The figures were human-sized, five adults-a wolf-headed man, his mouth wide in triumph, she-bear, moose, long-horned bull and bighorn ram-and a single child, its skull reptilian, fragile and snake-fanged. Their knees were cocked, arms extended heavenward, backs arched, one offering up a nugget of agate in its raised hands. On another, a tail curved away in an S, the last of its vertebrae no bigger than a snail’s body. It was as though the earth had thrown up an accumulation of its dead, regathering the parts into this resurrection of creatures.

She stopped at every one of them, fingering a hip, a shoulder, a cage of ribs, discovering how each ceramic bone had been attached to its armature of steel rods with copper wires and rawhide ligatures. The bones were colored ochre, caramel and cinnamon, the figures mostly unadorned. Here, a necklace of raven feathers. There, a bracelet woven of moss and flowers, an anklet of green beads, some figures rendered with more artistry.

She lifted an antler from the pile, then set it back in place. It was real, and the bones of cattle and horses and wild things mixed in with the mound of antlers were real. She imagined Griff carrying them in from the surrounding countryside. The years it must have taken.

On the northmost edge of the meadow she found a split-log bench and sat, her eyes welling with a sense of unexpected peace, her arms and legs gone weak. When her vision blurred the figures seemed to rock and leap, dancing around the heaped-up antlers as though the pile were a kind of shrine. She imagined she could hear the joyful hymns they sang.

She sat until it was too dark to see, and when Sammy whined she stood and shook her head, stomping her feet in the damp night air, feeling the episodes of her life edging back in increments: anger, jealousy, disappointment, pride. The belief of having been in love. It had all been bled away somehow, and she’d been reduced to just a simpler, and quieted, animal. She looked up into the spray of stars.

“No one can know for sure,” she said.

HE WOKE AT FIVE-THIRTY, the time he always got up in the summer, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He sat listening. No one was moving in the house. He was used to the racket of McEban in the kitchen, noisy and impatient with the coffeepot, the smell of frying bacon. He walked to the door, cracking it open to listen. Still nothing. He tiptoed to the bathroom at the end of the hall, easing the door shut behind him. He peed against the porcelain above the waterline to avoid the sound of splashing. When he was done he lowered the seat and sat. He worried it would be too loud if he flushed, deciding not to chance it. He hadn’t been here long enough to know the rules.

In his bedroom again he dressed and sat in the desk chair by the window looking out at the empty street below. A boy on a bicycle rode past throwing rolled newspapers from the canvas saddlebags at the back of his bike. Each paper was wrapped in clear plastic, and the boy gripped it by the excess part of the sleeve, swinging it around his head before letting it fly. Like David was supposed to have done with his slingshot. He wanted to rush out of the house, introduce himself, offer to help, but he didn’t. The rules again.

He thought the room must be someone’s office when they didn’t have a guest. There was a computer on the desk, a Mac like McEban’s, but he didn’t turn it on. Beside the desk were stacks of papers, books and boxes, and he peeked around in one and found a hole-punch, a stapler and padded envelopes, but the snooping just made him more nervous and he left the others untouched. He didn’t want to be caught going through someone’s belongings. There was still no one up in the house.

He put his shoes on to go downstairs, careful to place his feet where each step butted up against the wallboard, because he’d seen stairs built, knowing the boards were nailed solidly at the edges and wouldn’t squeak. In the living room he sat on the couch, then moved to a chair because he didn’t want to hog a big piece of furniture all to himself.

He was chilly and rubbed his arms. At first, he couldn’t figure out why Laramie was so much cooler than the ranch. It was August here too. And then he’d spotted the vent in the ceiling of his room and, holding his hand underneath, felt the rush of air. They kept their whole house colder than the bank in Ishawooa.

In the kitchen he poured a glass of milk. He thought this would be all right, that it might even be expected. It had been late when he and his father arrived the night before, but his father’s wife had waited up for them. Her name was Claire, and she was so pretty he forgot about being tired. She’d given him a glass of milk without asking if he wanted one, and made a sandwich with plenty of mayonnaise when he said that’s how he liked it. He thought about making a sandwich this morning but didn’t want to risk the disturbance. When he finished the milk he placed the glass in the sink, running it full of water, as McEban had taught him to, so a crust wouldn’t form in the bottom.

He thought about going outside, but what if Rodney got up and couldn’t find him? He counted the squares in the linoleum. Twenty-five across and twenty the other direction. He did the math.

When he couldn’t sit anymore, he searched very quietly under the sink and in the pantry, finding an all-purpose cleaner and a brush, a bucket and rubber gloves, and got down on his knees cleaning one square thoroughly, and then the next, subtracting against the total. That’s where he was when Claire came in wearing a pink-and-lavender robe, staring at him openmouthed as if she’d discovered a thief. She wasn’t wearing slippers, her feet so white he could see the blue veins beneath the skin.

He said he was sorry, that he hoped he hadn’t woken her.

“Oh, my God,” she said. She hugged him. She called him a sweet boy, and he stayed as still as he could, breathing shallowly, enjoying every bit of it. He didn’t think about pulling away. His mother was good at lots of things, like telling stories, but she wasn’t much of a toucher. McEban hugged him sometimes, but not like this. He couldn’t remember any similar experience in his life.

Later that morning his father loaded everyone in the car, Claire, and his new brother and sister, Kurt and Corley, and they bought a paper bucket of chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy and coleslaw at the Colonel’s, and drove east out of town up a long grade until they topped out in the National Forest. Vedauwoo. That’s what the place was called and it was cool as the house up there, though the sun was hot on their faces. Big, pale stones were standing everywhere, like a herd of elephants, and when he stood in the glare reflecting off a stone it felt as if he was onstage at the high school in Sheridan, which he’d done once in a play, with all the spotlights on him, unable to see the audience, even with his hand raised over his eyes.

Claire spread a blanket out in the shade of one of the stones, holding little Corley on her lap, and they had their picnic. The gravy and potatoes were barely warm, but it didn’t matter. Everyone was relaxed and quick to laugh, and then he and his father threw a football back and forth, letting Kurt try when he wanted, but he was only a year older than his sister, only three and a half, and wasn’t any good. When Kenneth lobbed the ball softly toward his little outstretched arms, it bounced into his face and he cried until Claire took him by the wrists and swung him around in circles.

On the ride back to Laramie he tried to keep every episode of the day linked together in his mind, like a highway with each separate memory represented by the yellow dashes in the middle, so he could tell McEban. But he already knew that Claire’s hair in the sunlight was what he’d remember most. Above anything else. It was a deep red color, and he’d always liked red hair and thought Rodney must too. That it was a preference he’d gotten from his father. And she had freckles on her forehead and arms that had darkened in the sun as the afternoon wore on, and he liked those too.