While the word spread, he loitered by a stack of crated turkey hens, listening to their soft gobbles. After a moment he reached down surreptitiously and f lipped the wooden latches open, holding the doors closed with his knee. He kept his eyes down the street on Callie and Sturgeon as they sampled bread and honey at a vendor's stall. Sturgeon sampled it, at any rate. Callie just stood holding hers, looking nervous, the way she always looked just before he gave her the office to act on whatever outrageous part he had assigned her in their schemes.

A tight smile curled his mouth. Only that one look between them, and she knew. And in spite of the desperate expression, she would perform her role to perfection, even if she didn't yet know what it was. She always managed to carry it off, as clever and cool as a schoolmistress once the sport commenced.

Ah God, he would miss her. No good-byes, no farewells, which was better. Last night was his good bye. Remember me, he thought.

Off by the sheep, one of his boys leaned over the pen as if to observe a ram more closely. Then he stood back, his hand nonchalantly resting on the gate, and made the high sign with a swipe of his arm across his forehead. Trev looked from one end of the wide street to the other. They all waited on him, an odd sprinkling of Samsons and Goliaths amid the fairgoers, rubbing their chins or whistling and gazing artlessly up at the sky.

He nodded and stepped away from the turkey coops, turning his back as the doors swung open. With

a sharp kick of his heel, he cried havoc and let slip the hens of war.

It all started with the turkeys, a sudden burst of black wings and wattles as the birds exploded from a falling stack of crates. Four big hens tumbled and recovered themselves amid a f lutter of feathers and splintering wood. As their owner shouted in alarm, they began to run, sleek ebony missiles darting hither and thither between the legs of goats and through fences and under the skirt of a cottager's wife.

Callie had just begun to calm herself a little, thinking she must have misunderstood the intent of that malevolent stare from Trev, that it was merely the particular effect of his dark gypsy eyes that made it seem as if he intended to commit some sinister mayhem at any moment. But she went stiff at the sound of shouting from just at the place he had been standing. God in heaven, what mad thing did he think was he doing?