MEN SEEKING WORK CAME TO THE CAMP IN A steady procession now. Some camped out in the stumps and slash, waiting days for a maimed or killed worker to be brought from the woods in hopes of being his replacement. These and others more transient gathered six mornings a week on the commissary porch, each in his way trying to distinguish himself from the others when Campbell walked among them. Some went shirtless to show off powerful physiques while others held axes brought from farms or other timber camps, ready at a moment's notice to begin chopping. Still others carried Bibles and read them with great attentiveness to show they were not blackguards or reds but Godly men. Some bore tattered pieces of paper testifying to their talent and reliability as loggers or discharge papers for military service, and all brought with them stories of hungry children and siblings, sick parents and sick wives that Campbell listened to with sympathy, though how much such stories influenced his choices none of the workers could discern.

Serena continued to go out with the lead crews each morning. Galloway trailed behind her, the nubbed arm dangling like rotten fruit clinging to a branch. As Serena moved from crew to crew, no man spoke to her of the coming child, and none let his gaze settle on her stomach. Yet all in their way acknowledged her waxing belly, some offering dipperfuls of spring water, hats holding raspberries and blackberries, ferns twined around chewy combs of sourwood honey. Others gave Galloway pint mason jars filled with spring tonics made of milkweed and sassafras, mandrake and valerian root. One logger offered a double-beveled broad axe to place under Serena's birth bed to cut the pain, still another a bloodstone to prevent hemorrhaging. Foremen came running when Serena appeared so she wouldn't have time or need to dismount. On warm days, the crew bosses led the Arabian into uncut trees so Serena would be shaded.

She often drank the spring water, occasionally ate some of the proffered berries and honey. Galloway placed the tonics in his tote sack. Whether Serena drank them none knew. As Galloway followed Serena from crew to crew, the jars clinked against each other softly, like wind chimes.

Snipes' crew worked alone, having ascended to the summit of Shanty Ridge. As they took a morning break, the men watched Serena moving among the crews to the south. Stewart shook his head in dismay.

"If Preacher McIntyre was here he'd say them carrying on like that is nothing short of idolatry."

"He surely would," Snipes agreed. "He any better, McIntyre I mean?"

"A tad," Stewart said. "Enough that his wife ain't let them doctors electrocute him."

"That's too bad," Ross said. "I was hoping we could fling him in the river and he'd shock us up a mess of catfish. Bring them up the same way you do cranking a telephone."

Snipes unfolded his newspaper and perused the front page.

"What's the scuttlebutt, Snipes?" Henryson asked.

"Well, them park folks seem to be honing in on Colonial Townsend's land over in Tennessee. Says here they've about reached an agreement."

"That tract's big as the one they got Champion to sell them, ain't it?" Henryson asked.

"Says here it is."

"I figured the Pembertons to have bought it," Henryson said. "They was hot after it for a while there till Harris steered them over to Jackson County."

"I heard Harris has got him some geologists over there in Jackson trying to root up a big copper vein," Stewart said.

"Copper?" Henryson said. "I heard it was coal he was looking for."

"I been hearing near everything from silver and gold to Noah's ark to the Big Rock Candy Mountain," Ross said.

"What do you think it is?" Stewart asked Snipes.

"Well," Snipes said reflectively. "It could be a quest for one of the world's immortal treasures, as many a rich man would wish to have his name recorded in the anus of history, but knowing Harris I'm not of a mind to think he'd care much about that."

Snipes paused and picked up a pebble, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger as he might a coin he was unsure he wanted to spend.

"What I'm thinking is that, at least as the crow flies, Franklin ain't but thirty miles away," Snipes concluded. "I'd say that ought to fill in enough of the puzzle pieces for you to figure the rest."

The men were silent for a few moments. Snipes returned to his newspaper as the others continued to look southward. They watched as Serena followed the new spur line into the woods.

"I heard she's just eating bloody beef for her breakfast and supper," Stewart said. "To make that young one of hers all the fiercer. And that ain't the half of it. Come the night she bares her belly to the moon, soaking in all its power."

"I'd say somebody's bull-ragging you, Stewart," Henryson said.

"Maybe so," Ross interjected, "but if somebody told you a year ago she'd train a eagle to go flitting around picking up timber rattlers long as your arm you'd have thought that a rusty too."

"That's true," Henryson said. "We've not seen the like of her in these hills before."

IT was in the eighth month of her pregnancy that Serena awoke with pain in her lower abdomen. Pemberton found Doctor Cheney in the caboose ministering to a worker who had a three-inch splinter embedded in the sclera of his eye. The doctor used a pair of tweezers to work the splinter free, washed the wound with disinfectant and sent the man back to his crew.

"Probably something has not lain well on her stomach," Doctor Cheney said as they walked to the house.

Galloway waited on the porch, Serena's horse tacked and tethered to the lower banister.

"Mrs. Pemberton will be staying in today," Pemberton told him.

Galloway made no reply but gazed intently at Cheney's heavy black physician's bag as Pemberton led the doctor into the house.

Serena sat on the bed edge. Her face was pale, gray eyes seemingly focused on something far away, her shallow breaths such as one might use while holding something fragile or dangerous. Serena's peignoir lay open, the dark-blue silk rippling back to reveal her rounded belly.

"Lie down on your side," Doctor Cheney said, and took a stethoscope from his bag. The doctor pressed the instrument to Serena's stomach, listening attentively a few moments. He nodded to himself and lifted the bright-steel bell from Serena's skin, freed the stethoscope's prongs so the instrument hung around his neck.

"All is well, madam," Doctor Cheney said. "It's normal for women to be susceptible to minor, sometimes even nonexistent pains, especially when with child. What you're feeling is probably a mild gastrointestinal upset, or to put it less delicately, excessive gas."

"Mrs. Pemberton is no malingerer," Pemberton said as Serena slowly raised herself to a sitting position.

Doctor Cheney placed the stethoscope back in his physician's bag, pinched its metal snap closed.

"I don't mean to imply such. The mind is its own place, as the poet tells us, and has its own peculiar reality. What one feels one feels."

Pemberton watched Cheney flatten his hand as if preparing to pat his patient on the shoulder, but the physican wisely reconsidered and let the hand remain by his side.

"I assure you that she will be better by tomorrow," Doctor Cheney said when they stepped back out on the porch.

"Is there anything that will help until then?" Pemberton asked, nodding at Galloway sitting on the steps. "Galloway can go to the commissary, to town if necessary."

"Yes," Doctor Cheney said, addressing Galloway. "Go to the commissary and fetch your mistress a bag of peppermints. I find they do wonders when my stomach is sour."