“What’s winterkill?” I asked. I knew, but I could see that Tim didn’t, and he wouldn’t ask. He was stub-born that way.

My father smiled at me. I always loved his smile. We didn’t see it often, but when we did, it lit up the whole cabin. He knew what I was up to but didn’t give me away.

“Well, Lizzy,” he said slowly, “that’s when winter comes on so sudden and so fierce that the animals aren’t ready for it or can’t protect and feed themselves, and most of them die. Your deer herds will make yards to spend the winter in back in the woods, and as the snow deepens, they’ll climb up on it and eat away at the trees, but no matter how much snow we get it won’t be enough and one by one they will starve and die.”

“How awful,” Miss Pauline said.

My father shrugged. It’s just nature,” he told her. “We don’t have any say-so in it. But I’ll tell you this—I intend to lay in four or five extra deer carcasses once we get a freeze. We can hang them in the barn. The deer are going to die anyway, so we might as well eat them. Besides, we may be snowed in here ourselves for a couple of months.”

Miss Pauline’s eyes widened. Winters had been hard, but there had never been any talk of getting snowed in before. “Maybe we ought to move down and stay with my sister,” she suggested.

My father made an impatient movement with his hand. “It ain’t no hardship, being snowed in, not if you’re ready for it. I been snowed in three times before.”

“But the children,” said Miss Pauline. “Their school.”

“We’ve got plenty of books,” he said. “You can read their lessons, if worst come to be. I’ll garntee you this: they’ll learn more good from a winter like that than they will from a hundred books.”

“What happens to the rest of the animals?” Tim asked. He rubbed his hand across his nose, which was always too small to suit him and which had gotten him in about two fights a week with boys who called him “Pug.”

My father looked at him just like he was another man. “It’s bad,” he said. “The bears go to their caves too soon, so they can’t make it all the way through the winter, and they have to come out and go hunting for something to eat. That’s the only time I’d ever be afraid of a bear, when he has to come out of hibernation early. The same thing happens to the birds. The turkeys will starve. We’ll take some of them too. You know I don’t hold with poaching, Tim, but this here’s different. Since they’re going to die anyway, it’s only common sense to use them to help us instead of letting them go to waste.”

“What about the ducks and geese?” I asked.