by C. J. Box
A quarter mile up the mountain, Caleb stopped and turned around. His tiny dark eyes settled on Joe. He said, “You coulda just rode away.”
Nearly to the top, Joe prodded on his pack animals. They were laboring on the steep mountainside. Caleb Grim wasn’t. The man long-strided up the slope at a pace that was as determined as it was unnatural.
Joe said, “The Brothers Grim?”
Caleb, obviously annoyed, said, “We prefer the Grim Brothers.”
Later, Joe asked, “Where are you boys from?”
No response.
“How long have you been up here? This is tough country.”
Nothing.
“Why just the Old Testament?”
Dismissive grunt.
“What kind of trouble did Camish run into yesterday?”
Silence.
“Some of the old-timers down in Baggs think someone’s been up here harassing cattle and spooking them down the mountains. There have even been reports by campers that their camps have been trashed, and there’ve been some break-ins at cabins and cars parked at the trailheads. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Caleb grunted. Again not a yes, not a no.
“The elk that was butchered confounds me,” Joe said. “Whoever did it worked fast and knew what they were doing. The bow hunters said it must have happened within twenty minutes, maybe less. Like maybe more than one man was cutting up that meat. You wouldn’t know who up here could’ve done that, then?”
“I already told you. I don’t know about no elk.”
“Have you heard about a missing long-distance runner? She disappeared up here somewhere a couple of years ago. A girl by the name of Diane Shober?”
Another inscrutable grunt.
“The Brothers Grim,” Joe said again.
“We prefer the Grim Brothers, damn you,” Caleb spat.
Joe eased his shotgun out of the saddle scabbard, glanced down to check the loads, and slid it back in. He’d have to jack a shell into the chamber to arm it. Later, though. When Caleb wasn’t looking. No need to provoke the man.
They were soon in dense timber. Buddy and Blue Roanie detoured around downed logs while Caleb Grim scrambled over them without a thought. Joe wondered if Caleb was leading him into a trap or trying to lose him, and he spurred Buddy on harder than he wanted to, working him and not letting him rest, noting the lather creaming out from beneath the saddle and blanket. It was dark and featureless in the timber. Every few minutes Joe would twist in the saddle to look back, to try to find and note a landmark so he could find his way back out. But the lodgepole pine trees all looked the same, and the canopy was so thick he couldn’t see the sky or the horizon.
“Sorry Buddy,” he whispered to his gelding, patting his wet neck, “it can’t be much farther.”
Caleb’s subtle arcs and meandering made Joe suddenly doubt his own sense of direction. He thought they were still going north, but he wasn’t sure. Out of nowhere, a line came back to him from one of his favorite old movies, one of the rare movies he and his father had both liked, The Missouri Breaks:
The closer you get to Canada, the more things’ll eat your horse.
Joe could smell the camp before he could see it. It smelled like rotten garbage and burnt flesh.
For a moment, Joe thought he was hallucinating. How could Caleb Grim have made it into the camp so much before him that he’d had the time to sit on a log and stretch out his long legs and read the Bible and wait for him to arrive? Then he realized the man on the log was identical to Caleb in every way, including his clothing, slouch hat, and deformed nose, and he was reading the missing half of the book he’d seen in Caleb’s daypack earlier-the New Testament.
Caleb Grim emerged from a thicket of brush and tossed his daypack aside and sat down next to his brother. Twins. Joe felt his palms go dry and his heart race.
“Why’d you bring him?” the brother-Joe assumed it was Camish-asked without looking up.
“I didn’t,” Caleb said. “He followed me.”
“I thought we had an agreement about this sort of thing.” His voice was nasal as well, but higher-pitched. “You know what happened the last time you did this.”
“That was different, Camish. You know that.”
“I didn’t know it at the time.”
“You should have known. They’re all like that-every damned one of them.”
“Especially when they got a badge to hide behind,” Caleb said.
“Especially then,” Camish said.
“What happened last time?” Joe asked. He was ignored. They talked to each other as if Joe weren’t there. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry.
The camp was a shambles. Clothing, wrappers, empty cans and food containers, bones, and bits of hide littered the ground. Their tent was a tiny Boy Scout pup tent, and he could see two stained and crumpled sleeping bags extending out past the door flap. He wondered how the two tall men managed to sleep there together-and why they’d want to. The bones meant the brothers were the poachers, because there were no open game seasons in the summer. Joe saw no weapons but assumed they were hidden away. He could arrest them for wanton destruction of game animals, hunting out of season, and multiple other violations on the spot. And then what? he wondered. He couldn’t just march them for three days out of the mountains to jail.
Said Caleb to Joe, “You gonna stay up there on that horse?”
“Yup.”
“You ain’t gonna get down?”
“Nope. I’ll just take a look at your fishing license and I’ll get going.”
The brothers exchanged looks and seemed to be sharing a joke.
“Well, then,” Caleb said, long-striding toward the pup tent, “I’ll go see if I can find it.”
Joe said to Camish, “How long have you been up here?”
Camish looked up and showed a mouthful of stubby yellow teeth that looked like a line of undersized corn kernels. “Is that an official question?”
“An official question?”
“Like one I have to answer or you’ll give me a dang ticket or something?”
“I’m just wondering,” Joe said. “It looks like you boys have been up here for a while living off the land. That’s curious. How many deer and elk have you killed and eaten?”
Camish shook his head. “If I don’t answer you, it’s not because I’m rude, mister. It’s because I don’t care to incriminate myself in any way. If it ain’t an official question and all.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “It’s an official question.”
“If I don’t agree to see you as an authority, it ain’t official. You know, game warden, this place ain’t called Rampart Mountain for no reason. You know what a rampart is?”
Joe kept silent, knowing Camish would answer his own question.
“A rampart is a protective barrier,” Camish said. “A last stand, kind of.”
Camish shook his half of the Bible at Joe. “I been reading this. I’m not all that impressed, to tell you the truth. I can’t figure out what all the fuss is about. I find it to be an imperfect book.”
Joe didn’t know what to say to that.
“At least the first part has lots of action in it. Lots of murder and killings and sleeping around and such. Battles and things like that. Crazy miracles and folk tales-it keeps you entertained. This part, though, it’s just too soft, you know? You ever read it?”
Joe said, “Some.”
“I’d not recommend it. At least the second half. Instead, I’d read the U.S. Constitution. It’s shorter, better, and up until recently it was pretty easy to find.”
Caleb crawled backward out of the tent, stood up, said, “Damned if I can’t find it, officer. But there’s one other place I need to look.”
“Where’s that?”
Caleb gestured toward the forest behind him. “We got a couple caches back in the trees. I might have put my license in one of ’em.”
Joe said, “I’ll follow you.” Wanting to be ri
d of Camish and his commentary.
That seemed to surprise Caleb, and again the brothers exchanged a wordless glance that made Joe both scared and angry. They were communicating without words or recognizable cues, leaving Joe in the dark.
“Come on, then,” Caleb said. “But you’ll have to get down. The trees are too thick to ride through. There’s too much downed timber.”
Joe studied the trees behind Caleb. They were too closely packed to ride through. For a moment, he considered telling Caleb he’d wait where he was. But he wondered if he let Caleb go if he’d ever see him again. And he didn’t want to be stuck with Camish, who asked suddenly, “You ever hear of the Wendigo?”
Joe looked over. He’d now heard the word twice-once from Farkus, now from Camish Grim. “What about it?”
Again the stubby teeth, but this time in a sort of painful smile. “Just wonderin’,” he said.
Joe waited for more but nothing came.
Then Camish said, “So who owns these fish you’re so worked up about?”
“What do you mean, who owns them?”
“Exactly what I asked. These fish are native cutthroats, mainly, and a few rainbows that were planted years ago, right?”
Joe nodded.
“So who owns them? Do you own them? Is that why you’re so worked up?”
“I work for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department,” Joe said.
“Note that word fish. We’re the state agency in charge of managing our wildlife.”
Camish rubbed his chin. “So you own the fish.”
“Technically. no. But we’re charged with managing the resource. Everybody knows this.”
“Maybe,” Camish said. “But I like to get things clear in my mind. What you’re saying is that American citizens and citizens of this state have to go out and buy a piece of paper from the state in order to catch native fish in wild country. So you’re sort of a tax collector for the government, then?”
Joe shook his head, lost in the logic.
“So if you don’t own the fish and you didn’t put them here, what gives you the right to collect a tax on folks like us? Don’t we have any say in this?”
“I guess you can complain to the judge,” Joe said.
“Does the judge get his paycheck from the same place you do? Sounds like a racket to me. You’ve got me wondering who the criminal is here and who isn’t.”
Joe climbed down quickly and tied Buddy to a tree. He said to Caleb, “Let’s go.”
Caleb grinned. Same teeth as Camish. “Pissed you off, didn’t he?”
Joe set his jaw and made a wide arc around Camish, who looked amused.
Joe followed Caleb Grim on a nearly imperceptible trail through the pine trees. The trees were so thick that several times Joe had to turn his shoulders and sidle through the trunks to get through. The footing was rough because of the roots that broke the surface. Not that Caleb was slowed down, though. Joe found it remarkable how a man of his size could glide through the forest as if on a cushion of air.
“So,” Joe said to Caleb’s back, “where are you boys from?”
“More questions,” Caleb grunted.
“Just being friendly.”
“I don’t need no friends.”
“Everybody needs friends.”
“Not me. Not Camish.”
“Because you’ve got each other.”
“I don’t think I appreciate that remark.”
“Sorry,” Joe said. “So where do you guys hail from?”
“You ever heard of the UP?”
Joe said, “The Union Pacific?”
Caleb spat. His voice was laced with contempt. “Yeah, game warden, the Union Pacific. Okay, here we are.”
The trail had descended and on the right side of it was a flat granite wall with large vertical cracks. Caleb removed a gnarled piece of pitchwood from one of the cracks and reached inside to his armpit. He came out with a handful of crumpled papers.
Joe tried to see what they were. They looked like unopened mail that had been wadded up and stuffed in the crack. He saw a canceled stamp on the edge of an envelope. When Caleb caught Joe looking, he quickly stuffed the wad back into the rock.
“Nope,” he said. “No license here.”
“Is this a joke?” Joe asked. “You didn’t even look.”
“The hell I didn’t.”
Joe shook his head. “If you’ve got a valid license, I can look it up when I can get to a computer. In the meanwhile, though, I’m giving you another citation. The law is you’ve got to have your license in your possession. Not in some rock hidden away.”
Caleb said, “You’re giving me another ticket?”
“Yup.”
He laughed and shook his head from side to side.
“There’ll be a court date,” Joe said, unnerved from Caleb’s casual contempt. “If you want to protest, you can show up with your license and make your case.”
“Okay,” Caleb said, as if placating Joe.
“And I’m going to write up both of you for wanton destruction of game animals. I saw all the bones back there. You’ve been poaching game all summer.”
Caleb said, “Okay.”
“So why don’t we get back,” Joe said.
Caleb nodded, shouldered around Joe, and strode back up the trail.
As Joe followed, he wondered if he’d been suckered, and why.
Camish was still on his seat on the log and he watched with no expression on his face as Joe emerged from the woods. A cloud had finally passed in front of the sun and further muted the light. While they were gone, Camish had started a small fire in a fire pit near his feet and had cleaned and laid out the trout Caleb had brought back.
“Guess what,” Caleb said to Camish, “he’s going to give us tickets.”
“Tickets?” Camish said, placing his big hand over his heart as if pretending to ward off a stroke.
Joe felt his ears get hot from the humiliation, but said, “Wanton destruction of game animals, for starters. But we’ve also got hunting and fishing without licenses, and exceeding the legal limit of fish.”
Again, Joe caught the brothers exchanging information through their eyes.
Joe wrote out the citations while the Grim Brothers watched him and smirked.
Caleb said to his brother, “You’re gonna get mad, but I told him we were from the UP. And you know what he said? He said, ‘Union Pacific? ’”
Camish laughed out loud and slapped his thigh.
“Oh, and earlier, you know what he asked me?”
“What?”
“He asked if we’d ever run across any remains of that girl runner. You know, the one who took off running and never came back?”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said sure, we raped and killed her.”
Camish laughed again, and Caleb joined him, and Joe looked up from the last citation he was scribbling and wondered when he’d left Planet Earth for Planet Grim.
He handed the citations to the brothers, who took them without protest.
“I’d suggest you boys get out of the mountains and straighten up and fly right,” Joe said. “You’re gonna have big fines to pay, and maybe even jail time if the judge comes down hard.”
“Straighten up and fly right,” Camish repeated in a soft, mocking tone.
“What’s the reason you’re up here, anyway?” Joe asked. “I find people all the time looking for something they can’t get at home. What’s the story with you two?”
The brothers looked at each other.
“You wanna tell him?” Caleb said.
Camish said, “Sure.” He turned to Joe. “Let’s just say this is the best place for us. I really don’t want to go into detail.”
Joe waited for more that didn’t come. Finally, he reverted to training and said, “If you want to contest the citations, I’ll guess I’ll see you boys in court.”
“Gee,” Camish said. “Do we have to wear ties?”
Caleb snorted a laugh at
that.
“You can wear what you want,” Joe said, feeling ridiculous for responding.
Caleb said to Camish, “But we got folks to look after.”
Camish shot Caleb a vicious glance, which shut his brother up.
“What folks?” Joe asked.
“Never mind my brother,” Camish said. “He knows not what he says sometimes.”
Caleb nodded, said, “I just babble sometimes.”
“Is there someone else up here?” Joe asked.
“Ain’t nobody,” Camish said.
“Ain’t nobody,” Caleb repeated.
Joe mounted Buddy, clucked his tongue to get him moving, and started back up the hill. He was never so grateful to ride away. He tried not to look over his shoulder as he put distance between himself and the camp, but he found he had to if for no other reason than to make sure they weren’t aiming a rifle at him.
They weren’t. Instead, the Brothers Grim were laughing and feeding the citations into the fire, which flared as they dropped the tickets in.
That night he discovered his satellite phone was missing. He remembered powering it down and putting it away into its case the night before, after leaving the message for Marybeth. He emptied the contents of both panniers and checked his daypack and saddlebags looking for it. He thought: They took it. He re-created the encounter with the brothers step-by-step and pinpointed when it likely happened. When he’d followed Caleb to the cache.
“The arrow,” he said aloud and rooted through all of his gear again. It was gone as well.
His anger turned to thoughts of revenge. If the brothers used the phone-and why else would they have taken it? — their exact location could be determined. It was how the feds tracked down drug dealers in South America and terrorists in the Middle East. Joe could bring a team back up into the mountains and nail those guys.
Being out of radio contact was not unusual in itself, and often he didn’t mind it one bit. This time he did. Marybeth would worry about him. In fact, he was worried himself. And what if the brothers hadn’t taken his phone for their own use? What if they’d taken it to isolate him, to cut off his communication with the outside world?
