“Umph. You’re not so young as I thought.” She went on. “But the disappointment was, beauty she might be but it wasn’t a wife those boys were chasing. That colored blood. She was the berry everybody wanted to pick but eat right there in the field, not carry home with them. Stop on the way theirselves and wash their hands. And that was before Mother killed herself.”

Then each stood silent regarding the other and the night around them. The dogs worrying the empty pails, their heads down inside as they scraped the flavor away with their tongues, the pails scooting against the dirt of the farmyard. Quiet, Foster asked, “Why’d she do that, you think?”

Prudence looked away from him a long moment. Then said, “Pick up those buckets; let’s get your dogs some water. Then find then a nice place to bed them down.”

In straight stalls in the horsebarn there were a team of heavy horses and next to them a team of driving horses and in a last stall a big stout pony the color of cream. The horses stirred and blew when they came in, one of the drafts stamping hard against the stall planking. Prudence took the buckets from Foster and dipped them into the iron-strapped water trough and set them down and the dogs, standing back, noses and ears up toward the horses, crept forward and drank. Then they went through a door into a partitioned sheepfold and the sheep also stirred, moving away from the light to the dark corners. At the end of the walkway was an open area with a pile of sawdust bedding and a stack of hinged two-sided gates used to make small lambing pens for individual ewes. Prudence took up one of these and swung it open and still holding it up against her hip kicked a thick layer of sawdust from the pile up against one stone foundation wall and leveled the sawdust with a boot and then moved the unfolded gate and without them even aware she was doing it cornered the dogs within the enclosure made.

“There,” she said. “That should do them fine.”

“They might cry some. A strange place and all.”

“They’ll settle down. It’s warm and dry. And the sheep, it’s a lot of company. It’s a great calming thing. You’ll see. Your dogs’ll be fine.”

“I know.” And because he wasn’t sure he leaned over the gate and stroked the two heads and as he did this behind him Prudence spoke.