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descending over this infernal pyre. And imagining that, he thought up a prayer.
    Oh Lord , he prayed, please see my mama to Heaven where she belongs. And Lord, see to it, please, that should my pa ever wish to speak with her from where he writhes and burns in that Other Place—
    Jason opened his eyes and stared into the flames that consumed the cabin old John Thistledown had built the year Jason was born.
    —please, Lord: see to it he stays where he is and keeps his damn peace.
    §
    A month ago, shooting the pigs might have brought Jason some measure of satisfaction. Now—somehow, the act seemed capricious; low-down cruel. But Aunt Germaine insisted.
    “They are probably fine,” she said. “But who knows if whatever it was that took poor Ellen is not also somehow attached to the swine?”
    “It don’t seem likely,” said Jason. “And anyhow—those pigs have value at market.”
    Aunt Germaine shook her head. “There is no market,” she said. “Not close by. Go on, young man. Take your shot.”
    “Well,” he said doubtfully, “they are cannibals.”
    In the end, Jason was down six bullets from the Winchester, having missed with one and but wounded with another.
    He made sure to gather up the casings for reuse before he and his new aunt started off, in the dawn light, toward the snow-choked pass to Cracked Wheel. Jason wondered how they were going to do it. But as they crossed a rise that had been beaten down by Aunt Germaine’s footsteps, and rounded a tree, he saw it. There, sticking out of the snow, were two pair of snowshoes.
    “Have you ever walked in snowshoes?” she asked.
    “‘Course,” he said. “There was a couple pair that burned up on the back of the woodshed. Didn’t think of them until now.”
    “Well, it is a good thing I thought ahead,” said Aunt Germaine. “See? I brought an extra pair.”
    “In case of survivors,” he said.
    “That is right.”
    “That was good thinking, Aunt Germaine.”
    Aunt Germaine reached out, tossed one pair of shoes onto the snow, and stepped onto them. She motioned for Jason to do the same, and then looked at him very intently.
    “I will look after you, Jason—from now on. I’ll see to you. We are, after all, family.”
    “Family,” said Jason as he stomped his feet into place on the snowshoes. He hadn’t thought he’d be using that word again, but it felt good coming off his tongue.
    “Let me carry your bag, Aunt,” he said as they headed off south.

3 - The Horror at Cracked Wheel
     
    Cracked Wheel, Montana, was the biggest place that Jason Thistledown had ever visited, but he was wise enough to know that didn’t mean much. From talking to others when they came to town from time to time, he understood that Cracked Wheel was but a flyspeck next to the great towns of Helena, of Butte, of Billings. He knew that all combined, they weren’t any of them a thing to compare to Philadelphia where Aunt Germaine came from, or New York, where the scale of things dwarfed whole mountain ranges.
    Still . . . there were more than a hundred people who made their homes here around a main street of log-and-board buildings. There was the Dempsey store, which handled dry goods and hardware and coffee and spices and the mail. When the season was right, they’d even get apples and such in, and when it was wrong, it would be applesauce, or anything else you might imagine sealed inside a tin can. There was a saloon, which Jason had not entered since he was very small, where you could get a room as well as a meal and a whiskey. Across the road was Johnston Brothers, a little storefront that offered doctoring and barbering and undertaking depending on your needs. And next to it was the town office, a low clapboard building where the records were kept of births, deaths and land titles.
    That was where Aunt Germaine led him. “It is the one building that I dared enter before I came to you. I am not dead. So I believe it is safe.”
    “Safe.”
    Jason kicked off his