Out of Range

TWENTY-EIGHT

Smoke Van Horn was a huge man who seemed to fill up the cabin when he entered the room, accompanied by the smell of wood smoke, grease, horses, and leather that hung in his oversized sheepskin coat. His face was massive and naturally thrust forward, like a fist.

"Nice night out there," Smoke said to Joe. "We need some snow, though, to get the elk moving."

He let his coat slide off his shoulders, then tossed it on the bed across the room as if he'd done it a hundred times before. Perhaps he had, Joe thought. Under the coat, Smoke wore the same clothes Joe had seen him in that afternoon in the meadow, as well as the holster and.44 Magnum.

"I was just scouting the territory when I saw the light from your cabin," Smoke said in a too-loud voice, "so I thought I better check it out. I've thrown more than a few backpacker types out of your place before, you know. A couple of years ago some hunters moved in before Will got up here, and I sent them packing too. I figure this place is paid for by my tax money and license fees, so I don't want nobody trashing it."

"I appreciate that," Joe said, as he dished steak and potatoes onto his plate. "Can I offer you some?"

"I filled my belly with pemmican while I was riding," Smoke said, shaking his head, "but that sure smells good."

Joe filled a second plate and sat it on the table in front of the outfitter. He tried not to turn his back on Smoke at any point, but to stay in front of him. The outfitter exuded an aura of pure physicality and danger, even though he had not yet said or done anything that could be considered threatening. Joe watched as Smoke withdrew a collapsible camp cup from a shirt pocket, shook it out, and filled half of it with Wild Turkey from a bottle he had brought in with him.

"Want some?" Smoke asked, already pouring it into Joe's tin cup.

"Thanks," Joe said, adding water from a canteen.

"That's ruining two good drinks," Smoke said, raising his cup, a wide smile cracking the fist. "Here's to fall in Wyoming and two good men."

While they ate, Smoke noticed Joe looking at the.44 Magnum.

"Something wrong?" Smoke asked through a mouthful.

"Do you ever take that off?"

"Nope."

"Have you ever considered carrying bear spray?"

"Nope."

"Have you ever had to use it?"

"Yup," Smoke said. "This steak needs something. You got any ketchup or hot sauce?"

Smoke surprised Joe by gathering up the dishes and dumping them in an old plastic tub that he'd filled with hot water from a pot on the stove. Joe said, "You don't have to do that."

"Camp law," Smoke said, not turning his head. "You cooked, so I clean. Have another snort. And give me a re-ride on mine, will you?"

Joe picked up the bottle and began to pour it into his cup, then thought better of it. He refilled Smoke, and put the bottle back down with a thump so Smoke would think Joe had taken some. Instead, Joe added more water to his cup.

"I've got to admit," Smoke said, washing a plate with his back still to Joe, "you are more wily than I gave you credit for when I met you outside of the Sportsman's. You must have known at the time you'd be coming up here into the backcountry, but you didn't give it away."

Joe didn't respond.

"That was an old trick of Will's too. He liked to keep everyone guessing. Shit, if I was the game warden, I'd probably do the same damn thing. This is a lot of country for just one man, ain't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"You ever seen anything like this before?"

"My district is in the Bighorns," Joe said. "We've got some rough country."

"Nothing like this," Smoke said, turning and taking a long drink, "nothing like this."

He banged the empty cup down. "How 'bout another re-ride?"

"It's your whiskey," Joe said, pouring again.

Smoke cleaned the last of the plates and suspended the skillet over the soapy water. "Do you wash your cast iron, or keep it seasoned?"

"Seasoned, I guess," Joe said.

"Good man," Smoke said, wiping out the skillet hard with paper towels. "Not many folks know anymore how much good taste and character you lose in your food when you wash the damn skillet every night with soap. Cast iron is meant to be seasoned."

Smoke sat down at the table when he was through, the drying towel still draped over his arm. "I suppose I ought to think about getting back to my hunters pretty soon," he said. "They'll be wondering if a bear got me."

Joe felt a tightening in his chest. It didn't feel right to let

Smoke go back happily to his camp, only to arrest him in the morning.

"Something wrong?" Smoke asked, studying Joe's face.

"Let's have a nightcap," Joe said, putting off his decision.

"Nightcap, hell," Smoke said, pouring generously again, "let's tie one on."

"This is my thirty-second year up here," Smoke said wistfully. "I love it as much as my first."

Joe nodded.

"Things have changed, though. I see it in Jackson all the time. But I never thought I'd see it up here, and it pisses me off."

Smoke shifted and leaned across the table, his face thrust at Joe. Joe stanched an impulse to jump back.

"I'm a third-generation outfitter," Smoke said. "I got the same camp my dad and my grandpa used. A couple of years ago I sat down during a blizzard when we couldn't hunt and I figured out that we've probably brought twenty-five hundred dead elk through that camp over the years. That's a hell of a lot of meat. I also figured out that over the years we've probably contributed over a half a million in license fees, and we've spent about four million in the county to keep our business running. I'm the best there is at what I do, so I feel pretty damned good about it, overall. I get to show these out-of-staters there is still some wildness left in this world, and that they'd better show some goddamned respect for it. I've been known to send a whiner or two home, even at a financial loss to me, if that son of a bitch don't respect what we've got up here."

"Twenty-five hundred elk is a lot of elk," Joe said.

Smoke weighed Joe's comment for a minute, his eyes narrowing, then decided it was neutral, not critical.

"It is," Smoke continued, "but in the big scheme of things, it's not enough. Because of federal policies, we've got too goddamn many elk up here to sustain a healthy herd. There's no good reason to have ten thousand elk come down to be fed on the refuge, like pets. They're weak as a herd, and they spread diseases among themselves. The herd needs to be culled. It's a goddamned meat farm, except that shooting them for meat is looked down on."

Joe smiled. "You sound a little like Pi Stevenson."

"Damnit!" Smoke shouted, thumping the table with his hand and making the cups jump. "Don't get me started on her. Her stupid solution is to let the herds grow until they all starve to death in front of our eyes. Then listen to her bitch."

"I can imagine," Joe said.

Suddenly, Smoke broke out into a grin. "I used to have these kinds of discussions with Will Jensen all the time, right at this table. You're a lot like him."

"You're not the first to say that."

"It's a compliment," Smoke said. "I liked the hell out of old Will, even though he wanted to arrest me and throw my big wide butt in jail. He would have, you know. But I respected him, he was a man of his word. Too bad he went nuts in the end."

"Were there people who hated him enough to kill him?" Joe asked abruptly.

The question didn't faze Smoke. "A few, I suppose. Your friend Pi Stevenson supposedly made some threats. I probably did too, when I was drinking. He made me pretty mad a couple of times."

"But in the end you got along?"

"In the end he was crazy," Smoke said. "Taking up with that Ennis woman the way he did. He even brought her up here one time, which told me he was forgetting who he was and where he was at. I consider this a cathedral, and he violated it. It got worse with the fights he got into, and then getting arrested himself…"

Joe watched Smoke closely.

"Before all of that, though, we coexisted pretty damned well, I'd say. We gave each other a wide berth. I think he even admired me, in a way, although he never actually said it. I'm one of the few who doesn't mind the bear population increasing or the wolves the Feds released on us," Smoke said. "They're a part of all of this. We need 'em to get the herd sizes down to a level that makes some kind of sense. But I have arguments with the way those animals are portrayed by some folks, like they're on a higher plane than us humans. It's pretty damned simple, really. The Feds-and people like Pi Stevenson-don't love the wolves and bears as much as they hate people. They're winning the game, it seems to me. That pisses me off too."

Joe found himself warming to Smoke, enjoying his company and his passion. Smoke was like a lot of the people he knew in Twelve Sleep County. He wondered, though, at what point Smoke's rage turned into violence. Joe admonished himself not to become complacent with this man.

"You know about that meat town they're trying to build outside of Jackson?" Smoke asked, his face wide with incredulity.

"Beargrass Village," Joe said. "I know about it."

"Not only is there no beargrass in Wyoming," Smoke said, his face flushing red, "but the whole fucking idea is to create an artificial environment for raising pure meat for millionaires! Jesus! They think that's real, somehow. It ain't real. This"-Smoke sat back, pointed toward the window- "this is real. It's just messy, and it's complicated, but it's real. Why'n the hell don't they experience this?"

Joe shrugged. Smoke was getting more animated as he talked, and louder. Joe saw the flashes of eloquent rage Smoke was known for, the rhetoric he used at public meetings to dominate discussions and make himself the scourge of agency officials.

"I'd like to bring a couple of those Beargrass jokers up here and let 'em shoot an elk, gut it, and hang it up in the trees. 'This is how we get meat,' I'd say."

Joe conspicuously looked at his watch, trying to signal an end to the evening. It was late and he was tired. Smoke ignored him.

"When I tell people what I'm telling you, they laugh at me," Smoke said. "They didn't used to, but they do now. They act like I'm something out of another century, some kind of throwback. I am, I guess."

Smoke drained his cup and poured another before Joe could object.

"I'm a goddamned arachnidism," Smoke said.

"You're a spider?" Joe asked, knowing Smoke meant anachronism.

"I don't mind being feared or hated," Smoke said, lowering his head, "but I hate to be fuckin' laughed at."

Smoke's silence was striking after all of his loud talk.

"I'm sorry," Joe said.

"About what?" Smoke finally asked, his voice soft for the first time since he had arrived at the cabin.

"For the spider joke," Joe said. "I knew what you meant."

Smoke almost imperceptibly nodded his woolly head.

"You know I saw you today, putting those salt blocks down," Joe said.

Joe thought he sensed a sudden, cold calmness in Smoke's demeanor. Maybe it was the way he was gripping his cup.

"I thought somebody was watching me," Smoke said.

"I've got pictures of it."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

Joe glanced quickly at the shotgun in the corner. Two steps, and he could grab it.

"I was thinking of riding into your camp and arresting you tomorrow," Joe said. "But I don't think either one of us wants me to do that in front of your hunters and guides."

Smoke sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping. "No, I wouldn't want that."

"We could do it tonight," Joe said. "It's not like I was planning to drag you in chains into Jackson. I'll write you up, give you the citation, and we'd go to court eventually."

Smoke shook his head. "That'd mean my outfitter's license and my reputation, Joe. You might as well shoot me on the spot."

Joe couldn't argue with the first part. "Smoke, you knew what you were doing."

"Yes," the outfitter said, a spark in his eyes, "I knew it. But I bet you didn't know who else used salt in that same meadow for years."

"I'm confused."

"You sure as hell are," Smoke said, again leaning forward, the color returning to his cheeks. "Your own Game and Fish Department. For twenty years, they put salt blocks out to lure the elk out of Yellowstone so they could be shot. For years before that, the Forest Service did it. At the time, it was considered good management."

"Really?"

"Really. It wasn't until a few years ago, when some crusaders like Pi Stevenson decided it was unfair, did salting become a crime."

Joe said nothing.

"You want me to take you out tomorrow on horseback and show you all the salt sets in this wilderness? Not only the ones put there by outfitters, but natural salt licks in the ground? Elk need salt. It's good for them. Salt blocks don't attract any game that isn't already there. All salt does is help group them up in one place, so a dude can get a clean shot and cut down the odds of wounding an elk and losing track of it in the timber. Besides, what if a hunter shoots an elk that just showed up at a natural salt lick? What about that?"

"That's different," Joe said. "Putting salt blocks out isn't natural."

Smoke's cup exploded with a pop from his tightened grip. Joe felt drops of Wild Turkey hit his face. Smoke's voice rose as he talked. "Neither is feeding hay to ten thousand goddamned elk so tourists can look at 'em on the elk refuge, Joe! Neither is letting the herd explode in numbers in Yellowstone because there are no natural predators left, or introducing a species of gray wolf in the state that never actually lived here. Neither is building a goddamned private village so rich people can raise their own 'pure' food that's the result of hundreds of years of genetic engineering!"

Joe pushed his chair back and stood up. The shotgun was within reach. "I'll make a deal with you, Smoke. If you destroy the salt sets and give me your word you'll never do it again, we'll pretend this conversation never happened."

Tracing his finger through the spilled whiskey on the table, Smoke said, "I can't do that, Joe."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think what I did is wrong. It's all a big game, just like everything these days. It's a big game set up to get rid of people like me."

"Then I need to write out the citation," Joe said, his voice wavering.

"I ain't going to quit my way of life, Joe," Smoke said, looking up. "Not because of a set of rules that don't make biological or scientific sense. I won't let you take my life away from me."

"I gave you a choice I shouldn't have given you," Joe said.

"And I appreciate that," Smoke said. "Don't think I don't. It shows you're the fair man I thought you were, just like Will. But my decision is made."

Joe felt his heartbeat in his ears as he pulled his citation book out of his panniers and wrote out a ticket. In his peripheral vision, he was aware of both Smoke's position at the table-slumping back, both hands on the table where he could see them-and the shotgun propped up in the corner.

"I'll trust your word if you say you'll get rid of that salt set."

"I know that, Joe. I appreciate your trust. But it ain't going to happen."

Shaking his head, Joe tore out the ticket and handed it to Smoke. Smoke took it, slowly wadded it up into a ball, and dropped it on the table into the pool of whiskey.

"That won't change anything," Joe said, feeling sudden malevolence emanate from Smoke's person the way the odor of horses and wood smoke had earlier.

"I ain't going to let you do this," Smoke said, rising almost sadly from the table. "I got no place to go."

Joe said, "It doesn't have to be this way, Smoke."

"Yeah, it does."

Joe stood with the back of his hand brushing against the barrel of the shotgun while Smoke retrieved his coat, gathered the bottle, and lumbered out the door without another word.

He brewed coffee to help him stay awake and read through the pages of the last spiral notebook. The door was bolted shut, and a heavy gun case was pushed against it. The shutters were closed so no one outside could look in and see him. The horses had been moved closer and picketed at the front and back of the cabin so Joe could hear if they sensed someone approaching. The shotgun, still loaded with slugs, was on the table where he read. He could not recall ever being as scared. When a squirrel suddenly chattered from a tree outside, Joe was up with the shotgun pointed at the door, his heart thumping.

Even the things he read in the notebook, as terrifying and revealing as they were, could not make him tear his mind away from the threat of Smoke outside. Will's notebook was a journal of the madness that had engulfed him. The ex-game warden's writing changed from cribbed, guarded comments to large block letters, with sections underlined so violently that the paper had ripped. Then the handwriting changed again, to outright loopy. The content changed from reports and observations to Will's innermost thoughts and fears. What scared Joe was imagining Will, a man as guarded and reserved as anyone he had known, turn into something else. The last entry was from three weeks before:

They're getting to me somehow. They're inside my head and inside my body. They know where I'm going and they track my movements. I know it sounds crazy, and it IS crazy. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. They figured out a way to screw me up.

And there was more.