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 make because they can’t roar. Only the big cats-like lions-can roar. Something in their throat. I forget. I’ll have to look it up again. Anyway, I just wanted to try to find it.”