The Shepherd on the Beartooth Pass

In the summer of 1987, twelve-year-old Marcus Elling wandered off the trail during a family hike along Montana's Beartooth Pass. The afternoon clouds rolled in fast, swallowing the switchbacks in gray mist. He couldn't see twenty feet ahead. He sat on a boulder and cried. What Marcus didn't know was that a local shepherd named Dale Kirchner had spotted him from a ridge above — a man who knew every ravine, every loose scree field, every place where the drop-offs hid behind wildflowers.…