Colonel Davenport lived at some distance from the village, several miles along the Bromyard road. As she rode she scanned the autumn landscape, searching for a familiar f lash of red and white hide among the laden apple trees or across the fields. It shouldn't be difficult to locate something as large as a bull, but they could be amazingly easy to overlook. Hubert would be enticed by the countless orchards or any fencerow that contained sweet grass, still green under the holly and hawthorn this late in the year. He could manage to obscure himself quite nicely behind an overgrown hedge.

A brief pause at Colonel Davenport's house discov ered only the empty paddock. The colonel himself was not at home. A stable lad showed her where Hubert had cracked the rails right through, tearing them out of the posts. Callie had dressed the boy down, quite unfairly, for the f limsiness of a fence that would not have held Hubert when he was a yearling, much less as a full-grown bull. It wasn't the lad's fault that Colonel Davenport didn't keep sturdy fences, but she was incensed. The boy seemed to think that Hubert must have smashed the rails with his horns, which would have alerted the whole neighborhood to his escape, but Callie knew better. All that would have been required was a long, slow, steady push by a bull that preferred to be outside the paddock rather than in it.

Whether he had been ready to go home or just stretching for that farthest blade of grass, she didn't know. From the colonel's house she took the route that the drover would have followed from Shelford. This led her back toward the village by a longer, more level way where a cart might ford the streams, in the direction of Dove House.

"Black henna, sir!" Barton whispered. "Not a bad job, eh? Started as soon as I had any light. For a while I didn't know if it would come up to cover the white, but he's turning pretty sleek now." He ran his hand down the bull's hind leg. "I see I missed a spot there on his left hock."

"Christ, where'd you get that much dye?" Trev demanded in a low voice. He saw now that there was blue-stained hay concealed under the fresh layer at the bull's hooves.

"Tanner, sir," Barton said solemnly. "Got thick with him over a pint of bitters."

"Naturally." Trev watched the dog, Toby, sniff at the bull's knee. "Now what the devil do you expect me to do with this animal?"

Barton looked anxious. "I dunno, sir. You didn't tell me I'd need to think o' what to do with 'im. I reckoned you knew your own mind on that, sir."

"I did," Trev said dryly.

"You was gonna give 'im to that lady, sir?"