C. Box - Nowhere to Run

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 rid 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.