"Come on, let's eat," said Arthur Stuart. "All this talkin' don't fill me up much."

And that being the most honest and sensible thing that had been said that half hour, they all agreed to it and followed their noses till they found a place that sold food that was mostly dead, didn't have too many legs, wasn't poisonous when alive, and seemed cooked enough to eat. Not an easy search in Barcy.

After dinner, Coz got him out a pipe which he proceeded to stuff with manure, or so it smelled when he got the thing alight. Alvin toyed with putting out the fire, but he knew he wasn't given his makery gift just to spare himself the occasional stink.

Instead he took his leave, hoisted his poke onto his shoulder, made sure Arthur Stuart unwound himself from his chair before standing up, and the two lit out in search of a place to stay. None of the miserable fleabitten overpriced understaffed crowded smelly firetraps near the river. Alvin had no idea how long he'd be staying and he only had limited funds, so he'd want a room in a boarding house somewhere in the part of Barcy where decent people lived who aimed to stay a spell. Where a journeyman smith might stay, for instance, while he searched for a shop as needed an extra pair of arms.

He wasn't thirty steps out of the tavern where they'd dined afore he realized that Abe Lincoln was a-following, and even though Abe had even longer legs than Alvin's, there was no point in making him hasten to catch them up. He stopped, he turned, and only then did he realize that Arthur Stuart wasn't walking with him, he was with Abe.

It was disconcerting, how Arthur had learnt a way to keep Alvin from noticing his heartfire. Not that Alvin ever failed to find Arthur when he was looking for him. But it used to be Alvin always knew where Arthur Stuart was without even thinking, but ever since Arthur had figured out a bit of real makering-how to het up iron or soften it, which was no mean trick-it seemed he'd also figured out how to make Alvin not notice when he sort of drifted away and went off on his own.

But now wasn't the time for remonstration, not with Abe a-lookin' on.

"You decided Coz could be trusted with his own money tonight after all?" asked Alvin.

"Coz can't be trusted with his own elbows," said Abe, "but it occurred to me that you and Arthur Stuart here have become right good friends, and I'd be sorry to lose track of you."

"Well, it's bound to happen," said Alvin, "since the only way to get your profits back north is to buy passage and get aboard afore Coz falls in love again."

"You seem to be a wandering man," said Abe, "and not likely to have a place where a man can send you a letter. Me, though, I'm rooted. I don't make much money doing much of anything yet, but I know where I want to do it. You write to Abraham Lincoln, town of Springfield, state of Noisy River, that'll reach me right enough."

Alvin had no shortage of friends in his life, but never had a man he liked so well upon such short acquaintance made it so plain that he liked him back. "Abe, I won't forget that address, and indeed I expect I'll use it. Not only that, but I do have a way that a fellow can write to me. Any letter posted to Alvin Junior in the care of Alvin Miller in the town of Vigor Church would reach me in due time."

"Your folks, I reckon."

"I grew up there and we're still on speaking terms," said Alvin with a smile.

But Abe didn't smile back. "I know the name of Vigor Church, and a dark story attached to the place."

"The story's dark enough, and also true," said Alvin. "But if you know the tale, you know there was some as didn't take part in the massacre of Prophet's Town, and didn't have no curse upon them."

"I never thought about it, but I reckon there had to be some as had clean hands."

Alvin held his hands up. "But that doesn't mean as much as it once did, because the curse has been lifted and the sin forgiven."

"I hadn't heard that."

"It isn't much spoken of," said Alvin. "If you want to learn the whole of the tale, you're welcome to visit my family there at any time. It's a welcoming house, with many a visitor, and if you tell them you're a friend of me and a certain stepbrother-in-law of mine, they'll serve you extra helpings and perhaps tell you a tale or two that you haven't heard afore."

"You can be sure I'll go there," said Abe. "And I'm glad to think tonight won't be the last I'll hear of you."

"You can't be any gladder than me," said Alvin.

With a handshake they parted yet again, and soon Abe's long legs were carrying him back toward the tavern with a stride that parted the flow of the crowd in the street like an upriver steamboat.

"I like that man," said Arthur Stuart.

"Me too," said Alvin. "Though I think there's more to him than making folks laugh."

"Not to mention being the best-looking ugly man or the ugliest handsome man I ever seen," said Arthur Stuart.

"Speaking of nothing much," said Alvin, "I wish you wouldn't do that trick of hiding your heartfire from me."

Arthur Stuart looked at him without blinking an eye and answered just as Alvin supposed he would. "Now that we're away from company, Al, ain't it about time you told me what our business is here in Barcy?"

Alvin sighed. "I'll tell you now what I told you back in Carthage when we set out on this journey. I'm going because my Peggy sent me here to Barcy, and a good husband does what his wife insists."

"She didn't send you to Carthage, that's for sure. She thinks you're gonna die there."

"When I die, I'll be dead everywhere, all at once," said Alvin, a little peeved. "She can send me to the end of the world, and I'll go, but at least I get to choose my own route."

"You mean you really don't know what you're supposed to do here? When you said that before I thought you were just telling me it was none of my business."

"It might well be none of your business," said Alvin, "but so far it's apparently none of my business, either. Back on the steamboat, I thought maybe our trip here had something to do with Steve Austin and Jim Bowie and the expedition to Mexico they tried to recruit me for. But then we left them behind and-"

"And freed two dozen black men as didn't want to be slaves."

"That was more you than me, and not a thing to be bragging on here in the streets of Barcy," said Alvin.

"And you still have yet to figger out what Peggy has in mind," said Arthur Stuart.

"We don't talk like we used to," said Alvin. "And there's times I think she tells me of an urgent errand in one place, just so I won't be in a different place where she saw some awful thing happening to me."

"It's been known to happen."

"Well, I don't like it. But I also know she wants our baby to have a living father, and so I go along, though I remind her from time to time that a grown man likes to know why he's doing a thing. And in this case, what the thing is I'm supposed to be doing."

"Is that what a grown man likes?" said Arthur Stuart, with a grin that was way too wide.

"You'll find out when you're growed," said Alvin.

But the truth was, Arthur Stuart might be full grown already. Alvin didn't know whether his father was a tall man, and his mother was so young she might not have been full grown. No matter how tall he might get, at age fifteen it was time for Alvin to stop treating him like a little brother and start treating him like a man who had the right to go his own way, if he so chose.

Which was probably why Arthur Stuart had gone to the trouble to learn how to hide his heartfire from Alvin. Not hide it completely-he'd never be able to do that. But he could make it so Alvin didn't notice him unless he was particularly looking, and that was more hidden than Alvin ever thought he'd be able to do.

Alvin did his share of hiding from folks, too, so he couldn't rightly begrudge the boy his privacy. For instance, there was no one who knew that Alvin not only didn't know what errand Margaret had in mind for him, he didn't much care, either. Or about anything else.