Ben Givens's suicide attempt is disclosed through the gun he carries into the desert: earlier that morning, he had put his father's shotgun in his mouth. The act makes his later pursuit of his dogs more than a test of endurance. The weapon is both a family possession and the instrument of an intended death, while Ben's regret at having ever held a gun registers a brief recoil from the violence he has made part of his plan.

The Earlier Attempt

As Ben prepares to follow his dogs, he loads two shells into his side-by-side shotgun. The scene identifies it as his father's gun and recalls that Ben had put it in his own mouth earlier that morning. The attempt itself is not staged; it enters the present as a blunt fact attached to the weapon. Ben has survived and is moving again, but the gun keeps the possibility of suicide physically close.

For a moment, he regrets every gun he has ever held. That hesitation does not become a declared renunciation: he shakes it off, packs his blanket and poncho, straps them to his rucksack, and sets out after the dogs. The contrast is consequential. The same hands that load the shotgun and shoulder the pack have handled a weapon as a means of self-destruction, yet Ben continues into the desert rather than remaining still with the thought.

The Plan Returns

The later account shows that the attempt has not ended Ben's suicidal intention. He arranges travel upriver by calling Greyhound Bus Co. and reserves a rental car from a Wenatchee company. He intends to drive to Malaga, Washington, find William Harden's Wolfhound Orchard, and somehow recover his gun. Afterward, he plans to walk for grouse in the Colockum country, find a barbed-wire fence, and shoot himself in the neck.

Recovering the weapon is not a simple matter of asking for it back. Ben expects Harden to refuse a direct appeal based on ownership, fair play, or another apology for the wolfhound's death. Nor can he imagine taking the gun by burglary or theft. The practical obstacle sharpens the plan's disturbing dependence on the very object Ben briefly regretted: his intended next step requires him to get the gun back.

Significance in the Narrative

The attempt is revealed retrospectively while Ben is already pursuing his dogs across moonlit prairie. His shotgun seems dreamlike in the silver light, an impression intensified by the marijuana whose effects later confuse him as he follows wheel ruts and tries to locate the dogs. Yet the recollection is exact where it matters: this is the gun he had put in his mouth. The image binds altered perception to an unmistakable fact of danger.

The event therefore marks neither a completed departure from life nor a settled recovery. Ben continues to travel and act, but his later itinerary still ends in a deliberate death, and the weapon remains central to it. His momentary regret interrupts that trajectory without resolving it; the attempt's force lies in the interval between the act already survived and the plan he is still trying to carry out.