"Looks like we got company," she told Jacob.

McDowell sat at the kitchen table with Mrs. Sloan, his right hand gripping a sweating glass of iced tea. An envelope lay on the table before him. Rachel set the rhubarb on the kitchen counter and sat down as well, but Jacob squirmed, began to whine.

"Probably needs changing," Rachel said, but Mrs. Sloan got up before she could and took the child into her arms.

"I'll do it." Mrs. Sloan said. "Then I'll take him out on the porch. You and the sheriff need to talk."

"Here," Rachel said, and gave the older woman the sock filled with marbles. "For if he gets fussy."

Mrs. Sloan jiggled the child in her arms, and Jacob laughed.

"Let's get you changed," she said, and disappeared with the child into the back bedroom.

McDowell took a sip of tea, set the glass before him.

"Likes the marbles, does he?"

"He plays with them every day."

"And doesn't try to eat them?"

"No, leastways not yet."

Mrs. Sloan and Jacob came out of the back bedroom and went out on the porch.

"What is it?" Rachel asked when McDowell didn't speak.

He looked out the front window where Mrs. Sloan held Jacob in her arms, the child reaching for a wind chime that dangled from the porch ceiling.

"I'm not sheriff anymore. They fired me and got them a lawman they can control."

"So there ain't nothing left to do but run and hide from them," Rachel said.

"I'm not running," McDowell said. "There's ways to beat them that don't need a sheriff's badge."

"If you do, we can go back home?"

"Yes."

"How long before you try to do something about them?"

"I have been trying," McDowell said bitterly. "My mistake was believing the law might help me. But I've come to the end of that row. If it's to be done I'll be doing it myself."

The ex-sheriff paused. He still looked out the window, but his gaze seemed upon something farther away than Mrs. Sloan and the child.

"You're going to try and kill them, ain't you?" Rachel asked.

"I'm hoping there'll be another way."

"I'd kill them if I didn't have Jacob to look after," Rachel said. "I would."

"I believe you," McDowell said, meeting Rachel's eyes.

A train hooted as it left the depot, the tea glass trembling as the train passed behind the house. McDowell reached out and held the glass still as the train clattered on south towards Knoxville. He stared at the glass as he spoke.

"If things don't work out the way I hope, you'll need to get you and the boy farther away than here."

"How far?"

"Far as this can get you," McDowell said, pushing the envelope toward her. "There's three hundred dollars in there."

"I wouldn't feel right taking your money," Rachel said.

"It's not my money."

"Where'd it come from then?"

"That doesn't matter. It's yours and the boy's now, and it may be all that keeps them from catching the both of you."

Rachel took the envelope and placed it in her dress pocket.

"You think they're still looking for us, right now I mean?"

"I know they are. If it's safe to come back, I'll come get you." McDowell said, pushing back his chair and standing up. "But until then don't take that child outside any more. I don't think they can track you here, but these folks ain't the kind you want to underestimate."

Rachel walked out on the porch with him and watched as he got back in the Model T and drove away. Then Rachel went back inside, fixed some oatmeal for Jacob. She set him on the floor and began cutting the stalks into inch-long pieces. Rachel raised a piece to her mouth, tasted its sourness and knew she'd need plenty of sugar. A freight train rattled the house, and she felt the boards beneath her shudder. Crockery shook in the cabinet.

Rachel wondered where the train was headed and remembered something from her last year of school. Where would you most want to go, Miss Stephens had asked, if you could choose anywhere on this map? One student raised a hand and said Washington, D.C., and another New York and another said Raleigh. Bobby Orr said Louisiana because he'd heard folks there ate crawdads and he'd like to see such a thing as that. Joel Vaughn, taking a notion to be a smart-aleck, said as far away from the school as possible. Now where would that be, Joel, Miss Stephens had asked, and made him come up to the front of the room. She'd taken a ruler from her drawer and made Joel go to the map and measure until he found the farthest dot, which was Seattle, Washington. I went there once, Miss Stephens had said. It's a pretty place. There's a river and a pretty blue harbor and mountains so high they have snow on them all year long.

BY EARLY OCTOBER, THE RAILROAD TRACK TO the new camp in Jackson County had been laid down and connected to the Waynesville line. Spurs sprouted into the surrounding forests, and the site itself had been cleared by workers who'd been in the Cove Creek camp just weeks before, their stringhouses set on flat cars and sent east with them. The farmhouse had been converted into a dining hall, and work had begun on houses for Meeks and the Pembertons. Little would change other than the locale.

Snipes' crew was among the ones left in the Cove Creek camp. On those last mornings they ascended the far western slopes of Shanty Mountain and Big Fork Ridge, the few acres yet unlogged. They were still one worker short due to Dunbar's death in the gap. A replacement had been brought in, but on the second morning a sapling under a felled hickory sprang free and fractured his skull, making Snipes both lead cutter and sawyer. By the time the men stopped midday to eat, Snipes was so exhausted he lay on the ground, his eyes closed.

Henryson took a bite from his sandwich. His nose wrinkled as he chewed the soggy bread and fatback, swallowed it with the relish he might a mouthful of tacks. He set the sandwich aside.

"I heard your preacher was out in his cabbage patch the other evening," Henryson said to Stewart. "He must be doing some better."

"He is, but he still ain't of a mind to say much. My sister got him a funeral to preach over there at Cullowhee, figured it would cheer him up a considerable bit, but he just shook his head at her."

"Well, there ain't nothing like seeing somebody laid in the ground to cheer a fellow up," Ross said.

"It used to done him that way," Stewart said. "He told me once the only thing he hated about dying was he wouldn't be around to do his own funeral."

Snipes eyes were still closed as he spoke.

"That's another example of the duality of man you're speaking of, Stewart. We want what's in this world but we also want what ain't."

"I don't quite get your meaning," Henryson said to Snipes.

Snipes turned his head a few inches to address Henryson, the foreman's eyelashes fluttering a few moments like insect wings vainly attempting to take flight.

"Well, I'm too tuckered to explain it right now."

The crew foreman resettled the back of his head on the ground. He placed a piece of the cap and bells' pennant-shaped cloth over each eye to blunt the sun and was soon snoring.

"If we don't get another worker soon, Snipes is going to be worn to a frazzle," Henryson said.

"Maybe they'll hire McIntyre back," Ross said. "It ain't like a man's got to wag his tongue to be a good sawyer."

"What do you think, Stewart?" Henryson asked. "Think McIntyre might come back?"

"Maybe."

"If funerals perk him up, he couldn't do better than here," Ross noted. "There's men falling dead near about fast as the trees."

A breeze stirred a white oak's high limbs. It was the last hardwood on the ridge, and a few scarlet leaves fell like an early surrendering. One drifted toward Ross, who picked it up and examined it carefully, turning the leaf to and fro as though something never seen before.