But Cade had other memories. "Sarah." She looked up at him, now with a tear in her eye. "Terrel told you what happened. Do you know the rest?"

"The rest?"

So, Cade thought, he never knew. Well, that's something, I guess. Cade had never told anyone before, kept it to himself. Now he could not hold it in, though he could see no purpose in his honesty.

His voice was harsh. "He came home that night, his lip cut where he'd bitten it through, trying to hold back his cries. His hands-if he had come home sooner, maybe we could have set them. I don't know. They were ruined." He looked away from her. "He was in such pain.

"Mother-" He sighed. "Mother tried to heal those hands. Every night she held him, crying on the bent fingers, as if her tears could really take the pain away." He could still see them. Lying on the cot, the ragged cloth that divided their one-room shack tattered and frayed, not hiding the scene from his young eyes. She had rocked Terrel to sleep every night. He slept with her because of the nightmares, about the sound of the snap of bones that just wouldn't go away.

"I had nothing, we had nothing to give him," Then Cade turned to her, his eyes so fierce she looked away. "But then, I knew, I had one gift ... Sarah, I had vengeance." His voice shook as he relived that time. He told her how he had found the rope in an alley full of mud and refuse, how he had pulled the brick from one of the few real buildings in Down- wind. How he tied the brick to the rope and then waited.

"For three nights I waited,"-he stood up, his muscles taut with the memory-"until they went to sleep. Then I took my rope and brick, and one by one I found those who had done it." His eyes were wild. "I found them." He sighed. "I caught them and I smashed them with the brick." His hand pounded the air. "I smashed them over and^over and over." He took a deep breath, then stood still.