"What brings you out this morning, Pemberton?"

"I talked with Harris. Secretary Albright called over the weekend and wants to set up a meeting. Harris says he's willing to come here."

"When?"

"Albright's willing to accommodate us on that as well. He said anytime between now and September."

"September then," Serena said. "However this turns out, the more time we have to keep logging the better."

Serena nodded, her eyes rising beyond the tulip poplar to the ridge where crews had gained a first foothold above Henley Creek.

"We've made good progress in the last six months, even with the bad weather."

"Yes we have," Pemberton agreed. "We could be finished here in eighteen months."

"I think less than that," Serena said.

The gelding snorted and stamped its foot. Serena leaned slightly forward, her left hand stroking the Arabian's neck.

"I'd better go and check the other crews."

"There's one more thing," Pemberton said. "Campbell says the Harmon girl's in camp. She wants her old job in the kitchen back."

"Does Campbell think we should hire her?"

"Yes."

Serena continued to stroke the Arabian's neck, but she looked at Pemberton now.

"What I said at the depot, about her getting nothing else from us."

"Her wages will be the same as before," Pemberton said, "and like before she won't be living in camp."

"While she's at work, who cares for the child?"

"A neighbor will keep him."

"'Him,'" Serena said. "So it's a male."

The sawing paused for a few moments as the lead chopper placed another wedge behind the blade. Serena raised her left hand and settled it over the saddle pommel. Her right hand, which held the reins, settled over the pommel as well.

"You be the one to tell her that she's hired," Serena said. "Just make it clear she has no claim on us. Her child either."

The cross-cut saw resumed, the blade's rapid back-and-forth like inhalations and exhalations, a sound as if the tree itself were panting. The Arabian stamped the ground again and Serena tightened her fist around the reins, preparing to turn the gelding's head in the direction of the cutting crew.

"One other thing," Serena said. "Make sure she's not allowed around our food."

Horse and rider made their way back through drifts of snow toward the deeper woods. Serena upright, her posture impeccable, the gelding's hooves set down almost disdainfully on the whitened earth. Cut proud, Pemberton thought.

When Pemberton returned to camp, he went into the dining hall where Rachel Harmon waited alone at a table. She wore a pair of polished but well-worn black oxford shoes and a faded blue and white calico dress Pemberton suspected was the nicest clothing she owned. When he'd had his say, Pemberton asked if she understood.

"Yes sir," she said.

"And what happened with your father. You saw it yourself, so you know I was defending myself."

A few moments of silence passed between them. She finally nodded, not meeting his eyes. Pemberton tried to remember what had attracted him to her in the first place. Perhaps her blue eyes and blonde hair. Perhaps that she'd been almost the only female at the camp who wasn't already haggard. Aging in these mountains, especially among the women, happened early. Pemberton had seen women of twenty-five here who would pass for fifty in Boston.

She kept her head slightly bowed as Pemberton surveyed her mouth and chin, her bosom and waist and the white length of ankle showing below her threadbare dress. Whatever had attracted him was now gone. Attraction to any woman besides Serena, he realized, unable to remember the last time he'd thought of a past consort, or watched a young beauty in Waynesville and imagined what her body would be like joined to his. He knew such constancy was rare, and before meeting Serena would have believed it impossible for a man such as himself. Now it seemed inevitable, wondrous but also disconcerting in its finality.

"You can start the first of December," Pemberton said.

She got up to leave and was almost to the door when he stopped her.

"The child, what's his name?"

"Jacob. It comes from the Bible."

The name's Old Testament derivation did not surprise him. Campbell's first name was Ezra, and there was an Absalom and a Solomon in the camp. But no Lukes or Matthews, which Buchanan had once noted, telling Pemberton that from his research the highlanders tended to live more by the Old Testament than the New.

"Does he have a middle name?"

"Magill, it's a family name."

The girl let her eyes glance his a moment.

"If you was to want to see him…"

Her voice trailed off. A kitchen worker came into the hall, a mop and bucket in her hands.

"You can start first of next month," Pemberton said, and went into the kitchen to have the cook make him a late lunch.

IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, MOST OF NOLAND Mountain had been logged and crews had worked north to Bunk Ridge before turning west, following a spur across Davidson Branch and into the wide expanse between Campbell Fork and upper Indian Creek. The men worked faster now that full summer had come, in part because there hadn't been a single rattlesnake bite since the eagle's arrival. As the crews moved forward, they left behind an ever-widening wasteland of stumps and slash, brown clogged creeks awash with dead trout. Even the more resilient knottyheads and shiners eventually succumbed, some flopping onto banks as if even the ungillable air offered greater hope of survival. As the woods fell away, sightings of the panther grew more frequent, fueled in part by hopes of earning Pemberton's gold piece. No man could show a convincing track or scrap of fur, but all had their stories, including Dunbar, who claimed during an afternoon break that something large and black had just streaked through the nearby trees.

"Where?" Stewart asked, picking up his axe as he and the rest of Snipes' crew perused the nearby woods.

"Over there," Dunbar said, pointing to his left.

Ross went to where Dunbar pointed and skeptically studied ground still damp from a morning shower. Ross came back and sat on a log beside Snipes, who'd returned to perusing his newspaper.

"Maybe it was that eagle," Ross said, "because there's nary a sign of a track. You're just hoping for that flashy hat."

"Well, I thought I saw it," Dunbar said gloomily. "I guess sometimes you've got the hope-fors so much it makes you imagine all sorts of things."

Ross turned to Snipes, expecting Dunbar's comment to provoke a philosophical treatise, but the crew foreman was immersed in his newspaper.

"What's in your paper that's got you so squinch eyed, Snipes?"

"They've got a big-to-do meeting about that park in two weeks," Snipes said from behind his veil of newsprint. "According to Editor Webb here, the Secretary of the Interior of the whole U S of A will be there. Bringing John D. Rockefeller's own personal pettifogger with him too. Says they're coming to make Boston Lumber and Harris Mineral Company sell their land or face eviction."

"Think they'll be able to do that?" Dunbar asked.

"It'll be a battle royal," Snipes said, "not a smidgen of doubt about that."

"They won't beat them," Ross said. "If it was just Buchanan and Wilkie they might, but not Harris and Pemberton, and especially not her."

"We better hope that's the way of it," Dunbar said. "If this camp gets shut down we'll be in the worst kind of fix. We'll be riding the boxcars sure enough."

"JUST Albright and Rockefeller's lawyer," Pemberton replied that evening as he and Serena prepared for bed. "Albright wanted no state politicians at the meeting. He said even with Webb and Kephart there we'll still have a five to four advantage."