Free Blood Land by R. S. Guthrie Page A

Jackson Hole—riding the tram, catching a movie, and then dinner at Nani’s Cucina Italiana . Deputy Canter would not be home until late Sunday night.
    Sheriff Pruett now had the whole day to himself with the prisoner. The riskiest part of the plan was the second step. Pruett intended to drive Ty’s pickup from impound to the parking lot at Eagle Heart trailhead four miles into the Bridger Wilderness, and then to jog back down to the jail. If a witness spotted the truck, the sheriff risked identification.
    The weekend prior Pruett tested the effects of Valerian, an herb with natural sedative properties and, more importantly, not part of basic toxicology screening protocol. He gave himself double the recommended dose for his body weight. The effect took about twenty minutes to kick in, and though it didn’t knock him down very quickly, he did sleep soundly for five hours in the middle of the day. For Ty, Pruett added a little past double, giving it to the prisoner in his Sunday night dinner—a dinner the sheriff picked up and delivered late, around nine o’clock P.M.
    “Damn, sheriff. My insides were startin’ to touch,” Ty said as he plowed into the plate of fried chicken and skin-on mashed potatoes from the Wrangler Cafe. He drank the tainted milk in several gulps.
    “Leave the plate by the door,” Pruett said.
    Outside in the main office, the sheriff changed his department coat for a jean jacket and his own hat for Ty’s dove-colored Stetson . He jimmied the key locker with a screwdriver from his desk, scarring the wood. The keys to Ty’s impounded truck hung on the far right peg, where Baptiste put them a month before. He checked his watch. The Valerian dose would be kicking in soon. The plan gave Pruett a little over an hour and a half to deliver the truck to the Eagle Heart Park trailhead and trek the four miles back to town.
    The sheriff didn’t see a single car in town. He drove Ty’s truck on the back roads, keeping clear of Main Street, until he reached the turn to Skyline Drive. Skyline was the only road up above the lake to Eagle Heart. He passed one or two tourist vehicles coming down the other way from the lake, but no locals. He parked the truck in the lot at Eagle Heart and then jogged back down to Wind River, taking to the shadows of the barrow ditch whenever a vehicle approached.
     

    Ty lay on his back, snoring loudly, his right arm splayed into space. The dishes sat on the floor next to the cot, food half-eaten. Pruett unlocked the jail door and picked up the tray. He turned to face the cell entrance and held the tray as if he were carrying it away, then walked quickly and slammed his forehead into the steel frame. The blow caused an explosion of light in his head as Pruett launched the tray and its contents into the corridor. The empty milk glass shattered against the far wall as Pruett fell to the ground. The collision of skull on steel hurt more than he planned. Blood ran from a gash on his forehead, coloring both his uniform and the tile floor. As coherence returned, he pushed the blood around some on the floor: the smears of a struggle.
    Ty’s inert body was heavy, corded muscle hidden beneath the orange County jumpsuit. Pruett wrapped a kerchief around his own forehead and slung Ty over his shoulder in a firefighter’s carry. He kept most of the blood off the unconscious man’s clothing but made sure he left behind full fingerprints from the escapee: on the keys, the screwdriver, and on each door leading out of the jail, into the office, and down the back stairs to where the sheriff’s Suburban waited.
    This time leaving the office, Sheriff Pruett turned on the overhead red and blues. He drove fast, as a sheriff would after an escaped prisoner, spewing gravel as he fishtailed out of the parking lot and leaving black marks where he took to Main Street.
     

    The moon cast a day glow on the forest. The air was crisp, the winds silent. Ty McIntyre woke slowly, clacking his dry mouth,