Dark Sky, page 7
part #21 of Joe Pickett Series
Joe rolled his eyes. “Just please don’t post any more photos of me, then. It distresses my wife and daughters.”
“They’re ConFab users? Excellent.”
Joe grunted in response.
“ConFab is an agent of good,” Price said. “It’s not like those other toilets on the Internet. ConFab exists to bring like-minded people together in worthwhile conversations, not to tear people down.”
Joe thought Price sounded defensive—and well-rehearsed.
* * *
—
As they crossed the meadow the shadows deepened.
“So is this going to be our camp for the duration of the hunting trip?” Price asked Joe.
“Maybe. I was up here two weeks ago to scout and I saw a lot of healthy elk. We made great progress today to get here. I thought it would take a day and a half, but our early start really helped. The elk up here don’t get a lot of hunting pressure because most guys are road hunters and they don’t venture this far into the mountains. It’s real work to pack an elk out,” Joe said. “I figure tomorrow we’ll get up real early and glass the meadows about a mile away. We might catch them grazing or about to bed down.”
“What if they aren’t there?” Price asked.
“Then we’ll go farther to the east. We might move the camp if we need to. Elk are wily. They never seem to be where you expect them to be.”
“It’s amazing how fast it gets dark and cools down up here,” Price said. “It’s so still.”
“It’ll get chilly tonight, but it looks like you brought good sleeping bags.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw the stars,” Price said. “I mean, really saw the stars. It was probably in the Galápagos or a week I spent in Tibet.”
“We’ve got good stars,” Joe said. “I recommend our stars.”
“What’s that pistol you’re wearing?”
“It’s a Colt Python .357 Magnum. They used to be standard issue for game wardens until the department went to .40 Glocks like everybody else in law enforcement. I kept mine.”
“Will it kill a bear? I assume that’s why you’ve got it.”
Joe said, “A larger caliber is preferred, like a .44 Mag or a .454 Casull. But yes, it could kill a bear with a well-placed shot. I’ve loaded it with hot loads that really pack a punch.”
“Are you a good shot?”
“I am not a good shot,” Joe confessed. “That’s why I carry bear spray and keep my shotgun within reach when I’m in the field. But if given a choice in a split second, I’ll reach for the spray first. It usually works.”
“Usually?” Price said with alarm.
“Yup.”
Joe didn’t want to tell Price about the grizzly attack that had killed a guide from Dubois the year before. After the Predator Attack Team had located the bear and killed it, they found that the carcass reeked of bear spray. Meaning that on that one instance, it hadn’t worked at all to deter the predator. But that was rare.
“I don’t know anything about guns except that I don’t like them,” Price said.
“They’re just tools,” Joe said with a shrug. “They all have different capabilities and purposes. It would be like going through life with just a screwdriver. If you live out here, you need a complete toolbox.”
“Tools that can kill innocent people,” Price said.
Joe sighed.
“Everybody out here is armed to the teeth, aren’t they?” Price asked.
“Yup.”
“The gun culture is so strong out here,” Price said. “I just don’t get it.”
“Most everybody hunts,” Joe said. “But those that don’t have guns, too.”
“The murder rate must be really high.”
“It isn’t.”
“Really?”
“Really. You can look it up. Folks are less likely to threaten somebody with a gun if that somebody is likely armed themselves.” Joe paused and asked, “Do we really want to have this conversation?”
“Probably not,” Price said. “I don’t think either of us is likely to change our mind. We just live in different worlds.”
“Yup.”
They walked in silence for a minute, then Price said, “You can blame Steve Rinella for me being here.”
“Steve Rinella? Really?”
“Have you heard of him?”
“We’ve got one of his wild-game cookbooks at home,” Joe said.
“Ah, I should have guessed. I’ve read a lot of his work, and a year ago I binge-watched MeatEater on Netflix. I became absolutely fascinated with the idea of harvesting my own protein. It seems so pure and primal. It takes the thoughtless cruelty and inhumanity of the mega-corporations out of the equation, it seems to me.”
Joe nodded. Price was going on in a way that didn’t really invite a response or comment.
“When you see what happens on factory farms,” Price continued, “it’s just an assembly line of soulless slaughter. Those animals never get to live the experience of being animals. They’re just organisms. Some of them never see the sky or eat a blade of grass. They’re pumped full of hormones, fed chemically enhanced pellets, and grow until they’re killed and butchered. All so we can buy the meat in a sterile package at a supermarket and never even think of where it comes from or how it got there.
“I tried to go vegan, I really did,” he said. “I did it for nine months, but I found my brain getting fuzzy. I couldn’t focus and I lost my sharpness. I knew I was hardwired to eat meat, but I knew there had to be a better way to get it, a way to earn it with dignity shared between me and the animal who sacrificed and gave up its life so I could eat. I needed skin in the game.”
“Got it,” Joe said. He picked up one of the saddles Boedecker had placed upside down in the grass to air out and carried it into the trees, where he placed it near the base of a pine tree. If it rained or snowed during the night, the saddle would likely stay dry. Toby was picketed a few yards away from the tree and he was greedily eating meadow grass.
“My board doesn’t really understand where I’m coming from,” Price said, still trailing Joe. “Nobody does. But I need to experience this on a basic level. I need to get blood on my hands. This is why I’m here. This is why we’re here.”
“Since you’re here, why don’t you grab one of those saddles?” Boedecker said to Price from where he was brushing down one of the packhorses. “Put it over in the trees with Joe’s. Then we can get started on dinner before it’s completely dark.”
“Excuse me?” Price said in alarm. It was as if Boedecker had rudely derailed his train of thought.
“I’ve got it,” Joe said to Boedecker, picking up another saddle. He’d been slightly mesmerized by Price’s reverie.
“I think I’ll head back and get some water,” Price said. Then he turned on his heel and walked toward the camp and the fire.
“Take it easy on him,” Joe said softly to Boedecker when Price was out of hearing range.
“Why? Did I offend him? We’re busting our asses getting this camp set up and those dudes are either sitting around or yapping too much. Kind of what I expected when I saw ’em get out of the plane. They like to be catered to.”
“Yup,” Joe said. “That’s the job.”
“It don’t mean I have to enjoy it.”
“I find Steve-2 kind of interesting,” Joe said. “I didn’t expect that.”
“He talks more than my wife,” Boedecker said sourly.
Joe started to respond but decided not to. Silence, he’d found, was often the best argument. Tension was natural between members of a hunting party when you’re thrown together into close quarters with people you’ve met just hours before. It was a complicated and delicate dynamic, all those strong personalities in what was almost a closed room. So unless the disagreement was about safety or security, Joe preferred to stay out of it.
He was a little surprised Brock voiced such hostility, though. Brock took inexperienced clients into the mountains all summer long on multiday pack trips. Maybe Boedecker was just a little burned out. It happened often in the guide and outfitter business. Bitterness toward clients brought down as many wilderness enterprises as the economy or loss of access.
“Looks like we’ll need to gather more wood,” Boedecker said after a long glance at the campsite. “That Joannides guy nearly let the fire die out, and now he’s building a bonfire.”
Joe looked over his shoulder. Boedecker had a point. The fire was enormous and throwing showers of sparks in the direction of the tent.
“It’s like taking little boys camping,” Boedecker said.
EIGHT
I don’t know what they’re doing down there,” Aidan Jacketta said aloud to himself as he leaned into his spotting scope and zeroed in on the large campfire. “It looks like they’re trying to burn down the whole forest.”
Jacketta was long and lean with a pointy blond beard and tiny-lens, horn-rimmed glasses. He was on his belly beneath a canopy of low-hanging pine boughs to observe the hunting party’s camp far below. A small white-gas camp stove hissed near his feet, but the water in the pot hadn’t yet begun to boil. His simple one-man tent was set up at the base of a massive ponderosa pine and his sleeping bag and pad were unfurled inside it. His soiled camo cap was tilted back on his head so the brim wouldn’t interfere with the eyepiece.
“Fucking idiots,” a deep voice said from the trees to his right.
Jacketta scrambled to his feet, startled. He was camping alone and hadn’t seen any sign of other hunters, hadn’t even heard anyone approaching.
“I guess you’re watching that group of idiots down there,” the voice said.
Jacketta glanced toward his custom recurve hunting bow, which was strung tight and hanging from a peg on a tree trunk next to his tent. His quiver of ten homemade arrows hung next to it.
The man who’d spoken moved out of the shadows until his bearded face glowed with the reflection of Jacketta’s small stove flame. He glided into the camp as if sliding on a track, without making an audible footfall.
“Brad Thomas?” Jacketta said when he got a good look at the visitor. “Is that you?”
“Aidan Jacketta, right?” Brad said. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I didn’t expect to find anybody up here.”
Jacketta let out a long breath and relaxed his shoulders. He no longer felt the need to snatch up his bow.
“I didn’t hear you coming,” Jacketta said.
“That’s the idea. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Well, you did.”
“You weren’t thinking of pulling a weapon, were you?” Brad said. “Because I hope not.”
Jacketta could now see that Brad held a short carbine of some kind with the muzzle down. It could be swung up and fired in less than a second.
“I’m not rifle hunting,” Jacketta said. “Here, I’ll show you.”
Jacketta pulled a headlamp from the pocket of his cargo pants and strapped it over his cap. He turned it on to the lowest light. Since the beam went wherever he turned his head, Jacketta deliberately avoided staring at Brad full-on. Blinding someone temporarily with a headlamp was rude camp etiquette.
Instead, he shined the beam on his recurve bow and quiver.
“See?” he said.
Brad moved over into the light and reached out and fingered the leather-wrapped grip of the bow and tapped on the extended stabilizer.
“Nice bow,” Brad said. “Did you make it yourself?”
“I did,” Jacketta said with some pride in his voice. “That was my winter project. I made the arrows, too.”
Brad hmmmed his appreciation. “Looks like a piece of art. I didn’t know you had that in you. Can you hit anything with it?”
“I can hit a target. It’s got a sixty-five-pound pull.”
Brad hmmmed again. “Seeing anything?” he asked.
“I passed on a spike this morning,” Jacketta said. “He walked up to me at twenty feet and just stood there staring for a while. It would have been a fairly easy shot.”
“But you want something bigger,” Brad said.
“I’d like a big bull, but I could live with a big lead cow. This is about meat, for me.”
“Yeah, I know.”
* * *
—
Jacketta had tangled with the Thomas clan at a Game and Fish Department public meeting the year before. Jacketta was a software engineer who’d moved from Boulder to the Twelve Sleep Valley to, as he put it, live a more basic existence. He was a low-impact kind of guy: light packs, no footprint, pack out everything he packed in. The Thomas operation was big and old-school: wall tents, stoves, ATVs, rifles. They prided themselves on delivering trophy elk for out-of-state hunters. Meat was a long way down on their list, Jacketta thought.
Jacketta was new to the area, but he considered the Thomases to be the last of a dying breed. They were second- or third-generation guides and outfitters who seemed to have the impression that the Bighorn Mountains belonged to them, even though most of the terrain was public national forest land. The family had well-established camps in the mountains in choice locations and they were known for scaring off and intimidating anyone who dared to use the locations without their permission.
Earl, the patriarch, was cantankerous and loud and he didn’t seem to care who he offended. After Jacketta had stood up at the meeting and said he lived in the valley and appreciated the mountain resource as much as the old-timers did, Earl had said to him, “You millennials with your beards and flannel will come and go. And when you’re gone, we’ll still be here.”
Jacketta wanted no trouble with the Thomases. He wanted no trouble with anyone. He just wanted to hunt for his own food and stay above the fray when it came to disputes about territory or tradition. He’d never attended another public meeting, nor had he spoken out after Earl had dressed him down. He’d done his best to avoid all of the Thomas clan. Which reminded him of something he’d heard about the family, something about a sister . . .
“I see you’ve got a little camp stove,” Brad said, nodding toward the hissing unit. “I suppose it works okay if you’re cheap and needy. Our camp is about a half mile away. Do you want to come and eat with us? We’ve got steaks instead of the freeze-dried crap you’ve got.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Jacketta said. “But I’m fine. I want to go to sleep early tonight so I can get up at three-thirty and go find an elk.”
“What are you planning for dinner?”
“Ramen noodles,” Jacketta said. He wished he’d said the name with more authority, like he was proud of it.
“Really?” Brad said. “You’d pass on a steak?”
Jacketta shrugged. “And the whiskey that comes with it, I would guess. I want to be clearheaded.”
“Very sporting of you,” Brad said. Jacketta detected a half sneer in the dark. That was something he’d learned about the Thomas clan: they were arrogant. He didn’t know Brad well, but he could hear Earl’s voice talking through the bearded mouth hole of his big son.
It was then that Jacketta realized Brad had casually swung the muzzle of the carbine up a little, even though he still held it one-handed. It wasn’t pointed at him exactly, but it was just a flick away.
“Let’s go get a steak,” Brad said.
“I can’t tell if that’s an offer or a threat,” Jacketta said.
“You’ve got a lot to learn if you can’t tell the difference. Come on,” Brad said while he stepped aside. “Follow me. I know you’ve met my old man, but I don’t think you’ve met my brother.”
“Maybe I’ll come along and say hello,” Jacketta said, as much to himself as to Brad. “Since we’re all in the same area and you’re locals and all.”
Brad nodded his agreement. “This way,” he said.
* * *
—
The first thing Jacketta noticed was that the Thomas men weren’t set up in one of their more established camps like the ones they used when guiding hunters. Instead of cleared trees, decades-old fire rings, and elevated cross-poles in the trees to hang game, this camp looked temporary, as if set up to be torn down at any time.
The second was that they didn’t appear to be grilling any steaks.
There was one medium-sized canvas wall tent, a small campfire shrouded on four sides by gnarled root pans as if to hide the flame, and various gear bags and panniers scattered on the pine needle forest floor. He could smell the musky odor of pack animals as they got closer and he sensed their big bodies within the trees, but he couldn’t see them in the dark.
Jacketta squinted and said to Brad, “I thought you said your brother was with you.”
“He is.”
“I don’t see anyone.”
As if that were a signal in itself, two men stepped out from behind trees on either side of the camp. Earl was armed with a rifle, but the other, smaller man didn’t appear to have a weapon.
“What the fuck, Brad?” the smaller man said.
“Look what I found about a half mile away,” Brad said to Earl.
Earl approached Jacketta and looked him over carefully. “I know you,” he said.
“Aidan Jacketta,” Brad said. “We met him at that meeting last year. He’s one of those millennials, like Kirby.”
“Fuck you, Brad,” Kirby said.
Jacketta nodded to Kirby as if trying to establish a kind of bond. Kirby didn’t reciprocate.
“What are you doing up here?” Earl asked Jacketta.
“Bowhunting for elk.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
Earl narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t nobody ever tell you it isn’t a good idea to hunt alone? Does anyone know where you are in case something happened to you?”
