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time!” The old coot was pushing Kelp in, crowding in himself, pulling the stall door shut just as the light in the barn got much brighter. Must be on a dimmer switch.
    “Hey, fellas,” a male voice said conversationally, “what’s going on?”
    Caught us, Dortmunder thought, and cast about in his mind for some even faintly sensible reason for being in this brown horse’s stall in the middle of the night. Then he heard what else the voice was saying:
    “Thought you were all settled down for the night.”
    He’s talking to the horses, Dortmunder thought. “Something get to you guys? Bird fly in?”
    In a way, Dortmunder thought.
    “Did a rat get in here?”
    The voice was closer, calm and reassuring, its owner moving slowly along the aisle, his familiar sound and sight leaving a lot of soothed horses in his wake.
    All except for the brown horse in here with Dortmunder and Kelp and the old coot. He wasn’t exactly crying out, “Here, boss, here they are, they’re right here!” but it was close. Snort, whuffle, paw, headshake, prance; the damn beast acted like he was auditioning for
A Chorus Line.
While Dortmunder and company crouched down low on the far side of this huge, hairy show-off, doing their best not to get crushed between the immovable object of the stall wall and the irrepressible force of the horse’s haunch, the owner of the voice came over to see what was up, saying, “Hey, there, Daffy, what’s the problem?”
    Daffy, thought Dortmunder. I might have known.
    The person was right there, leaning his forearms on the stall door, permitting Daffy to slobber and blubber all over his face. “It’s OK now, Daffy,” the person said. “Everything’s fine.”
    I’ve been invaded!
Daffy whuffled while his tail dry-mopped Dortmunder’s face.
    “Just settle down, big fella.”
    Just look me over! Have I ever had ten legs before?
“Take it easy, boy. Everybody else is calm now.”
    That’s because they don’t have these, these, these. . . .
“Good Daffy. See you in the morning.”
    Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear,
Daffy mumbled, while trying to step on everybody’s toes at once.
    The owner of the voice receded at last, and the old coot did something up around Daffy’s head that all at once made the horse calm right down. As the lights lowered to their former dimness and the sound of thumping boots faded, Daffy grinned at everybody as though to say,
I’ve always wanted roommates. Nice!
    Kelp said, “What did you
do
?”
    “Sugar cubes,” the old coot said. “I brought some for Dire Straits, didn’t have time to give one to this critter before that hand got here.”
    Sugar cubes. Dortmunder looked at the old coot with new respect. Here was a man who traveled with an emergency supply of sugar cubes.
    “OK,” the old coot said, shoving Daffy out of his way as though the animal were a big sofa on casters, “Let’s get Dire Straits and get out of here.”
    “Exactly,” Dortmunder said, but then found himself kind of pinned against the wall. “Listen, uh, Hiram,” he said. “Could you move Daffy a little?”
    “Oh, sure.”
    Hiram did, and Dortmunder gratefully left that stall, hurried along by Daffy’s nose in the small of his back. Kelp shut the stall door and Hiram went over to select a bridle from among those hanging on pegs. Coming back to Dire Straits’ stall, he said softly, “Come here, guy, I got something nice for you.”
    Dire Straits wasn’t so sure about that. Being a star, he was harder to get than Daffy. From well back in the stall, he gave Hiram down his long nose a do-I-know-you? look.
    “Come here, honey,” Hiram urged, soft and confidential, displaying not one but two sugar cubes on his outstretched palm. “Got something for you.”
    Next door, Daffy stuck his head out to watch all this with some concern, having thought he had an exclusive on sugar-cube distribution.
Whicker?
he asked.
    That did it. Hearing his neighbor, Dire Straits finally realized there was such a