Around three o’ the clock, as he was about to turn for the Bar K, he heard the rapid drumming of hoofbeats on the main road, approaching from the west. Without thinking about why it seemed so important to do so, Roland swung back in that direction, then brought Rusher to a stop behind a high line of run-to-riot hedges. For nearly ten minutes the sound of the hoofbeats continued to swell—sound carried far in the deep quiet of early morning—and that was quite enough time for Roland to feel he knew who was riding toward Hambry hell-for-leather just two hours before dawn. Nor was he mistaken. The moon was down, but he had no trouble, even through the brambly interstices of the hedge, recognizing Roy Depape. By dawn the Big Coffin Hunters would be three again.

Roland turned Rusher back the way he had been heading, and rode to rejoin his own friends.

Chapter X

BIRD AND BEAR AND HARE AND FISH

1

The most important day of Susan Delgado’s life—the day upon which her life turned like a stone upon a pivot—came about two weeks after her moonlit tour of the oilpatch with Roland. Since then she had seen him only half a dozen times, always at a distance, and they had raised their hands as passing acquaintances do when their errands bring them briefly into sight of one another. Each time this happened, she felt a pain as sharp as a knife twisting in her... and though it was no doubt cruel, she hoped he felt the same twist of the knife. If there was anything good about those two miserable weeks, it was only that her great fear—that gossip might begin about herself and the young man who called himself Will Dearborn—subsided, and she found herself actually sorry to feel it ebb. Gossip? There was nothing to gossip about.

Then, on a day between the passing of the Peddler’s Moon and the rise of the Huntress, ka finally came and blew her away—house and barn and all. It began with someone at the door.

2

She had been finishing the washing—a light enough chore with only two women to do it for—when the knock came.

“If it’s the ragman, send him away, ye mind!” Aunt Cord called from the other room, where she was turning bed-linen.

But it wasn’t the ragman. It was Maria, her maid from Seafront, looking woeful. The second dress Susan was to wear on Reaping Day—the silk meant for luncheon at Mayor’s House and the Conversational afterward—was ruined, Maria said, and she was in hack because of it. Would be sent back to Onnie’s Ford if she wasn’t lucky, and she the only support of her mother and father—oh, it was hard, much too hard, so it was. Could Susan come? Please?