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Sugar. “We have nothing for him.”
    Bird was silent.
    “You’ve put him to death then,” said Sugar. “This is on you.”When they finally left, Sugar was angry. He was kicking up stones
     and clumps of dirt without breaking his stride.

    “Worthless,” said Sugar, over and over again, kicking the earth and
     scattering teeth.
    Bird followed at an uneven clip, hopping and jogging slightly then
     slowing himself to keep just behind Sugar and out of striking distance.
    They were following the same path that had brought them there. Bird
     spotted the divot where he’d fallen, and he pressed it with his heel.
    Sugar paused then, as if he had an idea. He turned to the boy and Bird
     took a step back, flinched, and Sugar was upon him. He knocked the boy onto his
     back. The boy swatted his desperate hands and gripped at Sugar’s neck until Sugar
     was able to scoot his knees onto the boy’s elbows and, sitting on his chest, pin him
     at three points to the earth.
    “I will gut you,” said Sugar, “if you don’t tell me this instant where
     you’ve come from and what you’re after.”
    Bird coughed and made room for Sugar’s grip to tighten.
    “You ran away ?”
    Bird tried to shake his chin. He was wide-eyed, gazing back at Sugar and
     trying to look plain.
    “Someone sent you ?” said Sugar.
    When he did not respond, Sugar shook Bird. He shook loose the tears Bird
     was trying to hold back and struck him in the brow with the middle knuckles of his
     right hand.
    “Speak up,” said Sugar. “Tell me something to make some sense of all this
     and I won’t break you open and drag you behind us until you’ve bled out. We’ll cut
     off pieces of you and leave a trail for whoever sent you to find us. And when we
     deal withthem, it will be to mutilate them painfully and leave them
     to the woods. Then we will deal with your mother and father. We will put your
     mother’s head in a gunny sack and your father’s will hang from the side of my
     saddle.”
    Bird went back to trying to look plain. Or he was scared enough to be
     immobilized. Either way, he wasn’t crying or fighting, just staring up at Sugar as
     if there was nothing to do worth doing and nothing at all to hope for in the
     world.
    “What’s happened ?” said Brooke.
    Bird had not heard or seen his approach.
    “The boy’s got no paths,” said Sugar, “no markings of any kind. He’s
     appeared as if from nowhere. He knows nothing.” Sugar was pressing his palms against
     the boy’s throat then, holding him to the dirt and squeezing until the boy’s eyes
     bulged and stuttered about in desperation. “We’ve got nothing to go on other than
     knowing that we’re better safe than sorry. Safer without him. Safer without a mouth
     to feed and the unknown hanging over us.”
    “Well,” said Brooke, “if you’re going to do it, do it.” He rubbed his
     hands together, wiped them along the length of his pants. “But don’t drag it
     out.”
    Sugar leaned into his hold on the boy’s throat and locked eyes with
     him.
    “If you’ve got something to tell me,” whispered Sugar, “you tell me
     now.”
    The boy was tense, a short bit of rope tugged from either end, but when
     Sugar went silent the boy held that way for only a moment longer before releasing
     into the mud. His eyes wandered from Sugar to Brooke and then to nothing in
     particular. His air was gone. His throat was bruised and bent. Something was humming
     up inside of him like the edge of sleep. Thesounds of Brooke and
     Sugar rattled around in his head, little clips of conversation and the sounds of the
     forest around them now, suddenly, and from before.
     
    When Bird came to, he was not dead. There was a fire at his side,
     Brooke and Sugar were seated opposite him.
    “You,” said Brooke, pointing at Bird, “are no help at all.”
    “You tried to kill me,” said Bird. He sat up, coughed, rubbed his throat.
     He coughed again and loosed a mixture of phlegm,