And she was as thin as her husband. A tiny wizened bird. The womanly flesh that had modelled her pretty oval face and sweetly rounded body in those black-and-white photos was long gone.

Those sad, curling stained documents of the past were the only decoration in the room. On a drop-leafed table in the corner was a bundle of rags and newspapers spilling over onto the floor. The lumber from a broken gate leaned against the table leg, and it looked like that was what was burning in the stove. Surrounded by trees, and the lazy bastard chose to find a gate to break up and burn.

Moses lorded it in his chair. The remains of some kind of meal were on the floor at the back of the stove. Bits of stale soda bread that seemed to have been dipped in a gravy. It made Calvin sick looking at it.

And even now, it made Calvin sick thinking of it. He stopped digging for a moment, realizing he was attacking the earth like an assassin. He let his breath return to his normal half-caught wheeze and steeled himself to continue. He sliced at the soil rhythmically, and the memory was still there. He was back in the cabin again.

The boy had come in. Sam had opened the door the way Calvin guessed he opened it every day of his life. With caution. A hunted thing, watching warily to see if the predator would strike. Moses’s eyes had glittered. Calvin saw that thin, barely-perceptible line of evil intent flit across those deep-set black eyes and had been afraid for the boy. But they had guests. Sam was to come and join them. The boy had looked at Wayne, then at Calvin with a mixture of relief and shame. He clearly didn’t want his shaman teacher there in the house, but he knew he was glad to see him nevertheless.

Sam was like a creature from another planet in this household. At fifteen he was already six feet tall, gangly, waiting to fill out as a man. But he smelled of the open air, and his clear, nut-brown, almost femininely beautiful face was all the more attractive for the smears of mud on its cheeks.

He was clutching something in his fist and Moses spotted it, anger starting to rise in his face.

Then Wayne raised his newly replenished jar and toasted Sam’s entrance incoherently. Moses’s face relaxed from anger into something more approximating cunning.

‘This here boy been throwin’ away dollars on the railroad, Calvin.’ He motioned to Sam with his drink. ‘Go on. Show ’em your prize.’