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men too generously or buying too many provisions—and that number (net profits) began to drop. Your fortune, or the loss of it, was not in the Tarot cards or crystal ball; it was right there on the ledger paper.
    He lived with Uncle John in the back of the main cabin. At night Karl would watch his uncle poring over the dense market tables in the
Chicago Tribune,
a packet of which was delivered once a week. He did not know what his uncle was looking for, but somebody could have detonated a stick of dynamite outside and Uncle John would not have lost his place.
    Meantime, Karl began to admire the men he at first had feared. He came to love the forests and streams in which they worked, learned to find his way by moss and the lay of shadows. He developed a genuine feel for the contours of sand hill and swamp. He soon knew the names of birds and the melodies of their songs. He could track deer and turkey. More than once, during slack times in the office, Uncle John let him go off with scouts to investigate virgin lands they intended to work during the winter.
    It was on one of these journeys that he came across the river that drew him for the rest of his days. Ahead of them a big buck turned and stared at them for a moment before cracking off into the deep brush. As they reached the lowlands, their boots began to sink into the wet loam, the suck of their footsteps punctuating the hush of invisible waters and the rustle of the wind.
    Suddenly off to Karl’s right something reared up. He turned. It was a bear, and it had a cub.
    Karl froze. The others, who had not seen it, continued to move up behind him.
    He had never known such an animal. On the farm there were weaselsand coyotes, but they wanted to stay away from you. The bear stood its ground.
    The cub kept rooting around, curious about everything. At some point it began to edge in Karl’s direction and would not retreat. Karl did not dare move because mama had one clear purpose, and it was as old as life. When her child came closer to Karl and mama showed her fangs, Karl’s foot found a stiff twig and snapped it to back off the cub. We’re in this together, little cub, Karl thought. A tremor went through the mother.
    Then from behind him came a shot. The shot was clean. The mama bear’s legs buckled and she fell.
    Her cub went to her and began poking her with its snout. The next bullet came so close that Karl could hear it ticking through the branches near his ear. The cub collapsed.
    A sharp cry pierced the forest. It did not come from the animal.
    The ox man and the Norwegian with the rifle ran to him.
    â€œYou hurt?” shouted the ox man, who went by the name of Peter Hoekstra.
    â€œBig one,” said the Norwegian, grinning. He moved up to the carcasses and touched the mama’s nose with his toe to make sure she was gone.
    Karl had been around butchering all his life, so he knew what to do. When he finished flaying the beasts for their skins, he waded into the river to consecrate it with the blood from his hands and to cool in himself the heat that blood had raised.
    Though the mortal teachings of the forest were not over for the day, at least the next lesson brought with it a measure of grace: Hoekstra had decided the time had come to show Karl how to cast a fly.
    The Dutchman began the process by opening a case and drawing from it the thin reed of a long, delicate rod. He assembled it and attached a small reel. With big, blunt fingers he tied together somelengths of light gut until it tapered down so fine that Karl could not imagine it being able to hold anything wild. Then suddenly Hoekstra reached up and snatched something from the air. As he slowly opened his hand, Karl saw a grasshopper, disoriented, taking a few tentative steps.
    Carefully, Hoekstra stuck the body though with a needle-sharp hook that he had clenched to the end of his line with a series of brisk, perfect movements. The hopper was still alive, beating madly against the