Cold Wind - C. J. Box [8]
The sudden emergence of wind farms had added another dimension to his day-to-day responsibilities as well. He sighed and eased out onto the highway for areas twenty-one and twenty-two.
He turned from the highway onto the ranch owned by Bob and Dode Lee, a checkerboard of public and private land that contained a vast herd of pronghorn antelope.
He ground his truck up the side of a flat-topped bench that overlooked the vast sagebrush flats of the Lee Ranch. The top sliver of sun winked over the eastern horizon as he positioned his pickup on the top so he could look out over dozens of square miles. The sunlight was orange and intense and lit up the side of the bench, and it was at the perfect angle and intensity to reveal hundreds of tiny American Indian arrowhead and tool chips that still clung to the surface of the rise. Like so many off-road locations he’d found over the years, Joe was struck by the fact that he wasn’t the first to use this dramatic geography for the purpose of work. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned a small band of Cheyenne or Pawnee on the same bench hundreds of years before, making weapons and tools, looking out at the landscape for friends and enemies.
But as the sun rose, it also lit up row after row of wind turbines to the south. They looked like spindly white toothpicks. Shafts of sunlight bounced and sparked on the slowly turning blades. He knew they signified the border of the Lee Ranch where it butted up against the massive holdings of The Earl and, of course, Missy.
Joe slid down the driver’s-side window and fitted his Redfield spotting scope to the frame of the door. As the dawn melded into morning, the vista below him came into view. Hundreds of brown-and-white pronghorn antelope grazed amidst knee-high sagebrush. Mule deer descended from windswept grassy flats back into shadowed draws. Eagles and hawks soared above it all in morning thermals, making long-distance loops at his eye level.
He focused on a single blue pickup that was crawling along a two-track, a thin plume of dust giving chase. There was a flash of orange through the windows of the vehicle, as he identified the occupants—a driver and passenger—as hunters. As far as he could tell, they didn’t know he was up on the bench watching them.
The blue pickup was too far away to hear, but he slowly swiveled his spotting scope as it passed beneath him traveling left to right. They were headed south, and because of the contours of the land, they had no idea that the huge herd was to their east on the other side of a ridge. Joe wondered if they’d catch a glimpse of the antelope as they drove along, but the vehicle continued on slowly, apparently looking for all the game out their front windshield.
“Road hunters,” Joe whispered to himself. If the hunters fired at game from the vehicle, they’d be in violation and Joe would cite them. He hoped they were ethical and law-abiding, and would leave the truck on foot to stalk the antelope—if they even saw them.
He followed the progress of the pickup. He caught a glimpse of a license plate—Wyoming—but was too far away to read the numbers, so he focused in and narrowed his field of vision until the vehicle filled his scope. It was a shaky view at that distance, but he could see the passenger lower his window and extend his arm out of it, pointing toward something ahead of them.
Joe leaned back from the scope and surveyed the basin with his naked eye. He followed the road