C Box - Trophy hunt

On the floor of the pickup was a tranquilizer gun in its plastic case. The gun had a pistol grip and shot a single fat dart loaded with a debilitating sedative. The warnings on the box of darts said that the sedative was extremely concentrated, and designed for animals weighing over 400 pounds. The dosage was lethal to humans. Reversing down the empty county road for nearly quarter of a mile, he slowed, cranked the wheel so that the nose of the pickup pointed straight out into the breaklands, punched the four- wheel-drive high switch, and started crawling across the sagebrush in the dusk. His tires crushed sagebrush, and the sharp, juniper-like smell perfumed the chilling air. As usual, he kept both windows open so he could see and hear better. As the front tires bucked down and up through a hidden, foot-deep channel, he instinctively reached over with his arm to prevent Maxine from toppling from the seat to the floorboards before remembering Maxine wasn't there.

T

wenty minutes after he had left the road, Joe glanced up and saw a pair of bobbing headlights in his rearview mirror. The vehicle was at least ten minutes behind him, and seemed to be using the same set of tracks that he had cut across the grass and brush.

Who could possibly be following him, or even know where he was? Maybe Nate got his message after all.

While he was watching the mirror instead of where he was going, his left front tire dropped into a huge badger hole and jerked the truck to a stop. The steering wheel spun sharply left as the tire fell and twisted in the hole, and maps, memos, and other paperwork rained on him from where they had been wedged under rubber bands on his visor for safekeeping. The motor died. He picked up all the paper that had fallen on him and shoved it out of the way between the seats. He looked up and saw lazy dust swirling in his headlights, lit up with the last brilliant half hour of the ballooning sun.

Feeling his chest constrict, he checked his mirror. Because he had stalled out in a small dip in the terrain, he couldn't see the headlights behind him. He turned in his seat, looked through the glass, but couldn't see the vehicle.

Was it Nate? If Joe could see the headlights again, he could be sure. Nate's Jeep had a recognizable grille and set of lights. It looked like an owl's face.

He had a wild thought: what if it wasn't Nate? What if someone had used the same frequency as the bear collar to alert the biologists and lure Joe out here? The frequency itself, though assigned to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was available on the handheld radios favored by most hunters and fishers, even though use of it was discouraged.

Uh-oh, Joe thought. Did he have time to unsheath his shotgun before the vehicle behind him caught up?

Then headlights cleared the wash and Joe instantly recognized the grille of Nate's Jeep. Nate thrust his head out the window.

"Hey, Joe," Nate Romanowski, the driver, said in greeting. "I got your message about the bear and came straight out."

Joe sighed, relaxing. "Have you ever considered calling ahead, Nate? Have you ever thought about calling me on my cell phone or through my dispatcher and telling me that you're planning to find me?" Joe said, his voice rising. "Have you ever thought about that, Nate? Instead of scaring the hell out of me by chasing me across the prairie?"

Nate didn't respond right away, which was his way. Joe noticed that Nate was wearing his side-draw shoulder holster.

"So," Nate said, a smile tugging on his mouth, "where's your bear?"

They left Nate's Jeep in the ditch and, after working Joe's pickup out of the badger hole, Nate and Joe sat side by side on the bench seat in Joe's truck and churned forward through the prairie in the half-light of the last ten minutes of dusk.

"The bear might be out here," Joe said, "but I don't think the bear is the key to the mutilations."

Nate shrugged. "This is one of those instances where reasonable people can disagree."

"Okay," Joe said. "Explain."

Nate chuckled again, which sounded somewhat false.

"Things are happening with the investigation," Nate said. "I can tell by your mood. You're… jaunty, all of a sudden. A little excitable also, I'd say. If you give me the background I'll be able to let you know if I'm still in the ballpark or not. But I've had a few thoughts lately and a few more dreams. I've talked to some Indian friends."

Joe shot Nate a look. He knew Nate had contacts on the reservation. The mutual interest was falconry, which the Shoshone and Arapaho admired.

"So you need to tell me what's going on," Nate said.

Joe checked the GPS unit. They were close. So far, he was pleasantly surprised that they'd paralleled the worst draws in the breaklands, and hadn't been confronted with any ditches that stopped their progress.

"Things are getting interesting," Joe said, and told Nate about his confrontation with Barnum and Portenson, his interview with Montegue, and the meeting with Sheriff Dan Harvey.

"Okay," Nate said, after listening carefully. "There is something here."

"So what is it?" Joe asked.

Nate shrugged. "Hell, I don't know. But something ought to fit with something else. Tanner Engineering may be the place to start. But, Joe…"

"What?"

"Don't dismiss what I said earlier. About the energy booms and the fact that the murders and mutilations seem to come when the ground is being tapped. Or that the bear may be more than a bear. That bear is here for a reason." Joe waved Nate away, as if swatting at a fly. "Nate, let's not even go down that road. It's crazy." Nate clammed up, stung by Joe's attitude. Silence hung heavily in the cab. "Okay, Nate, I haven't dismissed it completely," Joe said, sorry he'd snapped. "But I still can't see where it connects." They hit another badger hole, which pitched the pickup like a sailboat in a choppy swell. Nate said, "It probably doesn't. That's my point. I feel like there are things happening on different levels of reality but all at the same time. We happen to be in the right place at the right time where different levels of conflicts are overlapping." "What?" "You should open your mind a little." "Perhaps." Both Nate and Joe watched the GPS unit. They knew they were moments away from contact. "What did you say that area code and telephone number was?" Nate asked, changing the subject. The pickup nose was pointed toward the sky, into a swirl of early-evening stars. When they broke over the rise Joe expected to see the bear. They were that close. "Nine-one-oh something," Joe said. "Fayetteville, North Carolina. Wherever that is." Nate laughed. "Here's a guy in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, asking where North Carolina is." "We're just about over the top," Joe said. "Get ready for I don't know what." "Nine-one-oh," Nate said suddenly. "That's the area code for Fort Bragg. The army base. I spent some time there. Forget Fayetteville, Joe. Think Fort Bragg." With that, Joe felt another door open. As it did, they topped the hill and looked down on an immense flat basin that was lit up in the moonlight. He saw no bear. But in the center of the basin was a sheep wagon. There was no pickup next to the wagon, only a few white sheep, their backs absorbing the light blue moonlight. The sheep wagon was prototypical of the models that used to be found all over the Rockies: a compact living space mounted on wheels that could be pulled by a long tongue hitch and stationed amid the herds. It was the nineteenth-century precursor to the RV. There was a single door at the rear of the wagon, and a single window over the bunk-shelf near the front. A wood-stove chimney pipe poked out of the rounded top.

Joe stopped and checked the coordinates.

"This doesn't make any sense," Joe said.

"What?" Nate asked.

"We're here. This is where the bear boys said they caught the grizzly's signal. Right here. But I don't see anything besides the wagon and the sheep."