LATER, WHILE DALLAS Cates and Bobbi Johnson were naked in a motel room on the west side of Rawlins, Johnson drained her plastic cup of Jim Beam and 7Up and stared at his bare arms and the redness of the skin on the undersides of his forearms and the back of his left hand. She was sore and she wanted to distract him.
“You got new ink?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Let’s see,” she said.
He smiled and held up his right arm and bent it so that his fist was near his right ear. The new tattoo was large and scabbed over and she wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like a big dark half-moon with jagged edges to the inside.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
He raised his left arm and did the same pose so that the two undersides of his arms joined at the elbows.
The scabbed image was the right and left sides of a bear’s face. The bear’s jaws were open and the teeth on each side were huge.
“Rowwrrr,” he roared.
She extended her little finger from her grip on the glass to point at the six empty boxes that had been recently tattooed on the back of Cates’s left hand.
“What’s that mean?”
“That’s my special list,” he said. “Each box means something to me.” Then: “Hey, give me that pen from the desk.”
She rolled over and found it and handed it to him. Cates carefully sketched out a seventh empty square underneath the other six.
“I added another one today,” he said. “His name is Winner.”
“Who are the first ones? What is the list for?”
“I’ll tell you later. Now roll over.”
She rolled over.
Johnson knew from experience that rodeo cowboys were always ready for another ride. And for that matter, they’d stay on for about eight seconds.
*
JOHNSON HAD A plan, one she’d proposed to Cates while he was in prison, and Cates had acquiesced. They needed to get out of Wyoming, the both of them, she’d said. She would never be able to shake her history, no matter where she went in the state.
That was the problem with Wyoming, she’d said. Everybody knew everybody. One degree of separation still existed in a state with less than a million people in it. If she got a job as a waitress in Jackson, say, somebody would recognize her as that Bobbi Johnson from Gillette, the one who had worked in a local diner and deliberately urinated in the soups of four members of the city council because they’d opposed a petition to legalize weed.
She’d been caught when a fellow employee ratted her out, and her name and photo had made all the news outlets in the state and had been picked up by the New York Post and the UK Daily Mail.
While in the Campbell County jail, Johnson had discovered meth. She’d followed the case of champion rodeo cowboy Dallas Cates from her cell, and she’d begun writing him letters.
The rest was history.
Dallas had an even tougher row to hoe, she’d said. His name was infamous everywhere in the state because of the saga of his family.
There was only one place the two of them could go, she said: California. The state was tolerant of people like them, she claimed, because it no longer had rules and many of the cities were no longer even civilized. The social welfare system would reward them until they could get on their feet, establish themselves, and start fresh. Maybe Dallas could get a job in the movie business, she said. She certainly found him charismatic and attractive, and all those rodeo buckle bunnies who used to follow him around on the circuit did as well.
They’d pick up Bobbi’s sister, Carmin, along the way and take her and her two fatherless babies with them, she said. Carmin needed a new start, too.
“Yeah, sure,” Cates had said. California it would be. He’d competed there many times at rodeos up and down the coast and the weather was good.
*
“YOU ASKED ME about my list,” Cates said as he held up his hand and displayed the tattooed series of boxes. They were in the process of recharging, which meant drinking Jim Beam and eating M&M’s and pork rinds.
“These are the people who ruined everything for me. They took away everything I’d ever accomplished, they killed my dreams and my future, and they destroyed my family,” he said.
Johnson listened intently with her head on his bare chest, her eyes glued to his face.
“They were the only reason I was able to go on day after day in that place. This list was pure motivation to rise to the top and run my pod. Because I knew someday I was going to get out and go after them one by one for what they did to me and my family.
“My dad was first,” he said. “They broke his neck and left him to die in a sewer pit. They crippled my mom and turned her into a quadriplegic. I couldn’t even go to her funeral when she died last year. She died alone in the women’s prison and I don’t even know where she’s buried. And they were responsible for killing my two brothers, Bull and Timber.”
“My God,” Johnson said. “That’s terrible.”
“There was a time when folks coming to the Cates place used to pass by a sign that said DULL KNIFE OUTFITTERS, C&C SEWER AND SEPTIC TANK SERVICE, BIRTHPLACE OF PRCA WORLD CHAMPION COWBOY DALLAS CATES.”
As he said it, he used the thumbs and forefingers of his two hands to frame the memory of the sign.
“We were a close family,” he continued. “My momma was so damned proud of me that she had that sign made. That was before everything went to shit.”
“That’s her face on your shoulder,” Johnson said.
“Yes, God bless her.”
Cates was silent for several minutes as he stared at the flickering images on the television that was bolted to the wall. Then he said, “I made a promise when they sent me away, a promise to my momma and to myself. I swore I’d go after the people who went after us.”
“Who are they?” Johnson whispered, stroking his hand and the empty boxes.
“You wouldn’t know ’em,” Cates said. “Let’s just say they all contributed to me being here right now and my family being in the ground.”
Then he shifted to look at her fully and said, “The sheriff, the prosecutor, the judge, a crazy falconer and his wife, and a game warden.”
Then he gestured at the pen-drawn box: “And now a CO who disrespected me inside for five years and stole my championship buckle. I’ll deal with him first. The others won’t see me coming.”
Johnson cooed and burrowed into him. “You’re making me hot,” she purred.
“I like that,” he responded.
“You like me, don’t you?” she asked.
“You know I do.”
He also liked the fact that she had a valid driver’s license, some cash, and a truck. His license had expired while he was in prison.
*
AN HOUR LATER, Cates lay naked on top of the bed drinking whiskey straight from the bottle while Johnson snored next to him. Her pale white skin danced with flashing colors from the crappy TV. Cates nudged her so she’d turn from her back to her side to stop her snoring. It worked.
The Wyoming news out of Casper was on, and he watched it dumbly. The sound was turned down, so he could barely hear what the blow-dried twenty-something newscasters read off their teleprompters. He was fine with that.
Then Cates saw a chyron that got his attention: ANOTHER GRIZZLY BEAR ATTACK IN NORTHERN WYOMING?
Even more than the chyron itself, the image gripped him. A man wearing a red uniform shirt and a battered cowboy hat was reluctantly answering questions from a local reporter. The man had a pronghorn antelope shoulder patch on his uniform and a thin gold nameplate above his shirt pocket.
He said something about an “alleged human and bear encounter” and calling in the “Predator Attack Team.” In the background of the shot, Cates recognized the very familiar outline of the Bighorn Mountains.
The newscast quickly cut away from the man to a graphic made up of bullet points of four previous bear attacks that year. One of them had been near Jackson, one had been near Dubois, and the last two near Cody, Wyoming.
This was the first in Twelve Sleep County, which was one hundred and eighty-five miles from the east gate of Yellowstone Park, where grizzly bears were “supposed” to stay.
Cates sat up in bed, his head swirling. A killer grizzly bear in the Bighorns?
He hadn’t even tried to read the name tag of the man in the news story, because he knew him. He hated him. The game warden had a spot waiting for him on the back of Cates’s hand. Joe Pickett.
Cates thumped Johnson on the shoulder with the back of his hand hard enough to wake her.
“What, goddamnit?” she asked.
“Get your bare ass up and get dressed,” Cates said. “We’ve got a change in plans.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? What about California?”
“We’ll end up there eventually,” he said. “But first there’s a couple of guys I need to find. One of them wrote to me in prison and we kind of bonded, you might say.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Johnson said.
In response, Cates raised his hand and chinned toward the tattooed boxes.
“We both deserve justice, and we’re going to get it,” he said.
“Who is this person?”
“You don’t know him,” Cates said. “So his name doesn’t matter right now.” As he said it, Cates slit the plastic packaging on one of the prepaid burner phones Johnson had purchased for him at the Rawlins Walmart. He activated the device and typed in a number with his thumbs and sent a message.
“We’ll see if he shows up or not,” he said.
“Hold it,” Johnson said with alarm. “Who are you inviting along? I thought it was just going to be us. And maybe Carmin.”
“I’ve got things I gotta do,” Cates said. “And I may need some help. First, I needed to contact this guy in Colorado who reached out to me. Second, I need to find my former cellmate. He’s got … unique abilities. I’ve never met anyone like him. Of course, he’s also goofier than shit. But I think I know where he lives and he owes me.”
“What about Carmin?”
“Carmin will have to wait,” Cates said. He pulled her close and glared into her eyes. “It’s all coming together for me.”