Spirit Walk. Jay Treiber

is sacred,” Mondy said, meeting the boy’s eyes as best he could in the dull light. “It keeps the good spirits in and the bad spirits out. It also helps my dreams.”

      “I think you make things up,” Kevin said.

      Mondy laughed. “Well,” he said. “Kind of. I just retool some Indian traditions to my liking. Bet I don’t go to Hell for it, though.”

      Kevin shrugged.

      Mondy laughed again and shook his head. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see.”

      Next morning, to Kevin’s surprise, Mondy tapped on the truck window to wake him. Tom and O.D. stood in the early morning dark warming their hands against a mature fire, the smell of coffee, bacon, and peach cobbler from Hallot’s Dutch oven rich on the air. Kevin tumbled out of the truck cab rubbing his arms for the cold, pulled on his chore jacket, and stomped into his boots. Mondy handed him black coffee in a tin cup, the only one in camp.

      “Coffee gets cold in that,” Mondy pointed out. “Better drink it quick.”

      Kevin sipped the coffee, still hot, and tongued at the grounds as they hit his teeth, not surprised to have gotten the bottom of the pot.

      “I had good dreams last night,” Mondy told him, low enough that the men by the fire would not hear. “I’ll take a buck today.”

      They agreed to split in twos, Kevin and Mondy taking the higher north end of Silver Creek ridge, while the men stayed low and glassed mesquite and ocotillo hillsides. Tom and O.D. would drive the Jimmy along those lower cuts and the boys would take the Ford. They would meet at a water tank at the head of the canyon about noon.

      The east sky had just begun to lighten when Kevin and Mondy made the ten-minute loop back within sight the house and outbuildings of the Snure Ranch, then began the rough climb up the Jeep trail to the top of a ridge that ran in a low-pitch off Starvation Peak. Kevin had warned Mondy twice not to drive too fast and was ignored. Just as they hit the stretch where the road flattened out toward the top, they were taken by the unmistakable sway and grind of a flat tire on gravel road.

      Kevin climbed out first and kicked the deflated tire hard enough to jam his toe. “Shit, fuck, puke,” he said, trying out a particular arrangement of oaths he’d learned from O.D.

      Mondy stepped from the truck to examine the ruined tire, but seemed more taken by the boy’s ire.

      “I told you not to drive so fast,” Kevin said. “This’ll put us half an hour late.”

      Mondy was staring at him. “You’re a feisty little shit when you get mad.”

      “I wanted a chance to kill a deer today,” Kevin said. “We’ll be too late working that canyon.”

      “I didn’t dream a deer for you today.”

      Kevin kicked at the tire again. “Did you dream that fucking thing?”

      Mondy laughed. “Your logic is good, but I think you need to learn more respect for your elders.”

      Kevin went silent.