Chapter Seven
Early the next morning, Dorn Peddy and Hillbilly Jimmy D. O’Bryan traversed the sagebrush badlands near Antler Creek Road in the ATV, eventually locating the camper trailer. It was tucked away in an aspen grove three miles from the junction where the ambush had taken place the day before.
Peddy quickly leaned down and turned the headlights off. “See it?”
“I see it,” O’Bryan replied. He’d been in a foul mood since Peddy had awakened him at four thirty that morning. Peddy had whispered that they needed to find that hunter who’d called in the incident, and fast.
“Why?” O’Bryan had asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it all night long,” Peddy had explained. “We don’t know if that guy saw us. If he did, it could fuck up everything. And, brother, I want to get paid.”
O’Bryan had reluctantly gone along with Peddy’s argument, and now they were sweeping across the labyrinth of two-track roads on public land near the junction. They plowed through snowdrifts on the back roads.
Peddy had explained that since the hunter was obviously on foot when they saw him, his camp couldn’t be too far away.
“If he has a camp at all,” O’Bryan said. But Peddy had ignored him.
O’Bryan wanted to get paid as well, and he wanted to hit the road and never run across Dorn Peddy again for the rest of his life.
—
Before they located the camper trailer, O’Bryan had been leaning forward in his seat so the heat from the vents would warm him.
The ATV was a new-model Polaris Ranger with an overhead cab, but the cold morning still leaked in.
O’Bryan couldn’t wait until the sun rose over the humpbacked Bighorn Mountains and flooded it with warmth and light.
He noticed how the sagebrush that bordered the two-track sparkled with frost from the beams of their headlights.
Jackrabbits bolted from the brush and ran ahead of them on the road, but ducked to safety at the last second.
“Why would anybody want to live here?” O’Bryan asked Peddy as they rolled along. “Yesterday, the wind was blowing a million miles an hour. Today, it’s colder than hell. What’s wrong with these people?”
Peddy had started to answer, when the camp came into view and he stopped the Ranger on the top of a hill.
There was a massive sagebrush swale between the Ranger and the camper trailer. The swale, like the trees that bordered the terrain, was still plunged into shadow. Lone junipers, like sentinels, stood at attention across the plain.
“We better move,” Peddy said as he restarted the engine. “I don’t want him to see us because we’ve skylighted ourselves.” When he stopped again farther down the hill, he asked O’Bryan for the binoculars.
“They’re around your neck.”
“Ah.”
Peddy rested the binoculars on the top of the steering wheel and leaned into them.
“There’s a pickup truck parked in the trees behind the trailer,” he said. “It’s sidewise, so I can’t see license plates.”
Then: “It’s a hunting camp, for sure. There’s no other reason for anyone to be set up out here.”
Then: “The trailer is pretty beat-up, and the truck is at least twenty years old. This guy isn’t rich, I’d say.”
Then: “The trailer is rocking a little. I think someone is walking around inside.”
O’Bryan “Hmmm’d” after each report to acknowledge what Peddy said. He noted that there was now a soft yellow glow from interior lighting through the windows of the camper.
“There he is,” Peddy said suddenly. “There’s our man.”
“Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent,” Peddy said as he handed over the binoculars.
O’Bryan focused the lenses. It was still too dark to see clearly.
What he could make out was the figure of a stout man, a dark form, as he emerged from the trailer door and took a tentative step down into the snow and grass.
The man was stocky, but O’Bryan couldn’t see his face or make out his clothing.
The hunter closed the door of the unit behind him.
The man lumbered the length of the camper to the front, then stood still and bent back a little, his right hand at crotch level. Steam from his urine rose in a small cloud near his feet.
When he was done, he turned and went back into the unit.
“I’m sure as hell not one hundred percent it’s him,” O’Bryan said. “Could you actually see his face?”
“I can tell by the way he moves,” Peddy said, but there was a trace of uncertainty in his tone.
“How do we find out?”
“We go ask him, idiot.”
O’Bryan scowled and looked away. Getting the hell away from Dorn of the Mountains couldn’t come soon enough.
—
They checked their weapons using a headlamp Peddy had brought along. He choked the beam down to a glow so the light from inside the Ranger wouldn’t be discernible from the camper trailer.
Peddy checked the loads in the magazine of a .
40 Taurus G2C semiautomatic and racked one into the chamber.
He slipped the pistol into a shoulder holster beneath his stiff canvas barn coat.
O’Bryan opened the cylinder of a .38 Smith & Wesson short-barreled revolver and snapped it back into place.
He dropped the revolver into his right parka pocket.
Both weapons had been provided by their employer from a large supply that was kept in an armory.
The serial numbers on both pistols had been filed off.
“Let me do all the talking,” Peddy said.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“There’s that fucking attitude again,” Peddy said.
O’Bryan shrugged. “So what’s our story, anyway?”
“We’re ranch hands. We’re out here looking for cows that wandered away from the ranch onto public land. I’ll ask our guy if he’s seen them.”
“Okay, and then what?”
Peddy threw back his head and rolled his eyes, as if he’d never heard a dumber question. “By then we’ll know if this is our hunter after all. We’ll know if he recognizes us. If he does, there will be a tell.”
“And if he does?”
“We’ll deal with him,” Peddy said.
“And if he doesn’t?” O’Bryan asked.
Peddy scoffed at the question and shoved the gear lever from park into drive. Then he turned the headlights back on.
—
Their high beams bathed the side of the camper trailer as they approached it. O’Bryan could see the head and shoulders of a man move to the side window of the unit and peer out. He still couldn’t see his face clearly.
Peddy parked and shut off the engine, but he kept the beams trained on the unit. As he strode up to the door, it opened.
O’Bryan slipped out of the Ranger through the passenger door.
Rather than catch up with Peddy, he stepped to the side so he’d have a clear view of what happened next.
From this vantage point, O’Bryan could also see that the pickup had plates on it with a 1 next to a bucking bronco logo.
So the hunter was from Wyoming, but no doubt far enough away from the Bighorns to find it necessary to camp out rather than return home at night.
O’Bryan had learned that license plates in Wyoming all began with the number of the county where the vehicle was registered.
He didn’t know the counties well enough to know which one had the 1 designation.
All he knew was that the license plates he’d noticed in Twelve Sleep County all began with the number 3.
The stocky hunter pushed the door open and stood in the threshold with a pot of coffee in his hand. O’Bryan could smell bacon cooking from inside.
“Greetings,” the man said. “What can I help you with?”
Even though they were closer and the sun was starting to overtake the gloom, O’Bryan still wasn’t sure he could identify the hunter as the hunter.
The man looked to be in his early sixties.
He had a full, short-cropped black beard and a wide face with a bulbous nose.
He wore long-handled underwear and a cooking apron.
“Good morning,” Peddy said. “Sorry to bother you so early.”
The hunter nodded and took in Peddy, then O’Bryan behind him. His face crinkled into a smile.
“You two look like dime-store cowboys,” he said.
“We’re ranch hands,” Peddy said.
“And I’m a pirate of the Caribbean,” the hunter said with a laugh. “It looks like you two were dressed this morning by Roy Rogers or somebody who watched too many episodes of Yellowstone.”
O’Bryan felt his neck flush with embarrassment and he looked away for a moment. Peddy, for once, had no words.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to insult you,” the hunter said. “Do you guys want a cup of coffee? I just made it.”
Peddy looked over his shoulder at O’Bryan. O’Bryan said, “I could use a cup.”
“Sure,” Peddy said to the hunter.
“Let me clear a place for you to sit. Then come on inside and get out of the cold.”
—
It was cramped and close inside the camper trailer.
The table in the nose of the unit was propped up by a single aluminum leg and it was the only place to sit down.
Peddy squeezed into a bench seat on one side, and O’Bryan slid in next to him.
When the hunter joined them on the other side of the table, their knees nearly touched his.
O’Bryan surveyed the interior of the trailer.
It was dated and had seen a lot of use. The bed at the foot of the unit was covered by a crumpled sleeping bag, and the single propane lamp above the stove hissed through a brilliantly glowing mantle.
It was warm inside and bacon was sizzling in a cast-iron pan on one of the burners.
A scoped hunting rifle was leaned against a wall near a closet, and a daypack was on the floor near it.
Weathered hunting boots had been tucked away under the bed.
“I’m Budd Betts,” the hunter said as he poured two cups of coffee. “What can I do for you fellows this morning?”
O’Bryan sipped from his mug. The coffee was hot and very strong.
Finally, Peddy said, “We’re from one of the ranches farther up the road. We’re looking for a half dozen lost cows and we were wondering if you’ve seen them.”
“What kind of cows?” Betts asked.
O’Bryan did a side-eye to Peddy, wondering with amusement what he’d say. Peddy had put himself in a spot.