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On this drizzly June day the whole place smelled of damp and rat droppings. Heat and light began to revive her, and overlaid the rickety rooms with a sense of romance. Shelter from the storm, Anna thought as she peeled off the layers of gray and green and pulled on dry fleecy pants and a top with a hood. Given time—and a decent red wine—she believed she might even come to like the place. The bang of the front door announced the arrival of the 3rd Sister’s crew, and Anna yelled a superfluous “Come in” as Hawk, Holly, and Denny Castle gusted into the outer office.

As she entered the familiar channel between Amygdaloid Island and Belle Isle, and saw the ranger station snugged up safe from storms at the foot of the moss-covered cliff, she allowed herself one short dream of cholla cactus and skies without milky veils of moisture, of a sun with fire to it and food hotter even than that. After the lion incident at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Anna had felt the need to move on, to start over. At heart, the Park Service was a bureaucracy and, in the wake of the discoveries, there had been much talk and little action.

They’d’ve had to. Not a sign. The bastards left us sloshing up to our knees in bilge. They probably heard the rainbow were running in Siskiwit and couldn’t wait. When my dad used to bring me out here—oh, twenty years ago at least . ” Anna let him ramble, even remembering to grunt or sigh—listening noises her sister had taught her. “It comforts people,” Molly had said. ” The noises turned out to be worth a thousand times what Molly had paid AT&T for the phone time to teach her. A ranger could get more information from a few well-placed “oh reallys” and “uh-huhs” than from an hour’s by-the-book interrogation.