West of Here by Jonathan Evison

and continued to graze as Ethan took aim, steadying the rifle with some difficulty in the bridge of his numb hand. As he locked in on her, she looked up and froze momentarily. That’s when she gave herself to him. He saw himself hitting her before he ever fired.
    When the shot rang out with an echo, the rifle jerked back, and the doe gave a lurch, but did not fall. She righted herself, then careened forward and to the side as if to go down, but caught herself once more, and staggered a few steps before darting into the woods without her former grace. Ethan gave chase. He lost sight of her almost immediately.He came upon the spattering of blood in the snow but hardly paused to look at it. He scrambled up the hillside, and after twenty hard-earned yards he stopped, out of wind. He quieted his breathing and raised his rifle and scanned the cluttered understory for any sign of movement. But there was only stillness.
    After a fruitless hour of reconnaissance, which failed to yield so much as a stray track or broken limb, Ethan settled for a breakfast of dried prunes, a spot of bacon grease, and a handful of flour. The flour, however, did very little to slow the progress of the prunes and the grease, and Ethan was forced to pause frequently in his labors as the day progressed.
    His thumb rendered him all but useless with an ax, so he began the business of running his lines with a length of alder he reckoned to be a hundred links, planting stakes along his way. It took him the better part of the day to reckon 160 acres, which extended south into the valley and east across the narrow canyon, a crossing that warranted considerable effort. He descended the bank near the mouth of the canyon, following the river around a sharp bend where a chaos of logs glutted the stream, causing it to alter its course into two sluices running swiftly around the edges. Ethan crossed the logjam and ascended the canyon on the far side to the bluff until he was opposite his cabin. With one arm, he felled and limbed another thin alder and began running a line up valley. And even as he executed this job, his mind set to work on the future.
    How long before a road replaced the settlers trail? How long before the clatter and clang of industry ringed the harbor from Ediz Hook to Hollywood Beach? How long before other men of vision, men with furry gray eyebrows, clutching leather attaché cases, looked upon this place and saw the profound and inexhaustible possibilities? How long before money came pouring in from the east upon the hot rails of the Northern Pacific? How long before Port Bonita replaced Seattle as the jewel of the Washington Territory, Washington
State,
before it became a western terminus rivaling San Francisco? And who would join him in hitching their fates to this town, these hills, who would work beside him in harvesting the bounty of this wilderness, pavingthis road, ringing this harbor with industry? The fine ladies and gentlemen of the commonwealth colony? The rugged denizens of the west end? Certainly not the Indians. And wasn’t it fitting that in a place comprised purely of potential, a failed accountant with no reputation, five hundred dollars, and a moth-eaten suit should help lead this charge toward civilization? For wasn’t this man, in essence, all future?
----
    UPON HIS RETURN JOURNEY , Thomas crossed the river again at Indian George’s, where he found the old man tanning a hide by the blue smoke of a fire. George left off working and watched Thomas shake the water from himself on the bank of the river like a wet dog. He directed a craggy smile at the approaching boy. Thomas tried not to look at the old man’s teeth, which were pointy in three places and too far apart.
    In a dream, as a child, George received a song, and the song was in Twana, and spoke of an invisible storm. Until George met the boy, he didn’t know the meaning of the song. Now, he thought he knew. The invisible storm lived inside the boy.
    “Your mother will