“What do you want to say?” Lee asked a third time.

“I want my wife,” Samuel cried. “No dreams, no ghosts, no foolishness. I want her here. They say miners take canaries into the pits to test the air. Liza has no truck with foolishness. And, Lee, if Liza sees a ghost, it’s a ghost and not a fragment of a dream. If Liza feels trouble we’ll bar the doors.”

Lee got up and went to the laundry basket and looked down at the babies. He had to peer close, for the light was going fast. “They’re sleeping,” he said.

“They’ll be squalling soon enough. Lee, will you hitch up the rig and drive to my place for Liza? Tell her I need her here. If Tom’s still there, tell him to mind the place. If not, I’ll send him in the morning. And if Liza doesn’t want to come, tell her we need a woman’s hand here and a woman’s clear eyes. She’ll know what you mean.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lee. “Maybe we’re scaring each other, like two children in the dark.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Samuel said. “And Lee, tell her I hurt my hand at the well head. Do not, for God’s sake, tell her how it happened.”

“I’ll get some lamps lit and then I’ll go,” said Lee. “It will be a great relief to have her here.”

“That it will, Lee. That it will. She’ll let some light into this cellar hole.”

After Lee drove away in the dark Samuel picked up a lamp in his left hand. He had to set it on the floor to turn the knob of the bedroom door. The room was in pitch-blackness, and the yellow lamplight streamed upward and did not light the bed.

Cathy’s voice came strong and edged from the bed. “Shut the door. I do not want the light. Adam, go out! I want to be in the dark—alone.”

Adam said hoarsely, “I want to stay with you.”

“I do not want you.”

“I will stay.”

“Then stay. But don’t talk any more. Please close the door and take the lamp away.”

Samuel went back to the living room. He put the lamp on the table by the laundry basket and looked in on the small sleeping faces of the babies. Their eyes were pinched shut and they sniffled a little in discomfort at the light. Samuel put his forefinger down and stroked the hot foreheads. One of the twins opened his mouth and yawned prodigiously and settled back to sleep. Samuel moved the lamp and then went to the front door and opened it and stepped outside. The evening star was so bright that it seemed to flare and crumple as it sank toward the western mountains. The air was still, and Samuel could smell the day-heated sage. The night was very dark. Samuel started when he heard a voice speaking out of the blackness.

“How is she?”

“Who is it?” Samuel demanded.

“It’s me, Rabbit.” The man emerged and took form in the light from the doorway.

“The mother, Rabbit? Oh, she’s fine.”

“Lee said twins.”

“That’s right—twin sons. You couldn’t want better. I guess Mr. Trask will tear the river up by the roots now. He’ll bring in a crop of candy canes.”

Samuel didn’t know why he changed the subject. “Rabbit, do you know what we bored into today? A meteorite.”

“What’s that, Mr. Hamilton?”

“A shooting star that fell a million years ago.”

“You did? Well, think of that! How did you hurt your hand?”

“I almost said on a shooting star.” Samuel laughed. “But it wasn’t that interesting. I pinched it in the tackle.”

“Bad?”

“No, not bad.”

“Two boys,” said Rabbit. “My old lady will be jealous.”

“Will you come inside and sit, Rabbit?”

“No, no, thank you. I’ll get out to sleep. Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.”

“That it does, Rabbit. Good night then.”

Liza Hamilton arrived about four in the morning. Samuel was asleep in his chair, dreaming that he had gripped a red-hot bar of iron and could not let go. Liza awakened him and looked at his hand before she even glanced at the babies. While she did well the things he had done in a lumbering, masculine way, she gave him his orders and packed him off. He was to get up this instant, saddle Doxology, and ride straight to King City. No matter what time it was, he must wake up that good-for-nothing doctor and get his hand treated. If it seemed all right he could go home and wait. And it was a criminal thing to leave your last-born, and he little more than a baby himself, sitting there by a hole in the ground with no one to care for him. It was a matter which might even engage the attention of the Lord God himself.

If Samuel craved realism and activity, he got it. She had him off the place by dawn. His hand was bandaged by eleven, and he was in his own chair at his own table by five in the afternoon, sizzling with fever, and Tom was boiling a hen to make chicken soup for him.

For three days Samuel lay in bed, fighting the fever phantoms and putting names to them too, before his great strength broke down the infection and drove it caterwauling away.”

Samuel looked up at Tom with clear eyes and said, “I’ll have to get up,” tried it and sat weakly back, chuckling—the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat. And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore had not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.