“In the mountains.”

“Why aren’t you all in the mountains with them?”

“Because we’re here.”

With an annoyed flourish, the Ranger opened his notebook again. “You should be gathering together,” he said through clenched teeth, furiously scribbling their trespasses. “You shouldn’t be waiting for anyone. You’re nomadic. There is nowhere you are allowed to just wait. You are supposed to one, stay together; two, keep moving; and three, do things as you move.” His counting fingers formed a two-barreled gun.

“We have to stop to hunt and gather and process,” said Bea.

“Besides, even nomadic people eventually settled,” said Carl. It was a very uncharacteristic thing for him to say, but he had turned an ankle that year and it had made walking a little less enjoyable for him.

That’s when the Ranger saw their smoker. He shook his head dis gustedly. “You people.” He walked around it, threw open the hooding, took pictures of it, scribbled more notes. Then, he pulled out a flask from his back pocket and a box of matches from his backpack, shook the liquid from the flask all over the smoker, and threw a match in. It lit up.

Building the smoker had taken an entire summer of harvesting wood from the foothills and dragging the wood back to camp. They’d never done so much exhausting work. Even during the years when they had walked for what seemed like years. Creating permanence was much harder work than walking, it turned out. They watched the smoker burn. There was nothing they could do. It had definitely been against the rules.

“Aren’t you worried about that fire spreading?” Bea’s voice quaked with anger, and maybe a little sadness.

“Not really. My horse is fast.” He winked at Bea.

She spit at his feet.

“Watch yourself,” he sneered. After a little trouble and cursing, he got back on his horse. Nodding to the fiery smoker, he cried, “Not a trace!” as he galloped away.

They hadn’t restocked their water yet that day, so the Community smothered the fire with a few skins from their beds. They gagged as the deer hair and skin smoldered and smoked.

The next day they sent the Hunters out to the foothills for more meat.

They worried that to move again would give up their claim on the land, though they had no claim on the land. So they did not pack up camp. They stayed put against all logic. Their instinct told them to.

*

With the Hunters off hunting and the Gatherers still gathering, Agnes and Glen were helping Debra and Jake sew. Sister and Brother and Pinecone were there too, but they were only making knots in the sinew and then being scolded by Debra.

Staying put had led to increased food, increased growth and girth, and the need for new clothes. For Agnes most of all. Perhaps she really had been too skinny like her mother said, but now she touched her cheeks to feel them spring back, jiggle under her fingertips. She was no longer an up-and-down arrangement of bones. Now she possessed a shape, albeit slight. She wasn’t sure anyone else would notice it, but she noticed it. When she lay down, everything felt different. Her body met the ground differently. She had grown taller too. She was now almost as tall as Val. She looked right at Val’s nose when they stood together. But she was still one of the shortest people in the Community. Much shorter than her mother, who was as tall as the men.

Agnes watched Glen slowly peel sinew strands from a dry deer tendon. He had jowls again, and they quivered as his fingers trailed up and down the tendon. Her mother’s first order of business after she joined Carl as leader had been to reinstate Glen into the Community. Cooks weren’t allowed to cut his rations, or any of the Originalists’ rations, any longer. They claimed they never had, but the Originalists became undeniably plumper in the season that followed this new mandate. Bea even had Glen’s rations increased for a time, until he became stocky again, regained his strength, and became solid on his feet. It was required that Glen be engaged in at least one conversation per day with a member of the Community other than Agnes. Each person took a turn. It wasn’t hard for the Originalists since they’d known him so long, though it could be awkward with Carl glowering at them. And if they didn’t spend time with him, Bea glowered. It was hard to be an Originalist sometimes.

For the Newcomers it was even harder. They really had to make an effort to think of him as part of the Community. He was always on the outskirts or walking far behind. That Agnes spent a lot of time with him and brought him food and washed the wounds he collected from tripping and stumbling had taught them he belonged in some way, but they had not really believed he was the pioneer of this group, that he’d started this Community in the Wilderness State, even though that’s what they’d been told. They always believed it was Carl, and Carl never corrected them. And even after they knew, they still preferred to think it was Carl. Carl was strong, decisive, unkind when he needed to be. They just liked Carl better. Carl’s story, as told to them by Carl, was a better story.

But Carl, it turned out, hadn’t any grand plan for leadership. No agenda or way forward. He just wanted to be leader and have everything go through him. Once that was secured, he delighted in being the enforcer.

Bea was the one in charge. But far from being a disruptive leader, she kept the Community abiding by rules even more stringently than they had before. “We will give the Rangers no reason to think of us,” she would say. “Our ideal is that they forget we are here.” Every rule in the Manual was followed to a T. Until the Basin.

The sun arced over their bent heads. Agnes felt her legs getting hot. They splayed out in front of her. She paused and took a moment to drape a cloth over Glen’s head so he would not get sun-tired.

Agnes softened sinew in her mouth as she watched Jake stitching pieces of hide together. He was making a patchwork buckskin blanket. His fingers were white from the force needed to pull the bone needle and sinew through. His hands were fully calloused. When he touched Agnes, his fingertips were as rough as dried seed pods. He said he could barely feel her skin against them. So he would sometimes trace his cheek, the tip of his nose, the inside of his wrist along her skin. Something more sensitive. He was her life mate. They had decided. They would make a family and rear their young, and then, at an age when it seemed their young could take care of themselves, they would send them away to find their own land to explore. And then they’d have more young.

“What age were you thinking,” Jake had asked.

“I think probably by six,” said Agnes.

Jake paled. “What?”

“You don’t agree?” She absorbed his silence, studied the incredulous look on his face. “I guess I could be convinced to wait till seven or eight?”

“Agnes, that is way too young.”

Now she felt incredulous. “Bears do it at two. Why can’t our babies?”

“Because we’re not bears.”

“Our babies will be better than bears!” Though she wondered if anything could truly be better than bears.

“Weren’t you about six when you came here?”

“Five. I think? I don’t remember.”

“Think about when you were that young. Would you have wanted to be on your own? Finding your own food, defending against predators. You, at five or six? Alone?”

When she first got here, of course she had been useless in the Wilderness. But that was because she was from the City. She knew beds and clean plates. She knew toilets. She knew about the predators in the City, but they were a different kind of predator, and it was a different kind of danger. She had needed time to adjust and learn about this new place. But she believed that by the following spring, she had developed the abilities and skills needed to lead the Community, if anyone would have let her then. She knew then almost everything she knew now about living here. The things she didn’t understand well were people and that hadn’t changed much. But surviving—she understood that. It had been one of the first things she understood here. Really, what else was there? Hunting, processing, tracking, water source, basic clothing and shelter, weather, the different gifts and threats from flora and fauna. Being alone on a stormy night. Being alone when you knew a big cat was nearby. Being alone when you heard footsteps and didn’t know what they belonged to. These things were hard at any age. But a six-year-old possesses logic. They can think themselves out of fear if they have to. If they are left alone to. Her mother had left her when she was maybe ten? Eleven? Twelve? That had been very hard, but not because of survival preparedness. And if the whole Community had left her, she would have been sad, but she still could have survived. What did age matter?

“I don’t know,” she said. Jake still stared at her with doubt. “Why, what age were you thinking?”

“Sixteen? Seventeen? Or whatever is legal.”