Bolt Upright: Seattle Tales

by Galen Peoples

Stories based on the series Here Come the Brides: Has Aaron won the Bolts' mountain, after all?...Lottie's unexpected windfall proves unwelcome...Jason takes Jeremy on a river run...Seattle has to build a university almost overnight...more.

3. Tales 9 and 10

9. An Air That Kills

Joshua had not wanted to go especially. But neither had he especially minded. The easy carelessness his brothers envied made all roads one to him, unless he were set on some lark that neither his duties as part owner of Bolt Logging nor his deep-down native prudence could forestall. This time he had gone only because his elder brother had asked him. Jason reproached himself with that knowledge a thousand times. Soon afterward his younger brother had felt against all reason something was wrong, and cursed himself (and Jeremy almost never swore seriously) for not having acted on the feeling. Whether Joshua blamed them or himself or assigned blame at all no one ever knew.

Like most happenings in Seattle it began with the brides—those girls imported from a far-off corner of civilization to answer the mating call of the less civilized. As the man who had brought them and become the sponge for their complaints, Jason had been quick to dismiss this latest one, but it had seemed like nothing. Even Aaron Stempel, Saturn to Jason's Mercury and by habit the most cautious of men, had thought so.

And the brides had not come to him with it as usual. That is, Candy Pruitt had not. Slightly older than the others and less silly in her own and the world's estimate, she was their duenna, taskmistress, and advocate before Jason and the other men. She had hoped to contain this unhappiness before it grew to demand advocacy, but all she achieved practically was to contain news of it. Biddie Cloom, her boon companion, observed the unintended success and strove to prolong it. That was how the matter came to Jason's attention while remaining shy of his understanding.

One evening near the end of an angry winter, which had worked off enough of its temper to encourage the town's hardier residents to betake them to the streets (street, rather, for they had scarcely more than one), two of the three shortest men from Jason's camp made a path toward the big white building which after the saloon had become every man's invariable destination: the Temple of the Virgins, as Jason called it in his poetic mood (though not within Candy's hearing). They were out to call on the girls to whom at autumn's ending they had been most nearly affianced. Two evenings previous they had come for the same purpose and Biddie had turned them away.

So she did again tonight. And they were not the first. Some nights Candy did the rebuffing, others a bride named Ula, but it was constant, and had been so since the last snow had fallen and the glaze on the mountain path that shifted about with such hazardous caprice had melted for good. Now the loggers were able to come again after, oh! such a brief lapse, only to find some calamity had overtaken the brides and forced them to keep to home and deny callers. Glimpsed through the screen door or an accidentally uncurtained window, they looked so pale and drifted between rooms so ghostlike the men feared some illness. Yet the doorkeepers did not behave so; rather as if they had a dirty house they were embarrassed to show.

The one who told Jason was Sam. Refused in spite of his and Billy's wheedling ("Shore they can't come out? Can we come in, then? Not even to get warm? Mighty chilly out here. S'pose we just stick our heads in and say hey?"), he left aggrieved, and when he spied Jason conversing with Stempel determined he would hear about it.

Jason had noticed the preponderance, or more exactly the universality, of uncompanioned men. Clusters of his and Aaron's workers hung about the dormitory till one by one they surrendered to the recognition of futility and faded into the night. Sam not being the kind to go without making a noise, Jason expected it at his approach and prepared to assume an appearance of listening that would free him from actually doing so. Thus it took nearly a minute for him to grasp Sam's advice the doctor was needed. "They all got it," he said. "First one, then 'nother'n, and now all of 'em, not just one like at first—"

"Now, Sam," said Jason, "got what?"

Sam's impatience brought an epithet to his lips which he stifled when he remembered he was talking to his boss. "That's why you gotta get the doc," he repeated, "'cause they all got it, first one..." Jason stopped his ears again. Aaron did not bother to mask his amusement, any more than Jason did when it was Aaron being beleaguered. Jason looked a silent question at him.

Aaron did not have to speak the answer either, but added in half-apology, "On the off chance." Jason nodded resignedly. He must ask after the brides' health, though it would mean coping with Biddie.

"Miss Cloom," he began, stretching to peer around her, "I just—ah—that is, I came to see—"

No matter how he leaned she managed somehow, slighter though she was, to block his view. "Lovely weather we're having," she said as if he were not already speaking.

"Eh? To be sure, yes—" Then the substance of the remark penetrated. "Is it?"

"Apart from being bitterly cold," she acknowledged. "But what I always say—"

Jason broke in, excusing himself: not that he was ever other than profoundly interested in what she might have to say, but just now— "You don't seem much concerned," he observed.

"Concerned to do what?"

"About this epidemic of the brides'."

"Oh, that!" She laughed shrilly. "Stuff and nonsense, pooh and piffle, pish and tush."

"Pish and tush?" he echoed hopefully.

"Nothing but an excuse to get attention. Ignore them, that'll put a stop to it, you'll see."

"But—"

"Good evening," she said briskly. He found himself facing the oak door again. He stole to the window and tried to peer between the curtains, but they overlapped snugly; tonight Candy had inspected them personally. He could have pounded at the door, yelled for her, bullied and blustered till she disclosed what was going on, but he did not care to; not just then. So he left.

Inside she listened to his retreating bootsteps while Biddie repeated what she had told him. "Tell me," said Candy. Biddie objected: hadn't she just—? "Please, Biddie." Puzzled but ever amenable, Biddie obliged. "That'll put a stop to it," she said for the third time.

Candy thanked her with an effort at a smile. Biddie felt uncertain. "You think the same, don't you?" Then she asked again, "Don't you?"

Candy was gazing into the parlor where the brides were congregated, her eyes like a skittish doe's. "I have the queerest feeling," she said, "as though it were the beginning of the end." Biddie felt a chill herself. This was not like Candy at all.

Work at the lumber camp had stopped, nearly. The men could be harangued into short spells of activity, but every effort of Jason's to pull more out of them was like trying to keep a pack of bears awake in hibernating season. A few shirkers could have been dealt with, as Joshua said, but it was three-quarters of the payroll, and they infected the rest.

The brothers saw Jeremy running towards them across the clearing, shouting wildly. He had been assigned to supervise the crew at the eastern stand, which till last week had been too deeply snowed over to work. Though too far away to make out his words, they guessed the cause of them. "The crew on the east slope," he reported on reaching them, with spaces to catch his breath, "they're doin'—they're doin'—" He looked about. "—just what this bunch is doin'."

"Nothing, you mean," said Jason. "All on account of the brides, I have no doubt. They're feeling poorly, so naturally"—he gave the word an edge more characteristic of Stempel—"their beaux feel poorly too. What I'd like to know is, what ails 'em? What?" He got only an echo in reply. One or two men looked up.

In the silence that ensued Jeremy discovered Joshua staring at him as if in expectation. "Well?" he said. On that Jason looked at him too. Under their dual scrutiny he reverted briefly to a weakness he had outgrown. "W-what would I know about it?"

"You visited with Candy last evening. Musta seen for yourself."

Jeremy protested he had seen no such thing. Yes, he had met Candy at the picket gate and they had gone for a stroll. On their return he had walked her to the porch, she had kissed him good night, withdrawn behind the screen, and when he moved to follow her— "She wouldn't let me in," he said. So sweetly had she managed it he had not been aware of it till now. The realization awoke in him a faint unease about the probable framework of their eventual married life.

He had not time to dwell on it because suddenly Jason's arm was around his shoulder, Jason's face close to his own, Jason's voice pouring like molasses into his ear—molasses with a core of hot lead. "You go back down there and demand to be let in," he said. "If she won't do it, push in and demand to know what the matter is. If she won't tell you, ask every one of those fifty girls, or however many's left—"

"Thirty-three," said Joshua. The other two stared at him, surprised at the currency of his knowledge. "Thirty-two," he amended, "when Ula—" A change in Jason's features, too slight for a stranger to have heeded, warned him to stop. He touched his lips as a seal of silence.

"Every one," Jason reiterated, "till one of 'em tells you..." He paused. "...what I need to know."

Jeremy looked as doubtful as he felt. He gave a nod, which was as good as a promise to do it.

—or something approximating to it, he amended half-wittingly, as he trudged half-willingly down the hill. By the time he reached the totem pole at the town limit his resolution had reshaped itself further: he would talk his way in somehow. And that was just how he did it. A small flash of perception hinted to him that his victory owed less to his eloquence than to Candy's dim, damp state. She lacked the spirit to fight.

He had known but not recollected that the brides owned a Holmes stereoscope, brought from New Bedford by Rachel, who upon marrying had bestowed it on the rest as a parting gift. He and Candy had used it in the early days of their courtship to while away rainy evenings in examining woodscapes (of which he for one had seen more than enough), cityscapes (of which he had seen too few), and views of assorted flora and fauna. Once in her absence he had resorted to it on his own to inspect a set of cards Clancey had smuggled in from San Francisco, featuring young ladies and a few less young in a variety of mildly titillating poses. Candy having surprised him at it, he had not been quite fast enough to extract the latest selection from the holder before she stole a look herself. "She'll catch her death" was her only comment.

He believed the brides seldom took up the implement now, having seen every picture in their stock a thousand times. Yet this morning as Candy led him wordlessly into the parlor it was the primary object of their attention; they barely registered his presence. Still confined, they were amusing themselves with it, as one might say, but its effect was something other than amusement. Each took the viewer in her turn and gazed into it long and longingly, after which she produced sometimes a sigh, sometimes a sniffle, and on the rare impulse a cross between a moan and a whimper.

Jeremy began to ask what was wrong with them but had got out barely two words when Candy turned on him so awful a look it cowed him into silence. The object made its way round to her at last, and without looking herself (for she knew what it would show) she passed it to Jeremy. His curiosity being as vast as his mystification, the image he saw when he pressed his eyes to the lenses was bound to disappoint him, notwithstanding its verisimilar depth. He recognized it at once from having once seen the original: the Seamen's Bethel in New Bedford.

Scarcely had he lowered the viewer than one of the brides pulled it out of his hands. Then she and the others took turns at the next of the thirty-six scenes from the boxed set one of them had got in the post as a Christmas gift from a sister too young to have gone west with her. Being thus unexpectedly transported home had engulfed her in a flood of sweet remembrance she could not fight, nor wished to; and from that had sprung this.

"Homesick?" Jason bellowed. Jeremy had already tried twice to answer him. "They been homesick since the day they arrived," said Jason. "How's this any different?" By the pause that ensued Jeremy knew that this time a reply was expected. He explained how the condition had originated and spread to take over the whole bridal population. Jason swore. "Always held no good would come of it."

"Of what, now?" asked Joshua, who had refrained from speech till that point. Years' practice had accustomed him to negotiating the sometimes rocky track of Jason's thought, but he tripped over this.

"Photography!" Jason cried, as if it were plain to all. "Didn't the Lord say, make thee no graven image?"

Joshua knew his Bible better than Jason, from a period in his youth when he had been persuaded he had the calling, and so he could recognize when a text was being misapplied, but he knew better than to retort as occurred to him, by mentioning who it was the Bard had said could cite scripture for his purpose.

"It's all that's on their minds," Jeremy continued. "They've stopped doing their chores..." He realized now the house should have told him that much: it was a mess by Candy's standard, but coming from a camp of rough men, he had not noticed it.

"And got their menfolk doin' the same," Jason finished. "Love...!" He would have punctuated the sentiment by spitting, had he not given up the practice on Candy's insistence ("to set a good example for the men"). "Bringin' the place to a halt," he went on, "as if they was all that mattered. Why, they're actin' like a passel of—"

"Homesick girls?" Joshua suggested.

Jason snorted. "They'll not be homesick much longer." Joshua asked what he thought he could do about it. Jason's eye traveled beyond the mountain, to that private hatchery of the empyrean where his grand schemes first saw life. "Call a meeting," he said.

The brides occupied the pews and Jason the pulpit, with his brothers standing at the side. The drumbeat of the rain against the tall west windows and the burble of the rivulet it formed at the foot of the wall would have lulled the audience to drowsing had the speaker been less bold. But nobody—except old deaf Shem Puterbaugh—ever nodded during one of Jason's perorations.

"Ladies," he began, "I'm given to understand you're missing your native soil rather keenly at present." The widened eyes that met its saying aloud proved Jeremy's information correct, and he proceeded according to design. "I sympathize, I truly do. It's a source of regret to me I was only able to see your fair metropolis the one time, and not properly then." His brothers, never having noticed any sign of this, wondered what he was up to. "S'pose you tell me all about it," he said, "all you remember best. Take notes," he whispered to Joshua, who now understood why he had been ordered to fetch along a writing tablet.

There was another whisper on his right—"Is this a good idea?"—to which Joshua deferred giving an answer till he should learn what the idea was. It appeared that might take some time, since the brides were not overleaping one another to speak. They had been cultivating their memories interiorly, hardly sharing them aloud except for wordless expulsions of an inexpressible sorrow, called on to express which they sat bewildered. "Come now," said Jason, "if it means as much to you as that, there's surely something to be said about it."

After a further silence, in which the rain continued to pat and trill softly, one woman stood up. "The smell of whale oil," she said. It was Ula, the intended of Daniel, whom she had chosen from a wide field that had included the young man now jotting down "Whale oil" on his tablet.

Jason was not sure he had heard right. "The smell of—"

"At the docks. Everything smelled like whale oil."

Jason stared at his brothers in perplexity. They stared back in double perplexity, not knowing his purpose and how this might or might not conduce to it. Ula would have laughed at their expressions had it not been for the gloom that blanketed the hall. But that was changing. The rest of the congregation hummed in agreement. Ann rose too. "The Common on the fourth of July."

Mary Ellen rose beside her. "Carriage rides around the Point Road and back across Fairhaven Bridge."

"Sledding down Bush Street Hill!" cried Ann, and then, with Mary Ellen, "Arnold's Garden!" Others clamored affirmatively. Joshua was scrawling without pause.

"The First Unitarian Church!" cried Ula. The hubbub stopped. She looked around to find all eyes on her, the brides' eager but thus far benighted. "It's in one of the pictures," she prompted. "It looks like a castle." Now they knew it, and seconded her jubilantly.

"Castle!" said Jason, his eyes asparkle. "Make a particular note of that, Joshua."

Like kernels popping in the skillet, one woman after another, or two or more together, stirred, stood, and strove for attention. Jason beamed, Joshua's hand started to cramp, Jeremy quailed at the barrage of female energy, till at last Jason waved his arms and called for silence.

"I thank you," he said. "Take your seats if you please. Seat, miss? There you are. Well"—he folded his arms—"now I see why the place of your birth glows still in your remembrance. Most natural thing in the world. All you knew and loved bundled up together in the one place. But shall I tell you something?" He left the pulpit to parade in front of them. "Your new home has something that beats it all. Shall I tell you what it is?" Their faces told him he should. "The men—your men—men that care about you and want to spend the rest of their lives with you here and now. Doesn't that count for more than a lost time in a faraway place?"

The proposition quivered in the air. "'course it does!" he answered himself. "Specially with spring comin' due. You oughta be lookin' out for it, calculatin' the perfect spot for your first picnic, your first sparkin' session—not implyin' anything improper," he quickly added with a glance in Candy's direction—"that's what you should be devotin' yourselves to. Not the past but the present, the great glorious God-given present, not the dank dark dungeon of days gone by. Girls your age!" They looked less abashed at that than he had anticipated but then people's faces didn't always show what was going on inside of them and he was in fine rolling form, had never spoke—spoken—better in his life. Thus bucking himself up, he took the last, irreversible step.

"If I was you," he exhorted, "first thing I'd do is take those pictures of yours, and any other souvenirs you got tucked under your beds, all yesterday's leavin's, throw 'em together in a heap and burn 'em!" There was no mistaking their expressions now. Jeremy tried to sound a warning but Jason, racing full throttle, paid no attention. "That's right," he exulted, "burn the whole lot! Pitch 'em in the fire where they belong! Bid prideful old New Bedford goodbye forever!"

The adjective, which had snaked out unforeseen, he regretted at once but trusted his oratorical powers to float them past it unawares. In that at least he succeeded: if they noticed the disparagement of their birthplace it did not distress them. But they had no distress to spare. One by one they began to weep. Their sobs grew and mingled with the plash and gurgle of the rain, water upon water, till no man could say for certain which was which. Then they got up to go. Jason stood dismayed. Candy, whose hopes had been warring with her sympathies and almost overcome them up till the end, glared reproachfully at him. "Really, Jason!" were the only words she could muster. She turned away to tend her flock, as she would be doing the rest of the day and into the night, and to herd them outside. Jason frowned. Joshua flung himself into a pew. "Uh, Jason," Jeremy ventured, "not sure what your plan was there..."

"Give 'em a good jolt, snap 'em out of it." Had he invented the excuse on the spot? His brothers never knew on such occasions. "Mighta worked," he said defensively.

"But, as it didn't..." said Joshua.

"As it didn't," said Jason, grabbing the tablet, "we try plan two."

He did not disclose what that was, any more than he had plan one, but the preparation for it, which occupied the rest of the morning, took them to various stops around town as the items on the list led them: the whale oil to Captain Clancey's ship, the Common to a level patch of earth down from the dormitory, and so forth, all according to a purpose Jason kept to himself but which Joshua could see dimly. Jeremy had more interest in learning whether Candy's displeasure with Jason also included him; before leaving the church she had flicked him a glance too brief to interpret.

She and Biddie watched with curiosity from a dormitory window as Jeremy hightailed it up to Perkins' Mercantile and back down a few minutes later to where his taskmaster was pacing out a square in the dirt. "Whatever are they up to?" Biddie asked. Candy shook her head. But the sight was restoring her faith in Jason. Obviously he was drawing up magic charms to conjure away the threat she sensed bode over the next horizon. If anyone could do it he could.

Jeremy reported to him that everything he had called for was on order and Ben would alert them as soon as it arrived. "Said he can't figure what the heck you want with it, though."

"None of his business," Jason said brusquely. "Now all's underway, all's summoned and subscribed for—all but one thing, and that the crowning touch." He laid an arm on each brother's shoulder. "Which I choose you," he told Joshua, "to go get fashioned, by the only man in these parts who can do it. And you," he said to Jeremy, "to fetch what he'll require."

Jeremy began to feel uneasy. "What is it?"

"Picture of the First Unitarian. That's the one they were all twitterin' about, wasn't it?"

Joshua raised an eyebrow. "Unitarian?"

"I know, sounds like they may 'a' been brought up a mite too free. But it ain't for the doctrine. You fetch it here."

"But they—" Jeremy shook his head. "They keep those pictures clutched to their—" He stopped, blushing. "Clutched to 'em. Day and night. They'll never give it up."

"Then you'll have to take without asking," Joshua interjected with a grin, which he expected to annoy his brother, as it did.

"I c-can't!"

"You can," said Jason. "You're the only one. The girls trust you."

"Won't after this," Jeremy muttered.

"Why, you mean to return it, don't you?"

Jeremy knew further protest was useless. Jason bade Joshua prepare to set out first thing next morning. He said he had some business to discuss with Stempel, which he went off to do, leaving his brothers to their assignments.

"Think he knows what he's doing?" asked Jeremy.

"He usually does, doesn't he?" Joshua did not wait for a reply and Jeremy did not offer one. To his mind it was a perpetually open question.

Biddie was sweeping the front hall of the dormitory. Candy had enlisted her and shamed another two of the older girls into action as well to perform the duties of their invalided sisters. Biddie still prided herself on being immune from the prevailing malady, and between strokes of the broom was saying to herself, but at a volume suitable for the stage, "I think it is the silliest thing. Homesick—honestly! Not that I have anything against home, or sickness—I mean, I'm not in favor of sickness—oh, what do I mean? But a girl who'd make herself sick over her home, or anybody else's home—but I suppose it would have to be her own, wouldn't it?—a girl like that hasn't a shred of self-control. Not a shred!"

Jason's inducing the brides to speak up had delivered them from their moping as he had intended, but only into a more active unhappiness (not quite active enough to inspire them to resume their chores) which in time would have revolutionary consequences. At present all it led to was a wish by Biddie's fellow workers as they dusted and polished the parlor (while their twenty-nine cohabitants were penned in the dining room) for some way of shutting her up. As it happened, these were the two who had stood up first after Ula in church.

Biddie, in the middle of her rebuke, found them suddenly close on either side of her, twin tempters. Didn't she remember? they purred. Remember the sun rising over Johnnycake Hill? The picnics on the rocks by Fort Phoenix? The gay circuses on Pope's Island? The maypole dances at (again they said it in unison) Arnold's Garden? These and other bygone joys, they funneled into her ears faster than she could resist till at last she gave way. "Well, of course I—but they're nothing to—I mean, for goodness'—" She trembled for a moment and then commenced bawling. "I want to go home!" The others smiled triumphantly. It was at that moment Jeremy came knocking.

He was waved vaguely toward the dining room, which the other brides, once there, had decided to use to its right purpose. For all their melancholy they were clearly not starving themselves, and while they were busy with first and second helpings in which Biddie's silencers now joined them, Jeremy trod softly into the parlor and combed among the momentarily neglected views of their birthplace till he found the one Jason had sent him after; at least he hoped it was. He slid it into his palm.

Where is Candy? he wondered. Turning to leave, he ran into her and quickly moved the picture behind him. She stared at him quizzically and, he thought, a little sullenly, as if she had not expected to see him there nor much cared to. This attitude (a misreading, by the way) made him feel easier over his quick getaway. What they said to each other, he hardly minded (though he worried about it later); little enough in any case.

The picture (no. 27 of 36) was actually an identical pair, sepia-toned, side by side on thick cardboard. Jason studied it a while before pronouncing "It'll do." It was tucked into Joshua's saddlebag along with two days' rations, a little cash, and a good luck charm he never traveled without and never showed anyone. All he would say about it after it was lost was that it was something he had been given when he was younger.

He was taking the Appaloosa, their best horse and the one Joshua knew best. They had few and seldom used them, being accustomed to walking except on long trips like this into the forest. Their work and the terrain they inhabited had made them stay-at-homes even if their dispositions inclined otherwise. So a part of Joshua felt grateful for the excursion.

Another part would as soon have remained to finish the budget for the coming season. Already he had determined to recommend Jason discharge half a dozen men who were not pulling their weight and parcel off a section at the foot of the mountain that was nearly worked out. He knew Jason would not hesitate to rid himself of the dead weights but would cut off a toe sooner than surrender an inch of land. "It's all I have to leave you when I'm gone," he would always say, and Joshua was not sure that was not the sounder course. His mind, when he chose to apply it, could see a question from every side; when he chose otherwise, none; let the wind blow as it might.

That was his attitude to the present trip. But his interest did flare a little when Jason revealed what exactly he was to do. Both brothers accompanied him to the head of the trail that led down the mountain and followed the curves of the lake shore north. At its end he was to continue by forest roads to the Snohomish River, which he would follow south as far as a landing whose stone fingerboard marked a path inland that would take him to the man he was to see, a stonecutter named Fertig. "Show him the picture," Jason ordered, "and tell him to make me the same tower to three-quarter scale. He's to finish inside three weeks."

"Can he do it on such short notice?"

"Mention a certain night he and I passed on the Barbary Coast." Jason smiled at the recollection. "He'll do it."

Joshua smiled too. "Maybe you should tell me the story in case he doesn't remember."

"You're not old enough to hear it," said Jason, "and if you were I certainly shouldn't tell you. Set an altogether bad example."

Joshua mounted the Appaloosa and nudged him around to face the trailhead. Sifting his mane in farewell, Jason bethought him of a last piece of advice. "As you approach the stoneworks be sure to give a hail. Shout loud, now. And be sure to get an answer before proceeding." Joshua asked why. "Fertig's apt to be a tad unsociable when strangers call unannounced. Comes of livin' alone, I reckon."

Joshua's eyes narrowed. "Brother, what kind of a place you sending me to?"

"No need to fear. Once you get to know him he's gentle as a dove."

Joshua resolved to be wary of Herr Fertig. With another nudge of the horse he started off at a canter down the hill. Jason called after him. "Once you've made him understand what's wanted, report back here. I'm relying on the two of you to put this thing over."

"What is this thing exactly?" asked Jeremy.

Jason ignored the question. "Don't dally, now!" he shouted as Joshua and his mount flickered in and out of sight amid the trees. "Fertig will invite you to stay over a few days and partake of his fine German cooking. Tell him no, politely." He waited. "You hear me?"

From below floated up the word "Sauerkraut?"

"No!"

"Wienerschnitzel?"

"No, I said!"

Finally, in a burst of inspiration: "Schnapps!"

"A schnapps or two might not come amiss," Jason conceded, "but then you head back, understand?" There was no reply. Joshua could no longer be seen. In days to come Jason would try vainly to recall the last glimpse and the sound of his last word. Thus do we live, he would reflect, poised at the brink: it was a line he had heard in a sermon.

All that day Joshua rode steadily through groves of maple, elder, and ash. At sunset he tethered his horse to an elder with a patch of dry ground next to it and there made a sparse supper of pemmican and corn bread. Besides the remote awareness of his errand he had little on his mind. The preoccupations of everyday life—the endless stacking and restacking of figures; the bother of keeping the men at their tasks even in their normal state; the settling of meaningless disputes, unavoidable in a camp of that size—fell from him as soon as he left town, to be replaced with a blank, bland repose in which, childlike, he could appreciate the world about him.

Propped against the tree under his saddle blanket, nestling his jaw in the upturned collar flaps of his coat, he stared into the deep blue, jewel-studded vastness above. How many stars were there—a thousand, ten thousand? He stopped himself: there he was, figuring again. He began to sing softly:

"Young Thomas lay on Huntley bank

When he did spy a lady gay,

A lady come all dressed in white

Like she was Queen of the May—"

A coyote howled. Joshua laughed. "And to the chorus," he said, "many thanks—many, many..." His head drooped. He shut his eyes.

Into Seattle a file of men with Jason at their head descended from the mountain bearing a long roll of canvas on their shoulders. Others behind carried poles and assorted tools. A little past the totem pole someone dropped a mallet; it made no more than a dull thud but Jason hushed the man fiercely. The dormitory seemed undisturbed, but at that distance, by no more than a darning needle of moon, he could not have seen it if the entire population had been at the windows.

One of them was. The sound, soft as it had been, had stirred Candy, who had not been sleeping anyway. As nearly as she could make out, a band of men—the big one was Jason, but where was Jeremy?—were unrolling bolts of fabric and planting poles in the ground. Now she recognized the tent P. T. Barnum had left behind after his command performance the year before. She did not know why Jason was putting it up but she said a small silent prayer for him, and for herself: a prayer of deliverance.

The next day Joshua found the landing and the fingerboard Jason had described. Remembering Fertig's skittishness about visitors, he left the Appaloosa tied to one of the bollards and took the path on foot, carrying the photograph in his coat. Tall foliage to right and left occluded a view of the stoneworks, wherever it was. From the bushes arose the occasional scurry of a small animal or the fluting of a bird; otherwise the countryside was still. A little way in he gave a hail, which went unanswered. He shouted again, identifying himself as Jason Bolt's brother. Perhaps Fertig was hard of hearing, or else—

"And what would you be wanting here?" said a high-pitched voice, so close it made him jump. He turned to see a woman dressed in white (like Queen of the May, he thought) and with hair of the blackest, stepping out of the bushes on his right. Behind them, he now saw, stood a large outbuilding; she must have come from there. He introduced himself. Pretty though she was, he went no further. For one thing he was concentrated on the task before him; for another hers was a hollow prettiness of a type he had seen before, on Tacoma's waterfront. "I asked what you were wanting with my father," she said.

"You're Fertig's daughter?" Without replying or asking again she offered to show him the way. Instead of returning through the shrubbery as he expected, she led him along the path to the front of the building. It was not so far out as he had supposed: rather, it marked the north edge of the compound. A small house and a larger workshop, as well as this warehouse and two or three sheds, stood in neglect. Creepers ran up their sides, and everywhere lay piles of tumbled and shattered stone. There was no sign of life. Joshua stared at his guide. Amidst the abandonment her hollow glamour shone forth strangely. "Are you a ghost?" he asked.

She gave a laugh; it was hollow too. "We don't keep it up as well as we ought," she said in a tone of regret, "but it's home to me."

"No, it isn't." His formless unease became solid at the recollection. "Fertig lives alone." He grabbed her by an elbow. "You're not his daughter, and you're no ghost. What are you?" There was a flicker of shadow behind him. He saw it half-aware, and too late. Hard rock struck the back of his skull, in an instant of sickening pain; then all went black.

"A robber," she answered.

"And me own dear sister," said the man who had just stepped out of the building. He had the same blackness of hair as hers, only his was stalky and unruly. He bent over Joshua's body and began feeling in his clothes.

"Don't kill him," said the woman. "He's a pretty thing."

He gave her a glance of reproach. "Sister, am I a common murderer?" She consoled him with a pat of his head. "I'll leave that task to the elements and the wild beasts." All his search yielded was a billfold, whose contents he counted before turning it over to her, and a photograph.

"Ooh, that's pretty too. Can I have it?"

He returned it to the coat. "Fella may have a sentimental attachment to it. Shouldn't like to deprive him if he's soon to be et up, or starve."

As he rose she hugged him. "Brother, you are a compassionate man."

"Best be off before he comes round."

"There's a fine horse by the river," she said merrily. Thence they repaired, leaving Joshua to his lone oblivion.

The same day, at almost the same hour, in the town he had left, Candy was making a circuit of the tent. Jason was having it guarded round the clock; this shift was Sam's. Candy believed there must be half a dozen of him since at every flap, gap, and edge she tried to peer around he confronted her anew. At last she gave up the attempt. Jason's secret must remain his. Ordinarily she would have felt piqued by all those males knowing what the females did not but right now she was too much worried. The brides had begun talking to each other in corners and out back, but not to her. She guessed what they were saying and what they were working themselves up to saying and tried not to think how she would meet it if they offered it up before Jason's circus, whatever it might be, was ready. A thing lurked inside her, an unseen presence that only awhiles and fleetingly let itself be felt; a white ghost; fear.

Over the Snohomish flats bumped a wagon full of men. The driver halted to let his horse drink and his passengers hopped down to do the same and to give their legs a stretch. He took a count: five, that was right. His eyes stayed on them as they stood or paced. One of them happened to look upriver. He did not look away, and soon the others were looking too. Following their line of sight, the driver saw the figure of a man away up near the hills, walking toward them on their side. The man waved and broke into a run but, tiring (or tired to begin with), returned to a walk. So he continued, intermittently running and then giving it up and waving at intervals, till the driver waved back to signal he meant to wait. With luck, this meeting might answer a present need of his. He dusted down his coat, which hid most of the loud green suit beneath, and arranged his face in its friendliest aspect.

The man's legs faltered somewhat, as if he had walked a long way. Indeed he must have done so unless he had lost his horse in the hills, for out here were no homesteads and the nearest town, Snohomish, lay fifteen miles distant. Though the morning was cold he wore his coat open as if accustomed to all weathers. As he approached, the other men observed that he was young and would have been quite handsome except that his features were pulled, and once having arrived he stared about him, clenching and unclenching his fists. The driver stepped up. "Jigger's the name," he said, offering his hand. The young man stared at it a moment before accepting it. This here's an odd duck and no mistake, thought Jigger.

The man considered before putting his question, which he did cautiously, fearing it still might not be right. "Can you—can you tell me who I am?"

The others exchanged looks. Jigger was struck dumb but only momentarily. "Why, don't you know?"

The young man shook his head. "There's this," he said, handing him a card. "Might be it's where I live."

It showed a picture—two pictures—of a church. Jigger began a shake of the head, which he quickly camouflaged as a shiver, his small eyes agleam. "I declare," he said, pocketing it. "And here I was thinkin' I'd never git this back."

The young man watched its disappearance with regret. "It's yours?"

"Well, ain't I the one loaned it you so's you could draw a likeness of it for your—your sweetheart?"

"Sweetheart?"

"Figgered you done run off on me and I'd never see you again. I'm relieved to find you was only lost and done found your way back to us after all." He stepped closer and clutched his arm. "That's the way of it, now, ain't it—Nate?"

The young man repeated it. "That's my name?"

The nearest of the passengers, another man of about the same age, had been listening to the conversation. He looked skeptical as Jigger produced a roll of documents tied with a ribbon. "Ain't I got the paper you signed to, same as these other gents?" He slid it out and showed it to him, holding it flat by a corner. "And ain't this your name right here?" Nate A. Pettibone, it read.

"What paper's that?"

"Work contract through the spring," said Jigger as he redid the roll and returned it to his coat. "Dollar a day, guaranteed, for three months."

"Three months!"

Jigger's little eyes grew smaller still. "Sure you don't remember nothing?" As Nate shook his head Jigger spotted a dark spot at the back, which inspection revealed to be a squarish patch of crusted blood. "This'll be the reason," he said. "'pears you've had a nasty fall." He clucked in seeming sympathy. "But you'll mend. Now git on board. Everybody!" he expanded. "We've lost too much time as it is." The others moved to obey, but not Nate. "You ain't proposin' to back out now, are you?" said Jigger, in a different tone, "'cause if you was..." He let the sentence hang. After a moment's thought Nate climbed on board.

The other young man, whose name was Espey, leaned over and whispered to the oldest of the group. "The scoundrel never saw that fellow before. I'm sure of it."

"Likely not," said the other, whose name was Sewell. "Figure there's anything you can do about it?"

"He should be seen by a doctor," Espey said stubbornly, and then repeated it louder in Jigger's direction.

"Well, ain't that where I'm fixin' to take him?" said Jigger. "Company doc'll tend to him purty as you please." Nate offered no word in defense of his own welfare but asked what company that was. "Only one you'll find this far downstream," Jigger said with no great interest. "Black River Coal."

Black River Coal, read the pinewood signboard, standing lopsided on its pair of stakes. The wagon had traveled half the day to reach the workings. For most of the way Jigger had clung loosely to the shore of a long lake, above which the sun had peeked occasionally, sunk down a little farther at each peek. Then he had veered away to cut across country and they had left the sun behind.

He pulled up at the top of a steep bank planted with plank shacks and scarred with a creek, if it could be called that, which twisted down to a sharp bend of grey water. Black dust swam in the creek, peppered the ground, and coated the shacks, a stable, and a few leafless trees. A few yards from the road and level with it sat the mine entrance. Elsewhere in the hill and in the one behind were scattered other tunnels, or the beginnings of them, which looked as though they had not been worked for months if ever. A path led down to a landing where two boats were moored, a 100-foot barge and a 30-foot packet boat, neither of the sturdiest. Men with rifles were posted by them as well as at the mine opening.

Two horses, a chestnut and a dapple grey, stood hitched to one of the trees. Saddled and bridled, they obviously belonged to visitors and not to the camp itself. Only two other inhabitants met their view: a short squarish half-breed Indian nosing among the shacks on some indeterminable quest (they later learned he had been hunting a pair of squirrels for supper) and an old man at his back, so pale and so flimsily attired, in disregard of the weather, he might have been a ghost from the mine's bygone days, presuming it to have known any.

The men surveyed the layout with more sober looks than they had worn riding in. Sewell was the first to speak. "Pretty measly outfit. Nary a mule nor pony to be seen."

"There's your mules," said a gloomy-sounding man whose name was Riggs. He pointed to a bone heap at the foot of the slope.

Another figure apeared from one of the shacks, a dark broad man with heavily muscled shoulders that made his short legs look skinny by contrast, and skinnier still as he climbed with long strides to meet them. He wore a kerchief about the neck and a coiled blacksnake under his belt. Jigger greeted him with an effort at cheer that did not quite hide the nervousness percolating beneath. "Here's your new gang, Toby, delivered as per contract."

Toby told him to uncrate them, and Jigger ordered them down in a harsher tone than he had used before. "Git, now! Line up and let Mr. Moyle have a look at you." They were slow to obey. Most of them would have been glad enough to ride out again.

Nate, last to board, was first to unboard, but no sooner had his feet touched the dirt than Moyle grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head round, causing him to cry out. "'ow's't?" barked Moyle. "'ere's damaged goods."

Espey stepped down. "He's injured. The doctor must see him straightway."

"Doctor! I'm doctor 'ere—and priest, midwife, and undertaker," he added with a laugh. Espey glared coldly at Jigger. Nate pulled himself free, causing Moyle to start. His hand moved impulsively to his whip.

"Had a little accident, is all," Jigger said hastily. "He's fit to work. You can see for yourself."

Moyle saw only a weak and wounded man who threatened to be of little use. He thrust his face into Nate's. "What's 'ee's name?" Jigger quickly answered for him. "Nate what?" The young man turned helplessly to the only rescuer he knew, whom Moyle picked up by a shoulder and dragged aside. "What are 'ee tryin' to sell me? Sooth, now!"

"Nothing, Toby, I swear." His trembling hand produced the contracts from his coat. "I got his name on the paper, y'see?"

"Be that 'is 'and?" Moyle's eyes stabbed into him.

Jigger's voice shook as badly as his fingers but he was not ready to give up the fight, and with it a part of his commission (or all, it might be, for he knew Toby's temper). "Look here," he said in a reasonable tone, "wasn't I bound to deliver six men? And when one of 'em skedaddles, and him the last able-bodied man in town, and I happen on another that'll do as good and don't know no better, what else was I to do but pack him along? That was sense, weren't it?"

Moyle rubbed his chin. "'e don't know 'eself?"

"Blow on the head knocked it clean out of him."

"And nowt on 'im to say?"

"Onliest thing he had was a picture of a church. I took it for my own self."

"Eh? What'd 'ee want with'n?"

"Don't know. Somehow does my soul good to look at it. Care to see?"

"Bah!" Moyle was studying Nate. "Mebbe I'll take 'e," he said, "but don't 'ee let on to Bascombe or—"

"Moyle!" pealed a new voice. While they had been talking another shack had ejected its occupants, who were climbing across to them. The one who had called out was small and lean, the other large and stout, and he wore a badge. Jigger wished them good afternoon. He knew the one for Hardy Bascombe and the other for Sheriff Case (his first name Jigger had never heard), who held office in the town that was the river's namesake. Between them somehow they owned the mine, and Moyle was their foreman.

Bascombe asked to see the contracts. "They seem in order," he said (he had himself drawn up the original of them) and passed them to his partner. "The sheriff will wish to see all's done according to the law." Moyle gave Jigger a glance of warning.

The workers were still lined up for inspection, which Bascombe took over from Moyle. They formed an immediate dislike for him as he surveyed each top to toe. "Bit skinny, this," he remarked of Espey, and again of one named Hounditch, who stood sniffling and shifting his feet; both outweighed him by at least thirty pounds. He barely looked at Nate. "They'll serve," he decreed. That made it a fact: they were officially in harness. Some showed the burden in their faces or their sinking shoulders. Not Nate: for all he appeared to care he might have been a thousand miles away.

In truth Nate cared greatly, and would care more once he sorted it all out. During the wagon ride he had had leisure to meditate on what information he owned about himself. He had overheard Espey's expression of doubt he was who Jigger had said; instinct if not experience remaining, he had mistrusted Jigger anyhow. But the identity would do for want of a better. The months of servitude, though he would not have chosen them in his rightful person (he believed), would give him a place to be and a little cash to get on with, for he had none. Also, it would give him a duty to perform, which he needed: that much about himself he knew.

He could not remember farther back than that morning, when he had woken in a place strange to him. His head had burned and throbbed at the back. Feeling it, he found blood, and found more of it on a chunk of stone a foot away. It must have fallen on him, or someone had struck him with it; perhaps he had been robbed. Checking his pockets, he found a view of a church and nothing else. His money was gone, if he had brought any. He realized he did not know if he had. He must search at home. Was he a stonecarver then? He realized he did not know that either. If it were, he was a stonecarver. He wandered into the building next to him and walked its length, studying the statues, gargoyles, fountains, and granite seats huddled together. He knew he could never have made them; his hands would have felt it. He did not know what he was or why he was here. All he knew was that his name—

He realized he did not even know that. At the discovery the world seemed to tilt around him. He dropped onto one of the hard benches, and soon his perspective righted itself. But his plight was unchanged. As he sat thinking (and he sat a long time) he found he knew much, but none of it pertained to his person. Most of all he knew the woods. He could call up sensations to which the events that had given rise were lost yet he knew certainly they had happened in the woods. His identity, history, home, profession, the very business that had brought him there, all that side of things was a bright emptiness: one that maddened because, though it seemed at first a screen with the facts just behind, almost visible, yet when he tried to rip through he found it was not a screen after all but a depth unfathomable. The facts lay beyond or around it, only there was nothing beyond or around it; nothing at all.

He explored the grounds and the buildings, moving from the storehouse to the factory and thence to the house. There was no food anywhere, to his regret, and no sign of recent habitation, which heartened him a little: he had been right to conclude he did not belong here.

He set out on foot, following the river, and went a long way without seeing anyone. The farther he walked the stronger became the fear that had sprung up in him without his knowing. He had half-trusted that once he came out into the everyday world he would recognize it and awareness would return. But this country looked as unfamiliar as the kingdom of frozen shapes. Ahead were hills; surely on the other side lay some landmark he knew. But no; the vista beyond was the same as the one behind. He felt suddenly atilt again.

Then he noticed a difference: a wagon, small in the distance, with figures around it. He shouted, though he knew they could not hear, and began to run, though his feet ached. He slowed to walking when he had to, resumed running when he could, shouting and waving—

And so he was taken into the wagon. The driver was some sort of rascal, he saw, but the men seemed a decent lot and he was glad of their company. In his ignorance, to be part of a crowd afforded him some security; thus could he bear it, and thus fix in his mind his present circumstances. Whatever he might have been or done before, this he was doing now; this he could keep hold of as a fact.

So, in the wagon. But here at the mine confusion had returned. He could make no sense of the place, its operators, or the chance that had brought him. The new enigmas had revived the larger mystery so that now he stood distracted, unable to think for the talk about him and unwilling to speak till he knew rightly what he was saying. Necessarily self-preoccupied, he could not grasp that his companions understood their terminus as little as he but, stupefied like every normal man by the remembrance of a lifetime's defeats, did not seek to understand.

But, he learned, men will fight. One of the group, who had been studying the hill with a perplexity that had drawn him unconsciously away from the others to a better view of the side, asked where the furnace was. He addressed the question to no one in particular, but loud enough so all heard. "We have a small working, sir," said Bascombe. "There is no furnace."

"How do you air it?" asked the man, whose name was Yarrow.

Moyle smiled to see Bascombe fidget. With an air of patience he explained that there were two shafts front and rear. "'tain't enough," said Yarrow. "You want a fire to drive out the bad air."

"He's right," said Espey, stepping forward. "Else the gases are poisonous."

"Hear that?" said Riggs. "You'll not get me down there."

Sewell spoke for the rest. "Nor any of us."

Bascombe looked to the sheriff, who appeared embarrassed. "Come on, boys," he said, "this is what you signed on for. You may wish you hadn't now but that's nothing neither way. You try to back out, I'll have no choice but to take you in for breach of contract. That's a criminal offense."

"No, it's not." This was Espey again.

The sheriff turned toward him heavily. "Beg pardon?"

"It's not a crime," he repeated. "It's a civil matter."

"Barky pup," Moyle growled. "I'll show 'e."

Case put out an arm to block him. "See here, Parson—"

"I'm no parson."

"Ain'tcha? You look like one." Moyle laughed and so did some of the guards. Hounditch joined in eagerly. "Tall collar or no," Case went on, "you're plumb wrong. In this county defaultin' on a contract's a serious business. Fetch you three months of jail time."

"Druther be in jail," said Yarrow. He was seconded by most of the others.

"I'm sure the judge'd be delighted to oblige. But, see"—he sounded almost apologetic—"all I got to do's recommend he put you to hard labor and you'll be back out here regardless. Only that way you don't collect no wages. That how you want it?"

They were beaten and knew it. "Moyle," said Bascombe, "I put them in your hands." The utterance did nothing to relieve their apprehensions. They watched dolefully as the two owners mounted and took to the road.

"So, me jennies," said Moyle, marching up the line like a cavalry sergeant addressing new recruits, "leave me make matters clearer so's to forby any—ructions." He grinned at the word. "For this threemonth I'll be 'ee's master—not Bascombe nor t'other gasser there, but me, Toby Moyle. Yon seam"—he indicated imprecisely with his thumb—"will yield twelve ton a day if you put 'ee's back to'n. And I'll see you do"—he clutched the blacksnake—"for certain sure. And mind! 'tes coal we're arter, not slate. Be owt of she mingled with'n, you'll sift she out 'eeself, nub by nub. So." The men eased at the last word, but he had not finished. "Any of 'ee think to fetch along pick and shovel?" Unsureness showed in their faces. He grinned again. "No mind, the comp'ny will provide. Which, added to 'ee's board and lodgin'—" Parson echoed the last word in a voice tinged with irony. "—lodgin'," Moyle repeated, staring hard at him, "imposes a consid'rable expense on the comp'ny, in respect of which 'ee's wages shall be 'eld back till 'ee's debt be paid."

"Snake statement," Yarrow said knowingly. Someone spat.

"Spit and growl at me all 'ee like. I pays it no more 'eed than I would the scrawin' of a she-cur at me back. But mark this—raise 'ee's 'and to me, I'll strike 'ee down where you stand. Shirk 'ee's labors, you'll get worse. Try and jump country"—for some reason he was staring at Nate—"and 'twell be the last run you make, for certain sure. So." Again the word heralded a change of subject. "Yon's where you'll bed." To their surprise he pointed out the stable. "Go shed they packs and return d'rectly."

They went carrying their modest kits—all but Hounditch, who hung behind. "Well, scrawny?" Moyle said. "Didn't 'ee 'ear?"

"Oh, yes, sir, indeed I did, I only—that is—"

"Well?"

Hounditch smiled as in apology. "I'm no great hand with a pick. Shan't pretend to be. But I can be useful in"—he paused significantly—"another way." On the verge of elaborating, he noticed Yarrow eyeing them from the stable door. After a moment he went in. Hounditch promised himself to return the favor one day.

The stable lay just below the mine, dividing it from the shacks. Straw carpeted the dirt floor, which was all that was to be had in the way of beds. Each man claimed a square for himself and an Indian horse blanket from a pile beside the door. Nate took the space at the other side. Parson brought two blankets, one of which he dropped at Nate's feet and the other in the parcel adjoining his. The owners having taken no pains to adapt the building to the men's use, the floor still smelled of sweat, dung, and urine.

Yarrow for one did not mind much; as he told the others, he had slept worse places. He did wonder where the crew had been barracksed while mules were stabled there: not at all, he guessed, or crowded into one of the shacks. In that assumption he did the sheriff, who had planned the camp, a small injustice: a bunkhouse had been intended but postponed, and a steady accumulation of supplies followed by the introduction of the guards (whom Case had insisted on calling deputies) had reduced the workers to one shack, which by then they had dwindled in number far enough to fit into.

Riggs did not share Yarrow's stoical tolerance and loudly expressed his disgust. "May be our good fortune," said Parson. "I believe they hold mules in higher esteem than men."

Sewell threw down his pack with vehemence. "Boys," he said, "I don't mind owning we been took, and took bad. And I don't doubt that brute'll drive us main hard. But I been drove hard before, by timber bosses and what-have-you, and I reckon most of you can say the same. What we got to look out for is that bad air." He nodded respectfully to the two who had raised the warning.

"Hardly possible," said the younger of them, "when it's all about you. What we should do—"

Yarrow broke in abruptly. "Say, let's git on out there. Mustn't give the brute more call to devil us." To Parson he excused the interruption by casting an eye toward the man whose late entry had motivated it and who now was appropriating to himself the last three blankets. "Have a care who hears you," said Yarrow. "I b'lieve the barn's got a rat."

"It won't be the last" was Parson's comment. Yarrow laughed and clapped him on the shoulder as they went out. Hounditch, not quite able quite to overhear the conversation but surmising he had been its subject, scurried after them to keep in earshot: a specimen of the alternative brand of usefulness he had promised Moyle. Meanwhile the brute—from then on they never referred to him any other way—was shouting for Ottawa, the half-breed, to fit them out.

Ottawa was the camp cook, supply sergeant, and general dogsbody. He earned next to nothing and said as much. Whether the owners had found him, he had found them, or he had simply existed there since before the mine and stayed on, Moyle had never asked. Meeting the men outside the stable, Ottawa beckoned them to follow him to the nearest shack, from which he dragged gigantic objects of wood and black iron, and piled them, clanking, into a wheelbarrow: sledges from Vulcan's forge, drills whose S-bends were each the length of two rattlers, yardlong picks, shovels with wide pans, forks with sixteen tines, wedges of assorted sizes. There were too few to go round but not all would be needed at once and so each miner was furnished a half-kit—pick and shovel or fork and sledge—with a half-understood instruction from Ottawa to share.

"Knacker!" bellowed Moyle. "Fetch'n." The old man they had seen on arrival took up the barrow, whose load would have taxed most younger men, and bussed it toward the mine in Moyle's wake. At Sewell's attempt to relieve him, he shook his head anxiously. Not to be defeated, Sewell picked out a hammer and a drill and took them on his shoulders. Others followed his example, and together they lightened the burden by half. Knacker nodded his thanks. Moyle stopped by the entrance. "In with 'ee!" he ordered.

They obeyed of course, till it came Nate's turn. His private trouble had been subsumed into their collective trial; although the gash in his head still burned, and worse when he moved suddenly, mostly he felt it without remarking it. But now, staring at the maw of the hill, he found his body resisting and his mind urging him back. Seeing his hesitancy Moyle made a noise that might have been a repetition of "In!" or an unarticulated growl of displeasure; whichever, that and the press of the men behind impelled him forward. Once he passed the threshold his unease subsided, and he continued back with the others.

The tunnel spanned seven feet both ways and a little more at the bottom, so it could fit no more than two abreast. The path was nearly level with a slight ascent and extended some hundred yards. At twenty-yard intervals wood U-frames spotted with white fungus buttressed the walls and roof. At each interval an oil lamp hung from one of the supports and cast long shadows before and behind. There was a ditch at the right to run off any accumulated water. At the left, beneath a strip of tannish grey mud and rock, orange inside the precincts of the lamplight and tapering here and there into weirdly hardened drippings, stood a wall of pure black, two-thirds the height of the men, with innumerable tilelike faces, one and another of which twinkled like diamonds.

No sooner had Nate entered the cave than the clammy air weighed on his lungs and rushed into his head, freezing the burning at the back but imposing a new ache at the temples. Its odor was compounded of mud, oil, and a rotten stench he supposed to issue from the gases that had been warned against, but this was faint and his nostrils got used to it quickly. Perhaps the danger was not so great. He found himself calculating the possibility, and knew by that his mind was working: he was not enfeebled, except by hunger and exertion; he was not insane.

Shortly he gave himself cause to wonder if that were true. They had reached the end of the tunnel and bunched up there to wait for Moyle. By them sat a hand-hewn ore cart, the only one the proprietors owned. The slotted wheels on which it had sat originally had been replaced with ordinary ones till a track should be laid, as had never happened. Knacker, squeezing past the others, parked his barrow behind it and dumped out the contents. His strength (or strength of will) amazed those who watched.

The face before them was undercut ten yards farther, as high as the seam. Planks had been laid to make a dry even floor for the coal as it fell. A second tunnel opened to the left, running (as Moyle would have said) along the strike crosswise to the dip. Its height was half that of the mainway; the only means of passage was crawling. As soon as Nate saw it, he looked away and tried to pretend it was not there; he could not have said why.

Moyle appeared with a deputy at his heels and two changes in his attire: his kerchief was pulled up to cover his mouth, causing the men to suspect he had taken Yarrow's warning to heart or known its gist beforehand, and he was wearing a cloth cap with a pocket holding a miniature mine lamp, which strewed light in his path as he walked.

By its light he peered round. "Right, school's in session." He spoke more quickly than before as if anxious to finish and return to the open air. "Mind 'ee's lessons, lest master be moved to chide." Again he touched the whip stock. "Any man 'ere b'long to work the mines afore?" Yarrow raised his hand halfway. Riggs began to do the same but quickly checked himself. "So," said Moyle, with a grin as if having trapped a rabbit, "show's how she's done." Yarrow reluctantly stepped out. He studied the face for a bit and then the pile of tools. "No powder?" he said.

"No need," said Moyle. "She's that soft."

"S'pose we meet a fault that ain't?"

"If there's blasting to be done, I'll do'n. Not none of 'ee." They saw the point at once: of necessity they had been issued tools that might make weapons, though unwieldy ones, but never explosives that would enable them to wreck the mine. He had given them the idea and scotched it at the same time.

Yarrow found a pick and a hammer to fit his grip, slid them and a wedge beneath the overhang, and crawled in after them. He settled to sitting, legs stretched out. The others bent to watch. First he felt the rock over his head and tested it with the pick. Once he judged it safe he began swinging at the coal face, working from the bottom up rapidly and rhythmically, gouging deeper and deeper, propelling black chunks out and about him. Then he threw the pick down and took up the hammer. In he drove the wedge and deeper in, fetching out more coal and still more, till he heard Moyle cry a halt. He clambered out. "Did 'ee all see?" said Moyle—the closest to praise they would ever hear from his lips.

Hate him though they might, none could accuse him of not knowing his business. He expanded on the demonstration with a further survey of basic principles. When satisfied they understood well enough to make a start, he set them to their tasks: Yarrow and Sewell at the main face, Parson by the cart—"You're too pinnikin to swing a sledge," he said, thrusting a shovel at him (Parson found it as much as he could lift easily, and a little more, but was afraid to say so), and the remainder up the left breast. Knacker he assigned to cart the ore to the boats.

Riggs crawled up the side tunnel ahead of Hounditch into a chamber six by six, whose supports were set deep into the rock and reinforced with cross-timbers. He saw these through a light veil of fog. The air here stank more strongly; it grabbed his breath, forcing a cough. Hounditch, hunching in after him, pulled out his handkerchief and covered his mouth. They waited, but no third appeared.

Nate had balked. The dread that had attacked him at the entrance had been weak in comparison to what he felt now; no more than a brook, it had returned as a flood. Inside that square mouth lurked something once known and feared, now unknown but still feared, and he dared not face it. Little did he care that Moyle was ordering him and ordering again, angry at first, then puzzled, and ultimately, once he saw he had a spooked animal on his hands, ready to deal with it as with all creatures that resisted his mastery: by beating it into submission. Sewell protested without avail. Nate did not budge; could not even if he had chosen to. He had become one of the stone people he had woken among, white and cold and still.

Moyle took one of his long strides a quarter way round him and pulled his coat down to the elbows. "I'll brook none of 'ee's qua'ms 'ere," he snarled. Nate felt a sharp smack across his back. The snap just before told him what had made it: the cutting rawhide of the whip. For the moment that was all he knew, that and the pain, momentary but everlasting. It repeated itself, repeated again, and would continue so forever. Pain—but not fear. That hole contained all of it the world had, and there was none left over. It had turned him to stone. Moyle, seeing his last recourse had failed and furious with the knowledge, dealt him a vicious clout from behind. It landed on the earlier wound. Parson cried out. Nate did not. Dizzied to sickness, he staggered, but he did not fall. Stone no more, he brought himself upright and stood waiting for the next blow. Both he and Moyle were breathing heavily.

"So you'd be a mule, would 'ee?" said Moyle, and then to the deputy, who had stood by without showing any sign of emotion, "Fetch the belt." The deputy might have opened his mouth in surprise, but if he did so it was for only a second, and he hurried out. Parson felt a chill slide down his back. Nate was almost past feeling.

Moyle wheeled out the ore cart. His seeming hurry to leave having boiled away in his new passion, he did not rush the next words but enunciated them lovingly. "Mr. Bascombe, as is a gentleman of consid'rable learnin', declares this to be of French mannyfacture—and 'tes, I daresay, for I've not seed 'er like afore. The froggies 'ave their devices, to be sure, but this"—he hooked his finger through an iron ring at the front—"I've not 'ad occasion to employ till this."

On the last words the deputy returned bringing a companion (mysteriously, and to some eyes ominously, since he had not been asked for) and, slung over his shoulder, a wide slitted belt of black leather with a chain running through the slits and a padlock hanging from one of the links. Nate did not see the nod Moyle cast the deputies. Wordlessly they marched forward and after pulling his coat off the rest of the way seized him by the forearms and dragged him backwards, bootheels scraping, to force him against the cart's cold nose. He did not fight. They cinched the belt about him, ran the chain through the ring, and locked it into place. Then one of them did something that surprised everyone: he picked up the coat where they had thrown it and laid it gently over his shoulders, but without meeting his eyes.

"Now mule you are," said Moyle. "Knacker, you are emancipated. Load'n!" This command was directed at the others. Whether the dialect exceeded their understanding or they were loath to obey, they did not move but stood staring at one another. To make his meaning clear, Moyle grabbed the shovel in Parson's hands and jammed it painfully against his chest. This time Parson did as commanded. Sewell picked up a shovel, Yarrow a fork, and together the three began scooping up the rubble about them and flinging it into the cart. Those in the breast sat quietly, hoping the brute would not remember them for the present, and he did not. Coal and more coal the others dumped in till it seemed as much as any man could move and they paused. Moyle ordered them to continue. "No, Toby!" Knacker protested. "It's twice't what I pull."

At last he called to them to stop. He stepped up to Nate and regarded his condition with evident pleasure. Nate lifted his head. To his eyes, seeing all things anew, despite the glimmers of a past life that flashed before them occasionally like mirages in the desert, this beastlike man stood drenched in misery, that which life had imposed on him as well as what he imposed on others. Nate could not fear it; he only wondered at it. That robbed Moyle of a degree of power, and his sense of the loss outraged him. He loosed the blacksnake and slashed at Nate's chest left and right in an X pattern. "For'ard!" he roared.

Nate took a step, or tried to, but his burden held him. He pulled harder and the cart grumbled and squealed into motion. He took another step. The earth under his feet felt hard, the muscles of his legs and back and shoulders about to snap. The edge of the belt bit his flesh through the layers of wool and cotton between. The gashes from the whipping stung and stabbed. He could not do this.

Yet he knew he could, just barely. Calling up all the strength and will he possessed, he could bear it without falling or fainting. He suspected the man forcing it on him knew so too; that was the kind of thing he would know. Now and again he laid on the whip, but almost glancingly, as if for show, for he must know besides that Nate would hardly feel it with all his energies bent on dragging the obscenely immobile mass at his back.

Riggs peered out cautiously. "He's brought a curse down on him," he muttered.

"His own fault," said Hounditch, "for not doing as he's told." Riggs would willingly have seen him buried under the next load.

After what seemed miles of tunnel Nate stepped out into the light. The clean chilly air, welcome after the dank and odorous recess, infused new vigor into him, which served him well, for as soon as he set his steps onto the well-rutted track to the landing the cart, suddenly immobile no more, pushed down on him with such weight he nearly collapsed to his knees. Unable to resist it totally, feet skidding in the dirt as he struggled to brake, he half-stumbled, half-ran down the slope, stopping only where it leveled off a little. "Mind she don't crush 'ee!" Moyle yelled, chortling, as he trudged after. He cracked his whip in the air. "For'ard!"

Nate plodded on, more firmly in control, back and shoulders tense and throbbing under their load, till at last he made the solid wood of the dock. From here gangplanks led to the barge, bridging its vast hold. "Unload'n!" ordered Moyle. This Nate tried to do by tilting the cart backward, as well as he could while twisting to see behind him, but it would not move. Knacker, who had been watching from above, hopped down to him and with barely an effort swung the cart around (and Nate with it) and tipped it sideways. Nate felt its pull on his flank as a thick black hail with its own dusty aura pummeled the floor of the hold. "Like so, see?" said Knacker.

Immediately Moyle's voice intruded—"Up, me brave mule!"—followed by the clack of his whip. Knacker righted the cart and gave Nate a friendly wink, which encouraged him more than he would have believed possible. He wheeled the cart around easily now, though it still was not light. As he started up the path Moyle stepped astride it, occupying almost his whole view. "Arter a day of 'ovin' you'll be beggin' to be let in the pit, beggin' with tears in 'ee's eyes—and I'll 'ave the tears in mine, from laughin' that 'ard. Up with 'ee!" He stepped back and Nate climbed on.

Up, in, out, down he climbed the rest of the day and well into the dark, when at last Moyle ended it and allowed the deputies to unchain him. Sore, cut, and bruised, he slowly made his way to the haven of the lighted stable, too weary to notice the chow line as he passed. In front of a cast-iron kettle hung over a fire, and an earthen stove that looked as if Ottawa might have built it himself, the man who was part this and part that was doling out reasonable portions of squirrel stew and Indian bread. Some of the men began stuffing it in before he had finished serving.

Happily, the food was not bad, since it also had to do for Moyle, the deputies, and the owners if they should happen to visit (though they did so infrequently). The meals were short on game unless Ottawa or a deputy had taken the initiative to go hunting that day, and on fish, unless someone had ventured up river beyond where the mine had fouled the water. But even Riggs judged the eatings fair enough, though he did qualify the judgment by observing that just then he would have scraped the leavings off one of the mule carcasses if it had come to that. Parson got two plates, one for Nate, and all but forced him to eat.

After supper he wiped Nate's bare back with a wet kerchief. Sewell lowered himself beside them with a grunt and inspected the cuts. "Not serious," he pronounced, "though they'll sting some. The brute knows just how far his leather'll cut." His eye happened to fall on Parson's hand, which he took and examined. The palm was raw and blistered. "You want hardening, boy," he said. "You're no laborer. What you doin' out here?"

Parson pulled it away. "Man has to earn a living, hasn't he?" He stood and went to wash the cloth as best he might in the dirty creek. Sewell watched him curiously. Then he noticed Nate bravely endeavoring to slip his shirt back on against the wishes of his stiff limbs. Sewell slid closer to aid him. Nate nodded thanks; again he found himself grateful for a little thing. His eyelids drooped as the man's practiced, comradely hands moved over him; angels and ministers of grace— The phrase arrested him. Someone had said it to him, and more than once, but he could not pursue the question now; he was too sleepy. His shirt restored, he lay back on the straw. The same hands—were they?—laid a blanket on him. He shut his eyes.

"Shoulda been back by now," said Jeremy.

Jason was standing a little ahead of him staring up the Sound. He could see little in the dark but it did not matter. "Not a bit of it," he said, but his voice was hollow. "Likely he's hanging about to see the job done to the letter."

"That's not what you told him."

"No." Jeremy waited, and sure enough, in came the drums and trumpets. "But you know Joshua. Chance to catch sight of a tavern sign or a fair pretty maid, he can't resist the temptation to misspend an evening or two."

"Sure that's not you you're talking about?"

Jason punched one hand with the other. "It's irresponsible of him, is what it is, to keep us waiting like this. When I see him, I'll—I'll—it's plain irresponsible." He left.

Jeremy stared out at the unseen night, which told him nothing it had not told his brother. But his heart did. "Yeah, Jason," he said, "I'm worried too."

A boy called Jeremy's name. The boy was in the dark; the dark was in a dream. Nate woke to discover himself in the dark indeed, but a known dark. "Nate?" a voice whispered—Parson's, he realized after a moment. "You were talking in your sleep."

"Dream. I was calling someone's name."

"Whose?"

He could not remember. But for some reason he remembered Sewell's earlier question, and repeated it. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you?" Parson retorted. He rolled over and returned to sleep, or pretended to. Nate lay awake meditating on the second question. What purpose was it that had brought him to the strange dead compound in the woods where his life as he knew it had begun? Where had he been before? Who were his people? Who was he?

Where was Joshua? The question preoccupied Jeremy as at Jason's behest he led the men in rolling a dozen barrels up from the wharf as quietly as possible and stowing them in the tent. He had less than half a will for the job, not only because of Joshua but because it was keeping him from Candy, of whom he felt uneasily he should be seeing more rather than less. Lately she had about her a frozen, distant air that in his experience always betokened some private lament; often a girlish fancy, but then not so often any more as with the responsibilities she had taken on she had shed most of her girlhood. So Jeremy wondered and worried a little about what her new sorrow might be; he was pretty sure it was not a longing for New Bedford.

The rumble of the barrels, quiet as he had kept it, had woken her. Irresistibly curious, she pulled a robe about her, wriggled her feet into their slippers, and stole out into the moonlit street far enough to glimpse the last thick-waisted cylinder tumbling through the flap. Barrels, sounds of building, Joshua off on a secret errand: she had seen enough of Jason's schemes to guess at the rest and her surmise landed close to the mark. When she returned upstairs and Biddie, woken by some instinct, asked if she had any idea yet what those Bolt brothers were up to, she could truthfully state she did. "And, oh, pray it works," she added.

"I certainly will," Biddie said promptly. Half a minute later she had thought of something. "Candy? How can I do that if I don't know what it is?" But Candy was asleep, or silent at any rate, and Biddie remained unsatisfied.

Passing the parlor on the way, she had found someone else up. Ula was sitting in the dark, in the rocker by the window. "Can't sleep?" Candy asked.

"I sleep," she said softly, "and when I sleep I dream. About home, only Daniel isn't there—or about Daniel, and then our home isn't there. Oh, Candy, I don't know how much longer I can bear it!" She broke into tears, which Candy hastened to comfort away and which raised a fear that he might be too late already. Without meaning to, she said it aloud.

"What? Who?" said Ula, sniffling.

"Never mind. Come upstairs, I'll tuck you in."

It was an unusual night even for Seattle. No sooner had they retired than another citizen took to the street in his nightclothes, tucking his habitual regard for propriety between his exasperation and curiosity over the work noises, unevenly stifled, that had roused him. No one barred his entry to the tent or his approach to Jason. Activity proceeded on all sides, mostly construction of some kind, but beyond that he could make no sense of it, which vexed him the more. "What on earth are you about?" he demanded.

Jason spared him hardly a glance before returning his attention to the dowel holes he was drilling in the post he sat astride. "About keeping the brides here," he said curtly, "if Mr. Stempel has no objection."

"Keeping them?" Aaron began to sit on a crosspiece, which two men immediately grabbed out from under him and bore away, and so he kept standing. "Why, were they going somewhere?"

"Signs," Jason said mysteriously, "hints, auguries. Whispers on the wind, writing on the wall—"

"Will-o'-the-wisps," said Aaron. If that was all...

"Thought you'd be pleased to see them go," Jason said, temptation getting the better of him. "Time was—"

Aaron let it pass. "On the contrary, I have a special interest in their staying. Ben and I are going in together on a tea shop."

"Tea shop?" Jason wrinkled his nose involuntarily.

"Oh, quite the fashionable thing." He quickly explained, "So Ben's wife tells him. We're counting on the brides to be our main customers."

"They have that much to spend?"

"Quite a few are receiving weekly allowances from their young men."

Jason stopped and stared. "Allowances?"

"In anticipation of marriage, so to speak."

"Why, that sounds almost—does Candy know about this?"

"I gather it was her idea."

Jason's shock and his anxiety to cover it with a mask of worldly tolerance were equally evident in his face. Aaron tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. "I won't ask what you're planning—"

"Well, good."

"—because I'd probably consider it a waste of time—"

"Probably."

"—but I will observe you're working your men mighty late. Will they be fit for work tomorrow?"

"No matter. They're doing barely a trickle now."

"I keep telling you, you need to instill a little discipline. I was having the same trouble but I called my crew together and let them know I wouldn't stand for it."

"Do any good?"

Aaron hesitated. "Not a great deal. But it's the princi—"

"Good night, Mr. Stempel." Just then he caught sight of an encroaching crisis—"Sam, you lubberhead! You have that turned clean around!"—and rushed away to resolve it. Always putting things to rights, thought Aaron; or his notion of rights anyhow. As he stepped outside he glanced over at the dormitory. Whatever the trouble with the brides (and lacking a brother to employ as a confidential agent, he still had no clue what it might be), Jason could manage them; always had, always would. Thus heartened, he returned home to bed.

Nate slept a sleep like death every night, but that only made the nights seem shorter and the days like one endless day. Moyle's promise of liberation notwithstanding, he kept Knacker, for want of another candidate, hauling the barrow to the boats—both of them, for the packet, as well as push the barge to market (wherever that might be), was to carry its share of cargo. So Knacker's course sometimes followed Nate's directly and sometimes preceded it, furnishing him with opportunities to ask questions and learn much. Never, by the way, did he master the technique of emptying the cart from the front, and discovered he was not expected to; the first trial must have been a small torment of Moyle's, for always from then on Knacker, a deputy, or (but rarely) Moyle himself was at hand to do it.

What he learned betweentimes was this: Knacker had arrived there with Moyle; the two of them had met while working the silver mines of Nevada City. Eventually the owners would have no more of either, Knacker because he was past his best and Moyle because, in Knacker's words, "got a temper, has Toby—one feller like to died." When Moyle rode out he invited Knacker to ride with him and promised that anywhere he found a job Knacker should have a place. "Looks after me, he does," Knacker said with feeling. Nate could not bring himself to disabuse him, and perhaps, he thought, there was another side to it after all. They had come earlier in the winter and gladly been taken on. The mine was failing, the men disappeared by ones and twos, and so before recruiting a new lot—Nate's lot—they brought in the deputies. "No one'll run now," said Knacker.

Nate asked why he did not leave himself. The old man paled at the thought. "I—I been with Toby a spell," he said; that was all. Nate let it drop. He wondered aloud what would happen to the rest of them when their time was up. Knacker took the question as meant for him. "As to that," he said, "can't say. Reckon can't no one say for sure." Just then Moyle yelled for him and he scuttled off.

Whether he actually knew more than he had said Nate doubted but he was left with the impression, which seemed likely, that his situation there was more dangerous than it seemed. Men like these were used to lying, cheating, forcing their way. Might they not keep him there, him and the others, or kill them? He could not predict from past experiences, for he had none, or as good as none. So even if he were free of his chain he could not act or lead others to act; he did not know enough. He could only work and wait. In time he would know more.

Although he was having the worst of it in the other men's estimation, he could not envy them as he watched them applying the principles Moyle had expounded at first. After cutting out a hollow sufficiently wide and deep a miner would entomb himself in it and continue picking on his back with scarcely elbow room and then as he bit higher and higher into the vein would switch from standing to lying to sitting as the height of the section allowed; in the breast all the work had to be done supine or bent double. To those who had never mined before, it had sounded impossible, yet they were doing it. And besides, they kept up the secondary jobs: hewing out the top rock to maintain a standing height and setting in more posts and lintels as they went. The coal that collected on the floor (the breast having an uphill pitch, most of its ore fell out into the mainway) they broke up and forked or shoveled into cart and barrow, saving the biggest lumps for last and then heaping them on at the sides.

Hard as the work was, it had also its satisfaction, and with the activity, they now found the mine quite warm enough. They were able to steal occasional rests between Moyle's inspections, and those he kept as brief as possible. But still there was the blackness that couched everywhere outside the lamplight, even penetrating (it seemed) to their faces and hands and clothing. They saw the sun only once a day, at their late breakfast; they entered and returned from dark into dark. Then there was the unending din: the rumble of cart and barrow, the pulse of pick and sledge, the throaty roar of rockfall.

Worst of all, there was the air, especially the nitrous fog of the breast, which left Riggs and Hounditch—and Parson, when he had to shovel out a pile-up there—with a chill and a headache three-quarters round at the end of the day. Yet those symptoms, though unpleasant, were not as serious as the creeping effects of other compounds, of whatever nature, that worked invisibly and insidiously: a sluggishness of body, a pallor in the face, a pressure in the lungs and chest. Following Moyle's practice, the miners shielded their mouths with kerchiefs and strips torn from their shirts, but these could have availed little. There were the airholes Bascombe had cited, square wells reinforced with crossbeams, but so narrow little air could have passed through them. The sole advantage of it all was the power it held to ward off Moyle.

This morning he was at Ottawa's cookstand sucking coffee from a tin cup when his ears picked up a falling off in the normal sounds of the day. He soon learned the cause: the miners had struck a sulfur ball, a rock impregnated with crystal sulfide. Yarrow had called the men from the breast to help but not all of them together (except Nate, chained to his anchor) could budge it. The thing would have to be blasted away. "'od rabbet it!" said Moyle. He called to Knacker to fetch the requisite materials, and on his return the two of them set to work. They said barely a word; obviously they had done this together many times.

Knacker held flat a length of blasting paper into which Moyle carefully poured a line of black powder from a small keg. He rolled the paper into a foot-long cartridge and sealed the ends with a paste Knacker had prepared from lye soap and creek water. After drilling a hole between the rocks he speared the cartridge with a long needle which he used to push it up the hole. He filled the left-over space with coal dirt. Into the end of the cartridge he inserted a fuse. This he lit with a tinder, ordering the others to stand clear, and then backed off himself. Within a few seconds they heard a loud but echoless thud, followed by the rattle of falling rock. A cloud of dense smoke with its own noxious reek prevented them from seeing the result till the smoke had faded.

"'od rabbet it!" he said again. The ball was holding to its place. He grabbed up a hammer and a wedge and the others followed his example. When the hammers ran out the last two took up shovels whose pans would serve as wedges too. Only Parson stood back, and Nate. After much jamming in and bearing down they succeeded in tipping out the stone, which thumped to the floor. Almost before they could wipe their foreheads Moyle ordered them to roll it outside, which they did as a body. Moyle smiled with a plain contentment he rarely felt.

But in him a good mood always had its counterweight of malice, in this case aimed at Nate, who had stood by and done nothing—Moyle groused—while he and the others toiled. He chose to ignore the condition imposed by himself that had left Nate helpless; in fact he had called to be released so he could lend a hand but Moyle had not minded him.

Not since his herculean labor had been laid on him had he once complained or fallen off in the performance of it. In the first days his muscles had threatened to give out but he had fought to master them and now, stronger than ever and growing stronger daily by the very burden that tortured them, they enabled him to push harder and faster, to tread more surely and, with a little energy left over, to apply them to other tasks that wanted doing: for instance mending the stable wall where a few half-hanging boards made crevices for the cold to slither through. Borrowing a hammer and nails from Ottawa, who volunteered his help, he stopped the gaps, and patched the roofs of two of the shacks for good measure.

Not well able to forbid him, Moyle chose to see his initiative as simple cheek. "Thinks 'e's some 'andsome, don't 'e?" he muttered between bites of his pasty. Ottawa baked one of them for him every Friday at his special request. Seated on a keg outside while Knacker, his usual supper companion, squatted on a rock at a respectful distance, as was also usual, he gobbled down the last of it and wiped his lips. "'tedn' no proper pasty," he said. He had communicated the recipe himself but in Ottawa's hands it always turned out more like an Indian pancake than he was accustomed to.

"'tedn' no proper mine nuther," he went on, almost under his breath. "Nat like they'ns at 'ome." He sighed. "But 'tes gone round now. I ask 'ee, 'ow's miners to live if there be no mines? Eh?" He ruminated on this for a space. "'tedn' no proper mine," he repeated. Then he stood.

At this signal he was done, Knacker asked in a small voice, "You wouldn't leave without me? Would you, Toby?"

"I promised, didn't I?" snapped Moyle. "And I never goes backs-a-word—come as may." Shaking his head at his own weakness, he turned in. Knacker, with whom he shared his shack, or a corner of its floor, followed timidly.

The same night Jason completed his work. He asked the men if they understood what they were to do on the morrow. They nodded sleepily. "Then let's away," he said. "I want you here bright and early for the unveiling."

Jeremy looked about at the products of their labor, which in taking shape had gradually revealed to him the length and breadth of his brother's scheme. To his mind they were the dimensions of the tent and no more; a little of beer and a lot of froth. His frown was not lost on Jason. "Something?" he asked.

"All this—"

"Didn't think we could manage it in such short order, did you?"

"It's not that—"

"All that's missing is Joshua's part. Well, can't be helped. But when he gets back—"

"Still think he fell from the straight and narrow?"

Jason considered soberly. "I don't know. Could be Fertig took persuading. Could be he had to send off for the stone..." Jeremy was still frowning. "There is something, isn't there? Something I've forgotten." Jeremy began to reply and then thought better of it. He shook his head. Jason said they had best get home and thence they hied, leaving only the night watch.

And in the darkness there was light; light through water; light on water: the boy was bathing.

—only now he was back in the dark in a cave in a panic, crying out a name—

Jason.

It was still on Nate's lips as he woke. He had been dreaming, a dream he had known before and then not known, but this time it had left a trace behind. Am I Jason? he wondered.

The night was marked by one more event, and that the most important. Seattle's main street was vacant except for the sentry at the tent, who was asleep. The door of the dormitory opened. The brides filed out, crossed the yard, and marched in procession to the church, which the Reverend had left open at Candy's request. A strange sight they would have made to a child peering out his window: a double row of women in cloaks and long coats with nightdresses underneath. They passed silently into the church, Candy last of all, her face as somber as the night. Jeremy was sleeping at camp, she knew, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away.

Next morning she led her legion out to confront Jason's small force, he armed with talk, she with righteous conviction: their usual weapons. "Ladies—" Jason began. "I—we—the brides—" said Candy at the same time. The confusion of nominatives arrested her and he forged ahead. "What a glorious coincidence! I was on my way to fetch you."

Still unsure of her approach, Candy labored to continue. "The brides and I—we—have something to ask you—tell you." Thimble! she swore silently. This was unlike her. Why couldn't she out with it?

"Let it bide," said Jason, "till the time be ripe. For I've a sight will dazzle your eyes and lift up your heavy hearts. Step this way." He started toward the tent. The other brides looked to her. She stood her ground. Jason looked back to find himself a leader without followers. "This way," he repeated less confidently.

She took a deep breath. "Last night the brides held an indignation meeting—"

"Indignation meeting, is it? And what would you have to be indignant about?"

She had difficulty uttering it. "We—" This time she let the word stand. "—voted to leave." From his expression she thought he might not have understood. "Seattle," she added.

Jason looked about for Jeremy and felt relieved not to see him. Then he reflected that she had probably confessed it all to him beforehand, in that way lovers had, but of course Jeremy would not have taken it seriously (Jason had a knack of disregarding his knowledge of people when it interrupted the fine flow of his thought). He only half-listened as she went on. "We demand—request that you arrange for our passage home, come the first fair weather. You will recall that in our contract—"

"But there's the point," he broke in. "There's the nub and the hub of it. You don't have to leave now, no, ma'am. And let me show you why."

"Jason..." Why did he have to be like this? She answered herself immediately: because he was Jason.

"Come along," he said, "and see a wonder." This time she followed, trailing the other brides; best get it over with, she thought. Some townsfolk, having heard the speech, tagged after. Jeremy and the other loggers stepped out of the tent as if by silent command, one at each tent pole. Jason turned to address the crowd. He was glad of a larger audience than the brides alone.

"It seems," he said, "the good Lord looked down on the world and saw things weren't as they should be. Why, no! New Bedford there, that emerald of the Eastern seaboard—" (Candy, who had spent most of her life in it and knew it as well as anybody, thought the epithet inappropriate) "why should those high-collared bluebloods have it all to themselves?" (being one of them herself, presumably, she was unmoved by the sentiment) "—so He passed His hand over, raised up a chunk of it, and had His angels bear it away to set down here in your own back yard." The men raised and sashed the tent flaps on all sides, exposing the interior. "Follow me for the grand tour."

It looked like a bazaar. The space was replete with the products of his and his artisans' handiwork. Some the brides recognized, others they did not, but Jason bestowed a name on each and pronounced it good. "Here's the Common—'course it'll take a while for the grass to grow. And here's a corner of Arnold's Garden—couldn't rightly make it out from the picture" (here he unwittingly incriminated poor Jeremy, whom he had chivied into further thievery) "so it may not be just like, but say the word and we'll do it to the life. This right here's our own Fairhaven Bridge, spannin' the village pond" (a mudhole).

"And here's the best of all." He stopped at the row of barrels. "Put in a whole stableload so's you can sniff it to your heart's content whenever you've the hankerin'." Sam pried off one of the lids. "Whale oil, just like back home." The oily stench pervaded that end of the tent. The brides turned away, hands to their noses. The logger hastily restopped the barrel. "Now you got all you been pining for," said Jason, "so—so..."

He became aware that something had gone wrong. The brides did not look happy even after the odor had dissipated. Of course! He had forgotten the missing centerpiece: the church tower Joshua had failed to deliver. The laggard! And himself a jughead for forgetting! Why, that was the main thing! He quickly offered it up to their imaginations: he would plant it at the entrance to town, replacing the totem pole. He then spotted a row of exhibits he had neglected. "Over here!" he urged.

But they had stopped following, had stopped listening. "Thank you, Jason," Candy said quietly. "Truly, thank you for trying. But you shouldn't have taken the trouble."

He saw she was resolute, proof against any argument or compromise, or what she called the razzle-dazzle. He had no means to sway her. The magnitude of the change this would entail had not yet struck him; he simply felt his own defeat, and that made him angry. "Why?" he roared. Some of the women quavered; she stood firm. "In the name of bloody blue blazes, why? I give you what you wanted, didn't I? All that was in my power—all but your precious Johnnycake Hill, and if you require it of me I'll scrounge and scrabble in the dirt and build me up a pile with my two hands till you have your Johnnycake Hill. What else is missing? What, I'd like to know?"

"New Bedford," she said simply. "I'm sorry, Jason. Our request stands."

"What request?" asked Jeremy, drawn by Jason's shouting. Neither had seen him approach. Candy started, stared, blushed, and then, not knowing what else to do, walked away. The other brides followed. "Candy?" he called after her, perplexed. "Jason?"

"S'pose you knew," Jason said accusingly. "About that vote of theirs. You mighta warned me."

"V-v—what—"

Jason's face softened. He realized he was being cruel. This would have hit Jeremy harder than him, hardest of anyone. He offered an apology. "Know the two of you'll want to spend the few days you have left saying your goodbyes. Shan't look for you before nightfall."

As understanding crept up on Jeremy he began to tremble. "J-Jason, wait—"

But Jason was already elsewhere, preparing to dismantle what he had built up. "Let's clear away this truck!" he ordered, and set himself to it with a vengeance. Jeremy, on his own—truly now, it seemed—began mustering courage enough to put the question to which he already had the answer.

She was standing at the parlor window. Biddie had let him in; he did not know where the others were. "The brides are leaving," he said. It was almost a question. She nodded—or had she? "Why didn't you tell me?"

He waited. "The meeting went late," she said. "Jason came around early."

"But you knew before. Didn't you?" She did not answer him. "What were you thinking? That Jason could arrange it without me finding out?"

"Of course not."

"And you—you—d-didn't you think I had the best right to know?" He was shouting like a child, a disappointed and devastated child.

"I knew Jason would tell you. Or Biddie." She half-smiled.

"But why wasn't it you? Why, Candy?"

How she wanted to tell him! That she had not dared to, knowing if she had, her love for him would have swept away everything else: her awareness of her responsibility to the brides and the strength to stick to it. If they must go, they must not go alone: they were too young, too easily taken advantage of. They needed her. Of course so did Jeremy, but she could not serve both. So she had chosen the need that seemed greater; rather, it had chosen her. If it had been her choice, her own need... Not daring to tell him this, lest even now it unmake her, all she said was, "I couldn't."

"You didn't have the nerve."

How true! "In a way."

He did not speak for a few seconds. She wondered what he was thinking. Finally he asked if that were all. She did not understand. "Sure there wasn't something else?" he pressed.

One of his riddles! Not that; not now. "Jeremy, whatever you mean, just say it."

His voice was husky and sounded as if it were forced out. "The, the vote. To go away. Was it unanimous?"

She had not expected questions on small matters of fact. She strained to recollect. "Let me see...Ula voted to stay—and I think she will, to marry Daniel. Biddie voted no at first, but—"

"Were they the only ones?"

"Yes," she said, puzzled. Then its significance as he would see it struck her. She lowered her head, and as quickly raised it again. "Yes," she said, holding firm, "the only ones."

Jeremy turned to the wall. "I see." The disappointment, disillusion, desperation in his voice almost broke her heart. She struggled to speak, but what could she say? "I'd 'a' thought it'd be different for you," he said. "Guess—guess I was wrong."

"You could—" He looked hopefully at her. "—come with us."

He shook his head, not in reply but in amazement. "You know I can't. You could stay."

"I can't either."

They stared at each other. Neither could believe this was the end; yet it was.

Candy fought against the flood rising in her. "Before long I daresay you Bolts will be going out and picking yourselves a new crop of eligible girls. You'll meet one of 'em the same way you met me, and poof! I'll disappear from your mind. Pretty silly our little picnics and tea parties will look to you then."

"And you?"

She laughed, too loudly. "Don't you mind about me, Jeremy Bolt. I'll hunt myself up a handsome new beau—plenty to pick from in New England, you know, not like this wilderness. And some day I'll invite you for a visit and you and I will look back and laugh at how young and foolish we were to ever believe our 'understanding' amounted to a—a hill of beans."

Jeremy did not catch the strain in her voice. All he caught was the words. It took him a long time to answer. "If that's what you think then you may as well leave, 'cause it doesn't matter. I thought it did but it doesn't. And if that doesn't matter, then nothing—" His voice broke. He swallowed, and recovered himself. He looked at her as if he were a stranger meeting her for the first time. That look stabbed her through. One more word—"Goodbye"; he did not even say her name—and he was gone. Then the flood burst. But he was not there to see it.

"Where you off to?" Jason asked. Stopping by the cabin to seek a home for some of the smaller manufactures he had decided he could not part with after all, he had found a horse tied up outside. On one of the beds sat a three-quarters-filled saddlebag, to which Jeremy added a portrait of Joshua.

"Find my brother," he said. "You don't mind me taking the grey?" Jason shook his head. "Shoulda gone before. Nothing to keep me now." He hoped to be asked about the last remark and receive some brotherly sympathy without having to beg for it, but Jason was deep in his own grief. His great experiment in the importation of women had come to this. Besides, he would miss the brides, with their bustling and blushing and giggling. He had never dreamed he would mourn the absence of girlish giggling; all his life he had regarded it as a toll men had to pay for the pleasanter feminine attributes. But he would miss it, and them; especially he would miss Candy.

But of course, he realized, Jeremy would too; he ought to be with her now. "Don't squander your time," he said. "Whatever nonsense Joshua's about, he's too late to help us. I give him clear instructions not to dally or dawdle or drag his heels, and what's he do? If that ain't the height of March—"

"You—you don't know anything!"

Jason was too flabbergasted to take offense. "What in the—"

"You—you—" He shook his head.

"No, you've had somethin' lodged in your craw since yesterday. High time you coughed it up."

"You wanna know? Okay, all of this—it's just like you, Jason, just like you. You don't see things like a grown man. You see 'em like a kid."

"Says my venerable, wizened brother."

"Shoot, if I'd known what you were up to—I did, but I didn't know the brides were—if I'd—" He got tangled up in his thoughts and blazed a fresh trail. "You think, you think, hey, the brides want whale oil? I'll ship in whale oil. They want a bridge? I'll build 'em a bridge, and sweet-talk 'em into believing it's the same thing." Jason's face was all over wrinkles. "Forget it," said Jeremy.

"It's always worked, hasn't it?"

"Of course it works!" Jason could not remember having ever seen him so agitated. "When the fella's as slick as you are, it works prime. You could talk the Big Dipper down out of the sky to pour you a shot of star juice." Jason could not but enjoy the compliment, and noticed for the first time his brother had himself some skill in that line. "But there's this," he continued, "and you ain't caught on to it yet—it only works till people get to thinkin'. And these girls have been doin' plenty of thinkin'—been doin' nothin' else. Thinkin' about home, everything they've been missin'. Your magic won't work on them."

Jason stared at him with new respect. "And they say Joshua's the smart one."

Jeremy was not sure he liked that but let it pass. "And Joshua—you know yourself he isn't d-dawdlin' or d-dallyin' or—"

"You got cause to believe otherwise?"

"We're brothers, Jason. I feel it—and so do you. Think past this trouble with the brides for a second. Something's not right."

It was obvious now Jeremy had said it. "Go after him," said Jason, "find him, bring him back." Jeremy buckled the saddlebag and hoisted it onto his shoulder. "But, Jeremy? If he is in a jam, don't follow him. Keep yourself well clear and come fetch me. I can't be worrying about two brothers." Their eyes met. Jeremy nodded.

He stopped in town just long enough to pick up a few provisions, but that was enough to expose him to Biddie's probing eye. He pretended not to hear her calling—she had often wondered why all her acquaintances were intermittently deaf—but she ran after him, shouting, and eventually he had no choice but to stop and wait for her.

"Going somewhere?" she asked with a casual air, still panting from the run.

"Find Joshua."

"Oh, of course. You would. I mean, the two of you are brothers, aren't you? And we are our brother's keeper—if we have a brother. Personally—"

"Biddie, what the hell do you want?" He was usually polite to her for Candy's sake, but why bother now?

His bluntness shocked her into direct statement. "I want to tell you something. I don't like to call Candy a liar—well, not lying exactly. But if she didn't have the brides to think about—if it was her alone—"

"I know." He had known almost as soon as he had left her but only now did he admit it.

"I wanted to be sure you did. Because, you know, you're more important to her than anything."

"Except the brides," he said bitterly.

"And nothing is more important to you except your brothers. So you're really the same that way, now, aren't you?"

Jeremy smiled. "And they say Candy's the smart one." She did not like that any better than he had. "Tell her—" he began, and then broke off. "Just tell her." He lightly kneed the grey, and off he rode. He did not hear, nor was meant to, the mutter at his back: "Who says she's the smart one?"

At the mine the coal was ready to ship. The boats sat low in the water—too low according to one of the deputies, who argued strenuously with Bascombe to lighten them. Bascombe only stood and shook his head. He ordered the two carters to keep bringing more till told to stop.

On one of their jogs Knacker lost his footing and toppled the barrow, scattering its load. Before he knew it Moyle was standing over him, swearing and dealing out a succession of sharp cuffs as Bascombe and the deputies watched impassively. "A bit of mercy, Toby," begged his victim.

"Mercy, you scoggin? Who d'you take me for? Ben't I the one 'as kept 'ee when else 'ee'd be dead?" He extracted the blacksnake from his belt. "I'll show 'ee who's master."

"No, Toby!" Knacker cried. "I can bear 'most anything 'cept that. Please—" He clawed in the dirt, laboring to scramble away. Moyle flung the lash behind him, but when he tried to bring it back he found it stopped and his arm wrenched sideways. He swung round angrily to find Nate up against him, the leather cinched around his still-stinging knuckles. He met Moyle's eye, and spoke for his ears only. "You're the lowest kind of coward that crawls. Face me if you've any manhood in you."

Moyle's eyes bulged and his face grew red. He tugged at the whip. Nate's arm jerked forward, but his hand would not let go its grip and the cart at his back trebled his force to resist—unexpected ally! The two stood almost chest to chest glowering at each other. In another moment Moyle might have dealt a blow to smash Nate into the hard iron, maybe breaking some ribs. But the moment was stolen. "Moyle!" rose an imperious shout. "I must speak with you."

Nate released his hold. With sentiments unspoken on his lips Moyle turned and trudged away down the hill, coiling and belting the blacksnake as he went. Knacker glared after him. Nate extended a hand to help him up, which he took gratefully.

"I don't object if you please to whip your dog," Bascombe told Moyle, "but lay off the boy. He does half again the work of the rest." As seldom and as briefly as he stopped he had noticed that.

"'e raised 'is 'and to me!" Moyle objected. "'e wants a right lacin'."

"He's helping me make a profit from this godforsaken hole," said Bascombe. "That's all that concerns me." Moyle bit his tongue. "But what I wished to say to you was this. I'm withdrawing most of the deputies to help me conduct the ore to the city. Can you manage short-handed?"

Moyle nodded toward the mine. "Whyn't tak' they?"

"And allow them a chance to escape? Are you six kinds of a fool, man?" Moyle bit his tongue again. "My question to you is this: can you manage, yea or nay?"

Moyle tried to smile but managed only to look a little less sour. "Dusn't be teasy, now, cap'n. I'll manage." He palped the whip stock. "One way or t'other." He glanced toward Nate, who was now retreating into the mine.

"I'll remind you again to keep your temper. Never wise to court trouble." Moyle walked off without answering. Bascombe scowled after him. He distrusted the man but for his present purposes he could not have found a better.

From the brink of the mine Moyle watched Nate fade in and out of sight through succeeding realms of light and dark. "I'll do for 'ee, me lover," he said, now that Bascombe could not hear him, "for certain sure." But he could not do it while the boy was under Bascombe's protection. He would have to put an end to that first.

For the rest of the day he paid Nate no attention except to redirect his next load, while the boats were embarking, to an expanse of flat ground a hundred yards past the dock where the coal was to be piled till their return. So Nate knew what none of the men inside did: that three-fourths of the deputies were gone. For how long he did not know; but they were gone. The knowledge might prove useful.

Earlier that day the one Bolt left in Seattle had happened on Ula at the pump. He bade her good morning and asked for courtesy what sort of name Ula might be. "Short for Ulalume," she said, a little reluctantly. He began to recite but she cut him short. "I've heard it, Jason. My father was an inveterate reader of Mr. Poe. It was in honor of him he named me and my sisters—Lenore, Helen, and Annabel." Resisting the temptation to quote again, Jason picked up her filled pail and escorted her and it back to the dormitory. On the way he thanked her for her vote. She told him she had retracted it. "I never liked to stand against the others," she said, "and now it isn't necessary. I'll be going, and Daniel will be coming with me."

"He what?" Jason halted so suddenly, water high-jumped the rim of the pail.

"Splendid, isn't it? 'Its Sybillic splendor is beaming.' That's from the poem. Jason?" He had not moved. From his expression she judged he might not think it so splendid.

"You can't do it!" he informed Daniel as soon as he had located him at camp.

"I can. I'm a free citizen, I can do as I please."

"And run out on your obligations?"

"I got obligations to others than you, Jason. They got first call on me."

"But look here, if you go the next fella'll be wantin' to go too, and then the next. And before you know there'll be a regular stampede, with everybody shovin' and elbowin' and tramplin' on his neighbor—like a herd of love-starved bulls. I reckoned you for more of a man than that. But if that's how you account yourself—as no better'n a beast of the field..." He noticed Daniel was gazing off down the mountain. "Dan? You listenin'?"

"Are you through?"

"Am I through? Am I—" He sighed. "Yes, I'm through."

"You talk good, Jason. Ain't no one can gainsay that." He was already walking away, as if in foretoken of the longer departure.

"Not so, Daniel," Jason said, but only to himself. "Not half good enough."

The next day dawned rainy everywhere. The loggers worked regardless. Strangely, after learning of the brides' imminent departure they had reverted to a semblance of their former industry. The reaction was not logical but it was human: permanent, irreversible loss they could bear; they were used to it; what had tormented unendurably was to have the object of longing in sight, seemingly in reach, but lost to the other senses.

Traveling, Jeremy kept to the trees as far as he could till a small rise brought him into sight of Snohomish at the base of the shallow river valley. He prodded his horse on.

At the mine Moyle had a canvas stretched over the coal pile and the day's further extractions husbanded inside till the rain lightened. The breast filled rapidly. Little of what it yielded tumbled out and Parson was having to shovel almost continuously.

In the middle of the morning he collapsed. He was groggy almost to insensibility. "It's the sulfur gas," said Yarrow, "from the rocks and blasting." In the absence of Moyle, whom they had seen hardly at all, he and Sewell carried Parson outside and laid him on the wet earth. The rain tapping at his face revived him a little.

Moyle appeared. His temper unabated since the day before, he shoved the pair aside and planted his feet astride the stricken man. "It's chlorine that's wanted," Yarrow advised. "That's the antidote."

"I'll give'n antidote." He grabbed up Parson by the shirt and administered a hard slap to the face. "No qua'ms, I say!" Parson's eyes rolled back and his head fell limply to the side. Moyle threw him down in disgust. The mud splashed over his still limbs. "Leave 'e lay," said Moyle. "'e'll come round d'rectly." With that he tramped off to his cabin. The others stared after him. Disregarding his order for once, they moved Parson to the stable. "It'll be us next," said Sewell. Yarrow nodded. From below Nate had been watching with rising fury. If he did not yet know himself, he was returning to himself. And his self was speaking to him, saying clearly: it's time.

At the edge of Snohomish the grey began to limp. Jeremy dismounted to lead him in and paused under an oak (seemingly the town's only tree) to inspect the shoe, where he found a rock that had somehow wedged itself under the heel. He wiped his hands on his trousers, which were wet themselves, took his knife from its sheath at his waist, and worked to dislodge the intruder. Between the muddy hoof and his wet hands it was a slippery job, but he managed it, to the grey's evident satisfaction.

Up the street someone was making a speech—hawking his wares, to judge by the sound of it. Jeremy could not make out the words. The speaker was standing in the bed of a wagon. He was clad in a slick rain cloak that streamed water and camouflaged a too-green suit. He was facing an audience of three who had probably been passing anyway; Jeremy made it four. "Job pays a dollar a day, guaranteed," the man was saying, "plus a rare chance to git away from the temptations that beset a body—women, liquor, gamblin'—and set your feet in the way of righteousness." He reached under his cloak and brought out a small picture: a twin picture: a stereoscope card. "See this here church? I carry it around with me—" But his mention of the spiritual advantages the job purveyed had scotched any interest he might otherwise have provoked in his hearers, except for one. "Does my soul good," he finished lamely.

"Can I see it?" asked the one remaining.

"You want it? It's yours—for a price."

Jeremy studied it. There could be no mistake. He stared squarely at the man. "It belonged to my brother."

"Oh?" Jigger said without interest, and then, differently, "Oh-h."

Jeremy leapt into the wagon. "Where is he? Tell me!" Jigger looked down at the knife still in Jeremy's hand. Jeremy recollected its presence at the same instant. "Talk fast," he said menacingly, "or—"

"All right," Jigger yelped, without knowing clearly what he was saying. His mind scurried about nosing for a way out and found one. "I'll take you there," he said, "but it'll take 'most till dark. It's down Seattle way."

Jeremy's relief that his brother was close to home after all diminished as they rode south, largely retracing his route of yesterday. Jigger would say no more and was obviously hiding something. Jeremy kept close to him as he drove. As evening fell they reached a town hardly distinguishable from the last. "Black River," Jigger announced. He pulled up in front of the sheriff's office. Jeremy asked if his brother were in jail. He thought that might be good in a way: Joshua would be safer there. "All in good time," said Jigger with a smile. He was far more chipper than when they had started.

As they entered, the smell of oil met their nostrils. Sheriff Case was occupied in cleaning his shotgun. Two rifles, having received his ministrations, were resting again in their rack; his pistols sat waiting their turn. "You the sheriff?" Jigger asked loudly, making a face at Jeremy's back to signal something was up.

Case barely let on to notice them. "Guilty," he said, flicking his badge. "Help you gents?"

"We reckoned you mighta seen the fella this fella's lookin' for." Jeremy took the portrait of Joshua from the coat pocket where it had been sitting alongside the church scene he had reappropriated and he handed it to the sheriff.

"Who is he?" Case asked, and upon Jeremy's answer, "Of the lumber Bolts?" Jeremy said yes. The sheriff's face slackened a little. He put down his rifle and his next words fell heavily. "I'll take you to him." Jigger began edging to the door. "You're coming with us," Case said sharply. Jigger froze. This was not going as he had expected.

Parson lay unconscious on his straw bed. He had emerged from his faint into a daze that had eased into sleep. The others stared at him, or looked away. The fear Sewell had voiced—that one of them would be the next—clung to them all.

"When men are being mistreated, they should stand up and do something about it."

It was the first time Nate had spoken that evening; almost the first time he had spoken at all. "You mean a strike?" said Riggs.

Yarrow hushed them till he made sure Hounditch's space was empty. "It's all right," he said. "The rat's off somewheres."

"You led strikes before?" Riggs asked.

"Must have," said Nate, "it's so clear in my mind. But it's not a strike we want, it's a jailbreak."

"What about the deputies?"

"Right now there are more of us than there are them."

"Tonight most'll be asleep," said Yarrow. "Even better odds."

Nate looked to Sewell, the oldest and in many ways the wisest, and put the rest of the case. "If we get sick there'll be no doctor. And when our contracts are up, you know they'll never risk us turning them in to the law—the real law, I mean. We'll die here one way or another."

Sewell's eyes met his. "Unless we bust out now."

"You others agree?" asked Nate. There was an approving murmur all round. "Then here's what we'll do."

As he laid forth his plan unsuspected ears were listening. Hounditch, having returned from a commune with nature, had had his hand on the door when the voices reached him. Presently he was descending with soft steps to Moyle's shack. "More tattle?" Moyle greeted him.

"More than tattle," Hounditch announced with relish. "It's an uprising!" After gauging him for a second Moyle motioned him inside.

While he and Nate communicated their respective intelligences, Jason Bolt, unusually for him, was saying nothing at all. He was leaning against the dark front of the general store gazing out at the space Little New Bedford would have occupied. All that was left now was the failed common, which he would allow to wither; most of the rest had been chopped for firewood.

"You couldn't do it," said a voice out of the night. "You couldn't keep 'em." Aaron stepped into view. He had had the whole story from his men and was unable to resist the tardy comment.

"I been keepin' 'em ever since they got here!" Jason broke out. "Me, Jason Bolt, with precious little help from any other soul—you especially. Always havin' to calculate how far I could push 'em this way or that, how I could keep 'em marriageable before they revolted altogether and got themselves in some worse mischief. I'm clean out of schemes. If they're fixed on goin' I can't stop 'em. Don't believe any man could."

"So the mighty Jason has lost his powers of persuasion. Not sure I mind that." He enjoyed needling Jason but also hoped to rile him out of his depression, which the brides' exodus did not fully warrant. Of course life would be duller without them, but they had served their purpose. The town had gained dozens of young wives, who would suffice for his tea shop. For the bachelors still unpartnered, Jason could whistle up a new cargo, from San Francisco maybe. He was taking his failure too hard, wallowing in hurt pride that did nobody any good, him least of all.

"One of the men's going with 'em," he said, cutting off Aaron's next remark. "And there's others talking about following him."

"All the way to New Bedford?" Jason nodded. Aaron chuckled, and then stopped suddenly. His face grew as serious as Jason's.

"Exactly."

"The town will miss the brides, of course. But if the men start leaving too—"

"Lumbermen are a dime a dozen. Isn't that what you've always said?"

"So are lumber towns, now. This isn't the old days. Lot of other places they can ply their trade. A town gets a feeling about it. And a town half-empty is a dreary kind of a place. I've seen it happen. Nothing there to attract new businesses, new families... Eventually it may just dry up and blow away." That had been Jason's fear too, but only in outline; now that Aaron's business sense had filled it in it looked worse than he had thought. "I don't like to say this," Aaron concluded, "but you and I could be looking at the last prosperous days this town will ever see." To Jason's eyes the barren acre where his park had been envisioned seemed now a harbinger of a greater emptiness to follow.

Nate was jerked violently out of sleep. Hands locked his arms in a crushing grip. They belonged to men he did not know, hemming him in. He struggled by instinct. "Nat this time, me lover," said a voice he did recognize, if only he could— A short sickening blow from a rifle end plunged him into blackness.

And black it was indeed when next he opened his eyes; as black as if they were still shut. "Where am I?" he called out. "Is anyone here?"

"Why, me," said the same voice as before, now a velvety whisper terrifyingly close. "You're with me, in Devil's Jaw." Nate scrambled to his feet, and immediately clutched his head. He had known this kind of pain before, and lately. Fighting it, he stumbled forward, struck a rock face, changed direction, struck another. It was not the pain driving him, it was fear: the fear of his dreams, a fear from the lost days, to shun which he had been willing to suffer almost anything else. He clawed at the wall for handholds.

"Aye, try to clem'n," said the voice, chuckling. "But t'only rope's 'ere by me." Nate cried to be let out, a cry for which the other in all his experience of inflicting pain had never heard a rival. "'urried of the dark, are 'ee? So. I'll give 'ee more'n dark to be 'urried of." There was a snap at his left ear loud enough to make it ache, and then again at his right—the voice of the blacksnake. That and the velvet laughter echoed in the blackness. He lurched forward, then back, but always into the rock, never finding the rope or his tormentor. He could not see where he was, could not understand or escape it—just like that other time, the time he did not remember and did not want to remember. He did not know when he had begun screaming.

His screams made the men in the stable shiver, and eventually woke Parson. He was still weak and his voice slurry, but when he learned whose screams they were he forced himself to sitting. "We have to help him," he said.

That stirred the others. They had been thinking the same, but Moyle's last promise as the deputies dragged Nate away—"I'll deal with 'ee d'rectly"—had cowed them. Suddenly it united them in defiance. "How'd he find out?" asked Riggs.

Hounditch's appearance at that moment gave them the answer. A wave of hatred surged up in them. Sensing it, Hounditch tried to run but two of them grabbed him. They had no clear idea what they would do next. "You dasn't harm me," he blustered. "If Moyle should hear—"

"You think he gives a hang for you?" said Sewell. "Time comes, he'll deal you the same hand as the rest of us."

A second's clear sight was enough to convince him. "And he would, at that."

"The deputies know him for Moyle's man," Yarrow suggested. "He could lure them away."

"How?"

"Use your noggin," said Sewell, rapping on it. "You'd no trouble informing on Nate." Hounditch cogitated, sweating and licking his lips. "And if you betray us again," Sewell added as a last persuasion, "God have mercy on you."

It had the intended effect. After a little more thought and a long breath more like a prayer, Hounditch ran outside. "They've escaped!" he shouted. "Dug a tunnel! It comes out over here!" He ran for the side of the hill.

The deputy in charge while his seniors were away called him back and insisted on his leading them in an inspection of the stable. Nervous of them, and even more so of those who had dispatched him, whose plans he could not be sure this would fit, he obeyed unwillingly, half-convinced that one side or the other would do for him before it was over.

One of the deputies rammed the door open with his rifle and pushed Hounditch in first. The lamp was out—hadn't it been on before?—and shadows hugged the wall. They looked alive—no, wait a moment! As the deputies entered, the forms crowded in on them, grabbed their guns, stopped their mouths, and forced them to the floor. There was nothing to bind them with—till Ottawa, to whom the miners had given no thought till that moment, appeared in the doorway with a coil of rope with which he helped them tie the deputies together. He neither explained nor asked for explanation and when the task was done he disappeared into the night and, for all their subsequent experience of him could say, into the earth like the coal. The only one left was Moyle.

Nate's screams had ceased without their realizing it. Now from the same direction erupted a harsher scream, one torn from a soul at the very verge of destruction. "Nate!" cried Parson.

In one of the abandoned gangways, the second they tried, they found the pit called Devil's Jaw. Their lamp revealed the form the blackness had hidden: a narrow V-shaped cleft with walls jutting in all around, like the inside of a sweet pepper. A rope ladder hung from the near rim. Slumped against it on the floor of the pit lay a body run through with a coal fork, eyes staring horribly, and on top of it a smaller one with its neck broken, wrapped in the leather coils of the weapon that had pulled its owner down. The partnership had continued into death.

At the far end of the pit stood Nate, staring aghast like the others, of whom he seemed hardly aware. Sewell climbed down to him. "I couldn't see," said Nate. "He was lashing me, I struck out, then—" He stopped. The effort was too great; his head was still throbbed from its latest hurt.

"'tweren't you," Sewell said. "'twas the old man. He's done us all a service—and had it paid back on him, God rest him." He spared no sentiment for Moyle.

"We've taken the deputies," Riggs informed Nate. "The way's clear to leave."

"Not quite," said Yarrow.

From the head deputy they took the key to the explosives shed and prepared a blast as they had seen Moyle do. This time the collapsing earth filled his grave. They would have preferred to give the old man a separate burial with a proper funeral but did not dare linger and decided the few words Sewell had said in his behalf would serve as well as any.

A little way down the river the barge had run aground. The deputy who had predicted it was quick to say "I told you so" and Bascombe was pressing for more practical advice when the echo of the blast reached them. Before Bascombe could take in this new worry he received a third unwelcome surprise: Case and Jigger approaching on the road from town in company with a man he did not know. He left the boat to meet them. "What in the blazes are you doing out here?" he demanded.

To his amazement the sheriff drew his gun, ordered him and his crew to drop their weapons—unnecessarily, since they had already laid them aside to inspect the beached craft—and herded them all together on the bank. Jeremy did not understand any of it. "Mr. Bolt," said Case, "these are the men holding your brother. There's a Mr. Moyle yet to round up. I hereby appoint you deputy"—he gave Jeremy no chance to refuse—"and order you to run in the lot of 'em for kidnapping and possible homicide." Jeremy quailed at the last word. "And me along with 'em," the sheriff concluded. He unpinned his badge and pinned it onto Jeremy's shirt. "You're now acting sheriff. Hope you'll do me the justice to testify I turned myself in peaceable—not that I got any mercy comin'."

"You—you said homicide."

"Not your brother," Case assured him, "though it mighta been."

"Where is he?"

Case said Bascombe knew the way. He was a mighty smart fellow, as well as the coal commission agent for those parts. It was he who had advanced Case start-up money for the mine after he bought it from the original owners. Soon he discovered they had been wise to abandon it: it had nothing to offer but bad coal, bad air, and bad luck. The miners began to sicken; one of them died, whether from the mine gases or another cause a jury would have to dectermine. They buried him in an unmarked grave, but Case did not doubt but what he could find it again. There followed a punishing winter; the river froze; the rest of the miners ran off; the mules died. Case had no choice but to turn the business over to Bascombe, not to own but to get back his investment if he could. He instituted the contracts and deputies to enforce them, hired Moyle as foreman and gave him nine-tenths of a free hand, and found a labor contractor in the next county (not too close to home) who would not ask or answer questions.

Jeremy did not see the point of it. If the coal was bad— But Bascombe had that fixed too. He had landed a supplier who wanted it to mix with the higher grade he purported to be selling. "Like watering whisky," said Jeremy. Case regretted going along with it but he was not a prosperous man and had hoped against hope he might still see some profit out of the enterprise. "Fool that makes me," he said. Technically in Jeremy's custody but directing matters himself, he loaded the other prisoners into the wagon bed and took the driver's seat.

The escapees, trudging along the bank, heard the clump and creak of the wagon's approach. Their first sight of the sheriff drove them to seek cover in the trees, where they stayed till the wagon noises could no longer be heard. Nate did not see, and if he had would not have recognized, the young man riding shotgun (his precise weapon was a rifle confiscated from one of the deputies) who passed within twenty yards of him.

Soon after, they reached the grounded barge and the tug floating at anchor nearby. They boarded the latter and after unloading the cargo, which took most of the night, set off downstream in the direction of Seattle—from which the Black River mine was not a day's sail away.

The next morning shone fair and warm—warm, that is, after the winter. Candy threw open the shutters next to her bed and was greeted with white lathers of cloud on a brilliant blue field; no view had ever been more dispiriting. Below it she saw Jason at the gate. "Fine morning," she called down.

"Winter's sped," he called back. Both knew that was over-simple but it would do for the purpose of their discussion.

He began to say more but she outpaced him. "Please find out for us how soon the Captain can make sail. Our bags are packed. We're ready to leave." That startled him. She did not tell him how much grief it had involved: how many unrealized hopes had thereby been brought to light and how many last lingering looks indulged in. There would be more grief to come, she knew, but she could no longer do anything about it. "He can take us as far as San Francisco," she continued, "and once there you can arrange for our passage the rest of the way."

"I can, can I?" he said, unsmiling.

"It was part of our agreement."

"Hang the—" He stopped, shaking his head. Then he entered and walked up under her window to speak more softly. "You might know this and you might not. Jeremy gives all he has, and gives it gladly. But he gives it only once. You were his first girl. Chances are, he'll not take a second." He had meant to end there, but a part of him, and not the better part, was unsatisfied. "I trust that will be an abiding source of pride to you."

It wounded her, as it was meant to. She clenched her jaw. "That isn't fair."

"No, miss," he said, "it surely isn't." As he left, that firm jaw began to twitch, the lips to quiver, the eyelids to brim with water. He had not seen; good; the brides must not see either. So she stood at the window and cried alone.

Not far away, yet farther than anyone in Seattle knew, Nate was urgently pestering Sewell to pull the packet in to shore for a little. Hounditch's hope he might have sighted something edible (they had not breakfasted yet) was short-lived. "I know these trees," Nate said. "I'm sure of it. Might have lived here once—might still." Sewell looked away in embarrassment. So did the others: not for his enthusiasm, which they sympathized with, but for the knowledge they shared and he did not: that they could not help him, much as he might (as they did) they owed it to him. "Just for an hour," he pleaded.

At last Riggs put it to him directly. "We ain't stopping," he said. "Not till we're clean out of the territory."

Espey had not been a party to the early morning's conference that had decided this; he was still weak and they had let him sleep. "You were going to report them to the marshal in Olympia," he said. "We agreed on it."

"Done some more talking," said Sewell. "Fact is, this boat's theirs and we stole it. Had contracts and run out on 'em. Blew up a part of their workings, jumped their men, left two dead—"

"They shan't find them," Yarrow said confidently.

"Makes no matter. Law'll say it was us in the wrong."

"But we know otherwise!" Espey protested.

"Listen, young'n," said Riggs, "we can't trust no lawman to give us a fair shake. 'specially when another lawman was in on the deed."

"But I can—" For some reason he did not finish the thought. "Very well," he said. "As you decide."

Nate roved the hills with his eyes, searching for some landmark with a memory attached. He was eager to climb ashore and seek farther inland. The scene looked not only familiar but recently familiar, as if he had visited it yesterday. "I have to find out who I am," he said to Sewell. "Don't you see? If there's any chance—"

"We can't wait," Sewell said with regret.

Nate nodded. He shook hands with Sewell, with Espey, with all of them except Hounditch. They steered the boat in to a depth waist-high, enabling him to slip over the side and wade to shore. Slogging out, his trousers dripping, he gave them a last wave and wished them luck. "You too, Nate," Espey called back, "or whoever you are!"

Whoever he was... With those words fresh in his ears, he started up into the peaceful green country before him, a place of rest and restoration. He took in every inch, anxious not to miss a clue. But no clues were forthcoming and before long each new tree and rock looked the same as the last. And he was tired, very very tired. He found a small hollow and sat back. Before he knew—

The moon was up: a gibbous moon, showing most of its face but with one small yet important piece still unrevealed. It was surrounded by a dark sea of oblivion. Moonlight silvered the leaves, the trunks, the earth, himself. He stared wonderingly at his silver hands. How long had he been asleep? One day? Two?

He stood, then walked. Presently he came to a hill. He knew it, beyond doubt. He climbed across by a sidewise path he had climbed before to a cleft at the top. From there he looked down on the water of his dream: silver water amid silver slopes. He approached with great gravity, as if it were an altar. By its side he shed his raiment, one piece at a time. Then he dived in.

The water was colder than the night, colder than ice, but not as cold as aloneness. He hurtled to the bottom, pushed off from the soft silver silt to propel himself back to the sheeny surface, laved water in his cupped hand onto his hair, his face and shoulders, churned the water so it would slap and foam against him and carry away every fleck of blackness the inside of the world had stamped on him. And when all was expunged and purged he lay back and drifted, eyes shut, at peace in the pool's cold rippling caress.

Then he dreamed. But this time it was a waking dream, or vision, and the boy in it was not alone. He was bathing with another boy, one with brown hair and a stammer. "Jason'll s-skin us alive," he said, "if we're not back by s-supper."

"Jason..." Nate whispered.

The brown-haired boy climbed out and began to pull clothes on from a pile on the bank. "You can g-get a whippin' if you want. I'm g-goin'."

"'fraidy-cat!" the other teased. But he was sorry for it when the other ran away. "I was just joking!" he called after him. "Come back! Jeremy!"

"Jeremy..." the dreamer echoed.

The boy climbed onto the bank and dressed. He was about to follow the other when something else diverted him, something high up on one of the enclosing hills.

Nate was standing on the same shore, facing the same hill. He was unclad but he did not feel the cold. He began climbing—

—as the boy in the dream was doing. Almost at the top, he discovered—

—a cave: the cave: the dark place of Nate's dream. He had known it would be there, but now it was practically too small for him.

Not so for the boy. He crawled inside, to where the passage took a turn away from the light. He turned and crawled farther, into the dark. A hole opened unexpectedly. He fell, slid, hit bottom. It hurt him. He tried to climb out, but his feet kept slipping and his hands could not reach the ledge above. He cried for help, cried, and kept crying till his voice turned to a croak. Help had not come. Then he heard stronger voices outside: "Joshua!" "Joshua!"

"Joshua..." repeated the man thitherto called Nate.

The boy Joshua cried—croaked—for help. It was not loud enough; they would not come. But soon he heard them again, closer: "H-here! In h-here!" "Joshua? You in there?"

"Jason! Jeremy!" he whispered.

"I h-hear him! I told you!" "As well do I! Don't be scared, brother! I'm coming for you!"

Joshua began to cry. He knew Jason would fulfill his promise; that he would come, though the cave was hardly big enough for him; that he would manage it somehow. Jason, and Jeremy: he could always count on them to pull him out of any mess he might get himself into. He was not scared now.

Neither was the grown Joshua. Now he remembered: remembered Jason pulling him out of the pit and once they had wriggled out (Jason got stuck once and Jeremy had to tug at his boots to help free him) hugging Joshua tight, hugging both of them, both his brothers...

Brothers: Jason, Jeremy—and Joshua. He repeated the names. They were passwords into his history, into his soul. "I know!" he shouted to the gleaming stars. "I know who I am! I'm! Joshua! Bolt!" The name—his name—echoed through the hills—his hills: he had played here, hunted here. He was not far from home—not far at all, he thought, laughing.

Then a new thought struck him: how did he come to be here? He remembered everything else but that. Yet hadn't he known just a moment ago? Black River, if he had thought of it then, would have meant nothing to him but the name of a place he had once ridden near. He did not know a mine existed there. Perhaps it was a mercy; his joy was untarnished.

Now he felt the cold, and returned to the lakeside to dress. As he did so he recalled the errand on which he had been sent. He wondered if he had carried it out. He had a picture... Checking his coat, he found he did not. And the Appaloosa—what had happened to him? He would hate to lose that horse.

He could have made town the next day but chose not to. He trod slowly, feeling a strange urge to appreciate as if for the first time the woods and rises and valleys he had known all his life. Twice he napped, for he was still beset with a weariness he could not account for, and his head hurt a little. Not till noon the following day did he reach the outskirts of Seattle.

Instantly he knew something was wrong. The town was too quiet. The shriek of the mill whistle, the thunder of logs sailing down flumes, the rattle of wagon wheels, horses' whinnies, voices: none of these were to be heard. The last curve of the path brought him to an outlook on the street. "No," he said, "please, no." He had never seen it empty before; not in daylight. He began running and did not stop till he reached the dormitory. He barged in shouting, "Candy! Biddie! Ann!" He could see it was no use: the place was bare, except for the furniture the town had provided; stripped of doilies, samplers, china, silver (except the teapot, which the town had provided also), knickknacks, little feminine things whose images he could not summon up. The brides were gone.

Then he remembered, and understood. This was what Jason had feared; this was why he had insisted Joshua hurry. But he hadn't hurried—for some reason—and this was the result. The brides couldn't wait; they had gone home.

Well, but where was everybody else? He returned to the street and shouted again. "Hello! Anybody?" He had been so long and so far away (so he felt it, though he did not know where or how) that now he was back, back where he belonged, he could not bear to be alone; not here of all places. "Anybody?" he repeated weakly. "Please—I'm home—I'm..." He sank to his knees. "...home." He began to weep. He did not understand. Maybe he was imagining it; maybe he had gone crazy. In that case he would still be alone.

Yet he was not. There was, he became aware, a figure standing beside him. He could not say how long the man (he knew it was a man without looking) had been there. He peered up into the face and felt almost a shock that he knew it and that the man knew him. He was not crazy. Embarrassed, he wiped his cheeks. "Aaron," he said, "you're here."

"I was about to say the same to you." What he was feeling himself at Joshua's outward appearance, face longer, body leaner, clothes steeped in black dust, Aaron took care not to show.

"The brides have gone. On account of me."

"You?"

"But where's everyone else?"

"Up at Alki Point seeing them off."

"Not you?"

Aaron traced an arc in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. "I—I didn't have the heart. If you could have seen your brother's face... Been worried about you too. Where have you been?"

Till now Joshua had put the question out of his mind, hoping it would answer itself in more familiar surroundings. He applied himself to it again but after a moment he gave up. "I can't—"

Then they heard voices, distant but unmistakable. They turned to the hill opposite the one Joshua had entered by. Soon heads rose into sight above the rim, then bodies under them, the children running ahead, the grown-ups following, the whole town; faces Joshua had known for his whole life, or the main part of it; people he loved and some he did not like so well: he was overjoyed to see all of them, and especially the brides: they had returned.

Someone spotted him and passed the word back. At the rear, now topping the crest himself, walked Jason. The word and the sight reached him at the same time. He broke into a broad smile, dropped the bags he was carrying, and started at a run down the hill. He ran all the way to within a few yards of Joshua and stopped short. They stared at each other in an outpouring of infinite gratitude, infinite gladness, infinite love. Their tears ran unbidden and unchecked. "Welcome home, brother," Jason said. He saw as plainly as Aaron that Joshua had been through some ordeal, but it did not matter for the moment; he was home, and safe. They embraced. The crowd collecting around them cheered.

"Are the brides back, then?" Aaron asked casually, as if the answer held only the barest interest for him.

"Queerest thing," said Jason. "No sooner did we put to sea than they got more homesick than before, but this time it was homesick for Seattle. Promptly took charge of the ship and ordered Clancey to return to port." The crowd cheered again.

"And your speech to them—where did that fit in?"

"Just after the putting to sea and ahead of the taking charge."

Aaron leaned forward and spoke into his ear. "Near thing, was it?" Jason's eyes gave the answer he expected. Aaron clutched his arm with a fervor seldom seen in him. "That's my man."

Jason's surprise at this nearly equaled his pleasure. "So, yes," he said, "the brides are back"—at this he and Candy exchanged the deepest and truest of smiles—"and Joshua's back."

"And Jeremy?" asked Joshua, who had now noticed his absence.

"Where do you think? Out looking for you. Fine thing, a grown man so harum-scarum his little brother has to be sent to fetch him home. And where have you been, after all?" Joshua's face took on the same intense, unmoored look as the first time he had tried to know. Aaron caught Jason's eye and gave a slight shake of the head. "Well," Jason said, all seeming joviality, "time enough for that. What's in order now is a celebration, for the return of the brides and a brother. To Lottie's!"

"Drinks are on me!" Aaron seconded, and then regretted it immediately. "I mean..." But he was too late. Someone with a fiddle struck up a tune, and the music inspired a flurry of chatter and laughter as the crowd moved up the street.

"It's too much for me," said Joshua. "I'll head up home." He declined Jason's offer to accompany him. "I know the way." Jason and Aaron watched him go. His walk was resolute but plodding, the walk of a man who has journeyed a long way and has a long way yet to go.

"Where do you suppose he's been?" Aaron asked.

"At a guess," Jason answered, "in one of the outer circles of Hell."

At the cabin where he had been born, played, studied, worked, and lain Joshua lay again. He felt as if he had been gone a hundred years, like Rip van Winkle. And like him he settled into a profound slumber.

He stuck mostly to the cabin for the next few days, to homely chores and strolls through the woods. One morning as he stepped outside his heart bounced to see Jeremy climbing the path. Candy and Jason were with him. At the sight of his brother he dropped his pack and ran to embrace him. The others hung back deliberately.

"You're okay then," said Jeremy.

Joshua shrugged. "Sorry you had to go hunt me down. There's a switch, huh?"

Jeremy searched his face for scars of the ordeal. "What you been through... Musta seemed like a fever dream."

"Wish I knew. Sometimes I remember things—small things—but can't make out what they mean. Don't know yet where I was, what I did—"

"But I do." They stared at each other in mutual astonishment. "There's a mine on the Black River..." The two of them had got halfway inside when Joshua stopped and looked back. "Jason? Candy? You come hear too."

The following month an article in the Olympia Star under the byline Philip Espey set forth the appalling conditions at the Black River mine. Joshua communicated with the author through his newspaper, and a few days later they enjoyed their first happy meeting. They were not quite friends, they found, yet they were much more. Espey was able to fill in some of the gaps in Jeremy's account and to explain his own presence among the miners: his editor had assigned him to take up various trades and report the hardships he experienced so his readers might see more clearly the plight of the working man. His article emboldened Sewell and some of the others to reappear and testify along with Joshua and Espey at the owners' trial.

Espey was also able to assist Joshua in investigating other matters of which he was curious to learn more. Inquiry among Fertig's competitors revealed no disaster had befallen him, in the customary sense at least; an admirer of Bismarck, he had felt a resurgence of nationalistic pride so strong it had moved him to forsake his stoneworks and repatriate. The same inquiry revealed that Joshua's assailants, by name Salty Pepper and Veronica, having appropriated the place as one of their dens, had been surprised at their business there and arrested as horse thieves. Veronica had disappeared before trial with her jailer and was never seen under her own name again. Salty had narrowly escaped hanging by persuading the jury it was his elder sister who had perverted him, a poor honest lad, to a life of crime. Joshua was able to track down the Appaloosa and, though not obliged to do so, paid to recover him from the rancher who had bought him in good faith.

Joshua had changed; his brothers saw it and so did the men. Now he was always ready, and more than ready, to listen to their side and to recognize when they were being overtaxed (and when they were only letting on to be). If there was a burdensome job to be done he would do it first himself, and see it made as tolerable as circumstances would allow. He was never certain how much of his adventure he remembered and how much he only imagined from what he had been told but for months afterward, asleep or no, some piece of it would always be appearing to him, like a goblin popping its head in, and the scare was not always quickly dispelled. And forever after when business called him away he always felt a little anxious on the road and remained so till he got safe home.

10. The Night Road

Every six years, more or less—never fewer than four, and the interval once had stretched to nine—someone saw him, or thought he had, and the report stirred again the dust storm of fables, apprehensions, further sightings, real or not, and (in the words of Aaron Stempel) just plain foolery that always attended his incarnations. Lottie Hatfield, the keeper of the town's only saloon and therefore also the resident mother confessor (if not mother), had heard it time and again.

To Christopher Pruitt it was all brand new. He had arrived in Seattle with his sister only two years before, joining another sister who had lived there but a year longer. Hence none of them had anticipated the commotion that now raced about them and quickened with each new intelligence of him: him, the bane of Seattle, the messenger of death, the white stallion.

He was white all over, even to his eyes; white as snow, white as chickweed. He had lived in those parts at least as long as men, and for so long his every visitation had brought death to the one who first laid eyes on him. People hid indoors with their curtains drawn so they would not spy him by accident, scattered salt around their cabins to ward him off, made sure their sugar jars were sealed, and steered clear of any place he was rumored to have been seen. Old-timers claimed Seattle had once had twice the population it had at present, and how to account for that except—

"Who's been telling you these tales?" asked Candy, Christopher's elder sister, breaking into his recitation. He did not know how to answer her. Nobody was talking about anything else. His other sister, Molly, was displaying a look of superior maturity he found annoying. As usual, she was quick to show she knew more about it than he did. Miss Essie had told the older girls to pay the story no heed; it had cropped up before and would soon go away.

Candy asked how it had begun. Christopher wanted to say: Why ask her? She's a kid too! "Nobody knows how superstitions originate," Molly quoted. "They're perpet—perpetuated by people who don't know any better." The directness of the insult, once spoken, startled her. "Grown-ups, I mean," she amended.

Christopher was a little placated by that and anyhow had no chance to reply; the wind was whipping so unpredictably around the bank of storefronts sheltering them that Candy, fearing it might work itself up to a tantrum, hurried herself and her charges home, to the safety of the brides' dormitory.

The owner of Perkins Mercantile watched them as they passed. "Look at them skedaddle," said one of a pair of men sitting at the pot-bellied stove. Both gave a chortle. They were not customers, mainly; both made purchases on occasion, but Ben never could remember the latest one, though he could always remember the latest borrowing. "Don't mind if I avail myself of a little liniment, do ye?" Adolphus might say. "Lumbago's actin' up again." Ben always felt it unsociable to refuse but could not lose the suspicion that these favors were swelling his overhead by at least an eighth.

The store was his life's work, though Aaron Stempel had conceived it and made many suggestions during its building; always suggestions, never dictates, but he it was who had sketched out the plan: mercantile here, postmaster's there, telegraph in another place. Ben saw them as separate offices and, moving between them as his duties dictated, would go by a longer way to use what he regarded as the proper entrance to each, though none bore any feature that identified it as such. They were parts of the ideal store he carried in his head and, by force of conviction (almost his only conviction), had come near to making the real thing into. The store in Tacoma was bigger but, as he would explain to anyone who would listen long enough, was not a patch on this. They didn't carry salaratus, nor rhubarb syrup, nor Palmer's extract—and no penny candy!

The last omission was undoubtedly deliberate, to prevent attracting the boys who were prone to hang out at the corner of any store. Ben's had its own gang (Christopher among them), and he would have to shoo them off sometimes, but only after some excessively fussy matron or her excessively stuffy husband had complained. He knew the boys would return as soon as the offended party had left, but he did not mind. They made him feel he was the center of the community, as did many of his other dealings. A farmer, for example, who did not know his letters would bring Ben the text of a notice laboriously copied out to be deciphered. A spinster would enjoin him to give her mail only into her own hands and not either of her sisters'. A girl from the dormitory would ask which of two ginghams would make the comelier frock. A man down from the lumber camp, after studying a catalog illustration of a special kind of saw, a strong temptation to put in an immediate order, would ask if it was worth the price. Hagglers unsatisfied with the deals they had extracted would vow never to patronize the establishment again but would return the following week and remember him and his family at Christmas. Best of all, the town asked him every year to be the marshal in the Fourth of July parade. They appreciated him, his customers.

Then there were the loungers. These lately had consisted of two, Adolphus and Old Tom. Their chief daytime occupation was to volunteer unasked-for comments about every activity that occurred within their scope, and twice a week after hours they could look forward to a form of hospitality more warming than the stove. The camaraderie shared in their evening confabulations furnished the answer to the riddle Ben's wife had posed him more than once: "It's beyond me why you put up with those no-accounts." Ben needed to belong and they filled the pit of his need—in a small way, for they were small men, but it was a small pit.

The day was drawing late and only one customer remained: Jesse, a mill hand from Irontown. To the pound of coffee, half-pound of nails, and half dozen corn plasters bunched on the counter he was adding papers of garden seeds one by one and concentrating so deeply on the choosing, as it seemed, he did not notice the sour looks trained on him by one of the two who were not there to buy. When he had left and Ben had locked the door after him, the two remaining, that one gave voice to his distemper. "You still lettin' in that kind of riffraff, Perkins?"

Ben sighed. It was not the first time Adolphus had issued the challenge. "It is the only store in town," he murmured as he put out the hanging lamp. Adolphus humphed. He and his partner rose and headed by unspoken custom to the back room, from which a lamp on a desk beckoned. Here they resettled themselves in a new pair of chairs, this move having been their greatest exertion of the day. Ben paused inside the door frame, reached down between two barley sacks, and lifted out a glazed jug. From behind the sugar grinder he produced two tin cups, which he filled from the jug and passed into eagerly grasping hands. He took out a third for himself but stopped the measure halfway; Emily would notice it if he came in wiggly-headed. She would not criticize exactly, yet her look would make clear her disappointment, which was worse than disapproval. Consarn her! But no, he could not cuss her, even as man to man, because without her—

"Ain't we been tellin' you," Adolphus was saying, "how too many of 'em's comin' in?" He was still talking about the last customer. "Coloreds, Greeks, Chinamen, and whatnot." Jesse belonged to the first category. "Ain't we, Tom?"

"We have," said Tom between sips, "we have."

Adolphus leaned forward. "Heard they been savin' up to hire Bolt to fetch in a hundred more of 'em from back East, same as he done them brides. Take away jobs that oughter go to folks like us."

"When was the last time you worked, Adolphus?" Ben asked idly.

Adolphus ignored the question. "Them in Irontown by us is the worst. Ain't they, Tom?"

"Worst, worst," Tom said fuzzily.

"Keep us up half the night with their singin' and heehawin'. It's a disgrace." He had in mind a single annual celebration: New Year's or, as it was called in Irontown, Emancipation Day. He and Tom could indeed hear it plainly from their cabins, which sat side by side in a little gulch across from Irontown; properly, in Irontown, except that everybody knew its residents were black, and so the two of them insisted on maintaining a distinct address.

Whether the district had been named for its mineral deposits or for the complexion of the residents, no one knew for sure; the usages had grown jointly. It lay northeast of town at the foot of the hills, incorporated nine residences (not counting Adolphus's and Old Tom's), and would be counted in the next census. It had not been set apart by design. Stempel, who had built the first cabins, wished too late they could be relocated, to avoid a growing estrangement that he knew could in the long view demoralize the community. Also, those deposits were worth money. But things lay as they had fallen.

One of the Bolts' lumbermen, Obie Brown, had taken the first cabin, to which he had later brought a wife. Jesse, the only other black man then resident and thereby perforce his friend, he had persuaded to take the second. His cousins Raphael and Gabriel had arrived the following year. So the neighborhood had assembled gradually, to Adolphus's disgust.

"—and here you go caterin' to 'em," he said, draining his cup to punctuate the end of the argument. "Pour's another'n, will ye?"

Tom extended his also. "'nother'n, 'nother'n," he chanted.

Ben obliged them and himself as well. "Shows what you know," he said defiantly, "and that's not much. Since I started talkin' with you boys I been thinkin'. And you know what?" He took more than his usual swallow. "I started chargin' 'em more," he said, slapping the table. "Yes, sir. Well, them from Irontown and the Greeks. Don't get many Chinese in here. Chargin' 'em a nickel on the dollar more'n anybody else. What do you say to that?"

His listeners were gratifyingly impressed. "That's good to hear," said Adolphus. "Ain't it, Tom?"

"Good to hear, good to hear," Tom parroted.

"Ain't gon' take over this town, no, sir." He took another swig.

"Good to hear." Tom took one too.

Adolphus gave a moment's thought. "Tell you what. Make 'er a dime 'stead of a nickel. That'll show 'em."

"I could," Ben allowed, "only..."

"Only what?"

"If I charge too much, they're apt to start tradin' in Blakeley. Can't have that."

"Good riddance to 'em!" Adolphus clanked his cup against the table. A little wave splashed out. "Ain't that right, Tom?"

"Rizzance," said Tom, whose mouth was beginning to lose its functions. "Rizzance."

Ben was not about to let himself be talked into anything. "You can't expect me to drive away business."

"Look here, Perk'ns." Adolphus shifted his shoulder toward him. "Are you a rightfully concerned member of this community or ain't you? That's what we want to know."

"'course I am!" Ben said with some heat. "Concerned as anybody. But bein' a businessman—"

Adolphus slapped Ben's thigh, a liberty Ben did not enjoy. "Then you step it up to a dime on the dollar like I say."

Ben felt penned in. "Well...all right."

"That's settled, then." Adolphus peered into his cup. "Fill 'er again."

"Fill, fill," responded the congregation.

Ben obliged but denied himself this time. He would have to be getting home soon.

Christopher meanwhile had continued to lobby his sisters to take him and the stallion seriously, but what little hope he had held of that had drained nearly to nothing. While bussing the supper remains from the table and passing them to Molly for washing—a task Candy did not entrust to any man—he persisted in the argument she had heard too often that day. "Everybody wouldn't be saying it if it wasn't true!"

"They're just repeating what someone else told them," Molly said, repeating what someone else had told her, "and probably getting it wrong."

"But people have seen it." The pitch of his voice was growing higher by the minute. "Jeremy told me—"

"I'm sure they have," said Candy, "or believe they have. There's no shortage of white horses in the world."

"Are in Seattle. Jeremy told me—"

"If they've seen anything it's a wild horse down from the mountains."

"Aren't any in the mountains. Jeremy told me—"

Candy bent a hard eye on him. "Never mind what Jeremy told you." She promised herself to tell Jeremy a few things when next she saw him. "There is no white horse!"

Christopher thought of pointing out she had just said the opposite but he thought better of it. Besides, he knew what she meant. And he was no closer to accepting it than he had been before.

Ben's guests would have been of a mind with him. Earlier Adolphus had disclosed that he prayed nightly to be spared from seeing the devil horse. Ben had scoffed at that. Now, having diplomatically steered the two of them to the door, he opened it to a sound that startled him in spite of himself: the whinny of a horse. Adolphus gave a shiver—not from the cold, for apart from the wind the weather was temperate for the time of year. "It's him," he said.

"Just some horse," said Ben, though he had to admit it was a sound seldom heard so late.

"You wai' n' see." Now Adolphus's tongue was losing its place too. "Someone'll die toni'."

"Die," Tom repeated, this time without prompting, "die, die, die..."

"Tom knows. You loog ou' f' y'rself."

Tom stepped outside and immediately reached to feel the top of his head. "Sh'a brung m' hat," he said. His companion having no opinion to offer on the point, the two wove away up the wind-swept street. In fact he had brought his hat, which Ben discovered under a chair by the stove in his last look round. He ran out to the street, but the two were no longer in sight. Well, they would be back. On the other hand, the walk to Tom's would do him good—by which he meant the air would adulterate the odor on his breath before he met Emily.

The wind picked at him, but after a few minutes he barely felt it, as if it had found him too skinny to bother much about. Save for the moon, which was one day short of being full, the light was gone by the time he reached the widening of the road where the valley to the left and the slight incline to the right marked the edge of Irontown. Beyond a cluster of maples he could see the nearer end of the staggered line of cabins. The path bent round the trees so that he did not see the object ahead of him till he had almost stumbled over it—a long bag stuffed full and doubled over, with a melon (if this were not a shadow) lying beside. The larger form quickly resolved itself into a shirt and trousers. "Oh, Lord," said Ben.

Something close to him gave a shriek that shivered the air. He looked up and realized it had been a neigh. He was facing the white horse.

It was standing on the other side of the body, staring at him through black eyes ringed with pink, over a tapering, lightly veined nose whose nostrils, flexing regularly, made him conscious of his own stopped breath. Its silky coat glistened in the moonlight. It bowed its head, then lifted it, and called out again, as if boasting of the death it had brought. Ben would have been unable to look away but for an uncontrollable desire to know who it was that had died. He could see no more than the rim of the cheek and jaw, but that was enough. The body was Obie Brown's.

When he looked up again the horse was gone. He started for the cabins but stopped almost before he had moved. He knew who had done this. For weeks they had been telling him those folks needed to be taught a lesson—telling him. What if they had spread it around? Or what if someone else had overheard? Everyone would think he was in on this. He fled as fast as his legs would take him.

Not till halfway back did the meanness of it strike him. Obie had been a customer of his; it wasn't fitting to leave him lying in the dust. He had to go back.

Yet he couldn't.

Yet he had to.

He hesitated at the ring of maples. He did not know if his heart could stand another meeting with the stallion. He was no coward physically; though he blustered a good deal, he would stand and fight if it came to that, as it had in an Indian attack years before. But he was always and incurably scared of What Folks Might Think. His wife, having been raised in unquestioned propriety, could afford to disregard general opinion as it pleased her; his more checkered background impelled him to treat it with an almost superstitious reverence. He also had a fear of unquiet spirits, based on once having seen one, and he did not doubt that after the disrespect he had shown, Obie's haunt might be waiting for him around the bend. So he trod well clear of the maples, along the edge of the path, fearing what he might meet at every step and what he knew he must see, ghost or no. In less than two minutes, though it seemed longer, he was within sight of the spot. The body was gone.

Thoughts leapt to his mind faster then he could voice them. Must have been a different path—no, there's only the one, there are the maples—the boys took it away to bury—they're probably burying it now. The last surmise led to the same conclusion as before, that it was not safe for him to be seen there. He fled again, though not home. The fate of Tom's hat, lost along the way somewhere, did not enter his head again.

Christopher was lying awake, Molly asleep in the bed beside. The partition that divided them from the brides was unnecessary for her, but Candy had not wanted to separate the two of them yet, though she had moved them from a double bunk into separate beds and saw she would have to make new arrangements within the year. Molly was growing up, and Christopher had been caught peeking around the divider at the brides some mornings. So far his curiosity had been held at bay by his standing resentment of their omnipresence, which crowded out every chance at peace or freedom his waking life offered. "Wisht I was you livin' in that harem," a logger had once confided to him. Ha! Let him try it.

A likeness of the window, distorted into the shape of the Big Dipper, was painted in moonlight on the floor. He listened to the boughs as they rattled against the wallboards and one another, to the bushes as the wind flicked their leaves like playing cards. And behind those noises he heard another: a neigh, he was sure—though he could not be quite sure. He almost fell to the floor in his scramble for the window.

There, his heart thumping, he saw what he had longed but scarcely hoped to see. Beyond the town, on a hill past Stempel's mill, stood the stallion, white in the white moonlight, tail swaying, mane played by the wind. He stepped, shifting his stance, cast his eye sidelong right and left like a king surveying his sleeping subjects, then all at once, as on a whim, presented a curving flank and with a bound was gone. It might have been a dream, but Christopher knew—though he could not quite know—it was not.

He tried vainly to convince his sisters of that on their walk to market the next morning. School was not keeping that day; the town council had ordered the schoolhouse repainted. But what was the point of having a holiday, Christopher thought, if you spent it doing errands? He and Molly kept up a litany of "Did so!"s and "Did not!"s till Candy stifled it. Lottie had waved to them from across the road in front of the town's new cafe, The Angels, and they stopped to wait for her. Christopher got in another "Did so!" which he intended as the last, but "Did not!" Molly said and "Did so!" he answered and Candy had to hush them again.

But not before Lottie had heard. She had a sparkle in her eye as always but Candy noticed it seemed brighter than usual today. "Disputing whether Jason really did plant a caramel tree up on his mountain?" she asked the children. "He did, you know. I've seen it."

"Where?" Christopher asked before thinking. Molly laughed at him—and had that been a wink Lottie had thrown her? He realized he had been fooled. "Aww..."

"Lottie, you're worse than they are." Lottie nodded brightly. Candy turned to Christopher. "You see? You're suggestible."

"Am not s—segetable." He did not know the word but guessed it meant "making things up." "I did see it!"

"Did not!" said Molly.

"Did so!"

Candy explained as they proceeded toward Ben's. "He had a bad dream last night." ("Wasn't!" said Christopher.) "Thought he saw that horse the men are prating about." ("Did see it!")

"Pookah," said Lottie. "Spirit horse. That's what the Captain calls it—when he can work up the gumption to mention it aloud."

There was the suggestion of a thrill in her voice, instead of the hardheaded dismissal Candy had expected. "Have you seen it yourself?" she asked, and wished she had sounded less eager.

"No," Lottie allowed, "but I've never seen New Bedford and I don't deny it exists." ("See?" said Christopher.) As evidence she offered the news that the town council was considering a law to ban the stallion from their precincts. Indeed she had left them at The Angels arguing that very question. Christopher looked over at the cafe with sudden interest.

"It only proves they'll argue about—" Candy began, and stopped. "Did you say The Angels?" Lottie informed her that was where they were now having their meetings. "Their breakfast, you mean," said Candy. And, she might have added, a shave and a haircut, for connected to the cafe was a barber shop. Gabriel was the barber, though this morning he was inexplicably late and his partner and brother was substituting for him, in addition to managing the cafe as always. The pair had modeled the business on a similar one in Chicago where they had barbered and waited tables. Theirs had more brass rails, cut-glass windows, and leather chairs than most of Seattle had ever seen in a single building, and the brothers could boast with probable accuracy that they served the biggest steaks and plied the sharpest razors this side of San Francisco. "You were breakfasting there too?" Candy asked. "But they're your competitors!"

"Never hurts to keep an eye on the competition," Lottie said, and for some reason then the natural flush of her cheek grew deeper. "Besides, they serve a better—"

She halted with her mouth open. They had started into Ben's, having scarcely glanced at the window in passing, and so had not seen that the inside was dark and still. The doors would not yield to pushing or, when that failed, to shaking. The place was locked, and the window carried no sign stating why. "Never knew Ben to close on a weekday before," Lottie said.

"Hope nothing's wrong at home. Should we pay them a visit, do you suppose?" Candy did not like to tempt misfortune by putting it more definitely.

"I doubt that good Mrs. Perkins will welcome a saloonkeeper to her domicile—midwifing excepted," she added, remembering a past stillbirth and the arrival of Ben, Junior. "But you're right, we ought to make sure."

"I don't have to go, do I?" asked Christopher, who had been increasingly fidgeting and casting glances toward the cafe. He took a hopeful step closer to it. "Not if—" Candy began. Without awaiting another word, he was off across the street.

"I don't mind calling," said Molly. "Boys are very rude."

"I thought the same thing at your age," said Lottie, "but when I got older..." Molly listened with the interest she always paid to Lottie's stories on the rare occasions that circumstances or her guardian permitted her to hear them. "...I found out how rude they can really be," Lottie concluded. The other two laughed and so did she. They started back as they had come and watched Christopher run into the barber shop, through which he intended to cut through to the cafe. A moment later, his onslaught repulsed, he reappeared and ran around to the side, out of sight. The women turned off to the church, near which the Perkins cabin lay. Stempel had built it for the couple as a wedding present after seeing that the one Ben had been keeping would not do for two, let alone later additions.

The question on Candy's mind—How do you pass a law against a horse?—Stempel was putting before his fellow councilmen. "...especially if the horse is imaginary," he added, as Christopher, having found a window partly open, rested his chin on the sill to listen. One of the council, Jeremy Bolt, spying the familiar round head perched there like a jack-o'-lantern, winked across at him. Jeremy was a year too young for his appointment but the council had voted to waive the requirement for him after his elder brother Jason had refused to reapply and his next elder brother Joshua had refused to consider running in his stead ("Not if you dragged me," he had said. "Not if I went to the penitentiary for it"). It had sounded good to Jeremy, and because there had always been a Bolt on the council (and Jason vowed there always would be) neither of his brothers had wanted to burst his bubble. Before long, however, he had found himself doing as he had in school, on those occasions he had attended: staring out the window (whence his having noticed Christopher's appearance) and drumming the floor with the heel of his boot.

On the other hand, the town was standing them breakfast (though the town did not know it) and the breakfasts there were humdingers. The table in front of him, not six feet from Christopher's nose, had till a few minutes ago hosted five cups of coffee, five plates of eggs, biscuits, sausages, and toast, and for Jeremy hotcakes and potatoes—a lumberman's breakfast—along with a jar of syrup, a jar of cream, and a butter dish, all elbowing one another like the guests at one of Candy's teas. The victualing had made it easier for Jeremy to ignore the perorations of the council's oldest and most vocal member, W. Lloyd Bagley, the town lawyer, who wore his prominence as he did his watch chain: prominently.

"We owe it to the good people of Seattle," he was saying, "who have entrusted us with this high office of state"—Stempel sighed audibly—"to guarantee their safety, their security, nay, their very lives." He pounded the table. The diners at other tables who had not heard him before at these meetings turned their heads. "We shall not allow that creature to prowl out streets, to—"

"Street," Jeremy said, just loudly enough to be heard. Bagley stopped, offended as always at any interruption. He and the others stared at Jeremy, waiting for him to make his point. He struggled to comply. "There's only the, uh, one street. Unless you count the alley down by the, uh, the, uh, the—" The others' faces did not leave his or change expression. He shut his mouth, folded his hands in his lap, and stared at it.

The man beside him, Seth Hinds, a woodworker with whom Stempel contracted for special jobs, jumped into the opening: "Like I was sayin', I knew this fella—"

No one showed any more interest in his story than they had earlier. "Supposing the horse—supposing there to be a horse—does pay a visit?" asked Stempel. "You intend to arrest it?"

"We got a law against pigs in the street." This intelligence emitted from a figure seated between Hinds and Stempel: Till Gorman, the knife and scissors mender. He had a way of seeming always to be sitting in shadow.

Stempel had to admit he was right. "But it wasn't written for the p—" He stopped, sighed again, and shook his head.

"Your pig is a different kettle of fish," said Hinds. Jeremy wondered: if a pig is a fish, do you use slops to catch it? The idea made him laugh. He caught himself soon enough to turn it into a cough. "Pigs don't lay a curse on you," Hinds went on, "and I knew this fella—"

"The man is right," Bagley declared. "That stallion leaves behind a trail of death!"

"One thing he leaves behind—" Jeremy began. Stempel checked him with a look.

"—knew a fella," Hinds went on, not to be put off this time, "saw a fella die on account of that critter. Right outside Lottie's."

"Oh, that's—" Stempel stopped. "Outside Lottie's, did you say?"

"Only one thing he leaves behind," Gorman said to Jeremy, having just understood the joke. "That's a good one."

"Only man I ever knew to drop dead outside Lottie's," said Stempel, "was Hangdog Parmlee."

" That was the fella! No sooner'd he seen that critter but he was struck dumb and keeled over on the spot."

"I was there." Stempel, the saying ran, could cut timber with a word given the occasion, and this was one of them. "He'd been ailing for years, he died cussing a blue streak, and that horse was nowhere in the vicinity."

"Well..." Hinds acquired the bulldog face people assume after being argued down to an irrational conviction. "Musta been a different Hangdog Parmlee."

Stempel gave a conclusive sigh and stood up. "I have a sawmill to run," he announced. "If the matter comes to a vote I recuse myself."

"Recuse on what grounds?" asked Bagley.

Stempel half-smiled. "I own a horse."

Almost at the doors, he heard the scissors man say behind him in befuddlement, "Well, I own a horse!"

He had not got far up the street when he saw a buckboard full of people approaching from the direction of Irontown. That would have been odd at any time, but especially so early on a weekday. He went to meet it.

Not five minutes later he reappeared in the dining room with a face so grim, Raphael stepped up to see what was the matter. Aaron looked at him in some confusion. He began to break the news but Rafe had already seen into the street beyond. "Is that Lucinda?"

Aaron turned to the simpler task of sending for Jason. Jeremy said he was at the blacksmith's. "Go fetch him," Aaron directed, adding, when the young man hesitated, "Now."

"Why are they here, Stempel?" Rafe demanded. He clutched Aaron's arm. "What's happened?"

Aaron could put it off no longer. "Your cousin. He—"

Rafe did not wait for him to finish. He ran out to the wagon, which had stopped alongside the cafe. Jeremy, who had lingered to hear, stared at Aaron questioningly. "It may not have been an accident," Aaron said. Jeremy stood trying to grasp it. "Didn't I tell you to fetch your brother?" The order, almost barked, stirred him from his daze. Aaron followed him out the door, past Christopher, who had been scuttling between the window and the corner watching the proceedings.

Inside the buckboard were people he knew from Irontown—Mrs. Brown, Gabriel, Jesse—and some he did not. Outside the shop sat a bench, empty at present. He slid under it to hear better. No one paid any attention to him. He saw Jason appear from the blacksmith's and come running down to the others, followed by Jeremy. The smith himself, a large man with a beard and round red cheeks, stood in his doorway looking after them. Rafe was staring into the back of the wagon, where Gabe, on his knees, was turning down one end of a bedspread to reveal the face beneath. Jason arrived in time to see it before it was covered again. He had heard the news but not actually believed it till he had seen. Blessed were they...

He was standing, he realized, at Lucinda's side. She was sitting still on the hard seat of the wagon. Even now she was beautiful, with the grace of a princess and a dancer. Both she was, one by birth, the other by nature, but today a dancer immobile and a princess in mourning. "Mrs. Brown—" Jason began. She could have faced him with slight effort, which she did not make. "Words can't tell you how sorry I am." From the other side Aaron asked how her husband's death had come about. She gave no sign of hearing him either.

"We found him in the road," said Gabe. He looked at Rafe. "Didn't know where to look for you or I'da come told you myself."

"Slept in town last night," said Rafe. He saw Lottie approaching in company with two women, a girl he knew somewhat, and a small boy she was leading by the hand. "'stead of where I shoulda been," he said bitterly. He stared at Gabe. "Where were you?"

From the cabin the women had seen something was up and had come to see what it was. They joined the group from the cafe and others from up the street to form a small circle round the buckboard. Lucinda seemed unaware of any of them.

"When did it happen?" Aaron asked.

Those in the wagon looked to Gabe. "One, two this morning," he said.

"Should have come sooner."

Gabe answered with reluctance. "She didn't want to bring him."

Jeremy met Candy at the edge of the crowd to keep her and the children from a closer look. Ben, Junior, his normal presumption quashed by the presence of the multitude, contented himself with the repeated query "What?" to which he never got an answer. Lottie slid through the crowd to Raphael and greeted him, a little questioningly. He looked at her once with no evident feeling and not again. Jeremy told the others what had happened and what was suspected. Emily grew pale. She repeated what she had just been telling Candy: that Ben had not come home the previous night. In this new context the fact was obviously alarming. Candy refused to think of it. "I'm certain he's all right," she said.

Christopher, glancing past his feet to a half-circle of slender buckthorns fifty yards away, spotted one of those sights children see and adults doubt can have been seen: a figure behind one of the trees, peering out now and again, and looking for all the world like Ben. Why would he be hiding? the boy thought.

He heard Jason talking and swiveled around to see. "I give you my oath," he said, "we'll find the man who did this."

"We know who did it!" said Raphael. The declaration carried to the buckthorns, and the figure there darted off.

"Name him," Jason said, "and by God—"

"Names! We don't know their names." He turned to Gabriel. "It was them, wasn't it?"

"They..." Gabriel hesitated.

His surer, swifter brother—the restaurateur addressing the barber—mimicked him fiercely. "They! They! They what?"

"They were there," Gabe said slowly, not to be forced into stating what he did not mean. "Their tracks led away from the—" He glanced at Lucinda. "Away from the place. But..."

"Whose tracks?" asked Aaron. "Who are you talking about?"

"Them that's been comin' at night hurrahin' us," said Gabe.

"White men," Rafe added, glaring openly at Aaron.

"Did you know about this?" asked Jason.

"First I've heard of it. What do you mean, hurrahing?"

"Ridin' in whoopin' and cussin', wavin' firebrands," said Gabe. "Makin' noise mostly."

"Till now," his brother amended.

"Did you see their faces, any of you?"

"Masked," said Gabe.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Once or twice a week for most of a month."

"And you didn't report it to me?"

"How could we be sure you wasn't in with 'em?" This came from Rafe.

"If you don't know better than that—" Jason began.

Aaron upraised a hand. "It's fair enough. I'd feel no different in his place. But I give you my oath—" Then he remembered Jason already had. "We won't stand for that kind of thing here."

"Did they come on purpose for him?" The voice—a new one from back in the crowd—took them by surprise. Only Jason recognized it immediately as belonging to his youngest brother. To Jeremy, listening to Gabe's description, the question had seemed self-evident, yet no one had thought to ask it.

"No," Gabe said definitely, almost gratefully. "They wasn't out to kill anybody."

"You don't know that!" his brother objected.

"If they'd wanted to, they'da done it before now. They're only tryin' to scare us—to run us out probably." He bent next to the body and turned down the cloth again. "Mark on his head shows where he hit it. You can see the stain on the rock. One of them mighta knocked him down, but that wasn't what they come for. They ain't the killin' kind of men."

"Don't matter!" Rafe shouted. "However it was, they got his blood on their hands." His eyes dared anyone to say differently.

Aaron met them calmly. "I agree with you," he said, to Rafe's surprise. "It would never have happened if they hadn't come tormenting you. If I were passing sentence..." He left the rest unspoken.

"Did Obie go out deliberately to face them?" This was Jeremy again. He could not help wondering about such details.

"We all been wakeful these nights," said Gabe, "keepin' a lookout. He musta spotted 'em first. Time we found him, they were long gone."

Jason leapt up into the wagon bed and lifted his arms. "Citizens!" he cried. "One of our own has been taken. Anyone that has so much as a glimmer of who did it—what crawling snakes are standing upright among us, passing for men—tell me now or the knowledge will take you down too, down to the depths of your destruction, as surely as if you were among the guilty."

The ensuing silence caused the last phrase to ring a little hollow, and Rafe was quick to seize on it. "Fine speech, but it won't bring him back, where he's gone. Won't do nothin'."

"It wasn't true, what you told me."

Except for the timbre of the voice, which he once had likened to a mountain stream, he would not have known the speaker had been Lucinda. She was still facing away from him. "How, not true?"

"This place. What you told me about it when I settled here with my Obie. I believed you. So did he. I see now it wasn't true at all."

"It is, Mrs.—Lucinda. But seen through a curtain of tears—"

"More words?" She almost laughed. "I don't need more of your words." She considered. "Maybe you believe it's so. Maybe it is for you. But not for us. What holds for you and your people doesn't hold for me and mine. That's where you fell into error." Jason's words having been refused, which for him was like being robbed of air, he was helpless to respond. "I should like to take my husband home," she said, "and dress him for burying. Will you allow me to do that?" There was a quiver in her voice that her seeming assurance could not hide. Aaron said the doctor ought to examine the body first. He offered to drive her. The others remained in back. The crowd dissolved.

Molly had drawn Candy apart to disclose some confidence that her manner showed to be urgent, at least to her. Candy beckoned Jeremy over and prompted her to tell him the story. He hunched close to hear.

It had happened at Mr. Perkins' store. Molly and Christopher were there buying penny candy. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were there too, buying a sack of flour, a jar of molasses, a bottle of Gridley's ointment—

"Molly, honey..." Candy prodded.

—and Mr. Perkins charged them too much. Molly spoke up and told him so; even toted it up to show him. Mr. Perkins reckoned he must have made a mistake. "But I don't think it was a mistake at all," she said. Neither did Mrs. Brown, who remarked that there seemed to be a mistake lately every time they were in. Mr. Brown shushed her as if not wanting to raise a fuss.

"That doesn't sound like Ben," said Emily, who had moved close enough to hear—the mischance Molly had tried to avoid. "Does it?"

"I hope he—" Candy began, and did not finish. She was thinking of Obie Brown. An awkward silence fell.

Emily assumed the demeanor with which she met every perplexity, that of a woman faced with having to rip out a stitch and do it over. She was thinking of the store. Ben (who surely had been detained by some trivial matter of business he would explain when he got home) would want it opened. She told the others so. She knew Molly would not mind looking after little Ben as she had before. Concentrating entirely on the routine of opening—drawing the shades, sweeping the floor, replenishing the barrels and bins (and checking for spiders)—Emily excused herself and headed home to fetch the key.

Jeremy frowned after her. "I'm not sure she's right," he said.

"About Ben wanting the shop open?"

"About that not sounding like him. I'm thinking of something he said last week. Didn't seem like much taken by itself, but..." He was clearly bothered. "Hope he hasn't been listening to the wrong people."

"He would never harm anyone," Candy said adamantly.

Jeremy agreed. "But the wrong people might."

His eldest brother, shaken by the morning's news, returned to the blacksmith's cloaked in meditation. Nothing like this had happened in Seattle for a long time. Even if it had been an accident (which he chose to agree with Gabe it had) the circumstances of it troubled him almost as much as if it had been premeditated. There were some narrow minds in town, to be sure, but none he believed capable of engineering such a campaign of terror. Perhaps a newcomer...

Seeking, his mind lit on the man he was going to see. The town had never before had a proper smithy, only the waterfront shack of old Carson Terry, who had performed a variety of services, horseshoeing among them. Recently the tremble in his hands had grown so severe it had forced him to give up the work, and Jason, who for a while in his youth had apprenticed himself to him unofficially and still envisioned himself at odd moments as Longfellow's hero with arms "strong as iron bands," had bought the old man's hammers, anvil, and forge and built a plank barn up from Ben's where he had set up shop on Saturdays. He cut a fine figure, as he was aware, in his brown leather apron, but after the first rush of people impatient after two months' delay to have their mules shod or their wheels mended, custom had grown scarce, except for those looking in to see if their jobs were done yet. He was sweating to replace a barrel hoop one late afternoon when he looked up to see a burly stranger leaning against the doorjamb, watching his struggle with unconcealed amusement. "That's not the way," he said in a rich drawl.

"I suppose you can do better?"

"I can," he said. "It's my trade." Without further preliminaries he took over and showed how it ought to be done, disposed of all the other jobs waiting, and mended a shoe for a carter who, seeing a new man at the anvil, had fetched his horse in before the chance was lost. "Don't know who you are, stranger," he said, "but I hope you'll stick. We could use you hereabouts." He smiled nervously at Jason, who was standing at the side. "No offense meant."

Before the day was out Maclaren had revealed he was looking for a place to set up and Jason, with not a little relief, had sold him the works for a dollar. Maclaren added to it his own collection of hammers, rises, poker and tongs, a block full of holes like cheese with bites taken out of its edges, a forge twice the size of old Terry's, and a big bellows hung in a wood frame with a rod and chain. That had been only a month before.

Jason re-entered the shop in a different cast of mind from when he had left. He found the smith at his grindstone honing a chisel, his foot pumping the treadle rhythmically. "You heard what happened?" Jason asked.

Hearing the change in his tone, Maclaren fixed his attention on the chisel at the point where it was tangent to the disc. "Enough," he said.

"And didn't feel the need to hear more?"

Maclaren shrugged. Jason advanced on him through the litter of nails and iron parings. "You're Southern-bred."

"Can't deny it. Shouldn't care to if it came to that."

"And the only newcomer to town."

Maclaren stopped pedaling and stared at him. "If you've a question to put, Mr. Bolt, you'd oblige me by stating it plain."

"Word is, some of your compatriots have never cared for Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation or its beneficiaries. Not all but not a few. Is that the fact?"

"It is," said Maclaren, "as I have cause to know." He faced Jason squarely and pulled his shirt open to the chest. Jason, who was not easily scared, could not suppress a gasp. In the hollow between the pectorals, burned clean of hair, stood forth a pattern of welts forming the letter A. "A scarlet letter, in good truth," Maclaren said. The memory of it rumbled through his voice. "They did worse to my striker." He shut his eyes for a moment, and his shoulders actually shook. "He was a freedman, Mr. Bolt—freed by me. For that they let me off with a branding. A for Abolitionist."

"And were you one?"

"I was after that night." He stared into Jason's eyes. "I know men like these, Mr. Bolt—know 'em clean through. And I know where to find 'em. In Port Madison—there's night riders in Port Madison. And in Oregon—they've made themselves a law to keep blacks from settling there." Jason was shocked for the third time that morning. "But not in this town. I'd swear to it." He considered. "Don't know about the jacks at your camp." Neither, Jason realized now, did he.

As he had entered the barn someone had been watching him. While his back was to the entrance the same figure shot across it, up the side, and behind the row of buildings to the rear of Ben's store, where he let himself in with a key; for the fugitive was Ben himself. He thanked his stars he had not been spotted.

In fact he had been seen many times, first by Christopher, then by other children and old men who enjoyed sufficient idleness to have noticed him. Had he known that he would have been in an even wilder panic than the one that had hold of him. He had run down to the dock but stopped short of it, for there were people on it; up to the livery stable but stopped short again, for it too was inhabited; and so on, till the conviction grew on him that the only safe hiding place was the store: no one would find him there. That it was the one place people had been looking was another truth happily veiled from him.

He crept through the dim back room to the front, from which he had the vague idea of provisioning himself for life as an outlaw. With the stores he had on hand and those he could order, he could live in the hills forever. On the other hand, could he place the orders safely if the law were after him? Of course he could do it under an assumed name; but then how would his consignors know who he was? While these and similar calculations chased themselves around inside his head, he studied the shelves and barrels to try to determine what he might need in his exile. Coffee, beans, rock candy—he loved rock candy—and what else? Running his eye along the rows of dry goods, he edged unthinkingly toward the window.

"It's closed!" rose a voice close by, together with a rattle. A snake! No, the door! The sound made him jump. As he jumped, his elbow bumped the licorice jar at the end of the counter. It teetered, fell, and crashed to the floor, scattering the contents. "What was that?" said the voice outside. Ben's feet danced first one way, then the other. His shoulder jostled the objects on the shelf behind it: snuff tins, matchboxes, packets of cards. They toppled and fell with a patter and a clatter. "Somebody's in there!" came another voice. "Somebody's robbing Ben!" A face peered in at the window. Ben quickly squatted behind the counter. The cry was repeated. There rose other voices. He duck-walked to the back room, blundered to his feet, and started for the door. Hearing someone shout "Let's try the back!" he retreated toward the front.

Then he heard, impossibly, Emily's voice. "What's the matter here?"

"Somebody's in the store," she was told. "We're trying the back."

"I have the key," she said. Ben heard it tick in the lock. He resumed his dash out the back door.

Once he was in the open air, he broke into a run. He rounded the blacksmith's, from which he met Jason emerging. "Ben—" Jason began. Ben yelped and ran off, he hardly knew whither. The next building to intrude into his field of vision was the doctor's. Aaron was standing in front, having just seen off Lucinda and the others. "Ben—" he began. Yelping again, in what evolved into a moan, Ben took off the other way, nearly the way he had come, which led him back to Jason. The posse was approaching from the store. He changed course again, and again ran into Aaron. Whichever way he looked, they were closing on him. Escape was impossible.

He must let them know right away how things stood. "It wasn't me, I swear! I thought it was just talk. If I'd known what they was up to—"

"What who was up to?" said Aaron.

"This about the Brown business?"

"Well, yeah, but—" Both men were staring at him, puzzled. Those from the store now joined them, but in no particular hurry, merely attracted by the conversation. Ben had an awakening. "You mean you weren't all looking for me?"

So did Jason. "I don't know, Ben. Were we?" His eyes had become like the cast iron of the blacksmith's.

"Emily is," said Jeremy, who had just walked up. His tone was not friendly either. "She's scared because you didn't come home."

Ben felt a pang close to hunger (which he was feeling too). "My gosh, Em! I better tell her!" He searched for her, but she was not with the crowd from the store. Having found it unoccupied and only slightly disordered, they had left her to the task of picking up. Ben, guessing something of the kind, started in that direction.

Jason blocked his way. "First tell us about this 'talk.' What kind of talk?"

Ben shrugged innocently. "Just talk. You know." In a voice meant for Jason's ears alone, he added, "When the jug's bein' passed, fella gets to talkin' kinda free."

"And the subject of this fine, free talk was—what?"

"Well," said Ben, screwing his face into a scowl, "some of us ain't too happy about the element that's been movin' in."

"What element would that be?" Jason's voice was as chilly as the Sound in winter.

"You know. Greeks and—and Chinamen and..."

"Which one of those," asked Jason, controlling himself with an effort, "was Obie Brown?"

"Well, and that bunch up in Irontown. They're the worst. And more of 'em comin' in all the time like they owned the place. We hadn't oughta stand for it." Realizing he had gone farther than he had meant to, he added, "The boys say."

"That why you been shortchanging Obie?" Jeremy asked. Aaron and Jason, to whom this was news, awaited the answer with interest, as did others in the crowd.

"How'd you know about that?"

"The children saw you."

"Well, I..." There were too many people listening for him to attempt a lie, and besides, it was nothing to be ashamed of; a merchant had a right to set any price he liked. "Sure, but I had nothin' to do with this other business. I didn't know what the boys were gettin' up to."

"Who are these 'boys'?" asked Aaron.

"You know. The boys. Old Tom and Adolphus."

"You think they killed Obie?"

"Who else?"

Within five minutes Aaron had shown him "the boys" lying resident in Seattle's tiny stone jail. The previous evening, after supplementing Ben's hospitality with a bottle or two (or three or four) from Lottie's, they had settled themselves under Aaron's window, where they had concluded their evening and interrupted his with repeated refrains of "Little Brown Jug" till, unable to stand it any longer, he had personally herded them to the cell where they had been wallowing in relatively innocent slumber ever since.

"Then it couldn'ta been them!"

"Unless they can pass through stone," said Jason.

"So it was just talk." Ben shook his head at the wonder of it. Then another truth hit home, one he could not bear so stoically. "I lost a morning's business on account of them! Hidin' out 'cause I figured you all'd be after 'em—and me with 'em." He laughed ruefully.

The other men did not laugh. No one said anything at first, and then Jeremy asked, even more quietly than usual, "Why, uh, why'd you figure that, Ben?"

"Well, on account of this trouble. Account of Obie Brown."

Jeremy repeated the name. "You sure?"

"Well...yeah." But he sounded sure no longer. They were all staring at him; of that he had no doubt.

"How'd you know about Obie Brown?"

"Don't rightly recall. Musta heard somebody talkin'." It sounded feeble even to him.

"Impossible," Aaron declared. "No one knew before. No one outside Irontown."

Jason's eyes cut through him. "Ben? Were you out there last night?"

So fate had ensnared him after all. He had no choice but to recount the whole story, still insisting he had had nothing to do with the death. But there seemed to be no question of that. "Did you see anyone else?" asked Aaron.

"Not as I remember," said Ben. Then he did. "Well, only the white."

Christopher almost jumped at that. Having followed the events of the morning as they had led him, he was listening behind the jailhouse. "Standing over the body," said Ben. "It's true what they say—somebody was bound to die."

Under the circumstances the veneration in his tone set off a spark in Jeremy. "And you—you left him lying there like a—"

"I went back!" Ben protested. "I knew it wasn't right. But I dasn't let anybody see me, don't you see? I was aiming to move him up by the house, then throw rocks at the window to fetch somebody out."

"That was a very foolish plan, Ben," Jason said gravely.

"But I didn't have to! Didn't have to do anything. When I got back, he was already gone."

"And you betook yourself home."

"I dasn't. What if Em was to start asking questions? I set out in the woods a spell trying to cook up a good story for her. Finally fell asleep. You know, it gets mighty cold out there."

Each of the others felt something ought to be said, but Jason was the only one to find suitable words. "Do you think perhaps, in retrospect, you might have done things a little differently?"

"Well, I don't know." He scratched his head. "It's terrible, what happened to Obie, but—shoot, it was no fault of mine."

The other men looked away in embarrassment. He peered around, seeking support anywhere, and found Emily standing a few feet behind him. "Em! You understand, don't you?" But she was staring at him as if she had seen through to his insides and seen the Devil sitting there. Without a word she turned and walked off. He could not fathom it.

"You're dead right, Ben," Jason said at long last, "you and the 'boys.'" Ben looked at him hopefully, Aaron uncertainly. "How do those people have the nerve? As if they were fit to breathe the same air and tread the same soil your Maker provided for your use exclusively. But you didn't go far enough. No, sir," he said, rolling along smartly now, "if Obie was too black for you, so's he"—pointing to Aaron—"why, look at him"—he lifted a bunch of Aaron's hair; Aaron slapped his hand away—"hair black as ink. And look over there, 'longside the jail"—Christopher jerked out of sight, merely from habit, since he was doing nothing illicit at the moment—"see that shadow? Black as coal. And every evening when the sun disappears, it throws up a whole skyful of black. Have to do away with that too."

"That—that's foolish."

"Glad you see it," said Jason, growing sober again, "even if the discovery comes a little late." He turned and walked away. The rest did the same. Not one had a word for Ben; nary a nod. He felt—shucks, he didn't know how he felt.

"But dang it!" he said, though there was no one left to listen. "It wasn't my fault."

The store was empty. Emily had abandoned the idea of opening it and returned to the cabin, picking up little Ben on the way. Ben suspected he should go and make it up with her after the fretful night he had caused but he was dimly cognizant there was more between them now, a gap he was not ready to cross. Instead he decided to open up, however late, and tend to business. She had replaced the goods on the shelf but not displayed them correctly; he rearranged them. She had discarded the spilled licorice but not refilled the jar, which he proceeded to do. It had remained whole; a small but happy mercy for which he was grateful. A pair of passersby glanced in and whispered as they passed. Gossip spread quickly in a town of that size and he was not sure but what it marked him as the one who had done the killing.

For this reason or some other no customers came. He was leaning on his arm disconsolately, wondering if the loss would be permanent, when Aaron stopped in. He liked Ben as much as he liked anybody but the man could be the damnedest fool sometimes, and this performance beat anything he could remember. He ambled across to the chair Adolphus usually occupied and seated himself, as if meaning to lounge a while. This was so uncharacteristic of him Ben immediately put up his guard. For a long time neither man said anything.

Aaron broke the silence, in the best imitation of casualness he could muster. "Remember how you got your start in this town?"

"Sure. Workin' at your mill."

"You were new. More than a few held you weren't to be trusted—penniless drifter nobody knew from Adam's off ox. But I had a feeling about you. I ignored everyone's advice, as I generally do, and it worked out fine all round. Later I provided you with the capital to set up here. You made quite a success of it." He smiled. "Had a feeling about that too."

Ben thought he was on to him now. "You said I needn't fret about repaying you—that it was more important the town have a store. I had your word on that." Business was pretty good (till today) but so large a loss, he doubted he could sustain, and the prospect agitated him so much he scarcely heard Aaron's attempt to inform him he was missing the point. "If this is on account of what I did—leaving Obie lay and not telling anybody—you can fetch me up before the judge when he comes around and I'll take what's coming. Reckon there's some law or other against it. But if you're looking to get your money back—"

This sent Aaron past the limit of his patience. "To hell with money!" he yelled, shooting to his feet. "To hell with the law!" An elderly couple strolling past who thought they recognized the voice peered in to make sure, the sentiments having sounded so unlike its owner. "You are the most vexing man," Aaron continued, "and in your mood the most impenetrably thick-headed, of my immediate acquaintance." He shook his head. "I suppose it's beyond your capacity to understand, but I'll make the trial. When you were an outsider here I gave you your chance—which is no more than any man deserves. I'm disappointed you were unable to extend the same charity to others." He studied Ben's face. "I guess it is beyond you. And that grieves me, Ben. It grieves me beyond telling." He seemed to have more to say and at the same time to have said all that could be said. So he left.

Molly Pruitt was considering whether Ben might be an unreconstructed Rebel. She consulted her sister on the question as the two stood hulling peas for supper. Candy asked where Molly had heard the expression. "Papa used to say some Rebels would always behave as if slavery had never ended. Is Mr. Perkins one of them?"

"No," Candy said, "he's just—" She stopped to determine how to put it most accurately. "Sometimes good people—sometimes very good people—are unaware of the attitudes they carry. They've picked them up somewhere along the way and held onto them without knowing. I don't believe Ben has ever had his attention called to his prejudices." Christopher had not yet given her an account of the events at the jail. "He's simply not had to think about it."

This statement was true no longer. After his conversation with Aaron Ben had begun to consider that perhaps "the boys" had pushed him into a course that strayed too far from the one he had set for himself. He knew who could tell him—if she wasn't too mad to talk to him. Since the store was bereft of customers anyway, he closed early and went home to try his chances.

The reason Christopher had not reported the news to Candy was that all afternoon he had been off devising a plan. She seemed to have guessed what it was, since at the first opportunity she forbade him to go visiting in Irontown till the trouble there was settled—an injunction he knew immediately he was going to ignore.

The district was not forbidden to Joshua Bolt, and though not quite at home there he had visited the Browns often; more often than the breadth of his friendship with Obie had justified. Today he visited Lucinda alone. She was a handsome woman, he reflected, and too good for Seattle; now Obie was gone, she might return to San Francisco, a real city. More than once he had thought of moving there himself.

She had been the victim of an arranged marriage but not known it till she had reached Seattle, whereupon she had quickly unarranged it; then she had met Obie and rearranged it again. He had admired her like a rare orchid and in so doing had exposed his young, gentle soul, with which she had found herself, despite herself, to be in love. Now she gazed around the cabin at the evidences of his presence so lately stolen from her: his hat, his axe, his gun, his books, his pipe—almost every object in the room was his. Joshua wondered for a moment where he was. On returning from town the others had taken the body to Jesse's to lie out of her sight for a little till it could be dressed.

Joshua asked if she needed anything. "Oh, yes," she said. "I need everything to be as it was yesterday. Have you the power to bring that about? If not, then no, you have nothing I need." Her voice, always precise and musical, was now hollow too, like an African drum.

"He died a man," said Joshua. "Probably died fighting. You can take pride in that."

"Pride in what's gone is a ghost," she said, "nothing but a pale ghost." Joshua could not honestly deny it. "He was the first—the first of us to settle here—and the best. The young ones who come after—they'll never know."

"They will," Joshua said fervently, "through you. You'll tell them the story and make it more than a story—make it seem like they're living it themselves. I saw you when you played the opera house. Always hoped for another chance." The performance had been her last. It had been part of a benefit to raise money for the building of a hospital (toward which the committee was still taking donations). "You told about Africa," Joshua recollected, "young as you were when you last saw it. The baking sun, the wide river, the noises rising from the palm forest at night. You sang and you danced, to the drum and the horn." He forbore mentioning that the dance had nearly caused a riot. The sinuous abandon of her bouncing steps, to the pulse of such approximations to native instruments as she could hire in the white Northwest, had led some members of the Ladies' League to walk out, or at least to threaten it. "And you told about the plantations."

"I barely saw them. I was one of the lucky ones." Now her voice sounded less hollow. She knew she had been lucky in more than that, a woman of her beauty and vitality: to have passed through slavery without dishonor. But her owners had been French Catholics (late of Haiti), residents of New Orleans, and patrons of the arts, all of which qualities had led them to practice slavery on the most liberal terms imaginable, consonant with the nature of the system.

On Sundays her master would take her, and later allowed her the liberty of going on her own, to Congo Square, one of the city's most famous sights, where blacks both free and unfree performed the dances of their birth lands. As a child she quickly picked up the steps and before she was grown had become one of the Square's premiere attractions. When the goings-on there became too unruly, her owners arranged appearances for her on the public stage, normally denied to blacks; her enthusiasts followed, and soon her name was known throughout the city. Then the War came and ended all such entertainments.

At the Square she had met a man, rough but loving: one of the reasons her master had discouraged her from going. When freedom came they married. But before long the state became like a prison for the former slaves, some of its impositions reaching even to freewheeling New Orleans, and the couple migrated to California. There Lucinda became what Seattle found her, "Frisco's own African princess." Her husband had died in a fight over a liberty taken by an admirer—one of many such admirers, and many such fights. In respect of them, and notwithstanding her large following, the management had been about to abridge her contract when Seattle engaged her (in more than one sense). So that journey had been felicitously timed.

"But you told about those days," said Joshua, "and you sang."

"Slave songs." That was what Raphael called them. He believed they should have died with the institution that had spawned them, and he disapproved of her singing them. Also the African songs: "We're not in the old country now." She half-believed she agreed with him; one reason she had not performed again.

Joshua saw it through different eyes. "Songs of hope," he said. "Songs that tell you the suffering will pass, that there's a life beyond it. I liked hearing you sing." He added hesitantly, "I'd like it now."

For a moment she looked as if she were searching for the music inside her, waiting to feel it fill her throat. "I can't," she said. "Not today." Her black eyes glistened and tears traced a path down each cheek. But strangely, she gave something like a smile and laid her hand lightly on his wrist. He returned the smile and was close to returning the tears when Rafe walked in. He stopped on seeing the two of them together. "What's he doing here?" he asked.

Lucinda lifted her hand away. "Paying his respects."

"Respect?" He made the word sound like an oath. He did not take his eyes from Joshua.

Lucinda straightened her shoulders. "What do you want, Raphael?" she asked.

Rafe obviously did not want to speak in front of her guest but could hardly refuse the royal summons. "We found a place for Obie in the loggers' yard. I'll take you to see. If it don't suit—doesn't," he quickly corrected—"Bolt's offered you your choice. He set a lot of store by Obie. I'll give him that."

"We all did," said Joshua.

Rafe looked away stiffly. He knew he must be a man, to stand up for himself and his people. But to answer back now would be an affront to Obie's memory, and to Lucinda. The Bolts had shown her a kindness—yet here was one of them showing more than kindness. Trapped between moral imperatives, he did not know which to honor. His discomfort spread to Joshua, who worked the only possible cure by withdrawing. Lucinda wished him a farewell, behind whose formality he could detect gratitude and, he believed, affection.

When he got back to camp Jason asked where he had been. "Offering condolences to the widow," said Joshua. He walked off whistling one of her songs. Jason recognized it, and recognized more than that in it. Brother mine, he thought, how little you know yourself.

Ben was making his way home, wondering what Emily would have to say to him and what he could possibly say to her. He had forgotten the cabin's third tenant, almost incredibly, since that one was on his mind almost always.

He paused at the door, searching for the words that would restore him to favor. Unable to find them, he momentarily considered sleeping in the woods again but knew it was too late for that. He would have to trust to Em's charity, his faith in which was considerable, but beyond whose limits he was becoming more and more certain he had strayed. He entered therefore in trepidation, with his fingers crossed behind him.

Even if he had found the right spell it would have availed him nothing since it would immediately have been swept from his mind by the torpedo that hurtled toward him as soon as he appeared in the doorway. "Papa home!" it said.

"Yeah, your papa's home," Ben repeated dully. As he removed his coat he looked across to the kitchen side, where Emily was slicing potatoes for the pot. She glanced at him but he had not time to read her face because the torpedo was by then nearly upon him. He spread his arms to receive it but at the last moment it changed course to the right and descended on the corner nearest the door. There it halted sharply and took up a large leather sphere in both hands, bearing which burden, it rotated 180 degrees and charged back at Ben. He put up his hands just in time to block a blow to the abdomen. "Pay bill!" the torpedo shouted. It meant "Play ball" but substituted a phrase it had heard more often from its father's lips.

"Not now, Junior. Your mama and me have business to settle." That was another phrase that came readily to him. He realized at once it was not the most conciliatory he could have chosen.

"Pay bill!"

"Not now, I said."

Emily turned from the cutting board. "Oh, Ben, go play with him. He so looks forward to it." Ben stared at her. She was smiling, apparently untroubled by anything he had done. He had the sudden hope that this was the case, that the disappointment he had read in her face that morning had been only a fit of pique on account of his confession that he had been making up a story to tell her. "Go on," she said.

He looked down at the giant brown eyes looking up at his. He thought the boy favored him. Emily said her father. Either way he was a regular bull-roarer and might grow up to be—who could tell?—the biggest merchant in the Northwest. He knew Emily had other plans for him; the ministry perhaps. Well, one didn't rule out the other. The boy yielded the ball to him. "Take the field, Junior," his father said, "and get ready for a scorcher."

"Not in the house!" Emily warned. Really, sometimes it was like having two children to mind. Ben obediently led his playfellow outside. The wind met them and lifted their hair. He had not noticed it going in. Not fully roused, it was only tickling at the leaves and sweeping random patches of loose dirt one way and another. But that was how it had begun yesterday.

"Pay bill!" Having observed that patience was not a two-year-old's strong suit, Ben did as commanded, but gently; the ball was caught, and returned right into his hands. The boy was going to be quite an athlete. Soon Emily came out and sat on the garden bench to watch. Ben smiled at her. She returned a half-smile, distant and meditative; a soft throw.

"French perfume," she said presently.

"Huh?" The ball hit his stomach, dropped, and rolled away.

"Pay bill!"

"Your turn, Ben," she said mildly. Puzzled and a little unsettled by her manner, he went to fetch it. Junior ran after. Ben continued the game where they were standing to keep her within view.

"Chinese silk," she said. "Irish linen."

He gathered this was going to be one of her sermons. He did not mind them; not like those in church. He knew if he waited she would arrive at the point before long. "Anything I had a hankering for," she went on, "anything at all some man somewhere in the world was selling and shipping, you'd get for me. That's what you promised when you proposed marriage. And I told you..." Ben knew what was coming next and hoped he would not be called upon to confirm it. "...I didn't need any of that. All I asked of a man was that he be honest."

"Papa! Pay bill!"

"You admitted you hadn't always been honest right down the line. But you swore you would be from that day forward. And you have been."

"Em—"

"Haven't you?" Her eyes, so clear and grey (except for that tiny black spot in the left iris), seemed to hold all the world's virtue. He felt humbled before it.

"Papa!"

"Maybe it was an oath I oughtn't to have took. Maybe it ain't in my nature."

"Oh, Ben. A dishonest man would never say that."

"You don't know. The things that get into my head. Working out a way to fleece some drummer." He dropped that head. "It's 'cause I'm scared, is the thing—scared that otherwise he'll get the better of me. If I was a man like Aaron—"

"Aaron!" she said, in something like horror.

"Aaron!" Junior repeated in the same intonation. His desire to get on with the game had given way to the new attraction of his parents conversing in a manner he had never heard before. Though he understood none of what was said, he felt it to be intensely interesting.

"He knows how to skin a man sooner than get skinned. That's the kind of man you shoulda married."

"I didn't want Aaron—"

"Aaron!" the child repeated.

"—or Jason Bolt or any other species of sharp operator. I chose a man who dealt fairly and openly." Ben opened his mouth but discovered he had nothing to say and stood mute. She did not look angry, only puzzled and a little hurt. "Why did you do it, Ben? Surely not for that little bit of money?"

"I don't know." He walked to the bench and sat wearily. "The boys would get to talkin' and—" He stopped himself as Junior reached them, having followed literally in his father's footsteps. Ben passed the ball to him. "Can't repeat some of the names they used."

"I know all about that," she said. Ben raised his eyebrows. "You think you men are the only ones? Some of the remarks that have been passed in the ladies' sewing circle would rival the sentiments exchanged over a jug in your back room." Ben was twice shocked: he had not thought she knew about the jug. The look on his face made her smile. "You're forgetting your scripture, Benjamin. None of us is free from sin—none." The last word she addressed to herself.

"Aaron!" Junior contributed; it was his new favorite saying. The two of them laughed.

"I must get on with supper," Emily said. She stood and watched as her husband hugged their son to him. "What do you mean to do about it?" she asked off-handedly, as if discussing an account that was slightly past due. "If you mean to do anything, that is."

Ben looked at the child, then at her. It was clear to him now. "Well, shoot," he said. "I got to make it right, don't I?" Emily smiled—the first full, heartfelt smile he had seen from her that day. "Reckon I'll be late for supper." She nodded and went in. He knelt before Junior and asked if he would be willing to stay home and look after his mama. Understanding nothing of the question but knowing from its tone what answer was expected, he gave a "Yes!" that rang with certitude. His mother re-appeared then with the coat Ben had shed and, she had no doubt, would otherwise have left behind. "We'll see another big blow tonight," she predicted. He agreed, and kissed her long and gratefully.

"Aaron!" the onlooker commented. "Aaron, Aaron, Aaron..."

Come suppertime, Ben was absent as predicted. He was going over his daybook and making a second tally, with a list of names, on a writing tablet. The total came to $8.47. He went to the safe, reached in through the back (which was open), and felt for a lumpy canvas sack, which he removed, carried to the desk, and partly emptied. From the mound of coins he counted out a number of smaller sums according with the tally and lined up the stacks in front of him. From the roll of wrapping paper beneath the counter he tore off an equal number of strips, bundled them, tied the bundles with string, and with a pen and a bottle of ink (which he took care not to overturn) labeled each bundle with a name from the sheet. He returned the bag to the safe, found another in one of the niches where he was prone to stuff them absent-mindedly, and packed the bundles into it. He deposited the tally sheet in his shirt pocket. Then he left.

Unlike him Christopher was in place for his supper and for the cleaning up afterwards. Unusually, he was impatient to get to bed, but Candy hardly noticed it. He was always excited about something or other and she did not always have time to keep up. Molly did notice and judging from his watchfulness, which approached jumpiness, was willing to bet (or would have been if proper young ladies bet) that whatever he was anticipating was to happen that very night.

Supper at the logging camp was unaccustomedly somber in view of the day's news. As the men were finishing up—most of them having taken only one helping, and most of those a smaller one than usual—Jason, in his customary place at the head of the main table, stood to address them. He had planned his speech out beforehand and confided it to his brothers, whom he had charged to watch the listeners' faces for signs of guilt. Jeremy opposed the stratagem. He never liked these bluffs even when they worked, and he was sure this one would not: the culprits would not be stupid enough to reveal themselves so obligingly. Besides, it was impossible they were from the camp; no one there would have hurt Obie. But he raised no objection, knowing the effort would be as useless as Jason's, and the speech proceeded as planned.

Jason began by lamenting Obie's loss, from which the camp would not soon recover. "Some men leave a hole bigger than the biggest of these evergreens," he said, "and Obie was one of them." He recalled Obie's skill at his trade, his kindness, his honesty, his loyalty to his comrades, his readiness to pitch in on any job and see it through, his pride in winning the logging contests every year (every year but one, that is). Now all that was gone forever.

"And one man here—one man," he repeated, his voice rising to a bellow, "had a part in it. Well, I know who you are—not much happens in this camp I don't know—and I know what quarrel you had with Obie. A small matter of color. And I say this to you: whatever befell last night—accident or no—you have till evening's end to make a clean breast of it. That includes the name of every man who rode with you. Otherwise I'll assume the worst. Then, by the saints, you will be standing alone—before your Maker—after I've shown you a new use for one of these saplings." He gave a smile the men had not seen from him before. "Law's not apt to raise much of a fuss—not when I tell 'em we've paid back Obie Brown's killer." His listeners were still. "That's all," he said roughly, and marched off to his tent.

The men slowly cleared the benches. Those who could be sure of those next to them ventured sideways glances of fear mixed with relief; the only reactions Jason's brothers had observed. They reported so to him.

A man from the camp shouldered past them into the tent. He was tall and sturdily built, and his broad brow was crowned with coils of black hair. "You hate us that bad?" he demanded. Jason, all at sea, looked to his brothers, who could offer no harbor. "'Obie Brown's killer.' Huh!" The man tried to pace but found the tent too small. His fist beat at the canvas with alarming force. "How do I know you didn't kill him? Or one of them?"

"How dare you—"

"Goes to show you can't tell a man from his outsides. But you knew that, didn't you? Don't fret, I'll be out of here soon's I pack my kit." On the promise, he began to leave.

"You, Ephraim? Why?"

Ephraim stopped with one hand on the tent pole. They feared he might uproot it. "'Matter of color.' How'd you know 'bout that? Obie swore he wouldn't tell. How he knew himself I can't make out. Most people take me for part Greek." The younger Bolts exchanged looks of dismay. "Hell, yes, we quarreled. Reckon you musta been up in one of your trees listenin'." Jason was too busy rearranging his mental closet to answer. "He cussed me up, down, and sideways for keepin' it secret. Said I'd no self-respect. If he'da heard you tonight, he'da changed his tune. 'Hang from a sapling.' Lowdown way of scarin' a man off so's you can keep your camp lily-white."

Now Jason had it by the reins. "No, Ephraim, no—"

"It's fittin', plumb fittin'. Why didn't I see it before? After all, white's the color of the veil—ain't it?" With a last glare, he tramped out.

Jason ran to the flap and clutched Joshua by the shoulder. "Go after him, tell him he's got it all wrong."

"Me? Why me?"

"You've a way with words."

Joshua could only gape at this. "And you don't?"

"Mine just dug me into a hole the size of Noah's ark. Yours may—may—dig me out." Joshua glowered at him. He did as ordered but cursed the whole way. Jason retreated to the tent to do some cursing of his own. Jeremy stood shaking his head. Knew it was a bad idea, he said to himself. But he was wise enough to keep it to himself.

He was gone when Joshua returned. To see Candy, Joshua guessed; the usual guess, but this time it was incorrect. Having eaten little while acting as Jason's spy, and having remembered that many of the men had also had small appetites, Jeremy had returned to scavenge some of their leavings. Jason was sitting on the bench outside the tent, staring toward what was left of the sunset. In this season he was seeing ever less of day and more of night. He no longer appeared angry with himself. Now he was ruminating on something else. "Ephraim understand I'm no bigot?" he said half-absently.

"Think so."

Jason nodded. It was no more than he had expected. "Hope you will too after what I have to say." Joshua could guess something of what was coming next and waited for it, silent in the growing darkness. "These woods are wide. Room enough for everybody in 'em. I don't deny that. I've known squaw men and their ladies that kept to the hills and to themselves and lost little enough by it." He paused. "But not you. It's only by chance you live on a mountain. You could never be happy cut off from your own."

"And that's how it'd be?"

"That's how it'd be. For her too."

"You sound like you approve." Joshua knew that was unfair but he had no better rejoinder handy.

"Not a question of approving." He thought a little before continuing. "Two people can stand together and fight the whole world—the two of 'em, taking all comers—and be the nobler for it. It's not in you to do that." Joshua began to object. "Not for long. And not for want of passion—I know every wild oat you've ever sowed, I guess." He had a side thought. "Jeremy, now..."

"Never sowed any."

"Ah. But those aside, of all the girls you've squired about town—must be close to the lot by now—tell me, how many of 'em you been familiar with?"

At first Joshua did not or would not understand and when he did the callousness (or honesty) of it shocked him. "Jason, how can you—these are respectable girls!"

"Ah. Respectability." Jason shook his head. "A commodity greatly overvalued in a woman. Well, respectable, then. How many of those respectable girls you been betrothed to? Or kept company with outside a month? How many have you stayed along with, Josh? A dozen? Half dozen? One?" Joshua began an answer that ended as a sigh. His brother was being foolish; this had nothing to do with—with anything. "You take a woman that's older, had herself a husband—"

"Two," Joshua said involuntarily.

Jason had not known that. "Two. Known two men—men—as well as a woman can know a man. How can you be anything to her but a boy? A fond boy, I grant you."

"You're wrong! We..." But the protest dissolved before he could form it.

"Oh, I don't doubt you could charm her into taking up with you, her being alone and you being what you are. And it's natural it would cross your mind—her being alone and...so forth. But don't you see, she'd be too easy won. And easy won is easy let go. Where would that leave her? Lonelier than before—lowered in other folks' eyes and in her own. That wouldn't be fair to her, Josh. Not fair at all."

Joshua felt as if his heart would pull him down to the bottom of the mountain. He knew every word Jason had said was true, and there was no one he could rage at for it; not Jason, not himself, not all of Seattle. Some circumstances simply had to be borne. Jason, who had learned the same lesson when young, ached for his brother's pain of discovery. But he could do nothing, any more than Joshua could. Life was as it was.

On the other hand, the illusion of boundless resource that extreme youth granted its possessors had encouraged one of them all that afternoon in devising a plan of escape. It was enabled by the late presence of an eyelet screwed into the wall outside his bedroom window, matching another at the far end. Between them they had held the rope from which the town had hung its Fourth of July banner. Through the nearer one he could thread another rope, borrowed from the shed behind the dormitory; one strong enough (he hoped) to bear his weight as he swung out the window and lowered himself down to the lawn.

He had gone to bed dressed except for his shoes and jacket. He arranged his pillows to look as he imagined his body to look beneath the quilt. He was afraid the resemblance was insufficient—the hump looked more like an otter—but it would have to do. He reached under the bed and dragged out the rope. He was a little too noisy at it, for by the time he reached the window the chamber's other occupant was sitting up. "Where are you going?" she whispered.

Straddling the sill, he leaned out to tie the rope into place using a half hitch he had learned from Captain Clancey. He hopped back inside. "Mr. Perkins saw the horse in Irontown. It might still be there!"

"You can't. Candy said!" Ignoring her, Christopher continued buttoning his jacket. "They say it makes people die. No animal can do that. If he saw anything, it wasn't magic. It was just a horse."

"Then it might still be there!" he said in triumph. She gave a sigh of exasperation. "'bye, sis!" He climbed out onto the sill and jumped off. "Chr—" she began, then covered her mouth. She threw down the covers and ran to the window.

Evidently he had not practiced his knots enough, for the half hitch undid itself too soon and he rode the rope down the last few yards. It landed by him in the grass. "You all right?" she whispered down. He waved an affirmative reply, then got onto his legs and ran off into the night and the gathering wind. Oh my soul, Molly said silently, oh my soul, oh my grievous (which she pronounced "grevious") soul.

By the time Christopher reached Irontown the wind was clattering the shutters and shaking even the largest boughs in the maple grove. He stopped there and looked out at the row of cabins, vivid beneath the big round moon. He was surprised to see Mr. Perkins at Mrs. Brown's. Maybe he had come looking for the horse too. He was standing in front talking to her, with Gabriel standing next to him like a parent. Raphael was standing next to Mrs. Brown. Most of the others were out as well, some at Mrs. Brown's, others watching from their doorways.

The first words Christopher heard were "Evening" from Mr. Perkins, and from Mrs. Brown, "You said that already" in a cold voice. He sat down in the dirt to listen.

"Came to pay my respects," Ben said.

"Lotta respectin' goin' on round here," said Rafe.

Ben did not understand what he was expected to say to that. But the crowd seemed to be waiting for him to say something. "Obie was a—a fine man," he stammered. "Fine man. Shame what happened to him. Fine man like that." Lucinda kept staring at him, Rafe was staring, the whole bunch was staring. He felt maybe he had better leave, after all. "Well, that's all I—" He turned nervously, shaking the change in his pocket.

"You're janglin'," Gabe observed.

"Huh?" He had almost forgotten the reason he was there. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, well..." From the way they were looking he figured they must know what he had done. He felt sweat on his forehead, rolling down to touch the tops of his eyebrows. His heart was hammering. He was not sure he could go through with this. But, dang it, he had to! It was only right.

"That's really why I came," he said. "Fact is, I been goin' over the books..." He pulled out the tally sheet and unfolded it one-handed against his shirt. "...and 'pears I owe you some change, Miz Brown. Not just you but quite a few here." He glanced over the list. "Gabe...Jesse..." Not Rafe; he had never dared to cheat Rafe.

The air of the gathering changed. They stared at one another in some astonishment. All had been taken advantage of by white men, some more often than others, but none could remember having heard one of them admit it, let alone offer to make amends. Christopher took it more simply: Mr. Perkins was not very good at arithmetic. He wondered if Mr. Perkins had liked school any better than he did.

A sudden gust of wind beat at them and set the iron cock spinning on the cabin roof. Ben clutched the bag tighter. Lucinda invited him to come in. "I would hate to see any of that money blow away."

"Well, I don't know..." She froze. It had been an instinctive reaction, which he regretted at once. "What I mean is, I wouldn't like to impose—ma'am—Miz Brown."

"A man bearing money can't ever impose," said Rafe with a grin. He touched Ben's shoulder lightly. "Come on in."

"Who else is on that list?" asked Lucinda.

"I see most of 'em." He handed it to her. "Can you—" He stopped himself, embarrassed again.

"Can I read it? Yes, Mr. Perkins, I can read." She picked out the names of three who were absent and ordered Gabriel to fetch them. "Will you have a cup of coffee? With perhaps a dash of something stronger?"

"The man won't say no to that," Rafe predicted.

Ben laughed. "No, sir, I surely won't."

When they had filed inside Christopher turned to his quest. He moved from the grove into the deep green salal bushes that ran parallel with the cabins along the border of the woods, and thence into the yews and hazels, looking and listening for the horse, treading as quietly as possible to keep from scaring him off if he should see him. As the talk and laughter from the cabin receded, other noises filled his awareness: leaves crackling under his feet, crickets creaking, an owl howling, unseen things scraping over the ground; he nearly stepped on a furry gold pillow he recognized in time as a sleeping fox; all these but no horse, either in the woods, as far as he could see by the light that filtered through the treetops, or on the road outside. He rested against a hazel tree.

Behind him he heard a snort and the soft thump of a pair of hooves—no, many pair—and a stifled cough. A band of riders was on the other side of the tree; the same bunch that had killed Mr. Brown, he figured. He could not run without being seen but maybe he could crawl. He began slowly to sink down. As his body pressed against the trunk, the bark crunched—unheard, probably, against the chorus of rustlings and soughings forced by the wind, but he could not be sure. He did not move again; not with them waiting so near. He braced himself to run if need be; meantime he waited too.

While Ben was sitting comfortably indoors, his wife was hastening through the street, shawl pulled about her, to bring him his hat before he left the store. That he seldom wore a hat even in winter did not discourage her; it was a wife's duty to keep at her husband about such matters. But alas, the back room was empty, and she had left little Ben alone. She must get back.

As she reached for the door handle the window beside her crashed and splintered. She hid her face. Something shot past her to the floor. Emerging from her fright as she saw what had happened, she picked it up; it was a square black rock. She raced out to the street. A man's back was just disappearing between the doors of the saloon. She had made a vow to the spirit of her late mother never to set foot in that place, even to bring her husband home. Now she prayed to the same spirit to forgive her, for she was about to break that vow.

The men at the tables were startled—all but one—to see her there after dark. Only an appearance by Lucy Dale, the chairwoman of the Temperance League, would have aroused greater dismay. But they did not have to wait to learn the cause of her visit, for she marched straightway to the nearest occupied table and brought the rock down onto it, shaking a bottle and two shot glasses that had been resting there. "Which one of you threw this?" she demanded. Now all understood and all averted their eyes.

Lottie flew out from the rear, where she had been taking a late supper, to ask what the ruckus was. She halted at the sight of the new visitor. "Not often our little tearoom boasts the pleasure of your company," she said.

Emily ignored the jibe. "A man smashed our window and ran in here. I'll be grateful if you'll be good enough to tell me who it was." Her embarrassment at being seen in those dingy surroundings showed only a little through the fire of her indignation.

"I'd hand him over in a second, honey, but I've been in back." She surveyed the room. "How about it, gents? Can any of you assist the lady?" They stared into their drinks or at the sawdust and peanut shells on the floor. "Fine crop we're seeing this year," she observed acidly.

One of the men—they could not be sure which because he did not look up—answered in a surly tone, "Obie was a friend of our'n." Others grumbled assent.

"A friend," said Emily. "So you come and do your mischief by night with your face hidden. Just as those men did to him. What he would have thought looking at you—what any decent man would think. It makes me..." She stood for a moment, then marched to the bar, and asked the last question Lottie would have expected of her. "How much is a bottle of whiskey?"

"A bottle of—? Four bits. I mean, one dollar." Emily searched for her change purse but it was not with her. "I'll put it on Ben's account," Lottie said helpfully. Emily had not known Ben had an account there. She thanked Lottie, and begged her pardon in advance for what she was about to do. As Lottie watched in curiosity she upraised the tall brown bottle—perpetual object of loathing to her—and brought it down against the counter with all the force she could summon, shattering it entirely.

The men at the tables stared aghast. Proceeding from her, the act constituted a gross violation of their most basic proprieties. The bottleneck was the only piece remaining in her hand. She laid it down. "You think there's no wrath in me?" she cried at them. "Or malice, or envy? Toward people who have more than we do? Toward people I secretly disdain?" Not as secretly as all that, Lottie thought. "I could surrender to my feelings, and hate and break and destroy. But I won't—because I'm a civilized woman, and I want my child to grow up in a civilized community." The men were listening soberly. She approached them. "My husband made a mistake. Ask him, he won't deny it. But which of you hasn't made the same mistake? You can't tell me you haven't because I've heard you. A man's entitled to make an occasional mistake." She had not known before she believed that. "But none of us is entitled to..." Finding herself where she had deposited the rock, she picked it up. "...cast the first stone," she concluded.

Lottie watched her with pride for all their sex. One of the men dug into his pocket and cast some coins on a table. "It was me throwed it," he confessed. "I'll set ye in a new window tomorrow."

Emily said she would appreciate that and was sure Ben would too. She became aware that the men were looking at her with a kind of respect they had never shown her before. She suddenly felt shy. She returned to the bar and examined the gash she had made in the wood. "Sorry to have marred your counter," she said.

"Honey, it was worth it to hear you. Don't believe I ever heard you say more than six words together before. You should speak your piece more often—it suits you. Jason Bolt couldn't have put it better himself. You ever want a job, you're welcome to one here any time."

Not wholly comfortable with the terms of this praise, and anxious to be getting home, Emily yet could not leave without offering to mop up. "Wouldn't hear of it," said Lottie. "That's what barmaids are for." Emily bade her and the men good night and said she would look forward to seeing them at the store.

The storekeeper himself had finished doling out what he had owed to a crowd that, verifying Raphael's philosophy, had grown downright congenial. Only one creditor was absent. Gabriel informed him Miss Rose Bell had moved to Duwamish to live with her nephew, who worked at the sawmill there.

Lucinda hushed them. She had heard sounds outside, sounds like those that had frightened Christopher. She ordered Gabe to fetch the squirrel gun from the corner. "You won't need any squirrel gun," said Ben. Over their protests he ran out to the porch.

No riders were to be seen. Danged cowards! "Hey, come out where I can see you!" he shouted. The others crowded out behind him. Gabe had brought the gun after all. "Okay," Ben continued, "then I'll talk to you where you're hidin'." He stepped into the road. "Now see here. I'm Benjamin T. Perkins, the proprietor of Perkins Mercantile, and I'm warnin' you to leave these people alone. They're my neighbors, see? And if you got a bone to pick with them you'll have to—to pick my bones first. So jist skedaddle outa here. You hear me? Go on, git!"

A row of horsemen trotted out from behind the cabins. In the lead was Aaron Stempel. "Glad to hear you say so, Ben," he said. The men at his back included the new blacksmith and that logger who was part Greek. "Everything all right here?" Aaron asked.

"Yes, sir," said Lucinda, "thank you for inquiring." She glanced at Ben. "Everything is fine."

"We formed a committee to patrol a few nights, just in case."

"Right good of you," said Rafe, in a tone that might have been ironic.

"No more than I'd do for any other citizen," Aaron returned, in the same tone. "Ben. Ma'am." He and his men rode off. Christopher was desperate to signal them but could not work out a means of doing it without exposing himself to the men behind him. Once the patrol was no longer heard they left also, keeping to a slow walk and never saying a word. It appeared the patrol had routed them for the night.

Ben made his goodbyes over the wind's attempts to smother them and asked Gabe how long it would take to get to Duwamish. On foot, as he had arrived, it would take most of a day's walk, and in that wind... "It is a tad brisk," Ben admitted. But he had no such notion. He planned to borrow Old Tom's wagon and Adolphus's mule that pastured alongside it. The boys had offered him the use of them, and for tonight's errand he thought that especially fitting. He was sure the boys would raise no objection, since they were still in jail (he had passed them on the way), probably forgotten about by everyone except him.

"If you're set on goin', I'll ride with you," Gabe offered. Ben thanked him but declined: this was something he had to do on his own. He looked at Lucinda as he said it. She nodded in understanding.

Now that matters were straightened out except for what was owing to Miss Bell, to whose residence Gabe had furnished directions, Ben felt as if a yoke had fallen from his shoulders. He was glad of that and glad his penance had been no harder. Yet he felt there was more to be said, and if no one else would say it he ought to. Within the limits of his experience he hardly knew how to begin. Still, he had to, even if he did it badly; better that than not do it at all.

"Ma'am, I..." He faltered. She waited. "You tended Junior that time Em was ailing. Didn't have to, you just done it. I was so worried about her I never thanked you properly. Mighta thanked Obie. I ain't sure." He tried to recall and then realized he was off the point. "Thing is, the two of you been mighty good neighbors to us. Then I go and..." He drooped his head. He felt as shabby as ever a man did and he took satisfaction from the feeling; it was what he deserved. "If you druther take your trade somewheres else, I wouldn't blame you none."

She laid a hand on his arm. "Anyone can make an error...counting change. All one can ask is that he make the account come right. You've done that. Put it behind you."

He looked at her with gratitude. "You're a forgiving soul."

"No," she corrected him gently, "I'm a forgiven soul. I confess it. In the first part of my life I looked down on the rest of humanity. No matter that I was a slave. I regarded myself as a princess among commoners—a princess betrayed into bondage, but a princess. I believe that my servitude was laid on me to teach me humility. But it only drove me to cling to my pride. Otherwise I could not have survived, body or soul. It took freedom, and my Obie, to teach me the good in being one among many. I had had no friends. Now I have—and from tonight I count you as one. And I would not give them up for a treasure house full of brass and ivory. My airs and graces are all gone." Not all, Ben thought; not nearly. "My only care is to find the men who killed my Obie. Gabriel says it was an accident. If it be so, I accept it. But whatever measure of guilt is theirs, I want retribution meted out to them in the same measure. If that's vengeance..."

"As a merchant," Ben replied, "I'd say it was a fair price." He wished her good night. As he started across the road Rafe called after him to watch out for the wind. Certainly it had grown stronger. Ben felt as if it might pull the coat off his back. But mostly it bypassed the valley where the mule sat and Ben was able to hitch her up with little trouble. It was more difficult to persuade her to leave that haven for the wind-wracked wilds above, but between the snap of the buggy whip and assorted commands, threats, and entreaties he soon had her on the road making south.

Christopher waited till the residents had retired to their houses. He did not want them to see him, for he ought not to have been there and he supposed that, being grown-ups, they would know it. He ran out through the hedge into the road, which stretched both ways, stark in the moonlight. Past the line of cabins it followed a small rise that marked the start of the hills. He turned for a last look at it.

He found the horse staring back at him.

Standing at the top of the rise, weight tilted toward his forelegs, nose down, he kept his huge black eyes fixed on the boy. The snowy skin shone in the ethereal light. The muscles rippled along his flanks and down his long back and neck. He was not white everywhere, after all; here and there were daubs of grey and pink. Even so, he was the most beautiful horse Christopher had ever seen. And the most frightening, but not as Christopher had expected, not as a harbinger of death but as some fabled primeval being like a unicorn or a dragon; perhaps even an angel.

With a low rolling snort, he whipped around and started off at a prancing lope, then halted and turned his head, eyeing the boy questioningly. Christopher looked toward home. He made his decision almost at once, if it had not been made already. He ran after the horse, ready to go whitherso he led. The rest of the town was indoors, nestling in cozy beds or at warm hearths. He was leaving them behind, even those in Irontown, at the outermost edge of the collective life, and entering the spacious, wind-swept hills, lightly pocked with the tops of farmhouses. Soon he passed beyond them into the wilderness, always climbing, so that before he knew it he was able, turning, to look down on Seattle as on a toy town, left out for the night where some child had been playing with it at the edge of a pond. The pond, he realized in a rush of awe, was the Sound. He had never seen it from God's perspective before.

The stallion had disappeared, as he had at every bend, only to reappear farther on. This time he remained unseen for several minutes before re-emerging atop a steep slope. He must know a hidden path up, but Christopher could not search for it in the dark; his only way cut across the hillside. So rapidly did he scramble in fear of losing the trail that he tripped over the roots of a grey and dying fir. This hill was unworked, not like those at the Bolt camp; here the trees that fell did so by act of nature and lay and rotted where they had fallen. One of them lay in his path, its branches curving upwards like the ribs of a great ox. He grabbed one of the smallest and hoisted himself over.

As he climbed, his shoes crackled the leaves under them and crunched down on chunks of bark and half-buried pine cones. The wind barked at his cheeks. The backs of his legs began to ache. He stepped on a severed branch, buried in detritus; its end popped up and knocked him in the knee. He stopped for breath against a spotted rock, on which he rested his hand; it landed on a string of wet moss. He immediately pulled it away and wiped it on his trousers, already smeared with dirt. He looked up. Now he was but a few yards from the top. He could not see the stallion but expected he would again.

When he did he almost despaired. Behind him lay the angle of the hill amid a confusion of other hills at other angles, with the white-faced mountains leaning in from above. The view made him dizzy, though the thinner air no doubt had something to do with it as well. That lay behind; ahead stood what looked at first to be a sheer cliff face with the horse posed on its brow, looking as if he only needed wings to mount to the heavens. Again he must have known a passage up, but Christopher could not see it. He inspected the ascent before him, which was not as impossible as it had looked at first. There were trees jutting out from it, and the rocks made steps that would take him up partway. After that he would see.

The face was nearly vertical but with a concavity in the middle like a gully stood on end, to which the rocks had gravitated. A trickle of water clicked between them and by its drips and splashes kept some surfaces permanently slick, as he discovered when he took a step, slid, and fell between the rocks to hit his shoulder on them. Ignoring the smart, he stumbled to his feet and nearly slipped again, this time for surprise, as a lizard darted out between his legs. He continued more carefully up the rockfall. It ended a little short of the crest, but by standing on the outermost protruding boulder he was able to grab onto the dipping bough of a small vine maple, whose trunk he shinnied up to a womblike cleft in the rock. This he inched up with care. A misstep could throw him out onto the rock pile or, if he missed it, all the way to the base, probably breaking his neck. But the luck of expeditionary boys was with him, and after safely negotiating the eye-shaped hollow he pulled himself up between two fringes of grass onto level ground. From the air soaring over him he knew he had reached the top. He lay there a minute or two, his face in the cool grass, smelling it, catching his breath, relaxing in his success, his feet dangling in the gap. Then he reclaimed them and sat up to see where he had got to.

It was a new world. Under the brilliantly starred sky the mountains surrounding him were lower than before yet somehow seemed farther off. Between them to the forest at all edges stretched a meadow of tall grass rippling in the wind, which blew more gently here, though the air was colder. In the middle of the meadow stood the stallion. He lowered and raised his fine-boned head, tossed his mane, and cried out to the great round moon. Christopher began to creep toward him. The stallion snorted and ran off a few yards. Christopher stopped.

"Careful," came a whisper behind him. The unexpectedness of it caused him nearly to fall over. He turned to see a man resting on his haunches under the trees. His face was the color of coffee. Against it his teeth showed white as the stallion himself. "You don't want to scare him," he said.

In the chamber where Christopher's journey had started, Molly lay sleepless. The wind was moaning and things were flapping and clapping in it. She did not like to think of him being at its mercy. As she concentrated hard to blot out the noises, a ghost in nightgown and nightcap appeared at the edge of the partition. She shut her eyes, feigning sleep. When she opened them the ghost was gone.

It re-appeared two seconds later. She shut her eyes again and did not peek as she heard it move past her. She guessed from the sound that it was throwing down the covers of the neighboring bed. The pillows had looked too much like an otter, after all.

"I know you're awake," said Candy, "so you can stop pretending." Molly turned to her. Candy asked where her brother was. Molly said she did not know. "I can tell when you're fibbing too."

"I'm not! I don't know." But absolute truthfulness impelled her to add, "...exactly."

"And inexactly?"

"He went to find that horse."

Candy dressed as fast as she could. At the foot of the street she met Emily heading in the same direction. Ben also had gone out to Irontown and was not home yet and ought to have been. "You don't think anything's happened to them?" she asked. Candy tried to put the possibility out of both their minds. They hurried up the street in tandem, capes blowing behind them.

On the plateau the black man continued to watch the white horse, who had returned to his grazing. Christopher began to wonder as much about the watcher. He was wearing a knee-length canvas coat, black flannel shirt, red bandana, and dun woolen pants with buckskin wedges on the insides of the legs. His clothes looked as though he might have sewn them himself; certainly he was far too tall to fit into store-bought. Under the trees stood his kit: a single-cinched saddle with long hangings at the sides, a bedroll wrapped in canvas, and a sugar sack that served as a carry-all. Along the side of the saddle ran a leather scabbard which cradled the biggest axe Christopher had ever seen.

The man continued to speak softly. "He's used to my scent," he explained, "but not yours. Get too close, he's liable to bolt and I'll have to go traipsin' after him again—'ceptin' I wait here for him to come back."

The two of them studied him as he stood equipoised on both pairs of legs while his jaws pulled at the grass, tail blowing from side to side like a palm leaf. "Then he's not a devil horse," said Christopher.

"Find that out soon enough," the big man said with a chuckle.

Christopher did not know what he meant and was not sure he wanted to. "You live up here?"

The man laughed. "Nobody lives up here that I know of." He had a thought. "'less you do." Christopher's decisive shake of the head made him laugh again. "Me, I stop below once a year to visit a friend of mine. Maybe you know him—he's round about your age. Charlie Bates?"

Christopher had suspected the man's identity but could hardly believe it. "You're Ox!" Then he remembered. "Sorry—Mr. Bates."

Ox smiled. "Either'll do. More I thought on it, more I come to reckon the ox as a highly respectable critter. Not his fault he was made a beast of burden." His face grew grave for a moment. "Not his fault no way."

"Charlie told me about you. I thought he made you up."

Ox laughed the hardest he had so far, momentarily forgetting about the horse, who perked his ears and bounded farther out into the meadow. "Maybe he did, at that," Ox said. "Just maybe he did."

Christopher recited from memory: "Lay 'pon one, job get done. Lay 'pon two, job yet to do. Lay 'pon three, you won't catch me." He looked at Ox. "Charlie said he learned that from you. That how it goes?"

Ox grinned. "That's how it goes." Christopher grinned back, pleased to have found a tie, however slight, to his new acquaintance. The two of them regarded each other with about equal curiosity. "Most white boys'd be shy around a man of color," Ox said, "but not you. How come that is?"

Now it was Christopher's turn to laugh, but he remembered the horse's presence and checked himself. "Mister, I'm from New Bedford. There's bushels of free blacks in New Bedford. Always have been."

Ox's eyes lit up. "New Bedford! I know that place." He slid over and rummaged in his bag, from which he took out a book. Christopher crawled to his side and bent to peer at the scarred brown calf cover. My Bondage and My Freedom, it read. Ox told him the author was Frederick Douglass. Christopher's eyes lit up. "Learned to read so's I could read this," said Ox. "One of the two books I've read clear through. Other was The Pilgrim's Progress. That's about a black man too—a man with a burden." Christopher, who had read some of it in school, thought of correcting him and then wondered if he might be right, after all. Ox opened the use-worn volume and turned quickly to the desired passage. As he read, it sounded as if he were half quoting from memory:

Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world.

He shut the book. "That's New Bedford."

"I met him!" said Christopher. Only politeness had restrained him from breaking in before.

"Met? Who?" Then, amazed: "Frederick Douglass!"

The story poured out in a flood. His big sister had taken him and his other sister to hear Mr. Douglass give a speech. He was the finest speechifier Christopher had ever heard; even finer than Jason Bolt. Ox smiled, remembering Jason. After the speech they had gone up and shaken his hand.

Ox wiped his own hand on his shirt. "Sir—don't believe I caught the name—" Christopher gave it. "Mr. Pruitt, will you permit me to shake the hand of a New Bedford man that's shook the hand of Frederick Douglass?" Behind the mock-solemnity he was genuinely impressed, and this flattered Christopher no end. "Shook the hand of Frederick Douglass," Ox repeated wonderingly, staring at his own which had now, at it were, done the same at one remove.

Presently he returned his attention to the horse. Christopher asked what he planned to do with him. "Mount him," said Ox. "Tried twice before but one of us wasn't ready."

"You aim to ride him? A wild horse like that?"

Ox explained he was not entirely wild—"half or three-quarters maybe, now." His feet were shod; he was a mustang, a stray. Probably he had belonged to the cavalry, who could not handle him, and he had run off, or been let run off. "Some critters can't be broke. Men too. Him and me's a pair that way. I don't claim it as a virtue. Times I'da give in if I could, spared myself a whipping. 'spect he'd say the same if he could talk." Ox had been moving with him ever since the night he had woken to find him nosing in his campfire, grazing on the charred leaves at its edges. When he had attempted an approach the horse had run off but had returned the next day. "Not sure if I'm sticking to him," said Ox, "or the other way about." A couple of times, the horse had eluded him; those were the times he had been seen in Seattle.

"People say he's a ghost horse."

"He's no common horse. You've had nightmares, ain't you? This is the night stallion that chases 'em. Runs 'em up the canyons of midnight." He said it like an incantation.

"People say when he comes someone dies."

"Could be it's the other way round and he can sniff out death. Critters know things we don't. Could be his rider died on him and he goes where death is, looking for him—hunting a dead man."

"Are there other horses with him?"

"Could be they're hid up in these mountains somewhere. But I don't believe he runs with a herd. That's another way we're alike."

Christopher had been so far absorbed in his chase and in learning all he could from his new acquaintance that he had forgotten he ought to be sleepy. Now his body reminded him of it by seizing him in a profound yawn. He tried to put up a fight but could not keep it up: his vessel had been boarded and surrender was inescapable. "You go on and sleep," Ox told him. "I won't be sleeping tonight." Christopher compliantly tipped over, legs bent up to his chin, one arm pillowing his head. Ox removed his coat and laid it over him. "'night, New Bedford."

He was not asleep yet but the view before his eyes rippled and shimmered. He shut them, and opened them a moment later—was it?—to see Ox (holy sakes, he was tall!) loping out into the meadow, saddle slung over his shoulder, a bridle cut out of a trousers belt dangling from his free hand. When he got to within eight or nine yards of his destination the horse's ears crooked toward him. He stopped, lowered the saddle quietly, and sat on it facing the horse, hands under his chin. Then the view turned to blackness.

When Christopher next opened his eyes—had he been asleep?—Ox was at the horse's nose, rubbing an iron bit against the teeth. To Christopher's vague surprise, the jaws parted to receive it. Blackness again; then a last glimpse (if he did not imagine it) of the coffee-colored man astride the ridge of the white back, firmly holding to his seat as the animal arched and kicked and then shot off like fury over the tall grass kicking up clods of dirt till he disappeared into the blackness; the blackness that now overtook Christopher utterly.

When he woke again the night was damp, and colder than it had been. He looked around. The man and the horse were gone. He was scared. He was not sure if he would be able to descend as he had ascended or, if he were, in what direction home lay. He walked out to the middle of the field and made a full circle as he surveyed the perimeter. In his fretfulness he did not hear the pounding on the earth behind him, which began far off and grew nearer and nearer till it was upon him and he felt the ground shudder under the swift, steady blows of those hooves. As he turned, a black figure riding a white wave bent and swept him up in one arm and plumped him down between himself and the saddle horn to nestle against the warm flannel of his shirt behind the bobbing, blowing mane. He felt as if he were being borne on the wind in surging leaps with short lulls between as they galloped toward the edge and then over, a little leftward of where he had climbed up. He was sure they would fly off into space but instead they tipped down, so sharply and suddenly his stomach left him and he was afraid he would be catapulted into the chasm, but he held fast to the pommel and the man's large legs pressed on his, holding them, as down they rode and down, back to the world he knew.

In that world where men lay asleep, two were roused by a pounding at their door only a little less importunate than the pounding of those hoofbeats. "Is it dawn?" one of them asked groggily. He knew otherwise as soon as his eyes took in the darkness of the cabin.

"What imbecile would come knocking at this hour?" said the other.

"Jeremy!" a girl's voice called in. "Wake up!"

"Shoulda known," said Joshua. When Jeremy showed no sign of life he answered the door himself, throwing it wide open to reveal his new red long johns. That would show Cancan, as he liked to call her (though only behind her back); serve her darn well right.

The additional, less familiar presence, he had not expected. "Mrs.—ma'am!" he said, his cheeks reflecting his suit. He pulled the door shut far enough to hide his nakedness.

"Christopher's missing," said Candy, trying to peer past him. "Is Jeremy here?"

"Ben too," said Emily.

"They were going to Irontown. We looked there—"

"At this time of night? That was stupid."

Jason decided it was time for him to take over. "Soul of tact, my brother," he said, shoving Joshua aside. He reopened the door, revealing himself in his nightshirt. But he did not mind who saw. Emily noticed again what a fine-looking man he was—though she personally did not care for the type, she reminded herself. Nevertheless she lowered her eyes out of temptation's way (which she had not bothered to do for Joshua). "Did you ask in Irontown if they'd seen them?"

"Everyone was in bed," said Candy. "We didn't like to disturb them so late."

"Just us," Joshua noted.

"I'm certain there's nothing to worry about," Jason said. Did anyone ever say so when it was so? his brother wondered. "What with the wind, they probably asked to be put up for the night."

"At Lucinda's?" Emily asked, frowning.

"No," Jason said soothingly, "not necessarily at Lucinda's. With one of the men." He urged them to wait at home (out of the way) and promised he and his brothers would let them know as soon as there was anything to be known.

"All of you?" asked Candy, whose eye had at last discerned Jeremy's inert form.

"Yes, all of us. Up, wee bairn!"

Emily obtained Candy's consent to wait with her at the dormitory and they returned down the hill while the two Bolts changed clothes, punctuating the action with holloas aimed at their lifeless third. "Astounding," said Jason.

"Observe and learn," said Joshua. He leaned down and crooned in Jeremy's ear. "Have a care, brother. Candy's gone out for a buggy ride with that handsome new logger."

Jeremy's lids parted. "She wha'?" Joshua grinned smugly. Jeremy sat up with a grunt. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Too late," Jason informed him. "Your young lady just came calling."

"Candy? Why didn't you wake me?" His brothers stared down at him. Since the urgency of the moment precluded their acting on the suggestion Joshua advanced—to smother him with his own pillow—Jason simply told him to hurry and get dressed.

While Emily sat in Candy's kitchen taking a cup of cocoa (the strongest libation she permitted herself) her husband was making his way back to Seattle at a pace that varied with the dispositions of his mule and the wind in whose teeth he was driving. He smiled regardless all the while, musing on the workings of providence.

What had happened to him was this: At the crossroads where one arm led to Duwamish, the fingerboard that normally pointed the way had blown down, leaving no clue which was right. "Dang!" said Ben. He had the directions to Miss Bell's nephew's from the store at Duwamish but they presumed he could find the town. He thought it lay to the left, but on the other hand it might be to the right. He had not been there, he guessed, in ten years. He sat a while considering and eventually decided, waveringly, on the left.

A mile or so farther the mule halted. Ben began to drive her on, then stopped as he saw the reason: a dead oak, felled like the signboard, barricading the path. "Double dang!" he said. He climbed down and made an effort to move it, which proved hopeless unaided, let alone with the wind champing at him. He could have driven around it but the forest on both sides was too shrubby and the ground too humpy with roots for him to be sure of getting through. He could continue on foot if the wind permitted but he could not swear he was on the right road and he might end up nowhere. Yet if he turned around and took the road back past the crossroads in the other direction he might still end up nowhere. For that matter he might be nowhere now.

But no; through the trees on the right he could see a light, like the light of a window, only multicolored: red, blue, green. Must be an illusion, he thought, some reflection off a creek or pond. If it were a house, he could ask directions. But he did not like to do that.

Not that he was shy of asking help from strangers. He had done so often on his buying trips in the old days—that is, before his marriage. Emily had not liked his being away so long; she had not said so but he could tell. He believed she doubted his power to resist the allurements of the metropolitan panoply, or perhaps the doubt was his own. Anyhow, nowadays what buying he could not accomplish through catalogs or drummers, Aaron or Jason did for him when their own business took him to the city, and the arrangement satisfied him overall. But every so often he would feel the urge to go again and shake hands and talk familiarly with other men of business and feel himself part of their gang. He would go for sure, one of these times.

And when he did he might again ask the way of strangers, who as always would be happy to oblige, and as always he would enjoy being seen in the role of a sophisticated commercial traveler. Yet this evening he was hesitant. He was not proud of the reason but admitted it: he dreaded asking because he dreaded being asked whom he was going to see. Miss Rose Bell? he imagined some farmer saying (some farmer who looked and sounded a lot like Adolphus). Why, don't you know she's—

"Need help?" came a shout from the trees, the same trees through which shone the mysterious light and in the middle of which now appeared a nearer and clearer light, belonging to a lantern.

Ben shouted back over the wind. "The tree won't budge. Not a dang lick!"

"And I bet that was just the way you were needing to go."

"If it'll take me to Duwamish."

"No, no, that's the other way. Not far, though. Not far." The man had nearly cleared the wood. "There's folks from Duwamish in my congregation."

The light, as of varicolored glass, and the white band showing at the man's neck as he stepped out from the thicket united in a flash of revelation. "You a preacher?" Ben would never have thought to consult a preacher, but now that one had presented itself—that is, himself—"I could stand to talk to a preacher."

He had never sought a moral philosophy; for him it was enough to work out each difficulty as it arose. But this business of cheating folks—how had that happened? The seed of it had been planted in his talks with the boys, he knew, but there was nothing wrong with talking. Nothing wrong either with protecting the town's good character; Emily worried about it enough. He recognized flickeringly that there was a difference between her behavior and his, but having got so far he refused to go farther, like the mule he had been driving. After all, he was not a bad fella, he just went along from day to day doing his best, yet this time things had got mixed up in his mind and were still mixed up. Why? A preacher could sort it out for him.

Only this one, as the lantern revealed beyond the possibility of mistaking, was black. Ben exclaimed despite himself. Only once before in his life had he seen a black preacher. "Oh, sorry"—why was he sorry?—"I didn't know..."

The man stopped a foot from him. "Know what?" After a moment he understood. "That this is a black ministry? It isn't—not altogether. The congregation includes three Salish, two Russians, and the occasional commercial traveler like yourself. I minister to all who have a need." Ben's face was all squints and tics as different feelings moved him one way and another. "But if you'd feel more confident of your prayers being heeded in another church—"

"It's not that. It's..." He had a sudden insight. "You know a Miss Rose Bell?"

"She's one of my congregants."

"Well, I'll be—oh, Reverend, sorry. Reckon you could point me the way to her place?"

"What you want with Miss Bell?" Did he sound mistrustful or only curious? Either way, Ben could not easily tell him the truth. The preacher studied him for a little. "Pardon me, I'm not the one to say, but could it be the Lord guided your steps to this place for a purpose?"

Ben pondered. "It is the only black church I've seen in these parts." That had sounded like an insult. "I didn't mean—"

"Only one in three hundred miles," the preacher said, and then laughed. "Listen to me—talking as if a want of churches was something to brag about."

Ben was still pondering. "You know, if it wasn't for the sign bein' down—"

"Again? I'll see it's put back up."

"No, but if it wasn't for that I'd never have got lost in the first place." He looked toward the colored window. "Only one in three hundred miles. Almost like—"

"Like you weren't lost at all." The preacher nodded. "You can take that for a sign. Whatever you got to tell—and it's plain it's rattling the bars inside you—time you let it out."

"You won't want anything to do with me after you hear it."

"Then I'd best hear it."

They retired out of the wind to the church: a smaller church than Seattle's but somehow more solid, as if it had put out roots. Side by side on a pew, Ben told his story and the preacher listened. When it was done he sat frowning. "You must take me for a pretty ornery fella," Ben said miserably.

"No, sir," the preacher said, "no, sir. What strikes my mind—you'll pardon me for saying so—is what a measly excuse for a sinner you are. Goin' to all the trouble to cheat people, and all you got out of it was a lousy eight bucks! Hardly seems worth the trouble." He did not sound much like Reverend Adams in Seattle. "You offer that up at the gates of Hell thinkin' it'll be your ticket inside and Satan's apt to kick your sorry hindquarters back upstairs. Wouldn't even earn you an overnight stop." He laughed deeply.

Ben had felt his act might be wicked but not insignificant. Now he remembered Emily had said the same. "Don't amount to much, does it?"

The preacher had risen and was pacing with his hands behind him. "Let me ask you this. When you saw this man—Obie Brown?—lyin' dead in the road, were you happy about it? I know you wouldn't tell me." He crooked a finger skyward. "Tell Him. He'll know if it's so."

"No!" said Ben, shocked at the suggestion. "Obie was a fine man."

"Fine man. I see, I see. And you were wanting him run out of town?"

"Not him. Well, not exactly."

"I see. His wife, then—pardon me, his widow. Was it her?"

"No, she's a princess. An honest-to-golly one from Africa."

The preacher scowled. "Not sure I hold with princesses. But then I never met one. Was it her you wanted to be rid of 'cause she don't keep to her place? Is that how it was?"

"No, I told you! She's just folks, once you get to know her."

"What about their neighbors? Low-down kind of people, are they?"

"I hardly know 'em. 'ceptin' Gabe. He's a good fella."

The preacher stopped pacing. "Then I'm confused. Yes, sir, I am mightily confused. Fine man, good fella—and a princess." He ticked them off on his fingers. "You said you wanted to clear out the bad element. Who was that exactly?"

This was beyond Ben's capacity. His mind hurt with the strain of thinking about it. "I don't know. Nobody, I guess."

"That's right!" the preacher said with gusto, pointing at him. "That's exactly right!" He was certainly not like Reverend Adams. "Wasn't nobody at all. Just an idea. Most dangerous thing in the world is an idea with no people in it. And the worst of it is, this one wasn't even yours."

"That's so!" He should have seen it before. "I had nothin' against Obie. I got nothin' against anybody." He felt mortified. "My gosh, Reverend, how'd I get so bad turned around?"

"Son, it's like that sign. Strong enough wind happens along, it can turn it around or knock it down altogether. You have to keep raisin' it back up so it faces the right way."

This advice inspired him to a proposition that would bring home the point and serve the commonweal at the same time. Even with the wind, the two of them should be able to manage it. He took a shovel along and they buried the sign four feet deeper. Only a hurricane could dislodge it now. The preacher invited Ben to sleep over, but though Ben would have been glad of the company—it was almost like talking to Emily—he said he had better get home. She would be anxious, and before seeing her he had to return the mule and the wagon. The preacher regarded their borrowing as doubtful policy but decided to say nothing about it in consideration of the hour and the greater moral lesson just imparted. Ben consigned Miss Bell's packet to his care and he promised to deliver it the next day. Ben left for home, and for Irontown.

Whatever the identities of the small band who were harrying the dwellers there, the patrol had only warded them off for a little. They had retreated to the water's edge north of town and sat there under the moon, waiting.

Someone else sat waiting too, under the trees by the cabins. After the patrollers had separated and most had gone home the blacksmith had circled back to take up watch. He planned to do so all night and every night if need be, sooner than let those men escape. He bore their brand—theirs or their spiritual comrades-in-arms', it made little difference—and bore also the memory of its imprinting. Every time he burned himself, as every smith was used to doing, it recalled the sickening agony of the red iron edge eating into his flesh, into his heart, clear through to his backbone. He had screamed and they had laughed, as they had laughed when they paid off his striker. From that night he had rejoiced every time he heard of a slave uprising. But he had also vowed to himself to do everything in his power to change the moral balance in favor of his people, which included the private satisfaction of hunting down his enemies wherever they showed themselves. Tonight's watch was part of the campaign.

Some time between midnight and dawn the riders descended on Irontown. Their faces were hidden except for the jagged eyeholes cut in the bandanas tied round their heads. They brandished torches whose fiery tops danced in the wind. Till now they had only waved the fire about, content to let the crackling threat of its orange talons speak for itself. But tonight (if it was their doing and not the wind's) they touched off a bush—a burning bush like the one God showed to Moses. The flames lunged sideways, clutched onto a wagon and set it alight, then spread to the nearest porch. All the while the riders paraded back and forth, hooting and screeching behind their masks, the horses squealing in concert.

Men, women, and children ran out of their houses. Rafe was carrying a shotgun. Lucinda shouted a warning at him. The rider who was leading the others had brought out a pistol from under his coat. He had set his sights on Rafe and was close enough to kill, only as he leveled the barrel an axe somersaulted past him so close it sliced through his coat sleeve and carried away a patch of flesh. He cried out, dropped the gun, and fell from his saddle. The axe buried itself in a wall. Lucinda turned to the road from which it had been launched to see a proud black man riding a proud white stallion, both gilded by the fire and silvered by the moon. Even on the stage she had never seen anything like either one. The smoke and the frenzy were spinning round her. She felt herself spinning too.

Ox dropped Christopher at the top of the rise and rode into the clearing. When the stallion shied away from the fire Ox nudged him around it, letting him find his own footing. By instinct he knew the other horses for his enemies. He plunged into the midst of them, squealing and snapping. Ox saw a woman on a porch who looked about to faint. He cantered up and reached out a hand to steady her. She gazed up at their rescuer who had come down like lightning out of the night. "Who are you?" she asked, her breath coming quick.

He started to answer, then stopped and started again. "Bates is the name," he said. "Andrew Evan Bates."

"What good angel brought you?"

He looked back toward Christopher. "Got a report you were having paleface trouble." He grinned. "Came to have a look for myself."

"I'm glad—" she began. But the battle had revived, and Ox (as Christopher still thought of him) was off again. The raiders had been checked by the fall of their leader but now he was back on his feet, although unsteadily, searching for the man who had wounded him. His sleeve was steeped in blood. He spotted the axe in the wall and ran to claim it. Ox goaded the stallion in the same direction with the same purpose. He need not have hurried: the other man could not have dislodged the axe with both arms. Ox drew it out with ease. His adversary saw a smaller one planted in a stump, ran and plucked it out with his good arm, and turned on Ox, who swung out of the saddle to face him and slapped the stallion away, confident he could fend for himself.

By now most of Irontown's residents, with Gabe in charge, were occupied in pumping and heaving bucketfuls of water to fight the blaze. Only Rafe and one other entered the fray. But more allies appeared. A bearded man ran out of the trees wielding an enormous hammer. He swung it into two of the horsemen, knocking them from their seats. Three others dismounted to help them but were stopped by Rafe, who ran at them swinging his gun like a cudgel. A man who had just ridden in, whom Ox knew for a storekeeper, jumped down to stand at Rafe's side. Though he did not show it he had been quite a scrapper in his youth, and his long-disused skill reasserted itself in a rush of righteous wrath. He was joined by two of the Bolt brothers, also just arrived, while the youngest of them ran to help Gabe's party at the pump. The white stallion charged at the enemy horses, now riderless, who jointly mustered the courage to take him on. They were able to dodge his teeth but not, they found, his powerful, surely aimed hindlegs. After a few painful kicks they retreated to the edge of the clearing.

Ox found himself back to back with the bearded man. "Who in blazes are you?" he asked. "I might ask you the same," rejoined the other. They exchanged introductions and shook hands over their shoulders.

One of the intruders was still mounted, and hovering at the outskirts. Christopher saw he was smaller than the others, not much above his own size. The rider circled away as if starting to flee. Christopher ran up and seized his arm. The rider might have been able to strike back had he seen the attack coming but, unprepared, toppled off into the dust. Christopher jumped onto him. His opponent struggled and struck out but Christopher, filled with the heat of battle, outpummeled him easily.

Ox was winning his fight too. A dozen times or more the two men clashed axes, and with each joining of blades the wounded man staggered back farther, his weapon weighing heavier on him, till he saw it beheaded in one fierce sweep. Quailing, he fled toward the gulch. Out of nowhere, as it seemed, the white stallion reared up in front of him. He did not see in it the animal his foe had ridden in; it was the monster of legend, the death horse. He fell back screaming, tumbled into the pit of the valley, and lay still. The Bolts hurried over one at a time, Jeremy first. He skidded down the hill to the body and turned it over. He pulled off the mask, revealing a face none of them had seen before. There was a half-circle cut into the cheek which Jeremy recognized as the mark of a horseshoe.

"The hooves never touched him," said Joshua. "He must have hit a branch."

Jeremy searched the ground. "There is no branch."

The battle was over and the fire was out. Ox had suffered a nick on his hand. Though others had fared as badly, his was the wound Lucinda rushed to tend, wrapping it in one of her scarves. He knew who she was, had heard about her but somehow never gotten around to seeing her before. Well, he had seen her now.

The Bolts bunched the marauders together and ordered them to show their faces. The last to do so was the one Christopher had bested. He looked scarcely older than Christopher. "Anybody know these men?" Jason asked. "Christopher? He a schoolmate of yours?" Christopher shook his head.

"We ain't from here," said the other boy, sounding offended. "We're from Port Madison."

Jason was glad to know they were outsiders. "Heard there were night riders in Port Madison. Suppose that'll be you."

"Shoot, naw." The boy made a noise that might almost have been a laugh. "But they give Jim the idea. In Port Madison we know how to do to folks we don't want."

"Son," Jason said stonily, "so do we."

"He's dead," Joshua informed the boy, with a nod across the road. "Was he your pa?"

The boy accepted the news with seeming ease. "Naw, that was Jim. He was the smart one. He seen after us." Joshua looked around at the ones who had not volunteered speech. Their eyes were dull, their countenances slackly sullen. "It was Jim's idea to ferry over and scare off your coloreds," the boy said. "Do y'all a favor."

Jeremy could not contain his outrage. "You killed a man!"

"Jim never killed him. He tried to unhorse Jim. Jim kicked him down. He never got up. Serve him right for layin' hands on a white man. That was what Jim said. But he never killed him. Only kicked him down. Serve him right."

"Why did you come back?" asked Joshua. "You must have known we'd be looking for you."

"With one dead your coloreds was sure to be scared. We come back to scare 'em some more. It was Jim's idea. He was the smart one. He seen after us."

Joshua looked to Jason, whose expression matched what he was feeling: a compound of anger, pity, and helplessness. "What will you do with them?" asked Jeremy. Jason had no ready answer.

Within the hour he had delivered Ben and Christopher to the women waiting, who nearly collapsed in their relief. The bruises and scratches, the stains on Christopher's clothes—whatever had he been doing?—for once appeared not to worry them. Ben faced Emily shyly. She could tell by looking that his pilgrimage was done. "It's good to have you back," she said.

A tall black man was standing outside. Candy tried to remember where she had seen him before. "Aren't you—"

"Mr. Bates," said Jason. "The man who brought your brother home."

Candy entreated him to come in. The place exhaled a gentility that made him hesitate. He asked if she were sure about that. Christopher, impatient with the whole business, ran out and dragged him in by the arm. "I told you, mister. My sisters and me—we're from New Bedford!"

Ben had one matter of business yet to attend to. Not the window, which had been broken and was being replaced today, for no reason Emily would explain; or the new sign, which he had conceived on the way home and had already painted and nailed up: "A fair price for every customer. If you observe dealings to the contrary, consult the proprietor"; or the introduction of Emily and little Ben to the business; or the restoration of custom, of which he had seen none all morning but for which he felt he had no right to beg.

No, the business he had yet to do involved the two men who staggered in, as he knew they would sooner or later, with the intention of taking up their accustomed seats by the stove. He blocked their way. "Got some things to say to you boys," he began. "First off, I want to thank you for the loan of the mule and wagon. Second, you're welcome to trade here any time you've a mind to. This store is in business to serve everybody—everybody," he emphasized. "But I can't have you two loafing around here any more, being as you're jailbirds and all. Em's going to be working here times and bringing my boy in and—well, it wouldn't be fitting." The boys nodded in doleful agreement. He could have left it at that, but his conscience, now firmly fixed, would not permit it. "Added to which, I just can't go along with your way of thinking. Don't know why I ever took up with you in the first place. You're a pretty sorry pair and that's a fact." They looked grumpy but drifted off without a word. Emily came and kissed him. "You look some pleased," he said, "considering I mighta drove off our only trade."

She smiled. "It's early yet. You'll see."

And by gum if she wasn't right as usual. Soon one of their neighbors stopped in, followed soon after by another, and before he knew it the place was as crowded as it had ever been except at Christmastime. One of the crowd was Raphael, whom Ben was especially happy to see, judging that if he was satisfied everything must be all right. Lottie was there too. She murmured a good morning to Rafe, as if for the second time, and cupped her hand in the cradle of his arm; only for a moment, but one not missed by Emily, who wrinkled her brow and then on further consideration relaxed it. After all, this was her community; hers and Ben's. She went and cupped her hand in his arm.

The two of them were present at Obie Brown's service, along with everybody else who had known him, which encompassed all of Jason's camp and nearly the whole town. It took place on the mountain in the loggers' yard, among the grey slabs that were the last known addresses and only permanent record of his brethren that had gone before. For the eulogy Ben had suggested inviting the preacher from Duwamish (whose name, he subsequently learned to his delight, was the Reverend Benjamin), and the Reverend Adams had also prepared a few words, which he was reluctant to file away in a drawer. So Obie received the distinction, uncommon in his trade, of being eulogized twice. Jason would have made it thrice but chose to respect the temperance of the occasion as befit the honoree.

Lucinda appeared in a black wrap thinly striped in brown and violet, tinged with gold. She led the hymn—that is, what the men of the cloth had expected to be a hymn, perhaps an African one, as her dress promised. Instead she had picked what seemed to her most fitting, Obie's favorite song and, improbably, the thing that had inspired him to take up lumberjacking. The crowd listened intently, the tall coffee-colored man most of all, as she began.

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.

The listeners who had smiled at first were swayed by the purity of her voice and the lament it conveyed, not for the tree of the song but for the man who had spent most of his days among trees. She reached out to Joshua, who was standing nearby. He came up, took her hand, and united his voice with hers.

It was my forefather's hand
That placed it near his cot.
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy axe shall harm it not.

Joshua motioned to his younger brother to join them. He knew the lyrics too; everyone who sang at all had learned them at some time. He clasped Joshua's hand and the three sang together.

That old familiar tree,
Whose glory and renown
Are spread o'er land and sea,
And wouldst thou hew it down?

Obie's cousins stepped up and Jason invited himself to link hands with the others, forming a cordon along one side of the pine box.

Woodman, forbear thy stroke
But not its earth-bound ties;
Oh, spare that aged oak,
Now towering to the skies!

Next the ministers joined the formation, and after them the others who had known Obie best, each clasping the hand of his neighbor, to make a solid hedge two rows deep around the coffin and the grave.

When but an idle boy
I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here too my sisters played.

In escaping from slavery Obie had been parted from his sisters. He had heard later one of them had died in her childbed; the other, he had had no further knowledge of. Tears rolled freely down Lucinda's cheeks and some others', including Jason's.

My mother kissed me here,
My father pressed my hand—
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that old oak stand!

By now all who knew the song, including Molly and Christopher, were singing in chorus, remembering the man whose favorite it had been and hoping he could hear it. The listening hills echoed it back, bidding their own farewell to the man who had known them.

My heartstrings round thee cling
Close as the bark, old friend.
Here shall the wild bird sing
And still thy branches bend.

The mountainside was their church as they stood beneath its great blue altar, to which their voices rose united in a final release of grief and in hope eternal.

Old tree! The storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot:
While I've a hand to save,
Thy axe shall harm it not.

As the notes died away in their ears they began to disperse. Aaron was always the first to leave any ceremony; this time he found Raphael in step with him. "I'll bring out a crew to help you put your row to rights," he said.

Rafe seemed in an oddly happy mood but was no more agreeable for it. "What makes you think we need your help?"

"You may not," Aaron acknowledged, "but have you considered we might need to give it?"

Rafe looked as if he were considering it, but what he said next was, "I've been meaning to ask you, Stempel—do you like me?"

Aaron stopped and stared at him. "Like you?" Rafe met his stare. Other people were walking into earshot. Aaron hesitated for only a second before answering truthfully. "Not especially, no."

Rafe's face broke out in a smile. "Thank you!" he said. He seized Aaron's hand and shook it vigorously. "And so you know," he added, "the feeling's mutual!" As he walked on, Aaron could not be sure but what he was laughing. After a moment Aaron laughed too. We men of business, he thought, we understand each other.

Ox, as Christopher could not forbear calling him even after Ox told him he was taking the name Bates for good, stayed around longer than intended, performing chores for Lucinda of whose necessity she had lived thitherto unmindful. Sometimes he was assisted by Maclaren, who had taken over the lead from Aaron in setting the place in order. The two talked together, to Lucinda, and occasionally to Christopher, who was there helping too, and out of their conversations and a nostalgia for the limelight Lucinda evolved a plan, which she presented to the men and then to Christopher, who presented it in turn to—

"No!" said Candy. "No, no, no, no, no!" She was speaking to Jeremy this time, having said the same thing to Christopher himself yesterday before supper when he had introduced the proposition and again at bedtime in response to his ceaseless entreaties. This morning he had appealed to Jeremy, who had taken up his cause and was now having a hard time keeping himself out of the orbit of Candy's broom as she swept the porch floor, rather more harshly than it required.

"Candy, if you'll hear him out—"

"He's only a boy!"

"When I was his age—"

"What you may have done or didn't do or got away with or never got around to makes no difference where Christopher is concerned. I'm his sister, and his guardian—"

"And his warden," Jeremy muttered.

"—and I absolutely forbid it!"

"There's a sentiment that does my heart good," said Aaron. He had just arrived from the garden path in company with Jason.

"Tragedy of it is, he's sincere," the latter observed. "What are you absolutely forbidding this time?"

Candy nodded toward the gate. "He can tell you."

Ox was practically ready to leave. The animal formerly known as the death horse (it was as well the council had never passed that ordinance) was waiting outside the fence, loaded with his gear. He was only waiting to say goodbye to a certain woman and in the meantime endeavoring to reconcile his young friend to the necessity (which the friend would not admit) of obeying his sister, whose glance informed Ox he was still out of favor. "There'll be other times," he said consolingly.

In answer to the men's question he unfolded Lucinda's plan. It was for a traveling show, to be composed by herself and taken through the territories the following summer, allowing time beforehand in which to write, carpenter, paint, rehearse, and acquire by some means a magic-lantern device. The program would include slides, songs, dances, recitations, and live tableaux re-creating scenes from history; not just any history but the history of black America. Did they know, Ox asked them (being reasonably sure they did not since he had not known it himself till she had told him), that the second woman ever to publish a book in America had been a former slave whose mistress had taught her to read and (obviously) to write? Did they know that in the same year, 1773, two former slaves had founded the first black Baptist Church, which whites had opposed so strongly it had had to be shut down and one of the men had had to flee to the West Indies? Did they know—

No, they did not, and had not time to hear it all now. Jason warned Ox that if he were not careful he would give away the whole show, and after a long "Ah" of understanding he reverted to general description. The company would consist of four—three, less Christopher, in whose place they would have to find another young man (Christopher aired a moan of protest at this) to work the magic lantern, learn to play the drum, and enact the youthful roles. Ox had received Lucinda's consent to read selections from the life of Mr. Douglass. Maclaren would essay the slaveholding characters and (because of his beard) Mr. Lincoln, and would be useful in keeping order when needed. Lucinda—what would Lucinda not do? The plan, the men could see, had been worked out in considerable detail.

"Isn't it the hare-brainedest scheme you ever heard?" Candy asked as she and Jeremy joined the assembly.

"Well..." they answered in the same breath, and stared in surprise at each other. Neither wished to be the first to contradict her, but taking turns between them, they offered the view, unspooling it little by little, that Christopher was getting to be of an age and was due for some broadening, a chance to experience life outside the family circle, and a bit of adventuring—the last being a thought of Jason's. "Sounds a grand idea," he concluded.

"I hate to agree with Jason so early in the day—"

"It's not early at all," said Candy.

"My point. But I must say I'm of his mind in this."

"Told you," said Jeremy.

"Hush." She tried to adjust her attitude to the unexpected consensus. "You don't think it'll be too dangerous?"

Offered an opening, they all rushed in on her at once. Not dangerous at all; the men would look out for him; Captain Clancey would provision them regularly, look in on him, report on his welfare, carry letters back and forth; and after all, it would only be for the summer. "Well," Candy said in the end, "I suppose..." Christopher let out a whoop. The others smiled.

Aaron's smile was fainter than the rest and disappeared quickly. He asked Ox if he and Jason might have a word with him, obviously meaning a word apart. They moved to a corner of the fence. The two white men looked uncomfortable. Ox wondered if they had bad news for him. "Has something happened to Lucinda?"

"Nothing like that," Aaron said and, having begun, proceeded. "It's about the men in custody. We, Jason and I, are inclined to—well, to let them go."

Ox stared at him impassively. Aaron was doubtful of what to say next. Jason stepped in. "They're practically children. One of them is a child. And as ornery a lot as ever drew breath, but not killers or barn burners, only ignorant and easy led. The man who brought them to this is serving his sentence already."

Ox's face still betrayed nothing of what he was feeling. The next part, they would as soon have passed over, but it was the most important. "There's something else," Aaron said. "He was from Port Madison. And there are night riders in Port Madison. If your part in this were to come out, things could get unpleasant. Not only for you." He nodded toward the street, where Lucinda was approaching. "I'll tell the judge he was frightened by a horse, which is true enough. Jason can bluff the others into keeping quiet—well, can't you?" he said, to the objection Jason was about to make. "No one's likely to take notice of what they say anyhow."

Ox smiled, but the smile was unreadable too. "Sounds like you have it all decided. Why ask me?"

"It's not primarily our concern," Jason said. "It was your fight. It's your call."

More hers than mine, Ox thought; and how would she answer? He regarded her for a few moments and said finally, "Mr. Douglass writes about times when no justice was done. This time there was—some. Best leave it at that."

The others shook his hand. He noticed that their breathing had relaxed. Well, they had a whole town to look after. He had only himself—for the present, but maybe in another year or two...

Lucinda was nearly at the foot of the street. He resolved to meet her. He returned to his horse and climbed—for him it was more like stepping—into the saddle. Before he knew it Christopher was at his side. Unsure of which name to use, he rendered both together. "Mr. B—Ox! You're not leaving already?"

Mr. Box leaned down and shook his hand. "So long, New Bedford. Be back for you come summer."

With that he reined about so abruptly he sent Christopher skittering to the fence, reined back a few yards, and took off at a gallop amid a salvo of dust (it was very well the council had not passed that ordinance). The others watched through the haze. From the trajectory of his ride it looked as if he were set on running Lucinda down. She had stopped in front of the barber shop and stood there waiting: the princess awaiting her knight-at-arms. He was riding taut in the saddle, his steed's nostrils flaring and huffing as he kicked him on, the princess stepped up onto the bench as if by arrangement, and then—how it was done exactly none of them could ever say but he was very tall and she was a dancer—she stepped out into the air unsupported but did not fall, for on the instant he caught her up and swung her onto the saddle in front of him, and his arm held her there and hers clung to his as she turned her head and gazed up at his strong, kind face the color of coffee.

The watchers at the fence applauded—all but Jason, who stood as if pole-axed. "Why, that—that—" He shook his head clear and looked around at the others. "Did you see what he did? Swept her right off her feet like—like—I never saw the like. Did you see, everybody?" Unexpectedly then Aaron began laughing. "What's so funny?" Jason asked. This only made Aaron laugh harder; harder than any of the others had heard him laugh before. First one and eventually all of them found themselves moved to join him. "What's so funny?" Jason repeated. They could not stop laughing long enough to tell him, and if they could have they could not have said. All holy innocence, the man from the mountain stared at the lot of them.

"Blame it, will somebody tell me what's so funny?"