Ella bent for the syringe in the dirt. She’d dropped it at his astounding stupidity. She picked it up along with an old rusted buckle that had lain there for a century. Stop trying, she might’ve told him. It’ll end in tears: Grannie’s line.

The calf bounded up when the lasso loosed. He was surprised to be free, leaped away, wove toward mother to nuzzle and suck. They hate humans, of course.

Grannie bellowed for more coal. She was tall and angular under her black umbrella. She whistled and Ella sprinted, always thinking reward came with goodness and obedience.

All three were recalled to this memory now—each to their own vivid versions of it—Ginny, as she ran the ridge to the Old Swede’s cabin, Ella, as she packed up Elk Valley camp breakfast, Dan, as he saddled mules in a separate universe just steps away, hurrying the job to get to the cabin sooner, an error he knew he’d pay for later—and all their lives too, they would recall it, but none knew all but you and me.

Once Grannie told the Dear Ones: A dog is not wild like a wolf or coyote. He’s an invention of man, a long-standing hybrid. No such thing as a purebred dog. He was born of ancient garbage pits. No real wolf would live on shit and rats. The neediest wolves tolerated men, ate from their hands. They guarded the town when the men were gone. The dog does not exist without man though man exists without the dog. It is an uneven arrangement, and the dog has not forgotten the debt. For this reason, the dog can always be trusted. Always listen to the dog.

She barely heard.

When she found the cob was missing, she spun, forgot the man in the tent. She stared out over the top of the Switchbacks at the morning gray mounds of the world below. Elk Valley, a twist of camp smoke far off. She called to the cob like a dog. When he didn’t come, she ran. She followed his hoofprints next to boot prints from the mud at the little lake.

The ridge declined toward the Old Swede’s. The roof lay in a hollow of yellow bluffs. She shuffle-ran, then ran, then walked when she couldn’t run. In the trees she tripped and tumbled. They’d slept on the shelf in the Old Swede’s rafters as children, a frightening-exhilarating coffin space, the rotting wood so near the nose, had been hoisted up on a father’s shoulders, or granddad’s if fathers were in short supply, uncles, toes in clavicles, ankles to necks, little hands reaching to catch the beam, sweating from the too-hot woodstove.