C. Box - Savage Run

“No.”

The Old Man sipped his coffee and watched Charlie Tibbs drive. He enjoyed watching Tibbs drive. There was such a display of competence, and competence was something the Old Man admired because it was so extremely hard to find. With Charlie Tibbs you always knew where you were going and why. The fears he had the night before about Tibbs he dismissed as manifestations of stress and fatigue.

But the feeling the Old Man had from the dream lingered.

On the same morning, 580 miles to the southeast of Missoula, Montana, Joe got a call about a mountain lion from a homeowner who lived in Elkhorn Ranches. The homeowner claimed he had been stalked. Joe took down the address and said he would there soon.

“You better be quick or I’m going to shoot that son-of-a-bitch,” the homeowner told Joe.

On his way out, Joe stopped at the breakfast table to kiss the girls and jokingly complained about “sloppy milk kisses,” which set them to howling. Even Sheridan, at the ripe old age of ten, still participated in the mock outrage over their dad’s early morning taunts. It was either about “breakfast kisses” or when he complimented them all on their lovely early morning hairdos before they got dressed and groomed themselves for school.

Marybeth followed him out the front door. Joe was already at his green Game and Fish pickup before he realized she was still with him. Maxine bounded out of the house and launched herself into the cab of the truck.

“I’m still disturbed about what happened yesterday in the library,” Marybeth said. Joe hoped for more.

He nodded, and turned to her.

Marybeth shook her head. “I feel horribly sorry for that woman, but she scared me.”

“What she looked like or what she said?” Joe asked, putting his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin and looking out toward Wolf Mountain, but not really seeing it.

“Both.”

Her hair smelled fresh, and he kissed the top of her head.

“She scared the hell out of me the first time, too,” Joe said. “She was sort of hidden in the curtains at their house.”

“I feel bad about being so repulsed.” Marybeth said quietly. “A disease like that could afflict any of us.”

Joe wasn’t sure what to say. He rarely thought in those terms. Right now, he only wanted to keep her close. He was grateful for the moment.

“That Tom Horn business puzzles me,” she said. “I’m still not sure if Ginger Finotta is just crazy, or if she’s trying to tell me something.”

“Maybe we ought to read up on the guy,” Joe offered.

“I’m waiting for her to return the book,” Marybeth said. “It’s the only copy the library has. I did a search on the computer trying to find it in another collection, but the book is really obscure. I found a copy in Bend, Oregon, and sent them an e-mail but haven’t heard back.”

He hugged her tightly. After a moment, she pulled away, but gently.

“Any chance you’ll get home early this afternoon?” she asked slyly. “The girls all have swimming lessons after school and won’t be home until five.”

Finally, Joe thought.

He smiled at her. He was wearing a department baseball cap until he could get his hat reshaped.

“Sounds like a proposition.”

Marybeth smiled mysteriously and turned toward the house.

“Get home early enough and you’ll find out,” she said over her shoulder.

The three-story red brick home was easy to find because it was the only house on Grand Teton Street in Elkhorn Ranches. All three acres had been recently landscaped with grass, mature Caragana bushes, and ten-foot aspens. The sod was so new that Joe could still see all of the seams in the yard. Joe couldn’t see a mountain lion anywhere.

As he pulled into the driveway from the road, one of the four garage doors began to open. As the door raised Joe saw a pair of fleece slippers, pajama legs of dark blue silk, a thick beige terrycloth robe cinched tight around a large belly, and the rest of a large gray-bearded man holding the garage door opener in one hand and a semiautomatic pistol in the other. The gun startled Joe and he froze behind the wheel. One arm was raised toward Joe. Luckily, it was the remote that was raised, not the pistol. Beside Joe, Maxine growled through the windshield.

Both Joe and the homeowner, at the same instant, realized that if Joe drew and fired, the shooting would be considered justified. The homeowner was armed and standing in the shadows of his garage. The man’s raised arm could have easily been mistaken for a threatening gesture. Quickly, the homeowner sidestepped and placed the pistol on a workbench. The man then shook his empty hand as if he had dropped something too hot to hold and an embarrassed look passed over the man’s face. Joe let his breath out, aware for the first time that he had been holding it in. If he had been out to get me, Joe thought sourly, it would all be over and he’d be the one left standing. Joe wasn’t even sure where his pistol was at that moment. In the field, where nearly every human Joe encountered was armed, Joe was duly cautious and kept his gun with him at all times. But at this huge new showplace home, in a perfectly square three-acre oasis of textured and manicured greenery, in the middle of a huge sagebrush expanse, he had not expected to run into an armed man.

The homeowner approached Joe’s pickup with a forced smile.

“Do you need to change your pants inside?” the homeowner grinned at Joe as if sharing an inside joke. Joe knew he must have looked terrified for a moment, and he felt an embarrassed flush crawl up his neck.

As Joe stepped out and shut the door to the pickup, he shot a glance inside the cab. His holster and gun belt were on the floor where he had left them the night before, the belt buckled around the four-wheel-drive gearshift.

“You okay?” the man asked, thrusting out his hand. “I’m Stan Wilder.”

Joe shook it and said he was just fine. Joe guessed that Stan Wilder was in his late sixties and new to the area. His accent was Northeastern and his words came fast. He had perfect big teeth that he flashed as he talked. The faded blonde-gray mustache and beard that surrounded the man’s mouth looked dull and washed out in comparison with his gleaming teeth.

“I was walking out to get the newspaper,” Stan Wilder nodded toward the red plastic Saddlestring Roundup box mounted on a T-post at the end of his driveway, “when the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Then I looked over there”-Wilder pointed toward a new row of spindly aspen trees-“and saw the mountain lion stalking me. I’m not ashamed to say that I was about as scared as you were just a minute ago!” He clapped Joe on the back.

Joe stepped far enough away so that Stan Wilder couldn’t do that again.

“How long ago did you see the mountain lion?” Joe asked. He chose not to reciprocate Stan Wilder’s banter.

“Must have been about seven this morning.”

“Did you see him run off?”

Wilder laughed, throwing his head back and showing his teeth again. Joe guessed that he must have been in sales and marketing before he retired and moved west to Elkhorn Ranches.

“Nope, but he saw me run right back into the house! That’s when I got my weapon out and called you.”

“You didn’t take any shots at him, did you?”

Somehow, Joe knew he had. Stan Wilder’s face betrayed the answer.

“He was on my property, Warden,” Wilder explained. “I popped a couple of caps. But I didn’t hit him.”

Joe nodded. “You ought to reconsider the next time you want to fire your pistol out here. The highway is just over the hill and there are construction workers framing a house in the next draw. You could hit one of them and you could also hit one of Jim Finotta’s cows. They graze fairly close to here.”