She looks to the north. Tundra stretches toward the horizon, kissing blue sky hundreds of miles away. The woman makes sure her rifle's locked and loaded and turns south toward camp three miles back. She'll be lucky if there's anything left of the carcass when she returns with help. The woman hadn't wanted to shoot a caribou so far from camp, but it's a lean year, and this was the closest kill she could make. She draws a long breath, grips her shoulder straps, and heads out across the tussocks.

She grew up knowing the sting of her father's fists and belt, Mother standing by only to watch and cry. Or simply turn the other way. When her father was through, her only escape was running into the woods behind their house till darkness forced her back home. She grew to prefer solitude and as soon as she left she dropped the family name. Dropped her own name, too. She bought an old pickup with a topper over the bed, left that dead-end railroad town and headed west. New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada. She never belonged in any town. Drifted all over, never leaving the mountains. She felt uncomfortable on the Plains, the high prairie, even the Front Range. She had to be surrounded by rocky peaks or she'd start to unravel.

Finding work when she needed it, the woman drifted up to Wyoming and Idaho. She broke down in Montana and stayed for a while but the north finally called her and somewhere in Yukon Territory she met the Inuits—the ones who taught her to track caribou—and traveled with them into Alaska.

Caribou—the last great herd hunt—thrilled her more than elk or moose and she made a point to return to Alaska every summer. In exchange for her work, the Inuits offered her a place to stay and she always pitched her tent alone on the outskirts of their camp, learning all they would teach about tracking, hunting, and medicine.

When she'd left Colorado this last time she'd wanted the man from Pueblo to come—the first time she'd ever wanted anyone to join her. She remembered the careful way his fingers worked the soil of her garden, never bending stalks or disturbing roots. How her horses trusted his hands immediately. That's why, at first, she couldn't figure out why he hadn't come with her. But by mid afternoon of that next day the waiting was driving her crazy. Sitting still. Something she'd never been good at. Her left eye twitched. And she knew she had to go without him. Especially since he said he wasn't coming, that this time he'd had enough, and she believed him. She'd thought of driving all the way to Pueblo and realized she'd never even known where he lived.

Selfish. And now it was too late.

She shouldn't have told him about her Alaska trip like that. While he was still recovering. Still hurt. In a way it was her fault he was injured. She'd raced off ahead of him, leaving him in the darkness to ski unfamiliar ground.

Two days after his accident she broke it to him. I'm heading north in a week, she'd said. The Brooks Range. I've decided I want to be there when the caribou come back. Hunt those great herds one last time. She'd expected him to be happy, to ask to come with her. But instead his face drained of color.

You've decided? he said. When did you decide this?

She told him it had been coming for a while. That she loved wintering in Colorado but needed her fix of true wilderness. She asked him to come with her. Hoping he'd soften and change his mind.