We ate without talking and watched dayrise through frost-rimmed glass in the double-hung window. Boys had broken out the lower pane that past summer with a baseball. Virgil had taped clear plastic over the triangular shards, enough of a fix until he had time and money to get a new pane of glass. We could not see the ground clearly from the table, only the sky through the upper half of the window.“Hear them coyotes last night?” I asked.“Mmm.”“Wonder if they’re after that little bear cub.”We’d seen a lone black bear cub the day before, out riding together. Virgil had marked it. He’d taken an intense interest in it.“I’m going over to see Charlie Good Swan,” he said, “about those calves. You can come along.”“I’d rather borrow a horse, if that’s all right. I want to go up Medicine Shield Creek, see if I can find that little bear.”“That’s a good idea. Take that buckskin.”Virgil ate his bread and gazed up at the sky, where clear-weather cumulus were moving east on a high wind.“All right, I’ll go see Charles, and I’ll see you back here later.”He went out to his truck and left.I saddled the buckskin and rode away south, toward the escarpment where we’d seen the cub.
