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an elaborate mutter of exorcism which involved asking after the creature’s health as well as that of its absent partner and offspring. She always burned a sprig of sage the night before Connor left for his summer of firefighting and once he had overheard her quietly reciting some kind of prayer over it. She pretended it wasn’t serious, but he knew it was. So it bothered him that he felt the way he did about the elk. Perhaps some ancient Celtic gene had woken in his veins and he would forever, like his mother, be its slave.
    The sky was starting to fill again with clouds. They were sliding in like a vault from the west and the nearest were already tinted amber by the fire on the mountain. Connor studied the slow eclipse of the stars. He wondered if the elk had lived and if so what lonely vigil it now kept and where. Then he cussed himself again for allowing it such rampant access to his thoughts.
    It was with relief that he heard Hank Thomas starting to wake those who were still asleep. Connor sat up and rubbed his eyes. He fitted his headlamp and switched it on, then hauled himself out of his sleeping bag and set about organizing his gear.
    ‘How you doing, cowboy?’ Hank called.
    ‘Okay. I could handle a steak and a beer.’
    ‘I’ll get on the radio right away.’
    Others chimed in with their fantasy orders while they packed their gear. Ice cream, pizza, chocolate milkshakes.
    ‘So when’s that lazy good-for-nothing musician friend of yours going to grace us with his presence?’ Hank asked.
    ‘Flies in Saturday.’
    ‘I hear he’s in love.’
    ‘I figure he must be. He’s bringing her with him.’
    ‘Poor dumb bastard.’
    ‘Poor dumb woman,’ Jodie said. There was a cry of sisterly support from Donna Kiamoto, a ‘snookie,’ or second-season jumper, from Wisconsin.
    ‘Is she a firefighter or what?’
    ‘Got enough on her hands fighting Ed off,’ Donna said.
    ‘No,’ Connor said. ‘She’s a teacher. She’s going to be working on some wilderness program or something. Kids who’ve gotten in trouble with the law.’
    ‘I know it,’ Hank said. ‘Out of Helena. They’re a good outfit.’
    Hank’s radio squawked into life and everyone hushed to listen. A helicopter was on its way to make a water drop on the flank of the fire nearest to them. Hank reported that he and the crew were moving out to cut another line. Soon they were all packed and ready to hike. Their headlamps angled fitfully while they checked each other over, the beams panning and shafting the charred darkness around them, glinting on their tools and sometimes catching the white of an eye or a flash of teeth in the black of their faces.
    ‘Okay, boys and girls,’ Hank said. ‘Unless anyone wants a shower from that helicopter, I suggest we get our backsides out of here. I want to be home for breakfast.’
    They didn’t make it back to Missoula in time for breakfast. Nor for lunch nor supper. Once the fire was dead, it took them three hours to hike out with all the gear to the nearest road where the bus stood waiting and by the time it dropped them back at the base it was just before midnight on Friday. Driving back into town Connor was so tired he almost fell asleep at the wheel of his truck. He collapsed on his bed still wearing his clothes and boots and reeking of fire and slept the dreamless sleep of the dead for twelve hours.
    He and Ed were renting the same apartment they’d taken the previous summer. It was on the top floor of a ramshackle pale blue clapboard house on the east side of town, just over the river from the university. It was two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom and even a tourist from another galaxy might have guessed that for the rest of the year it was inhabited by students.
    The floorboards creaked, the doors didn’t shut properly, the plumbing had a mind of its own and the walls were all scarred with Scotch tape and painted in various combinations of deep blue and purple, except for the bathroom which