When Merkus arrived the next morning to work off his debt, he and I tightened the roof and door of Amzil’s house before moving on to make the roof of the shed sound. Long before noon, I had earned his grudging respect. Over the next few days, Clove’s great strength made short work of tugging down several ramshackle structures so that we could reduce them to usable timbers. Once I had stockpiled the lumber that I thought I could use for Amzil’s dwelling and the adjacent shed, I put Merkus in our debt once more by using Clove to haul a number of heavy timbers down to where he wished to use them.

All this activity roused the curiosity of the other scattered dwellers. The old man and his nagging wife came to the door of their hut to watch Clove pass. I discovered there was one other family in the otherwise deserted town, a man and a woman of middle years with two half-grown children and a baby. They watched us from afar, but did not speak to us that day.

Amzil and I checked the snares together that evening. We had only caught one rabbit, but she still seemed very pleased with it. Under my guidance, she moved the snares to fresh locations on some of the many rabbit trails throughout the stump field.

“If the game becomes scarce here, then you can always set snares along the river, especially in the wintertime.” I told her. “Watch for the paths where animals go to water. Set them there.”

“The river freezes along its bank in winter,” she told me.

“There will still be tracks to it. You’ll see.”

Kara had tagged along with us, and to my surprise Amzil had the child set the final snare. She seemed very young to me to be doing such a task.

Nonetheless, I held my tongue, suspecting that in this, Amzil probably knew best. Small as she was, the sooner Kara stepped up to help provide for her family, the better they would do.

The cottage became a snugger place as each day passed. We mixed grass, moss, and mud, and chinked the gaps between the logs. With our salvaged wood, we put a floor in the cabin. I hunted each morning with my sling.

My best day was when a lucky shot brought down a goose that I’d startled off the river. It was fat. Grease had never tasted so good to me. Amzil caught every drop of it before it could drip into the fire and saved it to flavor the lean rabbit that made up most of our meals.

Our days began to have a pattern. Each morning I hunted. I brought my kills home to Amzil, and she cooked them. In the afternoons, I did whatever I thought best to improve her cottage. It was rough, crude work for the most part, but even so, it made a difference. A slab of wood and three stick legs made a stool. I longed for an awl, but managed to bore and whittle the leg holes with my knife. I made a low table so that the children could sit on the floor in front of the fire and have their meals more comfortably. Every day, Amzil set aside a part of my catch to either smoke or dry as jerked meat. It pleased me to watch her little larder grow full. I built her another shelf.