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different face every day. I'll bet I can show you things you never knew existed even if you've lived around here for years."
    "I don't doubt that a bit. I've stayed out of it as much as I could."
    "You don't know what you're missing."
    Sam uttered a half-laugh. "I think I do. You want to hear something strange and scary that happened this morning back here in your beautiful swamp?"
    "Tell me."
    "Yesterday, about dark, I heard two shots ring out. Didn't pay much attention to 'em at the time. Then just before daylight a man came by me carrying something over his shoulder wrapped in a cloth or blanket. I thought I saw a foot sticking out beneath it, but maybe it was only a trick of the light."
    "Where did you see him?"
    "A couple of miles north of here, near a place we call the Sand Suck."
    "I know where it is, just off Trail Six."
    Sam nodded.
    "You weren't dreaming in that stump?"
    "I don't think so." She paused. "I know I wasn't."
    "Every once in a while we'll meet an oddball back here. But oddballs are everywhere, not only in swamps. I saw plenty in Columbus. You sure he wasn't carrying a bedroll?"
    "And getting rid of it in the Sand Suck? No."
    He shrugged.
    She studied him. "Mind if I ask you a question?"
    "What happened to me?"
    "I shouldn't ask. It's none of my business."
    "I was in a plane crash ten years ago. I look a lot better now than I looked for a long time. Plastic surgeons. Skin grafts..."
    Then he dismissed it, abruptly. Slammed it shut. "I'll get some gauze." There was a sudden turn of annoyance in his voice.
    She'd guessed right. He'd been burned. Horribly burned. Sam had been looking into mirrors for a long time wishing she could see another face. Maybe a Julia Roberts with lips that would drive boys crazy. Imagine him looking into the mirror. She wondered whether or not he just turned away.
    He was gone five or six minutes. She heard him outside talking to the dogs. She definitely shouldn't have brought it up. Nosy Sam.
    ***
    "WHY'D you put her up on the roof?" he asked them. "You're going to have to learn between friendlies and enemies. She's a friendly, I think."
    But Chip was surprised at his own reaction to Sam Sanders. Normally he was shy and avoided contact with strangers, not wanting to see the inevitable looks on their faces, the almost revulsion at the scarring. He'd stayed away from crowds. He'd walked lonely paths. But this unplanned meeting hadn't given him time to
think about reactions. She'd been in obvious trouble and needed rescuing.
    "Behave yourselves," he said to the dogs and went up the ladder, hooking her other wader off the roof.
    Back on the ground, he stood looking out across the lake, thinking about the girl inside. It was the first time he'd ever had a girl in his arms; first time, that he could recall, he'd touched one in ten years. Conscious of how he looked, he'd never even tried to date. No sooner had he healed from one operation than he was under the knife again—eight long years of it, to try to repair the whole left side of his body—and during that time he hadn't appealed to most girls. Tom Telford had said one day one might come along who...
    He sighed, laughed gently at such a thought, then went back to the kitchen and patted her feet dry in silence.
    "Sorry," she said, looking down at him.
    He began gently winding the gauze around her feet. "You wanted to know, didn't you?" His eyes were hidden by the cap. The annoyance was still in his voice.
    "I was curious," she admitted.
    He continued wrapping the bandage in silence until he finally said, "There."
    Sam's feet looked mummified.
    "These slippers will be a little big, but that's good," he said, easing them on.
    "Ill get them back to you."
    "No hurry. Why don't you call home now? Then we'll start down the ditch."
    ***
With water that same oxblood, dark tea-color of the lake, the George Washington Canal, which dates back to 1793, is still in business, affording safe inside passage for yachts on the Inland Waterway