The warden had called late Monday afternoon, relaying a report he had received from a well tender of a sickly deer near the oil field. Reportedly seen stumbling out of a pond near there, with droopy ears. (The deer, not the tender.)

Well, fall into a near-frozen pond, and I suspect your ears would droop, too. And I'm sure there could be a hundred different reasons for a sick deer. And another hundred for a perfectly healthy deer to look sick when drenched and cold.

But I pass that pond on my second lek count route, so I promised to check it out.

Tuesday, after the desert route, we headed east into the sand dunes, to scout the roads for the next day's route. And to look for a sick deer.

No deer at all by the pond, nor the spring that feeds it. Went up to the dunes themselves, checking the tall sage by the powerline road.

No deer.

And spotted a road I'd never seen before.

Which happens all the time, it seems, but after a quarter-century in the same country, you'd expect to run out of unexplored roads sometime.

A road that led up into the dunes. A faded road, mostly overgrown, like the stabilized dunes. So sandy in places that, if it weren't saturated by Sunday and Monday's wet snows, a regular truck with regular tires would never get through.

But today we did.

And there they were.

The relics.

I'd seen them a few times before, actually. From the air, during deer or antelope surveys. But never knew the route into the dunes where they are hidden.

We parked by the old truck,

stripped of all but the most basic pieces. A vehicle made when most of the body was wood, not metal. And in our dry humidity, the wood is still there. After probably two-thirds of a century. And all the metal anodized.

Anodized, not rusted. Yes, oxidized like rust, but in a kaleidoscope of colours, and almost as hard as the original steel, although probably much more brittle. But sturdy and firm, nothing that will crumble in your fingers.

And nearby, the remains of the automobile.

I don't know my automotive history, so I can't tell you if this was a Model A, a Model T, or a Model J for that matter. But you look inside the carriage, and you can see that that is what it really was. A wooden carriage frame, with metal body parts wrapped around it. A true horseless carriage, made when the craftsmen had learned to make carriages, not cars.

Scrap pieces scattered all around in the sage, some intact, all preserved by the desert. Took me a while to figure out what was different about these old relics. Why they seemed so special compared to all the other old, dead cars strewn about this country.

No bullet holes.

Not a one (although I admit I didn't make a detailed inspection).

There are quite a few antique car bodies abandoned in this part of the world. But they are all riddled with bullet holes. Targets for idle marksmen with high powered rifles, or weighty handguns.

But not these two. Left alone out here, presumably when the steel oil tank near them had exploded. Ruined and abandoned by a fire that left no scars, perhaps? And protected by the loose sands of the faint road that leads into their hole in the dunes.

I suspect antique car restorers might love to get their hands on these, or at least on a few select parts.

They'd best hurry. After 75 years, they'll become protected artifacts of a time gone by, like the carriages they replaced. That's only a decade or so away, I suspect.

It has been six or seven decades, I assume, since some human hand tightened these bolts. Making a sturdy oil tank out of plates of curved steel. Sealed oil-tight by just their careful craftsmanship and the security of these bolts. Tightened in an era without work breaks, sick leave, or vacations. Without committees to oversee standards of quality control.

But tightened with pride.

Pride in one's own workmanship.

The tank is gone now, a contorted shape of mangled steel, anodized like the cars. Looking all the world like it crumpled in on itself. Imploded, rather than exploded.

But the bolts are still here.

They held.