It's been a couple hours since we let the balloons go, and we're working our way west through the sand dune country. In wet years, these small rolling hills of sage and rabbitbrush are filled with antelope. But this summer, all is dry. Even the little square pond hidden in a pocket. We find only a few stray bucks and does, maybe a mile between antelope.

There is no water, so how can they live here?

We pass the old strutting ground site and turn right, headed towards the Continental Divide, and I first catch a whiff.

Smoke. The smell of burning sage. Knew the BLM was going to be burning this fall. I wonder what piece of country is being devastated to make more grass for cows. I stop and look for the usual thick plume of smoke.

And there is none.

I use the side mirror to see behind us, as the four balloons block my window view.

And see blue smoke. Behind us.

Not on the horizon behind us, but trailing behind us, like a dust plume.

Ohhhh, chit!

I know what that is.

Slam on the brakes, step out the door and drop down to look under the truck, directly below my seat. Where the skidplate is that acts as a scythe as you drive the overgrown two tracks, cropping off and packing vegetation up under the frame. Next to the hot exhaust system.

And I see flames.

Not the orange glowing embers of heated sagebrush or grass I expected, but bona fide, flickering flames.

Ohhhh chit!

We're on fire!

First thought is to get the heelers out. Which is none too difficult, since they're standing right there at the open door, hoping for a chance at a drag race.

I tell them 'okay'. And the masked heeler bails out, dashing down the dirt track behind us.

Her maskless sister, however, gets to the edge of the seat, and sees the smoke billowing out below.

And turns around.

And cowers in the passenger seat. I lunge in at her, and grab the nearest leg. Which quickly jerks free, as she vaults herself into the backseat with the four balloons. I lunge again, and grab a collar. Dragging her outside and throwing her clear into the sage.

Get the hell away from the god-damned truck!

Then it's back in to grab the thick leather gloves on the front seat, and the 16-oz water bottle.

The one with a nipple top.

Crawl under the truck, and one quick squirt, half the flames are gone in a burst of steam.

But the water is gone, too.

I reach into the bed of the truck and grab the handy piece of rebar with the bent handle. Kept expressly for this purpose.

And notice there is only one, masked, heeler watching all this.

As I poke and prod at the glowing embers and debris under the truck, I hope the little maskless heeler is just snooping around on the other side of the rig.

First good poke, and a huge ball of orange falls out from beside the frame.

You know, right where the non-metal fuel line is.

As it hits the ground, the grass there immediately catches fire, and now I have another problem.

My truck's on fire. Parked on a fire.

I quickly snuff the new flames with my gloves, and jerk the 6-gallon jug from the bed. Which cannot reach this glowing grass directly, so I have to pour with one hand and splash the water on the ground fire under the truck with the other.

Once that is out, I see what has to be done, what I should have done when I stopped. The truck needs to be a foot and half to the left, so the burning sage and grass falls on the bare dirt rut, not thick, dry grass.

As soon as I move to get in the truck, the masked heeler beats me to it.

I drag her out, and tell her to stay. Noticing that there is only one heeler trying to ride with me.

And she flies back into the smoking truck.

Two more times I evict her, and finally she stays out in the sage, blocked behind the water jug.

The truck parked straddling bare dirt, the rest of the smoking grass and rabbitbrush is soon knocked off the skidplate, and the danger is gone.

And so is the little maskless heeler.

She's run away. Again.

I should have used my head, and looked for her tracks, but I didn't. She almost certainly bailed off behind us, straight east, so once I got her sister and the water jug loaded, that's where we went. There's a woven-wire fence two miles down the road that should stop her.

Unless, of course, she crawls under the gate. We need to get to the gate before she does.

As we drive slowly east, scanning for her blaze orange bandanna as we go, I think I see a flash of orange off in the dunes on the left. But by the time I get the scope up, there is nothing.

In these dunes, you could hide a thousand heelers within a mile and only see a hundred or so.

As we reach the fence, I am dismayed to see what I should have remembered. A hundred meters south of the gate, the fence turns due east as well. If she gets around that corner, it is three miles of open pasture before she hits another fence (by the balloons).

But that isn't the biggest worry.

That pasture is long and narrow, enclosing a straight rocky rim.

Full of snakes.

Rattlesnakes. Like the one we ran over not three hours before.

When the state university decided to study rattlesnakes, out of the whole state they came here, to this pasture, to study the huge den that is on the south side of that rim.

Oh, mannnnn.

Dozens of times I scan the slope of that rim, making sure there isn't a little dog scaling over to the south side.

Again, the brain not functioning, I should check for tracks at the gate. But I can see the fenceline to the south and east for a mile or more, and a half-mile north. If the flash of orange I saw was real, she may be headed back to the gate we used, a mile north.

I race back west, then back track north, and east again. To the second gate.

No heeler.

There's a small backhoe parked on the top of the dunes to the west, where there is apparently another new fence coming in that I know nothing about. When she was lost before, I found her by a billboard. The closest thing around that looked like a building.

We check the backhoe.

No heeler.

Now it's west along the crest of the rim, which happens to be the Atlantic branch of the Continental Divide.

No heeler.

We follow the Divide around to where it curves south, ending up a mile west of where we lost her.

Lots of antelope, both sides of the Divide, but no heeler.

Again, south along the Divide, then east to another old lek site. Now we're due south of where we lost her, again by a mile.

No heeler.

The damn balloons keep blocking my view out the side and back, but that problem is quickly rectified, sending those four colourful, cheerful apparitions up into the sky without a second glance.

By now, it's been an hour. 'Despondent' would be a good description of my mood. There literally is no water in this pasture, and the fences are sheep-tight, and almost heeler-tight. It's six miles wide and eight miles deep. It's eight miles east to the nearest public road, 14 miles to anything to the west. Home is twenty miles south, and there's nothing for 30 miles north.

We're in the middle of nowhere. She may last four days and four nights in freezing winter, but at least she could eat snow. How long can she last here, with no water? Maybe a day?

Not even trying to think about the snakes, coyotes, and yes, lions here.

We may have to get a plane up again. Before a day passes.

And then it hits me.

The sooner the better. Before she runs off too far. And I happen to know the pilot is free until one o'clock, 'cause he was trying to get me up to fly elk today.

Up here on the lek, I have cell signal. And call.

He knows this ranch well. Is there anyplace nearby he can land and pick me up?

Nope. The county road eight miles east. Take me an hour to get there. She could be anywhere within 48 square miles by then.

Then it hits me.

I don't need to be in the plane. In fact, it'd be better if I wasn't, if I was here on the ground.

Can you fly now?

Finally I am starting to think. We return to the small charred spot on the road, and look for tracks.

Nothing going west. That at least is clear. But some idiot drove on the road going east. I circle our burn spot in the sage, finding no tracks five meters out. I move out to 10-15 meters, and circle again.

No tracks. She must have gone east.

We drive east a ways, to a rutted spot where I had to veer the truck out of the tire lanes. And there, in the soft sand, are tracks. Too soft and deep to tell what species made the little dents in the dirt, but I know that pattern well. Followed that damn little pattern for four hours in snow one freezing February night.

She went east.

As I load into the truck, I hear and see the plane on the horizon behind us, so I am unsurprised when we are buzzed.

We get to the junction as the plane circles to the north. I check for tracks again, and there one is. Just one. Going east. Towards the first gate we checked. The pilot sees my work, and passes us going east. And banks right after he crosses the fence. And circles north again, along the fence, the other gate, and then off to the backhoe.

Only now do I feel any confidence. Nine hundred heelers might hide from a man in a truck on these dunes, but a plane above will see 950 out of a thousand.

Since he banked at the fence, I decide to continue east, to check for tracks at the gate, and the corner. Keeping one eye in the mirror, lest the plane start to wag its wings, or circle tightly.

Yes, we have our cell phones, but I have no signal at all on this side of the Divide. We're back to the aerial communication signals of the early last century.

As I slowly crawl east, I again scan the steep rocky hillside out our right window.

And see a red heeler. In blaze orange bandanna, trotting the other way. Not a hundred meters south.

Whether she was turned by the plane, or the fence, or was just headed back to where she thought the truck was, I do not know. But there she is!

I skid to a stop, get out, and happily call her name. And the invitation, "Load up!"

And she turns. And trots right towards me. Like this is a normal routine.

Happy, happy day!

And then I hear it.

The plane. Circling back, our way. I look to my right, and there it is, bearing down on us. Ona line maybe a hundred meters south.

Ohhh, shit!

He doesn't see her.

If the plane gets here first...

My God, to lose her when she's so close! I coax her on in, urging her in, hoping she'll get to me before the plane scares her off. At the last second I lunge at her, causing her to drop in panic, and scoop her up into my arms.

And wave like a madman to the pilot as he passes directly over us.

The plane circles high, and wags its wings at us before turning south, to home.

The masked heeler naturally challenges her miscreant sister in the truck, who quickly downs a full bowl and half of water.

And then, west we go, to the Atlantic branch of the Continental Divide.

To finish our route.

Noting that I found her 1.7 miles east of where we had our fire.

A half-hour later, on that Divide, the cell phone rings.

The pilot.

"You know, if you're going to have me out looking for something, it's hardly fair to hide it in your arms!"

We agree to fly elk this evening, and then it is back to work we go.

Back on route. Three of us.

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