He dropped his pack beside him and leaned the bow against it. Staring out across the wide expanse of bluff-rimmed, autumn-painted valley where the two great rivers met, he saw that it was exactly as he had been told it would be by the buffalo-hunting band he'd met in the great high plains almost a moon before. He smiled to himself as he thought of them, for they had been pleasant people. They had asked him to stay and he very nearly had. There had been a girl who had laughed with him, the laughter deep inside her throat, and a young man who had laid his hand upon his arm with the touch of brotherhood. But in the end he could not stay.

The sun was coming up and the maples along the rim of the farther bluff, caught in its rays, flamed with sudden red and gold. And there, on the rocky headland that reared above the river's junction, stood the huge block of masonry that they had told him of, with its many chimneys pointing stubby fingers at the sky.

The young man lifted a pair of binoculars off his chest and set them to his eyes. Disturbed by the movement of the strap, the bear claws of his necklace clicked together.

Jason Whitney came to the end of his morning walk and it had been, he told himself, the best walk he'd ever had—although he recalled that he always thought that each morning as he came up the slight slope toward the patio, with the smell of frying bacon and of morning eggs wafting from the kitchen, where Thatcher made them ready. But this morning had been good, he insisted to himself. It had been so fresh, with just a nip of chill until the rising sun dispelled it, and the leaves, he thought—the leaves were at their best. He had stood out on the point of rocks and had watched the rivers and they had been (perhaps to complement the autumn colors through which they flowed) a deeper blue than usual.