I knew that beyond the river was the road into town and beyond that more people than I could count, and buildings and bridges and trains and much, much else.

Beyond the mountaintop? Other mountains, old forests, caves and caverns, and more of what I didn’t know than what I did.

But here, on this mountainside above the river, there was some of each. Some tame. Some wild. Some of what I knew. Some of what I did not.

And here, on this mountainside, among the families, in broad daylight, with two of us together—Samuel making enough noise for ten boys—there was little chance of a bear or coyote meddling with us.

But we’d be carrying a sack of fresh meat, which would be like hoisting a big come-and-get-it sign in the language of carnivores.

So, “Straight back,” I said, looking her in the eye, nothing soft about either of us.

I was the first to look away. I knew I was right about those lullabies. But that didn’t make her wrong.

I picked up a tangle of wet laundry and shook it out: my father’s bed shirt. It was marbled with brown from where his sores had bled.

I pinned it on the line.

“What?” Samuel called as he came out of the trees into the yard, faceless in the shadow of his hat but all Samuel, still, in the set of his shoulders, the way he pumped his arms as he climbed the tilted yard. He was, in many ways, my father, cast small.

“We’re going to the Petersons’ now,” I called.

“Says you,” Samuel muttered, but we heard him.

“Says me,” my mother said, swinging her head around to look at him.

“Well,” Samuel said, “I’m going up first.” And he charged past us, past the cabin, toward the path to the Petersons’.

He did that a lot. Charged through life without paying much attention to where he was going.

“Like a little bull.” My mother shook her head.

Finally, she’d said something beyond the barest of bones.

And I wanted to do the same. To tell her about the treasures I was hiding on the shelf in the woodshed. How lonely I was. What had really happened on the day my father got hurt.

Instead, I nodded. “Like a bull. Or a puppy.” Which led to “When can I hold Quiet again?”

She shrugged, Samuel’s long johns like a headless puppet in her hands. “As soon as Maisie says so.”

Which meant I would visit the litter again after I’d brought the venison home.

Perhaps if I smelled enough like both a harmless deer and a juicy dinner, Maisie would let me hold my pup.

“Tell the Petersons I’ll bring up a peck of potatoes later on,” she said. “You take the pail of milk I left by the well.”

That was another way we paid our way on Echo Mountain.