By the third round, Pip had developed a clear preference among its playing pieces. Two of its stones were rough gray shale with lopsided yellow smears, but the third was a smooth, flat oval of river slate with three neat yellow dots arranged like a clover leaf. It slid better than the others, and Pip kept a heavy front paw resting on top of it whenever it was Osha’s or Chaska’s turn to throw.
Under a willow basket beside the drying racks, two bright black eyes were watching the yellow dots too.
The camp’s quicksilver ferret—a long, sleek creature whose silver-gray pelt rippled like spilled mercury whenever it breathed—had already stolen a wooden clothespin from Ysabet’s hem and half a boiled potato from the mule-handler’s bench. Now it slithered out from beneath the basket, belly flat to the grass, moving only when Pip looked toward the reed loop.
“Your turn, Pip,” Bren said, twisting his willow sticks to pull the green reed loop into a crooked crescent. “One more in and you take the round from Chaska.”
Pip lifted its front paw off the three-dotted slate oval and lowered its snout to line up the shot.
A streak of silver fur flashed across the beaten earth. Tiny black paws snatched the three-dotted stone right out from under Pip’s chin, and in two bounds the ferret was back beside the willow basket, holding the painted slate between its forepaws and chattering through its teeth.
