Every six years, more or less–never fewer than four, and the interval once had stretched to nine–someone saw him, or thought he had, and the report stirred again the dust storm of fables, apprehensions, further sightings, real or not, and (in the words of Aaron Stempel) just plain foolery that always attended his incarnations. Lottie Hatfield, the keeper of the town's only saloon and therefore also the resident mother confessor (if not mother), had heard it time and again.
    To Christopher Pruitt it was all brand new. He had arrived in Seattle with his sister only two years before, joining another sister who had lived there but a year longer. Hence none of them had anticipated the commotion that now raced about them and quickened with each new intelligence of him: him, the bane of Seattle, the messenger of death, the white stallion.
    He was white all over, even to his eyes; white as snow, white as chickweed. He had lived in those parts at least as long as men, and for so long his every visitation had brought death to the one who first laid eyes on him. People hid indoors with their curtains drawn so they would not spy him by accident, scattered salt around their cabins to ward him off, made sure their sugar jars were sealed, and steered clear of any place he was rumored to have been seen. Old-timers claimed Seattle had once had twice the population it had at present, and how to account for that except–
    "Who's been telling you these tales?" asked Candy, Christopher's elder sister, breaking into his recitation. He did not know how to answer her. Nobody was talking about anything else. His other sister, Molly, was displaying a look of superior maturity he found annoying. As usual, she was quick to show she knew more about it than he did. Miss Essie had told the older girls to pay the story no heed; it had cropped up before and would soon go away.
    Candy asked how it had begun. Christopher wanted to say: Why ask her? She's a kid too! "Nobody knows how superstitions originate," Molly quoted. "They're perpet–perpetuated by people who don't know any better." The directness of the insult, once spoken, startled her. "Grown-ups, I mean," she amended.
    Christopher was a little placated by that and anyhow had no chance to reply; the wind was whipping so unpredictably around the bank of storefronts sheltering them that Candy, fearing it might work itself up to a tantrum, hurried herself and her charges home, to the safety of the brides' dormitory.
    The owner of Perkins Mercantile watched them as they passed. "Look at them skedaddle," said one of a pair of men sitting at the pot-bellied stove. Both gave a chortle. They were not customers, mainly; both made purchases on occasion, but Ben never could remember the latest one, though he could always remember the latest borrowing. "Don't mind if I avail myself of a little liniment, do ye?" Adolphus might say. "Lumbago's actin' up again." Ben always felt it unsociable to refuse but could not lose the suspicion that these favors were swelling his overhead by at least an eighth.
    The store was his life's work, though Aaron Stempel had conceived it and made many suggestions during its building; always suggestions, never dictates, but he it was who had sketched out the plan: mercantile here, postmaster's there, telegraph in another place. Ben saw them as separate offices and, moving between them as his duties dictated, would go by a longer way to use what he regarded as the proper entrance to each, though none bore any feature that identified it as such. They were parts of the ideal store he carried in his head and, by force of conviction (almost his only conviction), had come near to making the real thing into. The store in Tacoma was bigger but, as he would explain to anyone who would listen long enough, was not a patch on this. They didn't carry salaratus, nor rhubarb syrup, nor Palmer's extract–and no penny candy!
    The last omission was undoubtedly deliberate, to prevent attracting the boys who were prone to hang out at the corner of any store. Ben's had its own gang (Christopher among them), and he would have to shoo them off sometimes, but only after some excessively fussy matron or her excessively stuffy husband had complained. He knew the boys would return as soon as the offended party had left, but he did not mind. They made him feel he was the center of the community, as did many of his other dealings. A farmer, for example, who did not know his letters would bring Ben the text of a notice laboriously copied out to be deciphered. A spinster would enjoin him to give her mail only into her own hands and not either of her sisters'. A girl from the dormitory would ask which of two ginghams would make the comelier frock. A man down from the lumber camp, after studying a catalog illustration of a special kind of saw, a strong temptation to put in an immediate order, would ask if it was worth the price. Hagglers unsatisfied with the deals they had extracted would vow never to patronize the establishment again but would return the following week and remember him and his family at Christmas. Best of all, the town asked him every year to be the marshal in the Fourth of July parade. They appreciated him, his customers.
    Then there were the loungers. These lately had consisted of two, Adolphus and Old Tom. Their chief daytime occupation was to volunteer unasked-for comments about every activity that occurred within their scope, and twice a week after hours they could look forward to a form of hospitality more warming than the stove. The camaraderie shared in their evening confabulations furnished the answer to the riddle Ben's wife had posed him more than once: "It's beyond me why you put up with those no-accounts." Ben needed to belong and they filled the pit of his need–in a small way, for they were small men, but it was a small pit.
    The day was drawing late and only one customer remained: Jesse, a mill hand from Irontown. To the pound of coffee, half-pound of nails, and half dozen corn plasters bunched on the counter he was adding papers of garden seeds one by one and concentrating so deeply on the choosing, as it seemed, he did not notice the sour looks trained on him by one of the two who were not there to buy. When he had left and Ben had locked the door after him, the two remaining, that one gave voice to his distemper. "You still lettin' in that kind of riffraff, Perkins?"
    Ben sighed. It was not the first time Adolphus had issued the challenge. "It is the only store in town," he murmured as he put out the hanging lamp. Adolphus humphed. He and his partner rose and headed by unspoken custom to the back room, from which a lamp on a desk beckoned. Here they resettled themselves in a new pair of chairs, this move having been their greatest exertion of the day. Ben paused inside the door frame, reached down between two barley sacks, and lifted out a glazed jug. From behind the sugar grinder he produced two tin cups, which he filled from the jug and passed into eagerly grasping hands. He took out a third for himself but stopped the measure halfway; Emily would notice it if he came in wiggly-headed. She would not criticize exactly, yet her look would make clear her disappointment, which was worse than disapproval. Consarn her! But no, he could not cuss her, even as man to man, because without her–
    "Ain't we been tellin' you," Adolphus was saying, "how too many of 'em's comin' in?" He was still talking about the last customer. "Coloreds, Greeks, Chinamen, and whatnot." Jesse belonged to the first category. "Ain't we, Tom?"
    "We have," said Tom between sips, "we have."
    Adolphus leaned forward. "Heard they been savin' up to hire Bolt to fetch in a hundred more of 'em from back East, same as he done them brides. Take away jobs that oughter go to folks like us."
    "When was the last time you worked, Adolphus?" Ben asked idly.
    Adolphus ignored the question. "Them in Irontown by us is the worst. Ain't they, Tom?"
    "Worst, worst," Tom said fuzzily.
    "Keep us up half the night with their singin' and heehawin'. It's a disgrace." He had in mind a single annual celebration: New Year's or, as it was called in Irontown, Emancipation Day. He and Tom could indeed hear it plainly from their cabins, which sat side by side in a little gulch across from Irontown; properly, in Irontown, except that everybody knew its residents were black, and so the two of them insisted on maintaining a distinct address.
    Whether the district had been named for its mineral deposits or for the complexion of the residents, no one knew for sure; the usages had grown jointly. It lay northeast of town at the foot of the hills, incorporated nine residences (not counting Adolphus's and Old Tom's), and would be counted in the next census. It had not been set apart by design. Stempel, who had built the first cabins, wished too late they could be relocated, to avoid a growing estrangement that he knew could in the long view demoralize the community. Also, those deposits were worth money. But things lay as they had fallen.
    One of the Bolts' lumbermen, Obie Brown, had taken the first cabin, to which he had later brought a wife. Jesse, the only other black man then resident and thereby perforce his friend, he had persuaded to take the second. His cousins Raphael and Gabriel had arrived the following year. So the neighborhood had assembled gradually, to Adolphus's disgust.
    "–and here you go caterin' to 'em," he said, draining his cup to punctuate the end of the argument. "Pour's another'n, will ye?"
    Tom extended his also. "'nother'n, 'nother'n," he chanted.
    Ben obliged them and himself as well. "Shows what you know," he said defiantly, "and that's not much. Since I started talkin' with you boys I been thinkin'. And you know what?" He took more than his usual swallow. "I started chargin' 'em more," he said, slapping the table. "Yes, sir. Well, them from Irontown and the Greeks. Don't get many Chinese in here. Chargin' 'em a nickel on the dollar more'n anybody else. What do you say to that?"
    His listeners were gratifyingly impressed. "That's good to hear," said Adolphus. "Ain't it, Tom?"
    "Good to hear, good to hear," Tom parroted.
    "Ain't gon' take over this town, no, sir." He took another swig.
    "Good to hear." Tom took one too.
    Adolphus gave a moment's thought. "Tell you what. Make 'er a dime 'stead of a nickel. That'll show 'em."
    "I could," Ben allowed, "only...."
    "Only what?"
    "If I charge too much, they're apt to start tradin' in Blakeley. Can't have that."
    "Good riddance to 'em!" Adolphus clanked his cup against the table. A little wave splashed out. "Ain't that right, Tom?"
    "Rizzance," said Tom, whose mouth was beginning to lose its functions. "Rizzance."
    Ben was not about to let himself be talked into anything. "You can't expect me to drive away business."
    "Look here, Perk'ns." Adolphus shifted his shoulder toward him. "Are you a rightfully concerned member of this community or ain't you? That's what we want to know."
    "'course I am!" Ben said with some heat. "Concerned as anybody. But bein' a businessman–"
    Adolphus slapped Ben's thigh, a liberty Ben did not enjoy. "Then you step it up to a dime on the dollar like I say."
    Ben felt penned in. "Well...all right."
    "That's settled, then." Adolphus peered into his cup. "Fill 'er again."
    "Fill, fill," responded the congregation.
    Ben obliged but denied himself this time. He would have to be getting home soon.
    Christopher meanwhile had continued to lobby his sisters to take him and the stallion seriously, but what little hope he had held of that had drained nearly to nothing. While bussing the supper remains from the table and passing them to Molly for washing–a task Candy did not entrust to any man–he persisted in the argument she had heard too often that day. "Everybody wouldn't be saying it if it wasn't true!"
    "They're just repeating what someone else told them," Molly said, repeating what someone else had told her, "and probably getting it wrong."
    "But people have seen it." The pitch of his voice was growing higher by the minute. "Jeremy told me–"
    "I'm sure they have," said Candy, "or believe they have. There's no shortage of white horses in the world."
    "Are in Seattle. Jeremy told me–"
    "If they've seen anything it's a wild horse down from the mountains."
    "Aren't any in the mountains. Jeremy told me–"
    Candy bent a hard eye on him. "Never mind what Jeremy told you." She promised herself to tell Jeremy a few things when next she saw him. "There is no white horse!"
    Christopher thought of pointing out she had just said the opposite but he thought better of it. Besides, he knew what she meant. And he was no closer to accepting it than he had been before.
    Ben's guests would have been of a mind with him. Earlier Adolphus had disclosed that he prayed nightly to be spared from seeing the devil horse. Ben had scoffed at that. Now, having diplomatically steered the two of them to the door, he opened it to a sound that startled him in spite of himself: the whinny of a horse. Adolphus gave a shiver–not from the cold, for apart from the wind the weather was temperate for the time of year. "It's him," he said.
    "Just some horse," said Ben, though he had to admit it was a sound seldom heard so late.
    "You wai' n' see." Now Adolphus's tongue was losing its place too. "Someone'll die toni'."
    "Die," Tom repeated, this time without prompting, "die, die, die...."
    "Tom knows. You loog ou' f' y'rself."
    Tom stepped outside and immediately reached to feel the top of his head. "Sh'a brung m' hat," he said. His companion having no opinion to offer on the point, the two wove away up the wind-swept street. In fact he had brought his hat, which Ben discovered under a chair by the stove in his last look round. He ran out to the street, but the two were no longer in sight. Well, they would be back. On the other hand, the walk to Tom's would do him good–by which he meant the air would adulterate the odor on his breath before he met Emily.
    The wind picked at him, but after a few minutes he barely felt it, as if it had found him too skinny to bother much about. Save for the moon, which was one day short of being full, the light was gone by the time he reached the widening of the road where the valley to the left and the slight incline to the right marked the edge of Irontown. Beyond a cluster of maples he could see the nearer end of the staggered line of cabins. The path bent round the trees so that he did not see the object ahead of him till he had almost stumbled over it–a long bag stuffed full and doubled over, with a melon (if this were not a shadow) lying beside. The larger form quickly resolved itself into a shirt and trousers. "Oh, Lord," said Ben.
    Something close to him gave a shriek that shivered the air. He looked up and realized it had been a neigh. He was facing the white horse.
    It was standing on the other side of the body, staring at him through black eyes ringed with pink, over a tapering, lightly veined nose whose nostrils, flexing regularly, made him conscious of his own stopped breath. Its silky coat glistened in the moonlight. It bowed its head, then lifted it, and called out again, as if boasting of the death it had brought. Ben would have been unable to look away but for an uncontrollable desire to know who it was that had died. He could see no more than the rim of the cheek and jaw, but that was enough. The body was Obie Brown's.
    When he looked up again the horse was gone. He started for the cabins but stopped almost before he had moved. He knew who had done this. For weeks they had been telling him those folks needed to be taught a lesson–telling him. What if they had spread it around? Or what if someone else had overheard? Everyone would think he was in on this. He fled as fast as his legs would take him.
    Not till halfway back did the meanness of it strike him. Obie had been a customer of his; it wasn't fitting to leave him lying in the dust. He had to go back.
    Yet he couldn't.
    Yet he had to.
    He hesitated at the ring of maples. He did not know if his heart could stand another meeting with the stallion. He was no coward physically; though he blustered a good deal, he would stand and fight if it came to that, as it had in an Indian attack years before. But he was always and incurably scared of What Folks Might Think. His wife, having been raised in unquestioned propriety, could afford to disregard general opinion as it pleased her; his more checkered background impelled him to treat it with an almost superstitious reverence. He also had a fear of unquiet spirits, based on once having seen one, and he did not doubt that after the disrespect he had shown, Obie's haunt might be waiting for him around the bend. So he trod well clear of the maples, along the edge of the path, fearing what he might meet at every step and what he knew he must see, ghost or no. In less than two minutes, though it seemed longer, he was within sight of the spot. The body was gone.
    Thoughts leapt to his mind faster then he could voice them. Must have been a different path–no, there's only the one, there are the maples–the boys took it away to bury–they're probably burying it now. The last surmise led to the same conclusion as before, that it was not safe for him to be seen there. He fled again, though not home. The fate of Tom's hat, lost along the way somewhere, did not enter his head again.
    Christopher was lying awake, Molly asleep in the bed beside. The partition that divided them from the brides was unnecessary for her, but Candy had not wanted to separate the two of them yet, though she had moved them from a double bunk into separate beds and saw she would have to make new arrangements within the year. Molly was growing up, and Christopher had been caught peeking around the divider at the brides some mornings. So far his curiosity had been held at bay by his standing resentment of their omnipresence, which crowded out every chance at peace or freedom his waking life offered. "Wisht I was you livin' in that harem," a logger had once confided to him. Ha! Let him try it.
    A likeness of the window, distorted into the shape of the Big Dipper, was painted in moonlight on the floor. He listened to the boughs as they rattled against the wallboards and one another, to the bushes as the wind flicked their leaves like playing cards. And behind those noises he heard another: a neigh, he was sure–though he could not be quite sure. He almost fell to the floor in his scramble for the window.
    There, his heart thumping, he saw what he had longed but scarcely hoped to see. Beyond the town, on a hill past Stempel's mill, stood the stallion, white in the white moonlight, tail swaying, mane played by the wind. He stepped, shifting his stance, cast his eye sidelong right and left like a king surveying his sleeping subjects, then all at once, as on a whim, presented a curving flank and with a bound was gone. It might have been a dream, but Christopher knew–though he could not quite know–it was not.
    He tried vainly to convince his sisters of that on their walk to market the next morning. School was not keeping that day; the town council had ordered the schoolhouse repainted. But what was the point of having a holiday, Christopher thought, if you spent it doing errands? He and Molly kept up a litany of "Did so!"s and "Did not!"s till Candy stifled it. Lottie had waved to them from across the road in front of the town's new cafe, The Angels, and they stopped to wait for her. Christopher got in another "Did so!" which he intended as the last, but "Did not!" Molly said and "Did so!" he answered and Candy had to hush them again.
    But not before Lottie had heard. She had a sparkle in her eye as always but Candy noticed it seemed brighter than usual today. "Disputing whether Jason really did plant a caramel tree up on his mountain?" she asked the children. "He did, you know. I've seen it."
    "Where?" Christopher asked before thinking. Molly laughed at him–and had that been a wink Lottie had thrown her? He realized he had been fooled. "Aww...."
    "Lottie, you're worse than they are." Lottie nodded brightly. Candy turned to Christopher. "You see? You're suggestible."
    "Am not s–segetable." He did not know the word but guessed it meant "making things up." "I did see it!"
    "Did not!" said Molly.
    "Did so!"
    Candy explained as they proceeded toward Ben's. "He had a bad dream last night." ("Wasn't!" said Christopher.) "Thought he saw that horse the men are prating about." ("Did see it!")
    "Pookah," said Lottie. "Spirit horse. That's what the Captain calls it–when he can work up the gumption to mention it aloud."
    There was the suggestion of a thrill in her voice, instead of the hardheaded dismissal Candy had expected. "Have you seen it yourself?" she asked, and wished she had sounded less eager.
    "No," Lottie allowed, "but I've never seen New Bedford and I don't deny it exists." ("See?" said Christopher.) As evidence she offered the news that the town council was considering a law to ban the stallion from their precincts. Indeed she had left them at The Angels arguing that very question. Christopher looked over at the cafe with sudden interest.
    "It only proves they'll argue about–" Candy began, and stopped. "Did you say The Angels?" Lottie informed her that was where they were now having their meetings. "Their breakfast, you mean," said Candy. And, she might have added, a shave and a haircut, for connected to the cafe was a barber shop. Gabriel was the barber, though this morning he was inexplicably late and his partner and brother was substituting for him, in addition to managing the cafe as always. The pair had modeled the business on a similar one in Chicago where they had barbered and waited tables. Theirs had more brass rails, cut-glass windows, and leather chairs than most of Seattle had ever seen in a single building, and the brothers could boast with probable accuracy that they served the biggest steaks and plied the sharpest razors this side of San Francisco. "You were breakfasting there too?" Candy asked. "But they're your competitors!"
    "Never hurts to keep an eye on the competition," Lottie said, and for some reason then the natural flush of her cheek grew deeper. "Besides, they serve a better–"
    She halted with her mouth open. They had started into Ben's, having scarcely glanced at the window in passing, and so had not seen that the inside was dark and still. The doors would not yield to pushing or, when that failed, to shaking. The place was locked, and the window carried no sign stating why. "Never knew Ben to close on a weekday before," Lottie said.
    "Hope nothing's wrong at home. Should we pay them a visit, do you suppose?" Candy did not like to tempt misfortune by putting it more definitely.
    "I doubt that good Mrs. Perkins will welcome a saloonkeeper to her domicile–midwifing excepted," she added, remembering a past stillbirth and the arrival of Ben, Junior. "But you're right, we ought to make sure."
    "I don't have to go, do I?" asked Christopher, who had been increasingly fidgeting and casting glances toward the cafe. He took a hopeful step closer to it. "Not if–" Candy began. Without awaiting another word, he was off across the street.
    "I don't mind calling," said Molly. "Boys are very rude."
    "I thought the same thing at your age," said Lottie, "but when I got older...." Molly listened with the interest she always paid to Lottie's stories on the rare occasions that circumstances or her guardian permitted her to hear them. "...I found out how rude they can really be," Lottie concluded. The other two laughed and so did she. They started back as they had come and watched Christopher run into the barber shop, through which he intended to cut through to the cafe. A moment later, his onslaught repulsed, he reappeared and ran around to the side, out of sight. The women turned off to the church, near which the Perkins cabin lay. Stempel had built it for the couple as a wedding present after seeing that the one Ben had been keeping would not do for two, let alone later additions.
    The question on Candy's mind–How do you pass a law against a horse?–Stempel was putting before his fellow councilmen. "...especially if the horse is imaginary," he added, as Christopher, having found a window partly open, rested his chin on the sill to listen. One of the council, Jeremy Bolt, spying the familiar round head perched there like a jack-o'-lantern, winked across at him. Jeremy was a year too young for his appointment but the council had voted to waive the requirement for him after his elder brother Jason had refused to reapply and his next elder brother Joshua had refused to consider running in his stead ("Not if you dragged me," he had said. "Not if I went to the penitentiary for it"). It had sounded good to Jeremy, and because there had always been a Bolt on the council (and Jason vowed there always would be) neither of his brothers had wanted to burst his bubble. Before long, however, he had found himself doing as he had in school, on those occasions he had attended: staring out the window (whence his having noticed Christopher's appearance) and drumming the floor with the heel of his boot.
    On the other hand, the town was standing them breakfast (though the town did not know it) and the breakfasts there were humdingers. The table in front of him, not six feet from Christopher's nose, had till a few minutes ago hosted five cups of coffee, five plates of eggs, biscuits, sausages, and toast, and for Jeremy hotcakes and potatoes–a lumberman's breakfast–along with a jar of syrup, a jar of cream, and a butter dish, all elbowing one another like the guests at one of Candy's teas. The victualing had made it easier for Jeremy to ignore the perorations of the council's oldest and most vocal member, W. Lloyd Bagley, the town lawyer, who wore his prominence as he did his watch chain: prominently.
    "We owe it to the good people of Seattle," he was saying, "who have entrusted us with this high office of state"–Stempel sighed audibly–"to guarantee their safety, their security, nay, their very lives." He pounded the table. The diners at other tables who had not heard him before at these meetings turned their heads. "We shall not allow that creature to prowl out streets, to–"
    "Street," Jeremy said, just loudly enough to be heard. Bagley stopped, offended as always at any interruption. He and the others stared at Jeremy, waiting for him to make his point. He struggled to comply. "There's only the, uh, one street. Unless you count the alley down by the, uh, the, uh, the–" The others' faces did not leave his or change expression. He shut his mouth, folded his hands in his lap, and stared at it.
    The man beside him, Seth Hinds, a woodworker with whom Stempel contracted for special jobs, jumped into the opening: "Like I was sayin', I knew this fella–"
    No one showed any more interest in his story than they had earlier. "Supposing the horse–supposing there to be a horse–does pay a visit?" asked Stempel. "You intend to arrest it?"
     "We got a law against pigs in the street." This intelligence emitted from a figure seated between Hinds and Stempel: Till Gorman, the knife and scissors mender. He had a way of seeming always to be sitting in shadow.
    Stempel had to admit he was right. "But it wasn't written for the p–" He stopped, sighed again, and shook his head.
    "Your pig is a different kettle of fish," said Hinds. Jeremy wondered: if a pig is a fish, do you use slops to catch it? The idea made him laugh. He caught himself soon enough to turn it into a cough. "Pigs don't lay a curse on you," Hinds went on, "and I knew this fella–"
    "The man is right," Bagley declared. "That stallion leaves behind a trail of death!"
    "One thing he leaves behind–" Jeremy began. Stempel checked him with a look.
    "–knew a fella," Hinds went on, not to be put off this time, "saw a fella die on account of that critter. Right outside Lottie's."
    "Oh, that's–" Stempel stopped. "Outside Lottie's, did you say?"
    "Only one thing he leaves behind," Gorman said to Jeremy, having just understood the joke. "That's a good one."
    "Only man I ever knew to drop dead outside Lottie's," said Stempel, "was Hangdog Parmlee."
    " That was the fella! No sooner'd he seen that critter but he was struck dumb and keeled over on the spot."
    "I was there." Stempel, the saying ran, could cut timber with a word given the occasion, and this was one of them. "He'd been ailing for years, he died cussing a blue streak, and that horse was nowhere in the vicinity."
    "Well...." Hinds acquired the bulldog face people assume after being argued down to an irrational conviction. "Musta been a different Hangdog Parmlee."
    Stempel gave a conclusive sigh and stood up. "I have a sawmill to run," he announced. "If the matter comes to a vote I recuse myself."
    "Recuse on what grounds?" asked Bagley.
    Stempel half-smiled. "I own a horse."
    Almost at the doors, he heard the scissors man say behind him in befuddlement, "Well, I own a horse!"
    He had not got far up the street when he saw a buckboard full of people approaching from the direction of Irontown. That would have been odd at any time, but especially so early on a weekday. He went to meet it.
    Not five minutes later he reappeared in the dining room with a face so grim, Raphael stepped up to see what was the matter. Aaron looked at him in some confusion. He began to break the news but Rafe had already seen into the street beyond. "Is that Lucinda?"
    Aaron turned to the simpler task of sending for Jason. Jeremy said he was at the blacksmith's. "Go fetch him," Aaron directed, adding, when the young man hesitated, "Now."
    "Why are they here, Stempel?" Rafe demanded. He clutched Aaron's arm. "What's happened?"
    Aaron could put it off no longer. "Your cousin. He–"
    Rafe did not wait for him to finish. He ran out to the wagon, which had stopped alongside the cafe. Jeremy, who had lingered to hear, stared at Aaron questioningly. "It may not have been an accident," Aaron said. Jeremy stood trying to grasp it. "Didn't I tell you to fetch your brother?" The order, almost barked, stirred him from his daze. Aaron followed him out the door, past Christopher, who had been scuttling between the window and the corner watching the proceedings.
    Inside the buckboard were people he knew from Irontown–Mrs. Brown, Gabriel, Jesse–and some he did not. Outside the shop sat a bench, empty at present. He slid under it to hear better. No one paid any attention to him. He saw Jason appear from the blacksmith's and come running down to the others, followed by Jeremy. The smith himself, a large man with a beard and round red cheeks, stood in his doorway looking after them. Rafe was staring into the back of the wagon, where Gabe, on his knees, was turning down one end of a bedspread to reveal the face beneath. Jason arrived in time to see it before it was covered again. He had heard the news but not actually believed it till he had seen. Blessed were they....
    He was standing, he realized, at Lucinda's side. She was sitting still on the hard seat of the wagon. Even now she was beautiful, with the grace of a princess and a dancer. Both she was, one by birth, the other by nature, but today a dancer immobile and a princess in mourning. "Mrs. Brown–" Jason began. She could have faced him with slight effort, which she did not make. "Words can't tell you how sorry I am." From the other side Aaron asked how her husband's death had come about. She gave no sign of hearing him either.
    "We found him in the road," said Gabe. He looked at Rafe. "Didn't know where to look for you or I'da come told you myself."
    "Slept in town last night," said Rafe. He saw Lottie approaching in company with two women, a girl he knew somewhat, and a small boy she was leading by the hand. "'stead of where I shoulda been," he said bitterly. He stared at Gabe. "Where were you?"
    From the cabin the women had seen something was up and had come to see what it was. They joined the group from the cafe and others from up the street to form a small circle round the buckboard. Lucinda seemed unaware of any of them.
    "When did it happen?" Aaron asked.
    Those in the wagon looked to Gabe. "One, two this morning," he said.
    "Should have come sooner."
    Gabe answered with reluctance. "She didn't want to bring him."
    Jeremy met Candy at the edge of the crowd to keep her and the children from a closer look. Ben, Junior, his normal presumption quashed by the presence of the multitude, contented himself with the repeated query "What?" to which he never got an answer. Lottie slid through the crowd to Raphael and greeted him, a little questioningly. He looked at her once with no evident feeling and not again. Jeremy told the others what had happened and what was suspected. Emily grew pale. She repeated what she had just been telling Candy: that Ben had not come home the previous night. In this new context the fact was obviously alarming. Candy refused to think of it. "I'm certain he's all right," she said.
    Christopher, glancing past his feet to a half-circle of slender buckthorns fifty yards away, spotted one of those sights children see and adults doubt can have been seen: a figure behind one of the trees, peering out now and again, and looking for all the world like Ben. Why would he be hiding? the boy thought.
    He heard Jason talking and swiveled around to see. "I give you my oath," he said, "we'll find the man who did this."
    "We know who did it!" said Raphael. The declaration carried to the buckthorns, and the figure there darted off.
    "Name him," Jason said, "and by God–"
    "Names! We don't know their names." He turned to Gabriel. "It was them, wasn't it?"
    "They...." Gabriel hesitated.
    His surer, swifter brother–the restaurateur addressing the barber–mimicked him fiercely. "They! They! They what?"
    "They were there," Gabe said slowly, not to be forced into stating what he did not mean. "Their tracks led away from the–" He glanced at Lucinda. "Away from the place. But...."
    "Whose tracks?" asked Aaron. "Who are you talking about?"
    "Them that's been comin' at night hurrahin' us," said Gabe.
    "White men," Rafe added, glaring openly at Aaron.
    "Did you know about this?" asked Jason.
    "First I've heard of it. What do you mean, hurrahing?"
    "Ridin' in whoopin' and cussin', wavin' firebrands," said Gabe. "Makin' noise mostly."
    "Till now," his brother amended.
    "Did you see their faces, any of you?"
    "Masked," said Gabe.
    "How long has this been going on?"
    "Once or twice a week for most of a month."
    "And you didn't report it to me?"
    "How could we be sure you wasn't in with 'em?" This came from Rafe.
    "If you don't know better than that–" Jason began.
    Aaron upraised a hand. "It's fair enough. I'd feel no different in his place. But I give you my oath–" Then he remembered Jason already had. "We won't stand for that kind of thing here."
    "Did they come on purpose for him?" The voice–a new one from back in the crowd–took them by surprise. Only Jason recognized it immediately as belonging to his youngest brother. To Jeremy, listening to Gabe's description, the question had seemed self-evident, yet no one had thought to ask it.
    "No," Gabe said definitely, almost gratefully. "They wasn't out to kill anybody."
    "You don't know that!" his brother objected.
    "If they'd wanted to, they'da done it before now. They're only tryin' to scare us–to run us out probably." He bent next to the body and turned down the cloth again. "Mark on his head shows where he hit it. You can see the stain on the rock. One of them mighta knocked him down, but that wasn't what they come for. They ain't the killin' kind of men."
    "Don't matter!" Rafe shouted. "However it was, they got his blood on their hands." His eyes dared anyone to say differently.
    Aaron met them calmly. "I agree with you," he said, to Rafe's surprise. "It would never have happened if they hadn't come tormenting you. If I were passing sentence...." He left the rest unspoken.
    "Did Obie go out deliberately to face them?" This was Jeremy again. He could not help wondering about such details.
    "We all been wakeful these nights," said Gabe, "keepin' a lookout. He musta spotted 'em first. Time we found him, they were long gone."
    Jason leapt up into the wagon bed and lifted his arms. "Citizens!" he cried. "One of our own has been taken. Anyone that has so much as a glimmer of who did it–what crawling snakes are standing upright among us, passing for men–tell me now or the knowledge will take you down too, down to the depths of your destruction, as surely as if you were among the guilty."
    The ensuing silence caused the last phrase to ring a little hollow, and Rafe was quick to seize on it. "Fine speech, but it won't bring him back, where he's gone. Won't do nothin'."
    "It wasn't true, what you told me."
    Except for the timbre of the voice, which he once had likened to a mountain stream, he would not have known the speaker had been Lucinda. She was still facing away from him. "How, not true?"
    "This place. What you told me about it when I settled here with my Obie. I believed you. So did he. I see now it wasn't true at all."
    "It is, Mrs.–Lucinda. But seen through a curtain of tears–"
    "More words?" She almost laughed. "I don't need more of your words." She considered. "Maybe you believe it's so. Maybe it is for you. But not for us. What holds for you and your people doesn't hold for me and mine. That's where you fell into error." Jason's words having been refused, which for him was like being robbed of air, he was helpless to respond. "I should like to take my husband home," she said, "and dress him for burying. Will you allow me to do that?" There was a quiver in her voice that her seeming assurance could not hide. Aaron said the doctor ought to examine the body first. He offered to drive her. The others remained in back. The crowd dissolved.
    Molly had drawn Candy apart to disclose some confidence that her manner showed to be urgent, at least to her. Candy beckoned Jeremy over and prompted her to tell him the story. He hunched close to hear.
    It had happened at Mr. Perkins' store. Molly and Christopher were there buying penny candy. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were there too, buying a sack of flour, a jar of molasses, a bottle of Gridley's ointment–
    "Molly, honey...." Candy prodded.
    –and Mr. Perkins charged them too much. Molly spoke up and told him so; even toted it up to show him. Mr. Perkins reckoned he must have made a mistake. "But I don't think it was a mistake at all," she said. Neither did Mrs. Brown, who remarked that there seemed to be a mistake lately every time they were in. Mr. Brown shushed her as if not wanting to raise a fuss.
    "That doesn't sound like Ben," said Emily, who had moved close enough to hear–the mischance Molly had tried to avoid. "Does it?"
    "I hope he–" Candy began, and did not finish. She was thinking of Obie Brown. An awkward silence fell.
    Emily assumed the demeanor with which she met every perplexity, that of a woman faced with having to rip out a stitch and do it over. She was thinking of the store. Ben (who surely had been detained by some trivial matter of business he would explain when he got home) would want it opened. She told the others so. She knew Molly would not mind looking after little Ben as she had before. Concentrating entirely on the routine of opening–drawing the shades, sweeping the floor, replenishing the barrels and bins (and checking for spiders)–Emily excused herself and headed home to fetch the key.
    Jeremy frowned after her. "I'm not sure she's right," he said.
    "About Ben wanting the shop open?"
    "About that not sounding like him. I'm thinking of something he said last week. Didn't seem like much taken by itself, but...." He was clearly bothered. "Hope he hasn't been listening to the wrong people."
    "He would never harm anyone," Candy said adamantly.
    Jeremy agreed. "But the wrong people might."
    His eldest brother, shaken by the morning's news, returned to the blacksmith's cloaked in meditation. Nothing like this had happened in Seattle for a long time. Even if it had been an accident (which he chose to agree with Gabe it had) the circumstances of it troubled him almost as much as if it had been premeditated. There were some narrow minds in town, to be sure, but none he believed capable of engineering such a campaign of terror. Perhaps a newcomer....
    Seeking, his mind lit on the man he was going to see. The town had never before had a proper smithy, only the waterfront shack of old Carson Terry, who had performed a variety of services, horseshoeing among them. Recently the tremble in his hands had grown so severe it had forced him to give up the work, and Jason, who for a while in his youth had apprenticed himself to him unofficially and still envisioned himself at odd moments as Longfellow's hero with arms "strong as iron bands," had bought the old man's hammers, anvil, and forge and built a plank barn up from Ben's where he had set up shop on Saturdays. He cut a fine figure, as he was aware, in his brown leather apron, but after the first rush of people impatient after two months' delay to have their mules shod or their wheels mended, custom had grown scarce, except for those looking in to see if their jobs were done yet. He was sweating to replace a barrel hoop one late afternoon when he looked up to see a burly stranger leaning against the doorjamb, watching his struggle with unconcealed amusement. "That's not the way," he said in a rich drawl.
    "I suppose you can do better?"
    "I can," he said. "It's my trade." Without further preliminaries he took over and showed how it ought to be done, disposed of all the other jobs waiting, and mended a shoe for a carter who, seeing a new man at the anvil, had fetched his horse in before the chance was lost. "Don't know who you are, stranger," he said, "but I hope you'll stick. We could use you hereabouts." He smiled nervously at Jason, who was standing at the side. "No offense meant."
    Before the day was out Maclaren had revealed he was looking for a place to set up and Jason, with not a little relief, had sold him the works for a dollar. Maclaren added to it his own collection of hammers, rises, poker and tongs, a block full of holes like cheese with bites taken out of its edges, a forge twice the size of old Terry's, and a big bellows hung in a wood frame with a rod and chain. That had been only a month before.
    Jason re-entered the shop in a different cast of mind from when he had left. He found the smith at his grindstone honing a chisel, his foot pumping the treadle rhythmically. "You heard what happened?" Jason asked.
    Hearing the change in his tone, Maclaren fixed his attention on the chisel at the point where it was tangent to the disc. "Enough," he said.
    "And didn't feel the need to hear more?"
    Maclaren shrugged. Jason advanced on him through the litter of nails and iron parings. "You're Southern-bred."
    "Can't deny it. Shouldn't care to if it came to that."
    "And the only newcomer to town."
     Maclaren stopped pedaling and stared at him. "If you've a question to put, Mr. Bolt, you'd oblige me by stating it plain."
    "Word is, some of your compatriots have never cared for Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation or its beneficiaries. Not all but not a few. Is that the fact?"
    "It is," said Maclaren, "as I have cause to know." He faced Jason squarely and pulled his shirt open to the chest. Jason, who was not easily scared, could not suppress a gasp. In the hollow between the pectorals, burned clean of hair, stood forth a pattern of welts forming the letter A. "A scarlet letter, in good truth," Maclaren said. The memory of it rumbled through his voice. "They did worse to my striker." He shut his eyes for a moment, and his shoulders actually shook. "He was a freedman, Mr. Bolt–freed by me. For that they let me off with a branding. A for Abolitionist."
    "And were you one?"
    "I was after that night." He stared into Jason's eyes. "I know men like these, Mr. Bolt–know 'em clean through. And I know where to find 'em. In Port Madison–there's night riders in Port Madison. And in Oregon–they've made themselves a law to keep blacks from settling there." Jason was shocked for the third time that morning. "But not in this town. I'd swear to it." He considered. "Don't know about the jacks at your camp." Neither, Jason realized now, did he.
    As he had entered the barn someone had been watching him. While his back was to the entrance the same figure shot across it, up the side, and behind the row of buildings to the rear of Ben's store, where he let himself in with a key; for the fugitive was Ben himself. He thanked his stars he had not been spotted.
    In fact he had been seen many times, first by Christopher, then by other children and old men who enjoyed sufficient idleness to have noticed him. Had he known that he would have been in an even wilder panic than the one that had hold of him. He had run down to the dock but stopped short of it, for there were people on it; up to the livery stable but stopped short again, for it too was inhabited; and so on, till the conviction grew on him that the only safe hiding place was the store: no one would find him there. That it was the one place people had been looking was another truth happily veiled from him.
    He crept through the dim back room to the front, from which he had the vague idea of provisioning himself for life as an outlaw. With the stores he had on hand and those he could order, he could live in the hills forever. On the other hand, could he place the orders safely if the law were after him? Of course he could do it under an assumed name; but then how would his consignors know who he was? While these and similar calculations chased themselves around inside his head, he studied the shelves and barrels to try to determine what he might need in his exile. Coffee, beans, rock candy–he loved rock candy–and what else? Running his eye along the rows of dry goods, he edged unthinkingly toward the window.
    "It's closed!" rose a voice close by, together with a rattle. A snake! No, the door! The sound made him jump. As he jumped, his elbow bumped the licorice jar at the end of the counter. It teetered, fell, and crashed to the floor, scattering the contents. "What was that?" said the voice outside. Ben's feet danced first one way, then the other. His shoulder jostled the objects on the shelf behind it: snuff tins, matchboxes, packets of cards. They toppled and fell with a patter and a clatter. "Somebody's in there!" came another voice. "Somebody's robbing Ben!" A face peered in at the window. Ben quickly squatted behind the counter. The cry was repeated. There rose other voices. He duck-walked to the back room, blundered to his feet, and started for the door. Hearing someone shout "Let's try the back!" he retreated toward the front.
    Then he heard, impossibly, Emily's voice. "What's the matter here?"
    "Somebody's in the store," she was told. "We're trying the back."
    "I have the key," she said. Ben heard it tick in the lock. He resumed his dash out the back door.
    Once he was in the open air, he broke into a run. He rounded the blacksmith's, from which he met Jason emerging. "Ben–" Jason began. Ben yelped and ran off, he hardly knew whither. The next building to intrude into his field of vision was the doctor's. Aaron was standing in front, having just seen off Lucinda and the others. "Ben–" he began. Yelping again, in what evolved into a moan, Ben took off the other way, nearly the way he had come, which led him back to Jason. The posse was approaching from the store. He changed course again, and again ran into Aaron. Whichever way he looked, they were closing on him. Escape was impossible.
    He must let them know right away how things stood. "It wasn't me, I swear! I thought it was just talk. If I'd known what they was up to–"
    "What who was up to?" said Aaron.
    "This about the Brown business?"
    "Well, yeah, but–" Both men were staring at him, puzzled. Those from the store now joined them, but in no particular hurry, merely attracted by the conversation. Ben had an awakening. "You mean you weren't all looking for me?"
    So did Jason. "I don't know, Ben. Were we?" His eyes had become like the cast iron of the blacksmith's.
    "Emily is," said Jeremy, who had just walked up. His tone was not friendly either. "She's scared because you didn't come home."
    Ben felt a pang close to hunger (which he was feeling too). "My gosh, Em! I better tell her!" He searched for her, but she was not with the crowd from the store. Having found it unoccupied and only slightly disordered, they had left her to the task of picking up. Ben, guessing something of the kind, started in that direction.
    Jason blocked his way. "First tell us about this 'talk.' What kind of talk?"
    Ben shrugged innocently. "Just talk. You know." In a voice meant for Jason's ears alone, he added, "When the jug's bein' passed, fella gets to talkin' kinda free."
    "And the subject of this fine, free talk was–what?"
    "Well," said Ben, screwing his face into a scowl, "some of us ain't too happy about the element that's been movin' in."
    "What element would that be?" Jason's voice was as chilly as the Sound in winter.
    "You know. Greeks and–and Chinamen and...."
    "Which one of those," asked Jason, controlling himself with an effort, "was Obie Brown?"
    "Well, and that bunch up in Irontown. They're the worst. And more of 'em comin' in all the time like they owned the place. We hadn't oughta stand for it." Realizing he had gone farther than he had meant to, he added, "The boys say."
    "That why you been shortchanging Obie?" Jeremy asked. Aaron and Jason, to whom this was news, awaited the answer with interest, as did others in the crowd.
    "How'd you know about that?"
    "The children saw you."
    "Well, I...." There were too many people listening for him to attempt a lie, and besides, it was nothing to be ashamed of; a merchant had a right to set any price he liked. "Sure, but I had nothin' to do with this other business. I didn't know what the boys were gettin' up to."
    "Who are these 'boys'?" asked Aaron.
    "You know. The boys. Old Tom and Adolphus."
    "You think they killed Obie?"
    "Who else?"
    Within five minutes Aaron had shown him "the boys" lying resident in Seattle's tiny stone jail. The previous evening, after supplementing Ben's hospitality with a bottle or two (or three or four) from Lottie's, they had settled themselves under Aaron's window, where they had concluded their evening and interrupted his with repeated refrains of "Little Brown Jug" till, unable to stand it any longer, he had personally herded them to the cell where they had been wallowing in relatively innocent slumber ever since.
    "Then it couldn'ta been them!"
    "Unless they can pass through stone," said Jason.
    "So it was just talk." Ben shook his head at the wonder of it. Then another truth hit home, one he could not bear so stoically. "I lost a morning's business on account of them! Hidin' out 'cause I figured you all'd be after 'em–and me with 'em." He laughed ruefully.
    The other men did not laugh. No one said anything at first, and then Jeremy asked, even more quietly than usual, "Why, uh, why'd you figure that, Ben?"
    "Well, on account of this trouble. Account of Obie Brown."
    Jeremy repeated the name. "You sure?"
    "Well...yeah." But he sounded sure no longer. They were all staring at him; of that he had no doubt.
    "How'd you know about Obie Brown?"
    "Don't rightly recall. Musta heard somebody talkin'." It sounded feeble even to him.
    "Impossible," Aaron declared. "No one knew before. No one outside Irontown."
    Jason's eyes cut through him. "Ben? Were you out there last night?"
    So fate had ensnared him after all. He had no choice but to recount the whole story, still insisting he had had nothing to do with the death. But there seemed to be no question of that. "Did you see anyone else?" asked Aaron.
    "Not as I remember," said Ben. Then he did. "Well, only the white."
    Christopher almost jumped at that. Having followed the events of the morning as they had led him, he was listening behind the jailhouse. "Standing over the body," said Ben. "It's true what they say–somebody was bound to die."
    Under the circumstances the veneration in his tone set off a spark in Jeremy. "And you–you left him lying there like a–"
    "I went back!" Ben protested. "I knew it wasn't right. But I dasn't let anybody see me, don't you see? I was aiming to move him up by the house, then throw rocks at the window to fetch somebody out."
    "That was a very foolish plan, Ben," Jason said gravely.
    "But I didn't have to! Didn't have to do anything. When I got back, he was already gone."
    "And you betook yourself home."
    "I dasn't. What if Em was to start asking questions? I set out in the woods a spell trying to cook up a good story for her. Finally fell asleep. You know, it gets mighty cold out there."
    Each of the others felt something ought to be said, but Jason was the only one to find suitable words. "Do you think perhaps, in retrospect, you might have done things a little differently?"
    "Well, I don't know." He scratched his head. "It's terrible, what happened to Obie, but–shoot, it was no fault of mine."
    The other men looked away in embarrassment. He peered around, seeking support anywhere, and found Emily standing a few feet behind him. "Em! You understand, don't you?" But she was staring at him as if she had seen through to his insides and seen the Devil sitting there. Without a word she turned and walked off. He could not fathom it.
    "You're dead right, Ben," Jason said at long last, "you and the 'boys.'" Ben looked at him hopefully, Aaron uncertainly. "How do those people have the nerve? As if they were fit to breathe the same air and tread the same soil your Maker provided for your use exclusively. But you didn't go far enough. No, sir," he said, rolling along smartly now, "if Obie was too black for you, so's he"–pointing to Aaron–"why, look at him"–he lifted a bunch of Aaron's hair; Aaron slapped his hand away–"hair black as ink. And look over there, 'longside the jail"–Christopher jerked out of sight, merely from habit, since he was doing nothing illicit at the moment–"see that shadow? Black as coal. And every evening when the sun disappears, it throws up a whole skyful of black. Have to do away with that too."
    "That–that's foolish."
    "Glad you see it," said Jason, growing sober again, "even if the discovery comes a little late." He turned and walked away. The rest did the same. Not one had a word for Ben; nary a nod. He felt–shucks, he didn't know how he felt.
    "But dang it!" he said, though there was no one left to listen. "It wasn't my fault."

Part Two

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