August 14th
The temperature is stifling. The slow breeze provides no relief, it simply circulates the scorching sting as if opening an oven door. The horizon waves in the heat over the knee-high golden-grey prairie grass, bending and swaying with the wafts.
Above the grass is an immersion of the brilliant blue sky, cloudless and vast. Contrails cross high above. A red-tail hovers overhead, spying below for rodents too busy with immediate obsessions to realize the threat from above.
The remoteness of the plain is accented with the sound of grasshoppers, visible above the grass, and harriers and grouse hidden in the dense pasture or within the wooded shelter in the crevasse. A phalanx of grasshoppers and other insects too small to identify, stirs ahead of a herd of mule deer moving north to south. Alert and tentative, heads held high smelling into the wind, ears erect, something disturbs these majestic creatures, turned evacuees, forced to endanger themselves in the open while the sun is high. Suddenly, they rush off as one, cutting east away from the distant slopes toward a ravine where a stand of trees offers shelter.
As the sound of hooves fades, it is replaced by the whine of 2-stroke engines. For endless moments, it’s impossible to determine the bearing of the engines or their heading. The natural setting is entirely destroyed when two helmets appear from the north like warriors marching to battle. The grinding pulse grows louder and moves across the scene slowly as the riders navigate over the bumpy terrain hidden by the thick grass. A brilliant reflection emits off the helmets, shoulder pads and fenders before disappearing out of view to the south as if dropping off a cliff.
They stop at the bottom of a chasm. The lead rider checks his GPS and then signals out with his outstretched right hand to the other. Behind him, the second helmet nods to acknowledge the instruction but the biker also reaches up and unfastens his helmet strap and indicates with his other hand he needs a drink. The din of the idling engines is replaced again by the sound of grasshoppers and other hidden wildlife, absorbing the interruption as if it never occurred.
As the lead rider is about to quench his thirst, he abruptly stops to look around and sniffs the air. His expression of fatigue and joy is replaced with a mix of disgust and nausea. His partner quickly makes the same discovery. They dismount their bikes seeking the source of the stench. The dried river bed hooks west behind a small plateau of fescue. While rounding the stand of grass, they hit a wall of stink, so void of fresh air it causes both instant dizziness. That’s when they notice a chocolate-brown hiking boot and then the motionless body wearing it.
