Now that I was well away from the end of the road, I could ponder what had overcome me. I didn’t want to try to remember that fear too clearly, nor to dwell on it. A comforting thought came to me suddenly. It wasn’t really my problem. I wasn’t building the road. All I had to do, simple soldier that I was, was guard the cemetery. I heaved a sign of relief at that thought and rode on. But when I reached the sign that pointed the way to the cemetery, I decided that my visit to the tavern could wait for tomorrow. Evening was coming on, and I wanted to see what my new billet looked like.

A cart track wound up the hillside. Clove and I followed it. I soon reached the first rows of rough headboards, for such they were, grave markers made of wood, not stone. To come on such a sprawling cemetery so far from any domiciles, was a very strange sensation. The graveyard was in an open meadow on a gentle roll of hilltop. Tall grass surrounded it, and the inevitable tree stumps. After the immense trees I had seen that afternoon, these seemed quite small and ordinary. I reined in Clove and sat on his back, enjoying that vantage of height. The only sound was the sweep of wind across the grasses, and the calls of the birds in the nearby forest. The cemetery told its own sad tale. There was a row of individual markers, and then what I could only describe as a filled-in trench. The hummock of earth over it showed that the dead had not been buried deeply. Beyond it, the individual graves resumed, but soon enough, those tidy rows were again interrupted by a long hummock of grass-grown earth. The farther I went, the newer the grave markers became.

It was an efficient cemetery, without thought for sentiment or beauty. The grass growing in it had been scythed, but not recently. There were no plantings, no walkways wandering among the graves, and not even a fence to indicate the boundaries of it. I rode Clove along a narrow track through the graves until I reached my destination: three wooden structures on the far eastern edge of the graveyard. As I approached the buildings, I found them better constructed than I had dared hope. They were tidy and tight, built of squared-off logs and well-caulked with clay. Grass had crept into the walkway along with weeds. It had been weeks, at least, since anyone had trodden them on a regular basis. I dismounted, slipped Clove’s bit so he could graze, and set out to tour my new domain. The first shed held the tools of my new profession. Shovels, rakes, a pickax, and several axes were neatly hung on one wall. Four plank coffins, plain as dirt, were stacked ready in the back for whoever might die next in Gettys. A supply of planks for making markers leaned beside them. The very small building between the other two was a necessary. A small paper-wasp nest on the eave by the door showed it had not been used in some time. The other structure proved to be my new home.