Open Season jp-6 Read online

  It was Vern's shadow that had probably prevented Joe from being notified that morning about the incident in the campground at Crazy Woman Creek. Vern had resigned six months earlier to go to work for a large energy company as a field executive in "local relations," whatever that was. The rumor at the time was that Vern had more than tripled his salary.

  They discussed the plan and the possibilities. They would move in on the elk camp in the predawn from three directions and close in. Wacey said he would communicate with Joe and Deputy McLanahan with hand signals. It anyone was in the camp, they would surround and disarm them as quickly as possible.

  "We don't know if these two had anything to do with Ote getting shot," Wacey said. "Ote may have wandered out of camp on his own, run into some kind of trouble, and made the midnight run to Pickett's house. These two might not even know where he is or what's going on."

  "On the other hand ..." interrupted McLanahan, barely able to contain his excitement of the possibility of being part of some real action.

  "On the other hand, they may have gotten drunk with old Ote and got in a fight and shot him a couple of times," Hedeman finished. "So we've got to be prepared for just about anything."

  "If they're involved they might not even be there," Joe said. "They might have cleared out last night and they're in Montana by now."

  ***

  Joe lay in his sleeping bag but couldn't sleep. He doubted the other two could either. The stars were out, and it was colder than he had expected it to be. He could see his breath in the starlight.

  His revolver was within reach on the side of his sleeping bag, and he reached down in the dark and felt the checkered grip.

  Joe thought of his girls. It was only 9:30, although it seemed much later. Both girls would be in bed, but probably not asleep. More than likely, they would be pretty wound up in that motel room. Sheridan would be reading or gabbing to her bear. She used to do that at night with her kitten, and before that, her puppy.

  Marybeth would be reading Lucy a story or cuddling her until she drifted off.

  Sheridan would no doubt be checking the motel window for the approach of more monsters.

  He wondered how this incident would effect his girls, especially Sheridan. It was one thing to look for monsters and another thing to actually see them. Ote's sudden appearance had somehow thrown a new curve on things, and Joe knew Marybeth would be thinking about that. The sanctity of their little family had been violated. Ote's blood would remain on the walk for months--and in their memories forever. Joe wondered what kind of cleaning substance he could buy that would remove bloodstains from concrete. How would Lucy remember this day? Would it make her more cautious, more suspicious? Would Sheridan wonder if her parents--especially her dad--could actually protect her from harm after all? The relationship between a father and his daughters, Joe had discovered, was a remarkably powerful thing. They looked to him to accomplish greatness; they expected it as a matter of course because he was their dad and therefore a great man. Someday, he knew, he would do something less than great and they would see it. It was inevitable. He wondered at what age his luster would dim in Sheridan's eyes and then in Lucy's. He wondered how painful it would be for them all when they recognized it.

  Joe Pickett had two passions. One was his family and the other was his job. He had tried as best he could to keep them separate, but that morning Ote Keeley had forced them together. Joe now looked at both differently and what he saw pained him. Marybeth had never actually complained about the way her life had gone since marrying Joe Pickett. Her frustration appeared in random sighs and sometimes hopeless facial expressions that she probably didn't even recognize as such--but Joe did. Marybeth had been on a career path--she was a bright and attractive woman. But by marrying Joe in college, having children, and moving around the state with him from one beat-up house to another, her life had turned out differently than she, or her hard-driving mother, imagined. Marybeth deserved a certain standard, or at least a permanent home of their own; Joe had not been able to provide either. It was eating at him, taking a million tiny bites. When she talked on the telephone to her old college friends who were traveling and managing businesses and enrolling their children in private schools, she would be blue for weeks afterward, although she wouldn't admit it.

  While he loved his job--he was, after all, nature boy--the guilt he felt this morning when he learned that they couldn't even afford a motel room in town still shrouded him. The exhilaration of the mountains right now brought a hard edged sense of regret and confusion. His belief that what he did was good--and that he was good at it--would not put his daughters through college or allow his wife to ever take a real vacation.

  Joe shifted to try to get more comfortable. He tried to think of other things but he couldn't. Joe tried to imagine what Marybeth would think if she could see him now, on a manhunt with his hand on his revolver and two (heavily armed) men sleeping next to him. It was a boyhood dream coming true; good guys pursuing bad guys. He couldn't deny the excitement that was keeping him wide awake. It would be hard to describe to Marybeth how he felt right now. He wasn't sure she would understand.

  He wondered what Marybeth, the protector of his career who had never understood what Joe saw in Vern (or Wacey, for that matter), would think of Vern being back in Saddlestring. Joe tried to stave off the resentment he felt toward Vern. Vern had been good to him and had recommended him for the Saddlestring district. It wasn't Vern's fault that everybody seemed to think Vern hung the moon when it came to setting the standard for a local warden.

  Too much to think about, and no conclusions to be reached.

  He raised up on an elbow and in the faint light of the stars, could see Deputy McLanahan walking away from the camp to relieve himself. McLanahan couldn't sleep either.

  As he stared up at the hard white stars--there were so many of them that the night sky looked gauzy--Joe realized that if things were to change for him and his family, he probably would have to change. Marybeth and his girls deserved better than what they had; to give them more, he would have to give up the other thing he deeply loved.

  But first there was the matter of a dead man in his backyard and an elk camp a few miles away.

  Wacey sighed deeply. He was snoring. He seemed to be exhausted. Joe wished he could sleep like that.

  ***

  At SIX a.m. they had rolled up their sleeping bags in silence, saddled up, and followed Wacey up and over the summit into the creek bottom where the elk camp was. No one had brought breakfast.

  Joe was alert but not completely awake. Although he knew he must have slept, he could not recall actually waking. He had slipped in and out of a kind of cruel half-consciousness that was vivid with dreams and episodes that didn't connect.

  Joe followed Wacey down a horse trail toward the camp. It was still dark enough that Wacey's worn denim jacket was out of focus. Deputy McLanahan followed Joe. No words had yet been exchanged that morning.

  They tied up their horses in a stand of lodgepole pines. Wacey poured dusty piles of oats into the grass for the horses to eat and to distract them and keep them quiet while the three men walked the rest of the way up the trail to the camp. It was an hour before dawn and the mountain air was crisp. The cold that had settled in for the night was just beginning to retreat through the trees and up the slopes.

  They were upon the camp in less than thirty minutes. Canvas outfitters' tents came suddenly into view, blue-gray smudges against the dark grass and trees, and when they did, Wacey dropped into a hunter's squat and Joe and McLanahan followed suit. They kept hidden from the tents by a hedgerow of three-foot young pines.

  Wacey leaned into Joe and McLanahan and whispered that McLanahan should flank left and Joe right. Wacey would continue down the horse trail and hide behind a granite spur just inside the periphery of the camp. When they all found good cover where they could see into the camp, they would wait until it was light.

  Wacey said he would ask the outfitters to come out with
their hands behind their heads. If only he spoke, he said, the outfitters wouldn't know how many men were out there. Joe was impressed by Wacey s take-charge attitude and command of tactics. Wacey seemed to be a natural and comfortable leader, and he had led them straight to the elk camp without a map. He had taken command and was not shy about it. Joe had not seen this side of Wacey before.

  "Did you see the horses?" Wacey asked, in a low whisper.

  "There's two of 'em in a corral." Joe shook his head no. He had dropped too quickly to see anything more than the tents.

  "There's probably somebody in camp after all," Wacey said, looking to both Joe and McLanahan.

  "Those horses are likely to notice us before the outfitters do, so keep quiet and close to the ground and out of sight."

  McLanahan let out a long breath that rattled at the end of it and mindlessly caressed the stock of his shotgun with his thumb. He was anxious and probably scared. McLanahan's face no longer had the kind of whiz-bang enthusiasm for action in it that Joe had seen the night before. Joe understood.

  Joe kept low and picked his way through the trees to the right side of the camp.

  He kept his shotgun parallel to the ground, glad he had it with him. He slid along the trunk of a thick, downed pine tree until he reached the root pan. It was there, for the first time, that he really raised up and looked at the camp.

  There were three tents constructed in a semicircle, with the opening of each aimed at a fire ring. They were permanent tents with stoves inside and probably wooden floors. Black stovepipes poked from the top of each tent. A thick wooden picnic table with benches was near the fire ring, as well as stumps for the elk hunters to sit on while they drank and watched the fire at night.

  The ground around the tents was hard packed by years of boots and horses' hooves during hunting season. A blackened coffee pot hung from an iron T near the cold camp fire. It was impossible to tell when the campsite had been used last.

  Behind the tents, directly opposite the horse trail they had entered the camp on, was the area used for hanging elk and deer. The crossbeams for suspending the carcasses as they were skinned and cooled were wired high in the trees, as well as rusty block and-tackle for winching up 500-pound animals. Joe could now see the makeshift lodgepole corral through the trees.

  The camp was still. Only the gentle tinkling of a foot-wide creek--the headwaters of the north fork of the Crazy Woman-made a sound. They had somehow surrounded the camp without raising warning chatters by squirrels, and the horses apparently hadn't seen them either because there was no nickering. Joe looked at his watch and waited. The fused warm light of dawn was now creeping down the summit. It was a clear morning, and the camp would soon be bathed in sunlight.

  He shifted to get more comfortable and tried to imagine who might be inside the tents and what they might be doing. As he did so, he noticed a quick movement. Suddenly, there was a shiver of the canvas on the side wall of the nearest tent.

  Joe eased the barrel of the shotgun through the roots of the tree so it pointed in the direction of the camp. He looked down the length of it toward the tent and the side wall.

  There was another shiver, then a sharp tug from the inside. Joe watched both the side of the tent and the door for any sudden movement. Joe held his breath. A low muffled grunt came from within the tent. He raised himself up hoping to catch the eye of either Wacey or Deputy McLanahan to indicate to them there was movement in the tent but could see neither. Joe settled back down and located the safety on the shotgun and clicked it off. The beating of his own heart now rivaled the sounds of the creek.

  A distinct round bulge appeared in the canvas, about a foot from the floor of the tent. The bulge slid slowly down the wall, straining at the material and pulling the canvas tight until the bulge rested near the ground. Joe kept the front bead of the shotgun on the middle of the bulge. He thought about his historic inability to hit anything that was stationary, and it worried him.

  He had never been in a situation like this before. How would he react?

  Then the bulge pushed its way outside and what emerged was the black-and-white bicycle-seat head of an enormous badger. The badger's head darted from side to side, and it sniffed the air.

  Joe lowered the shotgun and briefly closed his eyes. He let his breath out in relief. Then he studied the badger as it grunted and struggled its way out from under the wall of the tent. The badger was massive, the largest he had ever seen. As it scuttled away from the tent, rolls of fat shimmered under its coat, and its belly nearly dragged along the ground. Before it crossed the creek and entered the brush, it froze and noticed Joe for the first time. The badger swung its head at him and bared its teeth, and Joe noticed the pink tint of its head and mouth, the bright red of the piece of meat in its jaws. The badger had been feeding on something inside the tent. There was a brief, chilling moment when Joe and the badger stared into each other's eyes.

  Then things happened too quickly. Nearly out of his field of vision, Joe saw the door of the middle tent flap open and a man step out wearing old-fashioned long-handled underwear. Someone yelled--McLanahan or Wacey--and the man reacted by turning toward the sound. A rifle barrel raised from the side of the man, and suddenly there was a rapid series of deafening explosions that split the stillness of the morning wide open like an ax to a melon.

  Something struck Joe hard in the face and he found himself sitting down, his gloved hand covering a vicious red-hot sting under his right eye. He pulled the glove away and saw his own blood smeared across the leather. There were several more explosions and then a ringing in his ears. Joe scrambled back to the roots of the tree. The middle tent was now collapsing under the sprawled weight of the man who had raised the rifle. Flowers of dark red bloomed on his thermal shirt.

  The man was still and his arms outstretched, and his rifle was on the ground near his feet. Wacey was screaming for McLanahan to stop firing.

  Then Wacey turned toward the camp: "Anybody in that tent throw your weapons out first and come out with your hands behind your heads!" Wacey shouted.

  "There are twelve armed U.S. marshals out here and one of your party is already down!"

  Joe brought the shotgun to his cheek and pointed it toward the nearest tent. The butt of the shotgun was instantly slick with his blood. His face was now numb; he would assess his wounds when this was over.

  In the camp, nothing happened. Wacey barked out another warning. Both Joe and Wacey shot nervous looks at the body on the middle tent, and neither saw any movement. The tent was now down, and the man was partially covered by thick folds of dirty canvas that collapsed over him.

  Wacey stepped from behind the rocks and slowly walked into the camp, his carbine held loosely and ready in front of him. Wacey had fired at least one shot from the carbine, because he jacked an empty brass shell into the grass with the lever action. McLanahan stood up from where he had hidden directly across the camp. He was reloading stubby shells into his shotgun.

  "You shot me, Joe thought. One of your pellets ricocheted and hit me right in the face, McLanahan.

  Wacey had quickly determined that no one was in the tent nearest to him

  and had now crossed over the fire ring and approached the tent the man

  had come out of.

  Wacey squatted for a moment over the body of the man who had just been shot, apparently confirming that he would be no further trouble. Joe crossed the creek and neared the closest tent, the tent the badger had come out of, from the side.

  "Anybody home?" Wacey called toward the last tent. Joe smelled it before he saw it; when Wacey threw open the tent flap, Joe gagged and turned away.

  Kyle Lensegrav and Calvin Mendes were still in the sleeping bags where they had been shot and killed two nights before, their pale naked arms and parts of their faces chewed to the clean white bone by the badger.

  ***

  Sheridan sat in the shade of the big cottonwood tree in her backyard and ate a bowl of dry cereal with her fingers. She still wo
re her blue school dress but had kicked off her shoes and socks. She ate and watched the woodpile, waiting and hoping for something to happen.

  Someone from town had called her mom to tell her that her dad was okay and would be on his way home soon, and now Mom was calling Sheridan's grandmother to give her the good news. When Mom talked to Grandmother Missy, she talked for a long time. Unlike other grandmothers, Sheridan's insisted that her grandchildren call her by her proper name. Likewise, Missy never referred to her grandchildren as grandchildren. Sheridan felt that Missy was embarrassed that she even had grandchildren. Sheridan always felt a little silly calling a lady of her grandmother's age "Missy." It seemed like such a lightweight name.

  Mom said that the bad guys had been caught and that Dad had been hurt a little but that he would be all right. Dad would have to spend the night in the hospital in Saddlestring and answer a lot of questions and then he'd be home. So that would be good.

  The hotel had been okay for a night but Sheridan was glad to be back home. It had been fun. For dinner, she and Lucy had eaten popcorn shrimp that was delicious, and there were more than 30 television channels in their room. There was an elevator to all five floors, and she and Lucy had spent hours going up and down on it. There was a game room where she begged her mom to play pinball with her, and her mom had agreed. Her mom could actually be kind of fun when she wanted to be, and it surprised Sheridan that Mom had played pinball before. She even knew how to bump the console with her hip to manipulate the steel ball. It was nice not to have to make the bed in the morning, and Mom said it was okay to leave the towels on the floor of the bathroom, which was a treat. But by then Sheridan was ready to leave and go to school. Lucy wanted to stay. Mom said Lucy liked luxury, just like Grandmother Missy.

  In school, the rude girls had gathered around her and asked her questions about the dead outfitter and her Dad and what had happened in the mountains. Sheridan was for once the center of attention, and she liked that. The girls who had called her Weird Country now wanted to be around her because she had seen a real live dead man. They asked her what the dead man looked like, how is eyes were.