'Never.'

'How was she when she went to bed?'

'Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.'

Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane's gaze he didn't dare and it was Frank who did it instead.

'Diane's right,' Frank said. 'She'll be okay.'

Annie was still looking at Tom. 'Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She's only ridden him the once.'

'He'll be alright,' Tom said. It wasn't quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. 'I'll go with Frank and we'll see if we can find her.'

Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad's horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.

Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.

'I think Grace knows.' She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.

'I reckon so.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't ever be sorry Annie. Ever.'

That was all they said, because Frank came running up alongside and the three of them walked in silence to the rail by the barn where Joe had the horses waiting.

'There's his tracks,' Joe called. He pointed at their clear outline in the dust. Pilgrim's shoes were different from those of every other shod horse on the ranch. There was no doubt the prints were his.

Tom looked back just the once as he and Frank loped up the track toward the ford, but Annie was no longer there. Diane must have taken her inside. Only the kids still stood there watching. He gave them a wave.

It wasn't till she found the matches in her pocket that Grace had the idea. She'd put them there after practicing the trick with her father at the airport while they waited for her flight to be called.

She didn't know how long they'd ridden. The sun was high so it must be some hours. She rode like a madwoman, consciously so, wholeheartedly, embracing madness and urging its return in Pilgrim. He'd sensed it and ran and ran all morning, mouth afoam, like a witch's nag. She felt that if she asked he would even fly.

At first she'd had no plan, only a blind, destructive rage whose purpose and direction were not yet set and might be turned as easily on others as herself. Saddling him and shushing him in the gathering light of the corral, all she knew was that somehow she would punish them. She would make them sorry for what they'd done. Only when she reached the meadows and galloped and felt the cold air in her eyes did she start to cry. Then the tears took over and streamed and she leaned forward over Pilgrim's ears and sobbed out loud.

Now, as he stood drinking at the plateau pool, she felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher's yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.

And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he'd stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.

Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they'd all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that's where they'd done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to 'get her head together'. Jesus.

Well, she'd show them. She had the matches and she'd show them. It would go up like paper. And they would find her charred black bones in the ashes and then they'd feel sorry. Oh yes, then they'd feel sorry.

It was hard to know how much of a start she had on them. Tom knew a young guy on the reservation who could look at a track and tell you how old it was, near as damn it, to the minute. Frank knew more than most about such things because of his hunting, a lot more than Tom, but still not enough to know how far ahead she was. What they could tell however was that she was riding the horse as hard as hell and that if she kept it up he'd soon be on his knees.

It seemed pretty clear she was heading for the summer pastures, even before they found his hoof-marks in the caked mud at the lip of the pool. From riding out with Joe, she knew the lower parts of the ranch pretty well, but the only time she'd been up here was on the cattle drive. If she wanted a bolt hole, the only place she'd know to head for was the cabin. That is, if she could remember the way when she got up into the passes. After two more weeks of summer, the place would look different. Even without the whirlwind that - judging by her progress - was going on in her head, she could easily get lost.

Frank got down from his horse to take a closer look at the prints at the water's edge. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. Tom got down too and held the horses so they wouldn't spoil what evidence there was in the mud.

'What do you reckon?'

'I don't know. It's kind of crusted already but with a sun this hot that don't say too much. A half-hour, maybe more.'

They let the horses drink and stood mopping their brows and looking out across the plateau.

Frank said, 'Thought we might get a sight of her from here.'

'Me too.'

Neither spoke for a while, just listened to the lap of the horses drinking.

'Tom?' Tom turned to look at him and saw his brother shift and smile uneasily. 'This is none of my business, but last night, Diane… well, you know she'd had a drink or two and, anyway, we was in the kitchen and she was going on about how you and Annie were, well… Like I say, it's none of our business.'

'It's okay, go on.'

'Well. She said one or two things, and, anyway, Grace came in, and I'm not sure, but I think maybe she heard.'

Tom nodded. Frank asked him if that's what was going on here and Tom told him he reckoned so. They looked at each other and some refraction of the pain in Tom's heart must have shown in his eyes.

Frank said, 'In pretty deep, huh?'

'About as deep as it gets.'

They said no more, merely turned the horses from the water and set off across the plateau.

So Grace knew, though how she knew he didn't care. It was as he'd feared, even before Annie had voiced the fear this morning. When they were leaving the party last night he'd asked Grace if she'd had a good time and she'd barely looked at him, just nodded and forced a token smile. What pain she must be in to have gone off like this, Tom thought. Pain of his making. And he took it inside him and embraced it in his own.

At the crest of the ridge they expected again to see her but didn't. Her tracks, where they could see them, showed only a slight slackening of pace. Only once had she stopped, some fifty yards from the mouth of the pass. It looked as if she'd pulled Pilgrim up short then walked him in a small circle, as if she was deciding or looking at something. Then she'd gone on again at a lope.

Frank reined to a halt just where the land began to tilt sharply upward between the pines. He pointed at the ground for Tom to look.