Buzz stood on the bed, balancing on the hood with both arms, rifle slung on his back. He reached into his shirt pocket and took his Camels, his Ronson chromium-plated cigarette lighter strapped to the pack with a fat rubber band. He quickly tilted his head down, trying to align cigarette to flame as the truck lurched. It took him five tries.

Progress was slow, the road no wider than the truck now.

I can walk faster than this, Aaron thought.

As if reading his mind, Buzz tapped the truck and Leaf slowed down.

“This is it,” Buzz said. “We can make better time on foot.”

Leaf spit onto the road. “There’s a turnout ahead. Five more minutes, eh?”

After several minutes of verifiable truck abuse, they reached the pullout, no more than a six-foot-wide gravel swath just off the main “road.” Soon the men were slinging on their packs and canteens. Leaf draped a pair of black Zeiss binoculars around his neck.

Once comfortable with their gear, they hiked up the narrow road, boots trudging. The road carved around the base of a hulking granite mountain, then narrowed into a sliver.

“You always hear about the end of the road, fellas,” Leaf said.

They chuckled and Buzz gave him a pat on the back.

The hounds sniffed the ground wildly, and Leaf threw an arm high, pointing up the granite mountain.

“Go get her boys. Go! Get on, get on!” He unlatched their collars and the hounds sprinted away, noses to the ground. Leaf watched them with the eyes of a loving parent as they hustled up the outcroppings.

They followed the hounds throughout the late morning, making acceptable time for such rugged terrain. They climbed each granite shelf with labored breath, paused, and moved on to the next. When they reached the top, Buzz looked behind them.

“I’ve seen some views,” Buzz said. “But this?”

“We must’ve climbed at least fifteen hundred feet,” Aaron said.

“Wait till you see the view of the other valley, eh?” Leaf said with a gleam in his eye.

A group of stunted white pine clung to the mountain, growing out of a soil-catching depression in the granite. The men hiked across to the southern rim, glorious, cool wind rustling their hair.

“Tell me what you think of that, eh?” Leaf said.

Fifteen hundred feet below them a forest of virgin hemlock, red pine, and white pine choked the valley full. A series of granite mountains punched through the virgin forest, and trees clung to the domes, thinning as elevation increased.

“My God, Leaf. My God! We haven’t gotten these yet.”

“No we have not,” Leaf said. “And by the looks of it, we may never. The company doesn’t want to shoulder the cost of exploding all this granite to get a road in here.”

“Jesus,” Aaron said. “Is this how it used to look before us?”

“Yup,” Leaf said.