by C. J. Box
Joe sat back, sipped his beer, thought of the implications. Robey was clearly agitated.
“So Wyatt is out of it for sure?” Joe asked. “It’s completely between Arlen and Hank? And Wyatt is okay with that?” He thought of Wyatt’s tears on the floor of the sheriff’s office; the heartbreak of a giant.
“As far as I can tell, Wyatt just wants Opal to come back and cook him his meals,” Robey said. “He misses her. And he doesn’t seem to care about the dispute either way. When I talked to Arlen, he actually referred to Wyatt as the ‘turd in the punch bowl.’ He has no respect for his youngest brother, but Wyatt adores Arlen. And Hank, for that matter.”
Joe thought about that and wondered if anyone really knew Wyatt.
“I understand some anonymous tipster contacted the IRS and turned Arlen in for tax evasion,” Robey said. “We were contacted by the feds about it earlier this week with a request to provide background.”
“Hank,” Joe said.
“Or one of Hank’s people. But that’s just the start of it. I got a visit this morning from Roger Schreiner. He was scared shitless.”
“Roger Schreiner? The accountant?”
“Yup. He’s working for Hank’s side of the operation and he got a letter accusing him of playing a part in an illegal conspiracy to defraud Arlen. The letter even cited the RICO statutes, which means he’s liable for triple damages if he’s found guilty. Roger says he’s innocent as the day is long, but he’s scared to death of going to court because he’s not sure how far his firm will back him.”
“Arlen,” Joe said.
Robey nodded.
Joe told Robey about the 1-800-POACHER tip he’d received earlier, naming Hank.
“Oh, man,” Robey said. “What could that mean if it’s true?”
Joe said, “Tens of thousands in fines, but that’s not what would hurt Hank the most. What would hurt Hank would be the confiscation of the equipment used to poach the animals, meaning his airplane, vehicles, and guns. And even worse for him, his license to guide and hunt could be revoked. Since he runs a big hunting operation in at least three locations, it would put him out of business.”
Robey shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “This is getting even nastier than I thought.”
Joe snorted. “Of course, before investigating Hank I need proper authorization from my supervisor, which I’m still waiting for.”
“You’re kidding,” Robey said flatly.
Joe just looked at him. He hated feeling the way he did. Pope’s management of Joe stripped away both his independence and his confidence. But that was Joe’s problem, not Robey’s.
“And you know what?” Joe said, pointing the mouth of his bottle toward Robey. “I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet in regard to Scarlett versus Scarlett.”
Robey nodded. “We haven’t, because the next stage in the war will be more of what Arlen started in going after the surrogates of the other brother, like Hank’s accountant.”
“Or,” Joe thought out loud, “Arlen’s future management consulting firm—MBP Management.”
Robey sat back. “You think?”
“It fits,” Joe said.
And the door opened and in walked Hank Scarlett with a ranch hand. Joe watched as Hank mumbled hellos to men seated at the bar and then took the stool at the end that used to belong to ex-sheriff O. R. “Bud” Barnum, before Barnum went away. Hank’s tiny eyes, set close together in his thin face, burned like coals as they swept the room, settled for a moment on Joe, then moved on. He was doing inventory, Joe thought, seeing who in the Stockman was in his camp, and who wasn’t.
“Speak of the devil,” Joe said, his eyes narrowing. As he stared at Hank Scarlett, things started to tumble together and click. Six years before, Hank had been one of the most vocal opponents of calling in the feds when the Miller’s weasels were discovered, and he publicly blamed Joe for the intrusion of biologists, endangered-species advocates, and environmental groups that came as a result. Hank felt the issue would be best resolved locally, meaning: All the animals should be secretly killed. That’s how he’d always proceeded with endangered species.
In addition, Hank knew the Bighorns as well as anyone in Wyoming—even better than Joe, because he had hunted and explored every inch of them. If anyone knew where the colony of Miller’s weasels thrived in the wilderness, it was Hank. The fact that Marybeth had chosen to work for Arlen in Hank’s mind put Joe in his brother’s camp, even though it wasn’t the case.
“Joe, I don’t like that look on your face,” Robey said.
Joe didn’t realize he had any look at all.
“If you think Hank had something to do with that Miller’s weasel, you had best keep it to yourself until you can prove something,” Robey said.
Joe thought about the animal on his door, the steak knife pinning it there, the single streak of dark red blood that coursed down and pooled in a crack. And of Sheridan’s horrified expression when she realized what it was, what it meant.
“Excuse me,” Joe said, and slid out of the booth.
“Joe . . .” Robey said, his voice hard, but Joe didn’t turn around.
He approached the bar. Hank had his back to Joe, although the man Hank had come into the bar with watched Joe intently. Joe measured Hank’s companion, met his eyes dead-on. This one is a thug, Joe thought. There was nothing cowboy about him. He was tight through the chest, and his rolled-up sleeves revealed enhanced forearms with coils of cablelike muscle writhing under tattooed skin. His face was thin and pinched, his mouth full and rubbery. He had a soul patch under his lower lip and a ponytail. He wore the wrong jeans and his boots were black Doc Marten lace-ups, not real working cowboy boots. The man’s hat was Australian outback, not cowboy. And there was something about him, Joe thought, something familiar. When he looked at the man’s face he saw somebody else he was familiar with, or the shadow of that person. But Joe couldn’t remember if he had ever seen this man before.
The beer Joe had been drinking with Robey surged through him, deadening what should have been self-preservation warning bells going off like a prison break.
“Hank,” Joe said, to Hank’s back.
“Is there a problem here?” the man with Hank said in a low southern accent.
“I was talking to Hank,” Joe said, looking from the ranch hand to the mirrored back bar, to see that Hank saw him and was staring back with his dead sharp eyes.
The ranch hand spun on his stool and rose to his feet, but Hank said, “It’s okay, Bill, he’s just the game warden.”
Bill relaxed, stepped back, sat down.
Hank took a long drink from his glass of bourbon, then swiveled around, not getting up. Joe was three feet away, and he tried not to let his face twitch as Hank frowned and leveled his gaze on him.
“What can I do you for, Game Warden?” He said Game Warden with detached sarcasm. Hank’s voice was high and tinny. He bit off his words, as if speaking them were painful in itself.
“I wanted to ask you about something that happened at my house,” Joe said.
Hank flicked his eyes toward Bill, then back. His voice was a low hiss. “I don’t believe you’ve met our local game warden before, Bill. He’s the one who arrested our last governor for fishing without a license, and shot and killed both Wyoming’s greatest stock detective and our best outfitter. He’s sort of our own Dudley Do-Right. Joe, this is Bill Monroe, my new foreman.”
Monroe snorted and squinted and showed his teeth, which were white and perfect replacements for teeth that had been knocked out sometime in his career.
Joe looked at Hank, felt his rage build. Hank’s face was still slightly yellow—bruised from his fight with Arlen a month before. His nose was askew.
“Bill,” Joe said, trying to stanch his fear, “why don’t you take a walk? Go out and buy some new cowboy clothes, or something? I need to talk to Hank here.”
“Fuck you,” Monroe said.
“Settle down,” Hank said without looking at Monroe. �
�What was that about your house? I’d like to have a drink in peace.”
“Somebody stuck an animal on my door,” Joe said. “A Miller’s weasel.”
Hank stared for a moment, then smiled with his mouth. “I’m not exactly sure why you’re asking me about that, Game Warden. Do you think I had something to do with it?”
“That’s why I brought it up,” Joe said. “My daughter was pretty upset.”
Hank said, “Her name is Sheridan, right?” Saying her name as if it were the first time he’d ever enunciated it. “She’s Julie’s friend, isn’t she? I’ve seen her. She’s a nice girl, from what I can tell. Not as damned goofy as her father. Why would I want to upset my daughter’s best friend?”
Hank was enjoying himself at Joe’s expense. And Joe felt humiliated. But it made Joe even angrier, because he sensed there was something Hank knew about the incident.
Joe said, “Hank, I don’t care what you say about me to your rent-a-wrangler here. But don’t screw with my family.”
Hank smiled.
Monroe rose again, said, “‘Rent-a-wrangler’?”
“Sit down,” Joe said to Monroe, his voice harsh. “Or I’ll make you sit down.” As he said it he couldn’t believe it had come out of his mouth. But it worked, and Monroe leaned back on his stool, poised on the edge, ready to lunge forward if necessary. His eyes bored into Joe’s face like dual twin lasers, something was going on behind those eyes that was violent and seething. Joe thought, I’ve got to watch out for this guy.
Hank chuckled drily. “That sounded a lot like a threat, Joe. That’s big talk from a state employee. Especially one who has sided with my brother. Or at least his wife has. I’d watch what you say, Game Warden.”
“I haven’t sided with anyone,” Joe said. “Neither has Marybeth.” He still couldn’t believe that he’d threatened Monroe that way. “But if it was you, this is the end of it. Don’t come to my house again, or send any of your . . .” Joe thought about it for a second, then forged on. “. . . wranglers to my home. If you do, things are going to get real western, Hank.”
Hank started to answer, then didn’t. He looked away, then turned to Monroe and said, “Settle down.”
Monroe seemed as if he were about to explode. He clenched his fists and glared at Joe as if trying to figure out whether to strike with his left hand or his right. If he did either, Joe thought, there would be trouble, and he’d likely come out on the worst end of it.
Hank said, “You’ve had a few beers, I can tell. And I can see you’ve been listening to Robey Hersig over there, hearing how Arlen should get the ranch and I shouldn’t. So I’ll let this go for now, and pretend you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Which you don’t. But let me tell you something, Game Warden.”
Hank paused, letting the clock tick. Eventually, Monroe turned his head to hear what he had to say. Joe was rapt.
“The Thunderhead will be mine,” Hank said. “Nothing you, or your lovely wife, or anybody can do about that. So get used to it.”
Then Hank leaned forward on his stool, looking up at Joe under scarred eyebrows, and said, “My family was here a hundred years before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye. We own this place. We stuck. The rest of you come and go, like lint. Goddamned lint. So don’t poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. This ain’t your fight.”
He swiveled on his stool, turned his back to Joe, and sipped at his glass of bourbon.
Joe felt Robey tugging at his sleeve, saying, “Let’s sit down.”
But Joe found himself staring at the back of Hank’s sweat-stained Stetson, and thought of his daughter looking at the animal pinned to his front door. He said, “It better not have been you, Hank. And by the way, we got a call on you. I’ll be out to see you soon.”
For the first time, Joe saw a slight flicker of fear in Hank’s face in the mirror.
THEY FINISHED THEIR beers, and Robey spent most of the time telling Joe not to react, not to get mad, but to cool down and let the process work. Joe only sort of listened. He was furious that Hank had gotten the best of him, and even angrier that he’d opened himself up to it. He knew better than to create a confrontation when he was unprepared. But something in Hank’s eyes and demeanor had told Joe that he knew more than he let on. So if for no other reason than knowing that, it had been worth it.
The night went on. Robey was drunk, and repeating himself about the curse of the third generation. Joe called Marybeth on his cell phone, woke her up, and said he’d be home soon. She was groggy, and not happy with him.
Hank left the Stockman without looking back, although Monroe paused at the door and filled it, glaring at Joe, letting cold air in, which normally would have resulted in shouts from the patrons. But because Monroe was with Hank Scarlett, no one said a word.
JOE LEFT WITH Robey, and they both marveled at the night itself, how two grown men with families had drunk the night away, how unusual it was for them. They blamed the Scarletts for creating a situation where they felt it necessary—even justified—to do so. Robey started in on a soliloquy about drinking in general, and how intrinsic it was to living in the mountain west, how important it was to understanding the culture and isolation, but Joe said good night and sent him home, wishing there were a cab he could call for his friend, but taxis didn’t exist in Saddlestring.
As he searched for the ignition key on his key ring in the dark in the tiny parking lot behind the Stockman, Joe had an almost disembodied reaction to the sound of approaching footfalls crunching through the gravel, each step gaining in volume, realizing at the last possible second that someone was upon him. He turned with a frown and glimpsed the flash of a meaty fist in the moonlight before it struck him full in the face, the blow so powerful that his world went red and spangling white and his head snapped back and cracked the driver’s-side window of his pickup. He staggered to his left and felt his legs wobble, sidestepping furiously to regain his balance. The man who hit him mirrored his movements and snapped another blow out of nowhere. The explosion Joe felt on his cheekbone was tremendous—it seemed to make his brain erupt with sudden flashes of orange. Blood flooded his nose and filled his mouth from the back of his throat, tasting hot and salty. His legs gave out, and he was down on his hands and knees, gravel digging into the palms of his hands, pebbles under his skin. The attacker stepped back and delivered a kick to Joe’s stomach as if kicking an extra point in football, and Joe felt himself momentarily lifted into the air. When he came down, all his limbs were rubbery and his bloodied face smash into the pavement. His ribs burned and he knew instinctively that a few of them might be broken. He thought: Get under the truck. Roll out of harm’s way. But in his confusion he rolled the wrong way, his arms and legs askew, and he was farther away from his pickup than when he started. That apparently confused his attacker, who yelled, “Stupid fucker,” in exasperation as Joe found himself on the black Doc Marten lace-up boots, stopping Monroe from kicking him again. Monroe leaped back, getting clear, and Joe tried to rise but he couldn’t get beyond a clumsy crouch because his bloodied head swooned, and he rocked back in slow motion and fell, splayed out like a gut-shot animal on the asphalt of the parking lot. Despite the booming pain in his head, Joe thought, You’ve beaten me.
He heard a shout from across the parking lot. Instead of another blow, he heard the slow crunching of gravel as Monroe walked away and Hank saying, in the shadowed distance, “Yeah, that’s enough.”
JOE WAS HELPED to a sitting position. He leaned back against his truck tire. His benefactor was Hank.
“Here,” Hank said, handing Joe a bandanna from his pocket. “Use that to clean off your nose and mouth.”
Joe took it.
“I called the sheriff a minute ago. Somebody ought to be here any minute.”
“You called?” Joe asked.
“Damndest thing,” Hank said, squatting down by him. “When I saw what Bill was doing, I told him to stop and he ran off. I don’t know where he went.”
“
You said, ‘Yeah, that’s enough,’ ” Joe said.
“Right.”
“You said it like you ordered and approved of the damage so far.”
Hank cocked his head to the side in an exaggerated way, said, “I have no idea what you mean, Joe. Bill was acting on his own there. If I could find that damned Bill, I’d be the first to testify at his trial that he attacked you for no good reason.”
“Hmmm,” Joe said, not believing Hank, but having no way to prove otherwise.
“‘Hmmm,’” Hank mocked. “Maybe you shouldn’t have called him a rental wrangler, or whatever it was you said. You must have really made him mad.”
“Yup,” Joe said, cringing against a headache that was barreling through his head from the base of his neck.
Deputy Reed pulled into the parking lot. He got out and bathed Joe in the light of his flashlight, said, “Who the hell did this?”
THE NEXT MORNING, a warrant for arrest was issued on Bill Monroe, age unknown, last known address Thunderhead Ranch.
13
ON FRIDAY EVENING, NEARLY A WEEK AFTER THE beating, Joe drove Sheridan to her sleepover with Julie Scarlett on the Thunderhead Ranch, his thoughts echoing what Marybeth had said: This valley is getting too small.
His body still ached each time he turned the wheel of the pickup, even though it turned out his ribs were bruised, not broken after all. But his right eye was still partially swelled shut, and his nose felt detached, as if it were floating around his face like a slow bird, trying to find a place to land.
Joe had spent the last week in the field, repairing fences and signage for public fishing access and walk-in areas. The maintenance needed to be done, but it wasn’t urgent. The primary reason for keeping his distance from town was to avoid anyone seeing him and asking what had happened to him. He knew the beating was already a bit of a joke with McLanahan, who had worked long and hard on a description of what had happened, calling it, “The Fistfight at the KO Corral,” which the sheriff thought sounded western and funny. In a response to an e-mail from Pope asking if Joe was, in fact, injured in a brawl, Joe wrote back: “It takes two to brawl. I’m fine.”
