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Will was the biggest tosspot this side of Bucksport.”
    â€œYou said nobody local,” Rachel remarked in a voice that was not quite casual, and Louis could almost read her mind: We’re not local. At least, not yet.
    Jud paused and then nodded. “We do lose one of the tourists every two or three years because they think you can’t get lost right off the main road. But we never lost even one of them for good, missus. Don’t you fret.”
    â€œAre there moose?” Rachel asked apprehensively, and Louis smiled. If Rachel wanted to fret, she would jolly well fret.
    â€œWell, you might see a moose,” Jud said, “but he wouldn’t give you any trouble, Rachel. During mating season they get a little irritated, but otherwise they do no more than look. Only people they take after out of their rutting time are people from Massachusetts. I don’t know why that’s so, but it is.” Louis thought the man was joking but could not be sure; Jud looked utterly serious. “I’ve seen it time and time again. Some fella from Saugus or Milton or Weston up a tree, yelling about a herd of moose, every damn one of em as big as a motorhome. Seems like moose can smell Massachusetts on a man or a woman. Or maybe it’s just all those new clothes from L. L. Bean’s they smell—I dunno. I’d like to see one of those animal husbandry students from the college do a paper on it, but I s’pose none ever will.”
    â€œWhat’s rutting time?” Ellie asked.
    â€œNever mind,” Rachel said. “I don’t want you up here unless you’re with a grown-up, Ellie.” Rachel moved a step closer to Louis.
    Jud looked pained. “I didn’t want to scare you, Rachel—you or your daughter. No need to be scared in these woods. This is a good path; it gets a little buggy in the spring and it’s a little sloppy all the time—except for ’55, which was the driest summer I can remember—but hell, there isn’t even any poison ivy or poison oak, which there is at the back of the schoolyard, and you want to stay away from it, Ellie, if you don’t want to spend three weeks of your life takin starch baths.”
    Ellie covered her mouth and giggled.
    â€œIt’s a safe path,” Jud said earnestly to Rachel, who still didn’t look convinced. “Why, I bet even Gage could follow it, and the town kids come up here a lot, I already told you that. They keep it nice. Nobody tells them to; they just do it. I wouldn’t want to spoil that for Ellie.” He bent over her and winked. “It’s like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all’s well. You get off it and the next thing you know you’re lost if you’re not lucky. And then someone has to send out a searchin party.”
    *  *  *
    They walked on. Louis began to get a dull cramp of pain in his back from the baby carrier. Every now and then Gage would grab a double handful of his hair and tug enthusiastically or administer a cheerful kick to Louis’s kidneys. Late mosquitoes cruised around his face and neck, making their eye-watering hum.
    The path curved down, bending in and out between very old firs, and then cut widely through a brambly, tangled patch of undergrowth. The going was soupy here, and Louis’s boots squelched in mud and some standing water. At one point they stepped over a marshy spot using a pair of good-sized tussocks as stepping stones. That was the worst of it. They started to climb again and the trees reasserted themselves. Gage seemed to have magically put on ten pounds, and the day had, with some similar magic, warmed up ten degrees. Sweat poured down Louis’s face.
    â€œHow you doing, hon?” Rachel asked. “Want me to carry him for a while?”
    â€œNo, I’m fine,” he said, and it was true, although his heart was larruping along at a good speed in his chest. He