Annie stood up unsteadily, the water swift and swollen beneath them. “This was a battle. The wind was trying to knock down the sky.” Squatting to pat the tree, she added a little incongruously, “Poor darling.”

Lew had made a weapon from a fence stave, which was unbalancing him. “We have to fight.” Trying to stand, he slipped and narrowly kept from falling into the water.

Annie lay flat, pressing her ear to the tree. “Eagle-eyes, the tree says we have to go back to the fort and get ready.” She glanced around. “Where’s Roh?”

“Darn it, he’s gone again.” Lew flung his weapon into the water. “We’ll just leave him.”

“Can’t just leave him.”

“I’m going to lock him in the smokehouse tomorrow. I am.”

“We could tie some string to him. He could be our prisoner.”

“We’ll have to put something in his mouth to stop him hollering.” Lew had scrambled back to the bank and was looking anxiously around.

“Roh!” Annie called into the woods, joining him.

“Think he even knows that’s his name?”

“He knows. Where would he be? Down by the mill?”

“Not now. It’s too late.” Lew checked to see where the sun was. “Bet he’s by the sinkhole.”

They arrived out of breath. The roughly circular natural pool, about as big as a baseball diamond, had one half of its circumference open to a clearing in the woods, now bright with goldenrod and ailanthus, the other half closed off by a limestone rock face that rose as high as forty feet in places. On the far side of the pool, Rohan, Lew’s seven-year-old brother, soaking wet, lay upon a small ridge.

“Roh,” Lew shouted, “come on back here!”

His brother didn’t respond, utterly captivated by the veins of light reflected up from the pool onto the rock face.

“He’s gonna go crazy if I try to fetch him now.” Lew’s cheeks and arms were covered in scratches and bruises from such battles with his brother.

“He’ll come himself when the sun’s too low,” Annie said. “We can just wait here. It’s nice here.”

They sat at the edge of the pool.

“Found a sexy book under my mom’s mattress,” she said.

“You read it?”

“Some of it, and there’s this one part where the man—well, I don’t rightly know what he did, but the woman said it was like riding a bolt of lightning.”

Lew made a grimace.

After a moment, Annie said, “Lew, do you think we’re going to get married?”

He shrugged.

“Means we could live in the same house,” she said. “We could have our own farm.”

“Don’t want a farm. I want to sell insurance.”

“Why?”

“This insurance man came by the other day. Had a new Pontiac with the head of Chief Pontiac on the front. Said he went all over, far as Kennett. Showed me his cavalryman’s pistol. I couldn’t even lift it. Said it was for when other insurance salesmen tried to muscle in on his territory and it left a hole in them big as a silver dollar.”