“I do know that. And you do a good job of it. Before you go, I’ve another favor to ask. Can I beg some of the smoked rabbit from you? We’ve a way to go, and fresh venison won’t travel as well.”

“Of course. It’s your meat. You killed it and smoked it.” Despite her words, her voice was stiff with dismay.

“And I gave it to you. Do you mind if we take some? I’ll be leaving almost all the venison.”

“Of course it’s fine. I’ll be grateful for whatever you leave me. My children have eaten well in the time you’ve been here, hunting for us. I’m grateful for that.”

“The venison. You should let it hang for a few days before you skin it out. Let it bleed well. It will be more tender that way. You can use it fresh, but you’ll want to smoke or dry most of it.” It suddenly seemed to me that I was leaving her an immense task.

“I have to get back to my children,” she said again, and I realized how uncomfortable she felt without quite understanding why.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll bring your pan back to you tonight.”

“Thank you.” And with that she was gone as abruptly as she’d come.

Buel Hitch had levered himself up onto his elbows. He looked toward the pan longingly. “Coffee and some of that meat, and I’ll feel like I’m alive again,” he said.

“No coffee, I’m afraid. But we have water and fresh-cooked liver, and that’s not bad at all, really.”

“That’s true. But there should be some coffee in my saddlebags, if you want to brew some up for us. It would go a long way toward putting me on my feet again.”

The mere thought of coffee set my mouth watering. I put water to boil and then served up the meat for us. Hitch’s mess kit was of battered tin, a pan and bowl and an enameled mug. The precious horde of coffee was packed inside it. The aroma of the beans dizzied me.

We ate in silence. I gave my complete attention to my meal, only pausing to add the coffee to the water when it boiled and then set the pot where it would stay hot while it steeped. The smell of the brewing coffee enhanced my appreciation for the meat.

She’d cooked the liver perfectly. It was moist and tender still; I could cut it with the side of my fork. She hadn’t used much onion, but what she’d used was evident in tender translucent pieces of the vegetable and its affable flavor throughout the goose grease. The meat was the most alive thing I’d eaten in a long time. I can think of no other way to express it. Liver is always rich and flavorful, but that evening I was suddenly aware that I had transferred life from the deer’s body to my own. There was something so essential in that meat; I had no name for it, and yet I felt it replenishing me as I chewed and swallowed. The taste was so thick and strong, the goose grease so satisfying that when I scraped the last sheen of it from my plate, I felt more satisfied than I had in days. I looked up to find Hitch staring at me.

As I returned his stare, he grinned honestly at me. “Can’t say that I’ve ever seen a man enjoy his meal as much as you do. That coffee done yet?”

He had wolfed down his portion of the meat. I doubt that he’d even tasted it, and somehow that seemed a shame, that he did not realize as I did that the life I’d taken from the deer had passed into us with this meal. It diminished what I’d done in taking the deer’s life. I felt oddly disgruntled, as if his gobbling of the meat were disrespectful of something. But I said nothing of that, only poured coffee for both of us. He gulped his down and had a second mug-full. I drank mine in long, lingering sips, and then put more water onto the grounds to try to get a second brew out of them. While it simmered, I took Amzil’s pan outside, cleaned it, and then returned it to her. When I tapped on her door, she opened it a crack. She took the pan from me with a quiet “thank you.” She didn’t invite me in and I didn’t try to intrude.

When I returned to Hitch, he was pouring some of the re-brewed coffee into his mug. He hunched near the fire on his blanket, looking miserable but alive. “Well, that was quick,” he said.

“I was just returning her pan.”

He smiled knowingly. “She’s a difficult one, isn’t she? Sometimes she will, sometimes she won’t.”

Dismay mingled with anger and churned in me. I tried to keep anything from showing on my face. “Meaning?” I asked him.

He shifted slightly, his brow furrowing deeper. Obviously the move hadn’t eased his pain. He rubbed at his face. “Meaning only that, for a whore, she’s an odd one. Sometimes a man can buy a night inside and a bit of comfort from her. Other times, she’s either boarded the door up tight or there’s no one there. She’s moody. But good when you can get her, is what I heard.”

“Then you’ve never had her?”

A small smile crooked his mouth. “Old son, I never pay for it. Not Buel. I don’t have to.” He drank the last of the coffee in his mug and tossed the dregs into the fire. He grinned. “Guess that means you ain’t had much luck with her.”

“I didn’t try,” I said. “Didn’t think she was that sort of a woman, with three children around her and all.”

He gave a choked laugh. “What? You think whores don’t have kids? Well, I suppose they don’t, if they can help it, but most can’t. That woman there, she’s been there, oh, a year I guess. Used to have a husband, but he’s gone now. Probably up and left. But it’s known a man can buy her. Not for coin; she’s got no use for that. No, she only barters it for food, and only when she’s in the mood for it.”

I could not begin to sort the emotions running through me. I felt stupid and used; Amzil was only a whore, and even though I’d paid her fee in food, day after day, she’d never allowed me to so much as touch her hand. That wasn’t a fair judgment and I knew it. She’d as much as told me that she’d sold herself for food when she’d had to. Doing what she must to feed her children; did that make her a whore? I didn’t know. I only knew that hearing another man talk of it so bluntly made me intensely unhappy. I’d known what she was, I admitted. But until Buel Hitch had come here, I hadn’t had to face that a lot of other men knew it, too, and far more intimately than I did. I had pretended she was something else, and pretended all sorts of other things about her as well. That she had a heart I could win. That she would be worth winning. That my protecting her and hunting food for her might make her something other than what she really was.

“You still up to traveling tomorrow?” I asked Hitch.

“You bet,” he replied.

I did one final task before I left the next morning. I got up at dawn and slipped out of the house before Buel was stirring. I needn’t have been so quiet. His cheeks were red, and he slept the slumber of an ill man. But I went like a creeping mouse, for I wanted no witnesses.

I went to the abandoned vegetable patch. I stooped down and set my hands on the earth. I closed my eyes. I pressed my palms firmly against the wet and matted vegetation and the soil beneath it. I spoke aloud, more to focus myself than because I thought it necessary. “I will travel better and more swiftly if I know that Amzil and her children are provided for. Grow.”

After a time, I opened my eyes. A fine misty rain was falling all around me. It beaded in tiny droplets on my shirtsleeves and clung to my eyelashes. My gut was in my way. It was hard to crouch low and touch the ground. I felt like I was folding myself. I couldn’t take a full breath. And nothing had happened.

But I hadn’t really expected anything to happen, had I?

Revelation. How could anyone do a magic that he didn’t believe in? I gave up my crouch. I knelt on the wet earth. I pressed my hands firmly to the soil. I took a deep breath, and discarded both my disbelief and my deep-seated fear that the magic was real and I could do this. I made myself recall the sense of power I’d felt when I’d clasped the sapling growing from Tree Woman’s breast. That power. That flowing transference of being. That was what I wanted. I took a deep breath. Then I clenched my fingers in the gritty soil and breathed out, breathed out until there was no air left in my lungs, and still I forced something out of myself, not from my hands but from my gut and through my arms and down and out of my fingers. Colors danced at the edges of my vision. Something was happening. I watched it. The ragged grasses and jagged leaved weeds dwindled, sinking back into the earth. The vegetables I blessed swelled and grew. Turnips shouldered purple tops above the soil. A yellowing stalk of a potato plant went green, lifted from the ground, and thrust up buds that opened to small white flowers. The fronds of carrots lifted above the brown soil, stood tall and dark green. I held the flex of whatever it was I strained, held it until spots danced before my eyes.