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it?” Cole said. He took a long draw on the purloined pipe, then passed it to his twin.
    “I thought the equipment quit working when you got old.” At the age of fourteen, Eagle considered anything over thirty ancient.
    A year later, when Wolf was born, Dovie and Winston proved once again that everything was indeed in perfect working order, and that they enjoyed making it work.
    Now a sophisticated fifteen, Cole and Eagle discussed this new turn of events over their first taste of alcohol—a bottle of cooking sherry clipped from their mother’s kitchen cabinet.
    “Papa’s as bad as that old stallion,” Cole said, and Eagle voiced his hearty agreement, but there was a certain element of awe and pride in their voices.
    Remembering now, Eagle smiled. Judging by the evidence, Cole had inherited his father’s prowess. His young wife, Anna, was ripe with child, and he already had two fine sons—Clint, secretive and stoic even at seven, and Bucky, exuberant and wild with the joy of childhood, racing around on his sturdy legs, defying his tender age of three by being as surefooted as one of the antelope that roamed the Arbuckle Mountains.
    “Daddy! Daddy!” Bucky yelled as he raced around the yard. “Watch, Daddy!”
    He lunged for the black Lab, and boy and dog went down in a heap. The Lab licked Bucky’s face, then dog and boy were up and running again. It was hard to tell who was chasing whom.
    “Watch, Daddy! Watch!”
    With his arms held up toward the sun, the child spun round and round, ending in a dizzy tangle against Eagle’s legs.
    “Whoa, there.” Laughing, Eagle lifted the child.
    His nephew. Issue of the brother whose very soul was twined with his own. As the soft little arms went around his neck, there was a blooming in Eagle’s heart . . . and something akin to envy.
    “You’re dizzy, little sport. Time to slow down.”
    “Daddy?” Bucky put his dimpled hands on either side of Eagle’s face and cocked his head to one side.
    “No. I’m Uncle Eagle.”
    “Unca Eaga?” Bucky puckered his brow and looked from Eagle to Cole, then back again.
    Cole laughed at his son’s puzzlement. “That’s your uncle Eagle, son, the best man in Witch Dance besides your daddy. Give Uncle Eagle a kiss.”
    With the trust inherent in children, Bucky pressed his rosy mouth against Eagle’s, then squirmed out of his arms and gave chase to the dog once more.
    “‘Bye, Unca Eaga,” he yelled, his laughter lifting high and bright as a kite toward the fading sun.
    “You should see your face,” Cole said. “You look like you did that day you brought home the trophy for the debate team.”
    “I never knew that holding your own flesh and blood would feel like that.”
    “Remarkable, isn’t it?” Cole wrapped his arm around his wife’s thick waist. “It makes a man proud. Two sons already and another on the way.”
    Anna smiled at her husband, never daring to suggest that the child she carried might not be a son. She loved her tall, handsome husband with an adoration that bordered on worship and took every opportunity to show it.
    If he let himself, Eagle could envy that too.
    “Now that you’re back, it won’t take you long to catch up,” Cole said.
    Inseparable as children, Eagle and Cole had done everything together—ridden their first horse, climbed their first tree, bagged their first deer. They’d even broken their arms at the same time, the left ones, fractured when they’d fallen from the barn loft in an ignoble heap, drunk on their mother’s cooking sherry.
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to carry on the family name,” Eagle said. “At least for a while.”
    “You always were a visionary.” Cole leaned down for Anna’s kiss, then watched as she waddled off toward the house. “You build your bridges: I’ll make sons.”
    Winston Mingo didn’t miss a single nuance of the exchange between his sons, not Cole’s triumph at having finally bested his twin brother at something, nor