The side-by-side ATV is parked behind the steel-rimmed tank when we round the final bend in the faint track. Two camouflage-clad men come to attention as we emerge, my friend, Jason, drives the ATV suicidally, slewing around corners and jolting across washouts. I see one of them turn and speak to the other, realizing the one spoken to holds a tree stand. The stand belongs to Jason. The man drops the stand and starts toward his ATV in a slow saunter. Jason guns the motor and slides to a stop, cutting him off from his machine, killing the ATV. Jason vaults from the ATV and is in the man's face revealing a side of Jason that I'm completely unfamiliar with.

The man Jason berates outweighs him a good 30 pounds but he doesn't seem to have taken that into account, listing the indictments against him, slipping hands into leather gloves retrieved from a hip pocket while locking eyes with the obviously alarmed man. It's amazing to observe how lucid Jason's accounts follow. The other man simply offers pointed curses in way of denial, veins in the man's neck beginning to stand out as fury replaces shock.

I step from the ATV as the guilty party's partner approaches slowly, cautiously, eyes narrowed in a gesture I discern as menacing. Then there's a scuffle and I hear a meaty impact--I don't know who swings first--and whirl to see Jason and the man going at each other, landing powerful blows until they fall into a messy pile, gouging and grunting. The other man's coming faster now, bigger than I've realized. It's too much to comprehend. It's complete lunacy. I step to place myself between him and the dustup.

Jason moved down from Idaho a couple years ago to take over the environmental end of things. Jason was brand new to the mine when I was called to handle some mechanical difficulty, malfunctioning pumps or such. That's how we met. I noticed an archery catalog on his desk and we started talking, soon sharing stories about elk hunting. He had a lot more to tell, coming from Idaho where you can actually hunt elk every year; a concept as foreign as glaciers to Arizona residents. I hadn't drawn an archery elk tag in something like 10 years. In any case Jason and I became immediate friends.

Jason became eligible for resident status the following spring, submitting a separate application because I had all those preference points and he didn't want to hurt my odds with his zero status. Then he drew a tag and I didn't. No one ever said fairness was part of this hunting thing, but seriously, a Unit 9 tag on the very first try for god's sake? Hell yes I was jealous.

By summer's end we could find our way to Williams in our sleep, spending our free time traveling to and scouting that South Rim country. By early August the drought situation had turned dire and our trips north had become water-hauling missions, keeping a steel drinker Jason had settled his hopes on filled and available to thirsty elk. We'd even brought up parts to install into the float mechanism and make it function more efficiently, so it fed water smoothly and without waste from the holding tank that a surplus satellite disk fed during infrequent rains.