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there gasping his crying gasp.
    “He brought them after us,” Jean-Pic said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Kill him or leave him,” Jean-Pic said. “You know what’s right.”
    I took my cane knife out and looked at the edge of it. Above, the sky had silted over, a damp black. There was a single star.
    “Go on,” I said to Jean-Pic, and again I said, “Go.”
    Then Jean-Pic went padding off into the trees, and soon I heard him start to jog. The cane knife came up and up and pointed at the one high star. I thought, is it my z’étoile , or his? When we die the ti-bon-ange must leave the body, but that is only the beginning of the journey, and the z’étoile is master of where the ti-bon-ange will go and of what things it will do. I felt the handle turn in my hand and when the knife struck it was with the blunt edge, clanging on the rivet. The slave’s head bounced and sprang back from the snarl of vines, but the rivet held and I saw the knife rise and chop down once again and then the rivet broke. So I bent over and pulled the tin of the headstall apart. His head came free and he slid down the bank and lay in the creek bed with his face in the wet. He breathed and then his tongue pushed out and began to lick at the damp leaves.
    The cane knife swung down at my side. The cage of tin was twisted up among the vines, broken edges shining in the starlight. Two or three smaller stars had come out next to the one big one and away down the mountain I heard the dogs’ voices toll as they found sign.
    “Come on,” I said. “It’s time to go.”
    He spoke without lifting his head from the mud. “I can’t anymore.”
    So I kicked him in the ribs a time or two until he rolled up on his knees. “Get up and run,” I said. “You don’t yet know what you can do.”

Chapter Three
    C REAKILY B AYON DE L IBERTAT GOT DOWN from the coach and paused to look up at Arnaud, who stood on the gallery of the grand’case , caressing the pommel of the cane he held across his legs. A harness bell clacked as one of the grays tossed its head to shake off a fly. Toussaint closed the carriage door behind his master and moved to the horse’s head and stroked the line of its jaw to quiet it.
    “I hadn’t looked for you so early,” Arnaud said. “The Sieur Maltrot has not yet come.”
    Bayon de Libertat sneezed, drew out a cambric handkerchief from his coat pocket and blew his nose. Toussaint had turned to face him, stooped in a sort of frozen bow, eyes raised and querying. Bayon de Libertat nodded as he folded the handkerchief away, and Toussaint led the coach and horses around the rear of the grand’case toward the stable.
    “You’re well, I take it?” Bayon de Libertat said, a trifle testily. “ Et madame? ”
    “—is still abed.” Arnaud smiled suddenly and skipped down the plank steps, reaching for the other’s hand. “Welcome, then. You’ll inspect the fields with me? Come, I’ll order a horse for you.”
    Bayon de Libertat, who would have preferred coffee or a glass of water, and a chance to limber his rickety legs and back, began to open his mouth, but the voice which emerged from behind Arnaud’s fixed smile kept rushing over him.
    “Come,” Arnaud repeated. “You’re only stiff from jouncing over these bad roads. An hour in the saddle will do you good.”
    But when they once were mounted, Arnaud again was silent and morose. Bayon de Libertat asked such polite questions as occurred to him, his voice brittle with annoyance. His stomach was uneasy, his knees sore, his left hand cramped arthritically on the reins. Age told on him, though he would not think of himself as old, but blamed his discomfort on his host’s discourtesy. He was too irked to show his fatigue now. It was already very hot.
    “You’ve had another guest,” he forced himself to say.
    “Eh?” Arnaud said, raising his head from a muttered conversation with his commandeur. “Pardon? ”
    “A visitor? I met him on the road as I came in. He stopped