"Arne." Albin's voice was very calm now. "We've got some minutes. I don't know how many. Are you hearing me?"
"I hear you."
"Is the dog in here with you?"
He did not know. He had felt her go past him. He said, "Fly?" into the dark, and from somewhere ahead of him, low down, there was a single short whine, and then he felt her, very lightly, the side of her head pressing against his knee. The bad knee. She leaned on it, gently, and held there. He reached down in the dark and his glove found her ears, her skull, the place where the blaze would be, and she was trembling all over, and she did not pull away from him.
"She's here."
"Good. Listen. You've got ten head in the alley with you and they're scared to death and they're going to get somebody hurt. They need to go out. Can you find the south door?"
He could. He had worked in this barn every day of his life that he had not been in the Army or the hospital, and he found now, in the absolute dark, that he knew it the way he knew his own mouth with his tongue. Sixty-four feet from the north door to the south. The water tank on the left at twenty. The loft ladder on the right at thirty. The third calving pen at forty-four. The post at the south end with the iron hook his father had hung the lantern on, and the pry bar hanging under it on a nail, where it had hung since before he was born.
"I can find it."
"Leave the gun."