Amy Raye drove several miles from the campsite, winding her way up steep pitches until she found a level clearing where she could park the truck. She got out and opened the door of the extra cab. It was then that she noticed the small cooler, the one Aaron and Kenny brought along in the truck each day they headed out. They’d pack it with sandwiches and bars so they’d have something to eat as soon as they returned to the vehicle. The cooler had been on the table by the cookstove the night before. Amy Raye had watched Aaron clean out the wrappers and wipe out the crumbs.
Inside were a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a plastic bag filled with beef jerky, a yogurt, and a candy bar. Kenny must have packed the cooler for her after she’d turned in. She ate one of the sandwiches and some of the jerky. She put the other sandwich and the rest of the jerky in her pack. Then she took a couple of bites of the candy bar, left the rest of it, and closed the cooler. As she stood beside the truck, the coldness and dampness of the early morning began to cut through her layers of clothing. She was ready to start hiking. She picked up her orange hat off the seat, but thought better of it. The three of them hadn’t come across any other hunters that week or rangers who would be checking for orange. Getting a shot at an elk with a bow meant getting within close range of the animal; it meant not being seen.
She checked the broadheads on her arrows, made sure they were tight, and secured three arrows into her quiver, the one with the best flight into the first slot. Then she fastened the quiver around her waist and right leg, a certain rhythm to her actions. She secured her pack onto her back. She’d return for the packing frame should she get a shot. She hung her elk bugle and the cow call around her neck. With the headlamp switched to low beam and her bow in her left hand, she headed northward along the ridge about a hundred yards to the place she would veer off, marked by two pinyons that grew like Siamese twins.
As she walked, her thoughts spread toward home and the children and to an afternoon not so far back when reluctantly she had agreed to hike with her husband up Ypsilon Mountain in the Mummy Range of Rocky Mountain National Park. Reluctantly because of the distance that had spread between them, a space as thick as a room full of grief.
But that weekend the children were going to be spending time with Farrell’s sister, and Farrell, an amateur photographer, wanted to capture some still shots in the mountains, wanted his wife to join him. “Come on, the time will be good for us,” he’d said.
The weather had started out pleasant that day, in the midfifties, with a dull sun that made the air feel warmer. Amy Raye had walked behind Farrell, though the trail was wide enough in most places for them to walk side by side.
“Are you hungry? Do you want to stop for lunch?” he’d asked.
“Let’s go a little farther,” she said.
She had fallen in love with Farrell for his kindness, the same kind of nurturing she’d received from her mother. And she fell in love with him because when she first saw him, he was playing the guitar and singing Harry Chapin’s “Mr. Tanner,” and Amy Raye knew all the words, and she sang along, and when she sang, she felt like a young girl all over again.
They’d met in Idaho Springs, a small town just off Interstate 70. She’d given up on college by then. She’d given up on a lot of things, yet somehow she’d managed to get by, and when they’d met, she was getting by all right. She was selling advertisements for the county’s newspaper, the Clear Creek Courant, and working evening shifts at Night Owl, a liquor store run out of a trailer between a Jiffy Mart and a United Methodist Church. She was still young, and street-smart, just twenty-three years old.