John Saul - Nathaniel

"You wanta go somewhere else?" Ryan finally asked Eric, and Eric shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe he's gone."

"Maybe he's hiding in the woods," Ryan countered.

"You scared of him?"

Ryan hesitated, but finally nodded. "He's always growling, and acting like he's gonna bite."

"But Michael says he never bit anyone."

"So what?" Ryan replied, his voice scornful. "Michael doesn't even know where he came from."

Eric frowned. "Are you mad at Michael?"

"I don't know. He's just sort of-well, he's sort of weird."

Eric nodded his agreement. "But my mom says I ought to be nice to him. Why don't we ask him if he wants to go fishing with us?"

Ryan was about to shake his head when he remembered his own mother's words earlier that day, so he shrugged, then called out to his cousin. Michael looked up, then waved.

"Whatcha doin'?" Eric asked as he flopped down on the riverbank next to Michael.

"Waiting for Shadow," Michael replied, but there was something in his voice that made both the other boys suspicious.

Ryan eyed his cousin. "Did he run away?" he finally asked.

"N-no," Michael stammered. Then he told them what had happened, and finished by asking, "You wanta help me look for him?"

The three boys started slowly back up the path that followed the riverbank, but a few minutes later, Eric suddenly stopped. Michael looked at him curiously. "It was further than this," he said.

"But this is where old man Findley's land starts," Eric replied. "What if he sees us out here?"

Michael's eyes narrowed. "I thought you said you weren't afraid of old man Findley."

Then, before Eric could reply, they heard the sound of an animal whimpering.

"Shadow?" Michael called. "Shadow, is that you?" From up ahead and off to the right in the forest, came an answering bark. Michael began running toward the sound. A second later the other two boys followed him.

Michael found the dog first. Shadow was lying at the base of a tree, his back curled protectively against a root, licking at his left forepaw. Michael knelt down and reached out to touch the injured leg. The dog stiffened for a moment, then seemed to relax under the boy's gentle fingers. But seconds later, when Eric and Ryan came into sight, his hackles rose, and he struggled to his feet, supporting himself on three legs.

"It's all right, boy," Michael whispered. "Lie down. It's all right."

The beginnings of a growl died in the dog's throat, and then he eased himself back down to the ground. Warily, Ryan and Eric approached.

"What's wrong with him?" Ryan asked.

"It's his leg," Michael explained. "Something's wrong with his leg."

"Is it cut?"

"I don't know. I don't think so-there isn't any blood."

Eric dropped down next to Michael, and reached out to touch the injured leg, but quickly pulled his hand back when Shadow bared his fangs.

"No, Shadow," Michael said to the dog. "It's all right. Eric won't hurt you." Then, keeping his hands on Shadow's head, he nodded to Eric. "Go ahead-he won't bite you."

Eric still looked uncertain. "How do you know?"

"I know, that's all," Michael told him.

Eric took the dog's leg in his hand, and though a low rumble came from Shadow, and his eyes fixed balefully on Eric's, he didn't move. Gingerly, the boy explored the injured leg, and though Shadow yelped twice, he made no move either to pull the leg away or to snap at Eric. Finally Eric released the leg and looked at Michael. "It's swollen, but there isn't any cut or anything. It's like maybe somebody hit him with a stick or something."

"Is it broken?" Michael asked, his voice anxious.

Eric shrugged. "I don't know."

"I bet it was old man Findley," Ryan said. "I bet he was coming after you with his gun, and Shadow went for him."

The three boys fell silent, staring at each other, and suddenly Michael felt a chill go up his spine as if someone were watching him from behind. His hands fell away from Shadow, and he scrambled to his feet just as Ben Findley stepped out from behind a tree ten yards away.

The old man glared at them for a moment, then his eyes came to rest on Michael. When he spoke, his voice was hard and angry. "You're damned lucky I didn't shoot him," he said. Only then did Michael see the shotgun that he held loosely in one hand.

At the sound of the old man's words, Shadow bared his fangs once more, snarled, and struggled to his feet.

"What'd you do to him?" Michael demanded. Findley grinned, exposing crooked teeth.

"Hit him," he said. "Hit him with the barrel of this here gun, just when he thought he was gonna get me. Now you three get the hell off my land, hear? Get off right now, and don't come back."

As he gazed at the old man, the familiar pain began in Michael's temples, and a thought drifted fleetingly through his mind. I could make him die… right now, I could make him die … And then, barely discernible in the far reaches of his mind, he heard Nathaniel's voice: " Not yet. Not now …"

"I-I didn't know this was your land," Michael stammered as his headache passed. "There wasn't any sign or anything."

Findley fixed him with a hard look, but then nodded. "That's why I didn't shoot the dog," he said. "If it'd been one of theirs," he went on, nodding toward Eric and Ryan, "I woulda shot it. They know where my land starts and where it stops. And now you know, too. So take the dog and get off. And don't come back."

Slowly the three boys began backing away. For a moment, Shadow held his ground, his yellow eyes flashing even in the filtered light of the woods, but then he, too, began backing off, his gait an awkward hobble as he held his left foreleg off the ground. As the three boys watched, Ben Findley moved deeper into the woods, disappearing almost as if he'd never been there.

"C-come on," Ryan whispered, breaking the sudden silence that hung over the forest. "Let's get out of here before he comes back."

As one, the three boys wheeled around and ran back the way they'd come, not stopping until they were well away from Ben Findley's land.

Limping clumsily and favoring his injured leg, Shadow struggled to keep up.

When they finally emerged from the woods at the foot of the Halls' small farm, Michael stopped to stare at the weed-choked acreage of Potter's Field. Eventually, though, his gaze shifted to Ben Findley's ancient barn.

"That's what he really wants us to stay away from," he whispered, his eyes narrowing angrily. "It's not the woods he cares about, it's the barn."

Ryan and Eric stared at him curiously. "How come? What's so special about the barn?" Ryan asked.

Michael turned to the other two boys, an odd smile coming over his face. "You really want to know?"

The boys hesitated, then nodded.

"Maybe I'll show you sometime," Michael said softly. "Maybe when Shadow's leg gets better, I'll show you."

As the summer wore on, the heat of the prairie filled Janet with a languor she was unused to. At first she attributed it only to the weather, but when she finally talked to a doctor in North Platte about it, she was told that she had to expect her body to concentrate most of its energy on the baby growing inside her and that the best thing she could do was listen to the messages her body was sending her, and take life as easy as possible. And for a while, she was able to relax.

The farm needed little attention, and Michael was more than able to feed their few chickens, tend the cow, and keep the barn in order. Janet concentrated on turning the third bedroom into a nursery, and discovered that even that was no trouble. Just as they had for the farm itself, now people dropped by with things they "thought the baby might be able to use."

For a while, Janet kept a watchful eye on Michael, but as July passed into August, and he complained less and less about his headaches, she began to feel that perhaps the worst was over. Even Laura seemed to have been calmed by the summer weather.