She would have to take a good many rest stops on the way back for him . . . and there had been a time, not that long ago (or so her mind stubbornly maintained), when Peter would always have been a quarter of a mile ahead of her, belling vollies of barks back through the woods. She thought there might come a day when she would decide enough was enough; she'd pat the seat on the passenger side of the Chevrolet pickup for the last time, and take Peter to the vet down in Augusta. But not this summer, please God. Or this fall or winter, please God. Or ever, please God.

Because without Peter, she would be alone. Except for Jim, and Jim

Gardener had gotten just a trifle wiggy over the last three years or so. Still a friend, but … wiggy.

'Glad you approve, Pete old man,' she said, putting a ribbon or two around the trees, knowing perfectly well she might decide to cut another stand and the ribbons would rot here. 'Your taste is only exceeded by your good looks.'

Peter, knowing what was expected of him (he was old, but not stupid), wagged his scraggy stub of a tail and barked.

'Be a Viet Cong!' Anderson ordered.

Peter obediently fell on his side – a little wheeze escaped him – and rolled on his back, legs splayed out. That almost always amused Anderson, but today the sight of her dog playing Viet Cong (Peter would also play dead at the words 'hooch' or 'My Lai') was too close to what she had been thinking about.

'UP, Pete.'

Pete got up slowly, panting below his muzzle. His white muzzle.

'Let's go back.' She tossed him a dog biscuit. Peter snapped at it and missed. He snuffed for it, missed it, then came back to it. He ate it slowly, without much relish. 'Right,' Anderson said. 'Move out.'

3

For want of a shoe, the kingdom was lost … for the choice of a path, the ship was found.

Anderson had been down here before in the thirteen years that the Garrick Farm hadn't become the Anderson Farm; she recognized the slope of land, a deadfall left by pulpers who had probably all died before the Korean war, a great pine with a split top.