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his red flannel and Levis, was at the wheel. The wind, smelling of brushwood, swept through the cab. A chance thrill, I was thinking. This is a chance thrill! Or, as Sister Christine would say,
Nil Sine Numine
.
    Everything, at the very last second, just fell into place. Jay Jones said he’d cover my route and Father Elser got someone else to serve Sunday Mass and Mom said yes and it was Friday and I was free, free to go. We passed the Coors plant, its stacks sending up beer-colored smoke, and climbed west, up into the rocky arms of Clear Creek Canyon. James Taylor was on the radio.
    Lord knows when the cold wind blows . . .
    “Have you ever driven a tractor?” Bob asked. “Or milked a cow?”
    “Nope.” I shook my head and his teeth flashed white.
    “Well, I’ll teach you. I’ll bet you’re a quick learner.”
    I shrugged and felt pride or something leak through the heat of my cheeks. The luck of being included.
    We were up far and high now, near timberline, with snowcapped peaks rising up on all sides. The road was barely a road, more like two tracks of mud through a meadow. The sun had disappeared, but the light of day still lingered.
    “Watch your knee, kiddo,” he said.
    I closed my legs and watched his forearm, these marbled blue veins, shift the stick rising from the center of the floor. The truck lurched through the slippery ditches. We moved past a three-way fork in the road and clattered over a cattle guard. There was a wooden sign with a white arrow:
    “That’s the way to Bright Raven,” Bob said.
    “Who came up with that? That’s no name for a ranch,” George said.
    “Why not?” asked Bob.
    “Ravens are black. And they’re scavengers.”
    “Not white ones.”
    “No such thing.”
    “Keep your eyes peeled. If you spot one, it’s good luck.” Bob winked at me.
    “Bull,” said George.
    We rounded a clump of blue spruce and suddenly he hit the brakes, cut the engine.
    “What’s wrong?” George asked.
    Bob put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh . . .”
    He was staring at the clearing ahead. Something was out there—a mob of brown. Then my eye caught a clue—antlers. A ton of them, not eighty or ninety yards away.
    “Deer,” I whispered.
    “Wapiti,” Bob said. “Wild elk.”
    Their long necks were bent to the ground; they were eating. A little one with crooked legs kept pushing its head into the belly of its mother, searching for the place to suck.
    “See the bull at the far end?” Bob said. “Look at that rack. He’s the king. Bet he’s mounted every doe in the crowd.”
    I looked at Bob looking at the elk. He belongs here, I thought. He knows about the wilderness. At St. Malo he used to camp out in a real tepee; he used to lead the hard hikes up Long’s Peak. I didn’t know him then, he was too important. I just couldn’t believe I was sitting next to him now.
    George nudged me. “Look, two are fighting.”
    We watched two of them butt heads, their hooves kicking up clumps of soil.
    “Nah, they’re just playing,” said Bob and, reaching his arm up with a sigh, he let his right hand fall to my nape. His fingers began to brush up and down over the fuzz there, sort of inadvertently, but his hand was talking some story, direct from my neck down into the middle of things. Warmth was rising at the center of me and the elk were grazing and the sky going lavender and I let my head fall back, press into the curve of his palm. Something was in there, a bottomless mystery, a long way to tumble. Maybe a friend.
    And suddenly his hand split to start the engine and we roared ahead as a hundred black and terrified eyes snapped around to see a yellow truck with three humans—or who knows what they saw or thought—and in that instant they ran for their lives, a stampede of fur leaping across the meadow until all the elk disappeared.
    Sorry
, I wanted to say.
Sorry we made you go
.
    Bob shifted and the stick smacked my knee.
    “Sorry,” we both said.
    When we got to the ranch, we did