“Okay, Nanette. Come. Sit.” Lee laid down a piece of biscuit. “Nanette, this is a gift to you. From the Kaiser.” She glanced at the biscuit, then glanced away, offended. “Wait, I’m sorry, girl. It’s from General Pershing.” She fell on it as if she meant to kill it, and a second later it was gone.

Duncan looked at Thomas, who didn’t know he was supposed to have a response. “Firefly wrote me another letter,” he finally said. “Do you want to see?”

There was a festival in the village, something that went back to pagan times, involving burning cedar logs from a distant forest and throwing in bundles of herbs, and then everyone would get drunk. The enlisted men of the 135th came that night, and they brought instruments. Duncan brought his dogs.

Since there was dancing, Boy was particularly excited, whimpering (he hadn’t yet found his bark) and paddling at the air, as if hoping to cut in. Nanette ignored the distraction, focusing on her owner, who had a half-constructed plan in mind.

The center of town, where the two roads crossed, was more or less a heap of mud divots that was home tonight to a pyre of logs around which the carousing clustered. Enlisted men drank with the women of the brothel, whose sour looks Lee endured. The smell of burning rosemary was intoxicating. When a girl flashed her underskirt, the men cried out, “Magnifique,” which became three syllables of a happy song.

“Sit,” Lee said, and Nanette sat. “Stay. Stay. Stay.” While he spoke, he was walking backward. “Stay.” Her eyes were on him as if he were about to unveil a roast. One by one, the villagers and soldiers stopped what they were doing, and looked with amusement at the serious dog whose owner was walking backward around the fire pit. “Stay,” he said, which caused some spontaneous laughter, for he was now completely out of the dog’s sight, and on the other side of the flames.

When Lee was directly across from Nanette, with only the eight feet of fire separating them, he said something no one expected to hear. “Come.”

She was up like a shot, sprinted toward the flame, and stopped dead. Then, seeming to size up her opponent, she trotted back, licking her lips. Brief laughter—the dog clearly wasn’t stupid—and then the laughter stopped, for Nanette was only backing up to get enough momentum.

She sprinted, her body lengthening and going low to the ground, and then she launched herself through the wall of flames, landing at Lee’s feet.

“Good girl,” he said, and gave her the squeaky toy.