Nowhere to Run

2

The rhapsody ended at noon the next day. There was a lone fisherman down there in the small kidney-shaped mountain lake and something about him was wrong.

Joe reined to a stop on the summit and let Buddy and Blue Roanie catch their breath from clambering up the mountainside. The late-summer sun was straight up in the sky, and insects hummed in the wildflowers. He shifted in the saddle to get his bearings and searched the sky for more clouds. The sun had been relentless on the top of Battle Pass. There was little shade because he was on the top of the world, with nothing higher. He longed for an afternoon thunderstorm to cool things down, but the thunderhead had slowed its sky march and the rain column now looked like an afterthought. He hoped for a more serious cloud, and to the south he could see a bank of thunderheads forming at what looked from his elevation like eye level.

But first, he’d need to check out the fisherman.

Joe raised his binoculars and focused in, trying to figure out what there was about the man that had struck him as discordant. Several things popped up. The first was that although the hundreds of small mountain lakes in Sierra Madre had fish, the high-country cirques weren’t noted for great angling. Big fish were to be had in the low country, in the legendary blue-ribbon trout waters of the Encampment and North Platte rivers of the eastern slope or the Little Snake on the western slope. Up here, with its long violent winters and achingly short summers, the trout were stunted because the ice-off time was brief. Although today it was a beautiful day, the weather could turn within minutes. Snow was likely any month of the summer. While hikers might catch a small trout or two for dinner along the trail, as he had, the area was not a destination fishing location worth two or three days of hard hike to access.

Second, the fisherman wasn’t dressed or equipped like a modern angler. The man-who at the distance looked very tall and rangy-was wading in filthy denim jeans, an oversized red plaid shirt with big checks, and a white slouch hat pulled low over his eyes. No waders, no fishing vest, no net. And no horse, tent, or camp, from what Joe could see. In these days of high-tech gear and clothing that wicked away moisture and weighed practically nothing, it was extremely unusual to see such a throwback outfit.

He put away the glasses, clicked his tongue, and started down toward the lake. Leather creaked from his saddles, and horseshoes struck stones. Blue Roanie snorted. He was making plenty of noise, but the fisherman appeared not to have seen or heard him. In a place as big and empty and lonely as this, the fisherman’s lack of acknowledgment was all wrong and made a statement in itself.

As he walked his animals down to the lake, Joe untied the leather thong that secured his shotgun in his saddle scabbard.

Joe had often considered the fact that, for Western game wardens, unlike even for urban cops in America’s toughest inner cities, nearly every human being he encountered was armed. To make matters even dicier, it was rare when he could call for backup. This appeared to be one of those encounters where he’d be completely on his own, the only things on his side being his wits, his weapons, and the game and fish regulations of the State of Wyoming.

Fat-bodied marmots scattered across the rubble in front of him as he descended toward the lake. They took cover and peeked at him from the gray scree. What do they know that I don’t? Joe wondered.

“HELLO,” JOE CALLED OUT as he approached the cirque lake from the other side of the fisherman. “How’s the fishing?”

His voice echoed around in the small basin until it was swallowed up.

“Excuse me, sir. I need to talk to you for a minute and check your fishing license and habitat stamp.”

No response.

The fisherman cast, waited a moment for his lure to settle under the surface of the water, then reeled in. The man was a spin-fishing artist, and his lure flicked out like a snake’s tongue. Cast. Pause. Reel. Cast. Pause. Reel.

Joe thought, Either he’s deaf and blind, or has an inhuman power of concentration, or he’s ignoring me, pretending I’ll just get spooked and give up and go away.

As a courtesy and for his own protection, Joe never came at a hunter or fisherman head-on. He had learned to skirt them, to approach from an angle. Which he did now, walking his horses around the shore, keeping the fisherman firmly in his peripheral vision. Out of sight from the fisherman, Joe let his right hand slip down along his thigh until it was inches from his shotgun.

Cast. Pause. Reel. Cast. Pause. Reel.

Interaction with others was different in the mountains than it was in town. Where two people may simply pass each other on the street with no more than a glance and a nod, in the wilderness people drew to each other the same way animals of the same species instinctively sought each other out. Information was exchanged-weather, trail conditions, hazards ahead. In Joe’s experience, when a man didn’t want to talk, something was up and it was rarely good. Joe was obviously a game warden, but the fisherman didn’t acknowledge the fact, which was disconcerting. It was as if the man thought Joe had no right to be there. And Joe knew that with each passing minute the fisherman chose not to acknowledge him, he was delving further and further into unknown and dangerous territory.

As Joe rode closer, he could see the fisherman was armed, as he’d suspected. Tucked into the man’s belt was a long-barreled Ruger Mark III.22 semiautomatic pistol. Joe knew it to be an excellent gun, and he’d seen hundreds owned by hunters and ranchers over the years. It was rugged and simple, and it was often used to administer a kill shot to a wounded animal.

The tip of the fisherman’s pole jerked down and the man deftly set the hook and reeled in a feisty twelve-inch rainbow trout. The sun danced off the colors of the trout’s belly and back as the fisherman raised it from the water, worked the treble-hook lure out of its mouth, and studied it carefully, turning it over in his hands. Then he bent over and released the fish. He cast again, hooked up just as quickly, and reeled in a trout of the same size and color. After inspecting it, he bit it savagely behind its head to kill it. He spat the mouthful of meat into the water near his feet and slipped the fish into the bulging wet fanny pack behind him. Joe looked at the pack-there were a lot of dead fish in it.

“Why did you release the first one and keep the second?” Joe asked. “They looked like the same fish.”

The man grunted as if insulted, “Not up close, they didn’t. The one I kept had a nick on its tailfin. The one I threw back was perfect. The perfect ones go free.” He spoke in a hard, flat, nasal tone. The accent was upper Midwest, Joe thought. Maybe even Canadian.

Joe was puzzled. “How many imperfect fish do you have there?” Joe asked. He was now around the lake and behind and to the side of the fisherman. “The legal limit is six. Too many to my mind, but that’s the law. It looks like you may have more than that in your possession.”

The fisherman paused silently in the lake, his wide back to Joe. He seemed to be thinking, planning a move or a response. Joe felt the now-familiar shiver roll through him despite the heat. It was as if they were the only two humans on earth and something of significance was bound to happen.

Finally, the man said, “I lost count. Maybe ten.”

“That’s a violation. Tell me, are you a bow hunter?” Joe asked. “I’m wondering about an arrow I found stuck in a tree earlier today.”

The fisherman shrugged. Not a yes, not a no. More like, I’m not sure I want to answer.

“Do you know anything about an elk that was butchered up in a basin a few miles from here? A seven-point bull? It happened a week ago. The hunters who wounded it tracked it down but someone had harvested all the meat by the time they found the carcass. Would you know anything about that?”

“Why you asking me?”

“Because you’re the only living human being I’ve seen in two days.”

The man coughed up phlegm and spat a ball of it over his shoulder. It floated and bobbed on the surface of the water. “I don’t know nothing about no elk.”

“The elk was imperfect,” Joe said. “It was bleeding out and probably limping.”

“For the life of me, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“I need to see your license,” Joe said.

“Ain’t got it on me,” the man said, finally, still not turning around. “Might be in my bag.”

Joe turned in the saddle and saw a weathered canvas daypack hung from a broken branch on the side of a pine tree. He’d missed it earlier. He looked for a bow and quiver of homemade arrows. Nope.

“Mind if I look in it?”

The fisherman shrugged again.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes. But while you look, I’m gonna keep fishing.”

“Suit yourself,” Joe said.

The fisherman mumbled something low and incomprehensible.

Joe said, “Come again?”

The man said, “I’m willing to let this go if you’ll just turn your horses around and ride back the way you came. ’Cause if you start messing with me, well. ”

“What?”

“Well, it may not turn out too good.”

Joe said, “Are you threatening me?”

“Nope. Just statin’ a fact. Like sayin’ the sky is blue. You got a choice, is what I’m sayin’.”

Joe said, “I’m choosing to check your license. It’s my job.”

The fisherman shook his head slowly, as if to say, What happens now is on you.

The rod flicked out again, but the lure shot out to the side toward Joe, who saw it flashing through the air. He flinched and closed his eyes and felt the lure smack hard into his shoulder. The treble hooks bit into the loose fabric of his sleeve but somehow missed the skin.

“Damn,” the fisherman said.

“Damn is right,” Joe said, shaken. “You hooked me.”

“I fouled the cast, I guess,” the man said.

“Seemed deliberate to me,” Joe said, reaching across his body and trying to work the lure free. The barbs were pulled through the fabric and he ended up tearing his sleeve getting the lure out.

“Maybe if you’d stay clear of my casting lane,” the fisherman said flatly, reeling in. Not a hint of apology or remorse.

Joe dismounted but never took his eyes off the fisherman in the water. He fought an impulse to charge out into the lake and take the man down. He doubted the miscast was an accident, but there was no way he could prove it, and he swallowed his anger. He led his horse over to the tree, tied him up, and took the bag down. There were very few items in it, and Joe rooted through them looking for a license. In the bag was a knife in a sheath, some string, matches, a box of crackers, a battered journal, a pink elastic iPod holder designed to be worn on an arm but no iPod, an empty water bottle, and half a Bible-Old Testament only. It looked as if the New Testament had been torn away.

“I don’t see a license,” Joe said, stealing a look at the journal while the fisherman kept his back to him. There were hundreds of short entries made in a tiny crimped hand. Joe read a few of them and noted the dates went back to March. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Was it possible this man had been in the mountains for six months?

“Don’t be reading my work,” the fisherman said.

On a smudged card inside the Bible was a note: FOR CALEB ON HIS 14TH BIRTHDAY FROM AUNT ELAINE.

“Are you Caleb?” Joe asked.

Pause. “Yeah.”

“Got a last name?”

“Yeah.”

Joe waited a beat and the man said nothing. “So, what is it?”

“Grimmengruber.”

“What?”

“Grimmengruber. Most people just say ‘Grim’ cause they can’t pronounce it.”

“Who is Camish?” Joe asked. “I keep seeing that name in this journal.”

“I told you not to read it,” Caleb Grimmengruber said, displaying a flash of impatience.

“I was looking for your license,” Joe said. “I can’t find it. So who is Camish?”

Caleb sighed. “My brother.”

“Where is he? Is he up here with you?”

“None of your business.”

“You wrote that he was with you yesterday. It says, ‘Camish went down and got some supplies. He ran into some trouble along the way.’ What trouble?” Joe asked, recalling what Farkus had said at the trailhead.

Caleb Grim lowered his fishing rod and slowly turned around. He had close-set dark eyes, a tiny pinched mouth glistening with fish blood, a stubbled chin sequined with scales, and a long, thin nose sunburned so badly that the skin was mottled gray and had peeled away revealing the place where chalk-white bone joined yellow cartilage. Joe’s stomach clenched, and he felt his toes curl in his boots.

“What trouble?” Joe repeated, trying to keep his voice strong.

“You can ask him yourself.”

“He’s at your camp?”

“I ain’t in charge of his movements, but I think so.”

“Where’s your camp?”

Caleb chinned to the south, but all Joe could see was a woodstudded slope that angled up nearly a thousand feet.

“Up there in the trees?” Joe asked.

“Over the top,” the man said. “Down the other side and up and down another mountain.”

Joe surveyed the terrain. He estimated the camp to be at least three miles the hard way. Three miles.

“Lead on,” Joe said.

“What you gonna do if I don’t?”

Joe thought, There’s not much I can do. He said, “We won’t even need to worry about that if you cooperate. You can show me your license, I can have a word with Camish, and if everything’s on the level, I’ll be on my way and I’ll leave you with a citation for too many fish in your possession.”

Caleb appeared to be thinking it over although his hard dark eyes never blinked. He raised his rod and hooked the lure on an eyelet so it wouldn’t swing around. After a moment, Grim waded out of the lake. As he neared, Joe was taken aback at how tall he was, maybe six-foot-five. He was glad he hadn’t gone into the lake after him. Joe could smell him approaching. Rancid-like rotten animal fat. Without a glance toward Joe, Caleb took the daypack and threw it over his shoulders and started up the mountain. Joe mounted up, breathed in a gulp of clean, thin air, and clucked at Buddy and Blue Roanie to get them moving.

A quarter mile up the mountain, Caleb stopped and turned around. His tiny dark eyes settled on Joe. He said, “You coulda just rode away.”

Nearly to the top, Joe prodded on his pack animals. They were laboring on the steep mountainside. Caleb Grim wasn’t. The man long-strided up the slope at a pace that was as determined as it was unnatural.

Joe said, “The Brothers Grim?”

Caleb, obviously annoyed, said, “We prefer the Grim Brothers.”

Later, Joe asked, “Where are you boys from?”

No response.

“How long have you been up here? This is tough country.”

Nothing.

“Why just the Old Testament?”

Dismissive grunt.

“What kind of trouble did Camish run into yesterday?”

Silence.

“Some of the old-timers down in Baggs think someone’s been up here harassing cattle and spooking them down the mountains. There have even been reports by campers that their camps have been trashed, and there’ve been some break-ins at cabins and cars parked at the trailheads. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Caleb grunted. Again not a yes, not a no.

“The elk that was butchered confounds me,” Joe said. “Whoever did it worked fast and knew what they were doing. The bow hunters said it must have happened within twenty minutes, maybe less. Like maybe more than one man was cutting up that meat. You wouldn’t know who up here could’ve done that, then?”

“I already told you. I don’t know about no elk.”

“Have you heard about a missing long-distance runner? She disappeared up here somewhere a couple of years ago. A girl by the name of Diane Shober?”

Another inscrutable grunt.

“The Brothers Grim,” Joe said again.

“We prefer the Grim Brothers, damn you,” Caleb spat.

Joe eased his shotgun out of the saddle scabbard, glanced down to check the loads, and slid it back in. He’d have to jack a shell into the chamber to arm it. Later, though. When Caleb wasn’t looking. No need to provoke the man.

They were soon in dense timber. Buddy and Blue Roanie detoured around downed logs while Caleb Grim scrambled over them without a thought. Joe wondered if Caleb was leading him into a trap or trying to lose him, and he spurred Buddy on harder than he wanted to, working him and not letting him rest, noting the lather creaming out from beneath the saddle and blanket. It was dark and featureless in the timber. Every few minutes Joe would twist in the saddle to look back, to try to find and note a landmark so he could find his way back out. But the lodgepole pine trees all looked the same, and the canopy was so thick he couldn’t see the sky or the horizon.

“Sorry Buddy,” he whispered to his gelding, patting his wet neck, “it can’t be much farther.”

Caleb’s subtle arcs and meandering made Joe suddenly doubt his own sense of direction. He thought they were still going north, but he wasn’t sure. Out of nowhere, a line came back to him from one of his favorite old movies, one of the rare movies he and his father had both liked, The Missouri Breaks:

The closer you get to Canada, the more things’ll eat your horse.

Joe could smell the camp before he could see it. It smelled like rotten garbage and burnt flesh.

For a moment, Joe thought he was hallucinating. How could Caleb Grim have made it into the camp so much before him that he’d had the time to sit on a log and stretch out his long legs and read the Bible and wait for him to arrive? Then he realized the man on the log was identical to Caleb in every way, including his clothing, slouch hat, and deformed nose, and he was reading the missing half of the book he’d seen in Caleb’s daypack earlier-the New Testament.

Caleb Grim emerged from a thicket of brush and tossed his daypack aside and sat down next to his brother. Twins. Joe felt his palms go dry and his heart race.

“Why’d you bring him?” the brother-Joe assumed it was Camish-asked without looking up.

“I didn’t,” Caleb said. “He followed me.”

“I thought we had an agreement about this sort of thing.” His voice was nasal as well, but higher-pitched. “You know what happened the last time you did this.”

“That was different, Camish. You know that.”

“I didn’t know it at the time.”

“You should have known. They’re all like that-every damned one of them.”

“Especially when they got a badge to hide behind,” Caleb said.

“Especially then,” Camish said.

“What happened last time?” Joe asked. He was ignored. They talked to each other as if Joe weren’t there. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry.

The camp was a shambles. Clothing, wrappers, empty cans and food containers, bones, and bits of hide littered the ground. Their tent was a tiny Boy Scout pup tent, and he could see two stained and crumpled sleeping bags extending out past the door flap. He wondered how the two tall men managed to sleep there together-and why they’d want to. The bones meant the brothers were the poachers, because there were no open game seasons in the summer. Joe saw no weapons but assumed they were hidden away. He could arrest them for wanton destruction of game animals, hunting out of season, and multiple other violations on the spot. And then what? he wondered. He couldn’t just march them for three days out of the mountains to jail.

Said Caleb to Joe, “You gonna stay up there on that horse?”

“Yup.”

“You ain’t gonna get down?”

“Nope. I’ll just take a look at your fishing license and I’ll get going.”

The brothers exchanged looks and seemed to be sharing a joke.

“Well, then,” Caleb said, long-striding toward the pup tent, “I’ll go see if I can find it.”

Joe said to Camish, “How long have you been up here?”

Camish looked up and showed a mouthful of stubby yellow teeth that looked like a line of undersized corn kernels. “Is that an official question?”

“An official question?”

“Like one I have to answer or you’ll give me a dang ticket or something?”

“I’m just wondering,” Joe said. “It looks like you boys have been up here for a while living off the land. That’s curious. How many deer and elk have you killed and eaten?”

Camish shook his head. “If I don’t answer you, it’s not because I’m rude, mister. It’s because I don’t care to incriminate myself in any way. If it ain’t an official question and all.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “It’s an official question.”

“If I don’t agree to see you as an authority, it ain’t official. You know, game warden, this place ain’t called Rampart Mountain for no reason. You know what a rampart is?”

Joe kept silent, knowing Camish would answer his own question.

“A rampart is a protective barrier,” Camish said. “A last stand, kind of.”

Camish shook his half of the Bible at Joe. “I been reading this. I’m not all that impressed, to tell you the truth. I can’t figure out what all the fuss is about. I find it to be an imperfect book.”

Joe didn’t know what to say to that.

“At least the first part has lots of action in it. Lots of murder and killings and sleeping around and such. Battles and things like that. Crazy miracles and folk tales-it keeps you entertained. This part, though, it’s just too soft, you know? You ever read it?”

Joe said, “Some.”

“I’d not recommend it. At least the second half. Instead, I’d read the U.S. Constitution. It’s shorter, better, and up until recently it was pretty easy to find.”

Caleb crawled backward out of the tent, stood up, said, “Damned if I can’t find it, officer. But there’s one other place I need to look.”

“Where’s that?”

Caleb gestured toward the forest behind him. “We got a couple caches back in the trees. I might have put my license in one of ’em.”

Joe said, “I’ll follow you.” Wanting to be rid of Camish and his commentary.

That seemed to surprise Caleb, and again the brothers exchanged a wordless glance that made Joe both scared and angry. They were communicating without words or recognizable cues, leaving Joe in the dark.

“Come on, then,” Caleb said. “But you’ll have to get down. The trees are too thick to ride through. There’s too much downed timber.”

Joe studied the trees behind Caleb. They were too closely packed to ride through. For a moment, he considered telling Caleb he’d wait where he was. But he wondered if he let Caleb go if he’d ever see him again. And he didn’t want to be stuck with Camish, who asked suddenly, “You ever hear of the Wendigo?”

Joe looked over. He’d now heard the word twice-once from Farkus, now from Camish Grim. “What about it?”

Again the stubby teeth, but this time in a sort of painful smile. “Just wonderin’,” he said.

Joe waited for more but nothing came.

Then Camish said, “So who owns these fish you’re so worked up about?”

“What do you mean, who owns them?”

“Exactly what I asked. These fish are native cutthroats, mainly, and a few rainbows that were planted years ago, right?”

Joe nodded.

“So who owns them? Do you own them? Is that why you’re so worked up?”

“I work for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department,” Joe said.

“Note that word fish. We’re the state agency in charge of managing our wildlife.”

Camish rubbed his chin. “So you own the fish.”

“Technically. no. But we’re charged with managing the resource. Everybody knows this.”

“Maybe,” Camish said. “But I like to get things clear in my mind. What you’re saying is that American citizens and citizens of this state have to go out and buy a piece of paper from the state in order to catch native fish in wild country. So you’re sort of a tax collector for the government, then?”

Joe shook his head, lost in the logic.

“So if you don’t own the fish and you didn’t put them here, what gives you the right to collect a tax on folks like us? Don’t we have any say in this?”

“I guess you can complain to the judge,” Joe said.

“Does the judge get his paycheck from the same place you do? Sounds like a racket to me. You’ve got me wondering who the criminal is here and who isn’t.”

Joe climbed down quickly and tied Buddy to a tree. He said to Caleb, “Let’s go.”

Caleb grinned. Same teeth as Camish. “Pissed you off, didn’t he?”

Joe set his jaw and made a wide arc around Camish, who looked amused.

Joe followed Caleb Grim on a nearly imperceptible trail through the pine trees. The trees were so thick that several times Joe had to turn his shoulders and sidle through the trunks to get through. The footing was rough because of the roots that broke the surface. Not that Caleb was slowed down, though. Joe found it remarkable how a man of his size could glide through the forest as if on a cushion of air.

“So,” Joe said to Caleb’s back, “where are you boys from?”

“More questions,” Caleb grunted.

“Just being friendly.”

“I don’t need no friends.”

“Everybody needs friends.”

“Not me. Not Camish.”

“Because you’ve got each other.”

“I don’t think I appreciate that remark.”

“Sorry,” Joe said. “So where do you guys hail from?”

“You ever heard of the UP?”

Joe said, “The Union Pacific?”

Caleb spat. His voice was laced with contempt. “Yeah, game warden, the Union Pacific. Okay, here we are.”

The trail had descended and on the right side of it was a flat granite wall with large vertical cracks. Caleb removed a gnarled piece of pitchwood from one of the cracks and reached inside to his armpit. He came out with a handful of crumpled papers.

Joe tried to see what they were. They looked like unopened mail that had been wadded up and stuffed in the crack. He saw a canceled stamp on the edge of an envelope. When Caleb caught Joe looking, he quickly stuffed the wad back into the rock.

“Nope,” he said. “No license here.”

“Is this a joke?” Joe asked. “You didn’t even look.”

“The hell I didn’t.”

Joe shook his head. “If you’ve got a valid license, I can look it up when I can get to a computer. In the meanwhile, though, I’m giving you another citation. The law is you’ve got to have your license in your possession. Not in some rock hidden away.”

Caleb said, “You’re giving me another ticket?”

“Yup.”

He laughed and shook his head from side to side.

“There’ll be a court date,” Joe said, unnerved from Caleb’s casual contempt. “If you want to protest, you can show up with your license and make your case.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, as if placating Joe.

“And I’m going to write up both of you for wanton destruction of game animals. I saw all the bones back there. You’ve been poaching game all summer.”

Caleb said, “Okay.”

“So why don’t we get back,” Joe said.

Caleb nodded, shouldered around Joe, and strode back up the trail.

As Joe followed, he wondered if he’d been suckered, and why.

Camish was still on his seat on the log and he watched with no expression on his face as Joe emerged from the woods. A cloud had finally passed in front of the sun and further muted the light. While they were gone, Camish had started a small fire in a fire pit near his feet and had cleaned and laid out the trout Caleb had brought back.

“Guess what,” Caleb said to Camish, “he’s going to give us tickets.”

“Tickets?” Camish said, placing his big hand over his heart as if pretending to ward off a stroke.

Joe felt his ears get hot from the humiliation, but said, “Wanton destruction of game animals, for starters. But we’ve also got hunting and fishing without licenses, and exceeding the legal limit of fish.”

Again, Joe caught the brothers exchanging information through their eyes.

Joe wrote out the citations while the Grim Brothers watched him and smirked.

Caleb said to his brother, “You’re gonna get mad, but I told him we were from the UP. And you know what he said? He said, ‘Union Pacific? ’”

Camish laughed out loud and slapped his thigh.

“Oh, and earlier, you know what he asked me?”

“What?”

“He asked if we’d ever run across any remains of that girl runner. You know, the one who took off running and never came back?”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said sure, we raped and killed her.”

Camish laughed again, and Caleb joined him, and Joe looked up from the last citation he was scribbling and wondered when he’d left Planet Earth for Planet Grim.

He handed the citations to the brothers, who took them without protest.

“I’d suggest you boys get out of the mountains and straighten up and fly right,” Joe said. “You’re gonna have big fines to pay, and maybe even jail time if the judge comes down hard.”

“Straighten up and fly right,” Camish repeated in a soft, mocking tone.

“What’s the reason you’re up here, anyway?” Joe asked. “I find people all the time looking for something they can’t get at home. What’s the story with you two?”

The brothers looked at each other.

“You wanna tell him?” Caleb said.

Camish said, “Sure.” He turned to Joe. “Let’s just say this is the best place for us. I really don’t want to go into detail.”

Joe waited for more that didn’t come. Finally, he reverted to training and said, “If you want to contest the citations, I’ll guess I’ll see you boys in court.”

“Gee,” Camish said. “Do we have to wear ties?”

Caleb snorted a laugh at that.

“You can wear what you want,” Joe said, feeling ridiculous for responding.

Caleb said to Camish, “But we got folks to look after.”

Camish shot Caleb a vicious glance, which shut his brother up.

“What folks?” Joe asked.

“Never mind my brother,” Camish said. “He knows not what he says sometimes.”

Caleb nodded, said, “I just babble sometimes.”

“Is there someone else up here?” Joe asked.

“Ain’t nobody,” Camish said.

“Ain’t nobody,” Caleb repeated.

Joe mounted Buddy, clucked his tongue to get him moving, and started back up the hill. He was never so grateful to ride away. He tried not to look over his shoulder as he put distance between himself and the camp, but he found he had to if for no other reason than to make sure they weren’t aiming a rifle at him.

They weren’t. Instead, the Brothers Grim were laughing and feeding the citations into the fire, which flared as they dropped the tickets in.

That night he discovered his satellite phone was missing. He remembered powering it down and putting it away into its case the night before, after leaving the message for Marybeth. He emptied the contents of both panniers and checked his daypack and saddlebags looking for it. He thought: They took it. He re-created the encounter with the brothers step-by-step and pinpointed when it likely happened. When he’d followed Caleb to the cache.

“The arrow,” he said aloud and rooted through all of his gear again. It was gone as well.

His anger turned to thoughts of revenge. If the brothers used the phone-and why else would they have taken it? — their exact location could be determined. It was how the feds tracked down drug dealers in South America and terrorists in the Middle East. Joe could bring a team back up into the mountains and nail those guys.

Being out of radio contact was not unusual in itself, and often he didn’t mind it one bit. This time he did. Marybeth would worry about him. In fact, he was worried himself. And what if the brothers hadn’t taken his phone for their own use? What if they’d taken it to isolate him, to cut off his communication with the outside world?

Later, as gray wisps of clouds passed over the moon and the wash of stars were so close together they looked like swirls of cream, he lay outside his tent again in his sleeping bag, with the shotgun across his chest, and he thought how different things could have turned out if he’d taken Caleb’s advice and simply ridden away when he had the chance.

Every year at the Wyoming Game Wardens Association meeting, after a few drinks, wardens would stand up and recount the strangest incident or most bizarre encounter they’d had the previous year. There was a sameness to many of the stories: poor hunters mistaking deer for elk or does for bucks, the comic and ridiculous excuses poachers came up with when caught in the act, out-of-state hunters who got no farther into Wyoming than the strip club in Green River, and run-ins with hermits, derelicts, and the unbalanced. It was always amazing to Joe how more often than not those who sought solace in nature were the least prepared to enter it. But it was exactly the opposite with those brothers. He felt he was the one who was encroaching, as if he’d barged unasked and unwanted into their living room.

They were the reason he’d lain awake all night with his hand on his shotgun as if it were his lover.

Joe thought bitterly, This isn’t fair. This was not how it was supposed to be on his last patrol.

It was like walking into a convenience store for a quart of milk and realizing there was an armed robbery in progress. He didn’t feel prepared for what he’d stumbled into. And unlike other situations he’d encountered over the years-and there were countless times he’d entered hunting and fishing camps outnumbered, outgunned, and without backup-he’d never felt as vulnerable and out of his depth.

He thought how strange it was that no one-hunters, ranchers, hikers, fishers-had ever reported seeing the Grim Brothers. How was it possible these two had lived and roamed in these mountains and not been seen and remarked upon? Two six-and-a-half-foot identical twins in identical clothing? That was the kind of legend that swept through the rural populace and took on a life of its own. It was exactly the kind of tale repeated by men like Farkus at the Dixon Club bar.

So how could these brothers have stayed out of sight?

Then Joe thought, Maybe they hadn’t. They’d certainly been seen before.

But whoever had seen them felt compelled to keep their mouths shut. Or maybe they never lived to tell.

After several hours, Joe dragged his bag a hundred yards from the camp into a copse of thick mountain juniper on a rise that overlooked the tent and his horses. If they came for him, he figured, he’d see them first on the approach. He sat with his back against a rock and both the shotgun and the.308 M-14 carbine with peep sights within reach. Finally, deep into the night, he drifted into an exhausted sleep.

He didn’t know how long he’d been out when his eyes shot open. It was still dark, but the eastern sky had lightened slightly. A dream had terrified him, and he found he’d cut into the palm of his hand with his fingernails and drawn blood.

In the dream, Caleb sneaked into his camp, rolled him over in his sleeping bag, and took a vicious bite out of the back of his neck. The pain was horrific, worse than anything he’d experienced.

To assure himself it had been his imagination, he glided the tips of his fingers along his nape to make sure the skin wasn’t broken.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27