That same morning, Casey Seton opened his eyes to his thirteenth birthday. Warm and snug beneath his thick down quilt, he enjoyed the moment. I’m so much older! he told himself. No longer just a kid! A teenager! An adult . . . almost.
Images of the next few months spooled out in his mind like a movie trailer: a sweet spring and glorious summer, liberty to wander through the forest, fishing, hunting, and swimming. Doing whatever he liked. Then he would start high school in Lockport, where he would have a new life with new friends.
“It’ll be your last free summer,” his dad had told him.
Startled, Casey had said, “What happens after that?”
His father had laughed. “An old guy like you might want to find a summer job. Earn your keep.”
Casey had taken that as a joke.
Rolling over, he gazed at the posters on his wall: a great bull elk with twelve-point antlers; a keen-eyed Ute warrior, his bow drawn; a fully bearded old-time trapper, hair braided, dressed in a buckskin jacket, a muzzle-loading musket cradled in his arms.
Casey’s greatest desire—beyond all else—was to be a hunter.
He glanced at his bedside clock. Seven a.m. Schooltime. The boy sighed. His old life was still with him. In fact, the next moment, his mother poked her head into his room.
Bess Seton was a small woman with a curly mop of strawberry-blond hair, blue eyes, and a quick smile.
“Morning, love!” she called. “Do teenagers go to school?” Her laughter tumbled forth the way Casey loved it, full of mischief and challenge. “Presents are waiting!” she added before retreating.
“I’m coming!” Casey shouted, and jumped out of bed.
First, as always, he reeled up the window blind and checked the weather. The view was mostly of Lodgepole National Forest, crowned by Iron Mountain. That lonely peak—eight miles beyond Casey’s home and more than eleven thousand feet high with bare rock at the summit—was capped with snow.