When Reed got to them, he said, “You got to cut through here.”

It wasn’t much of a path, but now that Reed had pointed it out, Spud could see the detour through a thicket of trees. He followed Reed to a bulwark of sticks and mud twenty yards long—a beaver dam. The trail tracked along the top of the dam, a berm less than a foot wide, with an icy pond on one side and a four-foot drop into a marsh on the other.

Reed scooted across with no problem, disappearing into the trees on the other side, leaving Spud alone to figure out how to get Pip across.

“We need to walk across this dam,” he told Pip. “It’ll be okay, just hold my hands and take one step at a time.”

“I can’t.” Pip sounded like he was on the verge of crying.

“I won’t let you fall. I promise. Look, I’ll keep my light shining right in front of you and I’ll be walking right behind you. You can do it, Pip. You’re a big boy and you can do it.”

Pip’s breath, vapors in the cold night air, curled through the beam of Spud’s headlamp. The boy tightened his grip on Spud’s fingers and took a step onto the dam, his foot sinking slightly in the soft clay and mud. Then he took another step—and another. Spud held Pip’s hands and kept the light steady on the path. The world around them fell away so that there was no pond, no marsh, and no stars. There was only the dam. Soon they reached the other side, and Pip’s iron-tight grip eased.

“I knew you could do it!”

“That was scary. I thought I was gonna fall.”

“I would never let that happen, Pip.”

Spud could see Reed’s light in the woods beyond them; he was returning to the beaver dam. “The trail picks up over here,” Reed said.

Spud’s world shrank to the circle of light cast off by his headlamp, his eyes focused on the few feet of trail in front of him. When the trees grew too dense for Spud to carry Pip on his shoulders, Pip walked in front, staying close so that he could see the path in Spud’s headlamp. But when he could, Spud carried the child. He lifted Pip over fallen trees and mud pits; still, they couldn’t seem to keep up with Reed.

As he carried Pip to the crest of yet another hill Spud stopped, his fingers and toes grown numb from the cold and his back on fire from the weight he carried. He put Pip down, and braced himself against a birch tree to keep from falling. “Hold up, Reed.”

Reed, who was about thirty feet ahead of them, paused long enough to say, “We gotta keep moving,” and he started walking again.

“Goddammit, Reed. I said hold up. I gotta rest.”

Spud could see Reed’s lamp turn on the trail and move toward him, bouncing at an angry clip. When Reed was within a few feet of Spud, he stopped, the beam from his light blinding Spud. “Are you giving the orders now?” Reed said. “Is that what I’m hearing?”