At one o’clock he finished his bottle of milk and ate the last of the toast he had browned over a wood fire. He picked his way down the west slope of Little Round Top, sliding among the great bowlders with the basket on his arm. He washed at Plum Run and wandered east through the gulley to the Taneytown road … Green silence: he came out into the narrow lane, and a woman on a bay horse was bobbing toward him from the north.

She was Mrs. Tyler Fanning; she rode a colt which had been trained as the elder Fanning’s saddle-horse. It trotted gingerly, wondering about this side-saddle, its ears stiff and pointed … The woman held her face high; she came forward in metal dignity, and her lips were colorless. She wore a habit of dark blue, and her hat was in her hand; the dust lay like flour on every fold of her garments. Before this, she must have been galloping hard. The colt breathed too fast, and his bridle was gray with suds.

Bale stepped into the grass beside the road and put his basket down. “It’s a good day to ride,” he said.

The colt skated away through the dust, but the girl brought him back. She did not look at Dan Bale, but far beyond him. “I don’t know what to say to you.” She spoke harshly. “If you were me, would you know what to say? Please do not tell me that it’s a good day to ride—”

Their eyes met and clung coldly together.

“If you’ll get down,” he suggested, “we might walk a bit. You can tie the colt or lead him, just as you choose … He’s a good one. What do you call him? I’ve seen him out in the—”

She said, “Dazzle. His name is Dazzle.”

They muttered together: whoa, hold on, Dazzle, good boy, Daz—Bale grasped the bridle; the girl rested her hand upon his shoulder as she lifted her knee, shook out the wide skirt, and slipped to the ground. She seemed very small beside the tall young horse … There were tiny lines drawn in soft spokes around her eyes. “He’ll behave, tied,” she said to Dan, “if the flies don’t annoy him too much. Do you put him over there in the shade.”

Dan unsnapped the reins and knotted them together for an extended halter. “There,” he said, “he can get his head down if he wants any grass.” He tied the leather around a peak at the fence angle … He could feel blood in his wrists and temples pounding with the jarring spasm of pebbles—clots of pebbles moving through his veins. I wonder if my lips are gray, he thought. They feel gray. Her face is like it was when Tyler yelped at her, that other afternoon. There is still a bandage on her arm, to remind me.