In the snowy twilight, Indian Ridge was a whitish-gray wall against the deeper gray of the sky. Under a foot and a half of new snow, the horse trail traversed the face of the ridge and crossed at a saddle where a line of dark trees showed dimly through the storm. I unslung the rifle from my shoulder and placed it against a downed tree. Sitting on the log, I scanned the escarpment thoroughly with binoculars.
Pushed when they sense a severe storm, the elk that have been grazing the high parks on the gentler west slope of Indian Ridge will cross in herds, seeking the lower elevations and the forest of black timber beneath the sheltering bulk of the mountain. Often they cross in such numbers and oblivious intensity of purpose that a hunter waiting a hundred yards from their line of travel can choose, almost at leisure, between ten or a dozen six-, seven-, and eight-point bulls. This evening there were no elk on the face of the ridge, and no tracks showing that they had crossed. Perhaps the storm was not going to be strong enough, or perhaps the elk had crossed a mile to the north, where the head of Roaring Fork Creek makes a broad indentation in the flank of the mountain.
It was just past five o'clock; it would take thirty minutes to climb the ridge, and within an hour or less depending on the weather, it would be too dark to shoot. From my vantage point beneath Indian Ridge, it was a four-mile walk to Fontenelle Creek where I had left the jeep and the snow was becoming steadily deeper; already it rose halfway between the tops of my boots and the knees of my woolen pants, fine and dry and light, not yet an impediment. But that could change very quickly. Reluctantly, I tucked the field glasses into the top of my orange coat, took up the rifle from the log with its thickening cap of snow, and began following my own partly covered tracks downhill through the darkening woods.
The forest kept separating around small irregular clearings, which I skirted watchfully, keeping just inside the tree line. The snow completely muffled my footfalls while making no sound of its own. Very slowly, quietly, I drew back the rifle bolt and shoved it forward again to place a shell in the firing chamber. Then I went on, moving three steps and pausing, extending the pause, and moving three steps more. Suddenly I was on one knee in the snow, trying to place the butt of the rifle against my shoulder. This should have been as unconscious an action as chambering the shell had been, but I had injured my left shoulder in a fall from a horse the week before.
Twenty yards ahead, the tan hindquarters of a standing elk protruded from around a bend in the trial. I guessed a cow, but I could not be sure, and no responsible hunter will shoot into the rear end of an animal. I took one slow step forward and the elk was gone; through a gap in the tress I saw her flash, antlerless, against a piece of the gray sky.
I rose from the snow and went on, pressing the rifle firmly under my arm. Beyond the woods was a park divided by a hogback of exposed rock and falling away along its south aspect into a steep draw. The trail ran down to the draw, crossed at the head of it, and entered a stand of tall pines. At their dark center the storm was soundless and the snowflakes fell in straight lines to tie forest floor.
Just as I broke out among the slender young pines at the
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