The llamas grabbed mouthfuls at every opportunity and gorged themselves without causing a delay, probably because they knew where they were eventually headed—grazing as good as it gets—up on the side of Arnold Mountain.
As they crested the pass, the sparsely treed basin undulated before them, looking like rolling tundra. On the far side, three miles ahead, Arnold and Armstrong rose with the Canadian border traversing their tops. Heather loved the botany here. She and Nusmen had studied several grids for the forest service once. They wanted to know how the flora recovered from the sheep grazing. It was a unique, intermountain study area more like the Rocky Mountains than the Maritime Cascades to the west. What more could she ask for? Life here was beautiful. All her foreboding was slowly s
