Slowly, I hold out my bowl for more.

The woman turns from me quickly to fill it a second time and sets it before me again. I give this helping the same treatment I gave the first, and hold it out to her again. Without a word, she obliges, filling the bowl the third time.

I’m a little less hungry now. Curiosity has settled in. As I eat my third bowl of stew, I look around the cabin.

The place is sparkling. Where so much dust and soot had gathered now glitters polished wood, antler and stone. The cobwebs are gone out of the corners, and the floor has been swept clean.

Nothing valuable seems to have been thrown away, I note with satisfaction. All my little projects, needles and hide and half finished moccasins, the things I use to distract myself and idle away the time in the increasingly dark evenings, they’re all where they belong. Only the mess is gone.

My bowl is empty again. The woman looks to me with big, questioning eyes, but I do not hand it back to her. I’ve eaten enough.

I push my chair back a little and it scrapes noisily against the floor. She jumps at the sound, then lowers her eyes quickly in response and hurries to a dark corner of the cabin, sinking down against the wall with her head down. She hugs her knees and watches me surreptitiously from her shy, humble position.

Sitting very still, I watch her. Neither of us moves. Neither speaks. Only the fireplace creaks and pops as the flames slowly die down to glowing coals.

Half an hour passes.

I’d like to speak to her. I’d like to ask her what she’s doing here, what she wants. But somehow, it’s not that simple.

I haven’t spoken a word to another human being in over twelve years. I’m not even sure I can speak anymore. Certainly, I wouldn’t know how to hold a conversation with a woman.

I scratch my chin. My beard’s not so long this time of year. In the summer I usually cut it with my bush knife when it starts to itch too much.

She’s still not moving. I watch her another ten minutes.

She seems harmless enough, I decide. And quiet. Quieter than most humans, anyway. I’m still aware of her breathing, of course. And though she took care to step softly across the floor, my sensitive ears could not mistake the sound of her footfall.

Still, I find her presence not…wholly grating.

I rise from my chair. She follows the motion with her eyes. I hang my rifle on the wall and watch her shoulders relax just a little to see this.

That’s right; I’m not going to hurt you, little one. And I trust you not to try anything. Of course, if you do go for the rifle, it won’t end well for you. But you know this, don’t you? You’re no fool…

For now, not knowing what else to do, I turn my attention to my pack. There’s meat inside that needs to be dried before it goes bad. Seeing this, and watching me get the cleaver and chopping board down from the shelf, she jumps up quickly. She offers with a gesture to do the work for me. Intrigued, I surrender and watch her for a minute as she cuts the meat into long strips.

Deciding she knows what she’s doing, I go back to my pack. The hides have already been skinned, all the flesh and fat scraped out. They need to be salted, and quickly, or like the meat, they will go bad.

Taking one last look at the woman, I make my way outside with them, and over to the stable.

A large building, larger than my own cabin, the stable doubles as my work space. I have just the one horse, a nameless old gray mare, my only companion for many years. I pat her neck as I make my way inside, and check her provisions.

She’s a good horse, used to my ways. She doesn’t spook at the scent of flesh and hide, but stoically shares her space with these grisly trophies.

I have a dozen hides staked out in here in various stages of the tanning process. And along the wall, I have several pails filled with tannin solution, with hides curing inside weighted with large stones, as well as buckets of lime used to soak leather. Rawhide is stored in the big chest, safely out of the sunlight and protected from insects that would eat through the skins, with finished pelts and leathers stored inside the cabin and awaiting my next trip to town.

Setting the three hides fur side down on my work bench, I take salt from my salt vat and rub it generously into the skins to preserve it. Task finished, I roll them up to let them cure overnight. Then I go along the wall, stirring the hides curing in tannins, wringing them out and checking on their progress.

I top off the buckets that are evaporating with more tannin solution, but I’m nearly out. I’ll have to cut plenty of willow branches tomorrow, peel them and prepare the bark to boil to make more. Then I’ll use the leftover sticks as bait for my beaver traps. Ah, but those are getting a bit rusty. I’ll boil them in some tannin too, and turn those lethal reddish jaws a stealthy black…

I’m heading back to the cabin when the door opens suddenly, startling me.

The woman. I’d forgotten about her.

She’s holding my bowl and spoon, and the cutting board and cleaver, wearing a determined expression as she hurries past me. I watch her disappear in the darkness, making her way down to the creek, and I scratch my beard again. I head back inside.

The meat is all laid out on the drying rack over the coals. She works quickly, I decide, observing the cuts with a critical eye. And it’s not a bad job.

It feels strange, sharing this simple chore with another human being. For as long as I can remember, I’ve done everything on my own. But with the sudden appearance of this strange little woman, suddenly my workload has been cut down by half.

I look around the cabin again, observing the way it sparkles beneath the light of the flickering lantern.

Perplexed, wondering what my next move should be, I end up sitting in my chair again, just waiting for her to return, which she does, presently, her skirts damp and her hands raw from washing the dishes in the creek.

“There’s a bucket,” the words leave my mouth before I realize it, and I’m startled to hear the sound of my own voice. So much weaker than I remember. Barely above a whisper. I clear my throat. “You could have washed the dishes inside.”

“I did not want to trouble you with the noise,” she answers in the smallest, most timid voice.

She understands, this one. She understands I’ve spent all this time alone, that it would take some effort for me to get used to having another person around. And she’s made allowances for that.

This, I can appreciate. Though still, I do not understand it.

What is she doing here?

At any rate, it’s dangerous, I think, eyes narrowing on her. A woman walking alone after dark in the mountains. I’ve cleared the path down to the creek of trip hazards long ago, but she can’t know it very well. It would be easy to step off the trail, become lost. And there are wolves in this part of the country. Mountain lions. Even a pack of coyotes might try to make a meal of her, if they’re hungry enough.

“Next time,” I hear myself speak again, a strained, quiet sound, “bring the water inside for washing.”

Her dark eyes go wide with another question. I don’t answer her. Don’t really know how to.

Next time? Did I really just say that?

I suppose I did.

It’s the last thing I was expecting, and yet I find I’ve accepted it so easily.

This woman’s presence.

I watch her put the dishes away in their proper place and tend the fire. Then she finds her place again in the dark corner of the cabin and returns to her former position, watching me silently with big, brown eyes.

She needs me. I begin to understand this much. She needs me or she wouldn’t be here, trying so hard to please me. Needs a place to stay, a roof over her head, a little food to eat. And perhaps— protection?

I’ve been staring at her for a long time, studying her the way I’d study any animal whose movements I did not understand.

But, I remind myself, this woman is no animal. She’s a human, a female. A damned good looking one at that.

I begin to feel self-conscious.

Frustrated, I look away and push back my chair, bending to unlace my boots. The smell of my unwashed feet fills the cabin. I feel self-conscious about this too, and it makes me angry.

This is my space. Just because a woman’s squirreled herself away in here, I’m not going to change my habits, or worry about things I never considered before.

If she wants to stay, fine. So long as she doesn’t make a nuisance of herself, she can cook for me and clean the place all she likes. But I’ll be damned if I go taking a bath in the creek for her.

Belly full and body exhausted after a long day, I go to my bed and lay myself down, unafraid, unbothered by my silent, watchful audience.

The woman stays in her corner, knees still pressed against her chest, tiny fists pressed to her mouth. She even looks like a squirrel, I think.

I’m partial to squirrels. One winter I had one living in the rafters of the cabin. For weeks he was my only company while I was snowed in. I used to trade him fruit pits in exchange for his funny antics, and watch him for hours. Then one day in spring he disappeared, and I never saw him again.

Yes, I like squirrels, I decide, still watching her as I feel my eyelids grow heavy. I’ll let this one stay. It might be entertaining to have some company around for a while.

After all, how much trouble can one little squirrel really be?