AFTER TWO DAYS OF GOOD, SOAKING RAIN IN early May, the bunchgrass greened some. Three warm spring days without dusters followed the rain. There were leaves on the trees and the sun was shining and the weather made Emaline feel as light as one of those feathery clouds skimming through a sky the blue of cornflowers. When school was out, Bobby took the train to Sheridan to spend the summer on the 8T8. She helped him get his things to the train station, including the Enfield rifle in its scabbard. She wished he would leave the thing at home, but he was as attached to it as he was to his baseball bat. She managed not to cry as he boarded the train, but she would miss him awfully, the way he whistled around the house and sang little bits of funny tunes and told her jokes he had heard at school.

The next time she had a day off from the Arrowhead, she took a picnic lunch and headed for her favorite spot by the river, a place she had often gone to pick gooseberries with Velma. At the last minute, she decided to take along an old fishing pole that had belonged to Calla’s husband. If she could catch two or three fish, she and Calla could have something different for their supper. She packed a pork sandwich and a sweet potato and a jar of sweet corn kernels that Velma had canned in the fall. The corn was for the fish.

It was a three-mile hike to her picnic spot. She had to cross the bridge that connected Scottsbluff with Gering, then work her way back to the west, to a sheltered grove of elm and cottonwood. There was a row of weeping willows along the riverbank and she had to search to find a space between the willows where she could get a hook in the water. Bobby always caught fish along here, although perhaps not at this time of year, when the spring-swollen river was roiled and muddy.