Out of Range jp-5

by C. J. Box

  In a locked metal box in the bed of his pickup were tire chains, tow ropes, tools, an evidence kit, a necropsy kit, emergency food and blankets, blood-spatter and bullet-caliber guides and charts, flares, and a rucksack for foot patrolling. Taped to the lid of the box was a new addition: Joe's Last Will and Testament. He had written it out the night before. Not even Marybeth knew about it yet. He wondered idly if Will Jensen had thought to draw one up.

  Nate Romanowski lived in a small stone house on the banks of the Twelve Sleep River, six miles off the highway. Romanowski was a falconer with three birds-a peregrine, a red tail, and a fledgling prairie falcon-in his mews. But when Joe drove onto his property, Nate was saddling a buffalo. Joe noticed that Nate was sporting two black eyes, and that his nose was swollen like a bulb.

  A few months before, Nate had told Joe about his newfound fascination with bison. It had sprung from reading an article in an old newspaper he had dug out of a crack in the walls of his home. The article was a first-person account from a correspondent who had just returned from the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo after witnessing an event called "Women's Buffalo Riding." Apparently, women contestants mounted wild bison and were turned loose in an arena to see who could stay on the longest. There was a grainy photo of a cowgirl in a dress and baggy pantaloons astride a massive bull. In the photo, though, the bull looked docile. This account fascinated Nate, he said, because he had never thought a human could ride a buffalo around. Then he asked himself, Why not me? The idea quickly became an obsession. Sheridan, who received falconry lessons from Nate on Friday afternoons, had mentioned to Joe that Nate had bought a buffalo from a rancher near Clearmont. And here it was.

  Joe parked his pickup beside Nate's battered Jeep and got out. The afternoon was clear and warm, and Joe could hear the hushed liquid flow of the river.

  "I couldn't use a regular saddle," Nate said by way of a greeting. "The cinches were two to three feet too short. So I had to make my own cinches in order to make this work."

  Romanowski had appeared in Saddlestring three years before. He was tall, rangy, and rawboned, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He had a hawk's beak nose and piercing, stone-cold blue eyes. Most of the people in the county feared him, and several had seriously questioned the basis of Joe's friendship with a man who openly carried a.454 Casull, an extremely powerful handgun. Nate had come from Montana, leaving a set of suspicious circumstances involving the deaths of two federal agents, and Joe had almost inadvertently proved Nate's innocence for another murder. Upon his release from prison, Nate had pledged his loyalty to Joe and the Pickett family, and had not wavered in his blind commitment. There were rumors involving Nate's background that included years in covert operations for a secret branch of the defense department. While he didn't know the specifics, Joe knew this to be true. He also knew that Nate was capable of precision violence, and well connected to questionable people and groups throughout the country and the world. Joe had no clear explanation as to Nate's means of support. All he knew was that he sometimes vanished for weeks (always calling ahead to cancel Sheridan's falconry lesson) and that he sometimes cautioned Joe about coming out to his place at certain times when, Joe guessed, certain visitors were there. It was something they never talked about, although a few times Nate had offered tidbits. Joe didn't want to hear them.

  The buffalo stood in the center of a newly constructed four-rail corral. The corral was built solidly, but the east side of it was pitched out a little, most likely from the buffalo leaning against it or trying to push his head through. Joe wondered if the corral would contain the animal if it really wanted out.

  Joe draped his arms over the top post and set a boot on the bottom rail. He was impressed, as always, by the sheer size and presence of a buffalo. The bison was a giant brown-black wedge, front-loaded with heavily muscled shoulders and a woolly, blunt head. Bison, he knew, were pure front-wheel-drive creatures, with the ability to accelerate to forty miles per hour from a standing start. Conical pointed horns curled back from its skull. Marble-black eyes glowed from beneath thick, dirty curls.

  Nate tightened the cinch and the buffalo flinched. Joe prepared for a violent explosion, and he found himself stepping back involuntarily. The buffalo turned his head and stared at Nate.

  "This is as far as I got last week," Nate said, looking over.

  "What happened to you?"

  Nate touched his eye. "He didn't like the saddle at first."

  "But he does now?"

  Nate shrugged. "Not really. But he finally understands what I'm up to, and he seems resigned to the fact. I've tried to persuade him it will be fun."

  Joe nodded. Nate communicated with animals on a base level, in a wholly mysterious way. He didn't train them, or break them, but using cues and gestures he somehow connected with them. It was a methodology learned from working with falcons, who, after all, had the option (rarely acted upon) to simply fly away anytime they were released to the sky.

  "Your saddle in the back of your truck," Nate said, sliding a halter ever so slowly over the head of the buffalo. "Are you going somewhere?"

  "Jackson," Joe said. "The game warden there committed suicide. They've assigned me there, temporarily."

  Nate looked up, obviously trying to read Joe's face.

  "What?" Joe asked.

  Nate said, "Things are different in Jackson. I've got some acquaintances over there. I've spent some time there myself."

  Joe waited for the rest, but it didn't come.

  "Do you have a point?" Joe asked.

  He shrugged. "My point is things are different in Jackson."

  "Thanks for that," Joe said, leaning on the fence.

  For the next few minutes, Nate soothed the big bull, running his hands over him, speaking nonsense soothingly. Joe could see the buffalo relax, which was confirmed by a long sigh. He could smell the bison's grassy, hot breath. Nate gracefully launched himself up on the saddle.

  "This is the first time he's let me on," Nate said quietly.

  "He seems to be okay with it," Joe said, although they could both see the buffalo's ears twitch nervously. "Does he buck?"

  "See my face?" Nate said. "Yes, he can buck."

  Joe waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Nate just sat there.

  "Now I've got to get him to move and turn," Nate said. "It'll take some time."

  Joe had a vision of Nate Romanowski, wearing his shoulder holster, riding the buffalo through the streets of Sad-dlestring in the anemic Fourth of July parade. The thought made him snort.

  "How many of these calls have you received?" Nate asked later, over coffee in his stone house. The buffalo had been unsaddled and turned out to pasture.

  "Three in the last month."

  "Could it just be a misdial?"

  Joe nodded. "Sure. But how likely is that?"

  "Can't you get somebody to trace the call? Or get Caller ID?"

  "I ordered it this morning. The next time there's a call, we should be able to figure out who it is. Then maybe we'll know why."

  "I'll check in with Marybeth while you're gone," Nate said.

  "I'd appreciate that. Things get a little wild at times during hunting season. She's more than capable of handling anything, as you know, but it makes me feel better to know you'll keep an eye out."

  "A deal is a deal," Nate said.

  Joe wanted to say more. To remind Nate that the "deal" about protecting Joe and his family was one Nate had come up with, something Joe never proposed or really accepted. Being allies with a man like Nate made Joe uncomfortable at times because it went against his instincts. Nate was a strange man, a frightening man. But at times like these, he needed a guy like Nate, who was always a man of his word and didn't care about appearances, constraints, or even the law.

  "Thanks for the coffee," Joe said, standing.

  "Don't go crazy over in Jackson," Nate cautioned.

  "This from a man who is trying to ride a buffalo around." Joe smiled.

  "If
you need help, call me."

  Joe stopped at the door and looked back. "And vice versa."

  That night, Joe sat at his desk and made a list of ongoing projects and the status of each to e-mail to Phil Kiner in Laramie. Maxine sat curled at his feet, knowing, like dogs always knew, that she would be abandoned soon and making him feel as guilty as possible for it by staring at him with her big brown eyes. The whole evening had been that way.

  It had started at dinner with a melancholy pot roast and vegetables Sheridan complained were undercooked. Joe recognized her attitude for what it was: She was at an age where if she was angry with her father or mad at the world in general she took it out on her mother, who was the disciplinarian in the family. Lucy's way of showing her disapproval for his leaving was to ignore him and pretend he wasn't there, which to Joe was even worse.

  He looked over his long e-mail message. He knew he would forget things, and there was no way he could provide the background necessary on specific hunters Phil may have a problem with, or the idiosyncrasies of individual landowners. It was strange, Joe thought, not knowing for sure if he was coming back to his district.

  FIVE

  A traveler going from east to west over the Bighorn Mountains has three choices of routes: U.S. 16 through Ten Sleep Canyon and Worland, U.S.14 descending through Shell Canyon and Greybull, and U.S. 14-A, via the Medicine Wheel Passage and on to Lovell. Joe chose 14-A not only for the challenge of its switchbacks but for the view he would get when he broke over the top of the range and saw the vista of the Bighorn Basin laid out flat, brown, and endless. He chewed gum to help his ears pop as they clouded with elevation, and looked over frequently to check on Maxine, his Labrador, who he'd left at home until he could scope out his new district. Fine, gritty snow peppered his windshield at the ten-thousand-foot summit, the snow appearing from a virtually cloudless light blue sky.

  His feelings were decidedly mixed. The memory of the morning with his young family stayed with him. Sheridan and Lucy had been dressed for school and scrambling along the countertop in the kitchen, assembling their lunches. Marybeth was preparing for a day of bookkeeping at the pharmacy. She wore khaki slacks and a sweater, her blond hair cut shorter than she had ever worn it. He liked it but still wasn't used to it. Joe had stood stupidly near the mudroom entrance, watching them. Their good-byes had been a little frantic because they could all hear the school bus lumbering down Bighorn Road. After the girls were on the bus and the doors were shut, Joe and Marybeth walked to his pickup, which was fully packed and ready to go.

  "Call me often," she had said.

  "As often as I can," he said, kissing her.

  "In fact, call me when you get there. So I know you made it all right."

  The scene was less than dramatic. So why did he feel that something seminal had happened? Why did he feel both guilty and elated?

  As he descended the western slope, the snow vanished as suddenly as it had appeared and the temperature began to rise quickly. By the time he hit the flats, heat was shimmering on the old asphalt highway and roses were growing in boxes in downtown Lovell, which he left in his rearview mirror.

  A squawk from his radio interrupted Joe's thoughts. He picked up the handset. It was dispatch calling with a message from Trey. The meeting place that morning would need to be changed. There was a bear problem.

  Trey Crump was waiting for Joe in his pickup, which was parked in the trees at the culmination of a rugged two-track road, four miles from Dead Indian Pass. After Joe pulled up next to Trey's pickup, his supervisor got out of his truck and climbed in with Joe. Joe grasped the big man's hand.

  Trey looked larger than he really was, with a squarish block of a head, a thick mustache going gray, and heavy jowls. A big belly strained against his uniform shirt. He was a terse man in aura and appearance, but his deep-set, compassionate eyes gave him away as the romantic he really was. Joe liked and admired Trey, but he rarely saw him in person. Trey wore badge number 4, meaning he had the fourth highest seniority within the division. Joe had recently received his new badge, moving from 52 to 44. Since there were only fifty-five full-fledged game wardens-and thirty-five trainees not yet assigned a district-Joe was proud of his new badge number. With Will Jensen's death, Joe would now be badge number 43. He felt more than a pang of guilt for even thinking about that.

  Trey apologized for not meeting Joe for breakfast at the Irma Hotel in Cody, but said he had received a 5 A.M. call-out for a problem grizzly bear that had been breaking into cabins in the Sunlight Basin. The suspect bear was named Number 304, and he was well known in the area. That morning, the 450-pound grizzly had pushed down a steel-reinforced door, entered a cabin and dismantled it, ripping the cabinets from the wall and tossing a cast-iron stove from the kitchen into a bedroom.

  "This is a bad situation," Trey said, his voice deep and filled with gravel. "I could use your help."

  Joe could see the roofs of some of the cabins below in the heavy timber, and a culvert bear trap set up in a sundrenched meadow. The trap was designed on wheels so it could be pulled behind a vehicle to the problem area and baited with a road-killed deer or antelope. When the bear entered the metal opening and tugged on the bait, a heavy steel door crashed down and locked. The trap, with the angry bear in it, could then be hitched to a pickup and driven away to a remote location, where the bear would be released. Either that, or euthanized on the spot if the Interagency Grizzly Bear Management Team pronounced a death sentence on the animal.

  Joe grimaced. He had had enough of grizzly bears the year before, when a runaway from Yellowstone had bee-lined for the Bighorns. He'd seen firsthand what an animal like that could do to a man.

  "We're overwhelmed with bears right now," Trey said with a heavy sigh. "Three different call-ins came in just this morning. That's why I'm alone here-my bear guys are off on the other calls. They wanted to stay here to help me with 304 because we all kind of like the guy, and we hate to see him go."

  For the first time, Joe noticed that Trey's scoped rifle was out and lying across the hood of his supervisor's truck on a pair of old coveralls.

  "You've got to kill him, then?" Joe asked.

  "That was our recommendation to the Feds," Trey said with resignation. "This is the fourth time 304's damaged property in the basin. No matter how far we take him away, he finds his way back. He's got no fear of humans anymore."

  From a scanner in Trey's pickup, Joe could hear a low and steady pulsing tone. He knew from experience that the radio collar was transmitting the tone on 304. The bear was still in the area. They would sit and wait for it.

  Joe scanned the ridges and slopes of the mountain basin, looking for movement. He saw none.

  Trey said, "The sad thing is that 304 lived in these mountains for six or seven years without incident. One of the cabin owners left dog food out on his porch. 304 learned that he liked dog food and kept coming back. Pretty soon, the bear figured out that if he busted into the cabin he could find all kinds of things to eat. But it started with the dog food, and you know what they say."

  "A fed bear is a dead bear," Joe said.

  "Yes, goddamnit."

  Night came. The sliver of moon was a surgical white slice in the sky. Joe and Trey sat silently in the cab of the pickup, listening to each other's breathing.

  "Sorry to start out your trip like this," Trey said. "I bet you want to get over there."

  "Not a problem."

  "Joe, I've got to ask you something."

  Joe grunted.

  "After that incident last year, are you okay to work with me to get this bear?"

  Joe turned to Trey and found his supervisor studying him. "I'm fine with it."

  "Are you sure? Because if you aren't…"

  "I said I'm fine with it, Trey."

  Trey eventually moved from Joe's pickup to his own so he could sleep. Joe looked at his cell phone to see if he had a signal so he could call Marybeth and tell her about the change in plans. There was no signal. Instead, he checked
in with dispatch and asked the dispatcher to advise Marybeth and the station in Jackson that he would be late arriving.

  He tried to sleep. Cold crept into the cab from the doors and windows. The pulsing tone of the bear's collar served as a heartbeat for the stakeout.

  At 2:30 there was a metallic clang from the dark meadow below. Joe sat up with a start, banging his head against the steering wheel. He looked over and saw that Trey had heard it too, and had turned on his dome light and unrolled his window.

  As Joe opened his door, there was a roar from below that not only ripped through the silence but also seemed to roll through the earth itself.

  "Sounds like we got him," Trey said. There was no joy in his voice.

  Joe felt a shiver that raised the hair on his forearms and the back of his neck.

  SIX

  Even before the headlights painted the inside of the culvert trap, Joe could smell the grizzly. The odor was heavy and musky, what a wet dog might smell like if it was twice the size of an NFL linebacker.

  "Jesus Christ," Trey said when they could see the bear huddled at the back of the trap, his eyes blinking against the artificial light. "He's even bigger than the last time I saw him."

  "Is it 304?" Joe's voice was weak, as if the presence of the bear had sucked something out of him. The bear filled the back of the trap; his huge head hung low, his nose moist and black. A stream of pink-colored saliva hung like a beaded ruby necklace from his mouth to the half-devoured roadkill on the floor of the trap. The bear was frightened, and breathing hard, which made the trap rock slightly back and forth.

  "Yup, it's him."

  On the seat between them was a tranquilizer gun loaded with a dart filled with Telazol. Once the bear was down, Trey had told Joe, they would need to confirm 304's ear tag and inject the animal with a lethal dose of euthanol to kill it.