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business. Thirty minutes later, they mounted the two horses which Smhee had arranged to be tied to a tree outside city limits.
    'Weren't you afraid they'd be stolen?' she said.
    'There are two stout fellows hidden in the grass near the river,' he said. He waved towards it, and she saw two men come from it. They waved back and started to walk back to the city.
    There was a rough road along the White Foal River, sometimes coming near the stream, sometimes bending far away. They rode over it for three hours, and then Smhee said, 'There's an old adobe building a quarter-mile inland. We'll sleep there for a while. I don't know about you, but I'm weary.'
    She was glad to rest. After hobbling the horses near a stand of the tall brown desert grass, they lay down in the midst of the ruins. Smhee went to sleep at once. She worried about her family for a while, and suddenly she was being shaken by Smhee. Dawn was coming up.
    They ate some dried meat and bread and fruit and then mounted again. After watering the horses and themselves at the river, they rode at a canter for three more hours. And then Smhee pulled up on the reins. He pointed at the trees a quarter-mile inland. Beyond, rearing high, were the towering cliffs on the other side of the river. The trees on this side, however, prevented them from seeing the White Foal.
    'The boat's hidden in there,' he said. 'Unless someone's stolen it. That's not likely, though. Very few people have the courage to go near the Isle of Shugthee.' . .
    'What about the hunters who bring down the furs from the north?'
    'They hug the eastern shore, and they only go by in daylight. Fast.'
    They crossed the rocky ground, passing some low-growing purplish bushes and some irontrees with grotesquely twisted branches. A rabbit with long ears dashed by them, causing her horse to rear up. She controlled it, though she had not been on a horse since she was eleven. Smhee said that he was glad that it hadn't been his beast. All he knew about riding was the few lessons he'd taken from a farmer after coming to Sanctuary. He'd be happy if he never had to get on another one. The trees were perhaps fifteen or twenty deep from the river's' edge. They dismounted, removed the saddles, and hobbled the beasts again. Then they walked through the tall cane-like plants, brushing away the flies and other pestiferous insects, until they got to the stream itself. Here grew stands of high reeds, and on a hummock of spongy earth was Smhee's boat. It was a dugout which could hold only two.
    'Stole it,' Smhee said without offering any details. She looked through the reeds down the river. About a quarter of a mile away, the river broadened to become a lake about two and a half miles .across. In its centre was the Isle of Shugthee, a purplish mass of rock. From this distance, she could not make out its details.
    Seeing it, she felt coldness ripple over her.
    'I'd like to take a whole day and a night to scout it,' he said. 'So you could become familiar with it, too. But we don't have time. However, I can tell you everything I know. I wish I knew more.'
    She doffed her clothes and bathed in the river while Smhee unhobbled the horses and took them some distance up to let them drink. When she came back, she found him just returning with them.
    'Before dusk comes, we'll have to move them down to a point opposite the isle,'
    he said. 'And we'll saddle them, too.'
    They left the horses to go to a big boulder outside the trees but distant from the road. At its base was a hollow large enough for them to lie down in. Here they slept, waking now and then to talk softly or to eat a bite or to go behind the'rock and urinate. The insects weren't so numerous here as in the trees, but they were bad enough.Not once, as far as they knew, did anyone pass on the road. When they walked the horses down the road, Smhee said, 'You've been very good about not asking questions, but I can see you're about to explode with curiosity. You have no idea who the