Open Season

Joe reached down into the box for a handful of envelopes from past years. Many of the pictures were taken inside a VA hospital. There were nurses, doctors, light fixtures, other patients, tile floors, and again, Clyde Lidgard's penis.

Joe went through photos until the light got so poor he could hardly see. The most recent photos were from the summer before, and they had been taken in and around Saddlestring. That left a gap of at least two months from Clyde's last photos until he was shot in the outfitters' camp. Joe noted the time lapse in his notepad. He wondered what had made Lidgard stop taking pointless photographs.

When he finally took the boxes back to the junk room, he realized he had given himself a headache. The drumming of the rain on the roof had toned down to sporadic pings. He had been trying to see things that weren't there in the photos, trying to find something in them that would give a clue to who Clyde Lidgard was and how he ended up in the camp. He had found nothing, and the photos had only depressed him. There was something intimate in looking at the photos, as useless as they turned out to be. Lidgard, for whatever reason, had chosen to take the photos, have them developed, and stored them away. Lidgard might see things in the pictures that no one else could see, Joe guessed. Or he might see things out there that he felt compelled to photograph, only to get the photos back and to discover they weren't really there after all. Joe concluded that he knew no more about Clyde Lidgard than when he entered the trailer, but because of the penis photos he now knew more about Clyde Lidgard than he cared to.

Joe took a deep breath and opened the refrigerator. A thick roll of stench washed over him and stung his eyes. He squinted as he moved the flashlight around--putrid hamburger, spoiled milk, oozing cheese. He reached up and flipped down the door to the freezer compartment and the stink was even worse although the compartment was nearly empty.

Joe blew out a breath and kicked the trailer door open to get some air. Then he turned back to the freezer. The freezer pan was full of congealed blood and fluids. Tufts of brown hair were stuck in the blood and to the sides of the compartments. Until recently, Clyde Lidgard had stuffed his freezer with animal parts. And now they were gone.

***

Joe stood outside the trailer with his hands on his knees, breathing deeply, fighting back nausea. His head pounded and his eyes still stung. Eventually, he was breathing crisp clean air. There was the strong, sweet smell of wet sage, and Joe inhaled gratefully. Dusk brought a red-smeared sunset over the foothills.

Joe straightened up and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Then from behind him came a powerful whump sound. He turned in time to greet a ball of flame as it rolled out of the trailer, scorching his face.

It was remarkable how fast the trailer burned. Already the walls were gone, exposing the black skeleton frame. He watched helplessly. Whatever evidence there might have been inside was being destroyed. How could this have happened? He hadn't smelled gas.

He remembered that he had left his holster inside and he cursed out loud. Then something made him turn around. On the road leading toward Saddlestring, a pair of brake lights flashed. If a small herd of antelope hadn't crossed the road and forced the vehicle to slow down, Joe probably wouldn't have seen what looked like the back of a dark Chevrolet Suburban.

Vern Dunnegan drove a Suburban, but so did lots of people. Vern had also once taught Joe the trick of waiting until dusk to sneak up on hunters and use no lights because that was the hardest time to be seen in a moving vehicle. Joe wondered if that had been Vern, and, if so, what Vern would be doing out at the Lidgard place.

***

When Joe got home, Wacey's mud-splashed pickup was parked in the driveway. Joe pulled in alongside it and, as he walked toward the house, sniffed his shirtsleeves. There remained a strong odor of smoke from Clyde Lidgard's trailer. Maxine met him at the door and trailed him into the house, a gold shadow not three inches from his leg. Lucy and Sheridan were playing in the living room. Lucy was again playing the role of an animal and Sheridan was feeding her invisible treats as Missy looked on, amused. Wacey was leaning against the door frame of Joe's office and Marybeth was inside, looking through Joe's desk calendar.

"Want one of your beers before I drink them all?" Wacey asked.

"Sure."

Wacey returned with a cold bottle. "You don't smell good, Joe," Wacey whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he brushed by Joe and handed him the beer.

"I heard about Clyde Lidgard's trailer burning down. How in the hell did that happen?"

Joe was in a dark mood. He had radioed the Saddlestring Volunteer Fire Department (they had arrived ten minutes after the framework of the trailer sighed and collapsed in on itself into a sizzling pile) as well as Sheriff Barnum (who rolled his eyes skyward and moaned ruefully) about the ball of flame. The fire department recovered what was left of his gun and holster; the black fused-together mass still smoldered in the back of his pickup where he had thrown it. Rarely had Joe Pickett felt as stupid as he did right now.

"Did you ask him yet, Marybeth?"

"Ask me what?"

Marybeth had a curious smile on her face. Joe looked from Marybeth to Wacey, puzzled.

"Wacey has a proposition for us," Marybeth said.

Wacey stepped forward and shut the office door behind him. It was a small room.

Wacey grinned. Marybeth grinned.

"Aimee Kensinger has to go to Venice, Italy, for three and a half weeks with her husband," Wacey said.

"She asked me if I knew anyone who would be trustworthy enough to stay in her house and keep it up and walk her dog every day. You know, that little rodent Jack Russell terrier others."

Joe nodded slowly, waiting for more.

"He suggested us." Marybeth added in a way that indicated to Joe that she liked the idea.

"Our whole family. Even Mom."

Wacey jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Missy in the living room. "That way she could live more in the style to which she is accustomed," he said, affecting enough of a pompous lilt to make Joe smile in spite of himself. "It's going to be like a family vacation without really going anywhere."

Joe turned to Marybeth. "So you want to do it?"

Marybeth spoke practically. "We're out of room, Mom's sleeping on the couch, everything seems to be falling apart, and it would be a good time to get some repairmen in here when they're not bothering everybody. It seems like we're always here. It would be kind of like having a vacation."

"Which, as far as I know, you two have never had," Wacey chimed in. "Hell of an opportunity. Hell of an opportunity."

"We move in Thursday," Marybeth said.

"Then I guess the matter is decided," Joe said flatly, then drained his beer.

Marybeth asked Wacey if he wanted to stay for dinner. But Wacey said he had to get home. On the way toward the door, Wacey stopped suddenly and watched Lucy and Sheridan play.

"That's a cute little dog," Wacey said.

"I'M NOT A DOGGIE!" Lucy yelled back, arching up on her feet with her chubby arms curled under her chin while Sheridan fed her an invisible treat.

"What are you, then?"

"I'm not a doggie," Lucy said, folding back down to her haunches.

Joe Walked with Wacey out to his pickup. Wacey stopped and stood in the dark before he got in. Wacey had brought an unopened beer with him and Joe heard the top being unscrewed.

"Joe, do you know how it's going to look when word gets out that you burned down Clyde Lidgard's trailer?"

"Another bonehead move," Joe admitted, reaching into the bed of the pickup to see if his weapon was cool enough to touch. It was still warm. He tersely described what happened and said he couldn't understand how the fire had started. He left out the part about maybe seeing a Suburban.

"What a stroke of bad luck," Wacey said, looking at the now useless gun.

"I bet Barnum's having a good laugh about it. By tomorrow half the town will know."

Joe sighed. He couldn't believe he had lost his gun again. Wacey took a swig of beer.

"Are you sure this is something you ought to be pursuing?"

"Ote Keeley died in my woodpile. That makes it kind of personal. And to me the pieces just don't quite fit."

"What in particular?"

Joe rubbed his eyes. They stung from the fire. "Oh, I don't know. I guess I can't convince myself that Clyde Lidgard just up and shot three men for no clear reason and then stayed in their camp until we found him. And I don't know why Ote Keeley came all of the way to my backyard to die."

"Joe ..." Wacey's voice sounded high-pitched and pained, as if he were losing patience.

"Clyde Lidgard was a fucking nut. You can't explain a nut. That's why he's a nut. Just let it go."

"You sound like Barnum and everybody else."

"Maybe he's right for once," Wacey said. Joe could see the pale blue reflection of the moon on the bottom of Wacey's beer bottle as Wacey lifted it to his mouth.

"Trust me, Joe. It's been investigated. Everyone's satisfied. We're just Game and Fish guys. Guts and Feathers, as our critics like to say. We aren't detectives. People think we're nothing more than glorified animal control officers. Don't be a lone ranger here. You'll just embarrass the department and get yourself in more trouble, if that's possible."

Joe absently kicked the dirt with his toe and looked down.

"And you never know," Wacey said, "you might find a bad guy and then reach down only to remember that you lost your damn pistol again." Joe could tell Wacey was smiling at him in the dark.

"You've made your point," Joe answered sourly. "Just go on up with your cute little family and have a nice vacation at the Eagle Mountain Club," Wacey suggested.

"Besides, hunting season's just about to get hot and heavy, and you're going to be busy as hell. We both are."

"Maybe so," Joe said.

"That's what you say when you really don't agree but you don't want to discuss it anymore," Wacey commented. "I know you pretty good, Joe. You can be a stubborn son of a bitch."

"Maybe so," Joe said. Wacey grunted, and the two men stood in silence. Billowing dark clouds were low and moving fast through the sky, painting black brush strokes over stars.

"Why don't you and Arlene stay at Kensinger's?"

Wacey snorted.

"Arlene's idea of high class is eighty television channels. She wouldn't exactly appreciate that place the way Marybeth would. Besides, Arlene might find a sock of mine under the bed."

Joe nodded, though he wasn't sure he could be seen in the dark.

"I'm going to work one more week before I declare my candidacy," Wacey said after a long silence.

"I'm trying for a leave of absence with the state, but if I don't get it, I'll have to quit."

"What if you don't win?" Joe asked.

"I'm going to win," Wacey said, confident as always.

"But what if you don't?"

Wacey laughed and drained his bottle, then nipped it into the back of Joe's pickup where it would rattle around tomorrow. "Hell, I don't know. I haven't given it any thought at all. Maybe I'll go back to riding bulls for a living."

Wacey opened his truck door, and they looked at each other in the glow from the dome light.

"I'm not kidding you, Joe," Wacey said, climbing in. "Leave this outfitter business be. Just go back to work and have a fun vacation with your family. You've got one hell of a family, and one hell of a wife."

Wacey slammed the door, and they were in darkness again. Wacey started his pickup and the headlights bathed the peeling paint of the garage door.

Joe listened to gravel crunch and watched Waceys taillights recede down Bighorn Road.

Marybeth was suddenly beside him, and it startled him. He hadn't heard her come outside.

"We seem to be on a lucky streak," she said, looping her arm through his.

"First the job offer and now the Eagle Mountain Club."

"I might have broken that streak this afternoon," Joe said.

"What's bothering you?" Marybeth asked.

"You didn't exactly get excited when Wacey told you about it."

"I am excited," Joe said flatly. "You and the kids will probably love it. And your mom, of course."

She tugged on his arm playfully. "So what's the problem?"

He started to say "nothing," but she anticipated it and tugged on his arm again. He didn't want to mention burning down the trailer and losing his gun. Still, that wasn't the problem.

"I guess I just feel bad that we live in such a dump that housesitting seems like a vacation."

"Oh, Joe," Marybeth said, giving him a hug. "We both know this won't last forever."

***

Joe opened his mail while Marybeth got ready for bed. The mail was mostly junk, but there were several envelopes from headquarters in Cheyenne. There were two departmental memos, one about avoiding overtime and the other about making sure that original receipts were sent along with expense reports because credit card receipts could no longer be accepted.

When he opened the third envelope and read the letter it contained, he froze. It was written in terse bureaucratic prose and he read it three times before it sunk in. He blew a short, hard breath out through his nose in exasperation as he resisted the urge to tear the letter into tiny pieces.

"What is it?" Marybeth asked from behind a washcloth.

"Headquarters," Joe said dryly. "I've got to appear in Cheyenne on Friday for a hearing."

Marybeth stopped washing and listened.

"They're investigating the incident when Ote Keeley took my gun from me. They call it 'alleged negligence with a department issued sidearm." It says here that I could get suspended from the field."

Joe read the letter a fourth time to himself.

"Why now?" Marybeth asked. "That happened months ago."

"The state works in geological time," Joe said. "You know that."

"Those bastards," she hissed. She rarely said anything like that, and Joe looked up.

"Just when things were going so well."

PART FOUR

E) (1) ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMITTEE

There is established a committee to be known as the Endangered Species Committee (hereinafter in this section referred to as the "Committee").

(2) The Committee shall review any application submitted to it pursuant to this section and determine in accordance with subsection (h) or this section whether or not to grant an exemption from the requirements of subsection (a) (2) of this action for the action set forth in such

application.

(3) The Committee shall be composed of seven members as follows:

(A) The Secretary of Agriculture.

(B) The Secretary of the Army.

(C) The Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

(D) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

(E) The Secretary of the Interior.

(F) The Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

(G) The Governor of each affected State.

--The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982

Sheridan went outside to tell her animals that she'd be away for a little while, but they were nowhere to be found. Not only that, but she felt as though someone were watching her.

Sheridan's pockets were bulging with as much food as she could cram into them and still get out the door without her mom noticing. She had sunflower seeds, croutons, dry dog food, and cereal in the pockets of her skirt. It was more food than she had ever taken out to the animals, but she didn't know when she would be back to feed them again. She was very upset about having to leave the house again, this time to go and stay in the home of people she had never even met before: a stranger's home at Eagle Mountain. Mom couldn't even tell her when they would be back. Sheridan didn't care to see what Eagle Mountain was ("wealthy people share their homes all of the time!" her Grandmother Missy kept telling her. "And they have a pool!"), because she already hated it. Grandmother Missy had said that the girls at school would be envious of her, but Sheridan didn't really care about that. Grandmother Missy liked it when other people were envious, but Sheridan wasn't sure it was all that great. Sheridan thought that taking the entire family to Eagle Mountain would be a big mistake, just as she had when she, Mom, and Lucy had stayed at the motel in town. So many things her parents did for her benefit didn't seem to help her at all. She told her mom and Grandmother Missy that. She didn't want to leave her home again, and she especially didn't want to leave Lucky, Hippity Hop, and Elway.

But the animals didn't seem to be there.

It wasn't as if the creatures always came bounding out of the woodpile at the sight of her. Sometimes it took a while before one of them would realize she was out there. But as Sheridan walked across the yard, there was something about the woodpile that seemed vacant. The secret life was gone from it. It was just a woodpile.

She rained some seeds on the top of it and waited, looking closely for any movement. She sighed and sat under the cottonwood, her chin in her hands. Hot tears welled in her eyes. Where could the animals have gone? Could they be hurt, or worse? Did she feed them something that made them sick? Did they leave during the night and go back into the mountains? Could it be that they just didn't like her anymore? Or that they knew she was leaving and were so sad or angry that they

didn't even want to see her?

"This," she said out loud to herself, "is a really bad day."

And she could not get over the feeling that she was being watched. She shinnied around the trunk of the tree and looked at the house, fully expecting to see her mom or grandmother at the window. Or at least Lucy. But no one was there. Maybe that was it, she thought. Maybe her secret pets sensed someone's eyes on them as well. Squinting, she looked all around her. She took in the rest of the yard, the Sandrock draw pulsing red in the evening sun, and even the roof of the house.

She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. But she could see no one. It was giving her the creeps, and her imagination started to wander. For the first time in weeks, she thought of the monster again. It came from somewhere deep in her mind, as if it had been there waiting for the right moment all along. Maybe, she speculated, the monster, or the monster's friend, had come back for Lucky, Hippity-Hop, and Elway.

When she stood her stomach ached. The feelings welling up inside of her were overwhelming: anger, fear, and guilt. Maybe she should have told her mom and dad about the creatures. If she had told them, possibly they would somehow still be around. Her dad could have caught them and built nice houses for them, like he did when he built the rabbit hutch. Maybe by not saying anything, she had caused the creatures to die.

She decided she would give the creatures a little more time. If they didn't come out, she would rush in the house and find her mom. She would tell her everything. When Dad came home they could take the woodpile apart, stick by stick, until they found the poor little animals. Eagle Mountain could wait.

She threw more food on the woodpile, this time harder. There was no way the animals, if they were okay, would not know she was out there. Then she heard the familiar trill. She was suddenly joyous. But the sound did not come from the woodpile. She stood as silently as possible, listening and smiling. When she heard the sound again, her head swiveled toward it. Past the woodpile, past the fence, past the bushes. She found herself staring through bushy leaves at the peeling paint on the back of the garage.

She found them. They had moved, for whatever reason. The sound came from the other side of thick lilac bushes, and she crawled toward it on her hands and knees. She knew the area around their house so well that she was certain where she would find her pets: under the foundation of the garage. There were some large cracks in the concrete where the structure met the ground, and the cracks led to a large dark space under the floor of the garage. She had once probed the space with a long stick and had not been able to find the sides. That, she was sure, was where she would find them.

When she emerged from the bushes, the first thing she saw was Lucky sticking his head out of the crack and then vanishing under the garage.

"Boy, am I glad to see you," she said, emptying her pockets into the hole. "That ought to keep you guys full for a while." The relief she felt made her giddy.

"I'll be back as soon as I can be, you can count on that." She felt as wildly good as she had horribly bad a moment before. "You guys are pretty smart." She smiled, pulling her pockets inside out to get every last sunflower seed. "This is a much safer place for you."

Rather than crawl through the bushes again back into the yard, Sheridan skipped down the length of the lilacs toward the end of the fence and the corner of corral. She planned to turn and enter the yard through the same gate the monster had used. As she turned toward the corral, she saw the face of a man in the window of the pole barn, and it stopped her cold.

The man's face withdrew from the window into the shadows of the barn and then reemerged in the doorway, so that she could now see all of him. He stood in the light but didn't step outside into the corral. He was motioning to her to come to him. He was smiling. She had been right about being watched.

Sheridan couldn't move. She was terrified. She didn't know whether to scream for her mom, run for the gate, or run back toward the garage. If she ran back to the garage, the man might follow her and maybe see the animals.

"Sheridan, right?" The man asked softly. He spoke just loud enough for her to hear him.

"I need to talk to you for a second. Don't be afraid," the man said. "I know your dad."

He did look familiar, Sheridan thought. She had seen him before with her dad. She didn't know his name, and if she had been told what it was, she had forgotten. There were a lot of people who came to their house because it was Dad's office also. There had been a lot of men at their house when the dead man was found. She knew she shouldn't talk to strangers. But if he knew her dad and her name, was he really a stranger? She weighed going to the man against screaming or running to the house. If the man saw her feed the animals, he might tell her mom. If she ran screaming, she might embarrass her dad.

The man kept smiling and motioning for her to come. She walked toward him on stiff, heavy legs. Her eyes were huge. She walked past the gate and ducked through the poles of the corral. Still, the man stayed in the pole barn. Sheridan suddenly realized that he was standing there so he couldn't be seen by anyone in the house, and she knew she had made the wrong decision. She turned to run, but he was on her in an instant, and he jerked her back roughly into a dark stall with him.

He swung, her around and pressed her against the hay bales, and her scream was smothered by his hand. His face was so close to hers that his hat brim jammed against her forehead and his breath fogged her glasses.

"I'm sorry I had to do this, darling," he whispered when she had stopped struggling. "I really am. I wished you hadn't come around the yard that way. I didn't expect you and you saw me."

He kept his hand, massive and rough, crushed against her mouth. Her breath came in quick little puffs from her nose, and he didn't intend to let her answer.

"Before I take my hand down, there is something you have to understand, Sheridan. Are you listening?"

She tried to nod her head yes. She was trembling, and she couldn't make herself stop. She was suddenly afraid she would wet her panties.

"Are you listening?" he asked again. This time his voice was very gentle. "Are you listening?"

She said with her eyes that she was.

"You've got some secrets, don't you little girl? You've got some little friends in the woodpile, don't you? I've been watching you. I saw you feeding them."

The big hand did not move from her mouth. "Do your mom and dad know about them?"

She tried to shake her head no. Even though he pressed her to the hay, he could tell what she was trying to say because he smiled a little. "You're not lying to me, are you, Sheridan?"

As forcefully as she could, she tried to say no. He pressed his face even closer to her. His eyes were all she could see of his face.

"Okay, then. That's good. We both have a secret, don't we? And we're going to keep it our secret, just between us. Just between us friends. You just keep this to yourself and don't you ever say a word about this to anyone. Look at me."

Sheridan had averted her eyes toward the door, hoping her dad would be there.

"Look at me," he hissed. She did.

"If you say one thing about this to anyone, I'll rip those pretty green eyes of yours right out of their sockets. And I won't stop there."

With his free hand, Sheridan felt him reach back. She heard a snap and a huge black gun filled her vision. "I'll use this on your dad. I'll shoot him right in the face. I'll do the same thing to your pretty mom and your itty-bitty sister. I'll even kill that stupid dog. I'll blow her head right off. Keep looking at me," he said.

She had stopped shaking; she was beyond it. She was absolutely calm, and absolutely terrified.

"I'm going to take my hand down now and let you go as soon as you can smile," he said. "Then you take that smile right into the house and never, ever tell anyone what happened here. Your little animals in the woodpile are going to heaven, do you understand? Your family won't have to go to heaven or anywhere else if you keep your little mouth shut."

He eased his hand down. Her face felt cold as the air hit it. Her lips had been crushed against her teeth, and she tasted a drop of salty blood from inside her mouth.

"Are you listening, Sheridan?"

"Yes." Her voice was thin, and it nearly cracked.

"Then smile."

She tried. She didn't feel like smiling.

"That's not a smile," he chided, his voice gentle again. "You can do better than that, darling."

She tried.

"Closer," he persisted. "Keep working on it."

Her mouth smiled.

"We can live with that," he said, stepping back. His crushing weight was now off of her. She stood up. She winced as he reached over her shoulder, but he was just brushing the hay off of her dress.

"Don't be scared of me," he admonished. He sounded like a normal person now. She was as confused as she was frightened. "Nothing bad will ever happen because we've got a deal. I won't break it if you don't. Shoot," he said, "we might even turn out to be friends someday. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she said. But she was lying.

"You might even get a little older, and I'll take you to a movie. Buy you a Coke and some popcorn." He smoothed her dress across her bottom, pressing his hand more firmly than he needed to. "You might even like it."

They both looked up when they heard her mom call her name.

"You had better go now, darling," he said.

***

The house he was looking for was located down a mud-rutted dirt road in a thick stand of shadowy, old river cottonwoods. Joe had never been down the road before, but he had often passed by the crooked wood-burned sign on a post near the county road that read:

OTE KEELEY OUTFITTING SERVICES GUIDED HUNTS

ELK DEER ANTELOPE MOOSE SINCE 1996

The Keeley house was a pine log home that looked tired. There was a slight sag in the roof, its once dark green wood shingles now gray and furry-looking with age and moisture. In the alcove where the house slumped, there was a rusty 1940s Willys Jeep, a horse trailer, an equipment shed, and a yellow Subaru station wagon. Antlers hung above the doors of the house and the shed. Joe shut off his pickup, sat with the window opened, and listened. The heavy, damp quiet of the river bottom lay over the house and to Joe the scene seemed to be more Deep South than Rocky Mountain. Cross beams in the trees indicated that Ote had hung game animals in his yard.

Joe had checked in some fishermen early that morning, working his way upriver toward the Keeley house. He had ticketed a local ranch hand for using worms in a stretch of the river that was regulated for artificial lures only and had cited two itinerant Hispanics who were fishing without any licenses at all. Before he had left the house that morning, he had called Game and Fish Headquarters in Cheyenne to talk to the officer who had sent him the letter he received earlier in the week, Assistant Director Les Etbauer. Etbauer wasn't in yet, so Joe left a message that he would see him that afternoon for his hearing.

Joe walked by the yellow Subaru on his way toward the front door of the house and glanced inside the car. There was a child's car seat, and scattered on the bench seats and floorboards were fast-food wrappers, plastic toys, and children's books.

The unmistakable sound of a shell being jacked into a pump shotgun froze Joe in place where he walked. He was mindful of where his hand was in relation to his holster--Damn! He was unarmed--and he slowly raised both his arms away from his body so there could be no mistaking that he wasn't reaching for a gun.

Jeannie Keeley, Ote's widow, stood in the open front door of the house with a12-gauge riot gun aimed at his chest. She was wearing some kind of uniform smock and a pair of faded jeans.

Using a soft voice, Joe said who he was and said he would show her his identification if she wanted to see it.

"I know who you are," she said.

"I remember from the funeral."

"In that case, I would suggest you put that shotgun away somewhere safe," Joe said.

"I don't even have my weapon with me." He spoke softly but there was a edge to his voice. Jeannie Keeley shrugged and stepped back inside the house and placed the shotgun in a rack near the door.

"Sorry," she said, not really apologizing. "I'm not usually home during the day so I didn't expect anybody showing up. I got a sick kid here and I've been a little jumpy since Ote died."

"I understand." Joe stood up straight, took a few deep breaths, and unclenched his muscles. He decided against telling her that he could arrest her for aiming a gun at him because he figured it would be pointless. Jeannie, like Ote before her, seemed capable of getting the drop on Joe Pickett very easily. He told her he would like to ask her some questions about Ote.

She stood in the doorway, trying to look tough, Joe thought. Her unlit cigarette bobbed up and down as she seemed to think about it, and him. She was wary of him. He read the name embroidered on her smock. She was a waitress at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant in Saddlestring. That was the place that specialized in deep-fried Rocky Mountain oysters and one-pound hamburgers for lunch.

"I'd rather not invite you in the house," she said. "I got a sick kid in there, and it's kind of small. The house I mean."

"I don't mind staying out here," Joe said.

Inside the house, from the dark, a young girl called for her mom. Jeannie glanced over her shoulder and back at Joe. "Oh hell," she said. "Come on in."

Joe sat down at a rough-hewn wood table in the kitchen while Jeannie tended to a girl Sheridan's age. There were four rooms in the dark house. The kitchen and dining room were crowded by the number of animal heads on the walls. Off of the dining room were a bathroom, a bedroom, and another bedroom that looked as if it were crammed full with bunk beds. Joe thought his house was small, and he wondered how the Keeley family managed without tripping over one another.

April, the girl with the haunted face that Joe had seen at the funeral, was in the bottom bunk of one of the beds, and Joe could see a tangle of sheets and wet, dark hair. Jeannie gave the girl a glass of something and asked her to rest and be quiet until the man went away. The girl nodded her reply. Joe could also see another child--he couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl--playing on the floor in the room. The child wore only a disposable diaper and a T-shirt that was torn and dirty.

Jeannie came back into the kitchen and asked if Joe wanted coffee. He said no and she sat down with a cup for herself. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and put it in an ashtray.

"I can't smoke on account of I'm expecting, as you can tell," Jeannie said. "But sometimes I just have to stick one in my mouth for a while. It helps."

Jeannie went on to tell Joe a lot of things he would rather not have known, like how Ote had no insurance when he died. How Ote spent every dime they made on horses, guns, outfitting equipment, and that damned truck he was buried in. How the Ford dealership in Casper where Ote bought the truck was on her case because, come to find out, Ote had missed the last three payments and they wanted the truck back and wouldn't that be a hoot? How Ote married her when he was home on leave from the army and she was a junior in high school and got her pregnant for the first time on their wedding night. That was three and a half kids ago.

How Ote spent everything he saved in the service to buy this cabin and land in Wyoming so he could live his dream of killing things and getting away from people. He wanted to be a mountain man. He liked to say he was born 180 years too late. Ote hated people, but mainly he hated the government. Ote believed in the right to keep and bear arms. Ote told her all the time how he would die when the Feds came to get him for one thing or another. That's why he kept himself armed. That's why he showed her how to use and shoot the shotgun they kept in a rack near the door. That's why he wore a Derringer holster in his boot. Ote always thought his outfitting business would take off someday. He guaranteed a trophy to any of his clients on the promise that they wouldn't tell anyone when, where, or how they got it. He wanted to buy a float plane and expand into Alaska someday. He wanted to home school his kids, but she wouldn't let him because the kids drove her nuts when they were home all day, and besides, someday they would have to get jobs and go out on their own and Ote didn't know enough himself to teach anybody anything except how to butcher an elk. How Ote liked being with Kyle Lensegrav and Calvin Mendes more than he liked being around anyone else.

Ote was a mean-spirited prick of a man. Ote thought he knew everything, but he was basically Mississippi white trash in the middle of northern Wyoming. He left her nothing, not even the damned truck. She would have to go on welfare, money from the government he hated. Wouldn't that make Ote spin in his grave? She thought there might be insurance and benefits through the Veterans Administration, since Ote was a veteran. She needed to pursue that. Again, money from the government he hated. Ore would keep spinning down there. Like a top.

She would have to sell the house and the cars and move. Maybe she would take the kids; maybe she wouldn't. She wasn't sure. Her mama in Mississippi could take them for a while until she got her shit together. Go to Colorado, maybe. New Mexico. Arizona. Somewhere it was warmer. A good waitress could get a job anywhere.

Joe listened and watched her. He was as unprepared for this torrent as he had been unprepared for her at the door with the shotgun. She would not stop talking. She was bitter about Ote's death, but possibly just as bitter at the life he had given her and left her with. Joe could see that she could have been pretty when Ote had married her. But her features were now sharp, and her outlook was flinty. He was surprised how quiet the children were in the other room. He wondered if they were simply terrified of her. And she was going to have another.

"When he died, it was in your yard," she said, her eyes flashing. "He didn't even have the decency to die in his own yard. The prick. I had to sell his horses to pay for that funeral. I didn't know how much a front-end loader cost to rent. Why did I pay for his perfect funeral? Why? I'm so damned idiotic. He wouldn't have done that for me if I'd got shot. I bet he would have gotten drunk with his pals Kyle and Calvin and burned my body on a pyre like some kind of Indian woman."

Joe rubbed his neck. He stole a glance at his watch. She had been going nonstop for forty-five minutes. He would need to leave soon if he wanted to get to Cheyenne on time.

"Aren't you the guy Ote took the gun from?" she asked suddenly, grinning.

Joe said he was.

"Damn, he was proud of that," she said. "He couldn't stop talking about it for a while. Then he realized he could lose his outfitter's license. Then he got scared and depressed. You've got to understand that if Ote had lost his license, he might as well have been dead. It would have killed him. It drove me up the wall, him talking about it."

Joe looked at her as she talked, but his attention was diverted by the absolute quiet in the other room where the children were. He wanted to know what was wrong with the little girl in bed.

"Ote liked you," Jeannie said. "He bragged for a while about that gun thing, then he got scared. He said he thought you were a good man. He said you were fair and square, not like Vern Dunnegan."

Joe asked what she meant.

She shrugged. "Ote didn't tell me a lot about his business. All I know is that Ote was really mad once because Vern caught him doing something--poaching, probably--and Vern made Ote make it right with him."

"You mean a bribe?" Joe asked.

"Something," Jeannie said. "Vern made Ote do something, but I don't know what. All I know is that Ote was pretty mad about it. This wasn't a fun place to be when Ote was mad."

But she didn't know what specifically had happened. "That's the way things work," she concluded, as if she had forgotten Joe was a warden.

"Not necessarily," Joe said.

Joe couldn't listen to her much longer. He stood and asked her if he could get a glass of water. She waved toward the sink. On the way there, he paused at the children's bedroom door. April was in the bed. She looked feverish, her hair plasrered to her skull, but her eyes were calm and piercing. On the floor, a baby boy with big dark eyes turned to him. There was a look on the boy's face that suggested he expected Joe to step in and smack him. But Joe could see no bruises or injuries on either child.

He turned on the spigot and filled his glass with brackish water that came from their well. Jeannie Keeley was staring at him. He absolutely could not figure her out. She could be cool and abrupt one minute, and absolutely gushing words the next. He wouldn't have been surprised if she had stood and walked back over to the rack and pulled down the shotgun again and aimed it at him. This house and the people in it were crazy.

"Did Ote give you whatever he was going to give you to make things right?" she asked.

Joe paused with the glass nearly to his lips.

"Ote said he had something that once you saw it you would drop all the charges against him and he'd have his license back. Did he give it to you?"

"No. Did Ote tell you what it was?" Joe asked.

"Something he and the rest of the guys found. Some kind of animal."

"What kind of animal?"

She paused and screwed up her face. From the bedroom the little girl cried, "Mama."

"SHUT UP AND BE STILL," Jeannie Keeley roared without looking toward the bedroom, and there was silence.

"What kind of animal?"

"I can't remember for sure. We laughed about it, though. I had a gym teacher by that name in high school, I remember that."

"What was the gym teacher's name?"

"Mr. Merle Miller. We called him "Killer Miller.""

"Was it," Joe paused, searching his memory for the answer, "a Miller's weasel?" He vaguely recalled the name from a course he once took in biology. All he could remember was that the species was indigenous to the Rocky Mountain west and had been extinct for at least a century,

maybe longer.

"Could've been," she said. "That sounds familiar, I think."

"Did he tell you any more about it?" Joe asked.

She reached into her smock for a book of matches. She lit the cigarette she had put in the ashtray and inhaled deeply. "Can't do it," she muttered. "I been since breakfast without a cigarette. I got to learn to quit. Ote would be pissed if he was here." Which meant she had been smoking all along.

"Did he tell you any more about the Miller's weasel?" Joe asked again, this time letting his voice rise.

"Ote never told me nothing," she said flatly.

***

When Joe drove out of the cottonwood trees into the sagebrush and the bright white sunlight, he could not get three things out of his mind. The first was whatjeannie had said about the animal Ote was going to give him. The second was the manic, almost deranged look she had had on her face when she told him about Ote. The last was the look on April's face when Joe first saw her in the bedroom. He had seen the expression before, but only on domestic animals. It was Maxine's expression, the Labrador look. It said: please hit me if it will make you feel better.

The static sound of gravel crunching stopped abruptly as his tires climbed onto the smooth pavement of the state highway. He pressed the accelerator and the engine roared. Twin spoors of dirt trailed him on the blacktop. He could not get away from the place fast enough. He turned in the direction of the interstate highway, away from Saddlestring.

The drive to Cheyenne would take six hours.

To hunt and fish in the State of Wyoming, Joe thought, people were required to buy licenses and, in some cases, pass tests that proved they knew how to use firearms and knew Game and Fish regulations. There were no such requirements for having children.

From the moment he walked into Game and Fish Headquarters in Cheyenne and said he was Joe Pickett and he was there to see Les Etbauer for a meeting, the atmosphere changed within the room. The receptionist looked at him warily and pushed herself away from her desk as if he were contagious. Joe noticed that two young female license agents shot looks at him the instant they heard his name, then quickly turned back to their computer monitors as if suddenly reading the most fascinating e-mails they had ever seen. The receptionist directed him down a long hallway and told him to take a seat on the molded plastic seat outside of a door. Painted on the frosted glass were the words lesley et bauer assistant director.

Joe took off his hat and sat down. There wasn't much to look at. The sprawling cinder-block building had been built in the early 1960s, and the walls were painted institutional yellow and lit with industrial neon tubes. The hallway was narrow and the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor was scarred. It was the kind of hallway that echoed and amplified the rat-a-tat sounds of clicking heels as people walked down it. Not that there were many employees about; most of the doors in the hall were shut and there were no lights on behind the glass. He recognized many of the names on the doors as his agency superiors, but apparently they were already gone for the day. As he sat waiting for Les Etbauer, Joe realized that he felt as though he was back in grade school and he'd been sent to the principal's office. Like most of the field wardens, Joe had spent as little time as possible inside this building. This was where the agency bureaucracy was, where policy was set and regulations formed. It was here that the director met with the governor and individual legislators while they were in town for the legislative session and where laws and new regulations were hammered out and concessions were made. This was the place where hunters, fishermen, landowners, and environmentalists stormed (although they rarely made it past the front counter) when things didn't go their particular way. It was the place where all of those departmental memos came from. It was a place where they knew him, but he really didn't know them.

During the long drive to Cheyenne, Joe had had a lot of time to think. He had mulled over not only where the investigation of the outfitter murders seemed to be leading him, but also about the things Vern had said in the bar. It was the first time since this had all started that Joe had had the free time to try and put the things that he'd learned together. The conclusions he had reached unsettled him.

A man with an open collar and a short-sleeved dress shirt that stretched across his large belly approached from an office far down the hallway, and Joe looked up at him as he passed. The man stopped warily and turned around.

"You're Joe Pickett?" The man asked.

Joe nodded.

The man looked down the hall in both directions to make sure no one was coming. "I just want you to know that there are a lot of people here who think you're getting screwed."

"Really?" Joe had not realized he had been the subject of discussion at headquarters, although the behavior of two license clerks behind the counter had hinted at that. The man took a tentative step toward Joe and bent forward.

"We hope you fight it and take it all the way to the governor," he said.

"This kind of good old boy shit has gone far enough."

Joe was confused. "You seem to know a lot more about what's going to happen here than I do."

The man snorted and a smug look passed over his face. "Why do you think they'd want you here at four o'clock on Friday afternoon if the whole thing wasn't cut and dried? Think about it. If you get mad and want to protest, there's nobody to hear you until Monday morning."

"What ..." Joe started to ask but the man turned quickly on his heel and continued down the hall. The receptionist had reappeared.

He was going to be suspended. It was simply a matter of time until Etbauer pronounced those words. He had said a lot of words, Joe thought, but not those. Joe sat and listened. His mouth was dry, and his hands were wet. He couldn't quite believe this was happening even as he sat there. In his career, he had never received either a verbal or a written warning regarding his conduct, except for when he arrested the new governor for fishing without a license.

His performance reviews had always been good if not brilliant. He had done his job well, he thought, to the best of his ability and according to regulations. He had tried very hard to be honest and fair. He had not cut corners, and he had worked hard. The time he spent working was far beyond what was required of him and he never asked for overtime or compensatory time. He never cheated on expense reports. He had reported what had happened with Ote Keeley because it was the right thing to do. He had never even suspected that it would result in anything but, at the worst, a mild reprimand. After all, he had recovered the weapon and arrested Ote with an ironclad case of poaching.

But he was going to be suspended. Joe felt as though the wind had been kicked out if him.

Etbauer went on and on in a thin, nasal voice. He sat behind his desk and read aloud the report Joe had written about Ote Keeley taking his gun. When he was through reading Joe's report, Etbauer found the passages in the agency handbook that pertained to department-issued firearms and read those aloud. Joe hoped like hell that Etbauer wouldn't notice that wasn't wearing his gun now and ask him about it.

Etbauer had a wide, flushed alcoholic face and thick, photo gray glasses. Joe also noticed that he was balding. He didn't speak with Joe as much as speak to him. There was a quiver in his voice, and he mispronounced some of the words. It was as if Etbauer was reading aloud from a script.

Joe didn't know much about Etbauer, but he had heard things. According to Wacey, Etbauer had gone straight from the U.S. Army to the Game and Fish Department without a real job in between. Wacey had called Etbauer "the ultimate government employee," a man who had never collected a paycheck in his life that wasn't from either the state or the Federal government. He had attained his rank due to a particularly bureaucratic method known as ADV or "advanced due to vacancy." That meant that Etbauer simply put in his time and moved up as others moved out or retired. As state employees either left to take other jobs or start businesses of their own, bureaucrats like Etbauer (who no private sector employer would ever want on the payroll) simply grew in power and seniority like a tumor within the agency, amassing security and building a fine pension.

Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings. He never wanted to waste or unnecessarily expend words. To Joe, words meant things. They should be spent wisely. Joe sometimes paused for a long time until he could come up with the right words to express exactly what he wanted to say. Sometimes it confused people (Marybeth fretted that perhaps people thought Joe was slow) but Joe could live with that. That's why Joe despised meetings where he felt the participants acted as if they were paid by the number of words spoken and, as a result, the words began to cheapen by the minute until they meant nothing at all. In Joe's experience, the person who talked the most very often had the least to say. He sometimes wished that every human was allotted a certain number of words to use for their lifetime. When the allotment ran out, that person would be forced into silence. If this were the case, Joe would still have more than enough in his account while people like Les Etbauer would be very quiet. Joe had attended meetings where little got accomplished except what he considered the random drive-by spewing of words, like unaimed machine-gun bullets. What a waste of words, he often thought. What a waste of currency. What a waste of bullets.

Joe realized that there had finally been a pause and snapped back to the present. Etbauer was staring at him. "I said," Etbauer asked, miffed that Joe had ignored him, "how could something like this happen?"

"Easier than you might think," retorted Joe. Etbauer narrowed his eyes with scorn. This was not the answer he had been waiting to hear. "I was writing out a citation," Joe said. "It's in the report. I was holding the clipboard with one hand and a pen with the other. I admit that I wasn't prepared for what happened, and I regret that it happened, and it's my fault that I let it happen."

"But he took your weapon," Etbauer said, as if bolstering his case. "He took it from you while you just stood there." Etbauer said it with disbelief, as if he couldn't imagine anyone being as stupid as Joe Pickett.

Joe stood up suddenly from his chair, reached across the desk, plucked Etbauer's name badge from his shirt pocket and sat back down. Etbauer looked at him with wide eyes, and a hint of panic.

"See what I mean?" Joe asked, holding up the name badge.

"Even if you realize what's going on, sometimes you just can't react quickly enough because you're kind of boggled that it's happening in the first place."

Etbauer swallowed, trying to recover his authority. But his voice was weak: "Give me back my badge."

Joe slid it across the desk. "You thought I was going to pop you in the mouth, didn't you?" Joe

asked. "And you still weren't able to do anything about it. Well, that's what happened with Ote. I screwed up, but I didn't expect it at the time. Just like you."

Etbauer's face was now bright red. He wouldn't look Joe in the eye. When he said that he had carefully reviewed the report and the evidence and that his determination was that Joe was to be officially suspended without pay as of next Tuesday, September 30, he was declaring all of it to a place on the wall behind and far to the right of where Joe sat.

In addition, Etbauer said, there had been some other very disturbing reports. Serious allegations.

"We plan to investigate whether or not there has been a serious dereliction of duty while you investigate murders that have already been solved. And there is some question of whether or not you destroyed evidence that could link the accused to the crime."

When Joe asked who had made the reports, Etbauer cautioned that "he was not at liberty to say." Joe felt a chill snake down his spine.

Etbauer continued. "Let me inform you right now that because of your recent actions and behavior, we are going to investigate whether or not you should be a suspect in the crimes themselves. Do you understand the gravity of this?"

Joe nodded. He certainly did, but he had trouble speaking. "Me, a suspect?" he finally croaked.

"You, a suspect," Etbauer confirmed, his smile cruel. "We hope you can be cleared quickly because, frankly, if you aren't, it would cast the entire department under a black cloud, and we wouldn't want that."

Joe sighed. Etbauer was clearly a vicious, petty bureaucrat who lived for opportunities like this.

"Department policy states that you can challenge the suspension at the next Game and Fish Commission meeting, which takes place at the end of next month, by submitting a written appeal to the director. You've got three days to journal your area. Your duties will be turned over to an interim warden in an adjacent district who will be assigned on Monday."

Joe discovered that his mouth was too dry to swallow.

"You're dismissed," Etbauer said. "There's not much more I can say right now."

Joe stood. He knew it would all hit him later, but at the moment he felt both angry and oddly calm.

"At least give the Saddlestring district to Wacey Hedeman," Joe said. "He knows it pretty well, and he's a good hand."

"We'll consider it." Etbauer said, fingering the name badge Joe had snatched. "You're dismissed."

Before Joe opened the door, he turned to Etbauer.

"Have you ever done this before?" Joe asked. "Suspended an active field warden for this kind of first-time violation?"

Etbauer flushed again and looked away. Joe followed Etbauer's sight line. He was looking at a digital clock on a credenza behind him. It was 4:58 P.M.

"Anybody tell you to do this now?" Joe asked.

"Of course not," Etbauer replied, still looking at the clock.

"Nobody called you and said, "Les, I need you to move this Pickett gun thing to the top of the pile'?"

Etbauer wheeled around in his chair. "Of course not." He was defensive. "This conversation is over."

Joe opened the door. The receptionist who had been standing outside, listening, quickly gathered herself together and escaped down the hallway, her shoes clicking like an old Royal typewriter.

"It was never a conversation," Joe said to Etbauer. "A lynching maybe, but not a conversation."

He slammed the door so hard behind him that he stopped in the hall to make sure he hadn't cracked the glass.

He found an unoccupied, unlocked office and called Marybeth at the Kensinger house. Joe still felt strangely calm, but the need to talk to his wife was urgent. He wanted her thoughts after he told her what had happened. When she answered the telephone, he asked her how she liked the new place.

"Oh, it's nice," she said, but he could tell from her voice that she was completely enraptured.

"Five bedrooms, four bathrooms. A beautiful deck that overlooks the Twelve Sleep River, a Jacuzzi, a kitchen the size of our house and a dining room the size of a stadium. All of the closets are walk-in and so is the refrigerator. A breakfast bar and three fireplaces, one in the master bedroom. Mom and Lucy just love it. Right now, they're out walking Maxine and the Kensinger dog around the golf course."

Joe felt better just hearing her voice. After what he'd just been through, he needed to hear it.

"You didn't mention Sheridan," Joe said. "What does she think?"

Marybeth paused before she spoke. "I don't know for sure. She doesn't seem real excited for some reason. She didn't eat any lunch, and she didn't want to go out with Mom. She's just sitting in the living room staring out the window."

"Is it just the change of scenery?" Joe asked, thinking about how much they had moved Sheridan around from place to place in the last few years. The consistency and routine of the Saddlestring house was something Sheridan obviously enjoyed. Maybe she thought they were moving again.

"I hope that's all it is," Marybeth said. "I hope she isn't coming down with something."

Joe agreed. Then he said it: "Marybeth, the department has suspended me without pay as of Tuesday because Ote Keeley took my gun. They also suspect me of somehow being involved in the outfitter murders."

She gasped. "Oh my God, Joe."

He said nothing and neither did Marybeth. Finally, he asked if she was still there.

"Joe, what does this mean?"

"Two things, I think," Joe said, with as much confidence as he could muster. "The first is that there are some pretty powerful people who want me out of the field. The second is that it looks like you're talking to the newest employee of Inter West Resources."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Joe, is this something you really want to do?" Her concern was genuine, and he loved her for it.

"I don't see a lot of options," he said. "I've got a family to support."

"What about the house?" Marybeth asked. "We can stay in it through an appeal, if we decide to appeal."

"Joe ..."

"I've got three days before I'm officially relieved," Joe interrupted.

"I want to spend those three days following up on a few things I was thinking about on the ride down here. Then I'll let Vern know what the decision is. Is that okay with you?"

"Of course."

"I'll be home tonight," Joe said. "But don't wait up for me."

"I love you, Joe Pickett," Marybeth said.

"I love you, too."

***

Joe went downstairs into an area marked wildlife biology section. He walked past a desk already vacated by a secretary, then into a maze of small cubicles and tables littered with lab equipment. It smelled of wet fur and feathers and strong disinfectant, and without any windows, it was dark down there. His boot steps seemed amplified in the empty room as he walked though the middle corridor looking for anyone who might still be working.

When he saw the woman emerge from her cubicle with a jacket folded over her arm and a handbag, he knew immediately who she was. She had that harried look about her that said she had children at day care and she was on her way to pick them up.

"Working late on Friday?" Joe asked, smiling.

"Later than I wanted to be," she said, looking him over and clearly wondering why he was down there. "Can I help you find something? I'm kind of in a hurry."

He recognized her voice. "I'm Joe Pickett," he said. "I believe we spoke on the telephone last week."

The look on her face confirmed it. Her expression was pained.

"I'm sorry to bother you when you're in a hurry and all, so I'll get right to it," Joe said. "I appreciate what you did. It took guts and I know you could get in trouble for it. As far as I'm concerned, we're not even talking right now. I don't know your name, and I'm not going to ask."

She continued to watch him suspiciously. He could tell that she was trying to decide whether or not to simply walk away.

"Yes?" she prompted.

"Would you please show me where I can look up some information on an endangered species? Actually, it's an animal that is thought to be extinct."

Her face was a mask. "Is the species indigenous to Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains?"

"Yup."

She made up her mind and shrugged.

"Oh, come on," she said. "It'll only take a minute, and then you're on your own."

She walked quickly down the length of the room into a library cluttered with reference books and journals. Joe followed. There was a computer and fax machine on one stand and a microfiche reader on another. She put her coat and handbag on a shelf while she booted up the computer, double-clicked through a series of menu screens, and pulled up a document database.

"Do you know how to operate this?" she asked.

"I do," Joe said. He thought he did, anyway.

"Key in what you're looking for. If the search turns up something, you'll get an index number and a title for the publication. The reference books are on the shelves behind you and next door in the resource room." She stood up and quickly gathered her belongings.

"I'm out of here."

He called after her. "One more thing ..."

She wheeled, obviously out of patience.

"Did anyone locate the package I sent here?"

She sighed. "Try the incinerator."

"Thank you again."

"Forget it." She sang over her shoulder as she walked away. "I really mean that.

Make sure you shut off the computer and the lights when you leave, and if anyone comes down here, just leave and don't say anything."

"It's a deal," Joe said, chuckling. He liked her. He sat and turned to the computer monitor. After taking a few moments to figure out how to move around within the document, he pulled up the find command and typed in the words "Miller's weasel."

When Joe Was through reading, he drove into downtown Cheyenne and bought a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver at a pawn shop for $275. Farther down on the same block, he bought a box of cartridges for it.

***

"Hey, little school girl," the man called out as his vehicle slowed to a stop and his power window whirred down.

"Do you need a ride?"

Sheridan squinted against the roll of dust that followed from the road. It was the same man who had been hiding in the horse stall. He had been traveling on the other side of the road but had crossed over the middle of the county road and stopped in front of her. Because the passenger seat was empty and the vehicle was high, Sheridan could only see his face and his hand that rested on the steering wheel. He wore sunglasses, and she couldn't see his eyes. He was smiling.

"I'm not supposed to get in a stranger's car," Sheridan said.

The man chuckled. He could seem so friendly. "I'm not a stranger, though, darling'. I know your dad, remember? And you, too!"

Sheridan nodded yes. She was wearing a blue jumper and lace up shoes. Her homework and reading were in her backpack. Because she was staying at the Eagle Mountain Club, she had to take a different bus from a different place than she was used to and the bus was always late. She was the only child who got on in Saddlestring for the long ride.

"Mom is waiting for me to get off the bus," Sheridan said.

"Okay, okay. But at least come closer," the man said, still smiling. "So I don't have to yell."

Sheridan stepped up to the road but kept well back of the window. She was cautious, and her legs felt ready to run. Because the man would have to leap across the passenger seat and through the window, she thought she could easily get away if she needed to. Now that she was up on the road with him, she could see him a little better, and she could see clearly into his car. Her insides were knotted. Sheridan felt as if she might get sick and throw up. She had not been able to stop thinking about this man ever since he had pulled her into the stall, and now he was here again, right in front of her. He seemed so nice, but he had said such horrible things. And he looked at her like she was something special to him, as if by sharing the secret, they were somehow close to each other. She had never thought about any grown man in these terms before. It frightened her and made her feel

guilty.

Without being obvious, she tried to steal a look down the road in both directions.

"There's nobody coming," the man said, an edge creeping into his voice.

"What's the matter, don't you trust me to stay put? You think I'm going to grab you or something?"

She didn't reply. In her imagination, her dad's pickup had appeared on the top of the hill and was getting closer.

"If you were a couple years older, I probably couldn't stay put," the man laughed. "But you're safe for now." His voice dropped. "Unless of course you don't want to be so safe."

Sheridan turned her head, so he wouldn't see how scared she was.

"Let's make this quick so we can get on our way," the man said, his voice serious now. "How did you get those little weasels to come out of the wood pile?"

Sheridan said she tossed handfuls of food on the top of the pile. Like rain.

"What kind of food?"

Dry cereal, she said. Raisins, nuts, bread, sometimes bits of hamburger.

"And you just sort of sprinkled it on top, huh?" He asked. "Did they come out every time?"

No, they didn't, she said. Not every time.

The man seemed to be thinking about something. She couldn't see his eyes, but she could tell they were glaring at her behind the glasses.

"Sheridan, are there any secrets you're keeping from me?" Sheridan went cold.

"No," she lied. She hoped to God he wouldn't ask her if she knew where the weasels were now, because she wasn't sure she could answer him without showing she was lying. But he didn't ask, and like most grownups, he thought he knew everything.

"We've still got a deal, don't we, darling'?"

Sheridan nodded, relieved they were off the subject.

"A deal is a deal."

"You bet it is," he said slowly as he reached and pushed the silver button that held the glove box closed. The cover dropped open. There was something in the glove box.

"Look," he commanded, in a voice that made her obey.

She couldn't see it very well. The glove box was dark, but there was something round and white in the corner of it. It was something about the size of his fist, but wrapped in red-stained white paper that looked wet.

He snapped the cover shut before she could see any better.

His voice was almost a whisper: "Have you ever seen a kitty's head after it's been twisted off, Sheridan? When you twist it, the neck breaks and it sounds like when you crack your knuckles."

Sheridan stepped back, nearly falling. She covered her mouth with her hands, horrified.

"That," he pointed toward the glove box, "could happen to someone you know real well unless you keep our secret just between us."

Sheridan found herself backing away from the truck, wanting to be as far away from what lay in the glove box as possible.

"If I can't get those weasels out, you might have to help me," the man said.

"Maybe you can talk weasel language to them or something. I don't know."

He started up the motor. His voice rose as the engine raced. "Take it easy, darling'. Wish me luck with those weasels!"

***

The man pulled away and drove down the road. He watched in his rearview mirror as the yellow school bus cleared the hill behind them and began to slow down for the girl. She was moving toward it. The bus door swung open, and the little girl in the blue dress disappeared from his sight. She was a cutie, that Sheridan. He leaned over and opened the glove box and reached inside. The package was still warm, and the paper greasy. He peeled away the wrapper with his teeth. He took a big bite out of it, and dollops of ketchup spattered in his lap.

It was a triple chili cheeseburger from the Burg-O-Pardner on Main. Damn, it was good. That place could sure cook a burger. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at himself good and hard in the mirror. Despite everything, he liked what he saw.

***

The first written description of a Miller's weasel was made by Captain Meriwether Lewis in the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, published in 1805. The passage was not extensive. Lewis wrote, with his particular brand of spelling, that the party had encountered small colonies of the "plesant creatures" shortly after they had reached the Three Forks of the Missouri River and had followed the Jefferson River toward the Rocky Mountains. The animals, like prairie dogs, burrowed into the earth along what proved to be traditional buffalo migration routes. Their name came from Rodney "Mandan" Miller, a surveyor's assistant in the expedition, who injured his ankle by stumbling into one of the burrows. Lewis wrote that the creatures sometimes stood in tight groups on their hind legs and chattered a warning as the party approached. The Miller's weasels were, he noted, "happey little companions of the trail" and that their primary food supply was buffalo carrion. The day after a buffalo bull or cow was shot by the party for food, the weasels would gather and wait patiently until the large predators--the wolves, coyotes, eagles, vultures-were through with the carcass themselves and then would move in to finish what was left. He wrote that the weasels ate the meat, fur, and viscera of dead buffalo. As was his custom, Lewis first made a sketch, then shot several of the weasels, skinned the hides, and salted the bodies for later study by scientists back home.

It was dusk and Joe drove north, bathed in the brilliant copper light of the mid-September sun. He kept the window open so he could breathe in the sweet, dry smell of the sagebrush--covered flats that stretched like an endless rumpled quilt in every direction as he approached Waltman north of Casper. There were few other vehicles on the two-lane highway. It was just before dusk, the time of day when silent herds of deer were moving out from the secret draws and the tall sagebrush--a brief, magical time when the light was of perfect force and angle so it lit up the brown-and-white coloring of hundreds of pronghorn antelope, revealing them like beacons in the gray brush. In a few minutes, the light would change and the pronghorns, their particular illumination extinguished, would meld back into the mottled texture of the country as if they had never really been there at all.

Joe rolled down the window and turned the radio off. There weren't many places left in North America where humans could still be virtually alone and inaccessible but this was one of them. He had driven out of range of the only available radio signal several minutes before, and the "search" feature had been unsuccessfully spinning through all of the frequencies like a slot machine that wouldn't stop. He had now entered what Wacey referred to as "Radio Free Wyoming," and he would remain in it for at least the next half hour. He planned to drive straight through without stopping except for gasoline. He wanted to get home to Marybeth by midnight.

A strange, almost giddy feeling overcame Joe. He had seen thousands of Wyoming sunsets before, but for some reason, this one touched him. His emotions flitted like the radio search command from guilt to relief to outright anger. Guilt that he was letting Marybeth and his family down, relief that this chapter of his life--the long hours, the low pay, the frustration of trying to do a good job in a numbingly indifferent government bureaucracy--was over, and anger, nasty pulses of white-hot rage to which he was entirely unaccustomed, because he was a pawn in someone's game.

He tried to not dwell on the fact that this might be one of the last times he drove this pickup or wore his uniform. He wouldn't just be losing his job--he'd be losing his own self-image as well. Without a badge he was just like everyone else. He started to understand, for the very first time, why a police officer might want to turn his weapon on himself instead of turning it in. He fought against the self-pity that threatened to engulf him.

Instead, he turned his thoughts to what he had learned in the resource room.

What was known of Miller's weasels came from four primary sources: Captain Lewis' writings, the field notes of early biologists, references in pioneer journals, and a series of articles about the last known group of the creatures, which had been displayed at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1887 (according to the articles, they were a popular exhibit years before anyone had ever heard of the phrase "endangered species"). No more than twelve inches long and startlingly quick, Miller's weasels were more closely related to mongooses than any other North American species. They were civets, and seemed to resemble the Suricate or Stokstert meerkat of West Africa. They were omnivorous and aggressive, and they would eat eggs, snakes, mice, birds, lizards, fruit, insects, bulbs, and seeds. They would even give chase to foxes and dogs. It was estimated that at one time in the early nineteenth century, there were as many as a million Miller's weasels located within the Rocky Mountain West and Great Plains. They lived in family units as small as five or as large as 30, and they moved their colonies several times a year, following the buffalo wherever they went. They relied on the buffalo not only for carrion, but also for breaking up and churning the earth with their hooves as they grazed, thereby exposing plants, tubers, and small animals for the Miller's weasels to feed on.

American Indians considered the Miller's weasels to be good luck animals, and there were likenesses of them painted on tipi skins and beaded on clothing. The reason was simple: if there were Miller's weasels, then the Indians knew that buffalo would be nearby.

References to Miller's weasels were found in many of the journals kept by those who traveled the Oregon Trail, but no extensive or comprehensive passages. Most of the references had to do with killing the weasels wherever they could be found. It seemed that a legend had developed along the trail that Miller's weasels, despite their cuddly appearance, liked the taste of human flesh. The biologists who had analyzed the journal entries speculated that the pioneers had seen the weasels feeding on bison carcasses or perhaps digging into the numerous human graves that lined the route. There were rumors--none confirmed--that the animals were known to steal into Conestoga wagons at night and feed on human babies while they slept. Because of this legend, Miller's weasels were exterminated in every possible way. The pioneers poisoned the weasels by leaving tainted meat or oats near the colonies. They also would set bonfires on top of the animals' holes or flood these areas, then club the animals to death as they tried to escape. They were also shot, of course, on sight. Sometimes a single shotgun blast would cut down a dozen as they stood on their hind legs

and yipped.

But what really led Miller's weasels down the path to extinction was the virtual elimination of the great herds of buffalo on the Great Plains. Because the Millers weasels were dependent on the buffalo, they died out when the buffalo vanished. It wasn't until many years later that it became apparent that Miller's weasels no longer existed in America.

Was it possible that a few of the species still existed?

It was possible, Joe thought. Maybe the weasels had learned to eat something else. If the remaining weasels managed to change their staple diet, there were plenty of elk, moose, and deer in the mountains to feed on.

And Vern was right. If a colony of Miller's weasels was discovered, the news would hit the scientific and environmental community within hours via the Internet. It would sock the already fading town ofSaddlestring, Wyoming, with a punch Joe wasn't sure it would recover from. Federal employees from various agencies, journalists, biologists, and environmentalists from all over the world would come, all dragging their own distinct and separate political agendas along with them. The ranchers, loggers, outfitters, guides, and residents of Saddlestring would be no match.

Joe had no hard evidence of the species to present to anyone yet. But when everything that had happened was viewed in a certain light, a light not unlike the sunshine that had found and exposed the antelope in the sagebrush, it all seemed to point to the fact that a species thought extinct for 100 years was alive and well in the Bighorns--and that three men who found out about them had been murdered. The murderer, according to Sheriff Barnum and the state investigators, was Clyde Lidgard. But if Clyde didn't do it--and Joe couldn't decide if he believed that--who did? And why did the people who should be the most concerned about the possibility of this discovery, Joe's colleagues, seem uninterested or at least want to steer him away?

Joe smiled bitterly in the dark. He had only three days to try and find the answers to those questions, and he was completely on his own.

***

At a small pink general store 30 miles from anywhere else, Joe bought a half-pint of bourbon and a six-pack of beer from an old man behind the counter who had not only lost an eye but also his left arm from the elbow down. The store owner didn't bother to pin up the empty sleeve of his dirty, gold cowboy shirt, but let it flap beside him like a broken wing as he rang up the purchases. Yup, the store owner answered Joe, that pay phone outside still worked.

Outside, Joe dialed the telephone, opened a beer, and leaned against the pink building in the dark. A humming neon Coors beer sign from the window of the store painted his face a light blue.

Dave Avery, Joe's friend from the Montana Fish and Game Department, answered at his home in Helena. Joe could hear the sounds of a football game on television in the background. Joe asked Dave if he had been able to analyze the samples he sent him yet.

"Are you screwing with me, Joe?" Dave asked, his voice wary. "Is this some kind of a trick you're pulling on me?"

That meant Dave had received and tested the scat samples Joe had sent him.

"Why do you say that?" Joe asked.

Dave snorted. He was animated. No doubt he had already had a few beers that evening.

"You know why, Joe. That scat had a little of everything in it. Pine nuts, vegetation, traces of cartilage, even some elk hair. It could be a fox or something, but it's way too small for that. You win this game. I can't guess that shit. I thought I could name that shit in three notes, maybe less. But I'm baffled. Boggled. Blown away."

For Joe, this confirmed he was on the right track.

"Ever hear of a Miller's weasel?" Joe asked.

"A what?" Dave asked. Then he laughed, unconvinced. There was a long silence.

Dave Avery was well versed in both the current and former species of the region.

"You're not kidding, are you?" Dave asked. "Did you actually see any?"

Joe told him what had happened, where he found the samples, and what he suspected. Dave kept saying "Jesus Christ" as Joe talked. "Do you know what you might have here?" Dave said when Joe was through.

"If the Feds find out, it'll get wild."

"That's the least of my worries right now." Joe said. "Now will you do me a favor for the time being?"

Dave said he would.

"Do a couple of more tests to make sure neither of us is wrong. Then lock up those samples and the analysis. Don't tell anyone what you've got or what we discussed. Just keep it under wraps for a while until I can sort things out down here."

Dave asked how long it would be before Joe got back to him. "Three days."

***

Thirty miles north of Wakman and 20 miles south of Kaycee, Joe turned off of the highway onto a little-used ranch access. His tires bounced over ruts until he cleared a rise where he knew he couldn't be seen from the highway.

Joe killed the engine and swung out of the truck. There was just enough light that the sagebrush looked cottony. A jackrabbit bounded away from the road with tremendous leaps, looking twice its actual size in the headlights. Behind him, the hot engine ticked.

He stroked the checkered grip of the new revolver and raised it. He thumbed the hammer, and the action worked smoothly, rolling the cylinder. He aimed down the long barrel at the now distant rabbit and squeezed the trigger. The .357 roared and bucked violently in his hands and a two-foot explosion from the muzzle left an afterimage in his vision. A plume of dust exploded in front of the jackrabbit, and the animal reversed direction and now bounded right to left.

Joe fired, then fired again. He kept squeezing the trigger until he realized it had clicked three times on empty cylinders. A half a mile away, the jackrabbit had hit overdrive and was streaking toward the mountains.

With his ears ringing and half-blind from the concussive reports of the big pistol, Joe stumbled back to his pickup to reload.

***

Vern Dunnegan was not in his room or in the lounge at the Holiday Inn, but Joe saw his black Suburban on Main Street in front of the Stockman's Bar. Joe parked beside it. As the front door closed behind him, Joe squinted down the length of the dark narrow room through cigarette smoke and saw Vern sitting in the back booth just as he had a few days before. Vern was alone, hunched over and staring down at a tall glass of bourbon and water that he held between his hands.

As Joe approached, Vern looked up and in that instant something passed quickly over Vern's face--perhaps a mixture of both surprise and anger. Joe barely had a chance to register the look before it was replaced by a huge, overdone grin. Joe sat down heavily in the booth and ordered a beer when the barmaid approached.

"You're up awfully late," Vern said, studying Joe carefully from behind his smile.

"I just got back from Cheyenne," Joe said. "That's one hell of a long drive."

"It's a two-and-a-half six-pack drive." Vern chuckled. "A drive I made many, many times. It looks like you might have had a few yourself to make the hours more bearable. Gotta be careful on the highway," Vern said, smiling paternalistically "Some of those patrolmen would like nothing better than to give a ticket to a fellow state employee and get you in all sorts of trouble."

Caught, Joe nodded. A drunk like Vern who had tried to hide it for years could be very perceptive when it came to identifying someone else who'd been drinking, Joe thought.

"You just missed Wacey," Vern continued. Vern was now in command. Whatever had passed across his face when he looked up and saw Joe was now well hidden.

"We were having a little celebration."

Joe looked puzzled.

"Barnum announced today that he's dropping out of the sheriff's race," Vern said. "He's going to retire."

"You're kidding," Joe replied. He wondered what had made Barnum come to that decision. With Barnum out, Wacey was assured of winning the Republican primary in a couple of weeks. And in Twelve Sleep County, winning the Republican primary was the same as winning the general election. There were only a handful of Democrats, and few of them even bothered to vote anymore.

"So ole Wacey was pretty excited and we had a few drinks to celebrate," Vern said.

"I bet he was," Joe agreed. "Strange that Barnum dropped out."

Vern shrugged. "These things happen. Maybe he thought he was going to get whipped."

Joe recalled the conversation he'd had with Barnum earlier that week. Barnum had certainly acted as if he had already been defeated. But Joe hadn't understood it then, and he didn't understand it now. He had noticed no grounds-well of support for Wacey Hedeman in the community--and very little dissatisfaction with Barnum. It seemed to Joe that voting against Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum was like voting against the Bighorn Mountains.

"Politics," Vern said, as if the word alone summed up the conversation. "Stranger than fiction."

Joe sipped his beer. He wished he hadn't been drinking on the ride home. He wished his head was more clear.

"So what brings you down to the Stockman's Bar when it's obviously past your bedtime?" Vern asked.

Joe looked up. "I guess I want to accept that job you offered me with Inter West," Joe said.

"I got suspended today."

Vern frowned melodramatically. "Suspended? You? That doesn't even seem possible."

Joe had a feeling that it wasn't as much of a surprise to Vern as Vern made it out to be. They were now playing some kind of game with each other. But in this kind of game, Joe was an amateur and Vern was All-Pro.

Joe told Vern what had happened. Vern shook his head and rolled his eyes at the right places. Joe thought for a moment that maybe Vern hadn't known. No, Joe amended, Vern knew. There were still plenty of people in Cheyenne that owed Vern a favor and could have tipped him off.

"So I want to work with you," Joe finished.

"Why don't you fight it?" Vern asked. "It sounds like a ridiculous overreaction by the department. You should be able to win it at your hearing."

"I don't have the time or money to go against them and I need to support my family," Joe said truthfully. "I'm not sure I have the determination I need. I guess I'm not really sure I want my job back at all if this is what they're capable of."

Vern drained his drink and ordered another for both of them. "What does Marybeth say?" The tone of the question was not kind.

"I haven't talked to her about it yet," Joe said, flushing just a bit from the implication. "I came straight here."

"Joe," Vern said after the drinks had been delivered. "We seem to have some kind of misunderstanding here."

"What do you mean?"

Vern chuckled in his most kindly way, as if he were sharing the embarrassment for both of them.

"Joe, I don't think that I ever actually offered you a job. If I remember correctly, I just asked if you might be interested in something with Inter West I believe I said I was 'testing the waters." Don't you remember that phrase?"

"I do remember it," Joe said, trying to understand what was going on and where Vern was headed. He still wanted to trust Vern, but Vern's statement that there wasn't a job waiting for him at Inter West had left him shaken and wary.

"But I know what I heard from you. I know what you meant."

"Look," Vern said, glancing around the bar and lowering his voice. "It's not going to happen."

Joe sat back in his seat.

"Besides," Vern said, rolling the sweaty drink slowly between his palms, "I talked to my bosses at Inter West and they now think things are just fine as they are. For a while there, they tossed it around and they asked me if you were willing to make the commitment and I had to honestly tell them at the time that I didn't think you were. They reconsidered after that and now they don't see the need for additional employees at this level and at this phase in the project. Maybe if you had come back to me sooner-or with some enthusiasm. Before this thing in Cheyenne happened. It would be pretty hard right now to convince them that you suddenly changed your mind and it wasn't connected to the fact that you got thrown out of the department."

Joe started to speak, but he caught himself.

"One of the reasons I wanted you aboard with me was because of your clean record and your sterling reputation," Vern said, sounding almost apologetic. "But lately you've been neglecting your real job and running around the county with a wild hair up your butt trying to reopen that outfitter case. Don't think nobody has noticed it. You've been the talk of the morning business coffee at the cafe. There's talk that you burned down Clyde Lidgard's trailer house for some reason that only you know. Now you've been suspended from the department. I really don't think there's a job for you with us, Joe. I'm sorry."

Joe was stunned for the second time that day. He couldn't believe this was happening. He didn't know what to say to Vern. This was exactly the opposite of what he thought he would be able to tell Marybeth when he got home. And his girls. And his mother-in-law. The worst thing about it was that he had not really wanted to come to Vern and ask in the first place. He had talked himself into it as he drove and drank on the highway. He had done it, he thought, because it was the most responsible thing to do. As Joe stood up, he considered raising his fist and smashing Vern in his grinning mouth as hard as he could.

But he didn't. He felt too defeated for that.

"All is not lost, Joe," Vern said as Joe clamped on his hat.

"Wacey might need a new deputy, you know. He's going to get rid of that McLanahan guy just as soon as he takes office. All is not lost."

Joe turned and leaned forward into the booth, with both of his hands on the tabletop, and put his face directly in front of Vern's.

"You're wrong, Vern," Joe said, nearly whispering. "All is just about lost."

"Now, Joe ..."

"Vern." Joe cut him off. "Shut up and listen for a change."

Vern's eyes quickly confirmed that no one in the bar was paying them any attention. He looked suspiciously back to Joe.

"Vern, I lost my job and my house today. My faith in the belief that if you do your job and you work hard and you're honest then good things will happen is real shaky right now. My family is one paycheck away from being on the street. One paycheck. Now I've lost my only prospect for another job. And to top it off, you tell me I've lost my reputation. Then you tell me that all is not lost."

Vern reached up and put a hand on Joe's shoulder, but Joe angrily shook it off.

"Hey, Joe," Vern said, "it's time to start thinking a lot more about Joe Pickett and a lot less about what your family and everybody else thinks. That's what I've learned, Joe."

Vern's eyes turned hard and his lip curled back in a sneer.

"Welcome to my world. The real world. It's a place where nice things don't necessarily happen to nice people. I," Vern said in his most grandiloquent way, "am an entrepreneur. I create wealth. I empowered this Inter West deal into being. An offer was made to you, and you passed on it when you had the chance."

Their eyes locked.

"Vern, have you ever heard of a species called the Miller's weasel?"

The corners of Vern's mouth twitched slightly, then out came the false smile.

"Miller's weasels are extinct," Vern said. "They don't exist, even though every decade or so a rumor pops up that somebody saw one. Kind of like sightings of Bigfoot or something."

"Vern," Joe hissed. "If I find out you're involved in all of this, things are going to get real western."

The look Joe had seen on Vern's face when he walked into the bar passed over it again. But this time there was some fear mixed in. It was good to see.

The weather had turned sharply colder and the stars were shrouded by clouds.

Joe's hands were shaking as he dug in his pocket for his keys. He started his truck and began to drive to his house. He hit the brakes and cursed loudly when he realized that he was headed in the wrong direction. His family was at Eagle Mountain now, so he turned in the middle of Main Street and roared away in the other direction.

PART FIVE

LAND ACQUISITION

Sec. 5(a) Program. The Secretary, and the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to the National Forest System, shall establish and implement a program to conserve fish, wildlife, and plants, including those which are listed as endangered species or threatened species pursuant to section 4 of this Act. To carry out such a program, the appropriate Secretary (1) shall utilize the land acquisition and other authority under the Pish and Wildlife Act of 1956, as amended, and the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, as appropriate; and (2) is authorized to acquire by purchase, donation, or otherwise, lands, waters, or interest therein, and such authority shall be in addition to any other land acquisition authority vested in him.

(b) Acquisitions. Funds made available pursuant to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, as amended, may be used for the purpose of acquiring lands, waters, or interests therein under subsection (a) of this section.

--The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982

In the dining room, there was a long, dark hardwood table that could seat fourteen people comfortably. In the middle of the night, Joe sat in his robe at the foot of it under a dimmed chandelier and felt sorry for himself. Hours before, he had switched to drinking water, and he

filled up a stubby cut-glass tumbler from a pitcher that was older than he was.

The Kensinger house was magnificent, but he had surveyed it with amused dispassion. The bar area alone was half of the square footage of his house on Bighorn Road. The walls were hung with original Bama and Schenck contemporary western paintings and eighteenth-century English sporting prints.

Two-thousand-dollar Navajo rugs hung from ceiling beams. There was a pure stainless steel kitchen with a walk-in refrigerator freezer giving Joe the impression that food preparation in this place was a serious, almost clinical affair. In the book-lined den (the books were mainly leather-bound editions of sporting and history categories with stiff, un cracked spines), a powerful telescope was mounted on a tripod to study the Twelve Sleep River and the wildlife that came down from the foothills to drink from it. To Joe, the house was not built or arranged to be lived in as much as it was a stage for entertaining. Small children would kill this house, and this house would kill small children. It was a kind of rancho deluxe contemporary western living museum.

Joe sipped his glass of water and looked around the dining room in the dark. The unreality of this place, given his situation, was overwhelming.

"Can I get you anything?" It was Marybeth. She stood in the shadow of the double doors. He gestured at the half-empty pitcher of water to indicate he was okay.

He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the very first time. To sleep in, she was wearing an extra-large T-shirt that extended to mid-thigh. The cotton cloth strained across her pregnant belly and substantial breasts, her nipples poking out like buttons. Beneath the T-shirt, her legs were firm and thin, and her toes were curled into the nap of the thick carpet. Her hair was down around her shoulders and sleep-mussed. She was lovely.

When he had first come in, he had told her everything. The kids had been in bed, and Missy Vankeuren was who knows where within the house. He had held nothing back as they sat across from each other at the dining room table: what had happened at Game and Fish Headquarters, what Dave Avery had confirmed, what Vern had said about the job and his reputation.

"One way or other, that man has made sure he still has power over you," Marybeth had said.

"Vern Dunnegan may be the only person I have ever truly learned to hate."

He had told her about his plan to go back up into the Crazy Woman Creek canyon tomorrow where the outfitters had been murdered--while he still had the authority to do so. Maybe he could find something that would substantiate what he was beginning to suspect about the outfitters' murders. He had laid it out in flat, declarative sentences. When he was through, she had looked at him and had said, "That's a lot to think about," and then she had gone to bed. They had left things on a difficult, unresolved note. Now she was back.

She came from the doorway, pulled out a straight-backed chair next to him, and sat down. She reached over and slipped her hand between the folds of his robe and put a warm hand on his leg. She looked into his eyes.

"Joe, I've been thinking about everything you said."

He waited for what would come next.

"Joe, all is not lost. You have me. You have your family. You have character. That's a lot, and not many people can say that. We love you and appreciate who you are and what you've done."

He looked at her quizzically.

"Joe, you are a good man. You're the last of your kind. Don't forget that. There aren't many like you left. You have a good heart and your moral compass is a model of its kind. You need to do what you need to do. Things will work out, and we can talk about it all later. We're being tested, God knows why."

Joe was taken aback. For some reason--and he felt more than slightly guilty about it now--he thought she was going to tell him that she had had it and maybe the best idea was for her to take the children and go and live with her mother in Arizona for a while. He felt he had failed her. But she was showing that she was stronger and more committed to him, and them, than he had given her credit for. He started to speak and ask her why, but she didn't let him.

"Don't ask me, Joe. There isn't anything logical about it. There's nothing I can really explain to you other than I trust you and I'm with you until the bitter end."

"That's a lot to live up to." Joe said.

"You bet it is," Marybeth answered. "But you haven't let me down yet."

Joe thought she had never seemed as beautiful as she did at that moment.

"I'm not sure what I should say next," Joe said, flushing.

She withdrew from his robe and guided his hand under the T-shirt to her belly. He rested his hand on her and then spread his fingers. Beneath the taut flesh he could feel the baby shifting inside of her.

"We make wonderful babies," she said softly. "We're bringing good little people into the world who have a mom and a dad who care about them and love them. They know right from wrong because their parents teach them which is which, and because their parents live by example. Somewhere, there is a reward for us, Joe. We need to believe that. We won't just be abandoned."

Joe stared at Marybeth, still unsure what to say.

"But right now, I just want you in my bed," she continued. "I need you there."

He followed her to a bedroom he had never even seen before and to a bed he had never slept in. In it, they made love in a warm, clumsy way that at least for a few wonderful moments made him forget where he was.

***

He didn't know how long he had been sleeping, but when he opened his eyes it was still dark outside. He eased out of the bed, not wanting to wake Marybeth, and padded along the cold stone tiles in the hallway. Then he realized, standing in the strange house, that he wasn't sure where the closest bathroom was. He stopped at a curtained window and brushed it aside to look outside. There was still no sign of dawn. Stars shown brilliantly in the black sky. His intention was to be in the saddle by seven and to the elk camp by noon. Beyond that he wasn't sure where he was going or how far he would go. By the faint blue light from the moon, he saw the shadow of a lamp on a table in the hall; he bent down, turned it on, and looked at his wristwatch.

"Dad?"

The voice made him jump and spin around. He hadn't known which room the children were sleeping in. When he entered the bedroom, he saw Sheridan sitting upright on the bed, her fingers wrapped tightly around the covers.

"Honey," Joe said as he sat down on the bed, "it's three-thirty in the morning. Why aren't you sleeping?"

He couldn't see her well in the dark. She looked like a tangle of blond hair and thin limbs. He stroked her hair and eased her back to her pillow.

"I can't sleep," Sheridan said, her voice hoarse.

"Is it the new house?" he asked. "Sleeping in a new bed?"

She didn't answer, but he had the feeling that she wanted to say something. Tell him something. He petted her hair and shoulder to calm her. Something was wrong. He heard her sniff and realized that she had been sobbing. He felt her cheeks, which were moist with tears.

"You can tell me," he said, his voice gentle.

Suddenly, she sat up and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face into his chest. He assumed she must have heard some of the earlier conversation with Marybeth. Maybe she was worried about their situation ... like he was. He told her that everything was going to be okay. He told her that she needed to get some sleep. He waited for her to tell him what the problem was. She had never been shy before when it came to talking about her feelings. Far from it, Joe thought.

Finally: "I don't like this place," she told him, crying.

He didn't tell her that he wasn't real sure he liked it either. Instead, he once again eased her back into her bed.

"Is that all?" he asked.

She paused for an inordinate amount of time. She covered her face with her hands. "That's all," she said, meekly.

"We won't be here forever," he said, aware of the irony of that statement. He rubbed her shoulder until he thought she had drifted back to sleep. He rose eventually and quietly walked across the room toward the hall.

"I love you and Mom," she said. "I love our whole family."

He turned at the door. "Your whole family loves you, too, Sheridan. Now get some sleep."

***

Joe rode hard, pushing Lizzie as fast as he dared, and made it to the elk camp by midday. It was cold. Gray, scudding clouds filled a sky that seemed especially close. He dismounted in the camp, stretched, and unsaddled his horse.

They had both worked up a sweat. Steam rose like contrails from Lizzie's back, and he rubbed her down with his gloved hands while she drank from the trickle of cold water that was Crazy Woman Creek in early fall. He set out some grain for Lizzie and then draped the smoky, wet saddle blanket over a branch. He would wait for Lizzie to dry and rest before he continued on.

Except for a few early rising hunters waiting for their coffee to brew in the campground before sunrise, Joe had not seen another living person since seven that morning. On his hard ride up the mountain, he had spooked a small herd of cow and calf elk and had nearly ridden on top of a coyote who was loping lazily down the same trail he was riding up.

As Lizzie rested, he carried his saddle and walked through the elk camp. He sat on a rock, pulled his Thermos from a saddlebag, and poured a cup of coffee. In addition to the new Smith & Wesson revolver he wore on his hip, he had brought his Remington shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot. He arranged the saddle scabbard on top of the pommel so he could pull the shotgun out quickly.

Even though it was the same place he, Wacey, and McLanahan had moved in on that morning just two weeks before, it seemed very different now. The tents were gone, as were the stoves and wooden floors. The earth within the camp had been trampled flat and hard by investigators. The fireplace had been kicked apart, and the cross beams in the trees that were used for hanging elk had been dismantled. In a year or two, with plenty of snow and new grass and erosion, the elk camp would be unrecognizable, nothing more than a wide, flat place along the stream.

He spread a topographical map across his knees and studied it until he found the location of the elk camp where he now was and the creek that ran alongside it. Along the creek a few inches up from the camp, the contour lines narrowed and became dark and thick, indicating a steep and narrow canyon. The creek became a hairline. The trail, marked by dots and dashes, ended at the mouth of the canyon.

On the map, the canyon looked incredibly long and narrow. He traced it with his finger as it snaked through the heart of the mountain. But what Joe was most interested in was where the creek began, and where the walls appeared to widen.

It looked like a huge bowl or depression, two miles long by three miles, all four sides rimmed by sharp cliffs. The area was in a roadless section, and the map showed virtually no access from above. The only way in, it seemed, was upstream along the creek.

Joe had never been to the bowl before. He had asked Vern about it, back when he had just started in the district, because it was such a unique topographical feature. Vern had said he had been there once but hadn't been back as it was so hard to get to. Hunters avoided it, Vern said, because, although it was remote and probably rich with game, it was one of those places where "the only way to get an elk out was with a knife and fork."

But Ore Keeley, Kyle Lensegrav, and Calvin Mendes had spent a lot of time up here scouting and hunting elk. Joe wouldn't be a bit surprised if they had felt the urge to find out what was upstream, beyond the narrow canyon. They had probably used the same topo map Joe had and could see, as he could, that the bowl could very likely be the home of magnificent elk that were rarely, if ever, hunted.

Joe looked up and searched upstream for the spot where the canyon walls began to narrow. That was where he planned to go.

***

"Why do you want to go back to the house so badly, Sheridan?" her mom asked as she gathered up the breakfast dishes from the table. Lucy had already left to go watch television. Lucy had fallen in love with all of the channels available on the satellite dish.

Sheridan had thought long and hard about a story that would work. She had forgotten her library books, she said. The books were due on Monday, she said.

It was a lie, Sheridan knew. But it was sort of a good lie.

"Can't we go tomorrow?" her mom asked. "Tomorrow is Sunday."

"I've got to read the books," Sheridan said, looking to her grandmother for sympathy. "I've got to do a book report on one of them."

Missy Vankeuren laughed. She had been in a good mood ever since they had come to the house at the Eagle Mountain Club. "She sounds like me in my school days."

"Yes," her mom said, looking with disapproval at her own mother. "But it doesn't sound like Sheridan."

Mom turned back to her.

"Sheridan, you know better than to wait until the last minute to do your homework," her mom admonished as she took the dishes to the kitchen.

"Well, it's been pretty busy lately," Sheridan said, indicating the move. That would instill a little guilt, Sheridan thought. Her mom knew Sheridan didn't really like the new "vacation home," as Missy called it.

"Just use your charm to get yourself out of it," Missy said, winking at Sheridan. "Bat your eyes and make up some good story. That's what I would do." Then she smiled.

Sheridan's mom came back into the dining room.

"Well?" Sheridan asked her. "Can we go get my books?" Persistence usually paid off.

"We'll see." Her mom looked at her sternly.

"Does that mean yes?" Sheridan asked.

"It means, we'll see," her mom answered. "Now, scoot. You look like you could use a little nap."

"I'm okay."

"Are you feeling all right, honey? You're looking a little pale."

"I'm okay," Sheridan repeated, hopping down from the chair.

"She's fine," Missy told her mom with a knowing smile.

Boy, Sheridan thought, is she ever wrong.

Which meant yes, Sheridan thought, as she huddled with Lucy under a blanket on the sofa to watch Saturday morning cartoons. A second "we'll see" always meant yes.

Despite what she had told her mom, Sheridan wasn't feeling good. She stared blankly at the television set. She had not eaten much breakfast and her stomach hurt. Last night had been the worst night yet. In the unfamiliar bed it was almost as if that man was in it with her, he seemed so close. She could almost smell his breath. It was as if he were there watching her, waiting for her to say or do something she wasn't supposed to. Then that smile of his would turn into something else, something wicked, and in her imagination she could see him turn on his heel to hurt her family. And there was nothing she could do to stop him.

She had awful dreams. The dreams awakened her, and she had trouble getting back to sleep. In one dream, the worst, the man was in her room sitting on a chair near the foot of her bed. He was talking to her, telling her that he was her friend, but in his lap there was something round and large and wrapped in paper. Only this time, when she looked at the object, it was not the head of a kitten. It looked like Lucy's head. In the dream he began to unwrap it.

Another dream had her back in the barn, pinned again to the stall by the man as he breathed in her face and talked to her. He would do things to her mother, he had said. That he'd do things to the baby that was coming, too. You don't really want another brother or sister around here anyway, do you? he asked. / can tell, he said. You would like it if it were only you, wouldn't you? It made her feel bad that in the dream she had nodded her head yes. She hoped she didn't really feel that way. To prove it, she hugged Lucy, but Lucy wriggled free.

Sheridan had stayed awake after her dad had left her room, and had listened as he made coffee and shuffled around the house, gathering things to take with him. She had come close to telling him about the man and her secret pets when he was in her room. She had come so close. But remnants from her dreams had stopped her at the last second. After her dad had left the house, she stared at the unfamiliar ceiling and made a couple of decisions. When she made them, they felt right to her. So she wouldn't forget them in the morning, she got out of bed and wrote them down on a piece of paper with a crayon. The crumpled paper was in her pajama pocket now.

First, she would figure out a way to get back to the house so she could make sure the creatures were still there. She would feed them if she could. She prayed they would be all right.

Second, she would tell her dad everything. Something about the way he had put his hand on her face the night before made her feel that if anyone could protect her and the family, it was her dad.

Knowing what she planned to do made her feel a little better. Lucy leaned back against her, and they snuggled under the blanket. Lucy laughed at something that happened in the cartoon. Sheridan let her eyes close. Her eyes were burning.

This was too much for her. All of it. She would have to wait for her dad to come home. Then she would talk. It was time.

***

The first half mile of the canyon was easy going, even as the dark gray walls became sheer and the sky became no more than a ribbon of blue light straight overhead. There were Indian petroglyphs on the rocks, scenes of elk bristling with arrows, painted and feathered men on horseback, figures of warriors holding aloft the scalps and entire heads of other warriors. Near the petroglyphs, Joe found newer and much more stupid graphics written with a felt-tipped marker.

"Ote Keeley Sucks the Big One," someone had scratched.

"Kyle Eats Shit," said another.

"Calvin Is a Needle Dick." Yup, Joe thought, the outfitters had come up here all right.

The rock walls eventually became so narrow that Joe dismounted and hung the stirrups over the saddle horn so they wouldn't catch on the sides. Lizzie was fidgety, her ears were pinned back, and her eyes were wide with apprehension. He led her, coaxing her to continue and keeping up a singsong, inane monologue to calm her as the walls closed in around them. He stepped from stone to stone in the stream, trying to keep his boots dry. The mare's metal shoes clattered and sometimes slipped on the creek rocks, and the back of Joe's pants were soon soaked as a result.

He wished he hadn't brought the horse into the canyon and instead had tied her up and continued by himself. The canyon was much narrower than he had anticipated, and the roots, foliage, and thick spiderwebs that covered it made it claustrophobic. The problem he had now was that they had gone too far to turn around. He would have to back her out nearly a quarter of a mile along slippery rocks. The likelihood that she would fall and injure herself--as well as block the canyon--was too great. He had to continue on and hope she would trust him.

At one point when the walls became so narrow that they were literally touching both sides of her and the brush in the canyon was so thick above them as to block out the light. Lizzie finally balked and jerked back on the halter rope, pulling Joe into the creek. Her eyes were white and wild with panic, and they partially rolled back into her head. Joe tried to stop her as she backed up, and the rope sang through his hands, scorching his gloves. She finally stopped when her shoes skated over the tops of the rocks, and she sat down with an enormous thud and splash. Her breath pistoned out of her flared nostrils. She sat quivering and let Joe approach her. He spoke softly to her saying much the same things he had told Sheridan the night before. After a long ten minutes, she awkwardly scrambled upright. Her breathing had settled to a rhythm. He wedged in beside her and could find no injuries on her except for on her flank, where a small flap of torn hide stuck out like a pink tongue. He was now wet everywhere, and getting cold. The buckskin was wet also, and the canyon smelled strongly of horse.

"We are over halfway there, Lizzie," he told her, over and over again in a kind of mantra. "We can either keep going or back our way out. Let's keep going. It's not that far now. It'll get better, I promise. It's okay. Things are just real okay. Everything is not as bad as it seems."

As the walls eventually receded, the creek became shallow and soon Joe was able to mount again and ride upstream along a sandy bank. The sky didn't seem as gray as it had earlier in the morning, and the little bit of sun that filtered through the clouds warmed and dried them.

When the canyon walls finally opened, the bowl in the mountains was even more lush and untrammeled than Joe had imagined it could be. It was a beautiful, remarkable place. Around the rim of the bowl in all directions were sheer, red rock cliffs, which provided both protection and a windbreak. Thin rivulets of water that looked like old lace streamed down the rock walls from above. Joe imagined that in the spring the waterfalls would have real volume and would fill the bowl with their roar. The old-growth trees were mossy and tall, the foliage thick. Tall grass carpeted the edge of the creek while spring-fed pools full of clean, cold water dotted the creek bottom.

Something cracked in the trees and Joe pulled his shotgun out of the scabbard in a single movement. But even before he had racked the pump, he could see that the sound had come from a huge bull elk who had seen him and was now fleeing through the trees, a shadow moving through the thick timber like fan blades whirling in front of a light until it was gone. He lay the shotgun across the pommel of the saddle and nudged the buckskin on.

Joe knew what a unique place this was. It was like going back in time, like being one of the first to ride into a natural wonder like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon and not really being able to believe your eyes. Few people in the modern world would ever have the chance to see what he was seeing or experience what he was experiencing. Or so he thought.

He was nearly to the grassy rise before he realized exactly where he was.

Later, when he thought about it, he couldn't really say why he had stopped or how he had found it. It was a feeling he felt on the back of his neck like the lick of a ghost. But when he reined the buckskin and turned in the saddle, he had absolutely no doubt about what was there in front of him.

He was looking at a killing field.

It was a treeless slope that started at the edge of a dark timber stand and continued down until it reached the valley floor. What was peculiar about the field, now thick with dried, tall grass, was its lack of life. There were no birds, and nothing scuttled in the grass. It was dead, and Joe wanted to know why.

The mounds were there. He counted 26 of them. But the holes on the top of the mounds were blocked with new spiderwebs or bits of brush and grass that had blown into them. As Joe walked through the field, from mound to mound, he found the things he had suspected he would. There were spent casings from .22 shells buried in the dirt, as well as shotgun shells. He bent over a dried quarter of elk that was old enough to be skeletal but not old enough that he couldn't see and smell the poison it had been laced with. It was Compound 1080, a deadly substance preferred by those who took the killing of predators very seriously.

He found several M-44 cartridges wired into the carcass of a rabbit. The devices, long illegal, were designed to automatically fire a stream of cyanide into the mouths of whatever tugged on them. The cyanide, which reacted with saliva, would kill within seconds. The cartridges had been fired.

In a kind of stunned fog, Joe gathered what evidence he could. He pulled his camera from a saddlebag and took several rolls of film. Many of the shots, he knew, would be of Clyde Lidgard quality. But he found a scattering of tiny bones pressed into the soft earth of one of the mounds, and he filled a plastic bag with them. He gathered a handful of spent .22 brass for another sack, as well as the M-44 cartridges. Then he sat on a downed tree and simply stared at the field. He tried to imagine what it had looked like when it was teeming with the last colony of Miller's weasels on earth.

It WaS nearly dUSk when Joe cleared the elk camp in a trot and continued down the mountain. The long passage through the canyon had been made almost in a dream, and the buckskin mare seemed to sense that Joe was distracted, so she cooperated. She knew they were going home. Joe's mind was racing, and he was shaky from what he had discovered and from lack of sleep. Several times, he reached back into his saddlebags to confirm that he had in fact gathered the evidence he thought he had gathered. Already, the bowl seemed very far away.

He thought of the implications, which were huge. Terrible acts had taken place up there. They had happened right under his nose, in his jurisdiction, and on his watch. Of course there was now a conspiracy.

He doubted that it had started out that way. He guessed that what had happened was a series of incidents and mistakes that had mushroomed into something both big and awful. He didn't know how everything was connected yet, and he wasn't really sure he would be able to find out. But he knew he was now in the thick of it, no matter what. He wondered who out there would surface, once the word got out.

He thought again of the killing field, which both disgusted and depressed him.

He was astonished at the thoroughness of the people responsible. First they had started with Miller's weasels and then moved on to killing the outfitters. That progression indicated that perhaps they weren't yet through.

***

Joe loaded Lizzie into the horse trailer and put the saddle and tack in the back of the pickup. He shared the last of his water with his horse then climbed stiffly into the cab of the truck and started the engine.

When he cleared the timber, the Twelve Sleep Valley opened up below him. In the distance, he could see the early evening lights of Saddlestring like a jewelry box dumped on the prairie. Directly below him was the campground, and the winking yellow lights of hunters' lanterns and propane lamps. Between the two, miles in the distance and hidden in the folds of the foothills, was his house on Bighorn Road.

God, he was angry. He was furious at his own situation and at the people who had put him there. He was enraged when he thought of the killing field and the purposeful, deliberate way a species had been completely wiped off of the face of the earth. In all of his studies and all of the gossip he had heard over the years, this was the first instance he knew of in which there had been a purposeful and determined effort to wholly terminate a species.

It was nearly dark, and it was getting colder. An icy wind raced up the mountain from the valley floor. The sky had cleared to the horizons, but it seemed to be regrouping for later. Long, thin faraway clouds paralleled the western horizon looking like multiple red knife wounds slashed across purpling flesh.

***

"We have some beautiful sunsets, don't we, honey?" Sheridan's mom said.

"Yeah," Sheridan answered blankly. She had other things on her mind.

In the car, on the way to their house on Bighorn Road, Sheridan's mom had asked her to tell her what was wrong. It was just the two of them, she said, and she was getting a little worried about her big girl. She could tell that something was really bothering her, and she wanted Sheridan to tell her what it was. She said Sheridan's eyes looked very tired.

"I'm okay, Mom," Sheridan said. Her backpack was on the floor of the car. She had brought it, she said, to put her books in. But now it held a full bread sack of table scraps.

"Did you hear some of the things your dad and I discussed last night when he got home?"

Sheridan shook her head no. Her mom seemed relieved. Sheridan was glad it was nearly dark outside, because she knew her mom could read her face. It was as if her mom could tell what she was thinking sometimes. Sheridan felt guilty about not telling her mom about the creatures and the man. Mom was wonderful, and very smart, even though she could be stern. Sometimes she couldn't believe how wonderful her mother was, especially as Sheridan spent more time with Grandmother Missy. Sometimes it seemed like her mom was the adult and Grandmother Missy, Sheridan, and Lucy were the children. But her mom sure could worry, and Sheridan knew how much she would worry if she knew what Sheridan knew. Worrying wasn't a good thing for a woman who was so pregnant. This Sheridan was pretty sure of.

"I want you to feel you can tell me what's wrong, Sheridan," her mom said. She wasn't letting this go.

Sheridan had part of her problem solved. When they got to the house, Sheridan would go into her bedroom and fill her backpack with some of her own books from her bookshelves. She doubted her mom would want to look at the books to see if they were from the school library. The hard part, though, would be figuring out a way to get outside alone. She had a little flashlight in her backpack for shining under the garage. She hoped she would see them under there, and she hoped they would be all right.

"I think I don't like that house we're staying in," Sheridan said. "It seems too fancy. It seems like we're living in somebody else's house."

"I know you feel that way," mom said. "We are living in someone's house. Wealthy people like your grandmother do it all the time, but I realize it's new to you. But isn't it nice to have your own big room for a while? And that TV with all of those channels? What about that wonderful fireplace and all of those books on the shelves?"

"They're all right," Sheridan confessed. "But I still like our old house better."

"Sometimes change is good," her mom said.

"Most of the time it's bad," Sheridan echoed darkly.

Her mom laughed. "You can be so dramatic, sweetie."

The car slowed and her mom turned the steering wheel. "Well, it's still here," her mom said.

Sheridan looked through the windshield. The house was very dark. It looked like her father's truck was parked where it usually was on the side of the house. But it wasn't her father's truck.

"Wacey must have gone with Dad and left his truck here when they took the horses," Mom said.

"I didn't realize he was going, too." She turned off the motor.

"Anyway, let's not take all night," Mom continued.

"Grandmother Missy is making lasagna, and we don't want to miss that."

Grandmother Missy had come to the conclusion that everyone in the family loved her lasagna. The fact that no one finished their dinner hadn't changed her mind. The truth was that the only person who liked Grandmother Missy's lasagna was Grandmother Missy herself.

Sheridan was behind her mother while her mom found the keys, opened the front door, and went in. Mom reached to click on the lights, but she stopped before she did so, and Sheridan bumped right into her.

Her mom didn't move.

"What? ..."

Suddenly, her mother was bent over and her face was close to Sheridan's. "Don't turn on the lights, honey. Just be still." Her mom's voice was urgent--and serious. Sheridan had rarely heard that tone, and it scared her.

"What's wrong?" Sheridan's eyes were wide.

"I don't know for sure," her mom said. "But I can see some kind of light in the backyard."

Sheridan couldn't speak. She looked around her mother and could see it, too. Yellow light came in through the kitchen window and swept across the ceiling. Then it flashed the other way.

Sheridan's mom guided Sheridan to the couch and sat her down. "Just stay here for a second. I'm going to go see what it is."

Sheridan sat, clutching her backpack. She watched her mom walk through the front room and into the kitchen. Her mother's silhouette was framed by the window.

"Mom ..."

Her mother turned. "There is a man out there by the woodpile with a flashlight. He's kicking it apart." Her voice was a tense whisper.

"I think he intends to steal our firewood."

Sheridan was jolted the instant she heard that someone, a man, was in the woodpile. It came to her in a brilliant flash of panic: the truck parked outside, the fact that Mom didn't know about it, the friend of her dad's.

What was his name?

"Mom!" Sheridan screamed, hurtling off of the couch toward the kitchen, even as her mother reached over and clicked on the floodlights that illuminated the backyard.

"Get away from that wood!" her mother yelled, smacking the window with the palm of her hand as if the man were a stray dog rooting through the garbage.

Then the window shattered and there was a sharp crack outside. Her mother was thrown backwards to the floor, her head bouncing hard on the linoleum. Outside, a man was shouting.

Sheridan tossed the backpack aside and fell to her knees, sliding into her mother on the floor. Sheridan put her hands on both sides of her mother's face.

"Oh, Mom ..."

"I'm hurt, Sheridan darling," her mother said in a clear voice.

"He shot me, and I don't think I'm okay. I don't know who it was who shot me."

Sheridan wailed and buried her head into her mother's breasts. She could feel her mother's strong heartbeat. But Sheridan's hand, which was wrapped around her mother's waist, was warm and wet.

"Oh God," her mom said, with a choke in her throat. "I can't feel anything. Everything is numb."

It had all happened so quickly that Sheridan couldn't yet grasp the situation.

Suddenly, her mother was bathed in light, and Sheridan could see her mother's face and the tears in her eyes and the blood, lots of it, spreading across the floor. Her mother looked from Sheridan to the source of the light, and Sheridan followed.

"Stay where you are, you two," the man said, almost calmly. Then he withdrew the flashlight. They heard him trying to get in the locked back door.

"Somebody let me in," the man said with authority.

Sheridan's mom reached up and squeezed Sheridan's arm. "Get away, Sheridan."

"I can't," Sheridan said. The words tumbled out as she cried. "It's all my fault this happened. He said if I told anyone he would hurt our family. He said he would hurt you and Lucy and Dad. He said he would hurt the baby." Her tears dropped on her mother's face.

"Unlock the goddamned door!" A loud crash accompanied the man's yell as he began to hurl himself against the back door. There was a big crack down the center of the door. Splinters flew across the floor.

"Get away now," her mother said.

"Run out the front door and keep running. Hide and wait for your dad and Wacey to come back." Her voice was not as strong as it had been a minute ago. "Don't you stop, Sheridan."

Her mother's words rooted Sheridan to the spot. The truck outside that looked like her father's but wasn't, the man's familiar voice, and her mother's words all sprang out in sharp clarity and a surge of

recognition hit her.

"But Mom, that's Wacey outside the door," Sheridan cried. "It was Wacey who said he would hurt us!"

But her mom's eyes were closed, and her hand had dropped to the floor. Sheridan could still feel her heartbeat though, and she looked like she was sleeping.

Sheridan said, "I love you, Mom," and then she was up and running, deftly juking around the coffee table in the living room and out the front door just as the backdoor gave way and Wacey Hedeman stumbled into the house.

Running like she had never run before, not even feeling the soles of her tennis shoes on the grass or the broken concrete of the walkway, the screen door slamming behind her, Sheridan ran through the front gate onto Bighorn Road, changed her mind, and turned back toward the driveway.

Sheridan stopped and caught herself as she reached for the handle on the door of the car. She was not thinking clearly, and she realized she had no plan at all once she was inside the car. She could lock the doors, but Wacey could simply smash through the glass and get her. She couldn't drive away because her mom always took the keys with her and they were probably in her purse, on the floor, in the house.

So she dropped to her belly and scrambled under the car like a crab. Gravel from the driveway ground into her bare hands and jammed into the top of her trousers. A piece of hot metal that was sticking out under the car tore through her shirt and into the skin of her back.

Then she was out the other side and up again. She paused and tried to think.

Either she could run out onto Bighorn Road again and maybe be seen and picked up by somebody or she could go around the garage and into the backyard. But in the road, he could see her better, and shoot or run her down. She knew the backyard very well and the grounds around it. He might not look there first, which would give her time. These thoughts shot through her brain, and then she ran toward the garage. For a terrifying few seconds she was in the open where she could easily

be seen if he was looking.

Before she dropped to her hands and knees to crawl through the lilac bushes, she glanced over her shoulder. The lights in the house were on now, and Wacey was coming out the front door. He had one hand on the screen door knob and was holding the pistol in the other. He was looking out toward the road, squinting, and she was sure he hadn't seen her vanish into the dark bushes that formed a hedge between the house and the garage.

As she weaved through the bushes toward the back--she couldn't see well but had done it so many times before--she heard him call her name. Then he called her name again.

Not really seeing but knowing, she cleared the bushes and ran across the backyard. She avoided both the light of the floodlights and the trunk of the cottonwood tree, then raced through the woodpile where the neat rows of logs had been kicked to pieces and then through the corral fence. The stall was empty and dark, and her dad's horse was gone. She pulled down a heavy horse blanket from a cross beam in the tack room and threw it over her shoulder and ran out of the stall toward the Sandrock draw and up into the foothills. She would go to the place where she once thought monsters had come from.

She heard Wacey yell her name again. He was now out on the road.

Sheridan climbed up the draw away from the house. Cactus pierced her feet, and wild rose bushes tugged at her clothes, hair, and skin as if trying to prevent her from climbing still farther, as if trying to throw her back to where she belonged. It was hard to see where she was going so she navigated blindly, using senses she didn't know she had to tell her when to turn, when to duck, and when to step over a rock. Several times, she covered her head and arms in the horse blanket to push her way through thickets that would tear her skin or trip her.

Finally, she stopped. She could go no farther. Her chest hurt from panting, and her legs and arms were too heavy to lift anymore. She sank to the ground, her back to a boulder on the side of the draw. She pulled the horse blanket around her and covered her mouth with it to muffle her racking sobs. Her mind was filled with the image of her mother on the floor. She put the fingers of the hand she had held her mom with in her mouth, and she tasted blood. And she listened, hoping she wouldn't hear Wacey coming after her.

Instead, she heard her name being called very clearly.

"Sheridan, I know you can hear me," he yelled. She figured he must now be in the backyard. His voice carried through the draw and certain words bounced back in echoes.

"I know you can hear me, Sheridan. You need to listen to me." Her head emerged from the folds of the blanket. "Sheridan, I'm really sorry about what happened.

I apologize to you and to your mom. She scared the hell out of me, and I shot before I even knew who it was. Really, believe me. Please." He sounded as if he were telling the truth, Sheridan thought.

"I called for the ambulance, and it's on the way. Your mom is going to be okay. I just talked to her, and she's going to be just fine. It looks a lot worse than it really is. She's just worried about her little girl. She needs you to come back. She really misses you. She's real worried."

But he was a good liar. He had shot her pregnant mother, and he had come after her. The last thing her mom had told her was to get away. Sheridan believed what her mom told her. A lot more than she believed Wacey Hedeman.

"Sheridan, answer me so I can tell you're okay! Your mama needs to know."

He went on like that for a while. She listened but didn't speak or move. Her breath was finally calming, and her chest didn't hurt as much. The blanket was thick and warm, and it smelled like Lizzie and the leather of her dad's saddle. It comforted her.

His voice got harsher. He was now demanding that she answer him. There was no mention of her mother now. That meant he had been lying all along, as she had supposed. He wanted to know if she had told him everything she knew about "her little friends." He had been trying to find those Miller's weasels for two straight days, and all he could find, he said, was a bunch of goddamned turds in the woodpile.

"Get your little ass down here, Sheridan. If you don't, you're going to be in bigger trouble than you ever imagined!" He sounded crazy now.

When he said that, she resolved not to move an inch. Adults could be incredibly stupid. He had almost convinced her to answer before he lost his temper.

"Okay, then," he continued. "If you aren't coming down RIGHT NOW you had better stay exactly where you are tonight."

This was new. She listened. He was shouting. His voice was getting hoarse.

"Sheridan, there are going to be a lot of people here in a little while. Lots of lights and lots of policemen. You better not even think of coming down until after they're gone. If you do, if I see you, a lot more people are going to die. You're going to be the first one, and then I'm going to finish off your mother. JUST LIKE I'M GOING TO FRY ALL OF THESE FUCKING LITTLE WEASELS!"

It was the first thing he said that she truly believed.

She looked up, and the rock wall in front of her was glowing. Orange curls of light flickered across it, and for a moment she was sure she was witnessing a miracle. Then she climbed on the boulder that she had been sitting under and looked down. She was amazed at the distance she had covered, and how clearly she could see what was going on below her.

The woodpile was burning, the red flames rolling into the cold night air. Wacey was in the backyard, bathed in the light of the fire. He kept looking up into the foothills and it appeared he was looking directly at her. But he couldn't see her up there, so far away on top of that rock.

He turned and went inside the house. It was too far away to see into the house, to see her mother.

In his pickup, Joe crested the hill on the Bighorn Road and what he saw ahead in the distance was his worst nightmare come true--something that perhaps in the past he had dreamed about, or thought about just like every father inevitably does, but something he had suppressed into a place deep in his mind. But sometimes those unthinkable possibilities, no matter how far beaten back, are unleashed at terrible moments. Like now.

His house and the road in front of it was an explosion of strobing and flashing lights. Garish blue and red emergency lights spun on the tops of Saddlestring Police Department cars and county vehicles. Orange flames rose into the clear sky behind the house, the fire so large and bright it lit up the hillside beyond.

Then, from the center of it all, a Life Flight helicopter bristling with landing lights lifted off, looking clumsy as it cleared the roof of the house, then gaining altitude once it emerged from the spoor of wood smoke that was black on black in the night sky.

For a heart-stopping moment, Joe had forgotten that his family was at Eagle Mountain. But, after assuring himself that they seemed to be nowhere nearby, he wondered what he could be seeing. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped up. The horse trailer pulled sluggishly behind him. In the few minutes it took to get to his house, a half-dozen different scenarios occurred to him: the wiring in the house had always been bad, so a short caused a fire and the Life Flight helicopter contained an injured firefighter; or a drunk hunter, mad about something, had come to his vacant house and set the woodpile aflame and gotten burned in the process; or the people who had wiped out the Miller's weasels had come after him and something had gone wrong. All of the scenarios were possible but none made any sense.

The intensity of the multiple flashing emergency lights made it nearly impossible to see where he was driving. There were vehicles blocking the driveway and lining the road in front of the house. He pulled ahead and off to the side of the road and jumped out of his pickup. He left the motor running and the door open.

Sheriff's deputies in short dark jackets and Stetson's compared notes on the front lawn. No one seemed to notice him as he approached the house. Through the front picture window, Joe could see that there were men inside, standing in the living room and the kitchen, and every light in the house was on. Joe felt he was walking through some kind of movie scene where he was invisible to everyone else in it. He saw Sheriff Barnum's hangdog face through the window talking on the

telephone.

As he opened the door to go in, Wacey suddenly blocked it. He could tell by the drained, panicked look on Waceys face that something was horribly wrong. Joe tried to step around him, but Wacey made it clear he didn't want Joe to come any farther into the house.

"Move, damn it," Joe barked.

"Joe, Marybeth's been shot."

Joe stopped. The words hit him like a hammer. Wacey reached out and put his hands on Joe's shoulders both to steady him and to keep him in front of him.

"Joe, I was driving up the road about a half hour ago and I saw there was big fire behind your house. I saw Marybeth's car out front and the door was unlocked so I went in. I found her on the kitchen floor and there's a bullet hole in the kitchen window and the backdoor was kicked in."

Joe felt as if his insides had been sucked out. "Who ..."

"We don't know." Wacey had a desperate look on his face that disturbed Joe even more.

"Is Marybeth all right? Why was she even here?"

"She's alive, but we don't know how bad it is yet. The Life Flight chopper is on its way to Billings right now. She should be in surgery within a half an hour."

Joe was staring beyond Wacey and into the house. The kitchen floor was covered with dark red blood. It looked like gallons of it. A county photographer was taking shots of the floor and the window.

"Joe?"

Joe looked back to Wacey.

"Joe, do you have any idea at all who might have done something like this? Was anybody gunning for you? Any problems in the field with hunters or anything?"

Joe shook his head no. He didn't want to spend the time it would take to tell Wacey what he had learned in the elk camp, not knowing if it could possibly have any significance with what had happened to Marybeth, "Was she alone?" Joe asked.

"Did she have any of the kids with her?"

"She was alone, thank goodness," Wacey said. "God, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I really am."

"Jesus Christ," Joe sighed.

"Absolutely by herself," Wacey added for emphasis. "But don't worry, Joe, we'll find out who did it. We'll probably have 'em by midnight. My guess is drunk hunters."

Joe nodded, not really listening. "Wacey, will you help me out here?"

"You bet, Joe."

"I need to unhitch a horse trailer and get to Billings. Will you help me unhitch it and then call my mother-in-law at Eagle Mountain and tell her what's happened? I'll call her and the kids from the hospital as soon as I get there and find out what's what."

Wacey agreed, and the two of them went out to the road where Joe's pickup was.

Wacey asked Joe if he was sure he was okay to drive, and Joe mumbled that he was. He was still shaken from the sight of all of that blood on the kitchen floor. Marybeth's blood.

They unhitched the horse trailer from the truck and lowered the tongue to the ground. Joe asked Wacey to corral Lizzie and feed and water her.

"Do you want me to take that saddle, too?" Wacey asked, shining his flashlight in the back of the pickup on the saddle with its bulging saddlebags and the butt of the Wingmaster shotgun still in the

scabbard.

"No," Joe said. "That stays with me."

Joe ignored Wacey when he said he would be "more than glad" to take the saddle to the corrals.

As he pulled out into the road, in his rearview mirror, Joe could see Wacey leading his horse across the road and watching Joe's pickup drive away.

There had been something in Waceys eyes, Joe thought, some glint that made him look just a bit unhinged and had made Joe want to keep the saddle and the things in it. Joe wondered why Wacey seemed so personally affected by what happened to Marybeth. Either Wacey was deeper than Joe gave him credit for--or something was going on.

Joe tried to erase the feeling he had, but it wouldn't go away. Maybe he was getting paranoid. Maybe finding that killing field and thinking about the circumstances that led up to it was making him suspicious. Maybe he just wanted to get mad at someone because he felt guilty about not being able to prevent what had happened to his wife.

He drove through Saddlestring, through four straight red lights, and out the other side. Billings, Montana, was an hour and a half away, an hour if he drove 100 miles an hour. He tried to imagine what Marybeth was thinking, and he tried to send his thoughts to her up there somewhere in the air probably right over the Wyoming/Montana border. He told her he loved her. He told her to be stronger than hell and hang in there. He told her he would be with her very soon. He told her that she couldn't die, because if she did, he didn't think he had the strength and ability to hold their perfect little family together by himself, without his anchor to the planet.

His hands strangled the steering wheel. His legs trembled strangely. He drove even faster.

***

Surgery was on the third floor. He headed up there, ignoring the shouts of the receptionist to leave his holster at the desk and sign in. The elevator was busy, so he took the stairs two at a time and

burst out into the third-floor hallway breathing hard. He approached the doorway of the operating room just as a heavyset woman in a green scrub suit emerged from it, held up a rubber gloved palm, and said, "Stop!"

"I'm the husband," he said. "My name is Joe Pickett."

The woman said she would get the surgeon but only if Joe would stay exactly where he was.

"I'll stay here for about a minute," Joe said. "If he isn't out here by then, I'm coming in."

The nurse looked him over, sizing him up. "I'll get the doctor," she said.

Joe paced. Through the thick windows covered by blinds, he tried to see what was going on in the OR. He could see movement and light; a half-dozen people in green suits like the nurse wore were standing side-by-side with their backs to him. Marybeth must be on the table in front of them. What were they doing to her? The thought of his wife in that room with all of those unfamiliar people around her disturbed him. Was she bleeding? Broken? Crying?

Joe had never liked hospitals. They brought out something mean in him. He had made an effort all of his life to avoid going in them. Even when Marybeth had been in one to have Sheridan and Lucy, he struggled with-himself to be in the room with her when she delivered. It wasn't the blood or illness or weakness that turned his stomach. It was his memories of being in a hospital when he was very young, visiting his mother after she fell down the stairs. He must have been around six years old at the time. Looking out at him from her hospital bed, her face had been mottled and blue, her bottom lip was split and stitched back together, and her arms were in casts. He remembered how the nurses would smile at him like they were sorry for him instead of his mother, and how they would look at each other when he told them she had fallen down the stairs while he was sleeping. It was much later before he learned that she had never had the accident, that it was the result of a drunken fight with his father outside of the Elks Club. Nevertheless, he hated the forced quiet, the antiseptic smell, the artifice of the nurses who patted his head and looked at each other, and the doctors who thought of themselves as Olympian gods. He shivered when he heard the sounds of nurse's shoes squeaking down the hall as they walked.

A short, wiry doctor came out of the operating room and walked directly to him. The man's scrub suit was flecked with dark blood and his latex gloves were tinted pink from being immersed in it. The doctor slipped his mask down to his neck. Joe introduced himself.

"You may want to sit down," the doctor said by way of introduction.

"I'm okay," Joe said calmly. He tried to brace himself for the absolute worst.

"She's stable but still in danger," the doctor said bluntly. "The baby is lost.

It might have been possible to save him, but it wouldn't have been the wisest thing to do considering his condition. We had to make a choice between saving your wife and saving a very damaged fetus."

Joe stepped slowly backwards until he could rest against the wall. Otherwise, he was afraid he might slump over. The moment passed.

"Are you all right?" the doctor asked.

Joe couldn't think of anything to say, so he nodded that he understood.

"The bullet entered below her sternum, glanced off of her rib cage, and exited her lower back. It may have injured her spine. We don't know how extensive that injury will be."

Joe appreciated the fact that the doctor was being absolutely straight with him. But he struggled with the magnitude of what he was being told. His baby--his first son--was lost, and his wife might not be able to walk again.

"When can I see her?" Joe asked, his voice a whisper.

The doctor sighed. He started to say something soothing and procedural but the look in Joe's eyes made him reconsider. Then: "They're finishing up in there now. She's sleeping. They should be done and have her back in bed in intensive care within the hour. You can see her then, but don't expect her to be awake."

Joe nodded. His mouth was dry, and it hurt to swallow. The doctor approached him and put his hand on Joe's shoulder.

"There's no easy way to tell you these things," the doctor said. "Be strong, and love her back to health when she's out of here. That's the best advice I can give you."

Joe thanked him, but he really wanted to tell him to go away. He didn't want to be seen by anyone right now. He didn't want nurses clucking over him like they had when his mother was in the hospital. The doctor seemed to sense what Joe was thinking and went back into the operating room.

Joe turned and stumbled down the hallway until he found the men's bathroom. He went in it, turned out the lights, and wailed for the first time in his life.

***

Wacey knew just enough about the telephone lines in rural Twelve Sleep County to be dangerous. What little he knew he had learned from a couple of U.S. West telephone company engineers who had once needed his help. They were up from Denver to do some repairs and upgrading of the microwave station that served Saddlestring when they had run into a cow moose who wouldn't let them near the building. The microwave station was on the summit of Wolf Mountain. Between the microwave dish and the metal shack, they said, stood the moose. They showed Wacey the dent in the door of their pickup from her first charge. They had never experienced anything like it before.

Wacey had explained to them that moose couldn't see very well at all, and when panicked, they sometimes charged at whatever blur threatened them. He said it was likely that the moose had a calf somewhere up there in the bushes near the station and she was protecting her young.

He had driven to the summit with the engineers, but they never saw the cow moose. What they found instead was the stillborn body of her calf, still warm, the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around its neck. The engineers had probably appeared just after the calf had been born, when the cow was crazed with rage.

Wacey stood in the front yard of Joe Pickett's yard and looked up at the lone red light on the top of Wolf Mountain where the microwave station was. He had volunteered to stay at the crime scene until morning when Sheriff Barnum would send McLanahan or someone to relieve him. Under the front porch light, he looked at his wristwatch. Then he looked back at the mountain behind the house, where he was certain Sheridan was hiding.

While he was on the summit that spring, the engineers showed Wacey the circuitry inside of the shack and the thousands of telephone wires that fed into the main trunk line. He had noted where the trunk line emerged from the station to begin its descent into Saddlestring. He had thought at the time that a single high powered rifle bullet into the base of the trunk line would disable the telephone system for the entire valley. It might take days to repair, but Wacey was concerned only about tonight.

He had a .30-06 in his gun rack. He would chance it that Sheridan wouldn't even know he had left.

***

It was 11 o'clock but seemed much later when Joe put coins into the telephone in the hospital lobby to call Missy Vankeuran. He had silently rehearsed to himself what he was going to say, how he was going to tell Sheridan and Lucy what had happened and try not to scare them into hysterics. It was time to be calm. It was time to be fatherly.

It took a few moments of ringing before Joe realized he had absently dialed the telephone number to his house on Bighorn Road. He found the Eagle Mountain number in his notebook and dialed. While he did, he wondered how it was possible that Barnum had already cleared the scene and left no one to watch the house.

Maybe Barnum was incompetent after all. Maybe Wacey was right. Maybe Wacey would be a welcome addition as sheriff.

His mother-in-law picked up the telephone on the second ring. Her voice sounded angry and cold.

"Yes?"

"Missy, this is Joe."

First there was a pause. Then: "Oh, hello, Joe. You surprised me. I was expecting it to be Marybeth." Her reaction caught him off guard.

Joe was confused. Then he realized that no one had contacted her yet. But Wacey had said he would do it ... "I called your house over and over at dinner time," Missy said, speaking fast. "It was busy every time. Every time. Then all of the sudden there is no one there. Marybeth said she would be home in an hour. That was four hours ago, Joe. My dinner is ruined!"

"Missy ..."

"I haven't cooked, actually cooked in ages. It took me all afternoon to make my famous lasagna. Marybeth used to love it. She said she was looking forward to it. I'm starting to think staying with her isn't such a good idea. For either of us, Joe ..."

To Joe it sounded like Missy had a good start on the wine she must have had planned for dinner. He was angry.

"Missy, goddammit, will you stop talking?"

Silence.

"Missy, I'm calling from the hospital in Billings."

Silence.

"Marybeth has been shot. Someone shot her when she went to the house. They don't know who did it. The doctors say she's going to make it, but the baby isn't ..."

There was more silence, and he realized that the line was dead. He wasn't sure she had heard any of it. It didn't seem possible she could have hung up on him.

He dialed again. There was no ringing. He dialed again, and a recording said that the number he was calling was not in service at this time. He tried Sheriff Barnum's office. The line was dead as

well.

***

Joe couldn't sit. He couldn't stand still. He tried several times to read a magazine from the stack in the waiting room, but found he couldn't concentrate on the words or even remember what the article was about. He approached the nurses' station to check if he could see Marybeth yet.

The nurse was polite but annoyed. She pointed at the clock on her desk and reminded him he had asked her the same question not ten minutes before. Joe could not recall time ever moving so slowly. It would still be at least a half an hour before Marybeth would be wheeled out of the operating room.

He tried three more times to reach Missy and Barnum. Then he tried Sheriff Barnum's office again. He couldn't believe his bad luck. The phone lines all over the county were apparently down.

So he wandered the hallways, looking at his wristwatch every few minutes. The halls were all the same: heavily painted light blue cinder-block walls, dimmed fluorescent lighting, occasional black marks from gurney wheels on the tile floors, nurses at every station looking him over from behind their desks. He located the room where Marybeth would be. Her name was written on a card outside the door and the ink was still wet. She would be alone inside, he noted. She wouldn't have a roommate. He walked down the hall to the maternity ward and heard babies crying. He found himself staring at a young mother still plump and flushed from delivery. She was cradling a tiny red baby in her arms, waiting for a nurse to wheel her to her room. The scene pole axed him. In a daze, he ascended a set of stairs to the next level.

Joe wandered aimlessly but conveyed a sense of purpose that he didn't really have, and no one stopped him. When he glanced into the rooms he was passing, he saw there were older people on this floor. People waiting to get better or die. A television set was on and Jay Leno was interviewing someone.

A Billings police officer stood casually at the nurses' station and leaned on the counter. He didn't give Joe a second glance as Joe walked past. The policeman was talking in low tones to an attractive nurse who seemed interested in what he was saying but was feigning boredom. Joe noticed the policeman's empty chair near a room at the end of the hall, and he walked past it. The card on the wall of the room read C. Lidgard.

Joe took a few steps before it hit him. He stopped and looked down the hall over his shoulder. The policeman had his back to Joe, and he could hear the nurse giggle. Joe hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked into the room. He eased the door shut behind him.

Clyde Lidgard lay in the dark room illuminated by a small bulb mounted in the headboard. Joe hardly recognized him. Lidgard looked like he was 80 years old and was little more than a skeleton. His skin was waxy and yellow and harshly wrinkled. Webs of tubes sprang from his arms looking like the white roots of a neglected potato. His head was turned on the pillow toward the door, and the light from the bulb infused his feathery silver hair with a glow.

Joe stared at Clyde Lidgard's face as if willing him to wake up out of his coma.

"Tell me what you know, Clyde," Joe said. "Just tell me what you know."

When Clyde Lidgard's eyes slowly opened, Joe stood riveted to the floor.

Lidgard's eyes were rheumy and caked with mucus. Joe wasn't sure Lidgard could even see out of them. It didn't seem possible that Lidgard was actually awake or had any idea that Joe was in the room. Maybe Lidgard normally did this while he slept.

"Can you hear me, Clyde?" Joe asked softly. He half-expected the nurse and police officer to burst in at any moment and throw him out.

Lidgard's lips pursed as if he were sucking on a candy. "You're dry. Do you want some water?" Joe said, pouring some from a plastic pitcher into a small paper cup. He held the cup to Lidgard's

lips, and Lidgard drank. His eyes followed Joe's movements.

"Do you know who I am?" Joe asked quietly.

"Warden." The response was so weak that Joe almost didn't hear it.

"Warden." Joe replaced the pitcher and bent over Lidgard's face. He smelled the odor of decay on Lidgard's breath. It was the same smell a deer or an elk had after it had been shot.

"That's right," Joe said.

"I'm Game Warden Joe Pickett from the Saddlestring District. You need to tell me what happened up there in that elk camp."

Lidgard's eyes closed momentarily then opened again. "I'm going to die now," Lidgard said.

"Not before you tell me about the elk camp," Joe persisted. "Not until you tell me about the Miller's weasels."

There was a tiny reaction on the corner's of Clyde Lidgard's mouth, as if he were trying to smile.

"I took some good pictures of them weasels," Lidgard replied. "But I never got to see if they turned out. Instead, I died."

Joe gave Clyde Lidgard some more water. It was still quiet in the hallway.

"You talked for a while and cleared your conscience. A huge weight lifted off of you," Joe said.

"And then you died, feeling much better about yourself."

"I did?" Lidgard asked.

"Starting now," Joe said.

When Joe Came out of the room, the policeman was still leaning over the nurses' counter, and Clyde Lidgard was dead.

***

The first thig Joe noticed as Marybeth was rolled out of the operating room was that, compared to Clyde Lidgard, she looked remarkably healthy. He found her hand under the sheet and squeezed it as he walked alongside the gurney. The emotion he felt when he looked at her flat bandaged belly brought tears to his eyes.

They made him let go of her hand for a moment while they situated her bed in the room, but when the nurses moved to set up the IV bottle, he went back to her. They told him they had just given her some powerful sedatives and that she would be asleep until morning. But the drugs hadn't kicked in completely yet, because for a moment, she awakened.

"You're going to be all right," Joe said, forcing a smile. "You're going to make it and be just fine."

She seemed to be looking to him for some kind of reassurance. He hoped he was providing it.

"Marybeth, do you know who did this?"

"I couldn't see. All I know is that it was a man."

"Is there anything you can tell me?"

"What about my baby?" Her voice was thick.

Joe shook his head.

She turned her away, her eyes closed tightly as she cried. He squeezed her hands. Suddenly, Marybeth was looking at him, frantically searching his face. Her eyes were wide.

"Where's Sheridan?" she asked. "I told her to run."

PART SIX

Like blind men building a mechanical elephant, each of the players picked up a hammer and wrench and, working separately and often secretly, fashioned gears, soldered wires, and pounded sheet metal. One built a leg, another the tail, a third the trunk. Then suddenly this creation, like a dreadful android, sprung to life, catching its builders in its gears as it lurched, uncontrolled, toward unknown destinations, without purpose, limit, or remorse.

--Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood, 1995, commentary on the creation and unintended consequences of the Endangered Species Act

Sheridan had never been so cold, so hungry, or so alone.

Once the fire down in the woodpile had died out, utter darkness had descended over the mountain. She rolled herself into a tight ball against the base of the boulder and tried to tuck the horse blanket around her body, but it was too thick and too small to cover her completely. The boulder, the dirt, and the air were all cold. She wished she had brought the backpack with her because it was filled with scraps of food. This was the first time she had ever missed dinner.

She wished she could do something routine, like change into her pajamas or brush her teeth, so she could at least feel kind of normal. She didn't know what time it was, but she knew it was late. There was no moon and the cold, hard stars were relentless.

Night animals were out. Something it sounded like a dog by the way it walked had come down the Sandrock draw from above but had stopped when it either smelled or sensed her. With an abrupt thump-thump-thump, it had reversed course and crashed back through the brush up the mountain.

It had scared her at the time, because for a moment she thought it was Wacey. But she was pretty sure it had been a coyote. There were lots of them up here, according to her Dad. They had eaten her puppy and her kitten, after all.

She had slept for a while, but she didn't know how long. A sharp crack--a gunshot from somewhere up in the mountains-had jarred her awake a few minutes ago. She listened for more shots but heard none. She crawled on top of the boulder again and looked down. The woodpile, now coals and ashes, glowed deep red. The lights were still on in the house but she couldn't see the man moving around inside or out. She would feel better if she knew where he was. For a moment, she thought

about going back down.

She wished she had some way to defend herself if he found her. She assessed what she had--the horse blanket, a barrette, two pennies from her pockets. She didn't even have a stick. If she were in a movie, she would be able to fashion something clever out of those items to beat the bad guy. But this wasn't a movie, and she wasn't that clever. She was cold--and scared.

Then she saw the headlights coming down from Wolf Mountain. She watched them as they crossed the river and came down Bighorn Road, The pickup pulled back into the driveway at the front of the house. She heard a door slam but couldn't see who had been driving.

After a few moments, she saw someone in the house pass by the back

picture window. The porch light came on and Wacey stepped out. He was

carrying a rifle.

"Yoo-Hoo! Sheridan? Are you still with us?"

Sheridan began to cry. For a moment, she had thought the driver was her father.

"Answer me, sweetheart, so I know you're okay!" His voice was friendly, as it always was when he started out.

She was crying hard now, uncontrollably. It was as if something had released inside of her.

"It's nice and warm inside, Sheridan. I've got some hot chocolate warming up on the stove. Hot chocolate with itty-bitty marshmallows that I found in the cupboard. Mmmmmmm! You've got to be getting a little chilly up there."

She could not stop crying. She covered her face in her hands. For a few moments, there was silence from below.

Then: "I can heeeeear you. I can hear you up there. Stop crying, or you'll make me feel bad. I don't want to drink all of this hot chocolate by myself."

She scrambled down from the boulder. As suddenly as she had started crying, she had stopped. She was horrified that Wacey had heard her crying. Now he knew for sure where she was.

"You sound pathetic, Sheridan. Why don't you come on down so I don't have to come up and get you?"

She pushed her way around the side of the boulder through a juniper bush so she could see down into the backyard again. He was still standing in the light of the floods. He had raised the rifle and was trying to see her through the scope but he was looking in the wrong direction, somewhere off to her left. Maybe he didn't know where she was after all. Maybe her sobs had echoed and confused him.

Either way, he wasn't coming up after her. Yet. It would be different when the sun came up.

***

It was three in the morning in Saddlestring, Wyoming, when Joe Pickett roared in from Billings. The four stoplights flashed amber, and no one was about. The last of the bars were closed, and it was too early for morning activities yet. The town was as dead as it would ever be.

Joe drove straight down Main Street and pulled around the corner from Barrett's Pharmacy. He stopped and turned off the motor and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He expected his eyes to glow red, as if he were some kind of demon or alien. He was so tired, so drained. He had not slept in two nights and had not eaten since breakfast, now almost 20 hours ago.

And he was absolutely enraged. He knew it wouldn't be long before he would explode. The only question remaining was how many people would

be involved in the blast.

Dim lights were on inside the pharmacy and Joe pressed his face to the window and looked in. In the parking lot, he had seen the pickup with a magnetic sign on the door that read Hans' Janitorial Service. Hans was in there all right, pushing a vacuum through the aisle that featured magazines and paperback books. Joe rapped on the window, but Hans didn't look up. He couldn't hear Joe over the vacuum. Joe hit the window again so hard he risked smashing it or tripping the alarm. But Hans, who has half deaf anyway, didn't respond.

Joe took his flashlight from his belt and shined it through the window into Hans' face. Hans twitched and absently rubbed his mouth, not yet aware of what was annoying him. When he finally looked up, he jumped and nearly stumbled back into the bestsellers. Joe turned the flashlight on himself so Hans could see him, and he held his badge to the window. Hans stood thinking it over, his chin in his hand, then motioned Joe around to the backdoor.

"I probably shouldn't let you in," Hans said as he unlocked the door in the alley.

"Bill Barrett told me never under any circumstances to let anyone in the store after hours, even him. There's all kinds of narcotics and stuff in the pharmacy."

Joe thanked him and brushed by.

"It's official state Game and Fish Department business," Joe answered. "It's lucky you were here."

Hans grunted and locked the door after them. "I gotta tell Bill Barrett about this."

"That's fine," Joe said, walking through the store to the photo counter.

"Hope you don't mind if I vacuum," Hans said. "I went hunting with Jack this afternoon, and I'm running late. Got a buck, though. Finally. Missed a nicer one. You can ask Jack about it."

"Hans, I've got to ask you something." Hans stopped and stared at Joe. His hands shook. Joe could tell that Hans was trying to recall anything he might have done recently that could be a violation of the Game and Fish regulations.

"Don't worry," Joe assured him. "You haven't done anything wrong that I'm aware of."

Hans continued to shake.

"Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I drove up on you and Jack after you got that pronghorn buck?"

Hans nodded his head yes.

"You asked me about whether or not I had heard of an endangered species in the mountains. Do you remember that?"

Hans nodded again.

"What do you know about it?" Joe asked. His voice was firm.

"Nothing," Hans said. "Honestly. We just heard rumors. You know, bar talk. Somebody said somebody else had found something up there."

"Who found it?"

"Somebody said it was Clyde Lidgard," Hans said.

"Vacuum away," Joe said, waving his hand. He slipped behind the counter and slid out the oversize drawer that held envelopes of developed pictures. The envelopes where alphabetized by name. Joe quickly leafed through them, finding the packets filed under "I ." He found Lawton, Livingston, Layborn, Lane, and Lomiller. But he didn't find what he was looking for. Across the store, Hans fired up the vacuum cleaner. Joe slammed the drawer shut and said, "Shit!" But Hans was oblivious.

There was a stupidly simple reason, Joe thought, why Clyde Lidgard had no photos in his trailer from the two months leading up to the outfitter murders: he had not picked them up yet from the pharmacy after they'd been developed. But somebody apparently had. Maybe, Joe thought with a grimace, he was about ten steps behind everybody else just as he had been since this whole thing had started.

But maybe not.

He pulled open The drawer again and went to the back. Beyond "XYZ" he found a tab file that said "Unclaimed." In the file there were ten envelopes. Three of those were slated for pickup by Clyde Lidgard.

Joe ripped the first envelope open and slid the photos out onto the counter.

They looked familiar: blurred, off-kilter snapshots of trees, clouds, Clyde's penis, a manhole cover. Then he saw what he was looking for. There were dozens of them.

***

The Stockman's Bar had been closed since two, but Joe drove by it just in case before he proceeded to the Holiday Inn at the edge of town. He parked under the motel's registration sign, clamped on his hat, and went in.

Like all night clerks and auditors, the man behind the desk was jumpy. He wore a greasy ponytail and thick horn-rimmed glasses. His eyes, magnified through the lenses, were enormous. He slammed a Penthouse magazine shut in a night auditing folder but not quickly enough that Joe didn't see it as he approached.

Joe introduced himself and showed his badge. He said a package was supposed to be sent to him at the hotel in care of Vern Dunnegan. He said he had tried to call to check on it but couldn't get through.

"Phones are out all over town," the night clerk said. "We can't get in or out."

Joe watched carefully as the clerk used his finger to go down the registry. His finger stopped on room 238.

"I can't see a note for any package," he said.

"Can you check please?" he asked.

"It should have come in today. Maybe it's still in the back."

The night clerk clucked to himself and excused himself for a minute. The door behind the desk swung closed after him. Quickly, Joe jumped up and sat on the counter. He reached across the night clerk's desk and slid out the drawer. There were two extra keys for room 238.

Joe took one of them.

Joe scanned the small office as he waited impatiently for the night clerk to return without a package. He noted the small plastic sign stuck to the wall under the clock, informing all guests that for their convenience, their room key would open the back door of the motel as well as the door to their rooms. The man finally reappeared, apologized, and Joe said good night. Once outside, Joe jumped into the pickup, wheeled around to the side wing of the motel and parked near the exit door. Using the key, he entered and took the staircase steps two at a time.

Two-thirty-four, two-thirty-six, two-thirty-eight. No one in the hallway. Joe pulled the Velcro safety strap from around the hammer of his .357 magnum and turned the key in the lock. He stepped inside and shut the door after him. No lights were on.

Joe stood still for a moment, waiting until the objects in the room gradually took shape around him. It was a suite with a wet bar and some stools. A dark couch with clothes piled on it. Buckaroo prints mounted on the walls. A large-screen television. Two interior doors that he guessed led either to the bathroom or to the bedroom. Someone coughed, and he turned toward the room on the left. He walked across the carpet and eased the door open.

It smelled of stale bourbon and cigarette smoke inside. He couldn't see anyone, but he could sense there was more than one person in the bed. Pointing the revolver toward the bed with his right hand, he searched the wall in back of him with his left for the light switch.

Table lamps on either side of the bed came on, and Joe swung the revolver around until the front sight was squarely on Vern Dunnegan's sweaty forehead. Vern had thrashed in the sheets when the lights came on but was now sitting up in bed staring dumbly at the big black hole of the muzzle. An older, skinny woman with streaked blond hair clutched the blanket to her mouth. Her eyes were smudged with liner on the outside and road-mapped with red inside. She muffled a squeal.

"Joe, for Christ's sake," Vern said, his voice choked with sleep and anger. "What in the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for you," Joe said. "And I found you."

The woman was beside herself. She was trembling and looking from Joe to Vern.

"What's your name, ma'am?"Joe asked. He recognized her as a barmaid at the Stockman's Bar.

"Evelyn Wolters."

"Evelyn," Joe said. "If you don't get out of that bed right now, you're going to have Vern Dunnegan's brain splattered all over you."

Evelyn Wolters shrieked and dove out from the covers. She had long pendulous breasts that swung from side to side as she scooped up her clothing from the floor.

"Evelyn, do you know Sheriff Barnum?" Joe asked.

She nodded her head yes very quickly.

"Good. Then get your clothes on and get in your car and drive over to his house as soon as you can. Tell him to get out to Joe Pickett's house right away with every deputy he can find. Can you do that?"

Evelyn said she could.

"Aren't you going to check with me?" Vern asked her, thoroughly disgusted.

Joe stepped aside so she could run past. She didn't reply to Vern as she left the room. Vern and Joe stared at each other in silence, only the sounds of Evelyn Wolters getting dressed in a hurry--grunts punctuated with the snapping of elastic--breaking the quiet. Vern's face was flushed, and his eyes were narrowed into slits. Joe had never seen him so angry.

The door slammed in the front room, and Evelyn was gone.

"Joe, what the fuck is going on here? You don't really want to do this. Joe? Do you? This isn't like you at all."

Joe thumbed back the hammer on the Smith & Wesson. The cylinder turned from an empty chamber to one filled with a hollowpoint bullet. Little muscles in Vern's temples started to throb.

"Well, Vern, I don't know about that," Joe said, his voice betraying his rage.

"Maybe you just haven't seen me on a night when my wife gets shot, my baby son dies, and one of my daughters is missing."

Vern shook his head. His famous chuckle rolled out.

"Joe, you don't think I had anything at all to do with any of that, do you? I was closing down the Stockman with Evelyn when one of the local boys who'd been out at your place came in and told me about Marybeth being shot. He said Wacey told him to come find me and tell me what had happened out at the Pickett house. Soon after that, Evelyn and I packed it up and came here." Vern paused and shot Joe a look that was both petulant and accusatory.

"Frankly, Joe, I don't know how you could even imply that I might have been involved in all this stuff that you've been going on about."

"Shut up, Vern. You're so deep into this you'll never get out."

"Joe, I ..."

"SHUT UP!" Joe barked. His finger tightened on the trigger--Vern saw it and even though his mouth was still open, no sound came out.

"Here," Joe said, tossing the envelopes with Clyde's photos in them on the bedspread. Vern was confused until he shook one set of the photos out. He flipped through each of them, his stubby fingers snapping each photo down on the bed as if he were dealing cards.

"They're lousy pictures," Joe continued. "Just like all of Clyde Lidgard's work. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't even know that all of those brown, furry things sticking out of the ground were the last Miller's weasels on earth."

Vern returned the photos to the first envelope and took out the next set.

"Of course, the negatives are somewhere else so don't even consider that option," Joe said.

Vern seemed to get smaller in the bed as he looked through the photos. A look of utter defeat passed over his features.

"Now I know the majority of these photos are so bad you can't recognize anything in them. But Clyde did manage to take some pretty good ones of you and Wacey up there in the woods. In one you can even see a package of M-forty-four cartridges sticking out of your knapsack."

Vern neatly put the photos away, keeping his head down. When he raised it, he looked wounded.

"Where did you find all of this?" Vern asked. "How did you know where to look?"

"Barrett's Pharmacy," Joe said. "Clyde Lidgard told me all about it. He told me everything."

"Clyde Lidgard?"

"I'm not here to talk," Joe said. "You are the one who needs to talk. But right now, Vern, you have about twenty seconds to get dressed because we're going to walk out of here to go find my daughter."

***

Joe drove out of town on the Bighorn Road with his right hand on the steering wheel and his left hand on his lap holding the .357 Magnum, still cocked, aimed at Vern's big gut. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east, and the stars were not as brilliant as they had been. It was a cold, clear morning and there was no other traffic on the roads. Joe felt like he and Vern were alone in a world of their own making.

They were headed back toward Joe's house. Joe figured that if Marybeth had told Sheridan to run, there was a chance his daughter might still be somewhere not too far away from the house. It was a place to start anyway.

Vern wore a pair of baggy sweatpants, a T-shirt, slippers, and a bathrobe. Joe had not given him any more time to dress. When Vern had opened the closet to get his clothes, Joe had seen the butt of a handgun on the top shelf. Joe had ordered Vern to close the damned door and put on something from the dresser.

"I could use a drink right now," Vern said. "That would help."

"Shut up."

"I'm really sorry this turned out the way it did, Joe. I'm sorry you had to even get involved in it."

"Shut up."

"I'm an entrepreneur," Vern said, his voice rising. "I'm terribly misunderstood. I'm an endangered species just like you. I'm sorry about not being able to give you that good job when you finally wanted it. Especially now that it's available again. I bet you didn't know that, did you?"

Joe snorted. Vern just kept trying, Joe thought. He didn't quit.

"It's hard to believe how this all turned out," Vern moaned. "How screwed up everything got."

"Speaking of screwed, did Les Etbauer at headquarters owe you one?"

"He still owes me a couple," Vern sighed.

"I got him that cushy job and covered for him a couple of times when he was too drunk to function."

Joe grunted. He had thought it must have been something like that.

"A lot of people owe me," Vern said. "Some of those favors could be called in on your behalf, if you would just ease up on me a little bit. We don't have to be on opposite sides, here."

Vern looked over as if to gauge if Joe had softened some. "Joe, what I'm saying here is that we could either get you your old job back or you could work for Inter West Your choice. I can call Etbauer if you want me to. Even Wacey could hire you if I told him to. You've got lots of options, Joe. We really don't have to go through with all of this."

"Shut up, Vern," Joe gritted out, through clenched teeth.

"In fact, Joe, you owe me, too. How do you think you got the job after me? Do you realize how many guys wanted this? Wade, from Pinedale. Charley Gardener over in Rock Springs--"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Christ, Joe," Vern whined. "You could at least be civil."

The explosion of the pistol in the closed cab of the pickup was deafening, and the only thing louder than the ringing in Joe's ears was the high-pitched cursing of Vern as he searched himself frantically for the wound. There was a now a hole in the truck door the size of a quarter, just a few inches from Vern's belly.

They drove in silence for a few moments. The truck smelted sharply of cordite.

It also smelled of urine because Vern had wet himself.

"How did Wacey get involved in this?" Joe asked calmly.

"Jesus, this is really embarrassing," Vern said, looking down in his lap. He clutched his thighs with his hands to keep his legs from shaking.

"How did Wacey get involved in this?"

Vern rubbed his face and sighed.

"Getting Wacey in this deal was the single most stupid fucking thing I ever did. But he was the one who told me about that idiot Clyde Lidgard. He said Lidgard had talked to him about some little creatures he saw up in the canyon. Wacey knew about the pipeline, of course, and he had heard about Miller's weasels just like everybody else had. He told Clyde to keep it a secret, that it was some big government secret that just he and Clyde could know about. Clyde liked that shit. Then Wacey told me about it."

"So you and Wacey and Clyde went up there and wiped out the weasels," Joe said.

"But unfortunately you didn't wipe them all out, and Ote Keeley and his buddies found what was left."

Vern nodded. Joe thought Vern figured he had nothing more to lose by talking.

"Ote must have hoped that if he delivered a Miller's weasel to you that you would drop the charges on him," Vern said. "That was how you got involved in this whole stupid fucking mess."

Joe grunted.

"I always thought of you and Wacey as my boys," Vern said, his voice cracking. "My proteges. Wacey was always a little hotheaded, but he was determined and he was tough. You were the straight arrow. A little slow at times and you fucked up now and then, but basically you were a stand-up kind of guy. Now look what's happened: Wacey has gone over the edge and you're pointing a gun at me. I'm disappointed, Joe, at the way things turned out. How did they ever go so wrong?"

"Who killed the outfitters?" Joe asked.

Vern sighed, rocking his head back as if he were in pain.

"Wacey killed the outfitters. Then he killed Clyde. He's a goddamned lunatic hothead. He likes to be the one in control. I had no idea he could be like that. That was never supposed to happen with the outfitters. He said they were drunk when he rode up on them, and they showed him a couple of the weasels they had dug up and they mouthed off. Wacey said one of 'em went for a rifle."

"So Wacey told Clyde Lidgard to stay up there and guard the camp until we showed up?"

Vern nodded.

"I wondered why Wacey slept so hard the night before we went into that camp," Joe said. "And how he could just walk right up to that camp like he owned the place. It's because he had spent the night before that up there and he knew exactly what we were going to find."

"Wacey made sure Clyde got shot," Vern confirmed.

"What was in it for Wacey?"

Vern slumped against the door of the truck. It was as if every question knocked him farther down.

"He wanted in the worst way to be the sheriff, if you can believe that. He wanted to be the big shot."

"I believe it."

"I told Wacey I had some things on Barnum that would make Barnum drop out of the race. Barnum, back in the old days, liked Indian women. He used to hit on them when they were drunk and brought into jail. He's got a couple of grown kids on the reservation he pays support for. Nobody knew that but him and me. And eventually Wacey. That was part of the deal before it went so sour.

"That's how it started," Vern said, his voice small. "All I wanted to do was make a lot of money and all Wacey wanted was to be the sheriff. All I wanted were the big bucks I know I deserve after all of those years of working for the state. I was so close, too. The clearances were issued and that pipeline was just humming toward Saddlestring. But things got out of hand because of Wacey.

"All I ever wanted was a ton of money. Then Wacey went fucking nuts trying to cover up everything. The more he tried to cover it up, the worse it got. I warned him off of going after your daughter, but he was absolutely convinced that she knew about some living Miller's weasels. He kept saying if he could find those weasels and get rid of them that this whole thing would be over."

Joe had suddenly lost his concentration.

"What?" he yelled.

Vern looked scared. "You didn't know about your daughter?"

"Know WHAT about her?" Joe quickly switched the revolver from his left to his right hand and shoved the barrel into Vern's nose, pinning Vern's head against the passenger window.

"Jesus, Joe!" Vern honked.

"WHAT?"

"That Wacey thought she was keeping a couple of them as pets!" Vern said his eyes fixed on the gun barrel. "That's why he figured out a way to get you people out of your house and up to Eagle Mountain--so he could find those weasels. He told me this morning that he was going to head up to your place today to look for them."

Anguished, Joe pushed harder on the pistol.

"Wacey went after my daughter?"

"Please, Joe ... ," Vern pleaded, eyes bulging and blinking.

"Did Wacey shoot Marybeth, Vern? Did he? Is that what happened? He was up there looking for weasels and instead he fucking shot my wife?"

Vern started to sputter out a reply but Joe, already knowing the answer, cut him off.

"That son-of-a-bitch was my friend," he said, more to himself than to Vern.

Joe thought about how Wacey had blocked Joe's entrance into his own house earlier and how he had hustled Joe back out onto the road. Wacey had told the cop to find Vern and tell him Marybeth had been shot. Wacey had made a point of telling Joe he would stay and watch over everything. Wacey had seemed unnerved.

Wacey.

"Shit," Joe said, finally looking at the road and jerking the truck back in his lane after it had wandered. "Sheridan was right after all. There are monsters out there."

***

When dawn breaks over the Bighorns, it breaks hard and fast and with cascades of bright sunlight gushing over the mountains like a broken dam. A shaft of sunlight burst through the windshield of the pickup. Joe pulled over in a stand of mountain ash about a half a mile from his house. He shut off the motor and stuffed the keys in his pocket.

"Get out," he told Vern. "We're going to walk the rest of the way. I don't want him hearing us drive up. Shut the door easy."

Vern started to walk down the road bed, and Joe waved him into the ditch on the shoulder. Joe holstered his pistol and pulled his shotgun from behind the seat. He pumped a shell into the chamber. In his slippers, Vern gingerly stepped down from the road into the ditch. Frosted reeds in the ditch lit up with morning sun, and Vern's feet crunched through a skin of ice.

"This water's cold," Vern said.

Joe nodded and motioned with the shotgun for Vern to start walking.

"I look like a clown," Vern mumbled. Already his sweatpants were wet from the frost. A red "O" from the muzzle of Joe's revolver was still visible on Vern's nose.

"You are a clown," Joe said. "Now stay in the ditch and don't say anything when we get close. The

only way to keep your life is to help me find my daughter."

Vern moaned. "Then we're through, right?"

"Then we're through."

Neither told the other what they meant by that.

***

Sheridan untwisted herself from beneath the horse blanket. The sun was coming up. She was surprised to see that the blanket was covered with frost. She stood and tried to rub some feeling into her legs, arms, and face. She was no longer hungry-she was beyond that. The night had been long and terrible. She was dirty and she felt featherlight. Everything hurt. There seemed to be scratches, bruises, or imbedded thorns all over her body.

She could finally see what was around her, but she knew he could, too Rather than crawl on top of the boulder where she might be seen, she pushed her way through the juniper bushes on the side of it again. She tried not to rustle the bushes too much.

Wacey was not in the backyard. That meant he either was in the house or was already stalking her. She couldn't believe she had actually fallen asleep. She hoped she hadn't slept too long.

Then beyond the house, up Bighorn Road, something caught her attention. It was the glint of morning sun reflecting off of the glass of a windshield. It was a green truck way down the road, a green truck just like her dad's and parked in some trees. And in the foreground, between the house and the truck, there was movement in the ditch. Two men, walking in the tall weeds. The first man was big in a long flowing robe. Behind him was her dad!

Sucking in her breath, Sheridan scrambled out from around the boulder and started to run down the mountain.

Wacey stood at the broken kitchen window sipping from a cup of coffee that he had just brewed. When he saw a flash of color on the mountain, he stepped back and picked up his binoculars from the table. He focused.

Sheridan Pickett, blond hair streaming in the sun, was racing down the hill like her pants were on fire.

"Damn."

He had been beginning to believe that maybe she wasn't up there after all, that maybe what he'd heard crying in the night was a cougar or a coyote. They sounded the same as kids sometimes.

The next business would not be pleasant at all. But like burning the Miller's weasels, it needed to be done. Boy, he thought, he had sure sunk low. He had gone from killing three heavily armed hunters to shooting an unarmed woman. Now he was waiting for a seven-year-old. Strangely, it wasn't all that hard to do. He would make a damned good sheriff, he thought. He had a good understanding of the criminal mind.

Wacey placed the cup on the table. He started to reach for the .30-06 but decided that if she saw him come out with a rifle now, she might turn and run right back up the mountain. He didn't feel like chasing her or possibly missing her with a long shot. She was remarkably fast for a girl her age--especially one with glasses, he thought. Instead, he would wait until she got to the backyard. Then he would step out and run her down. He knew of a sump hole at the base of Wolf Mountain where some hunters had once trailed a wounded elk. The animal had gotten caught in the sump and sunk out of sight, much to the hunters' dismay. It would be a perfect place to throw a body. He would weight her down with rocks.

He waited until she ran through the back gate before he stepped out on the porch.

When she saw him, she froze in place. Her green eyes were so huge. He tried his best smile on her as the screen door slammed behind him. What he didn't understand was why those eyes had moved off of his face toward the side of the house. He followed them.

"Wacey," Vern said in his deep voice, "it's over, buddy. Our deal is done and we had better get the hell out of Dodge while we still can."

Wacey turned toward him, confused. Vern looked like he just got out of bed and had walked all of the way from Saddlestring.

"You look real stupid, Vern," Wacey said. "What'd you do, piss your pants?"

***

Joe came around from the other side of the house near the garage. Wacey's back was turned to him; he was facing Vern. Sheridan was out in the yard. Her clothes were tattered and she was smudged with dirt and blood.

"What are you doing here? What are you saying?" Wacey asked Vern, his voice high-pitched.

"I wiped out the rest of the weasels, and we're almost home free."

He gestured toward Sheridan and spoke to her. "Don't you move, darling'."

Sheridan stood absolutely still. But Joe knew she could see him. Don't give me away, Joe silently implored.

"Let's get out of here while we can," Vern said to Wacey. "They know about the weasels, and Barnum's on the way now."

"How in the hell did that happen?" Wacey demanded, almost in falsetto.

"I'll tell you in the car," Vern said, shaking his head from side to side.

"Tell me now."

Vern sighed. "Clyde Lidgard woke the fuck up and told everybody what happened. Somebody found some pictures he took up in the mountains with both of us in them." His voice cracked again, like it had in the pickup. "Remember Clyde and his goddamned camera? We've got to get out of