Chapter One
Targhee National Forest, Idaho
June 10
ON THE THIRD DAY OF THEIR HONEYMOON, infamous
environmental
activist Stewie Woods and his new bride Annabel Bellotti
were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and
blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy.
They met by chance. Stewie Woods had been busy pouring
bag after bag of sugar and sand into the gasoline tanks of
a fleet of pickups that belonged to a natural gas
exploration crew in a newly graded parking lot. The crew
had left for the afternoon for the bars and hotel rooms of
nearby Henry's Fork. One of the crew had returned
unexpectedly and caught Stewie as Stewie ripped off the
top
of a bag of sugar with his teeth. The crewmember pulled a
9MM semi-automatic from beneath the dashboard and fired
several wild pistol shots in Stewie's direction. Stewie
had
dropped the bag and run away, crashing through the timber
like a bull elk.
Stewie had outrun and out-juked the man with the pistol
and he met Annabel when he literally tripped over her as
she sunbathed nude in the grass in an orange pool of late
afternoon sun, unaware of his approach because she was
listening to Melissa Etheridge on her Walkman headphones.
She looked good, he thought, strawberry blonde hair with a
two-day Rocky Mountain fire-engine tan (two hours in the
sun at 8,000 feet created a sunburn like a whole day at
the
beach), small ripe breasts, and a trimmed vector of pubic
hair.
He had gathered her up and pulled her along through the
timber, where they hid together in a dry spring wash until
the man with the pistol gave up and went home. She had
giggled while he held her - this was real adventure, she
said - and he had used the opportunity to run his hands
tentatively over her naked shoulders and hips and had
found
out, happily, that she did not object. They made their way
back to where she had been sunbathing and while she
dressed, they introduced themselves.
She told him she liked the idea of meeting a famous
environmental outlaw in the woods while she was naked, and
he appreciated that. She said she had seen his picture
before, maybe Outside Magazine?, and admired his looks -
tall and rawboned, with round rimless glasses, a short-
cropped full beard, wearing his famous red bandana on his
head.
Her story was that she had been camping alone in a dome
tent, taking a few days off from her free-wheeling cross-
continent trip that had begun with her divorce from an
anal
retentive investment banker named Nathan in her home town
of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She was bound, eventually, for
Seattle.
"I'm falling in love with your mind." He lied.
"Already?" She asked.
He encouraged her to travel with him, and they took her
vehicle since the lone crewmember had disabled Stewie's
Subaru with three bullets into the engine block. Stewie
was
astonished by his good fortune. Every time he looked over
at her and she smiled back, he was pole-axed with
exuberance.
Keeping to dirt roads, they crossed into Montana. The
next afternoon, in the backseat of her SUV during a
thunderstorm that rocked the car and blew shroud-like
sheets of rain through the mountain passes, he asked her
to
marry him. Given the circumstances and the super-charged
atmosphere, she accepted. When the rain stopped, they
drove
to Ennis, Montana and asked around about who could marry
them, fast. Stewie did not want to take the chance of
letting her get away. She kept saying she couldn't believe
she was doing this. He couldn't believe she was doing this
either, and he loved her even more for it.
At the Sportsman Inn in Ennis, Montana, which was
bustling with fly fishermen bound for the trout-rich
waters
of the Madison River, the desk clerk gave them a name and
they looked up Judge Ace Cooper (Ret.) in the telephone
book.
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JUDGE COOPER WAS a tired and rotund man who wore a
stained white cowboy shirt and elk horn bolo tie with his
shirt collar open. He performed the ceremony in a room
adjacent to his living room that was bare except for a
single filing cabinet, a desk and three chairs, and two
framed photographs - one of the Judge and President George
H.W. Bush, who had once been up there fishing, and the
other of the Judge on a horse before the Cooper family
lost
their ranch in the 1980's.
The wedding ceremony had taken eleven minutes, which
was
just about average for Judge Cooper, although he had once
performed it in eight minutes for two Indians.
"Do you, Allan Stewart Woods, take thee Annabeth to be
your lawful wedded wife?" Judge Cooper had asked, reading
from the marriage application form.
"AnnaBEL." Annabel had corrected in her biting Rhode
Island accent.
"I do." Stewie had said. He was beside himself with
pure
joy.
Stewie twisted the ring off his finger and placed it on
hers. It was unique; hand-made gold mounted with sterling
silver monkey wrenches. It was also three sizes too large.
The Judge studied the ring.
"Monkey wrenches?" The Judge had asked.
"It's symbolic." Stewie had said.
"I'm aware of the symbolism." The Judge said darkly,
before finishing the passage.
Annabel and Stewie had beamed at each other. Annabel
said that this was, like, the wildest vacation ever. They
were Mr. and Mrs. Outlaw Couple. He was now her famous
outlaw, although as yet untamed. She said her father would
be scandalized, and her mother would have to wear dark
glasses at Newport. Only her Aunt Tildie, the one with the
wild streak who had corresponded with, but never met, a
Texas serial killer until he died of lethal injection,
would understand.
Stewie had to borrow a hundred dollars from her to pay
the Judge, and she signed over a traveler's check.
After the couple had left in the SUV with Rhode Island
plates, Judge Ace Cooper had gone to his lone filing
cabinet and found the file. He pulled a single piece of
paper out and read it as he dialed the telephone. While he
waited for the right man to come to the telephone, he
stared at the framed photo on the wall of himself on the
horse on his former ranch. The ranch, north of Yellowstone
Park, had been subdivided by a Bozeman real estate company
into over thirty 50-acre "ranchettes." Famous Hollywood
celebrities, including the one who's early-career photos
he
had recently seen in Penthouse, now lived there. Movies
had
been filmed there. There was even a crackhouse, but it was
rumored that the owner wintered in LA. The only cattle
that
existed were purely for visual effect, like landscaping
that moved and crapped and looked good when the sun
threatened to drop below the mountains.
The man he was waiting for came to the telephone.
"It was Stewie Woods, all right." He said. "The man
himself. I recognized him right off, and his ID proved
it."
There was a pause as the man on the other end of the
telephone asked Cooper something. "Yeah, I heard him say
that to her just before they left. They're headed for the
Bighorns in Wyoming. Somewhere near Saddlestring."
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ANNABEL TOLD STEWIE that their honeymoon was quite
unlike what she had ever imagined a honeymoon to be, and
she contrasted it with her first one with Nathan. Nathan
was about sailing boats, champagne and Barbados. Stewie
was
about spiking trees in stifling heat in a national forest
in Wyoming. He had even asked her to carry his pack.
Neither of them had noticed the late-model black Ford
pickup that had trailed them up the mountain road and
continued on when Stewie pulled over to park.
Deep into the forest, Stewie now removed his shirt and
tied the sleeves around his waist. A heavy bag of nails
hung from his belt and tinkled while he strode through the
undergrowth. There was a sheen of sweat on his bare chest
as he straddled a three-foot thick Douglas Fir and drove
in
spikes. He was obviously well practiced, and he got into a
rhythm were he could bury the 6-inch spikes into the soft
wood with three heavy blows from his sledgehammer; one tap
to set the spike and two blows to bury it beyond the nail
head in the bark.
He moved from tree to tree, but didn't spike all of
them. He attacked each tree in the same method. The first
of the spikes went in at eye level. A quarter-turn around
the trunk, he pounded in another a foot lower than the
first. He continued pounding in spikes until he had placed
them in a spiral on the trunk nearly to the grass.
"Won't it hurt the trees?" She asked, unloading his
pack
and leaning it against a tree.
"Of course not." He said, moving across the pine needle
floor to another target. "I wouldn't be doing this if it
hurt the trees. You've got a lot to learn about me,
Annabel."
"Why do you put so many in?" She asked.
"Good question." He said, burying a spike in three
blows. "It used to be we could put in four right at knee
level, at the compass points, where the trees are usually
cut. But the lumber companies got wise to that and told
their loggers to go higher or lower. So now we fill up a
four-foot radius."
"And what will happen if they try to cut it down?"
Stewie smiled, resting for a moment. "When a chain-saw
blade hits a steel spike, the blade can snap and whip
back.
Busts the saw-teeth. That can take an eye or a nose right
off."
"That's horrible." She said, wincing, wondering what
she
was getting into.
"I've never been responsible for any injuries." Stewie
said quickly, looking hard at her. "The purpose isn't to
hurt anyone. The purpose is to save trees. After we're
done
here, I'll call the local ranger station and tell them
what
we've done. I won't say exactly where we spiked the trees
or how many trees we spiked. It should be enough to keep
them out of here for decades, and that's the point."
"Have you ever been caught?" She asked.
"Once." Stewie said, and his face clouded. "A forest
ranger caught me by Jackson Hole. He marched me into
downtown Jackson on foot during tourist season at
gunpoint.
Half of the tourists in town cheered and the other half
started chanting, 'Hang him high! Hang him high!'. I was
sent to the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins for
seven
months."
"Now that you mention it, I think I read about that."
She mused.
"You probably did. The wire services picked it up. I
was
interviewed on Nightline and 60 Minutes. Outside Magazine
put me on the cover. My boyhood friend Hayden Powell wrote
the cover story for them, and he coined the word 'eco-
terrorist.'" This memory made him feel bold. "There were
reporters from all over the country at that trial." Stewie
said. "Even the New York Times. It was the first time most
people had ever heard of One Globe, or knew I was the
founder of it. Memberships started pouring in from all
over
the world."
One Globe. The ecological action group that used the
logo of crossed monkey wrenches, in deference to late
author Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang." One Globe
had once dropped a shroud over Mt. Rushmore for the
President's speech, she recalled. It was on the nightly
news.
"Stewie," she said happily, "You are the real thing."
He
could feel her eyes on him as he drove in the spiral of
spikes and moved to the next tree.
"When you are done with that tree I want you." She
said,
her voice husky. "Right here and right now, my sweet
sweaty… husband."
He turned and smiled. His face glistened and his
muscles
were swelled from swinging the sledgehammer. She slid her
T-
shirt over her head and stood waiting for him, her lips
parted and her legs tense.
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STEWIE HAD SLUNG his own pack now and had stopped
spiking trees. Fat black thunderheads, pregnant with rain,
nosed across the late-afternoon sky. They were hiking at a
fast pace toward the peak, holding hands, with the hope of
getting there and pitching camp before the rain started.
Stewie said they would hike out of the forest tomorrow and
he would call the ranger station. Then they would get in
the SUV and head southeast, toward the Bridger-Teton
Forest.
When they walked into the herd of cattle, Stewie felt a
dark cloud of anger envelop him.
"Range maggots!" Stewie said, spitting. "If they're not
letting the logging companies in to cut all the trees at
taxpayer's expense, they're letting the local ranchers run
their cows in here so they can eat all the grass and shit
in all the streams."
"Can't we just go around them?" Annabel asked.
"It's not that, Annabel." He said patiently. "Of course
we can go around them. It's just the principal of the
thing. We have cattle fouling what is left of the natural
ecosystem. Cows don't belong in the trees in the Bighorn
Mountains. You have so much to learn, darling."
"I know." She said, determined.
"These ranchers out here run their cows on public land -
our land - at the expense of not only us but the wildlife.
They pay something like $4 an acre when they should be
paying ten times that, even though it would be best if
they
were completely gone."
"But we need meat, don't we?" She asked, "You're not a
vegetarian, are you?"
"Did you forget that cheeseburger I had for lunch in
Cameron?" He asked back. "No, I'm not a vegetarian,
although sometimes I wish I had to will to be one."
"I tried it once and it made me lethargic." She
confessed.
"All these western cows produce about five percent of
the beef we eat in this whole country." Stewie said. "All
the rest comes from down South, in Texas, Florida and
Louisiana, where there's plenty of grass and plenty of
private land to graze them on."
Stewie picked up a pinecone, threw it accurately through
the trees, and struck a black baldy heifer on the snout.
The cow bolted, turned, and lumbered away. The rest of the
herd, about a dozen, followed it. The small herd moved
loudly, clumsily cracking branches and throwing up fist-
sized pieces of black earth from their hooves.
"I wish I could chase them right back to the ranch they
belong on." Stewie said, watching. "Right up the ass of
the
rancher who has lease rights for this part of the
Bighorns."
One cow had not moved. It stood broadside and looked at
them.
"What's wrong with that cow?" Stewie asked.
"Shoo!" Annabel shouted. "Shoo!"
Stewie stifled a smile at his new wife's shooing and
slid out of his pack. The temperature had dropped twenty
degrees in the last ten minutes and rain was inevitable.
The sky had darkened and black roils of clouds enveloped
the peak. The sudden low pressure had made the forest
quieter, the sounds muffled and the smell of cows
stronger.
Stewie Woods walked straight toward the heifer, with
Annabel several steps behind.
"Something's wrong with that cow." Stewie said, trying
to figure out what about it seemed out of place.
When Stewie was close enough he saw everything at once:
the cow trying to run with the others but straining at the
end of a tight nylon line; the heifer's wild white eyes;
the misshapen profile of something strapped on it's back
that was large and square and didn't belong; the thin reed
of antenna that quivered from the package on the heifer's
back.
"Annabel!" Stewie yelled, turning to reach out to her -
but she had walked around him and was now squarely between
Stewie and the cow.
She absorbed the full, frontal blast when the heifer
detonated, and the explosion shattering the mountain
stillness with the subtlety of a sledgehammer bludgeoning
bone.
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FOUR MILES AWAY, a fire lookout heard the guttural boom
and
ran to the railing with binoculars. Over a red-rimmed
plume
of smoke and dirt, he could see a Douglas fir launch into
the air like a rocket, where it turned, hung suspended for
a moment, then crashed into the forest below.
Shaking, he reached for his radio.
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Two
EIGHT MILES OUT OF SADDLESTRING, WYOMING, Game Warden
Joe Pickett was watching his wife Marybeth work their new
Tobiano paint horse, Toby, in the round pen when the call
came from the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff's office.
It was early evening, the time of night when the
setting
sun ballooned and softened and defined the deep velvet
folds and piercing tree greens of Wolf Mountain. The
normally dull and pastel colors of the weathered barn and
the red rock canyon behind the house suddenly looked as if
they had been repainted in acrylics. Toby, who was a big
dark bay gelding swirled with brilliant white that ran up
over his haunches like thick spilled paint upside down,
shone deep red in the evening light and looked especially
striking. So did Marybeth, in Joe's opinion, in her worn
Wranglers, sleeveless cotton shirt, and her blonde hair in
a ponytail. There was no wind, and the only sound was the
rhythmic thumping of Toby's hooves in the round pen as
Marybeth waved the whip and encouraged the gelding to
shift
from a trot into a slow lope.
The Saddlestring District was considered a "two horse
district" by the Game and Fish Department, meaning that
the
department would provide feed and tack for two mounts to
be
used for patrolling. Toby was their second horse.
Joe stood with his boot on the bottom rail and his arms
folded over the top, his chin nestled between his
forearms.
He was still wearing his red cotton Game and Fish uniform
shirt with the pronghorn antelope patch on the sleeve and
his sweat-stained gray Stetson. He could feel the pounding
of the earth as Toby passed in front of him in a circle.
He
watched Marybeth stay in position in the center of the
pen,
shuffling her feet so she stayed on Toby's back flank. She
talked to her horse in a soothing voice, urging him to
gallop. Which he didn't want to do.
Persistent, Marybeth stepped closer to Toby and
commanded him to run. Marybeth still had a slight limp
from
when she had been shot nearly two years before, but she
was
nimble and quick. Toby pinned his ears back and twitched
his tail but finally broke into a full-fledged gallop,
raising the dust in the pen, his mane and tail snapping
behind him like a flag in a stiff wind. After several
rotations, Marybeth called "Whoa!" and Toby hit the
brakes,
skidding to a quick stop where he stood breathing hard,
his
muscles swelled, his back shiny with sweat, smacking and
licking his lips as if he was eating peanut butter.
Marybeth approached him and patted him down, telling him
what a good boy he was, and blowing gently into his
nostrils to soothe him.
"He's a stubborn guy. A lazy guy." She told Joe. "He
did
not want to lope fast. Did you notice how he pinned his
ears back and threw his head around?"
Joe said yup.
"That's how he was telling me he was mad about it. When
he's doing that he's either going to break out of the
circle and do whatever he wants to, or stop, or do what
I'm
asking him to do. In this case he did what I asked and
went
into the fast lope. He's finally learning that things will
go a lot easier on him when he does what I ask him."
"I know it works for me." Joe smiled.
Marybeth crinkled her nose at Joe, then turned back to
Toby. "See how he licks his lips? That's a sign of
obedience. He's conceding that I am the boss. That's a
good
sign."
Joe fought the urge to theatrically lick his lips when
she looked over at him.
"Why did you blow in his nose like that?"
"Horses in the herd do that to each other to show
affection. It's another way they bond with each other."
Marybeth paused. "I know it sounds hokey, but blowing
in
his nose is kind of like giving him a hug. A horse hug."
"You seem to know what you're doing."
Joe had been around horses most of his life. He had now
taken his buckskin mare Lizzie over most of the mountains
in the Twelve Sleep Range of the Bighorns in his District.
But what Marybeth was doing with her new horse Toby, what
she was getting out of him, was a different kind of thing.
Joe was duly impressed.
A shout behind him shook Joe from his thought. He
Turned
toward the sound, and saw ten-year-old Sheridan, five-year-
old Lucy, and their eight-year-old foster daughter April
streamed through the back yard gate and across the field.
Sheridan held the cordless phone out in front of her like
an Olympic torch, and the other two girls followed.
"Dad, it's for you." Sheridan called. "A man says it's
very important."
Joe and Marybeth exchanged looks and Joe took the
telephone. It was County Sheriff O.R. "Bud" Barnum.
There had been a big explosion in the Bighorn National
Forest, Barnum told Joe. A fire lookout had called it in,
and had reported that through his binoculars he could see
fat dark forms littered throughout the trees. A "shitload"
of animals were dead, which is why he was calling Joe.
Dead
game animals were Joe's concern. They assumed at this
point
that they were game animals, Barnum said, but they might
be
cows. A couple of local ranchers had grazing leases up
there. Barnum asked if Joe could meet him at the
Winchester
exit off of the interstate in 20 minutes. That way, they
could get to the scene before it was completely dark.
Joe handed the telephone back to Sheridan and looked over
his shoulder at Marybeth.
"When will you be back?" She asked.
"Late." Joe told her. "There was an explosion in the
mountains."
"You mean like a plane crash?"
"He didn't say that. The explosion was a few miles off
of the Hazelton Road in the mountains, in elk country.
Barnum thinks there may be some game animals down."
She looked at Joe for a greater explanation. He
shrugged
to indicate that was all he knew.
"I'll save you some dinner."
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JOE MET THE SHERIFF AND DEPUTY MCLANAHAN at the exit to
Winchester and followed them through the small town. The
three-vehicle fleet - two County GMC Blazers and Joe's
dark
green Ford Game and Fish pickup - entered and exited the
tiny town within minutes. Even though it was an hour and a
half away from darkness, the only establishments open were
the two bars with identical red neon Coors signs in their
windows and a convenience store. Winchester's lone public
artwork, located on the front lawn of the branch bank, was
an outsized and gruesome metal sculpture of a wounded
grizzly bear straining at the end of a thick chain, it's
metal leg encased in a massive saw-toothed bear trap. Joe
did not find the sculpture lovely. But it captured the
mood, style, and inbred frontier culture of the area as
well as anything else could have.
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DEPUTY MCLANAHAN LED the way through the timber in the
direction where the explosion had been reported and Joe
walked behind him alongside Sheriff Barnum. Joe and
McLanahan had acknowledged each other with curt nods and
said nothing. Their relationship had been rocky ever since
McLanahan had sprayed the outfitter's camp with shotgun
blasts two years before and Joe had received a wayward
pellet under his eye. There was still a scar to show for
it.
Barnum's hangdog face grimaced as he limped aside Joe
through the underbrush. He complained about his hip. He
complained about the distance from the road to the crime
scene. He complained about McLanahan, and said to Joe
sotto
voce that he should have fired the Deputy years before and
would have if he weren't his nephew. Another reason for
not
firing his Deputy was that McLanahan's quick-draw
reputation had added - however untrue and unlikely - an
air
of toughness to the Sheriff's Department that didn't hurt
at election time.
The sun had dropped below the top of the mountains and
instantly turned them into craggy black silhouettes. The
light instantly dimmed in the forest, fusing the treetops
and branches that were discernable just a moment before
into a shadowy muddle. Joe reached back on his belt to
make
sure he had his flashlight. He let his arm brush his .357
Smith & Wesson revolver to confirm it was there. He didn't
want Barnum to notice the movement since Barnum still
chided him about the time he lost his gun to a poacher Joe
was arresting.
There was an unnatural silence in the woods, with the
exception of Barnum's grumbling. The absence of normal
sounds - the chattering of squirrels sending a warning up
the line, the panicked scrambling of deer, the airy winged
drumbeat of flushed Spruce grouse - confirmed that
something big had happened here. Something so big it
either
cleared the wildlife out of the area or frightened them
mute. Joe could feel that they were getting closer before
he could see anything to confirm it. Whatever it was, it
was just ahead.
McLanahan quickly stopped and there was a sharp intake
of breath.
"Holy shit." McLanahan whispered in awe. "Holy shit."