I retched up my jerky. Montana and the other hens started right away to eat it, fighting each other for position around my gut's steamy offering. All except Betty, who stayed watchful on her nest, protecting the shell-encased embryos of an entire possible future. People think chickens are stupid, use “birdbrain” like it's some kind of insult, but my girls have an instinct for self-preservation. They come home to roost at night. They scatter when shadows appear in the sky, search for cover from chicken hawks and bald eagles. They go broody when they need to and sometimes when they don't, like they're getting in some maternity practice. Soon, there in the coop bunker, the vomit was gone and Montana sat in my lap, preening her feathers, while I breathed deep and regular, trying to calm down.

I was thinking I should make a call, but the only government-type person I'd halfway trust was lying dead on my barn floor. I assumed a massacre, of course. It's natural I thought that, seeing that I lost both my parents at a pretty tender age. I imagine that every age you lose a parent is tender, probably, no matter how old you are. It's a raw sort of feeling. It didn't occur to me that any of those boys were still alive until I heard the moaning.

“Grace?”

It was a thin whisper, was all. I could barely hear it. I checked to be sure my .22 was ready, and crawled out of the coop.

I went to check on Jerry first. I knelt next to him, not realizing right away that the cool, thick wet I felt wicking its way into my pant legs, spreading in all directions around my knees, was Jerry's blood. His breathing was ragged and shallow. I took the shotgun out of his hands, kissed his bald spot, and whispered, “I'm sorry, Jerry.”

“My leg, Gracie.”

Jerry was bleeding bad from a wound in his thigh, near his groin but, luckily, not into his delicates. I grabbed at a pile of oil-soaked rags near the old Farmall, and Jerry winced when I pushed down, trying to put some pressure on the wound. The oil wasn't perfect, probably, but those rags were all I had to stanch the bleeding.

“You all right, Jerry?”

“That bastard shot me.”

“You shot first.”

“Accident,” Jerry said, and then he shuddered, and then he passed out. I made a tourniquet then, tight as I could. The blood slowed, but still it seeped and puddled into the folds of the oil rag, staining it further. I must have gotten a little lost in the image, because when I heard Smith call my name, I felt a chunk of time I could not quantify had fallen away from me.