Breaking Point

don’t mind if I ask you what you’re doing up here.”
    Joe explained the line of water guzzlers, then finding the cut fence. As he did, he watched Butch carefully.
    There was a slight reaction, a twitch on the corners of Butch’s mouth.
    “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Joe asked breezily.
    Butch shook his head and said, “They don’t need to put up fences like that and close the roads. We hunted up here for a hundred years on what is supposed to be public land. Now they berm the access roads so we can’t get in. Tell me what’s public about that?”
    Joe didn’t bite, and it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Butch had strong feelings and opinions when it came to access to hunting areas. That wasn’t unusual, either. Citizens in the area and the state took natural-resource decisions personally, and often railed against the public-lands managers who made decisions. Joe had heard the argument countless times, and sympathized to some degree. And because he was a state and not a federal employee, he often found himself in the middle. Which was why he hadn’t brought up the illegal campfire.
    Joe looked up and said, “I haven’t called it in yet. No one knows about it except you and me. But I would guess that if a guy went down there with a stretcher and a fencing tool, he could fix it so no one would ever even know it was down. It’s not like the Feds send out line riders to check it.”
    Butch looked away. He grumbled, “I hear you.”
    “That’s good.”
    “So the only reason you’re up here is those guzzler things?”
    The question took Joe by surprise. “Why else?”
    Butch shrugged. “Sure you don’t want some coffee before I kick the fire out and move on?”
    “I’m sure.”
    With that, Butch tossed the last of his tin cup of coffee onto the forest floor.
    “You need to borrow a stretcher?” Joe asked.
    “Naw. I built fence all through high school. I know how to fix a fence.”
    “Take it easy, Butch.”
    “You too, Joe.”
    Joe turned, puzzled by the whole exchange, and untied the reins of his horse and called Daisy back.
    As he pulled himself into the saddle, Butch said something Joe didn’t catch.
    “What’s that, Butch?”
    “I said, thanks for watching over Hannah.”
    “It’s Marybeth mostly,” Joe said.
    “I guess so,” Butch said, as he shouldered into his heavy pack.
    Joe noted how big and heavy the pack seemed to be for a day of scouting.
    —
    A FTER CHECKING the last two guzzlers—they were full and operational—Joe rode Toby slowly down the mountain toward his pickup. Daisy lagged behind, exhausted, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. It was hot, mid-eighties, and Joe felt sweat run down his spine and into his Wranglers. Dense cream lather worked out between the saddle and Toby’s sweaty back. As Joe cleared the trees he turned in his saddle to look at the top of the mountain where it went bald above the tree line. There was still snow up there, even in August.
    He sighed and settled back into the slow gait of the horse. The previous October, during the first heavy snow of the season, he’d been on top of the summit in his department pickup and had gotten it stuck in a snowfield he never should have tried to drive across. The reason he was up there was to try and assist his friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer and federal fugitive, who was in trouble. In the process, Joe had broken his hand and watched as a wounded Nate drove away. Joe hadn’t heard from Nate since, and given the circumstances and the body count that resulted, Joe didn’t mind. He’d
needed
the ten months since to heal in body and mind.
    Twice he’d ridden with a local tow-truck operator to the top to attempt to retrieve the pickup. Twice they’d been turned back by heavy drifts. The agency had sent up another pickup that should have been sold off because of its condition and the 190,000 miles on the odometer, but until Joe could get his new pickup out, he was stuck with the old one. The situation was the object of jokes and asides at headquarters in Cheyenne because of Joe’s track record with state vehicles. It would be any day now, Joe thought, that a new Game and Fish director would be named by the governor and review his record and give him a call. He hoped to have his pickup out by then, but he wasn’t sure he could make that happen.
    —
    J OE HEARD his old replacement pickup from a distance. The speaker outfit on the hood was