“Legal? What’s that?”

Jake hung his head in exasperation. Agnes felt her blood heating up. She did not want her children coddled. She didn’t know how old she was now. Maybe she was fourteen or fifteen or fifty-nine. Sometimes she felt older than them all. She’d been leading their walks for a long time now. And she’d been capable of surviving on her own just fine, thank you. She was brave. She was skilled. She was a watcher. She could take care of herself. And she would take care of Jake. And a baby. And anyone else who came along. Until they didn’t need her anymore.

“Let’s drop it,” Jake said, possibly sensing Agnes was building an argument.

Agnes had agreed. They didn’t need a parenting philosophy, as Jake called it, because every month Agnes bled.

The Twins said she would have to have real sex to get pregnant and what they were doing wasn’t sex. Agnes knew it wasn’t real sex but didn’t know how to make it real sex. Jake thought they were too young. He thought the walking was too hard to have kids right now. The weather was too unpredictable. He was embarrassed that they would have to tell Glen. He was scared of her mother. Wasn’t a newborn a burden on the Community? There was no rush, really, he always said.

“But you want to have young, right?” she would say.

Jake rolled his eyes. “I call them children, and yes, I’d like to have some.”

“Because it sounds like you aren’t sure.”

“No, I’m sure.”

“Okay, then.” She would reach for his pants, and he’d shackle her wrists with his hand.

“Please, Agnes. You’re too aggressive.”

This always stumped Agnes because she didn’t know how else to be. She tried to move more slowly for his pants, hoping that would seem less alarming to him. But he still dodged her.

She had asked politely. She had made intellectual arguments. She’d offered what she knew of statistics, of the need to grow the population in the Wilderness State. To stake some kind of claim here. She couldn’t imagine an elk going to so much trouble to mate. She had even tried to trick him one day by insisting the anthill they’d been sitting next to belonged to a rare poisonous kind of ant and that they needed to undress quickly to make sure no ants were on their bodies. But she’d felt ashamed of her cunning as he stood there blushing at their nudity, trusting fully that she had only meant to protect him from ants. She had walked away, mumbling for him to get dressed. The last time they had been alone together, she had decided to be blunt. She turned around, pulled her tunic up, and pushed her backside into him, and they both tumbled over.

He rolled away. “No, I told you.”

She clenched her fists in frustration.

He smiled. “Are you going to hit me?”

“No,” she said. She hid her hands behind her back so she could relax them and pretend they had never been clenched.

“We can do other stuff.”

“Okay,” she had said and led him to a spot between some sage bushes, and there they rubbed together with their clothes on. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy it. She liked panting and wrestling with Jake. They giggled and squeaked like weasels at play, and they were always relaxed and gentle afterward, like they were floating on a lazy river. She just didn’t see the point of it. She had needs. And this did not satisfy them.

Agnes slowly pulled the softened sinew from her mouth, and Jake blushed even though he had not seemed to be looking at her. She heard the return whistle of the Gatherers. The mellow toot on carved bone, in long and short bursts.

Then, on their heels, the horn of the Hunters, which Carl had fashioned out of a rock sheep’s ridged, pearly horn.

Agnes bounded up, pushed the wet sinew into Jake’s hand. “I did a really good job with this one.”

“You better have.” He smiled shyly at his palm, where the sinew glistened with her spit.

The Hunters and Gatherers arrived, and Agnes could see four jackrabbit heads, their limp ears flopping with each step. A deer lay across Juan’s shoulders. Ahead of them Joven walked with his deer, probably so they wouldn’t get spooked from the scent of the dead one.

Joven’s deer were a mother and juvenile that had recently crept closer to the border of the Community’s camp in the Basin. They were probably looking for protection from predators and were hoping the Community wasn’t one. One morning, Joven went out and fed them pine nuts. He had been told not to, but he didn’t listen, or perhaps he did not want to follow the rule. He was young. He was a Newcomer. He had other ideas.

The adults had a long meeting about Joven and the wild deer he was feeding, arguing for or against breaking the rules. Some insisted that when they needed the deer for food, it would be a good resource. The deer made Joven happy, and usually he was a somber little boy. But others simply said, “We can’t domesticate wild animals. Even if it’s an accident. We’ll get in so much trouble.” “But they’re already hovering around us,” the pro-deer camp argued. “At what point do they just become ours?” “When we feed them,” said the anti-deer camp. “Well, they’re already fed, so they’re already ours.” The pro-deer camp cheered and the anti-deer camp booed, and they got so loud and angry Carl and Bea had to make a call. They decided to let the deer stay.

“Our first foray into animal husbandry,” they said, putting on cheerful faces.

“Which is not why we’re here,” said Debra, the anti-deer camp leader. “This is really bad precedent, people.” She shook her head.

“Well,” Carl said, “we’re also supposed to be leaving this Basin once in a while, so if you want to follow the rules, why don’t you run along.”

“Oh, shut up, Carl,” Debra said, and she stepped toward him angrily. But Frank stepped toward her as she did. He was imposing. He somehow got bulkier the longer he was here, rather than waste away as most everyone else had. Debra stepped back. She’d been right, though. Domestication was very against the rules. Even Agnes had read this rule. It was rule number two on the second page of the Manual.

Now the deer shadowed Joven everywhere while keeping a wary distance from everyone else.

Joven took the deer round to the sleeping circle, where they munched on sage and then lay next to his bed and curiously nosed the deerskin bedding. They lay their gentle necks over his torso when he slept.

The Community got to processing what they had brought back. Linda lit the smoker. They’d patched it after the fire. It worked almost as well. Skinners skinned the rabbits, then scraped hides. Carl and the Twins worked on the deer. Carl had the strength to wrestle its bulk, but the Twins had the finesse to work clean in the skinning and gutting and butchering. Everyone could process a deer, but their hides were immaculate and their cuts were beautiful.

By the middle of the night they’d gotten meat into the smoker. Hides had been scraped, soaked, and stretched before they lost the sun. They made cuts by firelight. They formed a chain of hands to move strips from the fire to the smoker to be hung.

Then they tumbled into bed, where the smaller children were already asleep.

At first light, after only a few hours of sleep, five Rangers rode into camp on horseback. They were different Rangers than the one Ranger who had visited before. They wore new uniforms. Gone was the Ranger green. These new uniforms were a watery blue. Crisp white handkerchiefs circled their necks. Their badges were the only thing that announced they were still Rangers, though the Community recognized some of them.

The Rangers carried rifles, slung over their shoulders. And when they hopped off their horses, they held the rifles up, ready.

“What’s going on here?” Carl stretched and rubbed his eyes. His words were garbled by a yawn.

“We’re here to move you off this land,” one of the Rangers said. He was likely the head Ranger. His horse was the tallest one, and he wore a different hat from the others.

“No, I mean, what’s with the outfits? They’re new.”

“They’re not outfits. They’re uniforms.”

“Well, they’re new.”

“So they are.” The head Ranger stood up a bit taller. It seemed he liked the new look, liked the starchiness of the clothes. His boots were new too.

“You look like an army.”

“We have a new mandate.”

“What’s the mandate?”

The Rangers gave one another long, meaningful looks. The head Ranger spoke. “That’s classified.”

“How come?”

“Because it’s classified.”

“No, how come you have a new mandate?”

“There’s a new Administration.”

“That was fast,” Carl said.

The Community laughed.

“Don’t get smart,” the head Ranger said. “You need to move along. As you’ve been told. Repeatedly.”

“Just once, actually,” said Bea.

“Once is more than enough. Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The head Ranger’s shoulders fell as he spotted Joven’s deer lying with him in his bed. “What are those?”