I was as aware of the woman in the bed as I was of the mountain itself.

The dog watched me steadily.

The smoke from the fire fought off the smell of that leg, but I knew I would have to face it again soon.

I had once watched my father use a hot knife to seal a wound in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t a very big cut, but it had begun to fester. “Best to kill a germ before it spreads,” he had said, heating the blade of the knife on the kitchen stove and then taking it outside before pressing the tip of it hard against the wound.

He had bellowed like a moose, and I had cried at how much it had smelled like food cooking.

My mother had scolded him for doing that when he could have gone to the doctor instead. She had scolded him, too, for letting me watch.

But he had kissed her and told her that doctors cost money, that he’d heal faster this way besides. And that I’d be better off knowing such things.

Esther had wanted no part of it.

Samuel had been napping.

And I had been the one to learn that lesson.

But this was not a small cut on the hand of a strong and healthy man.

This was a serious wound, caked with maggots and pus.

I thought about how else to help her.

I could go get my mother. But what could she do?

Some things, she could do . . . and do well . . . without a second thought. And she was brave, too. Brave enough to give up town. To go with my father to the mountain. To start over in a place with no roads. No doctors. Almost no people. But her kind of courage had very little wild in it. Very little of the mountain. Which was all I had—wildness—though plenty of it. And of several sorts: not one vast thing, but as varied as trees. As flowers.

I looked around the cabin. There was a mangy dog, a tick as big as a lima bean hanging above his eye. There was an old woman lying in her bed, senseless, crawling with worms, in a fog of blowflies. And there was me. No one else.

I would begin. I would do what I could. And then I would do what I thought I couldn’t do, before I went for a different kind of help.

The fire was starting to settle down, so I added more wood until the heat pushed me away.

The knife I carried with me wasn’t big enough to do much good.

I went to the tools hanging above the workbench and chose a big chisel.

It would do.

I wedged its blade between the burning logs.

While it heated, I went to the old woman and had a good look at her.