Kate, meanwhile, returned to real time. First she heard the sound of her own heart, beating rapidly high up in her throat, then her breath, then her father's voice. She looked up to find him staring down at her, slanted hazel eyes so like her own, thoughtful and considering.

"You didn't run," Stephan said.

Kate swallowed hard. "No," she admitted.

"I told you to run."

"I couldn't, Dad," Kate said. "I couldn't leave you."

She'd been six years old and armed with a single-shot .22, and she had refused to back down or run away. Her father's slight smile betrayed his pride, and she straightened her shoulders. "All right," he said. "Let's get back to the boat."

"What about him?" Her chin indicated the sounds of the wounded male.

Stephan glanced at the sky. "It's almost four o'clock. It'll be dark in an hour. I'm not chasing around after any wounded grizzlies in the dark." He stooped to pick up the rope handle tied to the deer.

"We're taking the deer with us?"

"We worked too hard for her," he said. "I'll be damned if I leave her for them." He looked at her. "You can shoulder your rifle now, honey," he said, his voice gentle.

She looked down in surprise. Sure enough, she had the rifle up, the butt pulled firmly into her shoulder. Her cheek hurt, she realized, from where it had pressed against the stock. Her muscles stiff and sore, she reset the safety. She didn't reshoulder it; she carried it in both hands across her body, ready.

Stephan gave it a long, thoughtful glance, her face another, and said nothing.

When they got back to the beach, the others were there before them, Zoya and Eli with a stringy old buck and Luba and Ed with a couple of fat two-year-olds. They had been going to butcher out on the beach, but when they heard Stephan and Kate's story they loaded the four carcasses in the dory and headed for the Marisol.

Stephan strung their doe up by her hind legs from the boom. She was so fat, and her brown pelt so smooth and soft. Her eyes were open, big and brown, staring at the deck. Kate couldn't look away from them. Stephan noticed, and came around to see what she was looking at. He reached over Kate's shoulder and put a hand over the doe's face.

Almost thirty years later, Kate could still remember the gentleness of her father's hand that day. It had worked; with the doe's eyes closed Kate could help with the butchering out and even take an academic interest in the contents of the stomachseaweed and an incautious hermit crab that hadn't let go of the seaweed when the deer nibbled it up. The crab was still alive, and Kate tossed it in the water and hoped it made it back to its own tidal pool.

The next morning, Kate had been left on the boat while the grown-ups (including Ed, who was only five years older than Kate, a fact she pointed out to her father) went ashore and tracked down the wounded bear. He'd died overnight, and they returned to the Marisol that evening with two bearskins and three more deer. Stephan had grinned at her as he swung a leg over the gunnel, and her determined pout had dissolved like mist beneath a rising sun.