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amazing how you adjust to stuff. We were wet through and had been wet through for so long that we didn’t pay much attention to it anymore.
    “When we get out of the woods,” Jeannie said, “are we going to tell people what happened?”
    “Not until we talk with my father and my uncles,” I said.
    “So what do we tell people?”
    “That we got lost in the woods,” I said.
    “But you’re going to tell your father the truth,” Jeannie said.
    “And my uncles. They’ll know what to do.”
    “How do you know that?” Jeannie said.
    “They always know what to do,” I said.
    “They do? My mom never does,” Jeannie said.
    Pearl had tired of the woods and was now trotting along the tracks in front of us. Jeannie put her hand on my arm, and we stopped for a moment. She looked straight at me.
    “You saved me,” she said.
    I nodded.
    “You knew what to do,” she said.
    “Didn’t have a bunch of choices,” I said.
    In front of us, Pearl stopped suddenly and raised her head and began to sniff the air. I walked to where she stood and sniffed. There was a smell. I sniffed some more.
    Someone was frying bacon. I heard a car horn. The three of us went on down the tracks, around a curve, and there was a town.

Chapter 23
    “What did your father say?” Susan asked me.
    “Actually it was my uncle Cash that came to get us,” I said. “We were about twenty miles downriver, and we told him what happened on the ride home.”
    “And what did Uncle Cash say?”
    “Not much. He never had all that much to say anyway.”
    “Did he say anything?”
    “He said, ‘Sounds like you done pretty good. We’ll talk with your father about it.’ ”
    “Your father was the man?” Susan said.
    “It was mostly like a house with four equals in it,” I said.
    “Including you.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “but in retrospect, I guess my father was a little more equal.”
    “And you?” Susan said.
    “Maybe a little less, until I was older.”
    “They must have been out of their minds with worry,” Susan said.
    “Probably, though I gotta say they didn’t mention it.”
    “So what was your father’s reaction when you got home?”
    “Mostly like Cash’s, Patrick too. They both said it sounded like I’d done what I had to do and done it well.”
    “That must have made you feel good.”
    I nodded.
    “Did,” I said.
    “How about Jeannie?”
    “My uncle Cash told her that she could think of us as family and anytime she needed help come to one of us. Patrick and my father said that was so.”
    “And?” Susan said.
    “And she started to cry.”
    Susan nodded.
    “Finally,” she said, “someone to depend on. Must have felt good for her.”
    A couple of pigeons came to where we sat on the bench and stood giving us the beady eye. We had no food to give them. So after a long accusa tory moment, they waddled to the next bench.
    “Did you know,” Susan said, “in certain tribal cultures of the early Middle Ages, the child of a princess was raised by her brothers?”
    “I didn’t know that,” I said. “Why did they do that?”
    “Something about keeping the question of bloodline in-house, so to speak,” Susan said.
    “A little-known fact,” I said.
    “I have a PhD from Harvard,” Susan said. “I know many of them.”
    “All of them as useful as that?” I said.
    “Oh, heavens no,” Susan said. “But I do have a question.”
    “Of course you do,” I said. “You’re a shrink.”
    “How did you feel?” she said.
    “Me?”
    “You. You were fourteen years old and you’d just killed a man.”
    “At the time, I didn’t know quite how I felt,” I said. “I’m not sure I do now.”

Chapter 24
    Cash drove Jeannie home. I took a shower and put on clean clothes. There were biscuits left over from breakfast. My father cooked up some antelope steaks and fried some green tomatoes. When Cash came back, we sat down to supper at the kitchen table.
    “She got her story straight?” my father said.
    “Yeah,” Cash