Noah heard the talk—the almost-mumbled talk—and he knew the men were right. In his travels, he had followed many roads on nights when the moon gave enough light for walking, only to be surprised the next morning by where he was. He hoped that what the men said of Matthew was true, that in the morning Matthew would find a house and go to it and tell the people who lived there who he was and who his grandfather was. Hoped it would be that simple.

“What’s that?” one of the men said suddenly.

“Where?” Whitlow asked.

“Coming out the woods down there,” the man answered.

Whitlow peered into the night at a wobbling dot of light. “Looks like a flashlight,” he said.

A voice called from the direction of the light.

“It’s Peavo and Moody,” Taylor said.

They had not found Matthew, but they had found where he had been, Peavo said. Or so they thought. At John’s Creek—at one of the fishing places—they had found a tin can that still had live worms in it.

“It could of been somebody else’s,” Moody warned, “but the footprints down there looked like they was made by a boy, not a man.”

“You see which way they were going?” asked Whitlow.

“Just saw them at the creek,” Peavo said. “Didn’t see nothing anywhere else.”

“Wonder why he left the bait can?” one of the men said.

“Probably just forgot it,” Moody offered. “You got to remember the boy’s got a problem.”

“Let’s take the dogs on down there,” Whitlow said. “See if they can’t pick up which way he went.”

At John’s Creek, in the place where Peavo and Moody had found the can of worms, the dogs picked up the scent quickly, making braying sounds of announcement. In ten minutes of chase, they lost it, and Whitlow did not know why.

“It’s like they picked up on something else,” he said, and he called the dogs to him and put their leashes back on their collars and led them in a wide circle, coaxing them to find the scent. They could not. “Whatever they picked up, that’s what they looking for,” he added. “Wish I’d of brought the boy’s shirt with me.”

“One of us can go get it,” suggested Moody.

Whitlow stood, studying the woods, the moon. After a pause, he said, “Probably be better if we start back in the morning with the dogs. They’ll do better in the daytime, when the sun’s put some heat on the ground. Best thing to do now is to go back to the cars and drive the roads. My guess is, if he found a road, he’d be on it, trying to get home.”

It was a suggestion that made sense and the men started their walk back to Howard Reynolds’s home, forming plans among themselves about the roads to drive and who would take which road. None of them seemed tired, Noah thought. One of their own was missing, one who could not fend well for himself. Rest could wait.