Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
successful elk or deer hunt. I can no longer hear hounds and worry of their fate as well . . . what will become of them. I have no more experience in this area than I do packing a quickly stiffening corpse. There is no trail to follow, no evidence of our earlier passage. I ride alone on a general gut feeling, fighting my mule in the beginning, clutching a semblance of control over a world yawing utterly out of control. This is not conducted consciously, but yielded from infecting if carefully controlled terror. I hold onto myself tightly to tamp this fear into a safe place, more alone than I have been in a lifetime spent without the comfort of human presence. Eventually it suggests itself to simply give the mule his head, looping reins over the saddle horn and hugging my assembled bow to my chest to conserve warmth. The first hound shows sometime after midnight, shadowy against moonlit snow, self-consciously happy, as if apologizing to have been discovered slacking from his appointed task. I talk to him quietly, my voice somehow startling to hear. She (I sense this somehow, that undeniable feminine quality) falls in behind the mules and we continue on our uncertain way. A pair of slinking hounds appears some hours later, skittish and circling well out of striking distance of a threat only they perceive. I test my repertoire of those Mexican names I remember Clyde roaring and they duck heads uncertainly and circle to fall in with the seemingly aloof hound already trailing. In time I am beyond shivers, nodding off at intervals, woken by dizzying head bobbing that induces sickening nausea. I shake myself awake, registering my place in the world, surrendering to my mule's plodding, steady gait. I have a wide assortment of hounds at my heel, and believe they are accounted for, every one. And then I drift off again, my head filled with chaotic dreams that lead nowhere but somehow loop in dizzying fluency. I sense a complete and sudden lack of motion that requires a few minutes to register; opening my eyes to find truck and trailer squatted before us like an S unexpected religious revelation. There is some ugly business to follow – stumbling off my mule, nearly unable to stand – rifling Clyde's pockets for keys, panic spreading over me in my inability to locate them following a thorough search; discovering them in the ignition, relief spreading like a wave; sitting Clyde, stiff as lumber, in the passenger seat for his last ride. I spy hay in the truck bed and drag the entire bale into the P O R T I N G C 177 L A S S trailer head, hounds and mules alike loading anxiously; swinging the rustsquealing gate closed behind them. I hold my hands to heat pouring from the vents, power the radio, push seek. The dial spins through its range three times before I note an AM setting. Trying FM the cab suddenly fills with Patsy Kline, that absolute miracle of human voice riding the airwaves across a desolate Utah desert, and I sit and weep. I C S