“Heartwarming,” Butler said. “Anything else?”
“GPS tracker under the back left bumper.”
Butler did not like that. “Law enforcement?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Where are you?”
“In the motor home with the engine on and the AC blowing.”
“Hide the tracker somewhere there in the campground where you can find it and drive the rig up to the barn. Put the chemicals and the rest of it inside and hold your position until my call.”
“Roger.”
“JP, let’s get up there and in position opposite Cortland and Big DD.”
“On my way,” Vincente said.
Ten minutes later, Vincente drove up the ranch road in a green Honda Pioneer 1000 side-by-side utility vehicle.
“We got them now, jefe,” Vincente said as Butler climbed in. “Smooth hunting from here on out.”
Butler nodded. But he was thinking about that tracking device and who might have put it there and how he could use it to his advantage.
Chapter
29
The side-by-side was fitted with an aftermarket exhaust that made it almost dead silent as Vincente drove the inner ranch roads toward that dead sheep in a roundabout way so as not to alert the poachers.
As they drove, Butler enjoyed the breeze after all those hours in the sun. He drank a Gatorade and called for updates.
“Nothing yet,” Big DD said. “I expect they’re pausing out there to my south somewhere, taking a look for the ram with their own optics.”
“Ten-four,” Butler said. “Purdy?”
“At the barn,” she said. “Chemicals loaded. Waiting on your call, boss.”
Vincente pulled the Honda to a stop in the shade of a grove of western pines. They got out and stayed in the shadows as they snuck toward the tree line and the edge of the rise where it fell away to the sage flat and the ag field.
Before they reached it, Butler’s radio crackled. Cortland said, “Vultures on the bait, Cap. Knives and saws at work.”
Butler had hoped to be there when they tried to cut the head off Kong. But he was a practical man and Cortland and Big DD were highly skilled.
“Take them,” he said. “We’ll be right along.”
Butler and Vincente ran laterally across the hill through the timber toward the shouting voices. By the time they broke free of the trees, Big DD and Cortland had the poachers on their knees to either side of Kong, hands behind their heads, cowering before the two AR rifles with sound suppressors a foot from their faces.
Two pistols, two butcher knives, and a bloody folding saw lay behind Cortland.
The stench from the rotting ram came and went on the shifting breeze.
“We’re good, boss,” Big DD called.
Dudley Bob Hole, the older poacher, looked fifty going on seventy and wore a filthy, bloodstained camo jumpsuit and a filthier ball cap with the logo of a turkey-call company on it. He watched as Butler and Vincente approached and stayed quiet. He’d been down this road before.
His kid, Jim Bob, had shaggy brown hair, acne scars under his face paint, a scraggly red beard, and a camo kerchief tied around his head.
“There’s no need to be pointing those guns at us, man,” Jim Bob complained in a twangy accent. “We just found that ram lying there.”
“True?” Butler said to the older man.
“Out for a hike, stumbled on him,” Dudley Bob said in a cigarette-hoarse voice. “Seemed a waste to leave him there for the coyotes.”
“Fibber,” Butler said. “One of you guys shot him last night with a custom twenty-two fitted with a thermal scope that must have cost you five grand, Dudley Bob.”
The older Hole’s jaw sagged.
“Hey, man,” his son said. “You the law?”
“Of a kind, Jim Bob,” Butler said.
“What the hell does that mean?” the old man said, squinting at them all suspiciously now. “And how’d you know our names? Show me a badge or identification, and you better have had a warrant if you went inside our rig.”
“We didn’t need a warrant,” Butler said. “The door was open and it smelled like something was burning. Probably your rocket-scientist son’s fault.”
“You idiot,” Dudley Bob said.
Jim Bob got a sour look on his face. “Nah, Pa, I locked her tight.”
His father glared at Butler. “I still haven’t seen a badge. I want to see a goddamn badge or we are getting up and walking out of here.”
“We found three bighorn sheep heads in there,” Butler said.