There was no point going over it. Their money was gone. The grifters were gone. North, east, south, west. Jake could rage about it all he wanted, promise to beat the living hell out of the man if he caught him, but the truth was that they would never be caught, not by Jake McCloskey or anyone else. Jake had spent two hours the night before sitting with a deputy sheriff, going through photos of grifters known to be operating in Wyoming. Neither Big Hugh nor this woman who called herself Maisie had turned up anywhere. Jake’s fecklessness had forced them to sell the farm, now he had handed over most of what they had left to a couple of con artists in a bar. It was enough to make her want to throttle him as he slept.

After calculating to the penny what they would need to get to Portland, she prodded Jake with a toe. “Come on, mister big-shot lead-mine millionaire. If we’re going to Oregon, we’d best get started.”

Within an hour they were on the road, riding in bitter silence in the Dodge, Red and Molly the collie asleep in the back. As they ground their way up into the Absaroka Mountains and toward Togwotee Pass, the barren landscape changed dramatically. Trees crowded the narrow road, limber pine, whitebark pine, Douglas fir, Colorado blue spruce. They were climbing from one switchback to another toward the Great Divide, nearly ten thousand feet above sea level. The Dodge was in first gear, grinding along with the shift lever vibrating hard. Every few hundred feet they had to stop to let the radiator cool. They were still a quarter mile from the summit when the sedan ground to a halt. The grade was too steep. Jake was about to step out to put blocks behind the wheels when he felt a nudge from in back of the trailer. An empty logging truck was giving them a push, unasked. He waved an arm out the window, dropped the transmission into neutral, let the truck do the rest of the work.

“That’s one thing about this country will never change,” Jake said. “A workin man will always help another workin man.”

Emaline made a face. “Unless he’s the kind of working man who makes his living cheating other men.”

As they neared the summit, Jake put the Dodge in gear and pulled over into a turnout to let the truck pass. The driver honked and waved. Jake tipped his hat in gratitude. All they had to do now was get down off the mountain. At the summit, they found a wide spot in the road to pull over and let Red and Molly out for a romp. As they climbed back into the car, Emaline noticed that the sky had turned the color of dirty dishwater. Jake looked up and declared there was a snowstorm coming.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s almost summer.”