Out of Range (26 page)

“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.

Twenty Nine

A half hour before the sun broke over the eastern mountains, while the mist still hung tight to State Lake, Joe heard the black gelding snort in alarm. From somewhere in the shadowed trees where the trail tunneled through, an approaching horse called back. Joe’s eyes shot open in his sleeping bag, and despite the cold, it was as if an electric current had jolted him awake.

He had bedded down on a ground cloth in the tall grass behind a gnarled stand of ancient pine trees. Somewhere around three in the morning, after rereading the spiral notebook and coming to surprising conclusions, he felt he could no longer stay in the cabin and wait. He felt trapped in there, with no way of knowing if Smoke was coming back for him and, if so, from which direction. So he had stoked up the stove so that smoke would curl out of the chimney pipe as if the cabin were occupied, and dragged his sleeping bag and the ground cloth out into the night. He slept in his clothing with the shotgun parallel to his legs.

Sitting up, he could see the front door of the cabin through the tree trunks. The black gelding, his ears straight up, looked down the trail in the direction where the approaching horse had responded. It was colder than he had anticipated as he unzipped his sleeping bag, the cold numbing his hands and face. He rolled out of the bag, hearing the frozen grass crunch beneath him. He rose to his knees and stayed hidden behind brush while peering down the trail in the same direction the gelding was looking.

Smoke, who had obviously dismounted, appeared out of the shadows on foot. His big blocky form was unmistakable. Clouds of condensation billowed around his head, then snapped away into the air. Joe thought it was remarkable that a man so large could walk so quietly.

It took ten minutes for Smoke to position himself in front of the door of the cabin. The outfitter had approached as if he were hunting—taking a few slow steps, stopping to look around, sniff the air, and listen. Joe was frozen on his knees, the icy metal of the shotgun stinging his hands.

Smoke held his big revolver in one hand and the bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. Joe could see less than a halfinch of the liquid sloshing in the bottle as the man moved. There was a clumsiness about him, his movements slow and deliberate. Joe tried to remember how much whiskey had been left the night before—a halfbottle at least.

“Joe Pickett, you in there?” Smoke hollered at the door.

“Come out, sir. Let’s settle this.” To Joe, it sounded like “Lesh settle thish.” Smoke was blind drunk.

Joe rose to his feet, hoping his knees wouldn’t pop from the cold and alert Smoke. He shouldered the shotgun and stepped quietly through the brush and trees until he was less than twenty feet behind the outfitter.

He racked the pump of the shotgun. “Drop your weapon and turn around, Smoke.” Joe’s voice sounded stronger than he thought it would. He fought a trembling in his chest muscles that wasn’t from the cold.

Smoke snorted as if amused, and his shoulders listed as he turned his big head slightly. “Didn’t expect you to be there,” he slurred. “I expected you’d be all nice and warm in your cabin.”

“Drop the gun, Smoke.”

Smoke turned a little more. The gun remained at his side. “Didn’t I hear that somebody took a gun off of you once? An outfitter?”

Joe was thinking the same thing, but he didn’t answer.

That had happened five years before, but would always stay with him.

“Drop it and we’ll talk. My offer still stands.”

“Oh, the offer,” Smoke said. “I’m not taking it. I tole you that.”

Clumsily, Smoke turned and the quick movement seemed to make him swoon. He staggered, regained his balance, set his feet, and looked through bloodshot eyes at Joe.

“That was a good trick, hiding in the grass.”

“I expected you to come back,” Joe said. “I didn’t want things to get western.”

Smoke nodded slowly, as if Joe had delivered a complicated theory and it took him a moment to digest it.

“But they will,” Smoke said.

“They don’t have to.”

“This is the way I go out,” Smoke said, as much to himself as to Joe. “In a blaze of glory. What do you think I could do if my license was taken away from me? If I lost my grandpa’s elk camp?”

“There are plenty of things to do,” Joe said.

“Then why aren’t you doin’ ’em?” he asked, and smiled.

“Instead, you’re sleeping in the cold with a damned shotgun.”

“Smoke—”

“It ends here,” Smoke said, squinting. “I just got to figure out which one of you to shoot.” The muzzle of the revolver started to rise, and Joe could see its gaping mouth.

“Don’t do that,” Joe said. “Come on . . .”

The pistol fell back. Smoke grinned. “What, can’t you shoot a fella who’s looking you in the eye?”

Joe thought about the bear, how he had frozen. How Trey had fired because Joe couldn’t. This was different, though, he thought. Smoke wasn’t really going to go through with this. Hell, Joe thought, I like Smoke.

“There you are,” Smoke growled. “I got a fix on you now.”

Casually, Smoke raised the gun again and fired. The explosion was earshattering, and despite the sudden redhot roar of pain in his side and the ringing echoing in his head, Joe could hear dry pine needles rain down on the grass.

“Got you,” Smoke said, letting the gun down slowly from where it had kicked over his head until it settled again at eye level. His watery eyes were swimming. “Why ain’t you fallin’?”

Joe peered down the barrel of his shotgun and shot Smoke square in the middle of his chest. He racked in another slug as Smoke stumbled back a few feet, a confused look on his face. He could see a wisp of smoke rising from a hole the size of a quarter in the outfitter’s sheepskin coat.

Joe watched the gun, which had dropped back to Smoke’s side, start to rise again.

“Don’t make me . . .” Joe said.

The gun rose unsteadily but purposefully, and Joe shot him again in the chest. This time, the outfitter dropped straight down as if he were a puppet with his strings clipped. His gun fell to the ground on one side, the whiskey bottle on the other.

“Oh, my God,” Joe said, running to Smoke and falling to his knees. The outfitter was breathing shallowly in quick breaths, his eyes fluttering, his face horribly contorted.

Smoke said, “It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts . . .”

Beneath him, a pool of dark blood flooded through the grass, steaming in the cold with a sharp metallic smell.

“It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts . . .”

Setting his shotgun aside, Joe found one of Smoke’s big callused hands and squeezed it. There was no pressure back. The outfitter coughed a wet, hacking cough and a dollop of blood shot out through one of the holes in his coat, spattering Joe’s sleeve.

“Smoke?”

“It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts . . .”

Joe looked up toward the cabin, wondering stupidly if there was a firstaid kit inside. But the outfitter had taken two twelvegauge slugs in his chest. There was no way anyone could fix him now, or save him.

“Smoke, can you hear me?”

It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts . . .

With a rattle that sounded exactly like a playing card in a bicycle spoke, Smoke seized up and his hand clenched back and his last bloodsmelling copper breath wheezed out of his chest like a bellows.

Joe stayed motionless, his eyes closed tight, until the sun broke over the mountains moments later and he felt the sudden warmth on his back. Letting Smoke’s hand drop, he stood and his head reeled, and he nearly fell on top of the body. His side screamed at him, and his right arm was shaking uncontrollably. For the first time, he looked down. Blood had soaked through his three layers of clothing and glinted darkly in the morning sun. He took a sharp breath through gritted teeth, hoping the pain would stop searing him, but it didn’t. He needed something to put the fire out.