“Call off the hounds, it’s Sippy,” I heard Billy shout; then somebody yelled a command in Spanish which in the heat of the chase I didn’t attempt to translate. Fortunately the command worked. The dogs immediately stopped chasing us. Rosy continued to run in circles for a few minutes, in a perfect panic—I don’t think she realized the dogs had given up. The sheep did their best to get out of her way, and I did my best to stay on. When she finally exhausted herself we were on the banks of a foggy river. The drizzle had slackened during our chase; the mist lifted enough that I could spot a low cabin on the riverbank to the south.

I rode to it, keeping a tight rein on Rosy, who was well aware that the dogs were still in the vicinity. Even before I got to the cabin I smelled the mutton cooking, and my mouth began to water. Billy Bone stood in front of the cabin. Beside him, turning a lamb on a spit, was a tiny little old man in the cloak of an Andalusian peasant.

“I might have known it would take you all day to get here,” Billy said.

6.

I was so hungry I ate practically the whole lamb, as old Esteván—who was an Andalusian peasant—watched me stoically. Billy Bone, who contented himself with a rib or two of my lamb, had eaten a whole one himself earlier in the day.

“Two dead lambs and two dead people in one day,” Esteván said, in perfectly good English. “If you come to visit very often, Señor Billy, there won’t be no sheep left, or no people either.”

“You’ll be left, Esteván,” Billy said. “I ain’t fool enough to shoot a good cook.”

Esteván had snow-white hair and very bright black eyes. He was smaller than either of his dogs, two specimens of a giant sheepherding breed unfamiliar to me.

“They come from over the mountains,” Esteván said, when I asked about the dogs. I suppose he meant the Pyrenees. I was pretty sure they didn’t grow dogs that big over the Rockies, which were visible to the west once the rain finally stopped.

Billy’s relaxed manner, my hunger, and Esteván’s excellent lamb had distracted me for a while from the deadly nature of the mission Billy had undertaken.

“I don’t see any dead people,” I remarked.

“They’re in the cabin,” Billy said.

“They were my little ones,” Esteván said. “When Señora Snow brought them to me they were no taller than my sheep. Even though they never spoke one word in their lives, I could understand them.”

“What do you mean, never spoke a word?” I asked. Cecily had never told me they were mutes.