The Loop (3 page)

To avoid answering his own question, he leaned forward and switched on the radio. Hopping through the commercials and the relentless country music (which, after three years in Montana, he still hadn’t learned to like), he settled on the local news. The last item did little to improve his mood.

It was about a ‘wolf attack’ on a ranch near Hope and how the baby grandson of one of the community’s most prominent figures, Buck Calder, had only escaped certain death because a pet Labrador had bravely laid down his life instead.

Dan groaned. The media had it already. That was
all
he needed. But it got worse. They already had a phone interview with Calder himself. Dan knew of him but had never met him. He had the deep, seductive voice of a politician. All daggers dripping with honey.

‘The federal government let loose all those wolves down there in Yellowstone and now they’re everywhere and threatening mothers and babies. And are we allowed to defend them and defend our livestock and our property? No sir, we are not. And why’s that? Because the federal government tells us these animals are still an endangered species. I tell you, there’s no more sense than justice in it.’

The report ended and Dan switched off.

The guy had a point. Until recently, the only wolves in the region had been the few that had ventured down the continental divide from Canada. Then, after years of furious debate between environmentalists and ranchers, the federal government decided to give wolf recovery a boost. At huge expense, some sixty-six wild Canadian wolves were captured, trucked to Yellowstone Park and Idaho, and released.

In response to local anger, ranchers who lived in these so-called experimental areas were allowed to shoot any wolf they found attacking their livestock. But the released wolves had multiplied and because they weren’t too good at reading maps (or perhaps because they were), they had spread to places where shooting them earned you a $100,000 fine and even a spell in jail.

Hope was one of these places. What’s more, it was wolf-hater heartland. If a wolf had indeed shown up there today, it needed its head examined.

About ten years ago, Fish and Wildlife had held public meetings all over the state so that people could vent their feelings about federal proposals for wolf recovery. Some of these meetings had apparently gotten pretty stormy. But the one they’d held in Hope community hall beat all records.

A group of young ranch hands and loggers had stood outside with guns and yelled abuse all the way through. Those inside, where guns were banned, were just as scary. Dan’s predecessor, a legendary diplomat, had managed to keep the lid on. But afterward, two loggers had shoved him against a wall and threatened him. He came out several shades paler than he’d gone in, only to find someone had poured a gallon of red paint over his car.

In the far distance now, Dan saw the town looming.

It was the kind of town you could drive through and barely know you’d been there. One straight street, a couple of hundred yards long, fishboned with a few side alleys. At one end stood a rundown motel and at the other a school, and in between you could find a gas station, a grocery, a hardware store, a diner, a laundromat and a taxidermist.

Many of the town’s five hundred or so population lived scattered along the valley and to service their various spiritual needs there were two churches and two bars. There were also two gift shops, which said more about optimism than sound business sense; for although summer tourists often passed through Hope, few chose to linger.

In an attempt to remedy this and to meet demand from the modest but growing band of subdivision newcomers, one of these shops (and by far the better) had last year installed a cappuccino bar.

The shop was called Paragon and on those rare occasions when Dan was passing through, he always made a point of dropping in, not so much on account of the coffee, which was good, as of the woman who owned it.

She was a handsome New Yorker called Ruth Michaels and, from their two or three encounters, he’d so far established that she used to run an art gallery in Manhattan and had come to Montana on vacation after her marriage broke up. She’d fallen in love with the place and stayed. Dan could imagine knowing a lot more about her.

Cappuccino hadn’t exactly taken off with the locals who mostly preferred their coffee weak and stewed, the way they did it over the street at Nelly’s Diner. As he drove by, Dan was sad, but not altogether surprised, to see Ruth had a FOR SALE sign stuck in the front window.

Ahead, he could see Bill Rimmer’s pickup parked where they’d arranged to meet, outside a forlorn bar, aptly named The Last Resort. Rimmer got out to greet him. He was a born and bred Montanan and with his Stetson and droopy, blond mustache, looked it. At six foot six, he always made Dan feel like a midget. He was a few years younger than Dan and better-looking too; in fact, come to think of it, Dan couldn’t figure why he liked the guy so much.

He got out of his car and Rimmer slapped him on the shoulder.

‘How’re you doing, old friend?’

‘Well, Bill, tell you the truth, I had a better date than you lined up for tonight.’

‘You could break a man’s heart, Dan Prior. Shall we head on out there?’

‘May as well. Everybody else is. Did you hear the radio?’

‘Yep. And I heard there’s a TV crew up there too.’

‘Terrific.’

‘That old wolf sure chose a good spot to make his debut.’

‘Come on, Bill. We don’t even know it was a wolf yet.’

They climbed into Rimmer’s pickup and pulled out down Main Street. It was nearly seven-thirty and Dan was starting to worry about the light. It was always easier to check out the scene of a depredation in daylight. He was even more worried about all the people who had been trampling over the scene of the so-called wolf attack. If there were any tracks they were probably all scuffed up by now.

He and Rimmer had started their jobs at virtually the same time. Their predecessors had both been centrally involved in the release program and had quit not long after for more or less the same reason. They were ‘wolfed out’ - tired of being yelled at by ranchers for not doing enough to control the spread of wolves and by environmentalists for not doing enough to help it. You simply couldn’t win.

Rimmer worked for Animal Damage Control, a division of the Department of Agriculture, and was usually the first person to get the call when a rancher was having trouble with predators, be it bear, coyote, mountain lion or wolf. He was judge, jury and, where necessary, executioner. A trained biologist, he kept his love of these animals to himself. And that, along with his skill with rifle and trap, had helped him earn the respect even of those who harbored a natural mistrust of all federal employees.

He dressed like a cowboy, and that, along with his easy, laconic manner, gave him the edge over Dan when it came to placating irate ranchers who’d lost (or thought they’d lost) a calf or a sheep to a wolf. To such people, Dan would always be an East Coast outsider. Their main difference, however, was that while ranchers saw Rimmer as the man who could help solve their problem, they saw Dan as the one who’d caused it. Dan always felt happier when he had Rimmer alongside, especially in situations like the one they were headed for now.

They swung off the last stretch of blacktop and onto the gray gravel road that wound up the valley toward the mountains. For awhile they traveled without talking, listening to the scrunch of the car’s wheels that left a drift of dust behind them. Through the open windows the evening air was warm on Dan’s forearm. Between the road and the darkening green of the cottonwoods along the river a hawk scoured the sagebrush for an evening snack. It was Dan who broke the silence.

‘You ever hear of a wolf trying to take a baby?’

‘Nope. Likely it was the dog he was after all the time.’

‘That’s what I figured. What about this Calder guy. Have you met him before?’

‘Couple of times. He’s quite a piece of work.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Rimmer grinned, without looking at him, and with one finger eased the brim of his hat up his forehead a little.

‘You’ll see.’

The gateway to the Calder ranch was a massive structure of weathered lodgepole, its crossbar mounted with the skull of a longhorn steer. It reminded Dan of the entrance to a wild west rollercoaster ride called the Canyon of Doom on which he and Ginny had scared themselves witless last summer in Florida.

They rattled over a cattle guard and past a wooden sign that said CALDER RANCH. There was a smaller one beside it, freshly painted, which said simply HICKS. Dan assumed there was no pun intended.

They drove beneath the skull and followed the road for another mile, winding among small, scrub-covered hills, until the Calder ranch house loomed ahead of them. It stood assertively on the south-facing slope of a low bluff which no doubt afforded shelter from the winter blizzards as well as a commanding view of the best pastures of the Calder domain. The house was built of stout, whitewashed timber and though it was on two stories, its great length made it seem low and anchored immutably to the land.

Below it lay a wide cement yard, on one side of which stood an imposing set of freshly painted white barns, and on the other three silver feed silos which towered like missiles above a network of corrals. In the pasture that fell away beyond, a wide-crowned cottonwood grew from the shell of a Model T Ford, rusted the same shade as the horses that grazed around it. They lifted their heads to watch the pickup and its train of dust go by.

They forked left and two miles farther up the road they crested another hill and saw, in the gathering dusk, the dark red shape of the Hicks’ house. Rimmer slowed so they could take in the scene.

There were six or seven vehicles parked in front and though partly obscured by the corner of the house, a small crowd could be seen around the rear porch. Someone seemed to have a spotlight on and every so often there was the flash of a camera. Dan sighed.

‘I want to go home.’

‘Sure looks like a circus.’

‘Yeah. And here come the clowns.’

‘I was thinking more of the Roman kind, you know, where they feed you to the lions.’

‘Thanks a lot, Bill.’

They parked along with the other cars and made their way up to the house and around to the back where all the people were. Someone was talking and Dan recognized the voice right away.

Up on the porch, in a flood of light, a young TV reporter was interviewing Buck Calder. She was wearing a red suit that looked a good two sizes too small for her. Calder towered above her. He was tall, almost as tall as Bill Rimmer, and much more powerfully built. His shoulders were as wide as the window behind him.

He wore a light-colored Stetson and a white snap-button shirt that set off his tan. His eyes gleamed a pale gray-blue in the TV lights and Dan realized it was the eyes even more than the man’s physique that gave the impression of power. They were locked on the young reporter with such smiling intensity that she seemed mesmerized. Dan had expected to see the grandfather he knew Calder to be. But here instead was a man in his prime, who clearly knew the effect his confidence had on others.

Alongside him, looking a lot less comfortable, were Kathy and Clyde Hicks. Kathy was holding the baby who was staring at his grandfather, eyes wide with wonder. There was a table beside them with something bulky and yellow on it and it took Dan awhile to realize it was the dead dog.

‘The wolf is a killing machine,’ Calder was saying. ‘He’ll take anything he can. And if it wasn’t for this poor, brave dog here he’d have taken my little grandson. Though I reckon Buck Junior here might have given him a sock on the jaw first.’

The crowd laughed. There were about a dozen people there. The photographer and a young man taking notes were from the local newspaper; Dan had seen them before. Who the others were, he had no idea. Probably neighbors and family. There were two faces that he kept going back to: a graceful woman, in her mid-forties, Dan guessed, and a tall young man, probably in his late teens, beside her. They were standing in the shadows, a little way back from the rest. Dan noticed how neither of them joined in the laughter,

‘Calder’s wife and son,’ Rimmer whispered.

The woman had thick black hair, streaked with gray and loosely pinned up to show a long, pale neck. There was a kind of melancholy beauty about her that was echoed in the face of her son.

Everything had suddenly gone quiet up on the porch. The TV reporter, entranced by Calder’s gaze, had blanked. Calder grinned at her with teeth white and perfect as a movie star’s.

‘You going to ask me another question, sweetheart, or are we about done here?’

The laughter this time made her blush. She looked around at the cameraman, who nodded.

‘I think we’re done,’ she said. ‘Thank you Mr Calder. Very much. That was really, really . . . great.’

Calder nodded then looked over the heads to where Dan and Rimmer were standing and gave them a little wave. Everyone turned to look at them.

‘I can see a couple of fellas over there who you might like to ask a few questions too. I know I’ve got one or two for them.’

 

From the darkness of the barn, Luke Calder looked out across the yard to where they were doing the necropsy. He was just inside the open door, kneeling beside Maddie and stroking her. She was lying with her head on her paws and every now and then she would whimper and lift her head and look up at him, licking her grizzled old lips, and Luke would stroke her some more till she settled again.

Rimmer had the Labrador laid out on clear plastic sheeting on the tailgate of his pickup. He’d rigged up some lamps so he could see what he was doing with his knife. The other guy who’d come with him, the wolf expert, was videoing it, while Luke’s father and Clyde stood to one side, looking on in silence. His mother and Kathy were inside getting supper ready. Everyone else had at last, thank God, gone home.