Father McBride’s mind was full, and he’d seen enough of the church for that week. Though his knees ached, he knew he had to get out and do some chukar hunting.

He knew he’d find himself in confession for all the curses he’d shout before the day was done, because as the old saying goes, “You only hunt chukar once; every other time is for revenge.”

He left the rectory before first light, the old Ford coughing once in the cold before it settled into its familiar rattle. Washoe County stretched out ahead of him in the gray half-dawn, the foothills of the Sierra rising like the backs of old cattle against a sky still holding onto night.

He drove north out of Reno, past the casinos that never slept and the new subdivisions that seemed to grow overnight like weeds after rain. The pavement gave way to gravel, then to two-rut tracks that climbed into the sage and bitterbrush.

By the time the sun cleared the eastern ridges, the country opened up the way it always did out here—wide, dry, and indifferent. He parked the truck on a bench above a dry wash and sat a minute with the door open, listening.

The wind carried the thin whistle of a meadowlark and the farther, sharper call of a raven. His knees complained when he swung his legs out.

They had been complaining ever since he had taken a spill off a horse in the Spring Mountains back when he still thought a priest could ride like a cowboy. He had never quite given up the idea.

The shotgun was an old Winchester Model 12, the bluing worn thin on the receiver, the stock smooth from his father’s hands and then his own. He loaded three shells and started up the slope, the sage brushing his canvas pants with a dry whisper.

Chukar liked the rocky hillsides and the places where the cheatgrass still held a little green in the fall. He moved slowly, favoring the right knee, stopping every few yards to glass the slopes with a battered pair of binoculars.

The country looked empty at first, the way it always did until it wasn’t. He found the first covey halfway up a steep face of broken rock and sparse juniper.

They flushed wild, the gray birds exploding out of the brush with that sharp, rattling call that always made his heart jump. He swung on the nearest one and missed clean.

The second shot kicked up dust behind a bird that was already folding into the sky.

“Goddamn it,” he said, and then, louder, “Son of a bitch.”

The words hung in the thin air like dust from the shot.

He climbed after them, cursing under his breath with every step. The birds had scattered into the rocks above, and he spent the better part of an hour working the slope, flushing singles and pairs that always seemed just out of range.

His knees burned. Sweat ran into his eyes.

Once he slipped on loose shale and went down hard on one hip, the gun clattering against stone. He lay there a moment looking up at the wide blue sky, the sun already high and hard.

“Jesus Christ on a crutch,” he muttered, and then laughed at himself, a dry sound that didn’t carry far.

By midday he had two birds in the game bag, both taken cleanly on the last rise before the ridge. He sat on a flat rock with his back to the wind and cleaned them carefully, the warm bodies still soft under his hands.

Below him, the county fell away in long folds of brown and gray, the Truckee River a thin silver thread in the distance, Reno a low haze of buildings and dust. He thought of the church waiting for him—the confessional, the evening Mass, the parishioners who brought their small and large sins like offerings.

He would have to confess his own before the night was out. The words came easily enough when the birds were flying, and the country was empty.

He ate a sandwich from the truck and drank the last of the coffee, now lukewarm. The wind had shifted, carrying the faint scent of rain from the west, though the sky still looked clear.

He rose stiffly and worked the far side of the ridge, flushing one more covey that rose in a tight knot and then fanned out. He dropped a third bird and marked it carefully, not wanting to leave it for the coyotes.

When he found it, the sun was already sliding toward the Sierra, and the light had gone soft and gold. On the walk back to the truck, his knees hurt less somehow, or perhaps he paid them less mind.

The country had taken the fullness out of his head like it always did. He thought of the night ahead—the quiet rectory, the brief examination of conscience, the familiar words of the Act of Contrition.

He would say them sincerely enough. The dirt, the blood, and the rough language belonged to the hills, and the hills did not care.

God was a different story.

He laid the game bag in the truck’s bed and stood looking west a long time as the light faded. Washoe County settled into dusk around him, vast, quiet, and unchanged.

Father McBride loaded the gun into the truck, closed the door against the rising wind, and drove back toward town, the dirty words already softening into something close to repentance.