The sun was up to where a man could feel it. They slipped back a notch or two into the shade of the veranda, squinting into the glare. The temperature was going to top a hundred degrees by ten o’clock. It wasn’t yet mid-July and the grass was already browning. On days when the breeze picked up, the sky went the color of buttermilk from all the dust in the air. Eli tossed the dregs of the coffee into the dust and took their cups into the kitchen. When he came back out, he grabbed his figuring rope off its peg by the door and tied a few knots while Two Spuds got up to lead the pinto to the water tank. When the horse was through drinking, he turned it loose in the corral, drooped the hackamore over a hook on the porch, lifted the gunnysack with its mysterious burden.

“Jenny Hoot Owl said to bring you this chicken for Juanita. She said it’s to thank you for that batch of chicks she gave us in the spring.”

A chicken. Now that Two Spuds mentioned it, Eli realized that he had sniffed the rising odor of dead chicken for a while.

“Tell Jenny I said thanks.”

“I’ll do that.”

They fell silent again, until Eli decided that if he was going to get a solitary thing done on this hot morning, he was going to have to nudge this conversation ahead a foot or two. They had solved two riddles, why Two Spuds was riding bareback in an Indian outfit and what was in the gunnysack. That left one to answer.

“You didn’t ride all that way bareback just to give me a chicken.”

“Nope, I didn’t.” Two Spuds finished his biscuits and brushed his fingers clean. “You ever run into Little Joe Plenty Doors?”

“Time or two.”

“Has that squinty eye?”

“Yep. I had to pay Joe a visit a while back. He rode home trailing a lariat behind him. Turned out a gelding of mine was attached to that rope.”

“Joe don’t mean nothin by it. He knows you’ll come for the horse. He’s Crow. Best horse stealers on the plains. Joe is old enough to remember when the most fun a Crow could have was runnin off fifty head of Sioux horses.”

“He’s lucky I’m a kindly sort of fella.”

“Joe likes you. That’s why he stole your horse. He figures you both need to stay in practice—he needs the practice stealing your horse and you need practice getting it back.”

“You run into him lately?”

“He came by last night, wanting to talk about the black.”

“What black is that?”