Page 36 of Dark Sky

But he never found out whether he’d overcharged him or not because days afterward the young man was arrested for beating his live-in girlfriend to a pulp and was later sent to the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins for domestic assault. Despite pleas from Kirby’s outfitter father, Earl, Joe didn’t drop his case against his son. Earl maintained that the hunting violations, whenever they were to be adjudicated, would damage his reputation as a prominent guide and outfitter in the area.

Instead, Joe held the charges in reserve for when he could serve them in person. He did it for himself and for that poor pronghorn antelope buck.

Until the moment Joe glanced over his shoulder, he hadn’t known Kirby was out. He didn’t think it was a good time to remind the man about the pending charges against him that Joe was sitting on.

And now Joe was terrified. He didn’t want to see that look in Kirby’s eyes ever again.

—

As Joe rounded the corner of the wall tent with Kirby right behind him, the knife point stinging him, he tried to quickly assess the scene:

Price sat on the log by the fire with his hands on his knees, looking up at Earl Thomas, who towered above him. Earl had a carbine in the crook of his arm.

Zsolt Rumy was sprawled on his side near the smoldering campfire. He had a head wound under his scalp that bled in rivulets across his face and pooled in the grass beneath his head. His wrists were bound together behind his back with nylon rope.

Brad Thomas, Earl’s massive other son and his partner in the outfitting business, straddled Rumy and grasped a shotgun butt-down, as if prepared to bludgeon the man yet again if he dared move. Joe noted that Brad’s large boots were approximately the same size as the tracks he’d seen earlier that morning.

Tim Joannides stood on the other side of the fire ring with his arms crossed in front of him and his head tilted toward Price, as if trying to solve some kind of puzzle. He wasn’t obviously injured and he wasn’t constrained.

Brock Boedecker stood just inside the flap of the doorway of the cook tent as if he didn’t know where else to go. He wore his big .44 in a holster at his side. So they hadn’t disarmed him. He looked at Joe as if pleading for some kind of understanding.

A glittering pile of smashed electronics—sat phones, solar battery chargers, PLBs, digital tablets, cell phones—were on the ground between the firepit and the opening of the wall tent.

Joe tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t on the fly. Too many mixed messages.

“Look who I found,” Kirby said to Earl.

Earl looked Joe over and nodded a greeting of sorts. Price gestured to Joe with his hands out, as if to say,What do you make of this?

Joe said, “What are you doing, Earl?”

“Something that should have been done a year ago, Joe,” Earl replied.

Joe shook his head, not understanding.

“Frontier justice, you might call it,” Earl said.

“For what?” Joe asked. “What do you think we’ve done?”

“You haven’t done anything,” Earl said. “Neither has Brock. You’re just with the wrong people at the wrong time.”

“What does that even mean?”

Earl raised the carbine out of the crook of his arm and swung it toward Price. Price’s eyes got large and he sat farther back on the log as if that would make him harder to hit.

“Your crime is enabling this asshole. This guy here,” Earl said. “Mr. Bigshot San Francisco Tech Mogul. He’s going to finally get what’s coming to him. It’s high time.”

“High fucking time,” Brad said in an echo.

“Shut up, Brad,” Kirby whispered from behind Joe, as if embarrassed by his brother.

Earl stepped forward and lowered the rifle so that the muzzle was inches away from Price’s nose. He said, “You killed my Sophia.”

Price flinched and shook his head. “Who?”

“My Sophia,” Earl said. “My Sophia.”

“Ikilled her?” Price asked, obviously confused. “I don’t even know her. I don’t know anyone named Sophia. Jesus—this is insane.”

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