Sam jumped at the shout and now he sat breathing heavily, gawking at the man opposite him who was exuding a power he had long forgotten, a power he had felt from Calvin so many times and been both awestruck and frightened by it. Suddenly Sam was a teenager again. He could smell the grass and the blowing honeysuckle, and his heart was being released from its heaviness. He gazed more softly at Calvin, sensing the power that bathed him, and he gave himself up to it as though he had waited to do so for two decades. Calvin stared at him for a time, then spoke in that new quiet strong voice. The voice of a restrained power.

‘Your impurity. Name it.’

Sam blinked. Calvin waited for him to speak and when he did Sam heard his own voice far away as though someone else were talking. ‘I am a murderer.’

‘Who did you murder?’

‘You know who.’

‘Who?’

‘My father.’

Calvin’s face moved only slightly, as though his thoughts were wrestling behind his eyes. He set his lips tightly and then spoke calmly. ‘Tell me.’

Sam Hunting Wolf closed his eyes. The honeysuckle smell was not imagination. No. It was in his nostrils now, pungent and real. As real as that morning when he had woken in the woods. He had run from Calvin so fast the night before, crying in horror and shame, weeping at his betrayal, at the loss of his only loved one, and had hidden beneath a juniper wrapped in the sweet tangle of yellow-and-white honeysuckle. The morning sun had touched the dew on its delicate blossoms and it was the scent more than the light that woke him. He was there. It was real. He spoke of it now as if in a dream.

‘I hated you, Calvin. You know I loved you so much before you touched me. Better than any father. Better in every way. Kinder. Wiser. But it was over that night. You left me alone again.’

Calvin was listening as if he was merely a prompt, but his steady face and unwavering eyes did nothing to sway Sam from his dream-like recollection.

‘So I went home. I remember looking down on the cabin from the edge of the aspen woods and there was smoke coming from the chimney. I knew Moses was home. Normally I would have run. But you’d left me alone, Calvin. There was no one to run to. Nowhere to go. I wanted to die, and the surest way to die was to walk back into that cabin when the smoke was coming out of the chimney. So I walked real slow down the hill to the paddock and waited outside to see if he would come out. He didn’t. The sun was hot already and everything seemed more real than real.