Conversations are hard for Pop, but they're hard work for me, too, so much relentless effort to connect, to relate, to love and to feel loved by him. I wanted to yell, to grab his shoulders and shake the news out of him, or at least shake him into being interested in me, in the sage grouse, in anything. But I can't do that. He's my pop, and I love him, and what good would it do exactly?

“Fine,” I said. “Boring conversation anyway.”

Pop glared at me, hummed a few bars of the Star Wars theme, and ran over my foot with his electric wheelchair as he rolled toward the bathroom.

I DECIDED TO DRIVE out and ask Henson's permission to do the spring count myself, to try to get eyes on the lek. Henson was sitting alone on the porch swing, drinking from a can of Bud in a green foam cozy. A tiny pink bike, the training wheels bent so crooked they didn't sit flush with the ground, leaned against the porch steps, but there was no sign of a child. Henson is a tall man, broad-shouldered, but the way he had his back to the ribboned beauty of the sunset behind him, the way the house loomed dark, surrounding him, the way the porch spread out, empty, in front of him, he looked impossibly small to me. He took another swallow of beer, and I saw a pale strip of skin, tender-soft, right where a wedding band would be. For a fleeting minute, I felt sorrier for Henson than I did for myself.

Henson stood up as I approached. He smiled, but it was guarded. “Norah,” he said, nodding a greeting.

“Sorry to show up unannounced,” I said. “I didn't have a number.”

“All right,” he said, motioning toward a plastic Adirondack chair. “Take a load off.”

He reached into a small cooler and offered me a beer, which I took, even though I don't much care for beer. I heard an echo of Pop's advice: When you're trying to sweet-talk someone, Norah, you take what they offer you.

He asked about Pop. I shrugged. “Dunno,” I said.

We sat silently for an awkward minute, drinking beer.

“Feels like you're here to ask me for something I'm not likely to give.” He looked at me directly. He had eyes like robin's eggs, blue speckled with brown. They softened the rough of the rest of him. “I've seen the sage grouse out there. I guess you probably want some kind of easement.”

My heart sank a little. Not all ranchers are Pop's kind of rancher. Some find these birds obnoxious. Some refuse to pay grazing fees out of some misguided idea about their frontier heritage, about what the nation owes them. Some have organized, call themselves “sagebrush rebels.” They've threatened BLM agents at gunpoint. They've invaded National Wildlife Refuges. They've elected sheriffs all over the West who believe the Constitution gives them full rights to ignore federal and state laws. Even Pop, no friend of the feds, thought the sagebrush rebels were a dangerous fringe. If that's who Henson was, I already had my answer.