Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,14

father?”

I paused, remembering that hand as it twitched. “The same.”

She nodded briskly. “I’ll get the tallow.” She stepped just through the door to fetch a lump of deer tallow tied up in an old kerchief. “Rendered and ready,” she said, bringing it to where we stood in the yard, the pouch of meat slung between us, dripping a little blood onto the ground.

That was a trail we did not dare leave along the path, so I blotted the belly of the sling against the ground, Samuel getting my gist and lowering his end, too, while Mrs. Peterson tucked the tallow into a fold at the top.

“That ought to make you a fair bit of soap,” she said. “Or candle, if you like.”

We nodded our thanks, said it, too, and then our goodbyes.

“Tell your mother to come along next time,” she said. “I could do with a visit.”

“She’ll be up in a bit with some potatoes.”

“And I’ll be back soon to visit Scotch,” Samuel said.

And off we went back down the mountain, the meat swinging between us in its hammock, Samuel’s end mostly dragging on the ground, leaving a trail of blood despite our best efforts.

Chapter Eleven

It’s not easy to gather stink, but I decided I would go out before dark and do just that.

Supper almost changed my mind, it was so good and made me so sleepy, the venison a lovely change from soup.

I wanted to say to my mother, as she seared it in a black pan, “If that smell doesn’t wake Daddy up, nothing good ever will.”

But I knew I would soon be raising her dander again, so in the meantime I was the girl she wanted me to be. I helped with the meal, thanked her for it, and cleaned up afterward, my voice quiet, my smile steady, until I thought perhaps she and even Esther had forgiven me for dousing my father that morning, though I knew they still blamed me for much more.

“I’ll take supper to Maisie,” I said when the kitchen was clean and the lanterns lit.

“And then we’ll make soap,” she said.

My mother didn’t notice when I took a jar with a tight lid and snatched the last egg, the one that had been meant for my lunch. Since it was, in some ways, mine, I reckoned that I had the right to spend it as I wished. But I wasn’t sure my mother would see it that way, so I took it when she wasn’t looking and carried it out with the scraps for Maisie.

“Oh, how spry you are!” I said to Maisie when I crept into the woodshed and found her on her feet, her tail wagging a little.

I knelt down and let her come to me, the puppies squirming and squealing in their nest of straw.

She put her nice, wet nose into the hollow of my neck and snuffed at me, licked my cheek, put one forepaw flat against my arm until I knuckled her ears and kissed her in return. She gobbled the venison as I fed it to her on the flat of my hand, piece by piece, not just the gristle but soft meaty bits, too.

I knew that twilight would soon come creeping across Echo Mountain, and the night critters with it. Deer, wherever fire had left a clearing. Coyotes, wherever there were deer. Raccoons, masked for plunder. And skunks, hunting for grubs and worms and frogs too young to be quiet on a spring night.

But skunks loved eggs most of all.

And I had one.

A nice big one from Mrs. Anderson’s Rhode Island Reds, who feasted on marigolds and wheat berries and laid hearty eggs for all of us who lived nearby.

I had planned to crack the egg into a notch of a big rotten stump below the cabin, where I’d often seen skunks digging for termites, and then wait for its thick, gamey smell to draw a skunk close while I waited in the trees.

But I looked into Maisie’s eyes, ran my hand down her washboard ribs, thought about the milk she made for her puppies, and fed the egg to her instead.

I cracked it with one hand into my other and held it out while she lapped and lapped until it was gone.

“So you can sleep well,” I whispered into her silky ear. “So you can come out of here soon and see the springtime.”

And I was startled by the swell of happiness and fullness that swept over me as she laid her head against