One of the men said, “You goin’ after him?”

“I guess so.”

“You own a compass?”

Sam reached into his khakis and pulled it out. “I’ve been back in there before.”

“You got my sympathy,” said the hound’s face.

“I was on a horse.”

“Well, well,” the red-faced man said and spat into a box of sawdust next to the stove. “You got him now?”

“I’m on foot.”

The man stood up. “You need to see my brother, then.”

Sam looked at the clerk, who shrugged. “What for?”

The man lay a spotted hand on his arm. “Come on, he’s down the street.”

Sam followed him half a mile to a dog-trot house, and the fellow who came out had the same sun-botched face as his escort.

“Buzz. Who you got there?”

“Fellow needs a animal.”

“I got a pig he can have.”

“Does it come with a saddle?”

The brothers smacked hands and chucked shoulders and then stood side by side looking down off the unpainted porch to where Sam stood in the chicken-bald yard.

“I don’t have a lot of money,” he began. He explained what he wanted to do and the horse trader gave his brother a doubtful look.

“I should of knowed you wasn’t bringin’ around somebody with cash in his jeans.”

His brother shrugged.

“I can only sell you a animal. I don’t rent, there ain’t no sense in it. But when and if you get out of that terrible country”-he nodded his shaggy head to the south-“I’ll buy it back less what you skint off him in there.”

Sam tried to remember how much was in his wallet, how much a pair of train tickets would cost to get him and the boy down to New Orleans. “What can you sell one for?”

“I got an Appaloosa that’s tough and is good on short hills and mud. He’s thirty-five dollars.”

“God, I can’t afford that.”

The horse trader blinked. “Somehow I thought not. Well, I got a old mare, then, slow, but she won’t spook. You can’t make no time through those woods nohow. She’s twenty dollars cash money.”

“Maybe. What else?”

“I got a couple trained mustangs, but if you ain’t a real good horseman, they’ll kill you dead, ’cause they’ll do what you tell ’em even if you spur ’em into quicksand or off a drop. Now, I got a retired dray horse with heart trouble you can have for fourteen dollars, but once you get in the woods he won’t fit between trees.”

“Let me see him.”

The trader looked at his brother and shook his head. “Let’s us go around back, then.”

On the way to the barn, an animal in the pasture caught Sam’s eye, an oversized mule a hand and a half taller than most and gray as fog. “What’s the story on that one?”

The horse trader looked everywhere except at the mule. “What one?”

Sam pointed.

“Oh. That’s a hinny. Biggest I ever saw. I got him in a trade last year and done sold him and took him back three times. That one’s too smart to ride.”

“How’s that?”

“Aw, he just knows better than anybody that gets on him. If you could just figure out how he thinks, he’d be a good animal. But you can’t make him do a damn thing he don’t want to.”

“He’s sort of white.”

“Yeah. Folks around here think that means bad luck.”

“Can I try him out?”

The man turned and looked at him. “Why would you want to?”

Sam looked out into the field and the mule looked back, rolling his ears forward. “I rode a mule like him to school.”

The horse trader spat out the side of his mouth. “This one’ll take you to school, all right.”

They got a rain-hard saddle out of the barn, and Sam asked for a thick blanket when he saw it. He cinched it on, leaning against the animal while he worked, rubbing the mule over before clipping a cloth saddlebag on the back. The roller-mouthpiece bridle he passed slowly over the ears, which stayed relaxed, though the mule looked at him carefully. Sam talked to the animal and patted him. “You got a crupper for this saddle?”

“Naw. I got a old double rig in there somewheres if you’re scared of that one.” He motioned to his brokeback barn.

“Let me see something.” He walked to the fence and got a length of mildewed plowline hanging there and tied one end to the saddle horn and walked around behind the mule to the other side, pulling the rope and rolling it up the animal’s legs and quarters. The mule watched him but barely moved a hoof. Then he took the line off and put it back on the fence. He mounted up and started the mule off in a straight line, turned him, backed him, and made him trot a bit. Getting off, he left the reins on the ground and walked away. The mule looked at the gate and back at Sam, but didn’t move.

Sam climbed on the fence. “What’s wrong with him, then?”

“A man can’t get in that animal’s head. Some you can beat, some you can treat, but that one don’t respond to neither. To be fair, he’s done good for me, but everybody else tells me he’ll stop sometime and might as well be a stump. Worse, he’ll keep going even if you pull his head off. Just won’t stop for nothing.”

“Does he have good wind?”

“Oh, hell, yes. He’ll climb a tree and yodel at the top, but that might not be what you told him to do.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars.” He spat. “Eleven if you bring him back.”

“How about the tack?”

“Now that’s worth money. That stuff’ll listen to you. I want it all back, and you leave me a ten-dollar deposit.”

“What’s his name?”

“Gasser. That’s what was wrote on the bill of sale I got. Came from over the river in Pointe Coupee Parish.”

They shook on it, and Sam rode the animal back to the store for a sack of food, a canteen, matches, oil of citronella, and a straw hat with a curled brim. He also bought a box of Quaker Oats. Starting out toward the south, he noticed Gasser’s gait was rough when he hurried him along. He slowed him to a walk, and the mule grew soft footed. Then he bumped him up with his heels, and the hard gait returned. “Damned if you don’t trot like you’re runnin’ on crutches.” In ten minutes they entered the trees at a fast walk.

The country south of the Skadlocks’ was a mix of dry and submerged cypress swamp, but this higher northern route showed hardwoods mixed with longleaf pine, the terrain choppy and bent as a run-over washboard. He was two miles south of Zeneau when the forest closed in completely, and the mule stalled against a wall of tallow trees and briars, refusing to budge. He turned the animal around and found a hogback ridge which he followed for a quarter-mile until it came to a point at a gulch full of fallen timber. He sat the animal and looked down into the tangle. Turning the mule again, he backtracked and crossed to the next ridge and rode along it until it also petered out, so he reversed tracks again, sidling west until he found a ridge that sloped down gradually into a mudbottom gorge. He tapped Gasser’s flanks to go down, but he just stood there looking from side to side. “Git up.” After half a minute the animal sidestepped to the bottom and walked south in a narrow ditch full of mudballs washed out of the ridges. Sam dodged vines as big as a man’s arm, and after a mile of riding in what felt like a long grave, he tried to urge the mule up a slope onto high land, but he just stopped and drank the opaque water.

“Aw, get up!” The mule continued to drink. He popped him with the reins and found himself carried along the ravine, still in its bottom. Reining to the side made the mule jam to a stop, sideways, his nose in the moss on one side, his rump imbedded in dirt on the other. He cursed the animal for a full minute and then straightened him out and waited in the slow moving current. He kicked his ribs and called out every command he knew, every curse and animal insult, finally resorting to the French of his childhood, calling him a maudit fils de putain, at which the mule rolled his ears back all the way, though he didn’t budge. Sam noticed the ears and thought a moment, sucking a tooth. “En avant!” he yelled, and the mule picked up his head and walked forward. Sam raised his hands and let them drop. “Eh bien, un mulet qui parle français!” The animal picked up speed, as if what he’d heard made him comfortable with the work at hand. Sam decided to give the mule his head and let him figure the woods out for himself. The light began to fade and he played with the name “Gasser,” trying to understand where that might have come from. Finally, he called out “Garde ça!” and the animal gave a jump and picked up his step, bobbing his head. “Garde ça!” Sam said again, remembering that every village had a garde ça, an old rascal who sat in front of a store begging tobacco and telling dirty jokes. “Regardez ça!” the women would exclaim, shaking their heads. “Look at that.”