"I'll put the word out. He turns up, you let us know."

"You sure you don't want to come inside, Sheriff?"

She was giving him a look. It took Eustace a second to figure out what it was. Her off-kilter gaze traveled the length of his body, then lingered pointedly. The gesture was supposed to be seductive but was more like livestock trying to sell itself.

"Folks say you ain't got a woman."

Eustace wasn't perturbed. Well, maybe a little. But the woman had been treated like property all her life; she had no other way of doing things.

"Don't believe everything you hear."

"But what'll I do he's dead?"

"You've got two possums, don't you? Make more."

"Them there? Them's both boys."

Eustace handed back the rifle. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

He returned to the jail. Fry, at his desk with his boots up, was paging through a picture book.

"She try to poke you?" Fry asked, not looking up.

Eustace sat behind his desk. "How'd you know?"

"They say she does that." He turned a page. "Think she killed him?"

"She mighta." Eustace gestured at the book. "What you got there?"

Fry held it up to show him. Where the Wild Things Are.

"That's a good one," Eustace said.

The door swung open and a man entered, banging dust from his hat. Eustace recognized him; he and his wife farmed a patch of ground on the other side of the river.

"Sheriff. Deputy." He nodded at each of them in turn.

"Help you, Bart?"

He cleared his throat nervously. "It's my wife. I can't find her anywhere."

It was nine A.M. By noon, Eustace had heard the same story fourteen times.

39.

It was midafternoon by the time Caleb reached town on the buckboard. The place seemed totally dead-no people anywhere. In two hours on the road, he hadn't seen a single soul.

The door of the mercantile was locked. Caleb cupped his eyes to the glass. Nothing, no movement inside. He stilled his body, listening to the quiet. Where the hell was everybody? Why would George close up in the middle of the day? He walked around to the alley. The back door stood ajar. The frame was splintered; the door had been forced.

He returned to the buckboard for his rifle.

He nudged the door open with the tip of the barrel and moved inside. He was in the storeroom. The space was tightly packed-sacks of feed piled high, coils of fencing, spools of chain and rope-leaving only a narrow corridor through which to pass "George?" he called. "George, are you in here?"

He felt and heard crunching underfoot. One of the bags of feed had been torn open. As he knelt to look, he heard a high-pitched clicking above his head. He lurched back, swinging the barrel of the rifle upward.

It was a raccoon. The animal was sitting on top of the pile. It lifted onto its hind legs, rubbing its two front paws together, and gave him a look of absolute innocence. That mess on the floor? Nothing to do with me, pal.

"Go on, beat it." Caleb poked the barrel of the rifle forward. "Get your ass out of here before I make you into a hat."

The raccoon scampered down the pile and out the door. Caleb took a breath to calm his heart and passed through the beaded curtain into the store. The lockbox where George kept the day's receipts sat beneath the counter in its usual spot. He moved through the aisles, finding nothing amiss. A flight of stairs behind the counter led to the second floor-presumably, George's living quarters.

"George, if you're there, it's Caleb Jaxon. I'm coming up."

He found himself in a single large room with upholstered furniture and curtains on the windows. The homeyness of it surprised him-he had expected a scene of bachelor squalor. But George had been married once. The room was divided into two areas, one for living, the other for sleeping. A kitchen table; a couch and chairs with lace doilies on the headrests; a cast-iron bed with a sagging mattress; an ornately carved wardrobe of a type that usually stayed within a family, traveling the road of several generations. All seemed orderly enough, but as Caleb surveyed the space, he began to notice certain things. A dining chair had been knocked over; books and other objects-a kitchen pot, a ball of yarn, a lantern-were tossed about the floor; a large, free-standing mirror had shattered in its frame, the glass cracked in concentric circles, like a reflective spider's web.

As he moved toward the bed, the odor hit him: the rancid, biological reek of old vomitus. George's chamber pot sat on the floor near the headboard; that was where the smell was coming from. Blankets were bunched at the foot of the mattress as if kicked aside by a restless sleeper. On the bedside table lay George's gun, a long-barreled .357 revolver. Caleb opened the cylinder and pushed the ejection rod. Six cartridges fell into his palm; one had been fired. He turned around and swept the pistol over the room, then lowered the gun and stepped toward the fractured mirror. At the epicenter of the cracks was a single bullet hole.

Something had happened here. George had obviously been ill, but there was more to it. A robbery? But the lockbox hadn't been touched. And the bullet hole was strange. A stray shot, perhaps, though something about it seemed deliberate-as if, lying in bed, George had shot his own reflection.

In the alley, he filled his jugs from the tank and loaded them onto the buckboard. It wouldn't do to leave without paying; he made his best guess and left the bills under the counter with a note: "Nobody here, door unlocked. Took fifteen gallons of kerosene. If the money isn't enough, I'll be back in a week and can pay you then. Sincerely, Caleb Jaxon."

On the way out of town, he stopped at the town office to report what he'd found. At least someone should fix the door of the mercantile and lock the place up until they knew what had happened to George. But nobody was there, either.

Dusk was settling down when he returned to the house. He unloaded the kerosene, put the horses in the paddock, and entered the house. Pim was sitting with Kate by the cold woodstove, writing in her journal.

Did you get it what you needed?

He nodded. Strange how Kate was now the silent one. The woman had barely glanced up from her knitting.

How was town?

Caleb hesitated, then signed: Very quiet.

They ate corn cakes for supper, played a few hands of go-to, and went to bed. Pim was out like a light, but Caleb slept badly; he barely slept at all. All night his mind seemed to skip over the surface of sleep like a stone upon water, never quite breaking the skin. As dawn approached, he gave up trying and crept from the house. The ground was moist with dew, the last stars receding into a slowly paling sky. Birds were singing everywhere, but this wouldn't last; to the south, where the weather came from, a wall of flickering clouds roiled at the horizon. So: a spring storm. Caleb guessed he had maybe twenty minutes before it arrived. He gave himself another minute to watch it, then retrieved the first jug of kerosene from the shed and lugged it to the edge of the woods.

He didn't know what he was seeing. It simply made no sense. Perhaps it was the light. But no.

The mounds were gone.

40.

0600 hours: Michael Fisher, Boss of the Trade, stood on the quay to watch the morning light come on. A thick, cloudy dawn; the waters of the channel, caught between tides, were absolutely motionless. How long since he'd slept? He was not so much tired-he was well past that-as running on some reserve of energy that felt vaguely lethal, as if he were burning himself up. Once it was gone, that would be the end of him; he would vanish in a puff of smoke.

He'd emerged from the bowels of the Bergensfjord with some vague intention he couldn't recall; the moment he'd hit fresh air, the plan had fled from his mind. He'd drifted down to the edge of the wharf and found himself just standing there. Twenty-one years: amazing how so much time could slip by. Events grabbed hold of you and in the blink of an eye there you were, with sore knees and a sour stomach and a face in the mirror your barely recognized, wondering how all of it had happened. If that was really your life.

The Bergensfjord was nearly ready. Propulsion, hydraulics, navigation. Electronics, stabilizers, helm. The stores were loaded, the desalinators up and running. They'd stripped the ship to the simplest configuration; the Bergensfjord was basically a floating gas tank. But a lot had been left to chance. For instance: Would she actually float? Computations on paper were one thing; reality was another. And if she did, could her hull, cobbled together from a thousand different plates of salvaged steel, a million screws and rivets and patch welds, withstand a journey of such duration? Did they have enough fuel? What about the weather, especially when they attempted to round Cape Horn? Michael had read everything he could find about the waters he intended to cross. The news was not good. Legendary storms, crosscurrents of such violence that they could snap your rudder off, waves of towering dimensions that could downflood you in a second.

He sensed someone coming up behind him: Lore.

"Nice morning," she said.

"Looks like rain."

She shrugged, looking over the water. "Still nice, though."

She meant, How many more morning will we have? How many dawns to watch? Let's enjoy it while we can.

"How are things in the pilothouse?" Michael asked.

She blew out a breath.

"Don't worry," he said. "You'll get it."

A bit of pink was in the clouds now. Gulls swooped low over the water. It really was a fine morning, Michael thought. Michael felt suddenly proud. Proud of his ship, his Bergensfjord. She had traveled halfway around the world to test his worthiness. She had given them a chance and said, Take it if you can.

A glow of light appeared on the causeway.

"There's Greer," he said. "I better go."

Michael made his way up the quay and met the first tanker truck just as Greer stepped down from the cab.

"That's the last of it," Greer said. "We tapped out at nineteen tankers, so we left the last one behind."

"Any problems?"

"A patrol eyeballed us south of the barracks at Rosenberg. I guess they just assumed we were on the way to Kerrville. I thought they'd be on to us by now, but apparently they're not."

Michael glanced Greer's shoulder and signaled to Rand. "You got this one?"

Men were swarming over the tankers. Rand gave him a thumbs-up.

Michael looked at Greer again. The man was obviously worn out. His face had thinned to skull-like proportions: cheekbones ridged like knives, eyes red-rimmed and sunk into their pockets, skin waxy and damp. A frost of white stubble covered his cheeks and throat; his breath was sour.

"Let's get something to eat," Michael said.

"I could go for some shut-eye."

"Have breakfast with me first."

They'd erected a tent on the quay with a commissary and cots for resting. Michael and Greer filled their bowls with watery porridge and sat at a table. A few other men were hunched over their breakfasts, robotically shoveling the gruel into their mouths, faces slack with exhaustion. Nobody was talking.

"Everything else good to go?" Greer asked.

Michael shrugged. More or less.

"When do you want us to flood the dock?"

Michael took a spoon of the porridge. "She should be ready in a day or two. Lore wants to inspect the hull herself."

"Careful woman, our Lore."

Patch appeared on the far side of the tent. Eyes unfocused, he shambled across the space, lifted the lid on the pot, decided against it, and took one of the cots instead, not so much lying down as succumbing, like a man felled by a bullet.

"You should catch a few winks yourself," Greer said.

Michael gave a painful laugh. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

They finished breakfast and walked to the loading area, where Michael's pickup was parked. Two of the tankers were already drained and standing off to the side. An idea took shape in Michael's mind.

"Let's leave one tanker full and move it to the end of the causeway. Do we have any of those sulfur igniters left?"

"We should."

No further explanation was necessary. "I'll let you see to it."

Michael got in the pickup and placed his Beretta in the bracket under the steering wheel; a short-barreled shotgun with a pistol grip and a sidesaddle of extra shells was clamped between the seats. His rucksack rested on the passenger seat: more rounds, a change of clothes, matches, a first-aid kit, a pry bar, a bottle of ether and a rag, and a cardboard folder sealed with twine.

Michael started the engine. "You know, I've never been in jail before. What's it like?"

Greer grinned through the open window. "The food's better than it is here. The naps are sensational."

"So, something to look forward to."

Greer's expression sobered. "He can't know about her, Michael. Or about Carter."

"You're not making my job any easier, you know."

"It's how she wants it."

Michael regarded his friend for another few seconds. The man really did look terrible. "Go sleep," he said.

"I'll add it to my to-do list."