Wolf Pack Page 2

  There was another quick flash as the vehicle ascended the mountainside, but the woods were too thick to make it out.

  She knew there were old logging roads over there, and no doubt whoever had piloted the craft had retrieved it and was now getting away. There was no chance that she could get down the hillside and over the meadows in time.

  * * *

  —

  SHE SPENT the next hour photographing the carnage and killing wounded animals that would never recover in their winter-weakened state. It was disgusting work, and she was enraged at whomever had piloted the drone.

  What kind of sick mind would do such a thing? They’d been responsible for the deaths of dozens of animals.

  She thought about what her next steps would be. She knew very little about drones except that they were illegal to hunt or scout with. Were they registered somewhere? Was there a way of figuring out who had them and when they flew?

  All she knew was that the vehicle she’d spotted was headed away toward the top of the mountains and likely over the top, which was the demarcation line of her game warden district.

  Katelyn’s area of responsibility was nearly two thousand square miles on the western side of the Bighorn Mountains. Its name derived from the tiny mountain town of Shell, Wyoming.

  The district to the east was the Saddlestring District.

  It was managed by a game warden named Joe Pickett, who had recently gotten his job back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AT THE SAME TIME, eighty miles to the east, Joe leaned into the lens of a Bushnell spotting scope attached to the open driver’s-side window of his pickup. He carefully dialed the focus knob until he could look at a big arroyo in sharp detail. His new green pickup was parked in a pocket of aspen on the hillside just below the county road that continued into the national forest. From that vantage point—one he had used countless times over the years—he could scope the lower ends of the breaklands in his district and get a clear view of the deep red draws that knifed through the foothills of the Bighorns.

  These were the draws favored by local trappers hoping to catch bobcats, red foxes, and raccoons. Occasionally, a mountain lion would stumble into the traps, and even more occasionally a coyote or deer. But bobcats were the primary target, and they were surprisingly vulnerable. Stupid, even.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS A CLEAR, cool day in mud season. Rivulets of snowmelt coursed down the hillside from big drifts still caught in the shade of the trees. The dirt roads he’d used that morning were slick with mud, and his tires were coated with a full inch of it all the way around. It was still a long way from summer, but he could almost see it from there.

  Some of the species of wildlife Joe had encountered on his drive into the mountains were beginning to display springlike behavior. He’d noted three doe pronghorn antelope in different settings standing alone in the sagebrush as if they’d been expelled from their herds. Two froze in place and watched him go by with worried eyes, and the third ran away, looking back at him over her shoulder, as if imploring him to follow.

  He knew that the lone does were likely scouting locations to give birth in a few weeks. If he came back later and approached them, he’d likely find a tiny fawn—or twins, which was common with pronghorn—curled up at the base of a brush. The mother pronghorns stood guard until their babies could keep up with them—and the instant family unit would rejoin the herd.

  Pronghorn fawns fascinated Joe. When born, they were fully formed but miniature versions of the adult antelope. Within a week of birth, they could run just as fast—pronghorns were the second fastest land animal on earth, after cheetahs—and cover almost the same distance as mature animals.

  He’d noted the sightings on his Wildlife Observation Form, known by game wardens and biologists as a WOF, pronounced “woof.”

  * * *

  —

  A PRIME WESTERN bobcat pelt, unlike its eastern cousin, was fetching three hundred to five hundred dollars in the current fur market. In the last few winters, the bobcat population had boomed. Which meant the number of trappers had boomed as well.

  Joe liked it better when the prices were down, not because he disapproved of legitimate trappers, or had an excess of affection for predators. But when fur prices were low, fewer amateur trappers ventured out into the foothills and mountains. There was nothing wrong with amateur trappers, either, but too many of them lost interest in their sets if they didn’t produce quickly enough, and their traps went unchecked long after the seventy-two-hour requirement in the regulations. Or, worse, the traps were left out for months, and that meant many animals suffered cruel and unnecessary deaths: predators, deer, antelope, pets out for a walk.

  So when he’d received a call the previous evening from a local trapper reporting that someone had littered an arroyo with leg-hold traps and left them unattended for a month after trapping season had ended, Joe had responded the next day.

  “Failure to check” violations were serious and could result in ten days in jail, a thousand-dollar fine, and six years’ revocation of a trapping permit if the judge chose to throw the book at the violator. And that didn’t include the additional violations of trapping out of season and wanton destruction of wildlife if dead or maimed animals had been left in the traps.

  * * *

  —

  GAME WARDENS PERFORMED an odd dance with local trappers during the season. Trappers needed to purchase a furbearing animal trapping permit and obey all the rules and regulations, but they weren’t required to reveal where they set their traps. Therefore, in order to enforce the laws in their district, game wardens had to refrain from asking the trappers directly where they were set up and spend days trying to figure out each individual trapper’s grounds by using their knowledge and skills and following clues.

  As Joe scoped the arroyo, he noted irregularities that would likely be missed by casual observers. The weathered old log on the sloping wall of the draw looked out of place. Trappers wired their traps to branches or lengths of logs so they’d serve as drags if an animal tried to pull away.

  A pile of vertical brush looking like a miniature tipi on the floor of the arroyo had an opening at its base. Joe recognized it as a “cubby set.” Bobcats were preternaturally curious animals, and they were drawn to oddities and would check them out before proceeding on their way. Joe speculated that inside the cubby set he would find an open can of sardines or a dismembered rabbit, sure to lure a bobcat inside without it noticing the trap covered by loose dirt or sticks.

  Farther up the draw, a slight movement caught Joe’s eye and he adjusted the spotting scope. A single feather hung by a lanyard in the arroyo wall. It twisted slightly in the breeze. A passing bobcat would have to check it out and maybe even take a swat at it. Of course, the leg-hold trap was set in the gravel just below it.

  It didn’t appear that any animals had been caught and left to suffer and die. Joe was grateful for that.

  “Yup,” Joe said aloud.

  Daisy, the yellow Labrador, lifted her head in response from where she was curled up on the truck seat. She stared at him with unblinking eyes.

  “We’ve got us an illegal trapper,” he explained.

  After a beat, she lowered her muzzle back between her outstretched front paws.

  “You could pretend you’re excited, you know.”

  She sighed. Daisy seemed to know that she’d be left inside the pickup while he went to work. Joe had no intention of seeing her get trapped, either.

  * * *

  —

  HE UNCLAMPED the spotting scope and returned it to its case while he surveyed the landscape below. He could now pick out a set of ATV tracks through the sagebrush that he hadn’t noticed earlier. That’s how the trapper had accessed the mouth of the arroyo, and no doubt the route he’d use when he came back. Eventually.

  So instead of taking his t
ruck down there and leaving tracks of his own, Joe decided to walk in. He didn’t want the violator to know he’d been there. Joe intended to photograph the sets, trigger and confiscate the traps, and set up a spare trail camera that would, he hoped, capture an image so he could identify the rogue trapper when he finally came back to retrieve his hardware.

  Then Joe would throw the book at him.

  * * *

  —

  HE SAT BACK and smiled to himself. He was inordinately happy to respond to such a mundane trapping complaint, even though the reporting party certainly wouldn’t have thought it was routine or frivolous.

  For Joe, he was simply pleased to get up in the morning, pull on his red uniform shirt with the pronghorn antelope patch on the sleeve, pin on his badge and nameplate, clamp on his worn gray Stetson, climb into his pickup, and drive into the mountains of his district.

  Three and a half months of being on indefinite leave without pay from the Game and Fish Department had been a kind of nightmare for Joe, his wife Marybeth, and their three daughters.

  His troubles had begun when Governor Colter Allen had sent him hundreds of miles south to Saratoga to investigate the disappearance of a well-known British woman executive after she’d departed from a high-end guest ranch. Everything about the case had gone sidewise, and Allen had ordered his chief of staff, Connor Hanlon, to fire Joe and announce it with a press release.

  That’s when ex-governor Spencer Rulon had stepped in and offered to serve as his lawyer. Joe could never have predicted that fourteen weeks later he’d have his job and district back, all of his back pay plus a substantial raise, his badge number restored, and a brand-new Ford F-150 pickup to replace the one he’d damaged.

  Or that Governor Allen would be distracted while he fought for his political life in Cheyenne.

  It felt good to be back to work again.

  * * *

  —

  THE FOOTING ON the hill was loose and muddy and he didn’t want to leave telltale boot prints, so he stepped from sagebrush to sagebrush on the way down. He’d pulled an empty daypack over his shoulders to use for confiscating the traps. As he reached the bottom, his cell phone vibrated in his breast pocket. Joe paused and fished it out. The screen showed that the call was from Katelyn Hamm, who managed the Shell district on the other side of the mountains.

  Joe didn’t know her well, but he’d talked with her over the phone a few times and had helped her out once when she had to enter a remote elk camp and arrest a belligerent for hunting under the influence. Katelyn was younger than Joe, married, with two children in elementary school. From what he could discern, she was serious, professional, and a hard worker. She was, he thought, a credit to the job. There were fifty game wardens in the entire state. Of those, only four were women.

  He answered, “Joe Pickett.”

  “Joe . . .” The rest of her sentence faded away, except for the phrase “your side of the mountain.”

  Joe looked at his phone. Cell service was sometimes poor to nonexistent in certain places of his district and this appeared to be one of them.

  He raised his phone and said, “I’ll call you back when I get a signal.” But he wasn’t sure if she could even hear him.

  * * *

  —

  JOE DISCOVERED HE’D been wrong about the violator not causing any damage. Around an elbow of the arroyo wall was the mutilated dead body of a big male bobcat. Clamped on its right rear leg was an exposed steel trap with its chain secured to a length of wood. The carcass had been there for at least a week, and ravens had plucked out its eyes and had begun feeding on its flesh.

  Another violation had been added to the list.

  He whispered a curse and photographed the violation before he bent down to remove the trap. Legitimate trappers were required to attach an identifying plate or sticker to each set, but Joe didn’t expect to find one.

  Surprisingly, he did.

  It read:

  Tom Kinnison

  2204 Elkhorn Dr.

  Winchester, WY

  Joe was reminded once again that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, common criminals were not the brightest people. It was as if a burglar had left his business card on the kitchen table of the house he’d just looted.

  He didn’t know Kinnison and hadn’t heard his name before, but now he knew where to find him. There would be no need to set up his trail cam or worry about not leaving tracks.

  Of course, there was a very remote possibility that someone had stolen Kinnison’s traps and set them out in the arroyo. That didn’t seem credible, because Kinnison would have reported the missing property, and Joe would have been alerted through local law enforcement channels to keep an eye out for them.

  No, he concluded, I’ve got my illegal trapper.

  * * *

  —

  WEIGHTED DOWN BY ten steel traps in his daypack, Joe climbed the hillside back to his pickup, slipping once and falling and covering his left side with mud. He tossed the pack into the bed of his truck, wiped the worst of the mud off his clothing with an old towel from his gear box, and climbed into the cab.

  Daisy wouldn’t even turn her head to look at him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll let you out to run around when we find a cell signal.”

  As he started the engine and climbed on the two-track toward Hazelton Road, Joe keyed the microphone and raised the dispatcher in Cheyenne. The connection was poor, but it improved as he drove.

  “This is GF-18. I need you to run a name for priors,” he asked after the usual pleasantries. He spelled the name and cradled the mic in his lap while the dispatcher searched the law enforcement database.

  Several minutes later, she came back.

  “GF-18, we have no record of that individual.”

  That puzzled Joe. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. I tried Tom Kinnison, Thomas Kinnison, T. Kinnison, and just Kinnison in Winchester. No hits at all.”

  Which was unusual. Joe had learned over the years that game violations by an individual were usually just one rotten branch of a crime-filled tree. Men who flaunted wildlife regulations almost always had a rap sheet consisting of other crimes: DUI, moving violations, trespassing, breaking and entering, illegal drugs, on and on.

  Plus, it was Joe’s theory that committing wildlife violations signaled a general disregard for law in particular and civilization in general. The theory had been borne out time after time in his career. Show me a poacher, he’d once told Marybeth, and I’ll show you a career criminal.

  “Maybe he bought a trapping permit?” Joe asked.

  That search concluded much more quickly.

  “Affirmative,” she said. “Tom Kinnison of Winchester purchased a trapping permit online January 10 of this year. There’s no record of any other hunting or fishing licenses.”

  Also curious. He couldn’t recall ever encountering a trapper who wasn’t also a hunter or a fisher, and Joe had met nearly all of them in the area multiple times. Because a bobcat pelt fell under a federal regulation intended to combat the international market for illegal fur trading, it was necessary for local authorities to verify that the pelt was legally obtained by issuing a CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) tag for each properly harvested animal.

  “How many years does he say he’s been a resident?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Joe was puzzled. Winchester was a small mountain town twenty miles west of Saddlestring. He’d been there many times since he’d taken over his district, and he’d never heard of a longtime resident?

  “Can you please email me his trapping permit?” Joe asked. The application would include Kinnison’s age, height, weight, driver’s license number, and hair and eye color.

  If the man had lied on his application about being a Wyoming resident for fourteen years, there would be a
dditional criminal charges to add to his rapidly growing list of violations.

  So who was this guy?

  * * *

  —

  THREE BARS OF cell service appeared on Joe’s phone screen at the top of the mountain as he neared the paved highway. His intention was to return Hamm’s call first, then check in with Marybeth. Marybeth was the director of the Twelve Sleep County Library, and as such she knew more about her patrons in Saddlestring and Winchester than anyone else Joe could think of. Perhaps she knew something about Tom Kinnison. And if she didn’t, she probably knew someone who did.

  Then Joe would pay a visit to the man.

  But before he could proceed, his phone lit up with an incoming call. It was from Herman Klein, a third-generation rancher with a cow/calf operation on Spring Creek. It was strange that Klein had called Joe directly because Joe couldn’t remember ever giving him his private number. In the past, when elk had been in Klein’s hay meadow and needed shooing, or hunters had trespassed on his land, the rancher had called dispatch in Cheyenne.

  “Joe Pickett.”

  “Joe,” Klein said, “I got your number from the Forest Service fella in Bozeman.”

  Joe could only think of one U.S. Forest Service “fella” in Bozeman.

  Courtney Lockwood administered the Federal Task Force on Wolf Reintroduction (FTFWR) for the tristate region—Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. His area of responsibility included more than 328,000 miles and spread over two time zones, so you’d assume that Lockwood would be out of his office quite a lot. But he’d never known the man to leave his desk.

  Lockwood was frequently quoted in the press on questions regarding the controversies of wolf management and their conflict with livestock and wild game. In Lockwood’s view, the wolves that had been placed by the federal government into Yellowstone Park rarely ventured outside the park boundaries, and concerns about the predators roaming into other parts of the state were overblown and hysterical.