Page 51 of Three-Inch Teeth

From inside the outhouse, either Lynn Fowler or Jayce Calhoun shouted, “We are not old lunatics. How dare you?” Then: “Game warden, is that you?”

“It’s me,” Joe said.

“He’s crazy. It stinks in here. He said he’d throw us in the pit!”

“Head first,” Clay added with a maniacal grin.

“Let’s all calm down,” Joe said. “Clay, please put the rifle down on the ground.”

Hutmacher started to argue, but then dropped his head, apparently defeated. His eyes pleaded to Joe for understanding, and Joe nodded. Then Hutmacher lowered the rifle.

“That bear killed my boy,” he said. “They just don’t understand that, or they don’t care. All they’ve done is torture me for days. There’s something seriously wrong with them. They need to go back among their own kind in Jackson Hole. This is no place for them and their lunatic ideas.”

Joe approached the ranch foreman and placed his hands on his shoulders and slowly turned him around. Hutmacher offered no resistance as Joe pulled the rancher’s hands behind his back and placed handcuffs on his wrists. He didn’t cinch the cuffs too tightly. Joe could smell whiskey on Hutmacher’s breath since he was so close to him.

Joe said softly to Hutmacher, “It’ll be okay. I’ll get you someplace where you can sleep it off, Clay.” Then to the outhouse, “You can come out now.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“He’s detained,” Joe replied.

“Detained,” Hutmacher echoed, more to himself than Joe. “I’m the one detained,” he said with sadness. “It just ain’t fair.”

The bolt was thrown inside the women’s restroom and the door opened an inch. Joe could see Lynn Fowler’s eye appear in the crack.

“Are you sure he won’t hurt us?” she asked.

“I’m sure.”

The door opened the rest of the way and the Mama Bears appeared. They looked disheveled and shaky.

“It was horrible in there,” Jayce Calhoun said, wiping her eyes. Then to Joe, “All we were doing was trying to give Tisiphone a fighting chance to survive, after all she’s been through.”

“Enough about Tisiphone,” Joe barked. It startled both women. “We don’t even know if that was the bear or where it went. This man lost his son and you’ve been harassing him on private land. It’s a game to you, but it’s not a game to him.”

“You don’t need to use that tone,” Fowler sniffed.

“See what I’m dealing with?” Hutmacher asked.

To the Mama Bears, Joe said, “I’m going to get Clay in my pickup and take him into town. Then I’m going to come back here and cite you both for trespassing, vandalism, and harassment. We also have a law against interfering with the lawful pursuit of wildlife, which is what this grizzly is.

“Then,” he said, “I suggest you both get in your Range Rover and go home. Your game is over, and believe me when I say that this is for your safety, too. You two aren’t exactly the most popular folks in Twelve Sleep County right now.”

The Mama Bears were speechless.

*

AFTER CALLING INTERIM sheriff Elaine Beveridge and alerting her that he’d be bringing Clay Hutmacher in to the county jail, Joe turned to his friend in the passenger seat to discuss the potential charges against him. Joe’s job provided him with plenty of discretion, and he had no intention of throwing the book at Hutmacher.

In response, Hutmacher snored loudly, his head slumped forward with his chin on his chest. A string of saliva ran from his bottom lip to his belt buckle.

“Sleep it off,” Joe said.

Right then, Marybeth called. He punched her up and his eyes got wide when she said, “Dulcie’s dead. Dulcie. That grizzly bear got her, Joe.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Thermopolis

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