“Not really. He was away when I was smaller, and then I was away. I knew his father well, though; Grandfather had a bad knee by then, like Nattie”—Nattie, listening through the doorway as she spun, lifted up her head and smiled at her name—“and he stayed in camp and helped look after me, among other things. If I’d lost a foot instead of a hand, I might have ended like that, Uncle Dag to my brother’s pack.” Or I might have shared early. “So, um…are there any one-handed farmers?”

“Oh, yes, accidents happen on farms. Folks deal with it, I expect. I knew a man with a wooden leg, once. I’ve never heard tell of anything like that rig of yours, though.”

Fawn’s mother was relaxing nicely in his presence now and didn’t jump at all anymore when he moved. On the whole, Dag suspected that it was easier to coax wild animals to take food from his hand than to lull Bluefields. But he was clearly making progress. He wondered if his Lakewalker habits were betraying him, and if he ought to have started with Fawn’s papa instead of with the women. Well, it hardly mattered where he started; he was eventually going to have to beguile the whole lot of them in order to get his way.

And in they clumped, sweaty and ravenous. Fawn followed, smelling of cows, with two covered buckets slung on a yoke, which she set aside to deal with later. The crowd, minus Clover tonight, settled down happily to heaping portions of ham, beans, corn bread, summer squash, assorted pickled things, biscuits, butter, jams, fresh apple butter, cider, and milk. Conversation lagged for a little. Dag ignored the covert glances as he dealt with biscuits by stabbing them whole with his fork-spoon; Tril, if he read her aright, was simply pleased that he seemed to like them. Happily, he did not need to feign this flattery although he would have if necessary.

“Where did you go while I was milking?” Fawn finally asked him.

“Took a walk down to the river and back around. I am pleased to say there’s no malice sign within a mile of here, although I wouldn’t expect any. This area gets patrolled regularly.”

“Really?” said Fawn. “I’ve never seen patrollers around here.”

“We cross settled land at night, mostly, to avoid disturbing folks. You wouldn’t notice us.”

Papa Bluefield looked up curiously at this. It was quite possible, over the years, that not all patrols had passed as invisibly to him as all that.

“Did you ever patrol West Blue?” Fawn asked.

“Not lately. When I was a boy just starting, from about age fifteen, I walked a lot in this area, so I might have. Don’t remember now.”

“We might have passed each other all unknowing.” She looked thoughtful at this notion.