A beam of sunlight broke through the clouds and cast the Split Tree in gold, and the breeze blew, shivering the leaves.

“Well, I guess I ought to go and fix my string,” said Cass.

“Yeah, I got chores. And stuff.”

Cass smiled at me. “Be seeing you, Lee.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Be seeing you.”

And I watched her walk off toward the tenant house.

I was about to turn and go when I saw somebody out in the woods, watching me. It was the Urquhart kid, the one who had come with his family the day before. He stood not twenty feet from me, next to a gnarled old oak.

“Was that your girlfriend there?” he said. “She’s pretty. I come out and watch her play sometimes. I like to hear her voice.”

“You shouldn’t be spying on people,” I said.

He took a few steps closer to me. His face was unshaven and his teeth yellow, one missing on the left side of his smile. I could tell I’d misjudged his age. He was definitely older than me by at least a few years.

“Weren’t any different than what you was doing,” he said, “except I’m better at hiding.”

“What do you want?” I said.

He chuckled a little bit.

“Calm down now, boss. It’s just me, George Urquhart,” he said. “What’s your Grandma told you about us?”

“Only that you don’t belong here,” I said. And that you’re trash, but I kept that to myself.

“That’s true enough,” he said. “This is your family’s property, sure. Wasn’t always your family’s property though. Used to belong to the Urquharts until your great-grandfather swindled it from mine. The Sanfords were always ones for swindling folks.”

“I never swindled a person in my life,” I said. “I don’t even think I know how to. But I’d rather you not talk shit about my family, if that’s all right with you.”

“Fair enough, fair enough,” he said, and grinned a little. “You’re not so bad for a Sanford. Not so impressive either, though.”

“Why do y’all hate my family so much? Because of something that happened between our great-grandparents?”

“Nah, that’s not the thrust of the argument,” he said, “though it don’t help matters much. Truth is, I don’t have a single problem in the world with you or your family. It’s everybody else in my family who hates y’all, my momma and granny and sister. They’d just as soon shoot you as say hello.”

That scared me, to tell you the truth. I started figuring if I could outrun him, if I had enough of a head start that I could make it back to the Farm before he caught me.