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from his big igloo. “Who’s coming this year?”
    “It’s all doctors from Chicago. Some of them from last year. Bluebride’s bringing them four at a time.”
    “Where will they hunt?”
    “We’ll go south of here in the deep draws below Bellows and the three bald peaks. It’s thick timber and makes a great outing. I’ve been this week clearing trails.”
    They sat at the wooden picnic table inside the tent.
    “Anybody else above?” Mack asked.
    “Nobody has come by here from Cold Springs. It’s already snowed once. You guys going to Clark again? What is it? Ten years?”
    “It’s ten years,” Mack said. “There’s still fish in that lake. How’s Deb?”
    “She’s good. That real estate license has made a difference for us, but who wants their wife dressing up every day showing strange men empty mansions? Who wants mansions anyway? But she’s good.”
    “And Dougie?”
    “Dougie thinks school is heaven on earth. We’ve got some bona-fide artwork on the fridge.”
    “And those,” Mack pointed. There were sheets of crayoned squares and faces pinned to the tent wall.
    “Those,” Clay said.
    “He’s got the philosophy,” Mack said. “People and houses. Have you heard any helicopters?” Mack asked him.
    “No, sir. Are you thinking the vice president has gone fishing?”
    “I’m just asking,” Mack said. “I hope he isn’t.”
    “That’s the best coffee in Wyoming,” Vonnie said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
    “Stop by on the way down,” Clay told them. “There’ll be more. If I’m out with these guys, just come in and fire up some coffee. Stay the night if you need to.”
    Mack nodded at Clay’s book. “Put us in the journal as two optimists,” he said.
    “I did already,” Clay said. “Have fun.”
    The two hikers stepped out into the high-atmosphere sunshine and reclaimed the trail. Now it grew steep up the first hill, a series of long switchbacks. There were yellow blazes cut into the trees every thirty yards. One year on their fishing trip, it had snowed and they used the markings to pick their way down, tree by tree, arriving at the truck with the “coldest, wettest feet of all time,” according to Vonnie, and when Mack handed her the warm ball of thick wool socks from the glove compartment, she came into his arms so fully that socks became their joke for foreplay. The blazes now were shiny yellow, coated with sap at summer’s end.
    An hour later, at the top, they discharged their packs and sat against them, legs out, breathing. From the promontory they could see south now, over the hills they’d climbed, seven ridge-lines into the haze.
    “One second,” Vonnie said. “I’m going to pee.” She went off into the trees.
    Mack fished his BlackBerry from his pack pocket and dialed Yarnell’s code. He entered: 9200 feet, W. of Crowheart 14 mi. Send reading. He had told the older man that it was a needle in a field of haystacks, and Yarnell had given him the device and said: “Yes, and this is how it will find you . If you get within a mile, the blue dot will light.” Now Mack put it in his front pocket and stretched.
    A minute later Vonnie came back, and they stood stiffly and packed up. They walked the ridgeline for half an hour, pacing carefully, and then descended in four long narrow switchbacks to Cross Creek, a rivulet that they could step over and where the trail ascended sharply, the first place a person would be happy to have a horse. Slow and even was their way. They’d known sprinters, friends who rocketed ahead, marching in a race, then stopping for five minutes at each turn, blowing, and it had been proven to all parties that slow and steady, slower and steady, was best and most workable through a long day. At the top of this ridge they sat again and ate apples, not talking, eating them all down to the seeds. Behind them two pikas began to call from the rock spill, piping their hopes for any dropped candy, apple cores.
    “They remember us,” Mack