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Feeling vaguely ridiculous, she released the dogs. They instantly crowded up to Calven, obviously recognizing an old friend. ” He looked up at Elizabeth. “I know them two, seen ’em in the woods back of this. Read their names offen their collars. They’re right friendly, ain’t they? I wisht I could have me a dog but—” He broke off as Rosemary set a glass of milk and a plate with a thick ham and cheese sandwich on the little table under the window. His eyes widened at the sight and he darted forward.

Laurel lay sprawled on the mattress in her corner, fast asleep. Her red curls, damp with perspiration from the exertion of insisting that she didn’t want to take a nap, were plastered against her plump cheeks. One arm encircled Rex, the stuffed dinosaur her mother had sewn of soft blue brushed denim; the other lay extended, hand splayed open like a fat pink starfish. Rosemary sat at the rough table under the window her pa had cut in the side of the barn. From this perch, she commanded a view of the winding gravel drive that snaked down the hill to the hard road, almost half a mile away.

So, when the sheriff and them left, Bib tole me to head back over the mountain to the trailer and he’d see me there and I’d git what I had comin’. “Well, ol’ Bib, he slipped back down to the house to git his stuff and I took off fer the ridge over to Bear Tree like he done tole me. But I got to thinkin’ and figgered that without my mama nor my mamaw there to hold him back, he’d be like to kill me. So I just went along the ridge top a ways and come down here in you unses holler. I slept in your barn last night and I got me some food from that cabin over yon.