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names like “Turlington’s Balsam of Life,” and “Carter’s Spanish Mixture.” It ended eighteen months earlier, with a black line ruled underneath the last entry, which read, “Last of stock sold to Dr. Ducatel.”
    When he asked the clerk about it, the old man proved a lot more amenable, evidently possessing none of the loyalty to Ducatel that he held for his employer. Dr. Ducatel, he revealed, had rented the side room for a surgery, but in the months since that last sale he had gone out of business. No medicines could be obtained now, as the brutal administration of Buenos Aires did not allow drugs of any kind to be exported from that city. Even if they were available, no one in El Carmen could afford a doctor, as no one had been paid for many months. Accordingly, Ducatel was now running a ranch—he was estanciero, having married the daughter of a local landholder—and the surgery was locked and out of use.
    Ducatel — ranch. The two words seemed linked. Wiki frowned, and turned back to the first ledger, the one that recorded ordinary trade. A little gust came in the front door as he riffled through the pages, and a paper fluttered out of the back.
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Stackpole.
    Wiki bent to retrieve the document, which had fallen to the floor. Then he unfolded it, and spread it out on the top of the counter. Stackpole breathed heavily from behind his shoulder as he read it.
    The paper was a standard printed form, with gaps that had been filled in with inked names, a date, and a sum of money, and had been signed by Adams and a man who wrote in an illegible scrawl. Wiki scanned the copperplate script with growing stupefaction: “… whereas said schooner and outfits as she now lies at El Carmen de Patagones is this day sold by Rowland Hallett to Caleb Adams on behalf of S. R. Stackpole for the sum of one thousand …”
    He looked up at Stackpole and exclaimed, “It’s the deed of sale for the Grim Reaper !”
    The whaling master’s eyes widened for an instant, but then he grimly nodded. To have it confirmed that Caleb Adams had bought the schooner with his money and then sailed off with his property did not surprise Captain Stackpole at all.

Three
    When Wiki crossed the verandah of the store and went out into the afternoon sunshine, to his great surprise he found that a dozen gauchos on angular, unshod horses were waiting in the street, though he hadn’t heard them arrive. They were sitting sideways on their great fleece-covered saddles, brushing back their ferocious black mustachios to puff judiciously at skinny cigars of flaked tobacco wrapped in scraps of paper, and gave every appearance of having been there quite a while.
    Wiki studied them, and the cowboys studied him back with narrowed eyes. A gust lifted their ponchos and ruffled the hairs on the back of Wiki’s neck. Then, as the striped fabric fell back against their lean bodies, one of them lifted a yellow-stained finger, and in the accent of the arribeño of the upper provinces stated, “We believe you have lost an article of value.”
    Stackpole asked, “What did he say?”
    â€œThey know you’ve been robbed,” Wiki told him.
    â€œThey’re probably the men who helped Adams sail off with my schooner,” the whaleman growled. “Now they’ve come to claim a fee for pretending to hunt for it.”
    â€œBe careful what you say—they often understand some English. They’re rastreadores, professional trackers, and very proud men. They make their living by finding strayed animals, and hunting down thieves.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œBecause I’ve ridden with men like them before.”
    â€œSo how do they know I’ve been robbed?”
    â€œBy magic,” said Wiki dryly. It was well known in the Río de la Plata that if the owner of a ranchería woke up one morning to find horses or