“I understand he visited you, yes.” Starbuck was struggling to be courteous and even dignified, though he was remembering how his father had once tried to preach to some half-drunken immigrant longshoremen working on the quays of Boston Harbor and how even the impressive Reverend Elial had struggled to maintain his composure in the face of their maniacal coarseness. Breeding and education, Starbuck reflected, were poor things with which to confront raw nature. “He says you were not here.”

Truslow abruptly let go of Starbuck’s coat, at the same time making a growling noise that was half-threat and half-puzzlement. “I wasn’t here,” he said, but distantly, as if trying to make sense of some new and important information, “but no one told me how he was here either. Come on, boy.”

Starbuck pulled his coat straight and surreptitiously loosened the big Savage revolver in its holster. “As I said, Mister Truslow, I have a letter for you from Colonel Faulconer…”

“Colonel is he, now?” Truslow laughed. He had stumped ahead of Starbuck, forcing the northerner to follow him into a wide clearing that was evidently the Truslow homestead. Bedraggled vegetables grew in long rows, there was a small orchard, its trees a glory of white blossom, while the house itself was a one-storey log cabin surmounted by a stout stone chimney from which a wisp of smoke trickled. The cabin was ramshackle and surrounded by untidy stacks of timber, broken carts, sawhorses and barrels. A brindled dog, seeing Starbuck, lunged furiously at the end of its chain, scattering a flock of terrified chickens that had been scratching in the dirt. “Get off your horse, boy,” Truslow snapped at Starbuck.

“I don’t want to detain you, Mister Truslow. I have Mister Faulconer’s letter here.” Starbuck reached inside his coat.

“I said get off that damned horse!” Truslow snapped the command so fiercely that even the dog, which had seemed wilder than its own master, suddenly whimpered itself into silence and skulked back to the shade of the broken porch. “I’ve got work for you, boy,” Truslow added.

“Work?” Starbuck slid out of the saddle, wondering just what kind of hell he had come to.

Truslow snatched the horse’s reins and tied them to a post. “I was expecting Roper,” he said in impenetrable explanation, “but till he comes, you’ll have to do. Over there, boy.” He pointed at a deep pit which lay just beyond one of the piles of broken carts. It was a saw pit, maybe eight feet deep and straddled by a tree trunk in which a massive great double-handed ripsaw was embedded.

“Jump down, boy! You’ll be bottom man,” Truslow snapped.

“Mister Truslow!” Starbuck tried to stem the madness with an appeal to reason.

“Jump, boy!” That tone of voice would have made the devil snap to attention, and Starbuck did take an involuntary step toward the pit’s edge, but then his innate stubbornness took command.