Took Maisie her breakfast and sang her a small song I made up on the spot, full of barn cats and field mice and goldenrod bowed down with yellow.

Coaxed her outside for some air but stayed in the shed with the puppies so she wouldn’t fret.

Laid my hand over Quiet like a warm cape and told him things like, “You are beautiful. You are a beautiful, silly little dollop of a dog.”

When Maisie returned, I decided to go for honey and river water, but my father had taught me never to pass up the chance to get what food I could. (“You never know when there won’t be any to be had.”) So I gathered his fishing gear and put it with the medicine jar and some oilcloth for wrapping my catch, a pair of work gloves, and some tinder in my pack, the pack on my shoulder, and set out for the river.

Samuel followed me, and I let him, sure that he would tire before long and head back home.

“Where are you going, Ellie?” he said as I went down the path toward the river.

“To see if I can catch a fish for supper,” I said, though that was only one of the things I meant to do.

“With so much venison to eat?”

“Mother will make most of that into jerky. For when there isn’t any fresh. Besides, I like fish.”

“I don’t, much,” he said, though Mother always fried it crisp and gave it to us with pickles and cream.

“Well, I don’t much like jerky. And I don’t like being hungry. But if you’d rather eat pickles and cream without fish, that’s fine with me.”

At which he said “Huh” and nothing else.

The path was steep and rocky in places, but there were saplings all along it, and the ones nearest the difficult spots were smooth from where we had grabbed them again and again to steady ourselves. I had long since learned to find a handhold before I took a hard step down, but Samuel preferred to hop from rock to rock, and it wasn’t long before he fell.

“Oh, good grief,” I said as he lay crying on the path, banged up but with no real damage done. “How many times do you have to fall before you realize you’re not a mountain goat?”

He looked up at me with a wet face. “I don’t think I’m a goat. Why would I think I’m a goat?”

“Never mind,” I said, helping him up. “Just slow down. I have a fish to catch, and you’re here to help or go home.”

He brushed himself off. “Help, then. I’ll go home when I want to go home and not because you said so.”

Which I ignored completely.