She asked the boy, “What’s your name?”

He gave her a long, critical study before he answered. “Cyrus.”

Give a dog a bad name—But this was not a dog, this was a boy, an innocent boy who had no reason to answer for something done a dozen years before his birth. She said, “I cook up somethin’ sweet for my nephews when they come over to see me. I’ll bet I can find you some-thin’ good in the kitchen if you’ll come with me.”

The boy looked back to Isaac, asking him silently. Isaac nodded, smiling. “Be sure now and tell the lady thank you.”

Cyrus was quiet, but his eyes never rested. Annie found him some cookies she had made for Mordecai and Edward, Frank’s boy, when they had come over to help weed the cornfield and chop a supply of wood for the cooking. She had used honey, which was relatively plentiful, instead of sugar, which was not. While he munched the cookies, Cyrus walked about the cabin, looking at everything with a lively curiosity, even poking into the wooden trunk in which Annie had brought her few treasures from Tennessee. He took particular interest in a set of drawings she had made of the family back home so she could have them for remembrance. Annie got him a slate she had used in school and asked if he could draw. He lay on his stomach on the floor and went to work. The drawing was crude, but she could tell it was supposed to be a horse, or perhaps a mule.

“That’s good,” she said. “You could learn to be an artist.”

She realized sadly, however, that as Finis’s son, following in his father’s footsteps, he was unlikely ever to be anything but another Blackwood, lazy, trifling, perhaps even a little dangerous. What a waste that would be.

She realized after a while that the sound of wood falling on wood had stopped. She stepped out onto the dog-run and saw that Isaac had finished. He had stacked the timber as neatly as was practical. “Come on in,” she said. “I’ve made you some coffee.”

She did not often make coffee; it was too expensive for every day, so she had gotten into the habit of saving it only for company. It was a small price to pay for a wagon load of firewood. She watched him dust himself off and wash his hands in a small basin, using brown soap she had made from tallow and ashes and such. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, Mr. Blackwood—Isaac.”

She found his face not unpleasant when he smiled, and he smiled now. “Wasn’t no trouble at all, Miss Annie. And I’ve told you before, I’m just plain Isaac, not Mr. Blackwood.”

She was a bit dubious about so much familiarity, but she said, “If you’ll call me Annie. Not Miss Annie.” She led him into the kitchen, where the boy Cyrus was still on his stomach, sketching a cow that had horns as long as its body. Isaac stopped to look at the slate with some surprise. “I swear, Cyrus, I didn’t know you could do that.”