Chapter 17

I counted the sunrises by carving crude notches on a stick, which I kept inside the bag of our belongings. Six days had already passed.

***

Immediately after the attack, we only moved enough to find other shelter and hid. I had to regain my strength. We stayed perhaps a day and a half stuck in another storm bridge, under the tracks, in contact with the earth and the insects.

Resuming walking was torture.

We went south all the time. We guided ourselves by following the rails, the arc of the sun, and the columns of smoke that we could see between the branches of the trees, to avoid the cabins that were in our path. We took detours to avoid the towns. Late fall is a hectic and dangerous season for wild creatures. In Montana, the season for the wolf, the wild turkey, the fox, the bison was open, and very soon the season for the mountain lion and many other animals whose hunting required large-caliber rifles would open. It didn’t excite me.

I didn’t even wan