The doctor doubted it was the croup; probably a passing cold, but for safety's sake he advised the couple to stop in town a couple of days and keep a watch on her. Stempel agreed to put them up in a two-room house he had to let. They took turns sitting up with Miranda, and never slept in the same room together. But Candy could not have been expected to guess that when word of the living arrangement traveled to her, as it did via the brides' gossip at church.
    But that was to be on Sunday. Today, Saturday, she had only seen and not heard, Molly was on her way to tea with Biddie and Biddie's awful sister, and Jericho was grappling with the pains of conscience Clancey's ruse had awakened in him. On seeing Molly and Maddie together for what might prove the only time in the experience of either, he knew at once what he should and would do. It would be easy for him, so easy it might not count as a good deed if ever the balance of his life were toted up before the pearly gates (in which he personally did not believe). But it would be the salvation of one whom he had been responsible for bringing to the brink of ruin; his new tendency toward reform notwithstanding, he still overestimated his own moral capacities. And besides, it would be fun.
    He left his baggage at the corner of the nearest building, which happened to be the cafe (in most places he had lived, he could not have done so with any confidence of seeing it again) and hurried across to Maddie's party. None of them saw him coming, naturally, since each had been exerting a fixed effort not to look at him, but they could not help it when he intruded directly onto their path. They tried to walk round, but whichever way they veered he sidestepped to meet them and at last they were forced to stop. He grinned at each in turn and wished them all a good afternoon. Molly was staring intently at the ground where a weed was breaking through.
    "I owe you an apology," he said. Molly's heart began to beat faster, in spite of what her head tried to tell her. "Miss Cloom"–he was addressing the younger of the two–"I apologize for my rudeness of the other evening." Molly's cheeks reddened, partly out of anger with herself. How could she have been so stupid as to suppose–to suppose anything? "I hardly knew what I was saying. You see"–Molly felt his eyes on her–"I've been spending too much of my time nursemaiding callow young girls." Molly's face was coming to resemble a tomato. "The sort of girls who smell of lavender soap." Molly did use lavender soap, but vowed to stop forthwith. "Sort of girls who go teary at the sight of a dead hummingbird." And he had acted sad at that himself! This was worse than at the widow's; there at least he had called to her to come back.
    "Girl like that," he continued heartlessly, "don't know anything about what a grown man feels. Or what a grown woman ought to feel. How could she?" Molly's lower lip began to quiver. No! she checked herself. You cannot, you will not, cry. "Purely a bore spending time with her, knowing she's wanting me to kiss her." Ah! This was more like what he had said at the widow's, and it almost heartened her. "Me kiss her!" He gave a great guffaw. "The notion! Be like kissing a runt calf!" At the shock of this she did release a tear, but quickly wiped it from her cheek. She must control herself. What would the others think of her?
    "Now, a woman like you," he informed Maddie, "you're a different proposition. You know just what a man wants." He grabbed her and planted a kiss on her lips. She was taken too much by surprise to prevent it, and she quite enjoyed the sensation, one she had known too little of lately, till she remembered what an outrageous liberty it was and broke away to administer a slap on the face.
    "I would have if you hadn't," her sister said.
    Jericho sauntered away, tossing a sneer in Molly's direction for good measure. Maddie was too busy making sure her hair was not mussed to have a care for anyone else's feelings, but Biddie felt a profound sympathy. She knew the kind of mortification Molly had just undergone, knew how it felt to wish oneself a million miles down into the earth or a million miles up into the firmament, absolutely any place other than the site of one's humiliation. Seeing that the tears were about to break, she enclosed Molly in an all-solacing embrace. Within its protection, Molly was able for the first time since the onset of the ordeal to look out on the world again and on the one who had caused her such torment.
    He was picking up his things from the corner where he had left them, arranging them on his shoulder and under his arm, when he chanced to look back at her and so undid all his effort, which had been practically the only good deed of his life so far. He was wearing a look such as she had never seen on him, a look of remorse for what he had just done to her. When he saw her looking back he quickly turned away and strode in the other direction, opposite from the way he had to go, which would have taken him past her again. Her heart lifted. She had been right; there was good in him, after all. But no one else had seen that look.
    She could no longer have romantic hopes of him; even if she had been older, it would have been impossible. Yet they had made a special connection; he understood things about her no one else ever had, as she did about him. If only she could talk to him now, so they could sort it out, not as prospective lovers but as good friends. Yet what she thought of as being friends still contained something of the admiration he had visited on her, the flirting and the flattery her vainer self was loath to surrender, and need not now that she understood him. Through friendship, so defined, she could retain the casual delights of love and avoid its miseries. She was too young to recognize that this was what Lottie, quoting Miss Essie, would have called another contradiction in terms.
    But Jericho's spell on her had lifted, and in the absence of that preoccupation her other interests came tumbling back into her consciousness. One was Little Women, which she must finish reading. Another was Mrs. Owsley, whom she had shamefully neglected for days. She vowed to visit that evening and hoped the old lady would forgive her.
    The cabin looked the same as ever, but there seemed to be a stillness surrounding it she had never noticed before. The voice that answered her knock was not Mrs. Owsley's. After a moment she realized it belonged to Lottie. She entered slowly, with a sense of foreboding. Lottie was sitting by the bed. She turned and lifted a finger to her lips. Molly crept forward on tiptoe.
    Mrs. Owsley was very pale and seemed to be asleep, but when Molly reached the edge of the bed the old woman opened her eyes. Perhaps she had heard Molly's approach, or perhaps only sensed her presence. When she saw her, a beatific joy such as Molly had never seen spread across her face like a pool of sweet syrup. "You're here!" she cried. Her trembling hand sought Molly's, clasped it and clung to it. "You've come at last! Dear sister! I was afraid we'd never see each other again. Now we can do all we've talked about. I'm so glad." Molly was unsure what to say and so said nothing. After a minute the hand gave up its hold and fell away. The old woman's eyelids dropped shut and her body lost all motion, even the tiniest quiver of breath.
    Molly did not have to ask, but she did. Lottie answered with a nod. Tears welled in Molly's eyes. "I should have come before. I forgot. If only I'd known!"
    Lottie took her onto her lap and placed an arm around her. Her shoulder made a cradle for Molly's head. "No way you could have. It came on her very suddenly. And you had your own cares to attend to. Nothing wrong in that." She held her for a little.
    "She thought I was her sister," Molly said in a hushed voice.
    "You made her happy at the end. We can't any of us wish for better than that."
    "But...." Molly strained with the paradox of it.
    "But what?"
    "It wasn't true." She lifted her head and looked at Lottie beseechingly. "What she thought...it wasn't so."
    Lottie took her hand. "Honey, it doesn't matter. True or not, sensible or not. Any time one human being can fill another one's need, even if it's only for a little while, the happiness that's given is real and right. Don't ever doubt it, no matter what any of them say." She realized she had moved beyond Molly's experience to her own. "Whatever happens afterwards doesn't erase that." Molly knew that now she was not speaking only of Mrs. Owsley. In her interpretation Lottie was just putting into different words the recognition that there was good in him, after all. She was happy Lottie had finally seen it.
    They said little more but sat there a long while, so that when Molly got back home it was nearly time for bed. She fell asleep quickly. When she woke, it was not yet morning; not even midnight, she guessed, though since the second story lacked a clock she could not verify it.
    Midnight! She sat upright. What day was it? Her mind was methodical, or a part of it had been till lately, and given to religious precision in the observing of mealtimes, schooltimes, and the like. This part knew, without the aid of a reminder book, the birthdays of all the brides and the dates of anniversaries for those who had been married. And today (if it were not tomorrow yet) had been Kate's last day to decide. Molly had expected her to be gone before this. But there was Andrew; perhaps she had been unable to bring herself to hurt Andrew. Yet she could not give up Alvaro, and this was her last chance, unless it had passed. Molly had to know what time it was.
    This, she could discover soonest from the clock in the hall downstairs. She jumped out of bed and ran, or came as near as she could tiptoeing, through the main bedroom. Like many minds when they are fixed on timetables, hers had forgotten the one question of fact that mattered, which a quick look settled, a look she took without thinking as she hastened up the aisle between the rows of beds. Kate's was empty; Kate was gone. The shock of the discovery brought her fully awake. But was she gone completely? Molly raced downstairs, more noisily than she had planned, glanced at the clock in passing–it was not quite midnight,.after all–and ran out of the house, across the yard, out to the street, and down toward the pier. The cold air and the cold dirt reminded her she was still in her nightgown and stockings, but she did not care.
    She was in time, after all. Kate must have left the house only minutes before (and perhaps her leaving had woken Molly), for she was still standing on the pier, about to step into the waiting boat. A single carpetbag sat beside her. The dark figure of the sailor stood in the bows waiting. Molly ran up to her. "Kate!"
    She turned in astonishment. "Molly! You oughtn't to be here."
    Molly believed she ought. "You're not going in the middle of the night? Without a farewell party?"
    "I must. Or Alvaro will leave without me." She looked toward the lights of the schooner.
    "But...." She could not be going so soon! Their friendship had been so brief. Molly searched for arguments to keep her there. "It's spring. You were going to show me where the eagles nest. We were going to see them together."
    "Julianna knows. She can show you."
    "But–"
    Kate lowered herself almost to kneeling and laid her hands on Molly's shoulders. "Darling, this is my only chance. It's different for most of the brides. They want sturdy, steady men. But if I had to stay here, married to Andrew, I'd be in mourning for the rest of my life. It's nothing against him. But it would be like your marrying someone who told you you couldn't draw any more. Do you see?"
    Molly had seen: seen it happen to other women, and not only on the frontier. "Will you be happy, then?"
    Kate laughed at the question. "Of course! I'll be with Alvaro. We'll live in a...a kind of a palace. And walk on the beach in the warm sun. When you think of me, imagine me under palm trees, strolling barefoot on the sand."
    "Barefoot? Kate, how wicked!" It seemed to her the most daring thing she had ever heard. She did not reflect how close she was to being barefoot herself.
     And now she had a new idea. "Wait here!" she commanded.
    Kate stood. "I can't. I have to go."
    "No, I'll bring you the picture you liked, the one of the raccoon. So you'll remember me."
    "I'll always remember you," Kate said fondly. She spread her arms wide. Molly saw that there could be no more delay, that this must be their last leave-taking. She ran into her arms, and they hugged tightly.
    "Will she go, too?"
    Molly looked down. The man in sailor's garb had stepped out of the boat onto the landing. The moonlight revealed his face as that of Alvaro himself. Molly gasped, and so did Kate. She hurried down the steps to him and wrapped herself in his arms. Molly thought it the most romantic picture she had ever seen outside a frame; she heard Schubert playing somewhere above, or on that sun-soaked beach whither Kate was bound.
    "No, she's not going." Kate was unsure whether his question had been serious; with him, she often could not tell. She looked up at Molly. "If you don't get back, you'll catch your death."
    "And so will you." Each had meant, and knew the other had meant, goodbye.
    "¡Adios, señorita!" the dark man bade her. "¡Que enamorese de un bruto grande y que ustedes paralos muchos niños vigorosos!"
    "Alvaro!" Kate cried, as if shocked. She hit him lightly.
    "¡Adios!" he repeated, blowing Molly a kiss. He hefted down Kate's bag and stowed it in the bows, helped her to board and to seat herself, and took his position at the oars. Molly watched as he rowed out over the rippling Sound. She was a little disappointed when Kate did not look back, and did not wait to watch her onto the ship. She could hardly see it at that distance, anyway.
    As she started up the hill she glanced toward the boathouse on the adjoining pier, under whose peaked roof a figure was standing. A moment later he stepped out into the moonlight, but she had guessed who he was already. He passed in front of her without seeing her, or seeing anything, and turned onto the hill ahead of her. She wanted to run and comfort him, to tell him he would not feel Kate's loss forever, but she was needing to be told that herself just then. So she left him to himself and went home.
    Returning through the yard, she saw her sister waiting in the doorway. What must she think to find Molly out late again, and this time in her nightgown? Not–oh, no! She must not think that! Molly's idea of "that" was incomplete but sufficiently disgraceful to compel her to explain as she stepped onto the porch. "I was just–"
    "I know," Candy said softly. She swung the screen door open. "Come to bed."
    She seemed unlike herself: so tired, so listless. But instead of pitying her for it as might have been expected, Molly felt resentful. What right had Candy to be weak? It was her job to look out for them, her fault Kate had left. "Why didn't you stop her?" Molly demanded.
    "We came here to get married." The words seemed directed at herself, as though she had been the one who put the question. "That's what she's doing." As she shut the door she added, in a whisper, "I hope."
    "She could have gotten married here. You could have told her–"
    "Tell?" Candy faced her across the hall with eyes bereft of confidence. "Who am I to tell anybody anything?"
    Molly did not know how to answer. If there were an answer, she was not the one to give it. Her own sense of grievance subsided as she realized that Candy, even more than she, was encased in her own individual sorrow for the present, and that neither could relieve the other's. Together but separate, they betook themselves to bed.
    Early before church next morning, Corky was taking the trail to town (though not, in his case, to church) when he spied someone he had not expected to see so high up, so early. She was sitting on a footbridge just off the path, legs dangling, feet almost in the water. His first inclination was to leave her be, but she presented so odd and so sad a picture, equal measures of curiosity and sympathy drew him to engage her in conversation, which she seemed not to mind. She seemed beyond minding anything, or welcoming it, either. "Whatcha doin' out here by yourself?" he asked companionably.
    "This was the first place Jeremy kissed me." She said it without evident feeling. "In Seattle at least."
    "Is that so?" He had not really cared to know that. "So, whatcha doin' out here by yourself?"
    "It was the nicest kiss we ever had. After the first one. But that was much shorter."
    "Huh! You don't say?" Now he was feeling outright uncomfortable. "So, whatcha doin' out here by yourself?"
    Candy stared emptily into the empty water, where not a fish was stirring. "Feeling miserable."
    Corky left her to it. You ain't the only one, he thought as he continued down the trail.
    His appearance at the doorstep of the dormitory and his request for Biddie to be sent out occasioned some grumpiness (the house having barely woken up) and some hasty dressing, first by the bride who had volunteered to answer the door and then by Biddie herself, who wondered what it was all about. "Lydia said you wanted to see me out here?"
    Corky was wringing his hat with both hands. "That's right."
    "Would you care for some breakfast?" It was a tad early yet, but he could wait in the parlor and further wring his hat till it was time.
    "Had breakfast."
    "Would you care for...a cup of coffee?" It was a tad early for that, too.
    "Don't need coffee!" Biddie was entirely at a loss. She waited and the hat had a hard time of it for a minute or two while Corky worked himself up to say what he had to. "Don't guess I'll be coming around no more. I don't guess."
    After the impositions of the last weeks, this was more than she could bear stoically. "Corky! Why ever not?" She had a sudden suspicion. "Is it because of my sister?"
    "I don't know. You tell me!"
    "Corky, what–?"
    Now he let fly, pacing and gesticulating with his hat. "Ever since them two came to town you ain't been all gabby and fool-headed like you used to. You're soft-spoke and sensible like other gals. I hate it! And if that's the way you're gonna be, you can–you can–" He shook as he struggled to force past his shyness. "You can get yourself another fella!" He plumped the much-creased hat onto his head and stamped off down the steps.
    Biddie was too much astonished by his speech to call or run after him. She recognized that he was exactly right, though he had seen her only a couple of times in these weeks. This was a consequence she had not foreseen, and she would not abide it: Corky was just about the most important person in the world to her. She had let the situation go on longer than she had meant to anyhow. With a gleam of renewed spirit in her eye, she marched inside and up the stairs.
    She found the two of them still in bed, as she knew she would. All the brides were up and most of them were dressed, but not they, oh, no. Last to rise, longest to wash, loudest to demand their breakfast, they were a drain on the resources, the energies, and the morale of the household. Selfishly, for her own purposes, she had let them ensconce themselves to the disadvantage of all.
    "There you are," her mother grumbled, "and not before time. You can draw our bath" (it was only a washtub) and lay out our clothes, there's a good girl. The grey for me, I think, and as for Madeline...." Maddie, who enjoyed her repose, was rolling her shoulders and purring like a cat. "...well, you can ask her yourself. Look lively, girl!" Biddie did not move. "And didn't I tell you, didn't I plainly tell you, day before yesterday, to brush down my wrap? Really, how you'll manage when your sister's married and you're the only one left to do for me, I can't begin to imagine. It's a mercy you've no husband of your own and no hope of one, that's what I say, because if you had he'd never show you the forbearance I do. But I can't help it, I consider motherhood a sacred trust–"
    At that Biddie broke into a loud peal of laughter. Maddie Mrs. Cloom stared at Biddie uncertainly. "What are you laughing at?"
    "You," said Biddie, "are the most absurd person."
    Mrs. Cloom's mouth fell open. "I beg your pardon?"
    Maddie propped herself up on her pillow with a yawn. "Darling, is it kind to speak to poor dear–?"
    Biddie turned on her. "And you! You're funnier than she is!" She gave forth another peal of laughter. Her voice had drawn the other brides into the room and onto the stair, where they stood listening with growing pleasure. Her relatives stared aghast at her as she continued: "As far back as I can remember, the two of you have been nesting inside my head like a pair of crows, cawing at me every blessed minute. For the longest time I tried to get you to love me, until I realized that was impossible. Then–"
    "Bridget, dear–"
    "Be still!" Biddie snapped.
    "Darling–"
    "You, too! It'll only be another piece of nonsense, so hush! But where was I? Oh, yes–then I tried to get you to respect me, but I realized that was impossible, too. So I decided the best I could do was try to understand you. And I did–try, I mean. Then I got tired of it, so I did the only thing that was left and...and left. And you were both glad enough when it happened–goodbye, Biddie, and good riddance, as far as you were concerned. But now you've come all this way to see me. Why is that?"
    Her small dark eyes peered intently at them, and so did the eyes of the others, to the point of making them uneasy. "Well," Maddie stammered, "your last letter–"
    "Letter?" Biddie could not remember sending one.
    "At Christmas," said Mrs. Cloom. "You didn't sound at all like yourself, dear."
    "Who else would I be? And how would you know, either of you? You've never had the slightest notion who I was, or the slightest interest in finding out. I do understand you now. The only reason I put up with you this long was to make sure. You want someone you can humble, so you can feel like grand ladies. That's all I've ever been to you." Her voice cut like a cold knife. "You never were my family, except on the census rolls." She looked around. "This is my family. And it's my house, and I'll thank you to leave it and scoot back to your own. And I wish you well." She paused. "You know something? That isn't true." With that judgment, she left the room.
    The assembled audience felt like applauding. The two Clooms remaining found two dozen pairs of hostile eyes trained on them. "Well, if we're not wanted...." Mrs. Cloom said in a theatrical voice. No one contradicted her. She and her younger daughter were gone the next day, and it was a very long time before Biddie saw them again.
    Molly, who had heard the send-off from her chamber, congratulated Biddie as she was washing the breakfast plates and passing them to Molly for drying. "That was brave of you."
    "Pooh. I should have done it as soon as they showed their faces. But I thought...I don't know. Strange its being my letter that brought them. It was hardly a letter at all. Just a note to advise them that any misunderstandings we might have had in the past, I hoped they'd forgive me as I forgave them. That was all it was."
    Molly felt an indescribable elation. "Oh, Biddie, don't you see? It showed them you'd changed, and that made them afraid. They came here to try to make things the way they were before. But I'm glad you settled it. You're right, people can live inside your head your whole life–all sorts of people." She thought of Kate and Mrs. Owsley. "You can run away with them, or say goodbye to them. But you have to do something if you're given the chance. You have to!" She laid down the towel. "Thank you, Biddie!" She gave her a big hug and ran off upstairs.
    "Well, you're welcome as can be!" To herself she added, What ever can the girl have in mind? A few minutes later she heard her patter back down and out the door.
    Her first stop was the mercantile. "Oh, he's long gone," said Ben. "But you might ask Lottie."
    "Gone," Lottie confirmed. "Haven't seen him since that night." He certainly was not there now; nobody was, this early. "It's my guess he went off looking for that flower."
    "The snow-flower? That was for my picture!"
    Lottie spoke knowingly. "Honey, if one girl isn't at hand, he'll settle on another. Makes no difference, far as he's concerned." She took Molly's frown as a sign of wounded pride, which it was in part. "But he'll probably go ahead with yours," she said kindly.
    "Where would he look?" Lottie referred her to the same person she had the last inquirer, but he was now residing back at camp.
    "It's up there," he said, with a jerk of the thumb, "if it exists at all." Molly gazed up the mountain with an air of indecision. Joshua looked up from the little book on steam engines he had spent the morning studying. "He won't be there. That was just another whim of his. He's like a jackrabbit–a second later he's hopped off somewhere else." He gave her a hard look. "I hope you're not getting sweet on him?" She shook her head innocently. "Good," he declared. "Not worth your while." His eyes went back to the book, and hers back to the mountain.
    Had Candy been exercising her usual vigilance the next morning she would have noticed Molly leaving the house ahead of breakfast and questioned her closely about everything to do with it; questioned her announcement that she had to get to school early to help a fellow pupil complete Friday's assignment, questioned her having left her books at home (though she had taken her sketchbook with her), questioned the warm coat she had chosen. The coat must have been exceedingly warm, for her cheek was flushed and fiery, as Candy would have noticed but the others had not. Indeed, it was her recession from Molly's life that had emboldened her sister to so try her chance and follow her impulse where it led her.
    Today that would be up the mountain. Anticipation of the adventure had her pulse racing like the flume she had lately traveled. The sun, which shone askance on her as soon as she left the shadow of the house, appeared brighter than usual, so bright in fact she had to shield her eyes. She put that down to her own heightened state, which made everything seem more brilliant and more thrilling. Her head was whirling with it.
    The object of her search had done as Lottie had guessed and gone up to the high places in quest of the snow-flower. He had lodged himself in the Bolts' old cabin (he was a Bolt, after all) for as long as might be needed. Hither he had brought his easels (counting the one he had not returned, which was one more than he needed), his canvases, his brushes and paints, his clothes (including the coat Jason had unknowingly bequeathed him, which he was glad of now), everything he had had with him, including the little bit of money he had not spent.
    Hunger made him cross. He had finished off the little he had managed to pilfer from Clancey's galley, the pond nearby had been frozen over the night before (and he had never fished successfully in his life, anyway), he had no gun and no traps, and his palette knife would hardly serve for hunting. As a boy he had learned to use a slingshot; perhaps he could make himself another.
    He had passed a chilly and wakeful night, and on looking out after rising he found himself amid a new-risen ocean of white. That alarmed him unexpectedly, for he had supposed the big snowfalls to be ended. He had better start looking for the flower at once. His only clue to its whereabouts was the legend that it bloomed somewhere on the mountain; in the high reaches, Joshua had said, which might be here, or higher, or lower. His father had failed to find it, almost perishing in the attempt. None of this was in the least encouraging.
    Yet it would be worth the effort, if it existed, and if it were anything like his idea of it. He would fetch it away to some other place where he could find a model to match it to; not Molly now, but another girl of the same age and disposition, whom he must take care to treat rather less lightly (while of course still observing all the proprieties). He would paint her, and the result, he felt sure, would be his greatest accomplishment so far. Then he would somehow work his way back across country or through Canada, and across the ocean home. The thought comforted him.
    But first he must find the flower, if it were to be found. Without a map, without a plan, and without provisions (of which he had none), he set out from the cabin for the nearest hills. He found what might have been a trail and took it, found another and took that, and so continued, looking round as he went, but saw only brush, trees, and snow, with stands of earth between; no flower.
    Inevitably, since he did not blaze the way or mind the position of the sun, and had no compass with him, he got lost. He might have remained so forever if his nostrils had not grabbed at a smell in the air–of all smells, the one they craved most, and the most delectable to them, the fleshy, woody tang of meat roasting–and followed it with the infallible accuracy of instinct to a pair of skinned animals, somewhat but not quite like squirrels, that hung impaled on an iron rod stuck in the ground, amidst a fire whose smoke enveloped and browned the carcasses as if they had been midget saints burning at the stake. Beside the fire stood a pine with a sledge leaning against it and an animal trap clamped to it by the jaws. From this hung other traps, and pelts of various shades. Whoever their owner was, he was not in sight.
    As Jericho began to peel off a piece of game for himself he heard a sharp click behind him and turned to face the barrel of a rifle the length of a man, couched in arms big enough to wield it without strain. The deerskins, the long hair smeared with bear grease, the Hawken the giant was leveling, and above all the exhibits dangling from the tree beside him betrayed his calling. "Who are you?" he challenged. Jericho told him, and asked for the same courtesy in return. The man gave his name as Thibideau. "Maybe you are after my skins, eh?"
    Now that Jericho recognized the accent, he grinned as if he had found another brother. "Mais non, mon ami. Moi, je chasse le fleur des neiges."
    "Le fleur des neiges!" The trapper was impressed. "Ah, oui, c'est une merveille, vraiment." He lowered his Hawken and leaned it against the thick trunk, which had hidden him from Jericho at first. "Mais vous etes canadien?"
    "Non, non, je suis americain. J'habite ici." Jericho gestured vaguely.
    Thibideau looked about, scratching his head. "Ici?"
    "Plus ou moins."
    Thibideau shrugged. "So, we are neighbors. Come warm yourself at my fire. Soon these fellows will be done." He did not say what species they were, and Jericho did not ask, lest the knowledge spoil his appetite.
    He crouched before the fire. "Isn't this Bolt brothers land?"
    "Ah, oui. But the Bolts, they are down there, and I am up here." He laughed at his slyness. Jericho judged it wise not to mention his connection to the family. "This flower," Thibideau said presently. "If I could show you where it is"–Jericho's spirits rose–"what would you give me for it?"
    "I bet you've never had your picture painted." Jericho did not disclose that few holders of that promise (and none locally except the widow Duvet's girls) had seen its dividend. But Thibideau seemed pleased. First he shared his food with Jericho, who gobbled down his half ravenously, and then he led him to the flower. If it was a marvel, Jericho reflected, their meeting was a greater one. To have found the one man who could show him to the one thing he was seeking was much more than he had had reason to expect, as if it had been meant to happen.
    The flower lay among what could truly be called the high reaches, only two tiers below the summit. The narrow porch from which it sprouted was hidden between jutting rock faces. Without Thibideau, he probably would not have seen it. The stem was ugly (yet would be good to paint), a long black stalk without leaves, which would appear later (though the flower was showing now, in a seeming reversal of the natural order). From its end sprang a cluster of tiny deep red blossoms. They were beautiful, if one troubled to examine them, but one might well never trouble. That was fitting for Molly, or would have been.
    He regretted how things had gone with her. He was not sure which he regretted the more, his careless treatment of her or its correction, which had deprived the world of what might have been his masterpiece. The idea that this might have been the greater sin gratified his vanity so much he let it flutter through his head a while.
    He carefully removed the root from the ground and swathed it in one of the soft cloths in which he customarily packed his paintings for transit. The petals were so small he doubted whether they would survive the journey. But he had so doubted before and the flowers had always manifested more strength than he had credited them with.
    Half the mischief he had worked among his brothers had yet to be undone. Two of them had spent most of the past three days in the valley to which the steam engine had fallen, laboring to revive it, but though now it stood upright and the rods were unbent, the firebox stubbornly refused to stay alight. Neither brother had heard of Jeremy's return. Joshua had moved back to camp before the intelligence spread and he had not been back since. On the third afternoon he came down to ask Ben if he knew where a small bolt was to be found, and received the obvious joke in reply (whose wit tickled its originator no end). Forgetting the bolt, he hared back to the valley, where he was amazed to find the engine chugging and fizzing away. "Got it back in harness while you were gone," Jason boasted.
    "You did?"
    Jason took some offense at his tone. "I did. Is that such cause for dismay?"
    Rather than engage that large topic in the time available to them, Joshua repeated the news gotten from Ben. Jason's answer was immediate. "Then we'll fetch him home."
    "Take some tall talking. Not sure even you can do it."
    Chastened by his recent mistakes, Jason responded with something less than his usual cockiness. "The two of us can. Like the old days. Remember? You prime 'em, I finish 'em." This had been their motto.
    Joshua shook his head. "Not any more. I gave up the game a long time ago." That had been just after they brought the brides to Seattle. "Especially where Jeremy's concerned."
    "Ah, now it comes back to me. You got morality." His tone was derisive.
    "Wasn't that." But he would not say more.
    "Then you won't help? Not even for your brother's sake?"
    "You drove him out. You fetch him back." He started up the hill.
    "I will," Jason declared, "or I'll die trying." Another of his brainstorms struck him. "By Ned! If that ain't just what I'll do!" He arrested Joshua by the shoulder. "What we'll do."
    He kept at him for the next two hours, extemporizing on the proposition that the new plan was not at all like the old days but a different breed of animal altogether, and besides that, the importance of its object overrode any caviling about what one would and would not do, and besides that, he was only asking Joshua to do one simple thing. A simpleton, a small child, a babe in arms could do it. In the end Joshua agreed, mainly to spare himself further harassment. And in only a little more time than it took for his trip to town and back, the extra having been taken up in delivering the message Jason had dictated to him, Jeremy tore into camp. His features were drawn, his movements barely controlled. Joshua ambled in a good way behind him.
    "Where is he?" Jeremy shouted into the first face he met. "Where's Jason?" The puzzled logger pointed him to the brothers' tent.
    Jason was leaning back in a chair (a lot cruder than any of Isaac's), legs crossed, feet propped up on a short, squat log. He was flipping lazily through the latest number of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. The pose fit him so ill, it would have disconcerted Jeremy in any case, but he had expected something very different. He endeavored to make sense of what his eyes told him. "Jason...?"
    His brother barely looked up. "Been quite a spell since we saw you," he observed, without particular interest. "Help yourself to coffee if you like."
    "But Josh–" Jeremy saw him just walking up. His face was bland and unrevealing. "Josh told me you were–"
    "On death's black verge? Yes, that's what I told him to say." He continued perusing the paper.
    Jeremy felt as if his world were turned topsy-turvy, or he were. "But you don't look like you're dying," he persisted.
    "Mm? Oh, no. Wasn't true."
    "Not true! What do you mean, not true?" He wished Jason would look him in the eye.
    Jason granted the wish, folding the paper into his lap. "I mean," he said, blinking as if the question surprised him, "it was a prevarication. A stretcher. A tall story. Or, in plain words, a bare-faced lie." He called over to Joshua. "You see, I was right." Joshua smiled. "Bet him you were gullible enough to believe it. Gave us both a fine laugh." He rose, tossing the paper onto the chair behind him.
    Jeremy was as much bewildered as outraged. The tears that had stood waiting to grieve Jason now crowded forward, his frustration pushing them almost to the brink. "Soon as Josh told me, I dropped everything, ran here as fast as I could, just prayin' I'd be in time."
    "Expected you to." Jason shook his head scornfully. "You always were a sentimental mama's boy."
    The blow that threw him back onto the chair, crumpling Frank Leslie under him, seemed to have exploded out of empty air. It had taken Jeremy himself by surprise. Jason rubbed his jaw. "I had that comin'," he said, dropping the pose and speaking straightforwardly. "Now will you come home?"
    Jeremy at last understood that this had been his purpose all along; his and Joshua's. For a long spell he looked from one to the other, considering. "I owe him one, too," he said at last.
    "You'll have to work that out between yourselves," Jason replied. But he knew it was all right now; they all knew. Odd how a punch in the face had a way of setting things straight.
    "I'm not letting you sock me!" Joshua warned. Jeremy insisted he had it coming, which was the last straw. Jason might be content to go easy on him, but Joshua saw no reason why he should. "And you don't? Betraying us like you did?" A quiet fell. This was the first time the reason for their separation had been mentioned. The others stood awkwardly.
    "I had my reasons."
    "Yeah," Joshua said without thinking, "so'd Benedict Arnold." Before he knew it a fist soared out at his chin–unlike Jason, he saw it coming–and made him stagger back. His jaw wanted nursing, too. As he rubbed it he asked, rather resentfully, "Did that ease your conscience?"
    So the battle of weeks past had not ended. "You're so ready to point the finger–all of you," he added, including Candy in that. "But none of you will listen. Deaf and blind, like Isaac said." He could have laughed if he had not felt too much like crying. "It wasn't Jason I betrayed. It was–" He stopped, shaking his head. "What's the use? Tell me, what? You'll believe what you please, anyway."
    The discouragement he had felt when he left had settled on him again. His limbs drooped like a weeping willow's. Moving them with an effort, he walked away down the hill.
    "Who was it?" Joshua yelled after him. Jeremy continued without looking back. "See?" Joshua complained, somewhat self-justifyingly. "He wants us to listen, but he won't talk."
    "That's where he's going now," said Jason. He had observed which path Jeremy had turned onto outside the base camp. "Where he always goes, times like this. To the one person he knows will understand."
    Had the graves been in their original places by the old cabin, the brothers might have met their unlamented relation. But the remains had been moved to a hillock off the loggers' yard, and the makeshift crosses replaced with a carved headstone. Jeremy knelt before it. He spoke as naturally and easily as he would have to Lizzie. His brothers, who had followed him, stopped at the edge of the graveyard. They could not hear what he said, and would never have tried. Jason realized with a stab of remorse that when he had banished Jeremy from the mountain he had banished him from this, too.
    They were still waiting when he came down. That surprised him only a little. When a Bolt had unfinished business, he finished it, usually sooner rather than later (Jericho excepted). "Yeah?" he said indefinitely.
    "You've told her," Jason said. "Now tell us. I promise we'll listen this time."
    Jeremy took a deep breath. It took him a minute to subdue all the feelings contending within him. When he believed he had done so, he began. "You thought I betrayed you on the voyage. But, Jason, I didn't. Sure, it's what Stempel wanted me to do, what he thought he'd got me to do. Before we left, he took me aside and offered me money–"
    "Five hundred dollars," Joshua interjected.
    "Five hundred dollars. If I could convince you to approach the brides in a...in an upright sort of–"
    "Talkin' honest," Jason recalled.
    "Talkin' honest, that's right. He said he was lookin' out for the town's interests. And I believed him. You know me, I believe everybody." His brothers smiled. "Till once I got to thinkin' about it. Then I saw he'd fast-talked me. He was hopin' to make things go haywire. He didn't think talkin' honest would work any more than you did. The two of you think just alike." Joshua smiled at this; Jason did not.
    "But here's the thing," Jeremy went on. "He wasted his money. What he was askin' me to do was what I woulda done anyhow. Except the two of you were right–it didn't work. And I went ahead and gave you the nod to...to razzle-dazzle 'em." Now his brothers understood, and knew they had done him an injustice. "So, you see, I didn't betray you. I betrayed Stempel. After we got back I tried to refuse the money but he forced it on me. Said much as he'd like to keep it, I'd done my part, and he'd never in his life gone back on a contract and wouldn't start now. I didn't know what to do with that much cash, so I sneaked it into the brides' fund a little at a time." He did feel guilty about one thing. "I never told you about it. I...I didn't want you to know."
    The three of them stood silent for a minute between the field of grey stones and the tall evergreens that looked out over them. "You were in the right," Jason said. "Except for when you gave me the nod. I shoulda talked honest to those girls, or give up the enterprise. I didn't realize how much I was askin' of 'em, how much I was takin' from 'em. Only knew later, when it was too late. You were the only one who saw it clear."
    Jeremy shook his head. "You're givin' me credit I can't claim. You were bein' honest, in your way. Honest with yourself. But I wasn't. Not then, not ever. Don't you see? I woulda done the same as you–led 'em on, sweet-talked 'em. Only I couldn't because I–because I–" His jaws and lips continued to work, but the only sound that came forth was almost a croak. His brothers stared in shock. They had seen these attacks before, but not for years. "–because I c-c-can't!" he finally burst out.
    Jason hurried to him and clenched his shoulder. "Jeremy...easy."
    "You n-n-never–" Jeremy halted, breathing deeply, and continued, forcing himself to stay calm, carefully uttering each word. "–n-never n-knew. What it was like for m-me, bein' the only one who c-couldn't t-talk in a f-family of fast-talkers." Jason glanced at Joshua, who seemed unsurprised.
    "Before, we'd all talk together. Then I turned into your problem–the one that wasn't right." He could tell by the change in Jason's eyes this had hit home. "Yeah, I saw it." He felt in charge of himself again for the moment. "And when we got older and the two of you would team up for the razzle-dazzle–just the two of you–and I'd sit quiet, people would say, that Jason, he's a spellbinder, and that Joshua, he can charm the birds out of the trees. But that Jeremy c-c–" The old torment gripped him again: so he had not outgrown it, after all. It clamped his throat, his jaw, his tongue, and would not let them go; it jabbered in his ear the same mockeries it had in his childhood; his invisible friend, his imp. He had to fight it, as he had had to then. "–c-c-can't p-put two words t-t-together!"
    The revelation stunned Jason. "Mama's dyin'," he continued softly, as his imp stole away, "that was just the start. Afterwards, it was knowin' I c-couldn't make do. Knowin' people were always thinkin', what's wrong with him? You, too."
    "No, Jeremy–"
    Jeremy's eyes contradicted him. "To you talkin' is a birthright. Well, mine got stole. And I never got it back. Not like before. Because I do still stutter–down deep–and it won't ever go away. Because the only one who could make it go away is...." He looked up the hill. Then he quickly ran a sleeve across his eyes.
    "I never knew," said Jason. "I should have but I didn't."
    "I did." They turned to Joshua. "Not at first, when we were kids. But on the voyage. One day the brides were cutting' didoes on deck and you and me came out to talk 'em into behavin' like we wanted, like sweet little misses. And we did it up brown, too, a regular sermon. Jeremy was out there, hangin' around Candy. And he didn't say a word. But she marched up to us and commenced calling us names. You frauds, she said, you razzle-dazzlers, you oughta be ashamed of yourselves, perpetrating your confidence tricks on these girls when you're supposed to be taking care of them. She pointed over at Jeremy and said, look at him, he's ashamed of the pair of you!
    "I looked, and I saw she was wrong. Oh, he had that pinched-up, churchgoing look on his face, all right. But it wasn't us he was ashamed of, no, sir. Much as he disapproved of what we were doing, he envied us for it. Like a man with no hands envying a pickpocket. Didn't have to hear him say it, I knew it. That's when I made up my mind to give up the razzle-dazzle. Vowed I'd never again give him reason to feel he wasn't as good as us, that he didn't measure up. I couldn't do that to him, once I knew."
    Jason looked like a newborn exposed to the world for the first time. "You never said. Not a whisper."
    "Wasn't my place. It was Jeremy's to tell, if he chose."
    "All these years, and I find I don't know my own family." He had not only been mistaken about them this once; he had always been mistaken. He looked at Jeremy. "There's nothing I can say to make it right. 'Sorry" doesn't seem nearly enough."
    Jeremy had listened to Joshua's account with gratitude, but in some embarrassment for Jason as well as himself. The same care that had moved Joshua on his behalf now moved him. Jason must not feel he had failed to measure up, either; he was still the greatest man Jeremy knew. "But you got 'em here! You and your sweet talk. You've done more for the town than anyone."
    "My talk wasn't always so sweet," Jason said. "Oh, there was plenty of it–I'd talk at the drop of a hat, talk till the cows came home, the seas would run dry before I ran out of words to say or breath to say 'em with. But back then it wasn't to outfox people, make 'em see cheese where there were only stones, or wine for tar-water. That came after–after Ma and Pa passed." His brothers listened quietly, and with a feeling of privilege. Jason almost never spoke of the old days, of his young manhood, or of their parents' passing. Now he was "talking honest" indeed, telling things he had never told, as they had done. They wondered where it would lead.
    "Wasn't by intention," he continued. "Just came about. Expect I fancied if I talked fast enough and fine enough, I could keep other sorrows from the door. Keep you two from going the way of Jurgen and Judson and Jeroboam." He paused, remembering, and then spoke suddenly. "Everyone saw how Jeremy grieved for her. How it'd never be the same for him without her there to...." His throat tightened; he waited a second before proceeding. "Everyone saw how it was with him."
    His brothers had not known, had not guessed. He had never said; not a whisper. "And I hated you," Joshua confessed (but Jason had known it). "Because you never wept for her."
    "I wept." He stared down the rows of the dead. "While you two lay asleep. I stood outside in the cold and the tears froze on my cheeks. But you never saw them. I couldn't let you. Because now I wasn't only your brother, I was your father, too. It was my job to stand tall like the evergreens and teach you to do the same, so you'd survive–survive many winters." He looked at Joshua. "Instead I taught you never to weep. Didn't I?"
    "Out in the cold," Joshua said quietly, "with the tears freezing on my face."
    "We're all carrying the scars from those times," Jeremy reflected. "Looks like we'll carry them forever."
    Now Jason recalled his purpose in having lured him home. The afternoon's disclosures, which would thenceforth introduce a new charity into their dealings with one another, did not change that. "Here's where they'll hurt least," he said, "whatever wrongs we've done you notwithstanding. The best medicine for you is...Bolt brothers' business." He shouted it to the hills, and they shouted it back. "Josh?"
    "Bolt brothers' business!"
    "Jeremy?"
    "Bolt brothers' business!"
    "Together now!"
    "Bolt brothers' business!"
    They did not stop there, but continued shouting, competing to see who could do it the loudest. In the end, Jeremy won. It might have been foolish but it had felt good. The three of them laughed together as they had not for a long time. Jeremy asked, "Shouldn't we hug?" So they did. The air seemed freer and the sun warmer than they had before.
    "Come home," said Jason. "It's time."
    Jeremy surprised him. "Don't know that I can." He quickly explained, "I'd like to–I don't mean that–but I've got someone with me." They did not know about Lizzie yet. "I was going to go back with her. Now I guess I'll ask her to stay."
    While he told them of her and Isaac and the settlement, Jericho made his way back to the cabin with Thibideau, whom he had invited to share it (bear grease and all) on condition that Thibideau capture their meals, which Jericho had claimed he would not mind cooking. The arrangement had satisfied the trapper. He dragged his sledge behind him piled with the pelts, the traps, and a leather carryall on top. He rested it outside the door before going in. The house was small, but that was nothing to him; he had passed nights in dugouts, of both kinds. "You can sleep here as long as you like," Jericho promised.
    Thibideau turned to the nearer bed. "What about the girl?"
    "Girl?" Jericho recognized her at once, though her face was turned away. He ran and knelt at her side.
    The voices had roused her. She turned over and squinted at him; the light still hurt her eyes. "Jason?" she said tentatively, and then, hardly believing it, "Jericho?" Her voice sounded thin and frail, like Mrs. Owsley's. Her cheek was hot to the touch. Jericho told the other man so. "Am I dying?" she whispered. "Like Beth?"
    He did not recognize the reference. "I won't let you die," he promised. He looked over at Thibideau, to whom for some reason he ascribed a wide store of woodsman's knowledge. "Is there anything we can do for her?"
    Thibideau nodded. He picked up the snow-flower, still in its wrappings. "This will cool the fever." Jericho remembered that Joshua had told him the same thing. "I boil it." He started to remove the cloth.
    "Wait!" Jericho cried. "Not the flowers, too?"
    Thibideau stared at him oddly. "No, I can cut them. I only need the stalk." He went out for a few seconds and returned with a small cookpot. Then he saw that Jericho had neglected to lay a fire or, evidently, to do anything else since moving in. Sighing, he left to gather wood.
    Molly was asleep again. Jericho noticed her sketchbook on the floor. He picked it up and raised the cover to peer inside, for no reason more worthy than curiosity. The first drawing arrested his attention. It showed a doe, on the verge of running off; he knew that but he could not say how. He flipped to the next page. This one showed a kingfisher in the moment before taking flight. He continued leafing through from drawing to drawing, including one of himself as a red Indian that made him laugh. He looked as if he were about to run off, too.
    There were some drawings of plants as well, and these were well rendered, but the animal studies were the remarkable ones. They succeeded in showing their subjects as still for only a few seconds, between one movement and the next; one had no doubt that in the next second they would leap or soar out of the scene. That their portraitist was obviously self-trained, using techniques of line and shade she had contrived on her own, made her achievement the more impressive. For all of Jericho's skill in delineating the human figure, every one of his subjects looked to be in eternal repose. He now strove for that effect more or less consciously, to disguise the absence of a life exterior to the canvas. Molly had done what he could not; she must be very clever.
    No, to describe her so would be to dismiss her, and he must not do that. One day, with training and luck (neither of which might be forthcoming in her circumstances), she could become something very fine. She already was. He studied her face and her body as she slept. Seeing them through the prism of her work, he saw them clearly for the first time. And, seeing her, he saw himself; the moral difference between them defined what he was not but might have been, and been the better artist for it.
    "Maybe some day you will marry her, eh?" Thibideau said as he passed with an armload of firewood.
    Jericho continued to gaze at her. "If only I might," he murmured. Thibideau did not hear him. Then he was struck with an idea. He ran to his carrying bag and uncased the canvases in it. He had only two with him; he had left a blank one in Ben's backroom and tenting for one more, but had had no space for them in his bag. He removed the cotton wrapping from one of the two and stared at it a long time. Then he crouched over his smaller bag and dug in it for the palette knife.
    How much of Molly's experience had been real and how much imagined, she was not sure for a long time afterward, so fantastic did it all seem in retrospect. The early part, her long climb through the hills into the snowfields, she knew to have been genuine, despite the timber wolf she had met. He fled before she could think of drawing him, and made her feel like Red Riding Hood in earnest.
    Her head had been burning since she left Seattle. Soon it began to hurt, and with it the back of her neck, which felt as if hot needles were pricking at it. She could hardly bear to look ahead, so fiercely did the white snow glare in the white sun. Hotter, achier, and dizzier she grew till she did not know which way she was going, if she had known to start with. She stumbled onto a huge grey block–a cabin–and once inside, collapsed onto the first flat surface that appeared, after the floor. She fainted, or slept.
    Then two men came in: Jericho (if she were not imagining him) and a huge man, like a giant out of a fairy tale. She and Jericho talked, then she slept again, then he forced her to drink of a bitter, blackish tea that burned as it went down (she did not imagine that), and then followed more sleep, interspersed with glimpses, actual or not, of Jericho standing over her with a brush and palette; the room all black except for the red fire, with two bodies, like hibernating bears', huddled beside it; herself in a boat off Alki Point and Jericho towing her in to shore (this, she knew to have been a product of her fancy), and then herself outdoors, flying over the snow–no, supported in a giant's arms.
    When she next woke she was in her own bed. Candy–not Jericho?–was sitting by her. Christopher was there, too, but asleep; just like him! At first she thought she had merely dreamed a long dream; as she had, but that had not been all. The dream had ended, the fever had passed, and with it something indefinable, like the shadow of a bird's wing fluttering in the rafters, on a flight that had been happy but careless, like Jericho's. With the advent of caring–real, grown-up caring for another person as a distinct being, rather than a servant of one's own cravings–the flight had ceased.
    Candy told her how she had been found: how Jason's search party (which it happened, and which Candy happened to mention, had included Brian) met a trapper who had found her on the mountain and was carrying her back. Their relief on seeing her was so great, Jason chose to overlook the reason for the trapper's presence.
    "Was Jericho there?"
    Candy put the question down to the fever recently abated. She did not know how to answer without sounding unkind. "I'm afraid he's left for good. I know you ran off hoping to find him, hoping he'd take you with him, like Kate. But, sweetie–" She had stitched together this conclusion from the various reports she had collected of Molly's last conversations before leaving. She could not know it was almost the opposite of the truth, and Molly was too weak to contradict her. She had gone to say goodbye to Jericho, and to give him the portrait she had done of him as a keepsake.
    All this was too much for her to say; the most she could manage was to correct Candy's other misapprehension. "He's in the cabin," she said. "He nursed me."
    "They didn't see him. Jason would have told me."
    "Hiding from him," Molly whispered.
    Candy recognized that this was not impossible. "We'll go see. When you're better. And if he is there you can thank him." She bent and kissed her forehead. "Now sleep." Molly did not resist the command. She felt very, very tired.
    Resorting to the porch for a dose of cool air, Candy found Jeremy waiting at the foot of the steps. She fought down the impulse to run back inside. He was there to inquire after Molly, whose rescue everyone in town was talking about. But he had found that his feelings recoiled from the prospect of treading the porch, the scene of their divorce and his disillusionment. They stared at each other across a canyon Candy knew to be of her own making. Eventually he asked the question he had come to ask.
    "She's weak," Candy said, "but the doctor thinks she'll be all right." She did not mention, as she had not mentioned upstairs, how near a thing he had intimated it had been; he was of the opinion that some recent excitement of the blood had left her unduly susceptible. Nor did Candy disclose the worry that had racked her till Molly was returned, though Jeremy could guess that for himself.
    "I'd have come before," he said, "but I had someone else to see to. She's all right, too."
    There was an interval. "I'm sorry," Candy said, suddenly and awkwardly. "For what I said. What I did."
    Jeremy mulled this over. "Guess I would be, too." He started to go.
    "Jeremy!" She did not want to ask, hardly dared to hear the answer, but if he would not say then she must. At worst, she had nothing more to lose. "Our understanding?" He did not answer, and his expression did not change. Couldn't he help her just a little? "Do we still have one?" She wished her voice had not been shaking.
    He mulled this over, too. "I'm not sure we ever did." This pierced to the heart, though she had tried to prepare herself for it. "To have an understanding, you have to understand. And you didn't. I gave you the chance, but you didn't."
    "Did Jason? Did Joshua?"
    "We're brothers." He could not explain the difference beyond that.
    "And you can forgive them, but not me," she said bitterly.
    "I could. It wouldn't...." He sighed. This was something else she would never understand. "Everything in my life–my family, the mountain, you–always just came to me. I never chose it, never thought about it."
    Her worst fear all those weeks he had been gone was realized. "And now you have."
    He nodded. "I found out things weren't as perfect as I thought."
    By that she took him to mean her. "And that woman who came with you? Is she part of your choice?"
    "No," said a voice from the path. "She isn't."
    They turned to see Lizzie standing a little inside the gate with Miranda in her arms. Candy had been standing in almost the same spot when the three of them had entered town. Lizzie had noticed her at once and made a point, while she was watching, of demonstrating her own claim on Jeremy, in case there were any doubt. This evening she had guessed where he was going and followed him to make sure. And now she was. "Time Miranda and I started home."
    Jeremy approached her. "Lizzie, I've been meaning to ask you–"
    She put her fingers to his lips. "No. If that was what you wanted, you'd have said so long before now." His face, which could not conceal any feeling that ever visited him, however briefly (it was one of the things both women loved about him), unwillingly acknowledged that she was right. She looked beyond him to the porch and Candy. "I thought I'd run across an abandoned claim. But I see it wasn't abandoned, after all." Her eyes returned to Jeremy's. "If ever things change–and they do, sometimes–you know where to find me."
    He nodded. "The next valley over."
    She took his hands one last time. "Tell you one thing. Next time the settlement sees a man like you, I'll tie him to a tree before I let him go."
    He smiled. "You wouldn't!"
    Her face grew serious. "I would, though." He bent to kiss her. She held him at bay. "I'll take the wagon back."
    "You know how to drive it?"
    "I ought to. It was mine till I gave it up." She looked toward the porch again. "For the common good." Watching her go, Candy could not help admiring her. Nor could she keep herself from hoping, after what that woman had said and Jeremy had agreed to, that he would run to her, clasp her in his arms, and say to her, We've been too long apart, I can't live without you. But he said no such thing. Indeed he said nothing, only nodded formally and left.
    "...and he didn't say anything," she concluded the account she unreeled to Jason when he paid a call late the next evening. He had had a little of it from Jeremy, guessed most of the rest, and stopped by to console her, as well as to look in on Molly, whom he found unexpectedly bright-eyed. The same could not be said of her sister.
    "Expect he had nothing else to say," he told her. "Not just then. First he'll have to work it out in his mind, and in his heart. He will." He was standing on the porch, gazing out at what he could see of the street, only a few feet from the swing where she was sitting.
    "He was never like this before," she said.
    "He was never turned out of doors before. First by his brother, then by his sweetheart."
    "We should have known better."
    Jason shrugged. "Perhaps."
    "Why didn't we?"
    He was still turned away from her, facing the night. "We're too much the same, you and I, Candy Pruitt. Too full of our own righteous convictions. But it's unavoidable really. We live beleaguered by voices we're called on to answer–me for the men, you for the women. I do it with the razzle-dazzle–your word, and a fair one it was–you by talkin' honest."
    "You showed me there's a place for the razzle-dazzle."
    "As you taught me there's a time for honesty. You and Jeremy. And for that I banished him. What fools we mortals be!"
    "Oh, don't fling your Shakespeare at me!" The outburst was so violent, it brought him about to face her. "It never applies and it never helps. You only do it because it makes you sound cleverer than everybody else. I hope I never hear another line of Shakespeare as long as I live!"
    Jason did not seriously believe anyone could ever dislike hearing Shakespeare. "The lady doth prot–" He stopped at the look she gave him. "Or, in other words...."
    She looked away. "What shall I do if he chooses her, Jason? What can I do?"
    "Thought you said she left town."
    "He may follow her."
    "Not if I know my brother. He made it up with me, he'll make it up with you."
    "But it won't be the same as before. He's changed."
    Jason knew she was right. He had seen it himself but not realized it till now. "He's become a man. You wouldn't have him stay a boy all his days?"
    She thought it over. "Why not?"
    The wish was still with her when she stopped in to hug Molly good night. "Never grow up," she said. "Never ever ever."
    Molly answered with a smile of sympathy that made her appear the older of the two. Then Candy knew.
    "Oh," she said, trying not to look disappointed. "When?" It could not have been long before. Her sister merely shrugged. "Would you like to...talk?" Molly told her she had; with Biddie. "Oh," Candy said again. And she learned of the role Biddie had played in her own all-but-absence.
    She thanked Biddie for it the next morning, while they were making the beds. "You're her big sister," Biddie assured her, "not me."
    "Not any more. I've been her mother for a long time now. I know that. I had to be, you see. Our own mother was too frail, God rest her. By the time I was Molly's age I knew how to do, oh, so many things. But I was still frightened."
    "Frightened? Why?"
    "Because I didn't have a big sister to talk to." She smiled, and a moment later Biddie did the same. "My father would have fainted if I'd asked him. And my mother assumed I knew–though where she imagined I'd have found out...."
    "I always thought you knew everything. Since we were girls. Goodness, you always behaved as if you did."
    "I suppose so." She smiled again, this time ruefully. "Nothing but a razzler-dazzler."
    "Beg your pardon?" Candy shook her head. "But if you didn't learn from your parents, how did you?"
    "How do any of us? How did you?"
    "From Maddie. And she had most of it wrong. But it didn't matter. You know, nearly everything people tell you is wrong, but it makes you feel almost as good as if it was true."
    Candy decided to put off that question to another day. "I found out from books. My father had a very...eclectic library. And I got a lot wrong, too. But once we came here, sharing a house with ninety-nine other girls–"
    "I know! And I once thought I wanted to be a nurse!" She shuddered. Then a thought struck her. "Do you suppose young men know any more about themselves than we did?"
    "Men! I doubt it. They certainly don't know much about us."
    "Isn't it strange," Biddie mused, "that as long as people have been on this earth, they grow up so ignorant?"
    "I know one who won't. Thanks to her big sister."
    "Oh, there wasn't much I could tell her. She shares the house, too. And she's often observed the woodland creatures at their frolics." Her face took on a sly cast. "Such as Jericho."
    "Biddie!" Candy was shocked, a little; but she laughed. That showed her progress: a week previous, she would not have found the subject funny at all.
    The day of her sister's departure arrived sooner than she expected, though none too soon for her sister. The headmistress of the young ladies' academy in Boston, one of the first of its type, wrote to inform Candy that circumstances (which had included Lottie's promise of a modest endowment) allowed of their admitting Molly right away, in mid-term, or as promptly as ships' and coaches' and railroads' timetables made practicable, for a period of three years or longer, depending. Three years! When she returned she would be a woman.
    The girl she was, however, looked forward to the journey as a prodigious adventure. It would take the better part of a month, and this time her brother would not be with her. Now trains spanned the continent; half her days would be spent on them. Aaron Stempel, acting on Lottie's behalf, had worked it all out with startling efficiency. He had arranged the reservations in advance as far as he could and given Molly the addresses of agents on both coasts whom he could trust to manage the rest. He had also arranged a schedule of payments to the school. A cousin of Candy's had wired back that she and her husband were agreeable to taking Molly on the holidays. Candy sadly envisioned Christmases without her.
    Shortly before her ship was due to put out, her two erstwhile protectors were taking turns praising her from opposite sides of the bar. "When she comes back she'll be a lady of quality," Lottie predicted. "Her life will be different. Won't be much room in it for a pair of old wharf rats like us. But it'll be better–better for her."
    "Aye," the captain sighed, "but she was sich a pretty little t'ing." And by all the saints, who should run in just then but herself? She was dressed for traveling, and appeared by her deportment to have left behind already the skid town's tarry, salty, sawdusty side. She stretched across the counter to grant Lottie a hug, a kiss, and a goodbye and then did her perennial customer the same honors. After a last look round (which might be her last for all time, if Lottie's forecast were accurate) she ran out again.
    Lottie noticed Clancey was blinking more than usual. "'tis the smuts," he said. "Town's been troubled with 'em a good deal."
    "Smuts," she agreed, tossing him her bar rag. He lifted it to his nose and blew loudly.
    As Molly made her way back to the landing where she had left her bags sitting, she met Brian, not accidentally. He had spent half the morning searching for her, and had played truant to do it. He asked if he might write to her at school. Since the details of the routine she would soon take up were wholly mysterious to her, she was able to answer in all honesty, "I don't know if I'll have time to write back." This engendered in him a disappointment so devastating, she regretted at once having said it and amended it with a moral sureness new to her. "Of course you may write. I'll look forward to it." His smile of gratitude made her glad she had done so. She would miss Brian.
    Her farewells on the dock were sweet but remote, as if she had already consigned them to memory. Candy and Christopher were there, and Jason and Joshua (Jeremy had stopped by the dormitory earlier), and Biddie and the other brides. And Ben, who spoke the last words she heard from any of Seattle's residents: "Too bad that Jericho up and leavin' like that. He never did paint my picture!"
    Minutes later she was sailing westward across the Sound, watching her former home dwindle till it looked like a toy town she had seen once in a dime museum. Now it appeared in its correct proportion to the great forests that framed it on three sides, the great mountains that lofted above them, the great clouds that lofted above all, and the great ocean that lay yet so far out of view but which they were slowly approaching. Her days in Seattle now seemed more than anything else like a vast collection of drawings she had made herself. Some of them were still unfinished.
    The two things she would have liked to draw but could not, because they were too new, too private, and too full of meaning to her, were discoveries she had made almost at the end. One of them, she had made that very morning.
    She had gone to the wood a last time to bid it goodbye, and to the glade that held no terror for her now. Music rippled forth from it: the same tune as before, "Blind Mary." It was not Jericho's music, she knew now, for he was gone. Whose was it, then? She entered the glade to see.
    The player was bowed over the dulcimer with her eyes shut. When her tune was done she opened them and lifted her head. She showed little surprise at seeing Molly; much less than Molly felt seeing her. She realized for the first time how close in age they were. She had not noticed it that night in the woods, or the day the girl had returned her bracelet. She felt an unexpected and joyful unity with her here, in this secret place the two of them shared, which the music bottled like wine.
    It was not Jericho's music, but she heard it in her head every time she thought of her other discovery, as she did now at the rail, with the salt in her nostrils and the wind making free with her hair. She had gone back to the cabin as Candy had promised she might, to see whether he were there. Candy waited outside, but comfortably, for the air was warmer than it had been before and the snows about the cabin had melted. The interior lay in a golden light, filtered through the dust that clung to the windows. Molly stepped lightly, for every step seemed like an assault on the pervading stillness.
    Just after entering she saw them next to the hearth, one on each side: the canvases resting on the easels; the only ones he had had with him. He had left them there for her. Yet he could not have known she would return; he must have acted on faith. The canvases had been painted over, with a passion so immediate and so careless of niceties that bits of the originals showed at the edges. Seeing them, she understood the music of the glade. Having heard it, she understood the paintings. Both spoke of the same thing: youth, spring, innocence, earthly paradise, but for the artist, alas! a paradise lost too soon.
    The painting on the right was the job he had delayed doing so long, the portrait of her. In it she was holding the snow-flower. She gazed in wonder at herself. She could never have been so beautiful. Like the creatures in her own drawings, she was a breath away from escaping, poised to run, to leap, to fly away. What he had never been able to catch before, he had caught in her. The light of life streamed through her and out ahead of her, to bear her along with it on an infinitely expanding course.
    But it was the companion painting that made her soul lament and rejoice. It was a self-portrait of the artist, not as he was but as he had been, or in another life might have been, at the same age as she and with a countenance free of shadow, young and fair and immaculate of spirit. In that vision he had left for her, the same shining path that opened to her opened to him, a promise of happiness and of spring eternal, paradise regained.
    And he was holding the same flower.

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