Yet hold out she did for two years until, where youth had failed, age prevailed in the person of a quiet man named Ezra. He was the blacksmith, but more than that. Jobs were assigned, of course, but a man’s aptitudes governed his eventual occupations. Ezra’s understanding of animals other than horses and mules grew as the years passed until, in addition to being blacksmith, he was Beulah Land’s animal doctor. He remembered every remedy he heard about, discarding the ones that failed to work for him and venturing to experiment with local herbs. Ezra’s word was law on the treatment of all animal ills at Beulah Land, and, in time, since the bodies of men and women have much in common with those of beasts, he was consulted on human ills by the other slaves, and sometimes by the Kendricks too; and he began to be called, inevitably, Doctor.

Ezra’s knowledge was held in awe and superstition by his fellow slaves. It was supposed that he knew even more than he did, and field and house gossip made legend of his spells and predictions, although his predictions were always based on clever diagnosis, and he had nothing at all to do with spells.

His attendance on the ill meant that he was sometimes present at deaths, and this led to further duties of “laying out” the dead for burial. Treating thus with the dead made him a further object of awe and superstition, set him apart. It might not have been so had he married, but he had not at the time Laverne La Vey was brought to live and work at Beulah Land, when he was near forty and had long been considered one of those whose concerns turned them away from an interest in women. Ezra was, in truth, lonely, in spite of the busy life he led. The rare times there was no call on his services he spent fishing on the creekbanks or sitting in the cabin that he tended himself. He had not even a pet dog or cat, for when every animal is a man’s concern, he is unlikely to single out one for special attention.

Ezra along with the others noted Laverne’s prettiness and her temper, and found himself pleased as well as amused by her when, alone in his cabin at night, he thought of her—something he had heard her say that day, her laugh, a shout of sudden, transient rage.