A year ago today I spent dawn and early morning looking for the little maskless heeler.

Futilely.

Then joined two game wardens in extracting my truck (and yes, it took both their trucks to break through the drifts to reach it), and then killing and loading up the second elk.

This afternoon, however, there was hardly any snow on the road. Met a crew of surveyors that had been out and about marking uranium claims with their 4x4 wood posts. The country is that open.

And, unlike a year ago, today I had two heelers with me. But it still might be an unlucky place. Stopped just as we crossed the transcontinental railroad to glass for antelope and elk (and seeing none), and then started up again, my window mostly down.

Little maskless heeler was immediately on my lap, hanging out the window, eager for smells and a chance to run. Not to be outdone, her masked sister shoved herself onto my lap to follow suit.

And pushed her sister out the window.

Fortunately we were going slow (else the window would have been closed), but still a moment of panic as I slowed the truck and watched the heeler hit the ground and roll just outside my door.

Thirty seconds later she was back in the truck, shaking it off, and ready to run.

In the course of the afternoon, we found a couple hundred antelope, but no elk. (Unless you count the bones of #8.) And the sisters managed five or six drag races.

I offered them a chance for one last race at the interstate gate. Interestingly, the masked one dashed off as expected, but her smaller sister slunk into the passenger seat and dropped her ears.

I know from backtracking her footprints that she went through this gate the night before I found her last winter, and then passed under the interstate. I saw nothing in her tracks to suggest panic, but clearly something happened here.

Apparently we aren't the only ones with bad memories of those four days and nights.