ding, Stonecypher shoved the canoe off and hopped aboard. As he took
up the paddle, his hand trailed in the water and released the small
buzzer that had made possible Catriona's best carnival act.

* * * * *

For July, the afternoon was cool. Blue-gray clouds drifted before larger
dirty white masses. To the southwest opened the mile-wide mouth of Horse
Creek; and, far beyond, the great blue pyramid of Chimney Top Mountain
stood defiantly above Sevier Lake. The world seemed water broken only by
partly submerged hills and mountains.

Stonecypher gazed across the Lake at Bays Mountain and at the five
Cement Islands apparently floating against that backdrop. Softly, he
said, "Some folks call the big one Martyrs Island. There's a marble
pillar right in the middle. Nobody knows who put it there, and the
Government never bothered to knock it down. I reckon the poison ivy's
covered it by now, but I went and read the inscription, once, when I was
a boy. It says:

"They moved me off the Powell River.
They covered my farm with water.
I bought me another near Beans Station.
The water covered it.
I was getting old, but I built at Galloway Mill.
When they flooded that, I gave up and lived in Kingsport.
I will not move again."

The canoe bounded over the choppy water, one hundred feet above the
silted streets of the flooded city of Kingsport. Stonecypher said, "The
time I was there, you could still find a few copter-trooper helmets and
old cankered shells. Couple of years back, a diver brought up two skulls
off shore."

Catriona's eyes remained moist, but she smiled. Her teeth were
beautiful. "It'll be all rahght, Stony. You can't change the wo'ld in
one day. You did fine, and Moe will too."

"I told you to stay at the bullring," Stonecypher said.

"Ah couldn't watch that! And those puny, little, mousy women stare and
talk about me, because theah's a little meat on mah cahcass. Oswell said
Moe would be last, anyhow. Ah was so wo'ied about you, ah couldn't sit
still."

Only a few boats, mainly those of piscatorial maniacs, were on the lake.
Stonecypher glared at them and muttered, "I hope I did right by Moe. He
wanted to fight. Maybe, Catriona, if I'd had you when I found out he
could talk--not just mimic--I'd of raised him different. Maybe I
shouldn't have shown him that bullfight movie, but I wondered what the
only bull to see a bullfight from outside the ring th