“What happened to you?” Hannah asked, frowning at the sight of her sister in the moonlight. Andrea had several globs of hay stuck in her hair and even more on her pants and jacket.

“One of the cows woke up and lowed at me, and I got scared and fell down. I didn’t fall in anything really

um

messy, did I?”

Hannah turned on her Maglite and surveyed the damage. Messy didn’t begin to cover it. There was something on the back of Andrea’s pants that Hannah didn’t even want to try to identify and more of the same was stuck to the back of her hair.

“Hannah?” Andrea prompted, looking slightly sick. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“It’s not that bad,” Hannah said, lying through her teeth, and breathing through her mouth while she was at it. Whatever Andrea had fallen in was pungent. “Let’s search the bullpen and get out of here so you can get cleaned up.”

“Bullpen? How do you know Winnie’s hiding place is in the bullpen?”

“I figured it out from what you told us. You said Alice told the class she had to climb over a rail to get it, and it was in a box on the wall of a big pen. All the farmers around here keep their bulls penned up when they’re in the barn.”

“How do you know so much about farms, anyway?”

“I spent a lot of time on Grandma and Grandpa Swensen’s farm. I used to love going out to the barn with Grandpa and hand-feeding silage to the cows.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Of course not. You were just a baby and you stayed in the house with Grandma.” Hannah stepped inside the barn and shut the door. “Walk down the center aisle, Andrea. That way we’ll avoid the muck.”

“What’s

never mind,” Andrea said, obviously thinking better of the question she’d been about to ask. “I see two pens way down there at the end. One’s empty and the other has a cow in it.”

“That’s a bull,” Hannah pointed out as they got closer.

“How can you

never mind,” Andrea said again, deciding she preferred to be zip for two with her questions. “I’ll check the empty pen and you can check the other one.”

Hannah smiled. She’d expected no less. “Go ahead. I’ll wait to see if you find anything before I tackle the bullpen.”

As they walked down the center aisle of the barn, Andrea let her flashlight play over the cows. “They’ve all got signs hanging above their places,” she said. “Look, Hannah. This black-and-white cow is Daisy. And this brown one is Buttercup. And here’s Petunia, and

drat!”

“There’s a cow named drat?”

“No. I was reading the names and I forgot to look where I was going. I almost stepped in some dirt.”