Dull Knife: A Joe Pickett Short Story

By C. J. Box

A chilling short story of death and retribution featuring Joe Pickett from New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box.

On a high mountain lake in Wyoming, game warden Joe Pickett is carefully sliding across the ice to check the licenses of a group of fishermen when he sees a strange yellow glow coming from beneath the surface. At first he thinks it's a tree branch. But it's not. It's a frozen human hand, reaching up through the ice...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781101548196

C. J. Box

C. J. Box is the award-winning creator of the Joe Pickett series. Born in Wyoming, he worked as a reporter, surveyor, ranch hand, and fishing guide before he began writing fiction. In Open Season (2001), Box introduced Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden and expert outdoorsman who fights corruption on the plains. The novel was a success, winning the Gumshoe Award and spawning an ongoing series that has now stretched to twelve novels, including Force of Nature (2012) and the Edgar Award–winning Blue Heaven (2009). Box co-owns a tourism marketing firm with his wife, Laurie, and in 2008 won the BIG WYO award for his efforts to bring visitors to his home state. Box is a former member of the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. A lover of the outdoors, he has traveled across the American West on foot, horse, and skis. He lives in Wyoming with his family. 

Book preview

Dull Knife

C. J. Box

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

New York

Also by C. J. Box

The Joe Pickett Novels

Cold Wind

Nowhere to Run

Below Zero

Blood Trail

Free Fire

In Plain Sight

Out of Range

Trophy Hunt

Winterkill

Savage Run

Open Season

The Stand-Alone Novels

Back of Beyond

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

Blue Heaven

eSpecials

The Master Falconer

WHEN IT’S twenty-two degrees below zero on a high mountain lake, the cracking of the ice makes an unearthly howling bellow that chills the blood and makes hearts skip a beat. The crack itself, looking like a jagged bolt of crystal-white lightning, zips across the ice with the flick of a lizard’s tongue. But it is the sound of the crack, the plaintive, anguished moan, that penetrates a man and makes his skin crawl, reminding him that if the earth wanted to swallow him up, well, it could. And no one could stop it.

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett froze with the sound and looked down at his feet as the crack shot between them. The sound washed over and through him. The crack itself was no danger to him. Ice shifted and buckled all the time. Nevertheless, he sidestepped over the crack before continuing.

The ice fishermen were still a quarter of a mile away across the surface of Dull Knife Reservoir in the Bighorn Mountains. Four fishermen, two sitting on upturned plastic buckets, two standing near their holes in the ice. All bundled up like black snowmen, their shapes rounded and without angles because of the thick winter parkas and insulated coveralls they wore. Snippets of their conversation carried crisply over the distance: a growl, a laugh, a bark. They were obviously watching him approach, and were amused when he froze and altered course.

In January, Joe had little to do besides paperwork,