Excerpted from the novel STEALING by Margaret Verble. Copyright © 2023 by Margaret Verble. From Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.     I thought the cabin was still empty until I saw the red rooster out in the road. He was really flame orange, but people call those roosters red, and he had a big, bright green feather curling over the top of his tail. I had on my sneakers and was walking in a smooth gully the rain had created. So I wasn’t kicking gravel or making any kind of noise, and he didn’t look up from his pecking until I was close on him. Then, he cocked his head to the side and looked me over, slit-eyed. It was March. I hadn’t been down that road since fall. And by the tilt of the rooster’s head, it was clear to me he’d been around some time, maybe all winter. He owned that territory, or at least he owned the chicken part of it, and he wasn’t going to give ground scared, or even in a huff. He lifted a foot, held it up in a claw for only a second, and then he…