“Just lying there?  An eagle feather doesn’t show up every day of the week, you know.”

“Some day you’ll be a believer.  Eagles are sacred to us.  If I were to speak with my grandfather’s words, I’d say it was meant to be there, I was meant to find it.”

“Why?”

“Who knows why?  I’m not my grandfather.”  He gave her the feather and sat down in the grass beside her.

“But he’s like that?” she said.

“He has the old wisdom, what came before.  He would tell you that the Great Spirit sends the eagle.  Its wings provide shelter for the two-leggeds, it holds great power to protect.  Life divides always into two parts that are opposites and that’s the eagle feather also, black and white, then daylight and darkness, summer and winter, life and death.  Most important is that one part has no meaning without the other.”

“These things have been on your mind?”

“He’s been on my mind.  I hope he’s still alive.  Maybe he’s the one who wants you to have the feather.”

“Maybe he does.  In exchange for the biscuit.”

“I’m sure he’s still thinking about that.”  He lay sideways to her, using part of her skirts as a pillow, a simple gesture, she considered, but one that held within it the shift in who they were.

“Do you want to hear more of Moby-Dick?” she said.

“What was his name again?”

“Ishmael.  I’ll read about when he meets Queequeg.  That’s a better part.  At least I could get through it.”

“How big is a whale, do you think?”

“As big as a house.  More.”

“Like ten buffalo?  Fifteen?”

Charlotte frowned.  “That’s an odd way of looking at it.”

“I wonder if the whale is to them what the buffalo was to us.”

“Somewhere in this book it has to tell you what the whale is to them because it tells you everything else there is about whales, even things you never wanted to know.”  She started to read about the cannibal who had a body covered in tattoos and worshiped a small statue.

Since he was immune to the heat, it must have been the monotonous sound of her voice.  It only took minutes before Chace was asleep.

<>

Charlotte built the evening fire outside, leaving the cabin to itself.  She panfried the duck with dried apples.

“If you went to Oregon Territory, what would you do?” she said, and then was horrified that she’d brought it up.  She was certain she hadn’t been contemplating anything remotely like that.

“In the first place, I wouldn’t go to Oregon Territory.”

“Yes, but if you did, what would you do?”  Since she’d opened up the subject, she might as well keep on with it.

“You mean if I had to raise things or grow things?”

“Like that, I guess, is what I’m saying.”