We eat breakfast hunkered under the tents' rain flies. It's a miserable affair cups of oatmeal and hot drinks that we hold in gloved hands.

I wear every bit of clothing I have with me—long pants and two shirts under my sweatshirt under my rain jacket.

Dad, looking like a dark green bat in a flapping poncho that covers him head to shins, asks, "What do you think? Push on or wait it out?"

Nobody argues when Meg answers, "Let's hole up a few hours."

We spend the morning in shifting combinations of people playing cards and napping and reading The rain gets harder if anything, and lunch is another miserable, wet affair because Dad won't let us take food inside the tents.

"I won't spill anything," Amy protests, but Meg backs up Dad.

And if you did," Meg says, "the scent would linger on as an invitation to wild animals. You want to get visited by a skunk?"

"Yes!" Amy says. "I'd tell him to spray you and Pop and Tess!"

When we finish eating, Meg disappears into her and Dad's tent, and the rest of us start a marathon game of hearts. Every so often, Dad steps outside to look for lighter skies, but each time he comes back shaking his head. We play until Amy, after a couple of disastrous hands, starts hiding the queen of spades.

"Maybe, rain or not, you and I ought to go for a walk," Dad tells her "Tess, want to come?"

"I think I'll go see what Meg's doing," I say.

SHE'S WRITING in a notebook, and her Rattlesnake folder is open on her lap.

"Hi," she says, looking up. "Who won?"

"I'm not sure. Amy was keeping score and got the columns mixed up. What are you working on?"

"Catching up my journal, or trying to. I keep thinking about Katharina Bottner and wondering what her family's story was. And where they fit into the overall scheme of things." She gestures toward a folded sleeping bag "Come in. Sit down."

"I won't be bothering you?"

"I'll be glad for your company."

Leaving my boots at the tent entrance, I make myself comfortable while she continues to stare at her notebook with a little frown creasing her forehead.

"Meg, why do you care so much?" I ask. "About things that happened so long ago?"

She takes time choosing her words. "You're really asking why I'm an archaeologist, aren't you? I suppose because I'm fascinated by the mysteries that the past holds. And I believe our own time will be better if we understand how people have lived across history."

Then she says, "I could ask you the same question. Why do you care about music? Or for that mattes why does anyone become passionate about a particular thing?"

Her questions are the kind that my friends and I used to discuss in our coffee-shop gatherings. But that was us kids, and that we were passionate about our art was a given.

Now I tell Meg, "I don't know. I used to Say I couldn't live without my violin, even though I knew I really could. I mean, lots of people don't play instruments, and if I'd never played one then I couldn't miss it You can't miss what you don't know, can you?"

"I think you might feel something was lacking."

"I suppose."

Meg hands me the Rattlesnake folder "You're welcome to read through this if you want. It's got everything I could find on the Bottners and their homesite, as well as an assortment of other odds and ends."

While Meg writes in her journal, I scan through photocopies of legal documents and then slow to read a newspaper story about a government land survey. Apparently the survey results started a dispute between a railroad company and some Rattlesnake residents.

I go back to the beginning of the article and read more carefully, but the reporter doesn't provide much background, and his old-fashioned writing style makes it hard to understand the little bit he does give.

Meg, noticing what I'm looking at, says, "I puzzled over that, also, wondering if Katharina's family was involved, but I think the legal hassles were mostly resolved before Frederik Bottner filed his land claim. It's more likely that the earlier Bottner—Johann Bottner—would have been caught up in that controversy."

Other newspaper stories deal with ongoing issues like wildfire danger and timber sales, and a pair of brief pieces tell of the shooting death of a miner named Naill O'Leary and the related subsequent arrest of his son.

I glance at a couple of maps and read a 1916 newspaper clipping about a dance where Frederik Bottner provided fiddle music, and then I turn to some photos. The first shows a small building that's apparently a schoolhouse. A woman in a long skirt, holding a large book, stands out in front of it, behind a row of seven children. "What do the letters and numbers on here mean?" I ask.

"They're an archive reference," Meg answers. "The identifier for the original photo."

The next picture has two labels in addition to its identifier The first, printed in ink in the photocopy's margin, says, "Acquired 1956; source unknown." The other label is written in old-fashioned script across the picture itself. It says, "So lonely! Deserted cabin, Rattlesnake Valley, 1908."

"Was this Katharina's home?" I ask.

"No. The dates are wrong," Meg answers. "She wasn't born for another couple of years."

"Do you know whose place this was?"

"No. That particular cabin doesn't show up in any other Rattlesnake pictures I could find, so it might have been destroyed early on. Actually, I meant to leave that picture in my office along, with some other material probably not relevant to the Bottners."

I continue to study the photo, which is a very nice shot of a very sorry looking place. A window—the only window on the whole front side—is broken. The cabin's door hangs by one hinge, and what appears to be a table is visible inside.

"It looks like somebody left here in a hurry," I say. "They left their things."

Meg says, "Doesn't it make you wonder why?"

Just then we hear Dad shouting, "Helloooo!"

A moment later Amy barges in. "You missed so much!" she says, shaking off water the way a wet dog does.

"Stop!" Meg and I exclaim in unison.

"We found this meadow with actual frogs," Amy says, "and Pop says it's just the kind of place where deer go to eat early in the morning Do you want to watch for them tomorrow, Tess?"

"I think we're going to leave when the rain lets up" I tell her.

"But if we're still here?"

Dad pops his head inside the tent. "Hey, kiddo!" he says to Amy. "I thought you and I were going to make hot chocolate." He tells Meg and me, "We're going to mix it with orange drink and some mint we found. And we'll share!"

"Orange drink?" Meg asks, looking dubious.

"Orange chocolate," he says firmly. "A Thaler specialty."

"Then I don't want to miss it," she says. "By the time you two get the stove cooking and the water hot, Tess and I will be along."

I CONTINUE LOOKING through the Rattlesnake folder stopping at a 1906–1907 list of Missoula County High School students with the name Maureen O'Leary, a sophomore, highlighted. Behind it is a copy of a marriage certificate for Frederik Bottner and Maureen O'Leary dated March 14, 1908. "Are these Katharina's parents?" I ask.

Meg nods.

"But they're so young!"

"Maureen O'Leary certainly was," she says. "I don't know Frederik Bottner's age, but she couldn't have been more than sixteen." She shakes her head. "You wonder why. Maybe it was related to the shooting."

"Maybe they were in love," I say.

"Maybe." Meg sounds unconvinced. "But sixteen is awfully young to make a decision that will affect the rest of your life."

I glance up quickly, but if Meg's referring to anything more than the Bottners' marriage, her face doesn't show it.

"Are you guys still talking?" Amy asks, ducking under the rain fly. "Come on! The chocolate's done, and I put in lemonade mix besides orange drink, and Bap says it's the most unusual hot chocolate he's ever tasted."