Yellow. That was the color which attracted Jed's attention. Later, when it was all over, he remembered this, and wondered if yellow had been an intuitive premonition.

Some people have an inclination toward being blue, or experiencing black feelings. Jed Smith's mood was yellow the morning he started his string of ten pack horses up the trail, bound for the base camp of a U.S. Air Force survival school.

The thought that everything was yellow came to him, while top loading a case of beer for one of the instructors on Charlie Horse. The logo on the card-board carton was printed in canary, most likely the result of flawed market research survey. How could that be? Yellow is such an ambiguous color, signifying both sweet butter, and bitter lemons. But, for beer? Worse, yet, beer for a survival camp? Beer to accompany the meager fare of a scavenger's stew? Made as much sense as yellow for sunshine; or yellow for a pallid, shallow, world.

Having survived being sent to Nam by student deferments, and drawing a lucky number in the draft, Jed also wondered, in this first summer of a new decade, if the 70's would somehow carry a stigma of yellow for him. He did not approve of the involvement in what Eisenhower had warned "the folly of a land war in Asia," but Jed had also avoided the demonstrations on campus as somehow not being "The American Way." Jed wanted to believe that his country was doing right. On the other hand, after Kent State, he knew something was terribly wrong. Sitting on a split-rail fence, avoiding the issue, made him feel less of a man.

Whatever, this was Jed's disposition as he threw a canvas manty cover over the panniers and sawbuck of the next to last pack animal in his string —Big Enough. As usual, "Biggie" tried to scratch his long nose on Jed's belt buckle as he tucked and twisted 45 feet of 5/8th inch manila rope into a tidy hitch that held the packs securely to the horse. A diamond hitch. An art form from the past. Most books describing this historical oddity suggest that it took two men five minutes to throw a diamond. Jed could tie this elaborate knot in less than 60 seconds.

Jed had fitted nine other horses with their individual packsaddles. Made an adjustment of a breast collar here; a britchin strap there. And, he had hung 75 pound pack boxes on both sides of the sawbucks, alone.

Jed knew Old "Smiley" Smith would have been "right proud" of his boy-child. But, then, this, too, was just another side of his mood. He was alone.

The crudely lettered sign, painted upon a hand whipsawed board, hanging on the side of the old log barn that proclaimed Amos "Smiley" Smith & Son, Cascade Mountain Pack Train Station, to others, would have been considered a rustic work of art. To Jed, the weathered patina yellow —that damn color, once again —was a reminder that his father was dead.