A week later, MacDougall was escorted in a police van from the Cheyenne prison back into a Lander courtroom and, within three hours, all charges against him involving the library, his obscene art, pornography, and his models Lizzie and Audrey were all dropped. MacDougall was free to go.

After that, when new legislation to protect the state’s youth from obscenities was enacted by the Wyoming legislature -- the Wyoming Art Decency Act -- the American Civil Liberties Union found it so unconstitutional that it was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, which rose to the occasion, reflecting on the importance and value of free speech in America, overturning the Act by a unanimous vote. Their decision -- that "the Library is a never ending cultural centerplace for the free exchange of ideas" -- set the tone for all debate on this issue for years after, and still to come.

The Wyoming Children's Protection Act, however, passed into law, requiring schools and libraries receiving specified federal funding to certify they had policies in place that included monitoring the displaying of art works of objectionable content in library and museum spaces. Anything deemed “obscene” or “child pornography” or “harmful to minors” could not be displayed. The test for obscenity was (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appealed to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicted or described, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacked serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Roger Shepperton issued this statement: "For the benefit of those people who deserve to have access to all views and opinions, and to ensure that the policies are not vulnerable to lawsuits, all schools and libraries ought to consider how to avoid the banning of constitutionally protected material."

It didn’t bring the desired result -- the Wyoming Children's Protection Act closed the Western Two-Top Mountain School forever. MacDougall, as the Director of the Library (Museum) Services, had brought on wide state and national support for the "Non-Compliance" that brought the school down. It was in the news from coast to coast. The good fight was fought to try to keep the school open.

Politicians praised the school and library for not having succumbed to harmfully blocking useful art, then damned said school and library for not usefully blocking harmful art.

The two State Library and Museum Services Development Grants -- the certified service grant and the "Striving for Excellence" grant – were denied. The school failed, under the provisions of the state's procurement rules and regulations and competitive bidding requirements, to be certified.

The Two-Top Mountain School and library were found to be in non-compliance with the state's rules. The funding agency ceased funding. It gave notice to the school indicating it was out of compliance. The school was not brought into compliance before the start of the third program year after the date the school originally applied for State funds, and so was ineligible for the following year's funding program.

Authorities began policing the grounds, evicting past students and new squatters from the assorted huts, houses, cabins, and pagodas. Mysteriously, in the course of four or five years, each of the edifices caught fire and burned to the ground. By 1980, not a trace remained of what had once been the western Two-Top Mountain School.

Surprisingly, Arlen Townsend contacted me for help. He needed someone to help him sort and order his assorted sayings, bon mots, ad-libs, aphorisms, barbs, saws, maxims, asides, epigrams, and retorts. He was then intending to collate these with selections from his published essays, book reviews, prefaces, letters, lectures, marginalia, collected monologues, and assorted interviews. When that work came to an end, I thought I'd go spend some time with my father, who asked that I bring along my friend, MacDougall.

We arrived in Cheyenne at midnight and drove straight to the junkyard. We got past the dogs without incident and climbed up to the boat. My father was not aboard. It was cold out, but there was no wind. We laid down on the deck and simply watched the stars. Then MacDougall turned around and looked closely at a textured surface which his hand had felt -- words that Bill, or some friend or enemy of Bill's, had carved in tiny letters on the deck -- "Stamp out quicksand."

My father approached us in a dark brown, hooded, fur-lined coat. He was singing “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and staggering, holding up a brown paper bag. MacDougall saw him first. He turned to me and said, "I know what I'm going to do." When my father stepped up to say hello and shake our hands, MacDougall threw his arms around the old man's neck and kissed him on the lips. "Thank you," he said. MacDougall leapt from the boat, got back in his car, sped through the yard, and drove to Jackson Hole and, within the year, married Audrey. They bought a house. She made her jewelry, and he painted to his heart's content. The years went by.

My dad never did get the boat out on the water. He died of liver damage. It was left to me to transport the boat to the ocean. I drove it to the Two-Top Mountain School in Castalia, Maine, where my connections served me well. Arlen Townswend, relentlessly pursued by a succession of infatuated former female students, finally retreated into solitude before expatriating himself to Europe where, in Spain, he met the one great love of his life -- only to divorce and spend his final years in Italy. Roger Shepperton again took the helm of his Castlian Two-Top Mountain School which, within a decade, would also be shut down. Shepperton backed my fledgling enterprise of taking students and their parents sailing on Wild Bill's yacht in Frenchman's Bay, and I enjoyed success. Through several good years, I took them out and the money came in.

Now I have a house atop a cliff with a view out over the ocean. I started painting what MacDougall never painted -- seascapes. In my seaside house I have eleven original Mountain pictures from his ouvre, all signed by him. I've been offered a fortune for the lot -- though people still turn beet red when first they set their eyes on them.

MacDougall wrote, in his last e-mail to me, that he’d been voted, by one survey or another, one of America’s best loved living artists. It amused him, he claimed. He wished he’d never felt the urge to paint. It would have been enough, he wrote, to just wander in the valleys, pondering the beauty of the peaks.

Then I got the call from Audrey saying he’d again gone hiking in those mountains -- but hadn’t come back. Search parties were organized, but no corpse was ever found. They finally gave up. Big news all over the west for days, it was just starting to make headlines in the east. I flew out that night -- loaded with my rucksack, gear, Wild Bill’s coat, and one of Arlen Townsend’s axes -- to attend the memorial service, held on the banks of Jenny Lake. For a long time after, I searched myself to find MacDougall in the Tetons.