"Does all this have anything to do with Steve Austin's expedition to Mexico?" asked Alvin.

They both hooted with laughter. "Austin the Conqueror!" said Papa Moose. "Thinks he can take over Mexico with a couple of hundred Cavaliers and Americans."

"He thinks dark-skinned people are no match for white," said Squirrel. "It's the kind of thing slaveowners can fool themselves into believing, what with black folks cowering to them all day."

"So you don't think Austin and his friends amount to anything."

"I think," said Papa Moose, "that if they try to invade Mexico, they'll be killed to the last man."

Alvin thought back to his encounter with Austin, and, more memorably, with Jim Bowie, one of Austin's men. A killer, he was. And the world wouldn't be impoverished if the Mexica killed him, though Alvin couldn't wish such a cruel death on anyone. Still, given what Alvin knew about Bowie, he wondered if the man would ever let himself be taken by such enemies. For all Alvin knew, Bowie would emerge from the encounter with half the Mexica worshiping him as a particularly bloodthirsty new god.

"Doesn't sound like there's much useful for me to do," said Alvin. "Margaret don't need me to gather information-she always knows more than I do about what other folks aim to do."

"It kind of reassures me to have you here," said Squirrel. "Iffen your Peggy sent you here, stands to reason this is the safest place to be."

Alvin bowed his head. He would have been angry if he didn't fear that what she said was so. Hadn't Margaret watched over him from her childhood on? Back when she was Horace Guester's daughter Little Peggy, didn't she use his birth caul to use his own powers to save him from the dealings of the Unmaker? But it galled him to think that she might be sheltering him, and shamed him to think that other folks assumed that it was so.