Out of Range

THIRTY

Leading two horses, Joe Pickett rode south out of the Thorofare, on the trail to Turpin Meadows, in what became a kind of trek of lamentation. Smoke's body was wrapped in the ground cloth Joe had slept on the previous night, and it was roped over the back of the outfitter's own sorrel, the third horse in the string. Joe led his procession through camp after camp along the trail, too injured and tired to fully engage the guides and hunters who wanted to hear the whole story. The only men whom he told were the hunters from Georgia in Smoke's camp, with their hired guides looking on. The guides stared at the canvas bundle on the back of their boss's horse.

"We wondered where he went this morning," Smoke's lead guide had said, shaking his head sadly. "I always knew that hot head of his was bound to get him into trouble."

There was no anger, no accusations aimed at Joe from Smoke's men, which surprised him. What he saw was stoic sadness. And overt selfishness: "We can still hunt, can't we?" one of the hunters asked.

"I don't see why not," the guide said, with just a hint of disgust.

"I'm sorry and all," the hunter said, looking to the other hunters for support, "but some of us paid real good money for this."

"I know," the guide said, eyeing his clients and spitting a long brown stream of tobacco juice between his boots. Then, to Joe: "Sometimes I wish I'da never gone into the service industry."

Before setting out that morning, Joe had patched himself up. The crease from Smoke's bullet had split the skin on his side and sliced a three-inch gash on the inside of his right arm. The bleeding from his side was profuse. He had lost more blood than he realized, which made him lightheaded. He grimaced while he pinched the wound together, catching a glimpse of a white rib, which had also been nicked. There was a roll of gauze in the cabin but no medical tape to hold it to his side, so he used silver duct tape instead. He was a fan of duct tape, once telling Marybeth that it was one of the five greatest inventions of modern history. Painfully, he pulled on a fresh shirt over the dressing and tossed the heavy, wet one into the cookstove to burn.

The news preceded him as he rode. Outfitters communicated with one another in a combination of ways- face-to-face meetings, radio calls, and satellite phones, known as the "outfitter telephone line." Normally, the "line" was used to pass along word that the elk were moving, or that a guide had been bucked off his horse and was injured, or that a hunter was sick or disillusioned and needed a ride back to the trailhead. In this case, the news was that the new game warden had shot and killed the most infamous among them, Smoke Van Horn, the Lion of the Tetons, in a gunfight.

As Joe rode south, they anticipated him in each camp. In one of the camps he had checked on the day before, both the guides and their clients stood silently on the side of the trail with their cameras, and Joe heard the whispery clicks of shutters as he rode by.

A hunter dressed in head-to-toe camo gear said, "It's like something out of the Old West!"

Joe was slumping in his saddle, fighting shock and the exhaustion that came from it, when he reached the edge of Turpin Meadows at dusk. The Tetons were backlit by the setting sun, their profiles sharp and black against a bruise-purple sky.

As he led the horses toward the campground, he saw emergency vehicles, ambulances, and sheriff's department SUVs in the lot, and people milling around. Apparently, Joe thought, one of the outfitters had been able to get the news to Jackson.

When they spotted him coming, he watched the small crowd stop what they were doing and turn toward him as one, some raising binoculars. One of the sheriff's men unnecessarily whooped his siren for a moment, to signal Joe to come in.

"You'll need to turn over all of your weapons," Sheriff Tassell told Joe as he helped him down from his horse. "We'll get you to the hospital and then I'll need a statement from you."

Joe nodded grimly and dismounted. He could feel the scab of the wound in his side crack open under the dressing.

"How bad are you hurt?" Tassell asked. "Not too bad," Joe said. "I need some stitches, I think. Lost some blood."

"You need the ambulance to take you in?" Tassell asked.

"No."

Tassell turned to his deputies and gestured toward the third horse. "Untie the body and put it in the ambulance," he told them. "Tell the driver to go straight to Dr. Graves's."

Joe walked slowly toward his pickup.

"You're not driving yourself," the sheriff called after him, exasperated. "What in the hell are you thinking?"

Randy Pope stepped out from the small crowd. He wore crisp jeans, new boots, a snap-button shirt, and a denim jacket.

"I talked to Trey Crump," Pope said. "He said to tell you you're on administrative leave until the investigation of the shooting is concluded. As you know, it's routine procedure."

Joe nodded. "I figured that would happen." Looking Pope over, he said, "Looks like you've been to the western-wear store."

He ignored Joe's comment. "He said to tell you to give him a call as soon as you could."

"I planned to," Joe said.

Pope stepped in close. "So was it a gunfight, like they say?"

"It was more like assisted suicide," Joe said glumly. "Smoke fired first."

"Then you shot him?"

Joe nodded, too tired to speak.

Pope sighed and looked toward the darkening sky. Stars were beginning to poke through like needle pricks in dark fabric. "I need to work overtime just to keep up with the paperwork you generate," he complained.

Tassell turned his SUV over to a deputy and drove Joe's pickup, while Joe slouched in the passenger seat.

They were on the blacktop when the sheriff said, "This is Will Jensen's truck, isn't it?" Joe nodded. "Mine burned up." The sheriff shook his head. "I heard about that. Things tend to happen around you, don't they? Just like Barnum said they would."

Joe didn't respond.

"Will tried for years to build a case on Smoke, and in the three days you're up there you kill the guy."

"It wasn't like that," Joe said, but didn't want to explain. He was thinking about the contents of the last spiral notebook. How it was all coming together. How ugly it had been for Will at the end.

They drove in silence until Joe could see the lights of Jackson in the distance. It seemed as if he had lived there forever, not just a few days. The ambulance was stopped on the highway in front of them so that a long column of tourists on horseback could cross the highway en route to their guest ranch for the night. Tassell stopped directly behind it, the headlights of the pickup shining into the ambulance and illuminating the body wrapped in the ground tarp.

"There goes my budget for medical examinations for the fiscal year," Tassell sighed.

After an examination, a blood test, twenty stitches in his side and eight in his arm, Joe was remanded to the hospital for a night of observation. He was given sedatives by a doctor whose name tag identified him as "Dr. Thompson," who also wore a Day-Glo button that read "SKI BUM." The sedative was starting to dull the pain and bring him down. Before he went to sleep, he reached for the telephone at the side of his bed.

"Marybeth," Joe said, thrilled at hearing the sound of her voice, "I just killed the only man in Jackson Hole I really understood."