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been my mother’s since she was twelve. He’s over twenty and gone gray enough that we ought to change his name, but he still gets around and likes to go trailing where the ground’s not too steep. Brownie stays in the barn on Mr. Galloway’s land. Mr. Galloway boards a few horses along with his milk cows. He’s got the first good pasture land at the edge of town.
    I left a note for my parents telling them I was riding Brownie into the forest by myself. I knew they wouldn’t want me to have a gang of boys around my new rifle and I couldn’t go firing off a gun in town anyway. Then I stuffed a couple of apples in my jacket pocket along with a box of shells, tucked the Winchester up on my shoulder like an infantryman, and marched the half mile to Mr. Galloway’s.
    He was in the barn, finishing his milking. He held my rifle as I saddled and bridled Brownie.
    “This is quite a gun,” he said. “And you’re only eleven.”
    “Twelve yesterday, sir.” I led Brownie out of his stall.
    “I didn’t give my Jamie his first gun till he was fourteen.” Mr. Galloway patted the wooden stock with his big hand. “Should have done it sooner.”
    I didn’t say anything. Mr. Galloway’s son Jamie had died in France last year. The army said an artillery shell hit his trench and there wasn’t enough of a body to send home for my father and Mr. Galloway to bury.
    I swung up on Brownie and Mr. Galloway handed me the rifle.
    “Where you headed?” he asked.
    “Think I’ll go out along the French Broad where the land’s flatter and I can sight targets in the water.”
    He nodded. “Stay off the Biltmore Estate. The widow Vanderbilt’s got the groundskeepers patrolling for poachers. Hate to see your pa have to come bail you out of the pokey.” He laughed and slapped Brownie on the rump.
    The pony jumped forward and then trotted into the morning light. We stayed along the pasture edge until we reached the trail to the Swannanoa. Brownie headed down the path without a guiding tug on the reins. We’d taken it every day last summer after I’d been given permission to fish the Swannanoa River alone. But today we’d ride farther away from any chance meeting with the other boys from school, to a spot upstream along the French Broad before it merged with the Swannanoa and flowed west of town.
    Brownie struggled against me as I forced him onto the left fork off the trail to our fishing hole. Maybe he didn’t like a path still hidden in shadows. Maybe he knew I was ignoring Mr. Galloway’s warning and taking a shortcut across the Biltmore Estate.
    We climbed a gentle ridge of white pines. A hawk shrieked overhead, followed by a chorus of crows. The black birds sounded their alarm until the hawk flew on to somewhere he could hunt in peace.
    The white pines thinned and the crest of the ridge opened to laurel and scrub saplings. Timber clearing had left a patchwork of stumps, some with shoots sprouting from exposed roots. I knew I hadn’t crossed onto the Vanderbilt property because old Mr. Vanderbilt was known for his forestry methods. Even though he’d been dead four years, no one cut timber on his land or the land his wife had sold to the government for Pisgah National Forest without planting seedlings afterward. My father told me Mr. Vanderbilt had hired a man whose only job was to manage the forest. That man must have worked hard. All I could see from the clearing were trees and more trees.
    Brownie and I started down the other side of the ridge, entering a narrow trail marked by a freshly painted sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT! I’d be keeping out as soon as I could cross to the river, and I nudged Brownie with my heels to urge him forward.
    The path brightened as more sunlight penetrated the new spring leaves of the hardwoods. We’d probably followed the trail for thirty minutes when I saw mist suspended like a white band halfway up the tree trunks. The French Broad lay close by and the warming air lifted the fog in