The barn was far bigger than the ranchhouse, at least fifty yards long and fifty feet high. The front was festooned with reap-charms in honor of the season; stuffy-guys with huge sharproot heads stood guard. From above the open bay over the main doors, the butt of the head-beam jutted. A rope had been fastened around this. Below, in the yard, the boys had built a good-sized stack of hay. Oy stood on one side of it, Andy on the other. They were both looking up as Benny Slightman grabbed the rope, gave it a tug, then retreated back into the loft and out of sight. Oy began to bark in anticipation. A moment later Benny came pelting forward with the rope wrapped in his fists and his hair flying out behind him.

“Gilead and the Eld!”he cried, and leaped from the bay. He swung into the red sunset air with his shadow trailing behind him.

“Ben-Ben!”Oy barked. “Ben-Ben-Ben!”

The boy let go, flew into the haystack, disappeared, then popped up laughing. Andy offered him a metal hand but Benny ignored it, flopping out onto the hardpacked earth. Oy ran around him, barking.

“Do they always call so at play?” Roland asked.

Eisenhart snorted laughter. “Not at all! Usually it’s a cry of Oriza, or Man Jesus, or ‘hail the Calla,’ or all three. Your boy’s been filling Slightman’s boy full of tales, thinks I.”

Roland ignored the slightly disapproving note in this and watched Jake reel in the rope. Benny lay on the ground, playing dead, until Oy licked his face. Then he sat up, giggling. Roland had no doubt that if the boy had gone off-course, Andy would have snagged him.

To one side of the barn was a remuda of work-horses, perhaps twenty in all. A trio of cowpokes in chaps and battered shor’boots were leading the last half-dozen mounts toward it. On the other side of the yard was a slaughter-pen filled with steers. In the following weeks they would be butchered and sent downriver on the trading boats.

Jake retreated into the loft, then came pelting forward. “New York!” he shouted. “Times Square! Empire State Building! Twin Towers! Statue of Liberty!” And he launched himself into space along the arc of the rope. They watched him disappear, laughing, into the pile of hay.

“Any particular reason you wanted your other two to stay with the Jaffordses?” Eisenhart asked. He spoke idly, but Roland thought this was a question that interested him more than a little.