THE FIRST thing that Avery John Hawkins and the boy noticed when they returned to the lodge in the meadow was the garden. It was thick and looked as if it was about to burst from the original rectangular patch that the children and their grandfather plotted. Fat green tomatoes sagged on their vines. Watermelon, cucumbers, and squash crept forward, spilling into the tall grass of the meadow. The pole beans stood well over the straw man’s head, leaving the ghostly figure to stand in his silk dress, idly watching as the beanstalks slowly strangled the sunflowers.

Hawkins stepped up to the straw man and ran a thick finger over the tight weave and the feathers that fluttered around its head in the late afternoon breeze. He looked around at the trampled grass between him and the unearthed smokehouse.

“Maybe you should wait up in the woods while I have a look around,” he said to the boy. “I know that I ain’t seen no one here for two days, but it still don’t feel right.”

Avery John Hawkins pulled a rifle wrapped in beaded buckskin from the side of his horse and turned the boy toward the woods.

“Now, you keep your eyes open, and if it comes to it, don’t be afraid to flash your Winchester like I taught ya.”

The boy turned his horse and the pack mule and headed toward the stream and the far side of the woods. Hawkins crossed the meadow and stood in front of the crooked lodge, staring at the sagging door.

He looked around the meadow again, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hawkins had grown accustomed to returning to the lodge to find it in some state of disarray no matter what improvements he and the boy had made during their brief stays there. Animals of some sort seemed to always find their way in, leaving their mark as they saw fit. In particular, Hawkins thought of the wolverine that he often found inside and had yet to figure out its point of entry. Hawkins proceeded with caution, half expecting the creature to jump out at him with every step.

The lodge was now neatly stocked with a variety of provisions. In a far corner, arrows and bows stood in various stages of completion, and there were hides adorned with beadwork and bundles of feathers. Vegetables, some fresher than others, hung from the rafters, leading Hawkins’s eye to the support beams which now stood under the lodge’s sagging roof.

Avery John Hawkins shifted the heavy rifle in his hand and thought about how long it had been since he and the boy had been able to stay in one place longer than a couple of days. He knew that if they could, this is where he would like to settle, but he quickly dismissed the thought and checked to see how well the boy was hiding himself in the woods.

He stood at the thick glass window near the fireplace, running his eyes across the tree line and the garden, thinking that he had taught the boy well. The boy was nowhere to be seen. He leaned closer to the window and his heavy breathing steamed the glass, revealing a handprint. A print that was no bigger than the boy’s.

A flash of movement caught the corner of Avery John Hawkins’s eye. He stepped back from the window and peered deep into the woods.