Finally, and seemingly without cause, Hendry called for us to stop. We were upon a spot of the forest no different, as far as I could tell, from any other. While he picked at a scab on his face, Hendry gazed about, taking stock of tree and rock and sky.

“Looky there,” he said, pointing to a large boulder up ahead, maybe a quarter of a mile. “That’s the north border of your land,” he said. “Them thick trees we passed back there, the ones with white paint on ’em, that’s the southern border. Lotta rattlesnakes near there, if you care to mind ’em. Don’t matter to me. The rest of it runs from here to the creek on the east and west to the other creek. Unload the mules, and good luck to ye.”

“What?” I cried out. I wanted to be as stoic, as sturdy, as Andrew, but I could not help it. “You’re going to leave us in the wilderness with no roof over our heads?”

“Shelter ain’t my worry,” he said. “My worry is getting the animals back. This is your land, what you bargained for, so here it is. Do with it what you want. You don’t like living on it, go find a room in town. It’s nothing to do with me, though I’d advise you to be on your guard for painters. Too many of them about this spring.”

“What is a painter?” asked Andrew.

Hendry looked at Phineas and they both laughed.

“They don’t know about painters,” Phineas said, with an unmistakable tone of cruelty. “Guess they’ll find out.”

Hendry’s nose had begun to run as a consequence of his mirthful snorting. He wiped it with his forearm. “You talk smart, but you’ll get a good schooling, won’t you, maybe in its jaws? A painter is like a cat, if you know what one of them is, but about ten times bigger, and it likes to eat fresh and tender eastern folk.”

I’d had quite enough of Mr. Hendry. “I believe you mean a panther. If you wish to mock people for their ignorance, you ought at least to say what you mean.”

“Call the critter any name you like. It’ll tear the bubbies right off you all the same.”

“Enough. You are going, so get gone,” Andrew said. He put a hand on my shoulder.

“That’s a good thankee for one what’s brung you home.” Hendry snorted.

Phineas eyed me unkindly. “Don’t signify. They’ll be dead ’fore end of winter.”

“You can’t leave us here.” How I hated the tears that welled up in my eyes, but I could endure it no longer. “Are we to sleep on the ground like animals?”

Andrew shook his head. “I know how to make a shelter and endure far worse than this. We’ll make do, never you mind.”

“I cain’t say what you brung in your packs,” Hendry said, “but from the looks of you I reckon you come with nothing and expect the spirits of the woods to raise you up a wigwam. Well, good luck, I say, for yer on yer own now.”

“I don’t doubt they’ll do fine,” said a voice from behind us, “but if you please, my good turd, they won’t do it alone.”

I turned and saw two dozen men and nearly that many women, some of whom had children clinging to their skirts or babes in their arms. There were beasts-a quartet of sturdy horses, a pair of mules, and half a dozen frolicking dogs. Nearly all the men wore western attire, and they carried guns and knives and had tomahawks looped to their belts. They looked like white savages, clad in beast skins and furs, and yet for all that a humanity shone through.

The one who’d spoken stepped forward. He was a tall man, almost a giant, I thought, and looking every bit the frontiersman in western garb and reddish whiskers, which were, if not long, then at least ornate. His mustaches, in particular, drooped down from his face with a curious flourish. This man removed his raccoon cap to bow, revealing an entirely bald head.

“Lorcan Dalton at your service,” he said, his voice redolent with the tones of an Irishman. Returning the hat to his head, he said, “We’ll get to more introductions soon enough, but first let’s get these villains back to their master.”

“Hain’t no call for unkindness,” said Phineas.

“You want kindness, you quit Tindall,” Mr. Dalton said.

Hendry turned his horse to face Mr. Dalton. “You act like we ought to fear you, Irisher.”

Mr. Dalton grinned, showing a mouth of regular brown teeth. “Reynolds used to bring out the new ones. He doesn’t do it now, does he? Guess maybe that pretty wife back east don’t like the scar.”

Hendry said nothing. He and Phineas tied together the horses and mules and rode off without a backward glance.

“I never lament seeing the back of Hendry,” said Mr. Dalton, “and I’d only relish the front if there were a bullet in it. He’s worse than any two Indians and only makes amends for it with his lack of cunning. Now, then, let’s let the women start making us some repast while we men get to working. Lot of folks come out here, Mr. Maycott, who never got their hands too dirty before, but you don’t look like that sort. You look like you’re equal to some hard work.”

“I reckon I am,” Andrew said. “But what work is that?”

“They bring you out here,” Dalton said, “and they leave you here. And why not? Tindall and Duer-they don’t care if we live and would rather we die, for they can then turn about and pass the land along to another victim. It’s why they don’t trouble themselves to do aught about the redskins. But we look after one another here. Many folks on the border have turned savage, hardly better than Indians, but we don’t let that happen. New folks get the help they need, and all we ask in return is that you do your share when the next new man arrives.”

“Of course,” said Andrew. I saw he was moved by the kindness. Perhaps back home he would have made free with his emotions, but the western frontier was no place to be a man of feeling.

“Now, you’ll need a place to sleep,” Dalton said, “so we’ve come to build you a shelter. And we had better get to work if we’re to make any progress before the sun goes down.”

So it was that our first day upon our new land showed us both the lowest depths of human greed and evil and the great generosity of the human heart.

T hey were wondrous in their skills, felling trees, cutting them to size, and, with ropes slung across their shoulders and feet dug in like horses, dragging them to where they might be of use. My innocence, coupled with their single-minded labor, in which they were more like buzzing bees than men, led me to believe that they might build a cabin entire upon the spot, but such luxury was not to be ours. Their design was instead what is commonly called a half-faced camp-a shelter made of logs, composed of but three walls, with a fire built on the fourth side to keep the inhabitants warm and the beasts at a distance. The roof was made of a combination of crossbeams and thatching and would be of limited value in any great rain, but it was far superior to the wild nothingness to which I had believed we had been consigned.

Andrew had brought with him the tools of his trade, and the hardened frontiersmen were pleased and impressed by his carpentry. It seemed he possessed some special new way of bracing the logs together, and they were glad of his addition to the community, if that term could be used for such isolation.

While the men worked, the women provided me with instructions on how best to build a fire and fetch water and regaled me with more information than I could hope to absorb on the spinning of flax, the preparation of bear meat, the uses of bear fat, and a thousand other things I could not recall the next day.

Our rude shelter was completed shortly before dark, and I thought we should be left alone to our first night in the woods, but it seemed that the assistance they provided was, in part, an excuse to gather. The fire that burned outside our shelter was joined by a series of others, and soon the women were roasting meats, boiling porridge, and teaching me to make a kind of western bread called johnnycake, made of nothing but corn flour and water and grilled into flat pieces useful for taking in a travel bag.