Black Hills

liked, at least a little. He liked hitting the ball after supper, and the way his grandpa would surprise him every few pitches with crazy, exaggerated windups. He liked riding Dottie, the little mare, around the corral—at least once he’d gotten over being worried about being kicked or bitten.
    Horses didn’t really smell after you got to like them a little, or ride them without being scared shitless.
    He liked watching the lightning storm that came one night like an ambush and slashed and burned the sky. He even liked, sometimes, a little, sitting at his bedroom window and looking out. He still missed New York, and his friends, his life, but it was interesting to see so many stars, and to hear the house hum in the quiet.
    He didn’t like the chickens, the way they smelled or sounded, or the evil glint in their eyes when he went in to gather eggs. But he liked the eggs just fine, whether they were cooked up for breakfast or stirred into batter and dough for cakes and cookies.
    There were always cookies in his grandmother’s big glass jar.
    He didn’t like when people came to visit, or he rode into town with his grandparents, the way they’d size him up and say things like, So, this is Missy’s boy! (his mother, christened Michelle, went by Chelle in New York). And they’d say how he was the spitting image of his grandfather. Who was old.
    He liked seeing the Chance truck ramble toward the farmhouse, even if Lil was a girl.
    She played ball, and didn’t spend all her time giggling like a lot of the girls he knew. She didn’t listen to New Kids on the Block all the time and make girly eyes over them. That was a plus.
    She did better on a horse than he did, but she didn’t rag on him about it. Much. After a while, it wasn’t like hanging out with a girl. It was just hanging out with Lil.
    And one week—not two—after the talk at the kitchen table, a brand-new TV showed up in the parlor.
    “No point in waiting,” his grandmother said. “You held up your end just fine. I’m proud of you.”
    In all of his life, he couldn’t remember anyone being proud of him, or saying so, just because he’d tried.
    Once he’d been judged good enough, he and Lil were allowed to ride, as long as they stayed in the fields, within sight of the house.
    “Well?” Lil asked as they walked the horses through the grass.
    “What?”
    “Is it stupid?”
    “Maybe it’s not. She’s pretty cool.” He patted Dottie’s neck. “She likes apples.”
    “I wish they’d let us ride up into the hills, really see stuff. I can only go with one of my parents. Except . . .” She looked around, as if to check for cocked ears. “I snuck out one morning, before sunrise. I tried to track the cougar.”
    He actually felt his eyes bug out. “Are you crazy?”
    “I read all about them. I got books from the library.” She wore a cowboy hat today, a brown one, and flipped a long braid over her shoulder. “They don’t bother people, hardly at all. And they don’t much come around a farm like ours unless they’re like migrating or something.”
    Excitement poured off her as she shifted to turn more fully toward the speechless Coop. “It was so cool! It was just so cool! I found scat and tracks and everything. But then I lost the trail. I didn’t mean to stay out so long, and they were up when I got back. I had to pretend I was just coming out of the house.”
    She pressed her lips together, gave him her fierce look. “You can’t tell.”
    “I’m not a tattletale.” What an insult. “But you can’t go off by yourself like that. Holy shit, Lil.”
    “I know how to track. Not as good as Dad, but I’m pretty good at it. And I know the trails. We hike a lot, and we camp out and everything. I had my compass, and my kit.”
    “What if the cougar had been out there?”
    “I’d have seen it again. It looked right at me that day, right at me. Like it knew me, and it felt like . . . It sort of felt like it did.”
    “Come on.”
    “Seriously. My mother’s grandfather was Sioux.”
    “Like an Indian?”
    “Yeah. Native American,” she corrected. “Lakota Sioux. His name was John Swiftwater, and his tribe—his, like, people—lived here for generations and stuff. They had animal spirits. Maybe the cougar was mine.”
    “It wasn’t anybody’s spirit.”
    She just continued to train her gaze on the hills. “I heard it that night. Late the night we saw it. I heard it scream.”
    “Scream?”
    “That’s the sound they