“At the Agency, they taught my people how to grow corn and squash and beans, but the crops failed and none of that had anything to do with the buffalo.  Grandfather tried to raise cattle, but they took away the land they’d given him and it shouldn’t have mattered because none of that had anything to do with buffalo either.  See if you can keep a tribe fed through the winter on grouse or stay warm in cow leather.”  He stopped, trying to redirect his thinking.  “I saw goats once.”

“Goats?”

“I’d never seen one before.  On a raid when we were too young, stealing a herd of horses from a ranch, we came across the goats and no one knew what they were.  Later, with the missionaries, I found out.  If the buffalo were gone for good, and others depended on me, I’d maybe find an interest in goats.”

Sometimes she thought she knew him, only to turn around and find out that she didn’t know him at all.  Goats?

“You know what I’d want to do?” she said.

“What?”

“Raise geese.  I heard in Oregon they don’t have the good kind of geese, just a big ugly wild duck with all the wrong feathers, so there’s nothing to fill a mattress with.”

“That’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”

“That there aren’t any geese in Oregon?”

“No, that you have to have feathers to make a bed to sleep on.  Do you want to go back to the buffalo?  What a buffalo robe is?  How many people needed them to stay warm in the winter and needed the food to keep from starving?  How many carcasses were left out on the prairie to rot instead?”  He stopped again.  “Never mind.  Forget I said anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I am.  What’s the point in taking it out on you?”

The evening had closed in.  The thin crescent of moon hung low in the sky.  Charlotte cleaned the plates and put out the fire.  She splashed water on her face and rinsed out her mouth with water from the bucket.

“I’ll be back,” he said.  She got the rifle out from under the wagon seat.

A softness settled over the land.  A few ragged clouds sailed out of the west, catching the light of the dying sun.  The sky turned pink, then rose, then gray.  A meadowlark sang its evening song then quieted.  What am I doing? she thought, aware of the places her mind was going.  She could see her father pacing, on the edge of hysteria.  The dear chosen child wanting only to be with one member of the tribes before their journey ended.  And it would end, possibly sooner than she even knew, and in the way that they both understood.  There was no usefulness to be had in denying it, in trying to believe otherwise.