Suddenly, Wes's life became very structured by two personages: the strange dark skinned man living on the ridge and the strange yellow skinned scientist who seemed to haunt the halls of the sanitarium. Wes went out of his way to see the former and took pains to avoid the later. In the evenings, Wes's mother seemed more harried and distracted than usual. Dr. Bronner was not invited over again for dinner. His mother said nothing more about the doctor to him directly.

As for the dark skinned man, who called himself Sitting Mountain as Wes learned, Wes became something like his personal attendant. The entire hospital staff had revolted against his mother at the suggestion that they should attend to this specimen of the enemy.

"Our boys have driven back the natives this far. I ent handing over towlies now for nothing," a grey haired orderly said to a group of the staff in the furnace house. The other men and women shook their heads while their daemons all sat listlessly grooming themselves, as if collectively trying to shrug off the slightest hint of bother.

So the daily duties of attending to the patient or guest (Wes still wasn't entirely sure what this strange visitor's status was at the sanitarium) devolved on Wes. He carried water up to the cabin. He cleaned linens. He delivered the scanty meals that his mother forced the cooks to prepare by literally standing over them in the kitchen. Wes thought that her daemon, Erigimon, would have throttled the fat little pig daemons that belonged to the cooks if such behavior was not forbidden in polite society.

Wes never saw Sitting Mountain's strange black shell shaped daemon after that first glimpse. Hilrithra, who was beginning to look positively trim from all of the activity her human had been engaged in, had nearly convinced Wes that the man's deamon was a turtle that had retreated into its shell.

"We were awfully rude to burst in like that," she explained, a prim little cat that sat curled at the foot of his bed, bathing herself.

"We were just helping though."

"Well, I would have poked my head in my shell if I were her."

"Since when have you been so proper about things?" Wes asked.

"Don't make fun Wes. I'm trying to explain to you why we shouldn't be sitting up so late worrying about that awful man's daemon.'

"But there really was something strange about it. Something almost like a mystery or a secret," Wes said. He pitched himself back in bed. Hilrithra bounced up off the bed then turned into a moth that fluttered around the anbaric light by his bed and settled on his pillow. "I'll smoosh you if you don't turn into something more substantial," Wes said to her.

"Fine then." Hilritha became a dog and bounded to the floor. When Wes clicked off the light, they both prepared themselves for a restless sleep.

The next morning, Mr. Tinglar corned Wes in the furnace house. "Someone wants to see you," he grumbled.

"Who?"

"Don't accuse me of prying into business. Nothing of my concern. And you…" he looked down at his daemon, "No need for you to be spilling out secrets. We know nothing about it. So move on."

"But I just…"

"Not saying anything more. You can't make me. I've got matters to attend to," Mr. Tinglar explained, shuffling away from Wes.

Wes set down the empty water pails he was going to fill up and went outside. He couldn't guess who wanted to see him. People hardly paid any attention to him before and positively shunned him now that he attended Sitting Mountain. He passed a few patients who were strolling the sanitarium grounds or sitting on chairs positioned by the artificial pond that had been naturally populated by ducks.

Walking around to the front of the sanitarium, Wes saw a motorized carriage sitting out front and could hear the clanking rumble of the carriage's engine. As he drew closer, he saw Dr. Bronner sitting behind the windshield, his snake deamon bobbing in and out of view distorted by the wavy glass. Wes wanted to turn and run in the opposite direction. Before he could, Dr. Bronner honked the carriage's horn causing the nurses and patients around them to turn and look. Wes knew that he couldn't get away so he walked slowly toward the doctor with Hilrithra hopping on his shoulder as a little bird.

"There you are young man," the doctor said with a yellow smile.

"Yeah," Wes replied.

The doctor's teeth resembled chunks of elephant tusk that Wes had seen on display in museums. The doctor wore a very cleanly cut woolen suit with a stiff collar, proper tie, and a pair of creamy yellow driving gloves. Most of these details were lost on Wes though. He was entranced by the undulations of the doctor's daemon whose motion seemed to be designed to lure him into the carriage.

"I know the weather is getting a bit cold for a drive. I thought the novelty would win you over though."

"I guess."

"Come now. Hop in. There's a blanket on the seat to wrap yourself up in if you are cold." As if taken over by wholly unconscious impulses, Wes climbed into the idling carriage, smelling like burnt kerosene, and plopped down on the carriage's hard leather seat. As he did the doctor's daemon slithered out of view and they motored off.

The crisp breeze that hit Wes as they drove snapped him out of his hazy state. He quickly realized that they were heading towards town. As they drove, the doctor explained to him in broken sentences that were cut up by the bumps of the rutted unpaved roads that his carriage was rather old but still dependable. Although the motor back fired loudly from time to time, Wes generally shared the doctor's view of the transport.

They crossed Marhsall's main street and the tracks of the trams that transported miners and supplies up into the mountains. They crossed Marshall creek that brought snowmelt down from the mountains. Driving down Marhsall's main thoroughfare, Wes could smell everything from beer brewing to bricks being baked. There was a steady buzz of activity in town that was not an unpleasant contrast to the isolation of the sanitarium that set higher up on the hill.

In another few minutes, the peaks of the college buildings came into view. Desolate houses dotted the landscape off to one side while the five buildings of the college hugged a dusty quadrangle planted with scrawny trees.

The doctor pulled off the road and drove up to the college's science building. He killed the carriage motor and they coasted the rest of the way.

"Well, now, what a pleasant drive,' the doctor said to Wes. The drive was novel but Wes's legs were feeling numb from the ruts in the road and the motor's vibration.

Soon, Wes was following the doctor up a long series of stone steps into the building. Once inside, they went up another staircase where they reached the anthropology wing of the building. "This way,' the doctor said, pointing Wes through a doorway.

When the heavy glass door shut behind him, Wes realized he was standing in the doctor's office. A large desk set back against the windows. Behind that was a table littered with papers, bones, and arcane looking objects. Bookcases and books seemed to crawl up the walls. The doctor again pointed Wes into a dusty leather chair that seemed to groan under Wes's weight. Hilrithra was a small mouse curled up inside Wes's shirt. Wes could feel her shivering against his skin. He tried to run his finger along her back to soothe her though she nipped his finger when he did.

The doctor sat down in his own creaking desk chair and spun around to face his desk. With his back to Wes, Wes could see the shape of the doctor's daemon squirming under his suit, as if yearning to be set free but held back in restraint by the doctor's posture and clothing. Although Wes could not see what the doctor was doing, he could hear the sharp sound of pages being turned. He also watched the doctor give his fingertips a quick swipe with his tongue then turn another page.

Then the doctor turned back to Wes, stood up, and placed a large album on Wes's lap. "Look there young man," the doctor said.

Wes followed the line of the tobacco-stained finger and looked at a photograph held in place by translucent tips on the page. A young light skinned man wearing what looked like old-fashioned clothes to Wes stood amongst a large group of dark skinned people with flat faces and sharp eyes. They all wore their hair long and wore strange combinations of animal skins, home spun fabrics, and traded cloth with riotous patterns. Some wore old-fashioned top hats. Some wore fur caps.

Wes looked up at the doctor who had his left hand buried in his pocket while he chewed the thumb of his right hand. "Well?' the doctor asked.

Wes shook his head. "I don't understand."

The doctor bent over and tapped the picture again and again, drumming on it insistently. "Look. Look at it."

As if having her curiosity piqued, Hilrithra poked her head out of Wes's shirt and looked over the picture. In her mousy squeak, Wes heard her say, "That's the visitor at the sanitarium, Wes."

"Oh, you're right. That's Sitting Mountain," he replied.

"So he's told you his name. Or at least one of his names. Well, you've really gotten on with him better than I imagined. Well, what else?' the doctor asked, becoming thoroughly impatient with Wes's dense mind.

"He's got a daemon," Hilrithra said.

"True. Very true," the doctor said.

"He has?" Wes said. He strained to look at the photograph more carefully. Sitting next to Sitting Mountain was a large animal that looked like a pole cat or a mountain lion. In fact all of the dark skinned people in the picture had daemons. Not at all like the people he had seen up on the mountain that day. He could see fierce looking hawks, soft rabbits, mangy coyotes, and so on. Even the light skinned man had a daemon. A snake daemon that seemed to throb in front of the camera.

Wes looked up again at the doctor. "Now you've got it my boy. Now you've got it."

"That's you. Only younger."

"Yes," he doctor said, smiling. As he did, his face became awash in wrinkles. "Younger. Much younger I'm afraid."

Wes still felt very confused. The doctor knew Sitting Mountain somehow. They were in a picture together. But why was the doctor showing him the picture? What did it mean?

The doctor picked up the album and returned it to his desk. He turned back to it though saying, "Of course, I forgot the most important detail." He pulled the photograph out of the album and handed it to Wes. "Go on. Turn it over."

At first Wes didn't believe what he read. If the date on the back of the photograph was correct then the photograph was nearly one hundred and fifty years old. How could that be?

"I was just out of graduate school when that photograph was taken," the doctor said. 'I was one of the first scientists to make contact with the Legatee nation. Can you imagine that? Oh, the things I learned from that trip. Mainly how much there was to learn. Can you believe that that picture was taken exactly one hundred and forty-seven years ago to the day?"

Wes couldn't believe it and yet something in the doctor's manner and voice made it nearly impossible to sustain his incredulity.