Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,52

to her chin.

“If it does get better, will we just leave the honey that’s in there now?” I asked.

Cate considered that. “Why not? Might make me even sweeter than I already am.”

Which made Larkin laugh.

Cate said, “A boy who can laugh when he’s lying on the floor with a potato poultice on his eye. What do you think, Captan? Is that some boy?”

Captan opened his eyes. He thumped the floor with his tail just once and closed his eyes again.

“Won’t do me any good to cry,” Larkin said, though he wasn’t laughing anymore, either.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Did you make that stew you brought?” Cate asked.

“No,” I said. “My mother did. And she’d have my head if she knew I’d put cold water in the jar so it would take a lid.”

Cate said, “Oh, it was plenty good, even so.”

I watched her trying to catch her breath, the doll again tucked up by her cheek. She seemed young and old at the same time.

“My father told me he saw you skinning a deer on that day he climbed up here.”

Cate shrugged. “Maybe so. I do that when I kill one.”

“You kill deer?”

She raised one eyebrow at me. Something I would have to try myself. “And why wouldn’t I?”

I looked around the cabin. Saw no gun. No bow. Said as much.

“Have you never made a snare?” she said, clearly curious.

My father had. For rabbits. For other small game. And had taught me how, though I didn’t like to snare things. The animals we caught tried too many hard things to get loose.

He had used a gun for deer. Taught me that, too. But I didn’t like fast killing any better than slow. I did like to eat, though.

“I’ve made a snare,” I said. “But not for deer.”

She flapped a hand tiredly. “What works for small things, works for big ones. I do set a snare now and then. Bait it with corn. Sometimes I catch a raccoon. Sometimes a deer.”

“You eat raccoon?”

“Don’t you?”

“I do,” Larkin said from the floor.

What a strange conversation we were having, we three. One abed. One lying on the floor. One standing. Talking about game.

“I haven’t,” I said. “But my father once made me a coonskin cap. The meat went to the dog.”

Cate nodded. “If you cook it right, raccoon is quite tasty.”

“Venison is better,” Larkin said.

“But where are the skins?” I said.

“Pah. How many skins does one old woman need?” She held up her hand and turned it in the air. “I’ve got this one I was born with, which could use a hot iron. And I’ve got some deerskin leggings rolled up in that trunk. A coat, too, warm as any fur.”

“Except bear,” Larkin said.

“Except bear,” she agreed. “But I cut the snare on the one bear I caught and ran for home as soon as I did.”

I tried to imagine that.

“How did you kill the deer you snared?”

“I used a knife. Cut their throats.”

Larkin nodded. “And she has a hoof scar to prove it.”

The two of them sounded very . . . satisfied, but neither of them was smiling.

“And I gave away all the other skins.” She held the doll closer against her cheek.

“Who did you give them to?” I asked.

For a moment, she didn’t answer. Then, “To Larkin.”

“How many skins does one boy need?” I said.

“And his father,” Cate said, the doll clenched in her fist.

Which was the first thing either of them had said about his father.

I looked from one of them to the other.

Both had gone quiet. The kind of quiet that hurts the ear.

Something was very wrong, suddenly, and I was standing right in the middle of it.

I looked down at Larkin. “Why doesn’t your mother like you coming up here?”

Larkin looked up at me through his one good eye.

“She doesn’t know how to read.”

Which was not a helpful answer.

“So what?”

“So I do.”

Which wasn’t any more helpful than what he’d already said.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that,” Cate said.

“She’s scared I’ll leave,” Larkin said quietly.

“Leave?”

“Leave here,” he said. “Leave the mountains.”

I thought about Maisie and the things she might do to hold on to Quiet when Mr. Anderson came to take him away. But I couldn’t imagine her doing Quiet himself any harm of any kind.

“What about your father?” I said. “Does he mind you coming here? Learning to read?”

Cate turned her face to the wall.

Larkin glanced at her. “He died when I was ten,” he said quietly. “Right after you came here to live.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry, Larkin.” I looked