Shots Fired: Stories From Joe Pickett Country Page 2

  The first time Joe met Dietrich was when the then-foreman of the ranch, under orders from the owner, had strung barbed wire across the river to stop the passage of local fishing guides and recreational floaters. Joe had explained that state law allowed access to all navigable waters, that the land itself was private—even the river bottom itself—but the water was public. As long as the boaters didn’t anchor or step out of their boat, they could legally cross the ranch. Dietrich exploded and ordered his then-foreman to beat up Joe right there and then. The foreman refused, and was fired. Joe filed charges against Dietrich for threatening him, but dropped them when Dietrich agreed to remove his barbed-wire fence.

  The second time, just two months ago, Joe was at a hearing before the Game and Fish Commission on a plan Dietrich proposed to convert two thousand acres of his ranch into a wild game hunting operation. Dietrich’s idea was to import water buffalo, gazelles, kudu, blackbuck, and scimitar-horned oryx from Africa to be hunted by his friends. Since Joe was the local game warden, he was asked to testify, and he testified against the plan. Exotic, non-native species were a threat to the antelope, deer, and elk populations, he had said, and there was no way for Dietrich to guarantee the animals would never escape or pass along diseases that could decimate local wildlife. Dietrich appeared briefly at the hearing and extended a crooked finger at Joe and called him “a no-account tinhorn jackbooted thug.”

  Joe said: “I’ve never been called that before.”

  Because the atmosphere in the hearing room was so poisonous, the commission chose to take the decision under advisement and issue a ruling at a future date.

  That date had arrived. They had voted no. And Joe was tasked with delivering the verdict to the new ranch manager of the Crazy Z Bar, the Dietrich employee who had drafted and presented the proposal, Kyle Sandford.

  Poor Kyle, Joe thought.

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH LAMAR DIETRICH’S magnificent empty home—built of native stone and sheets of glass so heavy and large that they’d been delivered by a cargo helicopter—was set into the side of the mountain that overlooked the river bottom, the manager’s house was humble and in need of paint and new shingles. It was located on a sagebrush shelf with a cluster of outbuildings including a metal barn, corrals, and a Quonset hut for housing vehicles and machinery.

  There was never any need to knock on the doors of ranch homes, and no way to sneak onto a ranch. Daisy perked up again when a gaggle of motley ranch dogs boiled out from pools of shade and streaked toward Joe’s pickup. They formed yipping, tumbling knots on both sides and accompanied him as he drove into the ranch yard, nipping at the tires and fenders, the cacophony signaling the arrival of a stranger.

  “You stay,” Joe said to Daisy over the racket.

  The three members of the Sandford family appeared from three different places in the ranch yard as if joining each other on a stage: Joleen came from the ranch house itself, drying her hands on a dish towel; Kyle Sr. looked out from the Quonset, gripping a Crescent wrench with an oily hand; and Kyle Jr. strolled from a pocket of willows that marked the bank of the river, his fly rod poking nine feet into the air.

  Joe was most familiar with Kyle Jr., who was seventeen and ran in the same circle as his ward, April. He was a quiet ranch kid who had boarded the same bus as other ranch kids until he could drive himself, but hadn’t been in the valley long enough—and wasn’t an outstanding athlete, scholar, or leader—to belong firmly to a pack. He seemed like a floater, the kind of boy who hung back and to the side, keeping his mouth shut, occasionally surprising others with a good quip or an observation, but was never missed when he didn’t show up and never mentioned when groups were forming to attend games, go out on Friday nights, or plan a party. Joe recalled April reviewing digital photos of her friends at a football game, pointing out characters and laughing about things they’d done or said. When she came across a photo of Kyle Sandford Jr., she shook her head and said, “I don’t remember him being there, but I guess he was.”

  Kyle Jr. was wiry and dark with a prominent Adam’s apple and wispy sideburns. Joe had never seen the boy smile, but he had eyes that seemed to carefully take everything in.

  Kyle Sr. nodded a reserved hello to Joe and Joe nodded back. Joleen withdrew into the house but stood behind the screen, watching carefully. Kyle Sr. tossed his wrench into a bucket of tools behind him, clamped on a dirty short-brimmed Stetson Rancher, and greeted Joe by saying, “Joe.”

  “Hello, Kyle.”

  “Did you bring me some good news?”

  Joe paused. “Nope.”

  Kyle Sr. took a deep breath and stood still. His face betrayed nothing, but Joe saw Joleen shake her head behind the screen and turn away.

  “It was unanimous,” Joe said. “The commission voted to not allow a game farm. They said it would be a bad precedent, even if your owner did all the security fencing and inoculations he said he would.”

  Kyle Sr. said nothing. He just stared at Joe and his mouth got tight.

  Finally, in a thin voice, he said, “Is there anything we can do about this?”

  Joe was puzzled. Was Kyle Sr. offering a bribe?

  “Like what?”

  “Make another run at ’em, maybe. Adjust the proposal so they’re happy about it this time, you know?”

  Joe shook his head. “They’ll meet again in a month, but I can’t see them changing their minds.”

  Kyle Sr. dropped his head and stared at the top of his boots. “You know what’s going to happen then, right?” he asked.

  “I’m guessing Lamar Dietrich won’t be too happy,” Joe said.

  Kyle Sr. snorted and said, “You got that right. But you know what else will happen?”

  Joe said he didn’t.

  “Come with me,” Kyle Sr. said, gesturing with his chin toward the house. “I’ll show you something.”

  Joe started forward and remembered Kyle Jr. He looked over at the boy as he passed by. “Any luck?” he asked.

  “They’re hitting on prince nymphs and scuds.”

  “Any size to ’em?”

  “Eighteen, nineteen inches,” Kyle Jr. said. “I broke off one that was bigger than that.”

  “Nice fish,” Joe said, impressed.

  “Yeah,” Kyle Jr. said, his eyes worried, “they were.”

  • • •

  INSIDE, KYLE SR. pointed toward The Book of Rules and Joe knew then what was coming. The man slid the binder across the counter and used a greasy thumb to find the right tab. Joe read it: LOCAL POLITICAL INFLUENCE.

  Kyle Sr. folded back the tab to the first page of the section, and read:

  “‘As Ranch Manager of the Crazy Z Bar, an important part of your responsibilities is to develop influential working relationships with officials on the county and state level. The purpose of these relationships is to further the goals of the property and implement projects deemed important by the owner. Failure to secure beneficial results and decisions may result in termination.’”

  Joe contemplated that.

  Kyle Sr. said, “Mr. Dietrich thinks anything is possible if you’ve got the right relationships with the powers that be. That’s how he got to be such a rich man. He thinks all his managers need to have that same ability. I guess I don’t.”

  “It’s not that,” Joe said. “I was at the hearing, remember?”

  “And you testified against us.”

  “Yes, I did. But it wasn’t because the proposal was sloppy or you weren’t a good man making a strong bid. The game farm was rejected on its merits. It would have been the only game farm in the whole state, and policy was against you from the start. I think we have a lot of stupid policies, but that isn’t one of them. No one wants to be out elk hunting and run into a water buffalo. Simple as that.”

  “I know,” Kyle Sr. said softly. “But that won’t matter to Mr. Dietrich. He’ll see
it as me being a piss-poor influencer of mucky-mucks. He won’t look at the big picture and see how I’ve made our cattle operation go into the black or how I’ve sold more hay than any other manager here over the years. He’ll look at this tab and cut me loose.”

  Joe said, “He can’t be that unreasonable.”

  “You don’t know him like I do,” Kyle Sr. said, shaking his head. “If someone doesn’t do the job he wants, he cuts ’em loose. Haven’t you ever wondered why this place has gone through six managers in fifteen years? I’ve stuck the longest—going on four years. But he’ll find out about this decision and—”

  Joe looked up when Kyle Sr. suddenly stopped talking to see what had stopped him. He followed the man’s eyes to the outside screen door, where Kyle Jr. stood on the porch.

  Joe understood. No father wanted his son to think of him as a failure, whether the circumstances were fair or not.

  “We’re talking,” Kyle Sr. said to Kyle Jr.

  “Are we gonna have to move again?” the boy asked.

  Kyle Sr. raised his voice and said, “I said we’re talking in here, son. I don’t need you standing there listening in. You go get the company truck and gas it up. You can take it into town.”

  Kyle Jr. looked back, uncomprehending. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because Mr. Dietrich is coming for his quarterly visit. You can pick him up and bring him out here.”

  “Why me?” Kyle Jr. asked, pain in his eyes.

  “Because your mother and me need to start packing up,” Kyle Sr. said.

  From the living room, out of sight, Joe heard Joleen gasp.

  To her, Kyle Sr. said, “You’ll be getting what you always wanted, Joleen.”

  She responded with a choked mewl.

  To Joe, he said as an aside, “She never liked this place, anyhow. She’s scared of Dietrich and she’d like to be closer to her people in Idaho. Maybe we’ll end up there now.”

  “What about Kyle Junior?” Joe asked, after the boy had left the porch.

  “He loves this place,” he said with a heavy sigh. “He thought we’d finally found a place for him where we could stay awhile. He’s made some friends and he’s finally getting settled in. Now we’re going to jerk him out of high school and hit the road again.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “He ain’t never stayed in a place for more than a year or two,” Kyle Sr. said. “He’s like an army brat, I guess. But for some reason he thought this one would take. He finally let his guard down and started making connections. He told us he really likes it—the town, the school, even his teachers. Now . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  As Joe opened the door to go back out to his pickup, Kyle Sr. said, “Old man Dietrich couldn’t have better timing. He’s showing up on the day we find out about the game farm decision. He won’t even have a chance to cool off before he fires me. He likes doing it face-to-face. He says that’s the only way to fire a man: face-to-face. It’s in The Book of Rules.”

  “How’s he getting here?” Joe asked.

  “Kyle Junior is picking him up.”

  “No, I meant to Saddlestring?”

  “Private plane,” Kyle Sr. said. “He must have brought the jet or he’d land on our own strip.”

  “How many planes does he have?”

  “Three that I know of.”

  Joe said, “Maybe I’ll meet him at the airport along with Kyle Junior. I’ll tell him the news and make sure he knows it had nothing to do with you. Maybe that will help.”

  Kyle Sr. smiled bitterly. “Worth a try, I guess.” But Joe could tell he wasn’t optimistic.

  As Joe descended the stairs on the porch, he heard Kyle Sr. say to Joleen: “I’ll hitch up the horse trailer and back it up to the front door. You start gathering our personal stuff. Mr. Dietrich has been known to give folks an hour to clean out. We might need more than that . . .”

  • • •

  JOE SWUNG INTO THE TRUCK and said to Daisy, “Man oh man.”

  Daisy lowered her head between her big paws on the seat. Joe reached for his keys as Kyle Jr. drove through the ranch yard in the Crazy Z Bar’s Ford F-350. Joe got a glimpse of the boy’s face. He looked stricken.

  • • •

  AS JOE CROSSED THE ONE-CAR BRIDGE and drove toward Saddlestring in the lingering dust spoor of the F-350, he thought of the ranches in the Twelve Sleep River valley. There were twenty or more big holdings, most owned by out-of-state executives. But beyond that fact, each was mightily different from the other.

  In his experience, each ranch was a world of its own: teeming with intrigue, agendas, and characters. Each was a fiefdom with its own peculiarities and practices, its own set of rules and expectations. Ranch managers were itinerants in cowboy hats who did the bidding of their owners but, unlike the owners, had to interact with the locals. They hired cooks, wranglers, cowboys, and hands who specialized in construction, fixing fences, and wildlife management. Their employees gossiped about them, and sometimes switched ranches for better deals or benefits. There was lots of interbreeding, and relationships formed between employees of one ranch and employees of others. Even for Joe, who was out among them day after day, it was hard to keep it all straight.

  Despite telephones, email, and the Internet, most of the information and rumors from ranch to ranch were communicated daily through snippets of information relayed to the ranch communities by those who kept an old-fashioned circuit of visits, like brand inspectors, cattle buyers, large-animal veterinarians, and the almost legendary mail lady named Sandra “Asperger” Hamburger, who had delivered the mail in the rural areas on an ironclad timetable that had not wavered more than five minutes each day for fifteen years. Hamburger was unmarried and in her mid-sixties, and favored brightly colored cowboy shirts, jeans, short gray hair, and steel-framed cat-eye glasses she’d worn for so many years they were in fashion again. She was a tightly wrapped eccentric with mild autism—hence her nickname—who drove an ancient mud-spattered Dodge Power Wagon. She could be counted on to arrive at each rural mailbox on schedule, every day, despite the conditions. To her, the U.S. Postal Service was an all-powerful god and she didn’t want to let it down. When she was running late by even a few minutes, she was a terror. When Joe saw Hamburger’s truck barreling down a two-track road, raising dust behind her, he simply pulled over and let her pass. Otherwise, he was taking his life in his hands.

  But if Joe needed information or intel on any of the ranch managers or their employees, Sandra Asperger Hamburger was who he sought out. She knew all the names, most of their backgrounds, and most of their likes and dislikes based on what they sent or received in the mail. Often and intuitively, she knew of management shake-ups before anyone else in the valley. She wasn’t a gossip, but she made it her business to know what was going on. Otherwise, she apparently reasoned, it might make her less efficient.

  Some ranch managers fit right in, some contributed to the general welfare, and some were out-and-out bastards who used their positions as perches of power. A few of the ranch managers in the area were incompetent in every aspect of ranching other than being obsequious to the owner and his family when they arrived annually or semiannually, and that seemed to be enough to keep their jobs. Others were hardheaded cowmen who challenged their owners over budgets and priorities as if their roles were reversed. They didn’t last long.

  Kyle Sandford Sr., it seemed to Joe, was one of the good ones. He kept to himself—too much, apparently, for his own good—and honored local traditions and idiosyncrasies, or at least as much as The Book of Rules would let him. He was a member of the local Lions Club and he attended school activities with Joleen. Sandford managed the ranch as if it were his own, and he drove hard but fair bargains with cattle buyers, shippers, and local businesses. He didn’t make dubious wildlife damage claims like some of the managers did, and he looked the other way when old-timers hunted
or fished on private land they’d used for years.

  Poor Kyle Sr., Joe thought. And poor Kyle Jr.

  • • •

  THE SADDLESTRING MUNICIPAL AIRPORT was located on a high plateau south of town. There were two commercial flights daily—both to Denver—and most of the activity at the airfield was as a fixed-base operator for private aircraft. The ranch Ford was parked in front of the small FBO building, and Joe swung into the lot and parked beside it. As he did, he heard the whine of a small plane accelerate in volume in the sky as it descended.

  Joe swung out and patted Daisy on the head and pulled on his hat. Between two massive cumulus clouds to the east there was a glint of reflected light and it didn’t take long for the speck to grow wings and wheels.

  Inside the airport, Kyle Jr. sat on a molded plastic chair and stared out the windows at the tarmac. He wore a gray Saddlestring High School hoodie, worn jeans, cowboy boots, and a Wyoming Cowboys baseball cap. It was the official uniform of every teenage boy in town, Joe thought, except for the Goths and the druggies. Kyle Jr.’s hands rested on the tops of his thighs and his head was tilted slightly to the side, as if holding it erect took too much energy.

  “Are you okay?” Joe asked.

  Kyle Jr. started to respond, then apparently thought better of it.

  “I know this must be tough. You kind of like it here, don’t you?”

  Kyle Jr. nodded his head.

  “It’s a good place,” Joe said. “I know my girls would hate to leave it now that they’re in high school. But maybe it won’t come to that.”

  The boy looked up with hope in his eyes. “My dad didn’t seem to think so.”

  Joe nodded. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Dietrich. Your dad is a hell of a hand. He would have a hard time replacing him. I can’t believe he’d let him go because of something that was completely out of his control. I’ll let him blame me.”