Ketti had come up beside her father. She was looking at the colt, who had hidden himself behind his mother and was peering out under her belly with enormous eyes.
"Is that Solvei's?" she said.
"He is hers. He was born on the Milk River in April, in the Grandmother's country, in a snowstorm. His father is my gray." Tukweyit nodded at the tall horse behind him. "So he is half yours and half mine, I suppose, if we are going to be lawyers about it. I would rather not be lawyers about it." He looked at Ketti properly for the first time, and something in his face eased. "You are the one who peeled kouse with the wrong thumb."
Ketti went pink to the hair. "Ipnaxa told you that?"
"Ipnaxa has told me everything about this family that she knows, many times, at great length, over two years and perhaps fifteen hundred miles. I know about the lingonberries. I know about your mother's bread." He turned back to Nils. "I know the mare does not like her left ear touched. My nephew learned that by being bitten. He will not forget it."
"Your nephew?"
"A small joke. My sister's daughter. Tipyelehne." He seemed to decide something. "May I water the horses? They have come from Lapwai since this morning."
They watered the horses at the trough by the well. The colt drank beside his mother, splashing, and Ketti was allowed to stand at his shoulder and let him smell her hand, and Nils went inside and put the coffee on and cut bread and the end of a ham and set it on the table, and when he came back out, Tukweyit was standing in the yard with his hat in his hand, looking at the chimney again.