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the hambone out to Beatrice. “I brought this all that way for ya.”
    Beatrice nodded toward Lionel, and Corn Poe handed him the hambone. “I figured you was hungry.”
    Lionel bit into the salty cold pork and thought that he had never tasted anything so good in all his life. He took a few bites and then handed it to Beatrice, who did the same.
    â€œThank you,” Beatrice said.
    The three stood in the snow passing the ham between them.
    â€œWhat about you? Ya suddenly gone mute or something?” Corn Poe asked, ripping at the last bit of meat that clung to the now naked bone.
    â€œMy name is Lionel. Beatrice is my sister.”
    â€œBeatrice? Your sister?” Corn Poe stopped chewing. “I’d never known that in all them clothes. I hope my pa don’t get wind of it. Knocked down by a girl! He’ll skin me alive!
    â€œWell, girl or no girl, you got lucky on that go-round,” Corn Poe went on between his sporadic gnaws. “Like I was sayin’, my name’s Corn Poe Boss Ribs. That there was our place back in the valley. My father would kill me if he knew I gave you that ham hock. He hates Injuns, despitin’ the fact that he is one.”
    Corn Poe handed the bone back to Lionel. “But, I must confess, I don’t care much how mad he gets. I felt like stretchin’ my legs anyhow.”
    â€œWell, thanks,” Beatrice said again as she walked over to calm Ulysses. “I guess for tonight, Corn Poe, you best be coming with us. otherwise you’ll freeze.”
    â€œFreeze? Hell, I’m half frozed as it is.”
    Beatrice gave Corn Poe back his knife and helped him and Lionel up onto the horse. “Besides, I’d bet you’d be lost before we cleared the next hill,” Beatrice teased as she swung up behind them.
    â€œNow, what’s that supposed to mean?” Corn Poe shot back.
    Beatrice ignored him, and the three rode out of the gully, resuming their course toward the river.

Chapter Eight
    T HE C OLD • A NTLERS • A M YSTERIOUS V ISITOR
    THEY RODE the rest of the afternoon, Corn Poe rambling on about everything under the sun and then some. Lionel had never heard anyone who could talk so much, and he soon found himself drifting in and out of sleep as he rocked across the open prairie, riding on the great horse between Corn Poe and Beatrice.
    It was the warmest Lionel had been since he had woken the other morning listening to the drip of the melting icicle. Ice didn’t seem to be melting now; if anything, Lionel thought that the air had grown colder. Corn Poe must have agreed because he now rode along in silence, slumped forward and buried in Ulysses’s mane. Corn Poe could have been dead for all Lionel knew.
    Lionel looked down at the snow that passed beneath them and at Corn Poe’s leg dangling from the frayed cuff of the small boy’s patched work pants. Lionel thought his exposed skin looked almost blue. Blue, like the Frozen Man.
    Thinking about the Frozen Man sent a shudder down Lionel’s spine. He ran his fingers across the bear claws in his pocket and thought that if he and Beatrice and Corn Poe didn’t get wherever they were going soon, they would all be dead, dead like the Frozen Man.
    â€œYou cold?” Beatrice asked over the steady cadence of Ulysses’s heavy breathing.
    â€œNo, I’m okay,” Lionel lied.
    â€œHow much farther?” Corn Poe moaned.
    Good, Lionel thought. Corn Poe isn’t dead. Lionel didn’t want to see any more dead people.
    Lionel scanned the horizon and the rolling hills that rose and fell in the distance with greater frequency. He remembered the pictures of the ships that the captain back at the school had shown him, and thought that the hills looked like the barreling waves of water that the tall ships sailed across. The three of them and Ulysses were like a ship rolling along on a sea of endless snow. Up and down, down and up…
    â€œI