“Nope,” he said. “No license here.”

“Is this a joke?” Joe asked. “You didn’t even look.”

“The hell I didn’t.”

Joe shook his head. “If you’ve got a valid license, I can look it up when I can get to a computer. In the meanwhile, though, I’m giving you another citation. The law is you’ve got to have your license in your possession. Not in some rock hidden away.”

Caleb said, “You’re giving me another ticket?”

“Yup.”

He laughed and shook his head from side to side.

“There’ll be a court date,” Joe said, unnerved from Caleb’s casual contempt. “If you want to protest, you can show up with your license and make your case.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, as if placating Joe.

“And I’m going to write up both of you for wanton destruction of game animals. I saw all the bones back there. You’ve been poaching game all summer.”

Caleb said, “Okay.”

“So why don’t we get back,” Joe said.

Caleb nodded, shouldered around Joe, and strode back up the trail.

As Joe followed, he wondered if he’d been suckered, and why.

Camish was still on his seat on the log and he watched with no expression on his face as Joe emerged from the woods. A cloud had finally passed in front of the sun and further muted the light. While they were gone, Camish had started a small fire in a fire pit near his feet and had cleaned and laid out the trout Caleb had brought back.

“Guess what,” Caleb said to Camish, “he’s going to give us tickets.”

“Tickets?” Camish said, placing his big hand over his heart as if pretending to ward off a stroke.

Joe felt his ears get hot from the humiliation, but said, “Wanton destruction of game animals, for starters. But we’ve also got hunting and fishing without licenses, and exceeding the legal limit of fish.”

Again, Joe caught the brothers exchanging information through their eyes.

Joe wrote out the citations while the Grim Brothers watched him and smirked.

Caleb said to his brother, “You’re gonna get mad, but I told him we were from the UP. And you know what he said? He said, ‘Union Pacific?’”

Camish laughed out loud and slapped his thigh.

“Oh, and earlier, you know what he asked me?”

“What?”

“He asked if we’d ever run across any remains of that girl runner. You know, the one who took off running and never came back?”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said sure, we raped and killed her.”

Camish laughed again, and Caleb joined him, and Joe looked up from the last citation he was scribbling and wondered when he’d left Planet Earth for Planet Grim.

He handed the citations to the brothers, who took them without protest.

“I’d suggest you boys get out of the mountains and straighten up and fly right,” Joe said. “You’re gonna have big fines to pay, and maybe even jail time if the judge comes down hard.”

“Straighten up and fly right,” Camish repeated in a soft, mocking tone.

“What’s the reason you’re up here, anyway?” Joe asked. “I find people all the time looking for something they can’t get at home. What’s the story with you two?”

The brothers looked at each other.

“You wanna tell him?” Caleb said.

Camish said, “Sure.” He turned to Joe. “Let’s just say this is the best place for us. I really don’t want to go into detail.”

Joe waited for more that didn’t come. Finally, he reverted to training and said, “If you want to contest the citations, I’ll guess I’ll see you boys in court.”

“Gee,” Camish said. “Do we have to wear ties?”

Caleb snorted a laugh at that.

“You can wear what you want,” Joe said, feeling ridiculous for responding.

Caleb said to Camish, “But we got folks to look after.”

Camish shot Caleb a vicious glance, which shut his brother up.

“What folks?” Joe asked.

“Never mind my brother,” Camish said. “He knows not what he says sometimes.”

Caleb nodded, said, “I just babble sometimes.”

“Is there someone else up here?” Joe asked.

“Ain’t nobody,” Camish said.

“Ain’t nobody,” Caleb repeated.

Joe mounted Buddy, clucked his tongue to get him moving, and started back up the hill. He was never so grateful to ride away. He tried not to look over his shoulder as he put distance between himself and the camp, but he found he had to if for no other reason than to make sure they weren’t aiming a rifle at him.

They weren’t. Instead, the Brothers Grim were laughing and feeding the citations into the fire, which flared as they dropped the tickets in.

That night he discovered his satellite phone was missing. He remembered powering it down and putting it away into its case the night before, after leaving the message for Marybeth. He emptied the contents of both panniers and checked his daypack and saddlebags looking for it. He thought: They took it. He re-created the encounter with the brothers step-by-step and pinpointed when it likely happened. When he’d followed Caleb to the cache.

“The arrow,” he said aloud and rooted through all of his gear again. It was gone as well.

His anger turned to thoughts of revenge. If the brothers used the phone-and why else would they have taken it? — their exact location could be determined. It was how the feds tracked down drug dealers in South America and terrorists in the Middle East. Joe could bring a team back up into the mountains and nail those guys.

Being out of radio contact was not unusual in itself, and often he didn’t mind it one bit. This time he did. Marybeth would worry about him. In fact, he was worried himself. And what if the brothers hadn’t taken his phone for their own use? What if they’d taken it to isolate him, to cut off his communication with the outside world?

Later, as gray wisps of clouds passed over the moon and the wash of stars were so close together they looked like swirls of cream, he lay outside his tent again in his sleeping bag, with the shotgun across his chest, and he thought how different things could have turned out if he’d taken Caleb’s advice and simply ridden away when he had the chance.

Every year at the Wyoming Game Wardens Association meeting, after a few drinks, wardens would stand up and recount the strangest incident or most bizarre encounter they’d had the previous year. There was a sameness to many of the stories: poor hunters mistaking deer for elk or does for bucks, the comic and ridiculous excuses poachers came up with when caught in the act, out-of-state hunters who got no farther into Wyoming than the strip club in Green River, and run-ins with hermits, derelicts, and the unbalanced. It was always amazing to Joe how more often than not those who sought solace in nature were the least prepared to enter it. But it was exactly the opposite with those brothers. He felt he was the one who was encroaching, as if he’d barged unasked and unwanted into their living room.

They were the reason he’d lain awake all night with his hand on his shotgun as if it were his lover.

Joe thought bitterly, This isn’t fair. This was not how it was supposed to be on his last patrol.

It was like walking into a convenience store for a quart of milk and realizing there was an armed robbery in progress. He didn’t feel prepared for what he’d stumbled into. And unlike other situations he’d encountered over the years-and there were countless times he’d entered hunting and fishing camps outnumbered, outgunned, and without backup-he’d never felt as vulnerable and out of his depth.

He thought how strange it was that no one-hunters, ranchers, hikers, fishers-had ever reported seeing the Grim Brothers. How was it possible these two had lived and roamed in these mountains and not been seen and remarked upon? Two six-and-a-half-foot identical twins in identical clothing? That was the kind of legend that swept through the rural populace and took on a life of its own. It was exactly the kind of tale repeated by men like Farkus at the Dixon Club bar.