She splits the groin muscles and tendons between the ball and sockets of the hips and dismantles the haunches. The woman struggles a hind quarter into her pack and ties the leather straps down. She glances around for predators. The sun has glided further west. Two in the morning and still high above the horizon.

When she left Colorado she'd headed north, criss-crossing the Divide. She hiked much of the way and hitched when she came to a road. At first, the sheer adrenaline kept her from thinking of him. Small talk with drivers pushed her thoughts away from the man. But by the end of her trip there'd be no more roads or drivers. The final stretch would cross the Brooks Range.

A prospector on his way to Wiseman dropped her off on the upper banks of the Slate. Before she could get out of his rusty International, he turned to her.

You could ride with me up to my place, he said. His eyes moved up and down her body in a way that turned her stomach. A smile full of rotted teeth formed inside his beard.

Why would I do that?

He shrugged. Entertain me for a while. Make some money for your trip.

She was already out of the cab. I don't need money where I'm going. The woman slammed the door and lifted her pack out of the bed before he could drive away with it.

But instead of driving off, he sat behind the wheel and watched as she shouldered her pack, his pickup sputtering, threatening to cut out. As she walked around the backside of his truck she could see his face through the rear window, his tongue moving inside his mouth, sucking on those rotten teeth.

The woman felt for the knife at her side and shook her head as she hiked off the road in the direction of the mountains, her eyes never leaving his.

When the prospector shifted into gear, his pickup slowly rattled away, and she was finally alone on the edge of the last true wilderness. After his truck had disappeared down the road, and the dust settled, she gazed back up at the granite stretching on forever. The raw, naked peaks. And this time those towering, nameless mountains inspired something resembling fear. Nothing overwhelming at first. Just a sense of unease creeping in around her like the mist reaching down from those ridges. Not fear of dying but a new sensation. Being so small and alone in that vastness, maybe.

She shook her head as she left the road and picked her way across the muskeg between two clumps of dwarf spruce. She figured four long days to cross the Brooks Range and drop down to the North Slope where she'd find the camp and meet up with the old man, his grandson, and the Inuits who'd taught her to hunt the Arctic when she first travelled up this way.

As she finishes tying the hind quarter down, she strains to shoulder the fifty pound load, and bends to pick up her rifle. The men will be waiting back at camp and she'll need help packing out the rest of the meat before wolves or bears come. She drags the shoulder, ribcage, and skull between two boulders but blood still leaks from what's left of the caribou and something will sniff it out sooner or later.

Fastening the sternum and hip straps tight across her body, she feels the full weight. All that meat—pulsing with blood an hour ago—now heavy and motionless as stone.