C. Box - Savage Run

Now Finotta was caught off guard. But he recovered very quickly. “Yes it is. He came off of my ranch, in fact.”

“Seven points one side and nine on the other, that right?”

“Yes.”

“You know, I think I’m familiar with this bull elk,” Joe said, rubbing his chin. “I never saw it, but I heard of him. A guide I talked to about a year ago had scouted him out. He said he counted seven tines on one side and nine on the other. He said it was the biggest elk he had ever seen in his life.”

Finotta studied Joe, clearly wondering where this was going.

“He had put the word out to some clients that this bull elk existed and would probably be the biggest one taken in the Bighorns in the last twenty years. That guide scouted that bull for an entire year. He knew where the bull grazed, where it slept, even where it drank water in the evening.

“Then that bull just went away,” Joe said. “Broke that guide’s heart. He reported it to me, and said maybe the big bull got poached since it was still four months until hunting season.”

Finotta responded evenly. “Maybe it just died. Or maybe it moved. Wild animals will do that, you know.” He paused. “Or maybe it exploded like ten of my cows.”

Joe grabbed a hardback chair, slid it under the mount and stepped up before Finotta could stop him. He examined the head, then rubbed his hand along the antler. “There’s still some velvet on these antlers,” Joe declared.

Velvet is the soft feltlike layer that encases antlers of deer, moose, and elk as they grow back each year. Normally, the animals shed their antlers in winter and grow them back-usually larger-in the spring. By fall and hunting season, the velvet has been rubbed off completely and the antler takes on a hardened sheen and strength like polished bone. Joe had seen instances where patches of velvet remained on the antlers through October, but it was rare. Velvet on Finotta’s elk might be suspicious but it was proof of nothing.

Joe stepped down. “When exactly did you shoot this elk?” he asked.

Finotta quickly stood up, slapping his palms down on the top of the desk. “Are you accusing me of poaching ?”

Joe shrugged in innocence. “I’m just wondering when and where you shot the elk.”

Finotta took a deep intake of breath and his eyes became hard. “I got him during hunting season. Last fall. On my ranch. ” He hissed the last words out.

“Okay,” Joe agreed. “That being the case, I’m sure you won’t mind me checking. We found a huge bull carcass up on the forestland last May with the head cut off. We took a DNA sample of the carcass and it’s in my freezer. The poachers hadn’t even taken any of the meat, which personally, to me, is a crime of the first order because it means a headhunter did it. I hate trophy hunters who just take the antlers and leave the rest. Not to mention that it’s illegal as all hell.”

The room was absolutely silent. Finotta glared at Joe under a bushy frown.

“So I would like your permission to take a small sample from this trophy.”

“Forget it,” Finotta cried, appearing offended. “I paid a lot of money for that mount in Jackson Hole. You don’t have my permission to damage it.”

Joe shrugged. “I won’t damage anything. I’m just talking about a few shavings from the base of the horn, from the back side of it, where no one could ever even see it.”

“You’ll need a court order,” Finotta said, back on firm footing. “And I don’t think you can get that in Twelve Sleep County.” What Finotta didn’t say was what was well known-that Judge Hardy Pennock was one of Finotta’s closest friends and had a financial interest in Elkhorn Ranches.

“You might have me there,” Joe conceded. But Finotta was clearly still angry. Veins pulsed on his temples, although his eyes and expression remained serious and steady.

“This meeting is over,” Finotta declared. “You should be aware that I plan to contact your immediate supervisor as well as the governor you once arrested.”

Joe shrugged with resignation. That was to be expected. He knew something like this would likely happen if he mentioned the elk, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

“Or,” Finotta said, this kind of negotiating as natural to him as breathing, “you can consider making the case for damage reimbursement for my dead cattle.”

Joe was being given one more chance. He knew that the governor was known to micromanage state agencies and also knew of state employees who had been drummed out of a job. He and Marybeth were still literally a paycheck away from poverty, and the house they lived in was state-owned. Joe had gained some political capital since he started out in the Twelve Sleep District following his run-in with Assistant Director Les Etbauer while he was investigating the murder of three local outfitters, but not enough for comfort. Grievance procedures were in place, of course, but the state bureaucracy had time-tested methods of making conditions so miserable that employees, even game wardens, eventually left on their own accord. Sometimes, game wardens who were out of favor were reassigned to areas that no one wanted, like Baggs or Lusk. These locations had become the Wyoming equivalent of the backwater, hellhole location that FBI agents were once sent-Butte, Montana.

“Let me get back to you on that.” Joe heard himself say, and left the room.

Ginger had not moved from her place near the tree in the living room. Joe told her good-bye. She said again that if she was a snake that she could have bitten him.

He left via the subdivision, angrily negotiating wide and empty paved roads, one time screeching his tires when he took a wrong turn into a cul-de-sac, shooting bitter passing looks at new foundations and huge fresh dirt piles, nearly decapitating a hydrant, and wondering what kind of people would choose to buy a three-acre lot and live in Elkhorn Ranches.

And wondering what he would say when he got back to Jim Finotta.

Joe pulled off of the highway into a hilly BLM tract hazy with new spring grass. He found a familiar hill, parked on top of it, and for an hour watched three- and four-month-old pronghorn antelope with their herd. He knew that watching the wild herd would soothe him, calm him down, help him, he hoped, put things into perspective. Related biologically to goats, not antelope (despite their name), pronghorn were uniquely evolved to survive and prosper in the arid and mountainous Rocky Mountain west. Yearling pronghorns, often produced as twins, were amazing wild animals, and becoming Joe’s favorites. Young pronghorns didn’t have the soft features, big eyes, and the bumbling cuddliness of most baby animals. Within a few weeks of their birth, they became tiny versions of their parents, with perfectly proportional but miniature long legs, brown and white camouflage coloring, and the ability to accelerate from zero to sixty when they sensed danger, leaving only a rooster tail of dust.

He watched the antelope, but in his head he replayed his conversation with Jim Finotta. The conversation and the situation had gotten off track quickly and gone in directions Joe hadn’t anticipated. He hadn’t reacted well, either.

When he thought about the exchange, it wasn’t so much what Finotta had said, or implied. It was what he didn’t ask that unsettled Joe.

Joe had no experience with notifying a rancher that his cows had exploded, as ridiculous as that sounded when he thought about it. Nevertheless, it wasn’t like notifying the next of kin about a highway accident, or even a hunter’s wife about a terrible accident, which Joe had done and which resulted in several nights of lost sleep afterward. With Finotta, there had been no questions about possible human victims-how they came to die, no queries about whether the dead were local, or even the status of the investigation. Wouldn’t a lawyer, litigious by trade, be at least somewhat interested in whether or not anyone could establish liability?