C J Box - [Joe Pickett 02]
Page 19
"You look like a fox," Sheridan said, leaning back and looking at her mother as a peer. "You're a hottie
Marybeth had dressed in new jeans, a dark French-cut T-shirt, and a denim ranch jacket. Her blonde hair was lit with the glow of the neon beer signs. She was here to meet with a rancher. Or ex-rancher, to be more precise. Only he didn't know it yet.
She recognized him, as her eyes grew used to the bar gloom. He sat at the farthest end of the bar, on a stool by the wall, which he leaned against. Although he was situated in the shadows and the only illumination of his features was from a small-watt neon tube in an aquarium on a shelf of stuffed prairie dogs playing pool, there was something foreboding about him. She felt it right away He was avuncular, short, and solid. He had a large head with a bulbous, alcohol-veined nose. His head was mounted on a wide body and he wore a silver-gray 24X short-brim Stetson Rancher that was sweat stained and battered, but had cost $400 new. He was in his sixties. When he ordered another bourbon he cocked his finger and raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly and the bartender knew what it meant--and scrambled.
There was an empty barstool next to him, and Marybeth picked up her glass of beer and carried it there. She sat the glass on the bar, settled into the stool, and looked at herself and the ex-rancher in the mirror. He looked back, narrowed his eyes, and smiled with puzzled amusement.
"I'm Marybeth Pickett, Mr. McBride. Can I have a few minutes of your time for an important matter?"
"I know who you are." His grin grew, and he looked her over. "Babe, you can have as much of my time as you want. Call me Rowdy"
"Okay, Rowdy," she said. "Tell me about the Stockman's Trust."
Something passed over his face and his eyes inadvertently widened. He took a sip. "It seems kind of ironic that you're asking a man drinking in the Stockman's Bar about something called the Stockman's Trust, don't it?"
"I hadn't thought about that."
"What about it?" His voice was gruff.
"I received some information today that there are two killers who have been hired by the Stockman's Trust. My husband may be in danger."
"Killers?"
She withdrew the note written by John Coble from her jacket pocket and slid it over to him. He read it, then folded it and handed it back.
Dear Game Warden:
It is my understanding that you have been investigating the murder of Stewy Woods and that there is a possibility that someone is impersonating Woods and causing trouble. A man named Charlie Tibbs (stock detective) has been hired to rub out environmentalists and has done a good job of it Stewie Woods was the first target on our list. I assisted him in this task, but I have quit.
Charlie Tibbs was last in the vicinity of Yellowstone Park, but I think he's coming here.
The men that hired us is the Stockman's Trust. I don't know the names of the men, but you should investigate.
I'm writing you this to help relieve my conscience.
Signed' John Coble
PS. Don't try and look for me. I have left the country and changed my name and I done you a kindness here.
McBride seemed to be contemplating what he would say next.
"Before you sold your ranch to Jim Finotta, you were a member of the Stockman's Trust, right?"
"Before Finotta stole my ranch out from under me, you mean." His eyes flared.
"Whatever."
"Before I turned into a goddamned drunk at the end of the bar instead of a fourth-generation rancher?" he said bitterly. "If you'll excuse my French."
"That's not what I mean," she said softly.
He shook his head. "I know it isn't."
She drank from her glass of beer, giving him a moment to collect himself.
"Yup, I was a member. I was never on the board, but I was a member."
"Who else is a member?"
"What you need to understand is that there's an oath. I took that oath. Don't expect me to spill my guts out to you now, just because you look so fine, Marybeth Pickett."
She turned her head so he wouldn't see the look of distress on her face.
"Members of the Stockman's Trust are everywhere," McBride said after a beat. "Our bartender Jim might be a member. Your state legislator might be a member. Sheriff Barnum may be a member. In fact .. . never mind."
"But Sheriff Barnum wasn't ever a rancher."
"It's not just ranchers anymore. You just never know" He looked around them to see if anyone was paying undue attention to the conversation.
"Were You just kidding me about Sheriff Barnum?" Marybeth asked.
One of the ranch hands splayed in a nearby booth was ogling Marybeth, and McBride stared him down as he might a curious dog. "There's a lot of bitter men out here," he whispered. "Under the surface, there is real anger. They see their whole way of life getting undermined and laughed at. It's a real culture war."
Marybeth nodded.
"The Trust got started back in the Tom Horn days," he said. "That was the name of the group that hired Horn. They were all members of the Cattleman's Association, but kind of a splinter group. They all chipped in, hired Horn, and then let the man work his magic on the rustlers down around Cheyenne."
Marybeth nodded, listening intently He liked that.
"After Tom Horn got hanged, the Stockman's Trust kept on as a group. But instead of a bunch of guys who had come together for one particular thing, the Trust became sort of a secret men's club. They elected officers and met semi regularly to discuss the matters of the day"
Rowdy paused and gestured at Marybeth's glass. "D'you want another beer?"
Marybeth agreed. Anything to keep him talking.
Up until the 1940s, McBride said, the Stockman's Trust membership was exclusively ranchers. It was a secret society and new members swore an oath to keep it that way Although all of the members knew why the organization had been formed in the first place, the Trust became a kind of salon. Because so many legislators, judges, oilmen, lawyers, and doctors were also ranchers, the organization prided itself in its old fashioned exclusivity. It was an honor to be asked to become a member.
McBride's father had been a member, as had his grandfather. At one time his father had been vice-president.
The Stockman's Trust was financed by a voluntary levy by ranchers of a few pennies on every cow and by oilmen on barrels of oil they produced. Over time, quite a treasury was amassed. They used it to buy a discreet building in Cheyenne for a headquarters and to pay lobbyists to advance their agenda and protect their interests. The Stockman's Trust was as effective in its quiet way as Tom Horn had been with his Winchester.
"Is it possible that the Stockman's Trust has turned a culture war into a real one? That they've gone back to their roots?" Marybeth asked.
McBride pushed the fresh beer the bartender delivered toward Marybeth and drank a long pull from his bourbon.
"I wouldn't put it past them," he declared. "You've got to understand that the Stockman's Trust had completely changed even before I got out of it. It wasn't that old gentleman rancher's club anymore. Most of the new board members were out-of state absentee ranch owners. You know, the kind who likes to come out, put on his hat and boots, and play rancher a couple of times a year, so he can let it drop at cocktail parties in New York or L.A. that he owns a ranch in Wyoming. The old guys, like me, got pushed out. By the time I got out, I hardly knew any of them personally They did all of their meetings by conference call instead of at the headquarters in Cheyenne. These jokers called in from their private planes or from cell phones in limos. They bitched about the bad PR ranchers were getting because of loudmouth environmentalists. It was getting to be a joke. These guys weren't ranchers. They just owned ranches."
"Did you quit?" she asked.
He stared into his drink. "I said some things I shouldn't have said when I was drinking. Called a couple of 'em out-of-state cocksuckers, pardon my French. They rescinded my membership after I lost the ranch."
"Why did those guys even want to be members?"
She nodded. She thought of what Ginger Finotta had been trying to tell her.
"He's a member, isn't he?" Marybeth asked.
"Shit," McBride snorted. "I wouldn't be surprised."
***
At HOME, THERE WERE no messages from Joe. It was ten-thirty Trey Crump had called and said he would be leaving in the morning for the cabin, and he had asked Marybeth to fax him a copy of the map. If Joe was still missing in the morning, he would notify the County Sheriff to organize a search and rescue team.
Marybeth sat alone at the kitchen table. Her palms left a moist smear on the surface. She stared straight ahead and fought an urge to cry out of sheer frustration.
Suddenly she pushed away from the table and dug the slim Twelve Sleep County telephone book from a drawer. She looked up and dialed the number for the Finotta Ranch.
The phone rang eight times before it was picked up. The voice was cold and distant.
"Is this Jim Finotta?" She asked.
"Yes."
"May I please speak to your wife, Ginger?"
"Who is this?"
She told him. There was a long pause.
"Ginger is in bed."
"It's important."
He hung up on her.
31
ON SUNDAY MORNING BEFORE the sun rose, and cool air was flexing through the trees and over the mountainside, about the time Joe should have been home mixing pancake batter and frying bacon for his girls, Britney Earthshare came scrambling down from the ridge through the shale saying she had just seen Charlie Tibbs.
Stewie had been stretching and commenting how good bacon and eggs would be for breakfast.
"Show me where," Joe said, and followed her back to the ridge.
She pointed to a series of openings on the mountainside on the other side of the valley Joe looked with his binoculars but could see nothing.
"He came out of the trees into the clearing and then he went back into the trees," she said , her teeth chattering from fright and the early morning cold.
"Where was it again?"
She pointed generally
"Can you be more specific'"
She hissed angrily "Damn you, I saw what I saw!"
"Was he on horseback or on foot?"
She glared at him. "Horseback, I think."
"You think," he repeated, still glassing the mountain. The binoculars gathered more light than his naked eye, but it was still too shadowy even in the meadows to see Charlie Tibbs. "Was he coming our way?"
"Straight at us," she declared.
Joe lowered the binoculars and looked at her, trying to decide if she had actually seen Tibbs or had only thought she had seen him. He had already been making plans about returning to the cabin and his pickup, plotting how they could travel up the ridge and work their way back through the heavy timber covering a massive saddle slope to the south. If the terrain was agreeable, they could be back by noon.
But if Tibbs was coming straight at them, had found their track, they would have to either make a stand or run.
"There he is!" Britney screamed, gesturing frantically across the valley "Oh, my God!I"
Joe wheeled and jerked his binoculars to his eyes. He saw a tiny movement on the edge of a far-off meadow. It was dark and passed into the trees before he could see it clearly But it could have been the shoulders and head of a man on horseback.
STAY IN THE ELK TRAIL," Joe cautioned as they scrambled down the mountain, away from the camp and the ridge. "If nothing else, the trail may foul him up a little."
The path of the elk herd from the night before wasn't hard to follow They had churned up a two- to three-foot swath of earth, mashing pine needles into the dark loam and littering the trail with upturned black divots. Joe was pleased by the way their own tracks blended into the elk tracks.
"I'm sure getting hungry" Stewie sang out. "If we catch those elk I might need to take a bite out of one of'em."
"Yuck," Britney said. She had already mentioned that she didn't eat meat. She made a point about how the elk had become their metaphysical guides through the wilderness and how Emily's wolves played a part in providing the trail.
"Seeing those wolves running wild and free last night was, like, awesome," Britney rhapsodized. "It was, like, orgasmic. These beautiful creatures were all around us and for a minute there, I felt like I was one of them. Once you've seen those magical creatures with your own eyes, it makes it really hard to understand why they were trapped and killed almost to extinction. It really makes you hate the people who did that. What were they possibly thinking, to want to kill a magnificent animal like a wolf?"
They walked.
"There's an irony to all of this whole situation that I bet neither one of you know about," Stewie said.
"What's that?" Britney asked.
"Whatever it is, I hope it's short," Joe grumbled.
Stewie giggled at that. "The irony is that just before I headed out here and got married to Annabel and got blown up by a cow, the executive board of One Globe had a meeting and kicked me out!"
"You're kidding!" Britney was outraged.
"It's true." He was starting to breathe hard with the exertion of the fast trek. "They met at the new headquarters on K Street in Washington, D.C, and voted me off of the board, eight to one. My old buddy Rupert was the only one who stuck with me. They said they didn't like my methods anymore, that I was an embarrassment to the organization.
They said that direct action wasn't as effective as lawsuits and that my egomania was holding back membership funds."
"But you started One Globe!" Britney argued. "They can't kick you out of your own organization."
"Yes, they can," Stewie said. "And they did. The suits took over. The fund-raisers beat the hell raisers."
"Shameful!"
"So," Stewie said, directing it at Joe, "the irony is that Charlie Tibbs is coming after a big, fat has-been."
"You're not a has-been," Britney cooed.
Joe, however, was too preoccupied with the scene in front of him to answer Stewie.
A COW ELK STOOD off of the trail, in a small clearing, in a yellow shaft of early morning sunlight. She was straddling what looked like a wet bundle of fur. She watched them approach with her large black eyes. As they neared, her big cupped ears rotated toward them. Her legs trembled, as did her moist black nose.
Joe stopped. Stewie and Britney froze behind him.
"Jesus," Stewie whispered.
The bundle of wet fur was the cow's dead calf. Joe could see now that the calfs throat had been ripped open and its lower jaw was gone. It lay dead in a slick pool of dark blood. Near the calf, tufts of long canine fur clung to shafts of the long grass.
The cow elk would soon die as well. She had been disemboweled as she fought off the wolves that killed her calf. Loops of intestine, like long blue ropes, hung from her abdomen. One of her front forelegs had been skinned to the bone. Dark blood clotted in the thick fur of her upper shoulder. Joe had seen female elk fight; they sat back on their haunches and lurched forward, striking with their hooves. The power of their strikes could crush the skull of a badger or break the back of a coyote. The mother elk had connected with at least one wolf from the pack, hence the fur in the grass.
Britney broke down. She covered her face with her hands.
"You've got to do something," Britney sobbed. "It's horrible."
Joe scanned the trees that surrounded the clearing. The wolves were there, he was sure, but he couldn't see them. They were in the shadows, or hunkered down and still in the brush. He could feel their eyes on him.
"Do something," she begged, her voice wracked.
"Shoot that poor elk so she won't have to suffer," Stewie mu
rmured.
"No," Joe sighed. "A gunshot will give our position away"
"Who cares about that?" Britney cried, her voice raising to an emotional pitch. "Who cares about that? Do something!"
Joe turned toward her, his face a tight mask. His glare was so intense that she involuntarily stepped behind Stewie for protection.
"Look away," he hissed, his voice coldly furious. He strode toward the cow elk and unsheathed his Leatherman tool, pulling out the blade. The mother elk turned her head away, but did not have the strength to run or strike out, and he reached out and grabbed her ear to steady her while he cut her throat.
Stewie stood with an ashen face, watching, while Britney buried her head in his back. As Joe walked back to them, he heard the cow elk gurgle and settle into the grass on top of her calf.
"This is what wolves do," Joe said, his voice calm, a betrayal of what he felt. "I'm not saying they shouldn't be here, but this is what they do. They're wolves. I know it sounds real nice to say they're magical and beautiful and they balance nature and restore an ecosystem--and it's true, they do that. But this is how they do it. They go after the weakest first. When the mother stays back, the wolves open a hole in her belly and pull out her entrails. Then they wait until she doesn't have the strength to protect herself, then they'll move in and tear her throat out."
Joe slid the sticky Leatherman back into its case and wiped hot blood on his pants from his hand and sleeve.
"You people just like the idea of things, like bringing the wolves back. It makes you feel better." He looked from Britney to Stewie, both of whom averted their eyes. "I agree that it is a beneficial thing overall. But you don't like to see what really happens out here when those grand ideas become real, do you?"
They followed the elk trail to the bottom of the mountain, through another small stream swelling with icy runoff. They drank, and continued up the next mountain through twisted black timber, crawling in and out of scalpel-cut ravines.
The terrain finally flattened as they rose, and the walking became easier. Joe was drenched in sweat, and light-headed from lack of food. The water sloshed in his empty stomach as he hiked. The incident with the elk had dampened the enthusiasm and frequency of Stewie's monologues, and Britney was still so angry with him that she didn't talk--which was fine with Joe.