Ethan noticed with some bewilderment the relationship between Mavis and Kindred, which was quite different from how he and Epsey treated each other. They were more like a brother and sister, quite at ease, exchanging jokes and comments with complete abandon and arguing on an equal basis. On occasion, Mavis reached out with a feminine gesture, letting her fingers linger on Kindred’s neck or pushing his hair back from his eyes, but her husband seemed almost unaware of her delicate caresses. These movements made a profound impression on Ethan, because Epsey had never taken any such physical initiative since they had known each other. He was the one who had reached out on increasingly rare occasions, and he had never expected Epsey to go any further than to fulfill her conjugal duties, which she did with minimal response or emotion.

They had been together only a week or so before Mavis felt enough at ease to make the same kinds of flirtatious gestures toward him. She seemed fascinated with the thick blond hairs on his arm and would stroke them on occasion. His arm jerked sharply when this first happened, but afterward he tried to ignore any physical contact between them, whether it seemed deliberate or accidental. On one occasion when the three of them were sitting by the Morrises’ spring below the cabin for a noon rest and to eat, she looked up and caught his eyes on her. Her gaze never wavered and their eyes were locked for a few moments, and then he looked away and felt his face flush and his spine tingle. She gave a little laugh, and Kindred asked, “What’s funny?” She replied, “Nothing, just a passing thought.” For Ethan, the thought did not pass, but lingered.

To an extraordinary degree, Ethan had become the unshakable focus of Kindred’s trust and admiration. Mavis assumed that this indicated a natural respect and admiration for a man who was older and who had become a teacher and a role model for them both as the couple set up housekeeping and established and assumed frontier life.

Solitude was what Ethan had always relished most, but now, for a change, he often asked Kindred to join him, and they formed a friendship that he had never thought possible. They hunted and trapped together for meat, skins, and for small animal and insect specimens, which they studied carefully. At first, Ethan waited impatiently when Kindred lagged behind to examine something along the way. Then Ethan became an eager student as his neighbor shared his knowledge of the growing things that surrounded them. The men discussed some of the generic relationships, and Kindred carefully preserved and made notations in his notebook about those that seemed to be new and different species.