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?”
