The beast knew she was there. It held up its head, unmoving and watchful. There was a glint of moonlight on its living eyes and on its tiny horns. Dorothy seemed to feel the strain in its neck muscles. The buffalo snorted again and tried to thrash its way to its feet.

And then, the buffalo lay down its head in the waters of the Crossing.

And Dorothy understood. This was the last buffalo. It had come back home to die. Its home would have been the hills above Zeandale. Now those were pastures for cattle, ringed around with barbed wire.

The buffalo were becoming extinct. Like giant flying lizards, or dodos.

Dorothy could hear its breath, hoarse and panting. The beast was dangerous. Its head was huge and a single convulsion would knock her off her feet or tear her flesh. But Dorothy did not want to leave it. She did not want it to die alone, unnoticed. She did not feel that it wanted to be left alone.

She watched it from the shore, warily. It had stopped thrashing and its giant head lay still in the shallow water. She could feel its life draining away. Dorothy sat down on the stone and unlaced her boots and walked out onto the Crossing, toward the edge of the waterfall.

The water was cool, and she felt underfoot again the stone that was rippled like a sandbar. Dorothy walked as close to the beast as she dared.

Then she put her spirit into the buffalo. She felt the vast, exhausted bulk that had gone as immobile as stone; she felt the covering of wiry, curly hair caked with mud. She felt the tail wet and heavy, beyond flicking, floating in the shallow water. The buffalo was settling into the stone. Its huge pink tongue was lolling in the water.

Don't let me die alone, the buffalo seemed to say to her. Buffalo live together; we are taken by the wolves if we cannot keep up a march. If we lag behind, we are quickly torn away, but we do not understand loneliness. Don't leave me alone.

And Dorothy knelt close beside him and stroked his mighty head and the huge hump of his shoulders, and she felt how once he had been a king. No king should die unmourned. He went very still. Breath bubbled out of him in the water. His hide twitched.

Give me to the river, the buffalo said. Hide me away from men. I don't mind the coyote or the vulture; I don't mind the beetle or the muskrat. But I don't want men to get me. I don't want them to hang my brow and horns on their wall; I don't want my skin on their floor or on their backs. Let me go whole back into the earth.

Dorothy tended the king until he died. She stroked him until she was sure he was dead, until the chest no longer heaved with breath, until there was no bubbling in the water, until the flesh was still.

Then Dorothy tried to roll him over the edge. She was very strong and perhaps the current helped. She succeeded in half rolling the corpse of a bull buffalo up onto his haunches.

It was as though she had sparked something. The legs suddenly twitched. Yes! the muscles seemed to say, Yes! Dorothy heard the hooves scrabbling on the stone.

As though the buffalo had tried to leap into Heaven, the corpse launched itself into the air. It shivered its way over the edge of the rock, a moonlit sheen of water pouring over its shoulders. It fell over the horseshoe plunge, where Dorothy had once hidden herself.

The buffalo fell between the waterfall and a large boulder. He landed, with a rearing up of his small legs, which were now limp again. He reared up and settled back and it was as if he had sighed with relief, accepting the embrace of stone.

There was a large branch stranded on the edge of the fall, and Dorothy dragged that forward until it fell too. It slipped slowly sideways, hardly falling at all, it seemed, the heavier end of its trunk crashing down onto rocks and puddles. The upper boughs lashed the air at about the level they had been at before. Except that the buffalo was covered, hidden perhaps, safe perhaps from men.

Then Dorothy stumbled back home toward the summer kitchen. Her clothes were wet, but there was no one at home who would mind. Who needs dreams? she thought. This was better. As she walked, she felt her eyelids drooping. She picked up a stick to lean on.

It was blue-gray in the sky by the time she reached the woods over the farm. She planned to walk down out of the trees, unseen. She was idly slashing at the hickory with the stick. She thumped a large tree trunk and realized that it was hollow.

There's a hollow branch up there, she thought. And there was. Now how did I know that? She reached up into a broken branch and felt leaves and pulled.

Something came out, brown as Kansas. She shook it. It was a child's dress, very lacy. Would have been white once. And there were tiny, flaking platelets of metal sewn onto it. Dorothy held it up against herself. Definitely a child's dress.

Something stirred, as if there were something else alive within her. She felt it move. It was as if there were a dreamworld somewhere, which she could dimly see. Had she left the dress in the tree?

Dorothy remembered Wilbur. She remembered the first day and the train trip and something about staying with people on the way to Kansas. There had been another life, as if the world had divided in two. She had not always lived with Aunty Em. Dorothy rolled up the tiny brown thing and hid it in her coat.

Back down on the farm, there was nothing to greet her or welcome her. She dropped down onto her mattress and sank into the deepest kind of sleep, as deep as a well and dreamless. All unaware, she had dammed up a reservoir of dreams. They grew heavy, as if hairline cracks ran through the bones of her forehead.

As Dorothy worked that day, she stumbled. She stared ahead, terrible rings around her staring eyes. Aunty Em said, "I reckon you best rest a spell, Dorothy." Dorothy looked back at her, almost refusing. But I don't want to rest, she thought. I might have the dreams.

"Go on and lie down." Aunty Em's voice sounded sad and weary. Dorothy noted how it sounded even as she turned to obey automatically. It was easier to obey than to try to think. She plodded into the barn. Her feet were like heavy stones. She slumped down onto the bales of hay and curled up on one of them, boots drawn up under her knees. She stared ahead. She would not close her eyes. Aunty Em had told her to lie down, but she would not sleep.

Aunty Em came in.

"You're still awake," Emma said in sorrow.

Aunty Em came and sat next to her on the straw. "You don't sleep, do you, Dorothy?"

Aunty Em sighed when Dorothy did not answer. She moved closer and there was a rustling of hay. "Your clothes are soaking wet and your boots are covered in mud and grass and pine-tree needles. Where do you go, Dorothy? Where do you go at night?"

Dorothy didn't answer. She stared ahead. Aunty Em began to stroke her hair, as Dorothy had stroked the buffalo.