It felt good to get out of town and away from the cemetery and go to work. He had packed his lunch that morning in the kitchen and filled a Thermos of coffee. Maxine had been waiting for him in the back of the pickup, her heavy tail thumping the toolbox like a metronome as he approached. He patrolled a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) tract to the west of Saddlestring, a huge, nearly treeless expanse that stretched from the river to the foothills of the Bighorns. It was deceptive, complicated country, and he had always liked it. From a distance, it appeared to be simply a massive slow rise in elevation from the valley floor to the mountains. In actuality, it was an undulating, cut-and-jive high-country break land of hills and draws and sagebrush. The landscape had folds in it like draped satin, places where shadows grew and pronghorn antelope and large buck mule deer thrived. A spider’s web of old unnamed ranch roads coursed through it. Herds of deer and antelope had long learned how to take advantage of the land and the landscape, to live within its folds and draws and literally vanish when pursued.
