C. J. Box_Joe Pickett_02 by Savage Run

Author:Savage Run
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Joe Pickett (Fictitious Character), Conspiracies, Mystery & Detective, Environmentalists, Wyoming, Fiction, Romance, Game Warden, Pickett, Game Wardens, Suspense, Mystery Fiction, General, Joe (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780425189245
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2002-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

27

AFTER entering the HOUSE and kissing Sheridan, Marybeth asked if Joe had called. Sheridan, still lounging on her pillows in front of the TV answered that he hadn't.

Marybeth dropped the Tom Horn book on the kitchen table and launched herself into scrubbing the counters and washing the dishes. It was a way of fighting off the sense of dread she had been feeling since the telephone calls and the incident with Ginger Finotta in the library It was barely four in the afternoon and Joe had said he would be back by dark or call first. It was still early and she had no good reason to feel such anxiousness.

Reading the book hadn't helped. Although it meandered through Tom Horn's Indian fighting days--he was one of those hired to pursue

Geronimo--and his service with the U.S. Army in Cuba, what interested her were the chapters at the end of the book. Those chapters covered the period when Tom Horn was hired by Wyoming ranchers to clear out rustlers and homesteaders in southern Wyoming. The ranchers were a gentlemanly genteel group. Many had nothing to do with day-to-day ranch work, which they hired out to their foremen, and they spent their days in the men's clubs wearing fashionable clothing and their nights in a cluster of beautiful Victorian homes in Cheyenne. Some had visited their vast holdings up north only for occasional hunting trips. They knew, however, that the presence of rustlers, outlaws, and settlers threatened not only their income but also their political power base and the concept of open range. The ranchers were all members of the nascent Wyoming Cattle Growers' Association. So it was decided among a cabal of association members that the rustlers had to go, and it would be best if it were accomplished ruthlessly to send a powerful message. Based on the landowners' experience in the territory thus far, local law enforcement couldn't handle the job. The rustlers were local and their connections within the community were pervasive. For example, the rustlers knew well in advance when a sheriffs posse was forming or where deputies were going to be sent to try to break them up.

So Tom Horn was hired, supposedly to break horses for the Swan Land and Cattle Company He lived alone in a rough cabin in the rocky Iron Mountain range, which was country better suited for mountain lions than for people. But there was no mistaking the real reason he was in the area, and it had little to do with horses.

One by one, men suspected of rustling turned up dead. They were found in the high sagebrush flats and amid the granite crags of the Medicine Bow Mountains. There was a pattern to their deaths. All were found shot in the head, probably from a great distance, with a large caliber rifle bullet. And under their lifeless heads, someone had placed a rock.

"You be good," parents of the time would say to their children, "or Tom Horn 11 get you!"

AT FIVE, MARY BETH CALLED the dispatcher to find out if there had been any word from Joe.

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