When we left our campsite on the river bluff, we didn’t take the big road toward Middenmarsh; instead we took the drove road that runs a league or two to the west of it. A drove road aint exactly a road. It’s really just a beaten track the drovers use to get their stock to market. The drove roads run like wheel spokes out from Middenmarsh, where they have the spring stock market, and Tambluff, where they have the fall stock market. Floyd and me often took the drove roads instead of the big road when we was leaving some village wanting more.

If you need to get somewhere but need to lay low, you can’t do much better than a drove road. Villagers are convinced the drove roads are full of robbers and desperate men, which aint true. But they are full of drovers.

Cattle drovers have a reputation for meanness, and I reckon they earned it. They love stealing and fighting better than anybody I ever knew. They are forever stealing each other’s cows and breaking each other’s noses about it. It’s hard to say whether they fight over the stolen cows or steal cows so they’ll have a reason to fight.

All over Corenwald, the poor cows is about run ragged from getting stolen three nights of a week. Corenwalder cows sleep all day, like coons and possums, so they’ll be rested up to get stolen at night. More than once I heard of a group of cattle raiders coming home with a herd they’d stolen—only to meet their own herd coming the other way, driven by the very cowmen they was stealing from.

If everybody would settle down and tend his own stock instead of trying to steal a bigger herd, they’d all come out better, and the rest of us would have better beef. But tending cattle is a dull business—a heap duller than stealing cattle—and I reckon everybody feels entitled to some excitement in their chosen occupation.

So if respectable villagers is squeamish about meeting strange drovers, you can understand why. What the villagers don’t understand is that no self-respecting drover would ever rob a civilian. They’re in the cattle-stealing business, not the highway-robbery business. They don’t even do much cattle stealing on the drove roads. They have sort of a gentermen’s agreement: whatever cattle you got when it’s time to leave for market is yours until you get them to market. They rustle their hearts out in the home pastures, but not on the roads.

To look at them, you wouldn’t expect much out of the drovers in the way of gentermanly behavior. Their hair is shaggy, and their teeth aint all in their heads where they’re supposed to be, and most of them’s noses is mashed too flat on their face. Also, their language aint the most uplifting and improving language I ever heard. But they’ve got a code of behavior, and they stick to it at least as well as shopkeepers and schoolmarms stick to theirs. I’ll tell you this much: Floyd and me have had a heap more scrapes in the villages than we’ve ever had on the drove roads.

Because the villagers stay away, the drove roads become their own little world running parallel to the world of polite folks. Besides the drovers, there’s a few other folks that don’t do so well in the villages—trappers and hunters, show people like Floyd and me, wanderers, and anybody else who needs to lay low for a while. It’s best not to ask too many questions on the drove roads. You aint likely to get straight answers anyway.

Every five or six leagues on the drove roads is a stance—a big campground where there’s grazing and water for the cattle. The drovers and their cattle stay in stances of a night. There aint any inns on the drove roads. There aint any shops, either. Drovers don’t usually need to buy anything on the drove, and if they do, they just draw straws and send the unlucky feller to a nearby village to brave polite society. There sure aint any schools or law offices.

I reckon that’s my favorite thing about a drove road: there’s nobody trying to improve it.

Just like Floyd and me was going to the Middenmarsh stock market to give the feechie scare a head start, we was on the drove road to give the head start a head start. We was hoping to find some drovers on the road and plant some feechie ideas in their heads in advance of our feechie performance at the market.

It was a tricky business, though, and easy to overdo. A key part of the feechie scare was for folks to figure it out for theirselves, and we surely didn’t want to be associated with the beginnings of the feechie scare when we went back into the feechie trade. That’s why we painted the wagon box plain brown and Floyd unwaxed his mustaches. He put away his shiny showman clothes and put on a dull brown jacket with elbow patches—the kind a university perfesser wears, he said—and he made me put on a hat that covered up my flappy ears. We wanted to be more forgettable than usual.

Midmorning we seen a dust cloud ahead of us, and by the time the shadows was at their shortest, we was in sight of a small herd of cattle being driven by five drovers with their cowdogs. From our spot on a little rise, the cows reminded me of a pot of beans at a low boil, the way they milled and bumped and mixed amongst and between one another, the dust rising like the steam over a beanpot. Every now and then the drovers reached in with their long limber poles to stir the pot, nudging a cow this way, maybe whapping one on the haunch to get her moving.

The drovers looked pretty dashing in their slouch hats and loose britches. And over the racket of the cattle’s mooing, we could hear the drovers singing those yawping, yodeling songs of theirs. Cowmen are forever singing on the drove. They claim it soothes the cows’ feelings to be sung to, but their songs don’t seem calculated to soothe—especially not the way them boys sing them.

When we come up on them, they was singing “Tambluff Ladies,” an old favorite droving tune.

Whoop! Tambluff ladies
Don’t be so cast down.
Whoop! ’Cause the drovers
Is coming to town.

Whoop! When our cattle
Is counted and sold,
Whoop! Then our pouches
Will be full of gold.

Whoop! Tambluff ladies,
We’ll be wealthy men.
Whoop! Tambluff ladies,
Will you marry us then?

The cows didn’t seem especially soothed by the singing, but the cowdogs loved it. To a cowdog on the drove, everything seems like the best thing he’s ever seen or heard tell of. He wags hisself sideways for joy, snuffing and hassling and capering around. The drove is what he was born for.

A cowdog is about knee-high to a drover, broad chested, stump tailed, and wide across the skullbone. Cowdogs can be fierce—I’ve seen one grab holt of a bull by the snout and rassle him to the ground. But usually a cowdog is the merriest dog you’ll ever see. He bounds over to flank a calf, then he lopes back to his drover to see what he thinks about his work, then he zigs over to snuff at a rotten log, then he zags back to give his drover the most loving look you ever seen, then he bulges over to rassle a minute with another cowdog, then he trots back to his drover to see what he wants him to do next.

If every drover was as fine and accomplished a man as his dog believed him to be, I reckon they’d be running the show in Corenwald instead of stealing cows and breaking noses. Floyd never let me keep a dog, but I believe I’d be a better boy if I had a critter to look at me in the loving way a cowdog looks at its drover. I’d work mighty hard to deserve a dog’s good opinion.

When the drovers stopped for their midday rest, we caught up with them. Drovers is naturally suspicious of anybody on the drove roads who don’t have a herd or at least a dog. I was afraid one of them would set his dog on us, but Floyd acted like he didn’t notice their surliness. He just sailed right in.

“Good day, gentermen.”

The youngest drover give him a little nod, but everybody else went about their business like they didn’t hear him.

“Great day for the race,” Floyd said, still real cheerful.

A feller with a yeller beard sneered at him. “The race?” he said. “You think this is a cattle race? It’s a drove, stranger.”

Floyd chuckled, grinning his oiliest. “No, the human race.”

Yeller Beard spat on the ground. “Huh?”

“The human race,” Floyd said. “It’s a great day for the human race.”

Yeller Beard snorted. “If you say so, stranger.”

Just like that, Floyd had figured out the first thing he wanted to know every time he met a group of strangers. He knew Yeller Beard was the man to truck with. Yeller Beard was the lead dog. Win him over (or beat him, depending on the case), and the whole crowd is won over.

Floyd stuck his hand out to Yeller Beard and said, “I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Perfesser Bertie Culbertson, feechie expert.”

Yeller beard barked a little laugh. But he shook the hand that Floyd reached out to him. He looked so surprised to hear a feller call hisself a feechie expert, I reckon he didn’t know what else to do. “Feechie expert”—it even sounded funny to me, and I knew what Floyd was up to.

“Feechie expert?” he said, still shaking Floyd’s hand. “You mean you’re a puppeteer?” He looked over at our wagon, where Buttermilk was stomping and nuzzling at the grass. “You got a traveling puppet show?”

Floyd laughed. “No, my good man. Not feechie puppets.” He looked around as if to be sure nobody was listening, but of course everybody was. He poked Yeller Beard in the chest and said, “Real feechies. The kind that live in the swamp and rassle alligators and glide through the forest like ghosts and fight like panthers.”

Yeller Beard raised his eyebrows and drew down the corners of his mouth. The other drovers were looking at him careful to see what they was supposed to think about all this. “Is this supposed to be a joke?” Yeller Beard asked.

“No, friend, not a joke,” Floyd said, real friendly, like he wasn’t offended at all. “I’ve been hearing things. Strange things. About feechiefolks on the move all over Corenwald.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at me. “This boy and me are out seeing what we can find out about it.”

You could see the drovers trying to make some kind of sense out of this stranger that had turned up out of nowhere. You knew they was going through the choices:

Crazy? He don’t seem crazy.

Liar? Why would a grown man lie about such a thing as that?

Plain old crank?

From their smirks, you could see they were settling on crank. Just a harmless crank who might be good for some entertainment on the drove.

Yeller Beard said, “How come you on the drove road, Perfesser …?”

“Bertie. Just call me Bertie. And I didn’t get your name.”

“Aster.”

“Well, Aster, I’m on the drove road because I’ve never seen a feechie on the big road.”

One of the other drovers—a tall, skinny feller—snorted at that. “You telling me you’ve seen feechies on the drove roads?”

“Sure,” Floyd said. “Just yesterday we saw a clutch of hefeechies droving a herd of snapping turtles to market.”

The skinny drover rolled his head at that one.

“I’m teasing you,” Floyd said. “I’ve never seen a feechie on the drove roads. But we do keep our eyes skint for feechie signs when we pass river bottoms and swamps.” He looked over at me. “Don’t we, boy?”

“Yessir,” I said. “River bottoms. Swamps. Prime feechie habitat.”

Aster raised his eyebrows a little. I think he was impressed with the word “habitat.”

“If you want to know the real reason we’re on the drove road,” Floyd said, “it’s the same reason you are. We’re going to the stock market at Middenmarsh. I want to get these feechie rumors confirmed or denied. People from every corner of Corenwald will be gathered at the market. I can ask what they’ve seen and heard of feechie movements in their home country. I figure drovers are the best folks to ask: you spend most of your time outside, away from the villages. Which reminds me. Have you boys noticed any feechie activity back home in …”

“In Bluemoss,” Aster said. “We’re from around Bluemoss.” He shook his head and gave Floyd the least bit of a smile. Floyd had begun breaking down his suspicions. “But we aint seen any evidence of feechiefolks.”

Floyd looked around at the drovers. “You boys probably don’t believe in feechies anyway, do you?”

The drovers all looked at the ground. They had warmed up to Floyd and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Floyd said. “It don’t hurt me any if you don’t believe in feechies. They’re such slippery rascals that half the time I don’t believe in them myself! Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t just dream them two years I spent with feechies in the Feechiefen Swamp.” That made the drovers straighten up a little, but Floyd made like he didn’t notice, like he was talking mostly to hisself. “But these rumors got my curiosity up so that I’m going to bust if I don’t find out everything I can find out. If the drovers at the stock market don’t know any more about feechiefolks than you do, I reckon I’ll give it up.”

By then, it was time for the drovers and dogs to get the cattle moving again. Floyd figured it was best to let them talk amongst theirselves for the rest of the day until it was time to make camp. We trailed a good distance behind in the wagon, Floyd whistling “Gladsome Cricket” all the while.