C. Box - Savage Run

Barnum sneered. “But I thought we had a bunch of dead elk.”

Abruptly, Barnum turned and began to limp in the direction of his Blazer. McLanahan dutifully fell in behind him after giving Joe a look of superior satisfaction. Joe wondered just what it was he had done to arouse Barnum. He guessed it was exactly what Barnum had said: that he was there was enough. The new game warden, two years in the Saddlestring District, still wet behind the ears, who was now right square in the middle of another homicide. Or suicide. Or something.

There had been few violent deaths in Twelve Sleep County in the past two years aside from the outfitter murders. The only one of note was the rancher’s wife who killed her husband by burying a hay hook into his skull, straight through his Stetson, pinning his hat to his head. In one version of the story that Joe had heard, the wife had gone home after the incident, mixed herself a pitcher of vodka martinis, and then called the sheriff to turn herself in. The pitcher was nearly empty when they arrived a short time later.

Before following the sheriff and his deputy, Joe stood quietly in the dark. He could hear the rest of the herd of cows grazing closer to the crater. In the distance, a squirrel chirred a message. The wildlife was cautiously moving back in. But there was something else.

A tremor quickly ran the length of his spine, and he felt the hairs prick on his forearms and neck. He looked straight up at the cold stars, then swept his eyes through the black pine branches. He knew that the fire lookout station was out of range. The black humps of the Bighorn Mountains did not show a single twinkling light of a cabin or a headlight. So why did he feel like someone or something was there with him, watching him?

Driving back on the interstate toward Saddlestring, Joe watched the little screen on his cell phone until it indicated he was finally receiving a signal. As he had guessed, Marybeth was still awake and waiting to hear from him. He gave her a quick summary of what they had found.

She asked if the victim was someone local.

“We have no idea,” Joe said. “At this point we don’t even know if we’ve got one body or two. Or more.”

She was silent for a long time.

“A cow exploded?” she finally asked, incredulous.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“So now we’ve got exploding cows to worry about?”

“Yup,” Joe said, his voice gently teasing. “As if there weren’t enough things to worry about with three little girls, now we need to keep them away from cows. And they’re everywhere, those cows. In all of the fields and in all of the pastures. It’s like there are ten thousand ticking time bombs all around us just waiting to explode.”

She told him he was not very funny.

“It’s been a bad night,” he said. “Barnum asked me to notify the rancher who owns the cows tomorrow, which I’ll do. He said that beyond that, he really doesn’t need my help on the investigation. Hell, he was upset with me just because I was there. He’s calling in the state crime boys tonight.”

“Barnum just wants everything to go smoothly until he retires,” Marybeth said. “He just wants to cruise on out of here without a ripple. And he especially doesn’t want you to steal his thunder in the meantime.”

“Maybe,” Joe said, knowing she was probably right.

“Who’s the rancher?” Marybeth asked.

“Jim Finotta. All the cattle had his Vee Bar U brand.”

Marybeth paused. “Jim Finotta, the trial lawyer?” she asked warily. Joe knew her antennae were up.

“Yup.”

“I haven’t heard many good things about him,” she said.

“Maybe so,” Joe said. “But you know how people like to talk. I’ve never met the man.”

It was almost as if Joe could hear Marybeth thinking. Then she abruptly changed the subject. “I saved some dinner for you,” Marybeth said as the highway straightened out and Saddlestring came into view. The town at night looked like a handful of jewels scattered through a river valley.

“What did you have?” Joe asked.

Marybeth paused. “Hamburgers.”

Joe forced a bitter smile. “I’ll have to pass. I’ll grab some chicken at the Burg-O-Pardner.”

“I understand. Please hose yourself off in the front yard before you come in.”

An hour after the taillights of the law enforcement vehicles vanished down Hazelton Road to return to Saddlestring, two men emerged from the darkness of the forest on the other side of the mountain. In silence, they approached a sleek black pickup that was parked deep in the trees, away from the rough logging road they had used to access the area. Using mini-Mag lights with the beams choked down to dim, they repacked their equipment and electronics gear-optics, radios, the long-range transmitter, and unused packages of C-4 explosives-into brushed aluminum cases in the bed of the truck.

“Too bad about that woman,” the Old Man said.

“Collateral damage,” Charlie grunted.

“Except for her, everything worked perfectly.”

Charlie snapped the fasteners shut on the optics case and looked up at the Old Man.

“Yup.”

The old man had been stunned by the force of the explosion, even from the distance from which they had observed it. In rapid succession, he saw the flash as Charlie toggled the transmitter, felt a tremor surge through the ground, and heard the detonation as the sound rolled across the mountains. The booming rumble washed over them several times as it echoed like distant thunder.

The Old Man had lowered his binoculars and whistled. Charlie, who had been watching through his spotting scope as Stewie Woods and the woman worked their way up the mountain, clucked his tongue.

They had tracked Stewie Woods across three states, and Stewie had never known they were there. Even when he took up with the woman and switched vehicles, they had stayed close. He had been sloppy, and more than a little preoccupied. When the judge in Ennis reported that they were headed to “somewhere near Saddlestring” in the Bighorn Mountains, Charlie had demonstrated to the Old Man, for the first time, why he was so good at what he did. When it came to hunting men, Charlie Tibbs was the best.

The national forest was huge, with dozens of access points. But Charlie anticipated exactly where Stewie Woods would end up, and they had beaten him there. From Charlie the Old Man learned that this part of the forest had been the subject of a dispute involving environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service, and the local ranchers and loggers who had been leasing the area for years. The dispute had been used by the environmentalists as a test case, and they had thrown their best lawyers into it. They had wanted to end what they saw as sweetheart deals made to ranchers on public land. But, as Charlie explained to the Old Man, the ranchers and loggers won when the judge-once a rancher himself-ruled to continue the leases.

One Globe, Stewie Woods’s organization, had been the most vocal in the dispute. Woods himself had been forcibly removed from the courtroom for acting out when the verdict was read. On the courthouse steps, in front of television cameras, Woods had proclaimed, “If we can’t save the planet through the courts, we’ll do it in the forests.”

The tract that would lure Stewie Woods, Charlie guessed correctly, was the one most recently opened to both logging and grazing. The best access to the parcel was from a trailhead near Hazelton Road. From there, Charlie had determined, Woods would hike toward the peak where the trees to be logged would soon be marked. On the way, Woods would undoubtedly run into the herd of cattle that had recently been moved into the high country. The Old Man wasn’t sure what they would have done if Woods had skirted the herd of cows, especially with the tethered heifer that had been strapped with the explosives and the detonation receiver. But even if Woods had taken another route and evaded their trap, the Old Man had no doubt that Charlie would have quickly come up with another plan. The man was relentless.