The people who buried the child would have known this landscape the way people know a place they have lived in for generations — not as visitors, not as explorers, but as inhabitants, with the intimate knowledge of terrain and weather and seasonal rhythm that comes only from long experience in a specific place.

They knew which draws held water in the dry season.

They knew where the elk moved in the fall.

They knew the rock shelters that provided protection from the sudden violent thunderstorms that roll across the Montana plains in summer.

They buried their child in one of those shelters.

They covered him in red.

They gave him their best work.

And they left him there.