With that, Pip seemed to relax, the boy’s head nestling against Spud’s neck.

Spud hadn’t heard Reed return—no footfalls on the path, no raspy breath in the cold night. Nothing until Reed said, “Well, ain’t this cozy?”

Spud felt Pip jump in his arms; Spud may have jumped a bit too, before pulling himself together and asking, “Did you see anything?”

Reed walked past them and stepped up to the precipice. “I didn’t see any lights, but that don’t mean they ain’t back there.”

Reed stood atop a two-hundred-foot drop, his back to Spud. Was he daring Spud to act? Would the fall be enough to kill Reed? Twenty-five feet separated them. One simple shove and it would be done.

Spud set Pip down on the backpack and stood. He took a step toward Reed but stopped. The gun—Reed had it in his hand when he left. Was this a test?

Spud made a point of grunting as he lifted his pack off the ground and worked it onto his shoulders. Reed turned and looked at him, the gun resting in the crux of his crossed arms, his finger lying against the trigger.

CHAPTER 55

Reed boiled inside, to see his son sitting on Spud’s lap. Spud was coddling the boy the way Pip’s mother had. What was Spud telling him? No doubt filling Pip’s head with lies, painting Reed as a bad guy. Hard times made strong men and easy times made weaklings. Why couldn’t people understand that?

And what was that move Spud had made when Reed dug the gun out of his backpack? Spud had put his hand into his pocket. Did he have something in there? A knife perhaps? He hadn’t believed Spud capable of independent thinking, but there was that trip to St. Paul. And the toy car. And Spud had converted his inheritance into cryptocurrency. Clearly, Spud had been making plans of his own. Had they reached the point where mutiny was on the table?

Climbing down the ravine wall would be treacherous. It wasn’t a cliff, but it was steep enough that if one of them slipped, the tumble wouldn’t stop until he hit the river. Pip would need to be brave. He would need to be strong. The climb down the wall would be a good place for Reed to show his son what it meant to be tough—to be a man.

Reed turned to Spud. “Give Pip your light,” he said.

“What am I going to use?”

“I brought two headlamps. How many did you bring?”

“All I’m saying—”

“Are you suggesting that Pip should go down in the dark?”

“I was just… Don’t you have anything else?”

Reed had a tiny penlight that folded into the handle of his Leatherman tool, but that tool also had a knife blade. “We only have the two,” he said.

Spud took off the lamp, adjusted the elastic straps down for Pip, and knelt to secure the light to Pip’s head, fiddling with the fit like some mother hen.