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either misplaced pride or Kiner’s fear of displeasing Randy Pope by creating the impression he was close to Joe. Either way, it hurt. Joe tried to put himself in Kiner’s shoes, and when he did he understood the dilemma but still thought Kiner should have reached out. They had reconciled only after Sheridan slugged Kiner’s son Jason in the lunchroom at school and both sets of parents were called in for a conference with the vice principal.
    “How many are up there?” Joe asked.
    “Three,” Kiner said. “Related to the victim, from what I can tell so far. They sound really pissed off, so we need to get up there before they go after whoever shot the fourth guy.”
    “Is it possible it was an accident?” Joe asked.
    “It sure as hell doesn’t sound like one, but we won’t know for sure until we get there,” Kiner said, raising his eyebrows. “But from what I’ve heard, it sounds fucking horrible. In fact, I can’t even believe what they’re telling the dispatcher they found.”
    “What?”
    “Turn on your radio,” Kiner said while putting the pickup in gear and roaring off.
    Joe sat for a moment, took a deep breath, and followed. He kept far enough back of Kiner’s dust cloud to look up at the looming dark mountains as they framed the valley. Fingers of fall color probed down the slopes and folds. The sky had turned from brilliant blue to a light steel gray as a film of cloud cover moved from the north, bringing, no doubt, a drop in temperature and possibly snow flurries. He turned on his radio beneath the dash and clicked it to the mutual aid channel. It was crackling with voices.
    The dispatcher said, “Mr. Urman, I understand. But please remain where you are and don’t pursue anyone on your own. We’ve got units on the way.”
    “That’s easy for you to say, lady,” the man Joe assumed was Urman said with barely controlled fury, “you haven’t seen what happened to my uncle this morning. And whoever did it is still out there.”
    “Mr. Urman—”
    “Somebody shot him with a high-powered rifle,” Urman said, “like a goddamned elk!”
    Joe swallowed hard.
    “Like a goddamned elk,” Urman repeated in a near whisper, an auditory hitch in his voice.
     
 
AS HE FOLLOWED KINER, Joe did a quick inventory of his pickup. He’d been practically living in it for the past month and it showed. The carpeting on the floorboards showed mud from the clay draws and arroyos near Lusk, the Little Snake River bottomland of Baggs, the desert of Rawlins, the Wind River foothills out of Pinedale. There was a gritty covering of dust on his dashboard and over his instruments. The console was packed with maps, notes, citation books. The skinny space behind his seat was crammed with jackets and coats for every weather possibility, as well as his personal shotgun, his Remington WingMaster twelve-gauge, his third since he’d become a full-time game warden. An M-14 carbine with a peep sight was under the seat, a Winchester .270 rifle was secured in brackets behind his head. The large padlocked metal box in the bed of the vehicle held evidence kits, survival gear, necropsy kits, heavy winter clothing, tools, spare radios, a tent and sleeping bag. Single-cab pickups for game wardens with all this gear was proof that whoever it was in the department who purchased the vehicles had never been out in the field.
    Since he’d lost his district and been assigned to work “without portfolio” for the governor, Joe filled in across the state whenever and wherever he was needed. Since there were only fifty-four game wardens covering the ninety-eight thousand square miles of the state, he was constantly in demand. If a warden was sick, injured, or had extended duty in court or on assignment, Joe was asked to substitute. Because he was moving around so much, agency biologists had asked him to gather samples from big-game animals across the state so they could monitor the spread of chronic wasting disease. CWD was a