Wolf Pack (A Joe Pickett Novel, Band 19) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series, five stand-alone novels, and the story collection Shots Fired. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and two Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38 and a French Elle magazine literary award. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He and his wife Laurie split their time between their home and ranch in Wyoming.

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Chapter One

For Wyoming game warden Katelyn Hamm, April really was the cruelest month. And this year was turning out to be the worst one of all.

And that was even before she got her pickup stuck eight miles from the highway.

It was the last week of the month and she was in the middle of what was known as shed war season. Bull elk and big mule deer shed their antlers throughout the winter, and now the war was heating up due to the low snowpack and the antlers' high price.

Shed war season was why she'd been grinding her green four-wheel-drive Ford F-150 through sagebrush, snowdrifts, and rock formations in the high foothills of the western slope of the Bighorn Mountains. Gnarled ancient cedars stood as sentinels among the granite formations towering on both sides, and she'd tried to keep her front tires in a set of untracked but snowpacked ruts meandering up and through the rough country toward the mountains.

Her destination had been a set of high, vast meadows just below the tree line of the mountains. Those meadows were designated as critical elk and deer winter range, and her aerial surveys two months earlier had revealed thousands of both. The elk liked to descend by the hundreds from the shadowed low timber to feed in the open on the meadows at night where the wind swept the benches clean of snow. Hundreds of mule deer moved up from draws and arroyos to do the same thing.

Now the meadows were littered with forty-pound elk antlers and heavy-beam deer antlers, the sharp tines and tips emerging from the snow as it melted, so new they glinted in the sun.

There were two ways to get to the winter range from the highway. One was a moderately developed gravel two-track five miles to the south. That route was officially closed during the winter months and marked by signs warning against entry. But antler poachers were resourceful. They drove around the gate closure and shot up the signs.

The other way to the high meadows was the rough, obscure two-track path that Katelyn had chosen to take. It wound up through the rock formations and cedars and ended on a high promontory that would give her a sweeping view of the meadows and anyone who might be in them.

For antler hunters, the western slope was a treasure trove.

For Katelyn Hamm, it was where she got her pickup stuck.

The front wheels had dropped into a deep but narrow erosion ditch that crossed the road. She hadnÕt seen the depth of the hazard because it had been covered by a long, narrow snowdrift that started in a copse of sagebrush and extended forty feet beyond in a crusty frozen wave. The impact was hard enough when the tires dropped that a cascade of ticket books and topo maps showered down on her from where theyÕd been secured by a rubber band around the sun visor. Her chin hurt because sheÕd smacked it on the steering wheel.

It happened, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, and it occurred more frequently than any game warden would admit. The key was to figure out how they could free their vehicles without having to call for help, or worse, being photographed. Each year, the Wyoming Game Warden Foundation dinner featured a special PowerPoint presentation of game wardens stuck in their vehicles. It elicited lots of guffaws. Katelyn wanted to be one of the laughers, not the laughees.

She tried to rock the truck forward and back, hoping the tires would grind through the snow and grab a bite of dirt that would launch her out. But the more she rocked, the deeper the tires dug in.

Katelyn struggled into her parka inside the cab and jammed a green Stormy Kromer wool cap on her head, then tucked her auburn hair into the collar of her coat so the cold winter wind wouldn't whip her eyes with it. The hem of the parka gathered over the grip of her holstered .40 Glock.

She grimaced as she circled the vehicle, and not just from the wind. The tires were deep in the ditch and the front bumper was perched on the edge of it. The friction of her spinning front tires had glazed the snow and melted it down enough that they spun freely and could grip nothing.

In the gear box in the bed of her unit, she had two shovels, one with a sharp blade and the other squared off, and she could try to start digging, but the ground was still frozen solid. It might take her hours.

She could call dispatch and request a tow truck from town, eighteen miles away, but that would take hours as well, provided the driver could even find her in such a remote location, GPS coordinates or not. And would he have a phone or camera to document her situation? Of course he would.

"Well, damn," she said to herself. The wind whipped her words away.

SheÕd heard too many times that there werenÕt actually four seasons in the Rocky Mountains, but three: summer, winter, and mud. That was true enough, though there was the possibility of snow at elevation every month of the year. What that canard didnÕt account for was that no matter what the weather, the conditions, and snowpack, she still had hard calendar dates she had to consider in order to do her job.

There was a rhythm to it. Hunting season openers started with archery in the early fall through the last rifle seasons in December. Herd classification assessments of elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope took place in December and January. Checking up on local licensed trappers in the deep winter took her through late March, and checking fishing licenses lasted all summer. Interspersed throughout were mandated reports for headquarters in Cheyenne, regional training days in Cody, and various assistance requests not only from other game wardens but from local law enforcement, state troopers, and investigators.

Shed war season had become more exciting since the price for elk antlers had gone up to around fifteen dollars per pound, and mule deer antlers up to ten to twelve dollars. That meant a set from a mature bull could fetch up to six hundred dollars from the "antler man" when he came to town. Deer antlers fetched two hundred to four hundred dollars a set and were later sold to furniture makers, accessory manufacturers, and Asian buyers who ground up the material into powder and sold it as an aphrodisiac.

In a district where oil and gas activity was slowly coming back but still not out of the bust years, antler hunting could almost make a guy rich.

"Antler season" on the winter range opened on May 1, which meant antler hunters could legally spread out over the mountains and wintering grounds en masse to scoop up whatever they could find. It would be a free-for-all, filling flatbed trailers with sheds and overflowing pickup beds.

Unfortunately, some miscreants tried to beat the legal opening day and the other antler hunters. They'd try to sneak onto the meadows as soon as the snow receded enough that they could get there and back, despite the locked gate and the posted signs. Katelyn knew it had been happening for years, and she was determined to patrol the meadows by truck and catch the poachers.

Big-game animals were weak and stressed in the winter, especially in the last months before the grass pushed through the snow and the herds dispersed on their own. Antler hunters ran them off the meadows prematurely and sometimes spooked the herds away from their winter feed. It was cruel. Katelyn supported proper hunting ethics and was outraged at needless wildlife deaths.

She studied the landscape around her and made a plan. Anything, she...