I didn’t know if the meat had helped, but the way Kona moved in and out from the rock, traveling farther away each time, I could tell he knew we were there to work. I tried to think strategically, to imagine where a lion or coyote might drag an elk’s remains, especially an elk’s skull, which a lion could easily sever from the spine. Lion, and coyote for that matter, wanted to protect any cache they had found. They’d no doubt drag it to a grove of trees or tall shrubs. And when different animals were involved, the remains of a carcass might be spread up to a hundred yards in any direction. We’d covered at least a fifty-yard radius and come up with nothing. I’d have to cover a greater area. About sixty yards out, Kona uncovered a rib bone that could have been a couple of months old. I wasn’t sure if it had belonged to a young elk or a large deer, as the bone had been broken in half, and the marrow had been cleaned out. I knew that within one to two days of Amy Raye taking down an elk, even with that early snowfall, crows, ravens, magpies, vultures, and coyotes would have been all over whatever was left of the carcass. They could have cleaned it up long before we got to this location, and before the heavy snow accumulation. The past winter I’d come upon a deer carcass, and just as I did, a whole flock of ravens lifted off it. They’d been holding back approximately twelve to fifteen magpies that then clambered over and into the carcass.
I looked at Kona. He was lying in the snow and chewing happily on the bone. He rolled onto his back as if to expose his belly to the warm sun. Even if the rib belonged to an elk, it wouldn’t tell us anything without us finding the skull. And though we needed to make use of our time, I’d worked up a good sweat and wanted to replenish. I removed my pack and my fleece layer. Using my snowshoe and moving my leg in a sweeping motion, I smoothed out a space on the ground and sat with my snowshoes propped in front of me. I ate a handful of jerky and some trail mix, and drank from my hydration reservoir. And then there was quiet. Kona had stopped chewing on the bone. His eyes were closed and he was resting peacefully in a bright patch of sunlight. And in that quiet, I could hear the faint thrumming of the oil jack pumps from far off to the west of me. I thought back to the past summer’s field school at the Weatherman Draw site. In addition to Glade and me, the team had consisted of six college students and Martin, the field crew supervisor. During those two weeks, we’d spent our days with trowels and line levels and dustpans and brushes excavating the cliff dwelling. In the evenings we built a fire on one of the bald cliffs and waited for nightfall, and as our voices settled into not much more than a whisper, we heard the faint rhythm of the pumps. Martin told the students they were nighthawks, but Glade said they were the drums of the Fremonts, and the students believed him. We hadn’t seen any oil drills in the canyon. We hadn’t seen any sign of civilization. To those six students, the drums felt spiritual. I imagined these things as I sat in the snow that day. Imagined the ancestors of this land all around me. “Where is she?” I said.
Kona raised his head and looked at me.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said. But then I stood, pulled my fleece back over my head, and secured my pack onto my shoulders.
We worked the area for at least another hour and had moved close to seventy yards northeast of the rock. And then Kona was onto something in a cluster of scrub oak. He wagged his tail and blew air quickly in and out of his snout. Jutting from the ground into the branches were the tips of elk tines. I began to clear more snow from around the base of the shrublike trees. My shovel hit upon a hard surface. I cleared more snow and removed a rock. Then my shovel struck something else, and that was when we found the skull. It had been chewed on and the soft matter had already decomposed, but the skin still remained, having been freeze-dried. Overall the skull was in good condition, with the small, four-point horns still intact, and a bullet hole just below the right eye socket. We’d found it, and I knew it was hers, knew it in the way my pulse shimmied over my skin. I thought I would feel exhilarated if we found the skull, but instead I felt a soft sadness take hold, and something akin to admiration and awe for this woman whom we’d been looking for. She’d wanted to fill her tag before she and her friends headed back to Evergreen. That was all. And there was something pure and simple and courageous about that intention. She’d gone into this area alone, brought down a bull elk with a bow during the third rifle season, successfully tracked him over this complicated terrain. Amy Raye wasn’t a large woman. To take down an elk, she’d have to have pulled a draw weight of at least forty-five to fifty pounds, and done so within close range of the elk, no more than twenty yards, thirty yards at most if it was a perfectly placed shot. I’d never heard of a bow hunter taking down an elk in rifle season before. The elk were too spooked by all the guns going off to get that close. In Amy Raye’s tent, Dean had found a book on that, on how to hunt an elk with a bow during rifle season, and another book on the history of the Continental Divide.