“Shut up,” Jonas said. In the east, the sun would shortly heave itself over the horizon, casting its first gleams on a new day in this world of toil and sorrow. “I ain’t going to toss you over, because then I’d have to toss Clay over and follow along myself. They got the drop on us the same as you, right?”

Depape wanted to agree, but thought it might be dangerous to do so. He was prudently silent.

“Get down here, Clay.”

Clay slid off his mount.

“Now hunker.”

The three of them hunkered on their bootsoles, heels up. Jonas plucked a shoot of grass and put it between his lips. “Affiliation brats is what we were told, and we had no reason not to believe it,” he said. “The bad boys are sent all the way to Mejis, a sleepy Barony on the Clean Sea, on a make-work detail that’s two pans penance and three parts punishment. Ain’t that what we were told?”

They nodded.

“Either of you believe it after tonight?”

Depape shook his head. So did Clay.

“They may be rich boys, but that’s not all they are,” Depape said. “The way they were tonight… they were like… “He trailed off, not quite willing to finish the thought. It was too absurd.

Jonas was willing. “They acted like gunslingers.”

Neither Jonas nor Reynolds replied at first. Then Clay Reynolds said, “They’re too young, Eldred. Too young by years.”

“Not too young to be 'prentices, mayhap. In any case, we’re going to find out.” He turned to Depape. “You’ve got some riding to do, cully.”

“Aww, Jonas-!”

“None of us exactly covered ourselves with glory, but you were the fool that started the pot boiling.” He looked at Depape, but Depape only looked down at the ground between them. “You’re going to ride their backtrail, Roy, and you’re going to ask questions until you’ve got the answers you think will satisfy my curiosity. Clay and I are mostly going to wait. And watch. Play Castles with em, if you like. When I feel like enough time’s gone by for us to be able to do a little snooping without being trigged, mayhap we’ll do it.”

He bit on the piece of grass in his mouth. The larger piece tumbled out and lay between his boots.

“Do you know why I shook his hand? That boy Dearborn’s damned hand? Because we can’t rock the boat, boys. Not just when it’s edging in toward harbor. Latigo and the folks we’ve been waiting for will be moving toward us very soon, now.

Until they get into these parts, it’s in our interest to keep the peace. But I tell you this: no one puts a knife to Eldred Jonas’s back and lives. Now listen, Roy. Don’t make me tell you any of this twice.”

Jonas began to speak, leaning forward over his knees toward Depape as he did. After awhile, Depape began to nod. He might like a little trip, actually. After the recent comedy in the Travellers’ Rest, a change of air might be just the ticket.

The boys were almost back to the Bar K and the sun was coming over the horizon before Cuthbert broke the silence. “Well! That was an amusing and instructive evening, was it not?” Neither Roland nor Alain replied, so Cuthbert leaned over to the rook’s skull, which he had returned to its former place on the horn of his saddle. “What say you, old friend? Did we enjoy our evening? Dinner, a circle-dance, and almost killed to top things off. Did you enjoy?”

The lookout only stared ahead of Cuthbert’s horse with its great dark eyes.

“He says he’s too tired for talk,” Cuthbert said, then yawned. “So'm I, actually.” He looked at Roland. “I got a good look into Mr. Jonas’s eyes after he shook hands with you, Will. He means to kill you.”

Roland nodded.

“They mean to kill all of us,” Alain said.

Roland nodded again. “We’ll make it hard for them, but they know more about us now than they did at dinner. We’ll not get behind them that way again.”

He stopped, just as Jonas had stopped not three miles from where they now were. Only instead of looking directly out over the Clean Sea, Roland and his friends were looking down the long slope of the Drop. A herd of horses was moving from west to east, barely more than shadows in this light.

“What do you see, Roland?” Alain asked, almost timidly.

“Trouble,” Roland said, “and in our road.” Then he gigged his horse and rode on. Before they got back to the Bar K bunkhouse, he was thinking about Susan again. Five minutes after he dropped his head on his flat burlap pillow, he was dreaming of her.

Three weeks had passed since the welcoming dinner at Mayor’s House and the incident at the Travellers’ Rest. There had been no more trouble between Roland’s ka-tet and Jonas’s. In the night sky, Kissing Moon had waned and Peddler’s Moon had made its first thin appearance. The days were bright and warm; even the oldtimers admitted it was one of the most beautiful summers in memory.

On a mid-morning as beautiful as any that summer, Susan Delgado galloped a two-year-old rosillo named Pylon north along the Drop. The wind dried the tears on her cheeks and yanked her unbound hair out behind her as she went. She urged Pylon to go faster yet, lightly thumping his sides with her spurless boots. Pylon turned it up a notch at once, ears flattening, tail flagging. Susan, dressed in jeans and the faded, oversized khaki shirt (one of her da’s) that had caused all the trouble, leaned over the light practice saddle, holding to the horn with one hand and rubbing the other down the side of the horse’s strong, silky neck.

“More!” she whispered. “More and faster! Go on, boy!”

Pylon let it out yet another notch. That he had at least one more in him she knew; that he had even one more beyond that she suspected.

They sped along the Drop’s highest ridge, and she barely saw the magnificent slope of land below her, all green and gold, or the way it faded into the blue haze of the Clean Sea. On any other day the view and the cool, salt-smelling breeze would have uplifted her. Today she only wanted to hear the steady low thunder of Pylon’s hoofs and feel the flex of his muscles beneath her; today she wanted to outrun her own thoughts.

And all because she had come downstairs this morning dressed for riding in one of her father’s old shirts.

Aunt Cord had been at the stove, wrapped in her dressing gown and with her hair still netted. She dished herself up a bowl of oatmeal and brought it to the table. Susan had known things weren’t good as soon as her aunt I timed toward her, bowl in hand; she could see the discontented twitch of Aunt Cord’s lips, and the disapproving glance she shot at the orange Susan was peeling. Her aunt was still rankled by the silver and gold she had expected to have in hand by now, coins which would be withheld yet awhile due to the witch’s prankish decree that Susan should remain a virgin until autumn.

But that wasn’t the main thing, and Susan knew it. Quite simply put, the two of them had had enough of each other. The money was only one of Aunt Cord’s disappointed expectations; she had counted on having the house at the edge of the Drop to herself this summer… except, perhaps, (or the occasional visit from Mr. Eldred Jonas, with whom Cordelia seemed quite taken. Instead, here they still were, one woman growing toward the end of her courses, thin, disapproving lips in a thin, disapproving face, tiny apple-breasts under her high-necked dresses with their choker collars (The Neck, she frequently told Susan, is the First Thing to Go), her hair losing its former chestnut shine and showing wire-threads of gray; the other young, intelligent, agile, and rounding toward the peak of her physical beauty. They grated against each other, each word seeming to produce a spark, and that was not surprising. The man who had loved them both enough to make them love each other was gone.