Dakota loosens her hold just enough to take a step back and meet his eyes. “I found him still alive. I couldn’t help him.” She hears the catch in her own voice, half-grief, half-anger. “I couldn’t help him.”

He does not attempt to contradict her. “You are helping his mate and his cub. Not to mention his whole species. He would consider that a fair bargain, I think.”

“It’s all I could do.” The words are bitter on her tongue, like gall.

“It is much. No.” He cuts her off as she opens her mouth to contradict him. “I know you don’t think it’s enough. But it is justice, and you have fought hard for it.” He nods toward Kirsten. “So have others.”

“You’ve met?” With a small shock, it occurs to Koda that her father and Kirsten did not arrive together by chance.

“I went to the Base first, looking for you and Tacoma.” He smiles at Kirsten. “We got acquainted on the way into town.”

“Oh.” To her chagrin, Dakota feels the flush spread across her face, her skin growing warm. “That’s—nice.”

His eyes are sparkling now, with the warmth of a summer sky. “Yes, it is.”

Gods, is it written on my forehead? “Mother—?”

“Will adjust.”

“Not without a fight.”

“Probably not. Meantime—”

Manny pushes through the door, using good shoulder. Wanblee Wapka’s gaze shifts, taking in his bandaged hands, but he says only, “Tonskaya?”

“Leksi. Sorry. Koda, the jury isn’t going to go out at all. They say they don’t need to deliberate.”

The jury, which has been huddled in a tight knot with Harcourt at its center, is just making its way back to the table when Koda, Kirsten, her father and cousin file back into the courtroom. Silently, they range themselves along the wall at the back, and Kirsten slips her hand lightly, unobtrusively, into Dakota’s. Koda gives her fingers a squeeze—thank you—and waits for the verdict.

“Mister Chairperson,” intones the Judge. “Have you made a determination of the cause and manner of death of William E. Dietrich, deceased, of Rapid City, County of Pennington, in the State of South Dakota?”

The Chairperson rises. Louie Wang is a youngish man whose eyes are dark behind bottle-bottom glasses; even after Armageddon, his shirt pocket sports a plastic protector for a couple pens and a marker. Before meeting Kirsten, Koda would instantly have labeled him a typical computer geek. “We have, Your Honor.”

“Your findings, Mr. Chairperson, on the cause of death?”

“As determined previously, cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head, Your Honor.”

“Manner of death?”

“Homicide, Your Honor.”

Koda’s fingers tighten convulsively around Kirsten’s. Kirsten squeezes back, hard, a puzzled look on her face counterpart to the alarm on Manny’s. Only Wanblee Wapka seems unruffled, standing relaxed with one hand holding his hat, the other a jacket pocket.

“Are there any further findings, Mr. Wang?”

“Two others, Your Honor.”

“Your first supplementary finding, please.”

Referring to a yellow notepad on the table, Wang says, “Our first supplementary finding, in the absence of a civilian criminal court and a properly constituted grand jury, is that while a homicide—the killing of a human being—was committed, there is no finding of murder. From evidence given, it is the verdict of this jury that Lieutenant Manuel Rivers acted in defense of his own life and the life of Lieutenant Andrews when he returned shots fired at them by William Everett Dietrich, deceased. The jury calls to the attention of the court the circumstance that the said William Everett Dietrich was in process of commission of a felony when he shot at the Lieutenants with intent to kill, and thereby attempted capital murder, an offense which carries the death penalty in this state.”

Koda feels her breath go out of her in a rush, notes the relief as every muscle in Manny’s body suddenly seems to relax, held up only by the pressure of his shoulders against the wall. A glance at her father tells her that he has never doubted the verdict. It is not, she realizes, so much that he trusts the law as that he trusts her, and Tacoma, and Manny himself. Trusts them to act in honor, trusts their ability to defend those actions.

“And your second finding, Mr. Chairperson?” asks Harcourt.

“Our second supplementary finding,” Wang replies, still referring to the notepad, “is as follows. In the absence of any duly constituted legislative body of the State of South Dakota, this panel affirms the present laws which protect species determined to be either threatened or endangered, and the laws which prohibit the use of the leghold trap or any other device legally defined as cruel.”

“So say you one, so say you all?”

One by one the jurors confirm their votes, and the Judge adjourns the court sine die. As the audience begins to file out, all but a few who form a tight knot about Dietrich’s family, Tacoma makes his way to the back of the room. He walks unsteadily, both crutches held in one hand, their rubber feet stumping against the floor tiles like a freeform walking staff.

Wanblee Wapka looks from his eldest son to his nephew and back again. “You two are a mess,” he says equably. “What does the other guy look like?”

“Little metal slivers,” Tacoma answers, grinning. “Lots of ‘em.”

Koda smiles at Kirsten as Wanblee Wapka embraces Tacoma. This is your family, too. But that is not something to be said with strangers crowding past them, and so she only holds the tighter to Kirsten’s hand, not caring who may notice.

Fifteen minutes later, they pile into Wanblee Wapka’s big double-cab pickup, Koda’s own truck entrusted to one of the enlisted men. When they are settled, Manny looks back through the slide window into the camper-topped truckbed and frowns. “What are all those boxes back there? You moving in with us, Leksi?”

“Afraid not,” Wanblee Wapka says, maneuvering the heavy truck expertly out of the narrow space and out onto the street. “Those are just a few things your aunt sent: some home-canned peaches, corn, beans, frybread, and such.”

“There’s a couple chickens and some roasts at the house, too,” Kirsten adds. “And a side of beef at the mess—everyone’s going to have a full stomach tonight.”

“Thanks, Até,” Koda says quietly, and receives a smile in return.

It is nothing, however, to the beatific expression on Manny’s face, framed in the rear-view mirror. “Good bread, good meat,” he says reverently. “Good God, let’s eat.”

*

Koda stands in a white fog of condensate billowing out of the refrigerator, the blast of air chilling her face. “You call that a couple chickens and a roast or two?”

“I admit I wasn’t as—precise—as I might have been.” Kirsten’s voice is dryly factual, but Koda has known her long enough now to recognize the hint of laughter running underneath.

“How unscientific of you,” Dakota murmurs, taking in the packed space before her. There are chickens and roasts, to be sure. There is also a ham, a slab of bacon, a couple gallons of fresh milk, butter, several dozen eggs, and an assortment of parcels tantalizingly shaped like porkchops and T-bones. Above them, the freezer compartment bulges with more of the same. A string bag of potatoes leans against the door of the under-counter cabinets, accompanied by a second of large golden onions and yet another of carrots.

“Your mother,” says Wanblee Wapka with a self-deprecating shrug, “is convinced you’re on the brink of starvation.”

“Oh, we are!” Manny chimes in from his seat at the kitchen table. “Don’t let her tell you otherwise!”

“Well, not quite.” Dakota closes the fridge door and gives her father a brief but fierce hug, then leans back to smile at him. “We’re down to ‘nourishing but unappetizing,’ though.”

“Rubber cheese,” says Kirsten, with a wrinkle of her nose.

Wanblee Wapka motions toward the driveway with a tilt of his head. “I’ll bring in the rest.”

“The rest” is two boxes of home canned fruits and vegetables, everything from wild grape jam to pickled okra. Koda unpacks the Mason jars while a pair of chickens soak in salt water in the sink. “Até?” she says hesitantly, a quart of stewed tomatoes still in her hand. “You’re sure you can spare all this?”

The sudden fall of Manny’s face is almost comical, “Leksi, we can’t take things you and Themunga might need.”

Wanblee Wapka sets down a third box, larger but lighter, and studies Dakota and her cousin for a long moment. Finally he says, “We’re not just a family ranch anymore. We’ve turned into a village. These last weeks we’ve plowed an extra five hundred acres for garden vegetables and an extra thousand for hay and feed corn. The Goetzes have brought their sheep down and settled on the Hurley place. Brenda Eagle Bear has set up her spinning wheel and loom in one of their outbuildings, and her husband Jack is making hoes and mending bent harrows, not just shoeing horses. Barring a miracle, next spring we’ll be plowing behind some of those horses. The world has changed, Dakota. We have to change with it.”

Koda sets the jar on a shelf with a rueful smile. “I know. It’s just that I never expected home to change, too.” Wanblee Wapka gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then goes out for more of Themunga’s ample care package.

Half an hour later, dinner preparations are in full swing. Maggie, returned home in the midst of stowing the new supplies, dragoons Kirsten into helping her wrestle the unused middle leaf of her table down from the cramped attic storage space while Wanblee Wapka coaxes the recalcitrant ends apart. His uniform tie and jacket hung on the hall tree, Tacoma peels potatoes into a large earthenware bowl set between his feet. Manny, odd man out because of his injured hands, offers encouragement to all and sundry. “Hey, cuz,” he observes as Koda sets to cutting up the chickens, “I didn’t know you were a domestic goddess.”