Out of Range by C. J. Box Page B

from the highway would instantly cause visitors to hit their brakes and, without pulling over to the shoulder, pour out of their vehicles with cameras and camcorders. On his left the ground rose in a gentle swell toward the Gros Ventre Mountains. On the raised flats, barely visible from the road, were old dude ranches. The movie Shane had been filmed on one of them, Joe remembered. It was the only movie he and his father had ever agreed on, maybe the only thing they had ever agreed on. Then he realized something that both scared and exhilarated him: This was his new district. As far as he could see in every direction, from the Tetons to the west, Gros Ventres to the east, Yellowstone Park to the north, to the town of Jackson ahead of him to the south, was his new responsibility.
    Jackson was just a couple of hundred miles from Saddlestring, Joe thought, but it was a world apart.
    The big new twostory state building had a parking lot in front for visitors and a private lot in back for employees of various agencies. Joe cruised through the staff lot, looking for a parking space, but they all appeared to be designated. The only open one he saw was marked for w. jensen. Even though there wasn’t anywhere else available behind the building, he chose not to use it. Not yet. Instead, he wheeled around the front, parked between two RVs, and entered the building through the double doors.
    In the lobby, tourists stood and rifled through a rack of brochures offering horseback rides, an aerial tram ride to the top of the Tetons, chuck wagon cookouts, whitewater rafting, and other excursions, as well as accommodations.
    A darkskinned, wizened woman with coalblack hair peered over her goldframed glasses at him as he approached her counter carrying his battered briefcase and daypack. He nodded his hat brim to her, and she nodded back.
    “Joe Pickett,” he said.
    She stood. She was not much taller standing than she had been sitting down. “Mary Seels. We expected you five days ago.”
    “Hello, Mary. I was helping my supervisor with a bear.
    You should have gotten word from dispatch that I’d be late.”
    She assessed him. He thought he saw a slight smile on her mouth, as if she were hiding her amusement. “I’ve heard about you.”
    He nodded again, not taking the bait, not saying, What have you heard ? But he thought he already had her figured out, simply by the way she looked at him, with the same dispassionate sharpness of one of Nate’s falcons, and by the way she projected her innate territoriality. Mary was the one who ran the place, he thought. She appraised him as if he had walked into the building hat in hand looking for the last bed in town, and she had the power to give it to him or turn him away.
    “Will said you were a good guy,” she said.
    “I’m glad to hear that. I thought quite a bit of Will.”
    “If Will says you’re a good guy, you’re a good guy,” she said, more to herself than to Joe. “I suppose you want to use his office?”
    Inwardly, Joe cringed. He had not parked in Will’s space because he felt he was encroaching.
    “How many offices are in this building?” he asked.
    She ticked her head from side to side like a metronome as she silently counted. “Twentysome. We’ve got biologists, habitat specialists, fisheries guys, and communications people. Plus a library and a conference room. There’s a corral out back. Will’s four horses are kept there.”
    “Twenty offices,” Joe repeated. “In my district I work out of my house. In a space about as big as your counter here.”
    “That’s interesting,” she said, her tone dismissive. “I hope you don’t get lost here.”
    “Me too,” he said.
    There were a few beats of silence as Joe and Mary looked at each other.
    “Are you going to move in or not?” she asked finally.
    “Any empty rooms?”
    “A couple. But they have the lousiest furniture, if they have furniture at all. People raid the empty offices for what they want all the