C. Box - Savage Run

“Bye, babe,” Joe waved back at Sheridan.

He unfolded the paper with the directions to the cabin that Marybeth had been given over the telephone.

Then he pulled his hat brim down low, backed the pickup down the driveway to the Bighorn Road, and pointed it toward the mountains.

Northwest of Saddlestring, Wyoming

July 6

Driving four miles over the speed limit with the Mercedes SUV set on cruise control, the Old Man noticed a small tape recorder pressed upright between the seats and pulled it out. Lawyers liked to talk in these things, he thought, and later give their valuable musings to their secretaries to decipher. Then he remembered the microcassette tape they had taken from Hayden Powell’s telephone answering machine. With his left hand on the wheel he dug through his daypack on the passenger seat until he found the cassette, then inserted it into the player. It fit.

He rewound the tape and glanced again at the rearview mirror. He had been driving all night. The Old Man continuously watched for the black Ford pickup to come roaring up behind him. Every time a dark-colored vehicle approached, he reached for his handgun on the console. He had absolutely no doubt that Charlie Tibbs was somewhere behind him, and the two-lane highway he was on was the only southbound route. It could be later today, or tomorrow, but Charlie would come. The Old Man hoped like hell he would be in and out of town by then. If he wasn’t, the Old Man would be dead. It was as simple as that.

He listened to the tape from the beginning, getting insight into Hayden Powell’s life for the week prior to the night when Charlie Tibbs and the Old Man showed up to end it.

There were several messages from Powell’s New York editor asking for selections from Screwing Up the West so he could send them out in the hope of getting good quotes from other authors and environmentalists for the book jacket and publicity kit. The editor told Powell not to worry about having the entire manuscript complete and to send chapters that could stand alone and garner praise.

There was a message from Powell’s attorney warning Powell that the SEC had called and requested an interview because of the failing dot-com company. The attorney said he recommended delaying the interview as long as possible, but that the two of them would need to get together soon to decide on a strategy for dealing with the allegations.

There were several curt “Call me” messages left by a woman the Old Man guessed was Powell’s ex-wife.

It was near the end of the tape that Charlie Tibbs called. There was silence except for traffic sounds. The Old Man had been seated next to Tibbs when he made the call as they entered Bremerton.

Assuming that this was the last of the messages, the Old Man reached to stop the tape. But now he heard one more.

The last message was a bad connection, with static in the line. The voice was thick and slurred.

“You know who this is. You need to get out of here as fast as you can. First they tried to get me, now Peter Sollito is dead. These things work in threes, and who knows who might be next. Hayden, it might be you. We need to get together and think this thing out, come up with a strategy before it’s too late.”

The Old Man was stunned. That message could have been left only by Stewie Woods.

The Mercedes topped a hill on the highway. The Bighorn Mountains loomed ahead; they were light blue, peaked, and crisp in the morning sun. The small town of Saddlestring, from this distance, looked like a case’s worth of glinting, broken bottles strewn across the hardpan at the base of the foothills.

Sheridan Pickett, still in her pajamas, was nestled in a pile of couch cushions in front of the television when Maxine began barking at the front door. This ruined Sheridan’s perfect Saturday morning. She tossed candy wrappers and a half-eaten bag of chips aside and scrambled out of the cushions, wrapping herself in her terrycloth bathrobe as someone knocked heavily and then rang the doorbell.

Sheridan had been instructed never to open the door for strangers and she was rarely tempted. Ever since the man had broken into their house and hurt her mother she had been especially cautious.

People often came to the door looking for her dad, because his office was in the house. Sometimes they were ranchers who wanted to file damage claims or complain about hunters or fishermen, and sometimes they were hunters or fishermen who wanted to complain about ranchers. Her dad always asked people to call first and set an appointment, but sometimes they just showed up. Since it was her dad’s job to serve the public, her parents had told her that if she was home alone and someone stopped by, she should be polite and get a telephone number where her dad could call them.

She cinched her robe tightly and approached the window. Pulling aside the front window curtains, Sheridan peeked outside.

An older, portly, pear-shaped man stood on the front porch. He had a round, full, red face and was not shaved. He wore a low-crown gray cowboy hat, and a weathered canvas ranch jacket and blue jeans. Scuffed lace-up outfitter boots with riding heels poked out from the bottom of his Wranglers. Sheridan always noted the boots men wore because she thought that boots, more than anything, defined who a man was.

The man stood looking at the door, his shoulders slumped, his head tipped forward, as if he were very tired. She looked out through the yard and could see the roof of a car over the fence but couldn’t tell what kind of car it was. Sensing her eyes on him, the man turned his head and saw Sheridan looking out at him. He smiled self-consciously at her. Sheridan thought he had a friendly face and that he looked like somebody’s grandfather.

Nevertheless, she made sure the door chain was secured before opening the door the several inches the chain would allow.

“Is your father the game warden in this area?”

There was a wooden sign out front on the fence that said exactly that, but oftentimes strangers either didn’t see it or chose not to acknowledge it.

“Yes, he is,” Sheridan said. “He’s not here right now but he’ll be back soon.” This is what she was supposed to say, that he would be back soon. Sheridan’s mother had drilled this into her, this deliberate vagueness.

The man seemed to be thinking. His brow furrowed and he stroked his chin.

“It’s important,” he said, looking up. “How soon will he be back?”

Sheridan shrugged.

“Do you think it will be in a few minutes or a few hours?”

Sheridan said she didn’t know for sure.

The man rocked back on his boot heels and dug his hands into the front of his jeans pockets. He looked annoyed and troubled, but not necessarily with Sheridan as much as with the circumstances in general. She had not been much help to him, but she would only say what her parents had told her to, nothing more.

“I can give you his cell phone number,” Sheridan offered. “Or if it’s an emergency you can call the 911 number and ask the dispatcher to radio him.” She wanted to be helpful.

The man didn’t respond.

“I suppose you can’t let me come in and wait for him?”

“Nope,” Sheridan said flatly.

The man smiled slightly. It was clearly the answer he expected.

“If I leave him a note, would you make sure he gets it?”

“Sure.”

“Back in a minute.”

The man turned and walked through the picket fence gate toward his car. Sheridan went into her dad’s office and got a business card from the holder on his desk. She waited at the front door. Then she saw the man emerge from his car. As he came through the gate he was licking the back of an envelope.