When the first whisky makers fired up stills, they did not document the aqua vitae production. Distilling was just another chore in the pursuit of staying alive.

So, to tell the history of whisky, we exploit legends and a brief Exchequer Rolls mention of King James granting “eight bolls of malt” to Friar John Cor in 1494.

We will likely never definitively know where or who first made whisky, but one thing is certain…

An excerpt…September, 45 years ago in the town of Twenty Mile in Powder Basin County (okay, not its real name), and I’m standing on an unpainted, planked floor, facing the bar with four stools arrayed in front of it. Atop the bar sit a gallon jar of pickled eggs and a small wooden barrel of pickled pigs’ feet. Over the bar, just beyond arm’s reach, bags of potato chips are clipped to baling twine. Beyond that are a large upright cooler, a two-burner stove, a half dozen bottles of whiskey, and a cash register open as if waiting to be filled. Above the register is a chalkboard on which is handwritten “Burgers Only.” The other three walls are covered with cardboard prints of the “Enchanted Northland” from Hamm’s Beer with the slogan “From the Land of Sky Blue Water.”

I’m at Dolly’s Sagebrush Oasis. This is not the original bar but a smaller building put into service after an electrical fire gutted the original Twenty Mile watering hole. Now seated, I’m waiting to be served. Next to me is a weathered Basque sheepherder who I know lives mostly in solitude and tends nomadic sheep on open range; he’s holding a half-empty beer. There are two other customers against the wall seated at a small table having coffee. Both men work for the state highway department, maintaining the only paved road through Powder Basin.

An excerpt…The young pointer quartered into the wind, his gait as effortless and graceful as a whitetail buck’s, his tail a high-waving baton. His black-on-white coat gleamed; his rippling muscles worked in perfect coordination; his eyes, set in a chiseled, classically handsome head, shone like dark jewels. His nose cleaved the air like the prow of some mythic vessel, testing, sifting, winnowing, searching for the tendril of scent that changes everything, the skein of shimmering vapor that connects a bird dog to the object of its desire.

When the connection happened, the pointer was transformed. It’s often said that a bird dog “strikes” scent, but in fact it’s the other way around—the bird’s scent strikes the dog. It has the force of a physical blow.

Now, as if an invisible chain had hooked his collar, the pointer skidded 90 degrees clockwise and came to rest in an altered state, his sparking kinetic energy harnessed, his focus screwed down to a beam of white-hot intensity. For a moment he stood with majestic style . . . but then a quiver in his tail betrayed his faltering conviction. He took a cautious, stalking step, and then another and another, drawing up on the scent, reeling it in, taking out the slack until he could establish an unshakable bond.

“Whup-whup,” cautioned the man closest to the dog. His voice was soft, his tone reassuring. “Whup-whup.” That was the message the young dog needed to hear. His doubts dispelled, his instincts and training validated, he stood proudly, even defiantly, on point. He stayed that way, too, maintaining his resolute posture as the man stepped in front of him, scuffing the grass and making an exaggerated show of flushing before tripping the release trap, launching the pigeon, and firing his blank pistol. The dog turned his head to mark the bird’s flight, but held steady.

The man, professional trainer Robert Hall, knelt to stroke the pointer’s back. “This dog’s just 14 months old,” he said, an unmistakable note of pride in his voice, “and he hasn’t been pressured at all. He does these things naturally. They all do.”

“That’s so impressive, Robert,” I said, marveling at the performance I’d just witnessed. “I only wish Bob Wehle were here to see this. He’d be wearing a smile as big as Minnesota. The style, the precocity, the eagerness to please—all the qualities he valued in the Elhew pointers are right there.”

“That’s what we like to hear,” said Jerry Havel, the third man in the field that brisk October morning and, as the proprietor of Pineridge Grouse Camp & Kennels, Robert Hall’s employer. “We’re totally committed to these dogs, to preserving the legacy of Bob Wehle and Elhew Kennels. We’re in this for the long haul.”