“What are what?” Bea asked. The deer stood up on their twiggy legs and hovered over Joven, who sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes. They all blinked at the Rangers.

The head Ranger pointed at the deer. “Those.”

“Oh, just some deer,” said Bea.

“They look awfully comfortable around you.”

“We were just about to get them to shoo.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Do what? Get them to shoo?”

“Stop it. You’re not supposed to have deer following you around like dogs.”

The deer stood plucky, their ears taut, as though they knew they were being talked about.

A bearded Ranger ran at the deer, but they merely bowed their heads.

The Rangers looked to Carl.

“It just sort of happened.” Carl shrugged.

The mother deer bent toward Joven and nuzzled her nose into his clenched fist until he opened it. The deer licked his palm.

“They do that for the salt,” Joven explained in his small, high voice, his velveteen hair shining in the sun.

The head Ranger shook his head. He withdrew a pistol from his holster. “You know I have to destroy these.” He turned to Carl. “Unless you want to do it yourself. Are you the head guy around here?”

Carl scowled.

Bea stepped up. “I am,” she said.

“They’re not wild anymore. It’ll give the others the wrong idea,” he said and cocked the pistol. The deer stared steadily at the gun in his hand, hoping it was food. Their big eyes quivered in their sockets, their ears twitched, taking in all the nature around them, all the signs and signals. It looked to Agnes like they were smiling.

“Jovencito, ven acá rápido, rápido,” Linda hissed, urgently wagging her hand at her side.

But the head Ranger swiftly strode the few paces to the deer and shot a bullet in the juvenile’s head, then the mother’s head, and they dropped and shook on the ground, kicked up dust, grunted and mewled, then stopped.

Joven held very still, trying to blink away his shock. Quiet tears fell. The deer had fallen next to him. One of their tender necks lay across his ankle. He had blood on his chest and above his eye. Pooling in his bed. Linda ran to him.

The head Ranger cast a victorious look at the boy. “The kid must really like deer,” he said.

Carl lunged at him, but Bea put her body between them.

The head Ranger looked back at his men. “This is contraband, so I guess we’ll need to take it with.” He twirled his finger, and the four other Rangers picked up the animals and flung them across their horses’ backs. The deer hung limp, their tongues red and lolling, blood burbling from the bullet holes as though from a ground spring. The horses whinnied nervously. They did not like the weight of death on their backs. But the Rangers did not mount. They turned back to the Community, holding their rifles across their chests.

The head Ranger said, “Well?”

“Well, what?” Bea said.

“What are you waiting for?”

“An apology?”

The Rangers laughed, and Bea laughed haughtily with them.

“Not happening,” the lead Ranger said.

“Some instructions then, I guess.”

“Start packing.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you just going to stand there and watch?”

“Oh, we’ll help a little,” he said and smiled. The Rangers went to the smoker, the repaired and functioning and in-use smoker, and set it on fire again. Then the Rangers mounted their horses and rode off.

The Community used several more skins to extinguish the fire. They inspected what was left to salvage. They tidied up the camp and made breakfast and stared dumbly at the campfire as the children, minus Joven, yelled and wrestled around them. No one made a move to pack. Instead, they had the Hunters return to the foothills the next day for an overnight or two, to replace the skins they’d just sacrificed in the fire and the meat they’d lost in the smoker.

Two mornings later they heard an incessant mechanical whir as the wind in the Basin picked up. In the distance, zipping low toward them, they saw a helicopter. Soon they were spitting dust from their mouths and covering their ears and eyes. The helicopter hovered above them. A raspy megaphone blared down.

“You have been ordered to clear this camp immediately.”

“We can’t sleep first?” Carl yelled up.

“You have been ordered to clear this camp immediately.”

“Oh, it’s not a real helicopter,” Frank said. “It’s too small. It might be a drone.”

“It’s too big to be a drone,” said Carl.

“But it’s too small to be a helicopter.”

“Maybe drones are bigger now.”

“Maybe helicopters are smaller.”

“It’s just a fucking Ranger toy,” said Val.

A loud noise—a thumping, clanking, grinding, shrieking noise—followed, and they all covered their ears.

All the birds bolted away from the bushes. The children cried.

“You have been ordered to clear this camp immediately,” they heard over the industrial din.

They looked around at one another.

Bea sighed loudly and yelled, “Well, it seems the time has come to say goodbye to our pleasant Basin.”

They all nodded. They covered their ears and dragged themselves around camp packing things away. They had been there a long while. They no longer remembered how best to pack it all. They had accumulated too many things. How had they accumulated so much? How had they accumulated anything other than food? It took them two days to pack. By then the Hunters had returned. There was nothing to do with their kills but leave them for scavengers. They had no time to skin, butcher, strip, soak, stretch, smoke, and dry. A total waste. They walked around camp looking for micro trash, and the whole time what they now called the metal bird hovered above them, screeching for them to get out, leaving a few times for, they assumed, fuel or power, though they couldn’t imagine from where.

When they finished, they stood under the metal bird and looked up, shielding their eyes.

“Now what?” Bea yelled.

A yellow light blinked on its belly as though relaying the message. “Await instructions,” it intoned, and then it zagged away, leaving them with a phantom echo of the screeching soundtrack in their ears. They sat on their buckskin packs and waited. Later that day, a small but fast-moving cloud of dust emerged from the horizon. They heard the whinny of horses and the clomp of hooves. It was the five Rangers, their uniforms as crisp and clean as before. The head Ranger wordlessly handed Bea an envelope.

Inside was a new directive: We are opening a new Post! Travel to the Caldera summit for the grand opening event! There were hand-drawn balloons in the corners of the paper.

“You’re throwing a party?” Bea said.

The head Ranger shrugged. “Sure, why not? How often do we open up a new Post?”

“Why are you inviting us?”

The head Ranger smiled hard, with all his teeth. “Well, because the Post is for you.”

“Is the party on a specific day?”

“No, we’ll just have it when you get there.”

“So you’ll just be ready to party?”

“Yes, do you have a problem with that?” He had tired of the conversation.

“Do you have any idea how long it will take to get here?”

“For me, it’d take about six weeks of good daily mileage. For you?” He chuckled. “Six months. Minimum.” The other Rangers laughed hard behind him.

The adults nodded, but this idea was lost on Agnes. “How many moons is that?” she asked.

The head Ranger snorted. “Many. I’ve never seen anything move slower than your caravan.”

Bea rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, so we’ve heard. You know, we’re carrying a lot of stuff.”

“Well, maybe you should pare down. I’m sure real nomads didn’t have so many possessions.”

“We are real nomads.”

The Rangers laughed hard again.

Bea crossed her arms. “We’re also walking with children and they slow us down.”

Agnes’s face burned. She stomped her foot. “We do not! I’m the one who has to wait for you.” She felt tears rising. She was a good leader.

“I’m not talking about you,” her mother snapped. “I’m talking about the children.”

This stunned Agnes. She had not known that her mother thought of her as something other than just a kid. She thought her mother only saw her as that strange girl imitating her in a cave. Her mother dismissed her, and then other times exalted her abilities. She rarely seemed happy that Agnes was leading, but never interfered. It had originally been Carl’s idea, and it had begun when her mother was gone. But her mother could be dismissive with everyone. So perhaps being treated like that simply meant her mother thought of her as a peer.

Bea eyed the head Ranger skeptically. “Our map doesn’t really show the Caldera, not in any useful way.” She looked in the envelope. “Is there a new map?”

“You’ll get a map when you need a map,” he said, and without any warning he pointed his rifle into the distance and fired. The sound flew away from them, across the Basin, stopping at nothing, shaking dry sage branches and alarming the bugs, voles, birds who were still around.