But he peeled some twenties off a roll and I gave him change. That I remember.”

Nate nodded. Then, “Bob, we didn’t have this talk. You never saw me tonight.”

Bob looked over, wanting to hear more.

“That’s all. Forget I was here.”

“All right,” Bob said with hesitation.

“And forget about the loan,” Nate said, restarting his Jeep.

“Thanks, man,” Bob said, stepping away from the Jeep. It was perfunctory. As far as Nate knew, Bob had never repaid a loan, and he didn’t expect him to start now.

A few hundred yards up the reservation road toward the mountains and Hazelton Road, Nate saw a sow black bear in his headlights and swerved to miss it. In the red glow of his taillights he watched her amble down the faded center stripe of the asphalt en route to Bad Bob’s Dumpster.

8

Crazy Woman campground was empty except for two travel trailers full of elk hunters in the farthest reaches of the campsite. Nate could hear the hunters whoop from time to time, and he hummed along with old country music emanating from one of the closest RVs. Because of the possibility of being seen by any of the hunters if they chose to go for a walk in the dark, he moved his Jeep out to Hazelton Road, drove a mile away from the entrance of the campground, and backed it deep into the trees on an old logging road and waited.

It was nearly midnight when he saw a glimpse of distant headlights coming down the road. Just as suddenly, the lights doused. Joe, he thought, had hit his sneak lights as he got close to where the poacher had been reported. Sneak lights were mounted under the bumper and threw a dim pool of light out directly in front of the vehicle so potential violators couldn’t see him coming up the gravel road.

It was a cool, clear night and the stars were brilliant. The only sound was the occasional eerie and high-pitched elk bugle from the wall of thick trees on the rising mountains behind him. Upper Doyle Creek tinkled lightly on the other side of the road, deeply undercutting the grass banks on its circuitous route to the Twelve Sleep River.

Joe was almost upon him before he realized it. Nate saw the dull orb of light from beneath the front of the pickup, got a whiff of exhaust and heard the low rumble of the engine, and there he was, creeping along the gravel road, windows open so he could hear shots.

“Joe,” Nate said aloud.

The pickup braked to a stop. “Nate? Where are you?”

Nate fished a mini-Maglite flashlight out of his vest and swept it along the road in front of him until the light reflected from the headlights of his Jeep in the brush.

“This way,” he said, stepping aside.

As Joe turned off the gravel road and rumbled by Nate, his friend said, “There are no poachers, are there?”

“No.”

Nate used his flashlight to see ahead as he led Joe deeper into the trees to the edge of a small clearing. He jabbed the beam of light on a fallen tree trunk and said, “Have a seat,” while he kicked enough grapefruit-sized rocks free from the soil to make a small fire ring. Nate bunched a handful of dried grass in the center of the ring, lit it with a match, and started feeding the flames with dried pine needles and twigs.

He said, “I couldn’t risk calling you or coming to your place because I don’t know if you’re being watched and I can’t afford to leave any physical or digital records of my location or movements. The last thing I want to do is involve you or your family in what’s happening.”

Joe cleared his throat and sat back. “Good thing I showed up alone, then. The department assigned me a trainee, but when I called the TeePee Motel he wasn’t in, so I didn’t bring him along. I don’t know where he is.”

“That would have been unfortunate,” Nate said.

Joe leaned forward with his elbows on the tops of his knees and squinted at Nate. “So what is happening, Nate?”

Nate continued to feed twigs to the flame and didn’t look up. “Those three guys in the boat. They drew on me and I put them down. One of them shot me in the shoulder with an arrow.”

“Ron Connelly, the Mad Archer, I’d guess,” Joe interjected.

“Yes. They took me by surprise because they were locals. I let my guard down and they took advantage of it, which I think was the strategy all along. It was self-defense, Joe. Two of them were pulling guns as I shot them, and the one in front — the Mad Archer — had already put an arrow into me. I want you to know that even though you can’t really help me, because I know how you are. I understand it’s too late for that anymore.”

Nate took Joe’s lack of response as agreement. He said, “When you go off the grid, there are advantages and disadvantages. I always knew that. I’m not accountable for anything except to my own code, which is how I want it, because I trust my code more than any set of laws manipulated by those with their hands on the levers. But that’s an old story,” he said.

Joe nodded for him to go on.

Nate said, “I’m nonexistent as far as the government is concerned, and that’s harder these days than you’d think. But when something like this happens — or what happened to Alisha — I can’t respond through normal channels. I can’t let anyone know. I smashed my phone and there’s no way to find me. But I can’t call the cops or get a lawyer to defend me because then I’m back in the system and that’s where the bastards want me to be.”

Joe nodded, thinking it over, and finally asked, “How are you doing? You said you got hit with an arrow.”

Nate tented a half dozen bigger sticks over the fire and watched as the flames licked around them like tongues tasting peppermint sticks before they ignited. “I’m okay,” he said. “I can barely use my left arm, but it’s healing. I’m okay. I’ll be in yarak soon.”

“‘Yarak’?”

“Falconry term. Look it up,” Nate said, waving the exchange away.

“I can’t take you into town, but I could take you to the clinic on the res,” Joe said. “We might be able to work something out with them to keep it confidential. You’ve got lots of friends there.”

Nate shook his head. “No — I won’t involve anyone else in this. This thing I’m in is mine alone. And anybody who comes near me could get into trouble that’s not of their doing. I learned that when I stopped in to see Alice Thunder. I can’t risk anybody else, Joe. It’s not right.”

Joe looked confused.

“Alice promised me she would take a flight out,” Nate said. “But I could see her finding an excuse not to leave. The only thing I’ll ask you is to tail up and make sure she goes on vacation. Can I ask you that?”

“Done,” Joe said.

“What I couldn’t figure out,” Nate said, nodding, “is why. Why would three locals decide to try to rub me out? I didn’t even know them very well, and I’d never had any trouble with them. And I’m pretty sure the people I used to work with who want me dead wouldn’t associate with rubes like that. The Mad Archer and the Kellys weren’t professionals. They were rednecks with guns, and like everybody around here, they knew how to aim and shoot, but that didn’t qualify them as anything special.”

Joe said, “I might know something about it.”

Nate looked up, surprised. There was enough flickering orange light now that he could see Joe’s face.

“This afternoon, I went out to the Kelly place,” Joe said. “Two of the men you killed were Kellys — Paul the father and his son Ronald, better known as Stumpy.”

“The gargoyle,” Nate said with derision. “I’ve done it before, but I don’t take any pleasure killing the mentally or physically handicapped, even if they want to kill me.”

Joe hesitated, looking Nate over. Then he said haltingly, “No one I’ve ever known would make a statement like that.”

Nate shrugged, and Joe continued, “Yeah, him. Anyway, I talked to Paul’s wife and Stumpy’s mom, Pam Kelly. She’s in a state of rage because you took two of her men away, and it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation,” Joe said.

Nate asked, “You went and talked to her? Is this after the sheriff interviewed her?”

Joe shook his head. “McLanahan did a cursory call to her saying he was sorry for her loss. But he didn’t interview her.”

“But you did,” Nate said as a statement.

“She’s a piece of work, and I wouldn’t want to cross her. She’s mad at Paul and the world in general. She was literally tearing her hair out. I mean, she had strands of it in her fingers when I showed up.”

Nate said, “It didn’t have to happen.”

“I know,” Joe said. “But try telling that to Pam Kelly. The weird thing was I didn’t get the impression she was crazy from grieving as much as angry that Paul and Stumpy had let her down. Anyway, I asked her why she thought Paul and Stumpy went out in their boat with the Mad Archer. At first, she acted like she had no idea at all, but I could tell she was lying about part of it.”

“Which part?”

“I don’t think she knew anything about the boat trip in particular. For all she knew, they were going hunting. It took a while to get to the bottom of why they were with the Mad Archer. Apparently, they’d met him just a couple of weeks ago and he recruited them into some scheme that would make them big money. Pam Kelly didn’t know what it was, but she really liked the idea of big money and didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

Joe sighed and said, “It’s no secret that all the trouble Stumpy and Paul got into with their illegal guiding operation was all run out of Pam’s home office. She wants nice things but she was stuck with a loser. Paul’s disability checks didn’t go very far, I guess. I’ve heard it said that she wore the pants in that family, and my talk with her confirmed that.”

Nate said, “Someone was going to pay them to kill me?”

“That’s what I got out of it,” Joe said.

“Did she say who it was? It sure as hell wasn’t the Mad Archer, I’m sure.”

Joe said, “There are probably fifty-four game wardens across this state who aren’t very busted up about what happened to that guy. So at least you’ve got that going for you.”

Nate smiled.

“No, I don’t think it was Ron Connelly behind anything. He was a dupe just like the Kellys,” Joe said. “I asked Pam Kelly who might have been behind it and she said she saw a man with them a couple of weeks ago. She’d gone to visit her sister in rehab in Riverton and wasn’t expected back for a couple of days, but her sister had flown the coop. So she got home before she was expected back and apparently surprised them all — Paul, Stumpy, Ron Connelly, and a mystery man — when she walked into the kitchen and found them sitting at her table. The man she didn’t know got up and walked out and drove away and she never saw him again. When she asked her husband who the man was, he said he didn’t know his name but he was the one who had the big money. She called him the Game Changer. She said Paul seemed to be scared of this Game Changer guy and didn’t want to talk about him at all.”

“Did she describe him?” Nate asked.

Joe fished his small spiral notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Tall, pale, mid-fifties. Dressed well. Kind of handsome in a scary way, she said. He had ‘creepy’ eyes and a mouth like a girl model. That’s what she said, ‘a mouth like a girl model.’”

Nate shook his head in recognition.

“So you know about him?” Joe asked.

“Yes, and now it’s starting to make some sense. He also went to the school to ask about Alisha. What I don’t know is why he came himself, and why now.”

“Does this guy have a name?” Joe asked.

“John Nemecek,” Nate said.

Joe repeated the name phonetically, “John Nemma-check.”

“Yes. He was my master falconer. I was his apprentice. We used to work together. He saved my life more than once, and I saved his.”

Joe asked, “So he’s a friend?”

“He was once. But that was years ago.”

“Not anymore, then?”

Nate paused, then said, “Joe, he’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

Joe simply stared. Then he asked, “Why would he pay the Kellys and the Mad Archer to take you down?”

Nate said, “Because that’s one of their tactics: recruit local tribesmen.”

Joe sat up straight and asked, “What?”

Nate said, “Even with the name, you’re not going to find out anything about him. Like me, he’s been off the grid for years. But unlike me, he’s been hiding in plain sight.”

Joe said, “Local tribesmen?”

Nate stirred the fire so the flames erupted and the dry pine lengths popped sparks. He said, “COIN. Counterinsurgency tactics. How much do you want to know? I’ve tried to tell you before, but you didn’t want to hear it.”

Joe cocked one eye. “And I’m not sure I want to hear it now. Just tell me: how much trouble are you in?”

Nate sat back on the cool ground and met Joe’s eyes. He said, “He’ll probably kill me. I’m just being realistic. He’s that good.”

Joe’s face fell.

“In a way, I deserve it,” Nate said. “In fact, I’m resigned to the fact. Considering what I carry around with me, it may even come as a relief. I’d welcome some kind of conclusion. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked, almost in a whisper.

“John Nemecek deserves it even more than I do.”

Nate thought Joe looked like he was in physical pain, the way he kept writhing around while seated on the log. Nate could guess at the source: Joe wanted to know almost as badly as he didn’t want to know. And Nate understood. Joe was a sworn officer of the law. He took his oath seriously. He’d managed to stay just over to the right side of the line all these years because he wasn’t keeping Nate’s secrets — secrets that might lead Joe to turn his friend in or arrest him outright. Not to mention what Joe would think of him if he knew.

Nate said, “I’ll let you off the hook for now so you can relax.”

Joe looked up with the quizzical Labrador-type expression he sometimes had, even if he didn’t know it.

“I’ll save it for when you have to know,” Nate said. “When there’s no choice. It might be sooner than you think, but for now we can move on.”

Joe seemed to be okay with that. He asked, “Do you have a game plan for this Nemecek guy?”

Nate shrugged, “I’m still working it out. But what I do know is that something has happened to cause him to come out here for me in person. In the past, as you know, he sent surrogates. I was able to, um, make them go away.”

As he said it, he could see Joe withdrawing a little, so Nate brought it back to vagaries.

“Anyway, I need to do some investigating of my own,” Nate said. “I’ll find out what’s happened that made him feel like he had to come out here and take care of things himself. He’s secretive and cautious, and he’s always been an expert when it comes to getting things done and not leaving any fingerprints of his own on the operations. So for him to leave his lair, well, something is pressing him hard. If I find out what it was, I might have an angle.”

Joe said, “Did he send someone out here to take care of Large Merle? Get him out of the way? No one’s seen the guy in a month.”

Nate was surprised Joe was aware of the disappearance of Large Merle, but he didn’t give it away. Joe once again impressed him with his innate ability to dig deep and look at the world through his own eyes.

“Yes,” Nate said. “He sent a young woman. He knew Merle well enough to know his soft spot, and that’s how he got to him. Merle should have known better. Not many young and attractive women show interest in a giant.”

Joe asked, “Is Merle the last one of your friends from the old days?”

Nate shook his head. “Not entirely. I’ve still got some allies, but there aren’t many left. A few of them died of natural causes. A couple went straight and won’t even acknowledge our old unit. A couple more are in prison, where they tried to put me. And there is a small group of them … in another state. They’re off the grid, too.”

“Can they help?” Joe asked. Nate wasn’t sure Joe knew about the conclave in Idaho, but he’d made references in the past and his friend was probably aware. For one thing, Joe knew Diane Shober, for whom they’d both searched in the Sierra Madre, was in Idaho. But Joe didn’t let on anything, and Nate didn’t press.

“I’m going to find that out soon,” Nate said. “I’m going to go away for a while. Nemecek won’t hang around here if he thinks I’m gone.”

“Can I help?”

“I don’t want you any more involved, as I said. The farther you stay away from me, the better.”

Joe sighed heavily. “I can keep an eye out, at least,” he said. “If this Nemecek is still in the area, I might get a lead on him. It’s a small town, Nate. Not much goes on somebody doesn’t talk about it.”

Nate started to object, then thought better of it. Joe did have a wealth of contacts and was the kind of man people liked to talk to. Joe was empathetic. People told him things they shouldn’t, and Nate was guilty of that as well.

“That might be okay,” Nate said. “As long as you don’t try to do anything. If you did and something happened and Marybeth and those girls lost a husband and a father … well, that can’t happen. I mean it, Joe.”

Joe scoffed.

“You think I’m kidding, don’t you?” Nate said. “And I don’t mean that as an insult. You’ve got a way of getting into the middle of things and you usually come out on top. But it’s a percentage game, Joe. The odds wouldn’t be with you if you got too close to him. He’s not like anybody you’ve ever run across.”

Nate paused, and said, “I’ve always admired you, Joe, you know that.”

His friend looked away, but even in the firelight Nate could see he was flushing and uncomfortable.

Nate said, “You’ve got a beautiful wife, great daughters, and a house with a picket fence. I know it sounds trite, but there are assholes out there who think my life is hard, but it isn’t. Anybody can keep to themselves and be selfish. What you do every day is hard, Joe. Staying true and loyal, man, that’s not the easy path. I admire what you’ve got. …”

Joe leaned back on the log and rolled his eyes, said, “Enough!” but Nate kept going.

Nate said, “I want to defend it, even if I can’t ever get there myself. That’s what this has always been about: admiration. So I can’t let you get hurt trying to solve my problem. And this guy … he’s something else.”

“He really scares you, doesn’t he?” Joe asked. “What is it about him?”

Nate thought about it as the fire died down. He didn’t put any more fuel on it. “You know what I’m like,” Nate said. “You know what kinds of things I’ve done.”

“Some of them,” Joe said, cautioning Nate again not to go beyond their conversation.

Nate said, “There’s a certain kind of ruthlessness that can only be achieved by the coldest professionals or the truly deranged. The middle ground is mushy as hell, and unpredictable. Nemecek taught me professional ruthlessness. It takes a certain kind of mind-set to believe that whatever you do is correct and whoever gets hurt in the process is no more than collateral damage when it comes to achieving something greater. He has that mind-set. He’s the greatest asset imaginable to his masters and to a righteous cause. Those are the circumstances I met him under. But if things get warped …”

Nate wasn’t sure he was making sense, based on Joe’s quizzical expression. Nate paused, thought about it, and said, “Nemecek is the greatest falconer I’ve ever seen. He’s better than I will ever be, and I’m good. But what you need to realize is that great falconers, master falconers, see the world differently than anyone else. Think about it, Joe. A falconer devotes his life to a wild raptor and develops a partnership based on killing prey. But at any time, the falcon — the wild, untamed weapon — can simply fly away. Imagine devoting years of your life to a potential lethal partnership that could dissolve in an instant. It takes a crazy devotion to a possible outcome that may never materialize. Falconry is as old as human civilization. It goes against the nature of things that a human and a killer bird should work together for a common purpose. But when it happens, man … it’s the greatest thing in the fucking world. When it does, all the normal human social conventions seem like bat shit. And humans become just another hunk of meat compared to the rapture of wild and man when they intersect.”

Joe seemed stunned and said nothing.

Nate said, “What I’m telling you is that really great falconers, like Nemecek, think they’ve transcended low human boundaries in regard to behavior and morals. Therefore, everything they do is on a different and higher plane.”

Joe nodded.

Nate said, “So you take a person like this and you have to understand that he’s worst when he’s cornered. He has nothing but contempt for those who put him in that position, because they’ve never experienced what he’s experienced, and they don’t even comprehend the sacrifice that he’s undergone. And something has made him feel cornered. Believe me, he’s capable of anything.”

Joe shook his head, not fully comprehending what Nate was getting at.

Nate said impatiently, “Once, in a country I won’t name, I watched him saw the face off of a child with piano wire in front of her father to make the old man talk.” Nate paused and said, “He talked.”

“My God,” Joe said, as an obvious shiver ran through him.

Nate said, “I’ve seen him do worse than that. But what you have to understand is that when you’ve devoted your life to studying and worshipping birds of prey, you can lose your empathy for mere humans. When you turn yourself over to the call of the wild and understand it, things we would consider cruel are just part of the game.”

Joe looked even more uncomfortable than before, the way he was shifting his seat on the log. He said, “I guess what it comes down to is values. And I’m in no position to argue that.”

Nate said, “You could argue, but this isn’t the time.”

Minutes went by.

Joe asked, “Tell me what I can do to help. Since you don’t have a phone, how can I reach you if I find anything?”

“Give me your notebook,” Nate asked.

Joe handed it over, and Nate flipped it open to a fresh page and jotted down the address for a website: www.themasterfalconer.com.

“It’s an old website,” Nate said, handing the notebook back. “It hasn’t been updated since it was put up over ten years ago. It’s one of those sites where there are dozens of comment threads on it about different aspects of falconry. No one monitors the comments, and there are probably less than a few dozen people who even look at it anymore. But if you need to reach me, call it up. You’ll find a recent thread with words or references in it you know are mine. Register on the site and keep your comments brief and vague. I’ll understand.”

Joe looked at the address. “How often will you check it out?”

“I can’t say for sure. But at least every couple of days from a public computer somewhere.”

Joe shook his head. “If there are dozens of threads, how will I know which one you’re using?”

“Look for a recent thread with a question about flying kestrels.”

“Why kestrels?” Joe asked. “Aren’t they little tiny birds?”

Nate nodded. “Yes, they’re the lowest and the most unreliable of the falcons. There’s a royalty of falcons, starting with the eagle, who is the emperor. The gyr falcon is the king, the peregrine is the duke, and so on. On the bottom of the pecking order is the kestrel, which is considered the knave or servant. The reason I’m choosing a thread with a kestrel is because no self-respecting falconer would give a rip and look at it. Even so, don’t say anything directly that could be interpreted by a lurker.”

“Can’t we do better than this?” Joe asked. “Can’t you call me from a pay phone or something?”

“Not a chance,” Nate said. “Nemecek has his tentacles everywhere. It’s better to be low-key and obscure. And remember — don’t write anything that could possibly be used to tie you to me.”

“Nate …”

Nate stood and ground the last of the fire out with his boot heel. It was suddenly very dark.

“One more thing, Joe,” he said. “If you get the word from me to evacuate, that means grab your family and fly away somewhere. Don’t even take the time to pack — just get the hell out.”

From the dark, Joe asked, “Do you think he’d come after us to get to you?”

“I told you,” Nate said. “He’s capable of anything.”

As they made their way through the downed timber back to the vehicles, Nate heard Joe clear his throat in a way that indicated he wanted to say something.

Over his shoulder, Nate asked, “What is it?”

“This thing you did,” Joe asked. “How bad was it?”

Said Nate, “Worse than you can imagine.”

“And Nemecek was there?”

“Yes.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Joe said. “I mean, I know you pretty well after all these years.”

As Nate reached his Jeep, he said, “You just think you do, Joe.”

Joe reached out and grasped Nate’s hand. He said, “Be safe, my friend.”

“I will.”

Joe turned to leave. Nate said, “And if I don’t ever see you again, I just want you to know it was an honor to know you and you’re a good man and a good friend. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing better I can say.”

Joe was uncomfortable, obviously, but he met Nate’s eyes and said, “Knock it off. When did you get so mushy?”

And Nate said, “When he came here after me.”

9

Joe returned home shortly after ten to find another Game and Fish pickup parked in his place in front of the garage. The lights were on inside the house, and Joe swung in next to his trainee’s vehicle.

He got out and took a deep breath of the cold, thin air. Nate had rattled him and he didn’t want to show it.

Luke Brueggemann sat on the living room sofa and looked up when Joe came in. He was wearing his uniform and cradling a can of Pepsi between his knees. He looked at him expectantly, his eyes wondering why Joe hadn’t called him.

“I called your room,” Joe said. “I left a message. In the future, you need to be prepared or let me know your cell phone number.”

At the same time, though, Joe was grateful Brueggemann hadn’t been along to see Nate Romanowski.

His trainee plucked his cell phone out of his pocket and punched numbers. Joe’s own phone burred in his pocket and he leaned back to pull it out but Brueggemann said, “That’s me. You have my number now.”

“Okay.”

“Did you find anything up there?” Brueggemann asked.

“Nope,” Joe said, as he turned and hung his jacket on a peg in the mudroom and put his hat on the shelf. “Somebody’s idea of a prank call, I guess.”

Brueggemann shook his head. “I’ve heard that happens.”

Joe sat down in a chair facing Brueggemann and said, “It does.” Then: “Why are you here?”

The trainee grinned and his face flushed. “I got your message when I got back to my room. So I threw on my uniform and waited for you to pick me up. When you didn’t, I started driving up here thinking I’d meet you here. But when I got here, you were gone.”

As he talked, Marybeth came into the living room from the kitchen, shaking her head at Joe. “My husband has forgotten what being a trainee is like,” she said. “Even though it should be scarred into his memory. It sure is scarred into mine.”

“I said I left a message,” Joe said, sitting back in the chair.

His wife looked casual and attractive in a pair of sweatpants and an oversized white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail, making her look young, Joe thought. She wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses Joe referred to as her “smart glasses.” It was obvious she’d taken pity on Luke Brueggemann.

She said, “I saw him sitting in his truck out on the road, so I invited him in and fed him some dinner,” she said. “I told him you’d be back soon. I didn’t think it would be two hours.”

Joe shrugged.

“I tried to call you on the radio,” Brueggemann said, looking away from Joe so as not to pile on too much, “but you must have been out of range.”

“I guess so,” Joe said. He’d turned his radio off when Nate had appeared in the woods.

“Anyway,” Marybeth said, apparently finished with her admonishment, “Luke here helped April with her math and listened to Lucy recite some of her part from the play. So all in all, a nice evening.”

She winked at Joe to show Joe she was teasing. Joe shook his head at his wife. Those items would have been on his agenda for the evening.

To Brueggemann, Marybeth said, “Remember this when you get married and move your new bride to your game warden quarters in the middle of nowhere. Advise her that you are always on call so she won’t be angry when you suddenly have to leave the house at any hour. In fact, before you get married, have her give me a call.”

“Don’t do it,” Joe said to Brueggemann. “Keep her in the dark. It’s better that way.”

The trainee looked from Marybeth to Joe, and to Marybeth again.

“I’m kidding,” Joe said.

Brueggemann visibly relaxed and realized he’d been played by both of them. “You had me going there,” he said.

“And another thing,” Joe said. “Don’t ever go out on a call without your trainee.”

“Ha! I never would.”

Marybeth sent Brueggemann back to his room at the TeePee Motel with leftovers, which the trainee was enthusiastic about.

“I’ve been eating too much fast food and microwave soup and drinking too many sodas,” he said. “A home-cooked meal is pretty nice.”

“Anytime,” Marybeth said.

Joe told Brueggemann he’d call him in the morning.

“Are we going to check out those elk camps?” Brueggemann asked at the door.

“Maybe,” Joe said. “It depends on the weather and circumstances. Everything’s fluid at all times.”

Brueggemann nodded earnestly and shut the door.

“I like him,” Marybeth said, giving Joe a delayed hello peck on the cheek. “He’s an eager beaver. He reminds me of you when you started.”

Joe nodded, and realized how hungry he was. He asked, “Did you give him all of the leftovers?”

“Oops,” she said.

While Marybeth cooked Joe an egg sandwich in the kitchen, he said, “Nate was out there.”

He noticed how her back tensed when he said it. She looked over her shoulder from where she stood at the stove. “I had a feeling about that,” she said. “In fact, I knew we could have reached you by cell phone, but I didn’t suggest it to Luke. I thought if you’d hooked up with Nate, you probably wouldn’t want your trainee showing up.”

“You’re right about that,” Joe said.

“So how is he? Was he … involved with those men they found in the boat?”

Said Joe, “Nate’s injured, but he claims he’s okay. And yes, that was him who shot those men in the boat. He says they tried to ambush him and it was self-defense.”

Her eyes got big and she started to ask Joe a question, when she suddenly looked around him and said, “Hello, Lucy. Time for bed?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “I wanted to say good night.”

Fourteen-year-old Lucy was in the eighth grade at Saddlestring Middle School. She was blond and green-eyed and lithe — a miniature version of her mother. She was still getting used to not having her older sister Sheridan in the house, but was using the occasion to bloom into her own personality, which was expressive and good-hearted. She was growing into an attractive and pleasant young lady, Joe thought.

Joe said, “Sorry about missing your speech tonight.”

“It wasn’t a speech,” Lucy said. “It was the first act of the play. I’ve got to have it memorized by the end of the week.”

“And how’s it going?”

“Good,” she said, and flashed a smile.

Sheridan had been an athlete, although not an elite one. Lucy had opted for speech and drama, and had recently been chosen for one of the female leads in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

“My character is Lucy Pevensie,” Lucy said, and cued Marybeth.

Marybeth said, “‘The White Witch? Who’s she?’”

Lucy’s face transformed into someone younger and more agitated, and she said, “‘She is a perfectly terrible person. She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be queen at all, and all the fauns and dryands and naiads and dwarfs and animals — at least all the good ones — simply hate her. …’”

When she finished, Joe said, “Wow.”

“I always think of Grandma Missy when I say those lines,” Lucy said. “She’s my inspiration.”

Joe laughed and Marybeth said, “Get to bed, Lucy. That was a cheap shot.”

“But a good one,” Joe said, after Lucy had padded down the hallway to her room, pleased with herself for making her dad laugh.

“Don’t encourage her,” Marybeth said.

“Yeah,” sixteen-year-old April said, as she passed her sister in the hallway. “She gets enough of that as it is.”

April was wearing her tough-girl face and a long black T-shirt she slept in that had formerly belonged to Sheridan. Although the shirt was baggy, it was obvious April filled it out. Joe caught a whiff of wet paint and noted that April had painted her fingernails and toenails black as well.

April had come back after years of being passed from foster family to foster family. She’d seen and done things that couldn’t be unseen or undone. Marybeth and Joe had thought they were on a path to an understanding with April, and then Marybeth had discovered April’s stash of marijuana.

“Good night,” April said, filling a water glass to take to bed with her. Then: “Seven more days of hell.”

Joe and Marybeth exchanged glances, and Marybeth arched her eyebrows. For a second there, she seemed to communicate to Joe, April forgot she was angry with us.

“Maybe,” Marybeth said, “the sentence could be reduced by a day or two for good behavior. But there will have to be some good behavior.”

April turned and flashed a beaming, false smile and batted her lashes. “Good night, my wonderful parents!” she said. “How’s that?”

Joe stifled a smile.

“Not buying it,” Marybeth said. “But close.”

“Why did you paint your nails black?” Joe asked.

April recoiled as if shocked by the stupidity of the question. “Because it matches my mood, of course,” she said.

“Ah,” Joe said.

Marybeth poured herself a glass of wine and sat down at the kitchen table while Joe ate his egg sandwich. After April’s bedroom door closed, she said, “It’s been tough, but in a way this grounding might turn out to be a good thing for all of us, if it doesn’t kill me first.”

Joe raised his eyebrows.

“In a weird way, she seems happier.”

“She does?”

“Not judging by what she says, of course. But she seems to have an inner calm I haven’t noticed since she’s been back,” Marybeth said, sipping at her glass. “Maybe it’s because she finally knows where the boundaries are. Sheridan and Lucy just know, but April, I don’t think, has ever been sure. She probably doesn’t even realize it, and she’d never admit it. But I think she might be kind of like my horses: she just needs to know the pecking order and where the fences are and then she’ll be more comfortable.”

Joe finished his sandwich and opened the cupboard door over the refrigerator, where he kept his bottle of bourbon.

Marybeth said, “But judging by the way things usually go, something could always happen that screws things up.”

“Are you thinking about Nate?” Joe asked.

She nodded.

“Me, too,” he said, thinking of what Nate had said earlier. Thinking of Nate’s devotion to Joe’s family, his tenderness toward Sheridan, his protection of Marybeth. How much he’d miss Nate if he never saw him again.

10

At the same time, fifteen miles upriver and four and a half miles to the east, Pam Kelly slammed down the telephone receiver and cursed out loud: “Fuck you, too, Bernard!”

Bernard was her insurance agent. He didn’t have any good news.

She spun around in her kitchen on the dirty floor — she’d quit scrubbing it years before when she realized Paul and Stumpy would never learn to take off their muddy boots outside — and jabbed her finger at two yellowed and curling photographs held by magnets to her refrigerator door, Paul squatting next to a dead elk with its tongue lolling, and Stumpy holding the severed head of a pronghorn antelope just above his shoulder, and shouted, “Fuck you, Paul. And fuck you, too, Stumpy! How could you do this to me?”

She’d met Paul Kelly thirty-two years before at a rodeo in Kaycee, Wyoming. She was chasing a bareback rider across the mountain west named Jim “Deke” Waldrop who had charmed her and deflowered her behind the chutes at her hometown rodeo in North Platte, Nebraska, and she was convinced he’d marry her if she could only get him to slow down long enough. So she’d borrowed her father’s farm pickup and stolen her mother’s egg money and hit the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association circuit that July, trying to locate Deke and nail him down. She’d missed him in Greeley, caught a glimpse of him getting bucked off in Cody but couldn’t find him afterward, and had a flat tire just outside of Nampa, where she could hear the roar of the crowd in the distant arena as he rode to a 92, and Deke Waldrop, flush with cash, went off to celebrate with his buddies.

With less than ten dollars, Pam had rolled into Kaycee on fumes and a mismatched left rear tire, feeling sick to her stomach — she suspected she was pregnant with Deke’s child — to find not only Deke but Mrs. Waldrop and two towheaded Waldrop boys waiting to watch their dad ride.

She was devastated and furious, and as she returned to the parking lot, she saw a handsome, laconic cowboy climbing out of his ranch pickup that he’d just parked so closely to hers she couldn’t wedge in between them and open her door. It was the last straw. She set upon the stranger, pummeling his chest and shoulders with closed fists, but the man didn’t strike back. Instead, he smiled and said, “Whoa, little lady,” and leaned back so she couldn’t connect a punch to his jaw. She wore out quickly, and he gently clasped her wrists in his hands to still them and he asked if there was anything he could do to help her out, because she was obviously upset.

She’d looked around him through tear-filled eyes and saw the rifle in his gun rack across the back window of his truck. “You can give me that rifle so I can shoot Deke Waldrop,” she’d said. Then a whiff of fried meat from the concession area wafted over them and the smell turned her stomach and she got sick on the hard-packed ground.

He said, “You’re a pistol, all right,” and untied the silk bandanna from his neck and handed it to her to dry her face and wipe off her mouth. “Name’s Paul Kelly,” he said.

For the next thirty-two years, she’d remind him that was the first and last act of kindness he’d shown her.

But at the time, it worked. He bought her some ice cream and sat with her on the top row of the bleachers as she cried. Then he took her to his weathered old line shack in the Bighorn Mountains and offered her his bed and didn’t try to jump her. He was working for a local rancher, he told her, fixing fence and rounding up cows to earn enough money to go to college to become a mechanical engineer. He was, she told her mother over the telephone, “almost dashing.”

They married, and Pam convinced her father to cosign on a loan for an ancient log cabin on twenty acres in the foothills of the mountains. It was to be their starter home, and they planned to burn it down and build a real house on the property. But Paul never went to college, and they never built a house, and his stint as a ranch hand was the last steady job he’d ever hold. If it wasn’t for monthly disability checks that came because that asphalt truck ran over his foot after he’d hired on that summer with the county road construction crew, they’d have no steady income during the months when Paul (and later Stumpy) weren’t guiding hunting clients.

And now, she thought, the son-of-a-bitch went and got himself killed and took Stumpy — Deke’s son — with him, leaving her the place and six cows and two horses no one could ride. All that was left of her life was a stack of unpaid bills.

“Fuck you, Paul,” she said again at the photo on the refrigerator. Earlier that afternoon, after the game warden had left, Will Speer, the county coroner, had called to ask her what plans she had for “making arrangements.” She’d asked him if she could donate Paul’s body to science.

“Will they pay something for him?” she asked. “There’s got to be a college somewhere that wants to see what the inside of a loser looks like.”

The coroner stammered that he didn’t know where to start.

“Find out,” she said, and hung up the phone.

Pam Kelly was still cursing to herself in the tiny cluttered mudroom as she pulled on a pair of knee-high rubber boots. On top of everything else, the cows and horses had to be fed. She normally ragged on Paul to go out and do it, but he wasn’t there to rag on. Inexplicably, she fought back tears as she buttoned up her barn coat.

Several years before, she’d begged Paul to buy some life insurance. She made the appointment for him with Bernard, the insurance salesman she’d met in Saddlestring who said they could get $100,000 in term life for less than $20 a month. Paul drove to town with the checkbook and came back with a new hunting rifle. He shook it like a war lance and said, “This is all the life insurance I need.” Completely misunderstanding what she’d sent him to do, as usual. When she blew up, he’d promised he’d go see the insurance guy later. He never did, and Bernard had just confirmed it.

She looked at her reflection in a cracked, flyspecked mirror next to the door. She was too old, too fat, too crabby, and too used up to ever get another man in her life now.

“It just ain’t fair,” she said aloud.

The cows milled around in a mucky pen on the north side of the collapsing old barn, and the two horses were in a corral on the south side. When she emerged from the cabin, the horses pawed at the soft dirt and whinnied. They wanted to eat. “Calm down,” she said to the mare and her colt.

The cows just looked up at her dumbly, the way they always did.

As she grasped the rusty door latch to the barn, she wondered what she could get for the stock. She’d heard beef prices were on the rise and she figured among all the cattle they weighed maybe five thousand pounds total. There should be some cash in selling the cows, and she sure didn’t want to have to keep feeding them. The hay supply was low, and the bales too heavy for her to stack on her own if she ordered a couple of tons. And the horses? They weren’t worth anything except to a slaughterhouse. The French could eat them, she thought. They liked eating horse meat, she’d heard.

She swung the door back and reached for the light switch, which was mounted on the inside of the doorframe, when a hand grasped her wrist and twisted her arm back. The pain was sudden and excruciating, and she collapsed to her knees, gasping for air. She heard a muffled pop, and fireworks burst in front of her eyes. It felt like her arm had been jerked out of the socket.

The light came on, and she looked through the tears and starbursts at the Game Changer, the man she’d seen at her kitchen table talking with Paul, Stumpy, and Ron Connelly. The man who gave her arm another wicked twist.

He said, “I believe we’ve met.”

11

When they were sure the girls were in their rooms with their doors closed, Joe and Marybeth sat together on the couch and he told her about his conversation with Nate. He left out the part about the falconry website. Although it was his practice to share everything with his wife, in this case he felt the need to hold back a little for her own protection. She wouldn’t agree with his decision — he was sure of it — but Nate had spooked him.

“Nemecek?” Marybeth asked.

“Nate said we wouldn’t find out much about him,” Joe said. “He said he was off the grid as well.”

“No one is completely without identity.”

Joe shrugged.

“I have my ways,” she said.

He nodded. “I know you do.”

Marybeth’s part-time job at the library gave her access to data and networks that rivaled those of most local law enforcement, and certainly the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department. She’d used that access to her advantage many times, and, through a coworker who had once worked for the police department, had obtained passwords and backdoor user names that allowed her into N-DEx, the U.S. Justice Department’s National Data Exchange, and ViCAP, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.

“I’m curious to hear what you find,” Joe said.

“Of course, we could just go to the source and ask him,” she said.

“I’m holding that in reserve.”

She shook her head. If it were up to Marybeth, Joe knew, she would have had Nate spilling everything.

They sat in silence for a while on the couch, each consumed by their own thoughts.

Finally, Marybeth asked, “Do you think we’ll see Nate again?”

Joe shrugged. “I hope so.”

“If he said the things you told me, he must be really worried. I’ve never heard him talk like that.”

“Me either.”

She said, “I can’t help wondering what it was he did that drew him here. What was so awful that he thinks he deserves to die?”

At 2:30 in the morning, Joe slipped out of bed and pulled on his robe and walked quietly down the hallway to his tiny and cluttered home office. He shut the door, turned on the light, and sat down at his computer.

Emails from Game and Fish headquarters flooded his inbox, but nothing looked urgent. The department was temporarily without a new director, and a search by the governor was under way. Governor Rulon, who in the past had employed Joe directly but off the books in a bureaucratic sense, had two years left in his second and last term and had seemed to have mellowed somewhat. Joe hadn’t received an assignment from Rulon in more than a year, which was fine with him, although if forced to admit it, he’d come to crave the adventure and uncertainty of his missions. The respite had been healthy for his family, though, and being able to stay home was something he’d never regret.

It didn’t take long to find the falconry website Nate had given him. He took a few moments to register a username and a password, and he was in. The site was rudimentary and cluttered, no more than a screen filled with topics and comment threads:

Joe clicked on that one because he was unfamiliar with the word yarak and recalled Nate had used it earlier. The thread had begun more than ten years before, and the last comment was eight years old. Nevertheless, he read the thread with interest. Yarak was a Turkish word describing the peak condition of a falcon to fly and hunt. It was described as “full of stamina, well-muscled, alert, neither too fat nor too thin, perfect condition for hunting and killing prey. This state is rarely achieved but a wonder to behold when observed.” In order to achieve an optimum state of yarak, one commenter wrote, full-time care, exercise, diet, and training were required.

“Don’t think you can get your bird into primo yarak by working with it at night or on weekends. This is a twenty-four/seven commitment, and there are no guarantees.”

Joe didn’t expect to find a new thread with the word “kestrel” in it, and it wasn’t there.

He wondered if Nate would launch the thread before he achieved his state of yarak.

12

Fifteen minutes later, on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Bad Bob Whiteplume had a dream in which he was hunting for pronghorn antelope. As he raised his rifle, a car horn blared from somewhere behind him and spooked the buck. He watched in vain as the pronghorn he wanted zoomed away and turned its small contingent of does and fawns, and the herd raced away trailing a dozen plumes of dust. The horn wouldn’t stop, and he rolled over in bed and wrapped the pillow around his head and it helped a little. In his dream, the buck antelope he’d been after had run so far away Bob would never get a decent shot.

When Rhonda next to him elbowed him in the ribs, he opened his eyes to total darkness. But he could still hear the horn.

“Bob,” she said, “get up. There’s someone outside.”

“Who is it?” he croaked.

“How in the hell should I know? But it’s nearly three in the morning and somebody is sitting out front in their car, honking their fucking horn.”

“Go make them stop,” he said, scooting farther away from her and her elbow and her yammering. He wanted to go back to the antelope hunt. “And don’t turn on the light or they’ll know I’m back here and they’ll keep honking.”

The house had been built long before his grandfather had added the convenience store to the front of it. The two structures were joined via a metal door with several bolt locks on it he always forgot to secure.

This came in handy because if Bob and his buddies did too much alcohol or weed, Bob could crash in his own bed without having to drive anywhere. But sleeping so close to his day job came with annoyances. Like this. All the Indians were family on the reservation, which was fine, usually. There was always someone to borrow tools or bullets from. But familiarity sometimes meant neighbors didn’t honor rules, like when a store was open or closed.

“No,” she said, prying his hand and pillow away from his ear and leaning into him. “I’m not going out there. You go make them stop.”

“Give it a minute,” Bob grumbled. “They’ll realize I’m not coming out and they’ll go away.”

She huffed a long stream of air into the back of his neck from her nostrils as she sighed in frustration. There was a few seconds of silence.

“See?” Bob said, closing his eyes.

Then the horn resumed: a long blast, followed by several short blasts, followed by the long blast again.

“They’re not leaving,” she hissed.

“Okay, okay,” he growled, swinging his thick brown legs out from beneath the sheets. The floor was cold when his wide bare feet slapped it. “But I’m going to tear those knuckleheads a new one.”

“Just make them stop,” Rhonda said, collapsing back into bed.

Rhonda liked showing up around closing time and staying the night. She was a thick white woman with red hair and broad hips originally from Boston, who had shown up in Wyoming after a messy divorce looking for, she said, spirituality and something that would give her life meaning. Hence, she gravitated toward the folks on the res and provided free mental-health-care services at the tribal center one day a week.

She ran the only psychology practice in the little town of Winchester to the north, and she said she liked the idea of being a shrink to ranch wives and other assorted miscreants during the day and sleeping with an angry Indian at night, that somehow it gave her existence a kind of balance. She told Bob she considered herself a liaison between white problems and Indian problems, and maybe someday she’d write a book about her experiences. Bob doubted anyone would buy or read such a useless book, but he didn’t tell her that.

Before he could get her into bed, Bob had to answer her questions about native culture and beliefs and practices. He made them sound more mysterious than they were, and he made up a lot of it on the spot. For example, he had shown her the mottled scars on his chest and claimed they’d come from participating in a traditional sun dance where warriors pierced their pectoral muscles with sharpened bones and let themselves be hoisted into the air on rawhide ropes until they obtained their visions or the flesh ripped. Actually, the scars were a result of a motorcycle accident when Bob was a teenager. But no matter. It got her engine running, which was the point.

She begged him to take her to a sweat lodge someday, to show her how to do a vision quest, to let her see the actual sun dance (where dancers no longer pierced themselves or hung from ropes). He told her she’d have to earn those privileges by submitting to him and “his hot-blooded ways.” He suspected at times she was onto him — she was a psychologist, after all — but she didn’t put up any objection or question his stories or his motives. So one or two times a week he took her to bed, where she showed dexterity and a youthful hunger that decried her appearance and profession. Afterward, she’d rise early and drive back to Winchester before he got up, so he didn’t even have to feed her.

His mood was very, very dark as he stood and fished around on the chair through a pile of old clothes. He pulled on a pair of baggy gym trunks and a grease-stained hooded sweatshirt. His flip-flops were side by side under the bed, and he stepped into them.

“Come back soon,” she sang from bed. “I’m wide awake now.”

“Go back to sleep.”

The.30–30 lever-action Winchester was propped in the corner, and he grabbed it by the barrel as he walked by and shuffled down the hallway.

Maybe, he thought, the people outside honking their horn were visitors to the res, because locals would have known by now he wasn’t coming out. They’d know he meant business when they looked up and saw a big pissed-off Indian approaching the car with a hunting rifle.

He pushed through the steel door into his retail store. It was dim inside; the only lights were from the drink coolers. He paused at the front of his store and squinted, trying to see who was in the offending car. But because the bulb on the overhead pole light had been shot out recently — teenagers Darryl and Benny Edmo and their new pellet gun, he suspected — he couldn’t see much more than the outline of a vehicle in the moonlight on the other side of the gas pumps. One of the pumps blocked his view of the driver, but he could see no other occupants in the car.

Bad Bob slammed back the bolt locks and threw open the front door. Without the barrier, the blaring of the horn was louder and more infuriating than before.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Knock it off!” But his voice was drowned out.

Bob strode across the loose gravel on blacktop, ignoring the sharp little stones that wedged between his bare toes and between the soles of his feet and the flip-flops.

“KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!” he bellowed, and worked the lever action on his rifle with a swift and metallic clatch-clatch sound.

The horn ceased.

Bob said, “Thank you!”

Overhead, the full moon hung fat and low over the western mountains. As he glanced at it, he noticed a distant hawk cross over the white/blue surface like a miller moth dancing across a porch light. The hawk gave him pause, and something inside of him stirred a little. What? he thought. Does it have some kind of meaning? The old folks still talked as if everything that happened in the natural world had meaning outside of the obvious, but Bob never paid any attention to that stuff. But something tweaked him inside now and he couldn’t entirely ignore it.

He squeezed between the pumps to confront the driver, when a flashlight beam blinded him.

“Hey,” he said, raising his left forearm to block the light.

“Bad Bob, right?” came a male voice. It was somewhat familiar. A white voice.

“Get that light outta my face. I can’t see. Buddy,” Bob said, “do you know what fucking time it is?”

Although the light clicked off, all Bob could see was a round green orb burned into his eyes. He heard the car door open, though, and just as quickly the rifle was wrenched out of his right hand.

“Fuckin …” Bob started to say, but he heard the shuffle of someone behind him and something icy and sharp bit into his throat and squeezed off any further words as well as his breath.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the voice said calmly in his right ear. “But you’ll need to stop struggling. Do you understand?”

Bob tried to draw air in through his nose, but the cord — or wire — around his throat restricted that, too. He reached up involuntarily with both hands to feel what was choking him, but the man slapped his hands down.

“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need some information.”

Bob could feel his heart whumping, and a voice inside his head told him to stay still. He lowered his hands and rocked back slightly, which lessened the pressure of the thin wire noose — or whatever it was. His eyes had readjusted to the dark, and he glanced toward his store, hoping Rhonda would see what was happening at the front door. She wasn’t there.

“Do you remember me?” the man asked, his lips inches from Bob’s ear. “Do you recognize my car?”

Despite the biting pain it caused, Bob managed to shake his head. Even though he remembered the Audi Q7.

The man behind him chuckled. “Oh, we both wish it were so. Now, listen to me carefully, Bob. I’m going to ease up on you so you can talk. Like I said, all I need is information. Then, if you help me out and you don’t turn around and you walk straight back into your little store, everything will be fine. You’ll have an abrasion on your neck, but that’s all. Do you hear me?”

Although spangles were replacing the stars in the night sky, Bob managed to nod.

“Okay,” the man said, and the pressure eased, but the wire was still cutting into the soft flesh of Bob’s throat. “I’m looking for a house. Seven seventeen Farm Station Street. The street numbers here on the reservation — I can’t make heads or tails of them.”

Bob knew that to be true, and it was something he was used to. No one ever used street or house numbers, anyway. They just said, “I’ll meet you at Mary’s house” or “turn west by where Jimmy Nosleep used to live.”

“I don’t know the numbers,” Bob croaked. “Tell me who you’re looking for.”

“Alice Thunder,” the man said. “She works at the school.”

Bob felt a stab of pain in his heart. If this man would do this to him, what would he do to Alice? Everyone loved Alice. …

As if the man could read his thoughts, the wire cinched tighter, and Bob groaned.

“Where does she live?” the man asked.

Bob thought, I’ll tell him. Then I’ll call Alice and tell her to run like hell and I’ll call the tribal police right after that. Then he’d call his buddies and tell them to grab their hunting rifles and meet him at Alice’s place, where they’d teach this son-of-a-bitch a lesson before the cops got there. He still couldn’t quite believe how quickly the man in the dark crossover — the man Nate Romanowski had asked him about — had taken his rifle and slipped the garrote over his head. He looked again at his store and wordlessly begged Rhonda to look out.

Then, when the noose eased, Bob said, “Go down this street in front of us about a mile and a half and turn right on a dirt road just past a big stack of hay. Her house is half a mile from that, on your left.”

“Ah,” the man said. “I was right by it earlier and didn’t see it. You people need to come up with a numbering system that makes sense.”

Because of the wire around his neck and the man’s hands on the wire, Bob felt intimately connected to this person, and he could feel it when the man shifted his weight, as if he were digging something out of a pocket.

His keys. There was a dull thunk of an electronic lock releasing. In his peripheral vision, Bob saw the trunk of the vehicle lift on its own and an interior light come on inside. Until that moment, he’d thought he had a chance. No longer.

“We’re going for a ride now,” the man behind him said, and steered him toward the open trunk. Bob saw that thick clear plastic sheeting had been laid down inside.

“I thought you said …”

Bob never finished his question before the wire was cinched tight and his world went black and the last thing he saw was the after-image of the hawk flying across the surface of the moon and he wished he’d understood earlier what it foretold.