Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(10)

“I feel like we’re on top of the world,” Joannides said. He’d finally looked up from his screen.

“We’re not,” Joe said. “But you can see it from here.”





FOUR


Over two miles away, deep in the cover of a thick stand of spruce trees and several hundred feet higher than the trailhead parking and staging area, Earl Thomas pushed the lens of a spotting scope through a thick growth of mountain juniper. He was prone so there’d be no profile if any member of the hunting party decided to look up in his direction.

With stubby fingers the size of sausages, Earl delicately manipulated the focus knob until he could see sharply.

“It’s them,” he said in a low baritone. “I recognize the game warden’s horse. He rides a paint.”

His adult sons, Brad and Kirby, were huddled together near his feet. He’d told them not to stand up, too. They were on the back side of the small rise Earl had shinnied up to place the spotting scope.

Earl said, “One, two, three, four, five of ’em. Eight horses that I can see so far.”

“Only five?” Brad said. “That don’t seem like a fair fight.”

“Shut up, Brad,” Kirby said in a whisper. Then to Earl: “Do you see Steve-2?”

Earl didn’t respond right away. He slowly panned the scope from right to left.

The two pickups, the big SUV, and the horse trailer were the only vehicles in the clearing. The rancher was backing horses out of the trailer one at a time and tying them nose-first to the side of the unit. The game warden—easily identified by the red sleeves of his uniform shirt, although he was wearing a dark vest—was pulling bag after bag of gear and equipment from the back of the SUV and stacking it in a large pile on the flat, unpaved surface. Three others milled together on the periphery of the staging area, looking on. Earl stopped his lens on them.

“There he is,” Earl said to Kirby. “There’s that son of a bitch.”

Price stood out. He was fairly tall and slim, willowy and pale, and despite his camo hunting clothing he looked like he was wearing a costume, Earl thought. Like he was about to go trick-or-treating on Halloween. His ginger hair was like an ill-fitting skullcap.

The two men with him didn’t seem comfortable with each other. One was shorter than Steve-2 and he fidgeted and bounced from foot to foot as he stood there. He kept glancing at the screen of an iPad. The other was thick in the chest with dark hair, dark clothing, and a way of holding his arms out away from his sides that suggested his bulging muscles wouldn’t allow him to stand comfortably. He wore a tight parka and his eyes swept the area around them. Earl recognized the big man’s actions and demeanor: security.

“Let’s see if my plan works,” Brad said, almost to himself.

Earl could hear the muffled click of a handheld radio behind him. Then Brad eased the volume up.

For a moment, Earl assumed the signal was bad. After all, there was a considerable distance between the staging area below and their position on the mountainside. Plus, there were other considerations.

“Maybe somebody noticed it and turned it off,” Brad said.

“Or maybe it was a fucked-up idea to begin with,” Kirby countered.

“Boys,” Earl hissed.

Then the radio crackled. Brad turned up the volume.

“I want everyone to grab a canister of bear spray and a PLB,” said a distant voice. “Test your PLB to make sure it’s fully charged. Then I’ll show you how to use the bear spray.”

“That’s Joe Pickett,” Brad said. “I recognize his voice.”

“I do, too,” Kirby said.

“Yeah,” Brad agreed. “Too bad he had to do this. I’ve always gotten along with the guy.”

“Ol’ Dudley Fucking Do-Right,” Kirby said with derision.

“Boys, keep it down,” Earl said without looking at them. The reception on the radio wasn’t clear. All he could hear was murmuring and men talking over one another.

“Don’t worry about using all the battery,” someone said. “We brought a couple of booster chargers and a solar unit.”

“We can’t pack it all up there, though.” Joe again.

“I’m supposed to wear this thing on my belt?” someone else asked.

“What’s this orange thing do?”

“Do you spray it at a bear like a hose or do you, you know, blast a bunch of short bursts?”

Earl could make out what was going on by watching gestures and body language. The game warden was demonstrating how to pull the orange safety clip from the nozzle of the bear spray and trigger it to spray. He stepped away from the three onlookers until he was downwind from them. He extended his arm and Earl could clearly see a big bloom of pepper spray shoot from the canister Joe held. The cloud of red floated away from them until it dissipated near the tree line.

Afterward, Joe walked back to the group of men and personally showed each one how the spray worked. Then he helped to clip a unit of the bear spray onto Steve-2’s web belt. The other two watched and did the same.

“Now we need to make some decisions,” Joe said to the men. He chinned back toward the big pile of gear and equipment. “We need to decide what we absolutely need and what we have to leave behind.”