Then in the late afternoon, Ada Inman fed the horses and went hunting together. They hoped to hunt more birds or if they were lucky, they could hit a deer. They went to the mountains, and there was no movement in the Woods. There was no animal footprint left in the thick snow. They went through the chestnut forest and entered the hemlock forest to the ridge. They marched along the curved ridge and still had no prey. Several squirrels squeaked in the tall hemlock, that is, you could hit it and get a bite of gray meat, so they stopped playing.

Finally, they came to a flat rock with exposed rock ridge. Inman brushed away the snow, and they sat cross-legged face to face, knee to knee. In Inman’s backpack, a damp-proof cloth covered their heads. Through this cloth fiber, the light was dim and brown. Inman took the walnuts from the backpack and smashed them with a big stone. After eating, he put his hand on Ida’s shoulder and leaned forward to put his forehead against Ida’s forehead for a while. But after a while, the snow fell on the cloth and broke the silence.
She wants to tell him how she has become what she is today. She is a different person. He should know that she told Inman about Monroe’s death. His face was wet with dogwood petals in the rain. She told Inman that she had decided not to go back to Charleston. She told him that Ruby had returned everything to the weather, animals and plants that summer. She knew all the forms of life. You can establish your life by observing them. She still misses her father. She told Inman about his many brilliant achievements, but it was also a bad thing that his father always treated her as a child and prevented her from growing up. Because she didn’t resist him, he succeeded to a great extent
There are still some things about Ruby. You should know that Ida said that what will happen after us? I want her to stay in Black Valley as long as she wants, and she will never leave. Then I will be very happy that she will be sad to lose her if she leaves me.
It is not clear whether she will put up with me, Inman said.
I think she will. Ida said to ask you to be white. She is neither a servant nor an employee. She is my friend. She won’t be told not to pour chamber pot to others except herself.
They went on hunting down the mountain away from the rock and entered a wet swamp full of galex grass. Then they went through the scattered laurel bushes and came to a thin stream. They came to a tree that was blown down and stood beside the fir tree in the forest subway. The bottom of the tree root was like a well wall, and the half-rooted stem was tightly grasped by a stone that was bigger than a whiskey barrel. In that pit, Ida found a cluster of white buttercups. The duck webbed leaves were withered, but they could still be distinguished from the thin snow on the shady side of a big poplar.
Ruby needs buttercup to heal her father, Ida said.
She knelt by the tree and dug up the plant with her hands. Inman looked at it and it was a very simple picture. A woman knelt on the ground and dug up a woman. A tall man was watching and waiting. If they hadn’t pretended that it might be a period, there was almost no feature in the picture that could mark the era. Ida knocked off the mud from the buttercup stem and put it in her pocket.
When she got up, she found the white poplar arrow Ida, which was a broken twig. The exposed part was not an arrow feather, but a piece of arrow shaft. The wood of the arrow shaft was almost rotten, but it was still connected to the arrow. The gray flint arrow was cut into a shovel shape, and its perfect symmetrical shape could be made by hand. The arrow was buried in the trunk for more than an inch, partly because of the growth of the back trees, which caused scar-like ruffles around the arrow, but the exposed part was enough to see that the arrow was wide and long. Ida pointed at it and attracted Inman’s attention.
Shoot Lu Yingman or shoot people.
He licked a fingertip wet and scraped it at the exposed part of the sharp edge of the arrow, just like people try to check the folding knife with a knife stone.
It can also cut meat, he said
At the end of summer, Ida Ruby used to dig several arrowhead scrapers to shoot birds, but this seems special to her. It is still alive in its position. Ida stepped back to see more clearly. Generally speaking, it is still a small thing. It missed an arrow a hundred years ago or more years ago, but if people look at it from a different angle, it may not seem so long. Ida walks to the tree and shakes it at the end of the arrow shaft. It is very firm.
This arrow can be classified as a historical relic, another world relic, and Ida did something similar. She regarded it as an object that would gradually disappear from this world.
But Inman speculated that it was different. He said that someone was hungry, and then he guessed that the arrow was missed because the technology was not as good as despair, but the wind was not enough.
You remember this place, he said to Ida
So Inman discussed them and revisited this place to check the rotting degree of the arrow shaft and the growth of the green poplar around the flint arrow. He painted a picture of the future, hunched over and gray-haired. Ida, the main feature of the world in a brilliant future world, could not even imagine bringing the children to this tree. By then, the arrow shaft would have disappeared, and the poplar would be thicker and thicker, and nothing could be seen except a scar and crack in the bark.
Inman can’t imagine who they will be, but these children will be fascinated to see two old people insert knives into soft poplars and dig a small piece of wood, and then suddenly the children will see this stone blade as if it had come up. Inman described it as an art with a small path. Although Adafa fully saw the distant future, she could still imagine the amazing expressions on her little faces.
The Indian arrow was deeply attracted by Inman’s story. Ida said it was an Indian.
That afternoon, they went back without hitting their prey. What they could show was the buttercup firewood. They dragged the firewood behind them and left a band mark in the snow. The big trunk came from a chestnut tree and the smaller branch got a cedar. They found Ruby sitting next to Stebrod. He seemed to know Ruby Ida but was full of fear for Inman.
Who is that big black guy? He said.
Inman walked over and squatted next to Stebrod so that he wouldn’t feel oppressive. He said, I gave you water, but I didn’t come to arrest you.
Said Stebrod.
Ruby moistened a piece of cloth to wipe his face, and he resisted her like a child, mashing up a few white buttercups and applying them to his wound, while others made Stebrod drink tea. When she finished these, he immediately went to sleep.
Ida looked at Inman with a tired look on his face. She said, I think you should get some sleep, too
Don’t let me sleep until the night. Inman said he left. When the door was hit, Ada Ruby could see the snow outside. They drew lines when they fell. They heard him break branches outside. After a while, the door hit again. He sent in a bundle of chestnut firewood and left them. When they sat together with their backs against the wooden house wall for a long time, a blanket was draped over them.
Ida said, tell me what to do next. When the warm season comes, how can this place be in order?
Ruby picked up a branch and drew a picture of Black Valley. She drew roads, houses, barns, and some areas represented the current fields and woodlands. Then she talked about it, painted a picture of prosperity, and said to realize it. She bought a batch of mules, reclaimed the wasteland covered with rattan, grass, lacquer trees, and built a new vegetable garden. Some farmland was planted enough to make bread, corn and wheat, and the garden was expanded to build a real storage room. Apple houses worked hard year after year, but one day they would see the fields covered with tall agricultural products and chickens pecking at cows in the yard in summer. There are so many acorn pigs that graze in the pasture and forage on the hillside that they can be divided into two types to make bacon. Pig legs are thin and long. toad in the hole pig legs are thick and have a thick body. Ham bacon hanging on the ground is full of bacon houses. Oily and sophisticated long-handled pots are always placed on the stove surface. Apples are piled up in the apple houses, and jars of vegetables are arranged in the storage room, which is extremely rich.
That must be considerable, Ida said
Ruby wiped her picture with the palm of her hand. After a while, they sat quietly. Ruby leaned to one side and rested on Ada’s shoulder. The imagination exhausted her physical strength. Ada sat there watching the fire and listened to it crackling. Later, its embers collapsed. She smelled the sweet smell of firewood and thought that people could recognize trees by the smell of firewood smoke. That would be a measure of whether people could successfully notice the details of the world. It would be that people might be eager to master a skill, which is better than understanding the world in many worse things that hurt others and eventually hurt themselves.
Ruby woke up in the evening, and it was almost dark. She sat up straight, blinked, wiped her face and yawned, and then went over to check on Stebrod. She touched his cheek and forehead and lifted his wound.
He has a fever again, she said. I believe tonight will be a difficult night. He will live or leave, but tonight will be a decisive moment. I’d better not leave her.
Ida came over and put her hand on Stebrod’s forehead. She didn’t feel anything different this time. She looked at Ruby but Ruby didn’t look at her.
I don’t think we should leave him tonight, Ruby said.
When Ida walked along the stream to another wooden house, it was already dark. Snowflakes were falling, and the snow was so thin that it was difficult to walk. Even if she stepped on the footprints, she still needed to raise her knees. The snow reflected the light from behind the clouds, so that the earth looked like it was evenly illuminated from the Ministry, just like a mica lantern. She gently knocked on the door and entered the room, where Inman slept without being disturbed. The flame had burned low. In front of the fire, Ida saw Inman’s objects being dried, just like the display in the exhibition hall. Everything needs to be surrounded by clothes, boots, hats, backpacks, dry food bags, cutlery with scabbard, and the ugly pistol. Other parts push the bullet rod, the tin bullet pin barrel is still stuffed with gunpowder, and the shotgun is still filled with coarse lead. After this exhibition, bartram needs to be taken from the niche and placed next to the pistol with a white label that says deserter’s sleeve equipment.
Ida undressed and put three cedar branches in the fire and blew the fire. Then she went to Inman and knelt beside him. He lay facing the wall and made a bed of hemlock. The needles in his face were pressed by him. She stroked her forehead and smoothed his hair. Fingertips slid along his eyelids, cheekbones, nose and lips covered with stubble. She lifted his blanket and found that he had taken off his shirt. She pressed her palm against the tight new scar on the side of his neck. She moved her hand to his shoulder and held it tightly.
He woke up slowly, he moved in bed, turned around and looked at her as if she had no intention, but then he obviously closed his eyes involuntarily and went to sleep again.