Savage Run (joe Pickett, #2)

The second novel in the Joe Pickett series opens in the Bighorn National Forest near Saddlestring, Wyoming, where environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, are spiking trees with metal spikes to sabotage logging equipment. The couple married impulsively in Montana and are honeymooning through vandalism. Their romance ends when they stumble upon a heifer tethered in the forest and strapped with explosives. Annabel steps between Stewie and the cow just as it detonates. Before the couple left Montana, the judge who married them phoned a contact and reported their destination.

Joe Pickett, the game warden for the Twelve Sleep County district, arrives at the explosion site with Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum. At the crater, they find dead cattle, human remains scattered through the trees, and a pair of hiking boots blown off their wearer. Alone at the scene before leaving, Joe feels a distinct sensation of being watched.

His instinct is correct. On the far side of the mountain, two men repack equipment into a black Ford pickup: an aging operative called the Old Man and Charlie Tibbs, a stock detective, a type of private enforcer historically hired by ranchers. Charlie tracked Stewie across three states and rigged the heifer with explosives.

Joe visits rancher Jim Finotta to report the dead cattle. Finotta, a wealthy trial lawyer who acquired the vast Vee Bar U Ranch under questionable circumstances, dismisses the human victims and demands reimbursement. Joe notices a massive bull elk mount on Finotta's wall and suspects it was poached. Finotta refuses a DNA sample and threatens to contact the governor.

When Joe's wife, Marybeth, reads that the victim was Stewie Woods, she erupts at Joe and storms upstairs. Joe does not understand her reaction. Barnum's official theory is that Woods accidentally detonated his own explosives. Near the crater, Joe encounters activists, including Britney Earthshare, who insist Stewie was murdered.

In Bremerton, Washington, Charlie and the Old Man beat environmental writer Hayden Powell, Stewie's boyhood friend, to death and burn his house. In Washington, D.C., they strangle Congressman Peter Sollito, the foremost advocate of environmental legislation, staging his death as a scandal. In Montana, they sabotage the airplane of wolf-reintroduction advocate Emily Betts; she crashes in the Beartooth Mountains.

Joe pursues the poaching case but is stymied when Finotta intimidates the key witness and enlists an allied judge to block a search warrant.

At the library where Marybeth works, Ginger Finotta, Jim's wife, delivers a warning. Ginger, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), insists Marybeth must learn about Tom Horn, a stock detective hired by Wyoming ranchers in the 1880s to kill rustlers and settlers. She implies the past is repeating itself but loses her ability to speak before she can explain.

On a horseback ride, Marybeth confesses her teenage friendship with Stewie and Hayden Powell, including a brief romance with Stewie. Then mysterious calls begin: A slurred voice claiming to be Stewie asks for "Mary" and provides details only Stewie could know, saying he was "reborn" after the explosion and asking to meet at a remote cabin in the Bighorns.

In Yellowstone, Charlie and the Old Man kill Tod Marchand, a prominent environmental lawyer, by leaving him bound in a meadow for grizzly bears. In Marchand's pack, Charlie finds a letter signed "Stewie" with directions to a cabin. Sickened, the Old Man pockets Marchand's car keys and resolves to defect.

Joe rides toward the cabin while the Old Man, now calling himself John Coble, drives to the Pickett house and leaves a letter with Joe's ten-year-old daughter, Sheridan. The letter identifies Charlie Tibbs and the Stockman's Trust, a secret organization of ranchers and power brokers, as responsible for the killings. Coble then races toward the cabin.

Coble arrives first and finds Stewie alive but grotesquely disfigured. Britney Earthshare has been caring for him. Coble warns them to flee, confessing that the Stockman's Trust hired him and Charlie for $750,000. As Coble stands in the doorway, Charlie fires from across the valley, killing him instantly.

Joe gallops into the meadow. A bullet kills his horse, Lizzie, and sends Joe crashing against the cabin steps. He, Stewie, and Britney escape through a window and flee north into the wilderness.

Over two days, they hike through brutal terrain without food or shelter. They encounter wolves likely descended from Emily Betts's illegal transplants and find a cow elk dying after defending her calf. Joe cuts the cow's throat to end her suffering. They reach Savage Run, a sheer canyon considered uncrossable. When Stewie falls onto a narrow ledge near the rim, he discovers an ancient Cheyenne doll and the hidden trail a band of Cheyenne used to cross the canyon generations earlier.

They descend to the canyon floor and climb the opposite wall. Near the top, Charlie fires from across the canyon, killing Britney. Stewie scrambles over the rim, and Joe cuts the rope and fires five blind shots at Charlie's position.

Back in Saddlestring, Marybeth reads Coble's letter and the Tom Horn book, recognizing the parallel: The original ranchers' association hired Tom Horn in the 1880s, and the modern Stockman's Trust has hired Charlie Tibbs. She tracks down Rowdy McBride, a bitter former member who confirms the Trust's existence and implies Barnum and Finotta are involved.

Starving, Joe and Stewie kill and roast grouse, then stumble onto Finotta's ranch at dawn. They find Charlie Tibbs dead in an outbuilding, killed by Joe's lucky shot at the canyon. On a phone connected to the ranch house, they overhear Finotta leading a Stockman's Trust conference call confirming the target list is cleared.

Stewie grabs the phone and shouts at the board. He then pepper-sprays Joe, ties his wrists, takes his revolver, and storms the ranch house. He subdues Buster, Finotta's armed ranch hand, seizes Finotta, and straps him to a cow with C-4, recreating the method used to kill Annabel. Joe recovers and tries to talk Stewie down, arguing Finotta can be prosecuted.

A convoy of law enforcement arrives, including Barnum, Joe's supervisor Trey Crump, and Marybeth. Deputy McLanahan fires against orders, wounding Stewie. Sitting in the grass, Stewie pushes the detonator. The explosion kills Stewie, Finotta, and the cow, hurling Joe into a fence.

Joe recovers in the hospital. The Stockman's Trust investigation stalls: Finotta's records contain no membership lists, the conference call voices cannot be identified, and the organization retreats into silence, just as it did after Tom Horn's hanging a century earlier. Joe confronts Barnum, accusing the sheriff of letting the wounded Tibbs go and being a Trust member. Barnum says nothing and leaves. One Globe, Stewie's radical environmental organization, embraces him as a martyr despite having expelled him before his death.

At home, Joe places the Cheyenne doll on the bookcase and tells Sheridan that most people fall in the middle of the conflict between environmentalists and ranchers, with dangerous extremists on both ends. The novel closes with Joe watching Marybeth work their horse Toby in the round pen, as if exorcising something. He gazes toward the Bighorn Mountains and tells himself there is no conceivable way Stewie could have survived the explosion, then repeats the thought, leaving the faintest trace of doubt.