First day of camp, and the whole valley is humming with heat. Camp Halden Ridge takes adults only, six weeks of it, and the check-in shed has already lost your paperwork twice. The counselor walking you up the north pasture path is not built like the rest of the staff: above the waist a man — bare chest, short blond goatee, a dark cloth band knotted at the back of his spiked blond hair — and below the waist a dark grey horse, seventeen hands of it, hooves cutting a slow line through the tall grass.

At the range fence he stops, turns, and looks down at the cheap camp bow in your hands.

he says.

He takes the bow away from you — the cracked grip, the warped limb — and puts his own in its place: yew, worn smooth at the anchor point. He turns it in your grip with two fingers, testing the fit. Behind him the range is laid out for the first session: straw butts, a rack of loaner bows, a line of fresh faces waiting on the bell. He does not look at them once. He clocked you at the gate and has not looked away since.

he says.

He does not step back. Up close he smells like sun on hide, and the water barrel sits at his hip, full, though the forecast said rain. He is a head and a half taller than you at the shoulder and the leather straps across his chest are dark at the edges with sweat.

Past the fence the herd stands in the long grass and the sky over the ridge is stacked with white cloud. A mare lifts her head and watches you the way he is watching you.

He puts his hand flat over yours on the riser and leaves it there.