Sam turned the car into Silver’s main street and headed for the Petro-Canada. Cruising down the wide street, its verge piled high with wedges of old black snow, always made Sam feel like he was being covered in warm syrup. It was comforting. It was safe. It was also breathtakingly beautiful. At the eastern end of the street Wolf Mountain stabbed into the sky, a pyramid of seemingly impenetrable rock. Since Silver was nearly five thousand feet above sea level, and Wolf Mountain officially eight-and-a-half thousand, the stone cliffs that towered over the town were pushing four thousand feet. But its fortress was a lie. The climber braving those crags would be crestfallen to discover that the mountain was all bravado and had been tamed several times over.

Not only did the railroad run right through its guts, but its gentler western flanks were blanketed with ski trails and restaurants, hiding from the town as though Silver might notice the mountain had gone soft and lose its temper.

But to the non-skiing tourists wandering around the sunny sidewalks, looking in gift shops and killing time until their partners came down off the slopes, Wolf Mountain was picture postcard wilderness.

Sometimes Sam thought the mountain looked like it sealed off the street like a gate, even though it sat at least three miles away from town. In fact the very first night he and Katie spent in Silver together, he’d had a nightmare that he was running, lungs bursting, trying to escape from the town, or something in the town, and the mountain kept blocking his exit with a wall of living rock. Weird dream. Weird, since he loved Silver. And he loved Wolf Mountain.

They turned into the gas station and pulled in to a pump. Vince looked up from the till and waved a solemn greeting to them through the window. Billy leapt out and ran into the shop while Sam watched the pump eating up his dollars. Next time he looked he saw Billy inside, earnestly spinning the cassette rack.

A hand-written sign on top of the carousel read, Truck drivers’ delight. All country tapes half-price. This week only. We must be crazy!!!

Vince sure was making a mark on his patch. The customer might always be right, but as far as Vince was concerned the customer must also be blind. Day-glo stickers alerting the driver to the great offers now available in everything from mufflers to coffee speckled the interior and exterior of his booth like a fungus.