Wolf Pack, page 3
Although the wolves had been officially “de-listed” from federal control outside Yellowstone and the management of them had been turned over to the state in recent years, confusion reigned in the minds of hunters and ranchers over who had jurisdiction of which wolf packs and whether there would be fines and jail terms associated with killing the animals.
“What’s up, Herman? How can I help you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Klein said. “I know these wolves are federal and not a state deal. I know that. But I’m sick and tired of calling Courtney up there to tell him that there are wolves on my ranch, and a couple of them have killed my heifers.”
“They have?”
“Well, not according to Courtney,” Klein groused. “According to Courtney, there are no wolves around here.”
Joe nodded. He’d heard of sightings as well and could vouch for the fact that on more than one occasion he himself had seen a lone black wolf. He couldn’t swear that it had been the same alpha male each time, but it had seemed like the same one. That the wolf had appeared to him when Joe was injured, lost, or confused was something he couldn’t logically explain to anyone.
Klein continued. “Courtney tells me they can’t be wolves that harassed and killed my cows. He says it had to have been coyotes, mountain lions, or bears. He says none of them damned Yellowstone wolves have wandered off into this part of the state. To which I say bullshit.”
In the background, Joe heard Klein’s wife hiss, “Herman! Watch your language.”
“Change that to ‘bullcrap,’” Klein said.
“Gotcha. So what can I do for you, Herman?” Joe asked.
“Come right away and bring your camera.”
“Do you see wolves right now?”
“Not only do I see one,” Klein said, “I roped the son of a bitch and put it in my stock trailer. I need you to come here and verify it’s a damned wolf. Courtney doesn’t believe me, but maybe he’ll believe you.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “There’s a wolf in your stock trailer?”
“Goddamn right.”
Klein’s wife warned him about his language again.
Joe didn’t want to tell Klein that new wolf management rules meant that the rancher had the right to “shoot on sight” outside of the specially designated wolf habitat area the state had negotiated with the feds.
“I’ll be there within the hour,” Joe said, and disconnected the call.
Herman Klein’s ranch was en route to Winchester and he could stop along the way.
* * *
—
KATELYN HAMM ANSWERED on the second ring.
“Sorry about earlier,” Joe said.
“Don’t worry about it. It happens to me all the time. Just a sec—I need to pull over. There’s a dead spot on the highway ahead and I don’t want to lose you again.”
Joe waited.
When she came back on the line, she asked, “Are you aware of anyone who likes to fly drones over in your district? We’re talking big drones, expensive ones.”
He said, “I’ve seen a couple of hipsters in the city park flying them around, but they looked more like toys than serious hardware. Why?”
“Somebody from over your direction used a drone to spook a big herd of mule deer off the winter pasture today. There’s seven or eight mule deer that got panicked and injured and I had to put them down. I couldn’t get a visual on the vehicle the drone guys used, but they were headed your direction when I saw it last.”
“Antler hunters?”
“I don’t think so. I think they were harassing mulies for kicks. It really makes me mad. Our deer numbers are down and I hate to see someone stress the ones that are here by air that way. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Nope.”
Joe had limited experience with drones apart from a military drone that had once been unleashed in the mountains by a rogue operator. Hunting or scouting with the aircraft was illegal, but he’d heard stories about their use in other states.
Katelyn said, “I got my shotgun out and I wanted to blast that thing right out of the sky, but it didn’t get close enough. Don’t tell anyone, though.”
“I won’t.”
“Do you think it’s your hipsters?”
“I kind of doubt it,” Joe said. “The guys I saw looked like they were pretty small-time. Don’t drone pilots have to register with someone like the FAA?”
“Hell if I know,” she said. “I think so, but I’ve got to research it. I’ll let you know what I find out—especially if there are some registered drone pilots over in Saddlestring.”
“I’d be curious to find out if there are.”
“Well,” she said, “in the meantime, you might want to keep your eyes out. If you run across anyone playing around with big commercial drones, please let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
There was a pause. She said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t even say welcome back.”
“Thank you.”
“I won’t even pretend to understand everything that went down in Cheyenne,” she said, “but I’m glad you’re back where you belong. You’re kind of a legend to a lot of us, you know. We look up to you.”
Joe blushed and he was glad she couldn’t see him driving his pickup while caked with mud.
* * *
—
MARYBETH SAID, “Tom Kinnison. How do you spell that?”
“K-I-N-N-I-S-O-N.”
“Never heard of him, but I’ll ask around.”
Joe pictured her sitting in her chair in the office behind the checkout counter of the old brick Carnegie structure. She had blond hair, green eyes, and was using the businesslike tone she employed when her staff was close enough to overhear her on the phone.
Joe said, “Maybe you could check to see if he’s one of your customers. Maybe he checked out a Fur Trapping for Dummies book.”
She sighed with faux annoyance. “I’m sorry, we don’t divulge what books our patrons check out to law enforcement or anyone else. If you want to know that kind of information, you need to show up with a warrant from Judge Hewitt.”
Joe smiled. That definitely meant she was being overheard.
“Maybe I will,” he lied.
“It wouldn’t hurt if you spent a little more time in the library, you know.”
She was being playful and he liked it.
Her voice hushed. “You are going to be home for dinner tonight, right? It’s kind of a big deal for Lucy.”
Lucy was their youngest daughter, and her eighteenth birthday was the next day. She was a senior at Saddlestring High School, a reluctant prom queen, lead actress in the last musical, and in many ways the wisest of all of his daughters because she’d spent years observing her older sisters, twenty-year-old April and twenty-two-year-old Sheridan. She’d learned from their mistakes.
Lucy was keenly aware of what went on around her and she was especially mindful of the intricacies and nuances of relationships—even Joe and Marybeth’s. When the subject of a birthday dinner had been broached, Lucy had said she didn’t want to hurt their feelings, but with her going off to the University of Wyoming in the fall and her boyfriend, Justin, going into the navy soon, the two of them wanted to spend as much time as possible together while they still could. Justin, she said, had asked to take her to the new Italian restaurant in Saddlestring and it would cost him a fortune.
Joe liked Justin as much as he did any of the boys his girls had gone out with, which is to say he’d preferred they not go out with any of them.
So the plan was changed, and the birthday dinner with her parents would now take place the night before her actual birthday.
“I’ll be home.”
“Good.”
“I’ve got to see a wolf in a trailer and roust a bad trapper in Winchester. Then I’ll be home.”
It didn’t need to be said between them how many times he’d gotten wrapped up in a case and had been late.
“A wolf in a trailer?” Marybeth said.
“I’ll explain later.”
“Okay, but try to be on time. Lucy plans to go out with her friends later tonight. She’s a popular kid.”
“I won’t be late.”
“Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky if you play your cards right.”
Then she hung up before he could respond. Which was good, because he was speechless.
Joe shook his head and whistled. His first day back on the job was more exciting than he’d thought it would be.
CHAPTER THREE
HERMAN KLEIN and his wife, Paula, lived in an aging white single-story clapboard home four miles from Bighorn Road. The ranch headquarters was easily identified because it was located within a mature grove of cottonwood trees on the west bank of Spring Creek, which had started to swell and roar with early-spring runoff.
Farm equipment and old pickups were scattered throughout the property, and a half-dozen black angus cows stood in a corral adjacent to the barn.
The Kleins lived alone and operated their ranch by themselves, although during busy times Herman employed itinerant cowboys who drifted through. Joe knew the couple had two sons and a daughter who had left for more exciting pursuits in other places, and he wondered what would happen to the place when the Kleins could no longer run it.
Joe noted the rusted stock trailer parked alongside a big outbuilding that was sided with corrugated steel.
As he rolled into the ranch yard, the inevitable pack of mismatched dogs boiled out from where they’d been sleeping. They surrounded his pickup, jumping, barking, and braying—but stayed far enough away from the vehicle that there was no danger of him running any of them over.
Daisy leaped up and placed her front paws on the top of the dashboard and barked back at them until Joe told her to stop it.
When he parked and looked up, he saw Herman Klein step out onto his front porch and wave. He had white whiskers, clear blue eyes, and stooped shoulders. He was wearing knee-high Muck boots and pulling on a worn khaki Carhartt parka and a dented black cowboy hat.
Paula Klein looked on from the kitchen window while nervously drying her hands with a dish towel.
Klein chinned toward the stock trailer and Joe climbed out of his pickup and followed. The ranch dogs bounced around him, but parted so he could walk through.
“Bring your camera?” Klein called out.
Joe patted the phone in his pocket to indicate he had.
“This way,” Klein said.
The old rancher had a pronounced limp and Joe caught up with him in a few strides. Klein had once been a champion calf roper and team roper and, like all old rodeo cowboys Joe had met, he still suffered from his injuries.
“There were four of them in the south pasture,” Klein said. “May have been more up in the trees, but I didn’t see them.”
“How exactly did you do it?” Joe asked.
“With a rope.”
Joe chuckled.
“I saddled up my old gelding and took off after them,” Klein said. “I can hardly walk these days, but I can still ride. I got the last one of the pack—roped him around the neck. I was going for a heel, but I missed. Then I dragged him back here and put him in the trailer and called you.”
Team ropers were either “headers”—ropers who threw their lassos around the heads of running cattle—or “heelers,” who caught the back foot.
“Take a look,” Klein said.
Joe stepped on the fender of the old stock trailer and pulled himself up to look through the opening.
A big gray wolf sat back on its haunches in the far corner of the trailer. Although “gray” was the species, this particular animal was mottled brown and pewter with a white muzzle. It still had its thick winter coat, which made it look even larger than it actually was.
The wolf stared straight back at Joe without flinching. Its eyes were piercing and he felt an involuntary chill roll down his back.
Like the eyes of raptors flown by his falconer friend Nate Romanowski, wolf eyes showed no fear of humans. In fact, they hinted at contempt.
“He’s a big one,” Joe said. “I’d guess a hundred and twenty pounds.”
It wasn’t until Joe fished his phone out to take a few photos that he noticed there was a big bowl of water on the trailer floor as well as a bucket of what looked like dry dog food.
When he climbed back down, he said to Klein, “Yup. You roped a wolf.”
“Send those to Courtney, would you?” Klein asked.
“I will.”
Joe hesitated for a moment before saying, “I’m surprised you didn’t shoot it.”
Klein shook his head. “I don’t have anything against wolves except when they kill my cows. This pack was just passing through. Despite what Courtney and his ilk think, not all of us dumb ranchers just blast away at the sight of his precious wolves.
“I just want him and his pals to admit that their wolves range a lot farther than they’ll admit. And now we’ve got proof, don’t we?”
“Yup. So what are you going to do with it?”
Klein nodded toward the cloud-shrouded mountains that dominated the western horizon. “I’ll drive him up there and let him loose. Maybe he’ll be smart enough to hightail it back to the park. But if he decides to come back and chase my cows . . .” The rancher finished his sentence by forming a pistol with his gnarled right hand and dry-firing it into the side of the trailer.
“Gotcha,” Joe said.
* * *
—
“I’M IMPRESSED,” Joe said as they walked back toward the ranch house and Joe’s pickup. “That was some pretty good roping.”
“No one was more surprised than me that I could still do it,” Klein said with a smile. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee or a beer?”
“Maybe next time,” Joe said. “I appreciate the offer.”
“Well, damn,” Klein said as he stopped in his tracks. “You got a brand-new truck.”
“Yup.”
It was a sore subject with Joe, because he held the record within the department for destruction of state property, and by a large margin. And that didn’t count his state-owned home that had burned down on Bighorn Road.
“I heard you got a new house, too,” Klein said.
“Yup. Marybeth really likes it.”
The week before, they’d moved from a temporary town house in Saddlestring to a ten-year-old, three-bedroom, two-bath house on the east bank of the Twelve Sleep River. It was five miles from town and came with five acres, a barn for Joe and Marybeth’s horses, and a workshop and garage big enough to accommodate their vehicles as well as the equipment he’d been issued for his job: a snowmobile, an ATV, and a drift boat. Joe looked forward to assembling his fly rod and walking down to the river to fish for trout when the runoff calmed down and the water cleared up.
The home was larger and more modern than the one they’d left on Bighorn Road, which Marybeth found ironic. Two of their three daughters were gone and Lucy was only months away from going to college herself. They could have used the extra room while all their girls were growing up. Now, she said, they had a bigger empty nest.
Although she still said she had plans to go into another line of work, Sheridan had been promoted to head wrangler at the Silver Creek Ranch near Saratoga, and April was finishing up her last year of college at Northwest Community College in Powell.
“Well, we’re glad to have you back,” Klein said. “Some of us were worried they’d assign some knucklehead to the valley.”
Joe paused at his truck and turned and leaned back against it. “Thank you.”
“Hell of a mess in Cheyenne, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“I wish we could get Governor Rulon back instead of this yahoo. Even though he’s a damned Democrat.”
Joe didn’t comment. In his experience, character wasn’t relegated to any particular political party over the other. There were knuckleheads on both sides of the aisle, and he made it a point to keep his head down, do his job, and stay out of the fray.
* * *
—
DURING THE ADMINISTRATIVE hearing before the Game and Fish Commission on Joe’s firing, ex-governor Rulon had served as his lawyer pro bono.
Colter Allen’s chief of staff, Connor Hanlon, had led off the proceeding by reading statutory language that stated the governor was well within his purview to let go any state employee whom he wished to let go at any time that he chose. He accused Joe of insubordination, incompetence, and, of course, listed his long record of damaging state vehicles.
Lisa Greene-Dempsey, the director of the department, had chosen not to appear at the hearing, which was a statement in itself.
After stating the governor’s position, Hanlon had sat on a chair in the corner of the room with hooded eyes and a smirk. He’d refused to look over at Joe.
Rulon spoke next and quickly acknowledged that the current chief executive had the right to fire any game warden he chose to fire, but he insinuated that the governor had sacked his client not because of malfeasance but to pay back a political favor he owed. As it happened, it was to Joe’s own mother-in-law: Missy Vankueren Hand of Jackson Hole. There was no love lost there.
“Not only that,” Rulon had said, “but as we travel down the path of Governor Allen’s true motivations in this action, we just might turn up some facts and long-buried allegations that my successor might just as rather have remain buried.”
Joe noted that Hanlon had begun furiously tapping a text message to someone on his phone.
