Dick & Don Go to War

Esquire, February, 2002 by Wils S. Hylton

THERE'S ONE STORY that says the whole thing. It was 1995, in the summer. Dick Cheney and a couple guys were on horseback in Yellowstone, clomping down a trail toward the river, heading for a fishing hole. It was muggy, hot. Bugs thick in the air, horses bogged down with gear, and, to be perfectly honest, they were lost. So as they fumbled through the brush, picking their way along, there wasn't a lot of hooting and hollering going on. All you could hear was the thump of hooves and the swish of branches pushed aside.

Silence didn't bother Cheney. In the woods, he took on the quiet, singular disposition of a man who didn't care about shit but fish. Primed up with a graphite rod and his favorite flies, he'd wrassle the river all day for a trout. But come sundown, while the...