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would happen. The food was good, though.
    Quickly he dressed, sitting on the side of the iron bedstead to pull on his scuffed boots. His blue work shirt and jean trousers were cheap stuff and he disliked the feel of them, but if he was going to pass for a miner, he had to look like one. It wasn’t as if he’d never done the work. Much like that boy Billy, who hung around the tipple each morning hoping for work off the books, he’d started working down the mines when he was seventeen. Boy, he knew the work, all right.
    He plucked his billed cap off the bedpost where he’d hung it, eased the door open, and stepped out into a narrow hallway that led to a set of stairs. In seconds he was outside. If it weren’t so late, he’d go by the livery station and get his horse—take a long ride out to where the air was still clean and the mountain streams still pure. He settled for a mindless walk around town. Somebody’s hound tracked his trail, but it didn’t bark. Dogs never took him for a stranger.
    Of course, he wound up right where he didn’t mean to go, a little ways up the mountain on a path that put him directly above the tar-paper cabin in back of the James place, where Lilly Gray Corbett was staying. Just the thought of her and his heart was beating like a trip-hammer.
    He should be sleeping instead of spying. It had been a rough day, and tomorrow promised more of the same. Sometimes he didn’t recognize his own intent.
    When the roof caved this morning, he’d stayed put while everyone else ran for their lives. He couldn’t make himself leave Darrell Tippen—not even to save his own worthless hide. The others were right to run, trying to stay ahead of the dreaded black damp that dropped you in your tracks or the methane from firedamp and the explosion that could blow you right out the mouth of the mine—if you were lucky. At least that way your family had a body to bury. But noxious gases hadn’t formed. The bird didn’t die. Men were soon trooping back in and shoring up the roof with timbers until Bob made most of them leave again.
    Tern got some odd looks from the other miners for hanging back. That had been a dumb move. It wasn’t like he really knew the Tippen guy. He needed to be careful, really careful. He had to blend in with the others or else he might stir suspicion. Right now, all anybody knew was what he wanted them to know. He was just a fellow down on his luck, just passing through Skip Rock, just trying to make a few bucks until the next town. He wasn’t any different on any given day from Billy or Charley or Buck.
    The mating calls of insects waxed and waned with the fall of his feet, but when he hunkered down on the path, the noise became incessant. It was music to his ears. If you paid attention, you could hear that each bug played a different winged instrument. The black field cricket’s chirp faltered in and out like a pulse, but a tree cricket’s tune was long and steady. If he had to pick a favorite night song, though, it would be the katydid’s.
    Kay-tee-did, kay-tee-did. He heard the familiar sound made when the insect rubbed the ridge of one thinly veiled green forewing against a scraper on the other. Tern quieted his mind and listened hard to hear the sound most folks never did. Kay-tee-did-not, the leaf on legs trilled. Kay-tee-did-not.
    The buzzes, clicks, and rasps of the night serenade lulled him. The town and the mine seemed far away and of little significance from where he sat on his heels—until a door opened onto a stone stoop far below, and a young woman stepped out into the night.
    Lilly. He’d known it was her the moment he first saw her in the yellow light of the lantern that morning. He had dared to cradle her elbow in his cupped palm, supporting her as others carried Darrell Tippen to the surgery suite in the doctor’s office. Of course he’d heard the gossip that there was a new doctor staying with the Jameses and that it was a woman, but he’d never imagined it