The Photograph

Robust and commanding legendary adventure novelist J. Harvey Kincaid had been an important repeat lodger at the Wolf Creek dude ranch in the Colorado Rockies for decades, annually having come to be taken up into the mountains to hunt elk by both Jamie’s grandfather and Jamie’s father, John. With John off in Laramie, Wyoming, at a rodeo, and Jamie left behind to manage the financially struggling dude ranch, Kincaid has shown up again, asking young Jamie to take him on a hunting trip up into the mountains.

When straightening up the charismatic and “man’s man” novelist’s room, Jamie comes across a hunting trip photograph strongly hinting of a predatory hold Kincaid has had over his father, John—and that brings to mind the guilt-ridden suicide of his grandfather as well.

The revelation that Kincaid's trips have had a whole different connotation of hunting than shooting elk makes Jamie determined that Kincaid’s predatory hold over the previous two generations of his family and threatened extension to a third generation will come to an end on this camping trip up into the Rockies.