“Hey!” I shout to her. “You’re too goddamn close over there!”

“I know,” she says, reaching as far out as she can, and with a quick plucking motion of the hand takes hold of the stray line and lifts it out of the water. She gathers in more line and then walks back toward the granite boulder on her side of the hot spring. As the line goes taught once again, the Bazooka drifts back into place over the vent.

“That was close,” she says.

“So now what?”

“We’ll try it again, except––”

“Except what?”

“I don’t know.” She points to something behind me.

I turn into the wind and see that some of the buffalo, maybe ten or fifteen of them, are up and moving about where they were hunkered down out in the meadow. “What’s that all about?” I say, watching as a few more of them stand and, as if agitated about something, half-gallop, half-trot in four different directions.

“I don’t know,” she says, holding onto the rope.

“I thought they were down for the night.”

“They were. They always are by now. Something’s spooked them.”

“Grizzly?” I say and look out along the tree-lined east valley rim. Grizzlies do in fact move through this valley, one in particular, according to the ranger who checked us in at the west entrance this morning, that’s as big as they come.

“Young male wolf, more likely,” Evelyn says. “They’re coming up here more and more to work on their hunting skills. Things have changed for the buffalo now that the wolves are back.”

The buffalo are all up now, every one of them, and though they seem confused or not quite sure where they’re going, more than a few are forming into a line and heading in our direction.

“Hey, we better get this over with,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m coming back around and over to you. If we both keep shortening as I go––at your end and my end––we’ll keep control of it and it’ll stay out in the water. When I get over by you and the Igloo, we’ll take it up, put it in, and cut both lines. All right?”

“Okay.”

Evelyn starts around the hot spring, and we both shorten the rope, hand-over-hand, the line staying taught, the Bazooka bobbing and weaving a little as it inches toward my side of the hot spring. By the time Evelyn is standing close by me, I am on my knees again and, like Evelyn, holding onto less than a three-foot length of rope, the Bazooka floating only inches from the hot spring edge.

“I think we better sit down,” Evelyn says.

“What for? Let’s just do it.”

“I don’t think so,” she says and nods toward the meadow with uplifted eyes.

I look over my shoulder and there are three enormous, black-bearded male buffalo lumbering straight for us and looking about as fierce and menacing as any creature on this Earth. They are maybe twenty feet away and showing no sign of stopping. Behind them, the rest of the herd has formed into a line of two or three abreast, which reaches some distance out into the meadow.

“We’re outa here,” I say, my heart beat thump-thumping in my ears. “Forget the goddamn Bazooka.”

Evelyn shushes me and sits, minding the tether line with one hand. Though I’m ready to let go of the line and run around to the other side of the hot spring, the only place I can think of right now that seems safe, I do the same.

“This is crazy,” I whisper.

The three towering males slow a little, hesitating, but then pass right by with less than six feet of breathing room between us and them. Their hooves thump loud and hollow over sinter as they go, an ancient sound to match their ancient voluminous heads and black-brown bodies.

A smaller male who was behind the three catches sight of Evelyn and me and decides to play things more cautiously. He slows, looks one way, then the other, and then stops altogether. A female with a calf directly behind him collides headfirst into his rear haunches, and then stops, turns sharply to one side, and looks back into the meadow as if to tell the others to hold up. And they all do hold up, except for the three larger males up front, who are already past us and the hot spring and heading off toward the northwest reaches of the meadow.

After a tense minute or so, the hesitant male decides to follow the three that have gone out ahead, though it is evident in his face, in his darting, black-brown eyes, that he’s still a little spooked by our presence. He gives us wide berth, as do the two females behind him, and the others behind them, so that a kind of kink forms in the line but the parade is now underway and unstoppable. Only the little tan-colored calves pay any attention to the two humans out here, and when they do come up on us, they dart out of line so their mothers or older brothers or sisters are between them and us.

“How many do the wolves get?” I say, glancing down at the Bazooka, which is bobbing contentedly and a good number of inches from the edge. We’re somehow making this work.

“I’m not sure,” Evelyn says. “But however many, it’s better all the way around. They’ve had it too easy without them, you could say. Their numbers getting too large. They wander out of the park, and the ranchers shoot them. I think the change, even though it’s a painful one for them, is a good one.” She gestures toward the open northwest reaches of the valley to the right of us and the hot spring. “I think they’re headed out there. They go there sometimes.”