Chapter Five #2
As he climbed out of the cab and clamped on his hat, Joe passed by Clay’s truck and glanced inside out of habit.
There was a 12-gauge propped muzzle-down on the floor between the bench seats.
It was a combat model, and not the over-under that Clay often used to shoot sporting clays.
There was also a scoped .17 WSM bolt-action rifle next to it.
On the dashboard of Clay’s pickup were several boxes of .17 Winchester Super Mag cartridges and four boxes of 12-gauge shells in four shot. The choice of guns and ammo was particularly interesting to Joe.
He knew that guns were simply tools on a ranch, and that they were chosen for specific purposes in mind.
The .17 WSM was a lethal round used for varmint control.
It could also take out a coyote or fox because of its velocity.
But a multi-round pump-action combat shotgun shooting four- and six-shot shells?
Unlike the sporting clay shells that contained an ounce of gunpowder and tiny eight-shot pellets, the rounds on the dashboard were heavier and designed for ducks or pheasants.
And it wasn’t duck or pheasant season yet.
It was then Joe noticed the sound of gently pulsing electronic music coming from somewhere above him.
He looked up to see Brandy doing yoga on the third-floor veranda.
She was wearing a tight black tank top and skintight black yoga pants.
Brandy was blond and lithe and flexible.
She’d no doubt seen him drive up, but didn’t wave or look down.
“You’ll freeze into a block of stone if you look at her for too long, believe me,” Clay said with a wry grin. He came out of his office door and extended his hand. Joe shook it.
“How long have you had that new sign out on the road?” Joe asked.
“Couple of weeks.”
“It’s already been shot up,” Joe said. “That’ll happen when you overdo it.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” Clay said. “I tried to tell Mr. Thompson it wasn’t a great idea to piss off the locals.”
“Yup,” said Joe.
“He’s waiting for you in the garage,” Clay said. “Follow me, please.”
Joe followed Clay down a flagstone pathway that led to an entrance near the wide garage doors. Before reaching for the door handle, Clay paused and turned to Joe. His eyes were sad, Joe thought.
“I’ve got to tell you,” he said, “working for a billionaire cuts both ways, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
Clay started to answer, but apparently thought better of it.
“Not now,” Clay said. “Like I told you, he’s waiting for you.”
“What have you been going after with that seventeen-cal and that shotgun in your pickup?” Joe asked.
“Later,” Clay said.
—
Michael Thompson had eschewed several tricked-out pickups, a yellow Hummer H2, a battered Range Rover, and a Chevy Suburban for the four-passenger John Deere Gator that he piloted wildly down a gravel road, with Joe hanging on as his passenger. Clay had been left back in the garage.
The Gator had a roll bar and roof, but no windshield, and the cool fall air stung Joe’s eyes, making them water.
Thompson was in his late sixties, and he was in great shape, Joe thought.
The man was Ozempic-lean, with finely cut facial features, thick silver hair, and sharp blue eyes.
His accent was a mixture of his New Jersey boyhood and the Buckhead neighborhood in Atlanta where his headquarters were located.
While Thompson whipped the Gator around the bottom of a sagebrush knoll three miles from his mountain home and Joe held on to a stabilizing bar so he wouldn’t be thrown outside the vehicle, the rancher shouted, “What do you see before you, Joe?”
Around the knoll was a very scenic view of a vast wetlands bottom with a creek S-curving through it.
The stream was choked by willows and buckbrush that were turning red and orange with the season.
Multicolored fingers of aspen reached out toward the bottom land from the foothills, and black Angus cattle grazed like errant punctuation on the grassy floor of the valley.
“Antler Creek,” Joe shouted back. “I see Antler Creek.”
Thompson quickly decelerated and the Gator came to a halt. The engine puttered and he said, “Of course it’s Antler Creek, for God’s sake. But do you know what I see when I look at this valley?”
Joe shook his head.
“I see a big useless valley where I lose a ton of money every year. And you know what else I see out there? Especially when I look at all the sagebrush on the side of this knoll and on top of the benches?”
“What’s that?”
“I see what your damned agency has deemed ‘prime sage grouse habitat.’ ”
“Ah,” Joe said. It was true. The sagebrush hills and flatlands on the Double D were the traditional home of four to six prominent leks, or gatherings of sage grouse during their mating season.
Sage grouse, which were ungainly chicken-sized birds, had not been listed as endangered species in the Mountain West, but various interests in the state were very worried that it might happen.
If so, the designation would adversely affect many kinds of future development.
“Now tell me if I’m wrong,” Thompson said, “but my understanding is that if a businessman wanted to offer this valley you see before you as scenic parcels for second homes or, say, an upscale hunting or fishing lodge, a sign-off would be necessary to proceed. So the precious sage grouse could strut around once a year unimpeded. Am I hearing this correctly?”
“Since your ranch contains both state and federal parcels, like all the big ranches do, it would involve a sign-off of some kind,” Joe said. “This really isn’t my—”
“This is my ranch,” Thompson said, interrupting Joe. “I bought and paid for it outright. But you’re saying that in order to develop this little piece of it, I need to get the approval of a bunch of bureaucrats?”
“It’s above my pay grade to say,” Joe said. “Every situation is different.”
“Ah, the refuge of every little bureaucrat,” Thompson said with a sneer.
“I know how these things go. I pay attention. If you’re drilling an oil well, you get killed by the feds if a bald eagle gets harmed by the process in any way.
But if you’re putting up windmills, you can buy your way out of it and get ‘take’ permits to kill a bunch of bald eagles with no penalty at all.
It’s all who you know, and who knows you, and if what you’re doing is politically correct, right? ”
Joe flushed with anger. “Look, our agency has biologists and specialists in sage grouse. So does the state in other agencies. I can’t sit here and tell you what you can do or what you can’t do. What exactly is it that you want to put here, anyway?”
“That shouldn’t matter to you or to anyone else,” Thompson said. “That’s my whole point. Now tell me, is it true that if I did want to develop a parcel out there that the local game warden would be involved?”
“Probably,” Joe said.
“Finally, a straight answer,” Thompson said with a flourish. “So you would be asked to weigh in?”
“Probably, yes.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. I wasn’t sure I believed it when Clay said the local game warden might help sway the powers that be. But that seems to be the case after all.”
“I don’t know how much sway I’d actually have,” Joe said. “These decisions get political, and I try to avoid politics as much as I can.”
“Haven’t you been Spencer’s gun-for-hire when he asks you to be?”
Joe looked away and said, “Yup. But not when it comes to political problems. Those I stay away from, and he knows it.”
Joe found it significant that Thompson referred to second-time Wyoming governor Spencer Rulon by his first name. It was a tell.
“Oh, I know your reputation, Joe Pickett,” Thompson said. “Spencer has a very high opinion of you.”
“Except when he doesn’t,” Joe said.
Thompson laughed at that for a few seconds, then bore back down. “If you weighed in on my side, it might really make a difference. A big difference. You could be very helpful.”
“I’d need to know a lot more about the situation,” Joe said. “And you’d need to be straight with me.”
“So tell me, game warden, how many sage grouse do you see out there?”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Aha!”
Joe frowned. “It’s not like they wear blaze orange like hunters do. I’d have to spend some time here observing.”
“Or you could talk to your friend Clay, couldn’t you? Clay knows every inch of this ranch.”
“I would talk with Clay,” Joe said. “I’d also need to spend some time here on my own.”
“Are you always this stubborn?” Thompson asked.
“Yup.”
Thompson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Joe guessed it was so he wouldn’t explode.
“I’m hoping I can count on you for your support,” Thompson said finally.
“I’m hoping you don’t derail a project that would actually help me get some return on my investment, unlike the cattle out there.
You know, every bovine is a money-suck on four hooves.
No one makes money from a cattle ranch anymore, because the deck is stacked against ranchers.
You wouldn’t want to stack the deck even higher against me, would you, Joe? ”
“I’d call it like I see it,” Joe said. “But you still haven’t told me what you’re planning out here.”
“Whatever it might be, it would be good and worthwhile and harmless. That’s all I’ll say for now.”
“Okay,” Joe said. There seemed to be no point in pushing Thompson for answers at the moment.
“But you might want to spend a little more time out here in the coming months,” Thompson said.
“Maybe I can do that,” Joe said. “But right now I’m pretty busy. I’m dealing with the opening day of elk-hunting season.”
“I’ll let Clay know that you won’t be a stranger on this ranch.
“Who knows,” Thompson said with an unreadable grin, “maybe you’ll get lucky and see Brandy doing yoga out on the deck again.”
—
On their return to the Thompson compound, the ranch owner called his pilots to tell them to get the jet ready.
As soon as he disconnected, he turned to Joe and said, “I’ve got another damned fundraiser in Atlanta tonight.
I don’t even know what it’s for—homeless people or something about race relations, probably.
“My lawyers say I have to make sure I stay visible in the business community for PR purposes. They say the best way to deal with scandal is to carry on like nothing ever happened.”
Joe wasn’t aware of a scandal involving Thompson, but he made a note to ask Marybeth about it when he got home. If she didn’t know the details of whatever it was, he knew she had the resources to find out.
Then Thompson leaned in his seat closer to Joe as he drove. “Do you know what I think they should call homeless people? So it doesn’t sound so negative?”
“What’s that?”
“Outdoorsmen!” Thompson whooped. “We should call them outdoorsmen! Who doesn’t want to be an outdoorsman?”
Joe suppressed a smile, mainly because the statement was so outrageous and unexpected.
They neared the Gulfstream on the landing strip and Thompson looked at his wristwatch and declared, “I need to get into the air. Do you mind taking the Gator back to the garage?”
“I can do that,” Joe said as Thompson vaulted out of the ATV.
But before he took the stairs into the aircraft, Thompson turned and clapped Joe on the shoulder and said, “Don’t let me down, Joe. It wouldn’t be worth it to anyone involved.”
And he was gone.
—
Brandy had vacated the third level when Joe approached the Thompson house and guided the ATV into the open garage. He tried to wrap his mind around all that Thompson had said to him, and tried to guess what the rancher was envisioning for his mountain valley.
Clay was waiting for him outside of his pickup. On the way into the open bay, Joe had passed Clay’s vehicle once again and noted that the weapons and ammunition were no longer visible inside the cab.
“What’s going on around here, Clay?” Joe asked after parking the ATV and handing Clay the keys.
Clay looked away without answering. Then he turned and said, “Let’s just say I’ve been doing things I never thought I’d do. I mean, back when I had some self-respect.”
“Like what?”
“We’ll have to talk later,” Clay said. “Brandy needs a ride to town. She’s out of green tea.”
Clay backed out of the garage toward the open door, but he paused at the threshold. “Joe, Mr. Thompson gets what he wants. He plays by a different set of rules. My advice to you, as a friend, is to not get in his way and just do what he suggests. It isn’t worth it to buck him.”
“Is that what you do, Clay?” Joe asked. “Like shooting every sage grouse you see with that shotgun that’s no longer in your pickup?”
Clay looked as if he’d been caught. His face drained of color and he simply glared at Joe for half a minute.
“I thought we were friends, Joe,” he said.
“I have a job to do, Clay, and I’ll do it.”
“Then don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Clay said as he turned away abruptly.