“A lot,” I said. I wanted to be suspicious of Andreeson, but he sat there so relaxed and unshaven and apparently appreciative of hospitality; there was an empty plate on the table and a spot of frosting at the corner of his mouth. Dad, too, seemed at ease—warm, in fact.

“I was sorry to hear about your lungs,” said Andreeson.

“I’m okay.”

He looked at Dad, who gave him a nod. “Listen, Rube, I hope you’ll think this is good news. I’ve been showing your brother’s picture around—finally found the right man. Over in Amidon. He said he’s seen Davy in town. Not just once, three or four times.”

Andreeson waited for me to answer. As if I knew what I wanted.

“Last time was day before yesterday,” Andreeson continued. “Actually, he gave your brother a ride—dropped him off out of town.”

I have to be honest: this was kindly and quietly spoken. Andreeson seemed a different fed from he who’d shouldered into our home that first day with his talk of nabbing. Still, his nearness to Davy raised goose-flesh. I stood barefoot before him on the freezing linoleum.

“Go on, Martin,” Dad said.

Andreeson opened his mouth, shut it again, shook his head. “I just want you folks to know we’re going to be careful. Stay near the phone, Jeremiah.” He got to his feet. “Reuben—we won’t hurt Davy. That’s a promise. From me to you.”

But I didn’t want anything from him to me. It was suddenly important that he know my allegiance hadn’t changed. “You can’t hurt what you can’t find,” I replied, not looking at Dad.

But Andreeson smiled as he rose and laid a hand on my shoulder, saying, “There you go.” He went out the door all business, setting the felt fedora on his head. My enemy.

That afternoon I went outside on every excuse. After such a scare they were all against it, but I was an exemplary weasel now and eased out the back in my coat and hood, breathing through a scarf to warm the air. I prayed, but the prayers were tangled and dissenting. I prayed the Lord would sort them out and answer as needed. Above all that He would hurry. For Andreeson was closing in. He’d told Dad to wait by the phone. I walked up and down beside the house, attempting to pray as Dad did, trying to picture God listening to me, but He remained unseeable, just the usual lit cloud, and in minutes the walking wore me out. I went inside and was rebuked by Swede for taking chances. She had no idea. We ate some gingersnaps and repaired to the living room, where I stretched myself on the couch. The idea was to feign sleep until Swede went upstairs and then pop outside, but I dropped off for real and dreamed a river of horses flowing along between banks, manes rippling, backs streaming sun. I woke inside a strange calm recognizable as defeat. Light entered the house pink and orange. I straggled outside, leaned against the house and squinted at the backlit hills. The light was expiring; already it was like looking into deep tea-colored water. I didn’t, in fact, see Davy. But somewhere on the side of the darkening hill a horse lifted its voice to neigh. The sound had the clear distance of history.

I was to have one last night in the hills: another starry one, as you will hear, but with a moist hush to the air that was like something at full draw—a breath, an arrow.

Jape Waltzer was busy shoeing Fry. Whoever’d built the place had left behind an anvil and a makeshift forge. Jape had tacked new leathers to a bellows and was working up a glow that lit the shed.

“Reuben, I thank you,” he said, when Davy had ushered me in and I’d said my piece. That was it. He thanked me for the information and seemed otherwise unconcerned.

“He said they’re getting close,” I reiterated, unsure whether Waltzer had understood. He stopped working the bellows. On the orange forge lay a horseshoe like a black cutout of itself. He picked it up with a set of longhandled tongs and looked it over doubtfully.

“Fry,” he said to the horse, who stood shortroped to a ring in the wall, “let’s try this on. Davy, his head.”

Davy took the bridle in both hands and whispered compliments to Fry while Waltzer leaned against the horse’s left hip and picked up his foot. In the glow I could see fresh scrapes where Waltzer had filed the hoof smooth. I could see nail holes from the previous shoe.

“It’s always the back left one he throws,” Waltzer said pleasantly, laying the hot shoe against the hoof. “I don’t know why.” It was plain he liked the work.

I said, “It’s just, he told Dad to stay by the phone.”

Waltzer set down the hoof and replaced the shoe in the forge. When he looked at me from under those brows I knew I’d said everything on the matter. Pumping the bellows he said, “Reuben, look at these coals.”

They were beautiful, a breathing black-webbed orange.

“When they’re like that, when they look like a jack-o’-lantern, they aren’t hot enough.”

“They aren’t?”

“No sir. Not hot enough to soften that shoe.” He nodded at a stack of cut boards in the corner opposite Fry. “If you’ll feed some of those to the fire while I’m working the bellows, believe me Reuben, we’ll make some heat.”

What else could I do? Forgetting Andreeson for the moment I gave myself to the allure of the forge. It had a small steel door that Waltzer swung open. The firebox was a mere cozy flame and I fed it full of boards. Waltzer slammed it shut and commenced pumping and shortly the wood hissed to incandescence and the wind blew in the forge until I heard voices inside it.

“Good, Reuben,” Waltzer said. He was panting. Steam came off his shirt. “You see what you’ve done? Look at the coals!”

There was now only the faintest orange about them—as the afternoon sun is orange. They were white. Still they breathed. Already the edges of the horseshoe were white too.

This time it smoked when he fitted it to Fry’s hoof. Fry snuffed and hopped but was well pinned. Waltzer wasted no time but laid shoe to anvil. A few strokes and he had it to size. He was dextrous for a man minus two left-hand fingers. Bent over Fry’s upraised hoof he reached to his mouth for a nail. He drew a small hammer from his boot top and tapped the nail till its point emerged from the hoof’s clean slope an inch above the shoe. He drove a second nail, spat the rest into his palm and looked me over.

“Reuben, come finish.” Waltzer beckoned, hoof locked in his knees, wool shirt rolled to the elbows. He was sweating in the red gloom.

“Nail it home,” he said. I took the hammer. He showed me how to set the nail at the proper outward angle. Davy told Fry he was a good horse, a handsome horse. To this I would add longsuffering. Aiming carefully at the nail I tapped faintly away until Waltzer said, “Do you do everything the same way you breathe? Whack it.” So I whacked it, grateful for Fry’s resignation and at the nail’s progress down and through. I set the remaining nails and Waltzer produced, again from his boot top, a set of snips and cut the nail points off flush with the hoof. He pocketed the points and set the hoof back on the ground, patting the ankle above it.

“Fry,” he said fondly; then, “Thank you, Reuben. Well done.”

I looked at Davy, who winked. The forge was ebbing; it must’ve been cold in the three-walled shed, but I was warm and glad to be there.

We ate a midnight supper in the shack and still Waltzer would hear nothing of Andreeson. His disinterest was stunning. He turned the conversation to politics, astronomy, the science of well drilling, the superiority of beaver felt over wool. He claimed to have been born with no sense of smell but with extraordinary and compensatory taste buds; he never salted his food but accepted it as given, its natural flavor being satisfactory.

“For example, your meat there. I suspect you find it bland.”

It was a little lump of gray meat on a tin plate. It and a boiled potato were supper. There they lay, all tired out.

“It’s fine,” I replied. Of course it wasn’t yams and sausages.

Waltzer said, “It’s bland. Pork is bland meat and people season it to their senseless palates. Take a bite, Reuben. Describe the flavor.”

I bit. The pork had been boiled a long time. Indeed it bore no trace of salt. It was like chewing a hank of old rope. Waltzer’s eyes were alight and curious. Desperately I sought the elusive civil adjective.

“It’s pretty good,” I told him.

“I commend your courtesy; but nonsense. I won’t take offense. Nor will Emil. Do it for Emil, hm?”

You remember Emil.

I peered at the pork. Waltzer said, “Go on. Assess the piquancy of Emil. It’s all the memorial he’s bound to get. Poor little Emil.” He was delighted the meat had a name; he couldn’t use it enough.

And yet, surprisingly, knowing the pale lump before me was Emil was not disturbing. In fact it freed me up somehow. I chewed him up and swallowed him. “It’s—stiff,” I said cautiously. “A little dry.”

Waltzer said, “Go on.”

“It’s dull. Blunt.”

“Yes, yes.” Waltzer liked this. A strange thing occurred: adjectives, generally standoffish around me, began tossing themselves at my feet. “It’s fibrous. Rough. Ropy.” I was faintly aware of insulting Sara’s cookery, but Waltzer was nodding, smiling. His favor was better than the alternative. I basked in it; and it was fun, for a change, having the words. “Dispirited, stagnant. Mortified. Vapid.” I wasn’t sure what that last one meant, having heard it from Swede in a discussion about her second-grade teacher, but it had a ring.

“Well said,” Waltzer declared—the only time I recall that compliment being applied to myself.

“It tastes like cartilage,” I added, wanting to get that one in.

“Yes. Good. Now me.” Waltzer took a small mouthful and worked it efficiently. “Mmm, yes.” He closed his eyes, swallowed, blew hard through his nostrils. “I taste corn—not so much corn as I’d like. Kernels and husks. I taste beans. Bread. Pigweed, grass, earth, quite a lot of earth. Salt.”

I realized he was describing Emil’s diet. He looked pained. “Unfortunately, I also taste slops. It’s a hard gift. I’ve encountered flavors in sausages it would be obscene to describe.”

Did I believe him? It doesn’t matter. All this time my lungs had worked tolerably well. I understand now this was a period of grace. Waltzer went on treating me as though my presence honored him; wary as I was, his manner was winning and his talk beguiling. Sara stayed apart from us behind her wall of quilts. Later we stood outside the cabin, Waltzer pointing out constellations while Davy went to saddle Fry.

“There’s the Great Ring,” he said. “And there is the Totem; there’s Hawk and Mouse, the Whale, Boy Ready.”

I could only nod. Having someone point out constellations is pleasant as long as they don’t insist that you actually see them. Aside from the Dipper and Orion and the Teapot, constellations tend to hide in the stars.

“I never heard of Boy Ready,” I said, as though the others were familiar to me; so he aimed at its points one by one and related the myth of a child who lived in a city of wood, and how one night the city caught fire and burned so fiercely that by morning nothing remained but a field of fine ash. Only the boy escaped. One day a passing pilgrim saw him crouched at the river pursuing fish with his hands. The pilgrim took the boy on his horse to the next city, where he was fed and then celebrated as the tale of his survival spread. The boy charmed all with his bravery and wit and was adopted by the king, and grew up trained in arms and letters; at last he became king himself and was wise and good. It was a passable story until Waltzer revealed that the boy had set the fire himself.

“He couldn’t have!” I said.

“Of course he could. Calm down, Reuben; it’s only a legend.”