ULTIMATELY, IT WOULD BE up to Steve Herlihy to tell people what had happened to his friend, to describe how one of Lander's most respected, confident, and skilled climbers had died because a stranger threw a rock for fun. It was an awful story to tell, bound to trigger outrage and bewilderment, but Herlihy ended up recounting the details, Ishmael-like, again and again—to sheriff's deputies, to colleagues, and to Absolon's family and close acquaintances. It was important to him that people understand how alive Pete was, how suddenly he'd been snatched away.

But nearly 15 hours would pass before he had a chance to tell anybody anything. First he had to spend a long, surreal night with Luke Rodolph. Aaron told Herlihy he had called 911 on his cell phone from the rim and that help was on the way. Right after the impromptu prayer session, the others decided to return to the family campsite, while Luke volunteered to stay behind; he and Steve would hike out in the morning.

As the sun went down, Herlihy wandered out to the lake to be alone, but dropping temperatures soon lured him to the fire Luke had built. Over the next few hours, the two men talked, shared some whiskey, and waited for dawn. Herlihy spoke about Molly and Avery and what a great husband and father Pete was. Absolon had been his boss at NOLS, he explained, generous with his advice and hard-earned experience but never taking himself too seriously. He was, in short, Herlihy's hero. Rodolph listened quietly.

"I know it probably doesn't seem like it, but I am really sorry about what happened to your friend," he said. "I want to cry, but I just can't do it. I've seen a lot of death."

In a flat voice, Rodolph described his time in Iraq—seven months in Fallujah, five in the northern Kurdish provinces. He'd lost a close friend two weeks into his first deployment, after they changed seats one morning in a Humvee. His buddy was sitting in Rodolph's place when an IED went off. Luke said he lost five friends in all. The only comfort he could find, he added, was his Christian belief that the deaths had been God's will. Everything happened for a reason.

The remark grated on Herlihy. He could see no reason why Pete was dead. But he didn't want to argue; right now he just needed to keep talking. He asked Rodolph why he hadn't run away—after all, nobody outside his family had to know he'd thrown the rock. Rodolph said he couldn't run from God. He was willing to do whatever was needed "to make things right."

"We had a long conversation about what that meant," Herlihy says. "He thought he was going to jail."

The talk, like the fire, died down after a while. At one point in the night, a helicopter circled above them, raking a searchlight across the face of the cirque. The next afternoon, a copter-borne rescue team from Grand Teton National Park arrived and got Absolon down. By that time, Herlihy and Rodolph had hiked to Herlihy's truck and driven to his home in Lander. They spoke little on the way.

Herlihy expected the whole world to be changed, but when he reached his house he realized that almost no one in town had heard about Pete's death yet; the coroner was waiting for the body to be retrieved before contacting the family. Once inside his front door, Herlihy started sobbing as he told his girlfriend, Wendy, what had happened. Then, leaving Rodolph standing alone in the front yard, he headed over to the Absolon place to do what he'd dreaded doing since he came off the wall: tell Molly that Pete was gone.

When he returned hours later, emotionally exhausted, Rodolph was still in the yard. He'd tried to clean the blood off the rope and haul bag and waited for Steve's return so they could go together to give their statements to the police.