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I nodded.

He leaned forward. "How long you been in these parts? Not long? Good. Here’s what I’m interested in, Lyman. I want to know what it’s like to be one of them boys out there in them bands that are marauding here and there. Are these just gangs of boys up to mischief, or are these soldiers for the southern cause in the making? You look to be about sixteen."

I nodded.

"That’s the age of some of these boys. Now." He sat back and glared at me. "Are you one hundred percent sound on the goose question? Because you an’t goin’ nowhere in these parts if you an’t."

I had stolen boots and a hat; I had stolen, in a sense, Mr. Graves’s money that he’d paid for my passage; I had deceived Miss Carter; I had deceived all my friends; I had become a man—a boy, rather—and so it was no effort to me to nod. One hundred percent sound on the goose question. I did wonder, though, what Thomas would think about that.

"Good," said Mr. Morton. "There’s a horse in the livery stable over a block, Colman’s Livery. Brown horse named Athens. You get on him, and you find one of them bands, and you write about that, and if you do a good job, I’ll give you regular employment. I’ll tell you something: I don’t know a thing about you, Lyman Arquette, but you strike me, somehow. Maybe it’s your affliction, but I am moved to give you a chance, son."

I whispered, "Thank you, sir."

"Now," he said, "here’s an advance on your pay." He put a dollar in my hand. "Go get yourself some supper at the hotel across the street, and I’ll see you bright and early in the morning. You got a place to stay?"

"Yessir," I whispered.

Five minutes later, I was strolling away, as astonished as I had ever been in my life.

My supper, which I took in a nearby hotel, made what you might call an avalanche of sleepiness cascade over me, but I wanted to see the horse, so I walked around to the "livery stable," not an establishment the kind reader should confuse with a large building containing stalls and horses and equipment, but rather something quite similar to what I was used to in Lawrence—a large corral and a smaller building beside it, almost a shed, really, though this one was fairly large and contained prairie hay piled up in reserve for the horses, as well as tack and equipment hanging from the walls. There were eight horses and four mules in the corral; of the eight horses, two were chestnut, one was a dun, two were bays, and three were brown. Of these, two were mares, and so I figured Athens to be the round and somewhat swaybacked fellow scouting for wisps of hay in the dirt. He had a wide blaze from his foretop to his nose and looked well on in years. The contrast between him and Jeremiah made my throat tickle. On the other hand, the hay in the shed looked tremendously inviting, and I made straight for it and lay down upon it and nestled into it with a boldness born of irresistible desire. Not long after, an elderly Negro man was looking down on me. I could barely keep my eyes open, even in the midst of this confrontation, but I managed to say in my harsh whisper, "Please may I sleep here? I an’t got money for a room."

"Cain’t sleep here," said the man, in an accent that I found hard to understand. "This here’s Massa Harry’s place. Ain’ no hotel."

"I work for the newspaper." I gestured toward Athens. And then I simply fell asleep, as if dropping over the side of a cliff. There was nothing he could do about it, or I could do about it, though I think that he jostled me. It was no use. I was without will, and no doubt immovable. I remained unmoved, and woke, right there, just about at sunup. I remembered the elderly man instantly and scrambled to my feet, but he wasn’t around. No one was around except the horses and mules, who must have been hungry, as they were looking at me with interest. I picked the bits of hay off my jacket, reminded myself that I was a man named Lyman Arquette, that I had been hired at the newspaper and already owed my employer a dollar.

In the bright light of a good night’s sleep, my new situation seemed impossible, and