Less than a mile from the house, through the hot shimmering air of the sun-splashed August day, she saw them coming. For a moment, she couldn’t tell what they were, but then they galloped into focus, and she said, “Elk.”
She recalled one of the recent dreams in which, as a child, she had gamboled through a misty dusk, encircled by a herd of elk—one bull, three cows, two calves—as though she had been welcomed into their family. Racing toward her now were dozens of herds, more elk in one place than she had ever seen before. Although she didn’t fear a collision, she stopped the Ford and waited until scores of the magnificent creatures encircled the vehicle, bowing their heads to peer at her through the windows: the males weighing over a thousand pounds, their faces noble, their heads elaborately crowned by four-foot-high racks of antlers; the females smaller, with gentle faces; the sweet-looking calves with limpid eyes.
Joanna was overcome by a sense of wonder that was familiar. She knew, without understanding how she knew, that these herds were not gathered here by the workings of instinct, that they came to greet her, to welcome her home after her long absence. Elk lived eight to twelve years, so none of these had known her when she was a young girl. They hadn’t chosen to celebrate her return; they had been sent by someone, although by whom seemed to be an insoluble mystery.
Her delight was as familiar as the wonder that dazzled her. She suspected now that her intense dreams of communing—even frolicking—with animals were based on memories. For at least three or four years of her childhood, she’d enjoyed an extraordinary relationship with all the creatures of these Montana wilds.
She took her foot off the brake, and as she let the car drift forward, the elk moved with her, phalanxes of them to every side, escorting her to the plateau, past the stables on her left, past the lake on her right, to the house that had inspired the furnishing of her home in Santa Fe.
A man stood on the veranda, at the head of the steps. He was about five feet ten, stocky but not fat, dressed in jeans and a white shirt.
Joanna came to a stop in front of the house and switched off the engine and opened the driver’s door. When she stepped out of the Explorer, she found herself standing beside an elk, a bull, which was five feet high at its shoulder, a half ton of muscle, its head looming over her on its long neck, its antlers almost beyond her reach. The elk snorted as though in greeting, and she smoothed one hand along its flank.
A cow with a black mane craned her neck to smell Joanna’s hair, and a calf nuzzled her hand as she moved slowly among the creatures, away from the Explorer and toward the house. A few snorts, here and there a scuffling of hooves: The gathered multitude mostly stood in silence, as if they were as enchanted with her as she was with them.
At the foot of the steps, she addressed the man on the veranda. “My name’s Joanna Chase. I used to live here a long time ago.”
He came down to the flagstone walkway to meet her, and they shook hands as he said, “Wyatt Rider.”
In a tailored shirt, gray designer jeans, a pair of soft-green Common Projects sneakers, and with a Rolex on his left wrist, he for sure wasn’t a rancher.
“What is all this, what’s going on here?” he asked, indicating the herds with a sweep of his hand. “Are they migrating or what?”
She shook her head. “Not this time of year. Right now, warm as it is, they should be higher in the mountains. Their mating season starts in a couple weeks and lasts into November. When the weather changes—and only then—they come down from the heights to graze the valleys and lower fields.”
His hair was black, his eyes as purple-blue as gentian petals, his stare uncommonly direct. “It almost seems like they came here to see you. Has this happened before?”
As she sought a response to parry his question, one of the bulls startled them with a loud bugling sound that began on a low note but quickly escalated to a high pitch, ending in a forceful grunt. At once, the other bulls took up this cry, and a few of the cows began to make a sound half like the baa of a sheep, half like the whinny of a horse, and the day was full of raucous noise.
Joanna laughed because she’d heard this before and suddenly recalled winter mornings when she had sneaked away from the house to join a family of elk. She had tried to imitate their calls, but her reedy little-girl voice had elicited from them looks of pity.
When the bugling stopped, the herds turned away from the house as one and headed west, up into the hills, toward the forest and the higher meadows from which they had come out of season.