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+{"text":" \n# OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Airplanes, Aircraft, and Spacecraft_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Aliens_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Animal 'Toons_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Athletes_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Baby Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Beasties_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Birds_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Boats, Ships, Trucks, and Trains_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Buildings and Other Structures_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Cars, Trucks, and Motorcycles_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Cats_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Creepy Crawlies_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Dogs_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Endangered Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Famous Cartoons_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and Other Plants_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Horses_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Magical Creatures_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Monsters_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 People_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Princesses_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Sharks, Whales, and Other Sea Creatures_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Vehicles_\n\n\u2022 _Draw the Draw 50 Way_\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1983 by Jocelyn S. Ames and Murray D. Zak\n\nDrawings of \"Frankenstein\" \"Bride of Frankenstein,\" and \"The Phantom of the Opera\" are based on stills courtesy of MCA Publishing Inc., a Division of MCA Inc. Stills copyright by Universal Pictures, a Division of Universal City Studios, Inc.\n\nDrawings of \"Darth Vader\" and \"Yoda\" are based on stills courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. \"Darth Vader\" and \"Yoda\" are trademarks of Star Wars\u2122 & \u00a9 2012 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law.\n\nAll rights reserved.  \nPublished in the United States by Watson-Guptill Publications, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York, in 2012.\n\nWATSON-GUPTILL and the WG and Horse designs are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.\n\nOriginally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc., New York, in 1983.\n\nThe Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier edition as follows:\n\nAmes, Lee J.  \nDraw 50 monsters, creeps, superheroes, demons, nerds, dirts, ghouls, giants, vampires, zombies, and other curiosa...\/ Lee J. Ames. \u2013 1st revised ed.\n\np. cm.  \n1. Monsters in art\u2014Juvenile literature. 2. Animals, Mythical, in art\u2014Juvenile literature. 3. Drawing\u2014Technique\u2014Juvenile literature. [1. Monsters in art. 2. Drawing\u2014Technique] I. Title. II. Title: Draw fifty monsters, creeps, superheroes, demons, dragons, nerds, dirts, ghouls, giants, vampires, zombies, and other curiosa...\n\nNC825.M6A47 1983  \n741.2\/4  \n80003006\n\neISBN: 978-0-307-79501-4\n\nv3.1\nTo the jokesters down at Whaler's  \nand to Walter, loved so well...\nThanks, Holly!\n\nThanks, Tamara!\n\nThanks to Doug Bergstreser for the idea.\n\n# Contents\n\n_Cover_\n\n_Other Books in This Series_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Dedication_\n\n_Acknowledgements_\n\n_To the Reader_\n\n_To the Parent or Teacher_\n\nFirst Page\n\n_About the Author_\n\n# _To the Reader_\n\nA wild and wacky collection of monsters and other fantastic creatures awaits you in this book, and by following simple, step-by-step instructions, you can draw each and every one of them, from the Bride of Frankenstein to Sasquatch.\n\nStart by gathering your equipment. You will need paper, medium and soft pencils, and a kneaded eraser (available at art supply stores). You may also wish to have on hand India ink, a fine brush or pen, and a compass.\n\nNext, pick the creature of your choice \u2014 you need not start with the first illustration. As you begin, keep in mind that the first few steps \u2014 the foundation of the drawing \u2014 are the most important. The whole picture will be spoiled if they are not right. So, follow these steps _very carefully_ , keeping the lines as light as possible. So that they can be clearly seen, these lines are shown darker in this book than you should draw them. You can lighten your marks by gently pressing them with the kneaded eraser.\n\nMake sure step one is accurate before you go on to step two. To check your own accuracy, hold the work up to a mirror after a few steps. By reversing the image, the mirror gives you a new view of the drawing. If you haven't done it quite right, you may notice that your drawing is out of proportion or off to one side.\n\nYou can reinforce the drawing by going over the completed final step with India ink and a fine brush or pen. When the ink has dried, gently remove the pencil lines with the kneaded eraser.\n\nDon't get discouraged if, at first, you find it difficult to duplicate the shapes pictured. Just keep at it, and in no time you'll be able to make the pencil go just where you wish. Drawing, like any other skill, requires patience, practice, and perseverance.\n\nRemember, this book presents only one method of drawing. In a most enjoyable way, it will help you develop a certain skill and control. But there are many other ways of drawing to which you can apply this skill, and the more of them you explore, the more interesting your drawings will be.\n\nLee J. Ames\n\n# _To the Parent or Teacher_\n\nThe ability to make a credible, amusing, or attractive drawing never fails to fill a child with pride and a sense of accomplishment. This in itself provides the motivation for a child to cultivate that ability further.\n\nThere are diverse approaches to developing the art of drawing. Some contemporary ways stress freedom of expression, experimentation, and self-evaluation of competence and growth. More traditional is the \"follow me, step-by-step\" method which teaches through mimicry. Each approach has its own value, and one need not exclude the other.\n\nThis book teaches a way of drawing based on the traditional method. It will give young people the opportunity to produce skillful, funny drawings of monsters and other creatures by following simple instructions. After completing a number of such drawings, the child will almost surely have picked up some of the fundamentals of handling and controlling the materials and of creating believable forms, and a sense of the discipline needed to master the art of drawing. From here, the child can continue with other books in the DRAW 50 series \u2014 and at the same time, explore other methods of drawing which he or she will now be better equipped to deal with.\n\n##    \nWerner Werewolf\n\n##    \nUR2EZ\n\n##    \nThe Bride of Frankenstein\n\n##    \nRomney Horrorfield, demon\n\n##    \n_Hippus maximus centaurus_\n\n##    \nSasquatch\n\n##    \nSuper Itch\n\n##    \nBugg O'Neer\n\n##    \nRashid the Rotten\n\n##    \nWynsomme Warthead, witch\n\n##    \nYoda\n\n##    \nReeko Mortis, zombie\n\n##    \nMedusa\n\n##    \nDarth Vader\n\n##    \nMarv Gryphon\n\n##    \nMurt the Dirt\n\n##    \nGabba Ghoul\n\n##    \nLewis E. Furr\n\n##    \nWee Seamus Kildare, leprechaun\n\n##    \nJaws\n\n##    \nEgeni Chillingstone, warlock\n\n##    \nEzobite mouth creach\n\n##    \nDracula\n\n##    \nSinister Finster, dark demon\n\n##    \nFeodor the Dwarf\n\n##    \nQuicksilver\n\n##    \nClipper Gyp\n\n##    \nDemon from the Second Planet Circling Sirius\n\n##    \nFrankenstein's Monster\n\n##    \nRory LaGoon\n\n##    \nCyclops\n\n##    \nFong Choy Noon\n\n##    \nThe Hunchback of Notre Dame\n\n##    \nLousy Larrabee\n\n##    \nVilma Knibblenecker\n\n##    \nNose creach from Brinza\n\n##    \nBluddin Gaur, zombie\n\n##    \nBurt the Dirt\n\n##    \nHercules\n\n##    \nEzobite eye creach\n\n##    \nDunston Dripp, nasal nerd\n\n##    \nThe Phantom of the Opera\n\n##    \nJohn Henry\n\n##    \nBad Bjorn, giant troll\n\n##    \nB. L. Zeebubb\n\n##    \nUriah Creep\n\n##    \nSillawarsh, undiscovered slime monster\n\n##    \nCrullbeef Oryu Creep\n\n##    \nKurt the Dirt\n\n##    \nSuper Cowboy\n\nLee J. Ames began his career at the Walt Disney Studios, working on films that included _Fantasia_ and _Pinocchio_. He taught at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and at Dowling College on Long Island, New York. An avid worker, Ames directed his own advertising agency, illustrated for several magazines, and illustrated approximately 150 books that range from picture books to postgraduate texts. He resided in Dix Hills, Long Island, with his wife, Jocelyn, until his death in June 2011.\n\n# **DRAW 50 MONSTERS**\n\n## Experience All That the Draw 50 Series Has to Offer!\n\nWith this proven, step-by-step method, Lee J. Ames has taught millions how to draw everything from amphibians to automobiles. Now it's your turn! Pick up the pencil, get out some paper, and learn how to draw everything under the sun with the Draw 50 series.\n\nAlso Available:\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Animal 'Toons_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Athletes_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Baby Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Cars, Trucks, and Motorcycles_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Cats_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Dogs_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Famous Cartoons_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and Other Plants_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Horses_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 People_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Princesses_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Sharks, Whales, and Other Sea Creatures_\n\n\u2022 _Draw 50 Vehicles_\n\n\u2022 _Draw the Draw 50 Way_\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n**RACE UNMASKED**\n\n**MICHAEL YUDELL**\n\n**RACE UNMASKED**\n\nBiology and Race in the Twentieth Century\n\n**FOREWORD BY J. CRAIG VENTER**\n\n**COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS**\n\n**NEW YORK**\n\nColumbia University Press\n\n_Publishers Since 1893_\n\nNew York Chichester, West Sussex\n\ncup.columbia.edu\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 Michael Yudell\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nE-ISBN 978-0-231-53799-5\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nYudell, Michael.\n\nRace unmasked : biology and race in the twentieth century \/ Michael Yudell.\n\npages cm\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 978-0-231-16874-8 (cloth : alk. paper) \u2014 ISBN 978-0-231-53799-5 (electronic)\n\n1. Eugenics\u2014History\u201420th century. 2. Race\u2014History\u201420th century. 3. Human biology\u2014History\u201420th century. I. Title.\n\nHQ751.Y83 2014\n\n363.9'2009'04\u2014dc23\n\n2013043152\n\nA Columbia University Press E-book.\n\nCUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.\n\nCover design: Mary Ann Smith\n\nReferences to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.\n_To Gerald Gill, for all that you gave_\n**CONTENTS**\n\n_Foreword_\n\n_Acknowledgments_\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n1. A EUGENIC FOUNDATION\n\n2. CHARLES DAVENPORT AND THE BIOLOGY OF BLACKNESS\n\n3. EUGENICS IN THE PUBLIC'S EYE\n\n4. THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL AND THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RACE\n\n5. COLORING RACE DIFFERENCE\n\n6. BIOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF THE COLOR LINE\n\n7. RACE AND THE EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS\n\n8. CONSOLIDATING THE RACE CONCEPT IN BIOLOGY\n\n9. CHALLENGES TO THE RACE CONCEPT\n\n10. NATURALIZING RACISM: THE CONTROVERSY OVER SOCIOBIOLOGY\n\n11. RACE IN THE GENOMIC AGE\n\nEPILOGUE: DOBZHANSKY'S PARADOX AND THE FUTURE OF RACIAL RESEARCH\n\n_Notes_\n\n_Bibliography_\n\n_Index_\n**FOREWORD**\n\n**J. CRAIG VENTER, PH.D.**\n\n**T** he concept of race is a deeply embedded historical challenge for human societies, one that Michael Yudell clearly illustrates in this excellent book. In my research on the human genome, we have also found race to be a social construct, not a scientific one. Despite the many claims otherwise, science and scientists _are not_ infallible or unbiased when it comes to conceptualizing race. After all, as this book shows, some very notable scientists, even some from recent history, have espoused \"scientific theories\" to support their racial beliefs. Classification of species has been a part of science for centuries; thus scientists have struggled with these ideas for centuries.\n\nOnly recently, however, have we learned to measure the genetic code quantitatively and acknowledged that most of the previous classification was based primarily on visual differences. This type of behavior is clearly a human trait. We like people who look like us. We view the \"same\" as safe and reinforcing, and difference as foreign and potentially dangerous. One of the many ironies of this overly simplistic, crude classification system is that at some point in human history there may have been a selective advantage for being wary of the potentially disease-carrying stranger coming to your cave, village, or town. Perhaps that is one reason such narcissistic genetic traits are with us today. Yet despite these tendencies toward self-liking, our genomes show evidence of extensive interbreeding going back tens of thousands of years.\n\nOne of the reasons I moved into molecular biology and genomics is that it is a quantitative field. You either have the DNA sequence or you don't. It is either accurately measured or it is not. And the discovery that our genetic code carries within each of us our entire genetic history, as well as human evolutionary history, permits for the first time a quantitative basis for deciphering our history, our evolution, and our similarities with and differences from each other.\n\nAll modern humans originated in Africa, but some Africans migrated out 300,000 to 400,000 years ago and evolved into the Neanderthals. Not that long ago, it was a hotly debated question whether Neanderthals and modern humans interbred. Based on the incredible work of Svante Paabo and colleagues sequencing several Neanderthal genomes from bone fragments found in the Vindija Cave in Croatia, we now know that a group of modern humans that migrated out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals between 40,000 and 90,000 years ago. Paabo's findings show that 1 to 4 percent of the genomes from East Asians and Europeans are of Neanderthal origin. Neanderthal genes contributed changes in skin and hair that perhaps helped these populations adapt to colder climates.\n\nThe Neanderthal\u2013modern human interactions are only a single example of how human populations have interacted and intermixed throughout history. Hellenthal and colleagues reported this year in the journal _Science_ (343 [2014]: 747\u2013751) that admixture has been \"an almost universal force shaping human populations.\" Their work also highlights the impact of the Mongol empire, the Arab slave trade, and the Bantu expansion in influencing humanity's genetic code.\n\nOur genomes have been mixed and remixed with every generation, so much so that the notion of any \"pure\" human population is absurd. In my talk at the White House in 2000 to announce the completion of the first draft of the human genome, I said that race has no basis in the genetic code. The results of genome sequencing over the last thirteen years only prove my point more clearly. It is a fact that there are greater genetic differences between individuals of the same \"racial\" group than between individuals of different groups. The problem we face with the emergence of so-called race-based medicine is the same problem as with applying average or \"normal\" clinical values to any individual. They just don't work well.\n\nGenomics is about understanding that the uniqueness of each and every one of us cannot be determined by the broad general groups to which we appear to belong. Generalizations might work for clinical values and for populations, but not at the individual level. As human genome sequencing becomes a standard part of clinical practice over the next few decades, we will find that we all belong to a multitude of different human populations in terms of disease risk, drug responses, and differences in drug metabolism. Some of these differences might date back to the Neanderthal\u2013modern human mating that increased the risk for Type 2 diabetes over that of people who came out of Africa much later. Or they could derive from ancestors from Bedouin tribes whose lifestyle selected for Type 2 diabetes as a survival advantage.\n\nWe know that with all the admixture that has occurred throughout human history, skin color will not predict what will be found in your genetic code. Race and race concepts will not stand the test of time. The socially driven attitudes and biases that have for too long found a home in science will slowly be replaced. Unfortunately, in the case of the scientific race concept this has indeed happened slowly.\n**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\n**I** t may be clich\u00e9, but it is nonetheless true that a book is much more than the singular effort of its author. In the case of this book, I can confirm this\u2014I could not have completed this work without the nurturing, encouragement, patience, and assistance of many good friends, colleagues, and family members.\n\nI feel like I began this project in a different lifetime. Indeed, it was a long time ago that the inspiration for this book began at the City University of New York Graduate Center in a class on the history of public health with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz. David has played a unique role in my intellectual life. He guided me through too many years of graduate school, all the while remaining a patient and dedicated mentor who encouraged me every step of the way. From David I learned that not simply does history matter, but that matters of history can be the basis for living an intensely political, satisfying, and moral life.\n\nOne of David's most important contributions to my career was introducing me to Rob DeSalle at the American Museum of Natural History, and Rob and I have been close friends and collaborators ever since. Rob invited me to join his molecular laboratory as a student (in conjunction first with my studies at CUNY and later at Columbia), and we made a deal; I would bring to him history of science, medicine, and public health texts that we would read together and he would teach me genetics. From that beginning, Rob and I would go on to write two books together, with a third on the way, and my years in his lab helped me develop into the scholar I am today.\n\nSo much of the conceptual framework of this book was developed in conversation with friends both inside and outside academia. Kelvin Sealey not only read the entire text and offered his careful edits but he also provided both intellectual and emotional support during this long process. Kelvin and I started as graduate students together at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and together migrated to separate departments at Columbia. Over the course of that time we have supported one another in both friendship and intellectual pursuits.\n\nJames Colgrove, with whom I began my studies at Columbia and who is now a colleague and collaborator, read and discussed parts of the book and deserves special thanks. Joanna Radin, who is herself emerging as one of the most thoughtful historians of science, now at Yale, read the entire manuscript and helped me think through some of the challenges inherent to this topic. Her detailed comments made this a richer book.\n\nOthers, including Avi Patt, Bette Begleiter, Paul Messing, Bill Shein, Elizabeth Robilotti, Neil Schwartz, Cindy Lobel, Terrence Kissack, Tracy Morgan, Ariel De, Howard Rosenbaum, Michael Russello, Rick Baker, James Bonacum, Jorge Brito, Stuart Zicherman, Greg Moss, the late Myra Frazier, Jonathan Mannina, Sandy Kandel, and Seth Krevat, have, at various times, been forced to discuss or read the material herein and deserve my gratitude.\n\nMany of the ideas and impulses in this book can be traced back to Colin Palmer, who as an early mentor pushed me to consider not just the idea of race in science but also the relationship of that idea to both the lives of African Americans and to African American history. While I am not satisfied that this project does enough on both counts, this is a better book because of him.\n\nOthers still were incredibly generous with their time and advice on the manuscript, including Keith Wailoo, Richard Lewontin, Susan Reverby, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Merlin Chowkwanyun, Arthur Caplan, Janet Golden, Richard Sharp, and David Barnes. Additionally, Amy Fairchild, Gerald Markowitz and Elizabeth Blackmar read the entire manuscript and made extensive comments in its dissertation stage. Finally, very special thanks to Dr. J. Craig Venter for taking time to write the foreword to this book and for his work challenging scientists to reconsider their use of race as a variable in research.\n\nTo the many librarians and archivists who helped me along the way I cannot say enough thank-yous. Rob Cox, formerly the chief librarian at the American Philosophical Society and currently the head of the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was my guide to the collections at both repositories. Rob's keen insight into the history of genetics and eugenics was invaluable. A Library Resident Research Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society during the summer of 2004 provided me with the resources to complete most of the primary source research for this project. At the society Valerie-Ann Lutz, Joseph-James Ahern, Roy Goodman, Charles Greifenstein, and the entire staff provided invaluable assistance to me and my work. The librarians at the American Museum of Natural History library and archives offered their careful assistance to this project. Finally, Leonard Bruno, science manuscript historian at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., helped me navigate the as yet unprocessed E. O. Wilson papers, and the staff at the Stanford University Archives helped me navigate the then unprocessed Stephen Jay Gould papers.\n\nMy colleagues at the Drexel University School of Public Health have been supportive as I have worked to complete this book. My former dean, Marla Gold, my former and current department chairs Lisa Ulmer and Ann Klassen helped me carve out time in a busy schedule of teaching and other research responsibilities to complete the manuscript. I also owe special thanks to the now nine years of students who have heard me lecture on this subject and whose thoughtful reactions to this material forced me to think more carefully about it. Aaron Pankiewicz, Geoffrey Vargish, Jamie Earnest, Nicole Gidaya, Deb Langer, John Donovan, and Lilliam Ambroggio were especially helpful. Extra special thanks to Phoebe Jones, whose editing skills and insight were invaluable as I completed the book. Finally, thanks to several current and former colleagues who read and talked about sections of the book: John Rich, John Rossi, Craig Newschaffer, Lisa Bowleg, Randall Sell, Augusta Villanueva, Marcus Kolb, and Hernando Perez.\n\nI am grateful to have worked with Patrick Fitzgerald and his team at Columbia University Press, including Kathryn Schell, Bridget Flannery-McCoy, Leslie Kriesel, and Mike Ashby. Patrick was a wonderful editor, working closely with me every step of the way, and I am thankful for all that he did as he pushed me and guided me to make this a better book.\n\nMy mother and late father, Jane and Allen Yudell, instilled in me the progressive values that are at the core of my professional goals, and they deserve my deepest gratitude and love. My sister, Andrea Yudell-Nandi, has always been a loving friend in our journey through life. And my in-laws, Alan Rick and Debra Sacks, who came into my life in the middle of this long project, have offered only their deepest support.\n\nMy wife, Jacqueline Rick, whom I met on the downtown 1 train in New York City while we were both doctoral students at Columbia, is the center of my life, and this work was driven as much by her interest in my ideas as it was by her insistence that I finish the damn thing. Thank-you is not enough for her. Only my dedication to her as a husband and father of our daughters can begin to account for all that she has given me.\n\nThis book is dedicated to my mentor and friend, the late Gerald Gill. It was Gerald who inspired me (and several generations of undergraduates at Tufts University) to dive headfirst into the past in his seminars on the civil rights movement, the history of the American South, and African American history. Gerald was inspirational in the way he embraced the past. He did so with rigorous scholarly resolve and basic human decency with the hope of carving out a better future. This, along with his wry sense of humor and party trick\u2013like encyclopedic recall, earned him the love and respect of his students, colleagues, and friends. For me, I saw the way Gerald lived his life as a scholar and teacher, and I wanted to be like him. I hope this book is another step in that direction.\n**INTRODUCTION**\n\nRace, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, identifiable present, and uncertain future. The concept of race has been at the center of both triumphs and tragedies in American history and has had an unmistakable impact on the human experience. It is a term used both casually and scientifically; a way people and groups choose to describe themselves and their ancestors; a way scientists and societies have chosen to describe and interpret the complexity that is human diversity and difference; and a way that doctors and public health officials make decisions about our health, both individually and collectively. It can be a source of pride, self-understanding, and resistance. Also of oppression and carnage. It is indeed an idea that has shaped the dreams and lives of generations.\n\nThis book tells the history of the formulation and preservation of the race concept and explores the role that science, particularly genetics and related biological disciplines, played in the making of America's racial calculus over the course of the twentieth century. In so doing, it shows where commonly held beliefs about the scientific nature of racial differences come from and examines the origins of the modern idea of race. The book also examines how ideas about race developed into a biological concept during the twentieth century, and how that concept has persisted in various incarnations as accepted scientific fact into the twenty-first. This is not, however, a story of the triumph of rational science over ignorance and racism. Instead, this book considers how this history shaped a contemporary paradox in thinking about the biological race concept; that is, that race can be understood to be both a critical methodological tool for biologists to make sense of human genetic diversity and, at the same time, widely believed _not_ to be a particularly accurate marker for measuring that diversity.\n\nThe race concept in biology can be traced to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates about slavery, colonialism, and the nature of citizenship, which were driven by the sciences of polygeny, phrenology, and craniometry. But its early twentieth-century manifestation, in the work of those considered the finest scientists of the time\u2014primarily eugenicists and geneticists\u2014marked an important change. Whereas nineteenth-century race concepts were rooted in theories of racial distinctiveness based on measurable and observable physical traits such as cranial capacity and skin color, in the early decades of the twentieth century the biological sciences conceived of race as a reflection of unseen differences attributed to the then recently discovered factors of heredity, also known as genes. If polygeny, social Darwinism, and craniometry were the scientific backbones of a nineteenth-century understanding of race, then in the twentieth century eugenics and genetics played that same role, providing the formative language of modern racism. Hence, beliefs about racial differences became rooted primarily in biology rather than in social or economic ideologies. Over the twentieth century, the race concept had various incarnations in biology. It was modified and abandoned, embraced and repudiated by scientists. Yet it survives into the twenty-first century, persisting largely as a biological concept in both science and society. This book shows how scientists, even with the best intentions of modernizing or modifying the concept to keep with the scientific practices of the time, wound up reinforcing it and helping to ensure its survival.\n\nRace has been called man's most dangerous myth, a superstition, and, more recently, a social construction. Race concepts are rooted in the belief that the people of the world can be organized into biologically distinct groups, each with their own discrete physical, social, and intellectual characteristics. Changes to and variations in race concepts are themselves products of a range of variables, including time, place, geography, politics, science, and economics. As much as scientists once thought that race was a reflection of physical or biological differences, today social scientists, with help from colleagues in the natural sciences, have shown that the once seemingly objective race concept is in fact historically contingent and has had an unmistakable impact on the American story. Two interwoven histories\u2014the introduction of and consequent use of the term \"race\" in the study and explication of human difference and the general use of the race concept\u2014inform the evolution of the race concept in twentieth-century biological thought.\n\nThe historian Bruce Dain reminds us, \"Race itself was a monster if ever Americans conceived one, but a monster hidden in their minds, not, as many of them came to think in the reality of a nature behind their appearances.\" And, as Dain is quick to point out, \"that reality was obscure, shifting, and complex.\" But one constant in that reality is that since the late eighteenth century science has played a critical role in the formulation of racial views in the United States, and racists and racial theorists have often turned to science to both justify their beliefs and to provide a scientific vocabulary for explaining human difference. In the twentieth century, it was primarily the discipline of genetics from which racial scientists freely exploited both language and prestige. This legacy can be explained largely by the history of genetics itself, which at its founding was inseparable from eugenic theories that were mired in examining hereditary traits both within and between human races. The fields of genetics and eugenics would begin to diverge as early as the second decade of the twentieth century as geneticists in the United States sought to develop a more rigorous and less politically intent field. But despite this growing split between the two disciplines, the imprint of eugenical thinking on genetics remained strong, as did the field's reliance upon genetics. Even today, the typological thought characteristic of eugenicists at the turn of the twentieth century\u2014that is, the way eugenicists correlated both skin color and nationality with a wide array of physical, behavioral, and intellectual traits\u2014continues to be present in beliefs about human difference.\n\nAlthough a genetic approach was novel to racial scientific thought in the early twentieth century, race thinking about human difference in both science and society was definitely not. The roots of race thinking had been growing in Western thought for centuries. To be sure, American ideas about race difference have been constructed in a variety of ways from numerous corners of social and scientific life, including legal, anthropological, cultural, and sociological conceptions of racial difference. There are, in fact, many race concepts. So when this book refers to _the_ race concept, as it often does simply for the purpose of literary parsimony, I recognize that there are others and that the concept described in this book has existed on shifting terrain, even within the nomenclature of the biological sciences. Ultimately, as this book argues, in the twenty-first century, understanding the way race was constructed within the biological sciences, particularly within genetics and evolutionary biology, is essential to understanding its broader meanings.\n\nIn many ways, this book documents the process of \"racecraft,\" a term recently coined by Karen Fields and Barbara Fields in their eponymously named book\u2014 _Racecraft_ \u2014meant to convey the \"mental terrain\" and \"pervasive belief\" from where racism and our stubborn belief in race emanate. In other words, racecraft reflects both how these ideas are sewn into our individual and collective identities and how deeply embedded in those identities are the self-reflexive assumptions that these ideas are true. Racecraft is a way of seeing, understanding, and reflecting upon our world, even when there is no rational basis for a certain worldview. The history of the race concept in American scientific thought reflects just this: the persistence of long-standing social conceptions of the meaning of difference in the thinking, theorizing, and actions of America's scientific minds. Fields and Fields's description of racecraft implicitly recognizes its permeation into scientific thought, which they explain by stating, \"The term highlights the ability of pre- or non-scientific modes of thought to highjack the minds of the scientifically literate.\" Both the eugenicists and racists who sought to utilize the race concept to buttress a discriminatory status quo _and_ the liberal scientists who fought to modernize the concept were equally involved in the perpetuation of racecraft.\n\nHistories of the race concept in American scientific thought have generally told the story of two conflicting and competing ideologies seeking to define the meaning of race within the biological sciences. On one side of this morality tale are racists, working both in and outside of scientific fields to formulate ideas about the meanings of human diversity and to propagate them under the scientific guise of racial difference. While not necessarily self-avowed racists, their agenda and actions have supported white supremacy. From Thomas Jefferson's musings on the subject in the late eighteenth century, in which he theorized that the difference between the races \"is fixed in nature\" and hypothesized that blacks were \"originally a distinct race,\" to Samuel Morton and the American School of Anthropology's nineteenth-century theories about a racial hierarchy of intelligence and of separately created races (the theory of polygeny), to eugenics and the racialized theories of IQ over the course of the twentieth century, racists have sought to utilize science to further their causes.\n\nOn the other side of this divide have been liberal-minded scientists and their allies who have battled the forces of racism through their scientific work and popular writings. Theirs is a story of the rise and fall of racial science and of the race concept itself. At the outset of the twentieth century scientific minds like W. E. B. Du Bois and Franz Boas showed that the race concept was a social construction by illustrating how race was a much more fluid and complex phenomenon than had previously been thought, and that culture and economic circumstances played a more significant role in creating the disparities between racial groups that had been attributed to biological differences. At midcentury, anthropologists like Ashley Montagu and sociologists like Gunnar Myrdal fought against the race concept in their work. In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued its first statement on race, proclaiming, \"For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth.\" These scientists battled the racist and eugenic forces in scientific practice to push racial science to the margins and show that it was a social construction. In other words, a biological understanding of race has been constrained by the social context in which racial research has taken place.\n\nThis idea that there was a struggle between two fairly well-defined groups of scientists, that racial science rose pre\u2013World War I and waned post\u2013World War II, and that in this same time line race shifted from a concept rooted in typology to one rooted in population genetics does not hold up upon closer examination. This history, it turns out, is not so simple and not so hopeful. The notion that the race concept and racial science have somehow withered, or that the concept is being resurrected by genomics and the work of the Human Genome Project, is rooted in the post\u2013World War II era liberal hope that by showing race to be a social construction, the seemingly intractable problem of racism could be overcome. The premise of a rise and fall is central to what the sociologist of science Jenny Reardon calls \"the canonical narrative of the history of race and science.\" It is a \"dominant narrative,\" as she calls it, one that \"truncates history.\"\n\nIn his book reimagining the John F. Kennedy assassination, _11\/22\/63_ , Stephen King describes history as \"obdurate\"\u2014a nearly immovable force that itself fights change. The same could be said of historiography, which is also obdurate. It changes, in many ways, more slowly than the history from which it seeks to extract truths and meanings. By truncating our understanding of the evolution of the race concept, the \"canonical narrative\" hides a richer and much more disturbing past\u2014one that roots a modern race concept in eugenical thought, one that examines how the race concept in biology survived many challenges (from both within science and without) and was an animating force in science throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and one that considers how even those thought to be antiracist scientists helped preserve a concept they thought they were contesting.\n\nScholars have begun to contest this canonical narrative. Works by Jenny Reardon on the history of the Human Genome Diversity Project, Gregory Dorr on the relationship between eugenics and segregation in Virginia, and Lee Baker on the role that anthropologists have played in the reformulation of concepts of race all reframe how we think about this history. In this book I build on these works and others, arguing that the biological race concept, as we understand it today, originated with eugenic theories of difference and was re-created and integrated into modern biological thought by population geneticists and evolutionary biologists in the 1930s and 1940s during the evolutionary synthesis in biology (the union of population genetics, experimental genetics, and natural history that reshaped modern biology).\n\nWhile important changes in the biological approach to race did occur as early as the 1930s, particularly as an increasing number of geneticists, anthropologists, and social scientists began moving away from typological and eugenic descriptions of human difference to view races through the lens of population genetics and evolutionary biology, the shift away from typology was not as complete and was much more complicated than the canonical narrative suggests. Contrary to so much of the literature on the race concept, the field's shift on race was not simply the liberal triumph of science over ignorance. Instead, it was first a struggle to find meaning for the concept within taxonomic nomenclature and the evolutionary synthesis, and, second, a struggle to find alternative ways to explain human genetic diversity. And it was in this contradictory space that a growing group of scientists found themselves as they struggled to both find meaning for a race concept in science and fight against racial science and racism more generally.\n\nMany, in fact, came to reject a eugenic and typological notion of fixed genetic differences between so-called racial groups and instead understood human races as dynamic populations distinguished by variations of the frequency of genes between them. By rooting the meaning of race in genetic variation it became more difficult (though still possible) to root race in eugenic conceptions of difference and to argue that one race or another had particular traits specifically associated with it, or that one individual was typical of a race. Furthermore, the four or five racial groups identified by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientists now varied depending upon the genes and traits examined by geneticists. Theodosius Dobzhansky, the evolutionary biologist whose work between the 1930s and 1970s had a tremendous influence on the way that scientists thought about race, concluded that the number of human races was variable depending upon what traits were being examined. In fact, Dobzhansky believed the race concept in the context of population genetics and evolutionary biology was simply a tool for making genetic \"diversity intelligible and manageable\" in scientific study. In other words, while human differences are real, the way we choose to organize those differences is a methodological decision and not one that reflects an underlying evolutionary hierarchy.\n\nThis new approach was brought about by novel findings in genetics that demonstrated that genetic variation was much more common within species than once thought, and by the development of the evolutionary synthesis, which rejected eugenic notions of difference between and among species. Changes in the race concept were also influenced by a growing cadre of scientists who were generally more liberal on matters of race than their predecessors had been, as well as by a gradual liberalization on matters of race in post\u2013World War II America. Indeed, as this book documents, this was a two-way street\u2014the scientists involved in conceptualizing a race concept in biology were as much a product of the scientific culture in which they were trained as they were a part of the social milieu in which they lived their lives. Unfortunately, what was believed to be the methodological utility to evolutionary biologists and population geneticists of this new race concept would help reinforce confusion about the term, even within the field, and it would quickly be exploited and manipulated by racists from both within and outside the field. By the 1960s, Dobzhansky, whose work helped re-create race in the framework of population genetics and evolutionary biology, came to the conclusion that despite race's utility as a tool for classification and systematization\u2014\"devices used to make diversity intelligible and manageable\"\u2014that investigation into human diversity had \"floundered in confusion and misunderstanding.\" He also came to believe that the scientific and social meanings of race were inseparable, and that \"the problem that now faces the science of man is how to devise better methods for further observations that will give more meaningful results.\"\n\nRacial science did not simply end with the decline of the eugenics movement in the 1930s and 1940s, which was brought down by advances in scientific thinking that recognized the fallacy of the eugenic proposition and by a worldwide reaction to Nazi eugenical horrors. Nor did it recede in the wake of statements on race and racism by UNESCO in the early 1950s\u2014statements that were critical of the race concept and helped to shape thinking in this area among both natural and social scientists. Nor did the psychologist Kenneth Clark's studies illustrating the effects of segregation and white supremacy on African Americans, studies that figured prominently in the Supreme Court's 1954 landmark _Brown v. Board of Education_ ruling, bring an end to racial science. Instead, racial science and the race concept have survived many intellectual and political challenges. The historian William Stanton once said of the race concept that \"man was being fitted into a system of immutable law.\" When biologists at midcentury reaffirmed the race concept in the context of modern genetics, they were, intentionally or not, preserving racist ideas in science for both scientific and extrascientific purposes.\n\nA history of the race concept in biology would be incomplete without understanding the role that eugenics played in its development. To a reader well versed in the eugenic literature, many of the characters and issues raised in chapters 1 and  of this book will seem quite familiar. While it is true that a major objective of the eugenics movement was to keep the \"unfit\" from reproducing, it is also true that the movement and its architects helped develop a new language of difference and, therefore, of race in the twentieth century. This facet of eugenics has been largely overlooked in the historical literature. It would not be accurate, however, to suggest that eugenicists simply reflected the deeper racial anxieties and animosities of the nation in the early decades of the Jim Crow era. This book shows how, instead, eugenicists actually helped shape the way in which those animosities were incorporated into the scientific lexicon of the times.\n\nA rereading of eugenic-era primary source materials reveals that incorporation and revises that history by showing how beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries eugenics focused intently on the black-white divide in American society and sought to explain that divide in eugenic terms. It also shows how the attention of eugenicists to what they believed to be fundamental differences between whites and blacks provided a foundation for rethinking the race concept during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Eugenicists, as this book shows, devoted considerable resources to the study of black-white differences from the beginning of the movement in the late nineteenth century. Yet historians have painted eugenics as largely incidental to the formulation of ideas of race in science, focusing instead on the history of eugenic institutions, on the relationship between eugenics and emerging conceptions of ethnicity among immigrant white groups, and on the impact of eugenic policies (in particular sterilization programs and immigration restrictions). These approaches overlook the links between eugenic thought and ideologies of race and racism and their impact on African American history.\n\nAttention to the impact of racial science on African Americans during the twentieth century has focused heavily on two histories: the Tuskegee Experiments (Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male) and IQ studies. By telling these stories separately, historians have often missed a bigger picture\u2014a narrative exploring how, beginning with eugenics, biology has been used to buttress and rationalize American's changing view of African Americans, and that thinking in the natural sciences has influenced the continued evolution of racist ideology in the United States.\n\nIt is also significant that before 1924 explanations of racial difference by eugenicists and geneticists, according to most historians, were focused primarily on differences among what we would now consider white ethnic groups. Eugenics was not just about preserving whiteness from ethnics but was also about the construction of scientifically justified color differences. In the wake of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 (also known as the Immigration Act of 1924), which severely restricted immigration into the United States (legislation urged and supported by eugenicists), the focus of many eugenicists and other racial scientists shifted toward examining black-white racial differences. An examination of the discussions and debates taking place at this time among and between eugenicists, geneticists, evolutionary and population biologists, and anthropologists reveals how academic thinking helped to formulate the science behind ideologies of race and racism.\n\nThe race concept has had a marked impact on the practice of science and on the social understandings of human difference from eugenics to genomics. By examining the history of the biological race concept during the twentieth century, historians have borne witness to the ways in which the biological sciences have helped to shape thinking about human difference. The historian Charles Rosenberg reminds us that \"science has lent American social thought a vocabulary and supply of images.\" This book describes the role that scientific thought, particularly genetics, played in developing a language and methods used to measure the meaning of human difference in the form of race. The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah explains that the diffusion of scientific ideas and concepts into the general population took place by a process he calls \"semantic deference\"; \"that is, with the increasing prestige of science, people became used to using words whose exact meanings they did not need to know, because their exact meanings were left to the relevant experts.\" Through these processes, during the twentieth century biology and genetics became an arbiter of the meaning of the race concept.\n\nAn examination of the history of the biological race concept reveals that race is not what most people think it is. Ultimately, as this book illustrates, race is neither a static biological certainty nor a reflection of our genes. Instead, race is a historical and cultural phenomenon\u2014an analysis of human biological difference mediated by the politics, culture, and economics of a given historical moment and by the individual or society in that moment. For America, the corrupting power of racial thought remains embedded in its social structures. We see it in disparities in health, in housing, and in employment and social opportunities. This work does not claim to expose the nature of these disparities or how to mitigate them; this work focuses instead on the ideas behind the race concept. But by examining the historical and intellectual bases for the race concept, we can, it is hoped, begin to understand its origin and develop news ways of thinking about the meanings of human diversity.\n\nThis book shows how the biological race concept came to be what it is today and why, because of this history, race continues generating controversy as a classificatory tool.\n**1**\n\n**A EUGENIC FOUNDATION**\n\n\" **T** here is, unquestionably, a larger popular interest in races and racial traits now than ever before,\" claimed Charles Davenport in 1921. A biologist by training, Davenport was the leader of the American eugenics movement during the first three decades of the twentieth century and wrote and lectured widely on the subject. \"For some people race seems to be equivalent to European country of origin,\" declared Davenport, echoing in his statement what at the time was a race concept that conflated skin color with nationality. Those, for example, of Italian, Polish, and German descent were popularly and often scientifically believed to belong to Italian, Polish, and German races. Davenport also described how the \"Immigration Bureau recognizes 'races or peoples' such as Hebrew\" and how \"the U.S. census has classified the population by 'mother tongue,'\" which, he asserted, was \"biologically slightly more significant than country.\" In recognition of these seeming contradictions, Davenport worried that \"ultimately little attention is paid to the question: what is a race and how do you define any particular race.\" \"There would seem to be a need for a reconsideration of the idea of race and the definition of particular races,\" Davenport asserted, concluding that \"men of science are looked to for such clearer ideas and definitions.\" It would be from the eugenics movement, led in Britain by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century and in the United States by Davenport during the first three decades of the twentieth century, that \"men of science\" would address the challenge of defining this problematic concept.\n\nWhile ideas about biological distinctiveness were a part of the racial lexicon since the early nineteenth century, eugenics offered a scientific explanation for racial difference. Eugenicists correlated certain negative and deviant social behaviors\u2014including criminality, insanity, and feeblemindedness (a term that captured any number of mental disorders)\u2014with particular ethnic and racial populations, and claimed these behaviors to be inherited via the gene. In the first three decades of the twentieth century eugenicists and their supporters applied such ideas about racial difference to immigration, reproductive, and racial policies. The geneticization of race\u2014the idea that racial differences can be understood as genetic distinctions in appearance and complex social behaviors between so-called racial groups\u2014came about in the wake of the eugenics movement.\n\nEugenicists differed on how best to repair what they saw as a dysgenic society filled with what they believed to be genetically unfit groups, including most prominently immigrants from eastern and central Europe, who were outreproducing Americans of northern European ancestry. Whereas positive eugenicists sought to increase breeding among the American social elite, negative eugenicists, in contrast, discouraged breeding among the lower classes. During the heyday of the eugenics era in America, popular culture and policy enactments were dominated by the theories of negative eugenicists. Positive eugenics was the terrain primarily of socialist intellectuals who believed that eugenics would facilitate the emergence of a socialist utopia in the United States.\n\nSterilization laws across America were inspired by negative eugenic sentiment, and in 1907 the state of Indiana established the country's first sterilization law. By the early 1930s over twenty-nine other states would pass similar laws, leading at that time to the sterilization of approximately 30,000 so-called feebleminded Americans. That figure would rise to total more than 63,000 sterilizations by the 1960s. Criminals and those accused or convicted of sexual offenses were the primary concern of these eugenic enactments. Advocates of criminal sterilization wrote, \"Criminals should be studied for evidence of dysgenic traits that are germinal in nature. Where found in serious degree parole should not be granted without sterilization.\"\n\nIn the first three decades of the twentieth century eugenicists and many geneticists promoted the idea that mental and physical traits differed hereditarily by race. They also claimed that race crosses were harmful. Well-respected geneticists wrote openly that \"miscegenation can only lead to unhappiness under present social conditions and must, we believe, under any social conditions be biologically wrong.\" In the late 1920s Davenport wrote, \"We are driven to the conclusion that there is a constitutional, hereditary, genetical basis for the difference between the two races [whites and blacks] in mental tests. We have to conclude that there are racial differences in mental capacity.\" In their influential text _Applied Eugenics_ , Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, who endorsed segregation as a \"social adaptation,\" wrote that \"the Negro race differs greatly from the white race, mentally as well as physically, and that in many respects it may be said to be inferior when tested by the requirements of modern civilization and progress.\" Moreover, they suggested that \"Negroes, both children and adults, have been found markedly inferior to white in vital capacity....Differences in temperament and emotional reaction also exist, and may be more important than the purely intellectual differences.\" Through eugenics, genetics gave race and racism an unalterable permanence; neither education, nor change in environment or climate, nor the eradication of racism itself could alter the fate of African Americans or those labeled as belonging to nonwhite races.\n\nThere were, to be sure, even in the eyes of the most racist thinkers, exceptions to black genetic inferiority. But eugenicists and other scientific racists explained these \"aberrations\" by noting that genetic material from white ancestry set them apart. W. E. B. Du Bois's success was, for example, attributed to the blood he inherited from his white ancestors. In this context, it is not hard to see how eugenics provided a modern scientific language, rooted in the burgeoning field of genetics, that both proffered and buttressed contemporary racial theories. The legacy of eugenics therefore is not simply about sterilization laws, anti-immigration statutes, or its impact on Nazi racial theory. Those events, important issues in their own right, have been explored by numerous historians. Ultimately, eugenics in an immigrant and ethnic context was about social control. But in a black versus white context eugenics was also about defining (with the latest scientific theory and jargon) the nature of the social and biological differences believed to be reflected by skin color.\n\n**FRANCIS GALTON AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE BLACK-WHITE BIOLOGICAL DIVIDE**\n\nFrom the works of Francis Galton in England from the 1860s to the 1900s, to the corpus of writings of Charles Davenport in the United States from the 1900s to 1930s, eugenicists showed a keen and consistent interest in using their ideas and methodologies to understand racial differences between blacks and whites on both sides of the Atlantic, and thus played a fundamental role in the construction of American concepts of race and racism in the early decades of the twentieth century. The focus of eugenic ideas on hereditary differences between whites and blacks has been part of the eugenic literature since the earliest days of the movement.\n\nGalton, founder of eugenics, published his first essay in the field, \"Hereditary Talent and Character,\" in _Macmillan's Magazine_ in 1865. Interestingly, when Galton wrote the _Macmillan's_ article he had not yet even coined the term \"eugenics.\" The article focused primarily on his early ideas about how human traits passed between generations, on which Galton wrote, \"Our bodies, minds and capabilities of development have been derived from them [our forefathers].\" In the late nineteenth century the secrets of heredity had not yet been revealed except for the relatively obscure work of the monk-scientist Gregor Mendel, whose laws of heredity would not be rediscovered until the first years of the twentieth century.\n\nAs the scion of a prominent family that included his maternal grandfather, the great physician, inventor, and naturalist Erasmus Darwin, and his cousin, the celebrated naturalist and architect of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, Galton believed biological heritage to be of profound importance in his life. Through eugenics, he theorized that heredity exerted a singular influence on all the social characteristics of humankind. With such bloodlines, it seems no coincidence that Galton's \"inquiries into hereditary genius...show the pressing necessity of obtaining a multitude of exact measurements relating to every measurable faculty of body or mind, for two generations at least, on which to theorize.\" With this information Galton hoped to improve the world through selective breeding. Karl Pearson, Galton's star pupil, a famed eugenicist himself, and founder of the Galton Laboratory at the University of London, summarized what he believed to be Galton's vision of a eugenic world: \"Democracy\u2014moral and intellectual progress\u2014is impossible while man is burdened with the heritage of his past history. It has bound mankind to a few great leaders; it has produced a mass of servile intelligences; and only man's insight\u2014man breeding man as his domesticated animal\u2014can free mankind.\"\n\nFrom a very young age, according to biographer Raymond Fancher, Galton's parents, \"who collected and saved documents as evidence...regarding Francis's precocity in their diaries,\" had high intellectual expectations for young Francis, and he was \"cast firmly in the role of family academic from the time of his first glimmerings of scholarly aptitude.\" The young Galton's intellectual feats were self-recorded in a letter to his older sister when he was four: \"I am four years old and can read any English book. I can say all the Latin Substantives and Adjectives....I can cast up any Sum in addition and can multiply by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10.\" Tutored by his older sister until he was five, Galton was educated at prep schools until sixteen, when he became an apprentice to William Bowman, a young surgeon. Galton began his academic medical training in 1839 at King's College, London, but at the urging of his cousin Charles Darwin, Galton left King's in 1840 to pursue mathematics and classics at Cambridge. After three years at Cambridge, having failed to qualify for honors, Galton left for London to continue his medical studies. But that, too, Galton left incomplete, never becoming licensed, and his departure from medical training brought his \"formal\" academic career to an end.\n\nGalton, according to Fancher, spent much of the next six years living \"the life of the idle rich,\" going on \"a carousing tour of Egypt and the Middle East,\" where he practiced his hunting and shooting skills. His transformation into a man of science, according to one apocryphal account, suggests that his life began to take shape only after a London phrenologist suggested he could build character and strength through military service in the British colonies. With money from his family inheritance, Galton set out to explore and map regions of what is now Namibia in southwestern Africa. For that effort, in 1854, Galton was awarded a gold medal from the Royal Geographic Society.\n\nGalton's time on the African continent, according to historian Daniel Kevles, \"exemplified the joining of foreign adventure with scientific study,\" and certainly shaped his attitudes toward Africa, Africans, and the descendants of that continent. In his memoir, _Memory of My Life_ , Galton's earliest connections between race and breeding are unequivocal. Of his encounter with the Damara people in southern Africa, Galton wrote that they \"were for the most part thieving and murderous, dirty, and of a low type; but their chiefs were more or less highly bred.\" Galton's assessment of African intelligence was also severe. Of his visits with the Herero people in southern Africa Galton wrote, \"Whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no numeral greater than three. When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers....They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for the 'units.'\" But Galton, like many of his contemporaries, expressed his views about race through science, and as his eugenical ideas took shape, his social prejudices became scientific ones. Galton's personal observations about Africans would, in the coming years, evolve into more careful scientific thinking on the subject. His racism would also be obvious in many of his writings, including his two seminal works, _Hereditary Talent and Character_ and _Hereditary Genius_.\n\nGalton accepted the idea that physical and social traits were associated, despite his not having any evidence to support this point. Galton extended this idea to human racial types, writing in his 1865 essay on heredity in _Macmillan's_ , \"Mongolians, Jews, Negroes, Gipsies, and America Indians severally propagate their kinds; and each kind differs in character and intellect, as well as in colour and shape from the other four.\" In the _Macmillan's_ article Galton paid careful attention to blacks, suggesting, for example, \"the Negro has strong impulsive passions, and neither patience, reticence nor dignity.\" Galton also maintained that \"the Negro\" is \"warmhearted, loving towards his master's children and idolized by the children in return. He is eminently gregarious, for he is always jabbering, quarrelling, tom-tom-ing and dancing. He is remarkably domestic, and is endowed with such constitutional vigour, and is so prolific that his race is irrepressible.\" It would be easy to dismiss these racist musings as simply a reflection of Victorian views on race, which prevailed among both British and Americans at this time. Some have even argued that Galton's writings on Africans and blacks \"occupied only a minuscule fraction of his writings on human heredity.\" But Galton's attention to race, specifically as it concerned blacks, was, in fact, significantly developed and nuanced, and as the founder of a movement of which the \"betterment of the race\" was a core principle, Galton's writings on this matter would have been read widely with considerable effect on the shaping of eugenics.\n\nIn mid to late nineteenth-century England, Galton probably had few direct interactions with persons of African ancestry. Galton's experiences with blacks came from his earlier travels in Africa and what we must assume to be his limited contact with the few blacks living in London at the time. The black population of London shrank during the latter part of the eighteenth and into the first several decades of the nineteenth century following the ending of the slave trade in 1807 and the subsequent absorption of Africans and their descendants into English society. Great Britain itself was certainly not immune to the struggles around issues of slavery that had plunged the United States into civil warfare during the time Galton began to spell out his eugenical theories in his writings. The impact of both domestic and international racial conflict would be significant on Galton's thinking in this area.\n\nOn the effect of slavery on Britain's views of black Africans, Sir Richard Burton, the renowned nineteenth-century British adventurer and explorer, declared, \"Before the Wilberforcean age, he was simply a Negro. That trade which founded in Liverpool, and which poured five million pounds of sterling into the national pocket, marked him to the one class a Man and a Brother, to the other a Nigger.\" Views of blacks would change little after the emancipation of African slaves in Great Britain in 1807. In 1849, an anonymous author published an essay in _Fraser's Magazine_ titled \"The Nigger Question.\" The writer believed the typical black to be the lowest of the human species and wrote of their future, \"Decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you; servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you.\" In the succeeding issue of _Fraser's_ the philosopher John Stuart Mill offered a challenge to racist theories, writing that racial differences between blacks and whites were produced by circumstance, not nurture. Just a year earlier, Mill had written about the nature of the racist argument, stating, \"Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of human conduct and character to inherent original natural differences.\"\n\nGalton, who joined the Ethnological Society of London in the early 1860s, was likely influenced by debates at the society on the origin of human races. At that time, its members were arguing about the scientific legitimacy of a polygenic view of mankind\u2014whether or not blacks and other racial groups were actually a distinct species. In 1863, for example, the president of the society, in an address called \"The Negro's Place in Nature,\" argued in favor of a polygenic view, concluding that blacks were a distinct race, were intellectually inferior to whites, and that European civilization was \"not suited to the Negro's requirements or character.\" Polygenic theories were popular on both sides of the Atlantic at this time, driven largely by the efforts of Samuel Morton and the American School of Anthropology.\n\nIn the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Britain's colonial involvement in Africa grew deeper, justified in large part by such anthropological and biological ideas. Galton's prejudices against Africa were on full display as he weighed in on the colonization debate in an essay published in the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1878. He hoped for Africa that \"men of other races than the negro, such as the Chinese coolie,\" would \"emigrate, and, by occupying parts of the continent...introduce a civilisation superior to that which at present exists.\" On the interplay between politics and race on the African continent, Galton suggested, \"The recent attempts by many European nations to utilise Africa for their own purposes gives immediate and practical interest to inquiries that bear on the transplantation of races. They compel us to face the question as to what races should be politically aided to become hereafter the chief occupants of that continent.\" Ultimately, in Galton's mind, the inferiority of Africans predetermined that outcome as he expected that \"it may prove that the Negroes, one and all, will fail as completely under the new conditions as they have failed under the old ones, to submit to the needs of a superior civilisation to their own; in this case their races, numerous and prolific as they are, will in course of time be supplanted and replaced by their betters.\" It is worth considering whether the British sociologist Michael Banton was correct in concluding that \"the imperialist philosophy could ever have taken such a hold upon the nation's mind had it not been for the development of certain anthropological and biological doctrines.\"\n\nGalton was a prolific author, and his writings helped him popularize the study of the betterment of racial groups through eugenics. In his first book-length work, _Hereditary Genius_ , published in 1869, Galton's primary concern was \"whether or no genius be hereditary,\" and claimed \"to be the first to treat the subject in a statistical manner.\" The book received mixed reviews in both the scientific and popular press. Writing in _Nature_ , Alfred Russel Wallace, who, along with Charles Darwin, is jointly credited with uncovering the mechanisms of evolution, wrote that those \"who read it without the care and attention it requires and deserves, will admit that it is ingenious, but declare that the question is incapable of proof.\" The _London Daily News_ embraced the book, writing that \"Galton undertakes to show, and to a large extent undoubtedly succeeds in showing, that genius is equally transmissible, and that ability goes by descent.\" Both the _London Times_ and the _Saturday Review_ were unflattering in their reviews. The _Times_ reviewer wrote, \"Galton is a little too anxious to array all things in the wedding garment of his theory, and will scarcely allow them a stitch of other clothing.\" The _Saturday Review_ 's assessment suggested that Galton \"bestowed immense pains upon the empirical proof of a thesis which from its intrinsic nature can never be proved empirically.\" Galton's attraction to studying questions of heredity was influenced, in large part, by the work of his cousin Charles Darwin. While Galton had accepted Darwinian evolutionary theory, he searched for alternative methods by which evolution occurred. Whereas Darwin theorized that evolution was gradual and continuous, Galton believed it to be abrupt and discontinuous. Some have even speculated that modern theories of heredity, including eugenics, were launched to either challenge or complete Darwin's theory of evolution.\n\nIn a chapter in _Hereditary Genius_ with the title \"The Comparative Worth of Different Races,\" Galton proposed that \"every long-established race has necessarily its peculiar fitness for the conditions under which it has lived.\" It is therefore at the level of racial groups that intelligence will have its most significant impact. \"Among animals as intelligent as man, the most social race is sure to prevail, other qualities being equal,\" suggested Galton. In measuring the \"worth of races,\" Galton made \"use of the law of deviation from an average,\" a law that was both the centerpiece of eugenics and also represented Galton's lasting contribution to the field of mathematical statistics. Only the \"Australian type\" made out worse than the \"African negro,\" the former considered by Galton to be one grade below the residents of the African continent and their descendants.\n\nGalton introduces the reader to \"comparative racial worth\" by comparing \"the negro race with the Anglo-Saxon, with respect to those qualities alone which are capable of producing judges, statesmen, commanders, men of literature and science, poets, artists, and divines.\" While Galton acknowledged \"the negro race is by no means wholly deficient in men...considerably raised above the average of whites\" (citing as proof, for example, Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution), he concluded that \"the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own.\" Galton also cited a statistic suggesting \"the number of negroes of those whom we should call half-witted is very large.\" Recalling his own visit to Africa, Galton remarked that \"the mistakes the negroes made in their own matters, were so childish, stupid, and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species.\" Galton's rhetoric on this subject offers no statistical \"proof\" or data for these assumptions, yet reading his observations about the \"lowest\" or \"highest\" races, one is struck by the language of statistical certainty permeating his writing.\n\nFourteen years later, with the publication of _Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development_ , Galton expanded his hereditary focus to also include physical, social, and mental traits. Although he had been writing about the idea of eugenics for the almost two decades since the publication of his _MacMillan's_ essay, in _Inquiries_ Galton first offered a definition for his burgeoning field of investigation. Early in the text of the book, he introduced eugenics simply as \"the cultivation of race.\" Just below the definition, however, in an extended footnote, Galton notes the Greek origins of the word and shares with the reader his enduring vision for the field, writing that \"we greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word _eugenics_ would sufficiently express the idea.\"\n\nIn _Inquiries_ Galton wrote with conviction about what he believed to be the \"fact\" that \"the very foundation and outcome of the human mind is dependent upon race, and that the qualities of races vary, and therefore that humanity taken as a whole is not fixed by variable, compels us to reconsider what may be the true place and function of man in the order of the world.\" To satisfy that conviction, Galton used the pages of _Inquiries_ to begin to develop a program (that is, of course, eugenics) by which to improve different races of humanity. \"My general object has been to take note of the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and of the great differences in different families and races,\" wrote Galton. He hoped to use this information to investigate the \"practicability of supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable.\" For Galton, his supporters, and many of his peers, eugenics was a utopian method through which to breed better humans. A reviewer in _Science_ noted and endorsed the utopian nature of Galton's proposed method, writing, \"If we want human stock to grow better through voluntary effort, we must undertake to study and improve pre-natal and ancestral influences yet more than we try to better the influences of education.\"\n\nUltimately, however, the language and content of eugenics could be about using the scientific method for advancing and preserving white supremacy. Where _Hereditary Genius_ established a eugenic hierarchy of races, _Inquiries_ offered explanations for why this was so and why it would stay this way. Galton believed that \"so long as the race remains radically the same, the stringent selection of the best specimens to rear and breed from, can never lead to any permanent result.\" Galton likened the struggle to improve a low race through noneugenic means to \"the labour of Sisyphus in rolling his stone uphill; let the effort be relaxed for a moment, and the stone will roll back.\" Instead, the only way to improve a low race was by allowing only \"the few best specimens of that race...to become parents, and not many of their descendants can be allowed to live.\" This chilling passage, the spirit of which was adapted in the 1930s by the Nazis as part of their Final Solution, is the eugenic extreme. Similarly, this new scientific view of race was adopted and perpetuated by Galton's acolytes, by racists, and by white supremacists on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a century.\n\nIt is fairly easy to show through documentary evidence how Galton theorized about racial differences and, more specifically, about what he believed were black and white racial differences. There is more than sufficient evidence illustrating this point. However, even more important than his eugenical thinking about blacks is to recognize that Galton and his eugenic followers fundamentally changed the meaning and study of race and racism. If the historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan is right, and \"Galton changed the study of heredity by changing the meaning of the word 'heredity,'\" then we must also consider how Galton and his eugenicist disciples also changed the study of race by changing the meaning of the word \"race.\" Schwartz Cowan argues that \"heredity,\" prior to Galton and eugenics, was \"a word which had long been poorly, if not vaguely, defined.\" Prior to Galton's writings, words like \"inheritance\" and \"hereditary\" were used to generally describe intergenerational legacies. But according to Cowan, \"the passage from 'inheritance' to 'heredity' meant passing from an extremely flexible definition, one which was so vague as to be of little scientific value, to an extremely concrete definition, one which may have been overly rigid but which was nonetheless quantifiable, explorable and researchable.\"\n\nGalton's writings exerted a similar influence on race, and, as with his impact on the study of heredity, he and a generation of eugenicists redefined the term and its study. If eugenics was, at its core, about quantifying heredity, then through the lens of eugenics, race became the most important quantifiable human trait to study in a hereditarian context. Galton was not alone in believing that the \"survivorship of the fittest\" would occur at the level of race. The term \"race\" itself had long been the subject of debate among the nineteenth century's anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers. Whereas nineteenth-century anthropology failed to offer a lasting scientific vision of racial difference through the theory of polygeny\u2014polygeny posited a divine hierarchy of separate creations, a theory that contradicted the Bible\u2014eugenicists found a way to quantify and reify racial attitudes without undermining or challenging accepted religious mores. Galton's success was in developing mathematical methods to study human diversity in the context of heredity. Galton called eugenics \"the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.\" By pairing heredity and race under the banner of eugenics, Galton was able to redefine how race was employed in a scientific context.\n\nNineteenth-century anthropologists, including most prominently Samuel Morton, based theories of racial distinctiveness on measurable and observable physical traits. Their approach to measuring human difference was typological, under the belief that traits like cranial capacity and skin color were correlated with specific intellectual and behavioral characteristics. Eugenicists took a different approach; they shifted to seeing and measuring race as a reflection of unseen differences they attributed to heredity, an area of study they would help to create in the final decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries. This shift, from the seen to the unseen, which in today's genetic parlance would be from the phenotypic to the genotypic, was the eugenicists' most significant contribution to redefining the meaning of race. By the early twentieth century, as genetics became the field through which to study heredity, eugenicists helped to geneticize the study of human diversity.\n\nRooting human variation in blood or in kinship is a relatively new way to categorize humans. The idea gained strength toward the end of the Middle Ages as anti-Jewish feelings, which were rooted in an antagonism toward Jewish religious beliefs, began the long evolution into anti-Semitism, which rationalized anti-Jewish hatred as the hatred of a people. For example, Marranos, Spanish Jews who had been baptized in the Church, were still considered a threat to Christendom because they could not prove purity of blood to the Inquisition. Despite an outward acceptance of Christ, a Jew would always be a Jew.\n\nDuring the Enlightenment, ideas of this type took root and were more directly applied to explaining the diversity of humankind. The integration of social and cultural notions of personhood into a belief in static human communities came to fruition at this time, driven in part by the experiences with new peoples during colonial exploration, the need to rationalize the inferiority of certain peoples as slavery took hold in a protocapitalist world, and the development of a modern scientific taxonomy that provided a new type of language to assess and explain human and organismal diversity.\n\nThe progenitor of modern taxonomic classification, Swedish botanist and naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, devised his _Systema Naturae_ (1735), in which \"all living forms\" are classified by \"genus\" and \"species.\" Linnaeus defined species as \"fixed and unalterable in their basic organic plan,\" while varieties within the species could be caused by various external factors such as climate or temperature. Linnaeus divided the human species into four groups: _Americanus_ , _Asiaticus_ , _Africanus_ , _and Europeaeus_. And to these groups (he did not refer to them as races) he ascribed both physical and behavioral characteristics. Members of _Americanus_ were \"reddish, choleric, and erect; hair black...wide nostrils...obstinate, merry, free...regulated by customs.\" Those of _Asiaticus_ were \"melancholy, stiff; hair black, dark eyes...severe, haughty, avaricious...ruled by opinions.\" _Africanus_ were \"black, phlegmatic...hair black, frizzled...nose flat; lips tumid; women without shame, they lactate profusely; crafty, indolent, negligent...governed by caprice.\" Finally, those of the _Europeaeus_ category were \"white, sanguine, muscular...eyes blue, gentle...inventive...governed by laws.\"\n\nLinnaean taxonomy was infused with judgments of inferiority and superiority. The idea of a \"Great Chain of Being\"\u2014a vision of the universe that in a hierarchical fashion ranked forms of life from the simplest to the most complex\u2014is reflected in Linnaeus's characterization of human diversity. This Great Chain of Being \"was the conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century,\" according to Arthur Lovejoy, and was accepted \"without question\" by \"many philosophers, most men of science, and, indeed, most educated men.\" The integration of human diversity into the Great Chain also reflected \"the growing influence of a certain type of thinking, which presumed that each species had qualities of behavior or temperament that were innate.\" Linnaeus's own experience with different peoples was limited primarily to reports from others who had spent time in the colonies. The perceptions of these observers, according to anthropologist Audrey Smedley, \"flowed into the scientific establishment and fueled its speculations.\"\n\nOut of this Enlightenment mix of exploration, colonization, science, and slavery emerged a modern notion of race. But this Great Chain lacked a unifying term to connote the innate sense of being (referring to both physical and social traits) in populations of peoples that Linnaeus and others beginning in the fifteenth century were trying to describe, first throughout Europe and eventually to define and rank the peoples on the continents the Europeans colonized. Scholars are in general agreement that etymologically \"race\" was a latecomer to Romance and other Western languages, and that it originated in the Middle Ages as a term used primarily in domestic animal breeding to describe breeding lines or groups of animals bred for similar uses. Yet its use then, as now, remained confused and often contradictory. It could be a term simply to describe a group of people united by common characteristics, or it could be used when classifying different human groups, sometimes even in place of the term \"species.\" It was thus not unusual to see the term describe different things: the white race, the race of Englishmen, the human race, or its use to describe family lineage.\n\nAnd it is from this etymological disorder that the term \"race\" was introduced into the natural sciences in 1749 by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, in _Natural History_. Buffon saw clearly demarcated distinctions between the human races that, he believed, were caused by varying climates. On the one hand, Buffon recognized the unity of mankind as a species, and the ability of humans to thrive while breeding between races. Buffon wrote, \"The Asiatic, the European, and the Negro produce equally with the American. Nothing can be a stronger proof that they belong to the same family, than the facility with which they unite to the common stock.\" And Buffon also believed that while \"the blood is different\" between peoples, \"the germ is the same.\" Thus, despite outward differences in physical type, and even differences in the blood, Buffon believed that the \"germ\" of humanity was ultimately identical. Nevertheless, Buffon's climatological theory of difference was infused with notions of European superiority. In _Natural History_ he wrote, \"As if, by any great revolution, man were forced to abandon those climates which he had invaded, and return to his native country, he would, in the progress of time, resume his original features, his primitive stature, and his natural color.\" To Buffon, this natural state of humanity was derived from the European, a people that \"produced the most handsome and beautiful men\" and represented the \"genuine color of mankind.\"\n\nThe impact of German scientist Johann Blumenbach's racial classifications, developed toward the end of the eighteenth century in his book _On the Natural Variety of Mankind_ , continue to have a significant impact on the idea of race in modern times. Whereas Linnaeus suggested four racial types, Blumenbach offered five: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach's addition, noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, \"radically changed the geometry of human order from a geographically based model without explicit ranking to a double hierarchy of worth oddly based upon perceived beauty and fanning out in two directions from a Caucasian ideal.\" Even though Blumenbach \"stoutly defended the mental and moral unity of all peoples,\" his \"racial geometry\" was imbued with a sense of white superiority. And while racial differences were fast becoming part of the scientific vernacular, prejudice and discrimination based on skin color both preceded and complemented scientists' providing a vocabulary to racial ideology.\n\nGalton had no way to directly measure the \"unseen\" differences he attributed to racial difference. However, his theory of heredity assumed them to be real reflections of the physical and social differences that he claimed he could measure. In _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ Galton wrote that \"we cannot but recognise the vast variety of natural faculty, useful and harmful, in members of the same race, and much more in the human family at large, all of which tend to be transmitted by inheritance.\" Galton's methods of measuring racial difference ultimately differed little from the anthropological and typological approaches that preceded him. After all, the technologies of genetics were still a few decades away when Galton began theorizing on heredity. But what Galton did do was shift thinking about difference itself to a hereditarian worldview. While \"race\" remained a term with a multitude of definitions, Galton and the eugenicists succeeded in simultaneously quantifying the study of race through eugenics\u2014Galton and his colleagues developed statistical methods to measure mental, physical, and social traits that their data showed varied by racial groups\u2014and, paradoxically, using the term \"race\" in a multitude of ways that were often contradictory.\n\nThus, given the term's etymological and scientific history, that the inconsistent use of the term \"race\" is universal in the eugenic literature should not be surprising. In an 1878 article Galton wrote, \"The negro may himself disappear before alien races, just as his predecessors disappeared before him; or the better negro races may prevail and form nations and exclude the rest.\" Galton, of course, contradicts himself. In the first part of his definition he defined the negro as a race, but then wrote about \"the better negro races.\" Are we then to assume that Galton meant that \"race\" can be used to define a whole group as well as its subgroups? Are there better and worse races within a single race? In _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ Galton tries to address these contradictions, what he calls \"our ethnological ignorance,\" noting \"the absence of a criterion to distinguish between races and sub-races...makes it impossible to offer more than a very off-hand estimate of the average variety of races in the different countries of the world.\" Galton suggests that \"on the average at least three different recognised races were to be found in every moderately-sized district on the earth's surface.\" Galton goes on to define races in a surprisingly heterogeneous way, one that seemingly contradicts the absolute terms in which he spoke about blacks and Africans more generally. For example, on the diversity of races in Africa he writes \"that an invasion of Bushmen drove the Negroes to the hills....Then an invasion of a tribe of Bantu race supplanted the Bushmen, and the Bantus, after endless struggles among themselves, were...pushed aside...by the incoming Namaquas, who themselves are a mixed race. This is merely a sample of Africa, everywhere there are evidences of changing races.\" But just as surely as Galton wrote of the diversity of races in Africa, he could write just a few pages later that the industrious \"yellow races of China\" would become a colonizing force in Africa and \"extrude hereafter the coarse and lazy Negro from at least the metaliferous regions of tropical Africa.\" As much as Galton redefined race in a hereditary context, the nature of human diversity precluded him from providing a clear and consistent definition for race itself. Eugenics as a whole suffered from this problem\u2014eugenic literature is rife with multiple definitions and explanations for the nature and meaning of race and how eugenic policy should address these differences.\n\nFor Galton, race improvement was \"so noble in its aim\" that it rose to the level of \"religious obligation.\" By proposing methods for breeding a better race, Galton sought just that. Another of Galton's lasting contributions to the study of race was his proposal to use twins to understand hereditary differences, a research program he began in earnest in 1875. Galton outlined his method for twin studies in _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ in 1883, proposing that twins offer \"means of distinguishing between the effects of tendencies received at birth, and of those that were imposed by the special circumstances of their after lives.\" By studying twins who were \"closely alike in boyhood and youth\" to \"learn whether they subsequently grew unlike, and, if so, what the main causes were,\" and, conversely, to study \"the history of twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood, and learn how far their characters became assimilated under the influence of identical nature,\" Galton hoped to show the primary impact of nature (versus nurture) on humanity.\n**2**\n\n**CHARLES DAVENPORT AND THE BIOLOGY OF BLACKNESS**\n\nIf Francis Galton was the theoretician of eugenics, then Charles Davenport was its engineer and American torchbearer. In the United States, from the turn of the twentieth century until his death at age seventy-seven in 1944, Davenport was both the public and academic face of eugenics. Through his writings, speeches, and indefatigable advocacy on behalf of eugenic doctrine, Davenport established himself as the doyen of the American eugenics movement. Though Davenport lived just long enough to witness his field in decline in the United States (and its horrific successes on the European continent), during his lifetime he oversaw an expansion of eugenic ideas into both social and scientific spheres that are salient still today.\n\nA New Yorker by birth who prided himself in his colonial birthright, Davenport was the last of eleven children. His father, Amzi Davenport, a real estate man, traced his family line in a multivolume genealogy to eleventh-century England but was more recently descended from Congregationalist ministers in both England and New England. Davenport's love of science was imparted by his mother, Jane, so much so that he dedicated his first book to her, writing an inscription that read, \"To the memory of the first and most important of my teachers of natural history\u2014my mother.\" Davenport's passion for science took him to Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in biology in 1892 and afterward became an instructor there. He departed Harvard for the University of Chicago in 1899, taking a position as an assistant professor, where he stayed on until the opening of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island in 1904. Davenport's success in persuading the Carnegie Institution of Washington to endow Cold Spring with ten million dollars as a laboratory for the study of evolution marked what one biographer noted was Davenport's early signs \"of being an energetic organizer.\" This attribute would help Davenport prosper throughout his long career.\n\nDavenport is most often remembered for seeking to quantify the heritability of social and mental traits as they varied by group, and for the way in which he linked questions of heredity with the challenges of immigration. As the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for almost forty years, Davenport built the infrastructure of American eugenics at his beachfront laboratory on the north shore of Long Island. From there he oversaw an expansion in the study of \"the germinal differences that affect not only form and color and details of physical features but also instincts and temperament.\" In a speech in 1920, Davenport warned, \"It is not sufficient that a community or a state should purge itself of the 'inferior strains.' It must guard itself against the immigration into the community of persons carrying bad germ plasm.\"\n\nIn the years before the passage of the anti-immigrant Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which radically limited the entry of legal immigrants into the United States, eugenicists like Davenport and his colleagues Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, and Harry Laughlin stoked anti-immigration fervor by intensely lobbying public and political interests with eugenic rationales for a closed-door policy. American nativism would reach a peak in the 1920s, declining once the doors to most immigrants were firmly shut in the wake of Johnson-Reed. The rise of anti-immigrant fervor in the United States dated back to at least the 1880s, which saw the beginnings of an explosion of immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The challenge to the old order, brought about by these new immigrants, would stoke nativism and anti-immigration fervor for decades to come. In 1882, for example, 1.2 million souls turned up on America's shores, more than 80 percent of whom had begun their journeys in southern or eastern Europe, prompting one nativist to worry that America was allowing \"every nation to pour its pestilential sewage into our reservoir.\"\n\nIt is no coincidence that the rise of eugenics corresponded closely with the social transformations brought about by immigration, both real and perceived, that occurred during these times. By the early years of the twentieth century, the work of eugenicists would offer scientific rationales and solutions to the fears of a white elite that was concerned about its and the nation's decline. In the 1920s, for example, Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History and an ardent eugenicist, lobbied Congress to pass sweeping immigration restrictions. In May of 1924, for example, just a few weeks before the passage of the act, Osborn wrote to Congressman Albert Johnson, cosponsor of Johnson-Reed, congratulating him on the success of the bill in committee, which he believed to be \"one of the most important steps taken in the whole history of our country.\" To Osborn and other supporters, this legislation would spread \"throughout the country appreciation of the sacred duty of every American citizen to maintain the character of our country though elevating the character of its people.\" Osborn had been in contact with Johnson on immigration matters for at least five years prior to the passage of the 1924 act, and his thinking on this matter changed over time. In a December 1919 exchange with nativist and eugenicist Madison Grant, Osborn chastised Grant for his narrow views on immigration, which included quotas by trade and occupation. Osborn suggested instead that \"the men, women, and children whom we desire to admit to this country will be tested by their character, their physical health, their willingness to work and their unqualified loyalty.\" For those who were disloyal to the United States, Osborn proposed immediate deportation. Furthermore, Osborn opposed limiting entrance to select races and proposed instead that eugenics standards could be successfully applied to \"men of whatever race.\" Just a few years later, Osborn's ideas began to take on a nativist tone, urging that a sentinel force be used to prevent undesirables. Osborn wrote to Congressman Johnson in 1922, \"My ideas about the future of America are derived not from reading but from personal observation....I think that there are good and desirable immigrants to be found in every country. But all these countries are now striving to keep the desirable people at home, and are sending the undesirables, especially the Jews, to America. This is why it would pay the United States to have observers at all consulates abroad.\"\n\nThe impact of the push to integrate eugenic theory into American immigration policy by Osborn and others was considerable, and the consequences of this pursuit had measurable damaging effects on both immigrants to the United States and eventually on those who died in the Nazi genocide against the Jews in Europe. Federal immigration restrictions were, as such, buoyed by eugenicist sentiment. Harry Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, appeared before Congress several times in the early 1920s promoting the belief that immigration was foremost a \"biological problem.\" As Davenport's number two at the laboratory, Laughlin fervently promoted the eugenics cause, maintaining, for example, that recent immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were afflicted \"by a high degree of insanity, mental deficiency, and criminality.\" In his testimony before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Laughlin pleaded with the congressmen to restrict immigration so America would be allowed to \"recruit and to develop our racial qualities.\" Laughlin believed that the \"American Race\"\u2014a race of white people from northern and western Europe\u2014was being polluted by a high rate of \"inborn social inadequacy\" from new immigrants. To be sure, eugenics was not the only catalyst behind immigration restriction legislation. Nationalistic fervor, anti-Semitism, and a more general anti-immigration predilection all combined to advance the restrictive legislation. But eugenics was, in many ways, the most compelling ideology generating support for the bill, particularly because the anti-immigrant prejudices of many in Congress were consistent with eugenic pronouncements on the subject. Science has been a source of tremendous authority in twentieth-century American social and political thought. Scientific claims were used by activists to either bolster or discredit reform efforts. Eugenicists worked hard to capitalize on the rhetorical power of science and its authority in their claims about immigrants. Harry Laughlin, for example, during his congressional testimony in 1923, backed his eugenical vision with what he called scientific facts and criticized attacks on his work as being biased \"because its conclusions are displeasing.\"\n\nDavenport was involved in lobbying on behalf of immigration restriction. In correspondence with Congressman Johnson, cosponsor of the 1924 immigration act, Davenport paid careful attention to the impact of the Johnson-Reed Act on black immigrants from other parts of the Americas. \"Could you tell me in a word,\" Davenport wrote, \"whether there is some treaty requirement that makes it necessary to admit Negro immigrants from the West Indies, Brazil and other parts of the Americas....I believe you will recognize the undesirability of admitting thousands of alien Negroes from any source.\" Johnson replied, \"To date, Negroes have been admitted because of the wording of the Naturalization Act which admits to naturalization free white persons and African Negroes.\"\n\nThe relationship between eugenics, race, and immigration in the 1920s was complex, and scholars have examined how the Johnson-Reed Act, in addition to effectively closing America's immigration doors, also played a role in reconceptualizing racial categories. This redrawing differentiated and ranked Europeans based on their \"desirability.\" Non-European immigrants, including Japanese, Chinese, and Mexicans, were considered unassimilable into American society. Some scholars have suggested that following the passage of Johnson-Reed, the decrease in European immigrants post-1924, along with the migrations of African Americans from the Deep South to the upper south, north, and west, forced black-white racial issues to the forefront.\n\nWhile eugenicists post-1924 did systematically pay more attention to black-white differences, the idea that the Johnson-Reed Act produced a new racial binary between black and white both overstates the racialized status of white ethnics and fails to acknowledge the longer history and power of the black-white racial binary throughout American history. A new racial alchemy certainly developed during the twentieth century\u2014influenced to varying degrees by social, cultural, political, and economic changes\u2014but this binary was not novel to the twentieth century, nor did it take on a radical new form post-1924. Indeed, evidence from legal history shows that the black-white binary was legally maintained long before the passage of Johnson-Reed, and even long before the consolidation of segregation through passage of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s. An 1851 ruling in Alabama, for example, defined an individual as black \"as long as one of his or her great-grandparents was a 'Negro.'\" The \"Redemption\" of the South in the late 1870s and 1880s marked a postemancipation transition to reducing the rights of black citizens. Following the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, the nation abandoned the attempt to guarantee freedmen and -women their civil rights and relinquished control of the political infrastructure to white southerners. The Jim Crow laws of the 1890s legally consolidated the disenfranchisement of African Americans. Furthermore, evidence from the Commonwealth of Virginia shows how eugenics was put in service of the black-white divide as early as 1900, and continued in practice through at least the 1950s.\n\nIn the second decade of the twentieth century much of Davenport's research in this area suggested a scientific curiosity about the nature of human diversity, albeit driven by a desire to flesh out these differences in a biological context. But beginning in the latter part of that decade there was a fundamental shift toward asking social questions about human difference, and, as he did in the context of debates about national origin and immigration, Davenport also came to these research questions with the hope of influencing national and regional political debates. Maybe this change would occur in Davenport because the scientific question concerning the genetic nature of skin color would be satisfactorily answered for the eugenicists, and Davenport and others could instead focus on the policy implications of their studies. Or, maybe, as concern diminished in the wake of Johnson-Reed about the eugenic impact of white ethnics on American society, Davenport and others could dedicate more of their resources to the black-white racial binary.\n\nEither way, Davenport's fascination with black-white differences appeared early in his writings, and throughout his long career he struggled with the nature of human variation in a biological context. An undated address titled \"A Biologist's View of the Negro Problem,\" probably delivered sometime in the second or third decade of the twentieth century, confirms Davenport's social prejudices toward blacks in his application of eugenic doctrine to racial difference. \"For the present in North Carolina, I am informed these advantages are designed for white persons only,\" Davenport wrote referring to eugenics, \"but for the sake of the progress of society, that socially inadequate persons with darker skin also shall be segregated and kept in happiness but kept from reproducing their kind.\" \"Pity the people that has to depend on laborers, operators, and domestics upon the feebleminded!\" he lamented. Finally, he concluded that \"as the worst grade is eliminated and a higher grade takes their place at the bottom of the social scale, we shall have our unskilled labor and housekeep service performed by persons who are able to give better service....Thus, then, by eliminating the undesirable and socially inadequate strains without rigard [ _sic_ ] to color the state may hope to rise an efficiency, morality, and the happiness of the whole people.\"\n\nBut Davenport's views of blacks and race went far beyond this straightforward application of eugenic doctrine to segregation. From early in his career, Davenport's attitudes toward black Americans were much more than conformity to the racism of the times; indeed, a significant portion of his eugenic research program would examine black-white differences. As early as 1906, Davenport was considering the nature of these differences, particularly in the context of offspring between whites and blacks, and between those whom he repeatedly refers to as mulattoes. In a November 1906 letter written to Ale\u0161 Hrdli\u010dka, the first curator of physical anthropology at the United States National Museum (which became the Smithsonian), Davenport sought \"information concerning the offspring of two mulattoes.\" He was interested in both the skin color produced by this mating but also wanted to know if mulattoes were fertile and if their children were \"vigorous.\" Hrdli\u010dka's response seems to have whetted Davenport's appetite for research in the area. \"The question of mixed-blood of whites and Negroes and of their progeny,\" Hrdli\u010dka wrote, \"still awaits scientific investigation.\" Throughout his long career Davenport would repeatedly revisit this line of inquiry.\n\nDavenport's first known published effort to explore the issue of black-white differences came in 1910 in two articles that appeared in the _American Naturalist_. Cowritten with his wife, Gertrude, a former graduate student in zoology, \"Heredity of Skin Pigmentation in Man\" sought to \"provide a more extended, less biased treatment\" of \"the phenomena of inheritance of human skin color.\" The essay is written, save one short passage, as a dispassionate and objective exploration of this research problem. It is heavy on data, with numerous figures, and concludes that \"skin color in negro X white crosses is not a typical 'blend' as conceived by those who oppose the modern direction of research in heredity, but that...the original grades of heavy and slight melanogenesis segregate in the germ cells.\" The Davenports' conclusion that skin color was a Mendelian trait that segregated was part of an effort by eugenicists and geneticists to lay claim to unanswered questions about the nature of human heredity. Historian of science William Provine suggests that as Mendelians helped uncover mechanisms of heredity through plant and animal crosses, they believed that the laws of inheritance could also be studied through their experimental work, including \"an objective appraisal of race mixture in humans.\" The Davenports' study was the first serious effort in this area by Mendelians.\n\nThere are three pieces of evidence, however, that suggest that the Davenports' interest in this research problem was also motivated by their social views, by the racial mores of the times, and, ultimately, by an intent to further the development of the modern science of race and racial difference. First, by \"showing\" that skin color was a Mendelian phenomenon, the Davenports and other eugenicists and racists biologized race in a modern genetic context. Their paper is one of the earliest examples of a racial characteristic coming under the scrutiny of genetics research and, as such, was a direct intellectual descendant of Galton's research program concerned with redefining race in a hereditary and biological context. If skin color followed Mendel's laws, then, as Davenport would argue in future papers, other traits associated with race must also be genetically heritable. Furthermore, in making a case for Mendelian segregation, Davenport also provided fodder for racial segregation. The Davenports' evidence that blacks who were light skinned would have offspring that \"will show the various intermediate grades due to diverse combinations of the black and white units\" confirmed racist beliefs (backed up by biological laws) about the indivisibility of blackness. Genetics thus supported the rationale behind segregation and antimiscegenation laws. Eugenicists Paul Popenoe and Rosewell Hill Johnson wrote in support of antimiscegenation laws in their seminal text _Applied Eugenics_ , calling these laws \"desirable.\" The authors worried that the \"disharmonies\" produced by interracial matings would produce offspring that \"will usually be inferior to those resulting from a better-assorted mating.\" In correspondence four years before the publication of _Applied Eugenics_ , Davenport wrote to Popenoe highlighting his findings that skin color was a Mendelian trait.\n\nSecond, the data analyzed by the Davenports was provided by H. E. Jordan, a noted eugenicist and racist and professor of histology and embryology at the University of Virginia. In his research Jordan addressed \"the eugenic aspect of the Negro question\" and suggested that the \"pure Negro\" was inferior to the mulatto because of mulattoes' white blood. He determined to solve \"our Negro problem\" by \"conserving the present mulatto stock and employing it as a leaven in lifting the colored race to a higher level of innate mental and moral capacity.\" The introduction of white blood would (somehow) predispose these offspring to \"know their place.\"\n\nDavenport and Jordan corresponded for nearly ten years, from 1906 through 1914, on a variety of eugenic topics, including their work on what Jordan repeatedly referred to as \"the study of the Negro problem.\" In a July 1913 letter to Davenport, Jordan describes the receipt of a Phelps Stokes University of Virginia fellowship to study this \"problem\" and seeks Davenport's cooperation in this area of work. In an August 1913 letter, Davenport agrees, writing that it \"would be a fine thing if we could demonstrate the heredity of such matters as serve to differentiate the two races; such as the alleged difference to resistance to cancer; to tuberculosis...to educability; to sex control. Then there might be something definite to say about the consequences of miscegenation.\"\n\nThe Davenports never made their own explicit claims in the _American Naturalist_ paper about the relationship between the social and physical traits of those under study. They instead let Professor Jordan express those connections. In the article the Davenports introduced Jordan's observations and data, writing, \"We may now consider the pedigrees of skin color collected by Dr. Jordan.\" Quoting Jordan, they described the \"pedigrees\" of his study subjects: \"One man is a minister, one principal of the colored school, one a thriving merchant, and one a barber, and all seem considerably above the grade of morality and intelligence of the ordinary stupid and irresponsible Negro.\" In private correspondence a year later, Jordan proposed to Davenport a study of \"the relative mental capacity of Negro, mulatto and white school children,\" asking him, \"Don't you think this is a very important field of work?\" In his reply Davenport concurred, and he would go on to address this question nearly fifteen years later in _Race Crossing in Jamaica_. The Davenports concluded their discussion of Jordan's data and deductions by telling the reader that \"those who know Dr. Jordan will appreciate the better the great weight to be given his conclusion.\" The Davenports, after all, had to have been aware of Jordan's position on the nature of mulattoes and of his pioneering work bridging the worlds of eugenics, science, and racism. Trading on Jordan's reputation and expertise in matters of race, science, and society bolstered the Davenports' own credentials in the scientific study of black-white differences. The _American Naturalist_ paper was one of the first papers published in the twentieth century conflating science and sociology in the study of race.\n\nThird, and finally, Davenport published widely on the nature of black and white mating throughout his long career. Davenport followed his initial foray into the study of race with the publication of his first book on the subject, _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_ , published in 1913 by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The study, funded by E. H. Harriman, who several years earlier had endowed the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, was conducted in Jamaica and Bermuda. Davenport's conclusions were nearly identical to his earlier work in this area, though he did pay more careful attention to several of the issues mentioned in the _American Naturalist_ essay, including \"passing\" for white by individuals with \"a certain dilution with white blood\" and the \"matter of great social moment\" of \"the possibility of a reversion in the offspring of a white-skinned descendant of a negro to the brown skin color.\"\n\nIn a 1917 essay published in the _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ titled \"The Effects of Race Intermingling,\" Davenport again addressed the challenges of studying race, and also articulated policies to deal with America's racial diversity. Davenport's definition of race is especially worth noting, for it was, like Galton's, both confusing and inconsistent. Davenport offered what he called a modern geneticists' definition of race\u2014that is, \"a more or less pure bred 'group' of individuals that differs from other groups by at least one character, or, strictly, a genetically connected group whose germ plasm is characterized by a difference, in one or more genes, from the other groups.\" Davenport's example suggests that every small group of individuals who shared similar traits was its own race. He cites \"the blue-eyed Scotchman\" who belongs to a \"different race from some of the dark Scotch.\" (Despite this distinction, Davenport refers to the race of Scotch just a page later, prompting the reader to consider whether he is now conflating the blue-eyed and the dark Scotch or is still maintaining them as distinct groups.) Davenport even goes as far as suggesting that \"as the term is employed by geneticists,\" racial groups \"may be said to belong to different elementary species.\" This definition, if applied willy-nilly, as its spirit suggests, would make it impossible to quantify difference between any group. The consequences of this approach highlight Davenport's inability to use the race concept consistently and with discrete meaning. Davenport's own studies of the heredity of skin color that recognized that traits were not fixed in a race contradicted such assertions.\n\n\"The Effects of Race Intermingling\" also highlighted what Davenport believed to be the greatest danger to the sanctity of races\u2014miscegenation. In Davenport's view the offspring of such relations would, \"despite the great capacity that the body has for self adjustment,\" fail to \"overcome the bad hereditary combinations.\" Davenport believed that the hybridization of races was a threat to the social and political fabric of America, so much so that Davenport worried it would weaken the nation. Only through a program that restricted immigration, promoted \"selective elimination,\" and sponsored \"eugenical ideals\" (i.e., acknowledging that \"miscegenation commonly spells disharmony\") would \"our nation take front rank in culture among the nations of ancient and modern times.\"\n\nInto the 1920s Davenport continued to struggle with a \"scientific\" definition of race. In a 1921 lecture he affirmed the role that scientists would play in developing this definition, writing that the \"larger popular interest in races and racial traits now more than ever before\" necessitated \"a reconsideration of the idea of race and the definition of particular races.\" In that same speech Davenport illustrated the eugenic consequences of what he referred to as \"hybridization between a dominant and a subordinate race\" and, as such, offered scientific legitimacy to the development of antimiscegenation laws that were, in the 1920s, being passed by southern legislatures. By 1929, when Davenport cowrote _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ , his opus on race and genetics, his research had confirmed for him what he had been moving toward for almost twenty years, that there existed \"fundamental differences in mental capacity between...Negroes and Europeans.\"\n\nIn the Jim Crow era there were manifold ways of enforcing America's racial customs, and the diffusion of eugenic thought into laws across the American South was complemented by the dissemination of eugenic ideas into extralegal racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. It was discovered in 1923, for example, that the historian and eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard was advising the Ku Klux Klan on matters of race. Stoddard's bile-filled popularization of eugenic rhetoric, _The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy_ , argued that the colored peoples of the world\u2014yellow, brown, and black\u2014were on the verge of overwhelming white supremacy through rapid population growth, the demise of colonialism, and poor white breeding practices. Stoddard reserved special antipathy for the black peoples of the world, writing that at \"first glance we see that, in the negro, we are in the presence of a being differing profoundly not merely from the white man but also from those human types which we discovered in our surveys of the brown and yellow worlds. The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind.\" Not only were blacks distinct from other nonwhite groups, they also had \"no historic pasts. Never having evolved civilizations of their own, they are practically devoid of that accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and experiences which render Asiatics so impenetrable and so hostile to white influences....The negro, on the contrary, has contributed virtually nothing. Left to himself, he remained a savage, and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed their ideas and altered his blood.\" Finally, Stoddard's antimiscegenation rhetoric asserted that \"crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal.\"\n\nIn January 1923 Stoddard was exposed by the magazine _Hearst's International_ to have been offering advice to, and been a member of, the Ku Klux Klan. The article included reprints of letters confirming Stoddard's relationship with the Klan. In addition, the _Hearst'_ s article reprinted a letter imploring members of the Klan to read Stoddard's book: \"Any white man that reads this book will have the fear of God put into him over the race question. Every Klansman should read it, and be able to quote the high spot.\" In a letter to Henry Osborn soon after the article's publication, Stoddard described his disdain at \"the radical-Jew outfit\" who \"has determined to 'get me' and discredit me if possible.\" \"Through the theft of some papers from the correspondence files of 'The Searchlight,' the organ of the KKK,\" Stoddard continued, \"they have discovered that I have been advising the leaders of that organization on racial and radical matters.\"\n\nWhile Davenport never showed direct support for racist organizations like the KKK, his work confirmed and reinforced what Jim Crow customs had claimed for several decades: that the offspring of interracial relationships always resulted in children who were members of \"the subordinate or inferior race.\" Davenport pointed out that, in the United States, \"thus negro-white crosses are generally called negroes\" and that \"this custom has developed with the aim, more or less conscious, of protecting by this classification the superior or dominant race from legal marriage with the inferior stock\u2014from a dilution of their stronger stock by the weaker traits.\"\n\nA major exhibit and conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City would provide the public with an opportunity to learn firsthand the science of eugenics at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held at the museum in the fall of 1921. The intersection of eugenics and American racism would be on full display at the congress. Eugenicists hoped that the museum event would be a momentous opportunity for the public to learn about their science.\n**3**\n\n**EUGENICS IN THE PUBLIC'S EYE**\n\n\" **I** doubt if there has ever been a moment in the world's history when an international conference on race character and betterment has been more important than the present,\" said Henry Fairfield Osborn, the noted paleontologist and American Museum of Natural History president, in his opening remarks to the Second International Congress of Eugenics. The congress, held at the museum in September of 1921, was a gathering of prominent American and European eugenicists who came together to promote and popularize a eugenical vision of the world. To Osborn and his heredity-minded colleagues, eugenics was a social movement that could have a profound impact upon human populations through the improvement of genetic stock. Said Osborn, \"To know the worst as well as the best in heredity; to preserve and to select the best\u2014these are the most essential forces in the future evolution of human society.\"\n\nCharles Davenport gave one of the keynote speeches at the congress. In it he reinforced the idea that \"not only our physical but also our mental and temperamental characteristics have a hereditary basis.\" Consequently, Davenport hoped that \"the study of racial characters will lead men to a broader vision of the human race and the fact that its fate is controllable.\" The museum event was eugenics in its prime; it was an articulation of racial theories that, during the first third of the twentieth century, impacted far beyond the narrow confines of the academic circles where eugenics was widely celebrated. A strange mix of proceedings characterized the events at the museum, and ideas about eugenics\u2014both its social and its scientific meanings\u2014were on prominent display.\n\nPresentations at the congress were delivered by such rising stars in genetics as Sewell Wright and L. C. Dunn. Although Wright did present at the congress, he never embraced eugenics. His biographer, William Provine, believes that though Wright \"had no theoretic objections to eugenics,\" he \"never published on eugenics\" and \"steered clear of the subject.\" Part of Wright's resistance \"was his belief that human heredity was very complicated and little understood, giving little scientific basis for a eugenics movement at that time.\" Dunn briefly flirted with eugenics in the 1920s but quickly dropped any association with the movement, displeased with its methodology and unnerved by its overtly prejudiced mission.\n\nThomas Hunt Morgan, a father of modern genetics, had been an early participant in the eugenics movement as a member of the Committee on Animal Breeding of the American Genetics Association. Morgan, however, was uncomfortable with the eugenic conception of race, and in correspondence with Charles Davenport, he pointed out that human races share more genes in common than not. In 1915, a full six years before the congress, Morgan officially resigned from the committee, citing \"reckless statements and the unreliability of a good deal that is said\" by eugenicists.\n\nBut the vast majority of those who attended the congress were committed eugenicists who would stay with the movement until its dying days two decades later. Charles Davenport, the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin and president of the Eugenics Education Society of Great Britain, were the two most prominent eugenicist luminaries at the congress. The divide between eugenics and genetics had begun to develop in the previous decade. But eugenicists did make some important advances in the study of human heredity. Alexander Graham Bell, remembered best for inventing the telephone, was at the congress as an exhibitor. At the crossroads of eugenics and genetics, Bell's presentation examined \"the relation between age of fathers at death, age of mothers at death and longevity of the offspring.\" Bell's data was an attempt to examine complex intergenerational traits in a hereditary context. However, it was when eugenicists began making claims about the genetic nature of personality traits, intelligence, and complex social behavior that many geneticists left the movement, realizing, as Thomas Hunt Morgan had six years earlier, that such claims were not based on scientific study but on speculation rooted in social beliefs.\n\nThe museum itself figured prominently in the congress. Not only were its president, several distinguished members of its Board of Trustees, and members of its curatorial staff involved in the planning and execution of the congress, but also many in the museum community were fervent eugenicists who considered the meeting \"the most important scientific meeting ever held in the Museum.\" Osborn persuaded the Board of Trustees, with little opposition, to host the congress. The museum's 1921 _Annual Report_ highlights their institutional position on the congress: \"Inasmuch as the World War left the finest racial stocks in many countries so depleted that there is danger of their extinction, and inasmuch as our own race is threatened with submergence by the influx of other races, it was felt by all present and especially by our foreign guests that the American Museum of Natural History had rendered a signal service in providing for the reception and entertainment of the large number of distinguished men and women who attended the Congress.\"\n\nOpposition to Osborn and the museum's eugenic position didn't arise until two years later, following the publication in 1923 of the third edition of the eugenic tome _The Passing of the Great Race_ , by Madison Grant. Grant, a museum trustee and close friend of Osborn's, raised the ire of another museum trustee, the banker Felix Warburg. Warburg was outraged by both Osborn's laudatory introduction of Grant's book and the anti-Semitism infusing the work. Osborn was a notorious anti-Semite and an active booster of Nazi Germany, once writing to a colleague who had recently resigned from the Galton Society for its increasing anti-Semitism that \"the only way to learn the truth about Germany is to spend a summer there and freely mingle with these wonderful people who have so much to teach us.\" Warburg requested that the Board of Trustees investigate Osborn's anti-Semitism and his work with Grant, and described the ideas contained in _The Passing_ as \"scandalous\" and \"shameful.\" A committee of trustees investigated the matter but decided that Osborn's and Grant's ideas were opinions\u2014not scientific statements\u2014and wrote that \"there was no need for anyone to feel offended.\" Osborn, it should be mentioned, later made an \"enthusiastic\" trip to Nazi Germany. In 1934 Osborn received an honorary degree at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.\n\nThe museum, one of the world's leading institutions for anthropological thought, was heavily entangled in the racial debates of the times. Early in the century, Columbia University professor Franz Boas, a former museum curator who went on to international renown as the world's preeminent anthropologist, had attempted to move the museum away from typological racial thought. Unable to initiate the institutional change he sought, Boas left for Columbia University in 1905. During the ensuing decades the museum remained split between the racists and a growing stable of more progressive anthropologists, until the mid-1920s, when it began to move slowly toward Boasian anthropology.\n\nBoas's position on race was not popular at the second congress. Earlier in 1921, in an essay titled \"The Problem of the American Negro,\" published in the _Yale Review_ , Boas offered a sharp rebuff of the thinking of the eugenicists and white supremacists who gathered at the museum to discuss eugenics. Where eugenicists and racists like Madison Grant believed that \"moral, intellectual and spiritual attributes are as persistent in nature as physical characters and are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation,\" and that races were the units of this intergenerational legacy, Boas countered that \"when we talk about the characteristics of the race as a whole, we are dealing with an abstraction which has no existence in nature.\" Boas believed the idea of race disregarded \"the variability of individuals\" and in doing so neglected \"the differences from the ideal picture in bodily form and make-up among the persons that compose each people.\" Boas was at once arguing against racial typology and hereditary notions of racial difference and also maintained that insights in neither biology nor psychology could offer \"justification for the popular belief in the inferiority of the Negro race.\" In Boas's estimation, racial prejudice was social in nature and was \"founded essentially on the tendency of the human mind to merge the individual in the class to which he belongs, and to ascribe to him all the characteristics of his class.\" Upon the publication of the _Yale Review_ essay, Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrote to Boas expressing his \"hearty and sincere thanks for [the] splendid article.\" White considered the essay \"not only as a genuine scientific treatise of great merit but as a distinct contribution to the problem not of the Negro alone but of the welfare of America.\"\n\nEarly in his career Boas had embraced the biological race concept, although he did so with a bit of an egalitarian streak. In an 1896 lecture called \"The Races of Man,\" Boas acknowledged the then commonly held belief that \"the brain of the Negro does not grow and develop as long as that of the white man. In this he is decidedly at a disadvantage.\" But Boas insisted that \"we must not interpret the fact as meaning that the Negro cannot attain a culture such as the one which we now possess.\" Boas also recognized early on that despite what he believed to be the general superiority of whites to blacks, \"there will be a vast number belonging to both races who will be equal in all aptitudes\" and that therefore \"we must take care not to overestimate the amount of this difference.\" Just eight years later Boas, invited by W. E. B Du Bois to deliver the commencement address at Atlanta University, offered a changed vision of race difference to the graduates: \"To those who stoutly maintain a material inferiority of the Negro race and who would dampen your ardor by their claims, you may confidently reply that the burden of proof rests with them, that the past history of your race does not sustain their statement, but rather gives you encouragement....That there may be slightly different hereditary traits seems plausible, but it is entirely arbitrary to assume that those of the Negro, because perhaps slightly different, must be of an inferior type.\" Boas spent his career developing alternative theories to the dominant racial discourse, \"lines of thought\" that anthropologist Lee Baker calls \"inimical to the consensus about racial inferiority held by people in the mass media, the academy, southern state legislatures, and each branch of the federal government.\"\n\nAs much as Boas and his antiracist contemporaries sought to utilize science as a force for altering the racialized status quo, racial thinking in the early 1920s remained firmly dominated by eugenics and other variants of racist thought. The proceedings at the second congress at the American Museum of Natural History were an example of this continued dominance in American scientific and social thought. The public's access to this thinking was through a temporary eugenics exhibition held in conjunction with the congress. The exhibit, which ran from September 22 through October 22, 1921, drew between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors, according to museum estimates, and took up space on two museum floors. In the Hall of the Age of Man, where the \"principle meetings of the Congress were held,\" the exhibit focused mainly on \"early man and his culture.\" The design of this segment of the exhibit was simple\u2014it integrated well with the museum's overall approach to natural history and seemed to try hard not to offend noneugenically minded visitors to the congress. The permanent collection on display in the hall included anthropoid skulls and heads. For the congress these specimens were shown in \"new positions for the purpose of coordinating and emphasizing geological history of the human species.\" The temporary exhibit included displays showing \"Man's Place Among the Primates\" and \"The Most Ancient Human Races.\"\n\nThe first-floor exhibition space, held in both the Darwin and Forestry halls, was quite different. There the tools and data of eugenics were on display. The exhibit, as described by attendee Harry Laughlin, \"comprised mainly embryological and racial casts and models, photographs, pedigree charts and tables, biological family histories and collective biographies...maps and analytical tables demonstrating racial vicissitudes, anthropometric instruments, apparatus for mental measurements, and books and scientific reprints on eugenical and genetical subjects.\" Eighteen thematically organized booths were filled with 131 exhibits. The attendees were \"college and university professors, investigators in scientific institutions, physicians and field workers in institutions for the socially inadequate, statisticians and research departments of the great life insurance companies, scholars and authors of independent means....\" Indeed, they were a distinguished group.\n\nExamples of the booths' topics were \"Eugenical Organization,\" \"Human Heredity,\" \"Anthropometry,\" and \"Mental Testing, Psychiatry.\" One booth, designated \"Genetics and Heredity,\" sought to secure genetics at the center of eugenic theory, speaking of it as \"an important foundation factor in eugenics or the improvement of the human race through a knowledge of heredity and its application to selection and fecundity.\"\n\nRace was a theme in all the booths. Two separate booths on the \"Races of Man\"\u2014booths dealing specifically with race as a black-white issue\u2014were prominent in the conference exhibition. One \"race\" booth explored \"the history of the origin and development of races and the analysis of the...determination of the hereditary nature of specific traits.\" The other \"race\" booth focused on the \"elementary qualities\" of races and their role in human progress. Other booths touched on black-white racial dynamics. Dr. Thomas Garth of the University of Texas, Austin, presented his research under the title \"Curves Showing Racial Differences in Mental Fatigue.\" Garth's research showed that black students fatigued more quickly when working on mental tasks as compared with whites.\n\nAnother University of Texas at Austin faculty, the zoologist Theophilus S. Painter, presented an exhibit called \"The Chromosomes of Man.\" Painter, one of the world's leading geneticists at the time and a pioneer in _Drosophila_ studies, exhibited pictures of chromosomes of a white and of a black man alongside each other so as to show that they were \"alike in general form and in number.\" This photographic display, however, intended something different; it was presented to illustrate a subtle, if not significant, difference between black and white genes. These genetic differences were further highlighted in the presentation by Dr. A. H. Schultz of the Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution of Washington. Dr. Schultz's exhibit, \"Comparison of White and Negro Fetuses,\" examined the \"racial differences during prenatal development of man.\" Measuring the alleged differences in fetal development between the races, according to Schultz, could visually show just how different blacks were from whites. In the exhibit, finger, leg, thigh, and arm shape and length were all different between the two fetuses. The brain was smaller and the face larger in the black fetuses.\n\nOne of the congress's headliners, American Museum trustee Madison Grant, was the vanguard of early twentieth-century racial science. His books sold widely, and his influence was felt beyond the confines of academic eugenics. Author of _The Passing of the Great Race_ \u2014one of the most infamous eugenic texts of the era\u2014was a successful corporate lawyer who dabbled in zoology and anthropology and held positions in these fields, including time spent as the head of the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx Zoo. Grant's work as a naturalist propelled him to the forefront of the American conservation movement. He was one of the founders of the Save the Redwoods League in California and successfully lobbied the government to make Mount McKinley into a national park. Grant was also head of the overtly anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic Immigration Restriction League (later renamed the Eugenics Immigration League) and a member of the Galton Society and the Committee on Eugenics. Grant believed his work in conservation and eugenics to be closely related; both were, he wrote in a letter to Osborn, \"attempts to save as much as possible of the old America.\"\n\nAt the second congress, _The Passing of the Great Race_ was on display as Exhibit 51\u2014\"the principal feature of this exhibit consisted of enlarged copies of the several maps which appeared in the exhibitors book.\" Grant's work, now known for the influence it would have on Nazi ideology, \"enjoyed considerable vogue in the nineteen-twenties.\" It is not hard to see why the Nazis embraced Grant's work. _The Passing_ argued that the successes and failures of the civilizations of Europe could be correlated to the amount of a nation's Nordic \"blood.\" Grant surmised that both Europe and America were facing imminent demise because their Nordic bloodlines were fast becoming contaminated by the genetic stock of inferior races. In _The Passing_ Grant noted, surely to Hitler's later delight, that \"only in a few cases, notably in Sweden and Germany, does any large section of the population possess anything analogous to true race consciousness.\"\n\nGrant extended his opprobrium to the \"darker races\" of man. It is in these passages of _The Passing_ where the unmistakable rankness of racial theory grounded in emerging eugenic ideas about the biology of race difference can be found. To Grant and his eugenically minded colleagues, it was non-Nordic racial groups in Europe who presented the most immediate threat. Nevertheless, the fear of diluting the white race with black blood was unmistakable. Grant feared black-white racial amalgamation was creating a \"population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates.\" But the perceived threat from blacks was not as real as the possibility of the amalgamation of blood from white immigrants. After all, black-white miscegenation was already illegal in most states, and culturally proscribed in the rest. Moreover, Grant deemed blacks incapable of threatening the Nordic race, writing, \"Negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they are a stationary species, and that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within. Progress from self-impulse must not be confounded with mimicry or with progress imposed from without by social pressure, or by the slavers' lash.\" Finally, Grant believed that blacks were a \"valuable element\" in European and American societies, worth being preserved as a \"servient race.\" Any attempt at social equality, he concluded, \"will be destructive to themselves and to the whites.\"\n\nTo these pernicious thoughts about blacks Grant applied his eugenic conviction. That is, that \"the great lesson of the science of race is the immutability of somatological or bodily characters, with which is closely associated the immutability of physical predispositions and impulses.\" Grant's race-centered worldview asserted that \"race lies to-day at the base of all the phenomena of modern society.\" This outlook, one that combined a view that accepted race as based in biology, transmitted at the level of the gene, with a belief that racial problems dominate the political and social landscape, was the intellectual force behind eugenics. Its impact on American racial thought was explicit, and its consequences enduring. And its application to black Americans was neither accidental nor indirect. But because he was not a scientist and because his ideas may have been publicly distasteful to some, Grant is often cast as an outsider compared with more \"mainstream\" eugenicists like Charles Davenport or Harry Laughlin. To the contrary, Davenport and Grant were close allies in the movement, both socially and politically. Davenport worked with Grant on anti-immigrant campaigns and Grant was a funder of and a fundraiser for Davenport's work at Cold Spring Harbor, introducing him to the New York City social fundraising circuit, where, historian Elazar Barkan notes, \"bigotry and racism was a popular recreation.\"\n\nIn addition to the exhibition and booth presentations at the congress, 108 papers were presented during the six-day meeting. Presentations were given on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from \"The Effects of Inbreeding on Guinea Pigs,\" presented by Sewell Wright, a leading geneticist, to a paper titled \"Individual and Racial Inheritance of Musical Traits\" by Carl E. Seashore of the National Research Council. Many of the event's papers confirm that eugenics was not just about race in the context of immigration. These presentations, like many of the booth exhibits, highlighted the emerging new language of a genetic racial science, specifically as it would apply to black Americans. And while many of the papers dealt generally with the race concept, almost 10 percent dealt in a direct way with black-white differences.\n\nR. Bennett Bean, a leading anatomist and physical anthropologist at the University of Virginia, who made seeking to quantify black-white differences in physiognomy his life's work, presented a talk titled \"Notes on the Body Form of Man.\" Bean had published widely on the nature of the relationship between the physical and mental inferiority of black Americans for several decades. Trained at Johns Hopkins under the leading anatomist Franklin Mall, Bean quickly established himself as a leading authority of black and white anatomical differences and published widely on the subject. Through a series of papers during the first decade of the twentieth century, Bean argued that black brain structure revealed significant differences between blacks and whites in cognitive ability. Bean believed that these differences made blacks and whites \"fundamentally opposite extremes in evolution.\" _American Medicine_ , a leading medical journal, editorialized in support of Bean's thesis, writing that \"no amount of training will cause that [black] brain to grow into the Anglo-Saxon form,\" and suggested that his studies proved \"the anatomical basis for the complete failure of Negro schools to impart the higher studies.\" In 1909, Franklin Mall, Bean's medical school mentor, sought to verify Bean's measurements of black and white brains, and could find no significant differences between black and white brain structures. \"I have now had considerable experience in the dissection of the Negro and have yet to observe that variations are more common in the Negro than in the white,\" Mall wrote in a rebuttal in the _American Journal of Anatomy_. Still, Bean's ideas about racialized anatomy quickly became the scientific and popular norm, while Mall's work had little impact.\n\nIn \"Notes on the Body Form of Man,\" presented at the second congress, Bean compares stature and sitting height in groups he labeled American whites, Negroes, and Filipinos in an attempt to show a hierarchy of physical differences between races. According to Bean's data and analysis, blacks are consistently \"discernible by reason of the lower index.\" Bean includes a long description of the striking physical differences between blacks and other groups and describes what he believes is \"the true Negro,\" a person having \"a shortened torso and relatively long legs.\" The data presented, however, do not represent this \"true Negro,\" since \"the records are of Africans with a large admixture of European blood.\" It is on this point, at the intersection of physiology and blood, that Bean's typology becomes eugenic in nature and is thus used to suggest the permanence of racial bloodlines.\n\nSeveral other presentations at the congress offered fresh support for a geneticization of the black-white divide. The distinguished anthropologist E. A. Hooton presented a paper titled \"Observations and Queries as to the Effect of Race Mixture on Certain Physical Characteristics.\" Hooton, who spent his entire teaching career at Harvard University and was associated, but never closely affiliated with, the eugenics movement, wrote about the morphological differences between major racial groups and \"observed\" the effects of racial hybridization in crosses between blacks and whites. \"Distribution and Increase of Negroes in the United States,\" by W. F. Willcox, an economics professor at Cornell, and \"The Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,\" by Frederick Hoffman, an actuary for the Prudential Insurance Company of America and author of the racist tract _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro_ , explored the demographic trends of African Americans. Willcox claimed in his essay that while in the South the birth rate for blacks exceeded their death rate, in the North the reverse was true. Thus, the increase in the northern black population was due entirely to immigration. Willcox believed that urbanization was killing America's blacks at a high rate, and that their rate of growth as a population would decline rapidly, to the point that \"20,000,000 should be accepted as the maximum limit of the Negro population of the United States at the end of the century.\" Willcox's data and conclusions suggested, as did Hoffman's earlier conclusions in _Race Traits and Tendencies_ , that blacks as a group were deteriorating, or as Hoffman put it, \"The colored race was on a downward grade,\" leading toward \"extinction,\" a conclusion the distinguished sociologist and leader W. E. B. Du Bois called \"absurd.\" This decline would be attributed, in both Willcox's and Hoffman's work, to biological, and not environmental factors.\n\nIn his speech opening the eugenics congress, Henry Osborn articulated the new scientific language of race and racism. Osborn expressed this emerging ideological consensus on race, saying, \"The reason that these races are so stable and maintain their original character so stoutly is that the most stable form of matter which has thus far been discovered is the germ plasm on which heredity depends.\" Eugenic research throughout the 1920s continued to integrate this idea into its political advocacy, increasingly in the area of black-white difference. The language of science and the language of heredity were integrated into the American zeitgeist to become the intellectual justification behind the pernicious ideology of American racism. In the remainder of the 1920s, with eugenics at its most popular and powerful, the followers of the movement continued the work begun by Francis Galton in the 1860s. Charles Davenport, of course, led the way, helping to lay a foundation for a century of research into black-white differences by eugenicists and geneticists, as well as by other fields drawing on their scientific findings. While Galton laid out the theoretical basis for the relationship between heredity and black-white differences, Davenport developed methodologies to test and measure these differences.\n\nDavenport's connection between his study of black-white differences and his involvement in this issue as a policy maker became only more pronounced during the 1920s. His research into black-white differences in Jamaica, for example, grew into an international research project that, in 1928, was published as _Race Crossing in Jamaica_. The work was funded by Wickliffe Draper, whose interest in racial science would, in the 1930s, grow into his founding of the Pioneer Fund, an organization that still funds racial research today. Davenport and other eugenicists would also continue to research other areas of black-white differences, including a study proposed by the National Research Council to look at the educability of black children as compared with white children by setting up \"identical\" but separate orphanages to test for racial difference.\n\nThe 1920s also saw the beginnings of a comprehensive response to racial science by geneticists, biologists, and anthropologists, as well as by social scientists, who would come to play an increasingly important role in developing research in support of or, alternatively, in challenging the accuracy and assumptions of racial science. At the National Research Council of the National Academies, a series of committees were formed to study race that today provide insight into the evolving race concept and the scientists deeply involved in negotiating its meanings. It is also in these committees that we can see the deepening of eugenicists' interest in the nature of the social and biological differences between blacks and whites, an interest that had been overshadowed by eugenics' attention to immigration and ethnicity.\n**4**\n\n**THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL AND THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RACE**\n\nThe final report of the Joint Commission on Racial Problems capped more than a decade of efforts by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to grapple with the scientific and sociological meanings of race in America. In his final report in 1931, committee chairman and Columbia University psychologist Robert S. Woodworth described a plan to build racial orphanages to study the biological, psychological, and sociological meanings of race in controlled environments. According to the report, this \"comprehensive study of child development in different races would be an important contribution to the study of race differences.\" The orphanages, one white and one black, would provide an \"excellent environment, with opportunities for scientific study, organized to receive a sample of negro children, for example, soon after birth, and to retain them for several years at least.\" Though this study was never funded, it is not coincidental that at the same time the notorious \"Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male\" was in its earliest stages (interestingly, a small study in England in the 1970s found that black and white children raised together in an orphanage did, in fact, have different outcomes in IQ scores\u2014the black children's mean IQ was slightly higher). Both studies assumed significant roles for federally sponsored science and both assumed that traits unique to blacks and whites were worthy of study and expense.\n\nDuring the 1920s the National Research Council convened, in Washington, D.C., a series of investigatory committees to study the biological and social aspects of race difference in the United States and sponsored research to that effect. Beginning with the Committee on Race Characters in 1921 and ending with the Committee on Racial Problems in 1928, four separate National Research Council (NRC) committees brought together prominent geneticists, biologists, eugenicists, anthropologists, psychologists, medical doctors, and others to explore the impact of human difference on the United States' social, political, and economic systems. While the racial groups studied by the NRC changed over the course of the decade (a shift from European ethnics to African Americans), an interest in the way human difference was shaping 1920s America remained strong throughout.\n\nAt the outset of the 1920s, the Committee on Race Characters studied the assimilation of European immigrants into American society. In 1921, Clark Wissler, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a member of the Committee on Race Characters, wrote in urgent support of funding NRC projects in this area \"since the most complex situation confronting our nation today is the assimilation and Americanization of the large and diverse racial groups now present in our population.\" The Committee on Racial Problems focused instead on race as primarily an issue of black-white differences. This evolution, from the study of white ethnics to blacks, from concerns about immigration's impact on the racial character of the United States to concerns over a demographically changing African American population, is unmistakable when examining the NRC committees' records and indicates both the shifting priorities of a changing nation and continued attention to long-standing antiblack prejudices.\n\nThe biological and sociological assumptions about racial difference that drove the work of the NRC race committees during the 1920s were not the only efforts to pathologize black Americans, nor were eugenic and other scientific manifestations of racial science the only components of white supremacist thought. Sociologists and other social scientists also developed nonbiological rationales for the inferiority of African Americans and other racial groups. For example, social scientists claimed the black personality to be damaged, a theory embraced by both sides of the political spectrum. On the one hand, as historian Daryl Michael Scott argues, conservatives utilized findings of a damaged black psychology to \"justify exclusionary policies and to explain the dire conditions under which many black people live.\" On the other hand, liberals \"seeking to manipulate white pity...used damage imagery primarily to justify policies of inclusion and rehabilitation.\"\n\nRacist cultural depictions of African Americans also fueled the belief that they were not fit for citizenship. In the early decades of the twentieth century, literary and cinematic nostalgia for the plantation South helped popularize derogatory images of African Americans. For example, Thomas Dixon's novels, which included the best-selling _The Clansman_ , surely reflected and influenced many whites' views of blacks. _The Clansman_ , later made into D. W. Griffith's 1915 film _Birth of a Nation_ , according to historian Philip Dray, \"combined technical and artistic brilliance with a controversial rendering of Reconstruction that rehashed many of the most enduring and painful Southern myths about black Americans.\" President Woodrow Wilson, who had federalized Jim Crow segregation during his administration, hosted both Dixon and Griffith as guests at the White House to screen the film.\n\nAfrican American intellectuals were prominent among those who responded to the growing chorus of racist thinking and action at this time. This same period saw the formation of civil rights groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (1909) and the National Urban League (1910). African American intellectuals played a prominent role in responding to antiblack attacks. Kelly Miller, dean of Howard University in Washington, D.C., in response to Thomas Dixon's popular antiblack tirade _The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865\u20131900_ , asserted the common humanity of all peoples, writing that \"since civilization is not an attribute of the color of skin, or curl of hair, or curve of lip, there is no necessity for changing such physical peculiarities.\"\n\nThe attention to black-white differences by eugenicists and the consequent changes to ideas about race and black-white differences occurred at a time of considerable upheaval in African American history. A eugenic position on racial matters must be seen in this context. When the historian Rayford Logan wrote in 1957 that the time from the end of the nineteenth century through World War I was \"the nadir\" of race relations in the United States, he was referring to the disenfranchisement of African Americans across the American South, the rise of the Jim Crow system of segregation, an escalation in racial violence against African Americans, including lynching and race riots, and the migrations of more than one million blacks out of the South and into segregated northern cities. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were difficult and changing times for African Americans and for America's racial mores more generally. Writing in 1920, at the end of this period, a frustrated W. E. B. Du Bois lamented that \"instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and human brotherhood America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as the black and brown and yellow peoples are concerned.\" The advent of Jim Crow laws across the American South in the 1890s institutionalized white supremacy, effectively nullifying whatever progress had been made toward racial reconciliation during the era of post\u2013Civil War Reconstruction.\n\nHuge demographic shifts also affected African American communities and their relationship with fellow citizens. In all, from the turn of the century through the beginning of World War II, more than one million African Americans moved out of the Deep South. Historian Nell Painter writes that the movement of blacks from South to North during the early twentieth century represented \"both immigration and freedom\" to African Americans. For those who wanted a life other than Jim Crow's, change brought with it hope, but not always opportunity. And this Great Migration from South to North, from rural to urban, from the Deep South to the upper South, and from farmland to industrial, would come to have an important impact on the nation's racial calculus as formerly disenfranchised southern blacks gained the vote in their new northern homes. These migrations surely forced the federal government to take new notice of the black community and helped lay a foundation for a civil rights movement for African Americans.\n\nThe National Academies took careful note of this demographic shift and other phenomena it believed fell under the rubric of racial research, and it assigned a committee to investigate their impacts on \"interbreeding\" between whites and blacks, the fertility rates of black-white racial crosses, the birth rates and death rates of these crosses, and the variables that might be influencing the results.\n\nTHE COMMITTEES' WORK\n\nThe NRC was an ideal institution for the bold and large-scale studies that would be proposed, and in some cases funded, through its various committees on race. As a division of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the NRC shared in its scientific prestige and benefited from its political muscle. The NRC had its origins in 1916 when the NAS helped coordinate nongovernmental scientific and technical resources with military agencies as the United States prepared for entry into World War I. As early as 1863, the Civil War had \"brought about the organization of the National Academy for the assistance of the Government.\" A May 11, 1919, executive order by President Woodrow Wilson officially incorporated the National Research Council as a division of the NAS. The articles of organization of the NRC state its purpose as follows: \"To promote research in the mathematical, physical and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.\" In addition to its study sections and committees, postdoctoral fellowships and grant funding helped round out the work of the NRC. Between 1919 and 1933 the NRC funded approximately 850 fellows.\n\nThe work of the NRC was underwritten both by government funds and by significant monies from the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, institutions that also funded eugenics and other forms of racial science at the time. As historian Roger Geiger has noted, these relationships underscored the NRC's role as the nexus \"for private, elite authority over American science in the 1920s.\" To this group\u2014a gathering of \"the elite of American science, the heads of the philanthropic world, research directors and corporate leaders of the major research-based firms of the day, and certain key figures from public life\"\u2014the direction of American science under the administration of the NRC was entrusted.\n\nThe importance of philanthropy to eugenics was recognized in the earliest days of the movement. Just after the turn of the century the Harriman estate was the first to fund Charles Davenport's exploits at Cold Spring Harbor. At a 1914 conference sponsored by the Kellogg family, the relationship between philanthropy and eugenics was highlighted. At the conference, Leon J. Cole, a geneticist at the University of Wisconsin, presented a paper with the title \"Biological Eugenics: Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment\" that called for special study of \"what medicine and philanthropy are doing for the race\" and endorsed studying this research problem \"from our knowledge of general biological laws.\" Cole, in whose name an endowed chair lives on at the University of Wisconsin, recognized the importance of philanthropy in furthering the integration of eugenics into the American landscape. And while he understood that \"it might seem odd that philanthropy and medicine should be classed together,\" he believed that they had the following in common: \"The one tends to relieve the want, the other the suffering, and both often to prolong the life of the recipient.\"\n\nThe Carnegie Institution's interest in issues of race and eugenics dated back to the turn of the century. Davenport's first major eugenic project, the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, also known as the Department of Experimental Biology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, received the foundation's financial largesse and institutional support beginning in 1903. In 1913, the Carnegie Institution published Davenport's first book on black-white differences, _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_. Finally, the Carnegie Institution funded the Eugenics Record Office, for which Carnegie provided $474,014 for its operating budget between 1918 and 1939.\n\nAt the turn of the century, knowledge was quickly becoming, like land and capital, an important resource in the American economy. The Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations both backed the development of racial science through what historian Ellen Lagemann has called \"the politics of knowledge.\" Through their ability to \"exercise significant influence on decisions about public problems,\" determining how and what information \"experts would communicate with nonexperts,\" and by controlling \"who could and would gain entrance to the knowledge-producing elites that emerged and proliferated as the United States became a more nationally and bureaucratically organized society,\" in Lagemann's analysis, wealthy foundations became a vehicle to \"define, develop, and distribute knowledge.\"\n\nWhile the foundations benefited many, there were also those who expressed concern about concentrating control of knowledge in the hands of a few powerful groups. Much in the same way that monopolies in the production and distribution of oil and steel were attacked, critics also assailed the construction of \"cultural empires\" in the world of ideas. Still others have suggested that philanthropy has been the \"American equivalent of socialism,\" intending to relieve class tension. In the case of eugenics and the funding of racial science, however, the impetus was less about relieving class and racial tensions than about solidifying them.\n\nIt should come as no surprise then that having played such a significant part in the development of eugenics, these foundations, especially Carnegie, both believed in and sought to preserve white supremacy. The funding of eugenics and other racial scientific initiatives through the NRC was a significant way for foundations to support and bolster this point of view. Beginning in 1917 the Carnegie Corporation provided significant grants toward NRC activities. In August of 1919, the Carnegie Corporation approved a $5 million grant to be a permanent guarantee of income \"for general expenses [that] would make the Council a going concern, and enable it to secure additional contributions.\" That same year the Rockefeller Foundation promised $500,000 for five years for postdoctoral awards funded from the NRC.\n\nThe Division of Anthropology and Psychology, formed in October 1919, undertook all racial research at the NRC during the 1920s. In a description of the NRC's mission, the Division of A&P (as it is referred to in NRC correspondence), was directed to coordinate the research activities at the NRC in related fields, to train students in these fields, to foster research in anthropology and psychology, and to \"act in an advisory capacity on research projects within our fields, when such counsel is requested by duly constituted agencies.\" That racial research took place under the direction of this division rather than the Division of Biology and Agriculture seems meaningful only in the context of the research generated by the two committees: the Division of Biology and Agriculture, organized officially in 1919, grew out of an NRC committee on agriculture, and thus most of its research was focused on agricultural biology. Research in marine biology, as well as a project on radiation biology, also fell under the aegis of the Division of Biology and Agriculture, whereas human biological and sociological research fell under the control of the Committee on A&P.\n\nIt would not be fair to conclude that the racial research projects at the NRC during the 1920s themselves altered the ways in which scientists and the public understood the biology of human difference. Indeed, the committees' work more likely reflected a growing consensus among mainstream scientists that genetics and biology could be used to test prevailing social ideas about difference. However, that this line of work took place under the imprimatur of the National Academies certainly amplified its impact for three reasons: because of the National Academies' status in American science and politics, because the NRC committees funded racial scientific research, and because the NRC became a hothouse for emerging ideas in the area of racial science throughout the decade.\n\nTwo A&P committees focused on the study of race in America during the first half of the 1920s: the Committee on Race Characters and the Committee on Human Migration. In 1923 A. E. Jenks, the chairman of the Committee on Race Characters and a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, wrote to Robert M. Yerkes on Yerkes's acceptance of membership on the committee. Yerkes, a comparative psychologist, is best remembered for his primatology research and for the development of U.S. Army mental tests used \"for the classification of men in order that they may be properly placed in the military service.\" Although the army limited its use of the tests after World War I, this testing was a watershed, opening the door to mass IQ testing in schools and business and shifting the public's perception to one that embraced such testing as an accurate measurement of innate intelligence. The army tests were used in defense of racial segregation and were also cited in support of immigration restriction in the early 1920s.\n\nIn his letter to Yerkes, Jenks identified the \"need for scientific knowledge (about races) for the benefit of the national strength and well-being,\" and believed that his committee was poised to \"make contributions\" toward that end. Jenks offered his a priori assessment of racial difference to Yerkes, admitting that he believed \"the so-called races greatly differ\" in ways that were primarily genetic in origin. Jenks also did not identify specific racial groups in his assessment of group difference. Rather, he was interested, as the committee's funding patterns would later show, in a general understanding of the racial matters of the nation. Jenks outlined six \"measurable matters\" by which races differed: (1) \"physically as breeding animals, due to gametic differences\"; (2) \"physically in susceptibility to certain diseases\"; (3) \"temperamentally, due, perhaps, to differences of balance between the action of the glands of internal secretions\"; (4) \"psychically in pathologic reactions, due originally, perhaps, to unhappy racial experiences\"; (5) \"both physically and psychically in capacities and attitudes...due to heredity, and to geographic, human and cultural environment, etc.\"; and (6) \"in America, psychically in instinctive and often also in deliberate racially-normal reactions to many fundamental phases of characteristic American life, due to such varied things as history, content of education, ideals, etc.\"\n\nWhile Jenks's description of the nature of race difference offered a variety of explanations, ultimately it was biological and genetic reasons that would receive the most attention by the committee. In the foreword to the committee's \"Research Outline\" of 1923, the committee laid out its goal: \"It should be the purpose of racial researchers to arrive at the facts as to the existing race traits, to measure the traits of each race studied so that in due time it may be known what characteristic strengths and weaknesses for America the various races possess.\" Furthermore, the committee acknowledged that until this point, \"though races are exhibited before all eyes, they are not defined scientifically, but almost entirely subjectively....The result is much confusion, disagreement and often bitterness.\"\n\nThe committee outlined six research projects, based primarily on the recommendations of Paul Popenoe, to begin the scientific study of race difference. The proposed studies, \"Study of Normal Race Traits in a Selected Few Races,\" \"Typical Pure-Blood Races for Research,\" \"Other Pure-Blood Groups,\" \"Mixed-Blood Groups,\" \"The Old-Line American Groups,\" \"The Negro,\" and \"The Assembling of Existing Race Data,\" complemented each other in an attempt to examine a range of races from an \"unbiased observation of facts, from the presentation of the facts in unevasive language without exaggeration or argument, and from the inevitable conclusions to be drawn from the facts.\" The proposed studies were organized to examine race traits as distinctly physical, intellectual, moral, and social entities. Because the studies were based on the idea that races shared bloodlines, the methodology suggests that the traits under study were hereditary (through genes) in origin. The committee's report implies as much, stating that \"it is the intention in these studies of the normal race traits to produce model studies in race traits, and also in human heredity.\"\n\nThe studies also reveal a great deal about how race was defined in the early 1920s. Pure-blood races included \"the Mexican race,\" \"the south Italian race,\" the Russian Jewish race,\" and \"the Finnish race,\" while unidentified mixed-blood groups were considered a by-product of racial \"hybridization\" that in America \"is going on in larger and more complex way[s] than elsewhere in the world.\" The project on \"The Negro\" acknowledged only a cursory understanding of individuals grouped under that racial banner. Its proposal, for example, stated that \"no race group is less authentically and commonly understood in America than the Negro.\" Project organizers also expressed interest in studying what it called the three classes of blacks: \"those of pure African descent,\" those who shared \"Negro and general white ancestry\" (\"those commonly known as mulattoes\"), and \"those of accurately ascertained bi-racial parentage\u2014as Negro X Chinese, Negro X Indian, Negro X Swede.\" The distinction made between mulattoes and biracial blacks would suggest that in the early 1920s race and nationality, at least for the time being, were one and the same.\n\nNowhere is eugenics mentioned in these proposals. However, the research clearly followed a eugenic paradigm for racial studies, suggesting that eugenic ideas were, in fact, barely indistinguishable from mainstream studies of race. That so many of the scientists involved in the NRC race committees were themselves eugenicists or displayed eugenic leanings suggests that eugenics was an adjunct to most fields in the natural and social sciences. The work of the NRC race committees, their research proposals, funding patterns, and committee composition support eugenics as much more than just a complement to modern anthropological and biological thought. Indeed, eugenic views of race defined how difference was studied at this time. Evidence from the NRC committees illustrates how the role of eugenics was much more fundamental to the 1920s era of racial studies\u2014including anthropology\u2014than has been previously acknowledged. Other books have limited or overlooked the role of eugenics in the construction of racial thought in the United States. This is due, it seems, to the way scholars have previously defined the eugenical impact on racial studies; that is, as a political program that sought to guide human evolution through reproductive and immigration restrictions rather than as a scientific worldview that helped to define the way in which human difference was viewed, studied, and politicized.\n\nDespite the Committee on Race Characters' far-reaching set of research goals, as of 1923 its projects had received no funding. To address this shortcoming, the NRC established the Committee on the Scientific Problems of Human Migration, with Yerkes as its chair. A small grant of $5,000 from the Russell Sage Foundation helped the committee prepare its work, which was loosely defined as the \"formulation of a research program on problems of immigration.\" Subsequent grants, totaling $145,910, funded the work of the committee through 1928, when it was discharged. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial funded all but $10,000 of the committee's work. Like the Committee on Race Characters, this new NRC committee advocated the importance of a scientific understanding of racial difference, but did so explicitly within the context of race intermixture or racial amalgamation.\n\nThe committee claimed that through vigorous scientific research it could \"check the premature, shortsighted, impressionistic, and dangerous speculations of certain publicists\" on the matter of the biology of race. The targets of such comments were popular writers like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, whose best-selling books gained notoriety during this period for their racist assertions concerning the nature of racial differences. It is interesting that many of the members of the committee were avowed eugenicists, including most prominently Charles Davenport. That Davenport and other eugenicists issued such a strong statement against racist popularizers seems hypocritical, especially given the intellectual and institutional cover eugenicists like Davenport and Henry Osborn gave to men like Stoddard and Grant throughout their careers. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of academics like Davenport and Yerkes to distance themselves from such extremists when it was expedient, especially if it was done to attract foundation funds and federal dollars to what they wanted to be perceived as legitimate scientific research.\n\nThe approach of this committee to the study of the relationship between immigration and race is recorded in fascinating detail in the transcripts of a one-day conference held on the subject of \"racial intermixture\" February 17, 1923. Among the participants were the psychologist Raymond Dodge, eugenicist and biologist Charles Davenport, geneticist Raymond Pearl, psychologist Robert Yerkes, embryologist Frank Lillie, biologist Samuel J. Holmes, and anthropologist Clark Wissler. The composition of the committee, leaning heavily toward the biological and genetic, again illustrates how questions of race under the NRC A&P banner were framed, in large part, in a biological context. Also of importance from this conference was that despite the committee's intended focus on general race questions, most of its discussion concerned black-white differences.\n\nThe three most significant pieces of the committee's discussion are the seeds of what would become Charles Davenport's _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ ; a detailed outline of Raymond Pearl's studies of race in Baltimore; and a proposal to \"carefully prepare and present to the Secretary of Commerce a plan for the alteration and improvement of the tabulation and publication of the fundamental records of births and deaths of this country, to the end that the splendid mass of material which exists and is constantly accruing may be utilized for biological study.\" The group discussed how \"mental, temperamental, and behavior differences in races is particularly important in estimating the effects of race intermixture.\" The committee acknowledged that \"the fundamental problems of race intermixture are not different in principle from those of any other aspect of human inheritance,\" and that \"the entire subject of genetics must be made to contribute its results.\" Interest in black-white race mixture was justified because it was \"the most conspicuous instance of race intermixture in America.\" The committee recognized that despite \"practically no Negro immigration at the present time,\" \"secondary migration\" of African Americans \"within the nation, as from country to town, from South to North, etc.,\" could have an impact on the American racial landscape. One committee member, considering this matter urgent, believed that black and white migration from the rural South to the urban South and North would \"tend to increase race mixture. The more you get the blacks diluted among the whites, the more there will be this crossing going on.\"\n\nOne of the most interesting passages from the conference transcript comes from Charles Davenport, who, in the first decade of the twentieth century, had published several books and papers on the subject of race and went so far as to suggest that \"as the term is employed by geneticists,\" racial groups \"may be said to belong to different elementary species.\" Yet at the 1923 conference meeting, Davenport instead argued that \"pure races do not occur in human beings,\" and even suggested an alternative definition\u2014a segregate group\u2014for some human populations. A segregate group, rather than a racial group, would have experienced \"more out-crossing\" and \"less endogamy,\" which, in turn, makes it a \"less pure race.\" Davenport characterized the populations of central Europe, for example, as largely a segregate group rather than a racial one. And although Davenport did not believe that in the wake of immigration \"races are going to become altogether extinct and that all mankind will become mixed in one homogenous group,\" his ideas of segregate populations seemed to anticipate the emergence of the idea of ethnicity as a category that would gradually supersede race for European immigrants to the United States.\n\nAs far as the biological effects of racial intermixture, Davenport advocated for investigations into physical, temperamental, and mental differences produced by racial amalgamation. He was concerned specifically about segregate groups arising from black and white mixture, noting that \"we see the defects in the mixture of the Negro-white\u2014the offspring often have the push and determination of the white but the intelligence of the Negro; they are dissatisfied with themselves and with the world; they do not have ability to better their conditions.\" At the conference, in order to study these effects, Davenport suggested Jamaica and Bermuda as potential locales with accessible \"records of white-Negro matings.\" Davenport would spend much of the rest of the decade collecting data and developing theories about the nature of black-white interbreeding in his work on race crossing in Jamaica.\n\nRaymond Pearl, the prominent Johns Hopkins School of Public Health biostatistician and geneticist, was a major beneficiary of the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration's generosity. Pearl's studies of what he called \"racial pathology (as indicated in colored and white) from the autopsy and clinical records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital\" were funded by the committee. The committee funded Pearl's study for a year in the amount of $6,000 beginning in July 1923. Seeking to investigate links between the \"nature, degree, and etiology of lesions, weight of organs, clinical history, etc., in relation to race, especially European and American stocks, and the Negro,\" Pearl's research program produced eight papers on three topics related to race pathology: race and alcoholism, race and cancer, and race and tuberculosis.\n\nPearl was an aberration in the eugenics movement: he was one of the first dues-paying members of the Eugenics Research Association, a member of Davenport's inner circle, and his work provided more mainstream \"evidence\" for scientific racism. Yet Pearl sometimes publicly opposed racism, worked with NAACP president Walter White, and, at times, opposed the eugenics movement itself. Among Pearl's papers are two sets of surviving correspondence with White: a friendly exchange in 1933 in which White asked Pearl to serve on a committee studying Harlem Hospital, and a letter to White from Pearl relaying the results of a study he was about to present at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists showing that \"innate fertility\" between blacks and whites \"appears to be identical.\" Pearl's opposition to eugenics was rooted not in its core canon but in what he believed was its sometimes inappropriate scientific claims. Thus, his opposition to eugenics as science could exist alongside his own personal racism and anti-Semitism. Pearl believed that eugenics was a social movement, but believed genetics to be an academic discipline. This would account for Pearl's pressure on the committee to develop better methods to study human diversity.\n\nRankled by the methods and conclusions of some eugenics research as early as 1922, Pearl dismissed Charles Davenport's research on the matter of racial hybridization. In November 1922, Pearl responded to a letter from Yerkes seeking his analysis of a paper published by Davenport in 1917 titled \"The Effects of Race Intermingling.\" Yerkes asked Pearl whether he thought Davenport's conclusion in this paper\u2014that racial hybrids result in \"bad hereditary combinations\"\u2014was accurate. \"I think the statement of Davenport's which you quote,\" countered Pearl, \"actually rests upon very little except _a priori_ reasoning.\" In a follow-up letter, Yerkes notes that he \"had the feeling as I read Davenport's article that he was expressing wishes rather than facts.\" Pearl's very public break with the eugenics movement came in 1927. In an article published in H. L. Mencken's magazine _American Mercury_ , Pearl attacked who he believed to be the scientific charlatans who had filled the study of genetics and human differences with \"emotional appeals to class and race prejudices, solemnly put forth as science, and unfortunately accepted as such by the general public.\" Pearl also bemoaned the propaganda and scientific \"phases\" of the study of human traits as \"almost inextricably confused so that the literature of eugenics has largely become a mingled mess of ill-grounded and uncritical\" study.\n\nYet despite his role as the curmudgeon of the eugenics movement, his sometimes public opposition to the class and racial presumptions of eugenics, and his insistence on improving the methods of eugenic study, Pearl's work would strengthen and further the cause of racial science. In the late 1920s, for example, Pearl published a series of seminal articles in _The Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine_ about pathology and race difference. In those articles on necropsy studies on cancer patients in Baltimore County, Pearl's data shows that cancer rates are higher in whites compared with blacks and that \"the susceptibility to malignancy of the different organ systems of the body is a more diffuse and widely scattered phenomenon in the white race than it is in the colored.\" From this data Pearl concluded that \"malignancy is, in certain respects, a different condition in the white race from what it is in the colored race,\" thus reinforcing the popular notion that black and white biology were fundamentally different. Pearl did not always think this way. Just a year earlier, in 1927, Pearl believed it \"possible that these differences in the biologic and physical environment play a significant part in determining the observed differences in cancer incidence in these two broad racial groups. The main point to be kept in mind for the present is that the evidence so far reviewed permits no final conclusion as to whether the greater susceptibility of the whites than of the colored to cancer finds its origin in inherited racial differences, or in purely environmental differences.\"\n\nHis data on the \"site of primary carcinomas\" show that \"what cancer colored persons have tends to appear primarily either in the alimentary tract or in the reproductive organs, and not in the other organ systems, more constantly and regularly than is the case with white people.\" This led Pearl to a curious conclusion: \"White people are further along on the evolutionary pathway in respect to cancer than the Negro.\" To come to this conclusion Pearl would have had to believe the following: cancers of the alimentary tract and reproductive organs (more prevalent in blacks) were somehow more primitive, and, therefore, the sites of cancers in whites somehow represented an evolutionary advance. In a paper called \"Evolution and Mortality,\" also published in 1928, Pearl compared \"biologically classifiable deaths\" over four years between humans in London, England, and S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, and between reptiles, birds, and mammals at the London Zoological Garden. Here he found confirmation of his cancer-evolutionary hypothesis. Regardless of whether the data showed an increase or a decrease in death rate by organ system between lower and higher order of animals, Pearl concluded that this represented an evolutionary advancement. And he placed this in a racial context by \"showing\" that the causes of death by organ system in men in S\u00e3o Paulo (whom he calls a more primitive population, \"from both a general evolutionary viewpoint and from that of public health and sanitation, than that of England and Wales\") fit nicely between the men of London (\"a high product of human evolution\") and lower order animals.\n\nGiven Pearl's membership on the committee, it should come as no surprise that careful attention to methods was part of the group's work. An important item from the proceedings of the committee was its focus on the need for \"improvement in method, devising and perfecting tools for the solution of the problems\" related to migration and race. In its various proceedings the committee recommended careful attention to investigating methodological issues, primarily those related to deficiencies in the biological and psychological study of race and migration. At the committee's 1923 conference, Pearl spoke of the importance of refining methods of studying race, stating that \"whatever problem we undertake, or the committee undertakes, must be studied either with already existing materials of a statistical character, or else it must be done with materials yet to be collected. It is not easy to get really critical material on these problems.\"\n\nOf the sixteen projects funded by the committee between 1923 and 1926, almost all of them sought to improve the epistemological approach to the study of race. Among the committee's priorities in this area were the consideration of what qualitative characters were needed in the study of physical inheritance, and what race stocks would be \"readily accessible\" for experimentation. Also, the committee hoped to develop methods to better understand \"human inheritance through the study of family strains.\" Attention to psychometric methods also furthered racial studies. Grantees sought to develop an \"effective means of measuring mental, motor, and emotional traits.\" The application of this information to race crossing was considered a priority. Among the studies funded supporting these lines of research were Joseph Peterson's \"Comparative Psychological Study of Negroes and Whites\" (funded between 1924 and 1927) and Carl Brigham's \"Internationalizing or Universalizing Mental Measurements\" (funded between 1923 and 1926). Finally, Clark Wissler's \"Behavior of Physical Traits in Race Intermixture\" (funded between 1923 and 1926) was designed to perfect a technique for the \"study of human physical traits in pure and mixed groups and to measure the physical characteristics of Negroes, Indians, Japanese, Hawaiians, Whites, and crosses.\"\n\nThat committee members sought to develop methodologically sound studies for \"estimating the effects of race intermixture\" in an attempt to distinguish their brand of racial science from years of work by eugenicists in the same area seems a moot point given the committee's makeup; nearly all committee members were eugenicists in some form, and Davenport was the titular head of the movement. But their desire to develop scientifically rigorous methods was more than just political and scientific expedience (though this was certainly part of their calculus). It would seem that committee members were genuinely interested in refining the biological and psychological study of race. We see this in the nature of the studies funded by the committee and the papers published as a result of this research, and we see this in the discussions, correspondence, and reports of the committee. Ultimately, the focus on methodology illustrates the ways in which these NRC committees were part of the scientific reimagination of race differences during this time.\n\nIn addition to shaping debates on race and immigration, the work of these NRC committees on race matters during the 1920s also had a lasting effect on the methods utilized in some disciplines of the social and natural sciences. Raymond Pearl's work, for example, was part of a larger trend in demography that sought to develop a more robust understanding of the changing nature of populations. Additionally, the work of Clark Wissler and other committee members had a marked impact on the field of human intelligence testing. In his final report of the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, Wissler outlined what he considered the many achievements of the committee's research program: \"a series of tests to minimize language handicaps in mental measurements; a special group of tests for rating and analyzing mechanical aptitude; some fundamental pioneering in the analysis of personality...; an attempt to reach the fundamental psycho-neural responses...; an effort to develop an approach to organic differences in peoples through data as to pathology; and an attempt to test out qualitative anthropometric characters as a method in the analysis of mixed races.\"\n\nDuring the second half of the 1920s two new committees took over the mantle of racial research at the NRC\u2014the Committee on the Study of the American Negro and the Committee on Racial Problems. In these new committees, the NRC shifted resources toward what it called the study of the Negro. This should not, however, belie the fact that the work of both the Committee on Race Characters and the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration had already garnered significant NRC resources toward the study of African Americans. The work of these two committees provided the groundwork for some of the most influential work on race during the 1920s and for the work of the subsequent Committee on the Study of the American Negro and the Committee on Racial Problems. Indeed, research focused specifically on the study of African Americans and on race in a black-white context reflected the NRC's ongoing commitment to race.\n**5**\n\n**COLORING RACE DIFFERENCE**\n\n**B** y the middle of the 1920s, the National Research Council's (NRC) race committees had transitioned from the study of white ethnics to the study of black-white differences, resulting in the formation of the Committee on the Study of the American Negro. In the wake of the anti-immigrant Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which closed the door to new immigration, and growing concern over how a demographically changing African American population would impact American society, the NRC felt a need to understand the \"vital statistics of the Negro population.\" Hence, it diverted the focus of its racial research to concentrate on issues related to American blacks. This new committee believed its scope of inquiry should \"extend over all the biological and psychological aspects of the life of the full-blood Negro and of the mixed population.\"\n\nThe genesis of the NRC Committee on the Study of the American Negro seems to have been an October 1925 letter to G. M. Stratton, then the chairman of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology, from Robert Terry, a professor of anatomy at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Terry was a participant in several NRC race-related committees during the 1920s. As a physical anthropologist of some renown, he contributed to the debates on race through what he believed to be a \"problem fundamental to the studies of the colored population of the United States: the physical constitution of the American Negro.\" In his letter, Terry judges that \"there is no more serious work to undertake than the study of the colored races under our government,\" and that \"there will be everlasting regret if the problems of the colored races are not taken up seriously and vigorously now.\" Terry, fearful that miscegenation would somehow deprive researchers of an understanding of the \"colored races,\" hoped that the NRC would initiate research in the areas of \"vital statistics of the Negro population,\" \"the reproductive period in the American Negro woman,\" and the \"study of somatological variation\" among American blacks.\n\nA January 1926 letter to Stratton from A. E. Jenks outlined a genetically minded rationale for shifting resources to the study of black Americans. In his letter, Jenks expressed \"hearty agreement with Dr. Terry's suggestion for study of the Negro.\" Jenks offered three reasons that reflected the continued impact of eugenic views of human difference on America's racial debates: first, he suggested \"there is the general opinion that such persons [African Americans] are less fit than the remainder of the nation\" and that this was a problem unique to America (excepting \"the newer governments in South Africa\"); second, the populations of what he considered both pure and mixed blacks were in sufficient numbers to \"secure the most convincing sets of data\"; and, third, \"while all our so-called racial groups should be studied, the 'Negro' is evidently hereditarily less like the large numbers of white groups than those white groups are like one another, so a comprehensive study of the Negro would probably contribute distinctly toward a knowledge of so-called hereditary race characters more than would an equally comprehensive study of some one white group.\"\n\nYet despite the eugenic influences behind the formation of the committee, the membership of the group reflected a diversity of opinions on matters of race. After all, antiracist and antieugenicist Franz Boas and the racist and eugenicist Charles Davenport were both members of the committee. Committee members also included E. A. Hooton, Ale\u0161 Hrdli\u010dka, T. Wingate Todd, and R. S. Woodworth. Furthermore, the committee sought to complement its work on this subject in the natural sciences with the expertise of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Correspondence from the committee recognized the SSRC's expertise as \"indispensible,\" \"since the biological characteristics of man do not depend solely upon descent but also upon social environment.\" However, despite repeated attempts to nurture a collaboration between the two groups, no formal partnership was successfully developed between the NRC Committee on the Study of the American Negro and the SSRC.\n\nWhile the stated goals of the committee included \"acting as a fact-finding, stimulative, and coordinating agency in the field of Negro research,\" it seems as if it accomplished little during its three-year existence. This failure seems due, in large part, to a \"lack of funds for the prosecution of research.\" Only research that did not require financial support was undertaken by the committee, such as lists of universities and investigators that had research in progress on African Americans; a bibliography on research on African Americans; and the compilation of already existing vital statistics on African Americans.\n\nThe one considerable success of this committee's almost three years of work was the \"Conference on Racial Differences\" held at the National Academy in Washington, D.C., in February of 1928 under the joint auspices of the NRC and the Committee on Problems and Policies of the Social Science Research Council. The conference, \"called to consider the coordination and facilitation of research on problems of racial differences and racial changes,\" focused its efforts on \"the Negro and the Immigrant in relation to whites and stocks of earlier introduction.\" It was a \"who's who\" of the natural and social scientists of the time. Among the twenty-five attendees were distinguished academics including Franz Boas, E. A. Hooten, Fay-Cooper Cole, Raymond Pearl, and Melville Herskovits; eugenicists such as Charles Davenport, Robert Terry, and T. Wingate Todd; and representatives from foundations such as W. W. Alexander from the SSRC, Leonard Outhwaite from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and Graham Taylor Jr. from the Commonwealth Fund.\n\nThe conference was organized as a series of discussions held over a two-day period. Among the topics discussed were methodological challenges to measuring intelligence, disease, pathology, and anatomy among and between racial groups; the scientific meaning, if any, of \"race\" itself; the characteristics of the \"African\" body type; the potential dangers of racial hybridization; the sociological nature of black culture; and the origin of racial attitudes and prejudices. The proceedings were generally cordial, although it is possible that the transcript of the event deadened striking disagreements between participants on a host of subjects. When disagreement did arise, discussion always seemed circumspect and respectful. It was indeed an academic affair. Yet, reading through the proceedings of the conference offers a unique window into how men of science were struggling to understand and shape a common definition of human difference and how, ultimately, this struggle helped to endow the term \"race\" with biological and genetic meaning.\n\nFay-Cooper Cole, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, opened the proceedings with a discussion about the difficulties in studying and defining the term \"race.\" Through his work on Asian Pacific cultures (in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia), Cole was well aware of the methodological and practical challenges of using the term \"race,\" and he shared these frustrations with the scholars gathered at the conference. Given Cole's wariness of the term \"race\" itself, it is interesting that he was chosen to open the proceedings, although no correspondence could be found that indicates that this was intentional one way or the other. Cole was particularly frustrated by two things: the fact that the term \"race\" was \"frequently used in three or four ways in the same article\" and that \"while there is a great deal of confusion in the use of the word, apparently the general public thinks that those of us who are working in this field know what we mean by the term.\" Cole's candidness on this matter underscores the contradictions of even the most vehement proselytizers of the term and the word's biological meaning: that in private discussions among colleagues some scientists could admit to their misgivings about the idea of race but in public, be it in scientific journals or popular print, the meaning of race seemed unambiguous. It is surprising that Charles Davenport, whose public statements were among the most influential in garnering support for a biological and genetic view of race during the second and third decades of the twentieth century, could be circumspect in private about the meaning of human difference.\n\nBoas, the third speaker of the conference, spoke about \"Changes in Immigrants,\" a presentation that drew upon his well-known work in the area and concluded that \"American-born descendants of immigrants differ in type from their foreign-born parents.\" He described his findings that anthropometric measurements such as head form, stature, and facial width, once believed to be fixed by heredity, could instead vary by environment. These findings were revolutionary in anthropology and would come to have a significant impact on racial thinking more generally. By showing that the environment mediated intergenerational difference among immigrants, Boas's work highlighted the importance of environmental factors in determining physical traits and challenged scientific theories about the permanence of racial traits.\n\nBoas argued in his talk that heredity was not solely responsible for an individual's body type or phenotype. Instead, he believed that evidence showed that body type was influenced by both heredity _and_ environment. Boas, also wary of the methodological efficacy of \"race\" (like Fay-Cooper Cole), warned of the shortcomings of using race to study heredity in human populations. Boas reminded his fellow attendees that \"race, as we use the term, is composed of a great many different family lines,\" and that in order to compare \"a race in one environment with the same race in another social or geographical setting we must be certain that the same family lines are represented in both series.\" In other words, \"races\" were not useful to the study of human heredity because racial groups are made up of diverse \"family lines\" or subpopulations. Boas was one of the first scientists to recognize that skin color, despite being the definitive trait for a race, was just one of many traits that defined populations and thus made using racial groups highly problematic in the study of complex patterns of heredity and the relationship between heredity and environment.\n\nBoas also articulated what would soon become recognized among population geneticists as a fatal flaw in applying the race concept to the study of human heredity: that \"family lines in all so-called 'races' may be much more different among themselves than family lines that happen to belong to two different races.\" That Boas understood that populations within so-called races could be more dissimilar than populations between so-called races was an important intellectual jump in the long argument against racial thought, and Boas was among the first of a small group of scientists who began to apply this thinking to race in the 1920s and 1930s. Even as Davenport agreed with the spirit of Boas's misgivings about race, he remained opposed to the specifics of the new approach to human diversity as articulated by Boas. In Davenport's comments to Boas, he worried that the study of heredity was \"even more complicated than he [Boas] has stressed,\" and that \"part of the difficulty, I suppose, lies in the definition of race or type.\" Boas acknowledged his and Davenport's (as well as many of the other conference attendees') shared frustrations with \"race,\" saying that \"we both, I believe, wish to discard the term 'race' and lay stress upon the family lines.\" There is no recorded response by Davenport to this assertion in the conference proceedings.\n\nEven with his reservations about the definition of race, ultimately Davenport believed in the concept, however muddled his approach. The differences between him and Boas, still to this day, generally define the lines along which racial and antiracial thinking persist: population versus typological thinking. The biologist Ernst Mayr frames the differences between the two men in this way: \"All groupings of living organisms (including mankind) are populations that consist of uniquely different individuals....Populations differ from each other not by their essences but only by the mean differences of statistical populations. Population thinking is an entirely different way of thinking from typological or essentialistic thinking.\" Mayr tells us that for typologists, or essentialists, variety \"consisted of a limited number of natural kinds (essences, types), each one forming a class, the components of which are essentially identical, constant, and sharply separated from the components of other such essences.\" Variation by this way of thinking is \"non-essential and accidental.\" That is why a typologist looks at skin color and sees not only, for example, whiteness but also all the traits thought to be associated with that color. When it comes to differences in all species, a typologist does \"not know how to deal with variation. This is particularly conspicuous in his treatment of the human races. For him, whites, blacks, Asians and so forth are types that invariably have certain racial characteristics.\" This is why in one breath Charles Davenport could agree with Boas that the definition of \"race or type\" caused biologists, geneticists, and anthropologists methodological difficulties, but in his next breath Davenport could ruminate on the specific effects racial hybridization would have on resulting generations.\n\nIt is fair to say that Mayr's creation of the antipodes of population versus typological thought had a much more complex and nuanced dynamic within the evolutionary sciences, including population genetics. Discussions about variation dating back to Darwin were central to arguments about evolution, and central to the emergence of the evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s. However, this does not contradict the way fairly fixed ideas about typology undergirded arguments about variation, particularly in humans, within the biological sciences during the first three decades of the twentieth century. It wasn't really until Theodosius Dobzhansky's work on the evolutionary synthesis that ideas about variation in human populations would become more integrated into a population genetics worldview.\n\nDavenport's absolute adherence to typology without an understanding or application of population genetics to his work was quickly making him obsolete as a geneticist (although he managed to retain prominence as a eugenicist and some distinction as a geneticist into the early 1930s). Around him his field was quickly changing\u2014his failure to completely embrace the chromosomal theory of heredity certainly did not help matters\u2014as eugenical views of human and other organismal diversity were gradually being shown to be obsolete by work in the area of population genetics. During the 1920s geneticists Ronald A. Fisher, Sewell Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane, among others, developed the mathematic and theoretical foundations for the synthesis of Mendelism and Darwinism, and helped make a populationist view of organismal diversity possible.\n\nHowever, even as geneticists and other scientists provided evidence that undermined racial typology, there were still those among this new breed who held fast to typological views of race. For example, R. A. Fisher's _The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection_ at once provided mathematic models undermining typology _and_ dedicated several chapters in this now classic genetics text to eugenics. Fisher's eugenic sentiments are unambiguous. \"The most obvious requirement for a society capable of making evolutionary progress,\" he wrote in his classic text, \"is that reproduction should be somewhat more active among its more successful, than among its less successful members.\" That Fisher could at once be the genius behind many of the mathematical models of modern population genetics and a eugenicist is in many ways similar to Raymond Pearl's contradictory relationship with eugenics. Fisher was sympathetic to the ideas and worldviews of the eugenicists, he just thought that the methodology underlying their theory was wrong. His daughter and biographer explained Fisher this way: he \"could never let pass what he believed to be wrong reasoning. He was known on other occasions to argue the case, even with someone who produced a correct answer, if the reasoning on which it was based was not sound.\" Likewise, Edward East, the pioneering population biologist whose experimental work showed how Mendelian inheritance \"could account for an almost continuous array of variation,\" also authored the racist tome _Mankind at the Crossroads_. In the chapter \"Racial Prospects and Racial Dangers,\" East wrote in typological terms about the fixity of differences between black and white populations: \"The Negro as a whole is possessed of undesirable transmissible qualities both physical and mental, which seem to justify not only a line but a wide gulf to be fixed permanently between it and the white race.\" According to the geneticist Bentley Glass, \"No one went farther than East in lending his authority to racist and social prejudices.\" While this point is debatable\u2014Davenport, after all, was also a classically trained geneticist who was a product of the same Harvard institute where East taught\u2014East certainly was among the most prominent racists among the generation of geneticists who were helping to develop population genetics.\n\nThe contradictions and tensions between population thinkers and typologists were in evidence at the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" and the conference may be unique as the first forum where these opposing viewpoints were debated and divergent views on race were shared in such an intimate way. What seems so remarkable about the conference is that it seemed, intentionally or not, to set the parameters for the debate about the biological meaning of race for the remainder of the twentieth century. And not just in the simplistic population-versus-typological approach that so dominated the conference. What still seems striking today is that despite almost eighty years of science, the debate has changed so little.\n\nIn addition to Fay-Cooper Cole and Franz Boas, the populationist position was promoted by the anthropologist Melville Herskovits, a Boas acolyte and young assistant professor at Northwestern University, who spoke about \"The Role of Social Selection in the Establishment of Physical Type.\" In describing the emerging opposition to the race concept, Herskovits said that \"the existence of a group of such heterogeneous descent and termed 'Negro' is due to the fact that we have a social definition of the word Negro, and we do not have the same meaning in mind when we use the word as the anthropologist who does when he speaks of the African Negro.\" Herskovits also insisted that the social as well as the biological side of individuals must be recognized and studied. Yet despite Herskovits's place in the populationist camp, his conclusions were somewhat contradictory and illustrate how a populationist thinker could also embrace typological arguments. On the one hand, for example, Herskovits argued in _The American Negro: A Study in Race Crossing_ (published the same year as the conference) that race is a concept used \"with amazing looseness\" and recognized \"how little we are able to define a word that has played such an important role in our political and social life.\" But Herskovits also believed that his data showed that the American Negro was \"a homogeneous population group, more or less consciously consolidating and stabilizing\" due to both legal (antimiscegenation statutes) and social (segregation and racism) pressures. Herskovits did not, however, take the step that a pure typologist would have: he specifically did not regard the American Negro as a new race, no matter that his data showed that the population was homogeneous. Indeed, at the end of _The American Negro_ Herskovits warned that to do so would be fallacious, and that such thinking, \"translated into action in the field of race, too often makes for tragedy.\" Part of Herskovits's limitation was the nature of his methodology\u2014by relying on self-reported genealogies his data could show the emergence of a homogeneous population. By allowing his study subjects to self-identify their race, Herskovits probably hoped to avoid the gross typological observations of some of his colleagues. Yet in doing so he was relying upon the observations and memories of individuals who were still a part of the American system of racialized thinking, even though they themselves could be its worst victims.\n\nOn the other side of the hereditarian spectrum were speakers like Raymond Pearl, whose talk on the \"Incidence of Disease According to Race\" argued that the \"statistical characteristics of disease do have a rather definite correlation with race.\" So too did T. Wingate Todd expound on hereditarianism. Todd, an anatomist at Western Reserve University (later Case Western Reserve), spoke on \"The Search for Specific African Body Features.\" Todd's research, blatantly typological in nature, argued that \"the real distinction between our Whites and our Negroes is, then, in absolute dimensions.\" And even as he used measurements to \"subdivide our Negroes according to their white characteristics,\" he also believed that \"the American Negro is becoming homogeneous.\"\n\nFinally, the psychologist Joseph Peterson presented on \"The Problems and Results of Negro Intelligence.\" Peterson, a psychologist at George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville (now part of Vanderbilt University), was, perhaps, the South's most distinguished psychologist at that time, and he wrote extensively on issues pertaining to racial intelligence. At the time of his death in 1935 Peterson had even risen to become president of the American Psychological Association, the first professor from a southern university to hold that distinction. His 1923 book _The Comparative Abilities of White and Negro Children_ studied over 3,000 white and black children from the South and concluded that white children performed better on intelligence tests. Yet Peterson was hesitant to conclude that such results overtly indicated African American inferiority, and he also questioned the accuracy of the tests, writing that \"work in this line has been premature and untrustworthy; nevertheless many testers have been ready with conclusions.\" Moreover, Peterson was less concerned with this question than with using intelligence testing for what he called better adjustment, which was, in a sense, a \"gentleman's\" way of articulating racism. Hoping to use testing to serve a beneficial social purpose, Peterson sought to use test results mainly for the \"sort of self-control that the sound use of tests of any kind engenders.\" In other words, he believed testing could lead to the \"voluntary regulation of birth rate and elimination by eugenic methods within each race (or national) group of undesirable physical or mental traits, stronger in certain individuals than in others.\"\n\nPeterson's views were not an anomaly in the field of intelligence testing. A 1934 survey of seventy-seven psychologists, thirty education scholars, and twenty-two sociologists and cultural anthropologists on the subject of race and intelligence included as subjects Peterson and other well-known leaders in the field like Charles Davenport (who is oddly classified as a psychologist), Jean Piaget, Carl Seashore, John Dewey, Franz Boas, Fay-Cooper Cole, E. A. Hooton, and Knight Dunlap. The survey found that most of those in the fields of education and psychology believed \"race inferiority possible but not adequately demonstrated,\" whereas most anthropologists and sociologists (65 percent) were \"highly critical of the means used to demonstrate race inferiority and of the results obtained.\"\n\nAt the conference, Peterson raised several questions that would vex the field of IQ studies for much of the twentieth century. Peterson, for example, suggested that \"to determine the intelligence of Negroes is a rather difficult problem\" because \"we do not know exactly...what the Negro race is\" and we \"do not know what intelligence is.\" He proposed, as he did in his books and published articles, that the intelligence testing that had so far been done on black Americans had \"been of a casual nature\": \"Someone happens to find it convenient in his academic position to do some Negro testing and goes out and gives tests that are used for whites. He gets certain data and compares those data of Negroes in one community with the norms of whites, and puts down the difference as a race difference.\" Yet for all his skepticism about the nature of intelligence testing and of racial differences in intelligence, in the end Peterson's perspective would help to shape the racialized IQ debates of the twentieth century. He might have questioned the scientific legitimacy of racial categories and the definition of intelligence, but he still came back to the question, \"Is the great retardation of the Negroes due entirely to lack of opportunity or is it partly at least due to innate deficiencies?\" And it was Peterson's attempted solution to this question that was the most troubling actionable item to come out of the conference.\n\nIn the hope of developing a new methodology that could settle the question of innate differences in group intelligence, Peterson proposed an experiment whereby \"complete control of the group of individuals selected as representatives of the races to be compared, complete control through a long period of years, including their entire school training....If we could get an experiment like that going, and give the children of the compared races essentially the same sort of training throughout, then we should be able to throw some light on the question as to the degree of innateness of any differences found.\" Although there was little discussion of this item at the conference itself, Peterson's proposed racial or IQ orphanage was among the research projects recommended for further study by the group. This project would be picked up by the Committee on Racial Problems, jointly formed in March 1928 by the NRC and SSRC to formally act on the conference's recommendations.\n\nThe conference closed with several proposals for \"research on the scientific problems of race.\" In addition to Peterson's experiment, the conference sought support for a five-year study of comparative race pathology to be carried out by Raymond Pearl; Robert Terry's proposal to utilize cadavers from the nation's medical schools to address the need for anatomical data on race difference; Ale\u0161 Hrdli\u010dka's proposal for a study of the physical anthropology of immigrants; a methodology to study the impact of heredity versus environment \"to be applied to immigrants as well as Negroes\"; a study examining the physical and cultural components of populations in the Americas, Caribbean, and Africa; and a \"proposal for a study of 'race-crossing' in a large city and nearby rural community.\"\n\nHowever, surviving records suggest that the Committee on Racial Problems focused its efforts almost exclusively on Peterson's idea of creating racial orphanages to measure biological and environmental differences between black and white races. This may be partially explained by the fact that Knight Dunlap, chairman of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology, referred one of the proposals from the conference\u2014Raymond Pearl's project \"looking toward a 5-year study of comparative race pathology\"\u2014to the NRC Division of Medical Sciences. The remainder of the proposals were, according to minutes from the committee's meeting on January 12, 1929, tabled, deemed unactionable, or recommended for further study. The final report that the committee issued in April 1931 makes no mention of other projects resulting from the recommendations of the \"Conference on Racial Differences.\"\n\nThe efforts of the committee went solely toward the development of a second conference, May 25, 1930, that would explore the \"feasibility of a plan for studying the comparative development of children of different races in the hope of throwing light on the contributions of heredity and environment in determining racial differences.\" For reasons that remain unclear, Joseph Peterson, who proposed the racial orphanages, was not involved in the Committee on Racial Problems, nor in the 1930 Detroit conference. Instead, representing the Joint Committee on Racial Problems were the neuropsychologist Knight Dunlap, of Johns Hopkins, American Museum of Natural History anthropologist Clark Wissler, Columbia University psychologist R. S. Woodworth, Cornell University psychologist Madison Bentley, and sociologist Robert S. Lynd from the SSRC. That the NRC thought that such a plan could be put into action reflected not only the prevailing racial views of the time but also, to a degree, the Progressive Movement's concern for child welfare and social control. Under the Progressive banner, intervention in family life to protect a child was considered normal and necessary. However, by the 1930s, as the Progressive era gave way to the Great Depression and the New Deal, support for the construction of orphanages, let alone the proposed racial orphanages, was probably hard to come by. The era of orphanages would quickly come to a close with the rise of the New Deal welfare state.\n\nPrior to the Detroit conference both Fay-Cooper Cole and Franz Boas offered their thoughts to Dunlap on the idea of a racial orphanage. Cole was very critical, writing that the \"proposal is very interesting and one which would certainly yield valuable results, but it is not without serious objections.\" Cole worried that the differences of care between white and black institutions could not be controlled for and would result in \"differences in experiences.\" He believed that this was because it would be impossible to \"alter the experiences of the wardens and nurses so that they would react equally to black and white skins.\" Surprisingly, Franz Boas deemed the experiment \"highly desirable.\" He hoped \"the committee in charge of this matter which has been in touch with the Negro problem and knows by personal experience the prospects and difficulties\" would see it through. Boas also had hoped for a \"Negro on this committee.\" In the end, neither of Boas's suggestions seems to have been heeded.\n\nThe proceedings of the Detroit conference explored the methodological challenges of developing an experiment to \"throw light on the influences of heredity and environment in producing the differences actually observed in present-day groups in health, vigor, mental achievements and social adjustments.\" \"Plan A\" called for the development of an institution that would \"receive\" children at birth or in early childhood to provide \"an environment superior of that of the private home.\" In this controlled environment, researchers would be provided with an \"opportunity for intensive study of development.\" \"Plan B\" would see the construction of nursery schools \"with influence brought to bear also upon the homes from which children were received.\" It was hoped that in such a setting, the general environment of the student could be drastically improved, and also allow for \"following development.\" Finally, \"Plan C\" would follow black children placed in \"superior negro foster homes, with special care to secure an adequate control group.\" The group considered the challenges to all three plans, including the barriers to securing subjects; the barriers to securing orphanage staff; and the sampling problems faced by such an experiment. Ultimately, they worried about social and cultural biases, acknowledging that \"a complete control of social and cultural factors would be pretty difficult....A single accident, such as the introduction of cultural bias, might do a great deal to vitiate the experiment.\" In the end, the idea for such an institution died quietly\u2014the SSRC would soon after drop the matter and withdraw itself from the joint committee. The NRC initially appointed a committee to follow up on the idea of a racial orphanage, but that committee never took action on the idea.\n\nEven though the racial orphanage experiment never moved beyond the planning stage, it nonetheless raises troubling issues about the intersection of race and scientific experimentation, and the role that federally funded science played in shaping the race concept. The proposed orphanage study also illustrates how racial ideology shaped research agendas, research protocols, and, of course, the interpretation of research data, much as it did for \"The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,\" a forty-year experiment examining the natural history of the disease in 399 untreated syphilitic African Americans living in Macon County, Alabama. Both studies epitomize the way eugenic thinking about race corrupted those seeking to understand and address scientific questions and medical challenges.\n\nWith the dissolution of the NRC Committee on Racial Problems, the NRC's careful attention to race difference, for the time being, came to a close. During the 1920s the four NRC committees on issues of race exemplified the changing scientific approach to race in the United States. First, as the committee's work illustrates, there was a dramatic shift in how racial groups were defined during this period, from a broad definition that included both continental ancestry as correlated to skin color and ethnic, national, and religious affiliations to one that focused primarily on skin color. Second, the decade saw the emergence of large-scale research projects into the biological nature of racial differences between white and black Americans. These studies focused primarily on intellectual, pathological, and morphological differences between the two groups. Third, research sponsored by the committees sought to understand the biology of the children of black and white couples, or racial hybrids, as they were often called. And, finally, the decade witnessed the emergence of populationist thinking as an alternative to typological thinking, specifically as it concerned race difference.\n\n**DAVENPORT'S RACE CROSSING**\n\nIn many ways the 1929 publication of Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda's _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ , a study examining the biology of black-white racial hybrids in Jamaica, embodied the state of racial research, particularly the research generated by the NRC during the 1920s. The work, after all, was proposed in the early 1920s to the Committee on Human Migrations of the NRC. The book was a field study seeking to measure intellectual, pathological, and morphological differences between blacks and whites, as well as to understand these traits in hybrids between these two groups. The study remained wedded to a typological approach to race difference, yet as critics of the work would point out, the data collected did not necessarily correlate with its typological conclusions. Davenport's influence on the NRC was ongoing throughout the 1920s. Though the publication of _Race Crossing_ was not directly funded with NRC dollars, its ideas and methodologies both influenced and were influenced by Davenport's involvement with NRC committees on race, especially the work of the Committee on the Study of the American Negro, the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" and the Committee on Racial Problems. When asked to serve on the Committee on the Study of the American Negro in 1926, Davenport accepted, responding to the invitation with enthusiasm: \"I may say that I am vigorous in this matter and engaged in studies of it and shall be very glad to serve on the committee.\" In continuing correspondence with the committee's head, Davenport highlighted and encouraged the need for \"the invention of new methods of quantitative investigation to study this issue.\" In 1927 he would write to R. J. Terry, urging that the Committee on the Study of the American Negro \"seek funds to carry on investigation of the Negroes and Negro-white hybrids in one or more centers in some part of the country where both groups can be found in fairly large numbers.\" Terry, chairman of the committee, reached out for Davenport's assistance several times, including once in November 1928 when Terry asked all committee members for help \"in getting aid for research on the biology of the Negro.\" In March 1929 Davenport again wrote to Terry, concerning the recommendations of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" making suggestions for the racial orphanage study that included involving Boas\u2014\"the chief skeptic\"\u2014in the process and making sure that the comparison of white and black children \"be made on the two groups under as nearly similar conditions of training and culture as possible.\"\n\n_Race Crossing in Jamaica_ , the culmination of more than two decades of Davenport's research in the area of white-black differences, was a giant tome, an almost 500-page analysis of traits from stature to weight to intelligence between whites, blacks, and browns (hybrids). The book's research was funded by a $10,000 gift to the Carnegie Institution of Washington by Wickliffe Draper, who would later gain notoriety as the founder of the Pioneer Fund. Davenport had been courting Draper as early as 1923, discussing with him his interest in a \"bequest for the advancement of eugenics.\" It was not until 1926, however, that the two found common ground. In February 1926, Draper suggested Davenport might do \"research work on the effect of miscegenation\" and dedicate himself to the \"popularization of the[se] results.\" Draper's money would be put to quick use, and Davenport was clearly excited about what he thought would be its impact, calling the work \"of the greatest possible importance.\" \"The more I think over your plans and the contribution you have made toward the study of the consequences of miscegenation the more enthusiastic I am over the prospect of getting something of great scientific and practical utility,\" Davenport told Draper. Davenport outlined to Draper their agreement on how his funding would be used: \"A study, in the most objective and quantitative way possible, of the inheritance of the traits of pure blooded Negroes, as found in the Western Hemisphere (specifically, probably, Jamaica and Haiti) and of white, as found in the same places with especial reference to the inheritance of the differential traits in mulatto offspring and the distribution of these traits in later generations.\"\n\nThe basis of Davenport and Draper's relationship was clear; both were deeply concerned that \"the presence of the African negro in our country may be very fateful for its future, as its increase tends to overcrowd more and more the country to the detriment of the white race.\" By the fall of 1926, Draper's money was supporting Davenport's research into race differences. The research was carried out in Jamaica by Morris Steggerda, then a graduate student in genetics at the University of Illinois.\n\nThe three theses of _Race Crossing_ \u2014first, that hybridization between blacks and whites results in \"the production of an excessive number of ineffective, because disharmoniously put together, people\"; second, that \"a population of hybrids will be a population carrying an excessively large number of intellectually incompetent persons\"; and, third, that whites were superior in mental capacity to both blacks and browns\u2014confirmed the thinking of many racial scientists and validated popular racist beliefs. _Race Crossing_ 's significance also lay in its breadth of analysis. As one of the largest field studies of its kind to date, it endowed racial science with legitimacy and encouraged confidence in its results so much so that Davenport wrote in its pages, \"The burden of proof is placed on those who deny fundamental differences in mental capacity between Gold Coast Negroes and Europeans.\"\n\nReviews of the book were mixed. Writing in the journal _Social Forces_ , the eminent Smith College sociologist Frank Hankins called the book \"an extremely thorough anthropometrical study\" that is \"undoubtedly one of the very best contributions yet made to the difficult subject of race hybridism.\" Other reviewers were not as kind. Karl Pearson, writing in _Nature_ , was especially critical of the book's methodological shortcomings, specifically its data-collection methods. _Race Crossing_ 's most comprehensive critique came from Harvard scientist William Castle, an early pioneer in genetics and a former student of Davenport's from his Harvard days. In 1924 Castle became one of the first geneticists to attack the idea that hybrids resulted in disharmonious crossings, arguing that such an idea was not supported by science but rather was an expression of personal views. Castle came to this conclusion through his own work on rabbits, which revealed no hybrid disharmonies. His findings in nonhuman species would be supported by wide-ranging studies on humans in Hawaii, Canada, and the United States published in the late 1920s.\n\nCastle's review of _Race Crossing_ , which appeared in _Science_ in 1930, was a crushing review of the book, arguing that Davenport's conclusions were not supported by his own data. Castle pointed, for example, to the assertions that \"the leg of the blacks is much longer than that of the whites\" and that a cross between them would result in a disharmonious cross, \"which would put them at a disadvantage.\" In scouring the book Castle could find no data at all supporting Davenport's \"justification for the idea that the brown Jamaicans have dangerously disharmonious combinations of stature and leg-length.\" In fact, Castle pointed out, this idea contradicted the book's own data that \"the reputed 'much longer' leg length of the blacks turns out to be on the average longer by five tenths of a centimeter!\"\n\nYet despite such negative reviews, the impact of _Race Crossing_ and of Davenport's position on miscegenation and black-white differences went far beyond academic circles. These ideas would be enduring\u2014something Castle himself feared in his review of the book. \"We like to think of the Negro as inferior,\" Castle wrote, and \"we like to think of Negro-white crosses as a degradation of the white race.\" However, \"the honestly made records of Davenport and Steggerda tell a very different story about hybrid Jamaicans from that which Davenport...tell[s] about them in broad sweeping statements.\" Castle was resigned that such ideas \"will be with us as the bogey men of pure-race enthusiasts for the next hundred years.\"\n\nThat Davenport had become one of the foremost antiblack and antimiscegenation propagandists of the eugenic era should be no surprise, having argued in a variety of forums that \"there is a constitutional, hereditary, genetical basis for the difference between the two races in mental tests.\" He had also lectured on the \"interesting tendency\" in the United States of the \"dominant race to apply to the hybrid the name of the subordinate or inferior race,\" and called for the \"study of the physical, mental and temperamental traits of Negro-white hybrids to the second and third generation.\" Davenport worked hard to popularize the conclusions of _Race Crossing_. In the magazine _The Scientific Monthly_ Davenport emphasized the genetic nature of race, writing that \"genetical experimentation in hybridization has revealed\" inherited traits can \"recur in their pristine purity in later traditions.\" This, of course, was a dire warning about the potential effects of racial hybridization, a fact that Davenport did not hide in the article, asking, \"What is to be the consequence of this racial intermingling? \"Especially we of the white race, proud of its achievement in the past, are eagerly questioning the consequences of mixing our blood with that of other races.\" Davenport's conclusions confirmed this fear\u2014that while physically \"there is little to choose between the three groups,\" in intellectual capacity hybrids, or \"browns\" as he calls them, suffer from a \"large burden of ineffective persons who seem to be muddleheaded or incapable of collecting themselves to do the task in hand,\" and that a \"population of hybrids will be a population carrying an excessively large number of intellectually incompetent persons.\"\n\nDavenport's antimiscegenation science (embodied in _Race Crossing_ ) not only conformed to and confirmed the thinking of the time about race mixing but was also an important scientific retort to the mounting challenges against some state antimiscegenation statutes. Perhaps nowhere was this more true than in Virginia, where, with advisement from Davenport, the eugenicist and white supremacist Walter Plecker, a Virginia public health official, helped shape Virginia's antimiscegenation Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Davenport offered Plecker advice on antimiscegenation-related issues\u2014including help calculating race mixture and suggesting a change to Virginia's inheritance law that would prevent children from black-white relationships from inheriting land\u2014all the while studiously trying to avoid intimate involvement with \"the carrying out of that law\" for fear of drawing the Carnegie Institution into \"the matter of the administration of law in the State of Virginia.\"\n\nDavenport and Draper would have likely appreciated _Race Crossing_ 's role in the antimiscegenation battle nearly twenty years after its publication (although they certainly would have been disappointed with the battle's final outcome). The book and its conclusions were used by the defense in the landmark 1948 miscegenation legal challenge _Perez v. Lippold_ , in which the California Supreme Court declared its state's antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional. The case was brought by a Los Angeles couple who were refused a marriage license by the county clerk of Los Angeles because they were members of different racial groups. In court arguments, the city's defense relied on _Race Crossing_ \"as authority for the proposition that the progeny of mixed marriages are inferior to those of purebred marriages.\"\n\nDespite _Race Crossing_ 's staying power in eugenic and racist circles, Wickliffe Draper was not pleased with the book's limited popular impact. Draper would, in coming decades, turn his attention toward less-established scientists and other public figures who could help him with his racist program, funding in the 1930s, for example, the distribution of white supremacist Earnest Sevier Cox's book _White America_ to political figures across the country. Here Draper's funding effort bore significant fruit: Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo pledged support to Cox's and Draper's cause of repatriating black Americans in Africa. In April of 1939, Bilbo introduced the Greater Liberia Act on the floor of the United States Senate, seeking to mandate the removal of all black Americans from the United States. Draper would eventually focus his efforts through the Pioneer Fund, set up in 1937 to assist in the education of white descendants of the original settlers of the United States, and, more significantly, to support hereditary and eugenic research. Through the fund, Draper would assist in the promotion of his racist views through scientific studies. Harry Laughlin, formerly part of Davenport's Cold Spring Harbor group, became its first president. Over the course of the twentieth century, whether it was underwriting opposition to the 1954 _Brown v. Board of Education_ decision, to anti-Semitic or antiblack causes, or funding studies to \"prove\" the inferiority of blacks and the biological soundness of white supremacy, the Pioneer Fund played a significant role in racial science.\n\nThose who would benefit from the Pioneer Fund's largesse had an ongoing and significant impact on public debates about race, framed primarily as issues of race crossing and of black racial inferiority and white racial supremacy. However, beginning in the 1930s, eugenic racial scientists would come to have a diminishing impact on scientific debates about the race concept, particularly within genetics. Two related but separate discourses would take place over the remainder of the twentieth century; one by scientists involved in the emerging evolutionary synthesis who were struggling to reimagine how biology and the natural sciences defined race, and the other by paid scientific propagandists (including those by the Pioneer Fund) and their sympathizers in biology. The latter would steadfastly ignore an emerging scientific consensus on human genetic diversity and try to resurrect typologically based theories of human difference that were increasingly undermined by work in population genetics and evolutionary biology. The remainder of this book takes up debates within the biological sciences about the nature of the race concept. Pioneer Fund propagandists played only a limited role in these discussions, reacting largely to what would fast become a new genetical theory of race difference.\n**6**\n\n**BIOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF THE COLOR LINE**\n\nIn 1906 W. E. B. Du Bois, then a young social scientist at Atlanta University, issued a forceful and elegant challenge to racial science with the release of _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. In the pages of his book, Du Bois attacked the very foundation of America's racial ideology, calling into question the legitimacy of the race concept at a time when science was being exploited in the service of racist ideas and practices, and ideas about racial difference were increasingly becoming part of natural science's lexicon. Despite the boldness of the study and its importance as an act of intellectual protest, its contemporary impact was limited. As one commentator wrote, the usefulness of the work was not \"realized\" by African Americans at the time, and most whites were certainly \"hostile to such a study\" and its conclusions. Yet the book's importance should not be judged simply on what might be perceived as its immediate impact. Instead, the work serves as a milestone in antiracist thinking and scholarship.\n\nDu Bois's early writings on race anticipated the work of Franz Boas and other Columbia University anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century on cultural relativism and their critiques of ideologies of racial inferiority. More important, however, Du Bois also anticipated the lines along which many geneticists and other natural scientists would, over the course of the twentieth century, struggle with the scientific and social meanings of race. Yet given the book's limited readership, it seems unlikely that this impact was direct; it is doubtful that Theodosius Dobzhansky or Leslie Clarence Dunn, or other natural scientists working on concepts of genetic diversity more than two decades later, were aware of this document and of Du Bois's early opposition to racial science. But in many ways _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ struggles with the central theme of Du Bois's landmark 1903 study, _The Souls of Black Folk_ : \"the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.\" And it is in the negotiation of this \"problem\" that _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ illustrates and predicts how the natural sciences would be put into service demarcating and defending the color line. Du Bois implicitly understood the danger of this but believed that through careful rebuttal he could reveal race for what it was: an unscientific expression of America's racial mores.\n\nThe eighteen volumes of the Atlanta University series\u2014all but the first two overseen by Du Bois\u2014addressed a wide array of topics in African Americana. From _The Negro Church_ to _The Negro in Business_ to _The Negro American Family_ , Du Bois and his Atlanta colleagues explored topics in black American life, utilizing what were then cutting-edge methodologies in the social sciences. Du Bois is remembered as a \"founding father of American sociology,\" and his classic work _The Philadelphia Negro_ was pioneering in its interdisciplinary use of history, ethnography, and statistics. Du Bois's motivation for such a grand project was a Progressive belief in the power of scientific knowledge; knowledge, he hoped, that if shared with the general public could have an emancipatory effect on racism's stranglehold on the American zeitgeist. In the case of _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ , the clear target was on biological thinking in the area of human difference. \"The world was thinking wrong about race, because it did not know. The ultimate evil was stupidity,\" Du Bois would later write. His \"cure\" for American racism \"was knowledge based on scientific evidence,\" and in this and much of his other early work he set out to utilize the scientific method in his fight against this American failing. The \"scientific evidence\" of eugenicists, anthropologists, and biologists would, of course, trump Du Bois's own. Despite this, Du Bois hoped that the Atlanta studies would be a \"comprehensive plan for studying a human group and if I could have carried it out as completely as I conceived it, the American Negro would have contributed to the development of social science in this country an unforgettable body of work.\"\n\nTo help accomplish this ambitious undertaking, Du Bois reached out to academic leaders to build his argument and philanthropists to fund the work. In 1905 Du Bois corresponded with, among others, the American Museum of Natural History anthropologist Clark Wissler asking for \"a list of the best works on Negro anthropology and ethnology.\" Wissler understood, as he wrote to Du Bois, that \"the literature upon this subject is very incomplete and unsatisfactory\" and recommended several books and articles, including the book _The Races of Man_ by the French anthropologist Joseph Deniker. In Deniker, Du Bois found an education that must have shaped, to a great degree, his thinking about the meanings of race. Deniker was not a racial essentialist, and in his book he asserted that there were twenty-nine human racial groups, proposing that ethnicity was a more useful marker of understanding human biological and cultural diversity. For example, Deniker, considered whether \"real and palpable groupings\" of humans are \"capable of forming what zoologists call 'species,' 'subspecies,' 'varieties,' in the case of wild animals, or 'races' in the case of domestic animals. One need not be a professional anthropologist to reply negatively to this question.\" In Deniker's judgment, \"races, or varieties...are by no means zoological species; they may include human beings of one or of many species, races, or varieties.\"\n\nIn advance of the \"Health and Physique\" conference, Du Bois had sought funding for the project from numerous sources, including the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who had been a funder of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. In a long letter to Carnegie, Du Bois outlined the work of the Atlanta conferences \"with a view of securing if possible your financial support for this work.\" Du Bois lamented the fact that \"so far this work has been carried on by small voluntary contributions,\" and hoped that an infusion of funding would help \"to enlarge its scope and improve its methods of research.\" There is no record of a reply from Carnegie.\n\nIn late May of 1906 Atlanta University hosted the conference whose proceedings would soon be edited into _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. Among the conference participants were Franz Boas, who titled his talk \"Negro Physique,\" Du Bois, and R. R. Wright, of the University of Pennsylvania, who spoke on \"Mortality in the Cities.\" Eight months before the conference, Du Bois sought to foster a collaboration with Boas, writing to him that there is \"a great opportunity here for physical measurement of Negroes. We have in Atlanta over 2,000 Negro pupils and students who could be carefully measured. We have not the funds for this\u2014has Columbia any desire to take up such work?\" Boas told Du Bois that he thought that there was nothing \"particularly good on the physical anthropology of the Negro\"; he rejected any proposed collaboration and request for support. Nonetheless, Boas was \"very glad to hear\" from Du Bois that he intended \"to take up investigations on this subject.\"\n\nTwo days following the conference Boas would deliver the commencement address at Atlanta University, in which he confronted the issue of alleged black biological inferiority. \"To those who stoutly maintain a material inferiority of the Negro race and who would dampen your ardor by their claims,\" Boas declared, \"you may confidently reply that the burden of proof rests with them, that the past history of your race does not sustain their statement, but rather gives you encouragement. The physical inferiority of the Negro race, if it exists at all, is insignificant when compared to the wide range of individual variability in each race. There is no anatomical evidence available that would sustain the view that the bulk of the Negro race could not become as useful citizens as the members of any other race. That there may be slightly different hereditary traits seems plausible, but it is entirely arbitrary to assume that those of the Negro, because perhaps slightly different, must be of an inferior type.\" Boas's caveat\u2014\"if it exists at all,\" referring to the \"physical inferiority of the Negro race\"\u2014is similar to the caveats expressed by other leading antirace thinkers, including Du Bois in _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. That such a qualification was part of the attack on racial science suggests the tentative nature of this kind of thinking (after all, antirace thinking in a scientific guise was really barely a decade old at this point), and also the tentative nature of scientific thinking, which is almost always qualified.\n\nWhat makes _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ unique is that at a moment when the concept of race was being appropriated by science (in the service of racism), Du Bois was the first to synthesize a growing anthropologic literature arguing that race was not, in fact, a useful scientific category and that race was instead a socially constructed concept. Du Bois accomplished this by logically and rhetorically attacking the idea of race and by backing up these statements with scientific evidence of his own. Du Bois built his antirace concept argument in the following way. First, he began the book by writing that Americans talk about race in the way that they do because they know no better, and he centered his argument in the realm of scientific thought. Americans, Du Bois argued, \"are eagerly and often bitterly discussing race problems\" because they are behind the scientific times; they are not up-to-date on scientific advances regarding the understanding of human diversity. Second, Du Bois directly attacked the race concept, but he did so by first attacking the idea of whiteness, quoting the anthropologist William Ripley, who wrote that \"it may smack of heresy to assert, in face of the teaching of all our textbooks on geography and history, that there is no single European or white race of men; and yet that is the plain truth. Du Bois also cited contemporary anthropological discourse to argue that Europeans were an intermediate people between the Asiatic and Negro races. While some anthropologists would have accepted such assertions, these ideas would have been offensive to many scientists at the time and odious to the vast majority of Americans.\n\nThird, Du Bois extended his attack on race to the idea of a discrete black race generally and of an African American race specifically, writing, \"The human species so shade and mingle with each other that...it is impossible to draw a color line between black and other races.\" To this Du Bois adds, \"But in all physical characteristics the Negro race cannot be set off by itself as absolutely different.\" Du Bois also calls into question the idea of a \"pure Negro,\" highlighting that \"the Negro-American represents a very wide and thorough blending of nearly all African people from north to south; and more than that...a blending of European and African blood.\" Du Bois acknowledged that neither of these facts would be readily forthcoming in the United States. That because America was a racist society, \"no serious attempt has ever been made to study the physical appearance and peculiarities of the transplanted African or their millions of descendants,\" and that a racist society limits the way in which questions of race themselves could be studied. Or, as Du Bois himself put it, \"scientific research seldom flourishes in the midst of a social struggle and heated discussion.\" By arguing against common assumptions about how humanity was divided, Du Bois sought to bring attention to how human difference existed on a spectrum across the globe and could be organized in different ways.\n\nFourth, and finally, Du Bois attacked the race concept by examining quantitative data about (alleged) racial differences. Drawing on census data, public health data, military recruitment data (including data from records for U.S. Army recruitment, from the U.S. Census, and from the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission of 1863), and data and conclusions from previously published studies (some of which were used in _support_ of the race concept), Du Bois cobbled together a vision of race and of African Americans contrary to how most Americans were thinking. In answer to the claims by nineteenth-century anthropologists, polygenists, and craniologists that Africans and African Americans had a smaller cranial capacity and hence inferior intelligence, Du Bois presented evidence that no differences in brain size or structure had been proven, and that variability within races is similar. Also, in looking at other physiognomic data, Du Bois acknowledged the significant variability within and between races. Finally, based upon analysis of his data, Du Bois concluded that disparities were _not_ rooted in biological differences between groups. \"If the population were divided as to social and economic condition, the matter of race\" in predicting health disparities, Du Bois argued, \"would be almost entirely eliminated.\" Ultimately, poverty and \"the conditions of life,\" as Du Bois called them, were the real causes of health disparities. Du Bois believed that with \"improved sanitary condition, improved education and better economic opportunities, the mortality of the race may and probably will steadily decrease until it becomes normal.\" Drawing on his own research on Philadelphia's African American community, Du Bois argued that differences in health between groups were \"an index of social conditions\" and anticipated what in today's public health parlance would be called the social determinants of health\u2014including poor nutrition, lack of access to clean water, and low socioeconomic status\u2014being at the root of the disparities he identified.\n\nSeveral of Du Bois's arguments against the race concept were made in direct response to the assertions of Frederick Hoffman, a statistician for Prudential Life Insurance Company and author of the racist tract _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro_ , published in 1896. Hoffman's work both embodied the fading ideas of social Darwinists (\"the downward tendencies of the colored race\" were leading it toward \"gradual extinction\") and the ascendant ideas of eugenics (\"given the same conditions of life for two races, the one of Aryan descent will prove the superior, solely on account of its ancient inheritance of virtue and transmitted qualities\"). Though not a biologist, Hoffman marshaled statistics to \"prove\" a biological point in the service of the insurance industry\u2014that black Americans were biologically inferior, that their racial traits consigned them to poverty and unhealthy living conditions, and that they therefore were uninsurable. He set out to make this point following passage of insurance antidiscriminatory statutes in several states. A Massachusetts law was the first, passed in 1884. Others, passed in the following decade, forbade insurance companies from discriminating in their distribution of benefits\u2014blacks could no longer be given fewer benefits than whites if paying the same premiums.\n\nDu Bois had earlier answered Hoffman's racist assertions in an 1897 review of the book in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_. There he attacked _Race Traits_ and its conclusions as having \"doubtful value, on account of the character of the material, the extent of the field, and the unscientific use of the statistical method.\" In _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ Du Bois responded more directly. The title\u2014 _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ \u2014is an unambiguous retort to the title of Hoffman's book. The two descriptive adjectives in Hoffman's title, \"traits\" and \"tendencies,\" are suggestive of something negative, whereas \"health\" and \"physique\" in Du Bois's title sound positive and healthful. Also, \"traits and tendencies\" indicates something inborn and permanent, while \"health and physique\" are things that are experienced and shaped by human beings, or \"the conditions of life,\" as Du Bois called them. By providing data illustrating the relationship between poverty and morbidity and mortality rates, Du Bois rejected Hoffman's claim that blacks are \"inherently inferior in physique to whites,\" and that diseases such as tuberculosis, identified by Hoffman as a black disease, \"is not a racial disease but a social disease.\"\n\nWith the advent of eugenics, racial science, which had for most of the nineteenth century been driven by work in anthropology, quickly became largely the domain of biology and genetics. During the course of the twentieth century many anthropologists, led by Boas, would move away from a biologized race concept just as biology and genetics embraced it. While Du Bois could not have predicted this (after all, the term \"genetics\" was coined by the biologist William Bateson the same year that _Health and Physique of the Negro American_ was published), his writings suggest that he sensed what was to come for science and race in the twentieth century, and through this work he had hoped that intellect would prevail over ignorance and that the biologizing of race would be stopped. Looking back on this period in his life several decades later, Du Bois recalled that he \"had too often seen science made the slave of caste and race hate.\" Yet even as Du Bois set out to fight racism through scientific study, rationality, and a belief in justice, events in his own life and in the world around him would force him to rethink that course. In late September 1906, just a few months after the conference that launched _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ , Atlanta became ground zero for a brutal race riot, sparked by local newspaper reports of alleged assaults of white women by black men and caused by underlying racial tensions driven by the consolidation of and resistance to Jim Crow in Atlanta. The white mob was enormous\u2014approximately 10,000 men, women, and children took to the streets. By the time the riot was quelled a few days later, over twenty black residents of Atlanta had been murdered, and many scores more had been beaten.\n\nAfter the riots, according to historians Dominic Capeci Jr. and Jack Knight, Du Bois \"struggled with the profound impact of white brutality on his psyche and philosophy\" and \"his reliance on rationality.\" Though Du Bois spent his lifetime fighting oppression, in the wake of the Atlanta riots his approach and style shifted. He would quickly abandon his faith in education, rationality, and science as an antidote to white violence and racism. The approach of Du Bois the social scientist or \"organizational leader,\" as Capeci and Knight call him, had not worked and gave way to Du Bois as \"race propagandist\" and \"neoabolitionist,\" who came to rely on rhetorical flourish and political effort in his lifelong fight against racism. In this role Du Bois emerged as the leading political voice for African Americans. Du Bois's biographer David Levering Lewis explains that \"his chosen weapons were grand ideas propelled by uncompromising language\" about America's failings and successes. Du Bois also grew increasingly skeptical of science as an arbiter of truth and the power of truth to change hearts and minds. In the wake of this personal transformation Du Bois came to believe that racism was \"not based on science, else it would be held as a postulate of the most tentative kind, ready at any time to be withdrawn in the face of facts.\" Racism was instead simply a \"passionate, deep-seated heritage, and as such can be moved by neither argument nor fact. Only faith in humanity will lead the world to rise above its present color prejudice.\" And so, despite his rational, science-based refutation of the biological race concept and of racial science more broadly, an increasingly cynical (or perhaps practical) Du Bois recognized that eugenics would triumph for the foreseeable future, building a biological and hereditarian argument for racial difference that flourished in scientific and popular thought in America. Yet when scientists did begin to rebuke race, they did it largely on the terms that Du Bois had laid out in his elegant study in 1906.\n\nTo be sure, throughout his career Du Bois would keep fighting against white supremacy in the guise of racial science and the social damage and intellectual anguish it wrought. Beginning in 1910, over the course of his almost twenty-five-year tenure at the helm of _The Crisis_ , the NAACP's official publication, Du Bois used his editorial authority to assail racial science. A 1915 \"Opinion\" restates a prominent theme from _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ , calling attention to the idea that \"no race, as we know races, is an unmixed race. All so-called races are the result of mixtures.\" A 1911 editorial stated \"America is fifty years behind the scientific world in its racial philosophy.\" The editorial implied that biology and race were divergent; \"the deepest cause of misunderstandings between peoples is perhaps the tacit assumption that the present characteristics of a people are the expression of permanent qualities.\"\n\nDu Bois would also twice debate the eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard. In 1927 Du Bois and Stoddard squared off on radio from New York City. They met again in 1929, this time in a public debate in Chicago with more than 4,000 in attendance. During the raucous debate Du Bois attacked the core beliefs and contradictions of white supremacy. Where \"Nordics\" like Stoddard sought to maintain racial purity, Du Bois noted that so-called Nordics had, through \"exploitation,\" \"spread their bastards to every corner of land and sea.\" When Stoddard maintained that segregation based on \"racial difference\" was \"not discrimination; it is separation,\" Du Bois attacked the very notion of race itself, harking back to his work in _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. Du Bois sarcastically noted (given his own mixed-race ancestry) that he was \"'gladly...the representative of the Negro race,' but was also equally capable of being 'a representative of the Nordic race.'\" Explaining the contradictions of America's racial mores, Du Bois noted that when white supremacy denied his humanity it did so because of the color of his skin, but when he was deemed worthy in any way, most especially in areas of his intelligence, he was reminded of his white ancestry.\n\nBy the 1930s Du Bois was not alone in his attack on racial science and on the race concept itself. He was joined that decade by a growing chorus of natural and social scientists who would, to varying degrees, embrace his stance on the matter. Yet while most of Du Bois's writings expressed an unambiguous rejection of the biological race concept, there are contradictions on the topic in his writing. Despite his rebuke of eugenics, Du Bois, to some degree, embraced the spirit of that movement in his own work. Some have even suggested that he embraced a progressive eugenics, most evidenced in his writings on racial uplift. In fact, that W. E. B. Du Bois continued to struggle with shedding vestiges of the race concept points to how deeply embedded race was in America. That Du Bois implicitly understood the dangers of American racism and, to a great degree, was influenced by one of its most disgraceful racial theories only reinforces this notion.\n\nNowhere was his eugenic-mindedness more obvious than in his ideal of the \"Talented Tenth,\" a eugenic-sounding \"best of the race\" who were endowed with the characteristics to lead African Americans. This \"metaphorical eugenics,\" or \"bioelitism,\" as the contemporary critic Daylanne English called it, imbued Du Bois's Talented Tenth \"with an explicitly biological superiority.\" But with an expansive definition of eugenics and heredity, and by cherry-picking examples of an alleged embrace of eugenics from _The Crisis_ and selected other writings, it is easy to overstate Du Bois's affinity for such ideas. Ultimately, those who would accuse Du Bois of harboring deep eugenic tendencies confuse his commitment to a class-based and elitist solution to the challenges facing African Americans with a bioelitist one.\n\nDu Bois's antieugenic thinking on the race concept was evident throughout his career. For example, in his 1938 book _Black Folk: Then and Now_ , he wrote, \"No scientific definition of race is possible,\" and that \"the most that could be asserted of race was that 'so far as these differences are measurable they fade into one another.'\" But at the same time, Du Bois biographer David Levering Lewis observes that in that same book Du Bois also engaged in racial essentialism, writing that Negro blood is \"the basis of the blood of all men.\" This contradiction was, according to Lewis, intended to \"function in the service of racial pluralism, for in validating an unknown and remarkable Negro past he envisaged a future in which all races could accept the cultural parity of one another's history as well as the interdependence of their destinies.\" Lewis concludes that Du Bois's \"rather mild racial essentialism\" was itself an attack on contemporaneous race supremacy dogmas. Still others have noted that even as Du Bois's rejection of a scientific race concept became more strident (in a _Crisis_ article in 1911 and in his 1940 autobiography), this explicit rejection remained complicated by Du Bois's pursuit of a unifying concept for persons of African descent in a racialized world.\n\nHISTORICIZING RACE\n\nBy the 1930s, as eugenical theory was becoming less palatable to both scientists and the general public, prominent academics joined Du Bois in attacking the race concept. The Columbia University historian Jacques Barzun, author of one of the first in a spate of academic books about race and racism published during the 1930s and early 1940s, called race \"one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are everywhere spilled in reckless quantities.\" Published in 1940, _Race: Science and Politics_ by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict attacked racism, but noted \"that to recognize Race does not mean to recognize Racism. Race is a matter of careful scientific study; Racism is an unproved assumption of the biological and perpetual superiority of one human group over another.\" Benedict called race \"a classification based on traits which are hereditary.\" She belonged to a group of scholars, including the sociologist Robert Park and the economist Gunnar Myrdal, who, rather than emphasizing problems with the race concept, looked instead to race relations as playing the functional role in America's racial calculus. What made Benedict such an important part of this movement were her assertions that science was not to blame for the problems of racism; politics was. She wrote, for example, that in order to understand race persecution, we do not need to investigate race; we need to investigate _persecution_. While there is a certain logical truth to this position, it abdicates scientists of the responsibility of how the race concept was utilized popularly and it ignores a long history of scientists supporting racism through their work. Benedict acknowledged as much, writing that \"for the scientist, science is a body of knowledge; he resents its use as a body of magic.\"\n\nBarzun's 1936 text _Race: A Study in Modern Superstition_ , like Du Bois's work thirty years earlier, utilized both historical methods and the latest science to rebuke the race concept. A budding young historian at Columbia University, Barzun tackled the subject of race as American eugenics was in decline, the smoldering racial hatred of Nazism was fast making an impact on the European continent, and the movement for civil rights for African Americans was is in its earliest days. For Barzun the only possible argument in favor of the race concept \"would be that no one race could possibly have been gifted with such a capacity for nonsense as the literature on the subject affords.\"\n\nWhile Barzun's interest was primarily in considering \"racialism as a European phenomenon\"\u2014the book is infused with anticipation and fear of what Nazi racism was wreaking in Europe, from where Barzun had hailed\u2014it also conveys an implicit understanding of how racial thought impacted African Americans. Barzun writes that \"those human beings who have not lost their pigmentation are simply more clearly marked than others for discrimination; they wear a uniform that they cannot take off.\" This social stigma, which Barzun points out was not unique to the American experience, highlights the fact that \"the problems of colored populations...are not problems about a natural fact called race: they are problems of social life, of economic status, of educational policy, and of political organization.\" Barzun also believed that the \"race thinking,\" as he called it in a letter to the sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox, was endemic to Americans' thinking across social, cultural, and economic spectrums. In Barzun's estimation race thinking applied \"to taxi drivers as well as to Nordics or Semites. In fact it will fit any labeled category. It is as common among football fans as among rabid nationalists and as such deserves a place as the root fallacy in all social antagonisms that are not based on direct competition for concrete goods.\"\n\nBarzun, certainly one of the first authors to historicize the race concept, would go on to have a long and distinguished career as a historian. _Race_ , his first book, was in general not reviewed kindly in either the social or natural scientific literature. Several reviewers acknowledged Barzun's contribution in providing a broader context for the history of race but questioned his rejection of the race concept. Writing in the journal _Man_ , the British social anthropologist Rosemary Firth wondered if \"to deny any scientific reality to race at all...is to carry the valuable indictment of the popular absurdities of race thinking to an extreme, and thereby somewhat to weaken the otherwise good case\" against its misuse. Even the _American Historical Review_ , a distinguished journal for American historians, allowed the anthropologist Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History to review the book. Wissler, a member of the eugenicist Galton Society, was a steadfast believer in the biological race concept and an advocate of Nordic superiority. He argued that the main sources of human evolution were from Asia and Europe, \"while the rest of the world was relegated to a marginal position.\" Wissler was not particularly kind, writing, \"Though the author [Barzun] regards this volume as a critical history of thought on race, it can hardly qualify as a calm weighing of evidence.\" Wissler dismissed Barzun's work as extreme and suggested that it was best read in conjunction with books \"which defend the concepts of race purity.\" Such an exercise, Wissler suggested, \"may give perspective\" on the subject. Barzun, angered by Wissler's review, sent a letter to the editor of the _American Historical Review_ defending the book and pointing out Wissler's errors and misconceptions. Barzun seemed particularly irritated at the way Wissler, writing in the leading historical journal no less, criticized _Race_ and defended the race concept by demeaning the historical craft and the ability of historical methods to evaluate science. In the letter to the editor, Barzun pointed out that \"the basic questions he raises without stating them seem to be: whether ideas are real forces or mere illusions; whether their relation to biological or economic fact are subtle and complex or obvious and simple (Race being a simple First Cause for culture) and ultimately, whether the student of ideas has the right to be a pragmatic critic instead of a mechanistic materialist.\"\n\n_Race_ concluded with twelve objections to the race concept, which, very much in the mold of Du Bois's earlier critique, included the concept's general inconsistency, its elusiveness, its statistical fallacy, its fallacy of genetic predetermination, and its absolutism. Race could explain anything and everything, and Barzun noted that \"in a real world of shifting appearance, race satisfies man's demand for certainty by providing a small, simple, and complete cause for a great variety of large and complex events.\" Barzun's book and its critique of the race concept remain historiographically important for telling a modern reader where to look for the changing nature of the scientific foundation of the race concept. If anthropology was the arbiter of meaning for race in the nineteenth and through the earliest years of the twentieth century, then genetics, or \"the problem of hereditary transmission,\" as he called it, is \"central in any future theory of race.\"\n\nBarzun could claim genetics as the emerging authority on the race concept with confidence for several reasons. First, political events in Europe, specifically the rise of Nazism, had helped popularize the link between race and genetics in a way that not even the most fervent American eugenicists had thought possible\u2014although they actively and without compunction sought out this role. To a significant degree, Nazi eugenic zeal was inspired by American eugenics. The publication of Madison Grant's eugenic tract _The Passing of the Great Race: The Racial Basis of European History_ might have preceded the rise of Nazism by more than a decade, but its ideas about Nordic racial purity influenced many Germans. In a letter to Grant, Hitler called _The Passing_ \"his Bible.\" In 1933 the _Eugenical News_ , the official newsletter of several eugenic organizations including the American Eugenics Society, noted the American influence on German sterilization policy: \"To one versed in the history of eugenic sterilization in America, the text of the German statute reads almost like the American model sterilization law.\" American philanthropists, including those of the Rockefeller Foundation, also gave scientific grants to German eugenicist researchers, both before and for several years after the rise of Hitler. And even as the world recoiled in horror at the ways in which the Nazis integrated eugenics into their political philosophy\u2014mass sterilizations and concentration camps\u2014American eugenicists continued to support their Nazi brethren. In 1935 Harry Laughlin accepted an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg for \"being one of the most important pioneers in the field of racial hygiene.\" The dean of the University of Heidelberg's medical school later helped organize the gassing of thousands of mentally handicapped adults. Also in 1935, after a visit to Berlin, the head of the Eugenic Research Association, Clarence Campbell, proclaimed that Nazi eugenic policy \"sets a pattern which other nations and other racial groups must follow if they do not wish to fall behind in their racial quality, in their racial accomplishments, and in their prospects for survival.\" Finally, in 1937, American eugenicists distributed a Nazi eugenic propaganda film to promote the eugenic cause in the United States.\n\nSecond, with the American eugenics movement in decline during the 1930s, there was an opportunity for new claims and room for new authorities on the biological race concept. Third (and this is more speculation than assertion), as a historian, Barzun was able to see the evolution of racial science\u2014from its origins in prescientific folkways to anthropological to biological to genetic thinking\u2014having covered more than a century of its presence in European and American social and intellectual thought in his book _Race_. Following the debates, discussions, and findings on race, Barzun would have seen that geneticists were quickly becoming the respected voice on this matter. Fourth, and finally, the changing technological, methodological, and ontological approaches in biology, evolutionary biology, and genetics were coalescing into what in the 1930s would become known as the evolutionary or modern synthesis and reshaping the way the biological sciences hypothesized, conceptualized, and analyzed human difference. It was from this modern synthesis that ideas about race would be reformulated into both the scientific and popular lexicons.\n**7**\n\n**RACE AND THE EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS**\n\n**T** he evolutionary synthesis in biology, a historic moment for the biological sciences, was the union, in a Darwinian context, of theoretical population genetics, experimental genetics, and natural history. The synthesis resolved several outstanding, and until that point seemingly intractable, issues for biology. First, it reached accord that natural selection was the mechanism that accounted for evolutionary change. This also meant the acceptance of evolution as a gradual process. Second, the synthesis resolved the long-standing issue of how to explain evolutionary phenomena. According to Ernst Mayr, himself an architect of the synthesis, the consensus that emerged on this issue understood that \"by introducing the population concept, by considering species as reproductively isolated aggregates of populations, and by analyzing the effect of ecological factors...on diversity and on the origin of higher taxa, one can explain all evolutionary phenomena in a manner that is consistent both with known genetic mechanisms and with the observational evidence of the naturalists.\" Consensus on these issues was, to be sure, difficult for all involved. For example, for the first third of the twentieth century systematists rejected the discoveries of genetics and held fast to a worldview shaped by their own discoveries. This was primarily because their concepts of variation and inheritance were consistent with their own field observations and, they believed, could explain evolution better than the Mendelians. But between 1936 and 1947 this synthesis finally emerged in the literature, bridging a gap between two areas of research that had up until this time failed to communicate with each other.\n\nTheodosius Dobzhansky, one of the architects of the synthesis, described the significance of the emerging consensus in a 1947 letter to R. C. Murphy, president of the American Museum of Natural History: \"It is not particularly inspiring to continue to taxonomize as the nineteenth century taxonomists did. But no informed person can disregard the fact that a new science is being born from a synthesis of morphological and experimental biology, and that this science begins to occupy one of the central positions among the biological disciplines. On the taxonomic side, the new systematics uses, in part, the same apparatus of research which the old taxonomy has assembled and used, namely museum collections of dead specimens. But the new systematics studies dead specimens not merely in order to arrange them on museum shelves; dead specimens are used as means to discover the new laws of life.\" Among the seminal works of that period were Dobzhansky's _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , Julian Huxley's _Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_ , George G. Simpson's _Tempo and Mode in Evolution_ , and Ernst Mayr's _Systematics and the Origin of Species_.\n\nErnst Mayr, one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis, has written about the impact the synthesis had on a biological understanding of race and human diversity. According to Mayr, one of the more significant characteristics of presynthesis thinking was that while the \"naturalists had wrong ideas on the nature of inheritance and variation; the experimental geneticists were dominated by typological thinking that resulted in pure lines and mutation pressure.\" Mayr believed that prior to the synthesis geneticists were stuck in a mode of thought in which \"species and populations were not seen as highly variable aggregates consisting of genetically unique individuals, but rather as uniform types.\" This perhaps paints too simplistic a picture of broader arguments about the nature of variation in presynthesis biology. Mayr's point makes the most sense, however, not in explaining the fixity of two contrasting worldviews (typology versus populationist thinking) but as a way to illustrate the way typology had, before the synthesis, circumscribed thinking about variation.\n\nAnd Mayr understood these contrasting worldviews to be a fundamental struggle within evolutionary thinking; in fact, his writings traced the origins of modern populationist thinking back to Darwin and his cousin Galton. Galton, while the epitome of a typologist, would contribute to the emergence of populationist thought by developing mathematical models that accounted for variability. The sharp dichotomy between pre- and postsynthesis thinking on variation as Mayr described it was not, of course, absolute, and others have acknowledged the transitional work on variation occurring in genetics research in the decades just prior to the synthesis. For example, in the work on human ABO blood-group maps from the latter years of the first decade of the twentieth century through the 1940s, one can see the evolution from typological to populationist thinking.\n\nBut regardless of this transitional work in human diversity, the failure to fully conceptualize genetic variation led directly to the belief in the existence of \"uniform types,\" or races as they were commonly known. One of the more significant effects of the synthesis would be the rejection by most biologists of typological thinking; it may be recalled from chapter 5 that one of the reasons why eugenics fell out of favor, and why Charles Davenport's status in American science quickly went from leader to quack, was his failure to embrace this shift.\n\nYet this rejection of typology by the \"new\" biology did not mean that an evolving biological race concept somehow left scientists in the field above racist conjecture or left the race concept itself invulnerable to misuse. Indeed, there is no doubt that while by the 1930s new findings in population genetics and evolutionary biology witnessed significant changes in racial thinking, there was still no shortage of opportunity for the integration of racism into biological conceptions of human difference. To be sure, there remained those who held on to the legacies of typological thinking who were part of the modern synthesis. Julian Huxley was, for example, _the_ popularizer of the synthesis and the author of a book on race titled _We Europeans_ \u2014written in large part to attack the Nazi's racial doctrines, the book rejected the race concept as unscientific. He would also write in 1938 that \"in human genetics, the most important immediate problem is to my mind that of 'race crossing.'...The question whether certain race crosses produce 'disharmonious' results needs more adequate exploration. Social implications must also be borne in mind in considering this subject.\"\n\nDespite Huxley's prominence in the synthesis, his typological \"voice\" on this subject becomes less interesting than that of persons who through their research, publications, and correspondence struggled to redefine the postsynthesis biological meaning of race difference in humans. Ultimately, it would not be the holdover typologists and racists who developed a modern biological race concept. It was rather the scientists who sought to reconcile concepts of human diversity and modern biology who shaped a new consensus on racial difference. Those who sought to eliminate the race concept in biology altogether also played an important role in this debate. It is more interesting to consider those who recognized the need for change in the context of the new synthesis and how they made that change rather than to examine \"more of the same\" racist conjecture. It is the legacy of this work on race and human genetic diversity from the 1930s through the 1960s that has had continued significance as modern biology, genetics, and related disciplines continue to struggle with these concepts. And it is the work in this area conducted by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, the population geneticist L. C. Dunn, the evolutionary anthropologist Ashley Montagu, and the geneticist Curt Stern that will capture the attention of the remainder of the present and subsequent chapters.\n\n**THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY AND THE CREATION OF A NEW RACE CONCEPT**\n\nTheodosius Dobzhansky, according to the evolutionary biologist and geologist Stephen Jay Gould, \"was preadapted to initiate the synthesis.\" A Russian-trained zoologist who received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study with Thomas Hunt Morgan beginning in 1928 (first at Columbia and then at Caltech), Dobzhansky's training in Russia and subsequent work in the United States prepared him for his role in the modern synthesis in a way that was unparalleled in biological circles at the time. From Russia Dobzhansky inherited a rich tradition of experimental genetics in the context of natural history, a tradition absent at that time in American biology. Dobzhansky would later recall that to Morgan, \"'naturalist' was a word almost of contempt...the antonym of 'scientist.'\" Nevertheless, in the United States Dobzhansky had the opportunity to apply this tradition by working with Morgan and others. Surrounded by such a distinguished group of colleagues, Dobzhansky thrived and quickly went on to become one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis and one of the foremost evolutionary geneticists of the twentieth century.\n\nThe importance of Dobzhansky's work and those biologists who helped drive the evolutionary synthesis forward is well documented. One historian, for example, underscores the significance of Dobzhansky's _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , writing that it \"thus became the ground on which the heterogeneous practices of the biological sciences were stabilized and bound.\" At the time of its publication the population geneticist Sewell Wright, whose own mathematical models proved indispensable to Dobzhansky, heralded _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ as \"a book which will be a necessity for all interested in the recent development of the theory of evolution\" and called it \"by far the best synthesis that has come out.\" In an introduction to the 1982 edition of the book, Stephen Jay Gould calls it \"a long argument for a general attitude toward nature and a specific approach that might unite the disparate elements of evolutionary theory.\"\n\nThe historiography on racial science\u2014the murky place where the biological race concept intersects with prejudice both within and outside science\u2014suggests that in post\u2013World War II America the race concept continued a decline it had begun in the 1920s. According to Elazar Barkan, that decline ushered in an era that saw the emergence of egalitarianism in scientific discourse that would force racial science into retreat. This book argues instead that racial science\u2014if defined as the use of science, both by scientists and laypersons alike, generally as part of a greater arsenal of oppression, and specifically as a scientific language utilized for this general purpose\u2014did not decline. Instead, in the interwar period racial science thrived, and beginning in the 1930s through the postwar period, the language and ideas of racial science were adapted to the evolutionary synthesis by both participants in the synthesis and by outsiders trying to influence debates on the nature of human genetic differences. This is not to say that the evolutionary synthesis was itself racist in the same way as the eugenics movement. Indeed, most modern geneticists rejected racism in the 1940s but nevertheless continued to embrace the biological race concept. This seeming contradiction was at the center of efforts by many geneticists to preserve the race concept for their work (in all species) and cast off the racist aspersions formerly associated with it. As the nation's preeminent geneticist, and as one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis in modern biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky was at the forefront of this change.\n\nFrom Dobzhansky's perch as one of the preeminent scientists of his time he had the desire, prestige, and audience to write on matters social as well as scientific. And so he did, reaching beyond the confines of academia on subjects ranging from race and society to radiation and its impact on humankind to popular books about human evolution. For an \u00e9migr\u00e9 from Russia who had begun learning English only upon his arrival in the United States, this was quite a feat. His first popular book, _Heredity, Race, and Society_ , published in 1946, was written on the subject of race and coauthored with his colleague at Columbia (where he had become a professor of zoology in 1940), the geneticist L. C. Dunn. But Dobzhansky had already written about the race concept in biology\u2014with a very specific purpose\u2014earlier in the 1940s, and his scientific work on the modern synthesis as well as his deep humanitarian streak motivated his work in this area.\n\nThe laboratory life of Theodosius Dobzhansky had a marked impact on the way he perceived and conceptualized difference in the species he studied and, by extension, on how he understood diversity in his fellow man. The fact that Dobzhansky's scientific and intellectual authority as a leader of the evolutionary synthesis was brought to bear on the development of a new race concept in biology should not be surprising given the importance of genetic variation as a key concept in the synthesis. For Dobzhansky and others involved in the synthesis, natural selection, speciation, and adaptation could be understood only in the context of population, not typological thinking, and understanding genetic variation within populations was essential to understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Dobzhansky's Russian training played a formative role in his approach. In Russia, where Dobzhansky began his training as an entomologist, his work was rooted in a system of knowledge that emphasized natural history in a way that the American and European biological traditions did not. And it is in Dobzhansky's earlier foundational work on variation, race, and speciation that these Russian roots are evident. While still in Russia, prior to his work with _Drosophila pseudoobscura_ , Dobzhansky worked primarily with ladybug beetles ( _Coccinellidae_ ) as his experimental animal of choice. One early paper on ladybugs sought to examine the problem of \"the formulation of races by means of selection of biotypes.\" Other papers would look more closely at the mechanisms and nature of speciation, and during the 1920s Dobzhansky's research program matured to examine \"geographical distribution and variability in populations, individual variability within populations, and inheritance of variability\"\u2014all important components of his growing research into microevolution. Although the seeds of Dobzhansky's synthetic thinking would be present in his 1920s work, at that time he still had yet to make the connections between evolution, genetics, and morphology that would be present in his groundbreaking work of the 1930s.\n\nIt is not simply that Dobzhansky was interested in problems of race and variation in his earlier work; his training as a naturalist helped to focus his understanding of the genetics of natural populations. The attention to populations in the wild, as opposed to laboratory-bred populations, was a characteristic of the Russian biological tradition emphasizing the naturalist's viewpoint\u2014one that was centered on the observations of wild populations and using those observations to construct wider theories about the nature of biological systems at the micro- and macrolevels. Dobzhansky ascribed the roots of this tradition in Russia to \"perhaps the great size and environmental diversity of the country,\" which led to \"new and unusual animals and plants [that] were collected and brought for study in university laboratories, zoological and botanical museums and marine institutes. A majority of biologists had experience working in the field and observing living beings in their habitats....Anyway, it was taken for granted that a biologist must know animals, or plants, or both.\"\n\nBy fusing experimental and laboratory traditions in evolutionary biology, Dobzhansky was able to not only speculate about the nature of populations through laboratory analysis but also, through his meticulous fieldwork in natural environments, witness the genetics of population dynamics firsthand. Through his long-standing collaboration with the population geneticist Sewell Wright, Dobzhansky was able to make sense of the genetics of natural populations. Dobzhansky provided the observational and biological data as well as the theory; Wright helped Dobzhansky with the mathematical models underlying those theories. The breaking down of barriers between experimental work (the laboratory geneticist) and fieldwork (the naturalist) was, of course, another important legacy that Dobzhansky left to biology.\n\nDobzhansky's description of a 1943 trip to Brazil in a letter to Sewell Wright suggests the way his fieldwork shaped his own understanding of variation in natural populations. \"Tropical forest is an environment so different from ours of the temperate zones that all biological conceptions or preconceptions with which a 'temperate' biologist starts have to be critically examined,\" Dobzhansky wrote. Dobzhansky noted that \"the richness of species is of course commonplace; the population density of most species being or seeming low is also something for what I have been prepared.\" But he was surprised to \"see the incredible heterogeneity within even what seems superficially the same type of environment. Up to now I can not tell with assurance which _Drosophila_ species is the commonest because different ones are commonest in different places.\"\n\nRace as a taxonomic term predated Dobzhansky's reimagining of the concept in biology and would have been a classificatory tool used by taxonomists for at least a century before the evolutionary synthesis. Race was part of the set of standard categories that Linnaean taxonomy utilized to help organize biodiversity, specifically the morphological and physiological diversity found within named species. As a Russian trained natural scientist, Dobzhansky utilized race in his work to describe species subdivisions, or subspecies. In fact, race and subspecies were often used interchangeably in the naturalist literature. Dobzhansky described the taxonomic meaning of race in a 1933 paper on \"Geographical Variation in Lady-Beetles.\" \"The different patterns known in a given species do not occur equally frequently in every part of the area inhabited by the species,\" Dobzhansky wrote about the variation of color patterns found in lady beetles. Dobzhansky continued, \"In some sections of the specific area a majority of the population may consist of individuals having a pattern or patterns which are rare or absent in other sections of the same area. The species becomes, thus, differentiated into geographical races (subspecies). Each of the subspecies is characterized by a definite frequency of the different patterns in the population.\"\n\nIt is no accident that Dobzhansky, who was trained in this tradition of natural history, was able to make the theoretical leaps that helped usher in the evolutionary synthesis. It is also no accident that, like the Russian colleagues he left behind, he was mathematically unsophisticated, a shortcoming he himself acknowledged. Writing to his collaborator and mathematical muse, the theoretical population geneticist Sewell Wright, Dobzhansky admitted his own \"mathematical understanding is far too insufficient to read and understand\" Wright's papers \"completely.\" \"But,\" Dobzhansky continued, \"I have done the same thing that I have with other papers: read the part of the text preceding and following the mathematics, skipped the latter in assurance that to it the expression 'papa knows how' is applicable.\" Throughout his career Dobzhansky turned to mathematically minded population geneticists for guidance on the bases of his evolutionary theories. Fruitful collaborations with Alfred Sturtevant and Sewell Wright were critical to his overall success as a scientist.\n\nBut Dobzhansky, of course, was not the only evolutionary synthesizer to write about variation in the scientific literature. Sewell Wright and Ernst Mayr, for example, wrote extensively about genetic variation in the 1930s and 1940s but paid only minimal attention to the race concept. Ultimately, that Dobzhansky became so invested in discussions about genetic variation in the context of the synthesis and in both scientific and popular deliberations about the race concept had also to do with his personal history as well as his political and moral beliefs. Dobzhansky's thinking on race was shaped by both his deep-seated humanism and his belief in the important role of the intellectual in society. These forces drove his scientific interests. Furthermore, Dobzhansky's dedication to the study of evolution was not simply about uncovering the mechanisms of that process but was also about understanding the implications of evolution in and for humans\u2014an approach that shaped his popular discussions of race.\n\nLooking back on his career and on his role in scientific debates about race, Dobzhansky's own hindsight suggests that a veritable \"changing of the guard\" in his field (older geneticists retiring and dying) precipitated his and others' entry into the debates on race. Dobzhansky recalled that race prejudice was potent among the \"older geneticists\" and remembered an exchange with Edward East while visiting Woods Hole Laboratory in Massachusetts in 1936. East insisted that Dobzhansky was \"not a Russian\" given that Russians are a genetically inferior people. A small minority of Nordics lived among that population, and Dobzhansky had to have been part of that group. Dobzhansky was also motivated to become involved in debates about the nature of the biological race concept because of the \"impact of Nazi atrocities against the Jews\" and because the biological evidence did not support the alleged dangers of race crossing. Dobzhansky would have seen those who held fast to racist and typological viewpoints as anachronisms, and he himself believed that \"changing one's views is not at all shameful, and in fact when we reach the state when we can no longer change it may be time to retire.\" But it is clear that it was not simply that Dobzhansky's interest in race was about a temporal changing of the guard but also about significant differences in the worldviews of those who chose to tackle the race issue beginning in the 1930s.\n\nThe other important characteristic that defined Dobzhansky to a very large degree, and also defined others involved in rethinking the race concept in biology, was that they were outsiders of one sort or another. Dobzhansky was not simply an immigrant to the United States but also an exile who could not return to his Russian homeland in the wake of Stalin's growing purges. Dobzhansky was also, early in his career, a scientific outsider, arriving in the United States with only limited training in genetics and a strong background, unlike most of his colleagues, in natural history. Dobzhansky's collaborators and allies on matters of race had similar stories. L. C. Dunn, who briefly flirted with the eugenics movement, had a son with cerebral palsy whose condition would come to shape his antieugenical thinking. Ashley Montagu, born Israel Ehrenberg in London in 1905, changed his name to avoid the anti-Semitism of the British academic aristocracy. And Curt Stern, a German Jew, was unable to return home after the rise of Hitler.\n\nDobzhansky's objective\u2014seeking to redefine the biological concept of race in a genetic context\u2014began in earnest in his 1937 _Genetics and the Origin of Species_. While race is not itself the subject of the book, the importance of the concept of variation to the evolutionary synthesis meant that defining populations and other groupings of organisms received significant attention. By privileging variable over fixed populations, Dobzhansky's synthesis helped reconceptualize the idea of difference between and among populations of all organisms, including human beings. His description of the race concept in _Species_ should be considered one of the most important writings in the history of this subject, yet it has received relatively little attention. This is surprising given Dobzhansky's standing in genetics, his popular and scientific writings on the subject, and the legacy he left in the form of his students (several of whom, including Richard Lewontin and Francisco Ayala, later contributed to the discussions about race and genetics and were leaders in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology).\n\nTo be sure, Dobzhansky was not the only biologist writing about race at that time, nor was he the first to write against the typological race concept. Indeed, typological approaches to race difference were, over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, losing favor among geneticists as population genetics offered alternative explanations for intraspecies diversity. That information was, albeit slowly, making its way into popular thought about race even as Dobzhansky was helping to devise the evolutionary synthesis and place the race concept within that context. For example, Ralph Bunche, who would later garner fame as a United States representative at the United Nations and as the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1950), wrote _A World View of Race_ the year before _Genetics and Origin of Species_ was published. In his book Bunche, then a freshly minted Harvard Ph.D. in political science, wrote a chapter titled \"What Is Race?\" in which he reviewed the then current state of race thinking in anthropology and biology. In that chapter Bunche described the limits of typological thought (\"the plain fact is that the selection of any specific physical trait or set of traits as a basis for identifying racial groups is a purely arbitrary process\"), historicized race (\"our concept of race is a comparatively recent one\"), and reviewed emerging biological ideas about the race concept (\"the study of hereditary phenomena, or genetics...throws much light upon this human problem of race\"). In the emerging language of population genetics, Bunche, commenting on why pure human races did not exist, wrote that \"human variation is so great, in fact, that perhaps such homogeneous groups never existed at all.\" Bunche also suggested \"we drop the term _race_ with reference to existing groups and substitute some more accurate description such as _ethnic groups_ or _peoples_.\" This call to drop \"race\" went far beyond what geneticists like Dobzhansky were willing to do in rethinking the concept but anticipated what would become a more commonplace suggestion among some anthropologists and biologists in the 1940s and 1950s. Finally, Bunche, like Du Bois before him and Ashley Montagu in his footsteps, concluded that \"though racial antagonisms constitute a serious world problem, they have no basis in biology, nor can they be accepted as the inevitable result of group differences. Such differences must be analyzed and understood in their social and historical setting.\" Unlike Bunche, Dobzhansky would not reject the biological race concept, but did concur that \"the term race is one employed...with a looseness and inaccuracy matched only by its frequency in our literature.\" In _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , Dobzhansky hoped to remedy this problem.\n\nA reader first encounters the term \"race\" in chapter 3 of _Genetics and the Origin of Species_. Dobzhansky wrote that \"a living species is seldom a single homogenous population. Far more frequently species are aggregates of races, each race possessing its own complex characteristics. The term 'race' is used quite loosely to designate any subdivision of species which consists of individuals having common hereditary traits.\" Dobzhansky, however, admitted to complications regarding the use of this term; he was troubled that \"so many diverse phenomena have been subsumed under the name 'race' that the term itself has become rather ambiguous.\" And Dobzhansky worried about the unavoidable contradictions when applying the term, noting if races are \"described usually in terms of the statistical averages for all the characters in which they differ from each other,\" it inevitably \"begins to serve as a racial standard with which individuals and groups of individuals can be compared.\" Dobzhansky recognized the limitations of such a model: \"From the point of view of genetics such an attempt to determine to which race a given individual belongs is sometimes an unmitigated fallacy.\" This is because\u2014and this point is central to the modern synthesis's novel view of race\u2014\"racial differences are more commonly due to variations in the relative frequencies of genes in different parts of the species population than to an absolute lack of certain genes in some groups and their complete homozygosis in others.... _Individuals carrying or not carrying a certain gene may sometimes be found in many distinct races of a species_.\"\n\nBy revealing a core contradiction of race in a population genetics context, Dobzhansky explicitly acknowledged the imprecise nature of race. But he didn't stop there. He also noted \"that individuals of the same race may differ in more genes than individuals of different races\"; that the \"units of racial variability are populations and genes, not the complexes of characters which connote in the popular mind a racial distinction\"; that to understand race \"the geography of the genes, not of the average phenotypes, must be studied\"; and that \"racial variability of phenotypic traits is continuous.\" Yet despite Dobzhansky's insights into the limitations of a biological race concept, he refused to jettison it, and in his writings throughout his career, including _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , he sought to articulate why this was so.\n\nIn _Genetics_ Dobzhansky insisted that the discussions about what he refers to as the \"endless and notoriously inconclusive discussion of the 'race problem'\" could be boiled down to the following question: \"Is a 'race' a concrete entity existing in nature, or is it merely an abstraction with a very limited usefulness?\" But for Dobzhansky, this question missed the point: race was neither a concrete or \"static\" entity nor an abstraction, but instead an organic \"process\" that can be identified as the frequency of a gene or genes in a segment of a population begins to differ from the rest of that population. Race is therefore a temporal and geographic concept, changing as gene frequencies change, sometimes a stepping-stone to the formation of a new species as genes become fixed in populations as mechanisms prevent interbreeding between races, thereby \"splitting what used to be a single collective genotype into two or more separate ones.\" The caveat to this, of course, is that gene flow must stop between populations for this to happen. If it does not, then, in Dobzhansky's estimate, races will always be in flux and to a large degree indeterminable.\n\nIn a paper published in the _Scientific Monthly_ in February of 1941, Dobzhansky outlines his justifications for why the biological race concept was as important for studying humans as it was for studying _Drosophila_. The article's content is an expanded view of what he says on the subject in _Genetics_. Dobzhansky argues that previous discussions of the race concept had not been \"conducted on a scientific plane,\" primarily because biologists had \"with few exceptions, disdained to take part in the debate.\" Anthropologists and others had gotten the race concept wrong and he was going to fix it. These claims by Dobzhansky read more like rhetoric than fact, helping him structure an argument that essentially says, _what came before me was scientific bunk proffered by nonbiologists. As an expert biologist I will offer important scientific insight to this debate_. Where Dobzhansky was correct, however, was in his assertion that biology itself offered \"no clear definition of what constitutes a race.\" In _Genetics_ , in the _Scientific Monthly_ article, and in many future publications, he sought to offer a working definition that he believed was essential to the work of scientists operating in the paradigm created by the evolutionary synthesis. In Dobzhansky's calculation, \"the refined analytical methods of modern genetics may permit a better insight into this problem to be gained than was possible in the past, but the work in this field is now barely begun.\" And of that past, of those anthropological methods, Dobzhansky recognized their origins\u2014\"a strictly pragmatic purpose\u2014to place the almost infinite variety of living beings into pigeonholes where it can be kept until it is needed for further study\"\u2014and their shortcomings\u2014\"what actually happened was that pigeonholes were sanctified to become God given units (nominalism from which zoological and botanical taxonomies are just now trying to free themselves).\"\n\n>Dobzhansky began his argument in support of the biological race concept by rejecting the taxonomic and anthropological definition, one that posits races as averages of morphological, physiological, and psychological characters. This typological approach could, in Dobzhansky's estimation, provide a \"rough description of the observed variety of humans or of other living beings.\" It could not, however, provide \"an analysis of the underlying causes of this variety.\" To Dobzhansky, this problem could be fixed by the application of genetics in helping to understand the processes of organismal diversity. As he had previously suggested in _Genetics_ , it was not precise enough for geneticists to \"define races as populations that differ from each other in the frequencies of certain genes.\" Ultimately, such a definition tells us little about the \"extent\" of such differences. Dobzhansky provided an example from his work with _Drosophila_ to explain the shortcomings of this definition and provide one of his own. It is worth noting that Dobzhansky anticipated critiques of using _Drosophila_ models to discuss human races, writing that \"the laws of heredity are the most universally valid ones among the biological regularities yet discovered. The mechanisms of inheritance in man, in the _Drosophila_ flies, in plants and even in the unicellulars are fundamentally the same.\" That Dobzhansky sought consistency in the use of racial terminology across species and clades was driven by his classical training in taxonomy and his rigid view of terminology. Also, as mentioned above, Dobzhansky was trying to appropriate the race concept under the evolutionary synthesis. In order to do so it seems certain that he needed to rid it of its anthropological and eugenic stigma. By placing race under the rubric of genetics, he had hoped to save it for biological practice and thought.\n\nDobzhansky's _Drosophila_ examples were meant to reinforce the biological nature of the race concept. In the _Scientific Monthly_ paper Dobzhansky describes how no populations of _Drosophila_ are genetically uniform, and that \"in every one of them some individuals carried chromosome structures and mutant genes not present in others.\" He also notes that the genetic composition of populations in this species do not remain constant over time. These changes, as he noted in _Genetics_ , can, over evolutionary time, lead to speciation. Changes of this nature are \"subject to natural selection.\" Dobzhansky also notes that none of the populations of _Drosophila_ are \"pure races.\" In bringing up this point Dobzhansky was directly engaging the broader social debates about race, and in doing so hoped to disconnect the science from its social context. In Dobzhansky's estimation, \"the idea of a pure race is not even a legitimate abstraction: it is a subterfuge used to cloak one's ignorance of the nature of the phenomenon of racial variation.\" Instead, populations showed variability between them in \"geographically graded series\" or clines.\n\nOne of the challenges Dobzhansky faced using _Drosophila_ races as a way to explain the concept for its use among _Homo sapiens_ is that there is an obvious distinction in race between human and nonhuman species; the use of race in _Drosophila_ obviously does not carry the same social and historical burden as it does for the human species. For naturalists and evolutionary biologists, race was an important piece of the puzzle of natural selection, the chief mechanism of evolution. Species are, of course, made up of heterogeneous populations. That heterogeneity in nonhuman species leads to geographical races (or populations), and these populations are the raw material for speciation. Humans, however, do not have the same ecological niches as other species and therefore are not races in the same way in this evolutionary context. In trying to preserve the race concept for all taxonomic usage, Dobzhansky never explicitly addressed these inconsistencies.\n\nDobzhansky concluded his article by again arguing that postsynthesis genetics must be the arbiter of the race concept. His rhetoric called for more scientific study into this matter and noted that despite the difficulties involved in race-level research in populations, \"the difficulty of the task is not a sufficient reason to cling to the outworn methods of racial study...and still less is it a reason for erecting far-reaching theories on the basis of admittedly faulty data. To do so would be a travesty on science.\" In trying to appropriate race for postevolutionary synthesis genetics, Dobzhansky was trying to preserve a biological race concept. But in his \"mission\" to inject genetics into the debate over the meaning of race, Dobzhansky was up to something more, and concomitantly hoped that if the public understood the \"ABCs of genetics,\" then the biological race concept would not engender racism. In a 1947 letter to his colleague L. C. Dunn, Dobzhansky referred to several encyclopedia commissions he had recently taken on the subject of race and science. \"The pay is not very attractive,\" Dobzhansky wrote, but \"I am told that this book will be in every school library all over the country, so I regard this as a sort of obligation.\" That obligation, he wrote Dunn, was to \"help straighten things out\" given \"what stuff was fed about human heredity to people.\" In considering whether to take the commission to revise _Encyclopedia Americana_ 's entry on \"Races,\" Dobzhansky decided to do so because \"what stands there now could have been written by Dr. Goebbels.\"\n\n**DUNN**\n\nIn 1946 Dobzhansky coauthored his first popular book on the race concept, _Heredity, Race, and Society_ , with his Columbia colleague, the geneticist L. C. Dunn. Dunn was a distinguished geneticist who involved himself as deeply as Dobzhansky in the social aspects of scientific research. By the time of their collaboration on _Heredity, Race, and Society_ , Dunn had established himself as one of the world's preeminent geneticists, particularly in the area of mouse genetics and gene mapping, and is considered to have played a crucial role in the establishment of genetics as its own scientific discipline. In that capacity Dunn served on the Joint Genetics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science during the 1920s and early 1930s, as the first president of the Genetics Society of America in the early 1930s, and also helped to transition the _Journal of Heredity_ from a eugenic mouthpiece into an academic journal.\n\nDunn also facilitated the emergence of the modern synthesis through his relationship with Dobzhansky. The two geneticists had known each other since at least the mid-1930s, when, at the invitation of Dunn, Dobzhansky delivered a series of lectures at Columbia in 1936 (and a year later was named as part of the revitalized Jessup Lecture Series at Columbia). Those lectures, at the prompting of Dunn, were adapted into _Genetics and the Origin of Species_. After reading the book, Dunn acknowledged its importance, writing to Dobzhansky that \"it fills a need we have all felt for a long time.\" In 1940 Dunn would also be responsible for bringing Dobzhansky to Columbia from Caltech, where he had been working with T. H. Morgan since the late 1920s. Thus began a lifelong friendship and collaboration that lasted until Dunn's death in 1974.\n\nDunn's interest in race and genetics preceded his collaboration with Dobzhansky on the subject by more than twenty years. He was, in the early 1920s, active in the American eugenics movement, even delivering a paper at the \"Second International Congress of Eugenics\" held at the American Museum of Natural History in 1921. During the 1920s Dunn published several papers on race and race mixture that indicated his growing distance from the eugenics movement, including his 1925 paper \"A Biological View of Race Mixture,\" which argued \"popular assumptions of hybrid inferiority are shown to lack support. Biological evidence indicates that neither inbreeding nor outbreeding has uniform effects, and that each case of crossing may have to be considered as a special problem.\" Dunn's conclusions ran counter to most eugenic and genetic work being done at the time, and, like Dobzhansky, he seemed to share a desire to both explain the race concept in the context of the modern synthesis and to depoliticize and preserve it for scientific purposes. In his 1928 study called \"An Anthropometric Study of Hawaiians of Pure and Mixed Blood,\" part of the research originally presented at the American Museum of Natural History in 1921, Dunn tried to make this point. The paper argues both that there was currently not enough good data (which Dunn himself would collect) and that, based on this work, he and others could help develop a racial definition for Hawaiians.\n\nDunn held a divided opinion of eugenics during the 1920s, according to one of his biographers. On the one hand he accepted \"biological eugenics\" as a valid extension of Mendel's laws to humans. On the other hand, he was skeptical of the application of social eugenics to human populations, recognizing early on that heredity was complex and unpredictable, and that sterilization laws could not account for such complexity. Dunn's position was complicated by his own evolving views on the subject, driven by both the changing scientific landscape and circumstances in his personal life. In 1928 Dunn's second son, Stephen, was born with cerebral palsy. Although Dunn would always believe in the potential of applying genetics to social problems in human populations, by the 1930s he came to reject the eugenics movement for its mix of science and politics, and for the fear that a child like Stephen, who despite his physical handicaps grew up to receive a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia, would have been deemed unfit in most eugenic circles. Later that decade, Dunn would assist the Carnegie Institution of Washington\u2014then still the principal sponsor of Charles Davenport's work at Cold Spring Harbor\u2014in evaluating the work of the Eugenics Record Office. In a letter sent in 1935 to John Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution, Dunn summarized his views of eugenics: \"Eugenical research was not always activated by purely disinterested scientific motives, but was influenced by social and political considerations tending to bring about too rapid application of incompletely proved theses.\" The Eugenics Record Office was officially closed in December 1939, when it had become abundantly clear that its work was scientifically unacceptable in the United States and increasingly objectionable, particularly in light of the extremes of eugenics of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany.\n\nThat Dunn rejected eugenics and continued to believe that genetics could be (carefully) applied to human populations was similar in many ways to Dobzhansky's thinking on the subject, and the two men, as well as many of their genetics colleagues, saw no contradiction in rejecting what they considered a politicized eugenics movement and at least theoretically embracing its possibilities. In the 1950s Dunn even founded the Institute for the Study of Human Variation at Columbia, an effort to identify the \"causes of evolutionary changes in human populations\" and to see how such evolutionary changes \"could be initiated and developed.\" Dunn's eugenic venture was short-lived. The institute didn't survive the decade, and Dunn retired from his position at Columbia in 1962. Dunn's work through the institute reflected his long-standing interest in issues of discrimination and equality as they intersected with science. He launched two population genetic studies, one on the Jewish population of Rome and one on the Gullah peoples of James Island, South Carolina. Although his scientific hypotheses sought to examine the evolution of human populations, Dunn's work on these groups also addressed issues of ongoing discrimination, particularly the role of discriminatory social isolation as a factor in human evolution. Dunn's student Dorothea Bennett remembered his devotion to the potential of genetics in this way: \"He was equally interested in man, mouse and garden flowers in the sense that they presented interesting biological correlates that were just as real to him although their overall importance might be very different.\"\n\nAt the peak of their influence in the 1940s\u2014Dobzhansky because of his role in the synthesis and Dunn because of his role in establishing the discipline of genetics\u2014they were well positioned to author a popular book on genetics, race, and racism. And their collaboration on _Heredity, Race, and Society_ bore unquestionable fruit; its print run exceeded 500,000 copies over its four editions, and it was translated into many languages as well. The book brought together their personal and disciplinary views on race, racism, and genetics: that race was a useful biological concept that, in itself, did not buoy racism. Instead, racists misused genetics for their own nonscientific ends. The book also ventured into the nature-nurture debate, arguing that \"between so-called 'hereditary' and so-called 'environment' traits there is no hard and fast line.\" Finally, Dunn and Dobzhansky acknowledged the historical nature of the race concept, writing, \"The belief that the differences between men and races are inborn and unalterable is probably older and more widespread than the other extreme view that human peculiarities result from peculiarities of the environment in which they occur.\"\n\nThe book, directed at a general audience, meant to \"acquaint them with the biological facts necessary for understanding human likenesses and differences.\" In its chapters titled \"Human Differences,\" \"Nature and Nurture,\" \"The Method of Heredity,\" and \"Group Differences and Group Heredity,\" Dunn and Dobzhansky updated their readers on the state of genetics and evolutionary biology, the failings of eugenics, and the emergence of population thinking. But it is their final chapter on race where they sought to leave a mark on general science readers, or on \"John Q. Busrider,\" whom a derisive reviewer suggested was the target audience of their book.\n\nIn the book's final chapter, \"Race,\" Dobzhansky and Dunn made a case for why race is an important concept for science and society, and why racism is not supported by science. These arguments were meant to support their belief that the race concept could and should be divorced from racism and racists. \"Races can be defined as populations which differ in the frequencies of some gene or genes,\" they wrote, using scientific language to describe the nature of differences between human groups. And they emphasized the point that even though \"military leaders and politicians have been learning how to use real or assumed scientific discoveries to add an appearance of respectability to their propaganda,\" that propaganda \"cannot accomplish its purpose if we know the facts of human biology.\" In other words, even the biological race concept endorsed by Dunn and Dobzhansky could provide support and cover for racist thinking, since science could also challenge that use.\n\nYet reading the book, one can't help but wonder if Dunn and Dobzhansky were aware of the contradictions in their reasoning about the nature and meaning of the race concept and why they believed it to be such an important classificatory tool for biology. The book's final chapter is marked by contradictions obvious to any observer. On the one hand, the authors assert \"races are populations which differ in the relative commonness of some of their genes,\" yet at the same time they write tentatively that \"when we say that populations are racially different we are not saying very much. They may be so different that it is possible to tell to which of them any individual belongs, or so similar that only very careful study by specialists can reveal their distinctions at all.\" This position seems to assert that ultimately only \"specialists\" can determine race, and that what laypersons may think they know about race is, in fact, inaccurate. Similarly, Dunn and Dobzhansky wrote, \"Human races differ usually in many genes and many traits,\" and also stated that \"attempts to subdivide mankind neatly into several hard and fast racial compartments evidently failed.\" Moreover, Dunn and Dobzhansky believed that the existence of human races would eventually cease to exist, that \"there is no doubt that civilization leads slowly but inexorably, toward breakdown of the race divisions.\"\n\nThe book's reception was decidedly mixed. In the _Quarterly Review of Biology_ Bentley Glass recognized the book as \"outstanding for the clarity and simplicity of its exposition,\" and wrote that \"the authors have not been afraid to express their own view, growing out of their understanding of population genetics, on such subjects as the difficulties of eugenics, evolution, and 'social Darwinism.'\" Other reviews were not as kind. Writing in the _Journal of Heredity_ Robert Cook and Jay Lush worried that the book might leave its readers' \"thinking about individual and racial differences dangerously muddled.\" Cook and Lush also accused Dunn and Dobzhansky of \"ideological biases and value judgments\" and hinted that the authors harbored communist sympathies. An unsolicited review sent directly to Dobzhansky by Frederick Osborn, president of the American Eugenics Society and a founder of the Pioneer Fund, attacked the book's positions on eugenics and race. \"As you know,\" Osborn began, \"I felt very badly that in the little Penguin book published by yourself and Dr. Dunn, you failed to recognize the authoritative statements on eugenics and leveled your fire instead at social class eugenics and racism, which were discarded by all responsible people many years ago.\" Dobzhansky mocked Osborn's critique in a letter to the anthropologist Ashley Montagu: \"Ho-Hum!!! I really did not know that he felt badly, although I sort of guessed he might. And when, at what date, have 'all responsible people' discarded 'social class eugenics and racism'? I wish he might, as President of the Eugenics Society, make the discarding quite explicit and official.\"\n\nDunn and Dobzhansky's postsynthesis approach to race was not the only position on race being offered in public and scientific circles. In 1948, Harvard University Press published _Human Ancestry: From a Genetical Point of View_ , by R. Ruggles Gates. The book was a mix of eugenic and polygenic thinking, and Gates was an advocate of the position that races did not exist because the so-called races of man were actually different species, among which a hierarchy of abilities existed. In correspondence with Ashley Montagu, who had reviewed Gates's book for the _Saturday Review_ , Dobzhansky refers to _Human Ancestry_ as \"excrement.\" But Dobzhansky, ever the arbiter of the misuse of heredity and race by scientists and nonscientists alike, was less concerned with Gates's opinion than he was with the work of the evolutionary biologist C. D. Darlington, a pioneer in chromosome studies. Darlington believed that not only did races and classes of humans have different values but also that the languages spoken around the globe were genotypically controlled. Because Darlington was no scientific kook or fringe eugenicist, Dobzhansky worried that his theory of race had \"dangerous potentialities of spreading its evil smell\" and feared in its wake \"a big comeback of racialism in a virulent form!\"\n\nFor Dunn and Dobzhansky the biological race concept itself was not a problem, and they believed that they had written an important book that made that point. \"As far as spreading the light is concerned this is what we (or I at any rate) owed to members of our species,\" Dobzhansky wrote to Dunn in November of 1946, just after the book's release. \"How much light will come from our efforts is another matter and one not under our control,\" Dobzhansky continued. \"At any rate we tried honestly.\" That \"honestly\" for the two geneticists was that in the context of the modern synthesis, race made perfect sense and the public needed to understand what that meant. It was the social application of this idea that caused trouble. As such, racism, not race, was what scientists and others needed to be vigilant about. They sought to undermine scientific racism, not the biological race concept. The problem with this argument, of course, is that they simultaneously argued that race was imprecise and arbitrary as a biological category (outlined above as the \"difficulties\" of using race) and that it was a legitimate scientific concept. On the face of it, this is not necessarily contradictory. Biological concepts can be imprecise and still have utility. The evolutionary biology term \"homology,\" which shares with \"race\" a similar imprecision and a similar struggle among scientists to define its precise meaning, has been the subject of significant debate within biology. However, unlike \"homology,\" \"race\" has both social and scientific meanings.\n\n**MONTAGU**\n\nIn 1942 the British-born anthropologist Ashley Montagu wrote _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ , the first book by a natural scientist to call for the abandonment of the biological race concept. Montagu was a controversial figure who, throughout his long career (he was a prolific contributor to anthropological, biological, and sociological thought well into his nineties), took on controversial subjects with aplomb. Montagu trained first in England in social anthropology at the London School of Economics with Bronislaw Malinowski and later in the United States in cultural anthropology at Columbia University under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. Following the completion of his Ph.D. at Columbia, Montagu taught anatomy at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and in 1949 founded the Anthropology Department at Rutgers University. Montagu's position at Rutgers was short-lived, however. A staunch antiracist, integrationist, and early feminist, as well as an outspoken critic of the rabid anticommunist senator Joseph McCarthy, Montagu was driven from his position at Rutgers in 1953. Montagu's expertise crossed emerging anthropological subfields and he published widely in areas that today would be considered both cultural and physical anthropology. His obituary in the _American Anthropologist_ referred to him as an evolutionary anthropologist.\n\nBeginning in the late 1930s Montagu began his assault on the race concept. At first, however, he only articulated an opposition to racism. In 1939 Montagu presented a motion at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists stating that physical anthropology provided no scientific basis for discrimination based on race, religion, or linguistic heritage. The motion was not passed. By the 1940s Montagu began a direct attack on the race concept itself. Montagu's struggles with the race concept were similar to Dobzhansky's and Dunn's and were drawn largely from Dobzhansky's work _Genetics and the Origin of Species_. But whereas Dobzhansky and Dunn rejected a typological approach to race in lieu of a genetical approach, Montagu would reject both.\n\nIn a paper presented at the April 1940 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (published in 1942 in _American Anthropologist_ ), Montagu attacked the anthropological\/typological race concept, writing, \"What a 'race' is no one exactly seems to know, but everyone is most anxious to tell.\" Instead of upholding an outdated and scientifically useless typological approach to race, Montagu argued that an anthropologist should investigate human diversity \"not as a taxonomist but as a geneticist, since the variety which is loosely called 'race' is a process which can only be accurately described in terms of the frequencies with which individual genes occur in groups which represent adequate ecologic isolates.\" The influence of Dobzhansky's work is clear in Montagu's when he writes that \"race formation is genetically best understood in terms of the frequency with which certain genes become differentiated in different groups derived from an originally relatively homogeneous species population and subsequently undergo independent development.\"\n\nBut it is at this point\u2014where Montagu accepts the populationist view of race\u2014that he departs from the growing consensus on this matter. Instead of trying to save the race concept for the biological sciences (including physical and evolutionary anthropology), he rejects it out of hand, questioning, \"What aggregation, then, of gene likenesses and differences constitutes a race or ethic group?\" Montagu believed that the race concept, even with Dobzhansky and Dunn's modifications, was a convoluted idea, \"a rather fatuous kind of abstraction, a form of extrapolation for which there can be little place in scientific thought.\" Alternatively, Montagu proposed substituting the term \"ethnic group\" for \"race.\" This was not, in Montagu's reckoning, simply a terminological sleight of hand. Montagu's notion of an \"ethnic group\" was a rejection of the static and immutable notion of race, a denial of \"the unwarranted assumption that there exist any hard and fast genetic boundaries between any groups of mankind,\" and an acceptance of the genetic unity of humanity. Up to this point, his approach was no different than Dobzhansky and Dunn's. Montagu distinguished his position by his belief that even a revised race concept could not transcend the idea's long and disconcerting history in the natural sciences, especially anthropology. In Montagu's estimation, the history of physical anthropology from the middle of the nineteenth century was \"a gradual inversion of this genetic approach to the problem of the variety of mankind. The investigation of causes steadily gave way to the description of effects.\"\n\nMontagu wrote to Dobzhansky explaining why he believed \"ethnic group\" was preferable to \"race.\" But Dobzhansky, with whom Montagu carried on a friendly forty-year correspondence beginning in the 1940s, made clear his opposition to eliminating race from the biological parlance. Dobzhansky was not alone in his criticism of Montagu's proposed abandonment of race; Montagu's anthropological colleagues were also quite critical. At a 1941 celebration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of Chicago, Montagu read a paper titled \"The Meaninglessness of the Anthropological Conception of Race.\" The anthropologists in attendance were not supportive. From Fay-Cooper Cole to Harry Shapiro to Ale\u0161 Hrdli\u010dka, the rejection of Montagu's idea was overwhelming. Resistance to Montagu's position was driven by the novelty of his ideas about race and ethnicity in the face of a field whose work was defined, in large part, by its embrace of a biological conception of race, and by both the covert and overt racists who popularized the discipline.\n\nMontagu believed there were several reasons why \"ethnic group\" was a better term than \"race.\" First, he argued that \"it emphasizes that we are dealing with a distinguishable group\" that has \"been subject to cultural influences.\" Second, the term \"is non-committal, and leaves the whole question of the precise status of the group on physical or other ground open to question.\" Third, and finally, it eliminated what Montagu called \"any obfuscating emotional implications.\" For Montagu, \"the term ethnic group is not merely a substitute...it's a new concept, a concept for human groupings which modern knowledge has for the first time made possible.\"\n\nIn 1942 Montagu expanded his ideas about abandoning the race concept in the book _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_. The book, written more than seventy years ago, remains in print\u2014an indication of its lasting significance and impact. At the time, it quickly rose to become a best seller. As in his earlier publications on the race concept, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth_ argued \"that the term 'race' itself, as it is generally applied to man, is scientifically without justification and that as commonly used, the term corresponds to nothing in reality.\" Despite chapters on \"The Genetical Theory of 'Race'\" and \"The Biological Facts\" (Montagu embraced Dobzhansky's views of human genetic diversity), he continued to reject the biological race concept for the same reasons he outlined in earlier articles\u2014that the race concept was a vestige of history, that it measured differences that were \"more or less temporary expressions of variations in the relative frequencies of genes,\" and that \"ethnic groups\" was a viable alternative term for describing the states of human genetic diversity.\n\nReviews of the book reveal how novel and revolutionary the postmodern synthesis view of race was at that time, and how many remained unfamiliar with its propositions. Writing in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ , the Smith College psychologist Frank Hankins wrote that the book \"falls somewhere in the twilight zone between strictly scientific treatment of its subject and propaganda,\" and clearly without knowledge of Dobzhansky's and others' work on a genetical race theory, attributed its ideas solely to Montagu. Hankins's review revealed his own typological thinking and fundamental misunderstanding of populationist thought: he wrote that \"instead of trying to deny what the man in the street finds all too clear, namely, that there are such things as race differences,\" Montagu should instead have simply emphasized overlap between racial groups.\n\nOther reviews were more sympathetic of Montagu's project, although not always of the book's sometimes-polemic style. Writing in _Isis_ the Harvard cultural anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn agreed \"with the central thesis that the traditional view of 'race' which has prevailed in anthropology is utterly inadequate in the face of contemporary genetics and experimental biology.\" In the _Quarterly Review of Biology_ the geneticist Bentley Glass acknowledged Montagu's thesis, stating, \"One point should be clearly understood from the beginning by every reader. The author is not denying the existence of human ethnic groups which would fit the genetic definition of geographic race. He is careful throughout the book to make it clear that it is the older anthropological conception of 'race' that he regards as utterly fallacious and pernicious.\"\n\nIn the foreword to the book, the writer Aldous Huxley, no stranger to genetics and its controversies\u2014he was the brother of Julian Huxley and grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (both distinguished biologists) as well as the author of the genetically dystopic _Brave New World_ \u2014offered a bleak assessment of the impact of _Man's Most Dangerous Myth_. Although he acknowledged the book's \"great merits\" in exposing the fallacies of race, he lamented its limitations, writing that educating the public about the limits of the race concept was not enough. Facts were not enough, believed Huxley, because \"most ignorance is voluntary and depends upon acts of the conscious or subconscious will.\" Race and its associated ideas and behaviors would, for the moment, continue to win the day because \"facts are mere ventriloquists' dummies, and can be made to justify any course of action that appeals to the socially conditioned passions of the individuals concerned.\"\n\nDespite Huxley's admonition, Montagu continued, both in scholarly and popular publications, to argue against the biological race concept. Montagu also published widely in the 1940s, seeking to debunk American's racial prejudices against African Americans. Given that in the 1940s and the 1950s the crucible of race would reach fever pitch in American society, it is no surprise that Montagu, who had risen to become one of the most prolific and dynamic scientists writing about race, found himself at the center of that storm as head of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization committee on the race concept.\n**8**\n\n**CONSOLIDATING THE RACE CONCEPT IN BIOLOGY**\n\nOn May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case _Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas_. The Court's unanimous decision struck down legal segregation in America's public schools. \"In the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate-but-equal' has no place. Separate education facilities are inherently unequal,\" Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the decision. This victory for justice, this blow against institutionalized racism, was a historic moment in the intensifying civil rights movement and marked its most significant victory against legalized segregation to date. Debates still rage today regarding the impact of the desegregation decision on public education. Some have been critical of the Court's vague language\u2014\"with all deliberate speed\"\u2014in setting a timetable for desegregation, others have questioned the wisdom of the Court's reliance on psychosocial evidence in showing segregation's harm on black children, and still others worried that the ruling \"defamed all-black schools and their teachers.\" It was, nevertheless, a watershed decision.\n\n_Brown_ did not comment directly on the nature of race or on the alleged superiority or inferiority of racial groups. By rejecting the precedents that had shaped legalized segregation in the United States, the justices had to articulate an intellectual foundation for their ruling, and in doing so would help reshape the intellectual terrain upon which popular notions of race were built. The Court turned to contemporary social scientific evidence\u2014psychological and sociological studies documenting the deleterious effects of segregation on African American children\u2014to buttress its decision. In citing the effects of segregation on black children and the inevitable damage that it caused, the Court made a powerful statement, albeit obliquely, on the nature of race difference. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Warren stated \"that to separate them [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.\" Implicit in identifying segregation's harmful impact on black children's psyches and the wrongness of causing these children \"a feeling of inferiority\" was an acknowledgment by the Court that perceiving differences of race as inferior and superior is erroneous. These powerful words marked a watershed in American legal thinking, simultaneously rejecting the racist underpinnings of the Court's earlier segregation sanctioning decision of _Plessy v. Ferguson_ (1896), rejecting a hierarchical view of race differences, and seeking to use this worldview to protect African American children from the injuriousness of segregation and the racist thinking that brought it about.\n\nThe Court acknowledged the impact of scientific thinking on its ruling in footnote 11 of the decision, which cited, among others, the work of Kenneth B. Clark, E. Franklin Frazier, and Gunnar Myrdal. The work of the social scientists cited in this footnote sought to reframe the debates on race as a moral problem and as a problem of race relations. These analyses marked an important shift away from debates about the biological basis of racial hierarchy toward a discussion about the nature of race oppression and the ways in which the hierarchical relationship between blacks and whites had circumscribed opportunities for African Americans in the United States. By including these works in the ruling's footnotes, the Court was, to a great degree, endorsing their contents and theses. Although it is Kenneth and Mamie Clark's now famous \"doll test\"\u2014a psychological test designed to measure the effects of segregation in children\u2014that received the greatest attention for its impact on the Court's thinking in striking down legalized segregation, the placement of Gunnar Myrdal's _An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy_ as the final citation in footnote 11 is striking, especially given the book's critical assessment of American racial oppression and its rejection of the then widely, if not popularly accepted, typological view of race and race difference.\n\nAssessments of the impact of social scientific findings on the Court's decision in _Brown_ are decidedly mixed, particularly on the meaning of footnote 11. One school of thought argues that the inclusion of footnote 11 and other evidence indicates the considerable influence of social science research in finding public school segregation unconstitutional. This group of scholars suggests \"the _Brown_ verdict either justified or vindicated the Court's presumptive reliance on social science evidence.\" Others are critical of the Court's supposed reliance on social science data, worrying that it \"did not provide a sufficiently enduring basis to support the principle of racial integration.\" These scholars worried that a ruling based on social science data \"violated traditional, more resilient approaches to constitutional interpretation.\" Still others, from Robert Bork to Lawrence Friedman, have held that \"the _Brown_ Court did not rely on social science evidence in striking down school segregation.\" Bork, for example, has argued that \"social science evidence was immaterial to the Court's decision to strike down school segregation.\" Finally, more recent scholarship suggests that \"footnote eleven was a by-product of the Court's legitimacy concerns.\" In this view, the Court was concerned about both the controversy the verdict would attract and its rationale for its decision. The inclusion of footnote 11 was therefore considered post hoc and was more important to the decision's legitimacy than its formulation. All but the first argument\u2014that footnote 11 indicates the fundamental role that social science research played in _Brown_ \u2014fail to acknowledge the significance that the research played in Thurgood Marshall's arguments before the Court and in the cases that led to _Brown_. Furthermore, even if the impact of social science research was not definitive, it was significant. The inclusion of the Myrdal study alone indicates that the Court at least understood, and to some degree embraced, those findings. It is unthinkable that the Supreme Court would have included such a controversial study without understanding its implications and meanings for America's discussions of race and race difference.\n\nMyrdal's more than 1,000-page tome, supported by the Carnegie Foundation and written with the research assistance and consultation of more than seventy-five people, sought to recast America's racial problems as a moral conflict between the egalitarian impulses of America's democratic creed and its racist practices. Myrdal believed that this moral conflict, which he cast as the American dilemma, was soon going to resolve itself on the side of America's creed, and his work anticipated many of the victories of the then nascent civil rights movement. However, for Americans to rationalize this dilemma, the tenets of white supremacy\u2014white over black in an unchangeable biological hierarchy of races\u2014had to be an integral part of its zeitgeist. Myrdal wrote that \"race dogma is nearly the only way out for a people so moralistically equalitarian, if it is not prepared to live up to its faith. A nation less fervently committed to democracy could, probably, live happily in a caste system with a somewhat less intensive belief in the biological inferiority of the subordinate group. _The need for race prejudice is, from this point of view, a need for defense on the part of the Americans against their own national Creed, against their own cherished ideals_. And race prejudice is, in this sense, a function of equalitarianism. The former a perversion of the latter.\"\n\nMyrdal also spent several chapters of the book explaining the emerging consensus on the race concept that was developing in the biological sciences, and acknowledging that fixed biological notions of race rooted in typology were \"being replaced by quantitative notions of the relative frequency of common ancestry and differentiating traits....The great variability of traits among individuals in every population group is becoming stressed, and the considerable amount of overlapping between all existing groups increasingly recognized....The fundamental unity and similarity of mankind\u2014above minor individual and group differentials\u2014is becoming scientifically established.\" These \"quantitative notions,\" of course, all point back to Dobzhansky and others working under the rubric of populations and gene frequencies in the modern synthesis.\n\nGiven that the findings of _An American Dilemma_ went far beyond the narrow claims of the other works cited in footnote 11 (almost all examine, in some way, segregation's psychic toll on African American children), the inclusion of Myrdal's work here seems both purposeful and remarkable. That all members of the Court embraced Myrdal's conclusions seems unlikely, especially given several justices' sympathies for the practice of segregation, even in the wake of _Brown_. However, the content of _An American Dilemma_ and its inclusion in the _Brown_ ruling suggest that something was changing in America's understanding of what race was and how that emerging understanding of race was altering America's racial calculus.\n\nPublished in 1944, _An American Dilemma_ was a sensation from its first printing. The author Frances Gaither, reviewing for the _New York Times_ , called it \"a book which nobody who tries to face the Negro problem with any honesty can afford to miss.\" Writing in the journal _Phylon_ , W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the book was \"monumental,\" that \"Myrdal does not gag facts,\" and that the book \"does not appease the South.\" The historian Oscar Handlin, who reviewed the book on its twentieth anniversary, observed that _An American Dilemma_ was \"a magnet to scholars and a catalyst to political groups,\" and that \"its recommendations have helped shape the strategy of every organization interested in legislation and in judicial interpretations.\"\n\nOthers were not so kind. In the wake of _Brown_ , the historian Walter Jackson noted \"southern members of Congress and right-wing activists in other parts of the country regularly portrayed _An American Dilemma_ as a Communist-inspired work.\" Federal Bureau of Investigation chief J. Edgar Hoover even ordered an investigation into the book, Myrdal himself, and his many researchers. An FBI list accused forty-one of the individuals cited by Myrdal in his preface as having been or currently \"members of the CP [Communist Party], CP sympathizers or members of front organizations.\"\n\n_Brown_ heralded a shifting American racial zeitgeist that was fueled in part by changes in natural and social scientific thinking about race. Both scientific and public debates on this subject, not surprisingly, intensified in the 1950s as racists feared what the ruling and other challenges to America's racial hierarchy would bring. Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo had warned in 1947, for example, that the mingling of races would lead to the \"undermining of both the white and Negro races in this Nation.\" Wesley Critz George, an anatomist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine believed segregation necessary. In its absence the United States would \"sacrifice our children on the altar of integration.\"\n\nSO LONG RACE... IN A FEW HUNDRED YEARS\n\nJust four months after the _Brown_ decision Curt Stern, a renowned expert on _Drosophila_ and a human geneticist at the University of California, published a controversial article about race under the title \"The Biology of the Negro\" in the popular science magazine _Scientific American_. The article was a popularization of a scientific paper on the same subject that Stern had published just a year before. A German-born biologist, Stern, like Dobzhansky, came to Morgan's fly room at Columbia on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship in the 1920s (Stern left a year before Dobzhansky arrived). Based on his work in Morgan's lab, Stern produced several pioneering papers on the chromosomal basis of inheritance by looking at sex-linked chromosomal abnormalities in _Drosophila_. Stern's early work was fundamental to the development of the chromosomal theory of inheritance. Stern returned to Germany for several years following his work at Columbia, coming back to the United States to work with Morgan\u2014again on a Rockefeller scholarship\u2014in 1932. Hitler's rise to power a year later left Stern, a German Jew, with little choice but to stay in the United States. He spent most of the 1940s as the chairman of the Department of Zoology and the chair of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Rochester. In 1947 he joined the zoology faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would remain until his retirement in 1970.\n\nIn addition to his work on chromosomal inheritance, Stern would also make significant contributions through his work on somatic cell crossing over in _Drosophila_ , his development of the concept of isoalleles (different forms of a gene that produce the same phenotype or very similar phenotypes), and his use of genetic mosaics to understand development in _Drosophila_. Stern also made an important contribution to radiation science. During World War II, Stern's group at Rochester exposed _Drosophila_ to low levels of radiation, concluding that \"there is no threshold below which radiation fails to induce mutations.\" Perhaps Stern's greatest impact on the field was through his textbook _The Principles of Genetics_. First published in 1949, it quickly became the classic genetics primer for undergraduate and graduate students, selling more than 60,000 copies and appearing in three editions during his lifetime.\n\nUnlike others in the field whose participation in debates about human race differences were largely theoretical\u2014neither Dobzhansky or Dunn, for example, had much research experience in the area of human genetics\u2014Stern, beginning in the late 1930s, became increasingly involved in human genetics research, especially through teaching and training doctoral students. He published widely and lectured on the inheritance of skin color and on sex-linked inheritance and was, in 1957, the president of the American Society of Human Genetics. But Stern's forays into race and genetics were not without controversy. A February 1946 lecture at the University of Rochester titled \"Why Do People Differ?\" stressed \"the unscientific attitude of any race prejudice.\" The program for the lecture pictured a cartoon with three girls, two of whom were white, one black. The local chapter of the NAACP objected to the picture of a shabbily dressed black girl in pigtails wearing boots flanked by two well-dressed white girls looking at the black girl and smiling. Stern defended himself and his lecture, claiming that \"the purpose of the cartoon was to indicate differences of heredity (color) and of custom (different kinds of dresses).\"\n\nStern was well established in human genetics by the time that \"The Biology of the Negro\" was published in _Scientific American_. The magazine, which had held up publication of the article because \"of the priority of other subjects which seemed more immediately timely,\" realized that in the wake of _Brown_ they had an article on their hands that would generate significant readership. In August of 1954 Leon Svirsky, the managing editor of _Scientific American_ , wrote to Stern, telling him that \"now seems an excellent time to print an article on the Negro in view of the recent decision on schooling.\"\n\nThe article confirmed the worst fears of ardent segregationists. According to Stern, at the time he wrote his article almost 80 percent of \"U.S. Negroes\" had white ancestry; by 1980, he believed, \"there will hardly be a single Negro in the U.S. who can claim a purely African descent.\" Furthermore, Stern predicted that the future would witness only an increase in the \"flow of African genes into the numerically dominant white population,\" that the average skin color of the American population would \"shift slightly toward a light brunette,\" and that \"complete fusion\" between American whites and blacks would leave only a \"few thousand black people in each generation in the entire country.\" If someone living in 1954 \"could return at a distant time, he would ask in wonder: 'What became of the Negro?'\" In Stern's estimation, not only would the \"Negro\" race largely cease to exist as the result of being hybridized into the dominant white population but also race itself would become meaningless as the white and black races amalgamated. This idea infuriated racists and segregationists.\n\n\"The Biology of the Negro\" impacted far beyond _Scientific American_ 's usual readership, eliciting intense reactions from readers and getting coverage in both national and local newspapers across the country. Personal reactions to the article were, in the racial climate of 1954, predictably swift and angry. One anonymous letter read, \"You'r [ _sic_ ] nuts\u2014the people of America will not absorb the nasty, vile, vicious, horrible niggers. They are destroying parts of America.\" A letter from one C. L. Barnett of Shreveport, Louisiana, to Stern in 1955 was addressed to \"Old Banana Nose,\" an anti-Semitic reference to Stern's Jewish heritage. \"That damn propaganda article you wrote about the mixing white and negros [ _sic_ ] in the future is just about what one could expect from a Christ killing Jew. That is exactly what you Heebs want\u2014to weaken the white man so you can take over. What is going to happen is that you and your brother smockleburgers are going to be more hated and dispised [ _sic_ ] than you ever were in Germany.\" A Mrs. John Lansdell Howerton of Greensboro, North Carolina, wrote to Stern, calling to question the legitimacy of his conclusion. Howerton admonished Stern, telling him that race mixing might occur in California or the North, but that it didn't happen in the South. \"The Negroes have pride in their race,\" Howerton wrote. \"We like our Southern Negroes and they like us\u2014we understand them and help them....We do not accept the Negro socially and never will and as for intermarriage that is out of the question....Did it occur to you that the Negro prefers being black? Just a little food for thought.\"\n\nFinally, a letter from a fictitious Marcus Julius Frogstein, M.D., in October 1954 exemplified the racist response to Stern, the fear that his prediction generated, as well as the not-so-subtle threats that Stern faced following the article's publication. Frogstein's letter was in reaction to an article in the _Fresno Bee_ on September 21, 1954, about Stern's _Scientific American_ article. Scribbled across the copy of the letter in Stern's papers was a note that said \"not in Fresno phone book, not in AMA list.\" One can assume that the name was an anti-Semitic play on Stern's Jewish heritage. \"Taxpayers should see that any SCIENTIST of your caliber be kicked out of U.C.,\" claimed Frogstein. \"A drop of Negro blood is like a drop of ink. The ink will color a whole glass of water, and the COLOR AND STINK of a Negro, cousin to the baboon rather than the human race, will corrupt the blood of the White forever and forever.\" Frogstein's letter also feared Stern's \"philosophy\" meant \"extinction of the White Race.\"\n\nNot all responses to \"The Biology of the Negro\" were so negative, nor were all southerners so repelled by Stern's prediction. Several southern academics wrote to Stern, complimenting him for his thoughts on America's racial terrain. H. J. Romm, from the Department of Biology at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, commended Stern on his piece, writing that he wished \"that this article could be read by the Caucasians in the South....It is not uncommon now to see articles in the paper saying that if the blacks and whites hybridize in the South a mongrel race will develop. I doubt if these people know anything about genetics.\" A similarly positive letter from C. H. Arndt, a botanist at Clemson College in South Carolina, thought that the article would \"go a long way in dispelling some ideas that are held by individuals who have no conception of the biological factors involved in racial problems.\"\n\nNotwithstanding the ways in which Stern's bold predictions about the future of race in America resonated in various ways with some in the American public, the article offered important insight into the often contradictory thinking about race among scientists. Stern's piece and the reaction to it also confirm what is so obvious with hindsight: thinking about race, even by the most distinguished biologists, was often contradictory. On the one hand, in his prediction that the \"Negro\" race, as it hybridized into the dominant white American population, would largely cease to exist, Stern acknowledged the dynamic nature of racial categories. He also asserted, contrary to popular opinion, that \"there seem to be no inherent biological weaknesses in the Negro which place him at a disadvantage\" and identified \"socio-economic factors\" as responsible for health disparities between white and black Americans. Stern also dismissed claims of African American intellectual inferiority. On the other hand, Stern described the black race hybridizing into the white race but made no mention of the reverse being part of his prediction as well, even though this is implicit in the hybridization of the two populations. Did he not discuss this simply because it was obvious to him and his readers, or because it would have further fanned the flames? Stern's muddled thinking went further than this. He could at one moment describe Africans as the most genetically heterogeneous of any human population and in another revert to typological thinking by saying that African Americans with no Caucasian ancestry \"should have both dark skin and thick lips,\" the assumption being that the purer an individual, the more likely to have such stereotypical African traits. The stain of American society's thinking about race was never far removed from scientific thought.\n\nWHOSE SCIENCE DEFINES RACE?\n\nStern's \"The Biology of the Negro\" was neither the first nor the last publication on race during this time that would garner significant public and scientific attention. In 1949 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) convened an expert panel on race to \"collect scientific materials concerning problems of race,\" \"to give wide diffusion to the scientific information collected,\" and \"to prepare an education campaign based on this information.\" The founders of the program believed, as had many antiracists before them, from Du Bois to Dobzhansky, that scientific knowledge, particularly in the wake of Nazi atrocities, could be marshaled in the fight against racial prejudice. The UNESCO panel on race was not the first time scientists would assemble to discuss this topic. International Eugenics Congresses in 1912 (London) and in 1921 and 1932 (at the American Museum of Natural History, New York) did much the same, although they certainly did so with a different academic and social impulse. In the 1920s the National Academy of Sciences convened several committees examining race in various scientific contexts. And in 1937, the anthropologist Franz Boas and the eugenicist Frederick Osborn proposed holding an international meeting of leading scientists under the auspices of \"some government or the League of Nations\" to discuss \"the general problem of the characteristics of race.\" World War II intervened and the meeting was never held, but the seed was planted among international scholars to come together in some way to explore the meaning of race.\n\nTo amass, analyze, and communicate the current state of racial thought, UNESCO assembled a committee of ten esteemed anthropologists, psychologists, and education specialists. The participants came from across the globe and included such venerated scholars as the Mexican anthropologist Juan Comas, the American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, the French anthropologist Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, and the American anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who was chosen as rapporteur and editor of the committee. In December 1949 the committee met over several days at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and developed its statement on race. In a later interview, Montagu recalled the committee's proceedings as fairly trouble-free, and that on the first day of the committee's meeting those in attendance each shared their views of the race concept. According to Montagu, after he shared his ideas on race, one of the committee members, the anthropologist Ernest Beaglehole from New Zealand, said, \"Well, I think that Ashley Montagu has stated pretty much the view to which we would all subscribe. Why don't we get him to write this down and use it as a whetstone upon which to sharpen our wits.\" The following day Montagu presented the committee with his outline of the statement, and \"during the following days [it was] thoroughly debated and revised.\" In addition to distribution to committee members, drafts of the statement were distributed for comments to geneticists, biologists, social psychologists, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and experts in labor-management relations. These experts included Dobzhansky, Dunn, Stern, the British biologist Julian Huxley, the economist and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, and the American geneticist H. J. Muller.\n\nPublished in July 1950, the UNESCO statement on race was arranged in fifteen numbered paragraphs, each making a specific point about the nature of the race concept. From recognizing the scientific acceptance of the unity of mankind to explicating the postevolutionary synthesis biological race concept, the statement began by offering a straightforward assessment of the current state of academic thinking on race. Embracing a postsynthesis definition of race, it described the biological race concept in language almost identical to Dobzhansky's: \"From the biological standpoint, the species _Homo sapiens_ is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the others in the frequency of one or more genes.\" A race, then, simply defined, was \"one of the group of populations\" making up humankind. These \"are the scientific facts,\" affirmed the statement. Yet the statement recognized a gap between scientific and popular thinking on race; that \"when most people use the term race they do not do so in the sense above defined. To most people, a race is any group of a people whom they choose to describe as a race.\" As an antidote to the public's willy-nilly use of the term \"race,\" the statement proposed \"to drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of ethnic groups\" instead.\n\nThe statement also proposed the organization of \"present-day mankind into three major divisions\": Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. While such a classification scheme had echoes of past racial doctrines (e.g., Blumenbach, Linnaeus, Buffon), the statement clearly hoped to distance itself from scientific racists in its argument that human divisions were \"dynamic, not static,\" and that \"there is every reason to believe that they will change in the future.\" The remaining seven points of the statement sought to debunk popular confusion about race, including the assertions that mental characteristics are not included in anthropological classification of humans, that scientific evidence did not support \"the conclusion that inherited genetic differences are a major factor in producing the differences between the cultures and cultural achievements of different peoples or groups, that no inborn differences exist between human groups, and that race mixture produces no physical or mental disharmonies.\" The influence of Dunn and Dobzhansky in the document is obvious in the fourteenth point of the statement, insofar as the document is highly critical of the popular conception of race while acknowledging its biological significance: \"The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth.\" Finally, the statement concluded with a summary of its pronouncements.\n\nThe statement received prominent and generally positive coverage in major media outlets. A front-page headline in the July 18 _New York Times_ declared, \"No Scientific Basis for Race Bias Found by World Panel of Experts.\" A day later the _Times_ editorialized on the UNESCO statement, writing that the committee had \"performed a valuable service in making a study of the concept of race,\" and that its conclusion that there was no racial hierarchy in mankind was a \"truth that needs popularization.\" The editorial also embraced the statement's call for abandoning race as a scientific concept, stating, \"To eliminate 'race' as a scientific term is a step toward ending it as a myth that dictators and movements use as political instruments to gain and exercise power.\" Interestingly, though, the editorial made no mention of the statement's impact on the state of race relations in the United States, focusing instead on anti-Semitism and other forms of European racism. Unlike the _Times_ , the _Hartford Courant_ did not avoid the domestic implications of the UNESCO statement, declaring that because of it, Americans could no longer \"succumb to the doctrine of white supremacy.\" The _Courant_ also endorsed the committee's call to \"drop the word race from our vocabulary,\" and criticized the race concept itself for having \"poisoned human relations long enough.\" Not all newspaper accounts of the statement were as supportive, however.\n\nAcademic responses to the statement on race were decidedly mixed. The geneticist William Castle, with whom Montagu had a long and sometimes tumultuous relationship, sent him a warm, congratulatory note upon its publication: \"Hearty congratulations on the splendid, sane, and sound statement on race which you were able to get UNESCO to adopt.\" L. C. Dunn was also supportive of the statement. In prepublication comments sent to Montagu, Dunn thanked him for the statement \"with which I still agree heartily almost thru' out,\" and suggested minor revisions. Dunn hoped that his suggestions could help the statement withstand \"the closest scrutiny from hostile persons without having holes...in it.\" Dobzhansky, who had been a reader for UNESCO of a draft of the statement, wrote Montagu in October of 1950 to offer his congratulations, and commended him for his work and for having \"done a fine job in pushing them [the statements] through.\" Dobzhansky noted that one of his students, a Pakistani, \"started translating them...in order to publish the translations in some journal there.\"\n\nDespite support from such renowned geneticists, the statement received harsh reviews by many biologists and anthropologists, particularly for its proposal to abandon the race concept. Dobzhansky had warned Montagu about the potential furor over abandoning the race concept in the course of their correspondence (dating back, on this subject, to at least 1944). In Montagu's judgment, using ethnicity instead of race \"represents a clarification, not a device or subterfuge. I may be utterly wrong, but I believe that what I have done is scientifically sound and morally desirable....There is a great difference between a race and an ethnic variety, and this is what I hope I may some day convince you of.\" During the controversy over the statement, Dobzhansky reminded Montagu of their ongoing disagreement: \"The main attack of course against your suggestion of abolishing the term 'race' in favor of 'ethnic group,' and you will remember, my friend, that for the last ten years I have done my damndest to convince you that this proposition will neither be accepted nor would it do any good if accepted.\"\n\nIn _Man_ , the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the British primate anatomist and anthropologist Osman Hill attacked the statement, calling it \"merely the misguided opinions of a particular school of anthropologists whose assertions appear to be motivated by wishful thinking.\" Hill, an unreconstructed typologist, was the prosector at the Zoological Society of London and would later, in 1962, become the assistant director of the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, which in 1965 became the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. Hill denied the premises of the statement on race, decrying its claims, for example, that mental capabilities were much the same between races and dismissing its assertion that racial hybridization was harmless. Hill's writing illustrates how typological thinking remained prominent in some corners of anthropological thought at the time. He wrote, for example, that \"temperament and other mental differences are well known to be correlated with physical differences. I need but mention the well-known musical attributes of the Negroids and the mathematical ability of some Indian races.\"\n\nIn a letter to Montagu about the Hill letter in _Man_ , Dobzhansky wrote that Hill's thoughts revealed the man \"to be an old fogey.\" Not all opposition to the statement was couched in such transparent typological thinking. An editorial in May 1951, again in _Man_ , gave UNESCO \"great credit...for undertaking the campaign\" against racialism, but overall it considered the statement \"not the effective weapon which we had looked for, but a broken reed.\" In _Man_ 's opinion, the effort was tainted by including on its panel \"a small group of philosophers, historians, sociologists and others, only two of whom had any pretensions to competence in physical anthropology.\" The editorial was suspicious of many of the assertions in the statement, including its rejection of polygeny, its construction of race as a genetic rather than typological construct, and its rejection of the term \"race\" itself.\n\nDespite what Dobzhansky perceived to be largely unfounded criticism of the statement, he informed Montagu in February of 1951 of the formation of a second committee. \"The protests against the UNESCO race statement of yours,\" Dobzhansky wrote, \"have caused UNESCO to convoke another conference in Paris, on June 4th\u20138th, this year, consisting of physical anthropologists and geneticists.\" Unable to attend, Dobzhansky was concerned about the makeup of the new panel and worried that \"the genetical side of the group may consist of some people (such as Darlington) who are out and out racists.\" \"This may result,\" lamented Dobzhansky, in a \"statement which will be pretty sad.\" Dobzhansky was correct in his assumption that the second committee would consist of geneticists and physical anthropologists. However, Darlington was not on the committee, and Dobzhansky's concerns were mollified by the presence of Dunn as the committee's rapporteur.\n\nMontagu's position on the race concept is often mischaracterized in the historical literature; he is portrayed as a strict environmentalist who \"opposed any scientific concept of race.\" Likewise, there is speculation that the tenor of the statement was a consequence of his \"political zealousness and his refusal to adhere to received wisdom in science.\" This is misleading. While Montagu wanted to abandon use of the race concept in the sciences, he proposed doing so not because he rejected the biological diversity of humankind or because he himself rejected a geneticist's or anthropologist's ability to classify humans into groups or populations or what have you. Rather, he did so because he recognized that the race concept was tainted by its long and sordid history. Montagu's statement was at once a repudiation of the typological race concept and an embrace of the postsynthesis race concept as outlined by Dobzhansky and others. As such, Montagu was very much in line with genetical thinking on race. That Montagu and the statement fell under such a cloud for its assertions is indicative, perhaps, of his lack of political expedience (Dobzhansky's prediction about removing the race concept turned out to be correct) and of the fact that his views about the biological race concept were more radical than those of most geneticists and others in the natural sciences.\n\nA second UNESCO statement on race was issued in June 1951. J. B. S. Haldane, head of the Department of Biometry at University College, London, Gunnar Dahlberg, director of the State Institute for Human Genetics and Race Biology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and A. E. Mourant, director of the Blood Group Reference Laboratory at the Lister Institute in London were among the prominent scientists on the committee. Montagu remained a committee member, and, although not official committee members, Huxley and Dobzhansky \"contributed to the final wording\" of the statement. In his introduction to the second statement, Dunn explained the need for a revised report on race, insisting (unfairly to Montagu) that \"it was chiefly sociologists who gave their opinions and frame[d]\" the first statement. Alfred M\u00e9traux, the head of the Department of Social Sciences at UNESCO, who called for and organized the second committee, concurred with Dunn's assessment. M\u00e9traux was hopeful that the second UNESCO statement on race would allow the committee to go forward \"without exposing ourselves to criticisms on the part of scientists.\"\n\nIn Dunn's judgment, problems with the first statement were twofold: first, \"it did not carry the authority of just those groups within whose special province fall the biological problems of race, namely the physical anthropologists and geneticists,\" and, second, its assertions were \"not supported by many authorities in these two fields.\" Although Dunn acknowledged that there were important differences between the two statements, in his introduction he emphasized that \"there were no scientific grounds whatever for the racialist position regarding purity of race and the hierarchy of inferior and superior races to which this leads.\" The second statement also rejected arbitrary usage of the race concept, noting \"national, religious, geographical, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups; and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated connection with racial traits.\"\n\nYet despite being downplayed by Dunn and, subsequently, many scholars since, the differences in both tone and substance between the first and second statements were significant. Whereas the first statement defined the race concept in the postevolutionary synthesis vernacular of gene frequencies and populations, the second statement, to a very large degree, contradicted this approach, suggesting that race can also be understood in typological terms as an anthropological \"classificatory device providing a zoological frame within which the various groups of mankind may be arranged\" that \"should be reserved for groups of mankind possessing well-developed and primarily heritable physical differences from other groups.\" Whereas the first statement proposed dropping the \"term 'race' altogether\" in favor of \"ethnic groups,\" the second statement embraced the race concept in multiple forms as an anthropological tool. Dunn himself points out that \"we were...careful to avoid saying that, because races were all variable and many of them graded into each other, therefore races did not exist. The physical anthropologists and the man in the street both know that races exist.\" And, whereas the first statement rejected the idea that \"human hybrids frequently show undesirable traits, both physically and mentally,\" the second statement was more circumspect, asserting that \"no reliable evidence\" exists \"that disadvantageous effects are produced\" by racial hybrids.\n\nEven after its July 1951 release, the second statement went through multiple revisions. As late as February 1952, in correspondence with M\u00e9traux, Dunn expressed his dissatisfaction with the statement, writing, \"I don't like it as it stands and would prefer to see a more thorough-going revision....Since you are going to circularize the amended statement, could you not at the same time send out copies of the radical revision which I made and let the members choose between them?\" Dunn believed that the difficulties in drafting both statements arose out of the attempt \"to justify a particular ethical position on scientific ground\"\u2014that being, in this case, the idea that all people, regardless of race, are equal. \"It is our duty as scientists to make the facts as clear as possible and to relate them to the evidence,\" Dunn wrote to M\u00e9traux. Ultimately, at Dunn's insistence, in 1952 UNESCO published the final versions of the second statement along with the criticism received by the committee.\n\nThe second statement on race was not without its critics either. The geneticist R. A. Fisher, a founder of population genetics, wrote to Alfred M\u00e9traux soon after the statement's publication. Fisher questioned the statement's position on both the nature of race itself and on the relationship between race and intelligence. Fisher claimed that \"available scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development, seeing that such groups do differ undoubtedly in a very large number of their genes.\" He also expressed fear that \"this problem is being obscured by entirely well intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist.\" Criticism also came from those who thought that the second statement ambiguously defined race. The distinguished University of Chicago anthropologist Sherwood Washburn, who wrote to M\u00e9traux in October 1951, pointed out what he considered to be troubling and potentially dangerous contradictions in the text, and feared that \"the Statement may be used for political purposes.\" Washburn was particularly concerned with the statement's suggestion of the existence of three major racial groups. \"'Major' in what sense?\" Washburn wondered. \"Certainly not anatomically more distinct than others, older in time, or numerically greatest.\" This line of thinking\u2014major and minor groups\u2014was \"unfortunate,\" and he feared that it \"opens the way for superior and inferior to come back in the picture.\"\n\nMore than twenty years after the publication of the UNESCO statements, several geneticists, in correspondence with the historian of science William Provine, looked back at the second statement and its impact on the race debate in genetics. Sewell Wright thought it was \"too broadly negative as an expression of scientific thought on the subject, however desirable such a statement may be from the political and social standpoints.\" On the other hand, Dobzhansky believed that a majority of geneticists\u2014\"but hard to tell how great a majority\"\u2014were supportive of the second statement. As to whether or not there was a majority or minority of opinions in favor or against the statement, L. C. Dunn felt this to be incalculable. In his estimation \"it would be difficult to speak of 'majority opinions' or even of geneticists as a group. They differ in age, political and social views, class position and attitude and these are likely to affect their responses on questions which they suppose to be social or political ones.\" C. D. Darlington, who continued to publish racist claims throughout his career, belittled the second statement, calling it \"merely an expression of current fashion in emotions.\" And Curt Stern, whose position on race grew increasingly typological over the course of his career, wrote that it \"was strongly influenced by a vocal minority.\"\n\nThe first and second UNESCO statements on race have attracted limited but important interest from historians. For Elazar Barkan, author of _The Retreat of Scientific Racism_ , the first statement exemplified \"environmental determinism at its peak\" and completed \"the reversal in the scientific credo on race\" from a eugenic view of race to a cultural notion of race proffered by anthropologists that had begun in the 1920s. Indeed, in Barkan's estimation, the assertions in the first statement confirmed the retreat of scientific racism. Barkan's account, however, does not acknowledge what in actuality was the retreat from the antiracist spirit of the first statement on race or how the second statement contradicted and trivialized the first. Barkan also suggested that differences between the two statements were, for the most part, minimal and came down largely to a shift to a more tentative tone. In fact, Barkan argued that the second statement \"reconfirmed the lack of scientific support for race formalism.\" He also believed that \"race was losing its scientific (read: biological) credibility, but remained powerful in popular culture and as a social institute.\"\n\nLike Barkan, the historian Will Provine, in an _American Zoologist_ essay analyzing the relationship between geneticists and the race concept, looked at the evolution of geneticists' thinking about race differences and race crossing but did not address how geneticists conceived of the race concept itself and how that concept was developing at the time. Provine points out that while the statements indicated a general consensus among geneticists that \"race mixture was biologically harmless,\" most accepted the belief that \"hereditary mental differences probably existed between human races\" even though \"scientific evidence for their belief was not conclusive.\" Finally, Provine recognized that the race statements sought to accomplish something more significant than a summary of scientific thinking on race, and they presented an argument for \"equality in society for all races while holding open the possibility that there might be average differences in intelligence between races.\" In other words, the statements tried to make an ethical argument for equality, regardless of what the theories or perceptions of race were. The second statement failed at this largely because of its contradictory and often incoherent thinking; it rejected the first statement's refutation of the race concept and it was agnostic on whether races differed in intelligence, leaving open, as Sherwood Washburn conveyed in his criticism of the second statement, the possibility of re-creating a hierarchy of races on any number of traits. Dobzhansky, who had previously worried about the makeup of the committee writing up the second statement, was, unsurprisingly, not pleased with the outcome. After a visit to UNESCO in June 1951, Dobzhansky noted that \"poor M\u00e9traux is tired and nervous, and probably about ready to send all this UNESCO business to hell.\" In what was a rare moment of criticism of his close friend Dunn, Dobzhansky recorded in his personal journal that \"here was also Ashley Montagu, all displeased with the statement, and largely within reason. He declared that Dunn let me down by not defending my ideas about race. In this he is wrong, for my good friend Dunn simply does not himself know or understand these ideas.\"\n\nMore recently, the historian Michelle Brattain has analyzed the UNESCO statements as an important watershed in the history of the race concept. Brattain argues that the first and second UNESCO race statements revealed race as a historical construct in two ways: first, by showing how historical \"misuses\" of race had \"served as rationalizations for inequality,\" and second, by \"exposing race itself as a temporal, ephemeral phenomenon dependent on the people who invested it with authority and meaning.\" The great irony of the UNESCO statements was that as some of those involved in their development argued that race had a fixed, scientific meaning (particularly in the second statement), they produced a document that Brattain points out \"acknowledged implicitly that race had once been one thing and now it was another.\" But Brattain's construction of the history of the race concept relies on Elazar Barkan's notion of a retreat of scientific racism, followed by, in her estimation, a resurgence in the wake of the _Brown_ decision. Brattain also argues that \"scientific racism\" refers only to \"a particular scientific tradition associated with typological and hierarchical approaches typical of nineteenth-century physical anthropology.\" Brattain defends this position by noting that in the 1920s and 1930s the social sciences moved toward \"a greater emphasis on environment as a cause of human variation,\" and that during the same time in the biological sciences \"scholarship shifted toward a more complex understanding of human inheritance rooted in population genetics.\" While this is in itself true, by positing the history of scientific thought as discontinuous, Brattain does not seem to consider the contradictions and subtleties so often present in thinking about race. A simplistic typological approach to race thinking may have been pushed to the margins of scientific thought, thus resulting in a perceived retreat in scientific racism. But, as described herein, the perpetuation of the race concept in populationist thinking confirms the very contradictions and subtleties that are ever present in the relationship between scientific practice and the race concept. Scientific racism was not pushed to the margins of mainstream scientific thought. Instead, although this was certainly not their intent, Dunn, Dobzhansky, Stern, and others preserved the race concept in biological thinking by placing it firmly in the context of modern biology.\n\nIf Michelle Brattain is correct in asserting that the UNESCO statements can help in the historian's project of historicizing the race concept, then an examination of the scientific, social, and political terrain of the 1950s would suggest that something much more complex was afoot. First, the statements on race offered natural scientists an opportunity\u2014perhaps the first\u2014to collectively respond to the biological race concept as reimagined by Dobzhansky and others in the age of the evolutionary synthesis. For those who held on to the old typological ways of thinking about human difference, to whatever degree, the statements were an occasion to offer their resistance. Their challenges are indicative of the ways in which scientists were influenced in their approach to the biological race concept by extrascientific sources. One cannot read criticism of the statements\u2014like R. A. Fisher insisting without evidence that races \"do differ undoubtedly in a very large number of their genes,\" or H. J. Muller claiming that \"in view of the admitted existence of some physically expressed hereditary differences of a conspicuous nature...it would be strange if there were not also some hereditary differences\"\u2014without recognizing the impact of social prejudices on the ways questions about race were often asked and about the intense resistance to even changing the terminology of human diversity.\n\nYet at the same time, the reaction to the statements and the production of the second statement itself also indicate the ways in which a populationist definition of race had become consolidated in the biological sciences. Despite the significant differences between the first and second statements, both embraced the genetical concept that race was measured by the frequency of one or more genes in human populations and maintained that races were dynamic, not static, ways to understand human diversity. The comments of the sixty-nine physical anthropologists and geneticists about the statements, published by UNESCO in 1952 as _The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry_ , confirm this fact. There is very little criticism of the point in the second statement regarding a biological definition of race. However, the two parts of the statement that garnered the most criticism addressed which human populations could be considered racial groups and the relationship between race and intelligence.\n\nSecond, despite the broader consolidation of the race concept in biology, the scientific row that followed both statements' publication offers insight into the contradictions and problems with populationist thinking about the race concept and illustrates the ways in which racism preserved its place in scientific practice and thought. This was not, to be sure, the intent of Dobzhansky, Dunn, and most other geneticists as they set about rethinking the biology of race in the context of the evolutionary synthesis and population genetics. In fact, Dobzhansky and Dunn were committed antiracists. In the promotion of a \"modern view of race founded upon the known facts and theories of heredity,\" Dunn, for example, believed that \"the old views of fixed and absolute biological differences among the races of man, and the hierarchy of superior and inferior races founded upon this old view\" would be superseded and left \"without scientific justification.\" Dobzhansky thought it was the \"misuse of the word race by propagandists and bigots\" that led to popular misunderstanding of the race concept. Both Dobzhansky and Dunn (very much like Du Bois nearly half a century earlier) had confidence that education about what was now considered \"race\" would put to rest any confusion about what it had meant in the past.\n\nBut what they refused to acknowledge, and what in hindsight Montagu seems to have been most prescient about, was that in American society it is not possible to tease apart the social and scientific meanings of race\u2014remember this is the same conclusion that Du Bois reached as his own thinking about race evolved in the course of his early career. In Montagu's view the term \"race\" \"enshrines so many of the errors which it is desirable to remove.\" Even if biologists were to use the term in its so-called modern sense, the word \"race\" itself would still elicit meaning in the context of the old view. Race is a \"trigger word,\" Montagu wrote, \"utter it and a whole series of emotionally conditioned responses follow.\" One need not look any further than the changes from the first to second statements to recognize the contradictions inherent in the race concept. Even as the second statement embraced essentially the same populationist race concept as the first, it also embraced a typological race concept, stating that race is an anthropological \"classificatory device providing a zoological frame within which the various groups of mankind may be arranged\" that \"should be reserved for groups of mankind possessing well-developed and primarily heritable physical differences from other groups.\" Moreover, that a group of distinguished geneticists could not come to reject claims that race mixture produced physical or mental disharmonies, or that it could claim three \"major\" racial groupings, highlighted the contradictions inherent in the race concept and inherent in the thinking of those who thought that modernizing the concept could make it less connected to racism.\n\nThird, these same challenges to and changes in the statements suggest something about the status of scientific authority in the mid-twentieth century. As Dunn himself believed, the first statement was a failure because \"it did not carry the authority of just those groups within whose special province fall the biological problems of race, namely the physical anthropologists and geneticists.\" Instead \"it was chiefly sociologists who gave their opinions and frame.\" Dunn's critique not only ignores the contributions of the anthropologists involved in the production of the first statement (it may be recalled that Montagu had expertise in both physical anthropology and evolutionary biology), but it also belittles the important role social scientists\u2014from W. E. B Du Bois to Gunnar Myrdal\u2014played in helping to reformulate ideas about race. Such statements point to a growing dissonance between social and scientific thought, one that the British philosopher of science C. P. Snow would, in 1959, famously describe in his essay \"The Two Cultures.\" \"I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups,\" Snow wrote. He worried that a \"gulf of mutual incomprehension\u2014sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding\" was emerging between the sciences and other modes of thought.\n\nThe authority of evolutionary biology and genetics had, by the 1950s, according to historian of science V. B. Smocovitis, \"been secured by becoming officialized and institutionalized as the central component of the biological sciences.\" And with this authority biologists \"were to act as unifiers, negotiators of the location of biology, preservers of the whole of the positivistic ordering of Enlightenment knowledge.\" It is in this context then that Dunn's claim about the role of sociology in the first statement can also be understood as an assertion of the evolutionists' and geneticists' power. And Dunn believed he was using this power for good. \"You see, it's a much more palatable view for people who come to think about race for the first time than the typological view which had been dominant, and still is in many parts of anthropology,\" Dunn wrote, concluding that \"my own opinion is that this was a better way to counteract ideas about race prejudice.\" He hoped that \"other views tend to die off when people have a better one to substitute.\" The second statement is thus as much an assertion of what committee members believed about race as it was an affirmation of their authority over social scientists on this matter.\n\nDespite biology's authority in the mid-1950s, social scientific thought also commanded significant and growing influence in mid-twentieth century America. Witness its impact on the _Brown_ decision and on thinking about American race relations more generally. Social scientific thought also examined and challenged the status quo through best-selling works like David Riesman's _The Lonely Crowd_ , William Whyte's _The Organization Man_ , and C. Wright Mills's _The Power Elite_. Moreover, in many ways the 1950s were a period of waning dominance for the natural sciences. No longer would the authority of science go unchallenged. In many ways Montagu's position and the position of the first statement in general were precursors to what historian Ronald Walters calls the \"much larger late twentieth-century project of seeking out the hidden operations of power, questioning once seemingly fixed and 'essential' categories such as race, gender, and ethnicity.\" That the statements were part of the push and pull between the natural and social sciences is elucidated by Walters, who argues that beginning in the 1960s, soon after the statements' publication, \"scientists themselves [would do] little to enhance their image as spokespersons on crucial issues,\" including a growing penchant for speaking out \"with so much caution and nuance that their words carried little impact.\" Although the revisions to the first statement took place ten years before the shift Walters describes, the changes between the first and second statements suggest that perhaps this shift had begun even earlier.\n\nChallenges to scientific authority, or an acknowledgment of the growing division between scientific and social thought in the 1950s, came from sources as diverse as Hollywood films, politicians, philosophers, as well as scientists themselves. Both Hollywood and Japanese filmmakers produced movies\u2014 _The Thing from Another World_ (1951), _Them_ (1954), and _Godzilla_ (1954), for example\u2014that challenged the wisdom and authority of science. _Them_ \u2014referring to ants supersized following exposure to atomic radiation at a New Mexico bomb test site that then terrorize Los Angeles\u2014and _Godzilla_ both played on fears of atomic science. In _The Thing from Another World_ , a \"Thing\" lands on the North Pole and attacks a band of Air Force personnel and scientists stationed there. To some the film was an allegory about America's fears of communism. To others it was a rebuke of science and scientific decision making in an era in which scientists could be celebrated or despised. The film's lead scientist, Dr. Carrington, an atomic scientist no less, believes that the Thing is a superior life-form from which humanity can learn a great deal. Several times in the film Carrington sabotages efforts to kill the deadly creature. The doctor is saved from himself and his unyielding pursuit of knowledge only once the Thing has been defeated.\n\nPoliticians and philosophers too were well aware of challenges to the authority of the natural sciences. Writing in _Science_ in 1957 the Hungarian scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi argued that science had replaced religion as \"the greatest single source of error\" in human thought. Although Polanyi himself believed in objective truth and in the power of science, he acknowledged that the rhetorical power of science in silencing ideas was a dangerous turn for open intellectual exchange. \"Today, when any human thought can be discredited by branding it as unscientific, the power exercised by theology has passed over to science,\" Polanyi wrote. This condemnation of scientific arrogance was written in the hope of checking \"the abuses of the scientific method...in the interest of other human ideals which they threaten and in the interest of science itself.\" Vannevar Bush, who had been President Roosevelt's science adviser and had helped shaped postwar government support for scientific research, feared that in the wake of the atomic bombings in Japan, private foundations were becoming \"reluctant to fund natural science research.\"\n\nFinally, the content of both statements must be seen in light of the nascent struggle for civil rights that was emerging at the time, as well as changes in American social and political thought as pertaining to race. The very same week that the second statement on race was released by UNESCO the awful side effects of American racism were in plain view in Cicero, Illinois, where, on July 12, a mob of 3,000 whites sought to prevent army veteran Harvey E. Clark from moving into a rental unit in a formerly all-white apartment building. Following an intervention by the National Guard to quell the riot, a State Department official quipped that the situation was similar to early defeats in Korea. Lynching and other forms of violence against African Americans rose in the immediate post\u2013World War II years as the South sought to reassert its racist mores and send a message to returning veterans that Jim Crow remained firmly entrenched. Several black veterans were killed or maimed in such violence. Between the summer of 1945 and the end of 1946 there were at least sixty lynchings throughout the South. But racism in the United States did not always manifest itself in violence and intimidation. Jim Crow remained an organizing feature of American society in the 1950s, and that meant African Americans lived in a system of segregation and exploitation that both assumed and reinforced ideas about black inferiority. Jim Crow created economic dependency and inferiority, and in 1950 \"nonwhite families earned nationally 54% of the median income of white families.\"\n\nContradictions and ambiguities in America's racial calculus were becoming increasingly evident at that time, particularly in the context of international relations. In the wake of World War II and at the outset of the Cold War\u2014two wars fought in the name of American freedom and ideals\u2014the United States \"engaged in a sustained effort to tell a particular story about race and American democracy: a story of progress, a story of the triumph of good over evil, a story of U.S. moral superiority,\" notes Cold War historian Mary Dudziak. \"The lesson of this story,\" she believes, was that \"American democracy was a form of government that made the achievement of social justice possible, and that democratic change, however slow and gradual, was superior to dictatorial imposition. The story of race in America, used to compare democracy and communism, became an important Cold War narrative.\" It was in this context, of course, that in 1948 President Harry Truman signed an executive order desegregating the United States military. Truman, despite his Missouri upbringing and sometimes intemperate personal attitudes toward black Americans, became an ally in the emerging movement for African American civil rights. During his tenure he also called on Congress to protect voting rights, outlaw lynching, and enact civil rights laws. He even risked his political future during the election of 1948 by supporting, in order to court African American voters, a pro\u2013civil rights platform for the Democratic Party. Truman was, of course, mindful during these early years of the Cold War of perceptions of America at home and its treatment of its African American citizens. He expressed this concern via his 1948 special address on civil rights to Congress. In a stirring speech that went far beyond anything a sitting U.S. president had uttered on the subject of race until that time, Truman challenged America, declaring, \"If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, if we wish to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, if we wish to fulfill the promise that is ours, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our democracy.\"\n\nSo too did the success of Ralph Bunche, a United States representative to the United Nations, indicate changes in America's racial zeitgeist. In 1950 Bunche became the first African American awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the United Nations. Despite Bunche's incredible success, Michael Harrington feared that the popularization of his story (and, for that matter, at almost that same time, the popularization of Jackie Robinson's story) would, for most African Americans still living under the oppression of Jim Crow, come to represent \"a tragic gap between the ideal and possible.\" Nonetheless, Charles Johnson, president of Fisk University, who was possibly influenced by the UNESCO statements, wrote in 1951 of \"significant recent gains in civil rights\" and posited \"it seems no longer necessary in general discussion of race relations in America for anthropologists to document fundamental mental and biological equality.\" The optimism of Johnson's view would, however, be challenged in the years ahead as biologists and anthropologists continued to struggle over the race concept.\n**9**\n\n**CHALLENGES TO THE RACE CONCEPT**\n\n**T** he 1950 and 1951 UNESCO statements on race embodied contradictions in the race concept that would surface over and over again in American scientific thought and in the popular expression about race. Two events in the 1960s\u2014events that have been well documented in the historical literature as prime examples of scientific racism\u2014are also significant in the way that they embody the ambiguities of a modern biological race concept. The first, the publication in 1962 of University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Carleton Coon's _The Origin of Races_ , was a direct challenge to Dobzhansky's evolutionary-synthesis-era conception of race. The second event relates to claims by the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen that racial differences in intelligence, or IQ, were hereditary and genetic, and that therefore educational redress for IQ discrepancies was largely useless. Jensen's work epitomized the way the modern biological race concept could easily be appropriated by racists writing under the guise of science.\n\nThe advent of high-throughput genomic technologies has allowed evolutionary biologists and anthropologists to confirm earlier conclusions drawn from the human fossil record: that _Homo sapiens_ originated in Africa and fanned out across the continents. Even recent evidence from the Neanderthal genome project, which suggests that as _Homo sapiens_ fanned out across the globe some interbreeding did occur between non-African _sapiens_ and Neanderthals, does not contradict the \"out of Africa\" thesis. In fact, the Neanderthal data supports this claim, showing that most genetic variation originated in Africa and spread globally with the earliest human migrations. This contrasts with the view of Coon and many of his contemporaries in anthropology and biology who accepted Africa as the birthplace of the genus _Homo_ but embraced a theory that posited that _Homo sapiens_ evolved multiregionally from _Homo erectus_ and eventually replaced them (hence multiple human races and a theory that bore some similarity to earlier polygenic ideas).\n\nCoon, who in 1961 had been elected as the president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, took multiregional ideas a step further (or perhaps backward) than the anthropological consensus of the times. He repackaged them in his tome _The Origin of Races_ to read like nineteenth-century polygenist ideas of separate human race creations. Coon believed that the fossil record showed exactly five main subspecies of _Homo sapiens_ that had evolved from _Homo erectus_ at different times in our evolutionary history. \"Wherever _Homo_ arose,\" wrote Coon, \"and Africa is at present the likeliest continent, he soon dispersed, in a very primitive form, throughout the warm regions of the Old World. Three of the five human subspecies crossed the _sapiens_ line elsewhere. If Africa was the cradle of mankind, it was only an indifferent kindergarten. Europe and Asia were our principal schools.\" Coon estimated that European ancestors had evolved from _erectus_ to _sapiens_ first, some 200,000 years ago, whereas the Congoids, what he calls the ancestors of most modern Africans, had evolved only 40,000 years ago in that \"indifferent kindergarten.\" In recent history, each race had \"reached its own level on the evolutionary scale.\" And to this argument Coon brought what he claimed were the latest genetic and evolutionary biological techniques. Not only did the fossil record reveal these distinctions between humankind but so too did \"research in blood groups, hemoglobins, and other biochemical features.\" Coon judged this as \"good,\" believing that it was \"encouraging to know that biochemistry divides us into the same subspecies that we have long recognized on the basis of other criteria.\" Because these biochemical markers were \"invisible to the naked eye,\" Coon thought \"they are much less controversial than the latter in an increasingly race-conscious world.\" Of that race-conscious world, Coon believed that \"racial intermixture can upset the genetic as well as the social equilibrium of a group.\"\n\nIt is surprising that in 1962, at the height of the civil rights movement's challenge to the racial hierarchy implicit in Coon's typological and polygenic assertions, _The Origin of Races_ was generally well received in both academic and popular presses, even though most reviewers acknowledged that controversy was sure to dog the book. Writing in _Science_ , Ernst Mayr called _The Origin of Races_ a \"milestone in the history of anthropology.\" To Mayr, the book was \"something for which to be truly thankful,\" for despite what he considered its significant shortcomings\u2014\"as persuasive as Coon's treatment is, it does not always convince me of the validity of the lines of descent that he postulates\"\u2014the book had \"an invigorating freshness that will reinforce the current revitalization of physical anthropology.\" Mayr acknowledged that the book \"will stir up more than one controversy,\" yet he believed that \"the basic framework of Coon's thesis is as well, or better, substantiated than various possible alternatives.\"\n\nWriting in _American Anthropologist_ Frederick Hulse of the University of Arizona argued that \"no better text for a course in Fossil Man has yet been published\" and that the book was neither a \"racist tract, or...an echo from the past.\" Indeed, Hulse, despite accepting that \"many of the conclusions are highly speculative in nature, and leave me quite unconvinced,\" believed _Origins_ to be \"a serious attempt to arrange the fossil evidence of human evolution in a meaningful way.\" Even a review in the journal _Phylon_ , an academic journal published by Atlanta University and founded by W. E. B. Du Bois, gave the book a positive assessment. The reviewer did, however, acknowledge that racists could use concepts in the book \"to argue the inferiority of some groups.\" _Origins_ was even listed as a \"Reviewers' Choice\" for 1962 in the _Chicago Daily Tribune_. In the _Tribune_ , Wilton M. Krogman wrote that Coon's work \"is an important book about our own kind\" that has \"scientific validity; more, it has human dignity.\" Krogman's review also had some not-so-subtle allusions to his own thoughts about America's contemporary racial hierarchy and how the book confirmed this view. In _Origins_ \"we are told who we all are...and we all are _put in our places_ as subspecies sharing a certain amount of likeness, dividing a certain amount of unlikeness.\"\n\nDespite the significant questions raised in the reviews of _Origins_ , the book probably would not have garnered much attention had it not been for Dobzhansky, who, in a polite gesture toward his colleague Coon, sent him an advance copy of his review of the book (that was to appear in the _Saturday Review_ ) with a note that read, in part, \"It grieves me tremendously that I have to contradict your way of describing your findings. For I feel that it is indeed the unfortunate language which you are using that creates a semantic predicament of a dangerous sort.\" Although Dobzhansky never specifically identified Coon's unfortunate language, one can assume that comments that refer to Africa as the \"Darkest Continent\" and an \"indifferent kindergarten,\" or Coon's conclusions about a relationship between race and Coon's so-called evolutionary scale, were certainly among those that raised his ire. Coon was infuriated by the review, calling it \"an anti-racist tract,\" and was taken aback by accusations of \"mischievously furnishing ammunition to racists.\" Coon even went so far as to accuse Dobzhansky of libel. In response, Dobzhansky called for cooler minds to prevail, suggesting to Coon that \"we control our tempers and behave in a manner becoming for scientists.\" Dobzhansky also told Coon that the \"extreme violence of his reaction\" to the review \"came as a very painful surprise,\" but that despite the esteem in which he held Coon, he could not \"avoid concluding that your reaction shows that you know that you are wrong.\"\n\nDobzhansky's article was never published in the _Saturday Review_. The magazine returned his review to him with a fifty-dollar check, which Dobzhansky promptly sent back. Instead, the review would appear in _Scientific American_ and soon thereafter be reprinted in _Current Anthropology_ alongside a response from Coon. In his review Dobzhansky attacked the scientific conclusions of _Origins_ and their impact on popular discussions about race. He challenged Coon's understanding of the biological race concept, emphasizing \"race is an entity that is not clearly defined biologically,\" and called into question the centerpiece of Coon's thesis\u2014that there were \"exactly five races of _Homo erectus_ and that there are exactly five living races of _Homo sapiens_.\" Furthermore, Dobzhansky chastised Coon for what he called the book's \"semantic mischief,\" particularly Coon's description of time lines for racial evolution from _erectus_ to _sapiens_. \"A scientist should not and cannot eschew studies on the racial differentiation of mankind, or examine all possible hypotheses about it, for fear that his work will be misused,\" Dobzhansky wrote. However, he believed academics, particularly scientists writing about issues as potentially explosive as race, needed to be sensitive to the way in which these findings were communicated. In Dobzhansky's view, Coon had failed at this, giving cover to those who \"have repeatedly sought the support of bogus 'science.'\"\n\nThe anger Coon had exhibited in his personal correspondence with Dobzhansky spilled over into his published response in _Current Anthropology_. Instead of responding directly to Dobzhansky's criticisms of _Origins_ , Coon challenged Dobzhansky's credentials as a scientist, claimed expertise over him in the area of physical anthropology, called him \"professionally incompetent,\" and even privately suggested that he did \"not understand the mechanisms of evolution.\" Coon's response concluded that unlike fruit flies (Dobzhansky's subject of study), \"human beings do not mate at random, but are kept apart to a large extent and quite effectively by cultural barriers such as language, religions, and such other customs as feelings about integration and segregation.\" It seems a poor choice of words by Coon to conclude that \"feelings about integration and segregation\" were part of why humans did not mate at random, especially given the timing of the book's publication during the heyday of the civil rights movement's fight against segregation, and given Dobzhansky's criticism about the relationship between the scientific and the social realms on matters of race. In hindsight it is surprising that such a statement did not arouse more suspicion than it did at the time\u2014save Dobzhansky's and that of a few other critics\u2014about Coon's conscious or unconscious motivations for his conclusions in _Origins_.\n\nThat Coon was a cousin to the mid-twentieth century racist propagandizer Carleton Putnam\u2014whose book _Race and Reason_ Dobzhansky had just a year before called the \"bogus 'science' of race prejudice\" in the pages of the _Journal of Heredity_ \u2014was largely unknown at the time. Coon, as it turns out, offered Putnam significant personal assistance in the development of _Race and Reason_ , and the two developed a strong bond over their shared dislike for what they believed was the dominance of Boasian equalitarianism in anthropological thought. Coon's intellectual support of his cousin helped Putnam, in turn, exploit Coon's work in his political mission. This quid pro quo worked well for both men.\n\nDobzhansky was quite disturbed that his evolutionary biological colleagues either embraced or remained agnostic on Coon's book and their public disagreement. In early November 1962, Mayr wrote to Dobzhansky that when he read _Origins_ he \"saw none of the implications which you seem to see,\" and he even went so far as to warn Dobzhansky that he should make sure to cite the page numbers of what he perceived to be the objectionable passages in the book. If not, Mayr warned, \"you will surely expose yourself to the criticism that you have accused Coon unfairly and unjustly.\" Dobzhansky crafted a lengthy response to Mayr, G. G. Simpson, and William L. Strauss Jr., all of whom had taken issue with Dobzhansky's criticisms of Coon. In a \"dear friends\" letter to colleagues of whom he said \"there are no other three people in the world whose opinions on evolutionary matters I would value more highly,\" Dobzhansky admits that their opinions of Coon's book \"has caused me to do some soul searching and some re-examination of the book. But as a result, I feel obliged to stick to my guns, however much I would have preferred to have my guns stacked together with your guns.\" Dobzhansky told his colleagues that he considered _Origins_ as fitting \"the requirements of Putnam & Co,\" and wondered, without then knowing the full relationship between Coon and Putnam, whether Coon had framed his conclusions \"deliberately to give ammunition to that gang.\"\n\nIn many ways Dobzhansky's review of _Origins_ and the related correspondence read as if Dobzhansky saw himself as the caretaker of the biological race concept. He had, after all, helped usher in an era in the evolutionary sciences that sought to detach the idea of race from its typological origins and, in so doing, had preserved a concept of human difference for geneticists to utilize in their work. However, despite a nearly career-long fight to preserve the biological race concept, Dobzhansky began to express severe misgivings about the concept at around this time. In his book _Mankind Evolving_ , published the same year as Coon's _The Origin of Races_ , he worried that investigation into human diversity had \"floundered in confusion and misunderstanding,\" and that these confusions were \"only partly due to the biases and passions engendered by race prejudices and consequent defense reactions.\" Dobzhansky believed that ultimately \"the problem that now faces the science of man is how to devise better methods for further observations that will give more meaningful results.\" Dobzhansky cited several approaches to the race concept that identify anywhere between five and thirty-two races, including a classification scheme proposed by Coon himself in the early 1950s that divided humanity into thirty races. Dobzhansky was not critical of these inconsistencies in racial measurement. In fact, he embraced them because he believed that race itself was a tool for classification and sytematization, a device \"used to make diversity intelligible and manageable.\" While human genetic diversity is a hallmark of our species, Dobzhansky believed the way we choose to organize that diversity is a methodological decision and not one that necessarily reflects underlying evolutionary or hierarchical schemes. That is what race meant to Dobzhansky, and that is what he believed race meant in evolutionary biology and genetics.\n\nThat _Mankind Evolving_ was published the same year as Coon's _Origins_ attracted little notice at the time, in spite of the fact that the two books were basically about the same thing and reached two very different conclusions. This becomes even more puzzling when reading the chapters in _Mankind Evolving_ that address, albeit indirectly, the theses of Coon's work. \"We do not know nearly enough to give a satisfactory account of the appearance of modern man, _Homo sapiens_ ,\" wrote Dobzhansky, who then goes on to pick apart the separate creations argument. First, Dobzhansky argues that autogenesis, the idea that human ancestors were \"predestined from the beginning to develop in the direction of humanity\" is not a feature of evolution. Therefore, it is implausible that reproductively isolated groups of _erectus_ would have evolved separately into _sapiens_ over the course of 150,000 years. Second, because we recognize _Homo sapiens_ as a single species, it could \"not have arisen by the coalescence of two or several ancestral species.\" Finally, Dobzhansky recognized that \"living species are reproductively isolated, and living races are not\" (humans cannot, for example, breed with chimpanzees or gorillas). This contradicted the view that Coon's five _erectus_ populations around the world were isolated from one another and evolved separately.\n\nCoon, from his influential perch as the president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and as a well-respected leader in his field, challenged Dobzhansky's construction of race, and in doing so revealed its inherent contradictions. That the biological race concept could not completely disentangle itself from typological inferences was manifest in Coon's conflation of typology, genotype, and phenotype, as well as his own obvious social prejudices about nonwhites. In his review of _Origins_ , which appeared alongside the Dobzhansky review in _Current Anthropology_ , Ashley Montagu acknowledged that race and typology were indeed inseparable, and that the race concept remained burdened by its connection to its own history. \"If I were not actually reading the printed words in a book published in 1962 by a reputable publisher,\" Montagu wrote of _Origins_ , \"I could believe that I were reading an anthropology written and published in 1862.\"\n\nJust a year before the Coon imbroglio, Dobzhansky sparred with another anthropologist in the pages of _Current Anthropology_. Again, as he had been doing in both private correspondence and published writings, Dobzhansky defended the use of the race concept in the context of the evolutionary synthesis. In an article titled \"On the Non-Existence of Human Races,\" University of Michigan anthropologist Frank Livingstone reasoned \"that there are excellent arguments for abandoning the concept of race with reference to the living populations of _Homo sapiens_.\" For Livingstone, as one studied more and more of the variation both within and between populations, it was \"nearly impossible to determine what the 'actual races really are.'\" \"To apply the term subspecies to any part of such variation not only is arbitrary or impossible but tends to obscure the explanation of this variation,\" Livingstone said. Ultimately, Livingstone's critique echoed the earlier arguments by Du Bois and Montagu. \"No science can divorce its concepts, definitions, and theories so completely from its subject matter,\" he concluded.\n\nAs a physical anthropologist, Livingstone had studied genetic diversity within and between human populations. His groundbreaking work on the sickle-cell trait in West Africa, in fact, led him to reject racial classifications, as outlined in his back-and-forth with Dobzhansky. Dobzhansky, ever still the arbiter of the race concept, pushed back with his usual defense, arguing that \"the difficulties with the race concept arise chiefly from failure to realize that while race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena, race is also a category of biological classification.\" In other words, as Dobzhansky had argued many times before, race was real; it was the method of identifying and naming it where the problem lay. \"There is nothing arbitrary about whether race differences do or do not exist, but whether races should or should not be named,\" Dobzhansky asserted, \"and if they should, how many should be recognized, is a matter of convenience and hence of judgment.\"\n\nThough Livingstone agreed with Dobzhansky on this point, he ultimately thought this line of thinking\u2014which had come to define the concept of race in biological terms\u2014was specious. \"I would agree with him [Dobzhansky],\" Livingstone wrote, \"that just about all human populations differ in the frequency of some gene\" and that \"all human populations are racially distinct, which should imply that each is a separate race.\" But in Livingstone's analysis, this made the term \"race\" \"inapplicable\" in a biological context. \"Since any grouping differs with the gene frequency used,\" Livingstone argued, \"the number of groupings is equal to the number of genes.\" Therefore, \"one population could belong to several different races.\" This was, of course, Dobzhansky's point about the race concept: that it was a methodological tool to organize species-level diversity. But for Livingstone, this methodological justification for the use of race was not reconcilable with the taxonomic system\u2014the Linnaean system\u2014through which the biological sciences organized the natural world: \"Any particular animal population cannot belong to several different genera, species, or any other taxonomic level within the Linnaean system; such a usage is inconsistent with the assumptions of the system.\"\n\nLater that decade, another dispute surfaced about the use of the biological race concept in the context of race, genetics, and intelligence\u2014one that again highlighted the contradictions in the race concept. The 1969 publication of educational psychologist Arthur Jensen's \"How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?\" in the _Harvard Educational Review_ became a lightning rod for scientific and popular discussion about race, intelligence, and genetics. In that article Jensen made his now-infamous claim that intelligence, or IQ, had a very high heritability, that that heritability was largely genetic in nature, and that therefore redress for discrepancies in IQ through educational remedies in order to \"narrow the achievement gap between 'minority' and 'majority' pupils\" was likely to be futile. Jensen proposed instead that for American schools the \"next step will be to develop the techniques by which school learning can be most effectively achieved in accordance with different patterns of ability.\" In other words, trying to educate genetically smart students with genetically less-smart students is neither a good use of society's time or of humankind's genetic heritage. Jensen was hopeful that this was changing and believed that \"we are beginning to see some definite signs that this mistreatment of the genetic basis of intelligence by social scientists may be on the wane, and that a biosocial view of intellectual development more in accord with the evidence is gaining greater recognition.\"\n\nIn the article, Jensen, an educational psychologist with no formal training in any area of the biological sciences, presented himself as an expert in genetics and tried to summarize for the psychological community the mechanisms of heredity and how they related to race and IQ. Sections of the paper titled \"The Concept of Heritability,\" \"Polygenic Inheritance,\" \"Covariance of Heredity and Environment,\" \"Common Misconceptions About Heritability,\" and \"Empirical Findings on the Heritability of Intelligence\" help acquaint the reader with complex genetic concepts. Attempts like Jensen's to link genetics with race and America's social conditions were part of the academic and popular culture in the 1960s. This was occurring just as the civil rights movement and the more radical Black Power movement were quickly moving beyond a strictly civil rights platform to pay close attention to broader issues of social and economic justice.\n\nIn 1966 William Shockley, a Nobel Prize\u2013winning physicist and professor at Stanford University, received considerable publicity for calling upon the National Academy of Sciences (of which he was a member) to \"foster research on the effects of heredity, including race, on human behavior.\" \"I evaluate the marrow of the city's slum problem to be our uncertainty about its genetic aspects and our fear to admit ignorance and to search openly for relevant facts,\" Shockley claimed to the academy in a paper with the title \"Possible Metallurgical and Astronomical Approaches to the Problem of Environment versus Ethnic Heredity.\" In a press release by the Stanford University News Service, Shockley explained his \"incursion into the field of genetics as a reaction to colleagues' opinions that 'even the proposal that an objective study be sought is doomed to be smothered under an emotional slogan.'\" The following year, at a speech at Michigan State University, Shockley warned that \"unrealistic hope for speeding the Negro's struggle for equality before the real causes of his disadvantages are known may unwittingly inflict untold human suffering on the Negroes themselves.\" With his proposed program going nowhere at the National Academy, Shockley called upon John Gardner, Lyndon Johnson's secretary of health, education, and welfare, to undertake his study of America's impending racial degeneration. Gardner passed the letter off to Philip Lee, assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs, who rebuked Shockley's request and suggested that he speak with his Stanford colleague the eminent geneticist Joshua Lederberg about genetics, the environment, and human behavior.\n\nThe attempt by men like Jensen and Shockley to employ a biological race concept shows that no matter how hard Dobzhansky and other biologists tried to narrowly define race in the context of biology\u2014that despite the stated shift away from typology to populationist thinking\u2014race could and would be used for typological, racist, and nonscientific ends. The Jensen and Shockley affairs confirm the plasticity of the biological race concept and that its historical legacy is inseparable from its contemporary usage. At a 1966 symposium held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science exploring science and the race concept, the giants of evolutionary biology and genetics, plus several esteemed psychologists and anthropologists, continued to argue about the meanings of race in science. The symposium was organized, in the words of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, \"as an indication of the present state of knowledge and research on problems of race, and it represents a response to the barrage of pseudoscientific statements which, since the Supreme Court desegregation decision of 1954, have attempted to prove the innate biological inferiority of the group of Americans who are socially classified as Negro.\" At the symposium Dobzhansky, Mayr, and other evolutionary biologists again insisted that the biological race concept had left typology behind, and that race was both a tool for classification and a biological phenomenon. It is in that space, between methodology and biology, where the contradictions of race would emerge again and again.\n\nOne wonders, despite Dobzhansky's stern protests to Montagu that abandoning the term \"race\" in biology would do nothing\u2014\"I have done my damndest to convince you that this proposition will neither be accepted nor would it do any good if accepted\"\u2014what might have been had geneticists and others in the biological sciences heeded the call to substitute the term \"ethnic groups\" for \"race.\"\n**10**\n\n**NATURALIZING RACISM**\n\nThe Controversy Over Sociobiology\n\nOn December 18, 1975, after a long illness, the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky died. As an architect of the evolutionary synthesis in the biological sciences, a distinguished teacher and mentor to a generation of students at Caltech, Columbia, and Rockefeller, and a public intellectual, Dobzhansky left an indelible mark on his discipline, on the sciences more generally, and on the times in which he lived. Eulogized by the Royal Society, Dobzhansky was remembered for his singular contributions to the field and as \"a man ready to adjust his views in the light of increasing knowledge and not ashamed to admit past error, nor concerned to disguise it.\" What Darwin's _The Origin of Species_ was to evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century Dobzhansky's _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ was to it in the twentieth century according to evolutionary biologist and former Dobzhansky student Francisco Ayala. Another student of Dobzhansky's, the evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, remembered his late mentor as the scientist \"who, in _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , changed our view of races from the taxonomist's typological classification to the modern population genetic one.\" Indeed, Dobzhansky's impact is historic.\n\nJust a year before his death, Dobzhansky had published a remembrance of his close friend and longtime collaborator L. C. Dunn, who had died in March of 1974. Like Dobzhansky, Dunn was a giant in his field, remembered both for his important contributions to genetics and for the steadfast humanism that he brought to his work in science and society. Dobzhansky noted that during the 1930s Dunn was active on the Emergency Committee for German Scholars that helped resettle German exiles at American universities. Dunn was also remembered as an authority on the race concept\u2014work that he hoped would undercut racism's scourge in both scientific thought and popular practice. Other members of their scientific cohort, also founders of and contributors to the evolutionary synthesis, died in the decade or so following Dunn and Dobzhansky. Julian Huxley passed in 1975. Curt Stern died in 1981, George G. Simpson in 1984, and Sewell Wright in 1988. There were, however, two long-lived exceptions. Ashley Montagu and Ernst Mayr remained prolific into their nineties; Montagu died at age ninety-four in 1999, and Mayr at age one hundred in 2005.\n\n**SOCIOBIOLOGY ASCENDANT**\n\nIt is purely coincidental that in the same year as Dobzhansky's passing the entomologist Edward Osborne Wilson published _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , a now classic work examining the relationship between biology and social behavior in all species, including humans. Before his foray into sociobiology, Wilson had a distinguished career as a biologist whose work on ant populations, biogeography, and ecology made him one of the most distinguished and publicly recognized scientists of the late twentieth century. Wilson, of course, would also go on to become one of the world's most prominent environmental advocates as a voice for the preservation of the earth's biodiversity. But it was his work on sociobiology that first thrust him into the scientific and public spotlight. In the years following _Sociobiology_ 's publication, Wilson would, for example, win a Pulitzer Prize for _On Human Nature_ and a National Medal of Science from President Carter.\n\nWilson's sociobiological proposition\u2014that a biological theory of behavior (in humans and nonhuman species) should inform the work of the social sciences and humanities (some called this disciplinary imperialism or the Darwinizing of the social sciences)\u2014can now be understood as part of the impulse to unify the biological sciences. The most important step in this struggle during the first half of the twentieth century was the emergence of the evolutionary synthesis\u2014the unification of Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics. In declaring the \"new synthesis,\" Wilson sought to attach _Sociobiology_ to this legacy, applying evolutionary concepts to the relationship between biology and behavior in all species. As Wilson wrote, his work sought to \"codify sociobiology into a branch of evolutionary biology and particularly modern population biology.\" In addition to its historical connection to the drive in biology to unify related disciplines, sociobiology's ambition to uncover \"the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all kinds of organisms, including man,\" was heir to a legacy within the biological sciences of integrating claims about the genetic basis for complex human social behavior into social thought.\n\nWhile sociobiology made no claims to immediately involve itself in social policy, Wilson's introductory chapter in _Sociobiology_ did propose that \"the principal goal of a general theory of sociobiology should be an ability to predict features of social organization from a knowledge of these population parameters combined with information on the behavioral constraints imposed by the genetic constitution of the species.\" A leap from predicting the features of social organization to influencing it was not beyond the ambitions of some sociobiologists, including Wilson. If \"the most diagnostic features of human behavior evolved by natural selection and are today constrained throughout the species by particular sets of genes,\" then sociobiology's contribution to human society would someday be, according to Wilson, to \"monitor the genetic basis of social behavior\" because \"the genetic foundation on which any such normative system is built can be expected to shift continuously.\"\n\nThe quest for a sociobiologicalization of the biological sciences was not new to academic or popular thinking. Darwin's _The Descent of Man_ , and later R. A. Fisher's _The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection_ and Julian Huxley's _Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_ , expressed varying levels of belief in the biological basis for human social behavior. And, to be sure, Wilson was neither the first nor the only proponent of sociobiology in the late twentieth century. Sociobiology with a small _s_ was a field that grew from the achievements of scientists working in a range of biological and behavioral disciplines. For example, the ethological work of Konrad Lorenz and Desmond Morris in the 1960s laid the foundation for later sociobiological research. In the 1970s, Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling _The Selfish Gene_ , and David Barash, author of _The Whisperings Within_ , were among the many natural and social scientists working from a sociobiological paradigm.\n\nIn the five years following the publication of Wilson's tome, both the academic and popular presses closely followed sociobiology and the debate over its scientific merits and political significance. Through an aggressive public relations campaign, general interest in sociobiology gained a societal salience resonating from the hallowed halls of academia to the glossy pages of _People_ magazine. _BusinessWeek_ called the new science a \"genetic defense of the free market,\" while _Psychology Today_ asked whether Wilson's synthesis was \"all wet?\" declaring that it could \"provide very little enlightenment about the behavior of real people.\" University of Chicago cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins agreed, attacking the sociobiological notion that human kinship relations are \"organized in accord with the genetic coefficients of relationship as known to sociobiologists.\" Sahlins insisted, \"Human social behavior is not organized by the individual maximization of genetic interest in that human beings are not socially defined by their organic qualities.\" Sahlins argued that humans were biological beings but that culture, not biology, \"is the indispensable condition\" of human organization.\n\nOthers embraced _Sociobiology_. Writing in the _New York Times_ , the anthropologist John Pfeiffer said the book \"has much to say about what is happening to us here and now,\" and that \"the book may be regarded as an evolutionary event in itself, announcing for all who can hear that we are on the verge of breakthroughs in the effort to understand our place in the scheme of things.\" In the _Quarterly Review of Biology_ , the biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard called the book \"brilliant and timely.\" David Barash deemed it a \"tour de force\" and favorably compared Wilson and his work to Julian Huxley's _Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_. In private correspondence several distinguished scientists echoed these sentiments. Konrad Lorenz wrote to Wilson that he had read the book \"with as great pleasure as gain.\" Philip Darlington, the Harvard biologist who had trained Wilson, called _Sociobiology_ a \"fundamental, magnificent, and useful piece of work.\"\n\nMost of _Sociobiology_ , according to Stephen Jay Gould, both a critic of the field and a friend of Wilson's, \"wins from me the same high praise almost universally accorded to it.\" Gould, like many other champions of the field, believed Wilson's work to be \"a lucid account of evolutionary principles and an indefatigably thorough discussion of social behavior in all groups of animals,\" and predicted that _Sociobiology_ would be \"the primary document\" on these matters \"for years to come.\" However, it was Wilson's (and, of course, others' in the field) application of sociobiological ideas to humans that came under fire, particularly for the way in which these ideas were presented. It was what Gould called Wilson's \"extended speculation on the existence of genes for specific and variable traits in human behavior\u2014including spite, aggression, xenophobia, conformity, homosexuality, and the characteristic behavioral differences between men and women in Western society\" that became a target for sociobiology's critics. It is the field's interest in what it deemed human universals, like xenophobia and ethnocentrism, that is particularly noteworthy in the context of the evolution of the race concept and its implications for understanding racism.\n\n**SOCIOBIOLOGY AND RACE**\n\nDobzhansky's _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ modernized a theory of _race_ in the context of the evolutionary synthesis and population genetics. In a similar way, Wilson's _Sociobiology_ and contemporary sociobiological works sought to articulate a modern theory of the existence of _racism_ in the context of the new synthesis. Wilson was no racist and was distressed by the uses of sociobiology in this way, but in making arguments for an evolutionary and genetic basis for xenophobia and ethnocentrism, sociobiologists were participating in a long-standing debate regarding biological explanations for these concepts. Although the new synthesis did not contest the race concept as described by the modern synthesis, it did offer a biological way to explain tensions that persisted between racial (and other) groups in American society that resonated in the wake of the social revolutions of the 1960s. Literary critic Henry Louis Gates has called this sociobiology's \"pessimism,\" that \"racism is in our nature\" and that \"little can be done about it.\"\n\nThe 1960s and early 1970s were part of an era in the United States in which racial movements for social justice radically pushed back against and began to change America's political and cultural arrangements. As sociologists Howard Winant and Michael Omi point out, the wake of the 1960s social movements \"constituted a period of profound social transformation and dislocation in American life.\" In the 1970s, that transformation and dislocation were manifested in a renewed backlash against the civil rights struggle. Sociobiology gained social salience at this historical moment, and the biological explanations for xenophobia and ethnocentrism, as articulated by some in the field, were well suited to a post\u2013civil rights movement age witnessing a rise in cultural nationalism and ethnic pride and a growing rejection of the integrationist ideal.\n\nThis was also an era that saw a dramatic rise in genetic explanations for complex human social behaviors. Sociologists Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, in _The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon_ , argue that since the late 1970s \"in many popular narratives, individual characteristics and the social order both seem to be direct transcriptions of a powerful, magical, and even sacred entity, DNA.\" Genes, they say, are a \"convenient way to address troubling social issues: the threats implied by the changing roles of women, the perceived decline of the family, the problems of crime, the changes in ethnic and racial structure of American society, and the failure of social welfare programs.\"As sociologist Troy Duster shows, \"both the popular media and scientific journals published an explosion of articles that staked a renewed claim to the genetic explanation of matters that the previous two decades had laid to rest as social and environmental.\" For example, according to Duster, a review of the _Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature_ from 1976 to 1982 shows a surge in articles that \"attempted to explain the genetic basis for crime, mental illness, intelligence, and alcoholism during this brief six-year period.\" Sociobiology played an important role in the popularization of these ideas.\n\nWilson's toughest critics acknowledged that sociobiology was not immediately concerned with race, nor was it itself a racist doctrine. However, even if sociobiology was definitively not a racist theory, in its pursuit of a biologically based theory of human social behavior it _did_ concern itself with race indirectly. By trying to describe why, in an evolutionary and genetic way, populations of peoples hated, feared, and distrusted one another, sociobiology contributed to a biological concept of racism. So while the biological race concept was largely ignored in sociobiological theory, the social meanings of race became a focus of sociobiological research through the study of the biological mechanisms of racism. In this context, sociobiology could be and was interpreted by some as a way to rationalize racism. Racists, of course, did not need scientific theories like sociobiology to promote their ideas. Nevertheless, the intellectual claims of sociobiology\u2014intentionally or not\u2014could and did serve the needs of those who harbored racist ideas by giving them scientific legitimacy.\n\nBecause Wilson was a distinguished biologist trained in the traditions of the evolutionary synthesis and population biology, _Sociobiology_ did nothing to challenge the race concept: its definition had largely been settled in this corner of biology by the time the book was written. Wilson even turned to his Harvard colleague and soon-to-be antisociobiology antagonist Richard Lewontin for authority in this area, citing his work on the race concept in biology and writing in _Sociobiology_ that \"human populations are not very different from one another genetically.\" Furthermore, because _Sociobiology_ sought to identify human universals, it was not, in itself, a racist doctrine\u2014a fact that even Wilson's most vociferous critics acknowledged. After all, as Lewontin acknowledged, Wilson was concerned with the \"universals of human nature\u2014his chief point is that we're all alike.\" This was a point many sociobiologists made as well. The British sociobiologist and anthropologist Vernon Reynolds pointed out that \"sociobiology expects _every_ racial group to be xenophobic and it makes _no_ statement at all about superiority.\"\n\nUnlike sociobiology, earlier biologically driven theories of human nature did have race at their core. At the end of the nineteenth century, for example, social Darwinists spoke of the inability to \"change the different qualities of the races.\" In the early twentieth century eugenicists spoke of \"feebleminded\" blacks and other groups, while IQ theorists of the 1960s and 1970s speculated about the relationship of race, genetics, and IQ. Sociobiologists, however, consciously sought to sever any connection between their discipline and any racist doctrine. In his Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning work _On Human Nature_ , for example, Wilson issued a \"strong caveat\" declaring the search for \"racial differences in behavior\" as \"the most emotionally explosive and politically dangerous of all subjects.\"\n\nFor a more robust understanding of a sociobiological discussion of racism, we must return briefly to the basic theoretical suppositions of sociobiology. Sociobiologists believe that \"animals are social to the extent that cooperation is mutually beneficial.\" Sociality exists, therefore, because of kin selection\u2014\"the selection of genes due to one or more individuals favoring or disfavoring the survival and reproduction of relatives (other than offspring) who possess the same genes by common descent.\" In turn, cooperative social behavior among close kin will maximize inclusive fitness, or \"the total effect of kin selection with reference to an individual.\" Some sociobiologists assert that both ethnicity and race are \"extensions of the idiom of kinship, and that, therefore, ethnic and race sentiments are to be understood as an extended and attenuated form of kin selection.\" Because kin groups are both aggressive and xenophobic, according to sociobiological theory, one can assert, as some sociobiologists do, that xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and racism have a genetic basis.\n\nIn Wilson's seminal text he articulates a sociobiological explanation for how humans make sense of difference. Modern humans inherited a xenophobic trait from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, according to _Sociobiology_ , and \"human behavior provides some of the best exemplification of\" what Wilson calls \"the xenophobia principle\": a \"newcomer is a threat to the status of every animal in the group, and he is treated accordingly,\" and \"cooperative behavior reaches a peak among the insiders when repelling such an intruder.\" Offering a strikingly simplistic view of intergroup hatred, Wilson argues that in humans \"outsiders are almost always a source of tension.\" When they \"pose a physical threat...they loom in our vision as an evil, monolithic force.\" Furthermore, Wilson speculates that the outsiders are reduced \"to subhuman status, so that they can be treated without conscience. They are the gooks, the wogs, the krauts, the commies\u2014not like us, another subspecies surely, a force remorselessly dedicated to our destruction who must be met with equal ruthlessness if we are to survive.\" Wilson hypothesizes that this occurs at the level of a \"gut feeling,\" and he compares the xenophobic trait of a human being and that of a rhesus monkey, suggesting that the behavior \"may well be neurophysiologically homologous.\"\n\nPierre van den Berghe, trained as a sociologist, was one of the most prolific proponents of the sociobiology of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. A specialist in race and ethnic relations and a professor at the University of Washington, van den Berghe had asserted in his presociobiologically influenced work that \"racism is ultimately reducible to a set of attitudes which are, of course, socially derived but which nevertheless become part of the personality system of the individual.\" However, in the mid-1970s van den Berghe's approach shifted, and there emerged in his work a belief in the sociobiological origins of race relations. Van den Berghe suggested, for example, that \"ethnocentrism evolved during millions, or at least hundreds of thousands of years as an extension of kin selection.\"\n\nVan den Berghe and Wilson were not alone in their sociobiological explanations for human intergroup antagonism. Throughout the sociobiology literature ethnocentrism and xenophobia are justified in sociobiological terms. Another of the early sociobiologists, the zoologist David Barash (also of the University of Washington), posits a theory similar to van den Berghe's, but with a twist. Barash believes that \"human beings have a notable inclination to exclude individuals who are conspicuously different from us in any way.\" The root of this behavior is biologically adaptive \"for the following reason: Among most animals, disease is a prominent cause of mortality....Since many diseases can be transmitted by infected individuals, it would be advantageous if diseased animals were somehow prevented from associating closely with the healthy ones. Thus, in many animal societies, diseased or disfigured individuals are often mercilessly hounded and excluded from the group. As a general rule, those that are different get ostracized.\" Barash offers little hope of \"evolving\" out of this predicament. Instead, as he asserts, we must \"make sure that we are carefully taught to love one another.\" Sociobiology is thus \"an antidote to racism\" because \"it emphasizes human universals\" (e.g., human nature) and thereby unites the species in \"biological oneness.\"\n\nNot all scientists who wrapped themselves in the mantra of sociobiology were as kind. Psychologist J. Philippe Rushton was by far the most extreme of the sociobiologists, advocating not only sociobiological notions of racism but also typological notions of race. One might argue that his extreme views have no place in sociobiology. Rushton's work, however, has appeared in sociobiological and other respected scientific journals. He even proclaims his work sociobiological in nature in his monograph _Race, Evolution, and Behavior_. Furthermore, he was the recipient of several distinguished fellowships, including a Guggenheim, which only served to increase his legitimacy. Rushton's work, then, perhaps can be seen as a bridge between eugenics and the mainstream realm of sociobiology.\n\nRushton's ideas were echoes of the works of Gobineau and Morton. He was convinced that cranial capacity, which he found to be smallest among blacks, had direct correlations with \"intelligence, social organization, sexual restraint, and quiescent temperament.\" He ascribed the origins of these differences to the Ice Age, which exerted selective pressures upon non-\"Negroid\" races. Rushton's work also attempted to rekindle the debunked myth of r\/K selection, where _r_ is high reproduction rates and _K_ is high levels of parental investment. According to Rushton's conclusions, _r_ -selected reproductive strategies are emphasized among blacks, thus causing a \"bioenergetic trade-off between which is postulated to underlie cross-species differences in brain size, speed of maturation, reproductive effort, and longevity.\" _K_ -selected races have higher intelligence and thereby more advanced cultures. This notion of selective pressure as applied to human social behavior is similar to sociobiological notions of gene-culture coevolution. It is interesting that Rushton's work is cited numerous times in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's _The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_ , the mid-1990s best seller that linked race, genetics, and intelligence. Herrnstein and Murray nod approvingly toward Rushton's work, writing that \"he has strengthened the case for consistently ordered race differences.\" Nonetheless, they do acknowledge that his \"theory remains a long way from confirmation.\"\n\nRushton, to be sure, is far more extreme in his application of coevolutionary ideas than most sociobiologists. His work is also tarnished by his association with the Pioneer Fund\u2014an openly racist organization that supported his research and that he would go on to head from 2002 to 2012. The fund\u2014founded by Wickliffe Draper, whose role in the eugenics movement and in scientific racism is documented in chapter 5 of this book\u2014is a eugenic foundation that provides approximately $1 million a year to academic researchers. Much of the work from its grants goes toward establishing the genetic bases for racial differences.\n\nThere were sociobiologists who were skeptical of the extremes of Rushton. Writing in 1986, Vernon Reynolds, Vincent Falger, and Ian Vine cautioned, \"Some attempts to apply the sociobiological paradigm to human behavior have certainly been premature, ill-considered, superficial, over-confident, and indeed socio-politically na\u00efve.\" They were particularly concerned that sociobiological work could mistakenly portray racism as one of the \"genetic imperatives of human nature.\" Others, like Robin I. M. Dunbar (despite his support for studying the sociobiology of ethnocentrism), were concerned about the scope of sociobiological claims given \"the difficulty with producing evidence in support of any sociobiological statement with long-lived species like our own.\"\n\n**THE SOCIOBIOLOGY DEBATES**\n\nIn the months and years that followed the publication of _Sociobiology_ and the rapid growth of the field itself, the debate over the field grew increasingly personal and was sometimes outright nasty. Wilson, as the field's most distinguished member, quickly became both its spokesperson and lightning rod. Tense correspondence between Wilson and his critics reveals deep scientific and political acrimony on both sides of the debate. Some of the bitterest animosity emerged between Wilson and several of his colleagues at Harvard, particularly Richard Lewontin. Wilson claimed the attacks against him were personal in nature (as they sometimes were), and he even recused himself from faculty meetings in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. He found \"it intolerable to sit at a department-level meeting where the chairman [in reference to Lewontin] is the same individual who is conducting a personal campaign against me and my work, largely on political grounds.\" Lewontin, in fact, had been very aggressive and unsparing in his criticism of _Sociobiology_. \"The book has a lot of science _in it_ , but it is not _of_ science,\" Lewontin wrote to Wilson in October of 1975 in one of the many heated letters they exchanged following _Sociobiology_ 's publication. Concerning the scientific status of _Sociobiology_ , Lewontin told Wilson that his book was \"not a work of science because it makes use of what is essentially an advocacy method to erect an untestable and non-falsifiable structure of explanation of a world that in many respects does not even exist.\"\n\nWilson expressed his disbelief in the initial reaction to his work, concluding that most of the attacks on his and other sociobiological works were partisan, and he attempted to offset the impact of his critics by dismissing them as ideological dogmatists. While Wilson did, however, recognize what he called his \"more moderate\" critics, he criticized them too for holding fast to the \"antigenetic bias that has prevailed as virtual dogma since the fall of Social Darwinism.\" Accused of creating a scientific theory that sought to buttress the status quo, Wilson defended himself as a liberal who had \"no interest in ideology.\" His \"purpose was to celebrate diversity and to demonstrate the intellectual power of evolutionary biology.\"\n\nWilson's critics saw his work quite differently. In 1975, a letter to the editor in the _New York Review of Books_ authored by members of the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People (a political group that included several of Wilson's Harvard colleagues) attacked _Sociobiology_ and Wilson, calling the work \"a particular theory about human nature, which has no scientific support, and which upholds the concept of a world with social arrangements remarkably similar to the world which E. O. Wilson inhabits.\" The letter associated Wilson's work with earlier biologically deterministic theories, including social Darwinism and eugenics, stating that such theories (specifically _Sociobiology_ ) \"provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race or sex.\" Wilson wrote to the _New York Review of Books_ editor Robert Silvers, claiming that the article represented \"the kind of self-righteous vigilantism which not only produces falsehood but also unjustly hurts individuals and through a kind of intimidation diminishes the spirit of free inquiry and discussion crucial to the health of the intellectual community.\" Deeply hurt by what he believed were more than just scientific or partisan attacks against _Sociobiology_ , Wilson's anger at what he perceived to be indecorous and inappropriate behavior for the academy certainly drove his intense response to his critics. Both stunned by and incredulous at the nature of the attack against him and his book, Wilson wrote to Lewontin that December (1975) asking, \"How can you make such repeated accusations which you _know_ are untrue, especially since the target is an old and close associate?\"\n\nNot all Wilson's collegial relations at Harvard were distressed by the sociobiology debates. In November 1975, Wilson had written to the Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould\u2014also a critic, but one with whom, unlike with Lewontin, Wilson kept up a good personal relationship throughout the rancor that followed the book's publication. In his note, Wilson enclosed his response to the _New York Review_ article and hoped that Gould would agree that had he shown him \"this elementary courtesy, your own letter would have been far different and my reputation would not have been unjustly damaged.\" Wilson also told Gould that he knew that what he called the incident was ideological in origin and that there was \"no personal animosity between us.\" Throughout the sociobiology debates, Gould and Wilson maintained good relations. Gould even defended Wilson against some of the more personal attacks later directed against him.\n\nWilson defended his work in a 1976 article titled \"Academic Vigilantism and the Political Significance of Sociobiology.\" He believed that _Sociobiology_ was being judged \"according to whether it conforms to the political convictions of the judges, who are self-appointed\" and that those found guilty by such judges, like himself, were \"given a label and to be associated with past deeds that all decent persons will find repellent.\" Wilson defended his foray into human sociobiology, claiming that it \"was approached tentatively and in a taxonomic rather than political spirit\" and that it \"was intended to be a beginning rather than a conclusion.\" Nonetheless, Wilson clearly underestimated the political and historical context into which he offered these theories, and how that context would shape the tone and intensity of the response to both his work and to sociobiology in general.\n\nAmong the first to react to the publication of _Sociobiology_ was the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People, which criticized sociobiology as a \"tool for social oppression.\" The study group's purpose was to \"publicize the view that _Sociobiology_ was just another form of biological determinism and to break through the solid mass of praise of the book and make the subject controversial\" as well as to produce \"ideological weapons to counteract and delegitimate sociobiology and biological determinism in general.\" Science for the People, a coalition made up largely of socialist and ideological Marxist biologists, scholars, and community activists, worked \"to analyze and combat\" what it called \"this latest appearance of biological determinism.\" The group's stated goals were (1) \"exposing the class control of science and technology; (2) organizing campaigns which criticized, challenged, and proposed alternatives to the present uses of science and technology; and (3) developing a political strategy by which people in the technical strata could ally with other progressive forces in society.\" Among the study group's members were scientists at Harvard and other Boston-area universities, including Lewontin, Gould, and biologist Ruth Hubbard.\n\nThe group's reaction to the publication of _Sociobiology_ and other sociobiological theories was often swift and unsparing of the field and its nominal leader. Its attacks on sociobiology appeared in the group's bimonthly publication _Science for the People_ , as well as in numerous journals, newspapers, and periodicals. When sociobiologists proclaimed themselves reductionist and deterministic, asserting that a biologically based human nature was inherent to the human genome, the study group responded by stating, \"Determinism provides a direct justification for the status quo as 'natural.'\" When sociobiologists asserted that \"even with identical education and equal access to all professions, men are likely to play a disproportionate role in political life, business, and science,\" the group argued that evidence for male domination as a facet of human nature was wrongheaded, ignoring or misrepresenting \"cross cultural evidence on sex roles\" that dispute sociobiology's ideas. Finally, when sociobiologists claimed compelling genetic evidence for their assertion that there exist human universals such as spite, aggression, male dominance, ethnocentrism, and territoriality, the study group maintained that sociobiologists had no evidence for their theory. \"It is the classic error of reification,\" said members of the group, \"by which mental constructs are treated as if they were something concrete or object.\"\n\nThe group struggled, however, with whether _Sociobiology_ was racist. Minutes from the group's June 1977 meeting suggested a divide among its members: \"Some felt the book is clearly racist, others that it is not really a serious issue in the book, others that there is racism but it is implicit.\" A discussion on the subject with the radical group Committee Against Racism (CAR) yielded little agreement, with CAR convinced that sociobiology was racist, arguing that \"ideologies which can be used to justify racism are racist.\" Another group member expressed the belief that \"since _Sociobiology_ helps to legitimize racial conflict by postulating that it is genetically based, it helps to promote racial conflict and do what racism does indirectly.\"\n\nIf Wilson was the public face of sociobiological theory, then Lewontin had quickly become the public face of opposition to that theory. Even though he was a self-proclaimed ideological Marxist, he was still, like Wilson, one of the nation's preeminent biologists. But unlike Wilson, Lewontin explicitly fused his scientific activities with his political ones. And despite his protests that he should not be considered the voice of Science for the People, he became just that, precisely because of his intellectual standing in the scientific community and his long history of engaging in what he believed were the misuses of science for political and social purposes. Lewontin claimed that \"no one is a spokesman for SftP,\" and that calling him such misunderstood the organization, which he described as \"nonhierarchic and virtually anarchistic [in] nature.\"\n\nMembers of the Sociobiology Study Group were not the only ones to oppose sociobiology, and although Wilson might have accused them of \"academic vigilantism,\" their tactics in opposition to sociobiology paled in comparison with more radical groups that had threatened and committed acts of violence against Wilson. At the 1978 American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, for example, the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), a radical Marxist organization, charged the stage as Wilson was about to speak. The protestors doused him with ice water and then, with antisociobiology placards in hand, shouted, \"Racist Wilson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!!!\"\n\nApart from the attacks by INCAR in public settings, most critics of Wilson's engaged him intellectually on the scientific content in _Sociobiology_ and on its relevance as a political document, even as those criticisms devolved into personal attacks on both sides. Yet over time Wilson continued to engage his academic critics, particularly his Harvard colleague Lewontin, in much the same way he reacted to his purely political ones: he attacked their political proclivities rather than engaging them in scientific debate. He even accused his critics of trying to thwart academic freedom. And this strategy was largely successful\u2014Wilson succeeded in deflecting scientific criticism of his sociobiological work by accusing many of his critics of being Marxists (which, indeed, they were). In reaction to a published interview of Lewontin in the French newspaper _Le Monde_ , Wilson wrote to the editor referring to Lewontin as \"my chief Marxist critic.\" Wilson also suggested that opposition to sociobiology among his Harvard colleagues and Science for the People critics was driven by what he believed was their fear that Marxism was \"mortally threatened by the discoveries of human sociobiology.\" Overall, the conflict between Lewontin and Wilson, as well as the debates over sociobiology, were part of a larger cultural trend in academia in the 1960s and 1970s in which liberals and Marxists clashed over what values should shape their work and their world. This dispute is also, of course, a glaring example of how political considerations can shape scientific researchers and the questions they pursue in their work.\n\nWilson's use of Marxism as an intellectual foil to _Sociobiology_ holds great irony for reasons best articulated by Wilson himself. \"Marxism is sociobiology without biology,\" Wilson wrote in 1978, just a few years after _Sociobiology_ 's publication. Whereas Marxists view the world through a lens of class struggle, biological and genetic mechanisms were critical to the sociobiological worldview. Wilson's popularized accounts of sociobiology and his public statements on the nascent science often began not with a methodological defense of his data or theoretical claims but rather with an outline of the controversy surrounding sociobiology. Wilson spent, for example, an entire chapter of his 1983 book _Promethean Fire: Reflections in the Origin of Mind_ , attacking critics of sociobiology and accusing Lewontin and other critics of promoting \"Marxism-Leninism, in a manner specialized to subordinate science to the service of that [Marxist] ideology.\"\n\nEven accepting Wilson's assertion that he was a political neophyte at the time of _Sociobiology_ 's release, he quickly became an apt pupil of his discipline's politics, of academic politics more generally, and certainly of society-wide politics. Wilson, for example, kept a file titled \"Political Uses of Theory by New Right.\" Richard Lynn, a noted racist and eugenicist who was then teaching at the New University of Ulster in Great Britain, wrote to Wilson that \"several of us in Ulster have been greatly impressed by your book _Sociobiology_ and also sorry to see you coming under attack from 'liberals.' Do not be discouraged....Many of us think sociobiology reasonable and sensible.\" Enclosed in that correspondence was an article by Lynn called \"The Sociobiology of Nationalism,\" published in July 1976. In it Lynn concluded, \"Separatism promotes genetic variety because it divides a population into a number of smaller, inbreeding populations. Each of these develops its own genetic characteristics.\" Similarly, in 1977 Wilson received a letter from a Wilmot Robertson, who enclosed an article from _Instauration Magazine_ (a white supremacist publication) with the title \"The Minority War on Science.\" \"You may think we come on a little too strong,\" Robertson wrote, \"but I do feel there is a place in the United States and in the world for one magazine that looks at the racial background of the battles now going on in the scientific profession.\" \"If all races had an equal capability for science,\" the _Insaturation_ piece read, \"there should be no marked differences in scientific methodology when one replaced another in a dominant position in science. If it can be shown, for example, that Western science is changing its habits and its practices as Jews achieve an ever more commanding position, then this ought to demonstrate that science in its essentials is not universal, not a body of ideas and methods that stand above nation and race, but on the other hand is dependent on race for its very character and its very existence.\"\n\nLewontin also drew Wilson's attention to the relationship that was developing between sociobiological and racist theory. \"I thought you might be interested in the enclosed,\" Lewontin wrote to Wilson in July 1979, \"which comes from the Journal of the National Front in Britain.\" The article, by Richard Verrall, whom Lewontin mockingly referred to as the National Front's \"resident 'intellectual,'\" was titled \"Sociobiology: The Instincts in Our Genes.\" Lewontin quotes the article, which describes the sociobiological nature of racism: \"The basic instinct common to all species to identify only with one's like group; to inbreed and to shun out-breeding. In human society this instinct is racial, and it\u2014above all else\u2014operates to ensure genetic survival. The modern races of man evolved in pre-historic times, the separate development of each race representing an evolutionary experiment which nature isolated by instinctive tribal antagonisms.\"\n\nNot to miss an opportunity to point out to Wilson how Wilson's anti-Marxist jabs had angered him, Lewontin wrote, \"Your red-baiting makes you a natural ally of this type, but then I guess I heard somewhere about how if one lies down with dogs, one gets up with fleas.\" The Sociobiology Study Group had also debated how the group would respond to the National Front's racist assault. One member was concerned that a \"description of sociobiology as racist\" would only encourage the National Front \"to write more on sociobiology.\" The group also wondered if its statement would \"force Wilson to make a disclaimer in a British journal.\" Wilson was not pleased that his sociobiological work was being used in this way. In a handwritten note found in his personal papers in a file labeled \"Political Uses of Theory by New Right,\" Wilson wrote, \"Radical right literature 1981. Worse than radical left!\"\n\nFor his part, Lewontin was well practiced at being a scientific contrarian. Just a few years before he mounted a challenge to sociobiological theory, Lewontin withdrew his membership in the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in protest of what he believed was the academy's inappropriate involvement in war-related research. In addition to his contribution to the sociobiology debates, Lewontin was involved in the debates over the relationship between intelligence and race in the early 1970s. Some of Lewontin's arguments against those advancing a connection between heredity, IQ, and race anticipated his rhetoric against Wilson and others in the sociobiology debates. The Harvard psychologist Richard Hernnstein, following the 1973 publication of his book _IQ and the Meritocracy_ , threatened Lewontin with a lawsuit for his participation in an advertisement placed in both popular and academic media. The ad criticized Herrnstein's IQ research as racist, a characterization that he felt was \"repulsive and slanderous,\" as well as a \"gross misrepresentation of my writings.\" In response to Herrnstein's threatening letter, Lewontin wrote, \"I do not want to defame you, but to expose the fallacy and pernicious effects of certain ideas that you have propagated.\" \"I do not accuse you of being _primarily_ a racist,\" Lewontin asserted, \"but whatever your motivation, your activities _are_ promoting the cause of racism.\"\n\nAlso in the early 1970s, Lewontin received similar correspondence from the physicist William Shockley, who similarly demanded the retraction of comments Lewontin had made against him concerning his public statements and publications about African Americans and intelligence. Whereas Lewontin tried to muster as much respect as he could for Herrnstein in their correspondence, he was unable to hide his sarcasm and disdain in his exchange with Shockley. \"I am in receipt of your communication demanding that I make unspecified changes in the remarks in the _Harvard Crimson_ ,\" Lewontin wrote. He goes on to tell Shockley that he was not sure what he had had in mind in terms of changes, but that after rereading what he had said in the article, Lewontin himself felt dissatisfaction at his comments and therefore would take this opportunity to send a new statement to the editor of the _Crimson_. And so Lewontin wrote, sharing the submitted note with Shockley himself, \"Shockley is a racist ideologue who is abysmally ignorant of genetics: Agitators like George Wallace and the head of the American Nazi party do not have academic credentials and attempt to address a mass audience of disaffected people, appealing directly and crudely to their passions and fears. Shockley, trading on his academic standing in electronics, and addressing himself primarily to educated and generally satisfied elites, attempts to propagate his ideology by the use of fallacious pseudo-scientific arguments, while drawing around himself a cloak of false academic objectivity. That is the iota of difference between them. Shockley should be totally ignored.\" Seizing a final chance to mock and provoke Shockley, Lewontin concludes his letter saying, \"I do not know whether this meets your objections to my former remarks. At any rate it has the advantage of being more precise.\"\n\nLewontin's involvement in scientific matters related to race was fitting given his role as one of the world's preeminent authorities on human genetic diversity and evolutionary biology, as well as a pioneer in molecular genetics. Lewontin's 1966 articles on genetic variation, written with his colleague Jack Hubby, helped to revolutionize the use of molecular technologies (in this case gel electrophoresis) in the study of evolution. Because of this work, evolutionary biologists were finally able to directly study the amount of genetic diversity in populations by examining proteins. In 1972 Lewontin published a groundbreaking article on this subject called \"The Apportionment of Human Diversity,\" which today remains a classic accounting of human diversity that soundly rejected human racial classification as having \"no social value\" and \"virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.\" Unlike his mentor, Dobzhansky, who throughout his career struggled to hold on to the population genetics notion of race that he himself had helped to develop, Lewontin rejected both a social and biological race concept, and he did so based on genetic data revealed with technologies unavailable to scientists like Dobzhansky just a decade earlier. Lewontin challenged a traditional population genetics definition of race by showing that populations were more genetically diverse than once thought; indeed, most genetic variation (85.4 percent) was \"contained within\" racial groups or \"between populations within a race\" (8.3 percent), whereas only 6.3 percent of \"human variation was accounted for by racial classification.\" These findings, it should be mentioned, have been confirmed by more recent genetic studies utilizing DNA sequencing data as opposed to Lewontin's immunological data. Aided by a technological breakthrough that he himself had shepherded into evolutionary biology (the use of gel electrophoresis in population genetics) and driven by his mentor's antiracist zeal and his own sense of the relationship between science and politics, Lewontin carried out what was, in a purely scientific context, the most direct proof that, biologically, the category of race in humans was obsolete. In _Sociobiology_ Wilson acknowledged as much, quoting \"The Apportionment of Human Diversity\" to make the point that a similar type of distribution of frequency of behavioral traits could be expected in populations as well.\n\nAt the end of the twentieth century, the geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza confirmed Lewontin's findings using contemporary DNA techniques. His results showed that there was no significant genetic discontinuity between any so-called races in our species that would justify the use of racial classification in humans. Cavalli-Sforza believed that these results and the results of other studies implied that population genetics and evolutionary biology had satisfactorily shown that the \"subdivision of the human population into a small number of clearly distinct, racial or continental, groups...is not supported by the present analysis of DNA.\" Given that studies had confirmed Lewontin's results for almost three decades, Cavalli-Sforza believed that \"the burden of proof is now on the supporters of a biological basis for human racial classification.\"\n\nJust a year before the publication of _Sociobiology_ , Lewontin published his seminal work _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ , which was an examination of the nature of genetic diversity among organisms and the significance of that diversity in organismic evolution. As with Dobzhansky's book _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , Lewontin's book also began as a Jessup Lecture at Columbia University. Writing in the _Quarterly Review of Biology_ , Marcus Feldman called _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ \"the most important population genetics book in 10 years.\" Yale University biologist Jeffrey Powell called Lewontin's book a \"classic.\" Even the philosopher of science Michael Ruse, who would later collaborate with Wilson on books about sociobiology and ethics, wrote that \"any philosophical debates about the nature of biology, specifically evolutionary biology, must take account of this work, if not begin with it.\" In an observation that tied teacher to student, Ruse acknowledged that Lewontin's work was the most significant step in the furtherance of the debates over the nature of evolutionary theory \"since Dobzhansky first published his _Genetics and the Origin of Species_.\"\n\nThat Wilson and Lewontin were heading for an intellectual clash could certainly have been forecast by anyone familiar with their respective works. As the sociologist Ullica Segerstr\u00e5le points out, readers of _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ would have recognized that Wilson's _Sociobiology_ was a ripe target for Lewontin. In his book, Lewontin was critical of the current state of population genetics and \"suggested that fundamental theoretical revisions would have to be made within that field for it to produce valid predictive statements,\" most notably the erroneous idea that the relationship between genes and traits was \"akin to separate beans within a bag.\" Segerstr\u00e5le notes that Wilson was aware of this critique, and in _Sociobiology_ he \"approvingly discussed exactly Lewontin's points,\" writing, \"It remains for sociobiology to exploit both levels as opportunity provides,\" meaning that he advocated provisionally utilizing existing models and formulas and would wait for new ones to arise.\n\nLooking back on the critiques of _Sociobiology_ more than ten years after the intensity of the debate had waned, Wilson still asserted that the nature of those critiques were politically, not scientifically, motivated. \"The attacks were often personal in nature,\" he wrote in a brief autobiographic article published in the 1980s. \"The critics implied that I and others working in this area were promoting racism, sexism, and other political evils, either deliberately or else as a side product of being enculturated by a capitalist-imperialist state.\" And in his view, he had been vindicated: \"Fortunately, few people in the academic community believed the charges of Science for the People and INCAR, especially when it became more apparent that my colleagues in the radical Left were promoting a political philosophy and not just defending society from genetic determinism.\" Yet, curiously, even as he himself criticized the political nature of the sociobiology debates, he acknowledged that \"as intellectuals and the American public at large shifted more toward conservatism in the late 1970s, the purely ideological opposition to human sociobiology diminished to near insignificance.\"\n\nUnlike its reductionist predecessors, sociobiology did not speak in bold tones of genetically driven racial hierarchies. Sociobiology was different; instead of proclaiming racial inferiority for certain groups, it provided a framework to naturalize racism by offering a genetic rationale for it. The tenets of sociobiology\u2014by rooting a genetic basis for complex human social behavior in Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics (the evolutionary or modern synthesis)\u2014helped reintroduce the idea that human difference generated biological impulses embedded in our genomes. Whereas Dobzhansky tried to eliminate typology from the biological race concept, sociobiology reintroduced it by rooting the perception and meaning of difference (e.g., xenophobia and ethnocentrism) in our genes.\n**11**\n\n**RACE IN THE GENOMIC AGE**\n\nThe 1953 discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) by Francis Crick and James Watson ushered in a new era in the biological sciences. Just at the moment that the evolutionary synthesis had become the core theoretical construct in biology, a revolution in molecular biology was quickly emerging. Watson and Crick discovered DNA's double-helical structure by building on discoveries by biochemists including Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty, and Colin MacLeod (their work showed that nucleic acids, not proteins, constituted genes), Erwin Chargaff (his greatest find\u2014that in all organisms the ratio between the nucleic acids adenine and thymine to guanine and cytosine is always 1:1), and Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins (whose work in X-ray crystallography helped conceptualize the double helical structure of DNA).\n\nUntil the 1960s, molecular and evolutionary biology developed largely independently of one another. Molecular and evolutionary biologists were trained in different scientific traditions (an emphasis on biochemistry versus organismal biology) with different visions of what biology should be. By the early 1960s these divisions hardened, even between colleagues in the same department. For example, at Harvard in the early 1960s, according to historian Michael Dietrich, James Watson, then chair of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, \"helped polarize the department into what he believed were those working on the 'cutting edge' of biology in molecular biology and those languishing with the concerns of 'classical' biology such as evolution and systematics.\" The divisions between the two groups of biologists ran deep. The evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once called molecular biology a \"glamour field\" that was \"intellectually shallow.\" But Dobzhansky, drawing on his own intellectual legacy as a unifier, sought to reconcile these two distinct, \"though overlapping and complementary,\" approaches to biological research. Dobzhansky proposed a compromise that sought to understand both approaches as \"essential for understanding the unity and diversity of life at all levels of interpretation.\" On the one hand, molecular biology was shaped by a Cartesian or reductionist approach, which understood biological phenomena in the context of chemistry and physics. On the other hand, a Darwinian approach sought to understand biological phenomena in terms of the \"adaptive usefulness of structures and processes to the whole organism and to the species of which it is part.\" Ultimately, though, as Dobzhansky famously noted, \"nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.\"\n\nHowever, by the mid-1960s, a new generation of evolutionary biologists\u2014including Richard Lewontin and Jack Hubby at the University of Chicago, working on protein electrophoresis, as well as those experimenting with molecular data to make possible \"a quantitative estimate of the 'genetic distance' between different species\"\u2014fostered significant collaborations between the fields. But throughout the remaining decades of the twentieth century, despite such bridges, the two approaches remained relatively distinct. The molecular biologist Michel Morange argues that, \"although both disciplines use the word 'gene,' they have not sought to bring their two meanings closer, or even to confront them. For the molecular biologist, a gene is a fragment of DNA that codes for a protein. For the population geneticist, it is a factor transmitted from generation to generation, which by its variations can confer a selective advantage (positive or negative) on the individuals carrying it.\"\n\nWith the announcement of the Human Genome Project in 1989, it seemed as if molecular biology had prevailed. Genomics, an approach to biology that utilizes molecular technologies to sequence regions of, or an entire complement of, an organism's DNA (known as a genome), promised to revolutionize science and medicine. According to a 1988 National Research Council report, the primary goals of the Human Genome Project were (1) to construct a map and sequence of the human genome; (2) to develop technologies to \"make the complete analysis of the human and other genomes feasible\" and to use these technologies and discoveries to \"make major contributions to many other areas of basic biology and biotechnology\"; and (3) to focus on genetic approaches that compare human and nonhuman genomes, which are \"essential for interpreting the information in the human genome.\"\n\nMany in the academic community, including both natural and social scientists, feared that the reductionism so central to both the epistemological and ontological approaches of the Genome Project would reignite a form of biological determinism not seen since the days of social Darwinism and eugenics. Some also feared that racial science would emerge with renewed vigor in the genomic age. To attempt to address these fears at the outset of the Human Genome Project, James Watson called for at least 3 percent of the Genome Project's annual budget to go toward the study of ethical, legal, and social implications of genome research, as well as the formulation of policies to address such issues. Thus was born the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program of the Human Genome Project. The bioethicist Eric Juengst hoped that ELSI would \"help optimize the benefits to human welfare and opportunity from the new knowledge, and to guard against its misuses.\" Since its official formation in 1990, ELSI has funded more than $100 million in research grants.\n\nIt remains too early in the genomic revolution to tell what the long-term impact of genomics on the state of the biological race concept will be. The announcement of the completion of the human genome's draft sequence at a June 2000 White House ceremony suggests, however, that the race issue is not going away. At that event, President Clinton, flanked by genome sequencers Francis Collins and Craig Venter, announced the completion of a draft sequence of the human genome. Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and Venter, then president of Celera Genomics, had fiercely competed to complete separate draft sequences. But in a spirit of cooperation brokered by the White House, the two scientists together offered their genomic gift to the world\u2014one that is enhancing our understanding of human biology and, in turn, helping public health and medical professionals prevent, treat, and cure disease.\n\nOn that day, Venter and Collins also emphasized that their draft genome sequences were confirming what many natural and social scientists had been arguing for decades, that human genetic diversity cannot be captured by the race concept and that all humans have genome sequences that are 99.9 percent identical. At the White House ceremony Venter said, \"The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.\" A year later, Collins wrote, \"Those who wish to draw precise racial boundaries around certain groups will not be able to use science as a legitimate justification.\" These conclusions were not novel. Research conducted by population and evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and historians has shown since the 1930s that racial typologies are not good markers of human genetic diversity, that human populations differ from one another genetically in the relative frequency of alleles, and that the concepts of race and racism have identifiable and changing histories.\n\nYet since the completion of the draft sequences and the statements on race by Venter and Collins, many still hold fast to the belief that race is, in fact, a biologically meaningful classification. There have been two general approaches to justifying use of the race concept in genomics. One is exemplified by Neil Risch, a University of California, San Francisco, statistical geneticist and genetic epidemiologist. Risch believes that \"identifying genetic differences between races and ethnic groups...is scientifically appropriate.\" He argues that race is essential to help determine \"differences in treatment response or disease prevalence between racial\/ethnic groups\" and strongly supports the \"search for candidate genes that contribute both to disease susceptibility and treatment response, both within and across racial\/ethnic groups.\" Such an approach exemplifies scientists who utilize the race concept in genomic research and who claim that technological and methodological improvements allow them to examine human diversity with increasing precision that is disconnected from any social prejudices about human difference. Critical of this approach are natural and social scientists who insist that the race concept is a flawed, inaccurate way to measure human genetic diversity that is inseparable from social prejudices about human difference.\n\nA second and more common approach to the race concept among genome scientists is to conflate these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints. And this is the very paradox of the genomic age when it comes to race: scientists say that race does not accurately capture human genetic diversity, yet at the same time, some of those same scientists claim that race is a useful proxy to best capture that genetic diversity\u2014a proxy that is especially useful in clinical settings. By 2005, for example, Francis Collins had shifted from criticisms of the race concept to advocating the need to study how genetic variation and disease risk are correlated with what he called \"self-identified race, and how we can use that correlation to reduce the risk of people getting sick.\" This paradox is embedded in the practice of genomics in the twenty-first century. Self-reported racial identity remains an essential variable used at all stages of genetic research.\n\nThe first major controversy related to the race concept and the Human Genome Project was the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), which was proposed in the early 1990s by leading evolutionary biologists and population geneticists as a \"resource that is aimed at promoting worldwide research on human genetic diversity, with the ultimate goal of understanding how and when patterns of diversity formed.\" Project organizers believed that the genetic information garnered from it would likely \"prove useful to several areas of biomedical research.\" Data from the HGDP, it was hoped, could help estimate the incidence of recessive genetic diseases around the world, help identify the genetic variants that contribute to disease, and examine the \"contributions of environmental factors to complex human disease.\"\n\nIn order to accomplish its goals, the project collected DNA samples from thousands of populations across the globe, including the world's remaining indigenous populations. And it was these sampling methods and the language used to describe indigenous groups that fueled opposition to the project in some corners of academia and among indigenous rights groups. Even though project organizers were decidedly antiracist\u2014early on, some project scientists sought to sever ties with the historic use of the race concept in scientific studies of human populations by abandoning the category of race in their analysis, proposing to use categories of _group_ and _population_ instead\u2014critics accused HGDP scientists of racism and colonialism. Non-HGDP scientists were openly critical of the organization of the project, particularly of its framework for studying human populations. Although the HGDP saw as part of its mission to improve understanding of the diversity of non-Europeans (so as not to fall into the trap of seeing Europeans as genetically diverse and non-European groups as genetically homogeneous), the use of terms like \"tribe\" and \"indigenous group\" by project scientists left critics, including anthropologist Alan Swedlund, worried that the project might promote racism. Swedlund called the project \"21st-century technology applied to nineteenth-century biology.\" At the same time, indigenous groups worried that they were perceived as human fossils that needed to have their DNA sampled before they disappeared.\n\nThe problem, as the sociologist of science Jenny Reardon has argued, is that the population genetics\u2013based race concept can be both a social and a scientific idea, and that therefore not all HGDP scientists \"shared the same understanding of racial categories.\" Some \"believed that scientists could continue to use racial categories as long as they properly limited their use\" to scientific and medical research. Some project scientists accepted race only as a sociocultural concept. Other scientists advocated using traditional racial categories in conjunction with a more specific understanding of the population under study. And, finally, some participating scientists held contradictory views about the race concept, using it in some contexts and not in others.\n\nMore recently, in 2002 the International HapMap Project set out to \"determine the common patterns of DNA sequence variation in the human genome\" in order to develop \"a map of these patterns across the genome.\" The map, using DNA samples from \"populations with ancestry from parts of Africa, Asia and Europe,\" would be used to determine \"the genotypes of one million or more sequence variants, their frequencies and the degree of association between them.\" The HapMap Project, organizers hope, \"will allow the discovery of sequence variants that affect common disease, will facilitate development of diagnostic tools, and will enhance our ability to choose targets for therapeutic intervention.\"\n\nHapMap organizers have insisted, much like HGDP scientists did, that the project is not about measuring racial differences in the hope of uncovering disease-related information (and then associating certain racial groups with certain diseases) but rather represents the belief that human genetic variation is key to understanding the distribution of disease across human populations. The HapMap's Web site, for example, asserts that \"the information emerging from the Project is helping to demonstrate that common ideas about race emerge largely from social and cultural interactions and are only loosely connected to biological ancestry.\" The website's \"Guidelines for Referring to the HapMap Populations in Publications and Presentations\" even warns that describing study populations \"in terms that are too broad could result in inappropriate over-generalization.\" This may, in turn, \"erroneously lead those who interpret HapMap data to equate geography (the basis on which populations were defined for the HapMap) with race (an imprecise and mostly socially constructed category).\"\n\nStill, despite these calculated efforts to separate human genetic diversity research from past racial science, some HapMap critics believe that the project risks recapitulating typological approaches to race by relying on geographic ancestries\u2014the very European, Asian, and African categories that are central to the data-collection methods of the HapMap. As legal scholar Jennifer Hamilton has pointed out, such \"taxonomies of geographical ancestry reflect familiar divisions that map rather neatly onto earlier racial taxonomies (e.g., Negro, Caucasian, Mongol; Africanus, Europeanus, Asiaticus).\"\n\nThe emerging area of personalized medicine provides a third example of the intersection of race and science in the genomic age. This new field claims that the best treatments are individualized ones based on an individual's genome. A goal of personalized medicine is that people will have their own genomes sequenced, and that an analysis of that data will provide doctors with information both about disease risk and about an individual's pharmacogenomic profile (how one's genes influence responses to drugs). We know, for example, that a group of genes known as cytochrome P450 (the CYP family of genes) play an important role in the metabolism of most clinically used drugs. We also know that differences, or polymorphisms, in the sequence of these genes can alter the clinical responses to drugs. Some of these variations can lead to toxic reactions, while others can impact a drug's efficacy. Identifying these differences is thus a clinically useful and sometimes lifesaving tool. The challenge, however, lies in determining individual pharmacogenomic profiles, and this is where the race concept again intersects with the genomic age. Because we do not yet have the technology where this can occur (in most cases) rapidly and economically, researchers have been turning to racial and ethnic profiles as a proxy for estimating individual risks. For example, the CYP2C9 allele (or gene variant), which mediates metabolism of the anticoagulant drug Warfarin, shows up in higher frequency in what one study refers to as Black and Caucasian populations but is extremely rare in East Asian populations. The CYP2C9 pharmacogenomic literature is rife with such studies examining alleles in racial, ethnic, and national groups, including, for example, \"Swedes,\" \"African Americans,\" \"Han Chinese,\" and \"inner-city Hispanics.\"\n\nAs Dobzhansky has taught us, populations have varying allele frequencies in all their genes. That concept was the basis of the shift from a typological (or fixed) understanding of racial differences to an evolutionary synthesis understanding of racial difference, which understood population-level differences in terms of variation of allele frequencies between racial groups. Remember also that Dobzhansky argued that how we choose to arrange these groups was a methodological decision rather than a reflection of the natural order of things. This basic fact of population and evolutionary biology has led some to be highly critical of the race-based approach to personalized medicine.\n\nTo highlight the complexity of gene frequencies being dynamic both within and between populations, Craig Venter and his colleagues used the published gene sequences of two self-identified Caucasian men\u2014himself and James Watson\u2014to show how two white individuals could have very different pharmacogenomic profiles. Venter, for example, is an \"extensive metabolizer\" of CYP2D6, known to be involved in metabolizing codeine, antipsychotics, and antidepressants. Watson, on the other hand, has a variant of that gene that makes him an \"intermediate metabolizer\" of this class of drugs. From a race-based pharmacogenomics perspective, Venter's genetic profile was predictable. Watson's allele, however, is rare among self-identified Caucasians but seen in high frequency in East Asian populations. If one were to have used race alone to assess his ability to metabolize this class of drugs, Watson would not have received the proper care. Venter and his colleagues argue that this and other examples illustrate why the best choice is looking directly at an individual's \"genomic sequence instead of relying on a patient's appearance or self-identified ethnicity.\" Venter and his team also point out that gene variants do not always behave as expected: \"Although these complications may be due to other genetic differences, cultural factors such as diet and environment can also influence drug response.\"\n\nWhat is interesting in the context of the history of the race concept, however, is how these examples\u2014the HGDP, the HapMap Project, and pharmacogenomics\u2014illustrate similar patterns of racial research in the genomic age. That is, that scientists readily claim the race concept is both a reasonable proxy for genetic diversity even as they recognize its limited utility as a classificatory tool. More recently, two meetings sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute in 2007 and 2008 sought to address the current challenges of studying human genetic diversity, particularly given the burgeoning interest in the relationship between self-identified race and health disparities. At the 2007 conference, \"Frontiers in Population Genomics Research Meeting,\" one speaker called for scientists to \"eliminate reliance on the construct of race\" and for population geneticists to \"engage populations that adequately reflect human diversity.\" The 2008 meeting, \"Understanding the Role of Genomics in Health Disparities: Toward a New Research Agenda,\" was jointly sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Attendees, representing many NIH institutes as well as natural and social scientists with a research interest in disparities, made several recommendations based on two days of lectures and discussions.\n\nIn an apparent attempt to, at the very least, address how the race concept is used in scientific studies, the group recommended that NIH Funding Opportunity Announcements \"should require that investigators justify their use of racial and ethnic categories relative to the questions that they are asking and the methods they are using in particular research.\" The group also recommended the development of \"statistical tools to analyze complex populations as a single unit based on genomic\/molecular profile (or characteristics) rather than stratify by race and ethnicity.\" The report remains unpublished and it is unclear what, if any, impact its recommendations will have. Despite the best intentions of such reports, it has been over fifty years since Dobzhansky issued his challenge to the field in 1962\u2014he said then that \"the problem that now faces the science of man is how to devise better methods for further observations that will give more meaningful results\"\u2014and we are still struggling with the meaning of race in biology.\n\nA more immediate problem is that for now, despite some trying to find useful solutions to these challenges, the NIH still reifies racial categories in its grant applications; scientists are required to describe recruitment strategies for human subjects that emphasize traditional racial classifications. Scientists working at or funded by the NIH are mandated to report race based on the U.S. Census categories and following the standards set forth by the White House Office of Management and Budget Directive No. 15, which \"defines minimum standards for maintaining, collecting and presenting data on race and ethnicity for all Federal reporting.\" The \"Targeted\/Planned Enrollment Table,\" a fixture in all NIH grant applications that include human subjects, divides humanity into five racial groups: \"American Indian\/Alaska Native,\" \"Asian,\" \"Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Island,\" \"Black or African American,\" and \"White.\" Although the form was recently updated to include categories for \"more than one race\" and \"unknown or not reported,\" it still reinforces the most antiquated notions of this fundamentally flawed concept, making it more difficult to explore the subtlety and complications inherent to human genetic diversity. So long as the NIH is obligated to follow Office of Management and Budget rules, the system will perpetuate this racial paradigm.\n\nWhile the NIH meetings were a call to action for the field, some have more directly attempted to address Dobzhansky's challenge to devise better methods to understand human diversity. The molecular epidemiologist Timothy Rebbeck and bioethicist Pamela Sankar at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, acknowledge that \"much of the persistent controversy over the use of the terms 'ethnicity,' 'ancestry,' or 'race' may be attributable to the imprecision of their use.\" They believe that defining the terminology of race on a study-by-study basis may be a way to simultaneously embrace the inconsistencies of the race concept and find meaning in its specific context. Yet ultimately, they recognize that as a measure, race \"may have utility in increasing study efficiency or reducing confounding,\" but \"an important future direction for research will be to develop new measures that correlate with SIRE [self-identified race or ethnicity] that may better reflect the complex nature of this variable.\"\n\nIf these struggles over race at the outset of the genomic age can teach us anything about the history of the race concept, it is that even a generation of scientists reared in the wake of the evolutionary synthesis and population genetics (who had been trained to reject typology as a component of their analysis of populations) still struggle with utilizing a concept that has such a contradictory and sometimes awful history. These scientists\u2014contradictions and all\u2014indeed reflect and are working in the traditions of Dobzhansky and the evolutionary synthesis.\n**EPILOGUE**\n\nDobzhansky's Paradox and the Future of Racial Research\n\n**I** n 1998 the public health psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove published an article in the _American Journal of Public Health_ challenging the utility of race as a variable in health research, pointing to the risks of relying on an archaic and imprecise way to organize human diversity and calling upon the field \"to abandon race as a variable in public health research.\" The race concept \"is an arbitrary system of visual classification that does not demarcate distinct subspecies of the human population,\" Fullilove asserted, arguing that the concept could not \"provide the information we need to resolve the health problems of populations.\" In its place, she proposed that public health professionals \"invent a new science that embodies the human rights and civil rights essential to the health of human populations.\" Although Fullilove acknowledged that \"'race' is an ingrained part of personal identity,\" she believed that abandoning \"racial classification schemes is to challenge deeply held and socially endorsed ways of seeing one's place in the world.\" Fullilove's proposition was as much a call to science to find new methods to study the relationship between health outcomes and human diversity as it was to remind her fellow scientists that \"following the illusion of race cannot provide the information we need to resolve the health problems of populations.\"\n\nFullilove was not, of course, the first scientist or scholar to call for rethinking the scientific methodologies that measure human diversity. At the turn of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois called into question the scientific legitimacy of the biological race concept in _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. In the early 1940s the anthropologist Ashley Montagu called for an abandonment of the race concept in his classic work _Man's Most Dangerous Myth_. The evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who had in the 1930s and 1940s been largely responsible for reimagining and preserving the race concept in biology in his work on the evolutionary synthesis, came to believe by the 1960s that \"the problem that now faces the science of man is how to devise better methods for further observations that will give more meaningful results.\" And in 1972, the evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin wrote that human racial classifications have \"virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.\" Despite these calls, the population genetics\u2013based race concept as first articulated by Dobzhansky is alive and well in the biological sciences.\n\nPart of the challenge of situating this history in present-day debates about race is that, in general, unlike pre-twenty-first-century arguments about the race concept in biological thought, today's debates generally lack the clear ideological and political antipodes of racist and nonracist, reactionary and liberal. Instead, today's scientific debates take place (with some exceptions, of course) in a way that seeks to avoid the ideological and racist baggage of the past. Claims for race-based medicine in the genomic era are allegedly about drug safety and efficacy, reducing health disparities, and ultimately bettering human health and saving lives. Most of the discussion today about race in biology concerns the noble goal of utilizing an individual's self-identified ancestry to help determine the best course of medical treatments as we move closer to personalized medicine. Although there is a legitimate fear that this type of research will serve only to reify racial categories and harden racial prejudices, that is not, in most cases, its purpose. The question as it is often framed in today's debates about race is not whether racial classifications are harmful\u2014and this is with an acknowledgment that race is a social construction\u2014but whether race is a valuable biological variable and whether we can best improve the health of individuals and populations by continuing to use this variable.\n\nIn public health, the attention to health disparities has further deepened the interest of public health professionals in the race concept. Some in public health have chosen to integrate a socially constructed race concept into novel methodologies designed to study health disparities, while others have drawn on quasi-typological ideas of race to understand the relationship between biology and health. The work of Nancy Krieger at Harvard, for example, rejects the biological race concept but utilizes race in a novel methodology that she calls the \"Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project.\" Her method seeks to understand the underpinning of racial disparities in health by examining the underlying socioeconomic causes of disparities. In order to overcome a virtual \"absence of socioeconomic data in most U.S. public health surveillance systems,\" she has developed a method that utilizes geocoded residential addresses and area-based socioeconomic measures. Others have made alternative proposals. Ichiro Kawachi, Norman Daniels, and Dean Robinson argue that \"historical, political, and ideological obstacles\" have \"hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.\" They propose that \"racial and class identities are mutually constitutive,\" as race is \"neither a biologically meaningful category nor a proxy for class, but is a separate construct from class, more akin to caste.\" They call for a strengthening of the U.S. data infrastructure \"to improve the measurement of race\/ethnicity as well as class\/socioeconomic status\" so that policy makers can better \"monitor the effects of their policies on health disparities.\" Still others have called for more clarity in the use of race in health research. \"At a minimum,\" R. Dawn Comstock, Edward Castillo, and Suzanne Lindsay argue, \"researchers should clearly state the context in which these valuable epidemiologic and public health research variables are being used, describe the method used to assess these variables, and discuss all scientific findings.\" Doing so, they believe, \"will ensure continued constructive dialog about the interpretation of findings regarding race or ethnicity.\"\n\nFinally, epidemiologist Camara Jones argues that racism, not race, may be a \"root cause of observed race-associated differences in health outcomes.\" Race, according to Jones, \"is a social classification in our race-conscious society that conditions most aspects of our daily life experiences and results in profound differences in life chances.\" An understanding of what she calls the three levels of racism\u2014institutionalized racism (\"differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society by race\"), personally mediated racism (\"prejudice and discrimination, where prejudice means differential assumptions about the abilities, motives, and intentions of others according to their race, and discrimination means differential actions toward others according to their race\"), and internalized racism (\"acceptance by members of the stigmatized races of negative messages about their own abilities and intrinsic worth\")\u2014may offer a better understanding of the etiology of health disparities as well as concrete strategies to redress them.\n\nThe latest ways to utilize race and begin to rethink how to create a measurement variable from human genetic diversity are, despite their best intentions, overwhelmed in the larger research enterprise by studies that claim that race is, in fact, a methodologically sound classificatory tool in the biological sciences. Continued claims that race is, in fact, a useful tool for classification is driven by four factors. First, the reductionist ontology that underlies genomic science has given rise to the belief that biology is destiny, and that both at the individual and population levels, genes hold the ultimate information for understanding our health and understanding who we are. The philosopher of science Sahotra Sarkar worries that such reductionism in genetics \"attempts to explain phenotypic properties from a genotypic basis without attributing any particular structure to the genotype.\" Claims that race is a meaningful biological classificatory tool do make sense as an extension of reductionism as the line between phenotype and genotype is blurred.\n\nSecond, genomic technology has enhanced our ability to examine the 0.1 percent of nucleic acids in the human genome that, on average, vary between individuals. Over the past decade, the Human Genome Project and the technological revolution that spawned it are driving novel research to examine these differences. Many of these 0.1 percent differences will involve phenotypic variations including hair color, body shape and size, skin tone, disease susceptibility, and blood type. The 0.1 percent of variations between people can also be used to study both individual and population-level traits, including disease risk. However, this is still prohibitively expensive to do for everyone, so scientists are instead using population and ethnic groups as well as races as proxies to measure susceptibility and risk. One area where we are seeing some of the earliest manifestations of such an approach is in pharmacogenomic testing\u2014a way to predict, based on an individual's genotype, how one will react (either negatively or positively) to a particular drug. Will drug A, for example, be an effective and safe treatment for patient Y, or will it be toxic and nonefficacious? But, for the moment, because of the expense of sequencing individual genomes, scientific studies are often relying on an individual's race to make pharmacogenomic predictions.\n\nThe problem with such an approach, as the bioethicist Sandra Soo-Jin Lee points out, is that it inevitably \"suggests that the population under study is assumed to be homogeneous with respect to allele frequencies but in fact comprises subpopulations that have different allele frequencies for the candidate gene.\" In other words, as Dobzhansky tried to teach us many years ago, \"racial differences are more commonly due to variations in the relative frequencies of genes in different parts of the species population than to an absolute lack of certain genes in some groups and their complete homozygosis in others.... _Individuals carrying or not carrying a certain gene may sometimes be found in many distinct races of a species_.\" It is therefore not accurate to make assumptions about an individual's genes based on their race. Race as a proxy predictions will sometimes be accurate if the gene frequencies for, let's say, a drug's metabolism are high enough in a particular racial group. But inevitably, many will receive no benefit or may even be harmed based on these assumptions.\n\nThe 0.1 percent difference between people is also being used to promote a closer examination of genetic ancestry. A simple Google search reveals companies that claim a pretty simple correlation between your genes and your race. Although it doesn't use the term \"race,\" one company allows you to \"discover your estimated percentage of ancestry from four different population groups: European, Indigenous American, Sub-Saharan African, and East Asian.\" Another company's promotional video claims that DNA \"is the key to discovering where your family is from, and learning about the places and culture that make you who you are.\" Critics, however, have pointed out that these tests \"cannot pinpoint the place of origin or social affiliation of even one ancestor with exact certainty.\" Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee also worry that \"the mere hint that genetic markers are distributed in different frequencies across populations has led some people to quickly treat such variation as a proxy for racial and ethnic differences, lending renewed authority to biological conceptions of human difference.\"\n\nThird, the critical task of understanding and reducing health disparities has researchers looking at all possible explanations, including genetic ones, for disparities in health outcomes. The renewed focus on race and genetics suggests, however, that an analysis of the complex relationship between individuals, populations, and health has been surrendered to a simplistic, racialized worldview. An inability to digest (and frequently even to acknowledge) these complexities restricts scientific theory and practice to simplicity when complexity is needed. This underlies the drive to correlate race, genetics, and health disparities.\n\nFourth and finally, the history of the biological race concept demonstrates that race is deeply embedded in scientific and social thought, and that racialized thinking was an integral part of genetics in the twentieth century. This history has shaped scientific thinking about human difference as well as popular thinking about that difference. That Craig Venter's criticisms of the race concept at the outset of the twenty-first century are similar to those made by W. E. B. Du Bois at the beginning of the twentieth\u2014calling into question both the utility of racial classifications and the claim that health disparities can be explained by elucidating the relationship between genetics and race\u2014suggests that we are having frustratingly similar arguments about race and human difference despite the benefit of one hundred years of knowing better.\n\nIn light of this history, we should not underestimate the tenacity of the race concept. As scientists continue to struggle with the meanings of race, they should remember Dobzhansky's paradoxical thinking about the race concept: on the one hand, Dobzhansky believed the race concept to be a critical methodological tool for biologists to make sense of genetic diversity within species. On the other hand, Dobzhansky understood the imprecise nature of the term, its limited utility, and its potential for abuse. But despite these acknowledged contradictions, Dobzhansky held fast to and publically defended the concept for much of his career. Toward the end of his career he struggled to disown this paradox. He did this most probably because of the ways in which he saw the biological race concept being appropriated in the early years of the civil rights movement by those fanatically opposed to African American civil rights, because of disputes with other scientists who he believed were misusing the race concept in their work, _and ultimately_ because he seemed to realize that he was fighting a Sisyphean battle in trying to separate what he had formerly considered the separate domains of the scientific and social meanings of the biological race concept. Nevertheless, genetics continues to function within Dobzhansky's paradox. Despite his brilliance as an evolutionary theorist, Dobzhansky left us with only a warning and not a new method to study human diversity. History has shown that even acknowledging that race has a social meaning cannot disconnect the concept from its typological and racist past (or present). Despite the best intentions of scientists and scholars, race will always remain what Ashley Montagu once called a \"trigger word....Utter it and a whole series of emotionally conditioned responses follow.\"\n\nAnd so while the race concept can provide us with some information about health and human evolutionary history, ultimately that information is incomplete. What we know from Dobzhansky, his sometimes collaborator L. C. Dunn, the evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, and, most recently, Craig Venter, is that race is not a particularly useful measure of human genetic diversity. We also know from Du Bois and other historians and social scientists that the biological race concept is inseparable from its social history, and that race can be harmful to an understanding of both human health and evolutionary history.\n\nWe are a genetically diverse species, and there is meaning in that diversity. But as a species we seem thus far unable to reliably distinguish between the scientific ramifications and the social meanings of human difference. \"Race\" is a historical, not a scientific, term. Yet until the scourge of racism is eliminated from our lives and institutions, developing scientific methods unburdened by racial ideology to study human difference will be limited by the historical nature of the race concept itself.\n\nIn 1940, toward the end of his career, W. E. B. Du Bois penned his autobiography, _Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept_. David Levering Lewis, Du Bois's biographer, believes that the book was intended to be \"not so much the story of his own life, then, but the autobiography of the twentieth century as it had lived through him.\" The book is thus, in large part, both a personal account of the meaning of race in Du Bois's own life and an evaluation of its political, sociological, and scientific meanings over the course of his lifetime. Du Bois understood that scientific concepts of race had played a critical role in both providing support for racist claims and in buttressing the racial order, writing in _Dusk of Dawn_ that he \"had too often seen science made the slave of caste and race hate.\" Yet Du Bois also understood that the world and the race concept had changed, in some ways for the better and others for the worse, over his lifetime. \"Life has its pain and evil\u2014its bitter disappointments,\" Du Bois wrote at the book's close, \"but I like a good novel, and in healthful length of days, there is infinite joy in seeing the World, the most interesting of continued stories, unfold, even though one misses THE END.\"\n\nIn our own time, we continue to struggle with the power of the race concept. Biologists may today develop new ways of studying human populations that, to whatever degree, distance themselves from the race concept and its historical baggage, and those new methods may, in fact, be an improvement over where we stood before. Yet we should not be waiting for or expecting science and scientists to change our thinking about race. Science may have helped bring us to this point, but it is unlikely to extract us from it.\n\nThat social and natural scientists have been rejecting, abandoning, and discrediting the race concept for over a century suggests that, for now, the race concept in biology is here to stay.\n**NOTES**\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1997); Jacques Barzun, _Race: A Study in Superstition_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); Barbara J. Fields, \"Ideology and Race in American History,\" in _Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward_ , ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, 143\u201377 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).\n\n. Bruce Dain, _A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), vii.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).\n\n. Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, _Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life_ (New York: Verso, 2012), 18\u201319.\n\n. Ibid., 5\u20136.\n\n. Thomas Jefferson, _Notes on the State of Virginia_ , ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 138\u2013140, 143.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Statement on Race_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 9\u201313.\n\n. Jenny Reardon, _Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 22\u201323.\n\n. Ibid.; Lee D. Baker, _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Gregory Dorr, _Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia_ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008).\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 266.\n\n. Ibid., 252\u201353.\n\n. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, _Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center_ (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 90\u201394.\n\n. William Stanton, _The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815\u201359_ (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1960), 25.\n\n. Mae M. Ngai, _Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3\u20135.\n\n. Baker, _From Savage to Negro_ , 3.\n\n. Charles E. Rosenberg, _No Other Gods: On Science and Society and American Social Thought_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961), 1.\n\n. K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, _Color Consciousness: The Political Morality of Race_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 41\u201342.\n\n. Brian D. Smedley et al., eds., _Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care_ (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2003); John Yinger, _Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination_ (New York: Sage, 1995).\n\n**1. A EUGENIC FOUNDATION**\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Folder, Davenport, Charles B. Lecture: \"Racial Traits,\" February 21, 1921.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 46.\n\n. Ibid., 85.\n\n. Mark Pittenger, _American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870\u20131920_ , History of American Thought and Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 248.\n\n. Celeste Condit, _The Meanings of the Gene_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 27; Mark A. Largent, _Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011). 1.\n\n. Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, _Applied Eugenics_ (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 141.\n\n. William Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" _American Zoologist_ 26 (1986): 857.\n\n. Ibid., 868.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Folder, Davenport, Charles B. Lecture: \"Do Races Differ in Mental Capacity?\" March 1928.\n\n. Popenoe and Johnson, _Applied Eugenics_ , 283\u201384.\n\n. Eugenics Record Office Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box 62, Folder A: 974x6#10, \"Pedigree of W. E. B. Du Bois\"; Mark Aldrich, \"Progressive Economists and Scientific Racism: Walter Willcox and Black Americans, 1895\u20131910,\" _Phylon_ 40 (1979): 1\u201314.\n\n. See, for example, Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ ; Peter Schrag, _Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism and Immigration_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Stefan K\u00fchl, _The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Laura Briggs, _Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Largent, _Breeding Contempt_ ; Alexandra Minna Stern, _Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).\n\n. Michael G. Kenny, \"Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund,\" _Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences_ 38 (summer 2002): 259\u201383.\n\n. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 3.\n\n. Francis Galton, _Memories of My Life_ (London: Methuen, 1908), 1:141.\n\n. Karl Pearson, _The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton, Volume 2: Researches of Middle Life_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), 74.\n\n. Raymond E. Fancher, \"Biographical Origins of Francis Galton's Psychology,\" _Isis_ 74 (June 1983): 228\u201329.\n\n. Ibid., 228.\n\n. Nicholas Wright Gillham, _A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 26\u201327.\n\n. Ibid., 30\u201331.\n\n. Fancher, \"Biographical Origins,\" 231.\n\n. Ibid., 232.\n\n. Biographies and biographical articles on Galton include Gillham, _Sir Francis Galton_ ; Michael Bulmer, _Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Ruth Schwartz Cowan, \"Sir Francis Galton and the Study of Heredity in the Nineteenth Century\" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1969); and Fancher, \"Biographical Origins.\"\n\n. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 6.\n\n. Galton, _Memories of My Life_ , 141.\n\n. Raymond Fancher, \"Francis Galton's African Ethnography and Its Role in the Development of His Psychology,\" _British Journal for the History of Science_ 16 (1983): 67\u201379.\n\n. Cowan, \"Sir Francis Galton,\" 25.\n\n. _Macmillan's Magazine_ , 1st Paper, June 1865, 2nd Paper, August 1865, vol. 12:157\u201366, 318\u201327.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Fancher, \"Galton's African Ethnography,\" 67\u201379; Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 8.\n\n. Norma Myers, _Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain, 1780\u20131830_ (London: Cass, 1996).\n\n. See Gretchen Gerzina, _Black Victorians\/Black Victoriana_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), and James Walvin, _Black and White: The Negro and English Society, 1555\u20131945_ (London: Lane, 1973).\n\n. Michael Banton, _White and Coloured: The Behavior of British People Towards Coloured Immigrants_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960), 57.\n\n. Ibid., 58.\n\n. John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 319, quoted in Fancher, \"Galton's African Ethnography,\" 68.\n\n. Cowan, \"Sir Francis Galton,\" 26.\n\n. Banton, _White and Coloured_ , 60.\n\n. Francis Galton, \"Letters of Henry Stanley from Equatorial Africa to the 'Daily Telegraph.' London: 1877,\" _Edinburgh Review_ 147 (January 1878): 177.\n\n. John C. Kenna, \"Sir Francis Galton's Contribution to Anthropology,\" _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland_ 94 (July\u2013December 1964): 85.\n\n. Francis Galton, _Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences_ (Gloucester, Mass.: Smith, 1972), 40.\n\n. Banton, _White and Coloured_ , 59; Warwick Anderson, _The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia_ (New York: Basic Books, 2003).\n\n. Francis Galton, _Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences_ (London: Macmillan, 1869), vi.\n\n. All the review quotes are in Gillham, _Sir Francis Galton_ , 170.\n\n. William B. Provine, _The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 24.\n\n. Garland Allen, \"Genetics, Eugenics, and Society: Internalists and Externalists in Contemporary History of Science,\" _Social Studies of Science_ 6 (February 1976): 106.\n\n. Galton, _Hereditary Genius_ (1869), 336.\n\n. Ibid., 336\u201337.\n\n. Ibid., 337, 339.\n\n. Ibid., 338.\n\n. Ibid., 338\u201339.\n\n. Francis Galton, _Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development_ (New York: Macmillan, 1883), 24.\n\n. Ibid., 24\u201325.\n\n. Ibid., 332.\n\n. Ibid., 1\u20132.\n\n. \"Galton's Human Faculty,\" unsigned review of _Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development_ , by Francis Galton, _Science_ 2 (July 20, 1883): 80.\n\n. Galton, _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ , 305\u20137.\n\n. Cowan, \"Sir Francis Galton,\" 144, 200.\n\n. Ibid., 200.\n\n. Ibid., 203.\n\n. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , xiii.\n\n. Francis Galton, _Essays in Eugenics_ (London: Eugenics Education Society, 1909), 35.\n\n. Ivan Hannaford, _Race: The History of an Idea in the West_ (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996), 123.\n\n. Audrey Smedley, _Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview_ (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 164.\n\n. Arthur O. Lovejoy, _The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 59.\n\n. Smedley, _Race in North America_ , 164.\n\n. Ibid., 36\u201340; Hannaford, _Race_.\n\n. Smedley, _Race in North America_ 165.\n\n. Georges Louis Leclerc, _Natural History: Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c_. (London: Barr, 1792), 317\u201318.\n\n. Stephen Jay Gould, _The Mismeasure of Man_ (New York: Norton, 1996), 403, 408.\n\n. Galton, _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ , 331.\n\n. Galton, \"Letters,\" 189.\n\n. Galton, _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ , 310\u2013311.\n\n. Ibid., 314.\n\n. Ibid., 316\u201317.\n\n. Michael G. Kenny, \"Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund,\" _Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences_ 38 (2002): 261.\n\n. Galton, _Essays in Eugenics_ , 25.\n\n. Susan Lindee, _Moments of Truth in Genetic Medicine_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 122.\n\n. Galton, _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ , 217.\n\n. Ibid., 217\u201318.\n\n**2. CHARLES DAVENPORT AND THE BIOLOGY OF BLACKNESS**\n\n. Oscar Riddle, \"Charles Benedict Davenport,\" _Science_ 99 (June 2, 1944): 441\u201342.\n\n. Edwin Black, _War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 32\u201333.\n\n. Ibid., 33.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 45.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Lectures H\u2013M, File, Davenport, Charles B. Lecture: \"Heredity and Eugenics,\" 1920.\n\n. Thomas Kessner, _The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880\u20131915_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 7\u20138.\n\n. Osborn to Johnson, May 2, 1924. Henry Fairfield Osborn Collection, File: Johnson; American Museum of Natural History Archives.\n\n. Osborn to Grant, December 23, 1919. Henry Fairfield Osborn Collection, File: Grant, Madison, Folder 39; American Museum of Natural History Archives.\n\n. Osborn to Johnson, December 19, 1922. Henry Fairfield Osborn Collection, File: Johnson; American Museum of Natural History Archives.\n\n. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 102\u20133.\n\n. William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 95.\n\n. Ibid., 94\u201395; David A. Hollinger, \"How Wide the Circle of the 'We'? American Intellectuals and the Problems of the Ethnos since World War II,\" in _Scientific Authority and Twentieth-Century America_ , ed. Ronald G. Walters, 13\u201331 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).\n\n. Tucker, _Science And Politics_ , 96.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Davenport to Johnson, December 24, 1923.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Johnson to Davenport, December 27, 1923.\n\n. Matthew Jacobson, _Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 93.\n\n. Mae Ngai, \"The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,\" _Journal of American History_ 86 (June 1999): 69\u201371.\n\n. Jacobson, _Whiteness_ , 95.\n\n. Ibid., 98.\n\n. Julie Novkov, \"Racial Constructions: The Legal Regulation of Miscegenation in Alabama, 1890\u20131934,\" _Law and History Review_ 20 (summer 2002): 252.\n\n. C. Vann Woodward, _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 6.\n\n. Gregory Dorr, _Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia_ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008).\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Lectures A\u2013H, File, Davenport, Charles B. Lecture: \"A Biologist's View of the Negro Problem,\" n.d.\n\n. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 46.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Hrdli\u010dka, Ale\u0161: Davenport to Hrdli\u010dka, November 27, 1906.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Hrdli\u010dka, Ale\u0161: Hrdli\u010dka to Davenport, November 28, 1906.\n\n. Gertrude C. Davenport and Charles B. Davenport, \"Heredity of Skin Pigmentation in Man,\" _American Naturalist_ 44 (November 1910): 641\u201372. The second half of the article was published in vol. 44 (December 1910): 705\u201331.\n\n. Ibid., (November 1910): 672.\n\n. William B. Provine, \"Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,\" _Science_ 182 (November 23, 1973): 790\u201396.\n\n. Davenport and Davenport, \"Heredity of Skin Pigmentation,\" 668.\n\n. Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, _Applied Eugenics_ (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 284, 294.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Popenoe, Paul, Folder 2: Davenport to Popenoe, July 13, 1914.\n\n. Dorr, _Segregation's Science_ , 2\u20133. See also Harvey Jordan, \"The Biological Worth and Social Status of the Mulatto,\" _Popular Science Monthly_ 82 (June 1913): 573\u201382.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Jordan, H. E.: Jordan to Davenport, July 16, 1913.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Jordan, H. E.: Davenport to Jordan, August 7, 1913.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Jordan, H. E.: Jordan to Davenport, November 27, 1912, and Davenport to Jordan, November 30, 1912.\n\n. Davenport and Davenport, \"Heredity of Skin Pigmentation,\" 666.\n\n. Charles B. Davenport, _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1913), 28\u201330.\n\n. Charles B. Davenport, \"The Effects of Race Intermingling,\" _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ 56 (1917): 364.\n\n. Ibid., 364\u201368.\n\n. Peggy Pascoe, \"Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America,\" _Journal of American History_ 83 (June 1996): 44\u201369; Dorr, _Segregation's Science_.\n\n. Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda, _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1929), 477.\n\n. Lothrop Stoddard, _The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy_ (New York: Scribner, 1920), 301.\n\n. Stoddard to Osborn, January 23, 1923. Henry Fairfield Osborn Collection, American Museum of Natural History; Norman Hapgood, \"The _New_ Threat of the Ku Klux Klan,\" _Hearst's International_ (January 1923): 8\u201312.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Folder, Davenport, Charles B. Lecture: \"Racial Traits,\" February 21, 1921.\n\n**3. EUGENICS IN THE PUBLIC'S EYE**\n\n. Henry Fairfield Osborn, \"Address of Welcome,\" in _Scientific Papers of the Second International Conference of Eugenics_ , vol. 1, _Eugenics, Genetics, and the Family_ (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1923), 1.\n\n. Ibid., 4.\n\n. Charles Davenport, \"Research in Eugenics,\" in _Eugenics, Genetics, and the Family_ , 24.\n\n. Ibid., 28.\n\n. William B. Provine, _Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 180.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Morgan, Thomas Hunt: Morgan to Davenport, January 18, 1915.\n\n. Garland Allen, _Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 228.\n\n. American Museum of Natural History, _Annual Report of the Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History for the Year (1921)_ (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1921), 31.\n\n. Ibid., 33.\n\n. Osborn to William Gregory, May 25, 1935. Henry Fairfield Osborn Collection, American Museum of Natural History Archives; Geoffrey Hellman _Bankers, Bones and Beetles: The First Century of the American Museum of Natural History_ (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1969), 194; John Michael Kennedy, \"Philanthropy and Science in New York City: The American Museum of Natural History, 1868\u20131968\" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1968), 208\u20139.\n\n. Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 67.\n\n. Franz Boas, \"The Problem of the American Negro,\" _Yale Review_ 10 (January 1921): 384\u201395.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 392.\n\n. Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, White, Walter: Walter White to Franz Boas, March 15, 1921.\n\n. Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Boas Lectures: \"The Races of Man,\" 1896.\n\n. Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Boas Lectures: \"Commencement Address at Atlanta University,\" May 31, 1906. See also Julia E. Liss et al., \"Diasporic Identities: The Science and Politics of Race in the Work of Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois, 1894\u20131919,\" _Cultural Anthropology_ 13 (May 1998): 127\u201366.\n\n. Lee D. Baker, _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 119.\n\n. Harry Laughlin, _The Second International Exhibition of Eugenics Held September 22 to October 22, 1921, in Connection with the Second International Congress of Eugenics in the American Museum of Natural History, New York: An Account of the Organization of the Exhibition, the Classification of the Exhibits, the List of Exhibitors, and a Catalog and Description of the Exhibit_ (Baltimore: Wilkins and Wilkins, 1923), 13, 20.\n\n. Ibid., 13\u201314.\n\n. Ibid., 14.\n\n. Ibid., 16.\n\n. Ibid., 21.\n\n. Ibid., 23.\n\n. Ibid., 38.\n\n. Ibid., 70\u201371.\n\n. Ibid., 108.\n\n. Kennedy, \"Philanthropy and Science,\" 208.\n\n. William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 88.\n\n. Kennedy, \"Philanthropy and Science,\" 208.\n\n. Laughlin, _Second International Exhibition_ , 40.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 75.\n\n. Grant, _Passing of the Great Race_ , 53.\n\n. Ibid., 77.\n\n. Ibid., 69.\n\n. Ibid., 78.\n\n. Ibid., xv.\n\n. Ibid., xvii.\n\n. Barkan, _Retreat of Scientific Racism_ , 70.\n\n. Gregory Michael Dorr, \"Segregation's Science: The American Eugenics Movement and Virginia, 1900\u20131980\" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000), 250.\n\n. Gregory Dorr, _Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia_ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 79.\n\n. Dorr, \"Segregation's Science,\" 253.\n\n. Ibid., 254.\n\n. R. Bennett Bean, \"Notes on the Body Form of Man,\" in _Scientific Papers of the Second International Conference of Eugenics_ , vol. 2, _Eugenics in Race and State_ (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1923), 17.\n\n. Ernest A. Hooton, \"Observations and Queries as to the Effect of Race Mixture on Certain Physical Characteristics,\" in _Eugenics in Race and State_ , 64\u201374.\n\n. W. F. Willcox, \"Distribution and Increase of Negroes in the United States,\" in _Eugenics in Race and State_ , 171.\n\n. Ibid., 174.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, \"Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,\" _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 9 (January 1897): 127\u201333.\n\n. Frederick L. Hoffman, \"The Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,\" in _Eugenics in Race and State_ , 175\u2013188.\n\n. Osborn, \"Address of Welcome,\" 2.\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems, Joint with SSRC: Institutionalization of Infants for Controlled Data Accumulation, Letter from Knight Dunlap to Members of the Executive Committee, March 28, 1929, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n**4. THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL AND THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RACE**\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems: 1928\u20131932, \"Final Report,\" April 1931, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Barbara Tizard, \"IQ and Race,\" _Nature_ 247 (February 1, 1974): 316.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1921\u20131922. Open letter to the Committee from Clark Wissler, Chairman, NRC Division of Anthropology and Psychology, March 24, 1921, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems, Joint with SSRC: Institutionalization of Infants for Controlled Data Accumulation, Letter from Knight Dunlap to Members of the Executive Committee, March 28, 1929, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Daryl Michael Scott, _Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880\u20131996_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xi.\n\n. Philip Dray, _At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America_ (New York: Random House, 2002), 190; Kevin Gaines, _Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 66\u201399.\n\n. August Meier, _Negro Thought in America, 1880\u20131915_ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968).\n\n. Kelly Miller, _Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America_ (New York: Neale, 1909), 44.\n\n. Rayford W. Logan, _The Negro in the United States: A Brief History_ (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1957).\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil_ (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 36.\n\n. C. Vann Woodward, _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). See also C. Vann Woodward, _Origins of the New South: 1877\u20131913_ (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971).\n\n. Nicolas Lemann, _The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America_ (New York: Knopf, 1991).\n\n. Joe W. Trotter, _The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).\n\n. Mark R. Schneider, _\"We Return Fighting\": The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age_ (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002), 20.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: appendix I, 4.\n\n. National Research Council, _A History of the National Research Council, 1919\u20131933_ (Wilmington, Del., Scholarly Resources, 1974), 7.\n\n. National Research Council, \"The National Research Council: Organization of the National Research Council,\" _Science_ 49 (May 16, 1919): 458.\n\n. National Research Council, _History of the National Research Council_ , 9\u201310.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 208\u201310; Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, _The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy_ (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).\n\n. Roger L. Geiger, _To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900\u20131940_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 99.\n\n. Ibid., 100.\n\n. Cole's January 8, 1914, talk at the conference was later published as Leon J. Cole, \"Biological Eugenics: Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment,\" _Journal of Heredity_ 5 (1914): 305\u201312.\n\n. Ibid., 306.\n\n. Garland E. Allen, \"The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910\u20131940: An Essay in Institutional History,\" _Osiris_ 2 (1986): 225\u201364.\n\n. Charles B. Davenport, _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1913).\n\n. Allen, \"Eugenics Record Office,\" 225\u201364.\n\n. Ibid., 5.\n\n. Lagemann, _Politics of Knowledge_ , 4.\n\n. Ibid., 5\u20136.\n\n. Judith Sealander, \"Curing Evils at Their Source: The Arrival of Scientific Giving,\" in _Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History_ , ed. Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 229.\n\n. Merle Curti, \"American Philanthropy and the National Character,\" _American Quarterly_ 10 (winter 1958): 436.\n\n. Lagemann, _Politics of Knowledge_ , 81.\n\n. Ibid., 47.\n\n. Ibid., 48; Geiger, _To Advance Knowledge_ , 146.\n\n. Ibid., 147.\n\n. National Research Council, _History of the National Research Council_ , 34\u201338.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1923\u20131926, A. E. Jenks to Robert M. Yerkes, September 17, 1923, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group; Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , 80\u201381.\n\n. Daniel Kevles, \"Testing the Army's Intelligence: Psychologists and the Military in World War I,\" _Journal of American History_ 55 (December 1968): 565\u201381; Stephen Jay Gould, _The Mismeasure of Man_ (New York: Norton, 1996), 222\u201363.\n\n. Gould, _Mismeasure of Man_ , 260\u201362.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1923\u20131926, Jenks to Yerkes, September 17, 1923.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1923\u20131926, \"Research Outline from the Division of Anthropology and Psychology,\" National Research Council, December 10, 1923, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: 2\n\n. Ibid., 3.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1923\u20131926, Jenks to Yerkes, October 23, 1923, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Committee on Race Characters: 1923\u20131926, \"Research Outline from the Division of Anthropology and Psychology,\" December 10, 1923.\n\n. Ibid., 6.\n\n. Ibid., 7\u20139\n\n. Ibid., 10.\n\n. Ibid., 10\u201311.\n\n. Lee D. Baker, _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 5, 93\u201394; See also Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics_ , and Nancy Stepan, _The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800\u20131960_ (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982).\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, appendix I, 1.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, Clark Wissler, _Final Report of the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration_ , Reprint and Circular Series of the National Research Council (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1929), 7\u20138.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, 2.\n\n. Madison Grant, _The Passing of the Great Race: The Racial Basis of European History_ (New York: Scribner, 1916); Lothrop Stoddard, _The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy_ (New York: Scribner, 1920).\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Conference on Racial Intermixture,\" February 17, 1923, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: 4\u20135, 8, 15.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, 2\u20133.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Conference on Racial Intermixture,\" February 17, 1923, 7.\n\n. Charles B. Davenport, \"The Effects of Race Intermingling,\" _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ 56 (1917): 364.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, appendix I, 5.\n\n. Ibid., 6.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Conference on Racial Intermixture,\" February 17, 1923, 8.\n\n. Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda, _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1929).\n\n. Raymond Pearl Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, National Research Council, Yerkes to Pearl, May 16, 1923.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, Annual Reports, \"Report and Recommendations of the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migrations,\" April 5, 1926, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: 6; Raymond Pearl, \"On the Pathological Relations Between Cancer and Tuberculosis,\" _Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine_ 26 (1928): 55\u201373; Raymond Pearl and Agnes Latimer Bacon, \"New Data on Alcohol and Duration of Life,\" _Nature_ 121 (1928): 15\u201316; and Raymond Pearl and Agnes Latimer Bacon, \"Biometrical Studies in Pathology, V: The Racial and Age Incidence of Cancer and Other Malignant Tumors,\" _Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine_ 3 (1927): 963\u201392.\n\n. Edwin Black, _War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 412.\n\n. Raymond Pearl Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, NAACP, #2, Correspondence between Walter White and Raymond Pearl.\n\n. Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 212\u201320.\n\n. Raymond Pearl Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, National Research Council, Yerkes to Pearl, November 25, 1922; Davenport, \"Effects of Race Intermingling,\" 364\u201368.\n\n. Ibid., Pearl to Yerkes, November 28, 1922.\n\n. Ibid., Yerkes to Pearl, November 29, 1922.\n\n. Quoted in William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 71.\n\n. Raymond Pearl and Agnes Latimer Bacon, \"Biometrical Studies in Pathology, VI: The Primary Site of Cancers and Other Malignant Tumors,\" _Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine_ 6 (1928): 67\u201389.\n\n. Ibid., 81.\n\n. Pearl and Bacon, \"Biometrical Studies in Pathology, V,\" 963\u201392.\n\n. Ibid., \"Biometrical Studies in Pathology, VI,\" 80\u201381.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 23, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Raymond Pearl, \"Evolution and Mortality,\" _Quarterly Review of Biology_ 3 (June 1928): 271\u201380.\n\n. Ibid., 274.\n\n. Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, \"Report to the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration,\" March 8, 1923, appendix I, 8.\n\n. Wissler, _Final Report_ , 15.\n\n. Ibid., 9, 10, 14; Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration, Annual Reports, \"Report and Recommendations of the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migrations,\" April 5, 1926, 6.\n\n. Edmund Ramsden, \"Social Demography and Eugenics in the Interwar United States,\" _Population and Development Review_ 29 (December 2003): 548.\n\n. Wissler, _Final Report_ , 17\u201321.\n\n. Ibid., 16.\n\n**5. COLORING RACE DIFFERENCE**\n\n. Committee on the Study of the American Negro, 1926\u20131929, \"Committee on the American Negro: Proposals for the Organization of Investigations on the American Negro,\" n.d., in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Robert J. Terry. \"The American Negro,\" _Science_ 69 (March 29, 1929): 337\u201341.\n\n. Committee on the Study of the American Negro, 1926\u20131929, R. M. Terry to G. M. Stratton, October 20, 1925.\n\n. Ibid., Letter from A. E. Jenks to G. M. Stratton, January 27, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., \"Report of Progress, Committee on the American Negro, 1926\u20131927, appendix K,\" in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Ibid., \"Committee on the American Negro: Proposals for the Organization of Investigations on the American Negro.\"\n\n. Ibid., \"Report of Progress, Committee on the American Negro, 1928\u20131929, appendix G.\"\n\n. Ibid., \"Report of Progress, Committee on the American Negro, 1926\u20131927, appendix K.\"\n\n. Ibid., \"A&P Annual Meeting: 1928.\"\n\n. Ibid., \"Report of Progress, Committee on the American Negro, 1928\u20131929, appendix G.\"\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: 3.\n\n. Ibid., 5\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Fred Eggan, \"Fay-Cooper Cole, 1881\u20131961,\" _American Anthropologist_ 65 (June 1963): 641\u201348.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 9.\n\n. Franz Boas, \"Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,\" _American Anthropologist_ 14 (July\u2013September, 1912): 530\u201362.\n\n. Audrey Smedley, _Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview_ (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 276.\n\n. Ibid., 276\u201377.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 16\u201317.\n\n. Ibid., 18.\n\n. Ibid., 19.\n\n. Ibid., 21.\n\n. Ernst Mayr, \"Darwin's Impact on Modern Thought,\" _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ 139 (December 1995): 317\u201325.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 19\u201320.\n\n. William B. Provine, _The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).\n\n. Kenneth Ludmerer, \"American Geneticists and the Eugenics Movement, 1905\u20131935,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 2 (September 1969): 347\u201348, 350\u201351.\n\n. Joan Fisher Box, _R. A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist_ (New York: Wiley, 1978), 268, as quoted in Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 222; R. A. Fisher, _The Genetic Theory of Natural Selection_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930), 258.\n\n. Edward East, _Mankind at the Crossroads_ (New York: Scribner's, 1923), 133.\n\n. Bentley Glass, \"Geneticists Embattled: Their Stand Against Rampant Eugenics and Racism in America During the 1920s and 1930s,\" _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ 30 (1986): 135.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 31.\n\n. Ibid., 33.\n\n. Melville J. Herskovits, _The American Negro: A Study in Race Crossing_ (New York: Knopf, 1928), 67, 82.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 22.\n\n. Ibid., 12\u201313.\n\n. Wayne C. Richard, \"Joseph Peterson: Scientist and Teacher,\" _Peabody Journal of Education_ 46 (July 1968): 3\u20138.\n\n. Joseph Peterson, _The Comparative Abilities of White and Negro Children_ (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1923).\n\n. Joseph Peterson, \"Methods of Investigating Comparative Abilities in Races,\" _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 140 (November 1928): 178\u201385.\n\n. Charles H. Thompson, \"The Conclusions of Scientists Relative to Racial Differences,\" _Journal of Negro Education_ 3 (July 1934): 498.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, 36\u201341.\n\n. Ibid., 42.\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems, 1928\u20131931, Joint with SSRC, \"Memo,\" March 26, 1928, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Transcript of the \"Conference on Racial Differences,\" February 1928, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group: 77\u201380.\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems, 1928\u20131931, Joint with SSRC, \"Minutes of the Meeting Held January 12, 1929,\" January 12, 1929, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Ibid., \"Final Report,\" April, 1931, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Ibid., Memorandum to the Members of the Conference of Directors, May 12, 1930, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Roy M. Dorcus, \"Knight Dunlap: 1875\u20131949,\" _American Journal of Psychology_ 63 (January 1950): 114\u201319.\n\n. Mary Ann Mason, _From Father's Property to Children's Rights: The History of Child Custody in the United States_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Matthew A. Crenson, _Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).\n\n. Committee on Racial Problems, 1928\u20131931, Joint with SSRC, Fay-Cooper Cole to Knight Dunlap, September 17, 1928, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Ibid., Franz Boas to Knight Dunlap, April 1, 1929, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Ibid., \"Report Made to the SSRC Committee on Problems and Policy, August 1930, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group, 1\u20132.\n\n. Ibid., 3\u20134.\n\n. Ibid., \"Joint Committee on Racial Matters of the Social Science Research Council and the National Research Council,\" 6.\n\n. Ibid., \"Final Report,\" April 31.\n\n. Susan Reverby, _Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 24\u201326.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Kidder, Alfred: Davenport to Kidder, October 21, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., November 3, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., Committee on the American Negro: Davenport to Terry, January 4, 1927.\n\n. Ibid., November 12, 1928.\n\n. Ibid., March 4, 1929.\n\n. Ibid., File, W. P. Draper, Folder 2, 1929\u20131932: Davenport to Draper, July 16, 1929; W. P. Draper, Folder 1, 1923\u20131928: Davenport to Draper, May 25, 1928.\n\n. Ibid., Folder 1, 1923\u20131928: Draper to Davenport, March 20, 1923.\n\n. Ibid., February 5, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., Davenport to Draper, February 6, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., March 15, 1926.\n\n. Ibid., File, Todd, T. Wingate: Davenport to Todd, October 27, 1928.\n\n. William H. Tucker, _The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 30\u201333.\n\n. Charles B. Davenport, \"Race Crossing in Jamaica,\" _Scientific Monthly_ 27 (September 1928): 225\u201338.\n\n. Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda, _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1929), 477.\n\n. Frank H. Hankins, \"Heredity and Environment,\" _Social Forces_ 9 (June 1931): 587\u201388.\n\n. Karl Pearson, review of _Race Crossing in Jamaica_ , by Charles Davenport and Morris Steggerda, _Nature_ 126 (1930): 427.\n\n. Glass, \"Geneticists Embattled,\" 130\u201354.\n\n. William B. Provine, \"Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,\" _Science_ 182 (November 23, 1973): 790\u201396.\n\n. William E. Castle, \"Race Mixture and Physical Disharmonies,\" _Science_ 71 (June 13, 1930): 605.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Davenport, Charles B. Lectures: \"Do Races Differ in Mental Capacity, March 1924\" [The date on this file must be incorrect since the lecture discusses research being carried out in Jamaica by Steggerda, research that did not begin until 1926], \"Racial Traits, February 1921,\" and \"Heredity and Race Eugenics, 1927.\"\n\n. Davenport, \"Race Crossing in Jamaica.\"\n\n. Peggy Pascoe, \"Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America,\" _Journal of American History_ 83 (June 1996): 44\u201369.\n\n. Gregory Michael Dorr, \"Segregation's Science: The American Eugenics Movement and Virginia, 1900\u20131980\" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000), 515.\n\n. Robert R. Hurwitz, \"Constitutional Law: Equal Protection of the Laws, California Anti-Miscegenation Laws Declared Unconstitutional,\" _California Law Review_ 37 (March 1949): 127n28.\n\n. Tucker, _Funding of Scientific Racism_ , 33\u201338; E. S. Cox, _White America_ (Richmond, Va.: White America Society, 1923).\n\n. John P. Jackson Jr., _Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education_ (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 34\u201335.\n\n**6. BIOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF THE COLOR LINE**\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1906).\n\n. Lee D. Baker, _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 115.\n\n. Ibid., 99\u201310, 113.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, _The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches_ (Chicago: McClurg, 1903), vii.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, Elijah Anderson, and Isabel Eaton, _The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept_ (Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction, 1983), 58.\n\n. Ibid., 63.\n\n. Wissler to Du Bois, November 31, 1905, in _The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 1: Selections, 1877\u20131934_ , ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 115.\n\n. Joseph Deniker, _The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnology_ (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 2\u20133.\n\n. Du Bois to Carnegie, May 22, 1906, in Aptheker, _Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois_ , 121\u201322.\n\n. Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt: Du Bois to Boas, October 11, 1905, and Boas to Du Bois, October 14, 1905.\n\n. Ibid., Boas Lectures: Commencement Address at Atlanta University, May 31, 1906.\n\n. Du Bois, _Health and Physique_ , 13.\n\n. Ibid., 13.\n\n. Ibid., 16.\n\n. Ibid., 28.\n\n. Ibid., 29.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 24\u201327.\n\n. Ibid., 31\u201358.\n\n. Ibid., 89\u201390.\n\n. Frederick L. Hoffman, _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro_ (New York: American Economic Association, 1896).\n\n. Ibid., 326.\n\n. Megan J. Wolff, \"The Myth of the Actuary: Life Insurance and Frederick L. Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,\" _Public Health Reports_ 121 (January\u2013February, 2006): 86.\n\n. Ibid., 88.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, \"Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,\" _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 9 (January 1897): 133.\n\n. Ibid., 127.\n\n. Du Bois, _Health and Physique_ , 89\u201390.\n\n. Baker, _From Savage to Negro_. See also Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).\n\n. Du Bois, _Dusk of Dawn_ , 100.\n\n. Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Jack C. Knight, \"Reckoning with Violence: W. E. B. Du Bois and the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot,\" _Journal of Southern History_ 62 (November 1996): 740; David Levering Lewis, _W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race_ (New York: Holt, 1993).\n\n. David L. Lewis. \"Atlanta Is Swept by Raging Mob: Over 16 Negroes Reported to Be Dead,\" _Atlanta Constitution_ , September 23, 1906, B1; David Fort Godshalk, _Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).\n\n. Capeci and Knight, \"Reckoning with Violence,\" 749.\n\n. Ibid., 759.\n\n. Lewis, _W. E. B. Du Bois_ , 3.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil_ (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 54\u201355.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, \"Purity of Blood,\" in _Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, Volumes 9\u201310, 1914\u20131915_ (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969) 276; Carol M. Taylor, \"W. E. B. Du Bois's Challenge to Scientific Racism,\" _Journal of Black Studies_ 11 (1981): 449\u201360.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, \"Races,\" _Crisis_ 2 (August 1911): 157.\n\n. David Levering Lewis, _W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919\u20131963 (_ New York: Holt, 2000), 235\u201336.\n\n. Ibid., 236\u201337.\n\n. Daylanne K. English, _Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 41.\n\n. Lewis, _W. E. B. Du Bois: Fight for Equality_ , 455\u201356.\n\n. Anthony Appiah, \"The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,\" _Critical Inquiry_ 12 (autumn 1985): 4\u20135.\n\n. Jacques Barzun, _Race: A Study in Modern Superstition_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), 1.\n\n. Ruth Benedict, _Race: Science and Politics_ (New York: Viking, 1940), v\u2013vi.\n\n. Ibid., 11.\n\n. Ivan Hannaford, _Race: The History of an Idea in the West_ (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996), 376\u201390.\n\n. Benedict, _Race_ , 230\u201331.\n\n. Ibid., 233.\n\n. Harvard Sitkoff, _A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue; The Depression Decade_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).\n\n. Barzun, _Race_ , 11.\n\n. Ibid., 7, 10.\n\n. Ibid., 27\n\n. Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Jacques Barzun Collection, Box 6, File, Race: A Study in Superstition (vol. II): Barzun to Oliver C. Cox, April 19, 1948.\n\n. Rosemary Firth, review of _Race: A Study in Modern Superstition_ , by Jacques Barzun, _Man_ 39 (May 1939): 38\u201339.\n\n. Barkan, _Retreat of Scientific Racism_ , 109.\n\n. Clark Wissler, review of _Race: A Study in Modern Superstition_ , by Jacques Barzun, _American Historical Review_ 44 (October 1938): 62.\n\n. Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Jacques Barzun Collection, Box 6, File: Race: A Study in Superstition (vol. II), Barzun to Editor, _American Historical Review_ , December 1, 1938.\n\n. Barzun, _Race_ , 283.\n\n. Ibid., 296.\n\n. Madison Grant, _The Passing of the Great Race: The Racial Basis of European History_ (New York: Scribner, 1916), 45.\n\n. William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 27.\n\n. Stefan K\u00fchl, _The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 39.\n\n. Edwin Black, _War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 294\u201395, 312\u201314; K\u00fchl, _Nazi Connection_ , 48\u201349.\n\n**7. RACE AND THE EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS**\n\n. Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , by Theodosius Dobzhansky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), xxi.\n\n. Ernst Mayr, _The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1982), 567; Jan Sapp, _Genesis: The Evolution of Biology_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 143. Sapp's and Mayr's points are both based on the conclusions of Julian Huxley's classic summary of the evolutionary synthesis titled _Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_ (London: Allen and Unwin, 1942).\n\n. Ernst Mayr, \"The Role of Systematics in the Evolutionary Synthesis,\" in _Systematics and the Origin of Species_ , ed. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 123\u201324.\n\n. Mayr, _Growth of Biological Thought_ , 570.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society, Restricted File: Dobzhansky to R. C. Murphy, March 7, 1947.\n\n. Dobzhansky, _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ ; Huxley, _Evolution_ ; George G. Simpson, _Tempo and Mode in Evolution_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944); Mayr, _Systematics and the Origin of Species_.\n\n. Ernst Mayr, \"Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis,\" in _The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspective on the Unification of Biology_ , ed. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 13.\n\n. Ibid., 17.\n\n. Ernst Mayr, \"Typological versus Population Thinking,\" in _Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology_ , ed. Eliot Sober (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 158; Eliot Sober, \"Population Thinking, and Essentialism,\" _Philosophy of_ Science 47 (1980): 367\u201368.\n\n. Lisa Gannett and James R. Griesemer, \"The Genetics of ABO Blood Groups,\" in _Classical Genetic Research and Its Legacy: The Mapping of Cultures of Twentieth-Century Genetics_ , ed. Hans-J\u00f6rg Rheinberger and Jean-Paul Gadilli\u00e8re (New York: Routledge, 2004), 161.\n\n. Kenneth Ludmerer, \"American Geneticists and the Eugenics Movement, 1905\u20131935,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 2 (September 1969): 337\u201362.\n\n. Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 140.\n\n. Julian Huxley, \"Letter to the Editor,\" _Eugenics Review_ 29 (1938), as quoted in William B. Provine, \"Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,\" _Science_ 182 (November 23, 1973): 790\u201396.\n\n. Gould, introduction, xxv.\n\n. Sophia Dobzhansky Coe, \"Theodosius Dobzhansky: A Family Story,\" in _The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky: Essays on His Life and Thought in Russia and America_ , ed. Mark Adams, 13\u201328 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).\n\n. See chapters by Nikolai L. Kremenstov, Daniel A. Alexandrov, and Mikhail B. Konashev in Adams, _Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky_ , 31\u201384.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Morgan and His School in the 1930s,\" in Mayr and Provine, _Evolutionary Synthesis_ , 445.\n\n. V. B. Smocovitis, _Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 133.\n\n. Sewell Wright, review of _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , by Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Botanical Gazette_ 99 (June 1938): 955\u201356; Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Sewall Wright: Wright to Dobzhansky, October 22, 1937.\n\n. Gould, introduction, xxvi.\n\n. Barkan, _Retreat of Scientific Racism_.\n\n. William Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" _American Zoologist_ 26 (1986): 857\u201387.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky and L. C. Dunn, _Heredity, Race, and Society_ (New York: Penguin, 1947); Theodosius Dobzhansky, _The Biological Basis of Human Freedom_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956); Bruce Wallace and Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Radiation, Genes, and Man_ (New York: Holt, 1959); Theodosius Dobzhansky, _The Biology of Ultimate Concern_ (New York: New American Library, 1967); Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Genetic Diversity and Human Equality_ (New York: Basic Books, 1973).\n\n. Mayr, \"Prologue.\"\n\n. Daniel A. Alexandrov, \"Filipchenko and Dobzhansky: Issues in Evolutionary Genetics in the 1920s,\" in Adams, _Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky_ , 49\u201362; William B. Provine, \"Origins of the GNP Series,\" in _Dobzhansky's Genetics of Natural Populations: I\u2013XLIII_ , ed. R. C. Lewontin, John Moore, and William B. Provine, and Bruce Wallace, 5\u201376 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).\n\n. Mark B. Adams, \"Towards a Synthesis: Population Concepts in Russian Evolutionary Thought, 1925\u20131935,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 3 (spring 1970): 107\u201329.\n\n. Ernst Mayr Papers, American Philosphical Society, Transcript, May 23, 1974, Session II (B) Afternoon, 7.\n\n. Sewell Wright Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, 1943, Dobzhansky, Theodosius: Dobzhansky to Wright, September 28, 1943.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Geographical Variation in Lady-Beetles,\" _American Naturalist_ 67 (March\u2013April 1933): 98\u201399.\n\n. Provine, \"Origins of the GNP,\" 59.\n\n. Mayr, _Systematics and the Origin of Species_.\n\n. Provine, \"Origins of the GNP,\" 11.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Provine, William: \"Reply from Dobzhansky.\" Although there is no date on Dobzhansky's letter to Provine, the original Provine solicitation was sent on August 5, 1971. All the responses to Provine from other scientists were dated in the second half of 1971.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society, Notebooks, Box 1, 1953: Dobzhansky to Dunn, January 23, 1954 (letter taped into journal).\n\n. Audrey Smedley, _Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview_ (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 303\u201310.\n\n. Ralph Bunche, \"What Is Race?\" in _Ralph Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings_ , ed. Charles P. Henry, 207\u201320 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). Originally published in Ralph Bunche, _A World View of Race_ (Washington, D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936).\n\n. Ibid., 214\u201315.\n\n. Ibid., 219.\n\n. Ibid., 207.\n\n. Dobzhansky, _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ , 47.\n\n. Ibid., 60\u201362. Emphasis added.\n\n. Ibid., 60, 62\u201363.\n\n. Ibid., 62\u201363.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"The Race Concept in Biology,\" _Scientific Monthly_ 52 (February 1941): 161.\n\n. Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Jacques Barzun Collection, Box 6, File, Race: A Study in Superstition (vol. II): Dobzhansky to Barzun, December 18, 1942.\n\n. Dobzhansky, \"Race Concept,\" 161\u201362.\n\n. Ibid., 163\u201364.\n\n. Mayr and Provine, _Evolutionary Synthesis_ , 29.\n\n. Dobzhansky, \"Race Concept,\" 165.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box 12, Dobzhansky to Montagu, May 22, 1944.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Theodosius\u2014Dunn Correspondence #5, 1946\u20137: Dobzhansky to Dunn, March 10, 1947.\n\n. Mary F. Lyon, \"L. C. Dunn and Mouse Genetic Mapping,\" in _Perspectives on Genetics: Anecdotal, Historical, and Critical Commentaries, 1987\u20131998_ , ed. James F. Crow and William F. Dove, 161\u201366 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); Melinda Gormley, \"Geneticist L. C. Dunn: Politics, Activism, and Community\" (Ph.D. diss., Oregon State University, 2006), 112\u201322.\n\n. Joe Cain, \"Co-opting Colleagues: Appropriating Dobzhansky's 1936 Lectures at Columbia,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 35 (summer 2002): 207\u201319.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Theodosius\u2014Dunn Correspondence #1, 1936\u20137: Dobzhansky to Dunn, May 27, 1936.\n\n. Ibid., Dunn to Dobzhansky, May 4, 1937.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Leslie Clarence Dunn, 1893\u20131974,\" in _A Biographical Memoir_ (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978). For more detailed information on Dunn's life and work, see Gormley, \"Geneticist L. C. Dunn\"; and Dorothea Bennett, \"L. C. Dunn and His Contribution to T-Locus Genetics,\" _Annual Review of Genetics_ 11 (1977): 1\u201312.\n\n. L. C. Dunn, \"A Biological View of Race Mixture,\" _Proceedings of the American Sociological Society_ 19 (1925): 47.\n\n. L. C. Dunn, \"An Anthropometric Study of Hawaiians of Pure and Mixed Blood,\" _Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology_ 11 (1928): 91\u2013211.\n\n. Gormley, \"Geneticist L. C. Dunn,\" 98\u2013101.\n\n. Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, L. C. Dunn Correspondence: Dunn to Merriam, July 3, 1935.\n\n. Garland E. Allen, \"The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910\u20131940: An Institutional History,\" _Osiris_ 2 (1986): 225\u201364.\n\n. Dobzhansky, \"Leslie Clarence Dunn,\" 85.\n\n. Gormley, \"Geneticist L. C. Dunn,\" 491\u201396.\n\n. Bennett, \"L. C. Dunn,\" 1.\n\n. L. C. Dunn and Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Heredity, Race, and Society_ (New York: Penguin, 1946), 6.\n\n. Ibid., 5.\n\n. Ibid., 10.\n\n. Robert Cook and Jay L. Lush, \"Genetics for the Millions: An Unfinished Story,\" _Journal of Heredity_ 38 (October 1947): 299\u2013305.\n\n. Dunn and Dobzhansky, _Heredity, Race, and Society_ , 91\u201392.\n\n. Ibid., 108\u20139.\n\n. Ibid., 108.\n\n. Ibid., 113.\n\n. Bentley Glass, review of _Heredity, Race, and Society_ , by Theodosius Dobzhansky and L. C. Dunn, _Quarterly Review of Biology_ 22 (June 1947): 152.\n\n. Cook and Lush, \"Genetics for the Millions,\" 303\u20134.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box, Dobzhansky: Dobzhansky to Montagu, March 9, 1948.\n\n. Ibid., May 1, 1948.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Theodosius\u2014Dunn Correspondence #5, 1946\u20137: Dobzhansky to Dunn, November 25, 1946.\n\n. See, for example, Carl L. Hubbs, \"Concepts of Homology and Analogy,\" _American Naturalist_ 78 (July\u2013August, 1944): 289\u2013307; Roger Lewin, \"When Does Homology Mean Something Else?\" _Science_ 237 (September 1987): 1570; N. Jardine, \"The Concept of Homology in Biology,\" _British Journal for the Philosophy of Science_ 18 (1967): 125\u201339; and G. P. Wagner, \"The Biological Homology Concept,\" _Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics_ 20 (1989): 51\u201369.\n\n. Jonathan Marks, _What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 73\u201374.\n\n. Susan Sperling, \"Ashley Montagu (1905\u20131999),\" _American Anthropologist_ 102 (September 2000): 583\u201388; Michelle Brattain, \"Race, Racism, and Antiracism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Science to the Postwar Public,\" _American Historical Review_ 112 (December 2007): 1393\u201394.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Lieberman, Leonard: Lieberman to Montagu (with Montagu's answers), August 22, 1994.\n\n. M. F. Ashley Montagu, \"The Genetical Theory of Race, and Anthropological Method,\" _American Anthropologist_ 44 (July\u2013September 1942): 370, 373.\n\n. Ibid., 375\u201376.\n\n. Ibid., 369.\n\n. Brattain, \"Race, Racism, and Antiracism,\" 1395.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, Lieberman to Montagu, August 22, 1994.\n\n. Andrew P. Lyons, \"The Neotenic Career of M. F. Ashley Montagu,\" in _Race and Other Misadventures: Essays in Honor of Ashley Montagu In His Ninetieth Year_ , ed. Larry T. Reynolds and Leonard Lieberman (Dix Hills, N.Y.: General Hall, 1996), 10\u201311.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Theodosius: Montagu to Dobzhansky, May 23, 1944.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 244.\n\n. Ibid., 45.\n\n. Frank H. Hankins, review of _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ , by Ashley Montagu, _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 227 (May 1943): 191\u201392.\n\n. Clyde Kluckhohn, review of _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ , by Ashley Montagu, _Isis_ 34 (summer 1943): 419.\n\n. Bentley Glass, review of _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ , by Ashley Montagu, _Quarterly Review of Biology_ 21 (March 1946): 128.\n\n. Aldous Huxley, foreword to Montagu, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth_ , vii.\n\n. See, for example, M. F. Ashley Montagu, \"The African Origins of the American Negro and His Ethnic Composition,\" _Scientific Monthly_ 58 (January 1944): 58\u201365; M. F. Ashley Montagu, \"Physical Characteristics of the American Negro,\" _Scientific Monthly_ 59 (July 1944): 56\u201362; M. F. Ashley Montagu, \"Intelligence of Northern Negroes and Southern Whites in the First World War,\" _American Journal of Psychology_ 58 (April 1945): 161\u201388; M. F. Ashley Montagu, \"Blood Group Factors and Ethnic Relationships,\" _Science_ 103 (March 1, 1946): 284; and Ashley Montagu and Benjamin Pasamanick, \"Racial Intelligence,\" _Scientific Monthly_ 66 (January 1948): 81\u201382.\n\n**8. CONSOLIDATING THE RACE CONCEPT IN BIOLOGY**\n\n. James T. Patterson, _Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 67; Michael J. Klarman, _Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 148.\n\n. Aldon D. Morris, \"A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks,\" _Annual Review of Sociology_ 25 (1999): 517\u201339; Harvard Sitkoff, _New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); John Dittmer, _Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Charles W. Eagles, \"Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era,\" _Journal of Southern History_ 66 (November 2000), 815\u201348; Richard M. Dalfiume, \"The 'Forgotten Years' of the Negro Revolution,\" _Journal of American History_ 55 (June 1968): 90\u2013106.\n\n. James T. Patterson, _Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945\u20131974_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 389\u201395.\n\n. C. Vann Woodward, _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 146\u201347.\n\n. _Argument: The Oral Argument Before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1952\u201355_ , ed. Leon Friedman (New York: Chelsea House, 1969), 330.\n\n. Ibid., 330.\n\n. See, for example, Walter A. Jackson, _Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938\u20131987_ , Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Oliver C. Cox, \"The Modern Caste School of Race Relations,\" _Social Forces_ 21 (December 1942): 218\u201326.\n\n. Gunnar Myrdal, _An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1996). Regarding the Clarks' studies, see, for example, Herbert Garfinkel, \"Social Science Evidence and the School Segregation Cases,\" _Journal of Politics_ 21 (February 1958): 37\u201359; William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 138\u201353; Richard Kluger, _Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality_ (New York: Knopf, 1980), 315\u201345; Patterson, _Brown v. Board of Education_ , 67\u201368.\n\n. Sanjay Mody, \" _Brown_ Footnote Eleven in Historical Context: Social Science and the Supreme Court's Quest for Legitimacy,\" _Stanford Law Review_ 54 (April 2002): 795, 804, 806, 808, 814\u201329.\n\n. Myrdal, _American Dilemma_ ; David W. Southern, \"An American Dilemma After Fifty Years: Putting the Myrdal Study and Black-White Relations in Perspective,\" _History Teacher_ 28 (February 1995): 227\u201353.\n\n. Myrdal, _American Dilemma_ , 89.\n\n. Ibid., 15.\n\n. Kluger, _Simple Justice_ , 582\u2013616; Patterson, _Brown v. Board of Education_ , 46\u201369.\n\n. Frances Gaither, \"Democracy: The Negro's Hope,\" _New York Times_ , April 2, 1944, BR7.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, review of _An American Dilemma_ , by Gunnar Myrdal, _Phylon_ 5 (2nd quarter 1944): 114\u201324.\n\n. Oscar Handlin, review of _An American Dilemma_ , by Gunnar Myrdal, _New York Times Book Review_ , April 21, 1963, 1, as quoted in Jackson, _Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience_ , 294.\n\n. Ibid., 330\u201331.\n\n. John P. Jackson Jr., _Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education_ (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 41.\n\n. Ibid., 91.\n\n. Curt Stern, \"Model Estimates of the Frequency of White and Non-White Segregants in the American Negro,\" _Acta Genetica Basel_ 4 (1953): 281\u201398.\n\n. James V. Neel, \"Curt Stern, 1902\u20131981,\" _Annual Review of Genetics_ 17 (1983): 1\u201310; James V. Neel, \"The William Allan Memorial Award,\" _American Journal of Human Genetics_ 27 (1975): 135\u201339.\n\n. D. Peter Snustad and Michael J. Simmons, _Principles of Genetics_ (New York: Wiley, 2003), 773.\n\n. Neel, \"William Allan Memorial Award,\" 136\u201337.\n\n. Neel, \"Curt Stern,\" 7.\n\n. Curt Stern Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Lecture: \"Why Do People Differ?\": Stern to NAACP, Rochester, February 11, 1946.\n\n. Ibid., File, Stern, C.: \"The Biology of the Negro\": Leon Svirsky to Stern, August 20, 1954.\n\n. Curt Stern, \"The Biology of the Negro,\" _Scientific American_ 191 (October 1954): 81.\n\n. Ibid., 85.\n\n. Curt Stern Papers, Correspondence: undated and unsigned correspondence to Stern.\n\n. Ibid., \"Crackpot Letters\": C. L Barnett to Stern, August 13, 1955; Mrs. John Lansdell Howerton to Stern, n.d.\n\n. Ibid., \"The Biology of the Negro,\" Correspondence: Marcus Julius Frogstein to Stern, October 11, 1954.\n\n. Ibid., H. J. Romm to Stern, September 29, 1954; Arndt to Stern, October 8, 1954.\n\n. Stern, \"Biology of the Negro,\" 82.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Statement on Race: An Annotated Elaboration and Exposition of the Four Statements on Race Issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 1.\n\n. Michelle Brattain, \"Race, Racism, and Antiracism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Science to the Postwar Public,\" _American Historical Review_ 112 (December 2007): 1386\u20131413.\n\n. International Eugenics Congress, _Problems in Eugenics: Papers Communicated to the First International Eugenics Congress_ (London: Eugenics Education Society, 1912); Edwin Black, _War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 236, 245\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, Series I, File, Boas, Franz: Boas to Dunn, October 25, 1937.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box 30, File, Lieberman, Leonard: undated interview of Montagu by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons, and Harriet Lyons. This interview was published by the authors in _Current Anthropology_ 36 (December 1995): 841.\n\n. Montagu, _Statement on Race_ , 4\u20136.\n\n. Ibid., 7\u20139.\n\n. Ibid., 9.\n\n. Ibid., 9\u201313.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, \"No Scientific Basis for Race Bias Found by World Panel of Experts,\" _New York Times_ , July 18, 1950, 1.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, \"The Myth of Race,\" _New York Times_ , July 19, 1950, 30.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, \"Let's Forget About the Myth of Race,\" _Hartford Courant_ , July 20, 1950, 8.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box 7, File, Castle, W. E.: Castle to Montagu, April 21, 1951.\n\n. Ibid., Box 11, File, Dunn, L. C.: Dunn to Montagu, March 3, 1950.\n\n. Ibid., Box 12, File, Dobzhansky, T.: Dobzhansky to Montagu, October 16, 1950.\n\n. Ibid., Montagu to Dobzhansky, May 23, 1944.\n\n. Ibid., Dobzhansky to Montagu, January 26, 1951.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, \"In Memoriam: Osman Hill,\" _Journal of Anatomy_ 120 (1975): 387\u201390.\n\n. Osman Hill, letter to the editor, _Man_ 51 (January 1951): 16\u201317.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, Box 12, File, Dobzhansky, T.: Dobzhansky to Montagu, January 26, 1951.\n\n. \"UNESCO and Race,\" _Man_ 51 (May 1951): 64.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Box 12, File, Dobzhansky, T.: Dobzhansky to Montagu, February 24, 1951.\n\n. Jackson, _Science for Segregation_ , 61; Brattain, \"Race, Racism, and Antiracism,\" 1393\u201394.\n\n. Montagu, _Statement on Race_ , 137\u201338.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, UNESCO, 1951: Alfred M\u00e9traux to Dunn, June 26, 1951.\n\n. Montagu, _Statement on Race_ , 139.\n\n. Ibid., 143.\n\n. Ibid., 140.\n\n. Ibid., 10, 145.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, File, UNESCO, 1951: Dunn to M\u00e9traux, February 26, 1952; M\u00e9traux to Dunn, April 18, 1952.\n\n. William Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" _American Zoologist_ 26 (1986): 877; UNESCO, _The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry_ (Paris: UNESCO, 1952).\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, File, UNESCO, 1951: R. A. Fisher to M\u00e9traux, October 3, 1951.\n\n. Ibid., S. E. Washburn to M\u00e9traux, October 15, 1951.\n\n. Ibid., File, Provine, William: Dobzhansky to Provine, undated; Wright to Provine, August 17, 1971; Dunn to Provine, November 17, 1971.\n\n. Ibid., Darlington to Provine, August 13, 1971; Stern to Provine, August, 18, 1971.\n\n. Elazar Barkan, _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 341\u201342.\n\n. Elazar Barkan, \"The Politics of the Science of Race: Ashley Montagu and UNESCO's Anti-racist Declarations,\" in _Race and Other Misadventures: Essays in Honor of Ashley Montagu in His Ninetieth Year_ , ed. Larry T. Reynolds and Leonard Lieberman (Dix Hills, N.Y.: General Hall, 1996), 103\u20134.\n\n. Ibid., 103.\n\n. Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" 877.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society, Notebooks Box 1: \"June 14 Paris\u2013Iceland,\" 1951; Ashley Montagu Papers, Box 12, File, Dobzhansky, T.: Dobzhansky to Montagu, February 24, 1951.\n\n. Brattain, \"Race, Racism, and Antiracism,\" 1413.\n\n. Ibid., 1386\u201387, 1407\u201312.\n\n. Ibid., 1413.\n\n. Leslie C. Dunn Papers, File, UNESCO, 1951: R. A. Fisher to M\u00e9traux, October 3, 1951; Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" 875.\n\n. UNESCO, _Race Concept_ , 40\u201360.\n\n. L. C. Dunn, _Race and Biology_ (Paris: UNESCO, 1965), 7.\n\n. UNESCO, _Race Concept_ , 79\u201380.\n\n. Montagu, _Statement on Race_ , 61,65.\n\n. See, for example, Lee D. Baker, _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Tucker, _Science and Politics_.\n\n. C. P. Snow, _The Two Cultures_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3, 4.\n\n. V. B. Smocovitis, _Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 152\u201353, 167.\n\n. The Reminiscences of Leslie C. Dunn (1960), p. 886, in the Columbia Center for Oral History.\n\n. Ronald G. Walters, \"Uncertainty, Science, and Reform in Twentieth-Century America,\" in _Scientific Authority and Twentieth-Century America_ , ed. Ronald G. Walters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 6.\n\n. Ibid., 8\u201310.\n\n. Paul Boyer, _By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age_ (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 354; Margot A. Henriksen, _Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 58.\n\n. Henriksen, _Dr. Strangelove's America_ , 54\u201356.\n\n. Michael Polanyi, \"Scientific Outlook: Its Sickness and Cure,\" _Science_ 125 (March 15, 1957): 480.\n\n. Steve Fuller, \"Being There with Thomas Kuhn: A Parable for Postmodern Times,\" _History and Theory_ 31 (October 1992): 261.\n\n. Thomas Borstelmann, _The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 55.\n\n. Borstelmann, _Cold War_ , 54\u201355; Mary L. Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 18\u201324.\n\n. Morris, \"Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement,\" 518.\n\n. Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights_ , 13.\n\n. Borstelmann, _Cold War_ , 59\u201361.\n\n. Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights_ , 25\u201326, 82.\n\n. Harry S. Truman, \"Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights,\" February 2, 1948, _Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1948_ (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964): 121\u201326, as quoted in Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights_ , 82.\n\n. Brian Urquhart, _Ralph Bunche: An American Life_ (New York: Norton, 1993), 230\u201332.\n\n. Ben Keppel, _The Work of Democracy: Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, Lorraine Hansberry, and the Cultural Politics of Race_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 64.\n\n. Charles S. Johnson, \"American Minorities and Civil Rights in 1950,\" _Journal of Negro Education_ 20 (summer 1951): 489.\n\n**9. CHALLENGES TO THE RACE CONCEPT**\n\n. Carleton Coon, _The Origin of Races_ (New York: Knopf, 1962).\n\n. Arthur Jensen, \"How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?\" _Harvard Educational Review_ 39 (spring 1969): 1\u2013123.\n\n. Richard E. Green et al., \"A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome,\" _Science_ 310 (2010): 721; see also Alan R. Templeton, \"Out of Africa Again and Again,\" _Nature_ 416 (2002): 45\u201351; Svante P\u00e4\u00e4bo, \"The Mosaic That Is Our Genome,\" _Nature_ 421 (2003): 409\u201312.\n\n. Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari, _Race and Human Evolution_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).\n\n. Coon, _Origin of Races_ , 656.\n\n. Ibid., vii, 482\u2013587.\n\n. Ibid., 662.\n\n. Ibid., 661.\n\n. Ernst Mayr, review of _The Origin of Races_ , by Carleton Coon, _Science_ 138 (October 19, 1962): 420\u201322.\n\n. Frederick S. Hulse, review of _The Origin of Races_ , by Carleton Coon, _American Anthropologist_ 65 (June 1963): 685\u201387.\n\n. Malcolm F. Farmer, \"Stepping Stone Toward an Understanding of Man's Development,\" _Phylon_ 24 (2nd quarter 1963): 203.\n\n. Barbara Tuchman, \"Reviewers' Choice, 1962,\" _Chicago Daily Tribune_ , December 2, 1962, E8. Emphasis added.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Ernst Mayr: Dobzhansky to Coon, October 23, 1962; John P. Jackson Jr., _Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education_ (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 162\u2013170.\n\n. Michael Lerner Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Theodosius #5: Dobzhansky to Lerner (address to colleague), December 17, 1962; Margaret Mead, \"Scientist Reviewers Beware,\" _Science_ 141 (July 26, 1964): 312\u201313.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Possibility That Homo Sapiens Evolved Independently 5 Times Is Vanishingly Small,\" _Current Anthropology_ 4 (October 1963): 360\u201366.\n\n. Jackson, _Science for Segregation_ , 187.\n\n. Carleton S. Coon, \"Comments,\" _Current Anthropology_ 4 (October 1963): 366.\n\n. Jackson, _Science for Segregation_ , 99\u2013103, 189.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, File, Mayr, Ernst 1962: Mayr to Dobzhansky, November 1, 1962.\n\n. Ibid., Dobzhansky to Simpson, Mayr, and Strauss, November 9, 1962.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 253.\n\n. Ibid., 262\u201366.\n\n. Ibid., 178.\n\n. Ibid., 182.\n\n. Ibid., 183.\n\n. Ibid., 185.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, \"What Is Remarkable About Varieties of Man Is Likeness, Not Differences,\" _Current Anthropology_ 4 (October 1963): 362.\n\n. Frank B. Livingstone and Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"On the Non-Existence of Human Races,\" _Current Anthropology_ 3 (1962): 280.\n\n. Frank B. Livingstone. \"Anthropological Implications of Sickle Cell Gene Distribution in West Africa,\" _American Anthropologist_ 60 (1958) 533\u201362.\n\n. Livingstone and Dobzhansky, \"On the Non-Existence of Human Races.\"\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Jensen, \"How Much Can We Boost IQ,\" 3\n\n. Ibid., 117.\n\n. Ibid., 29.\n\n. See, for example, Thomas F. Jackson, _From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Wesley C. Hogan, _Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Michael K. Honey, _Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign_ (New York: Norton, 2007).\n\n. Harold M. Schmeck Jr., \"Nobel Winner Urges Research on Racial Heredity,\" _New York Times_ , October 18, 1966, 9; \"Possible Metallurgical and Astronomical Approaches to the Problem of Environment versus Ethnic Heredity,\" in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of A Psychology Records Group.\n\n. File: Comments, Institutions: General, Stanford University News Service Press Release, October 17, 1966, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Division of Anthropology and Psychology Records Group.\n\n. Press Release, Michigan State University, October 20, 1967, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Central File: Committee on Science and Public Policy, Study on Gene Pool Deterioration: Proposed.\n\n. Shockley to Gardner, October 13, 1967, in National Academy of Sciences\u2013National Research Council Archives, Central File: Committee on Science and Public Policy: Study on Gene Pool Deterioration: Proposed; Lee to Shockley, November 17, 1967.\n\n. Margaret Mead, \"Introductory Remarks,\" in _Science and the Concept of Race_ , ed. Margaret Mead, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ethel Tobach, and Robert E. Light, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969): 3.\n\n. Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society, Dobzhansky Box: Dobzhansky to Montagu, January 26, 1951.\n\n**10. NATURALIZING RACISM: THE CONTROVERSY OVER SOCIOBIOLOGY**\n\n. E. B. Ford, \"Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky: 26 January 1900\u201318 December 1975,\" _Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society_ 23 (November 1977): 62.\n\n. Francisco J. Ayala, \"Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1900\u20131975,\" in _A Biographical Memoir_ (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1985), 166.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, American Philosophical Society, File, Dobzhansky, Professor Theodosius, #IV: typed article of an obituary of Dobzhansky that would be published in the _Egyptian Journal of Genetics and Cytology_.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Leslie Clarence Dunn: November 2, 1893\u2013March 19, 1974,\" in _A Biographical Memoir_ (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences), 86.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Leslie Dunn, Well-Known Geneticist,\" _Washington Post_ , March 23, 1974, D5.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1975).\n\n. William M. Dugger, \"Sociobiology for Social Scientists: A Critical Introduction to E. O. Wilson's Evolutionary Paradigm,\" _Social Science Quarterly_ 62 (June 1981): 229; Richard Lewontin, interview by author, November 2, 1995, Cambridge, Mass.\n\n. V. B. Smocovitis, \"Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 25 (March 1992): 1.\n\n. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , 4.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, \"What Is Sociobiology?\" _Society_ (September\/October 1978): 10.\n\n. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , 5.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, _On Human Nature_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 43. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , 585.\n\n. R. A. Fisher, _The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 256\u201365; Julian Huxley, _Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_ (London: Harper, 1943), 572\u201378.\n\n. Desmond Morris, _The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal_ (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967); Robert Ardry, _African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man_ (New York: Atheneum, 1961); Konrad Lorenz, _Studies in Animal and Human Behavior_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); David Barash, _The Whisperings Within_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).\n\n. \"A Genetic Defense of the Free Market,\" _BusinessWeek_ , April 10, 1978, 100; Maya Pines, \"Is Sociobiology All Wet?\" _Psychology Today_ 11 (June 1978): 24.\n\n. Marshall Sahlins, \"The Use and Abuse of Biology,\" in _The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues_ , ed. Arthur Caplan (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), 424\u201327.\n\n. John Pfeiffer, review of _Sociobiology_ , by Edward O. Wilson, _New York Times Book Review_ , July 27, 1975, 15\u201316.\n\n. Mary Jane West-Eberhard, \"Born: Sociobiology,\" _Quarterly Review of Biology_ 51 (March 1976): 92.\n\n. David P. Barash, \"Ethology, Ecology, and Evolution: Getting It Together,\" _Ecology_ 57 (March 1976): 399\u2013400.\n\n. E. O. Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Series 21765, Box 1, File, Material on Sociobiology\/Letters on Sociobiology: Lorenz to Wilson, August 19, 1975; Darlington to Wilson, May 26, 1975.\n\n. Stephen Jay Gould, \"Biological Potential vs. Biological Determinism,\" in _Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History_ , 251\u201359 (New York: Norton, 1977).\n\n. Henry Louis Gates Jr., \"Critical Remarks,\" in _Anatomy of Racism_ , ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 326.\n\n. Howard Winant and Michael Omi, _Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s_ (New York: Routledge, 1986), 110.\n\n. Ibid., 110.\n\n. Bruce J. Schulman, _The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics_ (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002), 58\u201384; Michael Klarman, _Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 183\u2013198; Thomas Segrue, _The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-War Detroit_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).\n\n. Dorothy Nelkin and Susan M. Lindee, _The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon_ (New York: Freeman, 1995), 2, 194.\n\n. Troy Duster, _Backdoor to Eugenics_ (New York: Routledge, 1990), 93.\n\n. Wilson, _Sociobiolog_ y _: The New Synthesis_ , 550; Richard Lewontin, \"The Apportionment of Human Diversity,\" _Evolutionary Biology_ 6 (1972): 381\u201398.\n\n. Robert Lunbeck, \"Anti-Racism Group Attacks Wilson's 'Sociobiology,'\" _Harvard Crimson_ , December 3, 1975.\n\n. Vernon Reynolds, \"Sociobiology and Race Relations,\" in _The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism: Evolutionary Dimensions of Xenophobia, Discrimination, Racism, and Nationalism_ , ed. Vernon Reynolds, Vincent Falger, and Ian Vine, 208\u201315 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 212.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 83; Arthur Jensen, \"How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement,\" _Harvard Educational_ Review 39 (spring 1969): 1\u2013123; Arthur Jensen, \"Race and the Genetics of Intelligence: A Reply to Lewontin,\" _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ 26 (May 1970): 17\u201323.\n\n. Wilson, \"What Is Sociobiology?\" 47\u201348.\n\n. Pierre van den Berghe, \"Race and Ethnicity: A Sociobiological Perspective,\" _Ethnic and Racial Studies_ 1 (October 1978): 403.\n\n. Ibid, 402; Edward O. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1980), 314, 315; Reynolds, Falger, and Vine, _Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism_.\n\n. Wilson, _Sociobiolog_ y _: The New Synthesis_ , 286\u201387, 564\u201365.\n\n. Pierre van den Berghe, _Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective_ (New York: Wiley, 1967), 18.\n\n. Van den Berghe, \"Race and Ethnicity,\" 404.\n\n. David Barash, _The Hare and the Tortoise_ (New York: Viking, 1986), 144.\n\n. David Barash, _The Whisperings Within_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 154, 232.\n\n. J. Philippe Rushton, \"Comments,\" _Social Science and Medicine_ 31 (1990): 905\u201310; J. Philippe Rushton, \"Genetic Similarity Theory: Intelligence and Human Mate Choice,\" _Ethology and Sociobiology_ 9 (1988): 45\u201357; J. Philippe Rushton, \"Evidence for Genetic Similarity Detection in Human Marriage,\" _Ethology and Sociobiology_ 6 (1985): 183\u201387.\n\n. J. Philippe Rushton, _Race, Evolution, and Behavior_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995), 113\u201346; Adolph Reed Jr. \"Intellectual Brown Shirts,\" in _The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, and Opinions_ , ed. Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman (New York: New York Times Books, 1995), 268.\n\n. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray, _The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_ (New York: Free Press, 1994), 642\u201343.\n\n. Adam Miller, \"Professors of Hate,\" _Rolling Stone_ , October 20, 1994; William H. Tucker, _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 291\u201392.\n\n. Vernon Reynolds, Vincent Falger, and Ian Vine, \"Introduction by the Editors,\" and Robin I. M. Dunbar, \"Sociobiological Explanations and the Evolution of Ethnocentrism,\" in Reynolds, Falger, and Vine, _Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism_ , xv\u2013xx; 48\u201359.\n\n. E. O. Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Series 20196, Box 6, File, Wilson, E. O. Defense of Sociobiology: Wilson to Frank M. Carpenter, December 9, 1975.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, File, Wilson, E. O.: Lewontin to Wilson, October 28, 1975.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, \"What Is Sociobiology?\" _Society_ 15 (September\u2013October 1978): 10.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, _Naturalist_ (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994), 336.\n\n. Elizabeth Allen, Barbara Beckwith, Jon Beckwith, Steven Chorover, and David Culver, et al., \"Against 'Sociobiology,'\" _New York Review of Books_ , November 13, 1975.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, File, Wilson, E. O.: Wilson to Robert B. Silvers, November 10, 1975.\n\n. Ibid., Wilson to Lewontin, December 17, 1975.\n\n. E. O. Wilson to Gould, November 10, 1975, Stephen Jay Gould Papers, Box 525, Correspondence, Incoming, M\u2013Z, 1975\u20131979, M1437. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.\n\n. Garland Allen to Gould, February 23, 1977, Stephen Jay Gould Papers, Box 524, Correspondence, Incoming A\u2013L, 1975\u20131979, M1437. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.\n\n. Edward. O. Wilson, \"Academic Vigilantism and the Political Significance of Sociobiology,\" _BioScience_ 26 (March 1976): 183, 187\u201390.\n\n. \"Report to Eastern Regional SftP Conference, April 15\u201317, 1977 at Voluntown,\" Stephen Jay Gould Papers, Box 607, M1437. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.\n\n. Sociobiology Study Group, \"Sociobiology: Tool for Social Oppression,\" _Science for the People_ 8 (March 1976): 7; Robin Marantz Henig, \"10 Years Later...Science for the People: Revolution's Evolution,\" _BioScience_ 29 (June 1979): 341\u201344.\n\n. Robin Marantz Henig, \"Burning Darwin to Save Marx,\" _Harpers_ , December 1978, 31.\n\n. Sociobiology Study Group, \"Sociobiology: Another Biological Determinism,\" _BioScience_ 26 (March 1976): 280.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, \"Human Decency Is Animal,\" _New York Times Magazine_ , October 12, 1975, 50; Barbara Chasin, \"Sociobiology: A Sexist Synthesis,\" _Science for the People_ 9 (May\u2013June 1977): 30.\n\n. Sociobiology Study Group, \"Sociobiology: A New Biological Determinism,\" in Caplan, _Sociobiology Debate_ , 280.\n\n. Minutes of May 10, June 7, and November 8, 1977 meetings, Stephen Jay Gould Papers, Box 607, M1437. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.\n\n. Henig, \"10 Years Later\"; Richard C. Lewontin, \"Science for the People,\" _BioScience_ 29 (September 1979): 509.\n\n. Ullica Segerstr\u00e5le, _Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, File, Wilson, E. O.: Wilson to Silvers, November 19, 1975.\n\n. E. O. Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Box 11, File, Le Monde: response to RL Interview, October 1980, Wilson to Editors at Le Monde, October 21, 1980.\n\n. Wilson, \"What Is Sociobiology?\" 191.\n\n. Neil Jumonville, \"The Cultural Politics of the Sociobiology Debate,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 35 (2002): 569\u201393.\n\n. Ibid., 191.\n\n. Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, _Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of Mind_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 43.\n\n. E. O. Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Series 20196, Box 6, File, Political Uses of Theory by New Right: Richard Lynn to Wilson, July 7, 1976.\n\n. Ibid., Wilmot Robertson to Wilson, August, 29, 1977.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, Box 5, File: E. O. Wilson, Lewontin to Wilson, July 19, 1979.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Stephen Jay Gould Papers, Box 607, Minutes of June 26, 1979 meeting, Sociobiology Study Group, Science for the People. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.\n\n. E. O. Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Series 20196, Box 6, File: Political Uses of Theory by New Right, undated note.\n\n. Henig, \"10 Years Later,\" 341.\n\n. Richard Lewontin Papers, File, Herrnstein, Professor R. J.: Herrnstein to Lewontin, June 29, 1973; Lewontin to Herrnstein, November 20, 1973.\n\n. Ibid., File, Shockley, William: Lewontin to Shockley, October 19, 1973.\n\n. Richard C. Lewontin and Jack L. Hubby, \"A Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. I. The Number of Alleles at Different Loci in _Drosophila pseudoobscura_ ,\" _Genetics_ 54 (1966): 546\u201395; Richard C. Lewontin and Jack L. Hubby, \"A Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. II. Amount of Variation and Degree of Heterozygosity in Natural Populations of _Drosophila pseudoobscura_ ,\" _Genetics_ 54 (1966): 595\u2013609.\n\n. Jeffrey Powell, review of _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ , by Richard Lewontin, _BioScience_ 25 (February, 1975): 118.\n\n. Lewontin, \"Apportionment of Human Diversity,\" 397\n\n. Ibid., 396.\n\n. Maryellen Ruvolo and Mark Seielstad, \"The Apportionment of Human Diversity 25 Years Later,\" in _Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives_ , ed. Rama S. Singh, Costas B. Krimbas, Diane B. Paul, and John Beatty, 141\u201351 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).\n\n. Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , 550.\n\n. Guido Barbujani, Arianna Magagni, Eric Minch, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, \"An Apportionment of Human DNA Diversity,\" _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 94 (1997): 4518.\n\n. Richard Lewontin, _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).\n\n. Marcus W. Feldman, review of _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ , by Richard Lewontin, _Quarterly Review of Biology_ 50 (September 1975), 293.\n\n. Powell, review of _Genetic Basis_ , 118.\n\n. Michael Ruse, review of _The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ , by Richard Lewontin, _Philosophy of Science_ 43 (June 1976): 303.\n\n. Segerstr\u00e5le, _Defenders of the Truth_ , 36.\n\n. Ibid., 37; Wilson, _Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ , 70.\n\n. Edward O. Wilson, \"In the Queendom of Ants: A Brief Autobiography,\" in _Studying Animal Behavior: Autobiographies of the Founders_ , edited by Donald A. Dewsbury (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 481.\n\n**11. RACE IN THE GENOMIC AGE**\n\n. Oswald T. Avery, Colin M. MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, \"Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types,\" _Journal of Experimental Medicine_ 79 (1944): 137\u201358.\n\n. Erwin Chargaff, \"Preface to a Grammar of Biology: A Hundred Years of Nucleic Acid Research,\" _Science_ 172 (1971): 637\u201342\n\n. Brenda Maddox, _Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).\n\n. James Watson and Francis Crick, \"Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,\" _Nature_ 171 (1953): 737\u201338.\n\n. Michael R. Dietrich, \"Paradox and Persuasion: Negotiating the Place of Molecular Evolution within Evolutionary Biology,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 31 (1998): 85\u2013111. See also Joel B. Hagen, \"Naturalists, Molecular Biologists, and the Challenges of Molecular Evolution,\" _Journal of the History of Biology_ 32 (1999): 321\u201341; Ernst Mayr, _The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1982); Theodosius Dobzhansky, \"Biology, Molecular and Organismic,\" _American Zoologist_ 4 (1964): 218\u201337.\n\n. Richard C. Lewontin and Jack L. Hubby, \"A Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. I. The Number of Alleles at Different Loci in _Drosophila pseudoobscura_ ,\" _Genetics_ 54 (1966): 546\u201395; Richard C. Lewontin and Jack L. Hubby, \"A Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. II. Amount of Variation and Degree of Heterozygosity in Natural Populations of _Drosophila pseudoobscura_ ,\" _Genetics_ 54 (1966): 595\u2013609; Motoo Kimura, \"Evolutionary Rate at the Molecular Level,\" _Nature_ 217 (1968): 624\u201326; Willi Hennig, _Phylogenetic Systematics_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966).\n\n. Michel Morange, _A History of Molecular Biology_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 249.\n\n. Committee on Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome, National Research Council, _Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome_ (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1988), 5\u20136.\n\n. Daniel J. Kevles and Leroy Hood, _Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).\n\n. Jenny Reardon, _Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in the Age of Genomics_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); J. S. Alper and J. Beckwith, \"Is Racism a Central Problem for the Human Genome Diversity Project?\" _Politics and Life Science_ 18 (1999): 285\u201388.\n\n. Eric. T. Juengst, \"The Human Genome Project and Bioethics,\" _Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal_ 1 (1991): 71\u201372.\n\n. Raja Mishra, \"The Quest to Map the Human Genome Ends with a Truce,\" _Boston Globe_ , June 27, 2000, C5.\n\n. Rick Weiss and Justin Gillis, \"Teams Finish Mapping Human DNA,\" _Washington Post_ , June 27, 2000, A1.\n\n. F. S. Collins and M. K. Mansoura, \"The Human Genome Project: Revealing the Shared Inheritance of All Humankind,\" _Cancer_ 92 (2001): S221.\n\n. G. Barbujani, A. Magagni, E. Minch, L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, \"An Apportionment of Human DNA Diversity,\" _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 94 (1997): 4516\u201319; David Serre and Svante P\u00e4\u00e4bo, \"Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents,\" _Genome Research_ 14 (2004): 1679\u201385; J. P. A. Ioannidis, E. E. Ntzani, T. A. Trikalinos, \"'Racial' Differences in Genetic Effects for Complex Diseases,\" _Nature Genetics_ 36 (2004): 1312\u201318; M. W. Foster and R. R. Sharp, \"Race, Ethnicity, and Genomics: Social Classifications as Proxies of Biological Heterogeneity,\" _Genome Research_ 12 (2002): 844\u201350.\n\n. L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, P. Menozzi, and A. Piazza, _The History and Geography of Human Genes_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); M. Feldman, R. C. Lewontin, M. C. King, \"A Genetic Melting Pot,\" _Nature_ 424 (2003): 374; Svante P\u00e4\u00e4bo, \"The Mosaic That Is Our Genome,\" _Nature_ 421 (2003): 409\u201312.\n\n. William Stanton, _The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815\u201359_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); George M. Fredrickson, _Racism: A Short History_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Audrey Smedley, _Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview_ (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993); Stephen Jay Gould, _The Mismeasure of Man_ (New York: Norton, 1996); Ashley Montagu, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1997); Daniel J. Kevles, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).\n\n. J. L. Mountain, N. Risch, \"Assessing Genetic Contributions to Phenotypic Differences Among 'Racial' and 'Ethnic' Groups,\" _Nature Genetics_ 36 (2004): S48\u2013S53; D. A. Hinds et al. \"Whole-Genome Patterns of Common DNA Variation in Three Human Populations,\" _Science_ 307 (2005): 1072\u201379.\n\n. Reanne Frank, \"What to Make of It? The (Re)emergence of a Biological Conceptualization of Race in Health Disparities Research,\" _Social Science and Medicine_ 64 (2007) 1977\u201383.\n\n. N. Risch, E. Burchard, E. Ziv, H. Tang, \"Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race, and Disease,\" _Genome Biology_ 3 (2002): 2007.1\u20132007.12.\n\n. Robin M. Henig, \"The Genome in Black and White (and Gray),\" _New York Times Magazine_ , October 10, 2004, 47.\n\n. Morris W. Foster, \"Looking for Race in All the Wrong Places: Analyzing the Lack of Productivity in the Ongoing Debate About Race and Genetics,\" _Human Genetics_ 126 (2009): 355\u201362.\n\n. L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, \"The Human Genome Diversity Project: Past, Present, and Future,\" _Nature Reviews Genetics_ 6 (April 2005): 333\u201340.\n\n. Reardon, _Race to the Finish_ , 4\u20136, 92\u201397.\n\n. Ibid., 92.\n\n. Michael Dodson and Robert Williamson, \"Indigenous Peoples and the Morality of the Human Genome Diversity Project,\" _Journal of Medical Ethics_ 25 (1999): 205.\n\n. Reardon, _Race to the Finish_ , 159\u201360.\n\n. The International HapMap Consortium. \"The International HapMap Project,\" _Nature_ 426 (2003): 789\u201396.\n\n. Jennifer A. Hamilton, \"Revitalizing Difference in the HapMap: Race and Contemporary Human Genetic Variation Research,\" _Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics_ 36 (2008): 471\u201377.\n\n. International HapMap Project, How Are Ethical Concerns Being Addressed, 2012, <http:\/\/hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/ethicalconcerns.html.en>.\n\n. International HapMap Project, Guidelines for Referring to the HapMap Populations in Publications and Presentations, 2012, <http:\/\/hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/citinghapmap.html>.\n\n. Hamilton, Revitalizing Difference in the HapMap,\" 474.\n\n. P. C, Ng, Q. Zhao, S. Levy, R. L. Strausberg, and J. C. Venter, \"Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine,\" _Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics_ 84 (2008): 306\u20139.\n\n. David Jones, \"How Personalized Medicine Became Genetic, and Racial: Werner Kalow and the Formations of Pharmacogenetics,\" _Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences_ 68 (2011): 1\u201348; H. Kim, R. Kim, A. J. Wood, C. M. Stein, \"Molecular Basis of Ethnic Differences in Drug Disposition and Response,\" _Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology_ 41 (2001): 815, 850.\n\n. A. Bress, S. R. Patel, M. A. Perera, et al., \"Effect of NQ01 and CYP4F2 Genotypes on Warfarin Dose Requirements in Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans,\" _Pharmacogenomics_ 13 (2012), 1925\u201335; D. Si, J. Wang, Y. Zhang, et al., \"Distribution of CYP2C9*13 Allele in the Chinese Han and the Long-Range Haplotype Containing CYP2C9*13 and CYP2C19*2,\" _Biopharmaceuticals and Drug Disposition_ 33 (2012), 342\u201345; F. H. Hatta, A. Helld\u00e9n, K. E. Hellgren, et al., \"Search for the Molecular Basis of Ultra-Rapid CYP2C9-Catalysed Metabolism: Relationship Between SNP IVS8\u2013109A>T and the Losartan Metabolism Phenotype in Swedes,\" _European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology_ 68 (2012), 1033\u201342.\n\n. Ng, Zhao, Levy, Strausberg, and Venter, \"Individual Genomes,\" 307\u20138.\n\n. <http:\/\/www.genome.gov\/Pages\/About\/OD\/OPG\/DesigningGeneticists\/RCooper-Health_Disparities.pdf>.\n\n. Understanding the Role of Genomics in Health Disparities: Toward a New Research Agenda. National Institutes of Health Meeting, September 24\u201326, 2008, University of Maryland.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 253.\n\n. Roberta D. Baer, Erika Arteaga, Karen Dyer, et al., \"Concepts of Race and Ethnicity Among Health Researchers: Patterns and Implications,\" _Ethnicity and Health_ 18 (2013): 211\u201325; Targeted Planned Enrollment Table, 2012, <http:\/\/grants.nih.gov\/grants\/funding\/women_min\/guidelines_amended_10_2001.htm>.\n\n. National Institutes of Health, 2012, <http:\/\/grants.nih.gov\/grants\/funding\/424\/SF424R-R_enrollment.doc>.\n\n. Timothy R. Rebbeck and Pamela Sankar, \"Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Race in Molecular Epidemiologic Research,\" _Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention_ 14 (2005): 2467\u201371.\n\n**EPILOGUE: DOBZHANSKY'S PARADOX AND THE FUTURE OF RACIAL RESEARCH**\n\n. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, \"Abandoning 'Race' as a Variable in Public Health Research: An Idea Whose Time Has Come,\" _American Journal of Public Health_ 88 (September 1998): 1297\u201398.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1906).\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1997).\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 253.\n\n. Richard Lewontin, \"The Apportionment of Human Diversity,\" _Evolutionary Biology_ 6 (1972): 397.\n\n. Esteban Gonz\u00e1lez Burchard, Elad Ziv, Natasha Coyle, et al., \"The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice,\" _New England Journal of Medicine_ 348 (2003): 1170\u201375.\n\n. Nancy Krieger et al., \"Race\/Ethnicity, Gender, and Monitoring Socioeconomic Gradients in Health: A Comparison of Area-Based Socioeconomic Measures; The Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project,\" _American Journal of Public Health_ 93 (2003): 1655\u201371.\n\n. Ichiro Kawachi, Norman Daniels, and Dean E. Robinson, \"Health Disparities by Race and Class: Why Both Matter,\" _Health Affairs_ 24 (2005): 343\u201352.\n\n. R. Dawn Comstock, Edward M. Castillo, and Suzanne P. Lindsay, \"Four-Year Review of the Use of Race and Ethnicity in Epidemiologic and Public Health Research,\" _American Journal of Epidemiology_ 159 (2004): 619.\n\n. Camara Phyllis Jones, \"Invited Commentary: 'Race,' Racism, and the Practice of Epidemiology,\" _American Journal of Epidemiology_ 154 (2001): 299\u2013304; Camara Phyllis Jones, \"Levels of Racism: A Theoretical Framework and a Gardener's Tale,\" _American Journal of Public Health_ 90 (2000): 1212\u201315.\n\n. Noah A. Rosenberg et al., \"Genetic Structure of Human Populations,\" _Science_ 298 (2002): 2381\u201385.\n\n. Sahotra Sarkar, _Genetics and Reductionism_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 71.\n\n. S. S. Lee, \"Pharmacogenomics and the Challenge of Health Disparities,\" _Public Health Genomics_ 12 (2009): 170.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Genetics and the Origin of Species_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 61. Emphasis added.\n\n. AncestrybyDNA, 2012, <http:\/\/www.ancestrybydna.com\/ancestry-dna-testing-options.php>.\n\n. AncestryDNA, 2012, <http:\/\/dna.ancestry.com\/#experienceAncestry>.\n\n. Deborah A. Bolnick, Duana Fullwiley, Troy Duster, et al., \"The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing,\" _Science_ 318 (October 19, 2007): 400.\n\n. Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee, \"Genetic Claims and the Unsettled Past,\" in _Genetics and the Unsettled Past_ : _The Collision of DNA, Race, and History_ , ed. Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 2.\n\n. William Provine, \"Genetics and Race,\" _American Zoologist_ 26 (1986): 857\u201387.\n\n. Du Bois, _Health and Physique of the Negro American_ ; P. C, Ng, Q. Zhao, S. Levy, R. L. Strausberg, and J. C. Venter, \"Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine,\" _Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics_ 84 (2008): 306\u20139.\n\n. Theodosius Dobzhansky, _Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 266\u201367.\n\n. Ashley Montagu, _Statement on Race: An Annotated Elaboration and Exposition of the Four Statements on Race Issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 65.\n\n. David Levering Lewis, _W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919\u20131963_ (New York: Holt, 2000), 473.\n\n. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept_ (Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction, 1983), 326.\n**BIBLIOGRAPHY**\n\n**ARCHIVAL SOURCES CONSULTED**\n\nAmerican Museum of Natural History, New York\n\nHenry F. Osborn Papers\n\nAmerican Philosophical Society, Philadelphia\n\nAmerican Eugenics Society Records\n\nFranz Boas Papers\n\nCharles B. Davenport Papers\n\nTheodosius Dobzhansky Papers\n\nLeslie C. Dunn Papers\n\nEugenics Record Office Papers\n\nGenetics Society of America Papers\n\nMichael Lerner Papers\n\nRichard Lewontin Papers\n\nAshley Montagu Papers\n\nThomas Hunt Morgan Papers\n\nRaymond Pearl Papers\n\nHerbert Spencer Jennings Papers\n\nCurt Stern Papers\n\nSewall Wright Papers\n\nColumbia Center for Oral History Collection, New York\n\nReminiscences of Theodosius Dobzhansky\n\nReminiscences of Leslie C. Dunn\n\nColumbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York\n\nJacques Barzun Papers\n\nLibrary of Congress, Washington, D.C.\n\nE.O. Wilson Papers\n\nNational Academy of Sciences Archives, Washington, D.C.\n\nNational Research Council Collection\n\nRockefeller Foundation Archives, Tarrytown, N.Y.\n\nSocial Science Research Council Collection\n\nLaura Spelman Rockefeller Collection\n\nStanford University Archives, Palo Alto, Calif.\n\nStephen Jay Gould Papers\n\nUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass.\n\nW. E. B. Du Bois Papers\n\n**A NOTE ON SOURCES**\n\nIt would be an oversimplification to say that all books begin with a single ancestral source. But in the case of this work, that would largely be true. In the mid-1990s, I read a review essay by Paula Fass in _Reviews in American History_ titled \"Of Genes and Men\" (vol. 20 [June 1992]: 235\u201341). That essay, critical of Carl Degler's book _In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), helped me, as a young doctoral student, begin to shape my thoughts about the relationship between biology and society and the often uncritical way that biological explanations for a wide range of social phenomena were quickly being embraced by natural and social scientists, and even by those (Degler was her primary target) in the humanities. Fass pointed to two important issues (among many) in Degler's work that I reacted to. First, the claim by _In Search of Human Nature_ that \"racism is largely irrelevant to sociobiology\"\u2014chapter 10 of the present volume was written in rebuttal to Degler's wrongheaded analysis of sociobiology and race. Second, Fass attacked Degler's assertion that \"facts\u2014not ideology\u2014can govern belief.\" It was this second point that interested me most and led me on a path to interrogate the meanings of race over the course of the twentieth century, particularly how science was considered an objective arbiter of the truth about what race was and what it was not.\n\nMy approach to thinking and writing about the biological sciences has been informed by an interdisciplinary background in history, public health, and biology. I have been particularly influenced by my time as a researcher in the Molecular Laboratories at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Working at the museum shaped considerably how, as a historian, I think about the nature of scientific practice. As a nonscientist with complete access to and participation in a molecular laboratory, I was always a bit of a fish out of water. But as evolutionary theorists, the scientists at the AMNH were historically minded, and in that way our professional objectives overlapped: we all sought to develop an understanding of our present by reconstructing the past.\n\nThe nature and practice of science have faced considerable scrutiny by philosophers, historians, and scientists, among others. At the center of this discussion, as the philosopher of science Michael Ruse put its, is \"whether science should be considered something different and special\u2014something with independent standards which in some way guarantees its truth and importance,\" or whether science is \"basically just a product of the same general culture as most everything else, no worse but certainly no better than those who produce it.\" ( _Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?_ [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999], 9). At the extremes of this debate are the ideas of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Whereas Popper's hypothetico-deductive method maintains that science is both testable and falsifiable, Kuhn's belief in scientific revolutions claims that all scientific knowledge and practice are relative to the scientific paradigm\u2014the authoritative research program that dominates science between revolutions. This does not mean that science is somehow unreal, but it does mean that it is not necessarily possible to falsify scientific theories within their paradigms (Thomas H. Kuhn, _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962]; Karl R. Popper, _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ [New York: Harper and Row, 1968]). What my own experiences as a historian with training in the natural sciences has shown me is that on the one hand, science operates within a specific cultural and historical milieu. On the other hand, however, over time the scientific method tests data, theories, and ideas and discards science that does not cut the proverbial mustard. In the end, science can be both a social construction and an objective search for truth.\n\nI visited approximately ten archives in writing this book and looked at twenty-five manuscript collections in that process. The collections at the American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia provided the most fertile material for this study, and the correspondence and other materials in its collections provided great insight into the history of the biological race concept. Theodosius Dobzhansky's papers were, as can be seen from his prominence in this book, at the center of my research, and by the time I was done working my way through them, I felt a closeness to my subject and a deep sadness as I read through the final pages of his journal written just days before he died of cancer in 1975. I would encourage scholars to mine these journals carefully; they hold wonderful material about Dobzhansky's experiences traveling the world\u2014from the Brazilian rain forest to the Yosemite Valley\u2014collecting his specimens and meeting many people along the way. Much of the journal is written in Russian, despite a written promise in the 1940s to begin writing only in English so that his daughter could someday share all his reflections. He did not keep that promise, and the journals, spanning almost fifty years (from his days in Russia to his death) constantly switch back and forth between Russian and English. Despite what was once a good grasp of the Russian language, I can't claim to have digested much of what was written in Russian, and another scholar is sure to find rich material in those entries.\n\nFor the history of eugenics and race, collections at the APS, the AMNH, and the National Academy of Sciences Archives were incredibly useful. The Stephen Jay Gould Papers at Stanford and the E. O. Wilson Papers at the Library of Congress were unprocessed when I utilized them. As these collections are processed, I suspect that more information on race and sociobiology will become available. Finally, the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Archives have been digitized since my visit there, and I suspect that in time more information will be revealed about Du Bois's thoughts on the creation of his project on the _Health and Physique of the Negro American_.\n\nAs with all projects, I owe much of my thinking in the area of race and science to the important works that preceded my own. The following areas of historiography have been the most influential to this work, and the books and articles cited below are not an exhaustive accounting of works in the field or, for that matter, works cited in this book. Rather, I describe works that had a significant impact on this book, focusing primarily on books instead of articles. The notes are also an accounting of the state of the field.\n\nPre-Twentieth-Century Race and Science\n\nThe best surveys of pre-twentieth-century racial science in the United States are Bruce R. Dain, _A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); William R. Stanton, _The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815\u20131859_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); and Ann Fabian, _The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America's Unburied Dead_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). See also Stephen Jay Gould, _The Mismeasure of Man_ (New York: Norton, 1996); George Fredrickson, _The Black Image in the White Mind_ (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971); and, Drew Gilpen Faust, _The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830\u20131860_ (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981); Thomas Jefferson, _Notes on the State of Virginia_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 138\u201340, 143. For a broader discussion of Jefferson's role in the formation of a distinctly American conception of racial science, see Dain, _Hideous Monster of the Mind_ ; Alexander O. Boulton, \"The American Paradox: Jeffersonian Equality and Racial Science,\" _American Quarterly_ 47, no. 3 (1995): 467\u201392; Paul Finkelman, _Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson_ (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996); Nell Irvin Painter, _The History of White People_ (New York: Norton, 2011).\n\nRace, Genetics, and Eugenics\n\nHistorians who have explored the history of genetics and eugenics in the context of racial science have generally approached the topic as institutional histories examining internal developments in the field. For example, Daniel Kevles's seminal work on eugenics, _In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), is a history of the relationship between eugenic and genetic research programs and examines the internal changes in these disciplines that helped to create the nature and texture of modern racial science. Similarly, Mike Hawkins's _Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860\u20131945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) tackles the issue of racial science through the lens of social Darwinism. Nancy Stepan's _The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800\u20131960_ (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982) has race and science at its core. Stepan suggests that after World War II the study of human diversity superseded the study of race in the sciences. The ascension of population genetics and the downfall of typological thinking facilitated this change. Stepan's book focuses primarily on science and race in Great Britain. The story of the evolution of race and science, while parallel in some ways between the United States and Britain before World War II, has a different trajectory in postwar America. While studies of human groups do begin to shift away from typological to population studies, racial science remains a powerful element of postwar biological thought in the United States.\n\nWilliam B. Provine's seminal articles on race, biology, and eugenics (\"Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,\" _Science_ 182 [November 23, 1973]: 790\u201396, and \"Genetics and Race,\" _American Zoologist_ 26 [1986]: 857\u201387) offer an important perspective in the earlier literature on race and genetics. Unlike some of the more institutionally focused histories that examined genetics and race, Provine's periodization of how geneticists conceptualized race differences continues to provide insight into the theories and actions of these formative thinkers in the field.\n\nThe most recent foray into this subject is Mark A. Largent, _Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011), a narrative that broadens the context of forced sterilization into a history that begins in the mid-nineteenth century and continues to the turn of the twenty-first. In Largent's telling, eugenics is only part of the story behind coerced sterilization in the United States, a procedure begun in the nineteenth century by American physicians to prevent crime and punish criminals. There is, however, barely any mention of the role that race played in coerced sterilizations, either in the context of black-white or white-white ethnic differences.\n\nFinally, Alondra Nelson's important book _Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) has a short but important discussion (45\u201347) of W. E. B. Du Bois's seminal work on race, health, and science, _The Health and Physique of the Negro American_. In _Body and Soul_ Nelson shows how Du Bois understood how \"the arbitrariness of the American racial categories\" had a \"significant bearing on both the corporeal and social well-being of African Americans\" and that the race concept was \"explicitly linked to health and medicine.\" While the present volume argues that Du Bois's work in this area anticipated twentieth-century critiques of the race concept, _Body and Soul_ argues that it was similarly influential \"in future health activist projects, including those of the Black Panther Party,\" in framing arguments about \"the quantity and quality of medical facilities for African Americans\" and the attention to \"racial health disparities as a key cause of concern,\" among others. See also Elof Axel Carlson, _The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea_ (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001); Mark Pittenger, _American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870\u20131920_ , History of American Thought and Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Michael G. Kenny, \"Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund,\" _Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences_ 38 (summer 2002): 259\u201383; Raymond E. Fancher, \"Biographical Origins of Francis Galton's Psychology,\" _Isis_ 74 (June 1983): 228\u201329; Raymond Fancher, \"Francis Galton's African Ethnography and Its Role in the Development of His Psychology,\" _British Journal for the History of Science_ 16 (1983): 67\u201379; Garland Allen, \"Genetics, Eugenics, and Society: Internalists and Externalists in Contemporary History of Science,\" _Social Studies of Science_ 6 (February 1976): 105\u201322; David N. Livingstone, _Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); Ivan Hannaford, _Race: The History of an Idea in the West_ (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996); Frank Dik\u00f6tter, \"Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,\" _American Historical Review_ 103 (April 1998): 467\u201378; Diane Paul, _Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present_ (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995).\n\nAfrican Americans, Race, and Eugenics\n\nThere are only a few books that have begun to explore the relationship between eugenics, the idea of race, and the lives of African Americans. The historiography has unfortunately ignored the fact that eugenicists devoted considerable resources to the study of black-white differences from the beginning of that movement in the late nineteenth century. Eugenics was not just about preserving whiteness from ethnics, nor was it only social movement; it was also about the construction of scientifically justified color differences. Edward Larson's _Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) has a short discussion of the effects of eugenic sterilization programs on African Americans. William H. Tucker's _The Science and Politics of Racial Research_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994) looks at the relationship between eugenics, racial science, and race and the mental health community. As such, the book focuses primarily on the psychometric crusades of the twentieth century and on the influences that psychologists had in the courts in abolishing state-sanctioned segregation. Tucker's latest effort, _The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), is an important addition to the historiography as it explores the funding mechanisms that helped both eugenic and posteugenic racial science thrive. Gregory Dorr's _Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia_ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008) surveys the rise and impact of eugenics on Virginia's racial mores by examining the ways in which eugenics influenced twentieth-century notions of white supremacy in Virginia and how eugenic thinking impacted African American approaches to racial uplift. Dorr's work shows how eugenics quickly became the scientific justification for racial purity in twentieth-century Virginia, and the book is a powerful illustration of how eugenicist ideas about African Americans and about race relations more generally did not simply conform to racial theory but rather shaped it to a very large degree. Lee D. Baker's _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) explores many of the same questions explored in _Race Unmasked_ but does so in the context of anthropology. A chapter in Edwin Black's _War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race_ (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 159\u201382, looks at the career of obstetrician and eugenicist Walter Plecker and his impact on racial and segregation policy in Virginia as the head of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics. Daylanne K. English's _Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) offers particularly interesting insight into the relationship between the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and eugenic ideology. Finally, Mae Ngai's _Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) documents the shift from a scientific and eugenic focus on racial superiority to race difference during the first two decades of the twentieth century.\n\nThe Charles Davenport Papers at the APS reveal a striking series of correspondence, lectures, and notes that have generally been ignored by scholars examining the relationship between eugenics and African Americans and the way eugenicists thought about race in a black-white context. In the introduction to _\"The Hour of Eugenics\": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) historian Nancy Leys Stepan writes that despite \"the historical significance of eugenics...it is still surprising how restricted the study of eugenics is, especially when we consider...its connections to many of the large themes of modern history\" (2). In this context it is therefore not surprising that even given the centrality of racial matters to the eugenics movement the historiography of eugenics and the historiography of racial science have rarely intersected with African American history. Some scholars might argue that this is because race in the context of eugenics was not about the black-white divide in America but about attempts to define whiteness in relation to the immigrants who had been arriving on America's shores since the 1840s. (See, for example, Jacobson, _Whiteness of a Different Color_ , 39\u201390). Susan Reverby's new book on Tuskegee, _Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), is an important addition to the historiography of racial medicine that, in part, examines the way scientific thought (including eugenics) enabled the horrors of the Tuskegee Study. See also, for example, James Jones, _Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment_ (New York: Free Press, 1981); Joseph L. Graves Jr., _The Emperor_ ' _s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 157\u201372; Gould, _Mismeasure of Man_ ; N. J. Block and Gerald Dworkin, eds., _The IQ Controversy_ (New York: Pantheon, 1976); W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton, _An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and the Problem of Race_ (New York: Routledge, 2001); Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris. _Race, Science and Medicine, 1700\u20131960_ , Studies in the Social History of Medicine (London: Routledge, 1999); George M. Fredrickson, _Racism: A Short History_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); David Theo Goldberg, _Anatomy of Racism_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Thomas F. Gossett, _Race: The History of an Idea in America_ (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963); Mark H. Haller, _Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought_ (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963); Sandra G. Harding, ed., _The \"Racial\" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Richard Hofstadter, _Social Darwinism in American Thought_ (New York: Braziller, 1959); Nancy Ordover, _American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Diane B. Paul, _The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate_ (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Vanessa N. Gamble, \"A Legacy of Distrust: African Americans and Medical Research,\" _American Journal of Preventive Medicine_ 9 (1993): S35\u2013S38; John H Stanfield II, \"The Myth of Race and the Human Sciences,\" _Journal of Negro Education_ 64 (1995): 218\u201331; Lisa Gannett, \"Theodosius Dobzhansky and the Genetic Race Concept,\" _Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Science_ 44 (2013) 250\u201361; Harriet A. Washington, _Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present_ (New York: Doubleday, 2006.\n\nThe \"Rise and Fall\" of the Race Concept\n\nElazar Barkan addresses the historical status of racial science during the twentieth century in _The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). His book argues that through the efforts of progressively minded scientists, scientific racism was by and large pushed out of biological and genetic thought. He contends that scientists in the 1940s took on racial science in true Popperian fashion\u2014falsification. While some mainstream scientists left the idea of race behind, _Race Unmasked_ shows that many did not and that racial science remained a force to be reckoned with both because science never divests itself of the biological race concept and because racial science did not need the approval of biologists and geneticists to survive and to thrive. Kenneth Ludmerer also addresses the evolving history of racial science, but only in the context of the evolution of eugenics and its relationship with the emerging field of genetics in a 1969 article titled \"American Geneticists and the Eugenics Movement, 1905\u20131935\" ( _Journal of the History of Biology_ 2 [September 1969]: 337\u201362). The article later became a chapter in Ludmerer's classic book on the history of genetics, _Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972). Ludmerer's argument about the relationship between the eugenics movement and the field of genetics, and of the attitude of geneticists toward the race concept is problematic. In his view \"new findings of heredity dampened the enthusiasm of many geneticists for the movement; by demonstrating that inheritance is a much more complex process than had previously been thought, these findings indicated to many geneticists that the task of constructing sound and valuable eugenic schemes is not so simple.\" This awareness was followed by a renunciation of the movement by geneticists \"alarmed by the movement's participation in the vitriolic debates over immigration restriction and by its apparent endorsement of the race theories of Nazi Germany\" (Ludmerer, \"American Geneticists,\" 338\u201339). While this was true for many geneticists (including T. H. Morgan and L. C. Dunn) as _Race Unmasked_ argues the relationship between eugenics and genetics was never this clear-cut. Specifically, when looking at the relationship between the race concept and the field of genetics, it is clear that the impact of eugenics on genetic thinking outlasted the exodus of geneticists from the eugenics movement. Alexandra Minna Stern's _Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) is the most recent addition to this literature and offers an alternative time line for the decline of eugenics. Stern examines the history of eugenics in California through the 1970s and concludes that it was not until the \"protest and liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s\" that the \"legacy and longevity of eugenics in the United States\" was challenged in a sustained and meaningful way (25).\n\nPublished in 2011, Paul Farber's book _Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) explores the historical trajectory of the race concept but falls into the same trap as earlier volumes on the subject\u2014it reinforces the \"rise and fall\" claim that presumes a rejection of the concept by scientists in the post\u2013World War II period. Still, the book does draw attention to Dobzhansky's role in reshaping the race concept in evolutionary biology. Finally, Peggy Pascoe's _What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) traces the dismantling of miscegenation laws in the United States and how their downfall was shaped by and reshaped notions of race in legal and popular thinking. See also Robin O. Andreasen, \"A New Perspective on the Race Debate,\" _British Journal for the Philosophy of Science_ 49 (1998): 199\u2013225; K. Anthony Appiah, \"The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,\" _Critical Inquiry_ 12 (1985): 21\u201337; Guido Barbujani, Arianna Magagni, Eric Minch, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, \"An Apportionment of Human DNA Diversity,\" _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 94 (1997): 4516\u201319; Edward H. Beardsley, \"The American Scientist as Social Activist: Franz Boas, Burt G. Wilder, and the Cause of Racial Justice, 1900\u20131915,\" _Isis_ 64 (1973): 50\u201366; Juan Comas, \"'Scientific' Racism Again?\" _Current Anthropology_ 2 (1961): 303\u201340; W. E. B. Dubois, \"Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,\" _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 9 (1897): 127\u201333; Bentley Glass, \"Geneticists Embattled: Their Stand Against Rampant Eugenics and Racism in America During the 1920s and 1930s,\" _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ 30 (1986): 130\u201354; Julia Liss, \"Diasporic Identities: The Science and Politics of Race in the Work of Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois, 1894\u20131919,\" _Cultural Anthropology_ 13 (1998): 127\u201366; Lisa Gannett, \"The Biological Reification of Race,\" _British Journal for the Philosophy of Science_ 55 (2004): 323\u201345.\n\nAnthropology and Race\n\nIn _From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896\u20131954_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) anthropologist Lee Baker has covered some of the same ground this book covers from the perspective of anthropology. By examining the anthropological discourse from _Plessy_ to _Brown_ , Baker argues that anthropology played a primary role in \"helping to change the meaning and structure of race for African Americans\" (3). Anthropological discourse is important to the study of the impact of scientific racism, but ultimately it was biologists, and a discussion in the narrower context of genetics, that dictated the ground rules for the geneticization of race and racism and thus the parameters of debates on the nature of race in both scientific and popular discourse during the twentieth century. See also Rachel Caspari, \"From Types to Populations: A Century of Race, Physical Anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association,\" _American Anthropologist_ 105 (March 2003): 65\u201376; Philippa Levine, \"Anthropology, Colonialism, and Eugenics,\" in _The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics_ , ed. Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine. 43\u201361 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Peter Pels, \"The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Governmentality,\" _Annual Review of Anthropology_ 26 (October 1997): 163\u201383; Alan H. Goodman, \"Why Genes Don't Count (for Racial Differences in Health),\" _American Journal of Public Health_ 90 (1995): 1699\u20131702; S. O. Y. Keita, R. A. Kittles, \"The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence,\" _American Anthropologist_ 99 (1997): 534\u201344; Jonathan Marks, _Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History_ (New York: Aldine, 1995); Audrey Smedley, _Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview_ (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999); Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Yolanda T. Moses, \"Re-establishing 'Race' in Anthropological Discourse,\" _American Anthropologist_ 99 (September 1997): 517\u201333.\n\nSociobiology\n\nHistorians have been surprisingly silent in their exploration of the sociobiology debate. Daniel J. Kevles's _In the Name of Eugenics_ and Carl Degler's _In Search of Human Nature_ are two major historical works on the topic. Kevles's work includes a brief, dispassionate review of the new synthesis. Degler, however, in the last third of his book, embraces sociobiology, accepting as possible a scientific conception of human nature. Chapter 10 of the present volume was inspired largely by my reaction to Degler's work. His treatment of the emergence of sociobiology fails to interrogate the tenets of the new science, accepting them as the products of a newly advanced objective science. He virtually ignores the many criticisms of sociobiology and sees no connection between sociobiology and its sociopolitical context. Degler assumes that because \"many of the proponents of a recognition of the role of biology in human behavior were and are personally liberal, rather than conservative, in political outlook\" and that because \"social scientists began to be interested in bringing biology back into the human sciences as early as the 1950s and then through the 1960s, when the political climate can hardly be described as conservative,\" meant that sociobiological work could not be the product of, or have particular salience in, a specific historical moment (226\u201327). This assertion is both wrongheaded and troubling. As historian Paula Fass points out in her review of Degler's work in _Reviews in American History_ , \"In taking sides Degler fails fully to visualize the historicity of the issue, substituting a neo-Hegelian synthesis for the new paradigm that may be required\" (240). For overviews of the sociobiology debates from disciplines other than history, see, for example, Ullica Segerstr\u00e5le, _Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). See also Philip Kitcher, _Vaulting Ambition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985); Richard M. Lerner, _Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide_ (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1992); S. L. Washburn, \"Animal Behavior and Social Anthropology,\" _Society_ (September\u2013October 1977): 35\u201341; Howard Kaye, _The Social Meaning of Modern Biology_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Stephen Jay Gould, _Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History_ (New York: Norton, 1977); Arthur L. Caplan, ed., _The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1978); Martin Barker, _The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe_ (Frederick, Md.: Aletheia, 1982).\n\nRace and Genomics\n\nTroy Duster's _Backdoor to Eugenics_ (New York: Routledge, 1990), written at the outset of the Human Genome Project, calls attention to how the technological and philosophical approaches of the then emerging Human Genome Project threatened to reify racial and ethnic constructs in the wake of newly emerging technologies. The book also calls attention to the very fine line that exists between eugenics and genetics, and to how the Human Genome Project could very easily erase any distinction between the two.\n\nJenny Reardon's _Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), as mentioned in the introduction to this book, highlights what is a persistent problem in the history of the race concept: the notion of a rise and fall in the race concept in the biological sciences. Reardon believes that this idea is so entrenched that it has become \"the canonical narrative of the history of race and science.\" And I agree with her that as a \"dominant narrative,\" it \"truncates history\" (22\u201323). Her book then moves beyond this narrative by showing the persistence of race concepts in the genomic era, with a particular focus on how the Human Genome Diversity Project struggled with concepts of genetic diversity in the 1990s, and the pushback from advocacy groups and research subjects on the group's approach. Reardon's book also helped bring Dobzhansky back into focus as a central character in the history of racial science\u2014an important part of this history that others, including myself, have expanded upon.\n\nShedding new light on the relationship between race and personalized medicine is the aim of Jonathan Kahn's _Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic World_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). The book is an interesting exploration of the legal, historical, technological, and market forces that continue to shape a racialized approach to medicine. The book expands our understanding of how the concept of race is utilized in clinical medicine.\n\nSeveral new volumes have begun to expand the scope and interest in this area, the most interesting of which is Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee, eds., _Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012). The collection is packed with essays exploring topics ranging from forensic technology to pharmacogenomics to ancestry testing, and the work in this volume will surely influence future scholars as history continues to turn its attention to this area. Among other new volumes are Catherine Bliss, _Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice_ (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012); Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan, eds., _Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, _Race? Debunking a Scientific Myth_ (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011); Dorothy Roberts, _Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century_ (New York: New Press, 2012); and Paul Farber and Hamilton Cravens, _Race and Science: Scientific Challenges to Racism in Modern America_ (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009); Evelynn M. Hammonds and Rebecca M. Herzig, eds., _The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008); Linda L. McCabe, _DNA: Promise and Peril_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson, _Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008); Lundy Braun, \"Race, Ethnicity, and Health: Can Genetics Explain Disparities?\" _Perspectives in Biology and Medicine_ 45 (2002): 159\u201374; Morris W. Foster and Richard R. Sharp, \"Beyond Race: Toward a Whole Genome Perspective on Human Population and Genetic Variation,\" _Nature Reviews: Genetics_ 5 (2004): 790\u201396; Lisa Gannett, \"Racism and Human Genome Diversity Research: The Ethical Limits of 'Population' Thinking,\" _Philosophy of Science_ 68 (2001): S479\u2013S492; Duana Fullwiley, \"The Biologistical Construction of Race: 'Admixture' Technology and the New Genetic Medicine,\" _Social Studies of Science_ (October 2008): 695\u2013735.\nINDEX\n\n**Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book**.\n\nABO blood group maps,\n\n\"Academic Vigilantism and the Political Significance of Sociobiology\" (Wilson, E. O.),\n\nAfrica: Galton in, 17\u201318; migration from, x\n\nAfrican Americans: cultural depictions of, ; demographic shifts of, ; Du Bois on, 99\u2013100; intelligence testing and, , ; migration of, ; race relations with, 59\u201360; racial science and, ; violence towards, ; white ancestry of, . _See also_ blacks\n\nallele frequencies, 207\u20138\n\n_American Anthropologist_ , ,\n\nAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, 126\u201327, ,\n\nAmerican Association of Physical Anthropologists, , 133\u201334, ,\n\n_An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy_ (Myrdal), 140\u201343\n\nAmerican Eugenics Society, ,\n\nAmerican Genetics Association,\n\n_American Historical Review_ ,\n\n_American Journal of Anatomy_ ,\n\n_American Journal of Public Health_ ,\n\n_American Medicine_ ,\n\n_American Mercury_ ,\n\nAmerican Museum of Natural History, , , 45\u201347; eugenics exhibit at, 49\u201351\n\n_American Naturalist_ , , 39\u201340\n\n_The American Negro: A Study in Race Crossing_ (Herskovits),\n\nAmerican School of Anthropology,\n\nAmerican Society of Human Genetics,\n\nAmerican South, race relations in, 59\u201360\n\n_American Zoologist_ ,\n\n_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ , ,\n\n\"An Anthropometric Study of Hawaiians of Pure and Mixed Blood\" (Dunn),\n\nanti-immigrant movement, 32\u201334\n\nantimiscegenation laws, ; genetics and,\n\nanti-Semitism, ; genetic variation and, ; Grant and, ; Pearl and,\n\nAppiah, Kwame Anthony,\n\n_Applied Eugenics_ (Popenoe and Johnson, R. H.), ,\n\n\"The Apportionment of Human Diversity\" (Lewontin), 197\u201398\n\n_The Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine_ ,\n\nArndt, C. H.,\n\nAtlanta University, , 97\u201398\n\nautogenesis,\n\nAvery, Oswald,\n\nAyala, Francisco, ,\n\nBaker, Lee, ,\n\nBanton, Michael,\n\nBarash, David, 181\u201382,\n\nBarkan, Elazar, , 156\u201357\n\nBarzun, Jacques, 105\u20139\n\nBateson, William,\n\nBeaglehole, Ernest,\n\nBean, R. Bennett, 53\u201354\n\n\"Behavior of Physical Traits in Race Intermixture\" (Wissler), 72\u201373\n\nBell, Alexander Graham,\n\n_The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_ (Herrnstein & Murray),\n\nBenedict, Ruth, 105\u20136,\n\nBennett, Dorothea,\n\nBentley, Madison,\n\nBilbo, Theodore, ,\n\nbiological distinctiveness,\n\n\"Biological Eugenics: Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment\" (Cole, L. J.), 61\u201362\n\n\"A Biological View of Race Mixture\" (Dunn),\n\n\"A Biologist's View of the Negro Problem\" (Davenport),\n\n\"The Biology of the Negro\" (Stern), 143\u201348\n\n_Birth of a Nation_ (film),\n\n_Black Folk: Then and Now_ (Du Bois), 104\u20135\n\nblacks: definition of, in 1851, ; pathologization of, . _See also_ African Americans\n\nblack-white differences, 55\u201356; claims of fixity of, ; Davenport and, , . _See also_ racial differences\n\nblood, racial differences and,\n\nBlumenbach, Johann, 27\u201328\n\nBoas, Franz, , 48\u201349, ; Conference on Racial Differences and, 78\u201379; Du Bois and, 97\u201399; intelligence testing and, ; NRC Committee on the Study of the American Negro, ; population thinking and, ; racial orphanages and, ; UNESCO and,\n\nbody type,\n\nBork, Robert,\n\nbrain structure,\n\nBrattain, Michelle, 158\u201359\n\n_Brave New World_ (Huxley, A.),\n\nBrigham, Carl,\n\n_Brown v. Board of Education_ , , , 139\u201343\n\nBunche, Ralph, 121\u201322,\n\nBush, Vannevar,\n\n_BusinessWeek_ ,\n\nCampbell, Clarence,\n\nCapeci, Dominic, Jr.,\n\nCAR. _See_ Committee Against Racism\n\nCarnegie, Andrew,\n\nCarnegie Corporation,\n\nCarnegie Foundation,\n\nCarnegie Institution, 31\u201332, , 61\u201362, ,\n\nCastillo, Edward,\n\nCastle, William, 91\u201392,\n\nCavalli-Sforza, L. Luca,\n\nCelera Genomics,\n\n\"Changes in Immigrants\" (Boas), 78\u201379\n\nChargaff, Erwin,\n\n_Chicago Daily Tribune_ ,\n\nchromosomal theory, ,\n\ncitizenship,\n\ncivil rights, 163\u201364; groups, ; laws,\n\n_The Clansman_ (Dixon),\n\nClark, Harvey E.,\n\nClark, Kenneth, ,\n\nClark, Mamie,\n\nclimatological theory, of racial differences,\n\nCold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 31\u201332; Carnegie Institution and, ; Eugenics Record Office of, , 61\u201362; Station for Experimental Evolution,\n\nCold War,\n\nCole, Fay-Cooper, , , ; racial orphanages and,\n\nCole, Leon J., 61\u201362\n\nCollins, Francis, 203\u20135\n\ncolonialism,\n\nColumbia University, , ,\n\nComas, Juan,\n\nCommittee Against Racism (CAR), 192\u201393\n\nCommittee on Eugenics,\n\n_The Comparative Abilities of White and Negro Children_ (Peterson), ,\n\nComstock, R. Dawn,\n\n\"Conference on Racial Differences,\" 77\u201379, 82\u201386; race-crossing and, 89\u201390\n\nCongoids,\n\nCook, Robert,\n\nCoon, Carleton, 167\u201374\n\nCowan, Ruth Schwartz,\n\nCox, Earnest Sevier,\n\nCox, Oliver Cromwell,\n\ncraniometry,\n\nCrick, Francis,\n\n_The Crisis_ , 103\u20135\n\n_Current Anthropology_ , 170\u201371,\n\nCYP2C9 allele, 207\u20138\n\ncytochrome p450, 207\u20138\n\nDahlberg, Gunnar, 153\u201354\n\nDain, Bruce,\n\nDaniels, Norman,\n\nDarlington, C. D., 132\u201333,\n\nDarlington, Philip,\n\nDarwin, Charles, , ,\n\nDarwin, Erasmus,\n\nDarwin, Leonard,\n\nDarwinism, synthesis of,\n\nDavenport, Charles, , , ; black-white differences and, , ; Carnegie Institution and, ; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and, 31\u201332; Conference on Racial Differences and, ; definition of race by, 40\u201341; education of, ; eugenics research and, ; intelligence testing and, ; interracial relationships and, 42\u201343; Johnson, A., and, 34\u201335; Jordan and, ; miscegenation and, , 92\u201393; \"Negro problem\" and, 38\u201339; NRC and, 67\u201368; NRC Committee on the Study of the American Negro, ; Pearl and, ; race-crossing and, 86\u201394; Second International Congress of Eugenics and, ; segregation and, ; typology and, 80\u201381\n\nDawkins, Richard, 181\u201382\n\nDeniker, Joseph,\n\ndeoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), , 206\u20137\n\n_The Descent of Man_ (Darwin),\n\ndesegregation, of military, 164\u201365\n\ndeterminism,\n\nDietrich, Michael,\n\n\"Distribution and Increase of Negroes in the United States\" (Willcox),\n\nDixon, Thomas,\n\nDNA. _See_ deoxyribonucleic acid\n\n_The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon_ (Nelkin & Lindee),\n\nDobzhansky, Theodosius, 7\u20138, , 95\u201396, , ; Coon and, 169\u201373; Darlington, C. D., and, 132\u201333; death of, ; Dunn and, 126\u201327, 129\u201331; molecular biology and, 201\u20132; Montagu and, 133\u201335; race and, 122\u201323, ; race concept and, 114\u201326; race concept legitimacy and, ; training of, 116\u201317; UNESCO and, 149\u201354, 157\u201358\n\nDodge, Raymond,\n\nDorr, Gregory,\n\nDraper, Wickliffe, , 90\u201391, 93\u201394,\n\n_Drosophila_ studies, , 124\u201325, 143\u201344\n\nDu Bois, W. E. B., , , , 217\u201318; on African Americans, 99\u2013100; Boas and, 97\u201399; eugenics and, 104\u20135; genetics and, ; historicizing race and, 105\u20139; on Hoffman, ; Myrdal and, ; on race concept, 99\u2013100; race concept legitimacy and, ; race relations and, ; racial differences and, ; racial science and, ; racism and, ; Stoddard and, 103\u20134; writings of, 95\u2013104\n\nDudziak, Mary,\n\nDunbar, Robin I. M.,\n\nDunlap, Knight, , 86\u201387\n\nDunn, Leslie Clarence, , , , 126\u201332; death of, 179\u201380; eugenics and, 128\u201329; genetic diversity and, 95\u201396; race and, , ; Second International Congress of Eugenics and, ; UNESCO and, 153\u201356\n\n_Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept_ (Du Bois), 217\u201318\n\nDuster, Troy,\n\nEast, Edward, ,\n\n_Edinburgh Review_ ,\n\n\"The Effects of Inbreeding on Guinea Pigs\" (Wright),\n\n\"The Effects of Race Intermingling\" (Davenport), 40\u201341,\n\n_11\/22\/63_ (King),\n\nELSI Research Program. _See_ Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Research Program\n\nEnglish, Daylanne,\n\nEnlightenment, 25\u201326\n\nenvironment, heredity _versus_ , ,\n\nEthical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program,\n\nethnic group, , 151\u201352\n\nethnocentrism, , 186\u201387\n\nEthnological Society of London,\n\n_Eugenical News_ ,\n\nEugenic Research Association,\n\neugenics, ; at American Museum of Natural History, 49\u201351; decline of, 8\u20139; Du Bois and, 104\u20135; Dunn and, 128\u201329; Galton and, 22\u201323; history of, 13\u201315; immigration and, 32\u201333; Ku Klux Klan and, 41\u201342; NRC and, ; philanthropy and, 61\u201362; research, 55\u201356; segregation and, ; statistics and,\n\nEugenics Education Society of Great Britain,\n\nEugenics Research Association,\n\nevolution: acceptance of, ; autogenesis and, ; mechanisms of, ; research, 31\u201332; source of,\n\n\"Evolution and Mortality\" (Pearl), 71\u201372\n\nevolutionary biology, , 7\u20138; authority of, 161\u201362; molecular biology and,\n\nevolutionary synthesis, ; emergence of, 112\u201314; genetic variation and, ; history of, ; taxonomy and,\n\nevolutionary theory,\n\n_Evolution: The Modern Synthesis_ (Huxley, J.), , 181\u201382\n\nFalger, Vincent, 188\u201389\n\nFeldman, Marcus,\n\nFields, Barbara,\n\nFields, Karen,\n\nFirth, Rosemary,\n\nFisher, Ronald A., 81\u201382, , ,\n\nfossil record,\n\nFranklin, Rosalind,\n\n_Fraser's Magazine_ ,\n\nFrazier, E. Franklin, ,\n\n_Fresno Bee_ ,\n\nFriedman, Lawrence,\n\n\"Frontiers in Population Genomics Research Meeting,\"\n\nFullilove, Mindy,\n\nGaither, Frances,\n\nGalton, Francis, , 16\u201330; in Africa, 17\u201318; education of, ; eugenics and, 22\u201323; population thinking and, 112\u201313; race and, 18\u201319; on racial differences,\n\nGalton Society, ,\n\nGardner, John, 176\u201377\n\nGarth, Thomas, 50\u201351\n\nGates, Henry Louis,\n\nGates, R. Ruggles, 131\u201332\n\n_The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection_ (Fisher), ,\n\n_The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change_ (Lewontin), 198\u201399\n\ngenetic diversity, 95\u201396; race as measure of, ; research, 205\u201310. _See also_ human diversity\n\ngenetics, 1\u20133; antimiscegenation laws and, ; authority of, 161\u201362; Du Bois and, ; experimental, ; race and, ; reductionism in, ; segregation and, ; sociobiology and,\n\n_Genetics and the Origin of Species_ (Dobzhansky), , , 120\u201323, , ,\n\nGenetics Society of America,\n\ngenetic variation, , 197\u201398; anti-Semitism and, ; evolutionary synthesis and, ; Mendelism and, ; Wright, S., and,\n\ngenomics, ix\u2013xi,\n\n\"Geographical Variation in Lady-Beetles\" (Dobzhansky),\n\nGeorge, Wesley Critz,\n\nGlass, Bentley, , ,\n\n_Godzilla_ (film),\n\nGould, Stephen Jay, 114\u201315, 182\u201383, 191\u201392\n\nGrant, Madison, 32\u201333, 51\u201353, ; anti-Semitism and,\n\nGreat Chain of Being,\n\nGreat Depression,\n\nGreater Liberia Act,\n\nGreat Migration,\n\nGriffith, D. W.,\n\ngroup intelligence,\n\nHaldane, J. B. S., , 153\u201354\n\nHamilton, Jennifer,\n\nHandlin, Oscar,\n\nHankins, Frank, ,\n\nHarriman, E. H.,\n\nHarrington, Michael,\n\n_Hartford Courant_ ,\n\n_Harvard Crimson_ ,\n\n_Harvard Educational Review_ ,\n\nHarvard University,\n\n\"Health and Physique\" conference, 97\u201398\n\n_The Health and Physique of the Negro American_ (Du Bois), 95\u2013104,\n\nhealth outcomes, 215\u201316\n\n_Hearst's International_ ,\n\nhereditarianism,\n\n_Hereditary Genius_ (Galton), ,\n\n_Hereditary Talent and Character_ (Galton), ,\n\nheredity: chromosomal theory of, ; environment _versus_ , , ; inheritance and, ; race and, 79\u201380; race concept and, ; of skin color, 40\u201341\n\n_Heredity, Race, and Society_ (Dobzhansky & Dunn), , , 129\u201331\n\n_Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_ (Davenport), ,\n\n\"Heredity of Skin Pigmentation in Man\" (Davenport),\n\nheritability, quantifying,\n\nHerrnstein, Richard, ,\n\nHerskovits, Melville, 82\u201383\n\nHGDP. _See_ Human Genome Diversity Project\n\nHill, Osman,\n\nhistoriography,\n\nHoffman, Frederick, , 100\u2013101\n\nHolmes, Samuel J.,\n\n_Homo erectus_ ,\n\nhomology,\n\n_Homo sapiens_ , 167\u201368\n\nHooton, E. A., 54\u201355, ,\n\nHoover, J. Edgar,\n\nHouse Committee on Immigration and Naturalization,\n\nHoward University,\n\n\"How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?\" (Jensen), 175\u201376\n\nHrdli\u010dka, Ale\u0161, , , ,\n\nHubbard, Ruth,\n\nHubby, Jack,\n\nHulse, Frederick,\n\n_Human Ancestry: From a Genetical Point of View_ (Gates), 131\u201332\n\nhuman diversity, , , ; rethinking, 211\u201312. _See also_ genetic diversity\n\nHuman Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), , 205\u20136\n\nHuman Genome Project, , 202\u20133\n\nHuxley, Aldous, 136\u201337\n\nHuxley, Julian, 112\u201314, , , , 180\u201382\n\nHuxley, Thomas Henry,\n\nimmigration: Americanization and, ; eugenics and, 32\u201333; non-European,\n\nImmigration Restriction League,\n\nINCAR. _See_ International Committee Against Racism\n\n\"Incidence of Disease According to Race\" (Pearl),\n\n\"Individual and Racial Inheritance of Musical Traits\" (Seashore),\n\ninheritance: chromosomal theory of, ; heredity and, ; mechanisms of, ; Mendelianism and, ; physical,\n\n_Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development_ (Galton), 22\u201323, 28\u201329\n\n_Instauration Magazine_ ,\n\nintelligence, 175\u201376,\n\nintelligence testing, , 84\u201385; African Americans and, , ; Jensen and,\n\nInternational Committee Against Racism (INCAR),\n\nInternational Eugenics Congresses, , 45\u201346, ,\n\nInternational HapMap Project, 206\u20137\n\n\"Internationalizing or Universalizing Mental Measurements\" (Brigham),\n\ninterracial relationships, 42\u201343. _See also_ miscegenation\n\nintraspecies diversity,\n\n_IQ and the Meritocracy_ (Herrnstein),\n\nIQ testing. _See_ intelligence testing\n\n_Isis_ ,\n\nJackson, Walter,\n\nJamaica, race-crossing in,\n\nJefferson, Thomas, 4\u20135\n\nJenks, A. E., ,\n\nJensen, Arthur, , 175\u201376\n\nJews: atrocities against, ; Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 and, ; racial differences and,\n\nJim Crow laws, 35\u201336, ; advent of, 59\u201360; resistance to,\n\nJohnson, Albert, , 34\u201335\n\nJohnson, Charles,\n\nJohnson, Roswell Hill, ,\n\nJohnson-Reed Act of 1924, , 32\u201335\n\nJones, Camara,\n\nJordan, H. E., 38\u201339\n\n_Journal of Heredity_ , , ,\n\nKawachi, Ichiro,\n\nKing, Stephen,\n\nkin selection, 186\u201387\n\nKKK. _See_ Ku Klux Klan\n\nKluckhohn, Clyde,\n\nKnight, Jack,\n\nKrieger, Nancy, 212\u201314\n\nKrogman, Wilton M.,\n\nKu Klux Klan (KKK), 41\u201342\n\nLagemann, Ellen,\n\nLaughlin, Harry, , , , , 108\u20139\n\nLaura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial,\n\nLeclerc, Georges-Louis,\n\nLederberg, Joshua,\n\nLee, Catherine,\n\nLee, Philip, 176\u201377\n\nLee, Sandra Soo-Jin,\n\n_The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865\u20131900_ (Dixon),\n\nL\u00e9vi-Strauss, Claude,\n\nLewis, David Levering, , ,\n\nLewontin, Richard, , , , 189\u201399; population genetics and, 197\u201398; race concept legitimacy and,\n\nLillie, Frank,\n\nLindee, M. Susan,\n\nLindsay, Suzanne,\n\nLinnaeus, Carolus, 25\u201326\n\nLivingstone, Frank, 174\u201375\n\nLogan, Rayford,\n\n_London Daily News_ ,\n\n_London Times_ ,\n\n_The Lonely Crowd_ (Riesman),\n\nLorenz, Konrad, 181\u201382\n\nLouverture, Toussaint,\n\nLush, Jay,\n\nlynching,\n\nLynd, Robert S.,\n\nLynn, Richard, 194\u201395\n\nMacLeod, Colin,\n\n_Macmillan's Magazine_ , ,\n\nMalinowski, Bronislaw,\n\nMall, Franklin,\n\n_Man_ ,\n\n_Mankind at the Crossroads_ (East),\n\n_Mankind Evolving_ (Dobzhansky), 172\u201373\n\n_Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race_ (Montagu), 132\u201333, 135\u201336, 211\u201312\n\nMarranos,\n\nMarxism, 193\u201394\n\nMayr, Ernst, , 112\u201313, , ; Coon and, 171\u201372; genetic variation and,\n\nMcCarthy, Joseph,\n\nMcCarty, Maclyn,\n\nMead, Margaret,\n\n\"The Meaninglessness of the Anthropological Conception of Race\" (Montagu),\n\n_Memory of My Life_ (Galton),\n\nMencken, H. L.,\n\nMendel, Gregor,\n\nMendelism: genetic variation and, ; skin color and, 37\u201338; synthesis of,\n\nmental tests,\n\nM\u00e9traux, Alfred, 154\u201357\n\nmigration: from Africa, x; of African Americans, ; race and,\n\nmilitary, desegregation of, 164\u201365\n\nMill, John Stuart,\n\nMiller, Kelly,\n\nMills, C. Wright,\n\nmiscegenation, , ; Davenport and, , 92\u201393; NRC and, 75\u201376. _See also_ antimiscegenation laws; race-crossing\n\nmolecular biology, ix\u2013x, 201\u20132\n\n_Le Monde_ ,\n\nMontagu, Ashley, , , 131\u201337, ; anti-Semitism and, ; Coon and, 173\u201374; race and, 160\u201361; race concept and, ; race concept legitimacy and, 211\u201312; UNESCO and, , 151\u201354, 157\u201358\n\nMorange, Michel,\n\nMorgan, Thomas Hunt, , , ,\n\nMorris, Desmond,\n\n\"Mortality in the Cities\" (Wright),\n\nMorton, Samuel, 4\u20135; polygeny and, ; racial distinctiveness and,\n\nMourant, A. E., 153\u201354\n\nMuller, H. J., ,\n\nMurphy, R. C.,\n\nMurray, Charles,\n\nMyrdal, Gunnar, , 140\u201343,\n\nNAACP. _See_ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People\n\nNational Academy of Sciences (NAS),\n\nNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), , , ,\n\nNational Front, 195\u201396\n\nNational Human Genome Research Institute, ,\n\nNational Institutes of Health (NIH), 209\u201310\n\nNational Research Council (NRC), , ; Committee on Human Migration, ; Committee on Race Characters, 57\u201358, , 66\u201367; Committee on Racial Problems, , , 85\u201386; Committee on the Study of the American Negro, 74\u201377, ; Conference on Racial Differences, 77\u201379; Davenport and, 67\u201368; Division of Anthropology and Psychology, 63\u201364; eugenics and, ; history of, 60\u201361; Joint Commission on Racial Problems, ; miscegenation and, 75\u201376; philanthropy and, 61\u201363; racial differences and, 65\u201366, 88\u201389; racial intermixture and, 67\u201369; research by, 65\u201367\n\nNational Urban League,\n\nnatural history,\n\n_Natural History_ (Leclerc),\n\nnatural selection,\n\n_Nature_ , ,\n\nnature-nurture debate,\n\nNazi racial theory,\n\nNazism: Dobzhansky and, ; rise of,\n\nNeanderthal, x, 167\u201368\n\n_The Negro American Family_ (Du Bois),\n\n_The Negro Church_ (Du Bois),\n\n_The Negro in Business_ (Du Bois),\n\n\"Negro Physique\" (Boas),\n\n\"Negro problem,\" 38\u201339\n\nNelkin, Dorothy,\n\nNelson, Alondra,\n\nNew Deal,\n\n_New York Review of Books_ , 190\u201391\n\n_New York Times_ , ,\n\nNIH. _See_ National Institutes of Health\n\n\"Notes on the Body Form of Man\" (Bean), 53\u201354\n\nNRC. _See_ National Research Council\n\n\"Observations and Queries as to the Effect of Race Mixture on Certain Physical Characteristics\" (Hooton), 54\u201355\n\nOmi, Michael,\n\n_On Human Nature_ (Wilson, E. O.), ,\n\n_On the Natural Variety of Mankind_ (Blumenbach), 27\u201328\n\n\"On the Non-Existence of Human Races\" (Livingstone), 174\u201375\n\n_The Organization Man_ (Whyte),\n\n_The Origin of Races_ (Coon), 167\u201374\n\n_The Origin of Species_ (Darwin, C.),\n\norphanages, ; racial, 86\u201388\n\nOsborn, Frederick, ; UNESCO and,\n\nOsborn, Henry Fairfield, , , ; Davenport and, ; scientific language of race and,\n\nPainter, Nell,\n\nPainter, Theophilus S.,\n\n_The Passing of the Great Race_ (Grant), , 51\u201352,\n\nPearl, Raymond, 67\u201373, ,\n\nPearson, Karl, 16\u201317,\n\n_People_ ,\n\n_Perez v. Lippold_ ,\n\nPeterson, Joseph, , ,\n\nPfeiffer, John,\n\nphenotype,\n\n_The Philadelphia Negro_ (Du Bois),\n\nphilanthropy, 61\u201363\n\nphrenology,\n\n_Phylon_ , ,\n\nPiaget, Jean,\n\nPioneer Fund, , , , ,\n\nPlecker, Walter,\n\n_Plessy v. Ferguson_ ,\n\nPolanyi, Michael,\n\npolygeny, , , , ; rejection of,\n\nPopenoe, Paul, , ,\n\npopulation genetics, ; emergence of, ; Lewontin and, 197\u201398; theoretical,\n\npopulation thinking: Galton and, 112\u201313; typology _versus_ , 80\u201382\n\n\"Possible Metallurgical and Astronomical Approaches to the Problem of Environment _versus_ Ethnic Heredity\" (Shockley), 176\u201377\n\npoverty, 100\u2013101\n\nPowell, Jeffrey,\n\n_The Power Elite_ (Mills),\n\n\"The Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage\" (Hoffman),\n\n\"The Problem of the American Negro\" (Boas),\n\n\"The Problems and Results of Negro Intelligence\" (Peterson),\n\n_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_ , 40\u201341\n\n_Promethean Fire: Reflections in the Origin of Mind_ (Wilson, E. O.),\n\nProvine, William, 37\u201338, , 156\u201357\n\n_Psychology Today_ ,\n\npublic health, 212\u201313\n\npublic schools, segregation in, 139\u201343\n\nPutnam, Carleton, 171\u201372\n\n_Quarterly Review of Biology_ , , , ,\n\nrace: comparisons of, 21\u201322; definition of, by Davenport, 40\u201341; Dobzhansky and, 122\u201323, ; Dunn and, , ; ethnic group compared to, ; etymology of, 27\u201328; eugenic hierarchy of, ; Galton and, 18\u201319; as genetic diversity measure, ; genetics and, ; geographical, ; heredity and, 79\u201380; historicizing, 105\u20139, ; migration and, ; Montagu and, 160\u201361; postsynthesis approach to, ; proposed divisions of, ; relations, with African Americans, 59\u201360; reporting, 209\u201310; scientific language of, ; as social construct, ix, 2\u20135; sociobiology and, 183\u201389; taxonomy of, , ; thinking, ; as trigger word, ; typology and, 173\u201374; UNESCO and, 148\u201359\n\n_Race, Evolution, and Behavior_ (Rushton), 187\u201388\n\n_Race and Reason_ (Putnam),\n\n_Race: A Study in Modern Superstition_ (Barzun), 106\u20139\n\nrace concept: biological nature of, ; criticism of, 105\u20139; Dobzhansky and, 114\u201326; Du Bois on, 99\u2013100; Dunn and, 130\u201331; emerging consensus on, ; heredity and, ; HGDP and, 205\u20136; history of, 1\u20132; legitimacy of, 211\u201312; Montagu and, ; skin color and, ; Wilson, E. O., and,\n\n_The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry_ (UNESCO),\n\nracecraft,\n\n_Racecraft_ (Fields, B. & Fields, K.),\n\nrace-crossing, , , ; Davenport and, 86\u201394; disharmonious,\n\n_Race Crossing Jamaica_ (Davenport & Steggerda), , , , , 89\u201394\n\nrace relations, 59\u201360\n\nrace riots,\n\n_Race: Science and Politics_ (Benedict),\n\n\"The Races of Man\" (Boas), 48\u201349\n\n_The Races of Man_ (Deniker),\n\n_Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro_ (Hoffman), , 100\u2013101\n\nracial classifications,\n\nracial differences, ; assumptions about, ; blood and, ; climatological theory of, ; Du Bois and, ; Galton on, ; measurement of, 64\u201365; NRC and, 65\u201366, 88\u201389; pathology and, ; quantitative data on, ; racial orphanages and, 86\u201388. _See also_ black-white differences\n\nracial geometry,\n\nracial hybridization. _See_ race-crossing\n\nracial hygiene, 108\u20139\n\nRacial Integrity Act of 1924,\n\nracial intermixture, 67\u201369; effects of, 72\u201373\n\nracial orphanages, 86\u201388\n\nracial science: African Americans and, ; attacks on, 103\u20134; decline of, ; Du Bois and, ; Grant and, ; historiography on, ; legitimacy of, ; Pearl and, ; philanthropy and, 61\u201363; Pioneer Fund and, ; response to,\n\nracism: Du Bois and, ; East and, ; scientific, 69\u201370, 157\u201358; scientific evidence and, ; sociobiology and, 185\u201386, 195\u201396; Stern and, 146\u201347\n\n_Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature_ ,\n\nReardon, Jenny, 5\u20136,\n\nRebbeck, Timothy,\n\n_The Retreat of Scientific Racism_ (Barkan),\n\nReynolds, Vernon, 188\u201389\n\nRiesman, David,\n\nRisch, Neil,\n\n_The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy_ (Stoddard), 41\u201342\n\nr\/K selection,\n\nRobertson, Wilmot,\n\nRobinson, Dean,\n\nRockefeller Foundation, 61\u201363\n\n\"The Role of Social Selection in the Establishment of Physical Type\" (Herskovits),\n\nRomm, H. J.,\n\nRosenberg, Charles,\n\nRoyal Anthropological Institute,\n\nRoyal Geographic Society,\n\nRuse, Michael,\n\nRushton, J. Philippe, 187\u201389\n\nSahlins, Marshall,\n\nSarkar, Sahotra,\n\n_Saturday Review_ ,\n\nSave the Redwoods League,\n\nSchultz, A. H.,\n\n_Science_ , 91\u201392, ,\n\nScience for the People, 190\u201392\n\n_Science for the People_ ,\n\n_Scientific American_ , 144\u201346,\n\nscientific authority, challenges to, 162\u201363\n\n_Scientific Monthly_ , , 123\u201325\n\n\"The Search for Specific African Body Features\" (Todd),\n\nSeashore, Carl E., ,\n\nSecond International Congress of Eugenics, , 45\u201346,\n\nSegerstr\u00e5le, Ullica,\n\nsegregation: Davenport and, ; eugenics and, ; genetics and, ; Mendelian, ; in public schools, 139\u201343; as social adaptation,\n\nself-identified race or ethnicity (SIRE),\n\n_The Selfish Gene_ (Dawkins), 181\u201382\n\nsemantic deference,\n\nseparatism,\n\nShapiro, Harry,\n\nShockley, William, 176\u201377, 196\u201397\n\nsickle-cell trait,\n\nSilvers, Robert,\n\nSimpson, George G., , ,\n\nSIRE. _See_ self-identified race or ethnicity\n\nskin color: heredity of, 40\u201341; Mendelism and, 37\u201338; race concept and,\n\nslavery,\n\nSmedley, Audrey,\n\nSmocovitis, V. B.,\n\nSnow, C. P.,\n\nSocial Darwinism, ,\n\n_Social Forces_ ,\n\nsocialism,\n\nsociality,\n\nsocial justice, 183\u201384\n\nsocial science, , 160\u201362\n\nSocial Science Research Council (SSRC),\n\nsociobiology: ascent of, 180\u201383; debates, 189\u2013200; genetics and, ; intelligence and, ; race and, 183\u201389; racism and, 185\u201386, 195\u201396; typology and,\n\n\"The Sociobiology of Nationalism\" (Lynn),\n\n_Sociobiology: The New Synthesis_ (Wilson, E. O.), 180\u201383, 189\u2013200\n\n_The Souls of Black Folk_ (Du Bois),\n\nSSRC. _See_ Social Science Research Council\n\nStanton, William,\n\nStation for Experimental Evolution,\n\nstatistics,\n\nSteggerda, Morris, , , , , 89\u201394\n\nsterilization laws,\n\nStern, Curt, , , 143\u201348,\n\nStoddard, Lothrop, , 41\u201342, 103\u20134\n\nStratton, G. M., 75\u201376\n\nStrauss, William L., Jr.,\n\nSturtevant, Alfred,\n\nSvirsky, Leon,\n\n_Systema Naturae_ (Linnaeus), 25\u201326\n\n_Systematics and the Origin of Species_ (Mayr),\n\nTalented Tenth,\n\ntaxonomy, 25\u201326; evolutionary synthesis and, ; of race, ,\n\n_Tempo and Mode in Evolution_ (Simpson),\n\nTerry, Robert J., 75\u201376, 85\u201386, 89\u201390\n\n_Them_ (film),\n\n_The Thing from Another World_ (film),\n\nTodd, T. Wingate, ,\n\nTruman, Harry, 164\u201365\n\nTuskegee Experiments,\n\nTuskegee Institute,\n\n\"Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,\" ,\n\n\"The Two Cultures\" (Snow),\n\ntypology: evolutionary synthesis and, 112\u201314; genetic diversity research and, 207\u20138; population thinking _versus_ , 80\u201382; race and, 173\u201374; sociobiology and,\n\n\"Understanding the Role of Genomics in Health Disparities: Toward a New Research Agenda,\"\n\nUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), , 148\u201359\n\nUniversity of Heidelberg, 108\u20139\n\nUniversity of Texas, Austin, 50\u201351\n\nUniversity of Wisconsin, 61\u201362\n\nurbanization,\n\nvan den Berghe, Pierre, 186\u201387\n\nVenter, Craig, 203\u20134, ,\n\nVerrall, Richard,\n\nVindija Cave, x\n\nVine, Ian, 188\u201389\n\nWailoo, Keith,\n\nWallace, Alfred Russel,\n\nWallace, George,\n\nWalters, Ronald,\n\nWarburg, Felix,\n\nWarren, Earl, 139\u201340\n\nWashburn, Sherwood, 155\u201356\n\nWashington, Booker T.,\n\nWatson, James,\n\n_We Europeans_ (Huxley, J.),\n\nWest-Eberhard, Mary Jane,\n\n_The Whispering Within_ (Barash), 181\u201382\n\nWhite, Walter, ,\n\n_White America_ (Cox),\n\nwhite ancestry, of African Americans,\n\nWhite House Office of Management and Budget,\n\nwhiteness,\n\n\"Why Do People Differ?\" (Stern),\n\nWhyte, William,\n\nWildlife Conservation Society,\n\nWilkins, Maurice,\n\nWillcox, W. F.,\n\nWilson, Edward Osborne, 180\u201383; criticism of, 189\u2013200; kin selection and, 186\u201387; race concept and,\n\nWilson, Woodrow, ,\n\nWinant, Howard,\n\nWissler, Clark, , , 72\u201373, , ; Barzun and,\n\nWoodworth, Robert S., , ,\n\n_A World View on Race_ (Bunche),\n\nWright, R. R.,\n\nWright, Sewell, , , , 117\u201318, , ; genetic variation and,\n\nxenophobia, ,\n\n_Yale Review_ ,\n\nYerkes, Robert M., , ,\n\nZoological Society of London, \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n**Praise for**  \nTHE FARMSTEAD CREAMERY ADVISOR\n\n\"Where there's a will, there's a 'whey.' For both the dreamer and those who've already set their sights on the beauty of being a cheesemaker, here is all the information to get started in business and survive. Caldwell's first-hand knowledge takes the reader from their fledgling idea to selling their finished product, and is presented in an easy-to-understand format. Watch out\u2014you may start a venture that just might succeed! This is a brilliant how-to guide, and just what we stewards and entrepreneurs need during a time when our farmland must be saved.\"\n\n\u2014RICKI CARROLL, owner of cheesemaking.com\n\n\"This delightful book is a road map to success for aspiring farmstead cheesemakers. It will help them plan, implement, and develop their new businesses. Passionate stories of experience are revealed, giving great insight into becoming a sustainable, conscientious, and entrepreneurial cheesemaker\u2014including common pitfalls and how best to avoid them. It's about time someone writes such a comprehensive guide! I will recommend this book to every aspiring cheesemaker I know. We would have saved numerous hours and dollars with such an invaluable resource.\"\n\n\u2014DAVID GREMMELS, President of The American Cheese Society;  \nco-owner of Rogue Creamery\n\n\" _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ is thorough, eloquent, and generous\u2014a must-have book for anyone considering establishing a creamery. Each point is covered in detail: from the fundamental reasons for going into the business to begin with, to the design of the make room, all the way to the often-neglected exit strategy. This is a good business book for any-sized dairy.\"\n\n\u2014MAX McCALMAN, author of _Mastering Cheese:_  \n _Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maitre Fromager_\n\n\" _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ is an authoritative, yet friendly and approachable, guide to the process of establishing a farmstead creamery. Simply a must-have for anyone who wants to realize their dream of making and selling cheese.\"\n\n\u2014TAMI PARR, author of _Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest_\n\n\"Here's a nuts-and-bolts, no-nonsense, and essential guide for anyone curious about starting a farmstead dairy. Who better to explain the intricacies and pitfalls of the cheesemaking business than a true practitioner\u2014a woman with a lifetime of experience caring for cows and goats.\"\n\n\u2014BRAD KESSLER, author of _Goat Song: A Seasonal Life,_  \n _A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese_\n\n\"There have been many books written, and classes given, on the subject of cheesemaking, but primarily from the process-oriented view. Little has been written about how to get started, or the answer to, \"What are we up against here?\" _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ fills in those blanks. One of the best pieces of advice in this book is for cheesemakers to build a base foundation beginning with proper business management. No matter how good the cheese, or how much you love your animals, everything depends upon a good business plan to eventually turn a profit. Especially useful, in addition, is Caldwell's chapter on developing an aging space in light of increasing energy costs. This has been a not-so-well-thought-out part of many cheesemaking projects, and could be some of the most important information in this book. To be sure, Gianaclis Caldwell asks the big questions that need to be considered before beginning to develop such a project; it's a true reality check every aspiring cheesemaker needs. In fact, this book should be in all their libraries.\"\n\n\u2014JIM WALLACE, cheesemaking.com\n**THE**  \n **FARMSTEAD**  \n **CREAMERY**  \n **ADVISOR**\n\n**THE**  \n **FARMSTEAD**  \n **CREAMERY**  \n **ADVISOR**\n\n**THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO BUILDING**  \n **AND RUNNING A SMALL, FARM-BASED**  \n **CHEESE BUSINESS**\n\n**GIANACLIS CALDWELL**\n\nCHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING   \nWHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VERMONT\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2010 by Gianaclis Caldwell.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may   \nbe transmitted or reproduced in any form by   \nany means without permission in writing   \nfrom the publisher.\n\nProject Manager: Emily Foote   \nDevelopmental Editor: Benjamin Watson   \nCopy Editor: Lucy Gardner Carson   \nProofreader: Nancy Ringer   \nDesigner: Peter Holm, Sterling Hill Productions\n\nAll photographs by Gianaclis Caldwell unless otherwise credited.\n\nPrinted in the United States of America   \nFirst printing May, 2010\n\n**Our Commitment to Green Publishing**  \nChelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because we use recycled paper, and we hope you'll agree that it's worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative (www.greenpressinitiative.org), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world's endangered forests and conserve natural resources.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   \nCaldwell, Gianaclis, 1961-  \nThe farmstead creamery advisor : the complete guide to building and   \nrunning a small, farm-based cheese business \/ Gianaclis Caldwell.  \np. cm.  \nIncludes bibliographical references.  \neBook ISBN: 978-1-60358-283-4  \n1. Cheesemaking. 2. Cheese industry. I. Title.\n\nSF271.C35 2010   \n637'.3068--dc22\n\n2010010716\n\nChelsea Green Publishing Company   \nPost Office Box 428   \nWhite River Junction, VT 05001   \n(802) 295-6300   \nwww.chelseagreen.com\n\nCONTENTS\n\n**Foreword**\n\n**Preface**\n\n**Acknowledgments**\n\n**Introduction**\n\n**PART I: _Things to Consider Before Taking the Leap_ **\n\n**1** What's So Special about Farmstead Cheese?\n\n**2** Making It Official\n\n**PART II: _Getting Down to Business_**\n\n**3** Sizing Up the Market\n\n**4** Your Business Plan and Company Structure\n\n**5** Production Costs and Issues\n\n**6** Creative Financing\n\n**PART III: _Designing the Farmstead Creamery_**\n\n**7** Infrastructure and Efficiency\n\n**8** The Milking Parlor and Milkhouse\n\n**9** Cheese Central: The Make Room\n\n**10** Aging Rooms, Cellars, and Caves\n\n[**11** Accessory Rooms\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c23_r1.html#Anch0077)\n\n**PART IV: _Long-Term Survival Guide_ **\n\n**12** Safety: Why \"It Hasn't Killed Anyone Yet\" Isn't Good Enough!\n\n**13** Increasing Your Bottom Line: Classes, Agri-tourism, Additional Products\n\n[**14** Keeping the Romance Alive: Tips for Re-Energizing\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c27_r1.html#Anch0157)\n\n**Appendices**\n\nA. Resources\n\nB. Floor Plans\n\nC. Milk and Cheese Quality Tests and Parameters\n\nD. Sample Milk Purchase Agreement\n\n**Notes\/References**\n\n**About the Author**\n**Foreword**\n\nThe renaissance of artisan cheese and other foods continues to develop and spread throughout the United States. Today, growing numbers of craft producers offer us a veritable cornucopia of delicious and sophisticated food products, coupled with their strong commitment to the best environmental practices and fair compensation for farmers and workers. If you enjoy wonderful handmade cheese; world-class beer, wine, hard cider, or spirits; superior-tasting bacon, ham, and sausage; pasture-raised fresh meats and poultry; and organic and sustainably grown fruit and vegetables, then twenty-first-century America is one of the best places in the world to savor these and many more outstanding foods.\n\nDuring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we Americans celebrated our farmers for their amazing skills\u2014tractor and equipment repair, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, local weather wisdom, and good business sense\u2014as well as for their perseverance, solid democratic values, and plain old-fashioned work ethic. In the years after World War II, however, we transformed agriculture and food production from this human scale to an industrial one in which the farmer's need for diverse skills was supplanted by technology and corporate values.\n\nThe damage of this paradigm shift was serious, and it is still being felt today; yet, thankfully, all was not lost. Beginning in the 1970s, American winemakers\u2014some old-timers and a lot of young Turks\u2014took the world by storm and established regions like California's Napa and Sonoma valleys as serious places for winemaking. Following the wine community, craft and home brewers stepped forward and expanded beer culture, with the number of U.S. breweries increasing from a mere forty-four companies in 1980 to 1,302 by 1997. In the beverage sector alone, this proliferation has afforded American consumers choices far beyond anyone's capacity to enjoy them all!\n\nThis most recent decade, filled with growth, success, and lessons learned, has assured small business owners and entrepreneurs of continued expansion and opportunity in the agriculture and food sectors. New food businesses appear overnight\u2014a reflection of a national trend toward sustainable agriculture, a desire to know where our food comes from, and a thirst for unique aromas, flavors, and textures. Even in the midst of the current global recession, many consumers demand high-quality foods and are willing to pay a premium for them. More and more chefs and restaurants are passionately devoted to tasty and nutritious\u2014often local\u2014foods, while the local and national media direct their spotlights both on great places to eat and on the people who supply them. Major national food purveyors and small retailers alike are retooling their product lines, renovating buildings to create space for organic items, and teaching staff how to educate patrons about a constantly changing selection of foods.\n\nBeyond the numbers of new food artisans, let's acknowledge their artistry and commitment to excellence, to consistently high-quality beverages and foods. These individuals have resurrected traditional skills, added ideas gleaned from European practices, and mixed them with American ingenuity and innovation to create great products. Today, amplified through the Internet and social media connections, we can access ideas, information, and goods. It is a brave new world in agriculture and food, but not one that's unfamiliar or unwelcome to us. All of these factors\u2014from taste to sustainability to the media\u2014contribute to a powerful public image that attracts the attention of many more people who want to become part of this new revolution. Retirees, second-career individuals, and even some new college graduates are expressing a strong interest in farming or making artisan foods, in connecting with land and animals, and in contributing to healthier communities through taste and flavor.\n\nArtisan cheesemaking follows a similar trajectory. In 1990, approximately 75 small-scale cheese companies existed; a decade later, there were 155 producers. By 2006 I had documented no fewer than 345 artisan cheesemakers, and I estimate that in 2009 the country had more than 425 small cheese companies. Likewise, in the same year the number of craft breweries hovered around 1,500, while dozens of new cured meat producers had joined the ranks of those making traditional bacon and country ham and European-style cured meats.\n\nSince 2000, a number of authors have documented the artisan cheese movement; their books have informed and inspired readers by relating stories about cheesemakers\u2014their histories, their relationships to the land and to animals, and the value of local products to their communities. In my opinion, these artisan cheesemakers have helped to define a sense of place through taste, and they have made important contributions to the future of America's working landscape. They represent a different approach to the country's agriculture, a microcosm of significant contemporary changes that may shape tomorrow's food system.\n\nThrough our senses, we experience the links between ecology, economy, people, community, and culture. In a world often characterized by homogenized, standardized foods, artisan cheese represents something distinctive about an area. For cheesemakers, the key is milk: its flavors, color, butterfat, protein, and other elements depend upon myriad factors. Consider for a moment how a whole host of variables\u2014climate and water, geology and soil; geomorphology (the \"lay of the land\") and pasture; the distinctive breed of dairy animals, what they eat and their care; the season and time of day for milking\u2014adds complexity to the quality and character of milk. The French describe the \"taste of place\" as _terroir,_ all the unique ingredients connected to land and community that distinguish such wines as a Haut Brion from a Latour, a Pomerol from a St. Emilion.\n\nArtisan cheesemaking exemplifies the romance and the reality, the art and the science, of animal husbandry, as well as a devotion to creating distinctive and consistently high-quality products. To create great cheese requires remarkable skills, from scientific and technical matters to business sense and savvy marketing; it also involves an intimate knowledge and understanding of animals, milk, microbiological cultures, _affinage_ (cheese aging), hygiene, and sanitation. In short, cheesemaking presents a steep learning curve that even in the best of circumstances might mean not making a profit!\n\nUndoubtedly, some people are attracted to cheesemaking by a vision of bucolic fields, healthy animals, and unique, breakthrough products; yet the reality is generally far from romantic. Today, a potential cheesemaker faces a series of challenges to start up and establish a successful enterprise. Beyond the interplay between artistry and science\u2014creating distinctive cheese styles, while understanding the subtle changes occurring daily in your vat\u2014a prospective cheesemaker must contend with a diverse array of complex needs. From legal requirements and permits to marketing and sales, from facilities design and construction to environmental considerations, a small cheese business must steer through a sometimes exhausting array of tasks.\n\nGianaclis Caldwell, herself a successful artisan cheesemaker, searched for answers and guides to meet such challenges and demands when she and her husband Vern decided to set up their creamery. She found such books as Ricki Carroll's _Home Cheese Making_ and Margaret Morris's _The Cheesemaker's Manual,_ which provide some of the practical and technical knowledge needed to create distinctive, consistently high-quality cheese. But no blueprint or map existed to navigate the expensive shoals of permits, the whirlpool of facilities design and construction, or environmental reefs.\n\n_The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ sets out to fill this critical need. Regardless of size, ambition, or available resources, the stakes are high for a potential cheesemaker. Beyond the recommendation to learn as much as possible about actual cheesemaking from organizations like CalPoly, Wisconsin's Center of Dairy Research, or the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont, this book steps forward as _the essential_ instruction book for new and prospective artisan cheese producers. Gianaclis Caldwell covers all the bases from nascent idea to final product: from decisions about product type to permits and construction; hygiene and sanitation; marketing, distribution, and sales; even labels and logos for your cheeses.\n\nThe maturation of the artisan cheese community creates both opportunities and increasing competition. The increasing number of new producers means that there are colleagues with whom to share ideas, ask questions, commiserate, and celebrate successes. On the other hand, with so many artisans at work, often making a variety of cheeses, competition is stiff\u2014and the marketplace becomes less and less forgiving of inconsistency. As food-borne illnesses occur more frequently, wholesalers and retailers demand greater attention to production practices.\n\nFarming, food production, retailing, and restaurants are among the nation's most challenging businesses to launch and sustain successfully. This book is designed to assist a prospective cheesemaker: to be your constant guide, as well as a voice of reason and reassurance that whispers, \"The challenges you face are not new; you do not need to re-invent the wheel.\" By sharing her own story, as well as the experience of other well-known American artisan cheesemakers, Gianaclis invites you to a common kitchen table of knowledge, lessons learned through trial and error, and tested ideas and practices. Beyond artistic expression, in which Pholia Farm stands among the best, this book provides the substance to create a successful, sustainable enterprise . . . and perhaps avoid a few pitfalls along the way.\n\nCongratulations to Gianaclis for making such an important contribution to the future of American artisan cheese and hopefully, in the long run, the nation's agriculture.\n\nJEFFREY P. ROBERTS   \nauthor of _Atlas of American Artisan Cheese_  \nMontpelier, Vermont   \nJanuary 2010 \n**Preface**\n\nFirst, a confession: Becoming a cheesemaker was never a dream of mine.\n\nGrowing up, I had no idea that I would one day return to the farm, along with my husband of more than a quarter century and our daughters, to build a small goat dairy. Life often takes you on a journey with an unknown destination. Finding your dream is sometimes as simple as holding on and letting the current lead you to it.\n\nMy sister and I were raised with the unspoken\u2014but almost completely enforced\u2014motto of _\"If we can't grow it, we can't eat it.\"_ Our family gardened, canned and froze produce, milked cows, and raised cattle for beef and chickens for eggs. We churned butter and made a Greek-style drained yogurt (my mother reports that as a child I would gorge upon this until I was almost sick). My mom tried her hand at aged cheeses too, but there just weren't the information or supplies available back then to help the home cheesemaker learn the ropes, and also there was no one around from the previous generation to pass along the wisdom.\n\nI was a cowgirl: I had my two 4-H Jersey cows, Daffodil and Butterscotch. I sold their milk as a teenager, showed them at the fair, and later became a dairy cattle 4-H leader\u2014but still I had no thoughts of making cheese. I became a licensed practical nurse, not because I wanted to (I wanted to be an artist) but because that was where the jobs were. I tried writing fiction but found that my own talents paled in comparison to the abilities of the authors I loved to read. Eventually, in the late 1980s, I was able to pursue the fine arts of painting and printmaking and take those to what, for me personally, was the apex of expression.\n\nDuring these years of nursing and printmaking, Vern and I traveled wherever his career in the Marine Corps led us. My cows traveled with me, in a sense\u2014but now they were a herd of porcelain and china mementos given to me by friends and family who understood my love of bovines. We had a horse or two, and often a solitary goat for their companion. I look back on these goats with an apology for not appreciating at the time their uniqueness, both as a species and as individuals. But back then my heart was still with the four-teaters.\n\nAt Vern's last duty station with the USMC, we finally owned a piece of property on which we could have a few farm animals. Chickens came first. I have always felt that having a few chickens immediately grounds one to the planet\u2014a circle of life in miniature: you feed them, they feed you. Not to mention, chickens are a hoot!\n\nAuthor at age fourteen showing her first cow, Daffodil, at the county 4-H fair, 1976.\n\nFinally I started thinking about \"something to milk.\" I wanted our family to have a source of better-quality food. I wanted to not have to use store-bought, factory-farmed milk to make our yogurt. So I went cow shopping. However, the reality of their size, their impact on the land, and the volume of\u2014how shall I say it\u2014poop started to change the way I saw my future with the species.\n\nA neighbor at the time gave me an article from _Mother Earth News_ that discussed dairy goats. Now, I had tasted bad goat milk. I had smelled bucks. I didn't think of myself as a goat person. But our youngest daughter wanted to be involved with this milking thing we were embarking on, and the idea of her, at age eight, trying to lead a big cow around was not inspiring. The article mentioned a goat breed that I had not known in my 4-H days, the Nigerian Dwarf dairy goat. They were cute, they were colorful, and best of all, they were little. Amelia was hooked, I was intrigued. The current of our life had shifted.\n\nI started learning how to make cheese before the goats arrived. Using Ricki Carroll's venerable book _Home Cheese Making,_ I wowed myself and our friends by making fromage blanc and quick mozzarella. The magic of those first batches is still fresh in my memory.\n\nAnd then we fell in love with the goats.\n\nA couple of years later Vern was getting close to retiring from the Marine Corps. We knew we could move back home to rural southern Oregon and live on part of my family's original farmland. But what kind of work could Vern find that would both be fulfilling for him and allow me to stay at home, make cheese, ride the horses, and \"do art\"? By this time I was making hard cheeses, teaching some beginning classes, and having a ball. Vern had always been a cheese nut and a lover of all dairy products, so he had no complaints. Amelia and our older daughter, Phoebe, didn't seem to mind helping devour the spoils of my labor, either. Amelia and I had an idea: We could move back to Oregon and start a little cheese dairy. Vern was all for it.\n\nBarn at Pholia Farm.\n\nWe were swept up by the intensity of the venture and have been holding on ever since\u2014sometimes thrilled, sometimes wanting to jump ship, but for the most part amazed and fulfilled.\n\nIn the process of writing this book I have satisfied some of my own cravings, for knowledge and for expressing myself through writing. Some questions that we still had about the business after all these years have been answered, and other new ones have been raised. I hope the wisdom and knowledge shared with me for this book by cheesemakers from across the country will help those whose journey to cheesemaking is just beginning, and even those of us who are still on board and enjoying the ride.\n\nBon voyage!\n\n_\"I may not have gone where I intended to go,_  \n _but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.\"_  \n\u2014Douglas Adams, 1952\u20132001\n**Acknowledgments**\n\nThank you to my dear, longtime friend Christine DeMont; to good friend, author, and cheese advocate par excellence Tami Parr; and to my super-supportive husband, Vern, for the much-needed encouragement, editing, support, and advice. To my youngest daughter, Amelia: Thank you for pitching in with extra milking and goat chores so I could spend evenings writing and take several jaunts across the country to visit other farmstead creameries. When you are working on your book, I will do the same!\n\nThank you to the cheesemakers who allowed me to pester them with questions and\/or visits: Alyce Birchenough and Doug Wolbert, **Sweet Home Farm** , Alabama; Kelli and Anthony Estrella, **Estrella Family Creamery** , Washington; Jan and Larry Neilson, **Fraga Farm** , Oregon; Marjorie Susman and Marion Pollack, **Orb Weaver Farm** , Vermont; Pat Morford, **River's Edge Ch\u00e8vre** , Oregon; Brad and Meg Gregory, **Black Sheep Creamery** , Washington; Evin Evans, **Split Creek Dairy** , South Carolina; Leslie Cooperband, **Prairie Fruits** **Farm** , Illinois; Robin Clouser, **Mama Terra Micro Creamery** , Oregon; Walter and Liz Nicolau, **Nicolau Farms** , California; Laurie and Terry Carlson, **Fairview** **Farm** , Oregon; Jennifer Lynn Bice, **Redwood Hill Farm** , California; Rhonda Gothberg, **Gothberg Farms** , Washington; Gayle Tanner, **Bonnie Blue Farm** , Tennessee; Michael Lee, **Twig Farm** , Vermont; Laini Fondiller and Barry Shaw, **Lazy Lady Farm** , Vermont; Willow Smart and David Phinney, **Willow Hill** **Farm** , Vermont; Brian Futhey, **Stone Meadow Farm** , Pennsylvania; Linda and Larry Faillace, **Three Shepherds** , Vermont; Willi Lehner, **Bleu Mont Dairy** , Wisconsin; Paul and Kathy Obringer, **Ancient Heritage Dairy** , Oregon; David and Kathryn Heininger, **Black Mesa Ranch** , Arizona; Angela Miller, **Consider** **Bardwell Farm** , Vermont and to all of the other cheesemakers whose lives and cheese have inspired and influenced my own cheesemaking and writing.\n\nI am very grateful to the following experts who reviewed pertinent chapters for technical accuracy: Dr. Lisbeth Goddick, **Oregon State University** ; Paul Hamby, **Hamby Dairy Supply** ; and Peter Dixon, **Dairy Foods Consulting**.\n\nAnd last, thank you to all those who have worked for years to help small chee-semakers find their way, including Vicki Dunaway, author, editor, and publisher of the quarterly publication **_CreamLine_** and the **Small Dairy** website (www.smalldairy.com); Peter Dixon, publisher of the **_Farmstead Cheesemaking_** periodical, consultant, and teacher; and Ricki Carroll, **New England Cheesemaking** **Supply** , pioneering cheesemaking author and supplier\/resource.\n\nAnd finally, one more thank you, to everyone at Chelsea Green Publishing. While this was my first experience working with a publisher, I cannot imagine it getting any better. Their efforts, enthusiasm, and engagement made it obvious that each book they produce is as important to them as it is to its author.\n**Introduction**\n\nThere are many paths to the career of farmstead cheesemaker. Some of us simply seek a return to the farm and the \"simple\" life; others have found fulfillment in making pure, artistic cheeses; still others are seeking ways to make their animal hobby pay for itself. However you have arrived at this point\u2014where the business of farmstead cheese sounds appealing\u2014this book was written with you in mind.\n\nWhen we at Pholia Farm were going through the process of designing our small creamery, it was a near impossible challenge to find the resources that would guide us in the right direction. In fact, like so many other cheesemakers, many of our correct choices were made only after making incorrect, often costly decisions. While the logical place to start looking for answers is with other successful cheesemakers, the reality of their busy lives often leaves them too busy to support the frequent requests for mentoring. And that's where this book fits in. _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ leans heavily upon the shared wisdom of these experienced farmer-cheesemakers to provide a valuable knowledge base for both aspiring as well as established cheesemakers.\n\nLet me tell you first what this book will _not_ do: It will not teach you how to make cheese or how to manage dairy animals\u2014that information is thoroughly covered by other books and resources (many of which are listed in the back of this book). I see the business of cheesemaking as a triangle, with one side representing cheesemaking; the other side, animal husbandry; and the base of the triangle, business. Without a strong and stable base, these other skills will collapse under the pressure of the free enterprise universe. _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ will help guide you through all the aspects that are involved in getting started as a commercial farmstead producer\u2014from designs and floor plans, permitting and regulations, and equipment and setup to marketing and sales, and even saving money through efficient use of energy and time.\n\nPart 1, \"Things to Consider Before Taking the Leap,\" begins with a brief history of artisan cheesemaking in the United States, to give you some appreciation for the amazing growth in the industry in just the past three decades. The second chapter provides an overview of some of the important issues you will want to address early on in your process, including zoning, permits, and a slightly tongue-in-cheek \"suitability quiz.\"\n\nIn part 2, \"Getting Down to Business,\" we'll take an in-depth look at everything the farmstead cheesemaker should know about such topics as marketing, business plans and structure, production costs and issues (including insurance, labor, and product loss), and how to finance your operation.\n\nPart 3, \"Designing the Farmstead Creamery,\" is the heart of the book. It begins with an overview of infrastructure and efficiency choices that you should be aware of throughout the entire design process. Then it covers in detail the main rooms of the farmstead creamery\u2014milking parlor, milkhouse, and make room\u2014from the standpoints of design, construction, regulatory issues, and equipment options. Finally, aging rooms, cellars, and caves, as well as other accessory rooms you might want in your creamery, are discussed. This entire section is sprinkled with pertinent tips and examples from other cheesemakers.\n\nPart 4, \"Long-Term Survival Guide,\" begins with an approachable look at food safety and how the small cheesemaker can implement a workable quality control program. Then we'll talk about some of the myriad options that exist for increasing your financial bottom line, including agri-tourism, classes, and such products as fluid milk and meat. The section ends with a chapter whose subject is near and dear to me: sustaining your passion for the job\u2014a topic that I feel is often under-emphasized, but one that is incredibly important if you are to be successful over the long haul.\n\nFinally, the appendices contain some useful additional material for the home and commercial farmer-cheesemaker: a list of resources; several floor plans (including a small, home dairy plan); milk and cheese quality information; and a sample milk purchase agreement.\n\nWhile the number of people building and starting farmstead creameries continues to rise, the number of people leaving the field\u2014often after an all-too-brief career\u2014is also increasing. My goal in writing this book is to provide a guide filled with practical information and tools to help you create and sustain the best possible business and long-term future as a farmstead cheesemaker.\n**[\n\nPART I  \nTHINGS TO CONSIDER   \nBEFORE TAKING THE LEAP\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6127)**\n\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[What's So Special   \nabout Farmstead Cheese?](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6197)**\n\nThe United States is experiencing a food-quality renaissance. An increase in the number of farmers' markets and \"eat local\" campaigns, a growing awareness of food quality, and a desire to appreciate the story behind the product are all influencing the way Americans are buying and consuming food. While we are still largely a nation of fast-food addicts and all-you-can-eat buffet aficionados, more and more people today are starting to care less about the size of the serving than about the quality and story of its ingredients. This awakening is not limited to those who can afford the luxury of finer foods. It extends\u2014and indeed originates\u2014from a basic need to reconnect with health, history, and the awareness of nutrition's role in our very existence.\n\n**The History of Cheesemaking in the United States**\n\nBernard Nantet, in his book _Cheeses of the World,_ maintains that the United States, unlike Europe, does not have a strong tradition of artisan cheesemaking. It could be argued that it is this lack of an embedded culinary-cultural background, in part, that allowed the unfettered mechanization that all but extinguished the manufacture of handcrafted artisan cheeses in the U.S. by the mid-1900s. The current revival, which began in earnest in the late 1970s, occurred thanks to a combination of factors that increased the American public's appreciation not only of food but also of the way of life that the farmer-cheesemaker leads.\n\n**Rise and Fall**\n\nAlthough goats, sheep, and cows traveled to the Antilles (Caribbean islands) with Christopher Columbus in the late 1400s, it wasn't until the early 1600s that milk cows, and along with them cheesemaking, arrived at European settlements on the shores of what is now the United States of America. Cheeses were part of the provisions stocked on board ships traveling to the Americas, and as with all foods packed for the difficult voyages, cheese was a sustenance food, not a luxury. Cheese, both on board the ships and in the new settlements, was simply the best way to preserve excess milk and extend the availability of a valuable food.\n\nEuropean immigrants adapted to the hardships of life in the New World while continuing to practice the food traditions of their native cultures. Over time and through continued waves of immigration, cheese produced in America gradually began to reflect regional influences: In the northeast part of the country, an English influence created an early Cheddar industry; in Wisconsin, Swiss and Danish traditions included Gouda and alpine styles; and in California and the West, Spanish and French cultures influenced the kinds of cheeses made there, including the development of an American original, Monterey Jack cheese. By the mid-1800s most rural families had a milk cow or goats for dairy, meat, and by-products. Cheese was produced on the farm or at home, and cheesemaking was a normal part of a homemaker's repertoire. The seeds of change, for all of agriculture and eating, came with the American Industrial Revolution in the 1850s. Mechanization increased the ability of farmers to grow more feed, raise more animals, and subsequently harvest ever-increasing quantities of milk. For the cheesemaker, equipment could be manufactured to process larger volumes of milk into cheese to feed a growing population.\n\nIn the 1840s a Wisconsin man named James Picket is believed to have been the first farmer to make cheese from the milk of not only his own animals, but a neighbor's cows as well. This new concept in dairying was taken a step further in 1851 when the first \"modern\" cheese factory was built by Jesse Williams in Oneida, New York. Williams's factory is believed to have been the first cheese plant to pool milk from multiple farmers and complete the entire process of cheese making in a commercial facility. Other factories quickly sprang up throughout the country. By 1880 there were 3,923 factories nationwide, with a production volume of 216 million pounds of cheese. The family cow was on her way out of the picture.\n\nFamily cow being milked, early twentieth century.\n\nBy the 1920s cheese production had reached 418 million pounds, with most of this still occurring in what would be, by today's standards, small to moderate-size facilities processing milk from only local dairies as well as their own milk. By the 1930s cow's-milk cheeses similar in style to most major European cheeses were being made at the industrial level.\n\nThe early part of the 1900s also saw the birth and infancy of what would become the modern-day super-mega-one-stop grocery store. Previously, shopping had been done at specialized stores\u2014the butcher, the baker, the green grocer. But by 1910 many stores began carrying multiple specialty foods under one roof. This consolidation of products led to the building of ever-larger stores, the development of chain stores, and the need for centralized distribution. The competitive drive to promote the cheapness and value of one supermarket over another quickly followed. These factors all contributed to the impetus to produce cheese in greater volume and in the most cost-effective manner possible. Americans began to compromise quality for pocketbook \"value.\"\n\n**THE VELLA FAMILY**\n\nTom Vella founded Vella Cheese in 1931 in Sonoma, California, with a commitment to local dairymen. His creamery helped many small dairy farms stay in business during both the Depression and World War II. Vella's successful efforts extended beyond Sonoma to southern Oregon, where he started the Rogue Creamery in the 1930s. Both the Rogue Creamery (now owned by Cary Bryant and David Gremmels) and Vella Cheese (owned by Tom Vella's son, Ignazio) continue today with a focus on local sustainability as well as on the creation of artisan cheeses that are rooted in tradition.\n\nThe Great Depression of the 1930s brought further woes to the small producer. While many small dairies folded under the economic strain, others survived, in part thanks to the formation of cooperatives, as well as the intervention of creameries that refocused their production to purchase their fluid milk from these struggling small farms (see sidebar).\n\nFollowing on the unfortunate heels of the Depression, World War II furthered labor and economic issues by its upheaval of the workforce (men left farms and factories for the battlefield) and the necessary redistribution of resources and supplies to the war effort. When the conflict finally ended, wartime technological advances transitioned to civilian-oriented purposes. The increased technology available to manufacturing, combined with the demand for cheaper and more modern products (often seen as superior by a population starved for finer goods at an affordable price), spelled trouble for the small handmade-cheese producer.\n\n**Revival**\n\nThe re-emergence of the small cheesemaker began in earnest in the 1980s. As with the decline of handmade cheese, the renaissance occurred in response to the influence of movements and trends that occurred in the twentieth century. Hippies, back-to-the-landers, and gourmets (see sidebar) prepared the way for the renaissance of handmade cheese.\n\n**GOURMET OR FOODIE?**\n\nA gourmet is an aficionado of fine food and dining. The term \"foodie\" was first used in the 1980s to refer to a person whose hobby and passion center around everything to do with food, including understanding its manufacture and preparation. This new avocation in our culture has contributed not only to increased sales of small-production cheese, but to diverse income possibilities for farmer-cheesemakers through agri-tourism, cheesemaking classes, etc. For more on value-added agri-tourism, see chapter 13.\n\nOccurring almost simultaneously, and running different but overlapping courses, the hippie and the back-to-the-land movements both peaked in the 1960s through the mid-1970s. Their roots are vastly different, but their influence on the awareness of food quality and its effects on health and happiness are similar. The hippie movement brought an interest in natural and \"health\" foods, while the back-to-the-landers sought a return to the agrarian and self-sufficient lifestyle of their forebears.\n\nThe back-to-the-land movement saw the return of many urban and suburban dwellers to the countryside. The concept of homesteading brought renewed interest in the family milk cow and dairy goat. Beginning in the 1970s\u2014and still going strong today\u2014the magazine _Mother Earth_ _News_ and the Foxfire book series provided guidelines and inspiration for rural living and self-reliance. For many people, the homesteading spirit and lifestyle proved to be a transient state, once the hardships and reality of \"living off the land\" hit home. But even those who went back to more modern lifestyles did not lose the appreciation for that way of life.\n\nFarmstead cheese pioneer Jennifer Lynn Bice, Redwood Hill Farm, California, making cheese at her on-farm plant in the late 1980s.\n\nWhile some parts of our society were interested in reconnecting to the land, a more traditional way of life, and the quality of food that lifestyle offered, another segment was developing a culinary consciousness that included an expanding appreciation of food flavors and quality. Increased and easier travel to Europe, especially France, exposed many to flavors and cooking that had been ignored, for the most part, in the modern American diet. This appreciation was helped immensely by the work of such people as Julia Child, whose book _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ and television show _The French_ _Chef_ helped many mainstream Americans develop a new interest in the quality of their food, and Alice Waters, chef and proprietor of the Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse and a leader in the Slow Food movement (see sidebar).\n\n**SLOW FOOD AND AMERICAN RAW-MILK CHEESE**\n\nSlow Food is a non-profit, member-supported international organization that was founded in Italy in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions, and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes, and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Slow Food works to defend biodiversity in our food supply, promote \"eco-gastronomy\"and taste education, and connect producers of excellent foods with consumers (or \"copro-ducers,\" as the organization describes them) through various events and initiatives.\n\nOne of Slow Food's main international events is the biennial \"Cheese\" gathering that takes place in Bra, a market town in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, just south of Turin. At Cheese, according to Slow Food's website, \"the world's most renowned artisans, affineurs [cheese agers], cheesemongers, and shepherds come to present their cheeses to tens of thousands of visitors and host taste workshops.\"\n\nSlow Food has a strong presence in the United States through its national organization, Slow Food USA (www.slowfoodusa.org). The U.S. organization has several programs that feature artisan cheese, including the American Raw Milk Cheese Presidium, which is designed to recognize unique and valuable U.S. cheeses.\n\nThe Raw Milk Cheesemakers' Association (RMCA) was founded under the guidance of Slow Food USA but operates independently. RMCA promotes the production of high-quality raw-milk cheeses by providing criteria and guidelines for its membership that support both a quality product and humane production methods. See the resources and notes for contact information for the RMCA.\n\nAs all of these influences converged, a market for artisan, American-made cheese began to develop and a new wave of pioneers rose to meet the call. Cheesemakers, authors, educators, and visionaries have all had a hand in the current success of handmade cheese in the United States. Here are just a few of these pioneering farmstead cheesemaker innovators and leaders: Laura Chenel, Laura Chenel's Ch\u00e8vre, California, 1979; Sally Jackson, Sally Jackson Cheese, Washington, 1979; Allison Hooper and Bob Reese, Vermont Butter and Cheese, Vermont, 1984; Judy Schad, Capriole, Indiana, 1988; and Jennifer Bice, Redwood Hill Farm, California, 1988. (Of these, Capriole and Sally Jackson remain farmstead operations.) Authors such as Laura Werlin (who has been writing about cheese in articles and books since 1999) and Max McCalman (whose books and speaking engagements have helped elevate the role of cheese in fine dining and the status of cheesemongers and ma\u00eetre fromagers) have greatly increased the public's awareness and appreciation of cheese, as well as its makers. Educators and visionaries include Ricki Carroll, author and cofounder of New England Cheesemaking Supply in 1978, who continues to provide supplies and education to cheesemak-ers\u2014home, hobby, and professionals alike; Frank V. Kosikowski, founder of the American Cheese Society (see sidebar) in 1983 and author of _Cheese and Fermented Milk Foods;_ and Paul Kindstedt, coauthor with the Vermont Cheese Council of _American Farmstead Cheese_ and an original member of ACS. It is thanks to these leaders, as well as many others, that the way has been paved for the many new cheesemakers who are experiencing such success today.\n\n**THE AMERICAN CHEESE SOCIETY**\n\nAccording to its website, \"the American Cheese Society was founded in 1983 by Dr. Frank Kosikowski of Cornell University as a national grassroots organization for cheese appreciation and for home and farm cheesemaking.\"\n\n**Mission and Purpose**\n\n1.To uphold the highest standards of quality in the making of cheese and related fermented milk products.\n\n2. To uphold the traditions and preserve the history of American cheesemaking.\n\n3. To be an educational resource for American cheesemakers and the public.\n\n4. To encourage consumption through better education on the sensory pleasures of cheese and its healthful and nutritional values.\"\n\nAs of 2009 the American Cheese Society had 1,235 members, of whom 409 are cheesemakers (ACS does not differentiate between farmstead and other cheesemaker memberships). For the 2009 ACS Judging and Competition, 1,327 cheese and dairy products were entered.\n\n**Defining the Small, Farmstead Cheesemaker**\n\nNow that you know some history of farmstead cheesemaking in the United States, let's talk about some definitions, motivations, and qualifications.\n\n**\"Artisan,\" \"Farmstead,\" and Production Size**\n\nThe term \"artisan\" is applied to any product (food or otherwise) that is made in limited quantities by a skilled craftsman, usually by hand. The term is not legally defined for business use, however, and is becoming another buzzword whose meaning is being diluted by overuse. The American Cheese Society does define \"artisan\" when applied to cheese (see sidebar). \"Artisan\" and \"artisanal\" (interchangeable terms) imply, but do not guarantee, high-quality products!\n\n**ARTISAN OR ARTISANAL CHEESE**\n\nThe word \"artisan\" or \"artisanal\" implies that a cheese is produced primarily by hand, in small batches, with particular attention paid to the tradition of the cheesemaker's art, and thus using as little mechanization as possible in the production of the cheese. Artisan, or artisanal, cheeses may be made from all types of milk and may include various flavorings.  \nIn order for a cheese to be classified as \"farmstead,\" the cheese must be made with milk from the farmer's own herd, or flock, on the farm where the animals are raised. Milk used in the production of farmstead cheeses may not be obtained from any outside source. Farmstead cheeses may be made from all types of milk and may include various flavorings.\n\nSource: The American Cheese Society (www.cheesesociety.org)\n\n\"Farmstead\" is a term applied to cheese made only from the milk of the farmer's own animals; the term \"farmhouse\" is sometimes used interchangeably, but it is not as common. The production size of a farmstead cheese business is not limited or defined. In consumers' minds, however, it is often assumed that the facility is small and not highly mechanized. The farmstead cheesemaker is usually the smallest size of cheese producer, but not always. One very successful farmstead creamery in Wisconsin milks (according to its website) a herd of 950 Holstein cows, whose production level allows it to make approximately 3 million pounds of cheese annually. Many other existing cow dairies have value-added cheese plants in which they produce their own farmstead cheese. Cheese is saving many a family farm in this fashion.\n\nAnother term you will see is \"specialty\" cheese. Specialty cheese is produced by large-scale, industrial cheese companies as a value-added product of higher quality and in a limited quantity as compared to their other cheese products. According to the Wisconsin Specialty Cheese Institute, a specialty cheese cannot exceed an annual nationwide volume of more than 40 million\u2014yes, _million!_ \u2014pounds. Both artisan and farmstead cheeses sometimes fall under the category of specialty cheese when being discussed in industry trade papers.\n\nThis book focuses on the small and very small cheese business. Table 1-1 defines the size of a creamery based on its annual production of cheese. I am providing these definitions to help give prospective cheesemakers some idea of the size and scope they will be looking at in order to meet their production goals. At this time, the American Cheese Society has not formally defined these terms. Also, keep in mind that the production data are based on estimates and averages only. Actual yields will vary greatly based on breed, management, type of cheese, and individual animal differences. Remember, these numbers are just to give you an idea of what size dairy you might want to consider. When you are considering the size of your business, both the number of animals as well as the production volume of cheese must be considered when formulating your business plan. We will talk more about this in part 2, \"Getting Down to Business.\"\n\n**The Motivation behind Becoming**  \n **a Farmstead Cheesemaker**\n\nFarmstead cheesemakers are usually a unique blend of farmer, animal lover, independent spirit, masochistic laborer, and artist. Very few choose this life with monetary goals as their number-one motivator; instead it is a passion for the animals and for a way of life, the desire to create a value-added product on an existing farm, or the desire to leave a prior profession or lifestyle for the pursuit of a more rural way of living. There are also people who enter the business with purely entrepreneurial motivations\u2014those for whom the growing prestige and market potential of artisan cheese is the magnet (not unlike the motivation that draws some to plant a vineyard or build a winery). But, for the most part, the farmstead cheesemaker is first and foremost a herdsman. Let's take a look at some of the most common reasons for building a farmstead creamery, along with the assets and pitfalls that each motivation brings to the mix.\n\n**Hobby to Profession**\n\nThose who start out with a couple of dairy goats or a milk cow to feed a growing family, or a desire to live a more self-sustaining lifestyle, often find themselves with more milk than they know what to do with. Learning to make cheese is a logical progression that becomes a gratifying hobby for many. The decision to \"go pro\" is sometimes seen as an elaboration of the hobby, when in fact it is truly a full-fledged transformation. The change from avocation to profession brings new dimensions that can wear out even the most passionate hobbyist.\n\n\u2022 _Assets:_ Existing animal management skills, awareness of the rigors of farm life, some cheesemaking skills.\n\n\u2022 _Pitfalls:_ Often a lack of business management training, possible lack of investment capital.\n\nPholia Farm today.\n\n**Value-Added**\n\nFor many dairy people, adding a cheese facility to the dairy farm provides a value-added product that increases the prospects for survival of the farm. The growing popularity and public perception of cheese is helping retain and bring back generations of family that might not have previously stayed on the farm.\n\n\u2022 _Assets:_ Existing animal management skills, awareness of the rigors of farm life, existing business structure, existing infrastructure (buildings, systems, etc.).\n\n\u2022 _Pitfalls:_ Possible lack of cheesemaking skills and a lack of time to leave the farm for training.\n\n**Career and Lifestyle Change**\n\nWhether a long-contemplated dream or a recent revelation, more and more people are launching farmstead creameries after leaving their previous careers. Often these careers had little to do with the day-to-day operations of a farm, but maybe they brought them into contact with fine cheese or a rural, agrarian way of living. As often as not, the career change is a return to roots or a family history after experiencing the \"regular\" work world.\n\n\u2022 _Assets:_ Possible business skills, investment capital, and\/or a retirement income.\n\n\u2022 _Pitfalls:_ Possible lack of animal experience, possible lack of physical stamina related to age at retirement.\n\n**The Entrepreneur**\n\nFor investors building an artisan cheese business, the need for a reliable source of the highest-quality milk often leads them to the farmstead solution. The size and scale of these operations is medium to large. Usually both herd managers and cheesemakers are employed to handle these parts of the operation.\n\n\u2022 _Assets:_ Financial resources, business skills.\n\n\u2022 _Pitfalls:_ Lack of animal management expertise. (Cheesemaking experience, I believe, is more readily learned than animal husbandry\u2014educational opportunities and professional expertise are easier to find than an in-depth animal husbandry education.)\n\n**The Hybrid**\n\nMany farmstead cheesemakers are a mixture of some or all of the above motivations. People entering the industry with a varied background and multiple inspirations often bring a mix of qualifications that promote success in ways that cannot be anticipated by simply analyzing their credentials. There is no way to accurately categorize this type of person, but it is still important for them to attempt to analyze their skill set and job suitability based on information gained while researching the industry.\n\n**TEN QUESTIONS TO** **TEST YOUR SUITABILITY**\n\n1. Do you like to get up early\u2014every day of the year and for many years to come?\n\n2. Do you mind working late into the evening\u2014and then getting up early the next day?\n\n3. Do you mind working hard between getting up early and going to bed late?\n\n4. Does your spouse or partner also enjoy these hours?\n\n5. Do you have a good head for business?\n\n6. Do you have an artistic or creative flair?\n\n7. Can you be satisfied with repetitive labor and a lot of dishwashing?\n\n8. Do you have a great love for working with animals, no matter how exhausted you are?\n\n9. Can you deal well with constantly changing challenges and problems, including animal deaths, equipment failure, product loss, possible lawsuits and product recalls, and rising insurance and power costs?\n\n10. Do you mind working for below minimum wage for several years, or do you have an independent source of income to help pay bills?\n\n**Do You Really Want to Do This?**\n\nIt seems like being a farmstead cheesemaker would be fun and fulfilling, but once you take a good, hard look at the realities of setting up and running your own creamery, you need to decide if it is the right move for you. Here is a little quiz, devised with the help of cheesemakers from across the country, to help set the stage for what you will be in for should you bravely go where others have gone before (despite their warnings!).\n\nLet's look at these questions in more detail. If it seems a bit discouraging, try to remember that many of these issues will not seem as daunting after you learn more. The knowledge and skills you will gain by reading this book and educating yourself through other opportunities will give you the tools you need to deal with each of these issues, should you choose to become a farmstead cheesemaker.\n\n**_Are the hours really that bad?_ **There are times throughout the year when most farmstead cheesemakers find themselves going to bed just about in time to get up again. Kidding\/lambing\/calving season is a prime example\u2014and this is also the same time that most farmers' markets start their season. Milk is flowing, cheese must be made, and babies won't wait for your bedtime schedule. It is often nonstop work, and you feel like you're never caught up. When you choose to become a farmstead cheesemaker, you are choosing not just a job, but a way of life. If you have a spouse or partner, you will need to consider very carefully whether or not this way of life will be fulfilling for both of you, together.\n\nAn artistically designed exterior helps make Pholia Farm's Hillis Peak an eye-catching cheese.\n\n**_How about a good head for business?_ **When the hobby farmer-cheesemaker turns pro, everything changes. In reality you are now operating two businesses\u2014a dairy farm and a cheese business. Any inefficiency in either aspect will likely evolve into a liability, both financially and, in the end, emotionally. If you know you will not be able to develop a sound business plan, maintain accurate and up-to-date financial books, complete invoices, and follow up on orders and billing\u2014and you still want to go into the business\u2014then consider taking classes, or even hiring a bookkeeper and office manager.\n\n**_Why would I need to be creative or artistic?_ **Remember there is \"art\" in \"artisan.\" Not only will being creative give you an edge in producing visually appealing products, but it will help with designing packaging, labels, and promotional materials. As the number of producers grows and the volume of farmstead cheeses increases, it will be the little things, such as irresistible packaging and mouthwatering product presentation, that will help give your business an edge.\n\n**TEN CHARACTERISTICS**  \n **THAT MAKE FOR A GREAT**  \n **FARMSTEAD CHEESEMAKER**\n\n1. Organizational skills   \n2. High energy level   \n3. Personal drive   \n4. Ability to delay gratification   \n5. Patience   \n6. Kindness   \n7. Persistence   \n8. Creativity   \n9. Work ethic   \n10. Ingenuity\n\n**_Is there really a lot of dishwashing and repetitive labor?_ **Oh my, yes! Once all of your cheese recipes have been refined and perfected, it becomes the great cheese-maker's job to keep making them, as identically as possible, over and over. Keeping the passion and inspiration evident in each batch and wheel can become a challenge. As to dishwashing, there is a standard saying that cheesemaking is 90 percent cleanup. Sanitation and cleanliness in a licensed creamery cannot be treated casually. It is not in the least bit glamorous or inspiring, but you will spend a good deal of time doing it.\n\n**_How could I be too tired to enjoy my animals?_ **For most farmstead cheesemakers the animals are usually the reason they make cheese, not the other way around. Once you are licensed, however, selling your cheese becomes a priority that can take away time with the animals and drain your patience and energy to deal with their needs, as well as the challenges that caring for them brings. It's not hard for the pressures of the cheesemaking side to leach the joy out of the original reason for starting the business\u2014the animals.\n\n**_What kinds of problems can crop up?_ **The farmstead creamery, no matter how well administered, will face an ever-changing set of challenges. Dealing with equipment failure that leads to lost production or lost product; animal health issues that lead to lost milk, animal deaths, and culling decisions; and the possibility of liability lawsuits, product recall, and inspection violations\u2014all these and more bring a facet to the lifestyle that can be unduly stressful. To be successful, you must be prepared to face these challenges without letting them overwhelm you.\n\n**PHOLIA FARM: OUR MOTIVATIONS**\n\nWe are definitely in the hybrid category! While I had a rural upbringing and a background in dairy cattle, Vern had a more \"rural-suburban\" background in addition to his professional military career (including the Naval Academy and a master's degree in contracts and acquisitions). I was a nurse (an LPN and LVN for the better part of a decade) and then a professional artist. Vern's retirement from the military, available land from my family, and the desire to create a sustainable lifestyle led us to dairy goats, which in turn led to cheesemaking and ultimately to the \"retirement\" career choice of a farmstead creamery.\n\nOur diverse backgrounds brought assets that we could not have anticipated, such as business skills, decision-making capabilities, and an artistic approach to our products. Our past choices over the years regarding investments yielded enough capital to make the initial investment in our creamery. Vern's retirement income, while not a lot, also provides a safety net that makes sure the essential bills can be paid during the years that our cheese business is still in a fledgling state.\n\nI see our motivation as a definite hybrid: my hobby as a kid with dairy cattle has turned into a profession; we took a chunk of family land that was dormant and added value to it. This was most certainly a huge career and lifestyle change, and we feel that we have entered a market that appeals to our entrepreneurial natures.\n\nCheesemaking class at Oregon State University. Photo by Lynn Ketchum, courtesy of Oregon State University Extension and Experiment Station Communications.\n\n**_What about money?_ **Even if your cheese sells at the high end of the price spectrum, the number of hours you will work to create that product could mean that your average income will be somewhere below minimum wage\u2014 _I am not kidding._ If you do not have the investment capital to survive the first few years, or another source of income to make ends meet, then you would be wise to reconsider starting a cheesemaking business (or any small business, for that matter). Even after several good years, you will probably not become wealthy making cheese\u2014but you will have a priceless quality of life and hopefully be able to pay the bills!\n\nSome of these questions may seem extreme, but the reality of the lifestyle of a farmstead cheesemaker is at times very difficult and intense. If you answered yes, even if it was a somewhat reluctant affirmative, to _all_ of the questions in the quiz, then you are quite likely well suited to the profession of farmstead cheesemaker. But if you have any hesitation in embracing these conditions as a huge part of your life, then I would encourage you to enjoy this book, tour cheese farms, eat farmstead cheese, make your own cheese at home\u2014as a hobby\u2014and have a life!\n**Learning the Craft**\n\nSo where do you learn how to make cheese? Most start learning when inundated with pails and pails of milk\u2014in other words, out of necessity. But when the hobby is about to become a profession, other resources should be explored. Learning the art of cheesemaking, as well as the science and safety behind the process, through experienced teachers will help ensure your success as a business.\n\nThere are several venues in which to learn both the art and the science of cheesemaking (see appendix A for a list of resources for cheesemaker educational opportunities):\n\n\u2022 Books, Internet\n\n\u2022 University short courses\n\n\u2022 Private workshops and classes given by cheesemakers and educators\n\n\u2022 Apprenticeship\/internship programs at working farmstead creameries\n\n\u2022 Traveling to other countries with strong cheesemaking traditions to research traditional practices\n\nIn most states a business can be a licensed cheesemaking facility without the proprietor having special training as a cheesemaker, but in some there are standardized requirements. For example, in order to obtain a cheesemaker license in the state of Wisconsin, special training regulations apply, including up to 18 months of on-the-job work as a cheesemaker assistant. Be sure to investigate your state's laws in this regard. (More on this in chapter 2, \"Making It Official.\")\n\nMany cheesemakers continually seek to expand their knowledge and mastery of the craft long after obtaining a license. Entering competitions, seeking technical reviews of their cheese, taking courses, subscribing to professional publications, and communing with other cheesemakers are all viable routes for continuing education. Keeping your knowledge expanding and your awareness of the process growing will help to ensure the quality of your products as well as your own personal and professional gratification.\n\n**LIFELONG LEARNING**\n\nAlyce Birchenough, founder and cheesemaker of Sweet Home Farm in Elberta, Alabama, has been making her award-winning raw-milk cheeses for more than twenty years. When Alyce and her husband, Doug Wolbert, built their small cow dairy in the mid-1980s, there were not as many options available for learning as there are now. Alyce found her first information through the Minnesota Farmstead Cheese Project, an extension service project that was designed at the time as a value-added opportunity for farmers. She also relied upon back-to-the-land proponent Carla Emery's book _The_ _Encyclopedia of Country Living_ (still in print and up-to-date today). In addition, she attended a cheesemaking course at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada (a highly respected program that has been offered since 1956).\n\nAlyce says that one of her best teachers was \"lots of trial and error.\" Even after twenty-one years of success\u2014including numerous American Cheese Society first-place awards\u2014Alyce continues to seek out educational opportunities: She has taken courses at Cal Poly Pomona, Washington State University, and the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese (VIAC), as well as attending American Cheese Society conferences and educational sessions.\n\nBeing a part of a growing culinary tradition is exciting! Thanks to the perseverance of a handful of America's original artisan cheesemaking companies, the groundbreaking forays of the cheesemaker pioneers of the artisan revival, and the increased awareness and admiration of the life of the small farmer, it is now easier than ever to build a thriving farmstead cheese business. As you read the following chapters, however, you will learn that it will take far more than excitement and awareness to ensure that your cheese business brings you both financial and personal success.\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Making It Official\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6287)**\n\nNow that you have read about what a prime time it is to make and sell handcrafted cheese from the farm, you are probably feeling excited and just a bit mystified. After all, enthusiasm is one thing, but where do you go from there?\n\nBefore we get into the details of business and building design, let's talk about some preliminary considerations, such as zoning; working with the dairy inspector; choosing building plans, getting building permits, and working with a building contractor; and, finally, reviewing a primer on the often daunting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permit.\n\n**Zoning**\n\nOne of the first things people who are considering building a small creamery should do is find out if their property and land can be approved for the building and operating of a dairy. Every state and local jurisdiction will have land-use regulations and zoning laws that will determine the preliminary feasibility of your project. The laws governing zoning can vary greatly even within the same state. It is important to contact the correct authorities early in the process and receive a reliable judgment regarding your property and your proposed business.\n\n**Who to Contact**\n\nBefore making any phone calls, you will need to have a legal identification of your property. In some jurisdictions your address alone is sufficient. If you also have a property tax identification number (from your property tax bill) or a plate\/lot number, this will be helpful. Once armed with your property's legal identification, you will be ready to call the governing agency for the area in which you live. For most of us, that will be the county government, but some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, do not employ a county government setup. If your county does not list a zoning department, then talk to whoever issues building permits and you should be directed to the proper authority.\n\n**What to Ask**\n\nOnce you are connected to the right department, give them your name, identify yourself as the owner of the land (unless you lease or rent, of course), and ask if the land-use laws allow for the building and operation of a small dairy and cheese-making facility. Find out if there are any specific restrictions, such as the number of animals you can own. If you live outside of city limits but not far from a town, find out where your town's long-term urban growth boundary lies. While you may live in a seemingly rural area now, it may be slated for future growth, and even if that growth area does not encompass your land, it could negatively impact your future farming activities.\n\nImportant questions regarding zoning:\n\n1. Is my land approved for agricultural uses?\n\n2. If so, how many milking animals of my chosen species will be allowed?\n\n3. Are there any urban growth boundaries nearby?\n\n4. If a farming operation is allowed, is it also acceptable to sell farm products directly from the farm?\n\n5. If the land is not currently approved for farm use, is it possible to apply for a variance or zone change?\n\nOnce you confirm that your property is zoned for a small dairy and cheese facility you are ready to make the next call, to the dairy inspector.\n\n**The Dairy Inspector**\n\nYou might wonder why you would be calling an inspector when you have nothing to inspect. But in a sense you do\u2014your plan. By establishing contact with the proper regulatory agents early in the process, you will be doing two important things: First, you will be developing a good, up-front working relationship with an individual who will play a large role in your future professional life. Second, by discussing your plans before you invest any money in architectural drawings, permits, etc., you will have the opportunity to make choices that could prevent costly changes later in the process.\n\n**Who to Contact**\n\nFinding out who to contact can be a bit of a challenge in some states. For most, your state's department of agriculture will license and inspect dairy facilities. Try searching the Internet with the following terms: \" _your-state's-name]_ department agriculture dairy\" or \" _[your-state's-name]_ dairy inspection.\" By following links, you will most likely find the right department. Or, if you happen to have another dairy, cheese plant, or creamery in your area, you can try contacting them for the information. Regional cheese guilds can be of assistance also. (See [ appendix A for a list of cheese guilds.)\n\n**What to Ask**\n\nImportant questions for the dairy inspector:\n\n1. Does the state have any instructional materials or guidelines?\n\n2. At what point in the process does the inspector want to become involved?\n\n3. Are there any other resources that the inspector can recommend?\n\nHopefully your first contact with the inspector will be positive. Remember, many inspectors may not seem encouraging (that's not their job), but most are helpful and supportive. It is their job to enforce the regulations. If particular rules in your state do not seem to make sense to you, don't blame the messenger! The more professional and positive you can make the relationship, the more it will benefit you in the long term.\n\n**Building Plans, Permits, and Contractors**\n\nOnce you decide on a floor plan (ideally after reading part 3 of this book and studying the floor plans in appendix B) you will need a set of building plans drawn by a qualified person. A qualified person does not necessarily mean an architect, but it must be a person familiar with the building codes that will be enforced in your local jurisdiction.\n\nOnce drawn to your satisfaction, the plans will be submitted to the building or permitting department for approval. There is often quite a long period during which changes to the building plans might be required; also, permits (such as for septic and water) need to be approved prior to approval of the building plans.\n\nThanks to some experience I had drawing up plans and getting permits for smaller projects, such as additions and remodels, I was able to draw the full set of plans for our creamery. There were minor changes made by the county and a few by our builder. But, for the most part, it was a sound plan and a great\u2014if challenging\u2014experience.\n\n**Factors Affecting Plan Approval**\n\n1. Proof that zoning requirements have been met and are acceptable.\n\n2. Engineering requirements, load calculations, etc. (a competent architect should be aware of these requirements and include them in your plan).\n\n3. Infrastructure, such as septic and water (dairy waste will be discussed later in this chapter).\n\na. Do current systems meet the standards that will be required for your project?\n\nb. If no systems exist, permitting and completion of an approved septic system will most often be required.\n\n4. Fire Department approval.\n\na. Setbacks and abatement boundaries for rural settings.\n\nb. Plan review for fire safety.\n\n**Permits**\n\nMost states have an agriculture building permit exemption. Your building or some of your buildings may qualify for this exemption. It is best to clarify the parameters that your jurisdiction enforces. If you are using licensed building contractors, the permits will be issued to them, but make sure that they are aware of possible agricultural exemptions. Our barn and creamery did not qualify for the ag-exemption due to its mixed-use nature. But the permit fees were not high in comparison to those for a residential structure.\n\nIf you are planning on selling cheese directly from your farm, try not to use the terms \"store,\" \"retail,\" or \"commercial\" in your plans. For construction purposes, these terms can send up a red flag that might cause building departments to treat your plan as a \"commercial building.\" Even though you will have a business, an agricultural enterprise is not technically commercial with respect to its purpose\u2014commercial construction refers more to industrial and retail complexes, restaurants, apartment buildings, etc. Farmers are often allowed to sell what they produce directly from their farm without extra licenses and permits. If your jurisdiction requires an additional business license to sell products at your farm, that can be addressed at a later date; this should not influence your building permit.\n\nPholia Farm's dairy barn and creamery during construction.\n\n**Building Contractors**\n\nDon't wait until you are ready to build to start looking for a contractor. The good ones will likely be booked far in advance. Talk to friends and get referrals whenever possible. If you see a barn or building project that you admire, try to find out who the contractor was. We all have heard the stories of projects that are far over budget and off-schedule. While this is not always avoidable, taking your time and finding a qualified contractor who is well recommended can save you both money and anxiety.\n\nIn most jurisdictions you can serve as your own building contractor (also known as owner-builder). _This does not mean that you have to do all of the work_ _yourself!_ You can hire people to do the plumbing, electrical, building, etc. But you will oversee the project and be responsible for the work **.** If you are the one who \"pulls\" (requests) the permit, _you_ are the one who will be held accountable for failed inspections.\n\nTo assist the contractor in completing your project on time and within budget (or at least close to it), follow these tips:\n\n1. Do not make floor plan changes during construction.\n\n2. Know ahead of time what surfaces, colors, fixtures, etc., you want to use, then stick with them.\n\n3. Be on the site and involved\u2014but not in the way!\n\n4. Offer to make hardware store runs, pick up materials, clean up the site\u2014anything that can keep the high-paid labor doing their specialized work on the site.\n\n**CAFO and the Dairy Wastewater Management Permit**\n\nA dairy and creamery will create wastewater that must be processed and disposed of correctly in order to not overload the land and any watershed areas with chemicals and waste. You will be dealing with three main types of wastewater: animal wastewater, wash water, and human waste from any bathrooms. In addition, whey from cheesemaking must be handled as a pollutant and disposed of in an approved manner. We will discuss the infrastructure options for dealing with wastewater and effluent more in part 3, chapter 7, \"Infrastructure and Efficiency,\" but for now let's talk about the permitting surrounding dealing with dairy wastewater.\n\nCAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed these permits to protect water supplies from animal waste contamination by very large, confinement livestock operations. CAFOs are designated by size from small to large. An example of a small CAFO is 300 or fewer cows (the number limit varies by species). In most states, if you have just a few family farm animals, you are not required to obtain a CAFO permit. But if you have a licensed dairy _of any size_ you may be required to obtain a CAFO permit. (The term \"CAFO\" has such a negative connotation for many people, conjuring up images of factory farms that house hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of animals in a confined space, often with limited access to fresh air, exercise, and sunshine. It would be nice if the terminology associated with this type of permit evolved to better describe extremely small operations with only a handful of animals that have year-round access to pasture.)\n\n**WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT:**  \n **HUMAN VERSUS ANIMAL SYSTEMS**\n\nOur local sanitation department allowed us to process our dairy wastewater using a very large septic system that is also connected to a bathroom. In this case, since the state does not have anything to do with permitting systems that process human waste, the state CAFO folks deferred to the local regulators. If, however, this same septic system did not have a bathroom attached to it, then it would be an animal waste system and a CAFO permit would be required. We didn't find this out, though, until after I had written an entire AWMP (Animal Waste Management Plan) and filed for the permit! I did learn quite a bit from the process, though.\n\nA part of the CAFO permitting process is the development of an Animal Waste Management Plan (AWMP). The AWMP calculates the volume and nutrient content of all waste produced (including dead animals) and designates how it will be handled (whether spread on crops, composted, sold, etc.). It sounds overwhelming, but boilerplates and guidelines are provided and assistance is readily available, should you be required to file for a CAFO permit.\n\nThere is an initial fee and an annual renewal fee.\n\n**Who to Contact**\n\nYour best choice is to contact a representative at the state level. You can usually locate this person by linking from the EPA's website or by searching \" _[your-state's-name]_ CAFO.\" The department handling CAFO issues might be water quality, agriculture, or some other department. Your dairy inspector may know who to contact, but he\/she will not generally be a part of the permitting agency.\n\n**What to Ask**\n\nImportant questions regarding CAFO permits:\n\n1. How does my state define CAFOs?\n\n2. What animal wastewater options are allowed in my state?\n\n3. Who is the local agent I should talk to?\n\n4. If my local jurisdiction allows for the wastewater to be handled by a dual-purpose residential septic system, will a CAFO permit still be required?\n\nThe CAFO permitting part of the licensing process is one of the most confusing and frustrating \"hoops\" you will have to jump through. Even within the same state you might find some small creameries that are required to file and others that are not. I recommend starting at the top level when learning the rules for your state\u2014don't rely too much on word-of-mouth when trying to find out whether you will need a CAFO permit or not. Try not to be intimidated by the process. You should receive quite a lot of help, and it is educational to learn how the waste from your animals and processing will affect the land and watersheds; in fact you can think of a CAFO permit as proof of your good stewardship of your land and waste management.\n\nIf you are feeling a bit exhausted at this point, just thinking about all of these permits, plans, and processes, you are not alone! But this is just the beginning of the preliminary work. I think of it as an endurance test: If you can make it through all of the initial investigation and education without losing your enthusiasm for the final goal, then you might just be cut out to be a farmstead cheese-maker\u2014and a successful one!\n[\n\n**PART II**  \n **GETTING DOWN**  \n **TO BUSINESS**\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch00045)\n\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Sizing Up the Market\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6427)**\n\nNo matter how much you adore your animals and how enamored you are of the idea of being a farmstead cheesemaker, your endeavor won't have much chance of surviving\u2014much less thriving\u2014if you don't approach it first and foremost as a business. Asking some important questions now will help you find your niche early on and increase your odds of success: _Who will buy your cheese? What_ _cheese will you make? Where will you sell it? How much will you charge? How will you_ _ensure your place in the market?_ These are the questions that should be answered well before you start sketching floor plans or buying equipment. Take time to research and answer these questions. The information you gather will help you develop a sound business plan (more on that in chapter 4, \"Your Business Plan and Company Structure\").\n\n**Market Research for Cheesemakers: The \"Five Ps\"**\n\nWhen working on your marketing plan, use the \"five Ps\" of marketing: _People,_ _Product, Place, Price,_ and _Promotion._ Let's talk about assessing your market potential using each of these points. Below, I have defined the five Ps as they pertain to the artisan, farmstead cheesemaker, and I've included pointers on how to answer these questions when doing your market research. During all phases of this foundation work, try to remember that all of the answers must come together in a way that leaves no doubt as to the feasibility of your proposed business.\n\n**People**\n\nWho will buy your cheese? The local population, tourists, and\/or people outside your area? Here are some things to consider when sizing up the potential consumers of your products.\n\n**Local Population** The first choice for a \"green\" customer base is the local population. Here are some questions that will help you assess this market:\n\n1. _What cheeses are available locally?_ Check your local markets, grocery stores, and cheese counters. Ask the staff at each of these which cheeses are popular sellers, and what kinds they would like to see produced locally.\n\n2. _What percentage of the local market is dominated by staple commodity_ _cheeses (such as most Cheddar, mozzarella, and Monterey Jack) and_ _what proportion is \"gourmet\"?_ While many stores carry specialty, artisan, and import cheeses, it is a good idea to find out what proportion of the market they actually occupy.\n\n3. _Is the local market expanding or static?_ Your market might be just beginning to value handmade cheese through an expanding awareness of food quality or growing affluence. Assess this through feedback from store clerks, chefs, etc. If there is demand but no supply, and you feel you can meet that need, then this is a market area you can tap into.\n\nTerry Carlson, Fairview Farm, Oregon, manning a farmers' market booth. Notice the large banner and photos of the farm's goats and creamery.\n\n**Tourists**\n\nA year-round or seasonal tourist economy can greatly augment the sales of your cheese. Here are some questions that will help you evaluate this type of market:\n\n1. _Is the tourist market seasonal or year-round?_ If you are going to milk seasonally and are planning on making fresh cheeses, it is important to see how the tourist market will mesh with this type of production plan. You might be able to time your production to better coincide with the demand. For example, if you live in an area where the tourist season occurs in the winter, say a ski resort area, but your animals are not in milk during the winter, consider producing an aged cheese that will be ready to sell during that time.\n\n2. _In what venues will tourists buy and\/or consume high-end cheese?_ Include restaurants, farmers' markets, specialty stores, and farm stands in this survey. Talk to chefs and buyers to find out which products are in short supply and if they would be interested in working with a small local vendor. (A note about chefs: While many top-quality chefs will want to work with your cheese and you, many of these relationships are short lived, as the reality of ordering from many small vendors can prove difficult and time consuming for many chefs.)\n\n**Non-Local**\n\nPerhaps your largest customer base will be outside of your region or state. This can be the hardest market to tap into. If your research tells you that your sales lie farther afield, you will need to determine ways to make this market aware of your product (see  sidebar). Options include:\n\n1. _Cheese competitions_ \u2014Doing well can instantly increase your exposure, as many retailers and distributors attend competitions seeking out new cheeses.\n\n2. _Sending samples to buyers_ \u2014Retailers often have specific schedules for tasting new products and determining their place in their stores.\n\n3. _Trade show events_ \u2014Events such as the American Cheese Society's \"Meet the Cheesemaker,\" cheesemaker receptions at food shows, and cheese festivals are just a few examples of opportunities to present your product to both the public and industry representatives.\n\n**PHOLIA FARM: PEOPLE AND PLACE**\n\nWe were very lucky to have our market find us. Before we were even licensed, we entered a national competition that had an amateur category. The judges were highly respected, nationally known cheese professionals. When our cheese did well (winning Best in Show in the amateur division), one of the judges, also an author of several books on cheese and a buyer for one of the most highly respected cheese counters in the United States, became a fan and supporter of our farm and cheeses. . . . This was a defining experience for us on many points of our marketing plan.\n\n**Product**\n\nWhat cheese will you make? Here are some questions to help you focus in on the best product for your business:\n\n1. _What cheese can you create of the best quality and uniformity?_ Research and development of your product should occur before opening, if at all possible. While we should all continue to work on improving quality and even on developing new cheeses, make sure you have a product or combination of products that are market-ready by the time you open.\n\n2. _Is there a customer base?_ If the cheese you want to make has no market, consider a different choice of product, or at least be prepared with promotional tactics to develop a market for your cheese.\n\n3. _How will you package it?_ Packaging can add unforeseen costs and labor. Consider this obstacle ahead of time. For example, most fresh, soft cheeses must be packaged in single-use containers. This adds cost as well as a possible environmental negative for some people (both customers and producers). Try to assess your options ahead of time to make sure your product packaging fits your company's goals.\n\n**Place**\n\nWhere will you sell your cheese? Some ideas include on-farm sales, direct sales, farmers' markets, and wholesale (retailers, distributors, and restaurants). Here are some things to consider when analyzing place.\n\n1. _On-farm sales\u2014_ Having a farm stand or farm store offers opportunities to sell your cheese directly to the customer at retail price. (Chapter 13 will discuss more value-added options that can be explored with on-farm sales.) Increased traffic for your neighborhood, liability on your insurance policy, and labor costs are all factors that should be taken into consideration.\n\n2. _Direct sales_ \u2014Selling directly to the customer through phone or online sales also allows you to sell at retail pricing. You will have paperwork, possibly the need to accept credit cards, and packing and shipping considerations.\n\n3. _Farmers' markets\u2014_ Farmers' markets are another place where you can reap the retail price benefit. Direct contact with consumers can also be rewarding. Travel costs and time spent away from the farm and dairy need to be factored into the equation. Those with nearby, popular farmers' markets often make the majority of their sales through this venue. (For more details on farmers' markets, see  chapter 13, \"Increasing Your Bottom Line.\")\n\n4. _Wholesale\u2014_ Wholesale sales will give you the lowest profit margin, but possibly a better return for your time. (When you ship larger amounts of cheese to one buyer, you greatly reduce paperwork and packaging time.) There is also not the waste and loss that can occur due to cut and packaged product that doesn't sell, and samples given out to customers. Here are some possible wholesale customers:\n\na. _Full-service cheese counter_ \u2014These retailers purchase full wheels direct from the farm or from distributors. They sell cheese cut to order, meaning that their customers have the opportunity to sample the product first and then order and purchase it in the amount they choose. Full-service cheese counters are usually looking for local or regional handmade cheeses. A full-service counter will offer the most personal customer service, and therefore is the best market for unique and high-end cheeses.\n\nb. _Specialty retailer_ \u2014These high-end grocery stores and gourmet markets sometimes sell cheese cut to order, but most often they pre-package it for deli or dairy case sales. Even if retailers are part of a chain, they will often feature local products at regional stores and work directly with the producer.\n\nc. _Chain grocery store_ \u2014These usually purchase through distributors, but in smaller regions they might work directly with producers. Probably the least personalized customer service of all the retail venues\u2014and likely the lowest profit margin for the producer.\n\nd. _Distributor\u2014_ Distributors purchase larger volumes and resell to retailers and restaurants. This brings opportunities for larger producers to get their product out to many more venues for the best return. The distributor price is usually less than regular wholesale (more on that in a moment). Working with a distributor eliminates multiple shipments and billing. Once you deal with a distributor, however, the quality control\u2014handling, storage, packaging, condition at delivery, etc.\u2014is in their hands, not yours.\n\ne. _Restaurant_ \u2014Chefs usually place smaller orders and are often not as consistent as retailers in the amounts they purchase. They can increase exposure for your product, though, often resulting in additional sales at the retail level.\n\nCheese counter, Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Chicago, Illinois.\n\n**SWEET HOME FARM: PLACE**\n\nWhen Alyce Birchenough and Doug Wolbert of Sweet Home Farm in Alabama first built their creamery in the mid-1980s, they thought they would be shipping their cheeses to retailers. But after experiments with different packaging (all in an attempt to keep the cheese cool while not producing too much waste) failed, they refocused on the local market. Given their location\u2014ten miles from the Gulf of Mexico and a year-round tourist area, as well as in an established \"farm-stand\" culture\u2014they are able to sell 15,000 pounds of raw-Guernsey-milk cheeses every year almost exclusively from their farm store, which is open two days a week.\n\n**Price**\n\nHow much will you charge? Pricing cheese is a tricky and often confusing issue. You might think you can figure out how much it costs to produce and then charge enough to cover your costs (labor included). But artisan cheese is more likely to be priced according to _what the market_ _will bear._ Sometimes this is enough to cover your costs, and sometimes it isn't. If you do good market research and complete a viable business plan, you should be able to determine how much product and at what price you will need to sell it in order to create a sustainable business.\n\n**WHOLESALE VERSUS RETAIL PRICE**\n\nI have often heard cheesemakers say, \"I charge one price to everyone; if they want the cheese, they will just have to deal with it!\" This may work if you don't have any retailers too nearby, but retailers need to mark up products to as close to 100 percent as possible to help them cover overhead. You could harm business either by having your wholesale cost too high or by undercutting the retailer. Figure out a wholesale price you can live with, as well as your own \"retail\" price for farmers' markets and on-farm sales.\n\n**Wholesale Pricing**  \nWhen you sell your cheese wholesale the retailer needs to be able to mark it up close to 100 percent, as well as recover any shipping costs. For example: Say I sold 30 pounds of cheese to a retailer at $12.00 a pound with shipping and packaging costs at $42.00. When the retailer receives the order, he will compare the invoice to the contents and make sure he has received the weight he is being charged for. He then adds the costs together for a total cost of $402.00. This is divided by the pounds of cheese. He finds that the cheese costs him $13.40\/lb. This retailer doesn't do a full 100 percent markup, but 95 percent. He multiplies the cost by a factor of 1.95 (if it were a 100 percent markup, the factor would be 2.00), to find that he must charge $26.13\/lb. Here is the formula:\n\n**Formula for 95 Percent Markup by Retailer**  \n **Wholesale + Shipping\/Handling = Cost**  \n **Cost \u00d7 1.95 \u00f7 Pounds of Cheese = Retail Price**\n\n_Note:_ If a retailer really wants to sell your cheese, he might pay your price and then mark it up to whatever he feels is reasonable. Remember, though, that if another producer comes along with a similar cheese that he can mark up for a full 100 percent, then your relationship with him will come to an end!\n\n**Farm Retail Pricing**\n\nWhen selling direct to the customer, whether from the farm, via online sales, or at a farmers' market, it is important to set a retail price that does not undercut other retailers' pricing. This does not mean you have to sell your product with the full 100 percent markup, since you will not have the overhead that a store does. But set a price that reflects an on-farm or direct purchase discount. Here is an example using the same cheese as in the above wholesale pricing guideline: Let's say our cheese is selling in a local retail store for $24.00 a pound (this shop doesn't add in any shipping costs, as it picks up the cheese from the farm). We decide to have an open house and sell cheese directly to the customer. We mark the cheese up by multiplying the wholesale price of $12.00\/lb by a factor of 1.75 and get an on-farm retail price of $21.00\/lb (this is about a 10 percent discount over regular retail). This is still a nice markup for you, but it will not alienate your retailers. Remember, they have far more costs involved in the actual sale of the product than you do.\n\n**LEGAL STANDARDS**\n\n_Federal Standards of Identity: The United States_ _Code of Federal Regulations_ contains a list of just under 100 cheese and \"related cheese products\" whose manufacture and description are legally defined. What does this mean to you? If you are making and selling a cheese listed in the standards, then it must comply with the guidelines stated therein\u2014especially if the cheese will have interstate sales. For example: According to the standards, Colby cheese must be made from cow's milk and Roquefort cheese from sheep's milk. You are perfectly legal in describing your cheese as a Colby \"style\" cheese, however. If you are uncertain, your inspector should be able to help, but you can also refer to the list at Cornell University's website: www.milkfacts.info; follow the link for \"dairy processing.\"\n\n**Pholia's Formula for On-Farm Retail Pricing (75 Percent Markup)**  \n **Wholesale \u00d7 1.75 = On-Farm Retail Price**\n\n**Promotion**\n\nHow will you build and retain your place in the market? Select a business name and names for your cheeses that reflect your company's desired image. (See \"What's in a Name?\" later in this chapter.)\n\n**Packaging and Labeling**\n\nIt is important to know that there are different labeling requirements for your cheese depending upon whether you are selling it prepackaged or \"to go.\" If you package cheese for a deli case, then your state may require that specific information appear on the label, such as your manufacturing plant number, ingredients, weight (in ounces and grams), address, and product standard of identity, if applicable (see \"Legal Standards\" sidebar). If you are cutting or scooping cheese as it is ordered (think of it like ordering a hamburger at a drive-through restaurant), you can simply wrap it in paper or put it in a carton and sell it; no labeling is required. Whichever way you sell your cheese, you will probably want some kind of label. Try to choose graphics, colors, fonts, etc., that help develop your \"brand identity\" (see \"Brand Identity\" sidebar). If you have several different products, try to keep a similar theme for each one. It might seem like fun to have different labels for each (especially if you are creative and have a lot of good ideas), but it is more helpful for building your customer base and brand identity to have continuity in your labeling so customers can recognize your products at a glance.\n\nA beautifully designed cheese label gives both the required facts and a bit of the farm's story.\n\n**BRAND IDENTITY**\n\nWhat exactly is \"brand identity\"? We usually think of brands in regard to large companies and their many product lines, but branding is also important to the small company, albeit with a much different scope. Think of your branding in terms of continuity of a look\u2014a \"visual identity\"\u2014that reflects your quality and individuality. Use it as an opportunity to share your \"story.\" Remember, with handmade cheese, people are buying a bit of that story, not just a great food.\n\n**Brochures, Newsletters, and \"Take-Aways\"**\n\nCreate farm and product literature and narratives that tell your story. Information about your cheeses, your farming practices, yourself, and other details that allow the customer to share in the motivation behind your business will help build loyalty and increase customers' positive experience. A brochure should contain information that doesn't change too frequently. People often keep brochures for extended periods of time and might refer to them in the future, expecting the information they contain to still be pertinent. For information that changes frequently, such as hours and events, either make sure to specify dates or include an insert or separate flyer for transient information. An online or emailed newsletter can also be a good way to engage customers and retailers with events and happenings at your farm.\n\n**Media Coverage**\n\nSending updates to local news outlets with farm and cheese news can lead to very useful media coverage. (Develop an email group address book so you can easily send your press releases to all the local media outlets at one time.) Writing stories about your farm and your cheese for interested publications can also increase exposure and enhance your reputation.\n\n**Website**\n\nHaving a website can be another useful way of sharing your story. A website can be purely informational or promotional, or it can also be used for online sales. I advise learning how to run your own site, if at all possible. It is the best way to stay on top of updates and changes to the information without having to pay someone for even minor alterations. If you are not interested in running your own website but you still want one, devote a percentage of your monthly budget to maintenance fees. Remember, a poor website is worse than no website.\n\n**Paid Advertising**\n\nFor most small, artisan cheese companies, paid advertising is not necessary for sales. It can, however, help cement your standing in some valuable circles, whether professional or geographical. Advertising is not only about sales; it is just as much about image. Paid advertising can incorporate such avenues as sponsorship of worthy charities and support for events and organizations, which in their turn will support your goals as a cheesemaking company.\n\n**Competitions**\n\nConsider entering cheese competitions to build a reputation and customer pride, as well as to get professional feedback regarding your products. Many buyers attend well-known competitions to seek out new, unique cheeses and small farms.\n\n**What's in a Name?**\n\nChoosing a name for your company is an important step\u2014and rather fun, too! The name should reflect your company goals, your farm's personality, and your product image, and it should have the ring of truth. Here are some extra pointers and questions to help guide you in choosing a really great name for your cheese business:\n\n\u2022 **Company Goals:** Do you plan on staying small? How about being family operated? Do you want to create a graphic image in people's minds when they hear the name? Do you want to link your company name to a regional or cultural heritage?\n\n\u2022 **Product Image:** If you want to name your creamery \"Bill's Cheese,\" you probably won't want to give your cheese names like \"Antoinette's Bliss\" or \"Sunrise Serendipity.\" By the same token, if you are drawn to tongue-in-cheek names for your cheeses, such as \"Porcupine Pyramid\" or \"Tubby Tomme,\" then a creamery name that is erudite might not be the best choice.\n\n\u2022 **The Ring of Truth:** While consumers have grown accustomed to a certain level of \"spin\" in the advertising of big business, they will expect better from the small, artisan producer. If you name your company \"Smith Family Dairy\" or \"Green Pasture Goat Cheese,\" your consumers and retailers will be disillusioned if they don't find a couple of Smith children helping with the milking or if your goats are confined to dry-lot paddocks.\n\n**CERTIFICATION LABELS**\n\nFrom \"certified organic\" to \"salmon safe,\" the number of certifications that the small creamery can seek continues to grow. The usefulness of a given certification label varies greatly, depending upon the public's perception of the label's importance and the \"dilution factor\"\u2014when too many labels accompany a product, it tends to reduce each one's individual importance. Use of the same label by large corporations that produce a similar product also tends to reduce the value of the label for the small producer. You will need to weigh the cost of the certification versus its benefit. If your market is mostly local and the consumer can be educated about your farm practices, it may be that no further \"certification\" will be necessary. If there is a particular issue that you feel especially passionate about, however, you may want to obtain official recognition for your efforts in that regard.\n\n**REAL EXAMPLES OF DESCRIPTIVE TERMS**\n\nKennebec **Cheesery**  \nJoe's **Dairy**  \nKenny's **Farmhouse Cheese**  \nLoveTree **Farmstead Cheese**  \nBlack Mesa **Ranch**  \nBallard Family **Dairy and** **Cheese**  \nRiver's Edge **Ch\u00e8vre**  \nMatos Cheese **Factory**  \nJasper Hill **Farm**  \nSilvery Moon **Creamery**  \nMonroe Cheese **Studio**  \nMama Terra **Micro Creamery**\n\n**While consumers have grown accustomed to a certain level**  \n **of \"spin\" in the advertising of big business, they will expect**  \n **better from the small, artisan producer.**\n\nHow will you define your business? Will you be a \"cheese plant,\" a \"creamery,\" a \"fromagerie,\" or a \"cheesery\"? _Fromagerie_ is the French term for a facility that makes cheese. Here in the United States, you will find the term \"cheesery\" (a literal translation of the French term) used mostly in the northeastern states that share a border with the Canadian province of Quebec. The term \"creamery\" was originally applied to plants that collected cream and milk from several small farms in order to churn butter, make ice cream, and produce cheese. Butter production has shifted to larger, more industrial facilities, for the most part, and while \"cheesery\" is a more accurate term for a plant that produces only cheese, \"creamery\" has become the more common term. But feel free to name your business a ranch, farm, factory\u2014anything you want! (See the sidebar for some examples of names of a few farmstead producers in the United States.)\n\nDon't get too bogged down with this decision, but do spend a bit of time coming up with a name you can live with for the life span of your business! Remember, you will have to tack on the legal description of your company (covered in the next chapter), such as LLC or Inc., unless you also file a \"doing-business-as\" (DBA) name.\n\nA picture should be forming in your mind by now: You should have an idea of who will buy your cheese, what cheese you will make, how much you will be able to sell it for, where it will sell, and how you will promote your product. If you have done this part of the research well, then you are ready to move on to the next stage\u2014the business plan.\n\nWhile all of this planning and information collecting is not very romantic or exciting, it is the solid foundation that could make the difference between success and failure. Keep up the good work and read on!\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Your Business Plan   \nand Company Structure](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6507)**\n\nFor most of us who would rather be outside working with the animals or in the kitchen crafting tasty cheese, the thought of having to sit behind a desk and write a \"business plan\" brings a kind of glaze to the eyes and numbing to the brain. But try to think of it as an expression of your vision, creativity, and unique ideas for your future\u2014presented in a way that will help you envision your future as a cheesemaker, as well as possibly help you qualify for financial assistance. Even the smallest, best-funded business will benefit from taking the time to create a simple business plan.\n\nThis chapter is designed to motivate you to create a business plan that will help you solidify your goals and get financing. If needed, there are many additional resources and guides\u2014books, websites, and the Small Business Administration\u2014that provide templates and ideas for creating a good plan.\n\nNow is also the time to think about what sort of formal business structure your company will take; from sole proprietorship to limited liability company (LLC), you will need to make some informed decisions and take some formal steps to create your business's structure. This is another broad topic to which multiple books are devoted, so this chapter will introduce you to some of the more popular options chosen by many farmstead cheesemakers.\n\n**What Exactly Is a Business Plan?**\n\nI had intended to provide the perfect example of a real cheesemaker's business plan, but as the samples came in from some excellent sources, I saw that they were all vastly different in structure and content. There are just so many alternate ways to create the \"perfect\" business plan that no single example will tell you what you need to know. So instead I have decided to cover the goals that should be accomplished when writing a business plan and provide illustrative, fictitious examples where needed.\n\n**OVERVIEW OF COMMON BUSINESS PLAN SECTIONS**\n\n\u2022 **Overview\/Business Description**\n\n\u2013 Briefly summarize your business, including products, marketing methods, customer base, owners, business structure, etc.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Introduce your business and summarize your strengths.\n\n\u2022 **Mission Statement\/Executive Summary**\n\n\u2013 Outline the purpose of the business, the values it holds, and the principles that guide its function.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Share the guiding philosophies that make your company a viable business.\n\n\u2022 **Vision Statement\/Goals**\n\n\u2013 Share your business hopes for the future.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Share achievable long-term plans.\n\n\u2022 **Production\/Product Information**\n\n\u2013 Describe the product and its production, including labor, equipment, packaging, etc.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Show complete understanding of the manufacture of your product as well as any needs.\n\n\u2022 **Market Analysis\/Market Demand**\n\n\u2013Thoroughly explain and describe existing and projected demand, customer demographics, competition, market niche, etc.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Prove that your product has a place in the market.\n\n\u2022 **Company Management\/Organizational** **Structure**\n\n\u2013 Provide pertinent biographical information on experience that you will bring to the business. Describe the legal structure the business will take.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Prove experience and competence for this business venture.\n\n\u2022 **Financials\/Funding\/Budgets**\n\n\u2013 List start-up capital required. Give projected budgets for up to the first three years.\n\n\u2013 Goal: List immediate need and show how the company might perform over time.\n\n\u2022 **Risk Assessment\/Contingency\/Exit** **Strategy**\n\n\u2013 List alternate scenarios and how your company will deal with them.\n\n\u2013 Goal: Show that you have planned for different scenarios, including the failure of your business.\n\nA business plan summarizes all of the important aspects of a business venture. The Small Business Administration accurately describes the business plan as \"your company's r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\" Your plan should sell \"the bank\"\u2014but also _you_ \u2014on your company, your product, and most of all yourself! Above is a brief overview of some of the more common titles for the different sections of a business plan, along with a brief description of the content and main objective of each section. Below we will go into a bit more detail for each section, list some questions you should ask yourself when writing the plan, and give a few pointers that might make the process a bit easier. Remember, these titles can be different, the order of the sections can vary, and additional information can be added\u2014there is no single format for a good business plan!\n\n**Overview\/Business Description**\n\nThis is your first chance to introduce and impress. Summarize your business in a way that points out the strengths of the company and its product, including market demand and niche. You will expand on each of these areas in the rest of the business plan, so be brief and concise, but cover it all in the overview. _Pointer: While the overview comes first in the final business plan, it is often easier if you actually_ _write it after you've written the rest of your plan._\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. What type of business are we?\n\n2. What products do\/will we create, and what will make them unique?\n\n3. Who will our customers be?\n\n4. Why are we the best people to do this?\n\n5. Where is our company in its growth status (start-up, expanding, etc.)?\n\n6. What is our company's competitive advantage (family farm, organic, etc.)?\n\n**Mission Statement\/Executive Summary**\n\nIn Rodney Jones's paper \"Building a Business Plan for Your Farm: Important First Steps,\" he describes the mission statement as \"the foundation without which the whole structure can collapse.\" A strong mission statement should clearly state your guiding purpose, values, and reasons for creating the business. The mission statement is more concrete than the vision statement.\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. Why do we want to create this business?\n\n2. What need is this business filling\u2014personally, in the community, and in the region?\n\n3. How will our social and environmental values impact the business and community?\n\n4. What other values do we bring to this business that will be an asset?\n\n**Vision Statement\/Goals**\n\nDescribe your overarching, long-term vision for your business. What sort of goals have you set, and why will those be an asset to you as you grow? Sharing an awareness of the future of your company helps validate your current plan. Make sure that your vision goals do not conflict with goals and values in the mission statement. _Pointer: Sometimes it is easiest to start writing your plan by working on the_ _vision statement first. When the vision of the company is well defined, you can work_ _\"backward\" to define the details._\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. Where do you see the business in five, ten, and twenty years? How will it evolve, change, grow?\n\n2. Where do you see yourself in the company as it evolves and changes?\n\n**Production\/Product Information**\n\nThoroughly describe your product and how it is manufactured, including equipment, labor, and materials used. This section should show your existing knowledge of the process required to make your product, as well as what equipment might be needed to make your business profitable (this will help support any funding requests later in the plan). _Pointer: Even if you are unsure of exactly what_ _cheeses you will make, you must be able to define some sort of production that will_ _provide a sustainable living. You are always free to revise and update the plan as your_ _cheese production changes._\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. What type of products will we produce, both initially and in the future?\n\n2. Do we already have experience making any of these products?\n\n3. Will other people be involved in the manufacturing?\n\n4. What kind of equipment will be used to process the products?\n\n5. How will the products be packaged, labeled, shipped, etc.?\n\n**Market Analysis\/Market Demand**\n\nDocument current and projected market demand for the products you will be making. List any supporting facts for your projections, such as sales figures from existing markets for cheese, cheese consumption data from the USDA or other documentable source, or quotes from media articles on cheese sales and consumption in your area and nationwide. Discuss where your products will be sold (including stores, restaurants, farmers' markets, etc.), specify how much they will sell for (both wholesale and retail pricing), and support the fact that these venues\/outlets have a customer base that will buy your cheese. Discuss the competition and why your product will have a niche or edge. (See chapter 3 for more on analyzing the market.)\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. Who will buy my products?\n\n2. Where will I sell my products?\n\n3. Is the market\u2014local, regional, nationwide\u2014expanding?\n\n4. How much will my product sell for?\n\n5. What will I do to promote my products?\n\n6. Why will my product stand out among any competition?\n\n**Company Management = Organizational Structure**\n\nSpecify how the company will be structured (LLC, sole proprietorship, etc.; more on this later in this chapter), who will run the company, what each person's job will be, and why each is qualified to do that job. You can\u2014and should\u2014describe any business or management experience along with farmer-cheesemaker experience that you or your partner have. _Pointer: Don't underestimate the relevance of any_ _employment or work you have done; just try to show how the lessons you have learned_ _from that job will apply to the new business._\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. What type of legal business structure will our company take?\n\n2. Who will run the company?\n\n3. What will each person's title\/job\/role be?\n\n4. Why are we qualified to do this work?\n\n**Financials\/Funding\/Budgets**\n\nThis is probably the most difficult and tiresome part of the business plan to write (unless you love working with numbers)\u2014yet it's arguably the most important section because no matter how promising your company might look in the rest of the plan, if you cannot show a budget that will eventually balance, you really don't have a business that is worth the risk.\n\nThe financials section consists of two parts: a list of start-up capital needed, and a budget for the first year. Projected budgets for the following two years are also often required when applying for financing. _Pointer: If you have trouble figuring_ _out the financial section of your business plan, definitely seek help. Local offices for_ _the Small Business Administration and regional economic development offices can be_ _of great help, as can bookkeepers. (The USDA's Farm Services Agency has financial_ _template forms online, but frankly they are rather complicated and intimidating, and_ _more applicable to large-scale operations.)_\n\n**No matter how promising your company might look in the rest of**  \n **the plan, if you cannot show a budget that will eventually balance,**  \n **you really don't have a business that is worth the risk.**\n\nWhen thinking about start-up costs, don't forget the following:\n\n1. Infrastructure and building costs\u2014remodeling, permits, labor, materials, etc.\n\n2. Equipment needs\u2014vat, pasteurizer, tractor, manure spreader, cheese hoops\/molds, etc.\n\n3. Land\u2014lease, rent, mortgage.\n\n4. Operating capital\u2014money to cover such day-to-day costs as phone, Internet, utilities, and even feed for animals until income is established. (Many people overlook this need.)\n\nRemember, you must be able to justify each cost either in other parts of the business plan or as itemized details on the start-up capital list. When you justify an item, describe how it will help your process be more efficient and cost effective. For example, if you want to lease a neighbor's pasture and you have included that cost in your start-up capital list, explain why this pasture will help increase your profit margin: \"Addition of 20 acres of grazing land will allow the herd size to expand, allowing for increased production to the level that the facility, management, and market can handle while also adding value with the nutritional and sustainable provenance of 'naturally grazed' and 'grass-fed' to the product, increasing its cachet and marketability.\"\n\n**BONNIE BLUE FARM**\n\nJim and Gayle Tanner of Bonnie Blue Farm in Waynesboro, Tennessee, shared the following story about their initial budget:\n\n\"Budgeted building and equipment exceeded business plan by 200 percent (and that was doing the work ourselves, [with] very little hired labor); insurance was 300 percent more, including product liability; feed and hay 400 percent more; utilities, propane, and electricity only slightly more than budgeted, but if gas for going to farmers' markets and delivering cheese was included the amount would be greater; and cheese supplies, packaging, and labels 200 percent more.\n\n\"But we had good news too: Gross sales exceeded expectations by 200 percent our first full year of sales, 2007. And have increased every year including this 'recession' year.\n\n\"I would have to say, looking at the numbers now after three and a half years, we were very naive about the true start-up cost. The number tossed around for building and equipping a small dairy is $250,000. We don't feel that is far off. Of course it can be done with much less, but you get what you pay for. Our farm is aesthetically beautiful, and since we entertain farm visitors [with their farm stay\/agri-tourism cabins], that is important.\"\n\nI asked Gayle if they had used their business plan to seek any funding.\n\nShe replied, \"Yes, we received Tennessee Agriculture Enhancement Program grant dollars to purchase specialized, value-added equipment and help with the cheese cave.\"\n\nThe budget you present should reflect the scenario as laid out in the rest of the business plan. For example, if you have requested funding to lease twenty additional acres for increasing your herd size, then the budget should show both the income from the additional milk\/cheese production as well as the cost of the lease. If you cannot show that this increased cost will truly raise your profit margin, why would a bank lend money to you, and, even more important, why would you want to take the risk yourself? This is why a business plan should be created even if you are financing the entire operation without outside help.\n\n**If you cannot show that this increased cost will truly raise your**  \n **profit margin, why would a bank lend money to you, and, even**  \n **more important, why would you want to take the risk yourself?**\n\n**Risk Assessment\/Contingency\/Exit Strategy**\n\nWhile none of us wants to think about our business faltering or failing, a good plan will take this possibility into account. Address how you will handle a change in consumer tastes, prices\u2014anything that could happen that would undermine the current plan and budget. You should also delineate an exit strategy; in other words, show how you will resolve your obligations and such should you cease operation as a business _. Pointer: Think of this almost like a last will and testament\u2014_ _no one likes to think about and plan for their death, but those who do always leave_ _others in a better situation._\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n1. If there is a market failure\u2014such as too much competition\u2014and the price falls, how will we handle that?\n\n2. If there is a production failure and we lose product, how will we handle that, and what will we do now to prevent such failures?\n\n3. If all owners of the company decide to cease operations, how will that be handled?\n\nI have visited a couple of successful farmstead creameries where an exit strategy was never considered in the beginning of the business. While the couples have made a success of their careers as cheesemakers, now that they have reached an age where it is evident that they will not want\u2014or be able\u2014to continue this type of work, they are having a difficult time figuring out \"how to get out.\" Most have built their businesses on land they don't want to leave, but it is often their only capital asset. In the absence of a retirement plan, these folks face tough decisions about what to do with the business, how to live without its income, and where to go if they were to sell their farms.\n\n**What Is the Best Business Structure?**\n\nThe topic of legal business structure could occupy an entire book, but the goal here is to share what is working best for other cheesemakers. Without a doubt the number-one choice of cheesemakers I interviewed for this book was the limited liability company, or LLC. Another common form is sole proprietorship; general partnerships exist also. I do not know of any small cheesemaker who has formed a C or S corporation. So let's talk about the three most likely legal business structures for the small cheesemaker.\n\n**Sole Proprietorship**\n\nThis form is the simplest, yet perhaps the least advisable, structure that a business can take. It is usually operated by one person or a married couple (since they can be identified as a single entity on tax forms). The owner is\u2014and this is very important\u2014 _personally liable_ for all aspects of the business: profits, debts, and judgments. A sole proprietorship is the easiest business structure to dissolve, transfer, and report on tax forms. Its advantage is in the ease of formation and management. Its disadvantage is in the liability, as well as funding options. If a legal judgment finds the business liable for injury, then the owner's personal property, such as home and land, can be at risk. From the standpoint of funding, often loans and grants specifically exclude sole proprietorships from consideration. Even if you start out with this business structure, you can \"upgrade\" at any time.\n\n**WHAT ABOUT A DBA?**\n\nDBAs (also known as fictitious names, assumed names, and trade names) are an everyday part of business, often without the consumer even being aware of it. So just what is a DBA? The acronym stands for \"doing business as.\" DBAs allow you to use a name for your business other than the name of the owner(s), in the case of a sole proprietorship or general partnership, or the name registered with the government, in the case of limited liability companies and corporations. While you must use your company's legal name on permits, licenses, etc., a DBA can be used on such things as signage, business cards, packaging, and advertising.\n\nA DBA is obtained usually by filing paperwork with a governmental office, such as the county clerk or secretary of state, but regulations and procedures vary by state. For a complete list and links to each state, go to www.business.gov and follow the links for \"register a business.\"\n\nOnce you have a DBA you will be able to open a bank account under that name and deposit checks made out to your fictitious name.\n\n**General Partnership**\n\nA general partnership is formed when more than one person (or married couple) wish to go into business together as equals in the sharing of profits, debts, responsibilities, and liabilities. The partnership itself does not pay taxes, but each partner will report his or her share of the losses or profits on his\/her personal returns. As with the sole proprietorship, the general partnership is easy to set up and inexpensive to form. In addition, legal judgments may find the owner's personal property fair game.\n\n**Limited Liability Company (LLC)**\n\nThe LLC business structure is the new kid on the block, having existed in its current form only since 1997. The LLC is a hybrid of sorts between the general partnership and a corporation in that there is no personal liability for its members (owners) and its members are taxed as in a partnership and sole proprietorship instead of as a corporation. In addition, not every member has to have the same rights and responsibilities. So if you have someone who can bring assets to the venture, but management decisions will be made by other members, these issues can all be spelled out in the LLC's operating agreement. Sounds pretty good, right?\n\nForming an LLC is slightly more complicated, in that simple articles of organization must be filed in the state in which the LLC is formed. An LLC operating agreement (in which each member's obligations and rights are delineated) is highly recommended but not required.\n\nBeautiful barn and creamery at Twig Farm, Vermont.\n\n**More Help on Business Structure**\n\nTo be sure you make the best decision for your business, it is a good idea to consult your tax accountant and\/or an attorney. Excellent books on forming each type of business structure are available; most include CDs with templates for creating legal business documents. Again, the U.S. government's Small Business Administration is an up-to-date resource on all things related to forming and operating a small business.\n\n**CREATIVE BUSINESS STRUCTURING:**  \n **WHY SOMETIMES ONE JUST ISN'T ENOUGH!**\n\nSeveral small creameries around the country (ours included) have split their cheesemaking business from their goat business and formed either two LLCs or one LLC and one sole proprietorship. While this does require keeping two sets of books for tax purposes, it has the advantage of separating liability and simplifying the possibility of cessation of one business and not the other. As the cheesemaking side of the business is much more likely to encounter a lawsuit, it makes sense to separate the two. This way, if there is a judgment against the cheese-making side, only the assets of that LLC will be vulnerable. It also simplifies things should you decide to cease business as a cheesemaker but want to continue with your livestock. This may be another topic to discuss with an attorney and\/or your CPA before making any final decisions.\n\nThere, you've made it through another hoop on your way to making, and selling, farmstead cheese! Don't forget to revisit your business plan over the years; it might come in handy for applying for grants for expansion or educational purposes, as well as serving as a reminder of just you how far you have come.\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Production Costs and Issues\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6577)**\n\nOf the many obstacles that confront the small farmstead cheesemaker, finding insurance, dealing with labor issues, and facing the reality of product loss are often not considered until they are staring you in the face. This chapter will help you learn about choices and options regarding these three topics that will help you make good, cost-effective decisions for your business.\n\n**Insurance for the Farmstead Creamery**\n\nBelieve it or not, I know some commercial dairies that are operating without any insurance, either for the property or for product liability. Without proper farm and liability insurance, you place your entire investment and future at risk! It takes only one lawsuit or incident (even if you are not at fault) to, as the old clich\u00e9 goes, lose the farm. Please keep in mind that all of the information presented in this book is intended to be used as a guide, not as legal advice and counsel. You will want to thoroughly investigate the options and requirements particular to your state and situation. The information contained here is subject to change and should not be considered complete.\n\n**Farm Insurance**\n\nJust what is farm insurance? Most farm policies offer comprehensive coverage that takes into consideration all facets of a small farm, including the reality that you will probably live on the premises. You will work with an agent to analyze your coverage needs, including land and buildings; products (loss and liability); personal and commercial property, including animals and feed; automobile; employee and visitor liability; and medical (as well as anything else that has personal or commercial value and\/or risk).\n\nWhen we were first seeking coverage, we wanted to keep the current policies we had for our automobile coverage. We had been insured by the same company for decades and were always pleased with the service and premium. But we were not able to use that same company to insure the farm, as they did not offer dairy farm coverage. (Many companies will insure horse or hobby farms, but not commercial dairies, no matter how small!) We looked into splitting the policy, with our old insurer covering auto and the new one covering the farm, but it was pointed out to us that, as a family farm and residence, everything we owned could be linked to the business in the event of injury, loss, or liability.\n\nPholia Farm's washed rind cheese Wimer Winter aging.\n\nThe following are descriptions and examples of some of the possible areas you will need to consider for coverage. Remember, this is a guide only, not legal advice or opinion.\n\n**Product Liability**\n\nSometimes called \"food insurance,\" product liability insurance does just what it sounds like: it provides coverage, to the limit of the policy, from damage caused to others by your products. Most retail venues (such as grocery stores, cheese counters, and even some farmers' markets) will require you to have minimum product liability coverage of one million dollars. Even if this is not the case with your retail customers, carrying product liability coverage is a good idea. Here are some points to consider when discussing product liability:\n\n\u2022 Annual product sales (estimate in the beginning)\n\n\u2022 Level of coverage needed\n\n\u2022 Prior claims\n\n\u2022 Quality assurance or HACCP plan (see chapter 12)\n\n\u2022 Type of cheese (here they will want to know if it is raw-milk cheese)\n\n**General Liability**\n\nGeneral liability provides coverage for injuries and property damage related to your farm. This includes employees, interns, visitors, and volunteers. You will need to address the following:\n\n\u2022 Number of employees\n\n\u2022 Interns (include details, such as housing and duties)\n\n\u2022 Events you hold where visitors would be present\n\n\u2022 Precautions you will take to ensure safety\n\n**Commercial Property Coverage**\n\nThis category will include the following areas:\n\n\u2022 Buildings used in your business\n\n\u2022 Property, such as cheesemaking and office equipment\n\n\u2022 Business income, to cover loss of income as put forth in the policy\n\n\u2022 Agricultural equipment (tractors, trailers, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Animals, hay, feed\n\n**Personal Property Coverage**\n\nAs in a homeowner's policy, this coverage is for personal residence and structures, furnishings and belongings, and so forth.\n\n**Automobile Coverage**\n\nEach vehicle you drive will likely be considered commercial, even if you don't plan on using it for business. The reasoning is that if your designated business auto breaks down, you will probably use another vehicle you own. Remember, you are engaged in business even when you take business mail to the post office. The good news is that usually a policy that bundles so many areas together is relatively affordable (as compared to purchasing each component separately).\n\n**Finding a Company and an Agent**\n\nThis can be quite a challenge\u2014especially if the phrase \"raw milk\" is involved. Even though raw-milk cheeses are legal, they still raise a red flag for many insurers. If you know other cheesemakers in your state or area, you can talk to them about who they use, and whether they are satisfied with them. Some states' agricultural departments maintain a list of companies that provide farm insurance, but many of these providers focus on crop farms and not dairy farms. Agricultural newspapers often have ads as well, but, again, the majority do not necessarily cover farmstead cheese operations. Another very good place to find a company is farm\/agricultural expositions. Quite often insurance providers will have a booth at such events.\n\nA local agent is a must, in my opinion. Our first agent, who was some distance away, was recommended by another cheesemaker in our state. I tried to find a local agent at that time who could write policies from the same provider as the long-distance agent, but without success. When we finally located a local agent and switched, our policy became more pertinent (and even a bit less expensive). We also felt more satisfied with the service. Remember, you can have an agent visit your farm before you sign a policy. He or she will be working for you, so take the time to interview and find the right match. The complexity of the whole farm policy requires a good working relationship with the agent and frequent reassessment for updates and changes.\n\n**The complexity of the whole farm policy requires a**  \n **good working relationship with the agent and frequent**  \n **reassessment for updates and changes.**\n\n**What Will It Cost?**\n\nI wish I could tell you! Everyone's policy will vary greatly. But you can start your estimate at $350 to $550 per month for a small creamery. Remember to reassess your policy on an annual basis. It is possible that reductions can be made the longer you are insured without incident. Here are some pointers:\n\n\u2022 Read the policy yourself and look for coverage that is not needed or that is missing.\n\n\u2022 Consider higher deductibles for items that you believe are low-risk or that you can afford to cover out of pocket.\n\n\u2022 Don't make claims for small-value items; remember, every claim will be taken into consideration when you are renewing your policy.\n\n\u2022 Shop around!\n\n**Health Insurance**\n\nMany small farmers in the U.S. work and run their farms without health insurance. The high cost of individual policies is quite prohibitive. It is hard for many of us to contemplate spending hundreds of dollars each month on something that we may never need\u2014to the extent of its coverage\u2014when everywhere we look on our farms there are real, everyday problems that those same dollars would solve: a new roof on the barn, a new pump for the well, a ton of hay for the animals. But don't fool yourself: uninsured farmers are playing a game of chance. Some will win, but others will lose\u2014and by lose I mean lose everything they have worked so hard to build, including that barn with its new roof.\n\n**Uninsured farmers are playing**  \n **a game of chance.**\n\nThe best wisdom I've heard on this topic was shared by Marion Pollack and Marjorie Susman of Orb Weaver Farm in New Haven, Vermont. For them, the health insurance bill is always paid first, no matter how tight the budget might seem at the time. They understand that it would take only one incident, even the breaking of a leg, to financially cripple the entire operation. When all of your assets are tied up in one property and one livelihood, risking its loss by not having health insurance is an unwise business decision.\n\nMany farmstead cheesemakers rely upon insurance coverage provided by the employer of a spouse who works off the farm or, as in our case, health-care coverage from military retirement.\n\nAt the writing of this book, several hopeful cooperative health insurance plans are in the works, including one through the American Cheese Society. Other organizations in various parts of the country offer members health insurance options as well, including the Farmers' Health Cooperative of Wisconsin, the Agri-Business Council of Oregon (there are branches in many other states, but as far as I can determine, only Oregon's offers a group health insurance plan), and Agri-Services Agency. With health insurance being on the forefront of the political agenda at the moment, it is possible that there will be better access to care for all farmers in the near future. At the moment, though, it is costly and difficult to find.\n\n**Life Insurance**\n\nAs a small business that likely relies on only a few people (usually family members) for all aspects of operation, the loss of one of these key members can mean the loss of the business. Sit down with your business partner(s)\u2014husband, wife, mate, etc.\u2014and do your best to try to realistically calculate the amount of funds needed should one of you die. While of course no one can put a price on replacing a lost loved one, a certain amount of money can help you weather the loss and eventually recover\u2014from a business standpoint\u2014without significant damage to your business. The good news about life insurance is its affordability, especially when compared to health and farm insurance!\n\nWhen choosing life insurance coverage, ask yourself a very basic question: _\"If_ _my partner died, how much money would I need to keep the farm, the business, and_ _the family going?\"_ Consider the following possible costs:\n\n\u2022 Funeral and burial, or alternative life-end, costs.\n\n\u2022 Hiring help to replace lost labor (don't forget things like cleaning, cooking, and child-rearing).\n\n\u2022 Debt and bills previously paid by the lost family member's financial contribution.\n\n\u2022 Lost benefits, such as health insurance, retirement pay, etc.\n\nEven if you believe you would sell your farm and business should your family partner die, you will still have costs associated with the transition that could be difficult to cover.\n\n**Good Help Is Hard to Find: Labor Issues**\n\nHere comes the topic that brings the most frustration to the very small farmer\u2014finding reliable and competent workers. The nature of the life of a dairy makes it inherently difficult, with milking taking place at 8- to 12-hour intervals and the unpredictability of animal behavior. Of all of the issues facing the small dairy person, finding good help seems to be the most perpetually frustrating. In my interviews, the only people I came across who had not experienced dissatisfaction with farm help were those who didn't use any.\n\n**The only people I came across who had not experienced**  \n **dissatisfaction with farm help were those who didn't use any.**\n\n**Employees or Interns?**\n\nMany small dairy farmers find the concept of an intern very appealing. Who wouldn't? In theory, it's a win-win: trading work experience for labor. But be warned: state and federal labor laws still apply to this relationship, and lawsuits have been brought in the past due to dissatisfaction on the intern's part. This section will cover the basics, but it is not meant to be a complete guide to legally employing and engaging labor of any kind. Be sure to consult with your labor office, lawyer, bookkeeper, or other pertinent and up-to-date resource.\n\n**TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL INTERNSHIPS**\n\n1. Clearly define and support (with documentation or other evidence) the monetary value of room and board.\n\n2. Document hours spent on non-agricultural work, such as packaging product and selling at farmers' markets, for accurate tax reporting and compensation.\n\n3. Clearly define educational goals and how they will be attained by the intern.\n\n4. Document time spent on educational instruction and subject(s) covered.\n\n5. Structure stipend or wages in a tiered approach, with a greater educational component in the beginning of the internship and lessening toward the end.\n\n6. Provide social opportunities for solitary interns during their off time.\n\n**What's the Difference?**\n\nWhile in practice interns are often treated very differently from employees, the law recognizes very little difference. Interns exchange their labor (usually seasonal) for housing, food, and, most importantly, hands-on education. In addition, they are almost always paid a stipend. Employees, on the other hand, exchange their labor for cash wages. In both cases, federal and state labor laws apply. You as the employer could be held responsible, in the eyes of the law, should your workers\u2014employees and interns alike\u2014have a grievance with your employment practices. Remember this and protect yourself, even if at the time it seems like more trouble than it's worth.\n\n**You as the employer could be held responsible, in the eyes**  \n **of the law, should your workers\u2014employees and interns alike\u2014**  \n **have a grievance with your employment practices.**\n\nSo given the complications, why would you choose an intern over a traditional employee? It seems that the best intern relationships come when there is an underlying desire to teach and share on the part of the farmer-cheesemaker. When that desire is paired with a worker whose primary motivation is not to earn but to learn, then a mutually beneficial and satisfying relationship can occur.\n\n**Legal Considerations**\n\n\u2022 **Internal Revenue Service rules for reporting compensation** **and withholding taxes.** Download or send for the \"Agricultural Employer's Tax Guide\" (www.irs.gov\/publications\/p51\/index.html). You will need to report all compensation (including meals and housing), but you will not have to withhold taxes on the value of room, board, or other non-cash wages. If you employ a bookkeeper, be sure he or she has a copy of this guide, as rules for agricultural workers are often unique.\n\nOn most small farms, family members provide the majority, if not all, of the labor. Here Vern Caldwell, the author's husband, feeds young kids at Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n\u2022 **Federal minimum wage law.** While most small farms are exempt from the federal minimum wage law, you should review the Fair Labor Standards Act as it applies to agricultural employers. It covers other issues, including overtime rules and \"non-agricultural\" work that takes place on or off the farm. For example, selling at a farmers' market is _not_ considered agricultural work, and the federal minimum wage law would apply. (In 2009 the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 per hour.)\n\n**FRAGA FARM**\n\nJan Neilson of Fraga Farm in Sweet Home, Oregon, has a very well-thought-out intern and employee program. Her two part-time employees and the occasional intern are all on payroll (done by a bookkeeper once a month, costing Jan only about $25.00). The intern's work is divided into hours spent doing agricultural work (such as milking and feeding) and non-ag work (such as farmers' markets and packaging of product). From the intern's gross pay are deducted the non-cash compensations (such as room, board, and education). Then taxes, Medicare, workers compensation, etc., are withheld. It sounds complicated, but with the help of a good bookkeeper, Jan was able to set up a legal and fair program that allows her to have the workers without the worry.\n\n\u2022 **State minimum wage laws.** A few states have minimum wages that are higher than the federal level. In addition, some require that minimum wage be paid to all farm workers. Check with your state labor board.\n\n\u2022 **State compensation laws.** States will vary in how they view compensation such as room and board. Some will allow you to set the value of the compensation, while others stipulate an amount.\n\n\u2022 **Workers compensation laws.** Go to the U.S. Department of Labor's website (www.dol.gov) and follow links for the Employment Standards Administration (ESA) and the Office of Workers Compensation Program (OWCP) to find a link to your state's office. Again, states vary in their laws, so be sure to investigate thoroughly.\n\n\u2022 **Educational component.** If you can thoroughly document that your training program will truly educate and benefit the trainee, this can be a form of non-cash compensation, provided that both parties have agreed on its value.\n\n\u2022 **Work agreement.** However you decide to structure your internship or employment program, a mutually agreed upon and signed work\/ internship agreement is highly recommended\u2014and in most states it is a requirement.\n\nFor more thorough information on setting up successful internships, I recommend the following reading:\n\n1. _Internships in Sustainable Farming: A Handbook for Farmers,_ by Doug Jones, published by the Northeast Organic Farming Association. Available at <http:\/\/nofany.org\/publications.html.>\n\n2. _Western Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) __Farm Internship Curriculum and Handbook,_ by Tom and Maud Powell and Michael Moss. Available at <http:\/\/attra.ncat.org\/intern_handbook>.\n\n**PHOLIA FARM**\n\nEvery year we have had something happen that has caused the loss of up to 10 percent of our annual production. One year it was inadequate cooling in the aging room (it didn't cause us to lose cheese, but we had to shut down production for a week to rebuild the aging room); the next year it was cheese mites (these are normal on long-aged cheeses but have to be kept at a minimum or they cause severe aesthetic and flavor defects). Another year we lost several months' worth of cheese to poor quality due to high milk urea nitrogen (MUN) levels in the milk (caused by overfeeding of a certain type of protein). The lesson for us was to be more alert at all stages of the process, to keep learning, and to learn to accept the occasional \"glitch\" in income.\n\n3. \"Agricultural Employer's Tax Guide,\" published by the Internal Revenue Service. Available at www.irs.gov\/publications\/p51\/index.html.\n\nHaving interns can either be a very rewarding experience or it can be a very frustrating one. The cheesemakers I interviewed across the U.S. had experienced the entire gamut, from satisfaction to knowing someone who had been sued by a former intern. The same is true of employees. The best advice is to understand the legal requirements, structure your program to fairly meet both your and the intern's goals, and document that program. And finally, don't have any second thoughts about investing in the services of a good bookkeeper. Do you really have the time, skills, and interest that is required to keep your farm's financial side in order? A few hours' work a month by a competent bookkeeper is usually all it takes to keep a small farm's payroll and books in good shape.\n\n**Don't have any second thoughts about investing**  \n **in the services of a good bookkeeper.**\n\n**Product Loss**\n\nYour first business plan will include income projections based on how much milk you will have and how much cheese you will make from that milk. While in theory these numbers should work, in reality you will likely have a significant amount of waste\u2014from milk lost due to equipment failures; milk quality issues (such as bacterial and somatic cell counts); and lowered production from sick animals. You may also have waste in terms of finished product\u2014from equipment failures, quality issues, expired shelf life, sampling to the public, and even donations to charities.\n\nAlong with lost product will often come additional costs related to the reason for the loss, such as replacing and repairing broken equipment (that led to lost milk), treating sick animals (that caused poor milk quality), and product and milk testing (to identify the reason behind the poor milk quality). When creating your business plan, it is a good idea to factor in a percentage of product waste and to budget in a contingency fund for such occasions.\n\nProduct sampling at farmers' markets, open houses, and special events can quickly eat through a small chunk of your inventory. For example, if you are providing cheese for an industry event (let's use the American Cheese Society networking breaks as an example), you might calculate \u00bc to 1 ounce per person, depending upon the total volume of cheese provided. If 400 people are expected to attend, you might need to contribute anywhere from 6.25 to 25 pounds of cheese. At farmers' markets and open houses, people will probably want to sample each cheese you present. One suggestion is to feature fewer varieties at such events and rotate the types; for example, one week sample out two types and the next week use two different varieties. This can both keep your sample \"waste\" down and also provide an enticement for shoppers to return to your booth weekly.\n\nAuthor's daughter Amelia giving out Pholia Farm cheese samples at the local public radio station's annual fund-raising cheese and wine tasting event.\n\nDealing with requests from charities for product donations can be awkward for the new cheesemaker, and even for some of us who have been at it for a while! I suggest budgeting a certain amount of cheese (either in pounds or percentage of annual production\u2014think of it as a \"cheese tithe\") to charity. You can either dedicate this to causes you find personally gratifying or choose from among those that contact you. Count on being contacted regularly by many causes, and be ready to explain your policy. Most of these callers will be grateful to not be \"strung along\" and to know immediately whether or not you will be able to support their event. Here is approximately what we tell new callers: \"Your event sounds really worthwhile, but because of our production size we have had to limit our cheese donations to just the few events that we are currently supporting.\" If you would still like to help them, you can offer to sell them product at wholesale.\n\nFrom insurance of all kinds, to payroll, to planning for lost product\/income, farmstead cheesemakers face many hurdles during the development and growth of their business. Try to remember that these challenges will seem far less daunting after a while. Seek advice and help from industry and regulatory experts as well as other cheesemakers whom you respect, and, most of all, try to keep in mind that being prepared and planning things out for the worst-case scenario will help protect your future as a farmstead creamery.\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[ Creative Financing\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6647)**\n\nNow that you have a workable business plan, including a budget and a list of needed start-up capital, you will have a good idea of how much money you need to get your cheesemaking operation off the ground. Finding funding is often difficult and can bring added cost in the form of interest rates to your budget. In almost all cases, cheesemakers I interviewed relied on an outside source of income throughout the construction process and even for the first few years of business. In some cases, one member of the team continued to hold an off-farm job or have another source of income, such as retirement or investments. Many cheesemakers sink their entire life savings into the project in addition to accumulating some personal debt. It is actually amazing to see the financial feats we cheesemakers will perform in order to build our \"dream.\" This chapter will help you navigate the myriad of options for funding your dairy.\n\n**TIPS FOR REDUCING**  \n **FUNDING REQUIREMENTS**\n\n1. Start shopping for used equipment early in the process: Check restaurant suppliers, classified ads for restaurant auctions, dispersals, etc. Watch agricultural newspaper classifieds as well as Internet auctions and classifieds. Post your \"shopping list\" to Internet chat groups focused on dairy topics.\n\n2. Prioritize projects. Can some improvements or additions be made after you are licensed and have an income from cheese?\n\n3. If you have some construction experience, but not enough to head the project, ask your builder if you can be one of the laborers.\n\n4. Look for cost-saving construction options\u2014but don't sacrifice quality and longevity to save money; it won't pay off in the long run.\n\n**What's It Going to Cost?**\n\nCosts will vary based on several key factors: land ownership, existing infrastructure, outside labor costs, scope of the project, and equipment and supply costs. To construct and equip a creamery of the size and scope covered in this book, the cheapest I have seen is about $15,000 to $20,000. This cost was achieved by owning land with existing buildings and systems, doing all the remodeling and construction work without outside labor, purchasing used equipment, and delaying some improvements until after an income was established. For those who need to build from the ground up (meaning that there are no existing systems, such as power, septic, water, animal housing, etc.), who can do a good part of the labor themselves, and who purchase mostly used equipment, the cost can range between $150,000 and $250,000. You can see that the range is large and greatly dependent upon available resources and infrastructure already on the land, equipment choices, and the owner's skill and resourcefulness.\n\n**MAMA TERRA MICRO CREAMERY**\n\nArmed with a thorough business plan, Robin Clouser and her husband Gabe obtained a loan from a local commercial bank to build their small, family-run creamery. The land already included their home power, water, and septic. They also had existing goat housing, paddocks, and fencing. By doing much of the labor themselves they were able to build their 384-square-foot creamery and dairy for $85,000. The cost included upgraded construction materials, a 30-gallon pasteurizer (which also serves as a bulk tank and cheese vat), a dairy wastewater management system (an aboveground holding tank into which the dairy wastewater is pumped and later spread on fields), and appointments such as sinks and lighting. See appendix B for Mama Terra's floor plan.\n\n**It is actually amazing to see the financial feats we**  \n **cheesemakers will perform in order to build our \"dream.\"**\n\n**Loans**\n\nThe first place you will probably fill out a loan application will be at a commercial lending company, such as a bank or credit union. If you are turned down, you can seek a loan that is guaranteed by another institution such as the Farm Services Agency (FSA) or the Small Business Administration (SBA). When a loan is \"guaranteed\" it means that the funds still come from a lending company (such as the same bank that turned you down), but the intermediary company has guaranteed that you are a good risk. Guaranteed loans usually come with a different set of parameters, such as what percentage of the loan the lender is guaranteeing; a guarantee fee that is usually added into the loan; and collateral, often in the form of liens on future products, equipment, etc. Organizations such as the FSA and the SBA usually have a direct loan program as well, with their own set of criteria with respect to interest rate, loan limit, and payback time. For a list of major lending institutions, see appendix A.\n\nIf you have decent amount of equity in your land and home\u2014in other words, if the property's value is significantly greater than what you owe the bank\u2014then you can access that value through a home equity line of credit (HELOC) or a home equity loan. With a HELOC the line of credit is used as needed, with interest charged only after the funds are used. With a home equity loan you receive all of the funds in one payment up front and interest starts accruing on the balance from the beginning. In essence, a HELOC acts like a credit card and a home equity loan acts like a traditional mortgage. Interest rates on HELOC loans are usually not fixed (but often can be at some stage during the life of the loan), whereas interest rates on home equity loans are usually fixed. Repayment times are usually shorter than on first mortgages. An additional benefit to the home equity loan is the potential for a tax deduction on the interest paid\u2014but be sure to check with a tax accountant before claiming such a deduction.\n\nMama Terra Micro Creamery's small, efficient building contains the parlor, milkhouse, and creamery.\n\n**Investors**\n\nIt is worth exploring some other options for financing your business besides loans (after all, the title of this chapter is \" _Creative_ Financing\"). While investors will bring a new set of responsibilities and commitments, they can also bring capital for funding new equipment and expansion. Family members are a common resource for many new businesses\u2014but be aware of the potential for complications should the business not work out. The beauty of investment from outside is the impersonal nature of the arrangement. If you are considering approaching family members for funding, spend as much time and effort and attention to detail on clearly written, legally binding documents as you would if the investment relationship were with a stranger. By making sure all parties are clear on their obligations, you have a better chance of avoiding confusion and dissension in the future.\n\n**Members and Partners**\n\nIf your business is an LLC or general partnership you have the option, at any time, of adding members\/partners who bring capital to the business. These members\/ partners do not need to have any management power or operations input; they can simply exchange their investment for membership and an agreed-upon amount of the company's profits\u2014such investors are commonly called \"silent partners.\" Be sure to seek legal advice when structuring a partnership with any new members.\n\n**Venture and Angel Capital**\n\nVenture capital is investment from a large firm, while angel capital comes from an individual or a small group. Venture capital is more commonly associated with investment in existing businesses; angel capital is more common in the funding of start-ups. These types of capital can be in exchange for ownership or follow a traditional repayment-with-interest plan. Both sources are rather unlikely options for the small farmer-cheesemaker, but not out of the realm of possibility. For some resources on seeking venture or angel capital, search www.buzgate.org (America's Small Business Assistance Network); search by state, then search \"FundmyBiz.\"\n\n**Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)**\n\nA CSA sells subscriptions to a season's worth of products at the beginning of the season, providing the farmer with working capital for that year. The CSA model is most often used for produce farms; however, it can work for the small dairy farm as well, either in partnership with an existing produce CSA or on its own. A small dairy that will be producing a variety of cheeses and perhaps fluid milk can gain working capital in exchange for guaranteeing a certain volume of products to its subscribers. I feel this can be especially valuable when you are trying to get money to purchase a new piece of equipment. For example: Say you have decided to buy a small milk bottling setup. By selling that milk before it is even bottled, you could recoup a significant portion of the investment price. (See chapter 13, \"Increasing Your Bottom Line,\" for more on milk bottling.) Of course, this works best for established businesses with existing loyal customers.\n\n**Grants**\n\nGrants are a bit of a pie-in-the-sky solution to funding a new business. Almost all grants provide funding for existing businesses that want to expand, develop new products, add renewable energy, conduct research, or improve business practices (such as add organic certification, focus on local markets, or improve animal welfare). They rarely fund equipment, construction, or personal salaries. For the very large business\u2014one that will provide a significant number of employment opportunities in a state or region that is economically depressed, for instance\u2014start-up grants that do fund equipment and construction are not unheard of.\n\nThat being said, grants might still be a route of investment for your farm, especially if you have an existing farm and want to develop a cheesemaking business. Expect lots of paperwork, including business plans, financial statements, feasibility studies, letters of recommendation, and much more. Grants are usually very specific about what they will and will not fund. Before you go to the effort of applying for one, be sure the source it is an appropriate choice.\n\nFor help on finding and selecting grants, try your local Cooperative Extension office; the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA\u2014I know, the acronym doesn't match the name!\u2014www.attra.ncat.org); Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE; www.sare.org); Grants.gov (www.grants.gov); and USDA's Rural Development department (www.rurdev.usda.gov). The Farm Credit System (mentioned previously under loans) also supplies grants through its FCS Foundation (www.fcsfoundation.org).\n\n**Personal Investment**\n\nThis is the most common source of funding for many small cheesemakers: Whether through savings, investments made in real estate, or pay-as-you-go, many small dairies are funded by their owners\/builders. Even though I covered home equity loans and lines of credit earlier when I was talking about loans, these sources of funds really still fall into the category of personal investment. I would not _ever_ recommend using credit cards to finance any long-term business needs or costs (anything you cannot pay off the same month you purchased it)\u2014it just isn't worth the cost. While it also may not be recommended to cash in IRAs, stocks, or other investments, some people do.\n\nMy favorite choice for personal investment is pay-as-you-go. Of course, this requires some other source of income, as well as time and patience. The benefits of this method include no debt and time to change your mind\u2014on anything from the floor plan to the wall color to the whole idea\u2014as well as time to learn more about the business without the pressure of needing to produce product.\n\nWe were very fortunate: We had bought a fixer-upper at the bottom of the Southern California housing market; after we spent six years improving it and then sold the property at the peak of the recovered market, we had capital to start building our dairy. Even so, there was not enough money to complete everything. Consequently, three years later we still don't have our house done\u2014a small travel trailer combined with a kitchen above the barn is good enough for now. We have the best of intentions of finishing the house, but other business-related needs keep taking priority. Someday . . .\n\nWhen considering your financing options, remember that you can use more than one source\u2014this is where the creativity comes in. Using your business plan and financial projections, try to prioritize each need and find ways to fund the most important requirements first. Often, things that you assume are essential (such as, in our case, a house) need to be delayed in order to get the business off the ground\u2014and then maybe postponed again later, too, to keep the business running well. I see financing a business as an evolving compilation of needs, priorities, and options. There will always be a need; you just have to figure out its priority and then choose the best option.\n[\n\n**PART III**  \n **DESIGNING THE**  \n **FARMSTEAD CREAMERY**\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch00287)\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Infrastructure and Efficiency\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6787)**\n\nIn chapter 2 we discussed some issues related to dairy waste and wastewater management. In this chapter we will talk about choices you can make for handling both wastewater and fresh water, as well as power usage and building efficiency. As costs for power and water will no doubt continue to rise over time, it behooves the small-business cheesemaker to seriously assess these considerations before beginning construction. The more efficiency that can be built in, the better the return over the life of your business\u2014not to mention the good feeling you will get from knowing you are doing your best to reduce your environmental footprint.\n\n**Water**\n\nPotable (drinkable) water is used in the creamery for the washing of equipment, hands, etc., and sometimes in the actual making of cheese (such as in washed-curd cheeses like Jack and Gouda).\n\n**Quality**\n\nOne of the most important issues to be considered when addressing water supply for your creamery is quality. Your water source needs to be free of contaminants and any elements that could negatively affect the quality and safety of your cheese. Water enters the processing chain in a number of ways, including as residue on hands and equipment; when diluting cheesemaking ingredients, such as rennet and calcium chloride; and when washing curd in such cheeses as Colby and Gouda.\n\nIf you receive your water from a municipal water source treated with chlorine, your main concern will be not pathogens in the water but having chlorine-free water for diluting such things as rennet and other coagulants. This can be accomplished by purchasing distilled water or by de-chlorinating\u2014using a small amount of milk added directly to the water (the chlorine molecules will attach to the organic compounds of the milk and be deactivated). You only need to add enough milk to give the water a faint milky color. This method is used in many mid-size creameries where the purchase of distilled water would not be cost effective.\n\nIf you have a well or other private, non-treated water source, it is important to have your water tested regularly for coliform bacteria and\/or any other contaminants that might be of concern. Be sure to do this testing well before you begin production so you have extra time to use or install any needed remedies, treatments, or equipment and test the water again. Most states require preliminary testing as well as routine testing after you begin production. But even if they don't, you are wise to implement your own testing regimen. In addition, you should expect the dairy inspector to inspect your wellhead and any holding tanks, usually just prior to licensing, although this requirement can vary by jurisdiction.\n\nIf your water is not considered safe for manufacturing cheese, then various purification systems can be used. One of the most popular choices is an ultraviolet (UV) purification system. These systems utilize UV light to kill _Escherichia_ _coli (E. coli), Salmonella, Legionella pneumophilia, Mycobacterium tuberculosis,_ and _Streptococcus_ bacteria, as well as other pathogens. In addition, the same system can be equipped with various filters to eliminate sediment, odors, or other off-flavors. Whole-house filters and reverse osmosis units are also possibilities. It is important to consult with a plumber and water quality expert to determine your needs based on your water's test results and issues. Each filtration system has pros and cons and should be analyzed on an individual basis.\n\n**Utilization of equipment to its maximum capacity will**  \n **increase your efficient use of water and lower your production of**  \n **wastewater per pound of cheese produced.**\n\nOne often-unexplored aspect of water quality is how your water works in conjunction with the cleaning chemicals you use. Water hardness (mineral content) and pH (an indicator of acidity or alkalinity) greatly influence the effectiveness of detergents and sanitizers. You should have your water analyzed for pH and hardness; if the levels deviate from average, you will need special detergents. Be sure to consult with the manufacturer of the cleaning products you use, and\/ or a company representative, to select the proper products.\n\nYou should also install an anti-siphon device (also known as a backflow prevention device or valve). In order to maintain potable water quality, you must ensure that water pressure never reverses direction and siphons animal drinking water, wash water, or any other contaminated water back into the water pipes. A back-flow prevention device should be installed between the lines running to the creamery and the lines running to the barn. In addition, individual anti-siphon devices should be placed at each hose faucet where the possibility exists that a hose end could be left in standing water (where it could potentially siphon contaminated water back into the main lines). Talk to a plumber or plumbing supply company to choose an appropriate device. Also be sure to consult with your inspector as to placement, as well as any regulatory requirements that might exist.\n\n**Calculating Needs**\n\nRunning a dairy and making cheese requires a lot of water. If your water comes from a municipal source (what we often call \"city water\"), your increased use will be reflected on your water (or in some cases sewer) bill\u2014and while you might not have to worry about the volume of water available, the likelihood of increasing water costs is something you will need to consider. If you have a private well or other water source, your well pump and any filtration system will be put to greater use and this will be reflected in higher energy bills.\n\nEstimates of water use in the farmstead creamery vary greatly based on cleaning practices and volume of milk processed. The volume of water used goes up in steps based on the potential production capacity of your equipment. For example, if you have a 50-gallon bulk tank and vat but are processing only 20 gallons of milk into cheese, you're really not using that much less water than if you processed 50 gallons\u2014cleanup of the equipment will use the same amount. Utilization of equipment to its maximum capacity will increase your efficient use of water and lower your production of wastewater per pound of cheese produced.\n\nA common ratio used by cheesemakers states that it takes from 1 to 5 gallons of water to process 1 gallon of milk (from the milking parlor to the finished product). Our own personal experience shows that we use about 4 gallons of water for every gallon of milk, by the time we factor in cleaning the parlor, milkhouse, make room, and equipment. The bigger the batch, the fewer gallons of water used per gallon of milk produced.\n\n**A common ratio used by cheesemakers**  \n **states that it takes from 1 to 5 gallons of**  \n **water to process 1 gallon of milk.**\n\n**Reducing Use**\n\nWhile water seems like a cheap resource, it should be treated as an endangered one. As human populations grow, the demand on municipal treatment plants and on rural water tables continues to rise. In addition, how a dairy handles its wastewater and how it attempts to conserve and\/or reduce waste can become a political tool\u2014to the benefit or detriment (or eventual demise) of the dairy operation. Reducing water use is good from every angle: saving money, saving local resources, and saving your business's image.\n\nIn issue 32 of her quarterly newsletter _CreamLine,_ publisher Vicki Dunaway quotes Kent Rausch and G. Morgan Powell, authors of _Dairy Processing Methods_ _to Reduce Water Use and Liquid Waste:_ \"Stop using your water hose as a broom.\" The best way to reduce use is to employ a squeegee or broom to assist with cleanup instead of spraying every little piece of curd to move it to the drain. Combine this with efficient sizing of equipment and batches and you will have maximized your water use.\n\nWhile boilers are not commonly used on very small farms, when an economical fuel sources is available they are quite viable options. This wood-fired boiler with heat storage tank (on right) works in combination with a propane on-demand water heater (in background) to provide hot water at Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n**Hot Water**\n\nYou will need a reliable supply of hot water, at about 140\u2013160\u00b0F, for cleaning dairy equipment (more on cleaning in chapter 8) and heating the cheesemaking vat. Depending upon your water type (hard or soft) and the type of detergents used, your optimal hot water temperature will vary, but by planning on having it available toward the high end of the range, you will be better prepared for all situations. This seems to be the area where most creameries initially fall short, ourselves included!\n\n**Calculating Needs**\n\nBase your need calculations on the high estimate for total water usage (mentioned above) and calculate that two-thirds of that will likely be hot water. Remember that if you are sharing a hot water source for domestic use as well, you will need to consider not only volume but also pressure. Ask yourself, \"If hot water is running in another part of the building, will I still have enough for cleaning in the creamery?\"\n\n**Information on Water Heating Systems**\n\nThe U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has an up-to-date website that discusses most of the pros and cons of typical residential and small-business water heating systems. Go to www.eere.energy.gov and follow the links. When studying the different options, keep the following questions in mind:\n\n1. What is the maximum volume and maximum temperature required at any given time of use?\n\n2. What is the initial cost versus the long-term operating cost?\n\n3. Are there renewable energy rebates and incentives in my state that will help reduce the initial investment?\n\nTable 7-1 breaks down the main features of most systems. The only one not included in the USDE's website is the desuperheater. Desuperheaters harvest \"waste heat\" from heat pumps, bulk tank compressors, etc., to help heat water.\n\nWhile not common, they are worth considering.\n\n**Reducing Use**\n\nSimple solutions apply when considering saving on hot water usage: Using water at the correct temperature for the need, insulating lines to maintain water temperature in the pipes, and reducing overall use whenever possible are all viable options for reducing hot water use.\n\n**Wastewater**\n\nWastewater from your creamery can be divided into three categories: parlor wastewater, containing some animal waste as well as chemicals from cleaning; creamery wastewater, containing clear wash water and chemicals along with small amounts of milk, whey, and curd; and blackwater from the toilet\/restroom. State and local regulating agencies may differ greatly in how they regulate each of these types of wastewater. You will hear about a great variety of methods that have been approved for dealing with them. Be sure to contact the correct authorities before proceeding with a wastewater management plan.\n\n**Calculating Volume**\n\nIn most states you will need to estimate your wastewater volume as part of your sanitation application for septic, or for the animal waste management plan (AWMP) that some states require for even a very small dairy (see \"CAFO and the Dairy Wastewater Management Permit\" in chapter 2). You can make this calculation using the same formula as above for fresh water usage, since the same water will be running down your drains as waste.\n\n**Management Options**\n\nHow you manage the wastewater from your creamery will depend upon the regulations of your local jurisdiction as well as your state. For the very small dairy, many states defer to the local agency in regard to wastewater management. Smaller creameries will have very simplified wastewater management plans in comparison to the medium- to large-size dairy. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) regulations were designed to properly deal with the wastewater and runoff from very large animal facilities where animals are confined, such as feedlots, confinement dairies, and hog or poultry operations. Some states have implemented the same permitting requirements for _all_ commercial livestock operations, regardless of size. You will have to make sure that you are very clear on what your state and local authorities will expect and allow!\n\nCheese curd being placed into forms for draining on Pholia Farm's draining table\u2014made from a commercial dishwasher drain rack with stainless steel legs added.\n\nBelow are some of the wastewater management options that _may_ be allowed in your state. These options are by no means inclusive: Many other options exist, and exciting new ones are being developed, such as constructed wetlands (Living Machines built an indoor version at Cedar Grove Cheese in Wisconsin that processes 7,000 gallons of dairy wastewater per day), which send wastewater through a series of ponds or holding tanks where plants, microbes, and even fish cleanse the water naturally. For the purposes of this book, though, we will cover the more common systems.\n\n**MAKE IT GO A-WHEY!**\n\nWhey, a natural by-product of cheesemaking, is considered an effluent if it is dumped down the drain, while in large facilities it can become a value-added product if quickly dried and sold as a food additive, protein powder, etc. When introduced to septic tanks, waterways, and wastewater, however, whey has a high biological (or biochemical) oxidation demand (BOD), making it a pollutant. Substances with a high BOD consume oxygen that is dissolved in the water. In plain terms, whey disposed of in water will create \"dead zones\"\u2014not something you want in your septic system, stream, or pond.\n\nSo what are your options? Most small creameries deal with the whey through two main disposal methods: feeding to animals and\/or spreading on fields. If your whey is not too acidic (\"sweet whey,\" with a pH above 6.0, is produced during the manufacture of cooked\/pressed cheeses, such as Cheddar and Gouda), then it can successfully be fed back to your herd. Acid whey, with a pH around 4.6, is the by-product of lactic-fermented, soft cheeses, such as ch\u00e8vre and ricotta; it can be fed to pigs and chickens but should not be fed to ruminants, as it could upset rumen acid balance. It can be diluted to alleviate some of these concerns and buffers can also be added, but this should be done with care. Some whey (sweet) can be used to create other cheese products, such as whey ricotta and Gjetost, but it is unlikely that you will be utilizing all of your whey for such products. Most creameries will find that the large volume of whey produced will require at least some of it to be disposed of, along with creamery wastewater, and spread on field, crops, or compost heaps.\n\n**_Direct Diversion_**\n\nThis method is sometimes called \"run-to-daylight.\" Wastewater basically goes down the drain and runs through a pipe to the ground's surface. This method, even where allowed, is not one I recommend, as it does not deal properly with the nutrients and chemicals present in the water; nor does it reuse the water as well as it could. Some filtration can occur if the water is run to a gravel and sand pit, but the longevity of this system cannot be predicted.\n\n**_Septic System_**\n\nMany jurisdictions allow for the use of a domestic-type septic system (either shared with a bathroom or independent). A grease trap should be included on the tank, and the drain field must be sized properly to deal with the large volume of water generated by the dairy. A properly functioning septic system allows for the disposal of solids (by tank pumping) and for the return of water to the ground.\n\n**_Holding Tank_**\n\nHolding tanks are the most common means of dealing with wastewater in newly constructed small dairies. A holding tank for wastewater is any type of cistern, either buried or aboveground, that can receive and hold the wastewater. Periodically the water is distributed to crops and fields or disposed of in other acceptable fashions. A dairy's holding tank is basically a \"dark\" greywater system (as it will include small amounts of animal waste from the milking parlor) with a higher concentration of detergents and sanitizers than in a domestic greywater system. In addition, the distribution of the dairy wastewater will most certainly be regulated by CAFO rules. If you are interested in learning more about domestic greywater systems, go to www.greywater.com and www.thenaturalhome.com\/greywater.html.\n\nWastewater holding tank, Fairview Farm, Oregon.\n\n**FAIRVIEW FARM**\n\nCheesemaker Laurie Carlson of Fairview Farm in Dallas, Oregon, describes her creamery's wastewater management system this way:\n\n\"We are newly licensed, so I'll describe our system. We had to put in an aboveground tank\u20141,550 gallons\u2014to hold wastewater from milking during rainy months, so no water from the milking parlor would run onto wet pastures. We have a sump pump in the ground beside the milking parlor, which the floor drain runs into, then it pumps out to the tank. During dry periods we can run the water out of the tank onto the pasture through a hose. We are permitted with the condition that we do not milk during January through March, when our does are dry. If we planned to milk year-round we would have needed a bigger tank, because the winter months are the rainy ones.\n\n\"We had to get a CAFO permit here in Oregon, and we have a permit for 50 goats on the property.\n\n\"Our cheese processing building had to have a restroom with its own septic tank (commercial size, of course! For _one_ toilet!). The floor drain in the cheese make room runs about 50 feet underground to a French drain in our orchard.\"\n\n**_Ponds and Lagoons_**\n\nThink of the dairy pond as an aboveground, open storage tank. Wastewater flows, or is pumped, to the pond, where it is held until it is spread. A lagoon is similar to a pond, but it's meant for longer-term storage and treatment of the wastewater. While most small dairies will not need the volume of storage space provided by a pond or lagoon, they are often seen on older dairies that have been refurbished. Water spread from a pond will have a higher nitrogen content than that from a lagoon (and consequently more odor). Both ponds and lagoons will require extensive waste management plans (through the CAFO permitting process) and engineering.\n\n**Power and Fuel**\n\nToo often, the energy needs of the small dairy are not adequately calculated before designing and outfitting the creamery. By not factoring in these costs early in the planning stages, the small business can find itself facing higher power bills than expected and unable to keep costs in line with income. With energy costs being variable, and with long-term forecasts of price increases, it is important to attempt to address energy usage needs not only before opening for business, but before adding any new piece of equipment.\n\n**ESTRELLA FAMILY CREAMERY**\n\nKelli and Anthony Estrella of Estrella Family Creamery, Washington, saw their electric power bill go from $50 a month to $500 a month when their creamery came online. The family-run farm produces award-winning raw-milk and cave-aged cheeses from their herd of 19 Normandie cross cows and 50 La Mancha goats that graze the 164-acre restored dairy farm.\n\n**Calculating Usage**\n\nDon't be intimidated by such terms as watts, kilowatts, amps, and volts. You don't have to completely understand electricity to figure out how its use will affect your business. There is a simple formula that can be used to determine the potential energy usage of any appliance:\n\n**Formula to Determine Energy Usage**  \n **Volts \u00d7 Amps = Watts**\n\nSo if you don't really need to know what all of this means, how do you make it work for you? If you take a look at any electric appliance, you will find a plate or label that states the volts and amps (short for amperes) that the unit uses at peak usage. When you multiply these two numbers together, you will find out how many watts the equipment will use at any given time. To take it one step further, if the equipment runs at that rate for 1 hour, its usage could be measured in kilowatt-hours (KwH). Your electric bill tells you how many kilowatt-hours you use per month and how much those hours cost you. One kilowatt-hour is equal to 1,000 watts. For example, if a 100-watt light bulb runs for 1 hour, it will use 0.1 KwH of electricity. If it runs for 10 hours it will use 1 KwH.\n\n**PHOLIA FARM**\n\nBefore we built our off-grid dairy, creamery, and home, we plugged every appliance we had into a Kill A Watt meter to find out how much power we would have to make. Our example is extreme, but it is an eye-opening experience to find out how much power some things really use!\n\nHere is an example of using the formula of _volts \u00d7 amps = watts_ for our milking machine:\n\n\u2022 115 volts \u00d7 6.6 amps = 759 watts\n\n\u2022 759 watts \u00d7 2 hours of use = 1,518 watts or 1.5 KwH\n\n\u2022 1.5 KwH\/day = 45 KwH\/month \u2022 45 KwH \u00d7 [cost per KwH] = electricity cost per month\n\n\u2022 If the average price per KwH across the U.S. is $0.11, then it will cost you about $5.00 per month to operate this equipment.\n\nHere is another example, using a more power-thirsty appliance\u2014a three-compartment, glass-fronted refrigerator:\n\n\u2022 115 volts \u00d7 12 amps = 1,380 watts\n\n\u2022 1,380 watts \u00d7 10 hours (as the compressor will not run all of the time) = 13.8 KwH\n\n\u2022 13.8 KwH\/day = 414 KwH\/month\n\n\u2022 414 Kwh \u00d7 $0.11\/hour = $45.54\/month\n\nYou can see how this usage might all start adding up to a sharp increase in your power bill!\n\nA very useful tool to get an even more accurate idea of how much electricity a piece of equipment is really using is a neat gadget called an energy usage meter. A popular brand is called the Kill A Watt. You plug the meter into any 110-volt wall socket and then plug an appliance into the unit. A digital readout will display the current usage, as well as usage over time. Wait about 24 hours and you can get a pretty accurate idea of how much power is being consumed\u2014and think about whether adding that second fridge is really worth it!\n\n**Reducing Needs**\n\nWhen you design your creamery (as well as your business plan), you can make power-saving choices that will positively impact your future power bills and environmental footprint. The following chapters will discuss options that you can build into your plan for energy efficiency. This can be a greater challenge when you are working with existing buildings and infrastructure, but you can still make choices that will help reduce your energy needs.\n\nIf you are considering increasing production in order to increase income, don't forget to factor in increased energy usage and costs. If you are already using your equipment at its maximum and you need to add additional cold storage, etc., be sure that the increased product will offset the increased costs enough to make the investment worthwhile.\n\n**Renewable Energy**\n\nRenewable energy (RE) can be expensive to purchase and install, but it can become a cost-saving investment for any size creamery. The USDA Farm Bill often includes grant moneys for farmers who want to use RE. Check its website for updates and links to state officials who can help you research these options: www.rurdev.usda.gov\/rbs\/farmbill.\n\nAnother useful site for monitoring state incentives as well as other funding possibilities is www.dsireusa.org.\n\nTax credits and state rebates can sometimes cover as much as 50 percent of your initial RE purchase and installation costs, but these vary from year to year and state to state. Finding a reliable RE installer will be your best bet for staying on top of state funding and how to best take advantage of it. Many RE companies now offer financing, as well. Think of it as buying your power in advance\u2014for a set price now, you are guaranteeing a steady source of power for years to come.\n\nOften people focus on the \"payback time\" for renewable energy (the time it would take, with conventional operational costs, to pay for an RE system). Payback time isn't usually a consideration when using conventional energy sources, buying groceries, or buying a car\u2014so if you're considering renewable energy, take the payback time information with a grain of salt and choose what works not only for your pocketbook, but for your philosophy.\n\n**GIANACLIS'S \"CUPS\" FOR MAXIMIZING ENERGY** **EFFICIENCY IN THE CREAMERY**\n\n**1. Choose the right-size equipment**. For example, don't buy a 100-gallon bulk tank if you will be storing only 50 gallons of milk.\n\n**2. Use equipment to its maximum capacity for its size**. In other words, don't run a large refrigerator only half full of product.\n\n**3. Place equipment where it can run efficiently**. For instance, don't place a freezer against a wall that receives full sun exposure and radiates heat. Place cooling units, such as bulk tanks and refrigerators, so that the excess heat they create (as a by-product of cooling) can be exhausted from the room (to increase the efficiency of the compressor).\n\n**4. Schedule processing to take advantage of natural conditions**. For example, if the make room is so warm in the afternoon that you have to run an air conditioner, make cheese earlier in the day.\n\nA micro-hydroelectric turbine provides additional power to Pholia Farm's off-grid solar power system.\n\nFor a detailed description of renewable energy options for farms, go to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's website and visit the page for farmers and ranchers at www.nrel.gov\/learning\/farmers_ranchers.html. Another great site for farmers considering RE is www.farmenergy.org. While some of the RE options listed, such as methane recovery systems, are currently aimed at the large-scale dairy, others\u2014including wind and solar (photovoltaics)\u2014are viable options for any size farm. Determining your site's best choice and system size is most likely a job for a licensed installer.\n\n**Structure**\n\nAs you think about building a new barn and creamery, you will have options for choosing designs and materials that can increase your buildings' efficiency and reduce maintenance. While traditional (conventional) materials, such as wood framing and cement block, are always options, these days it's becoming easier to find contractors who have experience with some interesting, often more ecologically friendly options\u2014such as structural insulated panels (SIPs) or insulating concrete forms (ICFs). New construction will also give you the opportunity to orient the building and position windows to maximize efficiency. Even if you are remodeling, you might be able to take advantage of some of these options.\n\n**Building Material Choices**\n\nThere are many options available for the construction of a small dairy. Some of these choices may not be available in your area, either due to lack of supplies and construction expertise, or due to building codes that have not evolved to accept some of the newer building choices.\n\nWhen you choose a building material, it is a good idea to consider the environmental cost (EC). Environmental cost figures attempt to factor in such things as carbon output during production of materials, man-hours of installation, life span of the material, and demolition and disposal costs. Bear in mind that data on these factors is subjective and constantly changing. Depending upon where you live, the intended use of your building, the expected life span of the business, etc., the actual EC will vary greatly.\n\nHere is an example: Concrete has a high up-front environmental cost. One of the key ingredients in concrete is cement, which is made from limestone that is mined and then kiln treated. Much energy is consumed not only during the process of producing concrete but also during its use as a building material\u2014including trucking and often pumping the concrete to, and at, the building site. On the plus side, however, since any building will use far more energy over its life span than during its construction, concrete's long-term assets\u2014which include thermal mass (the ability of a material to store heat ) and low maintenance (cleaning, upkeep, paint, etc.)\u2014add EC credits. Furthermore, at the end of its life span concrete can be recycled for new uses. In addition, its fire-resistant quality adds sustainable benefits (as well as insurance rate discounts) that can all add up and make it the greenest choice available\u2014in the appropriate application. (If it sounds a bit confusing, it is, but it is still a good idea to learn what you can and make the best choice possible\u2014when options exist.)\n\nTable 7-2 summarizes some of the primary differences in building materials.\n\n**Passive Solar Design**\n\nPassive solar design optimizes a building's design to suit its climate and location to help maintain optimal comfortable temperatures year-round. Factors to be considered include the orientation of the building (south-facing usually being ideal); thermal mass of the materials (walls and surfaces that are placed to intentionally retain seasonally desirable temperatures); windows placed and sized to minimize undesirable heat loss or gain; and shading, such as deciduous trees and awnings that keep the building cool in the summer and allow sun exposure for increased warmth in the winter. Existing buildings, geographical limitations, or other factors can limit the use of passive solar design, but if you keep it in mind and incorporate it whenever possible, you will reap a great benefit on your power bill!\n\n**Ergonomics and Efficiency of Motion**\n\nAt this point, you are probably feeling as if there is enough to think about when designing your creamery, but here is one more! Think of sustainability in terms of how you might design your workspace to maximize your efficiency and therefore, in the long run, the sustainability of both your business and your enjoyment of the work. In the beginning, we all just want to do whatever it takes to get our license and start selling cheese, but some of the choices we might make to arrive at this short-term goal as quickly as possible could adversely affect our long-term survival. So, whenever possible, make choices that will reduce your workload and increase your efficiency! This topic will be revisited as you continue reading about designing each room of your creamery.\n\nAs you continue reading part 3, I hope you will see how your floor plan design and equipment choices will affect your choices of infrastructure and system options. No one I know who has built a creamery has been able to look back and say, \"It's just right; I wouldn't change a thing.\" But with some thought and consideration, perhaps your creamery will be close to ideal.\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[The Milking Parlor and Milkhouse\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6857)**\n\nWhat transforms a farm into a dairy? Two rooms: the milking parlor and the milkhouse. Both of these specialized rooms must be constructed to meet regulatory standards as well as to suit the size of your herd and your own personal preferences.\n\nFor both rooms we will cover floor plan considerations, construction and maintenance standards, and equipment options. Appendix B contains sample floor plans from working farmstead creameries around the country\u2014feel free to refer to them during your reading. Appendix A provides a list of resources where you can get much of the equipment mentioned here.\n\nEager to be milked, these pasture-fed cows wait for their turn at Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\n**The Milking Parlor**\n\nWhile the term \"parlor\" may bring to mind fringed lamp shades and overstuffed furniture, the milking parlor is in reality a bustling, noisy, wet room that should be designed to withstand the abrasion of animal hooves and the harsh contact of cleaning chemicals and brooms.\n\n**Floor Plan Considerations**\n\nWhen designing the layout of your milking parlor, take into consideration access, location, and size.\n\n**Access**\n\nMilking takes a huge chunk of time out of the dairy farmer's day. Getting animals in and out of the parlor in an efficient fashion will cut down on wasted time and effort. Think about animal traffic flow when designing the floor plan of your milking parlor, especially in relationship to the loafing area, holding pen, and barn. If you will be milking by hand or using a portable milking machine, then easy access to the milkhouse is a priority\u2014lugging heavy pails of milk up steps and through doors will get old very quickly!\n\n**Location**\n\nLocating the parlor close to or adjoining the barn brings convenience, but also the added challenge of keeping barn material\u2014such as manure, flies, hair, and dust\u2014out. If milk will be transported to a bulk tank via a permanent pumping system, locating the parlor slightly above the bulk tank will allow for gravity-assisted pumping\u2014and the milk will be treated more gently.\n\n**TRAFFIC FLOW**\n\nPaul Hamby, owner of Hamby Dairy Supply, one of the nation's largest suppliers to home and commercial dairies, says: \"Traffic flow is perhaps the single biggest mistake people make in planning a new facility. Poor flow adds more labor and slows the milking process and usually cannot be fixed after your facility is up and running.\"\n\n**Size**\n\nAs with most rooms in the dairy, it is hard to make them too large. A good parlor should accommodate the animals, the milkers, and the occasional additional person, such as a milk tester, visitor, apprentice, etc.\n\n**Construction and Maintenance Standards**\n\nThese standards are defined in the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO), the FDA's bible on Grade A milk production. Each state may also dictate additional and unique standards, so be sure to consult with your state's regulatory agency prior to building. This book will refer to the standards in the PMO at the time of writing.\n\n**WILLOW HILL FARM**\n\nWillow Smart and David Phinney of Willow Hill Farm in Milton, Vermont, built their new creamery on a slope\u2014with each room stepped down a level from the one preceding it in the cheesemaking process, thus allowing them to utilize gravity at each stage. Even the whey flows out of the creamery through a pipeline that runs directly to the hog pens. Willow Hill milks a herd of approximately 90 East Friesian and Friesian cross ewes and 7 Brown Swiss and Dutch Belted cows, which provides them with enough milk to produce 15,000 pounds of cheese per year. Their new creamery includes a handy self-serve \"store\" from which customers can also view the cheesemaking room.\n\n**Floors**\n\n\u2022 Sloped to drain   \n\u2022 Made of concrete or other impervious material\n\nThe parlor floor is not expected to be as smooth and free of blemishes as other rooms in your dairy, but it should not have areas that allow water to accumulate in puddles or cracks that are too deep to clean. You can have a slightly rough texture to your parlor floor to prevent animals or milkers from slipping. Parlor floors, especially those used by cows, will need to be resurfaced periodically over time (usually many years).\n\n**Walls and Ceilings**\n\n\u2022 Cleanable surface   \n\u2022 Sealed junctions at floor and ceiling\n\n**SWEET HOME FARM**\n\nOne of the more clever ceiling materials I saw was at Doug Wolbert and Alyce Birchenough's Sweet Home Farm in Alabama. Doug used painted metal roofing to cover the ceiling interior. He sealed screw heads and joints with 100 percent silicone caulking. The material has held up extremely well in the moist environment and looks clean and fresh with minimal maintenance. Doug and Alyce produce approximately 13,000 pounds of cheese annually from their herd of grass-fed Guernsey cross cows.\n\nWalls and ceilings must have a surface finish that you can keep reasonably clean. Concrete and block will have to be filled and relatively smooth. Ceilings should be smooth and painted or finished in an approved manner. Ceiling-to-wall joints as well as light fixtures must be sealed to prevent dust from falling into milk (especially when feed or other things are stored above the parlor). You should expect to resurface concrete floors periodically, depending upon what kind of wear and tear they experience. (For example, concrete floors in a cow parlor will wear much more quickly than those in a goat parlor.)\n\n**GRADE B MILK**\n\nWhile the PMO covers the production of Grade A fluid milk, some states still license plants to produce Grade B milk, also known as \"manufacturing milk\" because of its use in the manufacture of other dairy products, including cheese. Regulations differ for Grade B in regard to dairy barn construction and bacterial counts allowed in milk. Inspections are not as frequent. Some farmers start out using Grade B to make cheese, with the thought of upgrading in the future. Before you start your construction, consult with your licensing agency to determine if Grade B is an option worth investigating in your state.\n\n**Lighting**\n\nLighting must be sufficient for well-illuminated day or night milking. The PMO stipulates a light meter reading of 110 lux. (Think of a living room with enough light to read easily.) Light fixtures should be sealed to prevent any broken bulbs from introducing hazards into the milk. The most acceptable light fixture consists of a bulb inside a rugged glass jar encased by a metal grid. These fixtures are somewhat costly, but they'll reduce the risk of hazards due to broken bulbs (which can occur easily when cleaning the ceiling and walls with a scrub broom).\n\n**Ventilation**\n\nGood ventilation is important to prevent condensation or excessive odors. Consider installing an exhaust fan with a timer if natural ventilation through windows is not an option year-round.\n\n**Openings**\n\nThe PMO allows for three-sided parlors (ones that are open to a holding pen, breezeway, or other livestock access), but remember to check the rules for your specific state to see if this is acceptable where you are. Any opening to a feed room must have dust-tight doors that are closed except when they are in use, to prevent the contamination of feedstuffs into the milk. In addition, poultry, swine, and pets may not have access to the parlor. For large openings, using vinyl strip curtains or doors can help with climate and pest control.\n\n**Equipment and Accessories**\n\nHere is a list of some of the equipment and extra stuff you will need to consider for your milking parlor:\n\n\u2022 Milk stand or platform\n\n\u2022 Milking machine system, portable or in-place\n\n\u2022 Hand-washing sink and wash-down hose\n\n\u2022 Other stuff: shelf for teat dip, udder wipes, radio, white board, calendar, clock, etc.\n\n**Milk Stand or Platform Considerations**\n\n\u2022 Number of animals that need to be milked\u2014both now and planned over the next five years\n\n\u2022 Construction material, cost, and maintenance\n\n\u2022 Parlor style: tie-stall; pit\/recessed (with herringbone or parallel pattern); side exit; or rotary\/carousel\n\n**_Number of Animals_**\n\nWhile it is often not possible to anticipate future growth, try to start out with a milking stand or platform that will anticipate your needs about five years down the road. This could save significant cost as well as time should your herd size grow. Also, remember that the more animals you can milk at one time, the faster your milking chores will be completed!\n\n**_Construction Materials_**\n\nIf you are building a recessed (pit) parlor, then you will likely build your platform from concrete, most certainly if you are milking cows. If you are milking goats or sheep, you can have a recessed parlor with the elevated platform fabricated from steel\u2014either painted, galvanized, or stainless steel. (If you are milking year-round, it is a good idea to spend the extra money on a hot-dipped galvanized surface or even stainless steel.) A handful of states allow the use of painted wood. Some have argued that painted wood is an impervious material and should be allowed, but in reality, a painted surface on which hooved animals will be walking will be in constant need of maintenance.\n\n**_Parlor Style_**\n\nIn the Northeast and colder parts of the nation, you will find many _tie-stall_ barns that both house the cows during the winter and serve as a milking parlor. These are rarely seen in more temperate parts of the nation, where animals can access an outdoor loafing shed or protected paddock year-round. In some parlors, animals are not given grain during milking and can be clip-tied to either a wall or a rail. While this does eliminate the cost of purchasing a headgate system, it also increases labor time, as each animal must be individually secured and released.\n\n_Recessed or pit parlors_ can be designed with either a herringbone or parallel formation:\n\n\u2022 A _herringbone_ parlor usually consists of a central pit flanked by two milking platforms. Animals enter on one side and line up diagonally. The milker prepares the first set of animals and begins their milking, then allows a second set into the other side and gets them started. After being milked, animals exit from each side at the same time.\n\n\u2022 In a _parallel_ parlor, animals line up side by side at a right angle to the milker. Some parallel systems allow for single exit of animals, while others allow group exit.\n\nThree-cow tie-stall parlor, Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\nSix-sheep milking parlor with cascading headgate, Black Sheep Creamery, Washington.\n\n**HEADGATES**\n\nFor the small goat or sheep producer, a parallel formation on an elevated platform is the most common parlor design in use. The does or ewes usually place their heads in a stanchion (headgate) and are secured during the milking process. Headgates can be gang-operated (a single mechanism locks all animals in at one time); cascading (the first animal can access only the first stanchion; as it places its head through the opening, the stanchion locks the animal in and triggers the next stanchion in sequence, to open, and so on); or individually activated (each station closes and releases independently of the rest). Cascading head-gates have, in my opinion, the advantage in that they prevent animals from stopping at the first open stanchion and blocking animals behind them from entering the parlor. The only catch is that in order for the cascading headgate to latch, the animal must lower her head to a grain tub, thus triggering the catch. So you must want to feed the animals grain while they're on the milk stand for this type of headgate to be a good choice for your farm.\n\n_Side-exit parlors_ have individually loading and exiting stalls that place the cow sideways to the milker.\n\n_Rotary or carousel parlors_ are just what they sound like: animals step onto a slowly rotating platform and face toward the center, placing the udder to the outside.\n\nAs you can imagine, there are many things to consider when choosing a parlor style. There are advantages and disadvantages to each type. Some of the main points to consider when choosing a parlor style are:\n\n\u2022 _Ease of access to the animal for udder prep and milking_. The easier the access, the more sanitary the process is likely to be.\n\n\u2022 _Individual attention_. If animals must come and go in groups only, then slow-milking animals will either impede the process or will not be completely milked out when they exit.\n\n\u2022 _Visibility for the milker_. The farther the milker is from animals during milking (such as in a larger side-exit parlor), the more likely teat cups will not be removed at the right time.\n\n\u2022 _Comfort of the milker_. Parlors designed for one species (such as cows) but used for another (such as goats) are likely to be less efficient and comfortable. Platform height that is too low for the milker to easily prep and milk animals will decrease comfort and therefore efficiency.\n\nIf possible, try to visit dairies using several of these systems to get a better sense of your options. Consulting a specialist who sells parlor systems can also be helpful; however, many of these companies are focused on systems that are designed for the large dairy.\n\n**Milking System Considerations**\n\nWhile the PMO does allow for hand-milking, there are very few dairies that still employ this method as their primary milking system. Most small operations utilize either portable bucket milkers or a permanent pipeline system. Important factors to consider when choosing a milking machine system are:\n\n\u2022 Number of animals to be milked, now and over the next five years   \n\u2022 Initial cost and setup   \n\u2022 Operator efficiency and comfort\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_A \"Semi-Permanent\" Bucket Milker_**\n\nA bucket milker can be set up to be \"semi-permanent\" by locating the vacuum pump and motor a distance from the milking parlor and installing a PVC line that runs from the vacuum pump to the milking parlor and an electrical line and switch for turning the motor on and off in the parlor. This allows for a quieter milking situation, and easier cleanup in the parlor; it also keeps any greasy residue from an oil vacuum pump out of the milking area.\n\nRhonda Gothberg setting up her semi-permanent bucket milking system at Gothberg Farm, Washington.\n\n**Portable Bucket Systems**\n\nPortable bucket systems consist of a vacuum pump, a pulsator, a milk bucket, milking lines, and a milking cluster made up of claws and teat cups. The vacuum pump has a line that runs to the milk bucket, where it creates negative pressure. The milking lines run from the bucket to the animal. A _pulsator_ is installed either on the lid of the bucket, in the vacuum line, or as an all-in-one claw and pulsator. The pulsator turns the vacuum suction to the milk bucket and teat cups on and off rhythmically, allowing the teat to refill with milk and ensuring that circulation of blood to and from the teat is not impaired. The vacuum pulls the teat into the teat cup, which consists of an _inflation_ and _shell_. The inflation has a silicone or rubber liner inside a plastic or stainless steel shell _._ At the bottom of each inflation, or in-line just after the inflation, is a part referred to as the _claw_. If you are milking cows, the claw looks a bit like an animal claw, with many attachments coming off a central part, but for goats and sheep there is no resemblance. The whole setup is referred to as the _cluster_. The claw consists of a reservoir where milk pools before it enters the milk hose, a valve that prevents backflow of milk into the inflation, and a tiny air vent to draw air into the line\u2014thus preventing \"slugs\" of milk in the lines (slugs are a problem because they cause the vacuum to fluctuate to an extreme that can allow for droplets of milk to spray upward and into an open teat orifice). If no claw is used, then venting must be provided through the shell. Both the milk line and a vacuum line from the pulsator attach to the claw.\n\nAfter milking, the bucket is transported to the milkhouse, where the milk is poured through a filter (unless an inline filter is used) into a clean milk can or bulk tank; after this, the milk is either chilled and stored or pumped directly to the cheese make room for processing. Portable systems are cleaned using hose brushes and a sink and\/or bucket washer (more on this in the section on the milkhouse).\n\n**_Pipeline Systems_**\n\nPipeline systems deliver the milk directly to a milk storage (bulk) tank, eliminating the need to transport buckets by hand. The main components (milk pipeline and vacuum lines) are built in, while milk hoses and clusters can be either cleaned-in-place (CIP) or cleaned separately in the milkhouse. Most newer pipeline systems are CIP, but many smaller farms or dairies that milk in tie-stall barns remove milk hoses from the pipeline and clean them manually or with a bucket washer in the milkhouse. Pipeline systems use the same cluster set-up as described for portable bucket milkers, but instead of the milk hoses being attached to a bucket, they are attached to a milk pipeline and the vacuum lines are attached to a main vacuum line. These main lines run either above the level of the udder (high line) or below (low line). It is generally agreed that low-line systems are more efficient and move the milk more gently, as they can rely more on gravity to aid in the milk flow. In the small dairy, teat cups will most likely be removed by hand when the animal has been emptied of milk, but in large systems, automatic take-offs (ATOs) are common. The milk flows through the pipeline to a milk receiver jar, where it is pooled and then pumped or released to the bulk tank for storage. There are many variations, modifications, and maintenance issues that exist with a pipeline system. (These include such things as automatic backflushing of teat cups, in-line cooling and filtration, and more.) You would be well advised to consult with a reputable dairy supply dealer when considering the purchase of a pipeline milking system and then maintaining it.\n\n**BACKFLUSHING AND MASTITIS PREVENTION**\n\nIn large dairies, pipeline systems are more complex and automated than you are likely to see in a small dairy. This includes automatic take-off (ATO) and automatic backflushing of the teat cups. Backflushing is the process in which a sanitizing solution is flushed through the teat cups to remove any milk residue from the animal just milked and sanitize the teat cups between animals. Since the solution flows in the opposite direction of the milk, it is called back-flushing. The removal of the milk residue can help prevent cross-contamination by mastitic agents. Manual backflushing can be done on any milking system by shutting off all vacuum to the cluster and immersing the teat cups in a sanitizing solution; however, exposure to the solution must be for the minimum time required (30 seconds for most properly diluted sanitizers), and great care must be taken to refresh the solution (as it will rapidly become ineffective as the milk residue is rinsed into it) and to ensure that no solution is pulled into the milk hoses. Most references to manual backflushing as a means of preventing the spread of mastitis suggest that other steps will be equally effective, including ensuring proper vacuum pressure; not allowing teat cups to slip on and off a teat during milking (causing milk in teat cups to possibly enter the teat orifice); proper removal of teat cups, with vacuum off; and proper teat sanitation.\n\nEight-doe pipeline CIP milking system, Fraga Farm, Oregon.\n\n**MILK QUALITY OPPORTUNITY**\n\nYour best defense against poor milk quality is aggressively enforced sanitation and proper procedure in the milking parlor. Not only will these good manufacturing procedures (GMPs) and Standard Sanitation Operating Procedures (SSOPs) ensure a clean milk supply, but they will help prevent cross-contamination between animals and the spread of a potentially herd-devastating disease. The correct operation of vacuum pumps and milking equipment will help maintain good udder health, without which quality milk cannot be produced! See appendix C for more on milk quality and chapter 12 for more on SSOPs and GMPs.\n\n**_Choosing the Right System_**\n\nThe more animals you are milking, the greater your volume of milk\u2014and possibly the longer it will take to relieve them of this milk. This brings into consideration two important factors: First, the greater the volume, the more difficult it becomes to transport the milk by hand. Second, the longer it takes to complete the milking, the less quickly milk will be chilled (if not automatically transported to a chilling tank). A portable bucket system is very inexpensive in comparison to a pipeline system, but there could be added labor costs if the volume of milk reduces operator efficiency.\n\nThe two system types are virtual mirror images in their advantages and disadvantages. Here is a little quiz that might help you choose:\n\n1. How many animals will you be milking?\n\na. 1\u201320 goats\/sheep or 1\u20133 cows? _Portable okay._\n\nb. 20\u201330 goats\/sheep or 4\u20136 cows? _Portable okay, but pipeline better._\n\nc. 30 or more goats\/sheep or more than 6 cows? _Pipeline best._\n\n2. Is your milking parlor already built?\n\na. Yes? _Consider portable._\n\nb. No? _Consider pipeline if milking more than number of animals in_ _(1a) above._\n\n3. How much money can you invest?\n\na. Minimal? _Choose a portable system._\n\nb. A bit more than \"not a lot\"? _Consider a pipeline for long-term_ _benefits if milking more than 20 goats\/sheep or 3 cows._\n\nIf you decide that a portable system is best, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a system: motor size, oil or oil-less vacuum pump, balance tank, and maintenance issues. Motor size, measured in horsepower (HP), will dictate the maximum number of animals (or clusters) that can be milked at one time. If the motor doesn't have enough HP, then it cannot create sufficient vacuum without working too hard and shortening its life. With respect to oil lubrication of the vacuum pump, you will find equal support for either being \"the best,\" but remember that an oil pump will spew out an oily residue that will need to be factored in for placement of the unit. Balance tanks serve several purposes on a milking system. First, they provide a cushioning effect on the vacuum supply, preventing or limiting severe fluctuations in vacuum when lines are taken on and off of animals. Second, it provides a distribution chamber for line from the pump and to the milking clusters. Last, it serves as a trap (or leads to a trap) for any milk that might inadvertently get sucked into the vacuum lines. Some very small portable systems made today do not have a balance tank. If any milk enters the system, it can go directly into the vacuum pump and cause damage. With any portable, or, for that matter, pipeline system you will need to know the proper maintenance schedule. Be sure to consult with the dealer and know what is needed to keep your system operating at its peak.\n\nAs with parlor design, it is helpful to have some hands-on experience with milking equipment options before you choose and invest in a system of your own. Discuss the choices with people who have used both, as well as with vendors who sell both. While you can always upgrade from a portable to a CIP system, it may save you time and effort to install one in the beginning if need will eventually demand it.\n\n**Hand-Washing Sink and Wash Hose**\n\nA hand-washing sink is not required in the milking parlor, but consider installing one anyway, as it does come in handy. Parlor floors must be kept clean. While a washdown with water is the most common method, dry brushing followed by the application of hydrated lime (to sanitize the floor) is allowed by the PMO. Goat and sheep parlors can easily be swept first, to minimize the amount of solid waste entering the wastewater management system. The wash hose does not need to be supplied with hot water; however, you might want to consider having hot water accessible for more intense cleaning.\n\n**Other Stuff for Your Milking Parlor**\n\nYou can outfit your milking parlor with other things that will increase your comfort and functionality. A nearby shelf or a rolling cart (get the plastic\/ rubber type) for such items as teat dip, wipes, and udder treatments is very useful. A radio or music system is nice for both the milker and the animals. A calendar with important breeding and treatment dates, along with a whiteboard to leave messages for the next milker (or for yourself ), can also help optimize the time spent in the parlor by increasing the efficiency of your herd management.\n\n**The Milkhouse**\n\nThe room that houses the bulk tank, and therefore the milk, is called the milk-house. While a small creamery may actually store its milk in the cheese make room, it will still be required to have a milkhouse for the cleaning and storing of milking equipment.\n\n**Floor Plan Considerations**\n\nWhen designing the layout of your milkhouse, take the following points into consideration:\n\n\u2022 _Access_ that makes it easy to bring milk and milking equipment in from the parlor; when allowed, have doors swing into the room for easier load transportation.\n\n\u2022 _Location_ that is convenient to the parlor and make room, but separated for reasons of cleanliness and sanitation.\n\n\u2022 _Size_ that allows for ease of work and cleaning, along with possible equipment upsizing over time.\n\n**Construction and Maintenance Standards**\n\nAs with the milking parlor, the construction and maintenance standards in this book conform to the PMO at the time of writing. Remember that your state may enforce different requirements; therefore, be sure to consult with your regulatory agency prior to any construction.\n\n**Floors**\n\nFloors must be sloped to drain and made of concrete or other impervious material. They should be finished smooth and free of cracks or blemishes that inhibit proper cleaning. Floor drains must be accessible for cleaning and inspection. Don't put a drain where equipment will sit!\n\n**WHAT KIND OF DOORS?**\n\nThis question seems so simple to me now, but during our construction it was a tough one. For some reason I thought we had to buy heavy-duty, commercial-grade doors (very expensive). Fortunately, we figured out that it didn't matter, as long as they were sturdy and easy to clean. We chose fiberglass-wrapped doors with reinforced interior panels. (Most fiberglass and steel doors have a foam insulation core.) We also had windows put in each one, allowing extra light as well as visibility when coming and going into the room.\n\n**Walls, Ceilings, and Doors**\n\nWall finishes in the milkhouse will need to be more easily cleaned than those in the milking parlor; in other words, they will need to be smoother and in better repair than might be acceptable in the parlor. Painted plywood, fiberglass-reinforced panels, dairy board (also known as high-density polyethylene boards HDPE), and sealed and painted concrete (block or other) are all acceptable. Keep in mind that any paint going on a block or concrete wall will need to be formulated for wet environments. Many cheesemakers have had to completely strip and redo their walls after paint failure! Doors should be tight fitting and self-closing. If your regulators allow, try to design doors to swing inward to facilitate carrying loads into the room. Some state regulations will not allow for the parlor-to-milkhouse door to swing into the milkhouse, the concern being that an animal could push the door in and gain access to the milkhouse.\n\n**Lighting**\n\nThe milkhouse should be more brightly lit than the parlor. A lux of 220 is required. (Think kitchen lighting brightness.) Light fixtures should be protected and covered to prevent any broken bulbs from introducing hazards into the milk.\n\n**Ventilation**\n\nAs in the parlor, there must be enough air volume and circulation to prevent condensation and allow tools and equipment to dry\u2014remember, moisture allows for bacterial growth! A dry environment is more likely to be a sanitary environment. A good-quality exhaust fan (suitable for damp environments) with a timer switch (so it can run for a period of time after cleaning is completed) is highly recommended. Be sure to include a screened opening for fresh air to enter when the exhaust fan is running. Windows are permitted by the PMO (as long as they do not open directly to animal housing) and can supply adequate ventilation during most seasons.\n\n**Remember, moisture allows for bacterial growth!**  \n **A dry environment is more likely to be a sanitary environment.**\n\n**Water**\n\nHot water must be supplied to the milkhouse at a minimum temperature of 140\u2013160\u00b0F. This is to allow for the proper cleaning of milking equipment. The water must also be of a sufficient volume and have adequate pressure for cleaning. Insufficient hot water supply is one of the most common mistakes made when designing systems for the dairy. While hot water may arrive into the milkhouse at an adequate temperature, it cools rapidly during pumping through milking lines and equipment. If water is not hot enough, solids will be redeposited during the wash cycle\u2014this can lead to buildups of fats, proteins, and other contaminants that will harbor and grow bacteria, which in turn lead to the contamination of milk.\n\n**Insufficient hot water supply is one of the most common**  \n **mistakes made when designing systems for the dairy.**\n\nIn addition to water temperature, water for cleaning should be of a close to neutral pH and not be too high in minerals, such as iron. While your regulatory agency will most likely test the water for coliform contamination, I recommend a test for minerals (especially calcium and magnesium, the main components of hard water) and pH. You can test pH with pH strips or a pH meter (the same can be used for cheesemaking). If the mineral content of your water is high enough to negatively affect cleaning and sanitizing chemicals, it could also be affecting the absorption of and interaction with other minerals your livestock need. Consult the company that supplies and\/or manufactures your cleaning and sanitizing chemicals for parameters and product suggestions. Water quality and its effect on cleaning quality will influence the life span of your milk hoses and equipment, so it should not be ignored!\n\n**Equipment and Accessories**\n\nHere is a list of some of the equipment you will need for the milkhouse, followed by details on each item. The bulk tank can be located in the cheese make room, but we will cover it under this section.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Shelving_**\n\nWall shelving in the dairy, especially the milkhouse and creamery, can be challenging. Plastic-coated wire holds up for several years, but the brackets and mounts designed to hold it are made of painted steel. Any painted metal in the dairy will begin to flake and rust in a very short period of time. These flakes of rust and paint can become a contaminant in your milk and product. Chrome-coated shelves will also rust. Stainless steel won't rust in normal circumstances, but it will in the presence of high concentrations of chlorine. Epoxy-coated shelving is, in my opinion, the best choice. Even then, watch out for the mounting hardware (screws, etc.), as they will often rust out, leaving your shelves in a precarious position. Choose stainless steel screws and bolts whenever possible.\n\n\u2022 Double-compartment sink\n\n\u2022 Hand-washing sink and wash hose\n\n\u2022 Milk cooling\/bulk tank\n\n\u2022 Milk line washing equipment\n\n\u2022 Milk strainer and receiving pails (when using portable milking system)\n\n**Double-Compartment Sink**\n\nA two-compartment sink is needed for the washing and rinsing of milking equipment and tools. For the very small producer, the second compartment can be a stainless steel pail or a small, side-hanging sink as used with a bucket washer (more on that in a bit). You can hang your clean buckets and pails above the sink on stainless steel \"S\" hooks hanging from mesh shelving.\n\n**Hand-Washing Sink and Wash Hose**\n\nA hand-washing sink should be equipped with single-use towels (either disposable paper towels or cloth towels that are laundered between use). Be sure the sink stays clear of items that would block usage; in other words, don't leave baby bottles, pails, or anything sitting in it. Part of the routine dairy inspection will verify the access (and appropriate use) of hand-washing sinks. A wash hose with hot and cold water will be very useful, especially when cleaning tanks and hard-to-reach corners in the milkhouse. Don't forget to use a floor squeegee to reduce water waste (instead of using the water sprayer as a broom).\n\n**Milk Cooling (Bulk) Tank**\n\nThere are cheesemakers who do not use any milk storage system; rather, they make cheese daily. While this is the best choice for producing high-quality cheese, it is not realistic for most farms that rely on only a few people to do all of the labor. If you make cheese daily, other important things, such as animal care and maintenance (not to mention your own personal life), could take a backseat. I will assume that most people reading this book will need to hold their milk for 24 to 72 hours on a regular basis.\n\nFor the larger producer, there are many bulk tanks available, both new and used. For the small dairy, however, the choices are very limited. New tanks currently manufactured in the U.S. start at 600 gallons. But at least one small U.S. company is working on plans for small bulk tanks. There are some small, very nice tanks available from Europe, but depending upon the strength (or weakness) of the U.S. dollar, these imported tanks can fluctuate greatly in cost. Small used tanks can still be found through used dairy equipment suppliers. These older tanks are often in varying states of disrepair and will probably require new refrigeration equipment and valves. (See appendix A for a list of suppliers of both new and used bulk tanks.) If you have a very small operation, there are some creative milk storage methods that many small creameries around the country are using successfully\u2014with their inspector's approval. More on that coming up.\n\nSmall, rebuilt bulk tank, Twig Farm, Vermont.\n\nA bulk tank consists of a stainless steel reservoir (sized to hold several days worth of milk) surrounded by an insulated double wall with compressor coils (to chill) built into the wall. Some older tanks utilize an ice bank (coils immersed in a water bath that create a layer of ice around the lines, providing chilled water that can circulate around the tank). In large dairies, milk is often pre-chilled in-line before entering the tank. This is more energy efficient and better for the milk, but it's usually not cost effective, equipment-wise, for the small dairy. Agitator paddles operated by a motor gently stir the milk to ensure even cooling as well as to prevent cream separation (important for cow's milk).\n\n**_Important Bulk Tank Considerations_**\n\n\u2022 **Volume of first milking.** When choosing a tank, it is important to determine the minimum volume required to attain a level in the tank that will ensure that the milk makes contact with the agitators (usually about 10%). You will need to know what your average production for one milking will be in order to determine if the tank size will work for you.\n\n\u2022 **Storage volume.** Determine your milk production volume at peak month and maximum days stored. Try not to choose a tank that you will outgrow quickly.\n\n\u2022 **Power supply.** Even most small bulk tanks will require a 220-volt outlet (think electric dryer or range outlet). Older tanks, and some that are specially made overseas, are often rated for 110 volts.\n\n**_Creative Alternatives to a Traditional Bulk Tank_**\n\n\u2022 **Combination chiller\/vat.** Possibly the most practical solution for the small creamery is a vat and\/or pasteurizer that is also supplied by a chilled water source for cooling the milk. Several companies are now outfitting units for this multipurpose use. A regular cheesemaking vat is outfitted to pipe in cold water from a remote chilling unit. This water is drained prior to cheesemaking, and hot water is then circulated in the vat. Using one piece of equipment instead of two or three can be the most economical and practical choice; however, be sure you deal with someone who knows the special needs of each function and isn't just putting together something that may compromise each process. Some considerations when purchasing a combination vat\/chiller:\n\n\u2022 _Gentle agitation during chilling and cheesemaking_ **\u2014** variable-speed motor.\n\n\u2022 _Energy efficiency_ **\u2014** fully insulated exterior to maximize both the chilling and the heating efficiency of the unit.\n\n\u2022 **Immersion cooling.** Pails or other acceptable containers are filled with filtered milk and then immersed in a cold-water bath. Milk is hand-agitated and temperature drop is documented either through a digital temperature logger or through manual logging. Some examples of ice-bath chillers include using a traditional bulk tank filled with cold water into which food-grade bags of milk or milk cans are immersed and chest freezers filled with water, salt water, or a food-grade propylene glycol bath (both salt water and propylene glycol will attain very low temperatures without freezing) to cool cans of milk. Depending upon the temperature of the water bath, cans are either moved to a storage refrigerator or left in the cooling bath. This goes back to the old days when all dairies used milk cans and can coolers. Keep in mind that a 7-gallon milk can is very heavy when full, making lifting them in and out of a chiller physically difficult!\n\nPasteurizer\/bulk tank combination chilled by homemade remote chilling system, Mama Terra Micro Creamery, Oregon.\n\nBucket washer setup, Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n**Milk Line Washing Equipment**\n\nWhether you are installing a pipeline milking system or using a bucket milker, you may want to add a system that is specifically designed to aid in the proper and practical cleaning of your equipment. Lines can be effectively cleaned manually after each milking by using brushes, but this will erode the interior surfaces much more quickly than a vacuum washing system, as well as being very time consuming for you. The bucket washer (so called not because it washes your buckets\u2014it doesn't\u2014but because it is meant for use with bucket milker systems) consists of a suction unit that mounts to the wall onto which you attach your milking lines. A small sink or pail is filled with the washing solutions and the inflations are immersed in this pail. A line runs from the wall unit to your vacuum source. When the vacuum is turned on, the suction unit pulls and pushes the washing fluids through the lines. Between each cycle (rinse, wash, acid, or sanitizer) you will turn off the suction and change the solution in the small sink or pail. You hand-scrub the actual buckets and lids. A CIP system does basically the same thing but forces the solutions through the built-in-place milk lines. As you might expect, a CIP system is more complicated and requires monitoring to ensure proper function. Consult with a qualified sales representative to make sure that your system is performing adequately and that you are using the correct detergents and sanitizers, water temperature, \"slug\" (air bubble) flow rate, volume, and time.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_A Bucket Washer System with Faster Draining_**\n\nIf purchasing a bucket washer system (look for one that has stainless steel components) that comes with a small side sink that hangs off one end of the wash sink, consider having a larger drain hole cut. Side sinks typically come with a very small hole in the center that drains rather slowly. Have your new hole positioned in the corner that is the lowest and closest to you (so the plug is easy to reach). Have it cut to the same size as the drain hole in your wash sink so you can use the same size plugs. Have a short section of stainless tubing welded to the bottom to direct the drainage downward (otherwise it will fan out and soak your legs!). This new, larger hole will greatly speed your cleanup time.\n\nPipeline milk hoses and clusters being washed, Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\n**Milk Strainer and Receiving Pails**\n\nWhether milking by hand or by machine, the milk must be filtered. If you're using a pipeline system, an in-line filter will likely be used. If you're using a bucket milker, then you will pour the milk through a strainer\/filter and into a receiving pail, or directly to a pail or tank if an in-line filter designed for a portable bucket system is used. Alternatively, a large filter can be placed in an opening on top of the bulk tank and the milk pipeline can drain into the filter reservoir. ( _Note:_ This works only if the bulk tank has an opening designed to hold a filter.)\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Keeping Stainless Spotless_**\n\nBe sure to inspect stainless steel equipment for cleanliness when dry-wetness will disguise residues and bio-films making dirty equipment look clean.\n\nMilk-can storage rack, Lazy Lady Farm, Vermont.\n\nWhen filtering into milk cans or directly into a bulk tank, choose a large, stainless steel strainer with disposable filters. These large strainers often come with a stainless steel screen filter\u2014this filter is _not_ PMO approved. You can order a second \"punched\" stainless filter that you can use along with a disposable filter. You will need to store disposable filters in a container that can be kept closed between uses. Special dispensers for filters can be used, or you can use any type of plastic or stainless container. We hung a small plastic trash can with a self-closing lid just above the sink.\n\nMilk cans and receiving pails must meet sanitary standards. Rolled edges, rivets, rough welds, and glass lids are not acceptable. There are several inexpensive milk cans on the market for home dairy use\u2014avoid these! Purchase cans that are listed as meeting \"Grade A standards.\" When they arrive, inspect them for defects. Sometimes a rough weld can be fixed by fine sanding and polishing. Lids should be \"umbrella\" style, meaning they come up and over the outside edge of the pail (as opposed to nesting down into the neck of the can). Avoid rolled edges, as these will not be acceptable to most inspectors.\n\n**Other Stuff for Your Milkhouse**\n\nMilk testing equipment, such as scales, dippers, and milk measuring meters, can be stored in the milkhouse when not in use. This equipment is subject to inspection, so don't neglect to periodically take apart any milk meters for cleaning. Other items, such as kid\/calf\/lamb feeding equipment, might be allowed in the milkhouse, but check with your inspector. The philosophy should be: If it isn't used regularly, it shouldn't be in the room.\n\nWith thought and planning you can create a milking parlor and milkhouse that are efficient to work in and easy to maintain. Proper procedures in the parlor and milkhouse will help ensure a high-quality, safe milk supply\u2014without which you negate any efforts to make good cheese! There is an old saying, _\"Milk was never_ _meant to see the light of day.\"_ When you remove the milk from its source and send it through multiple processes, you put it at risk for becoming a dangerous or simply unappetizing food. Plan for and build spaces that help, not hinder, your goal of creating great farmstead cheese.\n\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Cheese Central: The Make Room\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#d7e6967)**\n\nNow for the room that makes a dairy into a creamery, where science and art come together to transform highly perishable milk into a long-lasting, nourishing, and downright tasty product\u2014cheese! The cheese make room is a place where you will be spending a great deal of time. It is important to make it not only highly functional, but also a pleasant place in which to work.\n\nIn this chapter we will discuss floor plan considerations, construction and maintenance standards, and equipment options. Appendix B contains sample floor plans from working creameries around the country. Feel free to refer to them during your study of this chapter to view placement options for the equipment mentioned. Appendix A provides a list of resources, including companies that supply much of the equipment described here.\n\n**Floor Plan Considerations**\n\nWhen designing the layout of your make room, you will need to address the following considerations:\n\n\u2022 **Access** from other rooms, such as the milkhouse, office, and\/or farm store.\n\n\u2022 **Location** of nearby animal pens, dust, and other contaminants.\n\n\u2022 **Size,** to provide adequate square footage for growth and additional equipment.\n\n\u2022 **Windows,** to provide light and views.\n\n\u2022 **Heating and cooling (conditioning)** that takes into consideration optimal cheese working temperatures.\n\n**Access**\n\nConvenient access from other workspaces and optimization of cleanliness should be your first priorities. Think about the proximity to your milkhouse for easy milk transport, either manually or by mechanical systems. Some of the best floor plans locate the make room centrally; in other words, you must first pass through other rooms before entering the make room, progressing in levels of sanitation as you go. Remember, the farmstead creamery is located on a farm! An awareness of the constant challenge to keep dirt, flies, and pathogens out of critical areas will help ensure a safe, high-quality product. By locating the make room so that entry is through other areas, you will help minimize the introduction of unwanted pests and dirt.\n\nLaini Fondiller hard at work in her small creamery, Lazy Lady Farm, Vermont.\n\n**I have never met a cheesemaker who complained**  \n **of his or her make room being too spacious!**\n\n**Size**\n\nMany people design their make room on the small side, picturing only one or two people working there and only minimal equipment in use. Don't forget about draining tables, racks, additional refrigeration units, etc. It is a good idea to try to plan a make room that is large enough to accommodate future, unforeseen needs.\n\n**Windows**\n\nA viewing window into the make room, either on the outside of the building or from your office or farm store, will allow guests and visitors to see into the room without actually entering. You may not be planning on having visitors, but there is a good chance that there will be authors, reporters, family members, retailers, and others who will be asking for tours. Another advantage to a window from the make room to the office or farm store is increased communication opportunities. If your operation is more than a one-person show, then it can be advantageous to be able to discuss such things as cheese orders with another member of the team while you are busy making cheese.\n\nPosition windows and exhaust vents away from animal pens and paddocks to help limit contamination of your workspace by dust, pests, etc. Consider installing filters in openings if such proximity is unavoidable. Also, at certain times of the year there may be more native molds and yeasts in the environment\u2014this will affect your cheese! In larger creameries, \"positive pressure\" is often used to reduce their influence. (Positive pressure is when a room has more air pressure inside the room than outside. When you open a door to one of these rooms, you will feel a whoosh as the air flows out. This positive pressure keeps contaminants from entering the room.)\n\n**Heating and Cooling**\n\nWhen considering how to heat and cool your make room, first take solar (sun) exposure into account. Maintaining the correct temperature in your make room will be easier if you are able to anticipate the impact the heat from the sun will have on your space, see chapter 8. For example, our creamery is built of cement blocks (also called concrete masonry units, or CMUs). The make room gets a lot of late-afternoon sun exposure. In the winter this is fine, but in the summer we have to hang shade cloth to help keep the walls from accumulating too much heat (solar\/ thermal gain), and we keep room-darkening shades pulled down. By that time of the day, luckily, I am done making cheese, so I don't mind not having a view. We have deciduous shade trees and shrubs planted that will eventually help with this problem in the summer and still allow the walls to collect heat during the winter.\n\nOptimal temperatures for draining most cheeses are right around 72\u00b0F. If you are not able to maintain an optimal temperature through natural cooling and warming, you will need to provide mechanical methods of heating and cooling. Many small creameries use portable heaters and window air conditioners when needed. When we designed our creamery, we included radiant heat tubing in our slab (taking great care to keep it away from the aging room floor!).\n\n**Construction and Maintenance Standards**\n\nIn the previous chapters of part 3, I referred frequently to the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) when discussing construction and maintenance standards. It is important for you to remember that the PMO delineates standards for the production of \"Grade A\" products, such as milk and sour cream. As odd as it sounds, cheese is not considered a Grade A product; therefore, its manufacture is not discussed in the PMO. That being said, if your state follows the PMO guidelines for issuing your license, it will follow the same standards in the make room as it does in rooms like the milkhouse and milking parlor.\n\n**DO-OVER STORY, PHOLIA FARM**\n\nThere were very few creameries, ours included, that I visited where I did not see low spots in the floor from an improper sloping of the concrete. The best advice from everyone is to supervise the entire concrete pour and question any area that does not look to have adequate slope. We watched like hawks as the workers poured our floors\u2014for the parlor, milkhouse, and aging room\u2014and we thought they were doing well (they had \"lots of restaurant floor experience\"), so we left for errands. When we came back there was an obvious, very low spot against one wall. Too late to fix! Now we are stuck using a floor squeegee to get the water to the drain.\n\n**Floors**\n\n\u2022 Sloped to drain   \n\u2022 Concrete or impervious material   \n\u2022 In good repair\n\nAs with your other rooms, floors must be sloped to drain, made of concrete or other impervious material (as stated in the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance discussed earlier), and in good repair. \"Good repair\" is defined as free of excess cracks, chips, or pitting. Basically, ask yourself, \"Can it be cleaned?\" If a crack is likely to harbor residue and bits of curd, then it is not going to be acceptable. Epoxy-coated concrete (with texture), ceramic floor tile with well-sealed grout lines, or new concrete in good repair are all acceptable surfaces. If you go with epoxy, be sure to have a reputable installer do the work; many farmers have coated their own floors only to find it not adhering well after a short period of time. Creameries are very wet places that challenge the durability of most finishes. Even concrete will pit and erode over time from the acid of milk and sanitizers.\n\n**Walls**\n\n\u2022 Waterproof, cleanable surface   \n\u2022 Sealed junctions between floor and ceiling\n\nMake sure your wall surface finish is durable and waterproof. This is one room where you cannot afford to shut down production in order to make improvements. ( _Note:_ If you are a seasonal producer, you can use your downtime for improvements and upgrades.) Surfaces such as epoxy-coated concrete block (CMUs), fiberglass-reinforced panels (FRP), dairy board, and painted plywood are all acceptable. When looking at the overall cost, consider the long-term maintenance. Junctions between the ceiling and wall, as well as around light fixtures, must be sealed in a manner so as not to allow dust or sediment to filter into the room.\n\n**Plumbing**\n\n\u2022 Adequately sized floor drains\/floor sinks\n\n\u2022 Hand-washing sink\n\n\u2022 Double- or triple-compartment sink that is not trapped\n\nYou will need floor drains located and sized to accommodate floor wash water and water from untrapped sinks. Floor drains must also be accessible for cleaning and inspection. Remember to size the drains to handle a large volume of water without backing up. So-called floor sinks (they look like small, porcelain sinks with a large drain and are set down into the floor, with the concrete poured around them) are a better choice than standard shower-type floor drains. Some facilities have what is called a trench or gutter drain. These run the length of the floor and allow water to collect as it is shunted toward the main drain in the floor. Trench drains are acceptable but are not considered as sanitary as floor sinks: they allow for the possible accumulation of dirty water, increase the likelihood of splashback from sprayers, and provide a larger, hospitable surface for pathogen growth.\n\nI recommend that any sink in which cheesemaking utensils and forms are washed not have a sanitary trap directly attached. (Sanitary traps are the curved piece of pipe located below household sinks. Traps keep a seal of water, situated in the curve, that blocks sewer gases from coming up the drain and out through the sink.) In food preparation areas, a sanitary trap can become a hazard, as it is another hospitable environment for pathogens. Any backup of water in the sink can bring that contamination into contact with your food contact surfaces. Instead of a sanitary trap at the sink, sinks can drain to a floor drain that is trapped. Hand-washing sinks can either be trapped or run to a floor drain.\n\nIn regard to floor drains and their traps, some jurisdictions will allow for the trap to be situated farther down the line (rather than directly below the drain). You will need to follow your local building code on this, but if traps are allowed farther from the drain itself, that is a more sanitary choice.\n\nPlumbing in the make room, as in the other rooms, can run inside your walls (unseen) or on the surface. If it is on the surface, this is also an area that will need cleaning. Surface-mount plumbing is a good choice in such situations as our CMU construction or in retrofitting an existing building. Remember, if you surface-mount plumbing and live in a zone where freezing is likely, you will need to condition the building during times when below-freezing temperatures could be reached.\n\n**Electricity**\n\nYou will most likely be working with a licensed electrician, unless you are competent to do your own electrical work and your jurisdiction allows for owner-builders to do their own wiring. While your electrician should be able to safely and properly wire your building, there are some things that will be peculiar to the construction of a cheesemaking facility. Here are a few pointers you might want to share with your electrician:\n\n**GREEN CONSIDERATION**\n\nWe all know that compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) save a lot of electricity, right? Well, what most of us don't know is the potential contamination threat if one breaks. They contain small, but significant, amounts of mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin. If broken, this mercury is released into the environment. Go to www.energystar.gov for recommendations on cleaning up a broken CFL.\n\nWhile it is still legal in most states to dispose of CFL bulbs in the trash, they should not end up in landfills. It is difficult to find local recycling options, but check these websites for help: www.epa.gov\/bulbrecycling or www.earth911.org. Remember that because CFLs use so much less energy than incandescent bulbs (roughly 75 percent less), there is still a net environmental gain, as coal and other fossil fuel plants needed to make the power that typically supplies incandescent lighting are major emitters of mercury.\n\nExtreme Green: If choosing CFLs, try to buy ones using technology which uses less mercury. Watch for cost decreases in LED (light-emitting diode) lighting, which has an even longer life and is more energy efficient than even CFLs\u2014but LED lighting has a high up-front cost.\n\n\u2022 All switches and outlets will have to be \"exterior\" grade; that is, designed for wet locations (this applies to most of the rooms in your creamery). Outlets will all be ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) outlets, which are designed to protect you from electric shock in damp areas.\n\n\u2022 Place outlets and switches above the 4-foot level on your walls (where it will be drier) and install them with wet location covers when situated near faucets, vats, steam, etc.\n\nWaterproof electrical cover, Mama Terra Micro Creamery, Oregon.\n\n\u2022 Ample lighting over workspaces is required in most situations. Be sure to provide for 100-watt bulbs or the equivalent.\n\n\u2022 Overhead lighting must be sealed and covered to prevent broken bulbs from contaminating product (see \"Green Consideration\" sidebar for more information on bulbs and safety).\n\n\u2022 Install adequate mechanical ventilation. Commercial-grade exhaust fans are a good choice. Consider having them wired to a timer switch so they will automatically shut off after you leave the room.\n\n**Equipment and Accessories**\n\nThe room in which you will make your cheese will have more equipment than any other room in your dairy. It is also the one in which you will probably be spending the majority of your time. As with the other room design choices, I highly suggest working in, or at the very least touring, several creameries before you settle upon your own floor plan and equipment choices. There is nothing like practical experience to help you define your own needs.\n\nThe following list contains common items found in most small, farmstead creameries. I have also included a chart to help you determine which main pieces of equipment you will need and under what circumstances.\n\n\u2022 Cheese vat\n\n\u2022 Pasteurizer\n\n\u2022 Cheese press\n\n\u2022 Draining table\n\n\u2022 Drying racks\/drying area or room\n\n\u2022 Brining tank (can be located in aging room or make room)\n\n\u2022 Antibiotic residue test kit\n\n\u2022 Refrigerator\/freezer\n\n\u2022 Product refrigerator\n\n\u2022 Rolling cart\n\n\u2022 Double or triple sink\n\n\u2022 Hand-washing sink\n\n\u2022 Washdown hose\n\nAs we progress through this chapter, we will discuss each piece of equipment\u2014choices, pros and cons, costs\u2014and give detailed descriptions to help you sort it all out. Refer to appendix A for a list of resources for purchasing equipment.\n\n**Cheese Vat**\n\nA cheesemaking vat is a container in which you warm and culture the milk, coagulate it, and then \"cook\" the curd. A vat can be a very simple container, such as a pot, or an elaborate receptacle designed specifically for the purpose of warming, cutting, and stirring cheese curd. Cheese vats usually have a jacketed exterior where steam or hot water circulates to warm the milk. If you are making only soft, fresh pasteurized cheeses, then you may be able to use your pasteurizer instead, along with food-grade pails or tubs designed for the culturing of soft cheeses.\n\nRefer to table 9-2 for an overview of vat choices. Details on the different types follow.\n\n**Rectangular or Square Vats**\n\nSmall rectangular or square vats are very uncommon in sizes under 100 gallons, although more companies are adding small processing equipment to their product lines. Rectangular vats have the biggest advantage when it comes to cutting curd, as regular cheese knives and harps fit nicely into the corners. When it comes to stirring the curd, they have a disadvantage\u2014those same corners are not easily reached by automatic agitating paddles and will need manual stirring. Most rectangular vats are not covered, so during ripening and coagulation there is a disadvantage in keeping the top of the milk\/curd at the proper temperature. Small rectangular or square vats are difficult to find new and almost impossible to find used. New vats can cost from $6,000 up depending on size and extras.\n\nSquare cheese vat by Kleen-Flo, Twig Farm, Vermont.\n\n**Round Vats**\n\nRound vats are more readily available in a wide range of small sizes (25 to 200 gallons and up). Most include agitators and knives. Most also have lids (which help maintain temperature during ripening and coagulation). Most round vats have a tipping mechanism that slightly elevates one side of the vat so that whey will flow toward the drain more easily. Round vats are readily available from several manufacturers new; it is rare to find them used. If you are purchasing a new model, prices range from $12,000 to 20,000 depending on size and accessories, look for recommendations from other owners, as product and technical support are critical for initial setup.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Not All \"Vats\" Are Alike!_**\n\nA \"vat pasteurizer\" is the same thing as a \"batch pasteurizer.\" These units are not necessarily ready for serving as a cheesemaking vat! Be sure to clarify with the manufacturer that you need a vat in which you can make cheese.\n\n**UNIQUE AND RARE VATS**\n\nBelieve it or not, there are a few copper cheese vats in use in the United States. They are fairly common in European cheesemaking situations, but inspectors in the U.S. have been quite resistant to their use here. Companies that have been able to use copper have had to convince the authorities that the type of cheese they wish to make cannot be duplicated without the influence of a copper vat.\n\n**Combination Vat and Pasteurizer**\n\nCombination vat and pasteurizers (sometimes called hybrids) are units that have been modified to perform both functions. The important thing to remember when considering a combo is that there is a difference between how milk is treated when it is being pasteurized as opposed to when it is being handled for cheese. For example, the speed at which a pasteurizer agitates the milk is too fast for stirring milk and curds when making cheese. So if you are buying a combination unit, be sure that modifications are included to properly perform both processes. Reputable manufacturers (refer to appendix A for equipment resources) will be able to assist you with these choices. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though any pasteurizer can be used to make cheese, some are deeper than they are wide, which makes scooping curd, draining whey, and cleaning rather difficult. If you are planning on making only pasteurized-milk cheeses, then a combination unit is a wise investment. Prices range from $15,000 for a small unit up to $25,000 for a larger one. Even if you are making both pasteurized and raw-milk cheeses, though, it could still pay off. Compare prices\u2014and remember, having only one piece of equipment means less space is wasted. Also compare energy usage. (See chapter 7 for more on calculating energy efficiency.)\n\n200-gallon van 't Riet cheese vat (great reviews by cheesemakers on this Dutch company's service and products), with cheesemaker Alyce Birchenough at Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\n50-gallon round Qualtech (note mixed reviews by cheesemak-ers on this company's service) cheese vat and pasteurizer, Black Sheep Creamery, Washington.\n\n**Steam Kettles**\n\nSteam kettles, also known as soup kettles, are used primarily in restaurants for cooking and heating soups and stews. They are fairly expensive when purchased new, about $5,000\u201310,000, and, in my opinion, are not a good choice when compared to a new round vat, but they are more readily found used and often at a much cheaper price than a small used cheese vat. When shopping for a steam kettle, consider the following options:\n\n\u2022 Tilting or stationary\n\n\u2022 Tilting will allow you to pour whey off the top\n\n\u2022 Stationary is less expensive\n\n\u2022 Direct-plumbed or self-contained electric or gas\n\n\u2022 Direct-plumbed to a hot water or steam source in the room; cheaper than self-contained units\n\n\u2022 Self-contained electric creates its own steam; higher power bill\n\n\u2022 Self-contained gas creates its own steam; can be propane or natural gas\n\nWatch your newspaper for restaurant closing sales, as well as classified ads in agricultural newspapers, and call restaurant salvage companies and supply companies that sell used equipment. If you are heating these appliances with hot water rather than steam, then safety concerns over buying a used unit are virtually nonexistent. There is little that can break on a direct steam unit; check that the drain valve has all of its parts and that any gaskets or O-rings are in good repair.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Finding Used Equipment_**\n\nSubscribe to dairy-focused \"list serves\" (email groups) on the Internet. There are many that are devoted to commercial dairy sheep, goats, and cows. Creameries that are going out of business frequently post their closures on these lists.\n\n30-gallon steam kettle used as a cheese vat, Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n**Pasteurizer**\n\nIf you are going to make cheeses that require the milk to be pasteurized, then you will need either a vat\/pasteurizer combo or a vat and a separate pasteurizer. Either way, this is an expensive purchase. Some people start out with very small pasteurizers only to find themselves processing several batches per day just to keep up with production (see Jan's story in the \"Fraga Farm\" sidebar). While this might save you money, your time is valuable too\u2014so try to anticipate your production maximum for the first few years and install a unit that can handle that volume.\n\nThe PMO dedicates at least eighty pages of discussion to the proper use and maintenance of pasteurizers\u2014including all the subjects you will be tested on. (You, or whoever in your creamery will be operating the pasteurizer, must pass a written and observed performance test before receiving a pasteurizer operating license.) I highly recommend referring directly to the PMO for study on this topic. Access this document online at the FDA's Center for Food Safety website (www.cfsan.fda.gov), or obtain a copy from your state's department of agriculture or other appropriate regulatory agency.\n\n**FRAGA FARM**\n\nJan and Larry Neilson own Fraga Farm in Sweet Home, Oregon. Jan relates her first equipment experiences:\n\n\"I bought the 15-gallon pasteurizer because I had no other choice; there just wasn't any other small equipment available and I wanted to get started. It was too small from the beginning, but I made two batches a day until I got the 30-gallon soup kettle, then I made up to three batches a day almost seven days a week. I got the soup kettle a year after licensing. After two months I needed bigger equipment. It was crazy since there were only two other producers in Oregon doing goat cheese. I started with 20 goats so I was pasteurizing like crazy. I had to increase the size of my herd within six months. There were a couple of times when I remember making six batches in one day!\"\n\nPrices for new pasteurizers range from $12,000 to $19,000 for very small units. The purchase of a pasteurizer is likely to be one of your most expensive budget items. This cost alone leads some creameries to choose to produce only aged, raw-milk cheeses. If you do decide to purchase a pasteurizer, choose the right size so you don't have to process more than one batch of milk per day!\n\nHTST (high temperature short time) pasteurizers heat the milk to 161\u00b0F and hold it for only 15 seconds. These units are also known as plate pasteurizers or continuous plate pasteurizers (the milk flows through a series of heated and cooled plates for the processing). HTSTs are generally used only for high-volume needs. I mention them here only because you will see the name frequently in the PMO; when I use the term \"pasteurizer\" throughout this book, however, I will be referring to batch (or vat) pasteurizers.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_PMO Standards for Pasteurizers_**\n\n_Remember:_ Any pasteurizer you purchase for cheesemaking must meet the PMO standards. \"Calf milk,\" colostrum, and home pasteurizers do not meet PMO guidelines.\n\nBatch\/vat pasteurizers are used in small-volume settings, such as the farmstead creamery. They process milk by heating it to lower temperatures than the HTST units and then holding that temperature for longer. In addition to being more practical for low volumes, they are the most gentle on the chemical structure of milk. As I mentioned in the section on combo vat\/pasteurizers, most pasteurizers can be used as cheesemaking vats, but they may require a few modifications. Also, some small pasteurizers are not shaped in a manner that would make using them as cheese vats very easy; for example, they may be too tall and deep, or too high on the legs, etc.\n\nPasteurizers are also very energy-demanding pieces of equipment. They require a 220-volt outlet, and even 15-gallon units will draw up to 40 amps. That means about 9 KwH per hour of use. A 30-gallon unit draws up to 60 amps, which means a usage of up to 13 KwH per hour. (See chapter 7 for more on calculating power usage and costs.)\n\nMechanical cheese press, Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\n**Cheese Press**\n\nIf you are making cheeses that require high-pressure pressing, such as Cheddar and\/or Parmesan types (as well as many others), then you will need a means to apply up to 50 pounds per square inch (psi) to the cheese. There are vertical and horizontal pneumatic presses as well as mechanical Dutch-style presses; there are even presses that utilize water pressure. Again, searching for used equipment can be rewarding, but the choices are usually very limited. New presses for the small cheesemaker can range from around $1,500 to $4,000. You will also need forms (also known as hoops) that can be used in the press. Be sure the press and forms you buy will work for your volume and production goals. As mentioned before, you don't want to have to make more than one batch per day in order to use up your milk!\n\n**Draining Table**\n\nMany cheeses do not require the high pressure provided by a mechanical press. If you are making bloomy rinds, tomme styles, or blues, you will not need a mechanical press. These types can be hooped (put into the forms and molds) and then drained and\/or pressed, if required (by weights, such as water jugs, barbells, etc.), on a draining table. A draining table has a stainless steel or food-grade plastic surface on which cheeses drain in the forms. It can be anything from a sloped stainless prep table to a custom-made draining table. It must be designed to allow the draining whey to flow away from your pressing and draining cheeses and to be collected in pails. If you are making only soft fresh cheeses, then you will not need a draining table, but you will need a draining rack\u2014something to hang your draining bags from and a way to collect the whey below them.\n\nPholia Farm's not-so-high-tech cheese pressing system.\n\nWe happened to find a stainless steel dish-draining unit at a used restaurant supply sale. We had stainless legs welded to it at a height that was comfortable for me to work (which is a bit higher than most would like!). It is working well for us and was very reasonable in cost.\n\n**Draining Racks**\n\nIf you are making soft, bag-drained cheeses, such as ch\u00e8vre or feta, you will need a sturdy draining rack or rod from which to suspend your cheesecloth bags over tubs to collect the whey. This is another area where you can improvise. Keep in mind the usual criteria of cleanliness and optimal temperature. Try to keep the area situated away from drafts, heaters, etc.\n\n**Drying Racks\/Drying Room**\n\nDrying racks are needed when you produce bloomy-rind (also known as surface-ripened) cheeses, such as Camembert or Crottin. These can be purchased through cheese-supply companies. Choose the type of food-grade matting that will best suit your finished product goals. The more difficult issue is where to place the drying racks, as the bloomy-rind cheeses need a different environment than is usually present in most make rooms, aging rooms, or coolers. Be sure to take this need into consideration when designing your space. If you are not confident of the temperature and humidity needs of your particular cheeses, consider hiring a consultant, taking courses pertinent to your cheese types, and studying cheesemaking guides (see appendix A for resource lists).\n\n**HOW CHEDDAR WON THE WEST**\n\nHistorically, Cheddar has been the cheese of choice for most Americans, closely followed by mozzarella and Jack cheese. None of these cheeses are brined\u2014ever wonder why? Respected technical cheese expert Neville McNaughton observed the following in a _Cheese Reporter_ article:\n\n\"Brining has traditionally required a great deal of space, which adds to the capital cost of a cheese production facility. It also involves additional time and labor; brining a 20-pound wheel may take three to four days, a 3-pound ball-shaped cheese about 30 hours. Cheddar is in the block in about five hours or less.\"\n\nCount on Americans for choosing expediancy!\n\n**Brine Tank**\n\nBrine, or brining, tanks are used in the production of many aged cheeses. Some cheeses, however, are dry-salted (as curd or wheels). If you are making a cheese that requires brining, you will keep a tank or reservoir of brine in your aging or drying room, or you will have a freestanding tank that is cooled (brine should be 50\u201355\u00b0F) by an external source of cold water (like what is used to cool a pasteurizer). Depending upon your production volume, something as small as food-grade covered tubs available from restaurant supply houses, meant for storing foods like salads, can be used.\n\nYou can also purchase brine tanks specifically designed for cheese production at some of the suppliers listed in appendix A. Prices will vary according to size and materials.\n\n**Antibiotic Residue Test Kit**\n\nMany states are now requiring that even farmstead producers who milk only their own animals (and yes, even certified organic producers who cannot regularly use antibiotics and remain certified) to perform an approved drug residue test on every batch of milk they make into cheese (this is part of appendix N of the PMO). For many small cheesemakers, this seems both an unnecessary cost as well as a poor use of their time, but it is becoming a widely enforced law. Before being allowed to begin production, you will receive training and a test from the governing agency and its representative in the appropriate department. In addition, your regular inspector will be checking your records during his or her unannounced visits. For most small producers, the procedure sounds intimidating, but it is relatively simple.\n\nDelvotest P Mini antibiotic residue test setup with incubator.\n\nThe most common test kit for the small producer is the Delvotest P mini. In addition to the incubator and test kits, you will also have to purchase \"positive controls.\" This is penicillin in either tablet or vial form that is at a specific concentration meant to be the lowest amount detectable by the test.\n\nContact your governing agency for information on learning the specifics of your test's requirements. Tests other than the Delvotest P may be required or suggested. Calibration requirements, thermometer requirements for tracking temperature during storage of the test vials, as well as the area in which you will be allowed to set up your \"lab\" may be dependent upon rules particular to your state. You would be wise to research this early in your planning to avoid any difficulty later on.\n\n**Refrigerator\/Freezer**\n\nYou will need a dedicated refrigerator for storage of rennet\/coagulants, cheese that is ready for sale, ingredients used in cheese, and antibiotic residue testing kits and positive controls. A dedicated freezer will be needed for cheese cultures and ice packs if these are being used for shipping cheese. (\"Dedicated\" means that you cannot store your leftover dinner or any other personal snacks in your cheese-supply refrigerator or freezer!) You can use any refrigerator\u2014household or commercial\u2014as long as it is in good condition and is cleanable. If the freezer has an automatic defrost, it may not be appropriate for storing starter cultures; your source for purchasing culture will be able to advise you as to its storage parameters. You will need at least one refrigerator to store product that is ready for sale and wheels that have been taken out of aging and cut. It is also useful to have enough refrigerator space to pre-cool wheels for shipping. If you are storing your antibiotic test kits and positive controls in this refrigerator\/freezer, then you will need to have approved thermometers (usually wet-bulb, calibrated in Celsius)\u2014one on the top shelf, one on the lower shelf, and one in the freezer compartment. You will probably want a chart on the outside of the unit on which you will record the daily temperatures (part of the antibiotic residue test requirements).\n\n**Rolling Cart**\n\nWhile a cart may not seem like a piece of equipment that should be at the top of your priority list, I have found ours to be one of the single most versatile and often-used items in our creamery. From moving full cans of milk, wheeling cheeses out of the aging room for affinage (a French term for the craft of maturing and aging cheeses), to simply serving as an extra surface when needed, our rolling cart is invaluable. We chose a composite plastic cart, such as those made by the company Rubbermaid, instead of a more expensive stainless steel version. Whichever type you choose, be sure that it will fit between shelving in the aging room and that it is easy to maneuver.\n\n**Triple-Compartment Sink**\n\nA triple-compartment sink has dedicated wash, rinse, and sanitize compartments. You may be allowed to use a double sink if you are going to pre-sanitize your equipment just before use, but I recommend installing a triple sink even if your inspector approves a double\u2014the convenience will pay off over time. Consider not trapping the sink drain, instead allow it to drain into the floor drain (which is trapped). This is a safety feature to prevent contaminants from migrating from your trap into your sink. Triple sinks can be square or curved, and with or without drainboards. For ease of cleaning include both a pre-rinse sprayer and a fill faucet.\n\nSump pump used to remove whey, Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\nShopping around for used triple sinks can save quite a bit of money. New, they can cost up to and even more than $1,000; used, they can be found for only a few hundred dollars. Another factor to consider is the gauge (thickness) of steel used to manufacture the sink. Many of the newer sinks are only 22-gauge steel (the lower the gauge, the thicker the metal), so they are rather flimsy and easily dented, and they are so thin it can even be difficult to mount them straight. Look for 16-and 18-gauge steel. Often the older used sinks are of heavier gauge. You may have to clean off a lot of milkstone and other residues, but it will probably be worth it. As with the other sinks for your creamery, watch trade papers, newspaper ads, and the like for restaurants going out of business; also check salvage shops.\n\n**Hand-Washing Sink**\n\nFor the make room, if you can find a used foot-pedal-operated sink, or spring for a new one, you will be glad you did. This is the room in which you will want to be the most sanitary. A foot- or knee-pedal sink will take one more critical step out of the process. Remember, your hand-washing sinks can either be trapped or drain to the floor drain.\n\n**DISHWASHERS AND CLEAN-OUT-OF-PLACE (COP) WASH SINKS**\n\nMany cheesemakers utilize commercial dishwashers or a COP sink in their make room for washing utensils, forms, and more. Commercial dishwashers use high heat as well as chemicals to very rapidly clean and sanitize (about 90 seconds per load). They are expensive, but can often be found used at larger restaurant supply stores or in industrial classified ads. Walter Nicolau, of Nicolau Farms in Modesto, California, says he could not live without his commercial dishwasher.\n\nCOP sinks are basically large tanks in which dirty utensils and equipment are placed, then water (with cleaning chemicals) is pumped into and through the tank. Alyce Birchenough, of Sweet Home Farm in Alabama, tried out a COP sink at their 13-cow dairy and found that although it worked very well, it was oversized for their operation, which produces about 13,000 pounds of pressed cheese per year. Alyce prefers their under-counter commercial dishwasher; however, she reports that cheesemakers who produce mostly soft-ripened cheeses, necessitating the use of many small plastic forms, find the COP tank very worthwhile.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Mounting a Curved-Bottom Sink_**\n\nIf you install a curved-bottom sink, I recommend buying a set of wall-mount brackets instead of legs. This makes it much easier to clean under the sink and leaves fewer things to stub your toes on!\n\n**Washdown Hose**\n\nHave the washdown hose faucet in your make room installed in a central location so you can easily clean the entire floor of the room. Make sure to provide a hose that is rated for hot water; these are usually a dull red color. Sprayer heads should be able to withstand hot water usage, as well.\n\n**Other Stuff for Your Make Room**\n\nThere are a few additional items you might want to consider to help keep your make room more organized, efficient, and comfortable.\n\n**Tables**\n\nYou will need at least one stainless steel or other food-grade surfaced prep table for packaging product. Regulations in your area may also allow you to do your antibiotic testing on the same surface; if not, you will want a separate table or area for lab and testing equipment. Another small table for taking notes and maintaining your product make sheets and inventory logs will also be handy. You can often find used stainless steel prep tables at restaurant supply stores or through industry-related classified ads.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_PVC\u2014The Cheesemaker's Friend!_**\n\nI have seen many useful things in make rooms that have been cleverly constructed of PVC pipe\u2014shelves, rolling sink carts, cheese hoop holders, platforms to elevate refrigerators off the floor, and more. PVC is easy to work with, inexpensive, strong, and, best of all, water-and rust-proof. Keep it in mind for applications where stainless steel is not necessary!\n\nCleverly constructed cheese form drying racks made of PVC, Sweet Home Farm, Alabama.\n\n**Shelving**\n\nAbove your packaging table, you may want some shelving for frequently used packing materials such as plastic wrap, labels, and freezer paper. You will not be able to store packing materials, such as boxes, in the creamery because they will absorb humidity and mildew, becoming a potential source of contaminants. Shelving above your sink can store your clean cheese molds (hoops\/forms) and utensils. Shelving for detergent and sanitizers should be located away from and\/ or below anything having contact with product. Remember, chlorine will erode stainless steel, so choose shelving of other material that is easily cleaned and non-corrosive (meaning it won't corrode in the presence of most chemicals). Plastic-coated wire is a good choice, but it will also eventually show signs of rust where the plastic coating erodes or the metal is exposed.\n\n**TIP**\n\n**_Check Your Shelving Hardware!_**\n\nThe hardware used to anchor wall shelves will eventually rust and corrode. Checking it once a year or so might save you from a falling shelf and damaged equipment!\n\nThe cheese make room is the most complicated space in your dairy, and the choices you will need to make in equipping it properly can be daunting. Because each creamery has its own unique production needs, there is no single blueprint for setting it up perfectly\u2014often, no amount of proper planning will likely fully anticipate the direction your company will take in regard to product lines and volume. Don't worry! If you have created a sound business plan, you will have a good idea of the starting needs of your business and you will be able to outfit a workable make room that will serve you well.\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Aging Rooms, Cellars, and Caves\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch004147)**\n\nNothing quite conjures up a romantic, gastronomic response when talking about fine cheese like the term \"cave-aged.\" The consumer's mind is immediately transported to a cool, limestone vault where wheels of cheese sit aging on wooden planks\u2014even if the reality is an aboveground walk-in cooler with wire racks and a complicated refrigeration system. While I personally have a bit of an issue in referring to such a system as a \"cave,\" the term is becoming accepted usage in describing any space dedicated to aging cheese. (It's similar to the practice of calling a wine storage room a \"cellar\" even if it is not underground.) For this book, however, I will refer to any aboveground aging space as an aging room and any underground space (created by humans) as a cellar or cave. Call it what you will, the proper building of a functional aging space can add both tangible and intangible value to your cheese.\n\nThe type of cheese you choose to make will dictate the design of the aging room. Some cheeses will also require a drying room for the first phase of aging. (Drying rooms are similar to aging rooms but usually have a lower humidity and greater air flow.) The drying room can also contain brine tanks (instead of the aging room). I will not talk about drying rooms as a separate topic in this chapter, as the design issues and equipment will be the same; only the application will differ.\n\nI will approach the topic first by discussing the \"big three\" issues facing the affineur (cheese-ager): temperature, humidity, and air flow\/movement. Then we will go over design, equipment, and construction options. Finally, we will discuss some unmentionables, such as cheese mites, that might be a future obstacle for you and your cheese.\n\n**AGING ROOM RESOURCES**\n\nA very fine, in-depth study of aging room options was done by Jennifer Betancourt with help from Amanda DesRoberts in their SARE Farmer Grower Grant publication _Current_ _Options in Cheese Aging Caves: An Evaluation,_ _Comparison, and Feasibility Study_. You can access it on Jennifer's farm website at www.silverymooncheese.com or via a web search. A lot of thought and work was put into this publication, and it is well worth studying. Also, Jim Wallace, with New England Cheesemaking Supply, and private consultant Peter Dixon have both documented many of the steps needed for cave and aging room construction\u2014Jim on the company's website (www.cheesemaking.com; click on Aging Help in the Help section) and Peter through his own publication _Farmstead Cheesemaking_ (available in back issues) and his writing in books and for the periodical _CreamLine_.\n\n**The Aging Room: The \"Big Three\" Design Issues**\n\nWhen designing an aging space, there are three main factors to consider: temperature, humidity, and air (both air exchange and movement). Each of these factors will be influenced by the volume and type of cheese being aged; your area's native influences (weather and soil\/earth stability and properties; also, if your building is underground); and the building structure and size. Because of the uniqueness of each building situation, there is no single book or guide that will be able to accurately tell you the perfect design for your aging space. By understanding the requirements for a good aging room, however, you will be able to evaluate the options for your space and successfully design a satisfactory aging room.\n\n**By understanding the requirements for a good aging room,**  \n **you will be able to evaluate the options for your space and**  \n **successfully design a satisfactory aging environment.**\n\n**Temperature**\n\nMost cheeses age beautifully at between 50\u00b0 and 55\u00b0F (10\u00b0 and 12.7\u00b0C). Certain cheeses, however, such as bloomy-rind types (e.g., Camembert and Brie) and Emmentalers (eye-formation cheeses), will have unique needs at different stages in their maturation. It is obviously very important to know what type of cheese will be inhabiting your aging space. Quite often cheesemakers will have more than one aging room, even if one is a walk-in at 55\u00b0F (12.7\u00b0C) and one a commercial refrigerator at 38\u00b0F. While many people simply plan on using mechanical, power-thirsty compressors to cool their space, if you plan well you will be able to greatly reduce, and perhaps eliminate, the need for equipment that will affect your profit margin by raising energy usage costs. I have written each of these sections under the assumption (and hope) that cheesemakers will attempt to design a system that is as energy efficient and environmentally friendly as possible.\n\nOften an aging space is constructed that can maintain a constant, year-round temperature in the acceptable range for aging cheese. But then, once that room is filled with cheeses, an additional cooling source must be added. The fact that aging cheese actually generates heat is often overlooked. The enzymatic processes occurring within aging cheese cause the release of energy, thus creating heat\u2014which is all fascinating, but what does it mean for you as the affineur? According to author Jean-Claude Le Jaouen in his book _The Fabrication of Farmstead Goat_ _Cheese,_ one ton of ripening cheese will release between 1,000 and 3,000 calories of heat every 24 hours. Just what is a calorie? One calorie is what is required to raise one liter of water by one degree centigrade (1.8\u00b0F). So let's say you have aging space for two hundred 10-pound wheels (that is exactly one ton of cheese). Even though it won't all be going through the same stage of enzymatic activity at one time, let's assume that it is releasing 3,000 calories every day. You can see how, over time, you will have a temperature increase in your aging space that could be detrimental to your cheese. So even if your structure is able to maintain a constant 55\u00b0F temperature when it is empty, you will not be able to hold that temperature without some sort of cooling assistance once the room is filled with cheeses. Remember to do your calculations based on the maximum amount of cheese your room can hold; otherwise you will be in for an unpleasant surprise at the worst possible time\u2014when you are at maximum capacity.\n\nYoung cheeses aging at Consider Bardwell Farm, Vermont.\n\n**The fact that aging cheese actually**  \n **generates heat is often overlooked.**\n\nSeveral other factors can influence your aging space's ability to maintain an optimal temperature without excessive need for mechanical cooling. These include temperature fluctuations for your area (especially night-to-daytime differentials); soil thermal potentials, in both R-value (insulation capability; see sidebar) and thermal mass (heat-storing capability); site location (north-facing being ideal); and even shading from trees and cooling masses of green surface plantings.\n\nYou can use the Internet to search for temperature records for your area. Finding out average highs and lows (both daytime and nighttime), as well as record highs and lows, will help you anticipate the possible temperature fluctuations and plan for them adequately. Sustained highs or lows without a nighttime variation will make it more difficult to recover an appropriate temperature for your cheese. For example, if your daytime summer high is 98\u00b0F (like it gets where we live) but your nights cool off to the mid-50s, you have a good chance of storing some of that coolness in thermal mass in your building. But if that same thermal mass is exposed to the hot sun all day (say your aging room faces south), then it will be more difficult to maintain an adequate aging temperature. (More about thermal mass later.)\n\nIf you are building an underground aging space, the material you cover it with will affect your temperature control. Soil, according to one source, has an average R-value of 0.25 per inch. (Solid granite has an R-value of 1.0 per inch.) So 5 feet of soil covering your aging cave will give you a value of about R-19. But soil's other property of thermal mass will allow you to hold temperatures for longer (traditional fluffy insulation, by contrast, has a very low thermal mass). This can work for you, or against you, depending on what is happening that might heat up the soil or rock. For example, I have seen some beautiful aging cellars that are faced with stone, but when exposed to the sun all day, the stone heats up and transfers much of that heat to the structure behind it. This is why it is ideal to face the aging space north (no direct sun) and\/or plant shade trees or vines to help keep that thermal mass from building up too much heat during the hotter parts of the year. You can also use these properties to help warm a too-cold cellar during the winter, by making sure that those shade trees and vines are deciduous\u2014when they lose their leaves in the winter, the rock and soil will be exposed to the warmth of the sun. This is why it is so important to know the temperature extremes for your area before you decide upon the material and orientation of your cheese cave.\n\n**R-VALUE EXPLAINED**\n\nR-value is the ability of a material to resist the transfer of heat (or cold, for that matter). A single layer of window glass has an R-value of 1. Most homes rely upon high-R-value insulation to prevent heat loss through walls, attic, and floor space. Wood-framed (stick) structures have insulation blankets (batts) placed between the wood framing members (or loose insulation fill pumped into the open bays between the wood). While this insulates the open space well, each wood framing member will have a much lower R-value, allowing for heat loss and gain in an otherwise well-insulated wall.\n\nNothing says your aging space has to be in a separate building. Many fine aging rooms are attached to the cheesemaking room or to a farm store, or located underneath the main creamery. Whatever your approach to the space, you will want to optimize the materials selected as well as create enough space to house the maximum amount of cheese you plan on aging at any one time.\n\nVolume of product is the main concern when determining the size of the aging space. Not only will you need room for the cheeses, but you must leave enough space behind and between shelves as well as between cheeses to allow for air flow. Large wheels will optimize space better than small ones. So before you decide on the size of the room, sit down and figure out your approximate volume of cheese (in pounds or wheels) and how many shelves you will need. Then you should be able to determine what size room you will need to accommodate that volume. Be sure to allow for some extra shelf space for times when production is high or outflow of product is low. Also, don't forget to factor in room for brine tanks!\n\nWhen constructing your aging room, it is almost impossible to build it with too much insulation (there's that \"R-value\" again). In residential \"conditioned\" spaces (meaning spaces that have heating and cooling controls), most heat loss is through poorly insulated ceilings, leaks around windows and doors, and thermal mass that works against the desired temperature goals (such as concrete slabs).\n\nHere is a perfect example of thermal mass working against the cheesemaker's goals: We thought we had planned out our first aging room very well. We situated it totally interior (meaning none of its walls were exposed to the outside), did not run any of the hydronics (in-slab hot water heating system) close to the space, filled the concrete block walls with pelleted insulation, and provided a wine cellar cooling unit sized properly for the space. It worked great until the really hot part of summer hit\u2014over 100\u00b0F for several days. Then we watched in horror as the cooling unit worked nonstop and the temperature continued to creep up. Vern took his handheld infrared temperature sensor and aimed it on the walls and floors. Even though the slab in the aging room was not directly a part of the slab outside the room, the sensor's probe clearly showed the cool leaking out of the room and the heat creeping into the room via the slab. So the lesson is, don't discount any building material that will act as a reservoir for heat or cold. Choose materials appropriately to work for you, not against you. (More on building material options later in the chapter.)\n\nSo what did we do to fix our little problem? We waited until the following winter, moved all of the cheese out of the room, and basically made the room smaller. We added a layer of rigid foam insulation (with an R-value of 14) to all of the walls and covered that with fiberglass-reinforced panels (FRPs). We didn't change the floor or ceiling, figuring we could do that later if this was inadequate. Now the aging room cooler runs only during the hottest of days. As the wine cellar cooler we use to chill our aging room vents directly into the cheese make room, we also have a window air conditioner that we run during those same time periods. If this room gets too hot, then the cooling unit cannot function at its optimum level.\n\nOther factors, such as heat from lights, fans, and even your body, will add to the temperature control challenges of an aging room. Using cool bulbs, such as compact fluorescents, and limiting your time in the aging room will help. (For example, putting your cheeses on a cart and taking them to a separate room for rind care, instead of performing that work in the aging room, will help keep heat contributions from your body to a minimum.)\n\n**Humidity**\n\nRelative humidity (referred to as simply \"humidity\" throughout this book) is as important to cheese aging as temperature, but easier to control. As noted with temperature, humidity goals will vary depending upon cheese type, but most will require humidity levels between 85 and 95 percent.\n\nWithout the proper level of moisture (called available water), the bacterial and enzymatic processes that must occur during cheese aging will come to a screeching halt and your cheese will, to put it bluntly, die. So the cheesemaker who is also the affineur must know the ideal humidity required for his or her cheese type. For some cheeses this will not be the same throughout the entire aging process, so either you will need a way to change the humidity, or you will need two separate aging spaces.\n\n**RELATIVE HUMIDITY (RH) EXPLAINED**\n\nThe amount of water vapor that air can hold at a specific temperature is called relative humidity. When air reaches 100 percent humidity, it is fully saturated and condensation will occur. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. For example: If your aging room is 55\u00b0F and 85 percent RH and you decrease the temperature, the RH will go _up_ because the amount of moisture the cool air can hold is lower. (Here is an experiment I like that demonstrates relative humidity: Take an airtight container at room temperature and normal humidity, close it tightly, then place it in a freezer. After a few hours, open the container\u2014you will find that ice crystals have frozen to the lid. The colder air could not hold the moisture and it condensed out as ice crystals.) This is why it is typically easier to maintain humidity (meaning RH), all other factors being equal, in cooler climates. (Not to mention that when refrigeration equipment runs it removes moisture from the air.)\n\nAs with weather patterns, you should be able to look up humidity ranges for your geographical location. Some of us live in areas where winters are cold and dry, others where winters are cold and wet. Knowing the seasonal variations for your area will help you anticipate the needs for your space.\n\nA psychrometer for measuring relative humidity by comparing the difference between readings from wet and dry bulb thermometers.\n\nThe same features of a building's structure that aid with temperature control will also assist with humidity control. A well-insulated building that does not have a temperature difference between the interior surfaces and the air in the space will not likely have condensation problems on the walls and ceilings. I will talk more about this in the equipment section, but just think of a glass of ice water in a warm room with droplets of condensation beading up on the glass\u2014you don't want this to occur in your aging room! Water in the _air_ is good\u2014but not on the walls and ceiling where it could drip on your cheeses. Aging rooms built under living spaces (which are kept warmer than the aging space) and not adequately insulated will have this problem, as will cellars where ice water is pumped through radiant tubing in the walls. The material used to construct the walls and floor can have a great impact on relative humidity in the aging room. Brick walls are probably the ideal, as brick has the best potential for absorbing and releasing moisture without having condensation issues. Brick structures are much more readily accepted in Europe, but you might be able to at least make a case for a brick-paved floor in your aging space.\n\n**Water in the** **air** **is good\u2014but not on the walls and**  \n **ceiling where it could drip on your cheeses.**\n\n**Air**\n\nCheese needs both air movement and air exchange to age properly. I have tasted (and smelled) cheeses at competitions that were obviously not aged in adequately ventilated spaces. Musty cellar odors are not what your cheese should exude. Remember to think in terms of both the rate of flow (movement of air across the cheeses) and the volume of exchange (how often the entire air volume in the room is replaced with fresh air). Of course, the more air you exchange, the more challenged you will be to maintain steady temperature and humidity!\n\nSome cheeses need more oxygen in the beginning stages of ripening; others produce ammonia gas and carbon dioxide during ripening. These cheese types, especially when you have a large volume in proportion to the space, will require some means to exchange the \"used\" air with fresh, clean air.\n\nAir quality and movement are not the only factors you need to keep in mind for the aging room\u2014you also need to think about what is _in_ that air. There are certain molds and bacteria that cheesemakers want to encourage in the aging room space; however, there may be times of the year when you will have to deal with unwanted spores entering the fresh air supply. Very few of us will be able to build a totally controlled, airtight, positive-pressure aging room. But never fear, this does not mean the demise of the cheese, only the unlikelihood of producing a uniform, possibly uninspired product. Most artisan cheesemakers learn how to deal with unwanted surface molds through various affinage techniques.\n\nAn oversized room will have fewer air issues than a small, overcrowded aging room. There must be adequate airspace both behind shelving as well as between cheeses to allow for air circulation. For optimal, natural air movement in the aging room, vaulted ceilings are the best (although most costly) choice. Locate shelving several inches from the wall surface to facilitate airflow along the walls and also to keep cheeses away from any moisture that might accumulate on wall surfaces. If adequate air movement is not achieved (placing thermometers at different levels in the room will help you determine this), then a small fan (not blowing directly on the cheeses) can assist with air movement. Again, the more cheese you have in the room, the more impedance there will be to air movement\u2014so be sure to monitor the stratification of air in the room as your aging room fills with cheese.\n\n**Design, Equipment, and Construction**\n\nNow that you understand the three most important issues that affect your aging space\u2014and what you can do about them\u2014you can more readily choose the other options and features of the aging space, such as floor plan, cooling (and possibly heating) options, humidifiers, shelving choices, and construction material options.\n\n**Floor Plan and Utilities**\n\nThe single most overlooked floor plan feature in many cheese cellars and caves is an antechamber\u2014a room you enter before you enter the aging space. The antechamber\/entry room (we won't call it a mudroom!) will serve first and foremost as an airlock and thermal barrier that will help keep the aging room from experiencing fluctuations in temperature and humidity. The best antechambers have at least one sink, a place to change shoes and hang lab coats, and temperature and humidity charts for documenting proper aging temperatures (part of a good quality assurance program; more on that in chapter 12); in addition, they offer access to any mechanical systems necessary for your aging room. Many people also install a window between the antechamber and the aging room, to allow visitors a peek at the cheese without having to enter what should be one of your most protected rooms. When I interviewed people who have built caves and cellars that are not attached to their cheesemaking facility, the number-one thing they would change about the design was to add an entry room and provide a sink for washing, shelving, etc.\n\n**CEILINGS: TO VAULT OR NOT TO VAULT?**\n\nMost cheesemakers and affineurs will agree that, all other things being equal, a vaulted ceiling is preferable to a flat ceiling. This type of configuration has two main advantages: Airflow is improved, by allowing for a natural, circular flow; and any condensation on the ceiling is less likely to drip onto cheeses but will instead run to the sides and down the walls. Then there is that romance factor. Along with wood shelves, a vaulted ceiling in your cave or cellar oozes old-world charm. On the downside, a vaulted ceiling will increase the cost of construction considerably. I would suggest investigating the options for vaulting, while keeping in mind that plenty of wonderful aging spaces have flat ceilings, not dripping with moisture, out of which have come some of the most acclaimed aged cheeses in the U.S.\n\nWhen considering lighting for the aging room, choose vapor-resistant, shatterproof fixtures (just as you did for the milkhouse and make room). Also remember that lighting will create heat, so whenever possible, select compact fluorescent or other \"cool\" light bulbs.\n\nIn the main aging room, calculate space for shelving, including a gap along the wall, as well as comfortable working space between shelves. If you will be transporting your cheese to and from the room on a cart, make sure you have enough space to maneuver without running into shelves. And don't forget to provide space for brine tanks, unless you will be using a cooled, freestanding brine tank in your make room.\n\n**Equipment**\n\nNow that you have an idea of how you want your aging room space to look and feel, what equipment will you need to put in it? While we introduced you to the importance of the \"big three\" design issues earlier\u2014temperature, humidity, and air\u2014let's look at some items that will help you address these issues and prepare your aging space for ripening cheese!\n\n**Coolers**\n\nYou will have several choices for mechanical cooling assistance, should you need it for your aging space. Typical choices include traditional refrigeration units (often referred to as condenser\/compressor units), floral cooling units, Burch Industries egg room coolers, wine cellar cooling units, chilled water lines, and window air conditioners with a CoolBot (more on those later). The important issue with any unit is customizing and optimizing it to meet your cheeses' needs without excess energy loss\/ waste and\/or undue financial investment.\n\n**\"LOW-VELOCITY\" COOLING**\n\nThe key phrase with any of these cooling units is \"low velocity.\" In a nutshell, it is the velocity of the air moving over the cooling fins, or coils, combined with the compressor's capacity that dictates the amount of humidity removed from the air. Maybe a bit too technical for most of us (me included), but when your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) specialist starts spewing information, perhaps the glaze-over will be minimal! Suffice it to say that any system not specifically designed to cool and condition cheese\u2014as opposed to something else\u2014will have technical issues to overcome.\n\n_Refrigeration units_ are designed to\u2014guess what?\u2014refrigerate, so if you are aging at refrigeration temperatures as well as waxing, vacuum-sealing, or otherwise protecting your cheese from drying, this type of cooling will work well. But if you are aging at warmer temperatures, 55\u00b0F being the most common, then modifications will be required to maintain proper temperature and humidity. Refrigeration equipment should be selected with the assistance of a qualified heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) specialist or manufacturer of appropriate units.\n\n_Egg coolers_ (the only U.S. manufacturer is Burch Industries; see appendix A for contact information) are similar in look to condenser\/compressor refrigeration equipment except that they are designed to keep eggs at either 50\u00b0F and up or 45\u00b0F and up (depending on whether the eggs are intended for hatching or for table use). They can also be equipped with humidifiers and heaters. The smallest units will cool 924 cubic feet.\n\n_Wine cellar cooling units_ are another good option. They come in many different sizes, keep the cheese at the proper temperature, and remove minimal humidity from the air. The humidity goal for wine aging is 50 to 75 percent, but the moisture removed can usually be drained directly back into the room, depending upon the unit's format (self-contained or split). Wine cellar coolers are quiet, efficient, and easy to install. The biggest drawback, as far as I can determine, is that the self-contained units must vent the heat removed from the aging space into a room whose ambient temperature does not exceed 80\u00b0F\u2014in other words, a conditioned room. Otherwise the unit will have to work too hard to cool air as it goes into the aging space.\n\n_Chilled water lines_ can be plumbed as a part of the walls of the aging room. I have seen this done by cutting channels into rigid insulation and embedding flexible water tubing (known as PEX), and even by chiseling channels into cement block and placing the water lines in the grooves; both were then covered with a waterproof surface. Chilled water (from an ice bank or remote chiller) is then pumped through the tubing, thus cooling the walls and radiating into the aging space. The wall behind the piping should be covered with reflective insulation so as to minimize both loss of cooling to the outside as well as heat gain from outside of the room. The biggest drawback I have seen for this type of system is the accumulation of condensation on the walls. If you avoid putting the cooling pipes in the ceiling (where the condensation could drip onto cheeses), this should not be too big of an issue.\n\nChilled water lines in masonry wall, Consider Bardwell Farm, Vermont.\n\nThe use of _window air conditioners and_ _a CoolBot_ , a relatively new development, is an interesting option for cooling your aging room. Residential air conditioners are not designed\u2014and indeed have no controls\u2014to cool air to below 65\u00b0F, but the CoolBot is an electronic device that \"tricks\" a window air conditioner into functioning at cooler temperatures and, according to the manufacturer, with much more optimal energy usage. At this writing, the price of a CoolBot is about $300. Considering that you can use it on successive air conditioners (should the first unit you buy not work out or wear out), it seems like a reasonable investment. The CoolBot website advises sizing the AC larger than the cubic square feet of the space demands in order to reduce load on the motor when cooling. It is important to note that it is always better to buy any cooling unit \"too large\" rather than undersized, as motors will give out much more quickly when working too hard.\n\nWith any cooling unit, it is wise to have a backup, or at least a backup plan\u2014you should know if your unit can be replaced or serviced quickly. Consider the possibility of the unit failing at the worst possible moment\u2014what would that cost you in terms of product? Can a replacement be shipped quickly enough to prevent inventory loss? Be sure to size units correctly: If they are undersized and have to work harder than they were designed to, you could be voiding the warranty while you also shorten the system's life span\u2014costing you more in the long run.\n\nWhat about heating the room in extreme cold climates? If you live in an area of extreme cold in the winter, you may need to provide a source of heat for your aging room. In some cases this can simply be an incandescent light bulb, since even a single 100-watt bulb will generate enough heat to warm a small space. Unless the space is extremely well ventilated, avoid any propane or kerosene heaters, as the fumes will not be healthy for you or your cheese. Small electric heaters with thermostats are another option, although most will not have a setting as low as you need for cheese aging; however, you can plug the heater into a timer and regulate the temperature that way.\n\n**Humidifiers**\n\nThe most efficient way to humidify the air in your aging space will be passively\u2014in other words, with a moisture source that is not mechanical\u2014as any mechanical means will also generate a certain amount of heat. That being said, you may have to choose a mechanical source, should other efforts not provide the relative humidity needed for your cheese.\n\nThe most basic passive source of moisture in the air of an aging room is the simple dousing of the floor with a bucket of water. In some cases this will be enough, but in others, maybe not, depending upon the absorption ability of the floor surface and the airflow and temperature in the space. Other effective passive means include terra cotta pots filled with water, or moistened lava (pumice) rocks. You can also plumb a perforated water pipe into the room and drape a sheet of fabric over it\u2014the water will slowly saturate the fabric, and it can then evaporate into the room.\n\nWhen selecting a humidifying machine, choose cool-fog types\u2014the most popular and effective are labeled \"ultrasonic.\" Instead of spitting heavy water droplets into the air (potentially causing problems on cheese surfaces), ultrasonic units dispense the water in a cool fog that does not cause excess droplets to collect near the humidifying unit. If your water is heavy in minerals, these will be dispersed in the room and form a mineral dust on surfaces. By the same token, be sure that the water supply that feeds the unit is clean and pure, as bacteria and contaminants in the water will be dispersed into the aging room. When buying a humidifier, you should be able to obtain a technical data sheet (either on the Internet or through the manufacturer) that will tell you how many watts the unit will use. If you think in terms of a light bulb, you should get an idea of both the amount of power the unit will use as well as the potential heat it will create.\n\n**Air Exchange**\n\nIn small settings adequate air exchange is often accomplished simply by opening and closing the aging room door throughout the day. If you are willing to monitor your cheese's changing needs, this can work satisfactorily. A more regulated method is to provide an exhaust fan (located near the ceiling so that warmer air will exhaust first) on a timer and a screened and louvered (with flaps that remain closed when the exhaust fan is not on) clean air intake vent. A mechanical timer can be set to provide air exchange as needed. Keep in mind that ammonia fumes will accumulate low in the space. If air movement is not adequate to stir these gases so they can exit through the exhaust vent (which, presumably, will be located up toward the ceiling), then they will not be adequately dealt with.\n\nIf you recall the principle of conduction, you will remember that hot air rises, creating air movement. This law can be utilized both to help remove heat from the aging space and to draw fresh air into the room. An exhaust chimney or duct should be installed in the room at a high point and an air intake duct at a low point. These ducts should be filtered and screened to prevent the entry of pests and dust. The low intake should be set above the level at which water from wash-down of the floor could enter the ducting.\n\nFresh air intake piping, poured concrete aging cellar, Bonnie Blue Farm, Tennessee.\n\n**_What size should the ductwork be?_** Most cheesemakers find that it is better to have a pipe that is too large rather than too small; 6 to 12 inches is usually adequate, depending upon the cubic feet of your aging room. Anything under this size will not likely provide enough draw to remove and replace the air in the room.\n\nTo further control the airflow, in-line or surface-mounted fans can be used. If installing a fan at either the exhaust pipe or the intake (or both), you can likely get away with smaller-diameter ductwork. Remember to look for wet-environment fans (such as for a shower), as the air in the aging room will be quite humid. Consider wiring the fan's switch to a timer that will allow you to vary the length and frequency of operation. When utilizing an intake fan, you might consider adding an air distribution \"sock\" to help disperse the air evenly throughout the room. These fabric socks are available from HVAC suppliers and come in different sizes and configurations. Another method to control airflow is the use of an irrigation gate valve that will allow you to restrict the airflow when needed. Some people have mentioned using a home ventilation system to exchange air in aging rooms; however, these units are designed to sense humidity and temperature of both the interior and the exterior air, and they ventilate only when certain parameters are met. For example, one popular brand will not bring in outside air if that air would raise the interior relative humidity above 55 percent\u2014this is designed for the comfort of humans, not cheese. I would imagine that a skilled HVAC technician could bypass some of these parameters, but you might find it simpler to control the air exchange with a timer or manually.\n\n**_What about the temperature of the fresh air?_** When you bring outside air into your aging space, it is important to make sure that you do not introduce warm air in the summer and cold air in the winter, unless you are willing to have your cooling or heating unit compensate for this factor (at a higher cost to you). One of the most effective methods for pre-conditioning the air entering the aging room is to run long lengths of ductwork or pipe from the exterior intake underground, at a depth where the ground temperature is stable, before it enters the aging room. If you are building underground, this can easily be accomplished during construction. Piping can be laid alongside the walls, under the slab, or at any other location accessible during construction. Estrella Family Creamery in Washington even ran extra piping through a buried water vault (basically an unused septic tank filled with water) to provide additional air temperature stabilization. If done successfully, this will provide you with year-round fresh air at the proper temperature. If you cannot provide ground cooling, shunt air intake from another room that has as few temperature fluctuations as possible. This may even mean providing two air intake sources, depending upon the seasonal influences experienced by the surrounding spaces.\n\n**Shelving**\n\nShelving options in the aging room will depend not only on what you would like to use, but upon what surfaces your inspectors will allow. Across the U.S. people are using, with their inspectors' approval\/acceptance, everything from knot-free hardwood or pine (softwood) boards to epoxy-finished or coated metal. Before we focus too much on just what the inspectors will accept, I would like to emphasize that your priority should be what is good for the cheese as well as the cheesemaker. Wood boards may increase the potential quality and romance factor for the marketing of your cheese, but will you be willing and able to keep up with the steps necessary to maintain them as a safe surface for aging a perishable product? If your cheeses will be waxed, vacuum sealed, or plastic (cream wax) coated, then you can probably age them on wooden planks without too much concern from your inspector. (Whether the wood actually adds any tangible quality to plastic-sealed cheese, however, could be debated.)\n\nPVC pipe racking system with plastic bread-bag tags as inventory labels, Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n**_Plastic or Chrome-Coated Wire_**\n\nPlastic or chrome shelving is readily available and relatively inexpensive. It will do well for a few years, but in a very humid environment the cut ends and any tears in the plastic coating or abrasions on the chrome will rust. Also, painted metal or chrome-finished wall mounts used with these shelving systems will begin rusting rather quickly, and any wall-mounted hardware that is not stainless steel will also be vulnerable to rust.\n\n**_Epoxy-Coated Wire_**\n\nEpoxy-coated wire shelving is more expensive than its plastic-coated cousin but will last much longer. It can be wall mounted or purchased as freestanding shelving. Freestanding shelving of this type is usually assembled in sequence\u2014in other words, the shelves are slid over the vertical supports starting with the bottom shelf and then moving up. This creates a very stable platform for cheeses. It also means that you will not be able to remove any single shelf (except perhaps the top shelf ) for individual cleaning. This is not an issue if you have enough space and shelves to move cheese to a new set of shelves should you need to do a thorough cleaning. And trust me, if you are making natural-rind cheeses, you will be needing to thoroughly clean those shelves!\n\nEasy-to-clean MetroMax shelving, Pholia Farm, Oregon.\n\n**_MetroMax_**\n\nMy personal favorite shelving is called MetroMax. Plastic, anti-microbial, snap-off grids sit on an epoxy framework. This allows you to remove portions of a shelf for cleaning without having to disassemble the entire unit, or even the whole shelf. They are the most expensive of these three coated-wire options, but in my experience, they are well worth the cost. With all of these shelf types, I recommend freestanding units that can be rearranged as necessary or removed entirely for aging room cleaning.\n\n**_Wood_**\n\n_What type of wood makes good cheese shelving_? While quite a few people are aging cheese on rather porous softwood planks, such as pine and spruce, the best choice is more likely to be a tight-grained, low-resin hardwood. Soft-grain woods are not only more porous\u2014meaning harder to clean and more likely to harbor bacteria\u2014but often more resinous (with pitch or sap), meaning that possible off-flavors may be imparted to the cheese. Some states that allow wood shelves still require that they be coated with a finish, such as polyurethane or wax. This greatly reduces the breathable nature of unfinished wood but still allows for the romance of the phrase \"aged on wood\" in your product description.\n\n_What about cleaning and maintaining_ _wood shelves?_ A variety of approaches are being used in the U.S. One state requires periodic scrubbing and kiln-heating of the wood to kill bacteria. Vinegar washes (to create an acidic surface not hospitable to most pathogenic bacteria) and\/or inoculating the shelves with beneficial bacteria via buttermilk or culture washes are two other techniques used to maintain a good aging surface. Wood shelves should not be scrubbed with a strong chlorine solution, as the chlorine will begin to break down the softer parts of the wood, leaving a more textured, hard-to-clean surface on the shelves.\n\nCommon wood shelving construction.\n\n_What about mounting wood shelves?_ One of the simplest ways to get started with wood shelves is to simply lay the boards across freestanding, coated shelving units. This has the added advantage of allowing the use of thinner pieces of often costly hardwood. When using wood alone, it must be quite thick to prevent warping and sagging under the weight of heavy wheels of cheese. Another simple approach is to build a framework of galvanized or powder-coated metal onto which the boards can be laid. Still another popular method is to install floor-to-ceiling vertical posts or poles into which holes are drilled at different levels. A long, sturdy dowel or pipe is inserted completely through this post, providing a bracket for shelving on each side (see the illustration above). There are many other creative approaches to building wood shelving in aging rooms. Whatever method you choose, keep in mind the following: ease of shelf removal for cleaning; stability of the entire unit when cheeses are placed at various places along the shelf; and rust-resistant hardware and material when building the unit.\n\nWalter Nicolau in his walk-in cooler aging room with wood shelving, Nicolau Farms, California.\n\n**PHOLIA FARM**\n\nWhen we wanted to use wood shelving in a state that \"doesn't allow\" wood, we worked with the state's land grant university dairy department to prove the effectiveness of our methods of maintaining the shelves. We utilized two methods (vinegar and culture washes) on two different types of wood (myrtlewood and Pacific maple) and tracked the shelves' sanitation by routinely sending off swabs for pathogen testing. In the face of evidence, along with the support of academia, it was rather hard for the regulators to refuse our methods. (We waited to implement this plan until we had a couple of years of proven safe product using more conventional aging methods. We felt it was important to set a track record for understanding the process before we \"pushed the envelope.\")\n\n**Wood shelves should not be scrubbed with**  \n **a strong chlorine solution, as the chlorine will begin**  \n **to break down the softer parts of the wood, leaving a more**  \n **textured, hard-to-clean surface on the shelves.**\n\n**_Plastic Matting_**\n\nYou might have already seen the food-surface-approved, plastic mesh matting\/ netting that cheeses are often placed on while they drain or age. You will also often see this type of matting over the top of plastic-coated\/epoxy\/plastic shelving as well as wood shelves. This is usually done to increase air circulation around the cheeses. Depending upon the type of cheese and how frequently the wheels are turned, this matting can help equalize the airflow around the cheese. Whether or not cheese sitting on matting over wood actually benefits much from the qualities of the wood (as with plastic-coated or waxed cheese sitting on wood) is a matter of opinion. But the matting could serve as an acceptable surface for the cheese in places where inspectors balk at having it sit directly on wood shelves.\n\n**Building Materials and Systems**\n\nThis is the fun part! When building a new, freestanding aging room, you have a lot of options (depending on what your inspectors will allow) for building materials. Choosing the right ones can be a bit daunting. In the U.S. there are aging rooms built from pre-formed concrete culverts, straw-bale construction, metal sea shipping containers, poured concrete, sprayed concrete (\"shotcrete\"), refrigerated (reefer) trailers, and walk-in coolers, and of course wood-framed ones as well. Whether your aging room is to be aboveground or buried will greatly influence your choice. Also, keep in mind the \"big three\" materials issues\u2014cost, longevity, and the qualities the substance might bring (both tangible and intangible) to the aging process\u2014when selecting the material that is best for you.\n\nA charming, old refrigerated trailer provides aging space at Gothberg Farms, Washington.\n\n**Reefer Trailers**  \nLet's start with the least romantic aging space, the reefer trailer. A refrigerated truck trailer is a convenient, immediate solution for many creameries. You can find these food-ready units used and ready to go for decent prices. That being said, they are designed to refrigerate to an approximate temperature of 38\u00b0F, which is not ideal for most cheeses. They have minimal insulation and a moderate thermal mass. In other words, they will be one of the most energy-thirsty choices you could make for aging cheese. But they serve many fine cheesemakers quite well and can bridge the gap at a time when no other space is available.\n\n**Walk-in Coolers**\n\nPrefabricated walk-in coolers, with or without refrigeration units, are also easy to find new or used and quick to install. Some manufacturers will help you choose a cooling system for a walk-in that is better suited to cheese. (One company I spoke with was coincidentally asked by another cheesemaker\u2014at the same time\u2014for a quote on customizing a walk-in cooler to cheese-friendly standards. Evidently the salesperson thought we were playing some sort of trick on him and called us \"cheese pranksters.\")\n\n**Florist Coolers**\n\nThese units are basically like a walk-in cooler, but designed for storing cut flowers. While often cooler than cheese aging temperatures, the equipment is designed to maintain a higher relative humidity than most typical refrigeration equipment. Floral coolers offer limited aging space and so are more often used as an interim solution when no other aging space is available.\n\n**Wood Frame**\n\nA traditional wood-framed aging room is an affordable, easy-to-build option. If you are designing the aging room to be a part of your dairy building, try to locate it on interior walls; in other words, no wall of the aging room should be a part of any outside wall. This will greatly assist in the control of temperature fluctuations caused by climate. In addition, when pouring the slab of the building, the aging room portion should have a thermal \"curtain\" (a layer of reflective insulation or other material inserted in the slab between the two spaces) separating the aging room slab from the main slab, to prevent the thermal mass of the slab from influencing the temperature inside the aging room. When building the walls, choose the thickest lumber you can accommodate in the space (and afford). The ceiling should be even better insulated than the walls. As noted earlier in this chapter, the less wood framing, the better the overall R-value will be. The thickness (and R-value) of the insulation you use will be dictated by the thickness of the wall. For example, if your wall is constructed of 2 \u00d7 4s you cannot force R-19 insulation into the space, as compacting the fiberglass batts (or alternative material) will negate its insulation potential. I recommend that aging room walls be of no less than 2 \u00d7 6 construction, which will allow for R-19 to R-21 insulation. Even better would be to cover the interior of the wall with rigid insulation; the rigid insulation will help mitigate the heat transfer that will occur at each stud in the wall (see illustration).\n\nDetails for framed wall construction in cheese aging room.\n\nCeilings can be easier to \"overinsulate\" if you have a flat ceiling with space above. A minimum of R-38\u2014which requires 2 \u00d7 12 ceiling joists\/rafters\u2014is recommended. Again, applying a layer of rigid insulation will greatly reduce the amount of heat transfer that will occur. Venting the space above your ceiling and insulation will ensure that excess heat will not build up above the space.\n\nWith all wood-framed rooms, you will need a waterproofing membrane covering the wood members on the interior. Tar\/roofing paper is the usual choice. Even if you are finishing the walls with fiberglass panels (FRPs), or dairy board you should further protect the wood with a waterproof membrane, such as tar paper. If you will be mounting shelves into the wood framing, use a bit of silicone caulking on each screw or bolt to keep moisture from following the hardware into the wood.\n\n**Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs)**\n\nStructural insulated panels (SIPs) are an excellent choice, when possible. SIPs are prefabricated panels of insulation and structural supports. They have a high R-value and are quick to install. All design needs, such as outlets, window openings, etc., must be determined before the panels are ordered. Finished wall surfaces can sometimes be added at the factory. The panels have a low environmental cost due to the decreased use of lumber, the lack of waste material at the jobsite, and their high insulation factor. If we had it to do all over again, as the saying goes, this is the building material we would have chosen for our creamery and aging room.\n\n**Sea Cargo Containers**\n\nIt is becoming common to hear of using buried sea cargo containers as root cellars. These are large metal containers designed for transporting goods on ships. They are usually not insulated. People have discussed using these for aging cheese, as well. Indeed, at the time of this writing one brave cheesemaker I know has done so\u2014but not with complete satisfaction. Sea cargo containers can be obtained on either coast at a relatively low cost. They are sturdy and can be insulated or even finished on the inside. If you bury one, you will need to reinforce the ceiling or it could buckle under the weight of the earth above. Because these containers were designed for heavy use in salty air, they are extremely durable even when exposed to the elements. Most certainly they are not as long lived as a poured concrete structure, but, given the cost difference, they're possibly worth considering. A metal surface interior is not likely to be adequate for a moist aging room, however, so insulating and finishing would be advisable. Ridged or sprayed-on insulation covered by cement board and plaster would create a surface more closely resembling the properties of a poured cement building or rock cave. Because the containers are long and narrow, I would recommend partitioning off the front section for an antechamber and using the back as the aging room. Building a partition will also help support the ceiling. The entire structure can be draped with heavy-duty pond liner or, even better, liner material designed for use in septic sand filters. This type of construction, however, falls under the _unproven_ category.\n\n**Septic Tank**\n\nNow who would associate the words \"septic tank\" with an appropriate cheese aging cave? But when you really think about it, what is a septic tank but a pre-engineered, underground room? If you don't need too much aging space, and you have a manufacturer fairly close by, a septic tank can be a viable option. The biggest advantage is that they are designed to be buried; you will have no fears that the ceiling could come down on your cheese\u2014and yourself! To get enough ceiling height, choose a large, single-compartment tank. For example, a 3,000-gallon tank (which is really two 1,500-gallon tanks sandwiched top-to-top) has a ceiling height of about 10 feet and will give you about 600 cubic feet of aging space. A door can be cut after the tank is installed (the tank will come in two pieces), or in some cases the manufacturer might create one during the pouring of the tank at the plant. Septic tanks are already considered waterproof, so you won't need to drape or coat the structure with a waterproofing material. Remember to cut holes for water and power lines, or you can run them through the access hole on top. This method should also be considered _unproven_.\n\nSeptic tank root cellar, Fornaciari home, Oregon.\n\nSeptic tank root cellar, Fornaciari home, Oregon.\n\n**Straw Bales**\n\nThere are a couple of ways you can use straw bales to construct an aging room. The first is to simply stack bales around the exterior of a wood-framed room or freestanding walk-in cooler as additional, cheap insulation. The bales can be left raw, if protected by the surrounding building, or finished with plaster, as in typical straw-bale construction. It is possible to build an aging room completely of straw bales, but there are a few issues that must be adequately addressed to ensure success. The number-one enemy of straw bales is moisture. The bales must be protected from exterior water by adequate roof eaves. In a residential setting, the walls are usually left \"breathable\" so water vapor doesn't get trapped in the bales. Unless you are aging cheeses in plastic or wax, your aging room will be a very humid environment, so the walls must be sealed from the inside. It is possible to allow the bales to breathe from the exterior or through the top layer, but depending upon your climate and humidity, there could be problems down the road. Moisture sensors should be embedded in the walls at critical levels to monitor bale dryness over time and seasons (this is a common precaution with many straw-bale structures). At the time of writing, I know of no straw-bale aging room more than a few years old; therefore, I would advise that this construction method be approached very thoughtfully (see sidebar).\n\n**RELATIVE HUMIDITY IN STRAW BALES**\n\nA large straw-bale winery in California has extensively documented the hygrothermal (moisture and temperature) performance of its earth-plaster-covered straw-bale walls (see www.ecobuildnetwork.org). Part of the winery includes a wine barrel room where relative humidity is often 80 percent (still lower than most cheese aging rooms should be). The winery's study showed that relative humidity within the bales surrounding this more humid room pushed the limit of what is acceptable.\n\n**Concrete Culverts**\n\nPre-cast concrete culverts are rectangular culverts manufactured off-site, then delivered and placed. They can be ordered in many sizes, both in interior height and in length. They arrive on a semi-trailer and are put in place with a crane. They have similar advantages to the septic tank option in that they are engineered for being buried and supporting a great deal of weight, but they are much larger and a better choice for most cheesemaking operations. They are open at both ends, however, so you will still have to construct a back and front wall. Culverts can be placed side by side or intersecting.\n\n**Poured\/Sprayed Concrete**\n\nPoured or sprayed concrete construction will give you the most flexibility regarding design, the longest life span, and possibly the highest initial cost. The expense comes not only from the concrete itself, but from the amount of rebar and steel needed to make it structurally sound. You may be required to have an engineer provide details as to the construction (commonly called \"having the plan engineered\"), which will also add cost. The weight and composition of earth fill around the cave will dictate wall thickness and thus the amount and placement of steel (rebar) in the walls.\n\nWhile you may be tempted not to waterproof the exterior of a concrete aging cellar, remember that moisture can be almost as detrimental to unfinished concrete as it can be to wood. Exposure to moisture will cause the inside walls to develop _efflorescence_ \u2014moisture moving through the walls carries minerals that are deposited, leaving a white residue. In addition, while the aging room should be buried deep enough to resist freezing, should water enter a crack and freeze, then over time the whole building could be structurally compromised. The interior should be finished smooth and be cleanable. Ideally, you will be allowed to leave the interior unsealed to promote the establishment of an environment that promotes the beneficial microflora and microbial growth desired for cheese aging. Some inspectors will allow the use of a whitewash in place of a sealing paint. This old-fashioned paint is made from hydrated (masonry) lime, table salt, and water.\n\nA beautifully designed front entrance for the underground aging cave at Orb Weaver Farm in Vermont.\n\nPoured concrete aging cave (\"Cave Beulah\") with vaulted ceiling, Estrella Family Creamery, Washington.\n\n**FIAS CO FARM'S WHITEWASH RECIPE**\n\nMix in a large bucket (a 5-gallon paint bucket is ideal):\n\n\u2022 3 large coffee cans of hydrated lime (about 12 cups)   \n\u2022 1 pound or 1 small coffee can of salt (about 4 cups)   \n\u2022 2 gallons of water\n\nTo mix this together, mix a little lime and salt, then a little water, then a little lime and salt, etc. If you just dump it all together it's like stirring with a boat anchor. You should let the mixture sit overnight, but we usually just use it right away and have had no problems.\n\nThe whitewash should be fairly watery; remember it's a wash, not a paint. Give it a stir once in a while as you use it.\n\nTo use the whitewash, just get a big brush and slop it on. Don't worry about getting it on your clothes; it washes out very easily. It may seem like it's not covering very well as you paint it on, especially on new pine 2 \u00d7 4s, but it will whiten up considerably when it's completely dry, so be patient. www.fiascofarm.com\n\nIf your inspector allows you to use this type of finish, you will preserve the breathability of the walls and add some antibacterial properties (as the coating is quite alkaline). It will need to be recoated periodically.\n\nConstruction of concrete masonry unit (CMU) root cellar with vaulted ceiling, home of Pierre Cloutier, Nova Scotia.\n\n**Concrete Masonry Units (CMUs)**\n\nMore commonly known as concrete blocks, concrete masonry units (CMUs) are another option for building an underground aging room. CMU construction has some advantages because it is easier for an owner-builder to do and it can be done in stages. CMU walls are not as strong as poured concrete walls, however; they are more likely to have air pockets\u2014open cells that do not get filled with concrete when the walls are filled. Engineering might be required when the wall will be retaining pressure and mass from surrounding geographical features.\n\n**Dealing with Unwanted \"Visitors\"**\n\nNo, these are not members of the press or public sneaking into your cellar for a quick peek at the cheese; these are creepy-crawlies and other unwanted varmints that affineurs deal with but rarely discuss. While there are certain pests, such as cheese mites and cheese skipper flies, that actually seek out aging cheese, there are other critters that will just be attracted to the warm, moist environment of the aging room. A certain amount of vigilance and diligence is required to keep these unwanted visitors under control.\n\n**Cheese Mites**\n\n_How do you know if you have cheese mites?_ The first sign of cheese mites will be a fine gray or brownish dust that you will notice on the cheese surface, the floor of the aging room, and shelves. This \"dust\" is made up of dead and living mites as well as their excrement (yes, mite poop). A quick way to find out if your cheese \"dust\" is mites is to place a small amount in a pile on a white piece of paper. If you come back in an hour and the dust has spread out, you know it has legs. Given time with your cheese, the mites will begin to pit and crater the surface. Eventually they become more than an aesthetic problem\u2014they actually change the flavor of the entire wheel, giving it a sweetish, herbal flavor. You have probably heard that cheese mites are intentionally allowed to live and work their \"magic\" on some types of European cheeses, such as Mimolette.\n\n**If you come back in an hour and the \"dust\"**  \n **has spread out, you know it has legs.**\n\n_How do mites get into your aging room?_ Cheese mites also enjoy feasting upon flour and grains. They can enter an adjoining or nearby building, either by being transported on a host (clothing, hair\/body, flies) or by drifting through cracks . . . and eventually find your cheese. If you make aged, naturally rinded cheeses and age them for long enough, you will most likely find mites in your aging room\u2014after they find you!\n\n_How do you deal with cheese mites?_ While some say that mites appear only in cellars that are too dry or too warm, in fact even refrigeration for several days does not kill them. (Don't even ask how I know that. . .) In the past, fumigation with sulfur was used to control cheese mites, but that method has luckily fallen out of favor. Oiling or vinegar-washing of the rind will prevent or slow the progress of cheese mites. Deciding to sell cheese a bit younger has its advantages as well, since cheese mites are slow to affect cheeses under six months of age. Also, keeping the oldest cheeses at a lower level on the shelves will help prevent the mites from \"dusting\" the younger cheeses. I have also been told that ozone machines (air purifiers) will sterilize the mites, eventually ridding your room of the population. Such units also kill molds and other microflora, however, so this would not necessarily be a good choice when you trying to make a naturally rinded cheese.\n\n_Are cheese mites dangerous to humans?_ Usually not, but there are some reports of dermatitis being caused by contact with the mites. Ingesting them (again, don't ask!) does not seem to be a problem.\n\n**Cheese Skipper Flies**\n\n_How do you know if you have cheese skipper flies_? Cheese skippers are named for the legless larvae's ability to contract their bodies and launch themselves several inches into the air, essentially appearing to \"skip.\" The adult females (small, shiny black two-winged flies) lay their eggs in aged cheese and cured meats (quite the gourmands!). The maggots feast on the cheese, causing rapid decomposition. The larvae are fairly large, about 1\/5 of an inch long. Between their size and jumping ability, and the state of the cheese when infested, it should be fairly apparent if you have a problem with cheese skippers.\n\n_How do you deal with cheese skippers?_ As the adults are flying insects, you can prevent their entry into the room by utilizing screens on air intakes and antechambers or double-entry doors. Hanging non-insecticidal fly strips or black-light flytraps is also recommended. Thorough, periodic cleaning of the aging room\u2014including shelves and any nooks and indentations where puparia (after the larva has feasted, it will go into a pupal stage before hatching out as a new adult) could hide\u2014will help prevent infestation.\n\n_Are cheese skippers dangerous to humans?_ Ingestion of skipper fly larvae is a cause of severe intestinal problems for humans. The larvae can live in the intestine, dining on the host's tissue and attempting to bore through the intestinal wall. Not a good thing! It's hard to believe that some people intentionally eat a black market cheese in Italy called Casu Marzu whose tangy, aromatic, and creamy texture is caused by cheese fly larvae feeding (with the encouragement of the cheesemaker) on the paste of the cheese.\n\n**Rodents and Other Pests**\n\nPest control consists of commonsense measures such as tight construction, well-fitted doors and other openings, screening, and filters. If a mouse or other four-legged small pest should get into your aging room, non-poisonous trapping methods should be used, followed by a thorough cleaning and inspection of cheeses for nibbling. For flying insects you can hang non-insecticidal strips and black-light traps. Always keep in mind that not only is the aging room a cozy, moist environment, but it is also well stocked with nourishment for a myriad of unwanted visitors.\n\nYou can see that building a successful aging room is a matter of understanding both your cheeses' needs as well as what your geography, climate, and building can offer. This is a complicated topic that is not as well researched and documented in the U.S. as it is in countries where there is a longer history of cheese-making. I imagine it will be some time before regulatory agencies, industry, and academia here come into alignment on the topic. Until then, many cheesemakers will continue to forge ahead and pave the way\u2014through both their mishaps and their successes.\n**\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Accessory Rooms   \n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch006175)**\n\nThere are rooms and areas that can be included in your creamery that will make your work and life easier. In this chapter we will go over some of these rooms and spaces, as well as some of the options you might want to consider when designing them into your building.\n\n**Office**\n\nKeeping up with the business side of farmstead cheesemaking takes far more time than I ever would have imagined. Invoicing, responding to email, bookkeeping, filing records, and paying bills will take up a significant amount of time in your regular operations. These tasks are unavoidable if you want your business to be a success.\n\nMany people have offices inside of their homes, but creating office space adjacent to the make room will allow the cheesemaker to optimize his or her time and stay a bit more organized than if the office were a part of the home space. An office can also serve as a place to hang lab coats and change shoes before entering the make room; thus it can serve as a \"buffer zone\" to help keep dirt and contaminants out of the make room.\n\nConsider including a window from the office to the adjoining make room for communicating with family members and other people who might need to talk to you during cheesemaking. If the office is not attached to the make room, think about including an intercom.\n\n**Packaging Room**\n\nThis is one room that we wish we had included in our design. As it is now, we store shipping boxes and materials in the finished loft of our building. When it is time to ship, we bring the boxes and materials to the office. I box the cheeses in the make room and then take them back into the office for weighing and to print labels. If you are not shipping cheeses, then a packaging and wrapping area is adequate. But for storage of cardboard boxes and packing materials, a separate area or room is needed. Cardboard boxes should not be stored in the make room, as they will absorb humidity and begin to mildew. Besides the boxes being ruined by the humidity, they also become nice little environments for pests to lay eggs in or harvest nest-building materials from.\n\nIf you are producing soft, fresh cheeses for direct sale to the customer (with little or no shipping involved), then a dedicated countertop in your make room can be used to package and label cheeses for sale. Boxes and carriers can be brought in from the office or a storage area. If you are storing boxes in another room, be sure that room is kept as free of pet hair, dust, etc., as possible and check boxes for debris before bringing them into the make room.\n\nA good separate packaging room will include the following:\n\n\u2022 Stainless steel or other food-grade work surface\n\n\u2022 Wrapping\/packaging paper, containers, wrappers, etc.\n\n\u2022 Interior fill material (such as packaging peanuts \u2014recycled or biodegradable, if possible \u2014or paper)\n\n\u2022 Labels for product\n\n\u2022 \"Perishable \" labels\n\n\u2022 Boxes for shipping\n\n\u2022 Postal scale\n\n\u2022 Product scale*\n\n\u2022 Order book and inventory lists\n\n\u2022 Refrigerator for pre-chilling cheeses before shipping\n\n\u2022 Frozen gel packs or ice \"blankets\"\n\n**Farm Store\/Tasting Room**\n\nWith the increasing popularity of artisan cheese, I encourage new cheesemakers to think more like a winery or artisan bakery and create a space for visitors to taste and buy your handmade cheeses, learn more about your farm, and perhaps buy other products as well. People are curious about the life of farmers; taking advantage of that can help promote both your products and the farmstead cheese sector as a whole.\n\n**Some cheesemakers have self-service coolers**  \n **or refrigerators so customers can pick up cheese**  \n **at their convenience using the honor system.**\n\nA farm store can be as simple as a room with a counter or bar for tasting cheeses (think indoor farmers' market stall) or as ambitious as a fully stocked shop selling local breads, preserves, T-shirts with your farm logo, etc. It can be open only on occasion or regularly. Some cheesemakers have self-service coolers or refrigerators so customers can pick up cheese at their convenience using the honor system. Those using this method find it very satisfactory: it reduces labor related to selling cheese and increases sales by having products available at the convenience of the shopper. Often self-service stands are located not on the actual farm but at a gate or roadside location. This prevents curious visitors from investigating areas of your farm that might be better toured with a guide\u2014or not at all!\n\n**HOW TO PACKAGE AND SHIP CHEESE**\n\nShipping cheese is one of those topics that can baffle the new cheesemaker\u2014I know it did me! Basically, there is no one preferred method. The only important issue is that the cheese arrives undamaged by either heat or impact.\n\nTo help keep cheeses cool during shipping, pre-wrap and chill for 12 to 24 hours before shipping. Use ice packs or blankets placed on _top_ of the cheese (because cool air settles) and fill open spaces in the box with a suitable fill material. Double-boxing will also help maintain coolness. Also, consider not shipping cheeses when the outside temperature is above 90\u00b0F either the origin or the destination)\u2014remember that packages often sit in hot delivery vehicles for many hours before they arrive at their destination. For especially delicate and fresh cheeses, use insulated shipping boxes, either purchased or made at home by cutting pieces of polystyrene insulation (Dow Chemical's trademark name is Styrofoam) purchased from a hardware or building supply store to line a box. Though not very environmentally friendly, these insulated boxes are a necessary evil unless you want to use overnight shipping, which is very cost prohibitive. When we need to use a polystyrene shipping container, we include return postage (very cheap) and ask the recipient to send the container back; this saves us a couple of dollars on a new container\u2014and also keeps it out of a landfill. Let's hope that one day an equally functional yet readily recyclable material will be available.\n\nWhen packaging cheeses of different weights and hardnesses, pack heavier, harder cheeses at the bottom of the box, fill voids with fill material, add ice packs or an ice blanket, then separate by a cardboard divider that has flaps oriented toward the top of the box (think of it as a topless box). This will keep the weight of the cheeses beneath from pressing against the more delicate cheeses you will place in the top section. By combining the cheeses into one box you can take advantage of the thermal mass (in this case the cool temperature stored within the cheeses) to help maintain an optimum temperature during shipping.\n\nFill material can be recycled polystyrene or cellulose \"peanuts\"; shredded paper (beware of ink from newsprint leaking onto cheeses!); straw, hay, or shavings (yes, people really do use these); or crumpled brown paper or newsprint. Whatever material you use, I encourage you to verify with recipients that they practice a recycling program that matches your own sustainability goals. For a location near you that will accept and recycle polystyrene go to www.earth911.com.\n\nSweet Home Farm sells their entire production of cheese, about 13,000 pounds per year, at their well-stocked, appealing store.\n\nIf your farm store is attached to your creamery, consider installing a viewing window into the make room. This gives you the opportunity to share more of your operation (and satisfy inquisitive visitors) without people actually entering the make room. If your farm store will be open only when staff is present, it can easily double as an office (of course you probably don't want visitors shopping unattended in a room where your computer, files, checkbooks, etc., might be kept).\n\n**Laundry Room**\n\nA dedicated (used only for the creamery) laundry facility is very helpful. Of course the home laundry can be used, but it can be challenging to keep creamery laundry free from lint, hairs, and other debris that is common in household laundry. Cheesecloth can be hand-washed and sanitized in the creamery, but lab coats will need a washing machine. Many cheesemakers are also using small terry cloth towels, instead of paper towels, for drying hands. These meet PMO requirements for single service, as they are used once and then re-laundered. The initial investment is higher than for paper towels, and there are additional expenses for hot water, detergents, bleach, and wastewater disposal. Paper towel costs continue to rise, however, and disposal (unless you are planning to compost them) is an issue. We wash and dry our small hand towels separately from the lab coats and cheese cloths so it's a quick and easy process to fold and put them away. After folding, they are bagged in reusable storage bags and stacked near each hand-washing sink. We started out using single-fold paper towels, the type you pull out individually from a wall-mounted dispenser. I took those dispensers off the wall, turned them upside down, and remounted them. The front opening (that was designed for refilling the unit with paper towels) now serves as a self-closing door that you can flip up to remove one cloth towel at a time.\n\n**Toilet**\n\nA toilet facility is mandated by the PMO. It should be located convenient to the milking parlor and milkhouse. For many small creameries, a bathroom in the residence is perfectly acceptable. But remember, the inspector will need to have access without your presence for inspection purposes. The toilet facility does not have to be state of the art; it can even be an appropriately dug \"outhouse\" or portable chemical toilet. It will be inspected for proper hand-washing facilities; general cleanliness; a tightly fitting, self-closing door; and absence of pests.\n\nWhen designing your creamery, consider building the bathroom to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Go to www.access-board.gov or talk to an ADA representative or your attorney for information on current dimensions and standards, as well as advice on meeting other requirements, such as parking (if your farm will be open to the public on a regular basis). Organizations that receive federal or state funding may not be allowed to include your farm (for membership, tours, etc.) if these standards are not met. While you may currently have no plans to work with such groups, there is no reason not to include the possibility into your building plans, if you have the chance.\n\n**Medicine Storage**\n\nMedications, treatments, and supplements for your animals must be stored in a place that the inspector can access. Our medicine cabinet for the goats is in our laundry room, through which the inspector also must pass to check on our toilet facility. The inspector will also look through the entire barn and feed rooms. If you have other species that you do not milk, such as horses, pigs, etc., be sure to keep their medications, de-wormers, and supplements in a specific location that is identified with a label or sign with something like \"horse shelf.\"\n\nThe inspector will be looking for properly labeled medications that include a species-appropriate listing (such as for goats, if you milk goats, and not medication that is labeled only for cows), name of medication, milk withholding times, dosages, expiration date, and purpose. If you milk goats or sheep and use medication that is labeled only for cattle, then you will need what is called \"extra labeling\" from a licensed veterinarian. This is true even if the medication is available at the feed store and is widely used for your species. The extra label will include the above-mentioned facts as well as the veterinarian's name.\n\nIf you keep medications that require refrigeration, expect their storage area to be inspected as well.\n\nKeep any medications that are only for use in young or male animals (in other words, non-lactating animals) on a separate shelf or case and label them accordingly.\n\nYour creamery is now complete! Don't be surprised, however, to find things you have left out or would do differently. I don't believe that there is any way to fully anticipate the future and changing needs of any business, much less one that involves both animals and food production. We all have a \"if we could do it over\" list. I hope this section will have helped you to one day have a shorter list than most of us!\n\n*Rules governing the weighing and selling of products are strictly enforced in most jurisdictions. You will need to check with your state's department of agriculture or other regulatory agency to determine the acceptable use of scales and weights for your application. In general, if a product is ordered by the customer and then weighed and priced by that weight, then the scale must be a \"legal-for-trade\" scale that is licensed with the appropriate agency and recalibrated at certain specified intervals. If products are prepackaged and sold by the piece, with customers selecting the piece they want to purchase (for example, a small piece of cheese might be labeled as \"small\u2014approximately \u00bc pound\" and there would be a set price for that size), then you might be able to avoid the use of a legal-for-trade scale. If using one allows you to more accurately price your product, however\u2014thereby not giving away an ounce here and an ounce there\u2014then you should consider selling by weight. Again, I really want to emphasize that the level of regulation and enforcement of on-farm and farmers' market sales varies greatly across the country. Be sure to know the regulations for your jurisdiction!\n**[\n\nPART IV  \n **LONG-TERM SURVIVAL GUIDE**\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch008181)**\n\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Safety: Why \"It Hasn't Killed   \nAnyone Yet\" Isn't Good Enough!\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch010183)**\n\nI have to admit, it took us a few years to get around to even _trying_ to create a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) plan. It is a daunting task made more difficult by a lack of clear, simplified instructions. Many publications on the subject are designed for the large-scale industrial dairy, not the little creamery operated by only a handful of people. A good portion of the documentation steps in a formal HACCP plan are meant to track the performance of a crew of workers, making these steps seem like wasted time and effort for the very small creamery. Indeed, the plethora of steps and paperwork is very likely to discourage many from attempting to create a solid food safety plan. With that in mind, I have simplified the process for those who would like to get started with HACCP. Should you become interested in a more complex and thorough program, resources listed in appendix A and in the notes\/references section will provide much more in-depth discussion of the topic. The subject of product recalls\u2014a part of any good quality assurance plan\u2014is also dealt with in this chapter. While recalls are something we can hope to never experience, the reality is that you or someone you know will probably have to deal with one at some point. The old saying _\"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure\"_ definitely is pertinent when it comes to quality assurance programs!\n\n**What Is HACCP?**\n\nHACCP (pronounced with a short \"a\" as in the word \"at,\" with a soft \"c\": \"HA-sip\") stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. In a nutshell, HACCP is a system designed to define every step of a product's manufacture, identify the points in the process that are critical for food safety, and create a plan that delineates and documents safe manufacturing processes. It is a preventive program, focusing on the process rather than on product testing. An important difference to note: HACCP is not about quality as it relates to aesthetics\u2014taste, texture, aroma, etc.; it is only about the _safety_ of the product.\n\n**THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF HACCP**\n\n1. Conduct a hazard analysis\n\n2. Determine critical control points\n\n3. Establish critical limits\n\n4. Establish monitoring procedures\n\n5. Establish corrective actions\n\n6. Establish verification procedures\n\n7. Establish record-keeping and documentation procedures\n\nIn the United States, HACCP programs are mandatory in certain food industries, such as seafood and fruit juices. At the time of writing this book, they are not required in the dairy industry, but they are encouraged. Furthermore, larger dairy processors are usually required by their clients to have HACCP plans in place. Even if you do not create an in-depth HACCP plan, you can still use the principles of HACCP to create your own quality assurance program.\n\n**HACCP is not about quality as it relates to aesthetics\u2014taste,**  \n **texture, aroma, etc.; it is only about the** **safety** **of the product.**\n\nBefore a HACCP plan is developed, you must first define your \"prerequisite programs.\" What is often confusing is that while prerequisites must be defined as a part of building a HACCP plan, they are not part of the seven official principles of HACCP as defined by the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF).\n\nAlyce Birchenough checks and logs the pH during her cheesemaking process as a part of Sweet Home Farm's quality assurance program.\n\nTo further add to the bewilderment, there are steps in prerequisite programs\u2014as outlined by the Dairy Practices Council's Guideline No. 100, \"Food Safety in Farmstead Cheesemaking\"\u2014that overlap steps and principles in HACCP.\n\nTo help make all of this easier to understand and to encourage the creation of a quality assurance program that even the smallest cheesemaker can implement, I have simplified and combined prerequisite programs and the seven HACCP principles into three steps.\n\n**Three Steps for Creating a Quality Assurance Program**\n\n**1. Prerequisite Programs** : These are standardized procedures based on knowledge of proven facts regarding the safe manufacture of a food product. They include _Product and Process Information,_ _Standard Sanitation Operating Procedures (SSOPs),_ and _Good_ _Manufacturing Processes (GMPs)_.\n\n**a. Product and Process Information** : Includes a description and a flow chart (showing every step of the process) for each cheese made.\n\n**b. SSOPs** : List step-by-step proper cleaning and sanitation of equipment and facilities.\n\n**c. GMPs** : List procedures for maufacturing related to facility, equipment, and processes.\n\n**2. Hazard Analysis** : Each step of your process is analyzed for any chemical, biological, and physical risk associated with that particular step.\n\n**3. Critical Control Points (CCPs)** : These are points during the process when a \"control\" (think a step, a procedure, etc.) is used to prevent, limit, or eliminate a critical food safety hazard.\n\nTo sum it up, the basic principle of HACCP is this: All hazards (identified in Step 2, Hazard Analysis) are controlled, whether through Step 1 (Prerequisite Programs) or Step 3 (Critical Control Points). If you have identified everything that could possibly go wrong and you develop procedures to prevent all of these potential problems, then the odds are very good that you will be producing a safe product.\n\nThe foundation for a good HACCP plan is knowledge. Until you are well educated in the microbiology and chemistry of the cheesemaking process, including cleaning and sanitizing, you cannot adequately understand or foresee the potential hazards that exist. This is another reason that even the most talented, intuitive cheesemakers should seek ongoing education about their craft!\n\n**Until you are well educated in the microbiology**  \n **and chemistry of the cheesemaking process, including**  \n **cleaning and sanitizing, you cannot adequately understand**  \n **or foresee the potential hazards that exist.**\n\nSo let's assume you are a fairly experienced cheesemaker with some education regarding milk chemistry and cheesemaking microbiology. In addition, you have books and publications that delineate good cleaning and sanitation, basic good manufacturing processes, and risks and hazards associated with taking raw, living milk and turning it into a fermented food. Where do you start?\n\n**Step 1: Prerequisite Programs**\n\n**Step 1a: Flow Chart and Product Description**\n\nCreating a flow chart for each cheese you make (start with just one for now) is the most logical starting point for most cheesemakers. The flow chart falls under the \"Product and Process Information\" portion of the prerequisite programs of HACCP. When creating the chart, be sure to list every step of the process, any added ingredients (in addition to milk), and the product and by-product distribution.\n\nYou can also include a more complete description of the cheese that includes the following:\n\n\u2022 **Common name** : Does the cheese fall under a _Federal Standards of_ _Identity_* description?\n\n\u2022 **Commercial name** : What do you call it?\n\n\u2022 **Packaging** : How is it packaged?\n\n\u2022 **Labeling** : How is it labeled?\n\n\u2022 **Shelf life** : What is the shelf life after sale?\n\n\u2022 **Storage temperature** : What is the correct storage temperature?\n\nHere is an example using one of our cheeses, Elk Mountain:\n\n**Common name** : None\n\n**Commercial name** : Elk Mountain\n\n**Packaging** : Sold in whole or cut wheels wrapped in freezer paper and\/ or plastic wrap\n\n**Labeling** : Handwritten on paper with name and date of make\n\n**Shelf life** : 4\u20136 weeks, depending on size of cut\n\n**Storage temperature** : Aged 6\u20139 months at 55\u00b0F; storage after aging, 38\u00b0F\n\n**Step 1b: Standard Sanitation Operating Procedures (SSOPs)**\n\nSSOPs deal with the proper cleaning and sanitizing of everything in your dairy and creamery, including workers' hands, processing equipment, floors, refrigerators, and raw material.\n\n**Flow chart for Pholia Farm Creamery's Elk Mountain cheese.**\n\n**_SSOPs\u2014Things to Remember_**\n\n1. You cannot sanitize something that is not clean; therefore proper cleaning is as important as proper sanitizing.\n\n2. Proper dilution of detergents and sanitizers must be coupled with proper water temperature, scrubbing, and length of time cleaned to be effective.\n\n3. Sanitizers not diluted to the proper concentration will be ineffective if weak and leave residue (a chemical hazard) if too strong.\n\n4. Good SSOPs include documentation of cleaning frequency and descriptions of cleaning protocols and who will do the job.\n\n5. To be effective, SSOPs must be monitored and corrections made\u2014choose a very reliable person (probably yourself ) for this job.\n\n**_SSOPs\u2014The \"Big Eight\" Sanitation Concerns_**\n\n1. Safety of water that comes into contact with cheese (such as in washed-curd cheeses) and with cheese contact surfaces (vat, molds, etc.).\n\n2. Condition and cleanliness of cheese contact surfaces, utensils, gloves, etc.\n\n3. Prevention of cross-contamination between finished cheese and raw products, utensils, packaging, etc.\n\n4. Prevention of adulteration of cheese, cheese contact surfaces, utensils, gloves, packaging, etc., with chemical hazards, such as cleaning compounds and lubricants; physical hazards, such as bandages, fingernails, jewelry, and pests; and biological hazards.\n\n5. Maintenance of hand-washing and toilet facilities (this includes single-use towels and hot water).\n\n6. Correct labeling and storage of all chemicals.\n\n7. Control of worker health conditions that could cause contamination of cheese, packing materials, surfaces, etc.\n\n8. Exclusion of pests and pets from dairy and creamery.\n\n**Step 1c: Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)**\n\nGMPs deal with policies regarding the production of cheese as it relates to everything in your dairy and creamery, including hygiene, quality of equipment, construction of floors, quality of refrigerators, and documentation of raw materials. GMPs are a part of the Federal Code of Regulations (see resources in appendix A).\n\n**_GMPs\u2014Four Main Areas of Food Processing_**\n\n1. _Personnel hygiene_ includes policies on hand-washing, jewelry, eating in manufacturing areas, illness, cleanliness of clothing, etc.\n\n2. _Building and facilities_ includes lighting and ventilation, hand-washing stations, pest management, etc.\n\n3. _Equipment and utensils_ must meet food-grade standards and be easy to clean, sanitize, and maintain.\n\n4. _Production and process control_ includes time and temperature logs, records on ingredients, lot identification of cheeses, etc.\n\nCommon chlorine strength test strips.\n\n**Comparing SSOPs to GMPs**\n\nTo better help you understand the difference between an SSOP and a GMP, table 12-1 presents two examples, one using milking equipment and one using starter culture. You can see how the two prerequisite programs overlap in many subject areas, but the focus of each is different. When used together, a complete process that creates a safe product is the result.\n\n**Putting the Prerequisites Together**\n\nOnce you understand the goals and parameters for SSOPs and GMPs, you are ready to document them in your prerequisite program. I have seen this done a couple of ways. Some people write a narrative for each step of the flow chart that describes each process and states what SSOPs and GMPs apply. Others document a full set of SSOPs and GMPs in a binder. During Step 2 of creating a quality assurance program (Hazard Analysis) you can refer either to the narrative that follows the flow chart or to your prerequisite program binder. If you skip the creation of a well-documented prerequisite program, you can still complete the hazard analysis, but it will be less thorough and\u2014even more important, perhaps\u2014less impressive and persuasive should you ever find an FDA official at your doorstep.\n\n**Step 2: Hazard Analysis**\n\nOnce you have your flow chart and are comfortable with the standards for SSOPs and GMPs (keep reference books and publications on hand to help with the process) you will be ready to analyze each step of your process for hazards in three categories:\n\n\u2022 **Chemical\u2014** examples include antibiotics, sanitizers, pesticides, paint, and allergens.\n\n\u2022 **Biological\u2014** examples include pathogenic bacteria, such as _Listeria_ and _E. coli;_ viruses, such as hepatitis A; and mycotoxins from mold.\n\n\u2022 **Physical\u2014** examples include bandages, fingernails, disposable glove fragments, glass, and pests.\n\nThe Dairy Practices Council's Guideline No. 100, \"Food Safety in Farmstead Cheesemaking,\" contains very thorough lists of potential hazards in the above categories. In addition, it covers SSOPs and GMPs as they relate to reducing and\/ or eliminating the risks posed by these hazards. It is an inexpensive publication well worth having.\n\nSo let's take a couple of steps from the flow chart for Elk Mountain cheese and analyze them for risks.\n\nRemember, when you are working on control measures for each step, measures must deal with safety only\u2014not quality as it refers to taste, texture, aroma, etc. _A_ _good HACCP plan does not mean a tasty cheese, only a safe one!_\n\n**Step 3: Identifying Critical Control Points (CCPs)**\n\nThis part of the HACCP process always confused me. I wondered why you would need to identify additional hazardous points if you had created a sound prerequisite program. If your SSOPs and GMPs dealt with all of the hazards you could identify, why would you need to label certain areas with a CCP? It didn't make sense to me, until I understood the difference between control measures (also called control points) and critical control points:\n\n\u2022 **Control measures** are points in the system where loss of control may result in a reduction of product quality, but not a reduction in the safety of the cheese.\n\n\u2022 **Critical control points** are points in the system where a control must be exerted or food safety will be compromised. CCPs represent a point in the process where no other measures that will occur later can eliminate or mitigate the hazard.\n\nSo think of CCPs as a kind of red flag or highlighted control measure. Examples of CCPs in the cheesemaking process are pasteurization, acidification, salting, and aging. Once you have done your hazard analysis, you can go back through the points and mark as CCPs those that present a critical risk. Once you have determined where the CCPs are in your process, it is important to set parameters and document that they have been met. This is the whole point of HACCP.\n\n**Is a Recall in Your Future?**\n\nA cheesemaker I once interviewed (who is no longer in business) gave me a provocative quote: \"If you stay in business long enough, you will have a recall.\" Stories abound regarding recall nightmares, some with happy outcomes and others from which companies could never recover. Even the ones with a happy ending were stressful and costly while they were happening. If you have developed a good HACCP or other quality assurance plan, you will have a very good chance of surviving an FDA-requested recall; if you do not, then the odds are not as good. In addition to the HACCP plan, you should have a recall plan\u2014indeed, it is considered a part of a complete prerequisite program.\n\n**FDA RECALL CLASSIFICATIONS**\n\n_Class I:_ There is a strong likelihood that use of, or exposure to, a product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. (For example, contamination with pathogenic bacteria or Class I allergens not declared on a label.)\n\n_Class II:_ Exposure to, or use of, a product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health or consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote. (For example, contamination with a piece of glass.)\n\n_Class III:_ Exposure to, or use of, a product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences. (For example, a product that contains an ingredient that is safe but is not declared on the label.)\n\n**Recalls Defined**\n\nBe wary of the use of the term \"recall.\" It should be used only when a product poses a risk hazard as defined by the FDA guidelines (see sidebar). Use it only when an FDA-requested, or FDA-instigated, recall is taking place. Products can be brought back from customers under a \"market withdrawal\" plan. When you read the classifications in the sidebar, please pay close attention to Class III. Even at this lowest level of FDA recall your business could be at risk for something so seemingly simple as putting the wrong label on a cheese!\n\n**RECALL STEPS**\n\n**1. Contact lawyer and FDA:** If you discover cause for a true recall (your situation meets the criteria listed in the sidebar on FDA recalls), contact your lawyer and the FDA.\n\n**2. Contact** retailers, wholesalers, and distributors and arrange to have your products returned. Follow this initial contact with a formal recall notice (see step 5).\n\n**3. Obtain samples** and send them to an independent lab for testing (if the FDA instigated the recall).\n\n**4. Public notification (press):** _only_ if the product poses a serious health threat, i.e., Class I.\n\n**5. Recall notice:** Create a notice that identifies the product (lot number or other identifier), the reason for recall, who to contact at your company, what to do with the recalled product, and reimbursement procedures.\n\n**6. Terminate** the recall after all product has been accounted for and after consulting with the FDA.\n\n**What Can You Do to Prepare Right Now?**\n\nThere are several fronts on which you can prepare for the potential of a recall. All of these steps are sound business measures\u2014even without fear of a recall\u2014so implementing them, regardless of how safe you feel, is still a great idea.\n\n**Preventive Measures**\n\n**1. HACCP:** Nothing will help set the stage for your defense better than a sound HACCP plan!\n\n**2. Product identification** in-house and tracking: Identify each batch of cheese on your make sheet\/log and track it through its aging, packaging, and sale. This step is essential in order to perform a successful recall or market withdrawal.\n\n**3. Shipping records:** This follows product identification.\n\n**4. Company contacts:** Know who to contact for each retailer, wholesaler, or distributor that sells your cheese.\n\n**Drills**\n\nHold a mock recall, go through all the steps below, and see if you are confident that each step can be completed with relative ease. Remember, if a recall situation arises, the stress level will be high and responsibilities that would seem simple under normal conditions become challenging.\n\nThere, you've made it through a tough chapter on topics that are all about the harsh realities of running a business that produces what is thought of as a high-risk product. Even if you are not ready to implement a quality assurance and recall plan right now, keep it in mind and take the time\u2014even if you do it in stages\u2014to create what I like to call your \"business armor.\" You have already put a lot of thought, time, and, no doubt, money into this venture; you might as well take the extra steps to protect it for the long haul.\n\n* _Federal Standards of Identity_ for dairy products lists products with production standards that must be met for that cheese or dairy product. If you make a cheese that falls under any of these descriptions, you must meet the production criteria for that product, and it must be labeled accordingly. (For more on the Federal Standards of Identity, see chapter 3.)\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Increasing Your Bottom Line:  \nClasses, Agri-tourism, Additional Products\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch012194)**\n\nAt some point in your development as a business, you may find that you want to augment your income, either to meet increasing costs or to make a bit more money\u2014or even as a way to vary your work. While the usual route would be to increase production, this is not always the best choice. You may feel that your land and time do not allow for an increased herd size without your having to compromise quality of animal care. Or perhaps you know that increasing the number of animals you milk will necessitate hiring outside labor, and this is something you don't want to deal with. For many of us it is easy to lose sight of our original goals when our bank account is screaming \"Too low!\" If growth is not your path for sustainability, then a value-added option might be the right choice. (Technically, cheese is already a value-added product to the commodity product of milk, but as this book is dedicated to those who wish cheese to be their primary creation, I will not refer to it as \"value-added.\")\n\nKeep in mind that the ideas in this chapter are just that, ideas\u2014not complete guides to teaching classes or running a farm stay. If you find any of these ideas intriguing, you can explore them through some of the recommended resources in appendix A or through your own investigation and experiences.\n\nHowever you approach value-added options, be sure to start with regulatory issues first. For each of the following examples there will be steps that you must take to ensure that your enterprise is functioning legally. You will also need to address liability issues by discussing the venture with your insurance agent. A good idea can be great only if you can conduct it legally!\n\n**Agri-education: Classes and Mentoring**\n\nOne of the simplest ways to bring in a little extra cash is to teach cheese making, herdsmanship, or farming classes, either on your farm or at events, such as outdoor festivals or fairs. If you enjoy sharing your experience and knowledge, not only can teaching bring in a little extra cash\u2014it can also be very gratifying.\n\nClasses given at your farm will offer the largest profit margin, as well as being the least difficult to support logistically, since your equipment and supplies will not have to be transported to another location. Classes can be tailored to your own level of expertise and interest. Depending upon the climate where you live, try to schedule classes for a time of year when people are not engaged with a lot of outdoor activities. We have found that late fall and winter is the time when people are looking for something to do indoors. This also may be the time of year when you are not as busy with the farm and when, if your cheese market is seasonal, a little additional income could be helpful.\n\n**BLACK MESA RANCH**\n\nBlack Mesa Ranch (BMR) is a 280-acre off-grid Nubian goat cheese dairy owned and run by Kathryn and David Heininger, located off the beaten path near Snowflake, Arizona. David and Kathryn's approach epitomizes, in my opinion, the perfect combination of resources, skills, and passions. They have turned their love of goats, cheese, chocolates, and a remote lifestyle into a viable business. David explains how agri-tourism has worked for them:\n\n\"Holding workshops allows us a way to channel the requests for information and education we get into a planned, organized, and billable format that amounts to about 8 percent of our income. We host only about five or six three-day workshops a year. It is just too disruptive to our full-time dairy business to try to do more. The workshops are full-immersion, intense sessions that leave most of our guests taking advantage of our optional afternoon breaks. Most are attended by couples, but we have also hosted a few families and groups of chefs. It has been gratifying to see what some of our guests have done with their knowledge\u2014including opening new creameries with their BMR workshop graduation certificates proudly displayed!\n\n\"We feel a big responsibility to provide our workshop guests with good value, so there is definitely a level of concern that something unforeseen might go wrong during their stay that would negatively affect their experience. Equipment failure, a sick animal, or other problems could prevent us from giving the guests our full attention. On the other hand, these are also real-life parts of the business of which the guests need to be aware if they are going to be successful in their own ventures.\n\n\"One common misconception that people who are considering adding workshop-type activities to their operations seem to believe is that by having other people (guests) doing some of the work, it will lighten their own workload. It will, in fact, be quite the opposite, but the entire experience will still be well worthwhile for all concerned.\"\n\nTeaching off-site is also an option; in fact, if you are involved with any groups or clubs, you can almost count on being asked at some point to teach a cheese-making class. Determine ahead of time what you will need to provide (such as milk and equipment), the conveniences available in the room (slide presentation equipment, sinks for washing, hot plates, etc.), whether the group (or you) will pay for handouts you prepare, and what kind of stipend you will receive. Don't be shy about clarifying all of these points before accepting\u2014it is the professional approach and should be respected and appreciated.\n\nIf there is a nearby university or college, you might also consider partnering with it to provide educational and personal enrichment experiences. Often summer programs through colleges offer classes related to local agriculture for youth, seniors, and others. While these types of classes will not usually provide the same level of income as when you administer them yourself, they can be a valuable community-building tool.\n\nDavid Heininger (left) teaching a cheesemaking class at Black Mesa Ranch, Arizona.\n\nAt Pholia Farm we offer animal husbandry and cheesemaking mentoring as a way of providing education for those wanting one-on-one hands-on experience with livestock and\/or cheesemaking. By offering animal advice for a fee, we are able to help those who are both serious about learning and understanding of the limitations on our time. As a way to help those who are not able to pay and\/or visit our farm, we try to provide as much information as possible on our website regarding our herd management and farm. If you should consider mentoring\/tutoring, base the price you charge on both your time as well as the opportunities you will give the student. If you prefer a less intense, activity-packed day, then charge accordingly. The experience should be worth both your time and the student's money.\n\n**Agri-tainment\/Agri-tourism:**  \n **Tours, Events, and Farm Stays**\n\nTerms like \"agri-tainment\" might make some of us who take our farming very seriously cringe a bit, but there is nothing disreputable about taking advantage of the opportunity provided by people who are seeking amusement and entertainment in a farm setting. The University of California at Davis (UC-Davis) offers many helpful tips on agri-tourism at www.sfc.ucdavis.edu\/agritourism, including advice on tours, events, and farm stays. Your own state department of agriculture or agri-business may also offer helpful tips and guidelines.\n\n**Tours**\n\nUnless you lock your gate and remove your phone number from anything that relates to your farm, school groups, food writers, foodies (see chapter 1 for more on foodies), and urban dwellers seeking a farm experience will be calling you to ask about tours. There are some ways to deal with this ahead of time that will make your life easier and perhaps satisfy the curious. Here are some of the issues you will need to decide upon:\n\n\u2022 _Will we charge a fee?_\n\n\u2022 _Will we provide cheese tasting?_\n\n\u2022 _Will we sell our cheese? What about other products?_\n\n\u2022 _Will we offer tours on a schedule or by appointment?_\n\n**Fees**\n\nWhile most farms do not charge a fee for a quick tour, you may want to consider a small fee if you are providing an educational component and tasting, especially for groups. We have found that individuals who visit us usually purchase enough cheese and other products to make it worth our time, while very few groups do. Groups, such as seniors and school groups, are usually there for entertainment and educational purposes. There is nothing wrong with coming up with a small fee that you feel will compensate you for your time\u2014in fact, you will probably find yourself providing a better tour and feeling better about it if you develop a fee schedule. We provide a \"tour tip jar\" instead of a fee and casually let people know that it is available if they would like to leave anything. These tips go to our daughter, who is also the tour guide.\n\n**Tastings**\n\nFor the full experience, your guests will probably want to try your cheese. If you have included a tasting room\/farm store (for more on farm stores, see chapter 11), you will be prepared for such events. If not, be sure to provide protection for the food from flies and dust and have hand sanitizer or other hand-washing facilities for your guests. If you do not have cheese for sale at your farm, consider a fee for tasting. Remember that wineries often provide one free tasting and then charge for additional samples. While I do not want cheesemakers to completely emulate wineries, I do think we need to learn to value our time and products at least as much as the winemakers value theirs!\n\n**Products**\n\nAs a farmer, you should have the right to sell products legally produced on your farm, and you may be able to sell other products as well. T-shirts and mementos for visitors to commemorate their time on the farm are always popular and can be a way to add a little income as well as increase your public profile. If you are selling products produced by others, you will want to find out if you need a business license.\n\n**Scheduled Tours, or By Appointment Only?**\n\nThere are advantages and disadvantages to being open on regularly scheduled days versus by appointment only. If you are off the beaten path, being open on regular days can be a study in \"hurry up and wait.\" It's not as bad if you can continue to work while waiting for customers, but if you have to stop everything and sit behind a counter\u2014and no one comes\u2014then it can be a waste of valuable time. On the other hand, if you have even just one regular time that you are open and do not want to deal with tours by appointment, then it is very handy to simply tell people that they will have to visit during that time. If you decide to be open \"by appointment only,\" be ready to say no to people when it is not a good time for visitors\u2014this can be harder than you might think! Very pleasant, tough-to-refuse people will call who are \"only in town today\" or \"just passing through\" or who have \"a food-related blog\" or some other persuasive angle that makes it difficult to turn down their request. Visits by appointment can sometimes mean setting aside time and waiting for people who arrive late, leave late, or sometimes don't even show up.\n\nGoat milking contest at Pholia Farm open house.\n\n**Events**\n\nFarm events can include open houses, a harvest festival, a corn maze, or a pick-your-own-pumpkin patch. You can also develop your own event that takes advantage of another community happening, when visitor traffic and press exposure might be at its optimal.\n\nBaby goat feeding at Pholia Farm open house.\n\n**Open House**\n\nHolding an annual open house can be a great way to offer a peek inside your life on one well-planned, very busy day. While you may not reap immediate financial rewards from such an event, you will increase your community profile and relationship. I find it is also a great way to get the place spiffed up!\n\nPhoto opportunity at Pholia Farm: Author's daughter Phoebe Caldwell and nephew Jacob Simmie as \"goat and milkmaid.\"\n\nHere are some tips for putting on a really great open house:\n\n1. Choose a time of year when the weather is pleasant.\n\n2. Have baby animals to see and pet.\n\n3. Invite a local winery, brewery, etc., to offer samples of its products.\n\n4. Have lots of helpers for keeping track of visitors and answering questions.\n\n5. Have hand-sanitizing stations near animal pens.\n\n6. Securely latch and \"visitor-proof \" all areas where risks might exist (including animal pens).\n\n7. Hold several mini-events throughout the day:\n\na. Milking contest (provide blue ribbons with your farm name to all participants)\n\nb. Baby feeding time\n\nc. Name-the-baby contest\n\nd. Hay rides\n\ne. Story time for kids in the hay barn\n\n8. Have at least one person available to help with parking.\n\n9. Provide water and snacks for your helpers and volunteers.\n\n10. Send out a good press release four weeks before and again one week before the date of the event. Include photos from last year's event.\n\n**Farm Stays**\n\nFarm stays have been popular in Europe since the 1990s and are catching on in the U.S. A less expensive version, the \"hay hotel,\" is becoming popular in Germany (people bunk down on bales of hay in communal rooms on a working farm) but probably won't be seen in the States for some time.\n\nFarm stays differ from bed-and-breakfasts mostly in their emphasis on having a rural experience on a working farm. Some jurisdictions also more severely limit the number of rooms and guests that a farm stay can have, in comparison to a B&B. Meals are sometimes included, and in other instances guests are provided with a stocked kitchen. Usually a commercial kitchen is not required. While the farm stay is a newer concept here is the U.S., many areas are encouraging them as a way to help farms and farmers remain viable.\n\nA lovely, rustic, and comfortably appointed cabin draws tourists to stay at Bonnie Blue Farm in Tennessee.\n\nBe sure to check with your county or local jurisdiction to find out what rules might apply should you consider offering farm stays. There are quite a few resources for getting started with a B&B, and many people who offer farm stays refer to these guidelines; this is a place to start, but be aware that regulations will likely vary for agricultural-based tourism. In some states, if you have only one or two rooms you may not need a license, but you will still have to comply with the conditions required for licensing. Some states will require you to collect a lodging or transient occupancy tax (TOT), the same as is collected by hotels, campgrounds, etc. A good place to start asking questions is your local agricultural extension agency office, the agribusiness council\/department for your state, or even your state department of agriculture. While they may defer to local jurisdictions, they often have helpful websites, publications, and links designed to support agri-tourism in your state.\n\n**If you are considering farm dinners, start making notes**  \n **as to what items are available seasonally in your area\u2014**  \n **this will help you optimize the timing of the events.**\n\nA gorgeous location, beautiful presentation, and excellent food make for successful farm dinners at Prairie Fruits Farm in Illinois. Dinners feature the farm's goat cheeses and local produce and meats.\n\n**Farm Dinners**\n\nAnother growing agri-tourism activity is the farm dinner. For foodies, the idea of eating outdoors (or in a barn or such) on the actual farm where many of the ingredients originated is very appealing. These meals are often prepared by a chef with a catering license and almost always include the use of local produce and ingredients. If you are considering farm dinners, start making notes as to what items are available seasonally in your area\u2014this will help you optimize the timing of the events. As mentioned before, regulations will vary, so don't neglect to explore this angle before proceeding. I would recommend starting with the local health department to determine food-handling laws regarding hosting a farm dinner at your location.\n\nAs with any event on your farm where visitors will be present, don't forget to make sure that your liability insurance and coverage will be in effect for any such undertakings.\n\n**Farmers' Markets**\n\nThe number of farmers' markets continues to grow across the country. Larger metropolitan areas usually have several, some of which have multiyear waiting lists for new vendors. Many cheesemakers spend the market season rushing to attend as many as four to six markets _per week._ Family members and other cheese makers often pitch in to make it possible to have a presence at this many markets.\n\nWhile many cheesemakers thrive on the interaction with the public that a farmers' market affords, others tire quickly of the routine\u2014and of the mounting work that is left undone on the farm. Here are some suggestions for making sure that your farmers' market experiences benefit your farm's bottom line.\n\n**Licenses, Permits, Taxes, and Regulations**\n\nFirst, find out what licenses and\/or permits are required to legally sell cheese at markets in your area. The laws vary greatly, from \"temporary food market\" permits or \"traveling retail licenses\" to income and sales taxes collected by cities and townships where you are selling, as well as special rules for the handling of \"potentially hazardous foods\" (PHFs), of which cheese is one. Depending on your location, you might encounter any number of complications and roadblocks for direct sales. The manager of the farmers' market should be well versed in these regulations, but you should be sure to obtain any information from your state and local jurisdictions regarding the regulation of farmers' market sales. In the end, you\u2014not the market manager\u2014will be held responsible.\n\n**Budgeting**\n\nOnce you have researched your jurisdiction's regulations on farmers' market sales, create a projected budget for a full season of selling at each particular market. Be sure to include fuel costs, booth fees, food you might purchase at the market during the day for yourself, and any other costs you can think of. Then project an income from market sales. Talk to other cheesemakers and vendors and get a range of \"good day versus bad day\" sales to help define your expectations. It's also important to factor in any costs incurred by you being away from the farm, such as hiring extra outside labor to perform tasks that you would otherwise be doing if you were present, or other quantifiable losses. At the end of the season, update the projected budget to reflect your actual income and expenses related to the market.\n\nLaini Fondiller, Lazy Lady Farm, Vermont, selling her cheeses at the Montpelier Farmers' Market. Laini uses a clever display box that holds ice in a lower section and allows the customer to see the cheeses while they are kept cold.\n\n**Increasing Income, Reducing Costs**\n\nFinally, analyze what you can do to increase your income and decrease the costs:\n\n1. Would cutting out less profitable markets save you money?\n\n2. Are there things you can do to increase sales at market?\n\na. Are your display and booth clean and appealing?\n\nb. Do you provide literature and information that help sell your farm and its products?\n\nc. Are your products as good as their samples? Don't get lax about quality: Taste every batch, and don't sell any product that is not representative of your usual quality.\n\nd. Can the customer get your products home in the best condition possible? Consider providing ice packs during the summer (the customer can bring them back the following week) or extra cushioning for especially delicate cheeses.\n\ne. Do you show up regularly? It doesn't take many missed markets to lose customer loyalty.\n\n3. Would sharing booth space and labor with another producer (if it's allowed) increase profitability?\n\n4. Would adding other farm products (more on that later in this chapter) bring more customers to your booth?\n\n5. Are you selling \"yourself \"? Don't forget that most customers want to live vicariously through you. Indulge that need by sharing stories, photos of life on the farm, and a newsletter with recent updates (animal births, etc.), and, most important, don't be afraid to open up!\n\nWhile most cheesemakers assume that they must rely upon farmers' market sales, it is possible for wholesale accounts to be equally profitable once you look at the costs of each.\n\n**Increasing\/Prolonging Your Cheese Production**\n\nMany cheesemakers turn to either buying milk from an outside source (especially during slow production months), milking year-round, or freezing milk or curd during peak production months as a way of increasing the productivity of the facility. Here are some things to think about when considering these options.\n\n**Milking Year-Round**\n\nThere are two methods commonly used to have a year-round milk supply. The most common is to plan birthings for more than one season per year. Another method is to keep animals in milk, without a \"dry\" period, for more than one year at a time.\n\nYear-round birthing for dairy cattle is a simple matter, but some goats, especially those of European descent, are seasonal breeders, only coming into estrus and able to breed in the fall (for spring birthings). The breeds of African origins, however, are usually capable of naturally cycling into estrus at other times of the year. It is becoming more common to use lighting techniques to encourage off-season fertility in goat herds.\n\nExtended lactations (also referred to as \"milking through\") means not rebreeding animals annually, but instead continuing to milk them for more than one full milking season. Dairy goats are known to milk for years at a time using this management option. Evin Evans of Split Creek Farm in South Carolina usually breeds her does only two or three times during their entire life span of 10 to 14 years. While does typically drop production during the winter, she says they all come back to close to peak during the spring. The lower production in the winter months is more than made up for by having no dry period or milk lost to feeding kids. This also allows Evin and her team to have far fewer babies to care for and find a place for in new homes. Here at Pholia Farm we always milk several does for at least two continuous years. We choose animals in their second or better lactation. We do not see elevated somatic cell counts for these animals during the winter months, as you would with animals who have been rebred and are toward the end of their lactations. An added bonus for the cheesemaker is a more concentrated milk that is higher in butterfat and protein than at other times of the year.\n\nDairy cows are rarely milked through, but they are completely capable of doing so. With only one (usually) calf per cow, however, it is often more practical to rebreed; you are dealing with far fewer offspring for the volume of milk, and the need for replacement heifers can drive the decision. (A cow could conceivably have very few opportunities to \"replace herself \" over her career, especially compared to the number of chances for a dairy goat to produce female offspring.)\n\n**MICRODAIRY DESIGNS, LLC**\n\nOne of the most intriguing setups for mechanically filling and capping fluid milk, yogurt, and other bottled products comes from Frank Kipe's MicroDairy Designs company. In addition to his reasonably priced pasteurizer\/vat, he manufactures the EcoFlex Packager, which allows the producer to fill approximately five to ten containers per minute. It can accommodate quite a few varieties of containers and lids. His design goals focus specifically on the very small producer whose volume will be low and who cannot afford the high investment cost of a typical mechanical bottler. The EcoFlex Packager starts at only $1,500. If you don't already have the peristaltic pump that comes with the MicroDairy Designs vat pasteurizer (for more on cheese vats and pasteurizers, see chapter 9), then you will need to purchase that for an additional $1,500.\n\nFrank is well known for his solid customer service after the sale. Lisa Seger of Blue Heron Farm, a small goat cheese dairy in Texas, told me, \"Frank is our hero; without him and his products we could not have afforded to farm.\"\n\nDairy sheep have shorter lactations than most dairy goats and cows and are never, to my knowledge, milked through.\n\nOne caveat to milking through is the anecdotal evidence that fertility is somewhat negatively affected. Some breeders report that animals who have been milked for several lactations can be difficult to settle in subsequent breeding attempts. This is not something we have had an issue with here at Pholia Farm, however.\n\n**Buying Supplemental Milk**\n\nMany small creameries turn to outside sources for additional cheesemaking milk. Some do this throughout the year, others only during the slower months. For example, a goat or sheep dairy whose own animals might be dry during the winter might purchase cow's milk in order to maximize the use of the creamery equipment year-round. If you can find a local, high-quality source of milk, this can be a viable option for increasing profits. (Cheeses made with this milk will not, of course, be considered farmstead products.)\n\nAppendix D contains a sample milk purchase agreement. You will want to customize such an agreement to make sure that all of the quality issues that are of concern to you are adequately addressed.\n\nIn addition to quality, transport of the milk is often an issue. The volume will be too small to warrant any sort of milk tanker truck. Stainless steel milk cans are usually used, although some states allow for the transport of raw milk in food-grade plastic barrels or bags. A milk hauler license is usually required.\n\nEcoFlex Packager by MicroDairy Designs, LLC.\n\n**Freezing Milk, Cheese Curd, and Cheese**\n\nAnother option for prolonging cheese production is the freezing of milk, curd, and finished product (usually soft \"fresh\" cheese).\n\nSheep's milk freezes more readily than cow's or goat's milk, with little change to the component structure. In addition, sheep's shorter lactation increases the value of freezing as an option.\n\nCheese curds, after much of the whey has been released in the vat, can be drained, frozen, and then turned into finished cheese at a later date. Some non-farmstead producers routinely purchase frozen curd from other sources to augment their own production. For the small, artisan cheesemaker, the steps involved require a likely increase in energy usage and storage space, but it can be another way to spread the production out over the year.\n\nFresh ch\u00e8vre, fromage blanc, and other soft cheeses are routinely frozen before shipping or simply to keep a stock of product on hand to sell during the period when the animals are dry. As with the other options, additional energy will be utilized, but sometimes being able to maintain a market for your product throughout the year might have a worthwhile payback.\n\n**Selling Fluid Milk**\n\nWhile cheese used to be the product that a dairy would turn to in order to add value, for the farm that produces primarily cheese, fluid milk can become a value-added option. There are basically two options when selling fluid milk: first, selling to another cheese or fluid milk producer; and second, selling bottled milk to the end consumer.\n\nFor the small cheesemaker, the likelihood of selling excess fluid milk to a larger cheese plant is fairly low. Larger-scale creameries and bottlers usually need a steady, predictable supply of milk. There are smaller creameries, however, that have a regularly scheduled pickup of milk. This can allow for other activities and work to occur on a farm without being, as we say, \"a slave to the vat.\" Milk can also usually be diverted to the fluid producer when you are unable to make cheese for various reasons, such as health or vacation.\n\nFor those considering bottling milk themselves, remember that while finished cheese has a much higher price per pound than milk, fluid milk has a lower cost of production and a quick turnaround. Many factors will influence the profit margin, including:\n\n\u2022 Cost of equipment for bottling: Some states require mechanical filling and capping. (See the \"MicroDairy Designs, LLC\" sidebar about small-scale bottling equipment.)\n\n\u2022 Pasteurized or raw milk: State laws vary on legal sales of raw milk. In states that allow raw-milk sales, prices will be higher for raw, while your processing cost will be higher for pasteurized milk.\n\n\u2022 Price: In some regions people readily pay $8.00 or more per quart for goat's milk and $12.00 or more per gallon for cream-top cow's milk.\n\n\u2022 Shelf life: If demand is not high enough, you will lose profit due to the short shelf life of fluid milk in comparison to cheese.\n\n**Meat**\n\nMost farmers are pretty practical folks. When you raise livestock\u2014even dairy animals\u2014you know that the end of the line for some of them will be the dinner plate. The sale of packaged meat is highly regulated by the USDA as well as state agencies. Slaughter and butchering (cutting and wrapping) of animals whose meat will be sold in grocery stores, distributed, or served in restaurants must occur at USDA or so-called state-equivalent inspection facilities. If you wish to sell individual cuts of meat to customers at your farm or at the farmers' market, you will most likely be required to transport the live animals to one of these inspected facilities for slaughter and butchering. In some states poultry and rabbits are allowed to be processed in on-farm, state-inspected facilities; some states even allow for a limited number of animals to be processed by the farmer, in non-inspected facilities, for direct and farmers' market sales.\n\nThe regulation of beef, pork, lamb, and chevon (goat meat) sales when sold direct from the farmer to the end user vary from state to state. Usually animals can be sold in whole or part to private customers, \"custom\" slaughtered on the farm (which is more humane, as the animals are not stressed from transport or change of environment), and processed by an inspected, custom processor or alternately by the customers themselves. It is assumed that the animal has been inspected and chosen by the customer before slaughter, thereby negating the need of government oversight. Meat processed in this way cannot be resold or used for any commercial purpose and must even be labeled \"not for sale.\"\n\nLamb and goat meat sales often revolve around ethnic holidays. The Illini SheepNet and Meat GoatNet at www.livestocktrail.uiuc.edu\/sheepnet\/ has a calendar of these dates as well as other tips for marketing lamb and chevon.\n\nIf you should decide to pursue the meat products avenue for your farm, be sure to investigate the legalities and regulations for your area and any venue in which you might want to market your product.\n\n**Other Products**\n\nSmall dairies often produce their own line of milk lotions and soaps as well as confections, fudge and caramels being the two most popular. If you have a farm store or farm stand, or you participate in farmers' markets, then you should be able to realize enough profit from these ventures to make them worthwhile. Additional farm products can also increase customers' interest in your entire product line. (That goes back to the power of brand identity that we talked about in chapter 3.) If you grow fruit trees, produce, herbs, or flowers, these can be sold from the farm, included as ingredients (be sure to understand those good manufacturing processes, or GMPs, we talked about in chapter 12!), or even turned into preserves (with your inspector's approval and\/or the right license) and accompaniments for your cheeses.\n\n**Evaluating Your Process**\n\nThere is nothing like routinely putting your process under the microscope and seeking out flaws that are draining your profits. I find that many small cheesemakers don't seem to be willing to take this step, perhaps because most of us are far less drawn to the business side of this life than to the tactile cheese and interactive animal sides. I have always believed that if you are in general happy with your work and able to pay your bills, then that's all well and good\u2014but if you find that no matter how hard you work you are not making ends meet, then it is time to take a good, hard look at your process and take steps to tighten it up.\n\n**Most of us cheesemakers love to create new cheeses,**  \n **which is great\u2014unless you are struggling to survive**  \n **as a business. Then your passion might need to take a backseat**  \n **to realism . . . for a while, anyway!**\n\nLook for some of these common hidden costs:\n\n1. _Energy_ : Look for processes that waste energy, such as long cold storage of product, equipment that is inefficient, batch sizes that are too small, etc. While you may not have an option for some of these costs, they should be kept in mind and readdressed as needed.\n\n2. _Product line:_ Look for products that do not sell as well or tend to have a shorter shelf life, thus creating more waste. Consider tailoring your product line to best address sales and profit margin. Most of us cheesemakers love to create new cheeses, which is great\u2014 unless you are struggling to survive as a business. Then your passion might need to take a backseat to realism . . . for a while, anyway!\n\n3. _Labor:_ Growth does not always bring equivalent profit. Analyze the increased labor costs of producing more product before turning to growth as a means of increasing profit margins.\n\n4. _Herd size:_ This goes hand in hand with _labor_ and _energy_. The first thing most of us do when looking at ways to increase our profit is to consider adding more milking animals and therefore creating more cheeses to sell. It may be that this is the right decision, but be sure to look at the increased energy usage in processing the additional milk and cheese, as well as the increased labor costs.\n\nIn addition, feed costs can be volatile and can greatly affect the production cost of your product. Before you consider growing your herd size, consider . . .\n\n5. _Herd productivity:_ Often the herd owner does not spend much time tracking the productivity of individual animals and their offspring. While it is a time-consuming task, this kind of analysis can help you build a herd of efficient, productive animals that also provide you with better-quality replacement milkers. I believe Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI) milk testing to be one of the most practical tools for tracking productivity and health in the dairy herd. As a cheesemaker, it will also allow you to analyze solids\u2014milk fat and protein\u2014for maximum cheese yield, as well as somatic cell count for quality milk and overall udder health in your herd.\n\nWith any value-added product, the effort and investment must be worth your while. It may sound easy to add a line of gourmet fudge to your product list, but ingredients, labor, packaging materials, and time will all take away from some other aspect of your business. When you sit down to think about these options, really try to focus on what your original goal was and how these products, events, and opportunities will facilitate that goal. If you find that adding some of these options are valuable from the standpoint of your own mental stimulation and personal gratification, then I say they are worth the time and cost. But more on that in the next and final chapter!\n**\n\n\u2022  \u2022\n\n[Keeping the Romance Alive:  \nTips for Re-Energizing\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch014210)**\n\nNo matter how great a cheesemaker and herdkeeper you are, sustaining the level of commitment and enthusiasm that is required is, I believe, one of the most difficult parts of this job. Every career has its pressures, but most jobs also include days off and vacation time\u2014even sick time! The farmstead cheesemaker is unlikely to have a union representative showing up to demand better working conditions, so you will need to become your own best advocate.\n\n**Lightening the Workload**\n\nCheesemakers around the world have developed some intriguing ways to give themselves breaks from the rigors of dairy work. Any kind of reprieve from work will likely correlate with a loss of potential income, but if that respite means a more sustainable business, then it is probably worth it. You shouldn't always let income define success. As Albert Einstein once said, \" _Not everything that can be_ _counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted._ \"\n\n**RULES FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORKLOAD**\n\n1. _Don't choose this profession at the wrong_ _time in your life:_ If you have too many other life responsibilities\u2014such as caring for young children or elderly parents, diminishing mental and physical energy due to age or illness, or any other burden that will be a major distraction\u2014enter this field with caution.\n\n2. _Don't be a martyr:_ Our culture tends to canonize those who are overachievers, work extreme hours, or otherwise deprive themselves of a \"normal life\" for the sake of their career. But you have to live _this_ life: If your cheesemaking career takes you away from commitments and important relationships, then seek a new balance.\n\n3. _Always remember that, no matter how hard_ _you work today, you will never be done:_ Find ways to \"ignore\" the pressure of unfinished projects long enough to stop and smell the cheese curds\u2014and the roses!\n\n**Seasonality**\n\nOne of the most common ways small dairies give themselves a change of pace is by milking and making cheese seasonally. While many people dry their animals off for at least a few weeks in the winter, some people do the opposite. At Orb Weaver Farm in Vermont, Marjorie Susman and Marion Pollack milk their cows only in the winter. During the spring and summer they pursue their other passion and grow produce for market. Here at Pholia Farm we have always milked year-round, but this year we are trying something new. We are milking a few goats through the winter (they will have extended lactations of at least two years before having kids again), and instead of making cheese, we will be freezing that milk and saving it for kids. Since the milk will not be for cheese, we won't have to be as careful and can even have someone come milk for us while our family does something we have never done before: go away, _together!_\n\n**Reduced Milking Frequency**\n\nIn Pat Coleby's book _Natural Goat Care_ she lists several ways that small goat dairies create some extra time for themselves, including in Norway milking only one time per day after four or five months of lactation and in France skipping one milking per week (Sunday evening was mentioned). Each of these choices brought decreased production, but they allowed the farmers either a break or the chance to do other high-priority work. Ideally you would have a relief milker; however, availability and cost can be prohibitive for many farmers.\n\nBrian Futhey of Stone Meadow Farm in Pennsylvania milks his sixteen cows once a day for the entire season. This allows him, with minimal assistance, to do all of the milking, make 200 pounds of Camembert and other cheeses per week, and sell the majority of it at four farmers' markets. While he would like to harvest the milk twice a day, he has not found dependable, affordable milkers, and the reality of the farmers' markets means he would have to be in two places at once. He has found that this choice has made his work sustainable.\n\n**Flexible Skills**\n\nFor the very small dairy, having every member of the team able to perform all of the priority tasks can be very helpful. Not only does it ensure continuity\u2014if one member of the team is sick or injured, the most important work will still occur\u2014but it also allows for the possibility of each member being able to get off the farm for short periods of time. Even if the work is not done to the skill level of its usual technician, at least it will get done!\n\n**Optimizing the \"Break-ation\"**\n\nOkay, I don't know if we really need another word with \"-ation\" hyphenated into it, but here it is! Your workday as a farmstead cheesemaker will be long, but you can structure in ritual breaks that you can look forward to and enjoy. Tea time, happy hour, whatever you want to call them: Don't answer the phone, don't think about what you still need to do\u2014just take a break. If you don't make these a ritual, though, you will find yourself making excuses to skip them. Here at Pholia Farm we have happy hour from 4 to 5 p.m. and a weekly breakfast out that we refer to as our \"business meeting.\" We also have \"sleep-in Sunday\" where we press the snooze button on the alarm once and \"tardy Tuesday\" when we get up at the regular time but sit with our tea and coffee for 5 or 10 minutes longer than usual. Silly, maybe, but it is rather healthy and fun to be rebellious (even if it is toward yourself ) once in a while!\n\n**The Day Off**\n\nSeveral farms I talked to have set aside one day of the week for no farm work, other than the essentials. This day, too, needs to become a ritual. Decide whether you will visit family, see friends, or just go to a movie. By setting aside some time for yourselves, your work will be more productive and satisfying during the rest of the week. Remember, there will always be more work that needs to be done, whether you work every day for the rest of your life or not! Don't forget to do the other things that make your life fulfilling and create memories with and for loved ones.\n\nA properly sized goat herd that both the land can sustain and the owners can manage well, Black Mesa Ranch, Arizona.\n\n**Stimulating Your Passion**  \n _(Yes, you can let the kids read this section!)_\n\nWhile the previous ideas are meant to give you a break from the farming, this section is meant to help you find ways to reconnect with the original passion you felt for cheese, cheesemaking, and the farm life. While many of us find reasons to not participate in some of these activities (they are usually financially based), the value of taking advantage of some of these opportunities cannot really be quantified.\n\n**Industry-Related Vacations**\n\nThe American Cheese Society Conference, Slow Food's \"Cheese\" event in Bra, Italy, and international cheese tours are just a few of the opportunities for travel related to your business (and hence possible tax deductions). While none of these options could be called economical, their payback can be significant. Connections and relationships are developed that can aid your business in a number of ways, but the immediate reward is the enthusiasm that you bring back to your farm from interacting with others who live a similar life and with those who simply appreciate what you do. In addition, knowledge, ideas, and inspirations are abundant during such events.\n\n**Cheese Guilds**\n\nThe number of formal and informal cheese guilds in the U.S. continues to grow, along with the opportunities and assistance that they provide to their membership. (See appendix A for a list of guilds, current as of this writing.) Several guilds hold annual cheese festivals that showcase their members' products and bring attention to the industry as a whole. Food writers and cheese \"celebrities\" are often guests at such events, as well as at classes for both guild members and the public. Guild membership and participation is another way to connect with the big picture in your state or region. This connection can help you feel less isolated, and part of an important movement. In addition, the relationship with other guild members can be an asset in tough times. Cheesemakers often rally to support their peers after a disaster or serious setback, not unlike the \"old days\" when farmers helped each other bring in their crops or raise a barn.\n\n**Writing**\n\nFrom blogs to books, many small farmers are finding ways to express themselves and share their lives and passion with others. Both reading and writing about this lifestyle can help you refocus and re-energize. I still remember reading Meg Gregory's (Black Sheep Creamery) blog at her website during the fall of 2007 when disaster struck Meg and Brad's small creamery in southern Washington State. A flood destroyed the majority of their flock, flooded their home and creamery, and floated their cheese-aging trailer around their yard. The blog entries shared their struggles and triumphs in surviving the kind of pain\u2014seeing their beloved flock wiped out or sickened\u2014that most of us cannot even imagine. The Gregorys' sharing of their journey was an inspiration to me and put some perspective on the insignificant day-to-day annoyances some of us complain about.\n\nVern Caldwell at cheese sampling event, Foster and Dobbs, Portland, Oregon.\n\nWhatever you want to call it\u2014\"belief window\" or just \"it's all how you look at it\"\u2014keeping a perspective that allows you to take minor setbacks and struggles in stride is imperative to surviving as a farmstead cheesemaker. You will need to train yourself to step back mentally and look at the bigger picture of your life. Remind yourself of your original priorities and goals. Take time to enjoy your animals and their antics. Look at your beautiful cheese in its packages, and breathe the sweet, acid smell of fresh curds or newly pressed \"infant\" wheels. Walk in your fields or forests and see the health of your land. Climb in the hay barn with your kids and see the magic of the life you are giving them.\n\nThen get back to work.\n\n_YOU DID IT!_ You've stuck with it and finished reading the final chapter (of this book, anyway)! I have done my best to offer you all the information and advice I can think of to prepare you to create and sustain the best possible business and long-term future as a farmstead cheesemaker. After everything you've read here, I hope you feel excited and like you can't wait to get going, or a little overwhelmed, or maybe a little bit of both! Just remember:\n\n_\"Obstacles are those frightful things you see_  \n _when you take your eyes off your goal.\"_  \n\u2014Henry Ford, 1863\u20131947\n\n**APPENDIX A**\n\n**[Resources\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch018217)**\n\nThis list is not meant as an endorsement by the author or the publisher of any of the companies, organizations, or individuals mentioned. Companies may carry more supplies and equipment than those listed. They also may have used and\/or reconditioned equipment for sale.\n\n**Books, Publications, Resources for Learning***\n\n**American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling** **Artisan Cheeses,** by Paul Kindstedt (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2005). _Intermediate_ _to advanced cheesemaking and business. This book has successfully bridged_ _the gap between industrial cheesemaking tomes and hobbyist\/home cheesemaking_ _books. Highly recommended._\n\n**Cheese Problems Solved,** edited by P. L. H. McSweeney (CRC Press, 2007). _A serious textbook (and priced like a textbook) that is very technical and totally_ _stimulating for cheesemakers who just have to know more than maybe they should._\n\n**The Cheesemaker's Manual,** by Margaret P. Morris (Glengarry Cheesemaking and Dairy Supply, 2003). _Great book for those transitioning from hobbyist to commercial._\n\n**Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)** , Title 21, Part 110. www.fda.gov. In the A\u2013Z Subject Index bar across the top of the webpage, click on C and then click on Code of Federal Regulations. In the box labeled Search CFR Title 21 Database, type in 110. (Or search \"Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 21, Part 110\" on the FDA website.) _While this is not an easy-to-read document, you should at_ _least know how to access the CFR if needed. The Dairy Practices Council handbooks_ _(below) reference the CFR when referring to GMPs._\n\n**CreamLine.**www.smalldairy.com. _Quarterly publication by longtime small-dairy_ _advocate and cheesemaker Vicki Dunaway._\n\n**Dairy Practices Council,** Educational Guidelines for the Dairy Industry (Newtown, PA). 215-860-1836. www.dairypc.org. _One of the best resources_ _for facts on all aspects of the dairy industry: HACCP, construction, quality milk_ _production, equipment, etc. Purchase booklets individually or in binders related to_ _your production._\n\n**The Fabrication of Farmstead Goat Cheese,** by Jean-Claude Le Jaouen (Cheese-maker's Journal, 1990). _Superb book for those whose focus will be soft-ripened goat_ _cheese._\n\n**Goat Cheese: Small-Scale Production,** by the Mont-Laurier Benedictine Nuns (New England Cheesemaking Supply Co., 1983). _Another great little_ _book focused on soft-ripened goat cheese production._\n\n*There are other books and publications available that either I have not read or are more suitable for beginning or industrial cheesemaking. This list comprises those I have read and use myself.\n\n**Cheesemaking Supplies: Forms, Cultures**\n\n**Dairy Connection** (Madison, WI). 608-242-9030. www.dairyconnection.com. _Culture selection specialists._\n\n**Fromagex** (Rimouski, Quebec, Canada). 866-437-6624. www.fromagex.com (click on English for language selection). _Forms and equipment._\n\n**Glengarry Cheesemaking and Dairy Supply** (Lancaster, Ontario, Canada). 888-816-0903. www.glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca. _Equipment, supplies, information,_ _and advice for cheesemakers._\n\n**New England Cheesemaking Supply** (Ashfield, MA). 413-628-3808. www.cheesemaking.com. _Supplies for the home cheesemaker._\n\n**Classes and Instruction**\n\n**University**\n\n**California Polytechnic State University** (\"Cal Poly\"), Dairy Science (San Luis Obispo, CA). 805-756-1111. www.calpoly.edu. _Short courses in cheesemaking._\n\n**Oregon State University,** Food Science and Technology. 541-737-8322. <http:\/\/oregonstate.edu\/dept\/foodsci\/extservices\/ext_index.htm>. _Respected program in_ _OSU's remodeled and expanding dairy facility._\n\n**University of Guelph,** Dairy Science and Technology (Guelph, Ontario, Canada). 519-824-4120. www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca\/dairyedu\/home.html. _One of the_ _oldest cheesemaking short courses in North America._\n\n**University of Vermont,** Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese (Burlington, VT). 802-656-8300. www.nutrition.uvm.edu\/viac. _Several highly respected short courses_ _throughout the year._\n\n**University of Wisconsin\u2013River Falls,** Dairy Science (River Falls, WI). 715-425-3911. www.uwrf.edu. _Short courses that apply toward Wisconsin's cheese-maker_ _requirements._\n\n**Utah State University,** Western Dairy Center (Logan, UT). 435-797-3466. www.usu.edu\/westcent. _A large variety of cheesemaking and related courses._\n\n**Washington State University,** WSU Creamery (Pullman, WA). 800-457-5442. www.wsu.edu\/creamery. _Respected short courses since 1986. Makers of Cougar_ _Gold cheese._\n\n**Private**\n\n**Glengarry Cheesemaking and Dairy Supply** (Lancaster, Ontario, Canada). 888-816-0903. www.glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca. _Workshops in Ontario and_ _guest teaching by Margaret Morris._\n\n**Neville McNaughton** (Davisville, MO). 314-409-2252. www.cheezsorce.com. _Great reputation for instruction. Also producing some small cheese vats. Website a_ _bit lacking._\n\n**New England Cheesemaking Supply** (Ashfield, MA). 413-628-3808. www.cheesemaking.com. _On-staff technical support. Website has lots of good photos of_ _cheeses being made and more._\n\n**Peter Dixon** (Westminster West, VT). 802-387-4041. www.dairyfoodsconsulting.com. _Great reputation for teaching and consulting. Website has up-to-date class_ _lists, recipes, and more._\n\n**Cleaning Chemicals, Supplies**\n\n**All QA Products** (Mount Holly, NC). 704-829-6600. www.allqa.com. _Sanitizer_ _strength test kits._\n\n**Ecolab** (worldwide). U.S. customer service: 651-293-1963. www.ecolab.com. _Large supplier of food industry cleaning products. Website is a bit awkward to_ _navigate._\n\n**PureLabs** (Madison, WI). 608-316-3500. www.purelabs.com. _Detergent chemistry._\n\n**Energy: Grants, Renewables**\n\n**Dairy Farm Energy** (Ithaca, NY). 607-266-6401. www.dairyfarmenergy.com. _Controlling energy costs._\n\n**Database for State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE).**www.dsireusa.org. _Information on state, local, utility, and federal incentives and policies_ _that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency._\n\n**Equipment: Milking Parlor, Milkhouse**\n\n**Coburn Company** (Whitewater, WI). 800-776-7042. www.coburn.com. _Wholesale_ _distributor of dairy supplies and equipment._\n\n**Glengarry Cheesemaking and Dairy Supply.** (Lancaster, Ontario, Canada). 888-816-0903. www.glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca. _Small imported bulk tanks._\n\n**Hamby Dairy Supply** (Maysville, MO). 816-449-1314. www.hambydairysupply.com. _My favorite place for milking equipment, milk cans, supplies. Can_ _help with problems with any type milking system\u2014even those they don't sell._\n\n**Major Farm\/Vermont Shepherd** (Putney, VT). 802-387-4473. www.vermontshepherd.com\/headgates\/about.html. _Cascading headgates, platforms, automatic_ _feeders, and ramps for goats and sheep._\n\n**Nasco Farm and Ranch** (Fort Atkinson, WI, and Modesto, CA). 800-558-9595. www.enasco.com. _Dairy and livestock supplies. Great catalogs. Sells Coburn_ _Company milking equipment._\n\n**Parts Department Dairy Equipment and Supplies** (Sharon, CT). U.S.: 800-245-8222; outside U.S.: 860-364-9326. www.partsdeptonline.com. _Milking_ _equipment and replacement parts. Awkward website, but good customer service._\n\n**Recorder Charts and Pens** (Newhall, CA). 800-758-0740. www.recorderchartsandpens.com. _Recording chart paper, recorder pens, marking system supplies._\n\n**Equipment: Make Room**\n\n**C. van 't Riet Dairy Technology USA** (DuBois, PA). 814-591-6979. www.schuller.us. _Vats, pasteurizers, presses, forms, more._\n\n**Central Restaurant Products** (Indianapolis, IN). 800-215-9293. www.centralrestaurant.com. _Shelving (including MetroMax), carts, prep tables, and more._\n\n**Dairy Heritage** (Hagerstown, MD). 301-223-6877. www.dairyheritage.com. _Vats, bottling equipment, more._\n\n**DR Tech** (Grantsburg, WI). 715-463-5216. www.drtechinc.net. _Manufacture,_ _sales, and service of large-scale mechanical processing systems for the dairy industry._ _Also makes smaller custom vats and products._\n\n**Glengarry Cheesemaking and Dairy Supply** (Lancaster, Ontario, Canada). 888-816-0903. www.glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca. _Presses, vats, pasteurizers._\n\n**JayBee Precision** (Dayton, OH). 800-236-3956. www.thevatpasteurizer.com. _15- and 30-gallon vat pasteurizers._\n\n**Kleen-Flo Dairy Equipment** (Lynn, IN). 765-874-1292. www.kleenflo.us. _Small pasteurizer\/vat combos, round and square vats, butter churns. Website does_ _not show all equipment; check their price list for choices._\n\n**Kusel Equipment Co.** (Watertown, WI). 920-261-4112. www.kuselequipment.com. _Larger vats, but also \"lab size\/small production\" vats starting at about 65_ _gallons._\n\n**MicroDairy Designs** (Smithsburg, MD). 301-824-3689. www.microdairydesigns.com. _Small, more affordable pasteurizer. EcoFlex small bottling system for_ _milk, yogurt, etc._\n\n**Qualtech** (Quebec, Canada). 888-339-3801. www.qualtech.ca (click on English). _Makes small and large vats (mixed reviews from cheesemakers as to ease of initial_ _setup and service)._\n\n**Stanpac** (Lewiston, NY; Dallas, TX). 905-957-3326. www.stanpacnet.com. _Glass_ _milk bottles._\n\n**Equipment: Aging Room**\n\n**Beverage Factory** (San Diego, CA). 800-710-9939. www.beveragefactory.com. _Wine cellar cooling units by many manufacturers._\n\n**Burch Industries** (Laurinburg, NC). 910-844-3688. www.burchindustries.com. _Egg coolers._\n\n**Central Restaurant Products** (Indianapolis, IN). 800-215-9293. www.centralrestaurant.com. _Shelving (including MetroMax), carts, prep tables, and more._\n\n**CoolBot** (New Paltz, NY). 888-871-5723. www.storeitcold.com. _Temperature_ _control units for converting window air conditioner to aging room cooler._\n\n**Lab Equipment, Supplies, and Miscellaneous**\n\n**All QA Products** (Mount Holly, NC). 704-829-6600. www.allqa.com. _Sanitizer_ _strength test kits, thermometers, pH strips._\n\n**Cole-Parmer** (worldwide). 800-323-4340. www.coleparmer.com. _pH meters._\n\n**Nelson-Jameson** (Marshfield, WI). 800-826-8302. www.nelsonjameson.com. _Delvotest P test kits, lab supplies, cleaning supplies, and more\u2014request a buyers'_ _guide._\n\n**Professional Equipment** (Janesville, WI). 800-334-9291 www.professionalequipment.com. _Digital thermometers, hygrometers, Kill-a-Watt meter (for energy_ _usage tracking)._\n\n**Laboratories for Milk and Product Testing**\n\nFor a complete list of labs approved for testing milk for interstate shipping, go to **www.fda.gov** and follow the links (this is a pretty unwieldy website, but stick with it!) for Food\/Food Safety\/Product-Specific Information\/Milk Safety\/ Federal State Programs\/Interstate Milk Shippers List. _Most of these labs are private,_ _but those that do outside testing are listed as well._\n\n**Agri-Mark Central Laboratory** (West Springfield, MA). 413-733-6213. www.agrimark.net\/public\/facilities.php. _Lab offers outside testing for milk and product,_ _pathogens, and components. Parent company of Cabot Creamery and others._\n\n**Silliker** (worldwide). www.silliker.com. _Pathogen testing for milk and product._\n\n**University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory,** Laboratory for Udder Health (St. Paul, MN). 612-625-8787. www.vdl.umn.edu\/ourservices\/udderhealth\/home.html. _Tests related to udder health._\n\n**Major Lending Institutions\/Organizations**\n\n**Commercial Lending Institutions**\n\nBanks, credit unions. Direct loans. Working with your local bank can be an advantage if you already have a good relationship with it and if the bank has a local focus and community-building reputation.\n\n**Farm Services Agency (FSA)**\n\nwww.fsa.usda.gov  \nPart of the USDA. Direct and guaranteed. Beginning farmer and socially disadvantaged (formerly called minorities) programs. Low interest rates. Visit the FSA website or contact your local office. Other financial assistance programs are available through conservation, energy programs, and disaster assistance.\n\n**Farm Credit System (FCS)**\n\nwww.farmcreditnetwork.com  \nA national network of cooperative lending institutions in existence since 1916.\n\nBorrowers become owners of the FCS. Long- and short-term direct loans as well as revolving credit. Visit the FCS website to locate a local office.\n\n**Certified Development Company (CDC)**\n\nwww.nadco.org  \nRegional organizations that promote and assist business development through loans and other programs. Interest rates usually higher than FSA loans. For a state-by-state list of CDCs, go to the National Association of Development Companies website.\n\n**Small Business Administration (SBA)**\n\nwww.sba.gov  \nDirect and guaranteed through commercial lending institutions, CDCs, and non-profit community micro-lenders. Visit the SBA website or contact your local office. Interest rates vary based on loan program, loan size, and current prime interest rate, but are usually higher than with FSA loans. Micro-lender list on the SBA website; search by state.\n\n**NLPA Sheep and Goat Fund**\n\nwww.nlpa.org  \nThe National Livestock Producers Association (NLPA) was formed in 1921 to assist livestock producers with marketing issues. In the 1930s it added capitalization through livestock credit corporations to its purpose. The sheep and goat fund is specifically targeted at funding projects that focus on developing products from, of course, sheep and\/or goats. Loans are not made to individuals (sole proprietors; see chapter 4 for more on sole proprietorship and other business structure options).\n\n**Packaging Supplies and Equipment**\n\n**Cold Ice** (Oakland, CA). 800-525-4435. www.coldice.com. _Ice blankets, ice gel_ _packs, temperature indicators._\n\n**Doug Care Equipment** (Springville, CA). 559-539-3076. www.dougcare.com.\n\n_Vacuum-sealing equipment and supplies._\n\n**Uline** (Waukegan, IL). 800-958-5463. www.uline.com. _Boxes, packing material,_ _ice gel packs._\n\n**Cheese Guilds and Associations**\n\nAmerican Cheese Society. www.cheesesociety.org\n\nCalifornia Artisan Cheese Guild. www.cacheeseguild.org\n\nMaine Cheese Guild. www.mainecheeseguild.org\n\nNew York State Farmstead and Artisan Cheese Makers Guild.www.nyfarmcheese.org\n\nOntario Cheese Society. www.ontariocheese.org\n\nOegon Cheese Guild. www.oregoncheeseguild.org\n\nPennsylvania Farmstead & Artisan Cheese Alliance. www.pacheese.org\n\nRaw Milk Cheesemakers' Association. www.rawmilkcheese.org\n\nSouthern Cheesemakers' Guild. www.southerncheese.com\n\nVermont Cheese Council. www.vtcheese.com\n\nWisconsin Specialty Cheese Institute. www.wisspecialcheese.org\n\n**APPENDIX B**  \nFloor Plans\n\n**Mama Terra Micro Creamery**\n\n**Designer:** Robin and Gabe Clouser.  \n **Dimensions:** 12' \u00d7 30'.  \n **Square Footage:** 360.  \n **Purpose:** Production of fresh, pasteurized cheese.  \n **Capacity:** 12\u201325 does.  \n **Notes:** Well-oriented plumbing and drainage. Simple, efficient design. Would benefit from addition of changing\/entry space at exterior wall by make room door. (Owners currently enter through milkhouse, causing them additional sanitation concerns.) Footbaths placed outside rooms would help limit concerns.\n\n**Small Creamery**\n\n**Designer:** Gianaclis Caldwell.  \n **Dimensions:** 24' \u00d7 36'.  \n **Square Footage:** 846.  \n **Purpose:** Creamery for production of fresh and aged cheeses. On-farm retail and shipping.  \n **Capacity:** 20\u201350 does or ewes, 5\u201310 cows.  \n **Notes:** Designed for efficiency and functionality. Passive solar orientation and fenestration. On-demand hot water heater.\n\n**Pholia Farm Barn and Creamery**\n\n**Designer:** Gianaclis Caldwell.  \n **Dimensions:** 60' \u00d7 60' ( _note:_ room dimensions are approximate).  \n **Square Footage:** Dairy\/creamery, about 938; additional unconditioned utility, about 288.  \n **Purpose:** Production of aged, raw-milk cheeses. On-farm retail and shipping.  \n **Capacity:** 30\u201350 does (Nigerian Dwarf goats), aging space for 1,400 pounds of cheese.  \n **Notes:** I love our dairy, but if I had to do it over, I would make the milking parlor larger and include a packaging and shipping room off the creamery\u2014perhaps utilizing part of what is now the back covered porch. We use the loft of the barn for partial living space and dry storage of boxes, packing materials, etc.\n\n**Small Non-Licensed Home Dairy**\n\n**Designer:** Gianaclis Caldwell.  \n **Dimensions:** 16' \u00d7 16'.  \n **Square Footage:** 256.  \n **Purpose:** Production of dairy products for home use and private milk sales where legal.  \n **Capacity:** 10\u201320 does or ewes, 1\u20133 cows.  \n **Notes:** Plumbing on one interior wall for cost savings and freeze protection. Floor drains could be included for improved functionality and possible future licensing. Size can easily be altered (maintain 4'-interval dimensions for less building material waste and cost). Small on-demand hot water heater.\n\n**APPENDIX C**\n\n**[Milk and Cheese Quality  \nTests and Parameters\n\n](CALD_ISBNXXXXXXXXX_epub_c4_r1.html#Anch022229)**\n\nAppendix C provides an overview of some of the more common tests and how to use the data to your advantage. In addition, we will cover some other avenues for monitoring the production of high-quality milk and cheese. For a more thorough understanding of these tests, please refer to the notes\/references section.\n\n**Common Laboratory Milk Tests Defined**\n\n**Standard Plate Count (SPC):** Raw milk, total number of aerobic bacteria. Expressed in number of colony-forming units per milliliter of milk (cfu\/ml).\n\n_Why it matters for cheese:_ High bacteria counts in raw milk indicate possible mastitis, poor udder preparation, dirty equipment, and\/or inadequate cooling. Coliform bacteria (of which _E. coli_ is one type) are often the dominant microorganism of the SPC. See below.\n\n**Preliminary Incubation Count (PIC):** Milk sample is held at 55\u00b0F (12.8\u00b0C) for 18 hours, then an SPC is performed. Bacteria associated with high PICs are generally _psychotrophic_ (cold-loving).\n\n_Why it matters for cheese:_ Many psychotrophic bacteria produce _proteolytic_ (breaks down proteins) and _lipolytic_ (breaks down fats) enzymes that can change the structure of milk during cold storage prior to cheesemaking, leading to poor coagulation, undesirable flavors, and rancidity in the cheese.\n\n**Laboratory Pasteurization Count (LPC;** also known as thermoduric bacteria count): Milk sample is heated to 145\u00b0F (62.9\u00b0C) for 30 minutes, then an SPC is performed. Counts bacteria that survive pasteurization. No legal limit for raw milk.\n\n_Why it matters for cheese:_ High LPCs are associated with poor udder cleaning and\/or dirty equipment, practices that reduce the quality of milk.\n\n**Coliform Bacteria Count** : Milk sample is plated on growth medium and incubated at 90\u00b0F (32\u00b0C) for 24 hours. If total coliform count is high, a separate _E. coli_ culture is done to detect pathogenic strains.\n\n_Why it matters for cheese:_ Coliforms from fecal contamination can be pathogenic, causing severe illness and death in certain cases. Coliforms also cause early gas blowing in cheese.\n\n**Somatic Cell Count (SCC):** Counts _leukocytes_ (white blood cells) and other body-tissue cells in milk. Indicative of udder health\u2014injury or infection, and\/or stage of lactation.\n\n_Why it matters for cheese_ : The increase of SCC correlates with the increase of proteolytic enzymes in the milk, leading to lower cheese yield, poor coagulation, and off-flavors in cheese.\n\n**Milk Urea Nitrogen (MUN):** Excess protein in diet leads to high blood and milk urea nitrogen levels, which affects cheese quality, as well as contributing to excess nitrogen in manure and ammonia in urine. Acceptable levels for cows average 10\u201314 mg\/dl. Goat and sheep norms have not been established. Small sampling has suggested normal levels for goats to be higher than that of cows.\n\n_Why it matters for cheese:_ High MUN levels are associated with poor coagulation, early fermentation, and excessive proteolysis in aging cheese.\n\n**Testing Frequency**\n\nThe frequency at which your milk will be tested by regulatory officials will vary. I recommend augmenting the state's testing to keep the frequency to every six to eight weeks, minimum. More frequent testing should occur if the results are less than favorable. The important thing is to _establish baseline numbers_ that you understand, accept, and can maintain. By watching results closely, you will be able to see any changes that indicate a flaw in your sanitation and practices and then remedy that flaw before it becomes a hazard and\/or violation.\n\nMost states perform only the minimum tests required to ensure safe milk. For cheesemaking _quality_ (beyond safety), you may want to have other tests performed on a routine basis or when needed. See appendix A for a list of laboratories.\n\n**On-Farm and Creamery Tests and Observations**\n\n**Tests for SCC (Somatic Cell Count) and Mastitis in Milk**\n\nSeveral immediate tests can be done on milk either during milking or prior to cheesemaking that will indicate the presence of somatic cells (SCs) and\/or mastitic milk. The California Mastitis Test (CMT) uses a reagent combined with an equal amount of milk swirled in the provided paddle to detect the presence of SCs. The paddle is swirled for 15 seconds and then tilted back and forth. Thickening is judged in degrees that correlate with the amount of SCs present.\n\n\u2022 Trace gelling = 300,000\n\n\u2022 Thickening but not clumping = 500,000\u20131,000,000\n\n\u2022 Thickening and clumping =>1,000,000\n\n\u2022 Clumping and sticking to paddle = >2,000,000\n\nMastitic milk will be more alkaline than healthy milk. (Some on-farm SCC tests are actually checking pH.) If the pH of milk at the start of cheesemaking is higher than normal, perform a CMT and compare.\n\n**Dairy Herd Improvement Programs**\n\nHerds enrolled in dairy herd improvement programs have milk samples pulled and weights recorded monthly on each animal. Data collected includes (this can vary by lab and program) butterfat, protein, solids-not-fat, cheese yield (based on butterfat-to-protein ratio and solids), and somatic cell count. This can greatly help the farmer-cheesemaker track seasonal changes in milk and milk quality as they relate to cheesemaking. Many new programs allow for owners to collect samples and data without needing an outside trained test person.\n\n**Appearance, Odor, and Flavor**\n\nMany flaws and problems can be detected in milk using your senses. I greatly encourage artisan cheesemakers to train their eyes, noses, and taste buds to be their first line of defense in ensuring day-to-day quality.\n\n**Tips for Analyzing Milk**\n\n1. For maximum aroma analysis, pour sample into a jar, leave a head-space, close tightly, and warm to about 60\u00b0F (in water bath). Open jar directly under your nose and inhale deeply.\n\n2. Compare fresh milk to that which has been stored for several days to help pinpoint cause.\n\n3. If necessary, compare samples from each animal to rule out individual variation in flavor.\n\n4. Official advice encourages the pasteurization of all milk samples prior to tasting.\n\n_Spoiled or unclean_ (dirty, animal taste, spoiled, fruity): Contamination and\/or bacterial growth during storage. Causes: dirty equipment or udders, psychotrophic bacteria.\n\n_Rancid, bitter_ (soapy, baby vomit, blue cheese): Breakdown of fat. Causes: excess agitation or foaming of milk during milking, late lactation (high SCC), fluctuation of temperature during cold storage.\n\n_Malty, acidic_ (malt cereal and\/or sour): Bacterial growth during storage. Causes: poor cooling of milk.\n\n_Oxidized_ (cardboardy, old oil): Oxidation of butterfat. Causes: Excessive high-fat feeds, low levels of vitamin E, presence of certain metals (copper contamination, rust).\n\n_Feedy_ (aromatic, unnaturally sweet): Odors and flavors absorbed by animal and transmitted to milk.\n\n**Common Lab Tests for Cheese**\n\nThese tests are just the tip of the iceberg in regard to understanding the safe manufacture of cheese. I recommend further study through cheesemaking books, classes, and the Dairy Practices Council's Guideline No. 100: \"Food Safety in Farmstead Cheesemaking.\"\n\n**In-House Observations and Tips**\n\n1. Product testing can be infrequent as compared to milk and environmental testing. Good manufacturing practices and quality assurance are more important than testing for ensured quality.\n\n2. Test more \"dangerous\" cheeses\u2014high-moisture cheeses, such as Brie, Camembert, washed-rind types\u2014more frequently.\n\n3. Suspect any finished product that deviates from flavor, aroma, and appearance profiles.\n\n4. During production, flag any batches where the make deviates from normal production standards. Test prior to selling.\n\n**APPENDIX D**\n\n**Sample Milk Purchase Agreement**\n\nThis agreement is entered into on __________________________[Date] between _____________________[Buyer] and ______________________[Seller].\n\n1. This agreement shall be effective from __________________[Date] through _____________[Date]. The parties named above may, however, elect to renew this agreement for another term.\n\n2. Buyer agrees to purchase from seller ________[Species] milk not older than ____ days, to be used for the manufacture of cheese for the length of this agreement.\n\n3. Either a) Buyer agrees to pick up milk at the farm, or b) Seller agrees to deliver milk to Buyer at a cost of $_____ per delivery.\n\n4. Seller warrants that milk sold to Buyer shall be free of inhibitory substances and shall meet the standards set forth by the _____________ Department of Food and Agriculture for manufacturing of Grade _______ milk. Seller shall remain under State inspection throughout the life of the contract.\n\n5. Milk must meet the approval of the Buyer based on any or all of the following tests:\n\na) Taste and odor\n\nb) Bacteria*\n\ni. Coliforms not to exceed ______\/ml (_____ to_____\/ml payable at 90%; ______ to ______\/ml payable at 80%)\n\nii. SPC not to exceed ________\/ml (_____ to_____\/ml payable at 90%; ______ to ______\/ml payable at 80%)\n\niii. LPC not to exceed _______\/ml (_____ to_____\/ml payable at 90%; ______ to ______\/ml payable at 80%)\n\niv. PI not to exceed _____% of SPC (_____ to_____% payable at 90%; ______ to ______% payable at 80%)\n\nv. Other...\n\nc) Received at no less than 40\u00b0F (34\u00b0F preferred) d) Sediment (per dairy inspector's test) e) Any counts over the maximum high count agreed upon are subject to rejection by the Buyer. In the event of a high count that does not change product quality, the first two deductions taken will be 10%.\n\n6. Weekly costs of testing milk and shipping to lab shall be divided equally between Buyer and Seller. Frequency: Milk will be tested _________ by an outside lab and sent in by Buyer. If milk quality problems exist and more frequent testing is needed, Seller will pay costs and be responsible for shipping samples and proving to Buyer that milk meets quality standards before Buyer purchases milk again. Failure to produce milk that meets quality standards is grounds for cancellation of contract.\n\n7. Buyer shall make no payment to Seller for milk that does not meet the conditions of paragraphs 4 and 5 above. Any payments made prior to testing the milk shall be credited to Buyer if milk does not meet same conditions.\n\n8. If milk is shipped with inhibitory substances, or if milk is of such poor quality that cheese does not set up, the producer of that milk shall be financially liable for actual costs incurred by Buyer of labor, utilities, ingredients, transportation, and any other milk that was contaminated. Costs will be deducted from future milk checks. Seller will provide Buyer proof of liability insurance.\n\n9. The price of milk will be based on a combination of butterfat, protein, and the time of year produced. The butterfat percentage \u00d7 0.66 + the protein percentage \u00d7 1.33 will yield a number which correlates to the payment schedule agreed upon. Buyer will make every effort to purchase all milk produced by Seller, but cannot guarantee to purchase more than Seller shipped in Seller's lowest quarter of the previous year. Buyer agrees to purchase all milk produced from Seller before adding new producers or purchasing from other outside sources. Seller agrees to give first option for purchase to Buyer for all marketable milk.\n\n10. Buyer will pay a bonus of 10 percent for milk that has lab counts for paragraph 5b, i\u2013iii, at half or less. This means LPC and coliform counts less than ____ and raw counts less than ______.\n\n11. Buyer agrees to renew this contract next year and purchase milk from Seller for another year provided Seller produces quality milk and similar amounts as in the previous year's lowest quarter.\n\n12. Buyer and Seller agree that this agreement may be suspended in the event of Acts of God or circumstances beyond the control of either party. Specifically, the agreement shall be suspended if Buyer dies or becomes disabled or incapacitated, either mentally or physically, so as to be unable to operate his\/ her business, or if the plant is partially or totally destroyed so as to cause a halt in the business. In addition, the agreement will be suspended if the laws of any governing body prohibit Buyer from manufacturing cheese.\n\n13. Buyer and Seller agree that this agreement shall be nontransferable by either party without the written consent of both parties.\n\nAttach agreed-upon milk purchase base price and payment schedule.\n\n*Bacteria counts left blank, as some agreements are for Grade A and others for Grade B milk.\n\n_Contract adapted from one provided courtesy of Sarah Shevett, California._\n\n**Notes\/References**\n\nThere are other books and publications available that either I have not read or are more suitable for beginning or industrial cheesemaking. This list comprises those I have read and use myself.\n\n**General**\n\n**Grade \"A\" Pasteurized Milk Ordinance.** U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Go to www.fda.gov and follow the links (this is a pretty unwieldy website, but stick with it!) for Food\/Food Safety\/Product-Specific Information\/Milk Safety\/ National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) Model Documents\u2014then click on the most recent PMO.\n\n**How to Become a Dairy Artisan.** Wisconsin Dairy Artisan Network. www.wisconsindairyartisan.org.\n\n**\"The Land of Cheese Marketing: Don't Get Caught without a Paddle,\"** by David Major. _CreamLine,_ Issue No. 10, Summer 2001. www.smalldairy.com.\n\n**On-Farm and Small-Scale Dairy Products Processing.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 90. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Chapter 1**\n\n**Cheeses of the World: An Illustrated Guide for Gourmets,** by Bernard Nantet (Rizzoli, 2005).\n\n**Eating in America,** by Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont (Ecco, 1981).\n\n**International Dairy Foods Association.**www.idfa.org.\n\n**The New American Cheese: Profiles of America's Great Cheesemakers and Recipes** **for Cooking with Cheese,** by Laura Werlin (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2000).\n\n**Understanding Dairy Markets.** University of Wisconsin Dairy Marketing and Risk Management Program. <http:\/\/future.aae.wisc.edu\/.>\n\n**Chapters 3 and 4**\n\n**\"Building a Business Plan for Your Farm: Important First Steps,\"** by Rodney Jones.\n\n2003 Risk and Profit Summer Conference, August 14\u201315, 2003, Manhattan, KS.\n\n**Creating a Business Plan for Your Dairy Business,** by Russ Giesy. University of Florida Extension. <http:\/\/dairy.ifas.ufl.edu>.\n\n**Form Your Own Limited Liability Company,** by Anthony Mancuso (Nolo, 2009).\n\n**\"Sampling and Farm Stories Prompt Consumers to Buy Specialty Cheeses,\"** by Barbara A. Reed and Christine M. Bruhn. _California Agriculture_ , Volume 57, Number 3.\n\n**Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business,** by Sarah B. Aubrey (Storey, 2007).\n\n**Chapter 5**\n\n**The Agricultural Employer's Tax Guide.** Internal Revenue Service Publication No. 51. www.irs.gov\/pub\/irs-pdf\/p51.pdf.\n\n**Are Your Internships Legal?** _Growing for Market,_ September 2007. www.growingformarket.com.\n\n**Exploring the Legal and Ethical Issues of Internships.** _Growing for Market,_ October 2007. www.growingformarket.com.\n\n**Food Insurance.** Professional and Liability. www.professional-and-liability.com\/food-insurance.html.\n\n**Internships in Sustainable Farming: A Handbook for Farmers,** by Doug Jones (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, 1999). <http:\/\/nofany.org\/publications.html>.\n\n**Chapter 7**\n\n**Best Management Practices to Handle Dairy Wastes,** by Ted W. Tyson and B. R. Moss. Alabama Cooperative Extension System Publication No. ANR-970. www.aces.edu\/pubs\/docs\/A\/ANR-0970\/ANR-0970.pdf.\n\n**\"Creamery Waste Management,\"** by Vicki Dunaway. _CreamLine,_ Issue No. 32, Fall 2007. www.smalldairy.com.\n\n**Dairy Processing Methods to Reduce Water Use and Liquid Waste Load,** by Kent D. Rausch and G. Morgan Powell. Kansas State University\u2013Manhattan Cooperative Extension Service Publication No. MF-2071, 1997.\n\n**\"Environmental Costs of Home Construction Lower with Wise Choice, Reuse of** **Building Materials.\"** Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) news release, August 24, 2004.\n\n**Milking Center Wastewater.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 15. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Potable Water on Dairy Farms.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 30. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Chapters 8 and 9**\n\n**The Design, Installation, and Cleaning of Small Ruminant Milking Systems.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 70. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Grade \"A\" Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, 2003 Revision.** U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Go to www.fda.gov and follow the links (this is a pretty unwieldy website, but stick with it!) for Food\/Food Safety\/Product-Specific Information\/Milk Safety\/National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) Model Documents\u2014then click on the 2003 PMO.\n\n**Mastitis Case Studies: Milking Machine.** University of Illinois. <http:\/\/classes.ansci.illinois.edu\/ansc438\/Mastitis\/milkmachine.html>.\n\n**Maximizing the Milk Harvest: A Guide for Milking Systems and Procedures,** by the Milking Machine Manufacturers Council of the Equipment Manufacturers Institute.\n\nwww.partsdeptonline.com\/maximizing_the_milk_harvest.htm.\n\n**Milk for Manufacturing Purposes and Its Production and Processing:**\n\n**Recommended Requirements** (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Dairy Programs, September 2005). Go to www.usda.gov and search \"Milk for Manufacturing.\"\n\n**Milking Parlor Types,** by Douglas J. Reinemann (University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Milking Research and Instruction Laboratory, December 2003). www.uwex.edu\/uwmril.\n\n**Production and Regulation of Quality Dairy Goat Milk.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 59. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Chapter 10**\n\n**\"Cheese Aging Rooms,\"** by Vicki Dunaway. _CreamLine,_ Issue No. 11, Fall 2001. www.smalldairy.com.\n\n**Current Options in Cheese Aging Caves: An Evaluation, Comparison, and** **Feasibility Study,** by Jennifer Betancourt with help from Amanda DesRoberts. www.silverymooncheese.com.\n\n**\"A Straw Bale Aging Room,\"** by Larry Faillace. _CreamLine,_ Issue No. 11, Fall 2001. www.smalldairy.com.\n\n**Chapter 12**\n\n**Conducting and Documenting HACCP: Principle Number One: Hazard Analysis.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 92. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Conducting and Documenting HACCP: SSOPs and Prerequisites.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 91. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Cookie Cutter Procedures,** by Dominique Delugeau, DCI Cheese Co. Presented at the 2005 American Cheese Society Conference, July 20\u201323, 2005, Louisville, KY.\n\n**Developing a HACCP Program,** by Mary Falk. April 12, 2006. www.milkproduction.com (search article title).\n\n**FDA Product Recalls: The Role of FDA\/The Responsibilities of the Food Industry,** by Richard Silverman, Hogan & Hartson LLP. Presented at the 2005 American Cheese Society Conference, July 20\u201323, 2005, Louisville, KY.\n\n**Food Safety in Farmstead Cheesemaking.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 100. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Chapter 13**\n\n**Cultivating Farm Stays in California,** by Janet Momsen and Jill Donaldson. _California_ _Community Topics,_ No. 7, April 2001. <http:\/\/groups.ucanr.org\/CCP\/files\/34360.pdf.>\n\n**Marketing Meat Animals Directly to Consumers,** by William R. Henning. Penn State University Cooperative Extension. www.bedford.extension.psu.edu (search article title).\n\n**Appendix C**\n\n**American Raw Milk Cheese Presidium Protocols.**www.rawmilkcheese.org\/index_files\/PresidiumProtocol.htm.\n\n**Bacteria Counts in Raw Milk,** by Richard Wallace. University of Illinois Extension, Illini DairyNet Quality Milk Issues Papers, 2008. www.livestocktrail.uiuc.edu (search article title).\n\n**Milk Urea Nitrogen,** by George Cudoc. Dairy One. www.dairyone.com 15, November 2009.\n\n**Raw Milk Quality Tests.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 21. www.dairypc.org.\n\n**Troubleshooting High Bacteria Counts of Raw Milk.** Dairy Practices Council Guideline No. 24. www.dairypc.org.\n\nGREGORY REDFERN\n\n**About the Author**\n\n**Gianaclis Caldwell,** along with her husband, Vern, and their teenage daughter, Amelia, owns Pholia Farm, situated in the verdant Rogue Valley of southern Oregon, where they make aged cheese from the milk of their Nigerian Dwarf goats. The twenty-three-acre, off-the-grid farm and forest have been in Caldwell's family since the 1940s. Caldwell's critically acclaimed cheeses have been featured in books, articles, and top-ten lists. She is a former nurse and mixed-media artist.\n\n**About the foreword author**\n\n**Jeff Roberts** is co-founder and principal consultant to the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont and lives in Montpelier, Vermont.\n**_Notes_**\nthe politics and practice of sustainable living  \nCHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING\n\nChelsea Green Publishing sees books as tools for effecting cultural change and seeks to empower citizens to participate in reclaiming our global commons and become its impassioned stewards. If you enjoyed _The Farmstead Creamery Advisor_ , please consider these other great books related to cheesemaking and farming-related business.\n\nTHE ATLAS OF   \nAMERICAN ARTISAN CHEESE   \nJEFFREY P. ROBERTS   \n9781933392349   \nPaperback \u2022 $35.00\n\nCHEESEMONGER   \n_A Life on the Wedge_   \nGORDON EDGAR   \n9781603582377   \nPaperback \u2022 $17.95\n\nAMERICAN FARMSTEAD CHEESE   \n_The Complete Guide to Making  \nand Selling Artisan Cheeses_   \nPAUL KINDSTEDT   \n9781931498777   \nHardcover \u2022 $40.00\n\nTHE ORGANIC FARMER'S BUSINESS HANDBOOK   \n_A Complete Guide to Managing Finances,  \nCrops, and Staff\u2014and Making a Profit _  \nRICHARD WISWALL   \n9781603581424   \nPaperback w\/CD-ROM \u2022 $34.95\n\nFor more information or to request a catalog,   \nvisit **www.chelseagreen.com** or   \ncall toll-free **(800) 639-4099**.\nthe politics and practice of sustainable living  \nCHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING\n\nTHE RAW MILK REVOLUTION   \n_Behind America's Emerging  \nBattle Over Food Rights _  \nDAVID E. GUMPERT   \nForeword by JOEL SALATIN   \nISBN 9781603582193   \nPaperback \u2022 $19.95\n\nTHE WINTER HARVEST HANDBOOK   \n_Year-Round Vegetable Production  \nUsing Deep-Organic Techniques and   \nUnheated Greenhouses _  \nELIOT COLEMAN   \nISBN 9781603580816   \nPaperback \u2022 $29.95\n\nINQUIRIES INTO THE   \nNATURE OF SLOW MONEY   \n_Investing as if Food, Farms, and  \nFertility Mattered _  \nWOODY TASCH   \nForeword by CARLO PETRINI   \nISBN 9781603582544   \nPaperback \u2022 $15.95\n\nSMALL-SCALE GRAIN RAISING, 2nd edition   \n_An Organic Guide to Growing,  \nProcessing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains   \nfor Home Gardeners and Local Farmers _  \nGENE LOGSDON   \nISBN 9781603580779   \nPaperback \u2022 $29.95\n\nFor more information or to request a catalog,   \nvisit **www.chelseagreen.com** or   \ncall toll-free **(800) 639-4099**.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"STORIES***\n\n\nE-text prepared by David Edwards, Haragos P\u00e1l, and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team (http:\/\/www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made\navailable by Internet Archive (https:\/\/archive.org)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 48254-h.htm or 48254-h.zip:\n      (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/48254\/48254-h\/48254-h.htm)\n      or\n      (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/48254\/48254-h.zip)\n\n\n      Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive. See\n      https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/monigoatboyother00spyr\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).\n\n      Text enclosed by equal signs is in Fraktur (=Fraktur=).\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration]\n\nMONI THE GOAT BOY\n\nAND OTHER STORIES\n\nTranslated from the German of\n\nJOHANNA SPYRI,\n\nAuthor of \"Heidi\"\n\nby\n\nEdith F. Kunz\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGinn & Company\nBoston . New York . Chicago . London\n\nCopyright, 1906\nBy Edith F. Kunz\n\nAll Rights Reserved\n614.3\n\n=The Athenaeum Press=\n\nGinn & Company . Proprietors .\nBoston . U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n                             INTRODUCTION\n\n\nOutside of the province of the Maerchen, which constitutes so rich a\nfield in German literature, there is no writer better known or better\nloved in the young German-speaking world than Johanna Spyri. Her\nstories, written \"for children and those who love children,\" are read\nand reread as something that never grows old. The secret of this charm\nlies, above all, in the author's genuine love of children, as shown in\nher sympathetic insight into the joys, the hopes, and the longings of\nchildhood, and in her skillful selection of characteristic details,\nwhich creates an atmosphere of reality that is rare in books written\nfor children.\n\nJohanna Heusser Spyri was born in the little Swiss town of Hirzel,\ncanton of Zuerich, in 1827, and died in Zuerich in 1901. She wrote\nespecially for young people, her writings dealing mostly with Swiss\nmountain life and portraying the thrifty, industrious nature of the\npeople. The stories are sometimes sad,--for the peasant's life is full\nof hardships,--but through them all a fresh mountain breeze is blowing\nand a play of sunlight illumines the high Alps.\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS\n\n\n                           MONI THE GOAT BOY\n\n      Chapter                                         Page\n\n        I. MONI IS HAPPY                                 3\n\n       II. MONI'S LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN                  10\n\n      III. A VISIT                                      21\n\n       IV. MONI CANNOT SING                             31\n\n        V. MONI SINGS ONCE MORE                         41\n\n\n                           WITHOUT A FRIEND\n\n        I. HE IS GOOD FOR NOTHING                       49\n\n       II. IN THE UPPER PASTURE                         61\n\n      III. A MINISTERING ANGEL                          75\n\n       IV. AS THE MOTHER WISHES IT                      85\n\n\n                          THE LITTLE RUNAWAY\n\n        I. UNDER THE ALDERS                            103\n\n       II. THE TWO FARMS                               119\n\n      III. GOING ASTRAY                                139\n\n       IV. WHAT GRETCHEN LEARNED AT SUNDAY SCHOOL      159\n\n        V. HOW RENTI LEARNS A MOTTO                    175\n\n       VI. ALL BUSCHWEIL IS AMAZED                     186\n\n\n\n\n                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\n      Running along in their midst came the goat boy _Frontispiece_\n\n                                                               PAGE\n\n      \"Hold fast, Meggy!... I'm coming down to get you\"          17\n\n      He drew her close to him and held her fast                 25\n\n      He thought over what he had promised Jordie                33\n\n      With happy song and yodel Moni returned in the evening     45\n\n      He would hunt up a hedge or a bush and hide behind it      57\n\n      \"Come out, child! You need not be afraid\"                  69\n\n      He greedily drank the cool water                           83\n\n      Never in his life had Rudi seen so many good things\n          together on a table                                    97\n\n      He charged down upon the steer                            109\n\n      There he stayed for hours without stirring                136\n\n      \"Why are you standing out here?... And why are you\n          crying?\"                                              150\n\n      \"I'd like to chop down all his trees!\"                    168\n\n      \"The dog will understand instantly, you may depend\n          upon it\"                                              179\n\n      \"Brindle, dear Brindle, do you know me?\"                  203\n\n\n\n\n                          MONI THE GOAT BOY\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                           MONI THE GOAT BOY\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                             MONI IS HAPPY\n\n\nThe baths of Fideris lie halfway up the mountain side, overlooking the\nlong valley of the Praettigau. After you leave the highway and climb\na long, steep ascent, you come first upon the village of Fideris,\nwith its pleasant green <DW72>s. Then, ascending still higher into the\nmountains, you at length come upon the lonely hotel building in the\nmidst of rocky cliffs and fir trees. Here the region would indeed\nbe rather dreary looking were it not for the bright little mountain\nflowers that shine forth everywhere from the low grass.\n\nOne pleasant summer evening two ladies stepped out from the hotel and\nascended the narrow footpath that runs up steeply from the house\nto the rugged cliffs above. On reaching the first peak the visitors\nstopped and looked about, for they had but recently come to the resort.\n\n\"Not very cheerful up here, is it, auntie?\" said the younger of the\ntwo, as she surveyed the scene. \"Nothing but rocks and fir trees, and\nbeyond, more rocks and firs. If we are to spend six weeks here, I wish\nwe might have some pleasanter prospect.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it would not add to your cheerfulness, Paula, if you should\nlose your diamond pendant up here,\" replied her aunt, as she fastened\nPaula's velvet neck ribbon from which the sparkling cross hung. \"This\nis the third time I have tied it since we came. I don't know whether\nthe fault is in yourself or in the ribbon, but I do know that you would\nbe sorry to lose it.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" cried Paula; \"I must not lose the cross! No, indeed! It is\nfrom grandmamma and is my dearest treasure.\"\n\nShe added two or three knots to the ribbon herself to make it secure.\nSuddenly she raised her head attentively and exclaimed: \"Listen,\nlisten, auntie! that sounds like something really jolly.\"\n\nFrom far above came the notes of a merry song; occasionally there was\nheard a long, echoing yodel, then more singing. The ladies looked up,\nbut no living creature was to be seen. The winding path, turning in\ngreat curves between rocks and bushes, was visible only in patches.\nBut presently it seemed all alive,--above, below, wherever parts of it\ncould be seen,--and louder and nearer came the singing.\n\n\"Look, look, auntie! There, there! see!\" cried Paula in great delight,\nas three, four, five goats came bounding down, and behind them others\nand still others, each one wearing a little tinkling bell. Running\nalong in their midst came the goat boy, singing the last lines of his\nsong:\n\n    \"The winter is cold,\n       But who would be sad?\n     For spring will return\n       To make the world glad.\"\n\nWith an echoing yodel the boy finished his song, and skipping along\nmeanwhile in his bare feet as nimbly as his goats, he presently reached\nthe side of the ladies.\n\n\"Good evening to you,\" he said, looking up at them with dancing eyes,\nand was about to go on. But they liked this goat boy with the bright\neyes.\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" said Paula. \"Are you the goat boy of Fideris? And are\nthese the goats from the village?\"\n\n\"To be sure they are,\" he answered.\n\n\"And do you take them up every day?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course.\"\n\n\"Indeed? And what is your name?\"\n\n\"I am called Moni.\"\n\n\"Will you sing me the song you were just singing? We heard only a few\nlines of it.\"\n\n\"It is too long,\" said Moni. \"The goats shouldn't be kept out so late;\nthey must go home.\" Setting his weathered little hat to rights, he\nflourished his switch at the browsing goats and called, \"Home, home!\"\n\n\"Then you will sing it for me some other time, won't you, Moni?\" cried\nPaula after him.\n\n\"Yes, yes; good night!\" he called back and started on a trot with his\ngoats. In a few moments the whole flock had arrived at the outbuildings\nof the hotel, where Moni had to leave the landlord's goats, the pretty\nwhite one and the black one with the dainty little kid. This little one\nMoni cared for very tenderly, for it was a delicate little creature and\nhis favorite of them all. Little Meggy, in turn, showed her affection\nfor the boy by keeping very close to him all day long. In the stable he\nput her gently in her place, saying: \"There, sleep well, little Meggy;\nyou must be tired. It's a long trip for a little goat like you. But\nhere is your nice clean bed.\"\n\nAfter laying her down in the fresh straw he started with his herd down\nthe highway toward the village. Presently he lifted his little horn to\nhis lips and blew a blast that resounded far down the valley. At that\nthe village children came tumbling from their homes on all sides. Each\none recognizing his own goat made a rush for it and took it home, while\nwomen, too, came out of the near-by houses and led away their goats\nby neck ropes or by the horns. In a few moments the whole herd was\ndispersed and each goat was stabled in its proper place. Moni was left\nwith his own goat, Brownie, and the two started off toward the little\nhouse on the hillside, where grandmother was waiting for them in the\ndoor.\n\n\"Has everything gone well, Moni?\" she asked in friendly tones, while\nshe led Brownie into the stable and began milking her. The old\ngrandmother was still a strong, vigorous woman, herself performing\nall the duties of house and stable and preserving the best of order\neverywhere. Moni stood in the stable door and watched her. When she had\nfinished milking she went into the house saying, \"Come Moni; you must\nbe hungry.\"\n\nEverything was ready and Moni sat down to eat; she sat beside him,\nand though the meal consisted of but a simple dish of porridge stewed\nin goat's milk, it was a feast for the hungry boy. Meanwhile he told\ngrandmother what had happened during the day; then, as soon as he had\nfinished his supper, he slipped off to bed, for at early dawn he was to\nstart out again with his flock.\n\nIn this way Moni had now spent two summers and had grown so accustomed\nto this life and to the companionship of his goats that he could\nhardly think of any other existence for himself. He had lived with his\ngrandmother ever since he could remember. His mother had died when\nhe was a tiny baby; his father had soon after left him to go into\nmilitary service in Naples. The grandmother was herself poor, but she\nimmediately took the forsaken little boy, Solomon, into her own home\nand shared with him whatever she had of food and other goods. And,\nindeed, a blessing seemed to rest upon the house from that day, for\nnever since had she suffered want.\n\nHonest old Elsbeth was much respected in the village, and when there\nhad been a call two years before for a new goat boy the choice fell\nunanimously upon Moni, for every one was glad to help the good woman\nalong in this way. Not a single morning had the God-fearing grandmother\nstarted the boy off without reminding him: \"Moni, do not forget how\nclose you are to God up there in the mountains; how he sees and hears\neverything and how you can hide nothing from his eyes. But remember,\ntoo, that he is always near to help you, so you need not fear; and if\nthere is no one at hand to help you in time of need, call upon God, and\nhis hand will not fail you.\"\n\nSo Moni had always gone forth trustfully to his mountain heights, and\non the loneliest peaks he knew no fear, for he always thought, \"The\nhigher up I go, the nearer I am to the good God and therefore the safer\nin everything that may happen to me.\" So, free from care, he could\nenjoy everything about him from morning to night. No wonder, then, that\nhe sang and whistled and yodeled all day long, for he must express his\nhappiness somehow.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER II\n\n                      MONI'S LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN\n\n\nNext morning Paula awakened unusually early; a lusty singing had roused\nher from sleep. \"It must be the goat boy,\" she said, jumping up and\nrunning to the window.\n\nSure enough, there he stood with bright, shining face; he had just\ntaken the old goat and the little kid out of the stable. Now he\nflourished his switch, the goats skipped and ran about him, and the\nwhole procession started on. Presently Moni's voice was again heard\nechoing from the hills:\n\n    \"Up mid the pine trees\n       The birds join in song,\n     And though rain clouds may darken,\n       The sun's out erelong.\"\n\n\"This evening he must sing me the whole song,\" said Paula; for Moni had\nnow disappeared and his distant song could no longer be heard.\n\nRed morning clouds still hung in the sky and a fresh mountain breeze\nwas rustling about Moni's ears as he climbed up the mountain. It\nwas just what he liked. He stopped on the first peak, and for sheer\nhappiness yodeled forth so lustily into the valley that many a sleeper\nin the hotel opened his eyes in surprise, but quickly closed them\nagain, for he recognized the voice and so knew that he might have\nanother hour's nap, as the goat boy always came very early. Meanwhile\nMoni continued climbing for an hour, higher and higher, up to the rocky\nledges.\n\nThe view grew wider and more beautiful the higher he climbed.\nOccasionally he would stop to look about him, across at the mountains\nand up to the bright sky that was growing bluer and bluer, and then he\nwould sing out in a strong, happy voice:\n\n    \"Up mid the pine trees\n       The birds join in song,\n     And though rain clouds may darken,\n       The sun's out erelong.\n\n    \"The sun and the stars\n       And the moon shining clear,\n     These the dear God has made\n       For our comfort and cheer.\n\n    \"In the spring there are flowers,\n       Red, yellow, and white,\n     And the sky is so blue\n       I am wild with delight.\n\n    \"The summer brings berries\n       Of many a kind,\n     Red ones and black ones,--\n       I eat all I find.\n\n    \"In fall I hunt nuts;\n       And I'm sure that I know\n     Why the goats like to graze\n       Where the best grasses grow.\n\n    \"The winter is cold,\n       But who would be sad?\n     For spring will return\n       To make the world glad.\"\n\nNow he had reached the spot where he usually stayed and where he meant\nto rest for a while to-day. It was a little green plateau standing\nout from the mountain side, so that one might look out from it in all\ndirections and far down into the valley. This projection was called\nthe \"Pulpit.\" Here Moni would often sit for hours, looking out over\nthe surrounding country, whistling to himself, while his goats were\ncontentedly gathering herbs.\n\nAs soon as Moni had reached this spot he unstrapped his lunch box from\nhis back, laid it in a little hollow which he had dug for it in the\nearth, and then went out on the Pulpit, where he stretched out on\nthe ground and gave himself up to the full enjoyment of the hour. The\nsky was now dark blue; on the opposite mountains ice fields and sharp\npeaks had come to view, and far below the green valley lay sparkling\nin the morning light. Moni lay there, looking about him, singing and\nwhistling. The wind cooled his hot face, and when his own notes ceased\nfor a moment the birds overhead whistled all the more merrily as they\nmounted into the blue sky. Moni felt indescribably happy. Now and then\nlittle Meggy would come to him and rub her head against his shoulder in\nher affectionate way, bleat tenderly, and then go to the other side and\nrub against his other shoulder. The old ones, too, would come up now\nand then and show their friendship in their own particular fashion.\n\nBrownie, his own goat, had a way of coming up to him quite anxiously\nand looking him over very carefully to see whether he was all right.\nShe would stand before him, waiting, until he said: \"Yes, yes, Brownie;\nit's all right. Go back to your grazing now.\" Swallow, the slender,\nlively little creature that darted to and fro like a swallow in and out\nof its nest, always came up with the young white one. The two would\ncharge down upon Moni with a force that would have overthrown him had\nhe not already been stretched flat on the ground. After a brief visit\nthey would dart off again as quickly as they had come.\n\nThe shiny black one, little Meggy's mother, who belonged to the hotel,\nwas rather proud. She would stand off several feet from the boy, look\nat him with a lofty air, as if afraid of seeming too familiar, and then\npass on her way. Sultan, the big leader of the flock, in the one daily\nvisit that he paid would rudely push aside any other goat that might be\nnear, give several significant bleats,--probably meant for reports on\nthe condition of his family,--and then turn away.\n\nLittle Meggy alone refused to be pushed away from her protector. When\nSultan came and tried to thrust her aside, she would slip down as far\nas she could under Moni's arm, and thus protected she had no fear of\nthe big buck, who was otherwise so formidable to her.\n\nThus the sunshiny morning passed. Moni had finished his noon lunch and\nwas leaning meditatively on the long cane which he always kept at hand\nfor difficult places. He was thinking about a new ascent, for he meant\nto go up higher with the goats this afternoon. The question was, which\nside should he take, right or left? He chose the left, for there he\nwould come to the three \"Dragon Rocks,\" about which the tenderest, most\nluscious herbage grew.\n\nThe path was steep and there were dangerous places along a precipitous\nwall, but he knew a good road and the goats were sensible creatures\nand would not easily run astray. He started and the goats ran merrily\nalong, now before him, now behind, little Meggy always very close to\nhim; sometimes he picked her up and carried her over the worst places.\nBut all went well and they reached the desired spot safely. The goats\nmade a rush for the green bushes, remembering the juicy shoots they had\nenjoyed there before.\n\n\"Gently, gently!\" Moni warned them. \"Don't butt one another along the\nsteep places. You might easily slide off and have your legs broken.\nSwallow, Swallow, what are you about?\" he called out excitedly to the\ncliff above. The nimble goat had scrambled over the high Dragon Rock\nand was now standing on the outer edge of the cliff, looking down\nsaucily upon him. He hastily scrambled up the cliff, meanwhile keeping\nan anxious eye upon the goat, for a single misstep would have landed\nher in the abyss below. Moni was agile and in a few moments he had\nclimbed the rock and, with a quick movement, had grasped Swallow by\nthe leg and pulled her back. \"You come with me now, you foolish little\nbeast,\" he said as he drew her down to where the others were feeding.\nHe held her for a while, until she was contentedly nibbling at a\ntender shrub and had no more thoughts of running away.\n\nSuddenly Moni cried out, \"Where is little Meggy?\" He saw the black\nmother standing alone by a steep wall; she was not eating, but was\nlooking all about her and pointing her ears in a strange manner. The\nlittle kid was always either beside Moni or running after its mother.\n\n\"Where is your little one, Blackie?\" he said, standing close beside her\nand looking up and down. Then he heard a faint, wailing bleat. It was\nMeggy's voice and came from far below, piteous, entreating. Moni got\ndown on the ground and leaned forward. Below him something seemed to be\nmoving; now he saw it plainly,--it was Meggy hanging in the branches of\na tree that grew out of the rocks. She was wailing pitifully.\n\nLuckily the branch had caught her, else she would have fallen into the\nabyss and been dashed to death. If she should even now lose her hold,\nshe must plunge instantly into the depths below. In terror he called to\nher: \"Hold fast, Meggy! hold fast to the tree! I'm coming down to get\nyou.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBut how was he to get there? The rocks were so steep at this point\nthat he could not possibly get down. But he reflected that he must be\nsomewhere near the \"Rain Rock,\" that overhanging cliff under which\nthe goat boys had for generations found shelter. From there, thought\nMoni, he might climb across the rocks and so get back with the kid. He\nquickly called the goats together and took them to the entrance of the\nRain Rock. There he left them to graze and went out toward the cliff.\nSome distance above him he saw the tree with Meggy clinging to it.\n\nHe realized that it would be no easy matter to climb up the cliff and\nthen down again with Meggy on his back, but there was no other way of\nrescuing her. And then, too, he felt sure the dear God would help him,\nso that he could not fall. He folded his hands, looked up into heaven,\nand prayed, \"Dear God, please help me to save little Meggy.\"\n\nThen he felt confident that all would go well and he climbed bravely\nup the cliff until he reached the tree. Here he held himself tight\nwith both feet, lifted the trembling, whining little creature to his\nshoulders, and then worked his way down very cautiously. When they had\nthe solid ground once more underfoot and he saw that the frightened\nlittle goat was safe, he felt so glad that he had to speak his thanks\naloud, and he called up to heaven: \"Dear God, I thank you a thousand,\nthousand times for helping us back safely. We are both so very, very\nglad.\"\n\nHe sat down on the ground for a while to caress and quiet the little\ncreature, that was still trembling in every limb, until it had somewhat\nrecovered from its terrible experience.\n\nWhen it was time, soon afterward, for breaking up, Moni again lifted\nthe kid to his shoulders, saying solicitously: \"Come, my poor little\nMeggy; you are still trembling; you cannot walk home to-day; I must\ncarry you.\" And so he carried her, cuddled close in his arm, all the\nway home.\n\nPaula was standing on the ledge near the hotel, waiting for the boy\nto pass. Her aunt was with her. When Moni came along with his burden,\nPaula wanted to know whether the little goat was sick. She seemed so\ninterested that Moni sat down on the ground before her and told the\nwhole story about Meggy.\n\nThe young Fraeulein showed great sympathy and stooped to caress the\nlittle creature, that was now lying quietly on Moni's knees, looking\nvery pretty with its little white feet and smooth black coat, and\nevidently enjoying the girl's attention.\n\n\"Now sing me your song while you are resting here so comfortably,\" said\nPaula.\n\nMoni was so happy that he gladly complied with her request, and sang\nthe song through to a lusty close.\n\nPaula was delighted with it and said he must sing it for her often.\nThen the whole company went on down to the hotel. There the little kid\nwas put to bed. Moni took his leave. Paula went to her room and talked\nfor a long time about the goat boy, about his happy nature, his lonely\nlife on the mountain, and the joys and privations of such a life. In\nthis far-off, strange hotel there was little diversion for the girl,\nand she was already looking forward to the boy's happy morning song as\none of the pleasures of the morrow.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n                                A VISIT\n\n\nThus several days passed, each one as sunny and bright as the one\nbefore it; for it was an unusually fine summer, and from morning to\nnight the sky was blue and cloudless.\n\nEvery morning at early dawn the goat boy had passed the hotel singing\nhis merry song, and had come back still singing at evening; and all the\nguests were so accustomed to the cheerful sound that they would have\nbeen sorry not to hear it.\n\nBut Paula, most of all, enjoyed Moni's happiness, and went to meet him\nevery evening, that she might have a little talk with him.\n\nOne sunshiny morning Moni had again reached the Pulpit and was just\nabout to settle down upon the ground when he reflected: \"No, we'll go\non farther to-day. The last time we had to leave all the good, juicy\nfood because we went after little Meggy. Now we'll go up again and you\ncan finish grazing.\"\n\nJoyously the goats ran after him, for they understood that they were\nbeing led to the fine feeding on Dragon Rock. But this time Moni was\ncareful to hold little Meggy close in his arm all the way. He picked\nthe tenderest leaves and fed them to her, and the little kid showed\nher appreciation by rubbing her head against his arm and bleating\ncontentedly from time to time. So the morning passed until Moni\npresently realized from his hunger that it had grown surprisingly late.\nBut his lunch was in the little cave by the Pulpit, for he had intended\nto be back there by noon.\n\n\"Now you have had many a good mouthful and I have had nothing,\" he said\nto his goats. \"It is time I had something, too. Come, we'll go down;\nthere is enough left for you on the lower <DW72>.\"\n\nWith that he whistled shrilly, and the whole flock started downward,\nthe liveliest ones in the van; Swallow, the light-footed one,--for\nwhom there were unexpected things in store that day,--in advance of\nthem all. She jumped from rock to rock and over many a chasm; but\nsuddenly she could go no farther, for directly in front of her stood a\nchamois, looking her saucily in the face. Swallow had never had such\nan experience before. She stood still and looked questioningly at the\nstranger, waiting for him to step aside and allow her to make the fine\njump she had in mind to the opposite rock. But the chamois never moved,\nand stood staring boldly into Swallow's face. So they faced each other,\ngetting more and more obstinate every moment; they would probably\nbe standing there to this day had not Sultan come up at this point.\nTaking in the situation, he carefully moved past Swallow and pushed the\nstranger so forcibly to one side that he had to make a quick jump to\nescape sliding off the cliff. Then Swallow passed triumphantly on her\nway and Sultan marched proudly behind her, feeling himself to be the\nmighty protector of the herd.\n\nMeanwhile another meeting was taking place. Moni, coming from above,\nand another goat boy from below, had met face to face and were looking\nat each other in astonishment. But they were old acquaintances and,\nafter their first surprise, greeted each other heartily. The newcomer\nwas Jordie from Kueblis. He had been looking for Moni half the morning,\nand now found him where he least expected.\n\n\"I did not think you went up so high with the goats,\" said Jordie.\n\n\"To be sure I do,\" answered Moni, \"but not always. I am generally\nsomewhere near the Pulpit. But why are you up here?\"\n\n\"I wanted to see you; I have lots to tell you. And these two goats here\nI am taking to the hotel keeper; he wants to buy one,--so I thought\nI'd visit you on the way.\"\n\n\"Are they your goats?\" asked Moni.\n\n\"Of course they are. I don't herd other people's goats any longer. I'm\nnot goat boy now.\"\n\nMoni was surprised at this, for Jordie had started out as goat boy of\nKueblis at the same time that he had been chosen from Fideris. He could\nnot understand how that could all be ended without a sign of regret on\nJordie's part.\n\nBut the boys had by this time reached the Pulpit. Here Moni brought out\nhis bread and dried meat and invited Jordie to lunch. They sat out on\nthe Pulpit and ate their lunch with a relish, for it had grown late and\nboth were hungry. When they had eaten everything and finished off with\na drink of goat's milk, Jordie stretched out full length on the ground\nand leaned his head on his arms; but Moni preferred to sit up and look\nout over the great valley.\n\n\"But if you are no longer goat boy, Jordie, what are you?\" Moni began.\n\"You must be something.\"\n\n\"Of course I am something,--something worth while, you may believe,\"\nanswered Jordie. \"I am egg boy. I go to the hotels with eggs every day.\nI go up to the baths, too. Was there yesterday.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\nMoni shook his head. \"That wouldn't do for me,--to be egg boy. No, I'd\nrather be goat boy, a thousand times rather. That is much better.\"\n\n\"And why, I'd like to know?\"\n\n\"Eggs aren't alive. You can't talk with them, and they won't follow you\nlike goats, and be glad when you come, and love you, and understand\nevery word you say to them. You can't possibly enjoy your eggs as I do\nmy goats.\"\n\n\"Yes; great enjoyment you must have up here!\" said Jordie scornfully.\n\"What pleasures do you have? Since we've been sitting here you've had\nto jump up six times to run after that silly little goat, to keep her\nfrom falling over the rock. Is that any pleasure?\"\n\n\"Yes, I like it. You know that, Meggy, don't you? Careful, careful!\"\nhe called, jumping up and running after her, for in her joy she was\ncapering about most recklessly.\n\nWhen he came back Jordie said, \"Don't you know that there is another\nway of keeping young goats from falling over the cliffs, that will save\nyour running after them every few minutes?\"\n\n\"How is that?\" asked Moni.\n\n\"Drive a stake into the ground and tie the goat to it by one leg; she\nwill struggle desperately, but she can't get away.\"\n\n\"You don't really think that I would do such a thing to little Meggy!\"\ncried Moni indignantly, while he drew her close to him and held her\nfast, as though to defend her from such treatment.\n\n\"This little one, of course, won't bother you much longer,\" Jordie went\non. \"There won't be many more times for it to come up.\"\n\n\"What? what? What did you say, Jordie?\"\n\n\"Pshaw! Don't you know that the landlord doesn't mean to raise it?\nIt is too weak; he thinks it will never grow to be a strong goat. He\nwanted to sell it to my father, but father did not want it. So now he\nis going to kill it, and then he will buy our Spottie.\"\n\nMoni had grown white with horror. For a moment he could not speak;\nthen he broke forth in a loud wail over the little goat: \"No, no! they\nshan't do it, my little Meggy; they shan't kill you. I won't have it;\nI'd rather die with you! No, no! I can't let them; I can't let them.\"\n\n\"Don't carry on so!\" said Jordie, annoyed; and he pulled Moni up from\nthe ground, where he had thrown himself, face downward, in his grief.\n\"Come, get up. You know the kid belongs to the landlord and he can do\nwith it as he pleases. Don't think about it any more. Here, I have\nsomething else. Look! look here!\" and Jordie held out one hand toward\nMoni, while with the other he almost covered something that he was\noffering for Moni's admiration. It flashed out most wonderfully from\nbetween his hands as the sun shone upon it.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Moni, seeing it sparkle.\n\n\"Guess!\"\n\n\"A ring?\"\n\n\"No; but something of the sort.\"\n\n\"Who gave it to you?\"\n\n\"Gave it? Nobody. I found it.\"\n\n\"Then it doesn't belong to you, Jordie.\"\n\n\"Why not? I didn't steal it. I almost stepped on it; then it would have\nbeen crushed anyway. So I might as well have it.\"\n\n\"Where did you find it?\"\n\n\"Down by the hotel last night.\"\n\n\"Then somebody in the house lost it; you must tell the landlord. If you\ndon't, I'll tell him this evening.\"\n\n\"No, no! you mustn't do that,\" cried Jordie. \"Look! I'll let you see\nit. I'm going to sell it to a chambermaid in one of the hotels; but she\nmust give me at least four francs, and I will give you one, or perhaps\ntwo, and no one shall know anything about it.\"\n\n\"I don't want it! I don't want it!\" Moni interrupted angrily; \"and God\nhas heard every word you said.\"\n\nJordie looked up to heaven. \"Too far away,\" he said doubtfully, but he\ntook care to lower his voice.\n\n\"He'll hear you, anyway,\" said Moni with assurance.\n\nJordie began to feel uncomfortable. He must get Moni over to his side\nor he would spoil the whole game. Jordie thought and thought.\n\n\"Moni,\" he said suddenly, \"I will promise you something that will\nplease you, if you won't tell any one about what I found. And you\nneedn't take any of the money; then you won't have anything to do with\nit. If you'll promise, then I will persuade father to buy little Meggy,\nso that she won't be killed. Will you?\"\n\nThat started a hard struggle in Moni. It would be sinful to conceal the\nfinding of the treasure. Jordie had opened his hand; there lay a cross\nset with many jewels that sparkled with all colors. Moni saw that it\nwas no trifling thing that would not be searched after. He felt that if\nhe did not tell it would be the same as though he himself were keeping\nsomething that did not belong to him. But, on the other hand, there\nwas dear little Meggy; she would be killed--horribly butchered with a\nknife, and he could prevent it if he kept silent. The little kid was at\nthat moment lying trustfully beside him, as though she knew that he\nwould always protect her. No, he must not let such a thing happen; he\nmust do something to save her.\n\n\"Then I will, Jordie,\" he said, but without any enthusiasm.\n\n\"Your hand on it!\" and Jordie held out his own hand, for thus a promise\nwas made inviolable.\n\nJordie was very glad that he was now safe with his treasure; but as\nMoni had grown so quiet, and as he had a longer way home than Moni,\nhe thought it best to start on. He took leave of Moni and whistled to\nhis two goats, which had meanwhile joined Moni's grazing flock,--not\nwithout various buttings and other doubtful encounters, however;\nfor the goats of Fideris had never heard that one must be polite to\ncompany, and the goats of Kueblis did not know that when one is on a\nvisit it is not proper to pick out the best feeding for oneself and\npush every one else away from it. When Jordie was halfway down the\nmountain Moni, too, set out with his flock, but he was very quiet and\ngave forth not a note of song or whistle all the way home.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER IV\n\n                           MONI CANNOT SING\n\n\nThe next morning Moni came to the hotel as quiet and downcast as he had\nbeen the evening before. He came silently, took away the landlord's\ngoats, and then started on his upward journey, without ever opening his\nlips for a song or a yodel; he hung his head and looked as though he\nwere afraid of something. Now and then he cast a furtive glance around\nto see if some one was not following him.\n\nMoni could not be happy any more; he could hardly tell why. He felt\nthat he ought to be glad because he had saved little Meggy, and he\ntried to sing, but he could not. The sun happened to be clouded\nthat day; he thought that when the sky cleared he would feel quite\ndifferent, and would be happy again. When he got up on the mountain it\nbegan to rain hard. Soon the rain came down in torrents and he took\nrefuge under the Rain Rock.\n\nThe goats, too, came and stood under the rock. The proud black one,\ncareful of her fine glossy coat, had crept in even before Moni. She\nnow lay behind him, looking out contentedly from her comfortable\ncorner into the streaming rain. Meggy stood in front of her protector\nand rubbed her head affectionately against his knee, then looked up\nastonished to find that he did not say a word to her, for that was most\nextraordinary. His own brown goat, too, pawed at his feet and bleated,\nfor he had not spoken to her all the morning. He sat there, leaning\nthoughtfully on his cane, which he carried in rainy weather to keep him\nfrom slipping on the rocks, for on such days he wore shoes. To-day, as\nhe sat for hours under the rock, he had plenty of time for reflection.\n\nHe thought over what he had promised Jordie. It seemed as though Jordie\nhad stolen something and he had done the same; for was not Jordie going\nto give him something for it? He had at any rate done what was wrong,\nand God was displeased with him,--he felt that in his heart. He was\nglad that it was dark and rainy, and that he was hidden under the rock,\nfor he would not dare look up into the blue sky as he had formerly. He\nwas afraid now of the dear God.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nOther things, too, came into his mind. What if Meggy should fall over\na steep place again, and he should try to save her, and God would no\nlonger help him? What if he could never pray to him any more, or have\nany hope of help from him? And what if his feet should slip? Then he\nand Meggy would fall down on the jagged rocks and lie there all torn\nand mangled.\n\n\"Oh, no!\" he cried in his troubled heart; \"this cannot be.\" He must\nmake his peace with the dear God, so that he could pray once more and\ngo to him with all his troubles; then he could be happy again. He\nwould throw off the weight that was upon him; he would go and tell\nthe landlord everything. But then? Then Jordie would not persuade his\nfather, and the landlord would have little Meggy butchered. Oh, no, no,\nno! he could not endure that; and he said: \"No, I will not. I will say\nnothing.\" But that did not relieve him; the weight on his heart grew\nheavier and heavier.\n\nSo the whole day passed. He came home at night as silent as he had gone\nforth in the morning; and when Paula, waiting at the hotel, eagerly ran\nout to him and asked sympathetically: \"Moni, what is the matter? Why\ndon't you sing?\" he turned away embarrassed, saying, \"Can't,\" and went\naway as quickly as possible.\n\nIn their room upstairs Paula said to her aunt: \"If I only knew what is\nwrong with the goat boy! He is so changed I hardly know him. If he\nwould only sing again!\"\n\n\"This wretched weather probably spoils the boy's humor,\" said her aunt.\n\n\"Everything seems to be going wrong. Let us go home, auntie,\" begged\nPaula. \"Our good times are over. First I lose my beautiful cross and\nthere is no trace of it anywhere; then this endless rain sets in; and\nnow there is not even the jolly goat boy to listen to. Let us go home.\"\n\n\"But we must finish the treatment here. There is no way out of it,\"\nsaid her aunt.\n\nThe next morning was again dark and cloudy and the rain poured down\nwithout intermission. Moni spent the day as he had the one before. He\nsat under the rocks, his thoughts going round and round in the same\ncircle. Whenever he reached the resolution, \"Now I will go and confess\nthe wrong, so that I can look up to God once more,\" he saw the little\ngoat under the butcher's knife, and the whole struggle began again\nfrom the beginning; so that he was quite worn out when evening came,\nand went crawling home through the drenching rain as though he hardly\nnoticed it.\n\nAs he passed the hotel the landlord called to him: \"Can't you get along\na little faster? Look how wet they are. What's come over you, anyway,\nlately?\"\n\nSuch cross words had never been addressed to him before by the\nlandlord. On the contrary, the latter had always shown special\nfriendliness to the boy; but now he was irritated by Moni's altered\nmanner, and was in bad humor otherwise, for Paula had told him about\nher missing jewel, which she declared could have been lost only within\nthe hotel or directly before the door, for she had left the house on\nthat day only to listen to the goat boy's song. To have it said that so\nvaluable an article could be lost in his house, and not be returned,\nannoyed the landlord extremely. On the previous day he had summoned the\nwhole staff of servants, had examined them, threatened them, and had\nfinally offered a reward to the finder. The whole establishment was\nupset by the occurrence.\n\nWhen Moni passed the front of the hotel Paula was there waiting for\nhim, wondering why he had not yet found his song.\n\n\"Moni, Moni!\" she called; \"are you really the same boy who used to come\nby here singing from morning to night,--\n\n    'And the sky is so blue\n       I am wild with delight'?\"\n\nMoni heard the words and they made a deep impression on him, but he\ngave no answer. He felt that it had indeed been different when he went\nabout singing all day, with a spirit as happy as his song. Would such\ndays ever come again?\n\nThe next morning he climbed the mountain sad and silent as the day\nbefore. The rain had stopped, but a heavy mist hung over the mountains,\nand the sky was covered with dark clouds. Moni sat under the rocks,\ntortured with distressing thoughts. Toward noon the sky began to clear.\nIt grew brighter and brighter, and Moni came out of the cave and looked\nabout. The goats were gayly skipping about once more, the little kid\nwantonly capering in the sunshine.\n\nMoni stood out on the Pulpit watching the sky and the mountains as they\ncame out brighter and brighter. When the clouds parted and the blue\nheavens shone forth, it seemed to Moni as though the dear God were\nlooking down on him from heaven. Suddenly things within him seemed to\ngrow very clear, and he knew what he must do. He could not carry the\nwrong about in his heart any longer; he felt that he must cast it off.\nThen he seized the frolicsome little kid, took it in his arms, and said\ntenderly: \"O my Meggy, my poor little Meggy! I have surely done what I\ncould; but it was sinful and bad. Now you must die. Oh, oh! how can I\nendure it!\" And he began to cry so bitterly that he could say no more.\n\nThe little kid uttered a sad cry and crept as far under his arm as she\ncould, as though to hide and be safe with him. He lifted her to his\nshoulders.\n\n\"Come, Meggy,\" he said; \"I'll carry you home once more. Perhaps soon I\nshall not have you to carry.\"\n\nWhen the company reached the hotel Paula was again waiting. Moni left\nthe little kid and the old black mother in the stable. Then, instead of\ngoing on down, he came to the house and was about to go in, when the\nFraeulein stopped him.\n\n\"Haven't you found your song yet, Moni? Where are you going with that\nlook of woe?\"\n\n\"I have something to report,\" answered Moni, without raising his eyes.\n\n\"To report? What is it? Won't you tell me?\"\n\n\"I must see the landlord. Something was found.\"\n\n\"Found? What? I lost something,--a beautiful cross.\"\n\n\"That is it.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" cried Paula, in greatest astonishment. \"A cross\nwith sparkling stones?\"\n\n\"Yes, exactly.\"\n\n\"Where is it, Moni? Give it to me. Did you find it?\"\n\n\"No; Jordie of Kueblis did.\"\n\nPaula wanted to know who Jordie was and where he lived, and was about\nto send some one down to Kueblis right away to get the cross.\n\n\"I will go; and if he still has the cross, I will bring it,\" said Moni.\n\n\"If he still has it!\" cried Paula. \"Why should he not have it? and how\ndo you know all about this, Moni? When did he find it, and how did you\nhear about it?\"\n\nMoni stared at the ground; he dared not tell how it had all happened\nand how he had helped to hide the discovery until he had been forced to\nspeak.\n\nBut Paula was very kind to him. She led him aside, sat down on a tree\nstump with him, and said reassuringly: \"Come, tell me how it happened,\nMoni. I want you to tell me all about it.\"\n\nSo Moni took courage and began. He told the whole story,--all about\nhis struggles for Meggy's sake; how he had grown so miserable through\nit all and dared not look up to God; and how he had not been able to\nendure it longer and had resolved to tell.\n\nThen Paula gave him friendly advice and said he ought to have come at\nonce and reported, but it was right that he had now told her everything\nso frankly, and he would not regret it. She said he might promise\nJordie ten francs as soon as she had the cross in her possession once\nmore.\n\n\"Ten francs!\" repeated Moni in surprise, remembering how Jordie had\nwanted to sell it. Then he rose. He would go back to Kueblis that very\nnight, and if he got the cross, bring it back to-morrow morning. Then\nhe ran away, realizing as he went that he could skip and jump once\nmore, and that the heavy burden was no longer on his heart.\n\nOn reaching home he merely told his grandmother that he had an errand\nin Kueblis, and at once started off. He found Jordie at home and told\nhim what he had done. Jordie was quite angry with him for a moment,\nbut when he reflected that further concealment was now impossible he\nbrought out the cross, asking, \"What is she going to give me for it?\"\n\nMoni was ready with his answer: \"Ten francs. You see honest dealing\nwould have paid you best, for with your dishonesty you expected to get\nonly four francs; but you will get your money.\"\n\nJordie was surprised, and regretted that he had not gone to the hotel\nat once with the cross, and so come off with a clear conscience, which\nhe certainly had not now. Things might have been quite different, but\nit was too late. He gave the cross to Moni, who hurried home, as it had\ngrown quite dark.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n                         MONI SINGS ONCE MORE\n\n\nPaula had left orders that she was to be called early in the morning.\nShe wanted to be on hand when the goat boy came, and settle with him\nherself. The previous evening she had had a long interview with the\nlandlord, coming away from his room with a look of satisfaction, as\nthough she had made some pleasant arrangement with him.\n\nWhen Moni came up with his herd in the morning Paula called to him,\n\"Moni, can't you sing even now?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"I can't. I keep thinking of poor little Meggy and\nhow many days longer she will be with me. I'll never sing again as long\nas I live; but here is the cross.\" With that he gave her the parcel,\nwhich his grandmother had carefully done up for him in many wrappings.\n\nPaula took the jewel from its coverings and examined it closely; it was\nreally her precious cross of sparkling stones, perfectly unharmed.\n\n\"Well, Moni, you have made me very happy. Without you I should probably\nnever have seen my cross again. So I want to make you happy, too. Go\nand get little Meggy; she belongs to you now.\"\n\nMoni stared at the Fraeulein as though he could not comprehend her\nwords. At length he stammered, \"But how--how can Meggy belong to me?\"\n\n\"How?\" said Paula, smiling. \"Last night I bought her from the landlord,\nand to-day I give her to you. Can you sing now?\"\n\n\"Oh! oh! oh!\" cried Moni, running to the stable like mad. He took the\nlittle goat and held her close in his arms. Then he came running back\nand held out his hand to the Fraeulein, saying over and over again, \"I\nthank you a thousand, thousand times! God reward you for it! If I could\nonly do something for you!\"\n\n\"Then sing your song and let us hear whether it has the old ring,\" said\nPaula.\n\nSo Moni lifted up his voice, and as he climbed the mountain his joyous\nnotes rang out so clearly through the valley that every one in the\nhotel noticed it, and many a sleeper turned on his pillow, saying,\n\"Good! the goat boy has sunshine once more.\"\n\nThey were all glad to hear him sing again, for they liked the early\nnotes, which were to some a sign for rising, to others leave for\nanother nap. When Moni looked down from the first ledge and saw the\nFraeulein still standing before the hotel, he stepped forward and sang\nas loudly as he could:\n\n    \"And the sky is so blue\n      I am wild with delight.\"\n\nNothing but sounds of joy came from his lips all day, and the goats,\ntoo, seemed to feel that it was a day of gladness, and skipped and\ncapered about as never before. The sun was so bright, the sky so blue,\nand after the heavy rains the grasses so green and the flowers so gay,\nthat Moni thought he had never seen the world so beautiful. He kept his\nlittle kid beside him all day, plucked the best herbs for it, and fed\nit from his hand, saying again and again: \"Meggy, dear little Meggy,\nyou are not going to be killed. You are mine now, and will come up the\nmountain with me as long as we both live.\"\n\nWith happy song and yodel Moni returned in the evening, and after he\nhad led the black goat to her stable he took the little one on his\narm; she was henceforth to go home with him. Meggy seemed very well\nsatisfied, and cuddled up to him as though she felt herself in the\nbest of care; for he had always treated her more tenderly than her own\nmother had.\n\nWhen Moni came home with the little one on his shoulder his grandmother\nhardly knew what to make of him. His calling out, \"It is mine,\ngrandmother; it is mine!\" explained nothing to her. But Moni could not\nstop to explain until he had run to the stable and made a good bed for\nMeggy close beside their own goat, so that the little one would not be\nlonely.\n\n\"There, Meggy; now sleep well in your new home. You shall always have a\ngood bed. I will make it fresh for you every day.\"\n\nThen Moni ran in to the wondering grandmother, and while they sat at\nsupper he told her the whole story,--of his three sad, troubled days\nand the happy ending of it all. His grandmother listened attentively,\nand when he had finished she said earnestly: \"Moni, this experience you\nmust always remember. Had you done right in the first place, trusting\nin the good God, then everything would have gone well. Now God has\nhelped you so much more than you deserve that you must not forget it as\nlong as you live.\" And Moni was very sure that he would not forget.\n\nBefore he went to sleep he had to go to the stable once more to make\nsure that the little kid really belonged to him and was there in its\nbed.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nJordie got his ten francs, as promised, but that did not end the\nmatter for him. When he went to the hotel he was taken before the\nlandlord, who gave him a severe lecture. But the worst of it all was\nthat whenever anything was missed after that, it was Jordie who was\nimmediately suspected of having stolen it. He had no more peace, for he\nwas continually in dread of being punished for something that he had\nnever done.\n\nMoni's little goat throve and grew strong, and the boy continued to\nsing all summer. But often when he was comfortably stretched out on the\nPulpit, he thought of the troubled days under the Rain Rock, and he\nsaid to himself, \"It must never happen so again.\"\n\nBut when he was too long absorbed in such reflections one or another of\nthe goats would come and rouse him with a questioning bleat.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                           WITHOUT A FRIEND\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                           WITHOUT A FRIEND\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                        HE IS GOOD FOR NOTHING\n\n\nThe traveler who ascends Mt. Seelis from the rear will presently find\nhimself coming out upon a spot where a green meadow, fresh and vivid,\nis spread out upon the mountain side. The place is so inviting that one\nfeels tempted to join the peacefully grazing cows and fall to eating\nthe soft green grass with them. The clean, well-fed cattle wander about\nwith pleasant musical accompaniment; for each cow wears a bell, so that\none may tell by the sound whether any of them are straying too far out\ntoward the edge, where the precipice is hidden by bushes and where a\nsingle misstep would be fatal. There is a company of boys, to be sure,\nto watch the cows, but the bells are also necessary, and their tinkling\nis so pleasant to hear that it would be a pity not to have them.\n\nLittle wooden houses dot the mountain side, and here and there a\nturbulent stream comes tumbling down the <DW72>. Not one of the cottages\nstands on level ground; it seems as though they had somehow been thrown\nagainst the mountain and had stuck there, for it would be hard to\nconceive of their being built on this steep <DW72>. From the highway\nbelow you might think them all equally neat and cheery, with their open\ngalleries and little wooden stairways, but when you came nearer to them\nyou would notice that they differed very much in character.\n\nThe two first ones were not at all alike. The distance between them\nwas not very great, yet they stood quite apart, for the largest stream\nof the neighborhood, Clear Brook, as it is called, rushed down between\nthem. In the first cottage all the little windows were kept tightly\nclosed even through the finest summer days, and no fresh air was ever\nlet in except through the broken windowpanes, and that was little\nenough, for the holes had been pasted over with paper to keep out the\nwinter's cold. The steps of the outside stairway were in many places\nbroken away, and the gallery was in such a ruinous state that it\nseemed as though the many little children crawling and stumbling about\non it must surely break their arms or legs. But they all were sound\nenough in body though very dirty; their faces were covered with grime\nand their hair had never been touched by a comb. Four of these little\nurchins scrambled about here through the day, and at evening they were\njoined by four older ones,--three sturdy boys and a girl,--who were at\nwork during the day. These, too, were none too clean, but they looked\na little better than the younger ones, for they could at least wash\nthemselves.\n\nThe little house across the stream had quite a different air. Even\nbefore you reached the steps, everything looked so clean and tidy that\nyou thought the very ground must be different from that across the\nstream. The steps always looked as though they had just been scrubbed,\nand on the gallery there were three pots of blooming pinks that wafted\nfragrance through the windows all summer long. One of the bright\nlittle windows stood open to let in the fresh mountain air, and within\nthe room a woman might be seen, still strong and active in spite of\nthe snowy white hair under her neat black cap. She was often at work\nmending a man's shirt, that was stout and coarse in material but was\nalways washed with great care.\n\nThe woman herself looked so trim and neat in her simple dress that one\nfancied she had never in her life touched anything unclean. It was\nFrau Vincenze, mother of the young herdsman Franz Martin, he of the\nsmiling face and strong arm. Franz Martin lived in his little hut on\nthe mountain all summer making cheese, and returned to his mother's\ncottage only in the late fall, to spend the winter with her and make\nbutter in the lower dairy hut near by.\n\nAs there was no bridge across the wild stream, the two cottages were\nquite separated, and there were other people much farther away whom\nFrau Vincenze knew better than these neighbors right across the brook;\nfor she seldom looked over at them,--the sight was not agreeable to\nher. She would shake her head disapprovingly when she saw the black\nfaces and dirty rags on the children, while the stream of fresh, clean\nwater ran so near their door. She preferred, when the twilight rest\nhour came, to enjoy her red carnations on the gallery, or to look down\nover the green <DW72> that stretched from her cottage to the valley\nbelow.\n\nThe neglected children across the stream belonged to \"Poor Grass Joe,\"\nas he was called, who was usually employed away from home in haying, or\nchopping wood, or carrying burdens up the mountain. The wife had much\nto do at home, to be sure, but she seemed to take it for granted that\nso many children could not possibly be kept in order, and that in time,\nwhen the children grew older, things would mend of their own accord.\nSo she let everything go as it would, and in the fresh, pure air the\nchildren remained healthy and were happy enough scrambling around on\nthe steps and on the ground.\n\nIn the summer time the four older ones were out all day herding cows;\nfor here in the lower pasture the whole herd of cows was not left to\ngraze under one or two boys, as on the high Alps, but each farmer\nhad to hire his own herd boy to look after his cows. This made jolly\ntimes for the boys and girls, who spent the long days together playing\npranks and making merry in the broad green fields. Sometimes Joe's\nchildren were hired for potato weeding farther down the valley, or\nfor other light field work. Thus they earned their living through\nthe summer and brought home many a penny besides, which their mother\ncould turn to good account; for there were always the four little\nmouths to be fed and clothes to be got for all the children. However\nsimple these clothes might be, each child must have at least a little\nshirt, and the older ones one other garment besides. The family was\ntoo poor to possess even a cow, though there was scarcely a farmer in\nthe neighborhood who did not own one, however small his piece of land\nmight be.\n\nPoor Grass Joe had got his name from the fact that the spears of grass\non his land were so scarce that they would not support so much as a\ncow. He had only a goat and a potato field. With these small resources\nthe wife had to struggle through the summer and provide for the four\nlittle ones, and sometimes, when work was scarce, for one or two of the\nolder ones also. The father occasionally came home in the winter, but\nhe brought very little to his family, for his house and land were so\nheavily mortgaged that he was never out of debt throughout the whole\nyear. Whenever he had earned a little money, some one whom he owed\nwould come and take it all away.\n\nSo the wife had a hard time to get along,--all the more so because she\nhad no order in her house-keeping and was not skillful in any kind\nof work. She would often go out and stand on the tumbledown gallery,\nwhere the boards were lying loose and ready to drop off, and instead of\ntaking a hammer and fastening them down would look across the stream\nat the neat little cottage with the bright windows, and would say\nfretfully, \"Yes, it's all very well for her to clean and scrub,--she\nhas nothing else to do; but with me it's quite different.\"\n\nThen she would turn back angrily into the close, dingy room and vent\nher anger on the first person who crossed her path. This usually\nhappened to be a boy of ten or eleven years, who was not her own child,\nbut who had lived in her house ever since he was a baby. This little\nfellow, known only by the name of \"Stupid Rudi,\" was so lean and gaunt\nlooking that one would have taken him to be scarcely eight years old.\nHis timid, shrinking manner made it difficult to tell what kind of a\nlooking boy he really was, for he never took his eyes from the ground\nwhen any one spoke to him.\n\nRudi had never known a mother; she had died when he was hardly two\nyears old, and shortly afterward his father had met with an accident\nwhen returning from the mountain one evening. He had been wild haying,\nand, seeking to reach home by a short cut, had lost his footing and\nfallen over a precipice. The fall lamed him, and after that he was not\nfit for any other work but braiding mats, which he sold in the big\nhotel on Mt. Seelis. Little Rudi never saw his father otherwise than\nsitting on a low stool with a straw mat on his knees. \"Lame Rudolph\"\nwas the name the man went by. Now he had been dead six years. After his\nwife's death he had rented a little corner in Joe's house for himself\nand boy to sleep in, and the little fellow had remained there ever\nsince. The few pennies paid by the community for Rudi's support were\nvery acceptable to Joe's wife, and the extra space in his bedroom,\nafter the father's death, was eagerly seized for two of her own boys,\nwho had scarcely had sleeping room for some time.\n\nRudi had been by nature a shy, quiet little fellow. The father, after\nthe loss of his wife and the added misfortune of being crippled,\nlost all spirit; little as he had been given to talking before his\nmisfortune, he was even more silent afterward.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nSo little Rudi would sit beside his father for whole days without\nhearing a word spoken, and did not himself learn to speak for a long\ntime. After his father died and he belonged altogether to Joe's\nhousehold, he hardly ever spoke at all. He was scolded and pushed about\nby everybody, but he never thought of resisting; it was not in his\nnature to fight. The children did what they pleased to him, and besides\ntheir abuse he had to bear the woman's scoldings, especially when she\nwas in a bad temper about the neat little house across the stream. But\nRudi did not rebel, for he had the feeling that the whole world was\nagainst him, so what good would it do? With all this the boy in time\ngrew so shy that it seemed as though he hardly noticed what was going\non about him, and he usually gave no answer when any one spoke to\nhim. He seemed, in fact, to be always looking for some hole that he\nmight crawl into, where he would never be found again.\n\nSo it had come about that the older children, Jopp, Hans, Uli, and\nthe girl Lisi, often said to him, \"What a stupid Rudi you are!\" and\nthe four little ones began saying it as soon as they could talk. As\nRudi never tried to deny it, all the people in time assumed that it\nmust be so, and he was known throughout the neighborhood simply as\n\"Stupid Rudi.\" And it really seemed as though the boy could not attend\nto anything properly as the other children did. If he was sent along\nwith the other boys to herd cows, he would immediately hunt up a hedge\nor a bush and hide behind it. There he would sit trembling with fear,\nfor he could hear the other boys hunting him and calling to him to\ncome and join their game. The games always ended with a great deal of\nthumping and thrashing, of which Rudi invariably got the worst, because\nhe would not defend himself, and, in fact, could not defend himself\nagainst the many stronger boys. So he crept away and hid as quickly as\nhe could; meanwhile his cows wandered where they pleased and grazed on\nthe neighbors' fields. This was sure to make trouble, and all agreed\nthat Rudi was too stupid even to herd cows, and no one would engage\nhim any more. In the field work there was the same trouble. When the\nboys were hired to weed potatoes they thought it great fun to pelt each\nother with bunches of potato blossoms,--it made the time pass more\nquickly,--and of course each one paid back generously what he got. Rudi\nalone gave back nothing, but looked about anxiously in all directions\nto see who had hit him. That was exactly what amused the other boys;\nand so, amid shouts and laughter, he was pelted from all sides,--on\nhis head, his back, or wherever the balls might strike. But while the\nothers had time to work in the intervals, Rudi did nothing but dodge\nand hide behind the potato bushes. So at this work he was a failure,\ntoo, and young and old agreed that Rudi was too stupid for any kind of\nwork, and that Rudi would never amount to anything. As he could earn\nnothing and would never amount to anything, he was treated accordingly\nby Joe's wife. Her own four little ones had hardly enough to eat, and\nso it usually happened that for Rudi there was nothing at all and he\nwas told, \"You can find something; you are old enough.\"\n\nHow he really existed no one knew, not even Joe's wife; yet he had\nalways managed somehow. He never begged; he would not do that; but\nmany a good woman would hand out a piece of bread or a potato to\nthe poor, starved little fellow as he went stealing by her door, not\nventuring to look up, much less to ask for anything. He had never in\nhis life had enough to eat, but still that was not so hard for him as\nthe persecution and derision he had to take from the other boys. As he\ngrew older he became more and more sensitive to their ridicule, and his\nmain thought at all times was to escape notice as much as possible. As\nhe was never seen to take any part with the other children in work or\nplay, people took it for granted that he was incapable of doing what\nthe others did, and they declared that he was growing more stupid from\nday to day.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER II\n\n                         IN THE UPPER PASTURE\n\n\nOn a pleasant summer afternoon when the flies were dancing gayly in\nthe sun, all the boys and girls of the Hillside were running about so\nexcitedly that it was evident there was something particular on hand\nfor that day. Jopp, the oldest one of them all, was leader of the\nassembly, and when all the company had come together he announced that\nthey would now go to the dairy hut in the upper pasture, for this was\nthe day for a \"cheese party.\" But first of all they must decide who was\nto stay below and watch the cows while the others went to the party.\nThat was, of course, a difficult question, for no one was inclined\nto sacrifice himself for the sake of the others and stay behind. Uli\nsuggested that they might for once make Rudi take care of the cows, and\nin order to keep him mindful of his duties they had best thrash him\nbeforehand. His suggestion met with approval, and some of the leaders\nwere already starting off to find the victim, when Lisi's voice was\nheard shrilly screaming above the others: \"I think Uli's notion is a\nvery stupid one, for we'll all have to pay for it when we come home and\nfind the cows strayed off. You don't suppose that if Rudi is too stupid\nto watch two cows he would suddenly be smart enough to take care of\ntwenty! We must draw lots and three of us must stay here with the cows.\nThat's the only way.\"\n\nLisi's argument was convincing. The company took her advice, and three\nof the number were sentenced to stay behind, Uli himself being one of\nthose upon whom the unhappy lot fell. Mumbling and grumbling he turned\nhis back upon the exultant throng and sat down upon the ground,--the\nother two beside him,--while the rest, with shouts and laughter, went\nscampering up the mountain, wild with expectation.\n\nThe boys were always notified by Franz Martin of the coming of cheese\nday, and they, in turn, never failed to remind him if they thought he\nmight forget, for it was a gala occasion to them. It was the day when\nFranz Martin trimmed his fresh cheeses, after these had been pressed,\na soft mass, into the round wooden forms. When the weight was laid\nupon it some of the cheesy mass would be pressed out from the edge of\nthe mold in the form of a long, snow-white sausage. This was trimmed\noff, broken into pieces, and distributed among the children by the\ngood-natured dairyman. The festival of cheese distribution occurred\nevery two weeks throughout the summer and was hailed each time with\nloud expressions of joy.\n\nWhile the children were settling their plans Rudi had been hiding\nbehind a big thistle bush. He kept very quiet and did not move until\nhe heard the whole company racing up the mountain; then he looked out\nvery cautiously. The three who had been blackballed sat sulking on the\nground with their backs toward him. The others were some distance up\nthe mountain; their shouting and yodeling rang out merrily from above.\nRudi, hearing their shouts, was suddenly seized with an overwhelming\ndesire to join the cheese party. He stole out from behind the bush,\ncast a swift glance over toward the three grumblers, and then, softly\nand lightly as a weasel, slipped up the mountain side.\n\nAfter scrambling up the last steep ascent he came upon a little fresh\ngreen plateau, and there stood the dairy hut; close beside it Clear\nBrook went tumbling down the <DW72>. In the door of his hut stood Franz\nMartin with round, smiling face, laughing at the strange capers that\nthe boys and girls were making in their efforts to get to the feast.\nThey had all reached the hut and were pushing one another forward in\norder to be as close as possible when the distribution should begin.\n\n\"Gently, gently,\" laughed Franz Martin; \"if you all crowd into the hut,\nI shall have no room to cut the cheese, and that will be your loss.\"\n\nThen he took a stout knife and went to the great round cheese that he\nhad ready on the table. He trimmed it off quickly and came out with a\nlong, snow-white roll, and, breaking off pieces from it, passed them\nabout here and there, sometimes over the heads of the taller ones to\nthe little fellows who could not push forward,--for Franz Martin wanted\nto be just and fair in his distribution.\n\nRudi had been standing in the outermost row, and when he tried to push\nforward he got a thump now on one side and now on the other. So he ran\nfrom side to side; but Franz Martin did not see him at all, because\nsome bigger, stouter boy always crowded in ahead of him. Finally he\ngot such a fierce blow from big, burly Jopp that he was flung far off\nto one side, almost turning a somersault before he got his footing. He\nsaw that the distribution was almost at an end and that he was not to\nget even a tiny bit of cheese roll, so he did not propose to get any\nmore thumps. He went off by himself down the <DW72>, where some young\nfir trees stood, and sat down under them. On the tallest of these trees\na little bird was whistling forth gayly into the bright heavens, as\nthough there were nothing else in the world but blue skies and sunshine.\n\nRudi, listening to the glad song, almost forgot his troubles of a\nmoment ago; but he could not help looking over occasionally to the\nhut, where the shouting and laughter continued as the children chased\neach other about, trying to snatch pieces of cheese from each other.\nWhen Rudi saw them biting off delicious mouthfuls of the snowy mass,\nhe would sigh and say to himself, \"Oh, if I could only have a little\ntaste!\" for he had never had a single bite of cheese roll; never before\nhad he even ventured so far as to join a party. But it availed him\nnothing, even if he summoned forth all his courage, as he had to-day,\nand so he came to the melancholy conclusion that he would never in his\nlife get a taste of cheese roll. The thought was so disheartening to\nhim that he no longer heard the song of the little bird, but sat under\nthe bushes quite hopeless.\n\nNow the feast at the hut was ended and the revelers came down the\n<DW72> with a rush, each one trying to get ahead of the others, their\neagerness leading to many a roll and tumble down the steep places. As\nHans went shouting past the group of fir trees he discovered Rudi half\nhidden under them.\n\n\"Come out of there, old mole! You must play with us!\" he shouted; and\nRudi understood what he was expected to \"play\" with them.\n\nHe was to stand as block, so that the others might jump over him. He\nwas usually knocked over at every jump, and he would much rather have\nstayed in his little retreat; but he knew what was in store for him if\nhe did not follow their commands, so he came out obediently.\n\n\"How much cheese roll did you get?\" Hans yelled at him.\n\n\"None,\" answered Rudi.\n\n\"What a simpleton!\" yelled Hans still louder. \"He comes up here\nexpressly to get cheese roll, and then he goes away without any!\"\n\n\"You stupid Rudi!\" they shouted at him from all sides, and the big boys\nbegan jumping over him, so that he had hard work getting on his feet as\nfast as they knocked him over. Sometimes he would roll down the hill\nwith a whole clump of them, and they would all continue rolling until\nsome chance obstacle brought them to their feet once more. After their\nboisterous descent they all ran in different directions, each one to\nseek his own cows. Rudi ran off by himself, far away from them all,\nfor now he expected even worse treatment from the three unfortunates,\nbecause he had deserted them. He slipped down the hill to the swamp\nhole, and crouched down so that he could not be seen from above or\nbelow.\n\nThe swamp hole was a hollow where water gathered in spring and fall and\nmade the ground swampy. Now it was quite dry,--a pleasant spot, where\nfine, dark red strawberries ripened in the warm sun that beat against\nthe side of the hollow. But Rudi trembled as long as he was in the\nneighborhood of houses and herd boys, for the latter might discover\nhim at any moment and renew their persecutions. He sat there trembling\nat every sound, for he kept thinking, \"Now they are coming after\nme.\" Suddenly he was filled with a delightful memory of the little\nnook under the fir trees and of the whistling bird overhead. He felt\nirresistibly drawn to it; he must go back to that spot.\n\nHe ran with all his might up the mountain, never stopping once until he\nhad reached the group of trees and had slipped in under them. The only\nopening in this retreat was on the outer side, toward the valley, so he\nfelt safely hidden. All around him was great silence; no sound came up\nfrom below; only the little bird was still whistling its merry tune.\nThe sun was setting; the high snow peaks began to glimmer and to glow,\nand over the whole green alp lay the golden evening light. Rudi looked\nabout him in silent wonder; an unknown feeling of security and comfort\ncame over him. Here he was safe; there was no one to be seen or heard\nin any direction.\n\nHe sat there a long time and would have liked never to go away again,\nfor he had never felt so happy in his life. But he heard heavy steps\ncoming from the hut behind him. It was the herdsman; he was coming\nalong carrying a small bucket; he was probably going to the stream to\nfetch water. Rudi tried to be as quiet as a mouse, for he was so used\nto having every one scold and ridicule him that he thought the herdsman\nwould do the same, or at least would drive him away. He huddled down\nunder the bushes; but the branches crackled. Franz Martin listened,\nthen came over and looked under the fir trees.\n\n\"What are you doing in there, half buried in the ground?\" asked the\nherdsman with smiling face.\n\n\"Nothing,\" answered Rudi in a faint voice that trembled with fear.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\"Come out, child! You need not be afraid, if you have done nothing\nwrong. Why are you hiding? Did you creep in here with your cheese\nroll so that you could eat it in peace?\"\n\n\"No; I had no cheese roll,\" said Rudi, still trembling.\n\n\"You didn't? and why not?\" asked the herdsman in a tone of voice that\nno one had ever used toward Rudi before, arousing an altogether new\nfeeling in him,--trust in a human being.\n\n\"They pushed me away,\" he answered, as he arose from his hiding place.\n\n\"There, now,\" continued the friendly herdsman; \"I can at least see you.\nCome a little nearer. And why don't you defend yourself when they push\nyou away? They all push each other, but every one manages to get a\nturn, and why not you?\"\n\n\"They are stronger,\" said Rudi, so convincingly that Franz Martin could\noffer no further argument in the matter. He now got a good look at the\nboy, who stood before the stalwart herdsman like a little stick before\na great pine tree. The strong man looked down pityingly at the meager\nlittle figure, that seemed actually mere skin and bones; out of the\npale, pinched face two big eyes looked up timidly.\n\n\"Whose boy are you?\" asked the herdsman.\n\n\"Nobody's,\" was the answer.\n\n\"But you must have a home somewhere. Where do you live?\"\n\n\"With Poor Grass Joe.\"\n\nFranz Martin began to understand. \"Ah! so you are that one,\" he said,\nas if remembering something; for he had often heard of Stupid Rudi, who\nwas of no use to anybody, and was too dull even to herd a cow.\n\n\"Come along with me,\" he said sympathetically; \"if you live with Joe,\nno wonder you look like a little spear of grass yourself. Come! the\ncheese roll is all gone, but we'll find something else.\"\n\nRudi hardly knew what was happening to him. He followed after Franz\nMartin because he had been told to, but it seemed as though he were\ngoing to some pleasure, and that was something altogether new to him.\nFranz Martin went into the hut, and taking down a round loaf of bread\nfrom an upper shelf, he cut a big slice across the whole loaf. Then he\nwent to the huge ball of butter, shining like a lump of gold in the\ncorner, and hacked off a generous piece. This he spread over the bread\nand then handed the thickly buttered slice to Rudi. Never in all his\nlife had the boy had anything like it. He looked at it as though it\ncould not possibly belong to him.\n\n\"Come outside and eat it; I must go for water,\" said Franz Martin,\nwhile he watched with twinkling eyes the expression of joy and\namazement on the child's face. Rudi obeyed. Outside he sat down on\nthe ground, and while the herdsman went over to Clear Brook he took\na big bite into his bread, and then another and another, and could\nnot understand how there could be anything in the world so delicious,\nand how he could have it, and how there could still be some of it\nleft,--for it was a huge piece. The evening breeze played softly about\nhis head and swayed the young fir trees to and fro, where the little\nbird was still sitting on its topmost branch and singing forth into the\ngolden evening sky. Rudi's heart swelled with unknown happiness and he\nfelt like singing with the little bird.\n\nFranz Martin had meanwhile gone back and forth several times with his\nlittle pail. Each time he had stood awhile by the stream and looked\nabout him. The mountains no longer glowed with the evening light, but\nnow the moon rose full and golden from behind the white peaks. The\nherdsman came back to the hut and stood beside Rudi, who was still\nsitting quietly in the same spot.\n\n\"You like it here, do you?\" he asked with a smile. \"You have finished\nyour supper, I see. What do you say to going home? See how the moon has\ncome to light your way.\"\n\nRudi had really had no thought of leaving, but now he realized that\nit would probably be necessary. He arose, thanked Franz Martin once\nmore, and started off. But he got no farther than the little fir trees;\nsomething held him back. He looked around once more, and finding that\nthe herdsman had gone into the cottage and could not see him, he\nslipped in quickly under the shadowy bushes. Franz Martin was the only\nperson in all the world who had ever been kind or sympathetic toward\nhim. This had so touched the boy that he could not go away; he felt\nhe must stay near this good man. Hidden by the branches, Rudi peeped\nthrough an opening to see if he might not get another glimpse of his\nfriend.\n\nAfter a little while Franz Martin did come out again. He stood before\nthe door of his hut and with folded arms looked out over the silent\nmountain world as it lay before him in the soft moonlight. The face of\nthe herdsman, too, was illumined by the gentle light. Any one seeing\nthe face at that moment, with its expression of peaceful happiness,\nwould have been the better for it. The man folded his hands; he seemed\nto be saying a silent evening prayer. Suddenly he said in a loud\nvoice, \"God give you good night,\" and went into his hut and closed the\ndoor. The good-night message must have been for his old friends the\nmountains, and the people whom he held in his heart, though he could\nnot see them. Rudi had been looking on with silent awe. If Franz Martin\nattracted every one who ever knew him by his serene, pleasant ways,\nwhat love and admiration must he have aroused in the heart of little\nRudi, whose only friend and benefactor he was!\n\nWhen all was dark and quiet in the hut, Rudi rose and ran down the\nmountain as fast as he could.\n\nIt was late, and there was no light to be seen in the cottage; but\nhe did not mind, for he knew the door was never locked. He went\nquietly into the house and crept into his bed, which he shared with\nUli. The latter was now sleeping heavily, after having expressed his\nsatisfaction at Rudi's absence by exclaiming, \"How lucky that Rudi\nis getting too stupid even to find his bed! I have room to sleep in\ncomfort for once.\"\n\nRudi lay down quietly, and until his eyes closed he still saw Franz\nMartin before him, standing in the moonlight with folded hands. For the\nfirst time in his life Rudi fell asleep with a happy heart.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n                          A MINISTERING ANGEL\n\n\nThe following day was Sunday. The community of the Hillside belonged\nto the Beckenried church in the valley. It was a long walk to church,\nbut the children were obliged to go to Sunday school regularly, for\nthe pastor was stern in insisting that the children must be properly\nbrought up. So on that day the whole troop wended its way as usual down\nthe hill, and soon they were all sitting as quietly as possible on the\nlong wooden benches in church. Other groups had assembled; the pastor\ngot them all settled, and then began. He said that he had told them the\nlast time about the life hereafter, and as his glance fell on Rudi, he\ncontinued: \"Now, Rudi, I will ask you something that you can surely\nanswer, even if we cannot expect much of you. Where will all good\nChristians--even the poorest and lowliest of us, if we have led good\nlives--finally be so happy as to know no more sorrow?\"\n\n\"In the hut of the high pasture,\" Rudi replied without hesitating.\n\nBut he heard snickering all about him and looked around timidly.\nMocking faces met him on every side and the children all seemed\nbursting with suppressed laughter. Rudi bent down his head as though he\nwished to crawl into the floor. Of the pastor's previous lesson he had\nheard nothing, because he had been engaged the whole hour in dodging\nsly attacks from the rear. Now he had answered the question entirely\nfrom his own experience.\n\nThe pastor looked at him steadily; but when he saw that Rudi had no\nthought of laughing, but was sitting there in fear and mortification,\nhe shook his head doubtfully and said, \"There is nothing to be done\nwith him.\"\n\nWhen the lesson was over the whole crowd came running after Rudi,\nlaughing noisily and shouting, \"Rudi, were you dreaming of the cheese\nparty in Sunday school?\" and \"Rudi, why didn't you tell about cheese\nrolls?\"\n\nThe boy ran away like a hunted rabbit, trying to escape from his noisy\ntormentors. He ran up the hill, where he knew the others would not\npursue him, for they meant to pass the pleasant summer afternoon down\nin the village.\n\nHe ran farther and farther up the mountain. For all his trials he had\nnow a solace: he could fly to the upper pasture and console himself\nwith the sight of Franz Martin's friendly face. There he could sit\nvery quietly in his little retreat and be safe from pursuit. As he sat\nthere to-day under the fir trees, the little bird was again singing\noverhead. The snow peaks glistened in the sun, and here and there a\nclear mountain stream made its way between green <DW72>s of verdure.\n\nRudi breathed a sigh of contentment as he looked over the peaceful\nscene. He forgot all about his recent tormentors and was conscious\nonly of the one wish,--that he might never have to leave this spot\nagain. Now and then he got a glimpse of Franz Martin, for whom he was\ncontinually watching. Then he would crouch down and make himself as\nsmall as possible, for he had the feeling that if Franz Martin should\nfind him here again he might think he had come to get another piece of\nbread and butter, while really it was only because this man was the\nfirst and only person who had ever been friendly and kind to him, so\nthat he felt happier in his presence than anywhere else in the world.\nThe herdsman did not discover him, and Rudi sat in his little nook\nuntil the stars came out and Franz Martin stepped forth from his hut\nagain and said, \"God give you good night.\"\n\nThen at last Rudi ran home. It was late, as on the evening before, when\nhe found his bed; but to-night he was hungry, for he had had nothing\nsince morning. He did not mind it very much, though, he had been so\nhappy on the mountain.\n\nSo a whole week passed. Whenever Rudi thought no one was watching him\nhe ran up the alp and slipped into his hiding place. There he would\nobserve the doings of the herdsman from moment to moment, and never\nwould he leave his hiding place until Franz Martin had said, \"God give\nyou good night.\" It seemed to him now as though the evening blessing\nwere meant for him, too.\n\nThe days that followed were exceptionally warm. The sun rose each\nmorning in a sky as cloudless as that in which it had sunk the night\nbefore. The pasturage was especially fine, and Franz Martin got such\nrich milk from the cows that he turned out most excellent cheeses. That\npleased him, and his happy whistle could be heard from earliest dawn\nto evening as he went about his work. On Saturday of this week he was\nat work even earlier than usual, for this was one of the days when he\nwas to carry three or four of the cheeses down to the lake and have\nthem shipped. Soon he had them packed and strapped to his back and was\ntrudging in happy mood down the mountain, alpenstock in hand. It was\nthe hottest day of the whole summer.\n\nThe farther down he went the more he was oppressed by the excessive\nheat, and many times he said to himself, \"Oh, how glad I shall be to\nget back to my hut this evening in the cool upper air! Down here it is\nlike an oven.\"\n\nHe reached the landing place just as the boat came in that was to\ncarry the cheese. His business was quickly settled, and then he stood\na moment thinking whether he should go right back up the mountain or\nstop for something to eat. But he had no appetite; his head was hot and\nheavy and he wished only to get back. Then some one touched his arm. It\nwas one of the ship hands who had just helped load the boat.\n\n\"Come, Franz Martin; it is a warm day; we'll go in the shade and have\na glass of wine,\" he said, as he drew the herdsman toward the tavern\nwhere the big trees stood.\n\nFranz Martin was hot and thirsty and was not averse to sitting down a\nlittle while in the shade. He emptied his glass at one draught; but\nin a few moments he rose, saying that he felt quite oppressed by this\nheavy lower air, and that he was used to cold milk and water and not to\nwine. He took leave of his companion and started off with long strides\nup the mountain. But never had he found the ascent so difficult. The\nnoonday sun beat upon his head, his pulse throbbed, and his feet were\nso heavy that he could scarcely lift them. But he kept on resolutely.\nThe steeper the alp the longer grew his strides, and he spurred himself\non with the prospect that now there was only an hour, now a half hour,\nand at last only a quarter hour of hot climbing before him; then he\nwould be at home and could lie down to rest on the fresh hay.\n\nNow he had reached the last steep ascent. The sun burned like fire on\nhis head; suddenly all grew dark before his eyes; he swayed and fell\nheavily to the ground--he had lost consciousness.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen the milker came in the evening he found that Franz Martin had not\nyet returned. He set the milk down in the corner and went away; he\nnever thought of looking about for the dairyman. But there was some\none else there who had been looking for Franz Martin for a long time,\nand that was Rudi. The boy had been sitting in his retreat for several\nhours. He knew every step the herdsman had to make and how his duties\nfollowed one after another; he was very much surprised to see how long\nFranz Martin left the milk standing to-day, for he had always poured it\nimmediately into the various vessels. Some of it, for buttering, was\npoured into the big round pans and left to stand until all the cream\nrose to the top in a thick layer; the rest of it was poured into the\ncheese kettle. All this Rudi had seen from day to day through the open\nhouse door.\n\nStill the herdsman did not come. The boy began to feel that there was\nsomething wrong. He came out very softly from his hiding place and went\ntoward the hut. Here all was still and deserted, in the lower room\nas well as in the hayloft above. There was no fire crackling under\nthe kettle; not a sound was to be heard; everything seemed dead. Rudi\nran anxiously around the outside of the hut, up and down, and in all\ndirections. Then, suddenly, down on the path he spied Franz Martin\nlying on the ground. He ran toward the spot. There lay his friend with\nclosed eyes, groaning and languishing in great distress. He was fiery\nhot and his lips were dry and hard. Rudi stood and stared for a moment,\npale with fright, at his benefactor. Then he ran down the mountain as\nfast as he could run.\n\nFranz Martin had been lying on the ground unconscious for many hours; a\nterrible fever had come upon him. He was tortured by awful thirst. Now\nand then it seemed to him in his fever that he was coming to water and\nwas about to bend over and drink. In his efforts to get at the water\nhe would wake up for a moment, for it had only been delirium. Then he\nfound himself still lying on the ground, unable to move, and longing in\nvain for a drop of water. He would lose consciousness again and dream\nhe was lying down in the swamp where he had seen the fine strawberries\nas he passed this morning. There he saw them hanging still. Oh, how he\nlonged for them! He put out his hand, but in vain,--he could not reach\nthem. But presently he had one in his mouth; an angel was kneeling\nbeside him and had given it to him,--one, and another, and another. Oh,\nhow good the juice tasted in his parched mouth! Franz Martin licked and\nsmacked his lips over the refreshing morsel. He awoke. Was it really\ntrue? was he really awake? It was no dream; there knelt the angel\nbeside him and laid another big, juicy strawberry in his mouth.\n\n\"Oh, you good angel, another one!\" said Franz Martin softly; but not\none only,--five, six, the angel put into his mouth, and Franz Martin\neagerly devoured them. Suddenly a look of pain shot over his face; he\nlaid his hand on his forehead and could only murmur, \"Water,\" before\nhe became quite unconscious again; he could not even eat the last\nstrawberry.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nHe dreamed most horrible things: his head grew as big as his very\nlargest ball of butter, and then grew still larger and so very heavy\nthat he thought in terror, \"I shall not be able to carry it alone; they\nwill have to hold it up with props,--like an overloaded apple tree.\"\nAnd then he felt quite plainly that his head was full of gunpowder;\nsome one had lighted it from behind and now it was burning with awful\nfury and soon would blow everything to pieces. Then suddenly Clear\nBrook came running down over his brow, cool and invigorating, then\nover his whole face and into his mouth; and Franz Martin swallowed and\nswallowed, and awoke to consciousness.\n\nIt was quite true,--shower after shower of icy water ran over his face;\nthen he felt something at his mouth like a little bowl, and he greedily\ndrank the cool water. Over him were the twinkling stars. These he could\nsee plainly, and also that he was still lying out on the open ground.\nBut it could not be Clear Brook that was flowing over him and giving\nhim drink. He could not make out what it was, but it felt very good and\nrefreshing, and he murmured gratefully, \"O blessed Father, how I thank\nyou for your kindness and for this ministering angel!\"\n\nAt last he felt something on his brow, so cool and comforting that he\nsaid, \"Now the fire cannot get through,\" and contentedly fell asleep\nand dreamed no more.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER IV\n\n                        AS THE MOTHER WISHES IT\n\n\nThe sun was rising in splendor from behind the high peaks when Franz\nMartin opened his eyes and looked about him confusedly. He shivered a\nlittle,--he felt chilly. He wanted to sit up, but his head was heavy\nand dull. He put his hand to his brow; it seemed as though there was\nsomething lying on it. And he was not mistaken; sixfold, wet and heavy,\nhis big kerchief that he had left in the hut lay upon his head. He\npushed it away, and as the cool morning breeze played across his brow\nhe felt so refreshed and strengthened that he sat up quickly and looked\nabout him. He met a pair of big, serious eyes fixed steadfastly upon\nhim.\n\n\"Are you here, Rudi?\" he asked in surprise. \"How did you get up so\nearly? But now that you are here, come closer, so that I can lean on\nyour shoulder; I am dizzy and cannot get up alone.\"\n\nRudi sprang up from his seat and went close to the herdsman. He braced\nhis feet on the ground with all his might so that Franz Martin would\nhave a firm support in him. In the toilsome ascent to the hut the\nherdsman, still leaning on the boy's shoulder, began to recall one\nthing after another that had occurred to him; but there were various\nincidents for which he could not account. Perhaps Rudi could help him\nout.\n\nOn reaching the hut Franz Martin sat down on one of the three-legged\nstools and said: \"Rudi, bring the other stool and sit down by me. But\nfirst get down the big jar and we will have a good drink of cold milk\ntogether, for I cannot make a fire yet. There is a little bowl beside\nit; see--\" He stopped and looked about in surprise. \"But what has\nbecome of it? I always set it up there; I don't know what has happened\nto me since yesterday.\"\n\nRudi's face turned fiery red; he knew well enough who had taken down\nthe little bowl. He said timidly, \"It is down there on the ground,\" and\nran and fetched it; then he brought the milk jar, and set them both\ndown before Franz Martin.\n\nThe latter shook his head in perplexity. As long as he had lived he had\nnever set his bowl on the ground there by the door. He drank his milk\nsilently and thoughtfully, filled the bowl afresh, and said: \"Come,\nRudi, you drink, too. You have done me a good service in coming up so\nearly. Did you think there might be cheese rolls to-day, and you would\nbe here first?\"\n\n\"No; truly I did not,\" protested Rudi.\n\n\"Well, tell me this,\" continued the herdsman, who had been looking\nnow at the wet cloth that lay on the table, now at the little water\npail that stood waiting at the door as if ready to start out,--\"tell\nme, Rudi, did I have the cloth on my head when you came up early this\nmorning?\"\n\nRudi turned scarlet, for he thought that if Franz Martin heard all that\nhe had done perhaps he would not be pleased; but the man was looking\nhim so earnestly in the eyes that he had to tell all. \"I laid it on\nyour head,\" he began bashfully.\n\n\"But why, Rudi?\" asked the herdsman in surprise.\n\n\"Because you were so hot,\" answered Rudi.\n\nFranz Martin was more and more astonished. \"But I was awake at sunrise.\nWhen did you come up?\"\n\n\"Yesterday at five, or perhaps four, o'clock,\" stammered Rudi timidly.\n\"The milker did not come until long afterward.\"\n\n\"What! you were up here all night? What did you do or want here?\"\n\nBut the herdsman saw that Rudi was quite terrified. The visions of the\nnight recurred to him, and with fatherly kindness he patted the boy's\nshoulder and said encouragingly, \"With me you need not be afraid, Rudi.\nHere, drink another glass of milk and then tell me everything that\nhappened from the time that you got here.\"\n\nCheered thus, Rudi took new courage. He drank the milk in long\ndraughts; it tasted delicious to the hungry, thirsty boy. Then he began\nto relate: \"I came up here to sit in the bushes a little while, but\nonly as I did every day, not on account of the cheese rolls. And then,\nafter the milker had brought the milk and you did not come for so long,\nI looked for you, and I found you on the ground, and you were red and\nhot and seemed thirsty. So I ran down quickly to the swamp and got all\nthe big strawberries I could find and brought them up to you, and you\nwere glad for them. But you pointed to your head and wanted water on\nit. I fetched the little bowl out of the hut, and the pail, and filled\nthem at the brook, and poured the water over your head and gave you to\ndrink, for you were very thirsty. Whenever the pail was empty I went\nto the brook and filled it; but because the water ran off your head so\nfast I thought a heavy cloth would keep wet a long time. So I got the\ncloth out of the hut and laid it thick and wet on your head and dipped\nit in the pail whenever it got dry and hot; and then at last you awoke\nwhen it was morning, and I was very glad. I was afraid you might get\nvery sick.\"\n\nFranz Martin had been listening with earnest attention. Now everything\nthat he had gone through in the night was plain to him,--how he thought\nan angel had come to him with strawberries, and how he afterward\nenjoyed the water of Clear Brook as the real water of life. Franz\nMartin sat and gazed at Rudi in dumb amazement, as though he had never\nseen a boy before. Such a boy as this he had certainly never seen.\nHow was it possible, he said to himself, that this boy, whom every\none, young and old, never called anything else but \"Stupid Rudi,\"\nhad been clever enough to save his life, which had certainly been in\ngreat danger?--for what a fever had been consuming him the herdsman\nknew perfectly well. Had Rudi not quieted this fever with his cooling\nshowers, who knows what might have developed by morning? And how could\nthis boy, whom no one thought worthy of a friendly word, be capable of\nsuch self-sacrifice that he would sit up and care for him all night?\n\nTears came to the eyes of the big, stalwart man as he looked at the\ntimid, despised little fellow, and thought this all over. Then he took\nthe boy by the hand and said: \"We will be good friends, Rudi; I have\nmuch to thank you for and I shall not forget it. Do me one more favor.\nI am so weak and shaky that I must lie down and rest. You go down to\nmy mother and tell her to come to me. Say that I am not quite well.\nBut you must come back with her, for I have much to talk over with you\nto-day. Don't forget.\"\n\nIn his whole life Rudi had never been so happy. He ran down the\nmountain, leaping and skipping for joy. Franz Martin had himself told\nhim to come again, and now he need no longer hide, but might walk right\ninto the hut, and, better still, Franz Martin had said that he would be\ngood friends with him. At each new thought Rudi leaped high into the\nair, and before he knew it he had reached the Hillside. Just as he was\ncoming down from above in jumps toward the neat little cottage with\nthe shining windows, Frau Vincenze came up from below in her Sunday\nclothes, prayer book in hand. The boy ran toward her, but for several\nmoments could say nothing; he was quite out of breath with running.\n\n\"Where do you come from?\" said the proper little woman disapprovingly,\nas she looked the boy over from head to foot. She thought that Sunday\nshould be fittingly observed, and Rudi presented anything but a\nholiday appearance in his little, old, ragged trousers and shirt. \"I\nthink I have seen you across the stream,\" she said; \"you must belong to\nPoor Grass Joe?\"\n\n\"No, I am only Rudi,\" the boy replied very humbly.\n\nThen it occurred to the woman that Joe's wife had a foolish boy in\nher house, who would never be of any use, people said. This was\nprobably the boy. \"But what do you want of me?\" she asked in growing\nastonishment.\n\nRudi had found his breath again and now delivered his message clearly\nand correctly. The mother was very much alarmed. Never before had her\nsturdy Franz Martin had any illness, and that he should now send for\nher, instead of coming down himself, was to her a very bad indication.\nWithout saying a word she went into the house, carefully packed\neverything that she thought they might need, and in a few moments came\nout with a big basket on her arm.\n\n\"Come,\" she said to Rudi; \"we will start right up. Why must you go\nback?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" he answered shyly, and then added hesitatingly, as\nthough he were afraid it might be something wrong, \"Must I not carry\nthe basket?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes! I understand,\" the mother said to herself; \"Franz Martin\nthought that I should be bringing all sorts of remedies, and the boy\nwas to carry them for me.\"\n\nShe gave Rudi the basket. Silently she walked beside him up the\nmountain, for her thoughts were troubled. Her son was her pride\nand joy; and was he really ill,--perhaps dangerously so? Her alarm\nincreased as she approached the hut. Her knees trembled so that she\ncould hardly keep up.\n\nShe entered the hut. There was no one there. She looked all about,\nthen up into the hayloft. There lay her son buried in the hay; she\ncould hardly see him. With beating heart she climbed the ladder. Rudi\nremained respectfully standing outside the door after he had shoved the\nbasket inside. As the mother bent anxiously over her son he opened his\nblue eyes, cheerily stretched forth his hand, and sitting up, said:\n\"God bless you, mother! I am glad you have come. I have been sleeping\nlike a bear ever since Rudi went away.\"\n\nThe mother stared at her son, half pleased, half terrified. She did not\nknow what to think.\n\n\"Franz Martin,\" she said earnestly, \"what is wrong with you? Are you\ntalking in delirium, or do you know that you sent for me?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, mother,\" laughed Franz Martin; \"my mind is clear now and the\nfever is past. But my limbs were all atremble; I could not come down to\nyou, and I wanted so much to talk to you. My knees are shaky even now,\nand I could not get very far.\"\n\n\"But what is it? What was it? Tell me about it,\" urged the mother,\nsitting down on the hay beside her son.\n\n\"I will explain it all to you, mother, just as it happened,\" he said\nquietly, as he leaned back against the hay; \"but first look at that\npoor, gaunt, little boy down there, who hasn't a decent garment to his\nname, whom no one thinks worthy of a kind word, and who is known only\nas 'Stupid Rudi.'\"\n\nThe mother looked down at Rudi, who was watching the herdsman with much\nconcern to see whether he was going to faint again.\n\n\"Well, and then?\" asked the mother intently.\n\n\"He saved my life, mother. If it had not been for this little boy, I\nshould still be lying out on the ground in deadly fever, or it might\neven be all ended with me by this time.\"\n\nThen Franz Martin told her everything that had happened since the\nafternoon before,--how Rudi had stayed with him all night and had cared\nfor him and relieved him from the consuming thirst and fever, and had\ncooled the fire in his head. The cleverest person in the world could\nnot have done it better, and perhaps no other person would have done it\nfor him.\n\nAgain and again the mother had to wipe away her tears. She thought to\nherself, what if her Franz Martin had lain out there all alone and\nforsaken in his agony of thirst, and had been quite consumed by the\nfever, and no one had known anything about him!\n\nThen such joy and gratitude rose in her heart that she cried aloud:\n\"God be thanked! God be thanked!\"\n\nAnd for little Rudi she suddenly felt such a heart full of love that\nshe exclaimed eagerly: \"Franz Martin, Rudi shall not go back to Joe's\nwife! The boy has probably been only half fed, and she has let him\nrun about in dirt and rags. This very day he shall go with me, and\nto-morrow I will make him some decent clothes. He shall not fare poorly\nwith us; we will not forget what he has done for you.\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I wanted, mother, but of course I had to find out\nwhat you would say to it; now you have the same plan as I, and have\nthought it all out in the best possible way. There is nothing in the\nworld like a mother, after all!\"\n\nAnd Franz Martin looked at her so lovingly and happily that it warmed\nher to her heart's core, and she thought to herself, \"Nor is there\nanything in the world like a manly, virtuous son.\" Then she said: \"Now\nyou must eat and get strong again. I have brought fresh eggs and wheat\nbread, and I will go and start the fire. Take your time about coming\ndown\"; which Franz Martin found that he was really obliged to do, for\nhe was still weak and trembling. But he finally succeeded. When he got\ndown he beckoned to Rudi, who had been looking in through the door all\nthis time, to come and sit at the table beside him.\n\n\"Rudi,\" he said, smiling into the boy's eyes, \"do you want to grow up\nto be a dairyman?\"\n\nA look of joy came over Rudi's face, but the next moment it\ndisappeared, for in his ears rang the discouraging words that he had\nheard so many, many times,--\"He will never amount to anything,\" \"He\ncan't do anything,\" \"He will never be of any use,\"--and he answered\ndespondently, \"I can never be anything.\"\n\n\"Rudi, you shall be a dairyman,\" said Franz Martin decisively. \"You\nhave done very well in your first undertaking. Now you shall stay with\nme and carry milk and water and help me in everything, and I will show\nyou how to make butter and cheese, and as soon as you are old enough\nyou shall stand beside me at the kettle and be my helpmate.\"\n\n\"Here, in your hut?\" asked Rudi, to whom the prospect of such happiness\nwas almost incomprehensible.\n\n\"Right here in my hut,\" declared Franz Martin.\n\nIn Rudi's face appeared an expression of such radiant joy that the\nherdsman could not take his eyes from him. The boy seemed transformed.\nThe mother, too, noticed it, as she set on the table before them\nthe big plate of egg omelet that she had just prepared. She patted\nthe boy's head and said, \"Yes, little Rudi, to-day we will be happy\ntogether, and to-morrow, too; and every day we will thank the good God\nthat he brought you to Franz Martin at just the right time, although no\none may know why it was that you came up here.\"\n\nThe happy feast began. Never in his life had Rudi seen so many good\nthings together on a table; for besides the omelet the mother had set\nout fresh wheat bread and a big, golden ball of butter and a piece of\nsnow-white cheese, while in the middle of the table stood a bowl of\ncreamy milk. Of each dish there was a generous portion for Rudi, and\nwhen he had finished one helping there was another ready for him.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nWhen the mother was preparing to go home in the evening she said:\n\"Franz Martin, I have changed my mind. Rudi shall stay up here with you\nuntil you are strong. He can fetch things and be useful to you. I will\narrange matters with Joe's wife.\"\n\nFranz Martin was satisfied, and Rudi's happiness knew no bounds. Now\nhe was really at home with Franz Martin. That night, when the evening\nblessing was said, he was not crouching under the fir trees, but stood\nbeside his friend under the starry sky, as the latter folded his hands\nand said, \"Come, Rudi, we will say our evening prayer.\"\n\nReverently he, too, folded his hands, and when at the close the\nherdsman said, \"God give you good night,\" Rudi's heart was so full\nof joy that he wanted to call out the blessing to everybody in the\nworld,--\"God give you good night!\"\n\nThat very evening the mother went over to Joe's wife. The latter\nwas standing before her house with the three boys and Lisi, and was\ntrying to make out what they were telling her. They were all talking\nat once, and all she could understand was that it was something about\nFranz Martin, whose illness the milker had told them about. When Frau\nVincenze explained why she had come, and said that she and her son had\nagreed to take Rudi as their own child, the woman made a great ado,\nassuring her that they would do far better to take one of her three\nboys, who would be much more help to Franz Martin, a hundred times\nmore, than Stupid Rudi.\n\nAnd the boys all shouted at the top of their voices, \"Me! me! me!\" for\nthey well knew how kind Franz Martin was, and what good things there\nwere to eat in the hut on the mountain. But all their begging and\nclamoring was in vain. Frau Vincenze said very quietly that she was\ndetermined to have Rudi, that she knew him, and that he had more heart\nand sense than many another who called him \"Stupid Rudi.\" Moreover, she\nwanted to warn the boys to be careful henceforth about their jeering\nand gibing, or they would have to settle with Franz Martin and his\nstrong arm. When she left them they all stared after her, dumb and\nstupefied, and each one of the children thought in his heart, \"I wish\nI were Rudi! he'll have fine times,--like a king, up in Franz Martin's\nhut.\"\n\nFrom that day on, whenever the boys saw Rudi anywhere, they ran after\nhim and each one wanted to be his best friend, for they all remembered\nthe last cheese party when Rudi was so badly treated. But now he would\nsurely have all the cheese rolls to himself, and so it would be a good\nthing to be his friend. And later they did find it a good thing, for\nRudi took great delight in dividing the rich harvest of cheese rolls\namong them all. He never ceased wondering at the way all the children\nhad changed toward him, and at their not jeering or laughing at him any\nmore.\n\nWhen he got over being afraid of people, it turned out, to the surprise\nof all, that he was a very apt, nimble little fellow, of whom every\none said, \"Either he is not the same boy, or else we were all wrong in\ncalling him 'Stupid Rudi.'\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                          THE LITTLE RUNAWAY\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                          THE LITTLE RUNAWAY\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                           UNDER THE ALDERS\n\n\nThe Alders is the name of an estate famed for its rich fields and\nsmiling meadows and for its wealth of luscious fruits. Apple and pear\ntrees stand in plenty on its well-kept fields, and if the year be a\ngood one they stand at harvest time with drooping branches, and their\nred and yellow treasure gleams from afar like gold.\n\nAt some distance from the house and barn lies the great pasture land,\nwhere in the sunny autumn days eight sleek cows graze contentedly upon\nthe fragrant grass, making sweet music as they wander to and fro,--for\neach cow wears a little bell about her neck. Sometimes the whole herd\nstarts up together into lively movement; then the pleasant sound is\ncarried far down into the valley and gladdens the heart of the traveler\nupon the highway below.\n\nThrough the middle of the pasture runs a low stone wall that marks the\nboundary line of this farm; for the land beyond belongs to the estate\nof Lindenhof. Halfway down the wall, and close beside it, stand two\ngreat alder trees whose swaying branches cast pleasant shadows on the\nwall and give the estate its name of The Alders.\n\nOn the neighboring farm a mighty linden tree has stood since ancient\ntimes. It guards the dooryard and spreads its branches far out over the\nfarmhouse and the big stone well. From it the estate takes its name of\nLindenhof.\n\nThese two farms, though not especially large, are among the finest of\nall those that lie scattered over the mountain side in the parish of\nBuschweil.\n\nOne morning in September, as the sun lay warm and soft on the wall, a\nlittle girl of about ten years came running across the meadow. In her\nright hand she carried a long switch; with her left she was holding\ntogether the folds of her apron, carefully guarding something within\nthat seemed to be of great value, for she would stop every now and then\nto open the folds, peep inside, and then draw them together again with\na happy smile.\n\nWhen she reached the wall she stopped and looked over into the\nneighboring pasture. Her blue eyes shone forth merrily from her little\nblond head, wreathed about with its two long braids, and fresh and\npink was the little face that turned expectantly from side to side.\nDisappointed at not finding any one there, the little girl dropped the\nswitch from her hand, and, reaching into her apron, brought forth a\nbright red apple, which she set upon the wall. Then she brought out\nanother and another, and still others, until there was a long row of\nthem.\n\n\"Ho! hey! Gretchen!\" came a lusty cry from below; then, amid noise of\nshouting, tinkling bells, and fierce snapping of a whip, a boy came\nrushing up the <DW72>. The cows followed with noisy accompaniment, for\nthe vigorous whipsnapping had brought them along in quite a tumult.\n\n\"Why are you so late?\" Gretchen called out to the boy.\n\n\"Because I--I had--there were so many things--well, I really don't know\nwhy it was.\"\n\nWith these words Renti had reached the wall and now stood breathless\nbefore Gretchen, who had seated herself on the top and was looking down\nat him.\n\n\"Now you see how it is,\" she said; \"and the next time I am late you\nmust be patient. You find that you can't always get here when you\nwish.\"\n\n\"Yes, you are right. I didn't consider before. And then it's always so\nstupid here until you come. Oh, how hot, how hot!\" he cried, throwing\ndown his whip and brushing back his thick brown hair with both hands.\nThen he stretched out full length on the ground and gazed up into the\nblue sky.\n\nGretchen smiled down from her cool seat under the alders.\n\n\"It isn't hot at all, but you have run so fast. Where are the potatoes?\"\n\nRenti pointed to a sack that he had thrown down beside the wall.\n\n\"What fine apples!\" he said, raising his head a little and looking up\napprovingly at the big red treasures set out in a row. Then he lay down\nagain, turned his eyes to the sky, and in the fullness of his joy began\nto whistle.\n\nMeanwhile the herds were grazing peacefully on both sides of the\nchildren. The gentle tinkling of bells was heard here and there, as the\ncows wandered to all parts of the meadow. In the alder trees the birds\nwere singing gayly; a fresh mountain breeze swayed the branches and now\nand then blew away some of the leaves that Gretchen had gathered and\nspread out in her lap. She was weaving them into a wreath by fastening\nthe stem of each leaf into the back of the preceding one. This made\na dainty little garland, for the leaves that Gretchen used were of a\ncertain delicate kind. She would take the wreaths home afterward and\nlay them in the hymn book, where they would serve as bookmarks for the\nverses she was to learn for Sunday school.\n\nOccasionally the little girl would look up from her work to see\nwhether her eight cows were all in sight and grazing properly, neither\ndisturbing each other nor being disturbed by outside causes. Gretchen\nknew all her cows by name and had come to know the character and\npeculiarities of each one in her two years of intimate association with\nthem,--for this was not her first season at herding. She had been to\npasture with them in the previous summer and fall and had herded them\nalone,--that is, with the help of Renti, who was always on the other\nside. At least, his cows were there; he himself was wherever Gretchen\nwas,--on the wall, on her side or on his.\n\nRenti was now lying unconcernedly in the sunny grass, not paying much\nattention to his cows, for he had great confidence in his strength and\nquickness, should anything happen among them.\n\nGretchen had looked several times toward one particular spot, where two\nof the cows were standing in a rather strange, unnatural manner; they\nwere not eating, and were holding their heads up in the air.\n\n\"Renti,\" she said, \"I believe there is something wrong. Look how\nstrangely Star and Brownie hold their heads, and they are not eating.\nNow Brindle is beginning to act frightened, too. Look, Renti!\"\n\nRenti sprang to his feet. At the same moment a big, terrible head\nappeared over the brow of the hill in Gretchen's field. Then the rest\nof the animal came into sight,--a wild, snorting steer that came\nrushing furiously up the hill. The cows ran about in terror. The bells\njangled loud and wild, like storm bells. Renti's cows now began to rush\nabout, too.\n\nGretchen jumped down off the wall to Renti's side. \"O Renti! look,\nlook! he is coming! Where shall we go?\" she cried, pale with fright.\n\nRenti made one leap over the wall. Then, setting up a terrible howl\nand roar, as though he were himself a wild beast, he charged down upon\nthe steer, at the same time cracking his whip as hard as he could. The\nbeast came on with increasing fury; Renti increased his noise.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nThen the creature stopped, stood motionless. Renti howled, snapped his\nwhip, and ran toward him. Suddenly the steer turned tail and galloped\naway. Renti dashed after him, still screaming and raging like a\nmadman. The beast, in growing terror, ran toward the steep descent\nthat led to the fields of Broadwood Farm, from which he had escaped.\nThere Renti finally stopped and turned back. He was breathless from the\nchase, but he came back on a run to Gretchen's side. As she stood there\nwaiting for him, her face was pale, but her blue eyes shone bright with\njoy.\n\n\"Oh, but I'm glad you're back, Renti!\" she said with a deep breath. \"I\nwas so frightened when you went after him, for fear he would catch you\nup on his horns and gore you.\"\n\n\"You must never be afraid,\" Renti assured her, breathless and almost\nvoiceless, for he had well-nigh split his lungs with his screaming.\nSuddenly he laughed aloud as he thought of the extraordinary leaps the\ncreature had made in terror of his noise.\n\n\"What if I had been alone!\" said the girl, trembling anew at the\nthought. \"If you had not been with me, where could I have taken refuge?\nHe would surely have caught me on his horns and thrown me down and\ntrampled on me! Oh, oh! And he would have gored the cows to death,\ntoo.\" And Gretchen trembled anew at the thought of what might have\nhappened.\n\n\"Don't be afraid, Gretchen; I will always be with you,\" Renti said\nreassuringly; \"and in the morning I will always be here when you come.\nDepend upon it, I shan't be late half a minute; I will manage somehow.\nBut I mean to tell them at home what happened to-day, and they will\nsend word to the farmer of Broadwood to tie up his steer so that he\ncan't get out again; so don't be scared any more.\"\n\nThe children went back to their place on the wall and Gretchen was\nat length quieted by the boy's assurances. The cows were grazing\nagain with gentle, tinkling accompaniment, and everything round about\nthem seemed so quiet and peaceful that before long the children had\nforgotten all about the disturbance.\n\nNow the sound of church bells came floating on the wind from the\nvillages round about. It was eleven o'clock, the hour when the noon\nbell rings in this region, the signal for the wives at work in the\nfields to shoulder their tools and go home to cook dinner. In the\nmeadows the herd boys and girls began to bestir themselves, and here\nand there a thin wreath of smoke arose. As it curled up into the blue\nsky gay shouts and yodeling went up with it.\n\nRenti leaped down from the wall. \"Come, it is time for lunch!\" he\ncried, running to the place where he had laid down his sack and\nbringing it forth.\n\nGretchen, with dainty care, arranged her garlands on the top of the\nwall, placing pebbles on them so that the wind might not blow them\naway; then she jumped down. Renti had emptied the contents of his sack\non the ground. There lay potatoes, bits of wood, a piece of cheese, and\nseveral bricks, all tossed in together.\n\n\"You ought to wrap your cheese in paper,\" Gretchen told him, as she\nstooped to pick it up from the ground. \"Look, it is all red from the\nbricks and covered with bits of wood.\"\n\nTaking out her pocketknife, she scraped away the dirt, while Renti\nlooked on with great relief, for the red and black speckled mass had\nstruck him with pained surprise. Then Gretchen drew a little package\nfrom her pocket; that was her piece of cheese, wrapped in a clean,\nstout paper. She opened the parcel and, placing Renti's piece with her\nown, laid them together on the wall.\n\n\"What are the bricks for?\" asked Gretchen.\n\n\"To make a better fire. See; we'll build a hearth with them.\" And Renti\narranged his five bricks to form a sort of fireplace on the ground.\nThen he carefully heaped up chips inside and lighted them. The flame\nleaped up in an instant and filled the fireplace and Renti had to hunt\nabout for more chips to keep the fire going. When the big flames had\nsubsided and only single little tongues came out here and there from\nthe ashes, Gretchen approached and carefully laid the potatoes in the\nembers, each one in a good glowing spot; and wherever the ashes seemed\nto be turning gray, Renti blew upon them with all his might until they\nglowed again. He kept putting on dry grass and chips, so that the\nflames continued to burn between the potatoes.\n\nGretchen watched the crackling embers very earnestly. Renti had to\nrun off to one side every now and then to cool his face, for with the\nblowing and poking it had become almost as hot as the fire. After some\ntime Gretchen said, \"There, now they are ready. Have you the shingle,\nRenti?\"\n\n\"Yes, here it is,\" he answered, as he drew forth a little board and\nalso a long willow wand from under the sack. The supple willow twig had\nbeen bent down from the top and fastened upon itself with a thread, so\nthat it made a loop. With this the children drew out one potato after\nanother from the fire, sliding them onto the shingle and then to the\ntop of the wall.\n\nWhen all the potatoes had been laid out in a row on the wall, Gretchen\nlooked about for a comfortable seat, where the shadow of the alders\nwas thickest, for now the sun was in the zenith and poured down with\nconsiderable warmth from the cloudless sky.\n\n\"Come, Renti; up here it is fine,\" she said, as she settled herself\nand laid out beside her some large leaves that she had gathered. Renti\nwas by her side in a moment, and then they sat and watched the little\nclouds of gray steam rise from the potatoes and float off on the wind.\nBut now they had waited long enough; Gretchen took up one potato after\nanother and rubbed off the charred outer layer with one of the big\nleaves that she had at hand. She was careful, however, to save the\ncrisp brown skin, for that was the part they liked best of all. Then\ntheir noonday meal began. The children sat up on their little elevation\nwith a potato in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other, taking\ndelicious bites now from one, now from the other. Overhead the birds\nwere singing in the alder branches; across the meadow lay the golden\nsunshine; and in the grass at their feet the blue harebells tossed\nmerrily in the breeze.\n\n\"Gretchen,\" said Renti, taking alternate bites from his right, then\nfrom his left hand, \"would you rather be a king and sit on a throne and\nwear a golden crown on your head, or would you rather sit on the stone\nwall in the alder shade and eat baked potatoes and listen to the birds'\nsinging?\"\n\nGretchen hesitated.\n\n\"Well,\" she said, after some reflection, \"a king can have whatever he\nwishes; so, besides having everything else, he could still sit on the\nwall and eat baked potatoes whenever he pleased.\"\n\n\"No, he couldn't; that wouldn't be proper; a king must always sit on\nhis throne,\" declared Renti. \"But I know\"--and in his ardor Renti\nraised his fist high in the air and thumped it down on his knee--\"I'd\na thousand, thousand times rather sit here than be a king on a throne,\nfor he could have nothing better than we have here.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; it is true,\" Gretchen agreed. \"I like it best here, too.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you do. Oh, how good this potato tastes! and do you hear that\nfinch?\"\n\nRenti tried to imitate the bird's whistle. Then he took another bite of\npotato, but being obliged to express his happiness in some way, he beat\ntime to the bird's melody by kicking his feet against the wall. \"Surely\nthis is the loveliest spot in all the world. Where could it be finer?\nOr do you think it may be more beautiful in heaven?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" replied Gretchen positively; \"where all the beautiful\nwhite angels are, with lilies in their hands.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it is. Among so many strange people we'd be afraid\nand shouldn't know how to behave; I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly so\nnice as it is here, where we two are alone together and can do just\nas we please, and are masters of the whole meadow and of the cows and\neverything. No, I'm sure it isn't so nice anywhere on earth or in\nheaven.\"\n\nBut Gretchen was not easily convinced.\n\n\"You have never been to heaven and can't be at all sure about it,\" she\ndeclared. \"But come, let's have the apples now.\"\n\nThe first part of the meal, the more substantial portion, was now over,\nand as it had been of a rather dry nature it had made the children\nvery thirsty; so the juicy, sourish apples tasted most delicious, and\ndisappeared so fast that soon there were only two left. A few more\nbites finished these, too, and then Renti made himself comfortable on\nthe wall and said, \"That was the best dinner that any person could\nhave.\" And Gretchen agreed with him perfectly.\n\nThe afternoon brought a number of unexpected happenings. Star and\nBrindle got into a quarrel because both wanted to graze in exactly\nthe same spot. They began to horn each other and the children had to\nrun down and separate them. Then they kept them grazing in different\nparts of the pasture for a while until the cows had got over their\nquarrelsome mood. Later Renti saw that Molly, the slender black one of\nhis herd, was bounding across the pasture toward the hedge beyond,\nand three or four of the others, seeing her, started in pursuit. The\nwhole herd seemed about to follow their example. Renti started after\nthem with loud \"Ho!\" and \"Hey!\" and turned them back just before they\nreached the hedge, where they seemed to have no intention of stopping,\nalthough the high jump would certainly have had disastrous results for\nthem. On the other side of the hedge the grass had been cut and was\nspread out in the sun to dry. It had wafted such tempting odors to\nMolly's nostrils that she had started off on a run to follow up the\nscent.\n\nSo one thing after another happened during the afternoon to keep the\nchildren busy. The cows were healthy and well fed, and toward evening,\nwhen they were no longer hungry, they were subject to all sorts of\nwhims and notions that the children had difficulty in restraining. When\nthe herd on one side was quiet something would happen in the other\nfield, and the children ran back and forth, for they always helped each\nother. It was much pleasanter to do together whatever had to be done.\n\nMeanwhile the sun had moved far on toward evening and was about to set.\nThe mountains began to redden and all the little hills around seemed\ncovered with gold. Suddenly a loud tooting sound was heard, first on\nthe right hand, then on the left, then from varying distances. It was\nthe signal, blown forth on immense horns, to the herd boys and girls\nthat it was time to bring the herds home for milking. And the cows\nseemed to know the sound, for they gathered in a group from all sides\nof the pasture and stood waiting.\n\n\"Good night, Renti!\" \"Good night, Gretchen!\" the children called to\neach other.\n\nRenti, with three or four bounds, landed in the middle of his herd,\nand cracking his whip and yodeling at the top of his voice, he ran on\ntoward the Lindenhof stables.\n\nGretchen gathered up the two little garlands she had made and spread\nthem out on the palm of her hand; then she, too, moved on toward home,\naccompanied almost to her door by Renti's loud yodeling.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER II\n\n                             THE TWO FARMS\n\n\nThe house at Lindenhof had a big, comfortable living room, with a green\nDutch-tiled stove in the middle and wooden benches all along the walls.\nAround the stove there was also a bench, where an old gray cat usually\nlay purring lazily. Wide steps, that were like many little benches set\nover one another, led upstairs to the sleeping rooms. In this way there\nwas abundant opportunity for sitting down in any part of the room, and\nthis gave the place an air of ease and comfort.\n\nThe farmer and his wife had two daughters, one twenty, the other\nnineteen years old; but they were no longer at home, both having\nmarried in the previous summer, one soon after the other. They had both\nmarried well, for the young farmers whom they had taken to husband had\nfarms of their own and were comfortably established. Now the father and\nmother were by themselves again, as in the beginning. At first they\nkept only one hired man, for the husband said, \"We'd better hire day\nlaborers in the busy season, and then be alone the rest of the time,\nthan to keep several men in the house.\"\n\nAnd the wife said: \"I think so, too. I do not like the tramp of heavy\nboots about the house.\"\n\nSo the household went on in its old quiet way, and still the work was\nproperly done.\n\nBut when autumn came the farmer said: \"We must have a herd boy. The\nhired man cannot sit out in the meadow all day when there is so much\nwork still to be done, and yet we cannot leave the cows out in the\npasture all alone.\"\n\nAnd the wife said: \"That would suit me very well; for a nimble little\nboy would often be handy for me in the work about the kitchen, the\nwell, and the shed. He might look after the chickens, too; I cannot\ncall the man for all these little services.\"\n\n\"Then I will go and get one,\" said the farmer, reaching for his coat\nand his heavy cane. The alms commissioner always knew of boys to hire;\nhe would go to him.\n\nNow it happened that on that very day the butcher had sent his delivery\nboy to the commissioner with a message that a new place should be found\nfor the boy, as he himself had bought a cart and would have no more\nneed of him.\n\nThis boy was Renti. He was quite alone in the world, having neither\nfather nor mother nor any one else who belonged to him. Where he had\ncome from no one knew.\n\nNine years before, on Laurentius Day, a tiny baby boy, wrapped in a\ncoarse cloth, had been left on the doorstep of the church. The sexton,\ncoming to ring the bell for evening prayers, had found a bundle at\nthe door, and on discovering that it contained a living child he had\ntaken it to the pastor. On the following Sunday the little boy was\nbaptized, and received the name of Laurence in honor of the saint on\nwhose day he had been found. Then he was intrusted to the care of the\nold washerwoman Katrina, who kept him clean and decent as long as she\nlived. But she died after a few years, and then Renti passed from one\nhand to another. Sometimes he was treated kindly, sometimes quite\notherwise; up to the time of his tenth year he had never known how it\nfelt to have a home, for he had never been kept more than a year in one\nplace. In the last few years, since he had been able to do light work,\nhe had gone to a new place almost every three months, wherever people\nhappened to have need of him.\n\nWhen the farmer of Lindenhof arrived at the commissioner's, the latter\nwas at his door and Renti was standing before him delivering the\nmessage from the butcher.\n\nThe farmer did not notice the boy especially, but began at once to\nstate his wants, whereupon the commissioner drew Renti forward and\nsaid: \"You have come at an opportune time. Here is a boy ready to go\nright home with you. And he will do what is right, won't you, Renti?\"\n\nThe boy nodded his head. There was something about him that the farmer\nliked.\n\n\"Then come along,\" said the farmer.\n\nSo Renti trotted along beside him. Barefooted, with no other clothes\nthan the little jean trousers and coarse shirt he had on,--for his\nlittle jerkin had fallen into rags,--Renti entered upon his life at\nLindenhof.\n\nThe farmer's wife looked out in surprise when she saw her husband\nreturning so soon with a boy. She scrutinized the newcomer more\ncarefully than her husband had, for she knew the boy would be with her\na great deal of the time, and she was particular as to the people she\nhad about her. Renti had big brown eyes that looked out upon the world\nand its people with open, frank gaze. Thick brown hair waved about his\nbrow. The woman liked him.\n\n\"I'll manage somehow about his clothes,\" she said to herself, for she\nsurmised that the garments he had on were his only ones.\n\nOn the following morning Renti was at once sent out to take the cows\nto pasture. There he met Gretchen, who had but a few days before been\ninitiated into the duties of herding and who was very glad to find that\nshe was to have a companion.\n\nInto this new life for Renti there came a joy that he had never known\nbefore,--he had found a home. Out on the sunny meadow, under the alders\nwith Gretchen, the boy was happy. Joy shone in his eyes from morning\ntill night, and when he was not talking to Gretchen he had to express\nhis happiness in singing or yodeling.\n\nThe farmer's wife was kind to him. She had a neat suit--trousers and\njacket--made for him for Sundays, and a white shirt to go with it.\nThen she taught him to wash carefully at the well every morning, and\nhe was pleased and willing about it all, for he himself liked to look\nneat. In his little room there was a real bed, such as he had never had\nbefore, and no one was ever cross to him now, as his former masters and\nmistresses had often been. So Renti was as happy as the birds in the\nair, and his whistling stopped only with their own songs, and probably\nwould have continued all night if the housewife had continued her\ndemands for wood and water that long. He always did the kitchen errands\nat night, for the housewife was systematic and wanted everything made\nready for the next morning.\n\nOften when the boy's whistle was heard at night in the stable, the\nshed, or the henhouse, the farmer, hearing it, would say: \"Do send the\nboy to bed. His workday should be over by this time.\"\n\nBut the wife would answer: \"Work never hurts any one; he gets sleep\nenough, and his whistling shows that he is not unhappy.\"\n\nThen the farmer was satisfied, and his wife was glad that she could\nhave her own way with the boy, and that he was cheerful and content.\nWhen winter came she proposed that they keep him, for she would have\nwork for him when he was not in school, and when spring came and they\nhad to take laborers she would have extra work in the kitchen and would\nfind the boy very useful. The work of carrying meals to the field hands\nthree times a day was alone worth keeping him for.\n\nIn his various duties the boy was often with Gretchen, for she had many\nof the same tasks as he had, and the two estates ran side by side. In\nthe summer the children were sent to the fields to glean after the\nharvesters. They had discovered that it was much pleasanter to do\nthis work together, first in one field, then in the other, than to\ndo it alone. So it was with many of their tasks, and they were much\ntogether. But they were happiest when autumn came and they were sent\nto pasture with the herds. Renti had become so familiar with the life\nat Lindenhof that he knew every cow by looks and disposition; he had\nbecome so well acquainted with the hens that he could pick out any egg\nand tell just where and when it had been laid. It took close watching\nto keep track of the eggs, for the hens liked to lay in secret places.\nEvery creature, large or small, that belonged to the farm was more\nfamiliar to Renti than to the farmer himself, or to any hired man that\nthey had ever had on the place.\n\nAt The Alders life went on in the same quiet, orderly way as at\nLindenhof. In fact, there had always been great similarity in the\nmanner of running the two farms. In the stables there were always eight\ncows, and if either of the farmers had seen fit to have nine, then\nthere would have been no sleep for the other until he, too, had nine\ncows in his stall; for it was an old custom to have everything alike on\nthe two farms.\n\nThe farmers were the best of neighbors, however, and there never was\na thought of unpleasant rivalry between them. Each was content to\nhave everything remain just as it had always been in the fathers' and\ngrandfathers' and great-grandfathers' time.\n\nIt had happened, strangely enough, that on both occasions when there\nwas a christening party at Lindenhof there was one on the same Sunday\nat The Alders,--with this difference, however, that the babies\nchristened at Lindenhof were both girls, while at The Alders they\nwere boys. Hannes had come first, and then, a year later, Uli,--the\nboys being now in their twentieth and nineteenth years. But the most\nimportant difference between the two households was, that while the\nnumber of children at Lindenhof remained at two, a third child had come\nto the other family years afterward. A little girl had made a late but\nby no means unwelcome appearance, proving a great joy to the family as\nthe years went on. She was a winsome, happy child and did credit to the\ncareful training of her parents, for they were proper people, both of\nthe opinion that their first care should be to educate their children\nto a decent, orderly life.\n\nRegularly on Sundays the family might all be seen going to church\ntogether,--father and mother in advance, with little Gretchen between\nthem, and Hannes and Uli behind, all in their Sunday clothes and all\nlooking so neat and honest that it warmed the pastor's heart to see\nthem filing into church.\n\nAs little Gretchen grew along in this well-ordered life she won the\nheart of every one; for she was pleasant and courteous at all times\nand sweet to look upon, with her bright, laughing eyes, blue as the\ncornflowers, and her long, blond braids like the golden grain above\nthem.\n\nWhen she had reached her ninth year her father said one day: \"Gretchen\nis old enough, I believe, to herd the cows this year, and we might get\nalong without a boy. It is hard to find one whom you can trust, and\nGretchen is a sensible child and the cows are all gentle.\"\n\nThe mother thought that they might at least try it. Uli would, of\ncourse, go with her for the first day to see that she got along without\nany trouble, and was not afraid,--for she was a slight little thing, to\nbe sure, to take care of the cows all alone.\n\nGretchen herself liked the idea of going, and Uli said: \"She need not\nbe timid. Our neighbors have a herd boy who seems gentler than most\nboys, and I will tell him to look after her.\"\n\nSo Gretchen started out a few days later, accompanied by Uli. In the\nneighboring pasture Renti was already at his post. Uli called him to\nthe stone wall and made him understand that if anything should happen\namong the cows he must come to Gretchen's assistance. In return he\nshould have plums and nuts when they came in season.\n\nNow Renti needed only this to complete his happiness,--to have a\ncompanion in the meadow,--and by the end of the first day the children\nwere such good friends that the boy would have gone through fire and\nwater for Gretchen's sake. A more faithful protector could not have\nbeen found for her.\n\nSo the children passed the autumn season in daily companionship. When\nwinter came they went back and forth to school together twice a day.\nSundays they invariably spent together, for Renti was treated as a\nneighbor because he belonged to the household at Lindenhof. So he went\nto The Alders every Sunday afternoon and stayed with Gretchen until\nsupper-time,--that had become a matter of course. And every Sunday\nafternoon had slipped by so fast that when it was over they wished it\nwere just beginning; they hadn't had time for half their plans and\nprojects. Renti was skillful at carving wooden whistles and making\nlanterns out of pumpkins, and Gretchen had a supply of  paper\nfrom which they manufactured whole cities, including the inhabitants,\nand boats with movable oars, and churches, and houses with swinging\nwindows.\n\nThen came the work of spring and summer, and the children met\ncontinually in the fields. When they were not together each knew\nexactly where the other was, what he or she was doing, and when they\nwould meet again.\n\nNow autumn had come and the children were enjoying happy days in the\nmeadow. There had been but few rainy days to keep Gretchen at home, for\nthe season had been unusually fair. In wet weather Renti had to wander\nabout alone, with a feed sack wrapped about his shoulders to keep off\nthe rain. On such days he took care of Uli's cows also, after the\nlatter had brought them to pasture in the morning. In this way he kept\nhis pockets full of nuts. When Gretchen came out on the next day there\nwas always a great deal to talk over, about how the cows had behaved,\nabout the little birds in the alders and how they had crept into\ntheir nests, and about the big crows that had suddenly swooped down\non the pasture, croaking so hideously that Brindle, in sheer terror,\nhad run right into their midst, whereupon the whole flock started up\nand flapped about, frightening Brindle still more, so that she went\ngalloping wildly about, and Renti had to catch her and stroke her head\nuntil she became quiet.\n\nAll these incidents were the subject of earnest conversation when the\nchildren were together once more under the alders. So the days passed,\nand there were no happier children in all the country round than Renti\nand Gretchen.\n\nOctober came, and the bright, sunny weather continued until past the\nmiddle of the month, so that the children still remained in the meadow\nall day without feeling cold,--only they went home rather early in\nthe evening. On a Saturday afternoon of the third week black clouds\nbegan to pile up in the sky and the children started for home at four\no'clock. A sudden darkness had come on, and a violent downpour of\nrain, or perhaps hail, seemed about to break forth. Gretchen was quite\ndowncast, for she feared that snow and cold weather would now set in\nand put an end to the herding. But Renti was hopeful and thought that\nwinter was still a long way off. Monday would be fair again, he said,\nand they would come out as usual.\n\nThey bade each other good night and hurried home with their herds, for\nthe first drops had begun to fall and the sky was growing darker and\ndarker. Renti, after reaching the barn and tying the cows in their\nstalls, scrambled about in all the corners, as he did every evening,\nto find the eggs. Presently he heard a furious storm beating down upon\nthe barn. The rain and hail and wind were almost crushing the roof. He\nstood in the barn door holding the eggs in his cap, for he was afraid\nthey would be broken by the hail if he started for the house.\n\nWhile he stood there the farmer was looking out of the kitchen window\nat the storm. His wife was blowing the fire that had several times been\nput out by the wind and rain. The farmer watched the gusts sweep by and\nsaid: \"I have been expecting this. I've seen it coming for some time.\nIt is hard on the fruit trees. Well, this makes an end of autumn and we\nmay look for cold weather. The farmer of Broadwood told me to-day that\nhe wants a boy for the winter. He means to get along with one hired man\nand a boy, for he has his two sons to help him. So I told him he might\nhave Renti.\"\n\n\"You did!\" exclaimed the woman. She stopped blowing the fire and looked\naround at him. \"Why did you tell him that? Shall I do my work alone all\nwinter merely to let the farmer of Broadwood have a good boy?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said the farmer in conciliatory tones; \"I had no such\nthought. On the contrary, you are to have better help than you have\nnow,--a young fellow who is stronger than Renti and can be of more use\nto you. I have a great deal of wood to cut this winter and shall need\nan extra hand. A young fellow of seventeen or eighteen can do my work\nand can also help you in the kitchen. I have my eye on one.\"\n\n\"I was satisfied with Renti,\" said the wife; \"but if you need an older\nhand we must give up the boy, for we do not need three servants.\" Then\nafter a moments she added: \"If Renti must leave us, I am glad that he\nis to have a good place. I shouldn't like to send him away without\nknowing what sort of people he goes to, but the household at Broadwood\nis well managed. But whom will you get in his place? I hope it will be\nsome one fit to have in the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Yes, he will do very well,\" said the farmer. \"He is young enough to do\nlittle errands about the house and kitchen, but at the same time strong\nand sturdy. For carrying wood and water he will be better than a little\nboy. To-morrow he is to come along this way, and if we wish him to, he\nwill stay. They will expect Renti at Broadwood to-morrow evening.\"\n\nThe wife thought this was hurrying matters somewhat, but her husband\nexplained that as the herding season was now ended the wood felling\nmight as well begin at once.\n\nSo they decided to let Renti go on the morrow and to keep the young man\nwhen he came, for the wife remembered, after her husband had mentioned\nthe youth's name and described him somewhat, that she had seen him once\nor twice, and that he came of a decent family in one of the neighboring\nparishes.\n\nThe storm had now abated and the farmer went out to see that everything\nwas in order for the night. At the same time Renti came running into\nthe kitchen with eager, happy face, holding out a cap full of eggs\ntoward the housewife.\n\n\"What a boy you are to find nests!\" she said, as she bustled about the\nhearth. \"To-morrow you are to go to Broadwood, Renti. There you will\nhave plenty of eggs to hunt, for they keep a large flock of chickens,\nthe finest in this whole region.\"\n\nRenti stared at the woman and almost dropped the eggs from his hand,\nbut he did not utter a word.\n\n\"Lay the eggs on the table,\" said the woman; \"I haven't time to put\nthem away now; and bring in a stick of wood. You needn't go for water\nwhile it rains so hard. Then come in to supper.\"\n\nRenti laid down his cap and went out to the shed. He was paralyzed by\nthe news he had just heard; he could scarcely lift the stick of wood,\nalthough he usually carried such a burden on a run.\n\nThe housewife looked at him questioningly. \"I believe you are tired,\nRenti. Come, eat your supper and then go right to bed.\"\n\nAt the table Renti never once looked up, and for the first time since\nhe came to Lindenhof he had no appetite.\n\n\"He is tired; I noticed it awhile ago,\" said the wife in answer to her\nhusband's puzzled look,--for the boy's spoon was not traveling back and\nforth in its usual way, in and out of the big bowl of sour milk.\n\n\"Pshaw! that wouldn't take away his appetite,\" said the farmer.\n\nBut Renti could not swallow his supper.\n\n\"Perhaps the storm oppresses him. Let him go to bed,\" said the farmer.\n\n\"Yes, yes; you'd better go to bed,\" said the wife in friendly tones. \"I\nwill look after the shoes myself. Go and have one more good sleep in\nyour comfortable bed.\"\n\nRenti crept upstairs to his dear little room. He felt as though a heavy\nweight were upon him; he could hardly breathe. But after he was in bed\nand everything about him seemed just the same as it had always been,\nand always must be, he thought, he breathed more easily. Something\nwould surely happen overnight to straighten the matter out. When things\nhad gone on so long and so smoothly without change, they could not all\nbe upset in one night. And with this thought Renti finally fell asleep.\n\nNext morning, as the farmer and his wife returned from church, Renti\ncame out of the barn to meet them as usual. On Sunday mornings, when he\nhad plenty of time to scramble about all the corners of the barn, he\nalways made new discoveries in the way of hidden nests.\n\n\"Now go and put on your Sunday clothes, Renti,\" said the wife. \"After\ndinner you may run over to The Alders and tell them 'God keep you,' for\nyou probably won't see them again for some time. It is a long way to\nBroadwood. Then you must come home for a timely start, so that you will\nreach your new quarters before nightfall. It would not look well for\nyou to get there late.\"\n\nRenti felt as though a thunderbolt had struck him. The morning having\npassed in its usual quiet way, just the same as all other Sunday\nmornings, he thought that the danger must be over and that things were\nto remain as of old. But now he was to be sent away, after all! He put\non his Sunday clothes; dinner came and went, he knew not how; he was as\nif stunned. After dinner he went to the barn and sat down on the lowest\nround of the hay ladder. There he stayed for hours without stirring. He\ncould not go to The Alders and tell them \"God keep you.\" No, no, no! he\ncould not go away! he could not!\n\n[Illustration]\n\nThe housewife, thinking he had done as she told him, packed his clothes\ninto a bundle and then joined her husband in the sitting room, where\nthey always sat together on Sunday afternoons. Here she waited for\nRenti to return.\n\nWhen the clock struck half-past three and he had not yet appeared, she\nsaid: \"He is late. He ought to be here by this time.\"\n\n\"He knows that it is Sunday, and that coffee will be on the table at\nfour o'clock. He will be here,\" said her husband.\n\nThe wife went out to prepare the coffee. When she returned with the\ntray Renti had not come. She went to the door to look for him and\ncalled his name. He answered from the barn.\n\n\"If you were back, why didn't you come in?\" she said. \"Come and drink\nyour coffee. It is high time that you were started.\"\n\nRenti came in and gulped down his coffee, but he could not eat\nanything. The woman laid a piece of the fresh Sunday _Kuchen_ into his\nbundle and held it out toward him.\n\n\"There, Renti; God keep you! Be a good boy and do what is right. Come\nto see us some Sunday and tell us how you are getting on,\" she said,\nas she laid the bundle on his arm. He extended his hand to the woman,\nthen to the man, without saying a word; then he turned and went out.\n\nThe wife went as far as the outer door with him.\n\nRenti left the house without looking back. Once outside, he ran as fast\nas he could.\n\n\"It is better so, after all,\" said the woman, coming back to her\nhusband's side. \"He might have said a word of good-by; but it is better\nthan if he had been sad at going, for then it would have been hard to\nsend him away.\"\n\n\"You need not worry about him,\" said the farmer. \"Youngsters always\nlike a change. He is glad to get into something new.\"\n\nRenti ran with all his might until he was beyond the house and land of\nLindenhof. Then he threw himself down on the ground and wept and moaned\nas though his heart would break. Not a gleam of hope could he see\nbefore him,--not a ray of comfort.\n\nThe sky was covered with stars when he finally arose. Then he ran\nwithout stopping until he reached Broadwood. It took more than half an\nhour of fast running to cover the distance,--so far away from home was\nhis new life to be.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n                             GOING ASTRAY\n\n\nWhen Renti arrived at the lonely looking house at Broadwood everything\nwas quiet, and the door, which in country houses usually stands open\nall day, was sternly closed. As he approached, a big, ugly dog darted\nout of his kennel toward him, barking and growling angrily. Renti\nshrank back in terror. Fortunately the dog was chained, for he was in a\nfierce mood, being enraged at the arrival of so late a visitor.\n\nThe door of the house opened and a rough voice called out, \"What's the\nmatter out here?\"\n\n\"It's--only I,\" Renti answered in trembling tones.\n\n\"Who is 'I'?\" said the farmer. \"Come closer. He will not eat you. Down,\nTurk!\"\n\nRenti came forward and said, \"Good evening.\"\n\nThe farmer, seeing the bundle on Renti's arm, said: \"Ah! you are the\nboy from Lindenhof. A pretty time to arrive! They surely sent you away\nlong ago. If you think we are going to allow you to vagabond and come\nhome when you please, you are mistaken. Come in.\"\n\nThe farmer's wife had been trying to make out with whom her husband\ncould be talking at this late hour. Every one else was in bed,--sons\nand farm hands,--for here the rule was, \"Early to bed and early to\nrise.\" When she saw her husband come in with a boy she understood who\nit was.\n\n\"Send him right up to bed,\" she said, as she brought a little lamp and\ngave it to her husband. \"You will have to show him the way and light\nhis candle. To-morrow he will go without a light. He is to sleep in the\nroom with Matthew, the young fellow.\"\n\nThe farmer led the way with his meager little light, and Renti followed\nhim to a small room under the roof, where the hired man was already\nsound asleep. Renti undressed quickly and slipped into his narrow\nlittle bed; the farmer went away with the light. Renti realized that\nthe bed was harder than the one he had slept in last, but this did\nnot trouble him long. He was very tired and in a few moments was fast\nasleep. Then he thought he was under the alder trees with Gretchen,\nand the Broadwood steer came, and he charged down upon it and rescued\nGretchen.\n\nThere was more noise and bustle about this new establishment than in\nthe home he had just left. The Broadwood estate contained a great deal\nof woodland, and the farmer, with his three sons and two hired men,\nworked in the woods all winter. In the barn there was a team of stout\nhorses besides the cows, and sometimes even the bad-tempered steer was\nput into harness, for there was much carting and hauling to do.\n\nRenti was expected to fetch and carry and make himself useful in all\nthe different kinds of work, in the barn, wood lot, or house. The\nsummer vacation was over, and he was supposed to spend a number of\nhours in school each day, but in this matter the farmer was not very\nparticular.\n\nOn Monday morning Renti was told to stay about the barn and help the\nfarmer. At noon he was to carry dinner to the workmen in the wood lot\nand was to stay there and help for the rest of the day. Renti was\nquick, and being familiar with the work about the barn, he got along\nvery well with his new master. At noon he carried a big basket to the\nwoods, and after the men had disposed of the lunch they kept Renti busy\nrunning here and there, wherever they needed him. Now he had to push,\nnow to pull, and to carry the tools back and forth continually.\n\nBut suddenly he disappeared. Loud voices called him repeatedly, but he\ndid not answer. The voices grew angry; they threatened, they scolded,\ngrowing harsher and harsher. Renti did not come; he was by this time\nfar beyond the reach of their calls. A feeling had suddenly come over\nhim so irresistibly that he could not withstand it,--he must go to\nLindenhof; and he ran and ran, without stopping, until he reached the\nbarn. There he stopped and looked about him. Yes, the place was all\nunchanged: the big barn door was standing open, and he could hear\nhis cows inside pulling the hay out of their cribs; his hens were\nscratching about as usual for seeds and grain, cackling contentedly.\n\nThe feeling that this was no longer his home, that he no longer\nbelonged to the creatures he loved, was more than Renti could stand.\nHe crept out behind the barn, where no one could see him, and threw\nhimself down on the ground, burying his face and sobbing and moaning\npiteously. For a long time he lay there; it was twilight when he arose.\nThen he ran as fast as he could up to the pasture, and climbed onto\nthe little stone wall. The wind rustled through the alder branches and\nshook dead leaves down upon him; everything else was very quiet. Renti\nsat motionless, staring into the twilight as though he hoped to summon\nforth some figure that was not there. Presently the church bell rang\nfor evening prayers. The sound must have aroused him. He leaped to the\nground and ran across the meadow toward The Alders, where he stole\naround the corner of the barn and looked over at the house. Everything\nwas quiet; not a person was in sight. He stood there until he saw some\none coming out of the house. It was Hannes going to the barn. Then\nRenti started off and ran home, but it was quite dark when he reached\nBroadwood. When he entered the house he saw that supper was over and\nthat the farmer, who was putting out his lantern, had just come in from\nhis last trip to the barn. The farmer's wife stood beside him. She\nspoke first. \"Here comes the vagabond! Do you think we are going to\nallow such conduct here? I wonder that you have the face to come back!\"\n\nThen the farmer spoke. \"Where did you learn such tricks? I hear you ran\naway in the middle of the day. Did they allow that at Lindenhof? Be\ncareful, my boy; if this happens again, you will rue it. For this time\nI will let you off, because it is your first day and you worked well\nthis forenoon; but don't try it again! Now go to bed. Supper is over.\nWhoever is here in time sits down with us.\"\n\nRenti went upstairs to his room. He did not mind going without supper,\nnow that he had been to Lindenhof. The next day the farmer took him\ninto the potato field. Here he had to push the cart and sort over\npotatoes, picking out the poor ones and laying them in a separate heap\nfor the pigs.\n\nEverything went well through the morning. Renti worked diligently and\nthe farmer was pleased with him. In the afternoon the wife said she\nwanted Renti to help her in the garden. She was going to put things\nin order for the winter and take up the plants that were not to stay\noutdoors. Renti proved especially quick at this work, for he had always\nhelped the mistress of Lindenhof in the same task. He knew just what\nhad to be done and took up one thing after another, even before the\nwoman had a chance to direct him.\n\n\"How clever you can be when you want to!\" she said, half in approval,\nhalf in reproach. \"Don't you see how pleasant it would be if you would\nonly behave as you should? You know how to do your work properly, and\nwe are all friendly toward you; but you must not run away.\"\n\nAt four o'clock the woman packed a lunch basket and gave it to him.\n\"Now carry the men's supper out to them. They are at the edge of the\nwood and it is not far. Come right back and you shall have your own\nsupper. But remember to come back at once.\"\n\nRenti did not come back.\n\n\"Scalawag!\" exclaimed the woman angrily, when she found herself still\nworking alone an hour afterward. It was now growing dark, and she\ngathered up her tools and went into the house.\n\nWhen the farmer and his men came home to supper Renti had not appeared.\n\n\"Now you must teach him who is master,\" said the wife, after she had\ntold her husband about Renti.\n\n\"Yes, he shall learn it once for all,\" he replied.\n\nSupper-time came and passed and the workmen went to bed; only the\nfarmer and his wife were still busy with their last duties.\n\nAt length Renti appeared in the door.\n\n\"Straggler!\" the farmer called out angrily. \"Where have you been\nroaming about?\"\n\nRenti said nothing.\n\n\"Can't you speak?\" demanded the wife.\n\nNo answer.\n\n\"Do you know what you deserve? There, now perhaps you'll remember\nto-morrow!\" said the farmer as he boxed his ears sharply. \"Now go to\nbed.\"\n\nOn Wednesday Renti worked diligently, doing carefully whatever task he\nwas set to. He held out bravely until twilight, then he disappeared.\nWhen the housewife wanted wood for her fire she called him, but there\nwas no Renti.\n\n\"What can we do with such a boy?\" said the farmer in despair when he\nheard this last report.\n\n\"I had my suspicions from the first,\" said the wife accusingly, \"when\nthe farmer of Lindenhof offered him to you so readily. I suppose his\nwife had had enough of the rascal's tricks.\"\n\n\"He does his work very well when he is at it,\" said the man in a\nconciliatory tone; \"but I really am curious to know where he wanders\nabout.\" He opened the door once more and looked out.\n\n\"I am not,\" replied the wife. \"I'm sure he has fallen in with some\ngood-for-nothing boys who go tramping about the country, and that's why\nhe won't tell where he's been. And what if he does work well? What good\nis he to us if he is always gone when we need him most? No, we cannot\nkeep him if he goes on in this way.\"\n\nJust as the farmer was about to lock the door Renti came running in.\nHe had to go without supper, as on the previous night, and received a\nworse punishment than before, and a stern warning that if the offense\nwas repeated something serious would happen.\n\nOn Thursday the farmer said to his wife: \"Let him go to school to-day.\nThere is nothing special to do. Next week we shall have particular\nneed of him, and if he is out too many days we may get a notice from\nthe schoolmaster.\"\n\nRenti went to school. He saw Gretchen for the first time since they\nhad parted in the meadow; but he saw her only at a distance, for as\nsoon as school was dismissed the boys all ran off together in one\ndirection and the girls in another. That was the way they always did\nat school,--except that in the winter the boys ran after the girls and\nsnowballed them; but there had not been enough snow for that this year.\nSo at four o'clock Renti ran off toward Broadwood without having spoken\na word to Gretchen. When he was halfway home and was still running he\nsuddenly felt some power seize him from behind and turn him around. He\nfaced about, and the next moment was running back over the same road\nfaster than ever.\n\nOn the previous Sunday after church, when the farmers usually met\nand exchanged news items, Gretchen had heard that Renti was to leave\nLindenhof and go to Broadwood. She was so downcast by the news that she\ndid not speak a word at dinner, and Uli said teasingly: \"What's the\nmatter with you? Has your kitten run away again?\"\n\nBut the mother said: \"Don't bother her, Uli. She feels sad about Renti,\nbecause he must go away.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I don't think that's anything to feel sad about,\" protested\nHannes. \"At Broadwood he will be well provided for. It is one of the\nfinest farms in the country. I wish we had a team of horses like\ntheirs.\"\n\nGretchen felt certain that Renti would come in the afternoon. He always\ncame on Sundays, and now that he was going away he would surely come to\nsay good-by, and then she would tell him to be sure to come the next\nSunday. But she waited for him in vain. She went to the window again\nand again to look for him, and still he did not come. Gretchen was very\nsad at heart. At the supper table her father remarked that it was not\nvery mannerly in Renti to go away without saying good-by,--and that\nmade her feel still worse.\n\nHannes and Uli agreed with their father and said they would not have\nthought it of Renti; but the mother suggested in her kindly way that\nperhaps he had wanted to come but was kept at home for some reason by\nthe farmer or his wife.\n\nFor several days Gretchen had looked for Renti at school, but in vain.\nShe knew, however, that he had left Lindenhof, for Uli had heard it\ndirectly from the master of Lindenhof. But to-day he had been at\nschool. He had not spoken to her, and she had only seen him sitting on\nhis bench on the other side of the room, and after school he had run\naway with the other boys; but she was glad that he had been there and\nthat she knew at least this much of him.\n\nIn the evening, when it was growing dark, Gretchen's mother sent her\nto the well with the bucket and told her to set it where Uli would\nsee it and bring it in filled when he came. As Gretchen was coming\nback from the well she heard a strange sound, like suppressed moaning.\nIt seemed to come from the barn, and she stood still and looked in\nthat direction, but could not distinguish anything on account of the\ndarkness. As she stood looking she heard the piteous sound again. She\nwas frightened and ran toward the house.\n\nThen she heard her name called, quite plainly,--\"Gretchen!\" She knew\nthe voice and ran toward the barn.\n\nThere stood Renti with his face pressed against the wall.\n\n\"Renti! is it you?\" said Gretchen in pleased surprise. \"Why are you\nstanding out here? Come in. Mother is in the kitchen. And why are you\ncrying?\"\n\n\"I can't come in; I am afraid. Everybody is angry with me for running\naway. I suppose she is, too.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\"Oh, oh! you went away without asking?\" cried Gretchen in sad, shocked\ntones. \"But why didn't you come on Sunday? You will surely come next\nSunday, won't you?\"\n\n\"Last Sunday I couldn't come, and till next Sunday is so long I can't\nwait. I have to run away every day.\"\n\n\"Where do you run, Renti? I never see you.\"\n\n\"It is always late when I come, and then I have to go right, back. And\nyou are never here. I run home every day to Lindenhof, and if no one is\nthere to see, I go into the barn and look down through the feed holes\nat the cows. And Brindle always knows me, and says 'Moo' when she sees\nme. Oh, I can't endure it! I can't endure it!\" groaned Renti, pressing\nhis face against the cold stones as though to wring pity from them.\n\nGretchen's eyes filled with tears.\n\n\"If you run away every day, Renti, don't they whip you?\"\n\n\"Of course they do. They'll whip me to-day, too.\"\n\n\"O Renti! then go home as fast as you can, or they will be more and\nmore severe with you. And don't run away to-morrow, nor the next day,\nnor any more, so that they won't whip you,\" entreated Gretchen.\n\n\"I don't mind it very much,\" said Renti. \"It isn't so bad as not\nrunning away.\"\n\nHe was still pressing his face against the stones, but at length\nGretchen drew him away and entreated him to go. It made her heart ache\nto think that they would beat him, and she hoped he might be spared if\nhe ran very fast.\n\nSo Renti turned and darted off down the road.\n\nGretchen went in and told her mother all about it,--how sorry she\nfelt for Renti and how dreadful it was that they should whip him. The\nmother was sorry for the boy, too; but she said that he must learn to\nreconcile himself to the change and not run away any more. And she told\nGretchen to tell him, if she saw him again, that he would be welcome on\nSundays at The Alders, if they allowed him to come, but that he would\ncertainly not be welcome if he ran away.\n\nAll this trouble about Renti lay heavy on Gretchen's heart. The boy\nwas kept out of school the rest of the week. The farmer thought he\ncould thus keep better watch of him and prevent his running away, until\nhe was settled in the new life and trained to its ways. But every\nday--usually it was dark before he got a chance--he would manage to\nslip out, and away he would shoot like an arrow. The later it was when\nhe escaped, the later would he come home and the harsher would be the\npunishment that awaited him. On Saturday evening, after the boy had\nbeen chastised as usual and sent to bed without supper, the farmer told\nhim: \"I will give you one more week's trial. If you do not improve I\nwill send you away.\"\n\nThe next day the woman said to Renti: \"This afternoon you may go out\nwith my permission; but see that you come back at a reasonable time for\nsupper, as befits decent people.\"\n\nRenti went away right after dinner, but he did not go to The Alders.\nHe thought the family had probably heard of his running away, and he\nwas ashamed to go. And perhaps Gretchen's father and her brothers would\nlook accusingly at him and make him feel that he was not welcome. He\nfelt the same way about the people at Lindenhof, and not for anything\nwould he have gone into their house or let them see him.\n\nIt had begun to snow a little, and a cold, sharp wind was whirling the\nflakes about him in eddies.\n\nRenti ran up to the meadow and sat down on the stone wall. He stayed\nthere until it became dark, although he was shivering with cold and\nthe wind almost blew him off the wall. When it was so dark that no one\ncould see him, he went down to Lindenhof and wandered about the barn\nand the stables like some restless spirit condemned to leave a place\nand yet unable to tear itself away. Several times he started toward\nhome; then he would turn back and go all around the barn once more,\nlaying his ear to the cracks and trying to hear some dear, familiar\nsound from his cows or his chickens. Finally he tore himself away and\nwent over to The Alders. At the corner of the barn he waited a long,\nlong time to see whether Gretchen would come out; but she was nowhere\nto be seen, so at last he ran off home.\n\nThe following week passed as the previous one had. If on any one\nevening Renti found no chance to run away, then he slipped out so much\nearlier the next day. Several times he came home so late that the\nfarmer could not go to bed at his usual time. Then the boy was punished\nwith exceeding severity, so that the farmer thought, \"Surely this will\ncure him.\" But it did not cure him.\n\nOn the second Sunday, when Renti came down in the morning, the farmer\nsaid: \"You may go as soon as you have finished breakfast. The alms\ncommissioner knows you are coming; I told him about you.\"\n\nThe wife packed his clothes in a bundle, and when Renti rose from the\ntable she gave him his package, and he went accompanied by the parting\ninjunction from both the farmer and his wife to \"be better in his next\nplace than he had been with them.\"\n\nRenti went on his way utterly indifferent; he did not care where he\nmight be sent next. When he reached the commissioner's house the man\nhad not yet returned from church, so he waited. Presently the man\nappeared, and seeing Renti at his door, at once exclaimed: \"What's this\nI hear about you? A fine record you are making! You'd better try to\nstay in your new place, for I don't know what will become of you after\nthe next three months. The parish will not pay for you after that; so\nthink over the matter a little. Now you are to go to the shoemaker's.\"\n\nRenti felt that the commissioner did not feel friendly toward him, as\nhe had formerly. He turned away in embarrassment and went on.\n\nIn winter the farmers did not usually take boys, as they did through\nthe summer, for their clothes and keep, so no one had offered to take\nRenti on these terms; but the shoemaker had agreed to take him for a\nsmall sum to cover his board, since he always had use for a boy.\n\nWhen Renti presented himself at the shoemaker's the man was sitting in\nthe one room of the house, with his wife and three small children. He\nwas mending a shoe, although it was Sunday.\n\n\"I suppose you are the new boy,\" said the woman, when he presented\nhimself. \"Lay your bundle in here. This is where you are to sleep,\" and\nshe pointed toward the door by which he had entered. Renti understood\nthat he was to sleep in the small cupboard-like opening that he had\nnoticed on the left of the door. It was shut off from the rest of the\nroom by a few narrow boards, with wide cracks between them, these\nopenings being the only means by which light and air could enter the\nspace. Within, there was nothing but a straw bed and a broken chair.\nThis was to be Renti's bedroom. He tossed his bundle on the chair and\nran out.\n\nThe poor shoemaker had no order or system in his household. He took\nRenti for the sake of the little money he would get for him, and\nbecause he needed some one to do his errands, as his own children were\ntoo small to be of any use to him. Aside from this he paid little\nattention to the boy and let him go his own way. He sent him to school\nmornings, because the boy's expenses were paid by the community and he\nwould have been called to account if Renti had not gone to school; but\nin the afternoon, if he had long errands, or any other kind of work\nfor him, he kept him out. In the evening the shoemaker always sent him\nabout here and there, and Renti came home when he pleased, no one\npaying any attention to him; but he never found anything to eat then,\nfor he was always too late for the family supper, and of course nothing\nwas saved for him. The others were glad that he did not come, for there\nwas hardly enough for the family, and if he had come in time they would\nhave had to give him something. To have anything left over was a thing\nunknown to them.\n\nRenti was becoming sadly demoralized. In school he never knew anything\nbecause he never studied at home, being out every night. In appearance,\ntoo, this thin, ragged little fellow was much changed from the Renti of\nformer days.\n\nGretchen was much worried about it all; her days had become very\nunhappy. When she heard the teacher saying so often, \"Renti, you have\nbecome one of the very worst boys in school,\" she felt like sinking\nthrough the floor, for she always felt as though it were she herself\nbeing thus disgraced. She never had a chance to speak to Renti; he\nalways ran away right after school and seemed to have grown shy and\ntimid. She could not tell her troubles at home, for as soon as she\nmentioned his name her brothers would cry out, \"Don't speak of him;\nhe's a good for nothing.\" And even her mother would no longer take his\npart and say in her kind way, \"He may turn out all right in time.\"\n\nGretchen had but one hope,--that when Renti's time with the shoemaker\nwas over and he was once more taken on a farm, where there was better\nmanagement, he would turn over a new leaf; for she could not believe\nthat he was really the good for nothing that her brothers thought him.\n\nEvenings she often wanted to go out to see whether Renti might not be\nstanding at the corner of the barn; she wanted to console him and urge\nhim to do better; but her mother would never let her go. She said that\nRenti should not be wandering about at night, and if he had a clear\nconscience he would find their door on Sunday afternoons. If he didn't\ncome then, Gretchen was not to watch for him.\n\nSo on many and many a night Gretchen went to bed with a heavy heart,\nand lay awake thinking of some way by which Renti could be led back to\nthe right path.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER IV\n\n                WHAT GRETCHEN LEARNED AT SUNDAY SCHOOL\n\n\nThe early days of March had come. In the meadows the primulas and white\nanemones were blooming, and in the fields the farmers were rushing\ntheir spring work with all their might, for each one wanted to be first\nto get his potatoes into the ground. Plowing and sowing were everywhere\nwaiting to be done. There was much need of help, and boys were in\ndemand once more. So it happened that Renti found a new place on the\nvery next day after he left the shoemaker. Early on Sunday morning he\nstarted out with his little bundle; but it was a very different bundle\nfrom the one that he had brought with him from Lindenhof. He had had\nnothing new since the day he left there, and his old clothes were in\nrags. The little Sunday jacket, once so neat and stout looking, was\nnow thin and shabby, and the fresh face and bright eyes that had gone\nwith the jacket when it was new wore quite a different look when Renti\npresented himself at Brook Farm, his new home. The place was so named\nbecause the farm extended along the margin of a large stream that\nflowed through the lower part of Buschweil. Renti reached the new place\nquite early, before the farmer had started for church.\n\nGretchen was happy once more that Sunday morning, for she had heard the\nalms commissioner telling her father, as they came from church, that\nRenti was to go to Brook Farm, and that it would be a good change for\nthe boy, as there was very poor order in the shoemaker's household, and\nthe boy had probably not had much to eat.\n\nAfterward, when they were sitting at dinner, Gretchen's father began to\nspeak of Renti. On Sundays he was always more talkative at the table\nthan during the week, for that was the only day when they had plenty of\ntime to eat and did not have to hurry back to work.\n\n\"Brook Farm,\" he said, \"is an excellent place for the boy. They do not\nkeep a hired man there and have few laborers; so he will be with the\nfarmer a great deal and right in his sight. Perhaps he can thus be\nbrought back to proper ways and made to forget his runaway habits.\"\n\n\"I doubt whether he will ever be cured of his vagabonding. What excuse\nhad he for running away at Broadwood? He had a good place there,\"\nsaid Hannes impatiently; for it irritated him to think of the two fine\nhorses standing over there in the barn, while in their own stalls there\nwere none, and he had always longed for one.\n\n\"Why should he run away anyhow?\" Uli went on. \"Hannes and I never\nthought of such a thing, and we had many a job that we did not exactly\nlike when we were going to school.\"\n\nHannes and Uli were both a little self-righteous. They had always lived\nan even, proper life, and did not reflect what it had been worth to\nthem to have a good, comfortable home and loving care.\n\n\"We must not lay it up against him that he ran away sometimes,\" said\nthe mother charitably, \"if he does right now. He is young, and has been\nknocked about a great deal. If he falls into good hands now, he may\nturn out all right.\"\n\nGretchen was very glad to hear her mother say that. After dinner she\nran out into the meadow to gather primulas and anemones, and she\nremembered with pleasure the times when Renti and she had gone out\ntogether on Sunday afternoons to pick the flowers. Perhaps he would\ncome again, if he got back into a proper life now and found he could do\nright once more.\n\nAll that day Renti roamed about, no one knew where, for he took good\ncare not to let any one see him. It was always the old places,\nhowever, that he haunted. On Sundays he often sat for hours behind the\nbarn at Lindenhof, and there, hidden by the wood pile, he would dig\nworms and grubs for the hens and so coax them to him. They would eat\nthe morsels from his hand with evident pleasure, cackling contentedly,\njust as they used to do when they still belonged to him. But sometimes,\nin the midst of his enjoyment, he would suddenly press his face against\nthe wood and sob piteously.\n\nOn Monday morning work began. He was kept constantly under the farmer's\neyes, as Gretchen's father had said, for there was no one besides the\nfarmer and Renti to do the work in field and stable.\n\nThe wife had only two small children, and she herself carried in wood\nand water for the kitchen. So there was no twilight hour when Renti was\nsent out on these errands, and consequently there was no chance for\nrunning away.\n\nAfter the field work and the evening chores in the barn were finished\nthe farmer would say, \"Now come in to supper and then go to bed.\"\n\nThe man rarely spoke to Renti, but the boy realized very well that he\nwas keeping close watch of him. For a whole week there was no chance\nfor the least attempt at running away. The boy was not sent to school,\nfor the farmer said that the early spring work was very urgent. All\nthis produced a strange effect on Renti: he felt possessed by a passion\nto tear in pieces everything that was put in his hands and trample it\nunderfoot.\n\nIf the work that he was doing kept him behind the farmer's back, he\nwould suddenly throw down his tools, clinch his fists, and stamp on\nthe ground like a madman. When the farmer turned round he would snatch\nup his tools and fall to work; but these strange performances did not\nwholly escape the farmer's eye.\n\nThe boy was not nearly so apt in his work as he had formerly been. If\nthe farmer explained to him how a thing was to be done, one step after\nanother, he paid little attention and forgot all the instructions\nbefore he got half through the task. It was plain that his thoughts\nwere not upon the work, for he would stand staring vacantly into space,\nand sometimes his eyes would roll about in a wild way as though he were\nengaged in some fierce struggle.\n\n\"Keep your mind on your work and don't be so clumsy,\" the farmer often\ntold him, but it did no good. Again he would warn him: \"Be careful, my\nboy; if you don't do better, you will be sorry for it.\" But he did not\nimprove. On the next Sunday the farmer said, \"You must stay at home\nto-day. If you go wandering about the country, your head will be full\nof crazy notions all the week.\"\n\nRenti could not get away, for the farmer remained at home all day\nwithin sight of the house and barn, keeping his eye on the boy until\nit was time to milk the cows and feed them, and in these duties Renti\nalways had to help.\n\nThe following week was even worse than the last one. Renti seemed\npossessed by some evil spirit that gave him no rest. One day the farmer\ndirected him to sit down before the barn door and cut some potatoes\nthat were needed for planting, he himself being busy in the barn where\nhe could keep an eye on the boy. Renti had done this work before\nand knew very well that the potatoes must be cut carefully so that\neach piece would have the proper eyes for sprouting. But he went at\nthem regardless of eyes or sprouts, hacking right and left with such\nfierceness that it seemed as though he were taking vengeance on the\npotatoes for some great wrong that they had done him. The farmer came\nup softly behind the boy; the violence of the latter's movements had\nmade him suspect that the work was not being done as carefully as it\nshould be.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" he said suddenly, right behind the boy's chair.\n\nRenti sprang up in alarm, upsetting the basket with all the uncut\npotatoes, and these rolled down into a cistern that the farmer had just\nuncovered, all but a few disappearing in the hole.\n\nThen Renti began to recover his senses, for he had been sitting as if\nin delirium. He had not meant to spoil the potatoes, but had simply not\nthought anything about what he was cutting them for, and it relieved\nhis feelings to chop them with all his might.\n\n\"A pretty mess you've made!\" said the farmer angrily, as he\ncontemplated the few small potatoes that were left. \"You are more\nexpense to me than you are worth. This comes of having your thoughts\nalways on vagabonding. But you're not going to stir a step from the\nhouse,--you may count on that. Struggle as you please, you will finally\nlearn to be patient.\"\n\nThese words made Renti feel as though the farmer had fastened a chain\nto him and bound him down. After that he grew more restless and more\nerratic than ever. He was continually looking about for some way of\nescape, and whatever he did was so carelessly done that the farmer more\nthan once took him by the ear and said, \"Careful, careful! This can't\ngo on much longer.\"\n\nOn Saturday evening, at milking time, the farmer went into the barn,\nwith Renti following as usual.\n\n\"You haven't brought back the bucket since it was scrubbed at the\nwell,\" he said impatiently; for he had already tied the cow's tail so\nthat she would not switch it in his face while he was milking. \"Run and\nfetch it, and be quick!\"\n\nRenti ran out. Once outside the door he flew like an arrow over the\nfields. A few moments afterward the farmer rose from his milking stool,\nwhere he had been sitting waiting, and went to the door. The well was\njust outside: there stood the bucket, upside down, as it had been left\nto dry, and Renti was nowhere in sight.\n\n\"Tricky little scamp! This is the last I'll have of you!\" muttered the\nfarmer in rage, as he went out to get the bucket.\n\nRenti ran without stopping until he reached the path leading to\nLindenhof. Then he paused; he happened to think that it was just the\ntime when the men would be busy about the stables. So he turned about\nand ran toward The Alders.\n\n\"Renti, Renti! wait!\" he heard a voice calling behind him. He turned\nabout and saw Gretchen coming toward him with smiling face. She was\nvery glad to see Renti once more and wanted to hear from him that he\nwas getting on well in the new place and that everything was going to\nturn out happily,--for this was what she confidently expected to hear.\n\nBut when she came up with him and looked into his face she said in\nalarm, \"Renti, what is the matter with you?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" was the answer.\n\n\"But you are so changed. Are you out on an errand? Were you coming to\nour house?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You haven't run away again, Renti, have you?\"\n\nGretchen looked at him in distress.\n\n\"Yes, I have.\"\n\nGretchen grew pale.\n\n\"Oh, oh! now you are doing it again, and everything will go wrong! What\nwill the farmer do to you when you go back?\"\n\n\"I don't care what he does. I'd like to chop down all his trees!\"\n\nThat seemed to Renti the most awful injury that one could do to an\nenemy. He had once heard of a servant who, in a fit of anger, had cut\ndown his master's tree, and Renti remembered what a dreadful impression\nthis had made on every one; for a fine old tree, that has stood from\none generation to another, giving its yearly offering of fruit, is\nlooked upon with special reverence by the farmers. Renti uttered this\nhideous wish with clinched fists and set teeth.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nGretchen was very sad. \"I never saw you like this, Renti. You are\nsurely getting bad again,\" she wailed, \"and everybody will turn against\nyou, and there won't be any possible help for you.\"\n\n\"No; no help at all,\" groaned Renti.\n\nThe church bell sounded for evening prayers.\n\n\"I must go home,\" said Gretchen hastily. \"Our happy days are over. Good\nnight, Renti.\"\n\n\"Yes; and all my life long I can have no more pleasure. Good night,\nGretchen.\"\n\nRenti ran across the fields toward Lindenhof, and Gretchen went her way\nwith a sad heart.\n\nOn the following day, a bright Sunday in spring, when all the fields\nlay smiling and sparkling, Gretchen stood at the corner of the house\nand would not go in to dinner, for she feared that now they all knew\nthat Renti had been running away again; and what would her father and\nbrothers say? Her mother called a second time and she reluctantly went\ninto the house.\n\nShe was not kept long in suspense. As soon as her father had laid down\nhis soup spoon, he said: \"Well, now it's over with Renti. I heard\nto-day at church that he had been sent away from Brook Farm. The farmer\nsays he cannot keep him because he is good for nothing, and that it\nwould be useless for any one else to try him.\"\n\n\"But where will he go, father?\" asked Gretchen timidly.\n\n\"Perhaps they will take him to the poorhouse, as they did Yoggi, the\nidiot boy. There he will be mastered,\" Hannes informed her with a\ntriumphant air. \"They won't expect him to work, but if he doesn't stop\nrunning away they will tie him down until he grows tame.\"\n\n\"It's what he deserves,\" declared Uli, with self-righteous assurance.\n\n\"I am really disappointed in the boy,\" said the mother. \"I was always\nfond of him and hoped he would turn out a good boy in time; but if\nhe doesn't behave anywhere, it is a bad sign and shows there must be\nsomething wrong with him.\"\n\nGretchen could hardly keep back her tears. Everybody was against him\nnow, even her mother, and she dared not say a word in his behalf. Then\nwhen she remembered how strangely he had behaved the evening before,\nshe grew more and more troubled, and thought that perhaps he had really\nfallen into evil ways. And she could not help him, and no one else\ncould help him. She could hardly choke down the last mouthful, and left\nthe table before dinner was over, asking permission to go out.\n\n\"Yes, but do not stay out late,\" her mother said, as she always did.\n\nGretchen ran up to the pasture, where it was quiet, and where very\nfew people ever came. When she reached the stone wall she sat down\nunder the shade of the alders and thought over the whole matter about\nRenti,--how he seemed to be going from bad to worse and how hopeless\neverything seemed. The tears that she had held back so long began\nto flow down her cheeks, and while the birds in the alder tree were\nsinging their merriest songs she sat underneath and wept as though her\nheart would break.\n\nPresently she heard some one approaching; she dried her tears and kept\nvery quiet. Looking down over the meadow, she saw the pastor coming\ntoward her. On Sunday afternoons he often took this walk up the hill to\nenjoy the fine view one got from there over the surrounding country.\n\nSeeing Gretchen sitting all alone on the stone wall, he stopped in\nsurprise and spoke to her. She arose at once and gave him her hand. He\nlooked at her in silence for a moment; then, patting her shoulder in\na friendly way, he said: \"Gretchen, Gretchen, what is the matter with\nyour bright eyes? Don't you hear the birds singing and giving thanks\nfor this beautiful Sunday?\"\n\n\"Yes, Herr Pastor, I hear them.\"\n\n\"And can you not be happy with them?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot,\" she said in a voice that was almost a sob.\n\n\"Are you in trouble, Gretchen? Come, tell me about it. Can't you?\"\n\nGretchen for a moment made no reply; then she said in a low voice, \"No.\"\n\n\"I think I understand,\" said the pastor sympathetically. \"Sometimes\nthings will happen that we don't care to talk about,--some little\ndifference with brothers, or some misunderstanding at home. It frets\nand grieves us, because we see no way of ever straightening it out and\nbeing happy again; but, Gretchen, don't you remember the lines you\nrecited in Sunday school a week ago?\"\n\n\"Yes, Herr Pastor,\" answered the child without trepidation; for she was\nnot one of those who learned her verses the last minute before Sunday\nschool and then forgot them as soon as she was out of church. She\nstudied them carefully and conscientiously, so that she would be sure\nof not breaking down in church.\n\n\"Won't you come here and say them for me now?\"\n\nThe pastor seated himself on the wall and motioned Gretchen to a seat\nbeside him. She willingly obeyed, and clasping her hands she said with\nreverent air:\n\n    \"Sing, pray, walk in His way,\n       Do your work as for the Lord;\n     He will help you when the world\n       Naught of comfort can afford.\n         For if your faith be sure,\n         And your courage endure,\n           God will be your friend.\"\n\n\"That is very good; but have you ever thought what the poem means,\nGretchen?\" asked the pastor.\n\n\"I have repeated it ever so many times, so that I could say it without\nstumbling,\" said Gretchen.\n\n\"You have learned it very well indeed,\" said the pastor; \"but I mean\nsomething more than that. Let us see what it says: 'Sing,'--that is,\nbe happy like the birds, and do not lose courage or hang your head;\n'pray,'--that you must do to keep happy. 'Do your work as for the\nLord,' and you will feel that God is with you, and will help you\nwhen no one else in the world can. Now think about it, Gretchen. And\ngood-by.\"\n\nSmilingly the pastor held out his hand to the child, and then went on\nup the hill.\n\nGretchen had listened with deep attention to all that he had said,\nand now as she sat thinking of his words a great weight seemed to be\nlifting from her heart: she had found comfort. She would do just\nas the pastor had said; and she repeated the poem again, slowly and\nthoughtfully, trying to remember all that he had told her. When she\nreached the last lines she said them out loud joyously and confidently:\n\n    \"For if your faith be sure,\n     And your courage endure,\n       God will be your friend.\"\n\nThen she heard the birds singing in the alder trees, and she suddenly\nfelt like joining in their song. The evening sun was spreading its\ngolden light over the meadow, and Gretchen saw that it was time to go\nhome. She jumped from the wall and walked down the hill toward home,\nsinging a happy song as she went.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n                       HOW RENTI LEARNS A MOTTO\n\n\nThe alms commissioner had tried hard to have them keep Renti awhile\nlonger at Brook Farm, for he did not know what else to do with the\nboy. There was no room for him in the poorhouse, and since everybody\ndeclared him utterly useless for work, there was no prospect of finding\nanother place for him. The parish was not willing to pay for him in\nthe summer, as it did through the winter. The farmer at first vowed\nhe would have nothing more to do with the boy, but at last consented\nto keep him a week or two longer. The field work would be increasing\nthroughout the summer, and perhaps after a while a place would be found\nfor Renti,--if not in Buschweil, where everybody knew the boy, then\nperhaps in some neighboring parish.\n\nSo for the present Renti remained at Brook Farm; but he had a miserable\ntime of it, for the farmer was harsh toward him for having succeeded\nin running away on the Saturday before in spite of all his vigilance.\nNor did Renti improve in his work; so he got nothing but harsh words,\nand he grew uglier every day.\n\nThe season was an exceptionally bright and sunny one, so the spring\nwork could be carried on without interruption. The farmers who had\nplenty of help might count on a rich harvest, for they were able to get\ntheir seeds in early, and the warm sun promised rapid growth.\n\nThe last farm in the parish of Buschweil was Stony Acre. In fact,\nit lay partly in the next parish, but the family came to church in\nBuschweil. They lived a stern, arduous life at Stony Acre. From early\nmorning till late at night the farmer, with his five sons and two hired\nmen, were abroad plowing and sowing, while the wife went out into the\nbean field, with a maidservant and a day laborer, and superintended\nthe digging of holes and the planting of the beans. When noon came she\nwould hurry home, get dinner, then run to the stables and feed the\nstock, and then out into the bean field again; and so on all day long\nwithout stopping, for she was known to have more energy and endurance\nthan any other woman in the community.\n\nBut \"to be everywhere at the same time is impossible,\" she said to her\nhusband one evening. \"I must have a boy. When you begin work in the\noutlying fields and can't come home to dinner, how shall I cook the\nmeals and carry them out to you, and at the same time be here to feed\nthe cattle and look after the house?\"\n\n\"Get a boy,\" said the farmer. \"Choose one yourself and you will be\nbetter satisfied.\"\n\nBut there was little choice for her. Far and near there was not a boy\nto be had except Renti, and he had the reputation of being so stubborn\nand ugly that no one could manage him.\n\n\"Indeed!\" said the woman when this was told her; \"I'd like to see the\nboy I couldn't manage. I've brought many an older one to terms, and\nwe'll see how long it takes to make this youngster toe the mark.\"\n\nShe immediately sent word to Brook Farm that she needed a boy and that\nthey might send Renti.\n\nWhen people heard that the boy was to go to Stony Acre they said that\nthis was the last chance of his ever amounting to anything, for if any\none in the world could discipline him, this woman could. She had tamed\nmany a wild fellow, and if anything could be done with Renti, she was\nthe one to do it.\n\nRenti presented himself on the same day that he was sent for. The woman\nhappened to be all alone that afternoon, and was sitting out in front\nof the house picking over seed peas. Beside her lay a big watchdog,\nwho growled at the slightest noise and sprang up barking furiously when\nRenti appeared.\n\n\"Be quiet!\" the woman commanded him. Then turning to Renti, she said:\n\"Come this way. He will not hurt you if you do nothing wrong. It is\nfortunate that I have this opportunity of speaking to you quietly\nbefore the others come, for I have something to say to you. You see\nI've heard about your tricks, my boy, so you must not try any of them\nhere, for the first time you run away you'll get a thrashing such as\nyou never dreamed of. What do you say to that?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Renti in stubborn tones.\n\n\"Nothing? You mean to defy me? What did you do before when you got a\ngood thrashing for running away?\"\n\n\"I ran away again the next day.\"\n\n\"Indeed? Then that was all the good it did? Well, I know something\nbetter that will surely cure you.\" The woman called to the\ndog,--\"Nero!\"--and pointing her finger at Renti, said, \"Watch!\"\n\nThe dog growled angrily and made a dash at the boy; but the woman held\nhim by the collar, and Renti shrank back in alarm.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\"I see you understand,\" the woman said to Renti. \"Now the dog has\nlearned his lesson, and hereafter, when you carry dinner out into the\nfields, or go on the slightest errand, he will go with you; for I can't\nbe watching you--I have other things to do. If you make any attempt to\nget away, the dog will understand instantly, you may depend upon it. He\nwill seize you by the neck, and if he wanted to kill you, there would\nbe no help for you. Do you think you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered the boy in timid tones, for he trembled at the thought\nof his fierce guard.\n\n\"Now as to your work. If you do your tasks properly, all will be well;\nif not, remember that I have taken others by the ears. So make your\nplans accordingly.\"\n\nAfter these preliminaries the woman told him what his duties would be.\nThat very evening he was sent out to the fields with supper for the\nmen, and the dog went with him, never for a moment stirring from his\nside. Renti saw that there would be no more chance of running away.\n\nThe following week was a hard one for the boy. But he himself had now\ngrown hard. He never was so stubborn before. At Lindenhof he had never\nfelt like being insolent; but now, when the woman would say to him,\n\"Why do you stand there staring into space? why don't you go on with\nyour work?\" he would answer sullenly, \"Because.\" And when she called\nout to him, \"Be quick, or I will come and help you!\" he would say, \"Who\ncares!\"\n\nOne day, when she had set him to weeding the garden, he went about it\nso fiercely that she stopped to watch him. He drove his hoe into the\nground so hard that he could scarcely pull it out, thus giving vent to\nhis inner rage. She called to him to be careful, or he might be sorry.\nHe muttered angrily that he didn't care what happened.\n\nMore than once he was taken by the ears for his saucy answers. It was\na week full of secret rage on the boy's part, and of indignation and\nangry outbursts on the woman's part.\n\nOn Sunday morning after church, when her acquaintances gathered about\nher, all anxious to hear how she was getting on with the boy, she\nexclaimed over and over: \"He drives me frantic! I don't wonder that no\none would take him. Such a sulky, impudent rascal--you wouldn't believe\nit unless you heard him. And his work doesn't amount to anything. But I\nwill not give in until I master him.\"\n\nThen the women all agreed among themselves, \"He must be a bad one,\" and\ntold their husbands when they got home, \"If she succeeds in bringing\nhim to time it will be a miracle.\"\n\nIn the afternoon Renti was told to carry some tools that needed\nrepairing down to the smithy. \"As it is Sunday, you may stay out until\nfive o'clock; but see that you get home in time. If you are not here at\nfive, you will regret it.\"\n\nRenti took the tools and went. He had but to leave them at the smithy,\nso that they might be repaired in the morning, and thus no precious\ntime would be taken from the working hours for this errand.\n\nRidding himself of his load as quickly as possible, Renti was off and\naway into the sunny afternoon. He would go and visit the pasture once\nmore, and the little stone wall, and the alder trees. While he was yet\nat a distance he saw that Gretchen was sitting on the wall. As soon as\nshe saw him she came running eagerly toward him.\n\n\"How nice that you have come once again!\" she called to him. \"It is\nso long since I have heard anything of you! It is Sunday, and you\ncould come to-day without running away, so we will be happy all the\nafternoon.\"\n\nThey had reached the wall; Gretchen seated herself upon it, and Renti\nstood before her.\n\n\"No, I did not run away,\" he said sullenly; \"but at five I am to be\nback. I won't do it, though; the dog isn't here, and I won't go home\nuntil dark; I don't care what happens.\"\n\n\"O Renti! are you beginning your bad ways again?\" wailed Gretchen.\n\"They said that at Stony Acre you might be made to behave; but now\nyou mean to disobey your mistress, and you will get a whipping, and\neverything will be as bad as before.\"\n\n\"It has been all the time,\" Renti replied, casting wild looks about,\nand growing more and more violent in his speech as he proceeded. \"If\nshe wants to thrash me, I don't care; and if she wants to pound me to\ndeath, so much the better. It's all over with me anyway. If I could\nonly chop down every tree on her whole farm!\"\n\n\"O Renti, Renti! do not say such things!\" cried Gretchen in terror;\nfor she saw in imagination the hideous wish fulfilled, and all the\nbeautiful trees lying prone upon the ground. \"If you yield to your\ntemper in this way, you will grow worse and worse, and finally--yes,\nRenti, father said that if you did not mend your ways it would go hard\nwith you. Oh, if you could only be good again, as you used to be!\" And\nGretchen covered her face with both hands and broke out into bitter\nweeping.\n\nRenti threw himself on the ground, moaning: \"I can't be good any more;\nI don't know how, and there isn't any hope for me, and I'd like to die\nthis minute!\"\n\nThen Gretchen dried her eyes and said earnestly: \"There is help for\nyou. If you had faith, and would pray, you would feel at once that God\nwas your friend.\"\n\n\"But how can God help me?\" groaned Renti, with his face still buried in\nthe ground.\n\n\"I don't know, but I'm sure the dear God knows, and if _he_ would help\nyou, you might be good again, as you used to be, Renti. Oh, I can't\nbear to see you so changed! Do, for my sake, Renti,\" pleaded Gretchen,\nentreatingly; \"do try to be good! Then we shall all be happy again.\"\n\n\"Then I will,\" said Renti, rising from the ground; \"if you won't cry\nany more, and won't be angry with me for having been so bad.\"\n\n\"No, indeed; indeed, I won't!\" Gretchen assured him. \"But I wasn't\nangry, Renti; I was only sad; and if you will do now as you have\npromised, what good times we shall have!\"\n\n\"Do you really think so?\" Renti asked doubtfully, for he could think of\nnothing that would ever make him happy again. \"But, Gretchen,\" he said\nafter a moment's reflection, \"what can I do for my mistress to make\nthings come as you say?\"\n\n\"You must obey at once when she speaks to you, and you must do your\nwork properly. You know very well how it should be done, if you only\nkeep your wits about you. And whenever bad thoughts come into your head\nabout running away and about chopping down trees, you must pray. Then\nthe dear God will help you when there is no other comfort. You know the\npoem says:\n\n    \"For if your faith be sure,\n     And your courage endure,\n       God will be your friend.\"\n\nRenti listened attentively to all that Gretchen said. After thinking\nthe matter over, he said resolutely, \"Yes, I will try; but will you\ncome here to the stone wall next Sunday afternoon, so that I can tell\nyou how I have succeeded?\"\n\n\"Yes, I will come,\" Gretchen promised him; \"but you must not come\nunless you have permission, else you will spoil it all again. Now you\nmust go home; it struck four a long time ago.\"\n\nRenti had heard it and knew that it was time to go, but he thought he\ncould stay until Gretchen gave warning. Wishing to show that he was\nin earnest about his promise, he immediately held out his hand to her\nand said, \"Good-by.\" Then he ran down across the meadow as fast as he\ncould, and never paused until he found himself at Stony Acre.\n\nWhen his mistress saw him she said: \"It's well that you didn't try to\nplay any of your tricks to-day. Nero was ready to go after you.\"\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VI\n\n                        ALL BUSCHWEIL IS AMAZED\n\n\nMonday came, and the work of another week began.\n\n\"I wonder what has got into the boy now!\" said the housewife, casting\nsuspicious glances at Renti several times during the day. On Tuesday it\nwas the same, and the woman at length exclaimed: \"What can be going on\nin his head? I don't know what to make of him.\"\n\nRenti never answered a word. He gave no more saucy retorts; his\nimpudence was gone; but he looked as though he were being crushed to\nthe earth by some awful burden. He had to struggle continually to keep\nhis promise. To do at once as he was told, to practice self-control, to\nkeep back saucy answers, required such exertion on his part that his\nhead was bent low under the strain and he hardly saw what was going\non about him. Then it was very difficult, too, to keep his thoughts\nupon his work, so that he could do it properly, for he had to pray\naway the temptations to do bad things. What prayer could he think of\nquick enough to conquer them? Then he remembered Gretchen's verses, and\nwhenever bad thoughts threatened to rise he would say:\n\n    \"For if your faith be sure,\n     And your courage endure,\n       God will be your friend.\"\n\nBut sometimes the thoughts rushed over him so suddenly that in his\nexcitement he could not remember the verse, and he would have to stop\nand think and at the same time keep on with his work. All this was such\na strain upon the boy that he grew pale and lost his appetite.\n\n\"He is an artful hypocrite,\" said the woman, when Wednesday came and\nRenti continued as he had begun on Monday. \"If I could only make out\nwhat it is he's plotting. I have conquered many another fellow, but I\nnever saw one like him.\"\n\nWhen Renti continued the same on Thursday and Friday, keeping his eyes\non the ground, speaking never a word, and growing paler and paler, the\nwoman stopped scolding. She began to feel queer about the boy. She\nwatched him anxiously from the corner of her eye, as though she were\nin constant fear of some new outbreak. On Saturday Renti scarcely\ntasted food; and then a hideous thought occurred to her: What if the\nboy had eaten some of the rat poison from the kitchen cupboard!\n\nShe immediately began questioning him: \"Do you feel sick? Answer\nquickly! Have you pain?\"\n\n\"No,\" said the boy, without lifting his head; he was still struggling.\n\n\"There is something uncanny about him. Perhaps he is a vampire!\" she\nthought, in sudden terror. She had once heard of a person whom no one\ndared to look upon because he was a vampire. \"I wish I had never laid\neyes on the boy!\" she exclaimed, incensed at her own weakness; and\nshe darted about all day as though driven by an evil spirit. For the\nfirst time in her life she felt helpless. The idea of not being able to\nmaster a young boy seemed absurd, but she was really so uncomfortable\nabout him that she would much rather have had nothing more to do with\nhim. She would go to church to-morrow, at any rate, and tell her\nfriends what a time she was having, and what a strain it was on one's\npatience. That would be some relief, she thought.\n\nAs soon as church was out a group of people gathered about her, all\ncurious to hear how she was getting on with the boy.\n\nThen she poured forth her tale, growing quite breathless in the\neagerness of her telling. \"Yes, yes; if you only knew him! He is deep,\nI can tell you. Control him? If you could do that, you could work\nmiracles. Since Monday he has taken a new turn. Now he doesn't say a\nword,--gives no answer, but hangs his head to the ground and broods\nall day. What he may be hatching out will come to light soon enough.\nOf course we can't tell what it may be; but,\" she continued, with a\nmysterious nodding of the head, \"there is something queer about the\nboy. I will not say what I think. You will find out for yourselves.\"\n\nAt that the mistress of Lindenhof stepped forth from the group, and,\nconfronting the woman of Stony Acre, said in distinct tones that were\nheard by all those present: \"I want to say a few words in this matter.\nA week ago the complaint against the boy was that he gave back saucy\nanswers and was insolent in his speech; to-day it is that he gives no\nanswer and says nothing. So I should like to ask what he could do to be\nsatisfactory? It seems to me that if the boy is getting so bad, there\nmust be some cause in the treatment he receives.\"\n\nThe mistress of Stony Acre started up as though a wasp had stung her.\n\"In my opinion,\" she replied angrily, \"it is much easier to send away\na boy when he grows troublesome than it is to take one whom no one else\nwants. What do you think?\"\n\nThe woman of Lindenhof answered in calm and measured tones: \"It was not\non account of his behavior that I sent the boy away, but simply because\nwe had made other arrangements about our help. As long as Renti was\nwith us he was a good boy, and I should not mind taking him back this\nvery day.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" said her angry opponent. \"Words are cheap and make a good\nsound. Many another mistress would find it best to 'make other\narrangements' to get rid of such a boy.\"\n\nThen the other held up her head stiffly and said, as she looked the\nangry woman squarely in the face: \"I am ready to stand by my words.\nHere before these people I say that I am not afraid to take the boy\nback into my house; and I will prove it.\" With that she passed out of\nthe group and went away.\n\n\"She means what she says; she will do it,\" said one woman. Another\nsaid: \"I am curious to see how the affair will turn out. Do you think\nshe will master him?\"\n\nThe excitement over the matter grew, and partisanship for and against\nthe contestants drew forth many different opinions. Some said, \"She\nof Lindenhof will never do it; she will leave the boy where he is.\"\nOthers said, \"If she does take him, she will get rid of him before\nlong; for if he is too much for the woman of Stony Acre, he will never\nbe conquered by her of Lindenhof.\"\n\nThe wives all went home so excited that their husbands became\ninterested, too, and in all Buschweil that day people were talking of\nthe probable outcome of the matter between Renti and the two women who\nhad quarreled over him.\n\nGretchen's mother alone of all the women had not stopped after church,\nbut had gone directly home with the rest of her family; so at The\nAlders they knew nothing of the occurrence.\n\nThe mistress of Stony Acre came home in a bad mood; the encounter had\nbeen extremely irritating to her. Never before had she been accused of\ntreating her servants badly. How dared any one suggest such a thing to\nher?\n\nThe first person she saw on entering the house was Renti. He was\nsitting on a stool in the kitchen paring potatoes, as she had directed\nhim to do. All the morning he had had but one thought, which he had\nbeen turning over and over in his mind,--that this afternoon he was\ngoing to find Gretchen by the stone wall, and tell her how obedient he\nhad been all the week and how hard he had tried to do right, and she\nwould surely be very much pleased.\n\n\"You are not going to stir a step from the house to-day,\" the woman\nexclaimed as she entered the room. \"You went last Sunday, and I'm sure\nyour vagabonding did you no good.\"\n\nIt was a hard blow for Renti. All through his struggles during the\nweek he had looked forward to Sunday afternoon; and now--he must stay\nat home and face another long week like the last one. At the thought a\nsudden flame of anger blazed up within him and he muttered between his\nclinched teeth, \"What you deserve is to have all your trees and your\nhouse and your barn and your cattle\"--\"chopped down,\" he was about to\nsay; but suddenly he saw Gretchen before him and remembered how she had\nwept and entreated. He made a tremendous effort, struggling as never\nbefore to recall his verse, and then finally, when it came to him,\nsaying it over and over,--\n\n    \"For if your faith be sure,\n     And your courage endure,\n       God will be your friend,\"--\n\nuntil the evil thoughts were banished.\n\nWhen the afternoon sun lay bright and pleasant on the meadows the\nmistress of Lindenhof stepped forth in Sunday array from her door. She\nstopped on her way through the garden to pick a fine red carnation,\nand with this in her hand she went out into the road, and then across\nthe fields. Her face showed that many thoughts were at work in her\nmind. She realized that the errand before her was one of consequence.\nShe had involved herself that morning in something for which she\nhad not planned; but one word had led to another, until she had at\nlast committed herself to a statement that she did not want to take\nback,--for she always stood by her word. When she told her husband of\nwhat had happened, he agreed with her entirely, and said: \"Of course\nyou must take the boy. If he proves too much of a trial, we will send\nhim to our son-in-law, who is young and strong and has several hired\nmen, and among them they will manage the boy. I will gladly let them\nhave the fruit of one or two of our trees in the fall to make up for\nit, rather than to have noise and wrangling in the house.\"\n\nThe wife thought this all over, but the calm serenity with which she\nusually ended her reflections was not within her reach to-day. She\ncould not dispose of the problem so easily as her husband had, for she\nhad made up her mind to keep the boy, no matter how wild, or lazy, or\nunmanageable he might be. The woman of Stony Acre should not have the\nsatisfaction of seeing her defeated; nor did she wish it said by the\nother women that she made statements that she could not carry out.\n\nBut if the boy had really grown so wild and stubborn, what would become\nof the peace of her home, and her quiet, orderly life? This thought\nmade her uncomfortable, for she disliked harsh words and rude manners;\nthey were unknown in her household. When she thought of Renti, however,\nand of what a good boy he had formerly been, she said to herself: \"He\ncannot be altogether bad. He is still young, and God willing we will\nmake something of him yet. Kindness and reason will accomplish a great\ndeal.\"\n\nShe had now reached Stony Acre. As she entered the living room she saw\nthat the housewife was sitting alone; the other members of the family\nwere all out. Some had not come home and others were in the stables\nfeeding the stock.\n\n\"Ah!\" said the hostess stiffly; \"it is an uncommon honor to see you\nhere. Will you sit down?\"\n\n\"I have come to keep my word,\" answered the visitor in firm tones,\nwithout noticing the proffered seat.\n\n\"Indeed? You are in earnest?\" And the hostess tried to twist her mouth\ninto a smile. \"The boy is in the barn; I will call him.\" She went\ntoward the barn, the other woman following her.\n\nUpon hearing his name called, Renti appeared in the barn door. When he\nsaw the mistress of Lindenhof he started impulsively toward her, but\nsuddenly checked himself, and hanging his head came slowly forward;\nfor his first joy at seeing the mistress with whom he had once been\nso happy immediately gave place to the conviction that she must be\nangry with him, as everybody else was, for having been so bad. She had\nnoticed his start of joy, however, and now held out her hand toward him\nsmilingly and said, \"Come, Renti; you need not be afraid.\"\n\n\"He probably has good reason for being afraid,\" said the woman of Stony\nAcre sharply.\n\nHe felt that he had indeed, and his head dropped lower and lower. The\nvisitor watched him closely.\n\n\"Renti,\" she said, \"what do you say to going home with me?\"\n\nRenti's head went up at that; he thought he was to take a walk to\nLindenhof, and that would be fine. But his mistress had forbidden him\nto go away to-day. He looked at her questioningly; she said nothing.\n\n\"Well, get your bundle and we will be off,\" said the visitor.\n\nRenti looked up with wide eyes.\n\n\"Do you mean--to live?\" he said at length, hesitatingly.\n\n\"Yes, yes; that's what I mean,\" she assured him.\n\nA look of joy shot into his eyes that touched the woman's heart.\n\n\"How glad he seems to go with me!\" she thought with pleasure.\n\nRenti darted away to fetch his bundle, and in a very few minutes was\nback with it; he had little to pack.\n\n\"There is nothing more to arrange, I think,\" said the visitor.\n\n\"Nothing,\" answered the hostess shortly. \"I wish you joy.\"\n\nBut the woman of Lindenhof paused. \"Renti,\" she said, \"don't you want\nto tell your master 'God keep you'?\"\n\n\"It is not necessary,\" said the other woman.\n\nBut Renti had been accustomed to obey his former mistress on the\ninstant, and when she spoke he immediately ran to the barn. Returning\nin a moment, he made his adieus to the wife. They were short; she did\nnot desire many words.\n\nThen Renti walked along beside his old mistress toward Lindenhof. He\nwas making the journey this time with a clear conscience, and before\nhim lay the prospect, not of a few anxious, homesick hours, but of the\nold happy life. He was to stay there, live there, be at home once more\nin the dear place. He could hardly realize such happiness. Every now\nand then he would look up at the woman to see whether it could really\nbe true. She was going her way silently; she was again busy with her\nthoughts. So far the matter had turned out quite differently from her\nexpectations. Could the boy be merely playing a part, she wondered, and\nwould he show himself in quite another light when it came to working\nand doing as he was told?\n\nThere was nothing saucy, nothing obstinate, nothing uncanny about\nhim, so far as she could see. He seemed to be just the same cheerful,\nwilling little fellow that she had always known. But his blouse was\nvery shabby and his little trousers most disreputable looking for\nSunday, and his whole appearance was not clean and well kept, as it had\nformerly been.\n\n\"Renti,\" she said, looking him over, \"are these your Sunday clothes?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he answered, blushing; \"in the bundle I have only torn ones. I\nhave been wearing these on Sundays and week days, too, for a long time.\"\n\n\"That blouse looks to me like the very one I gave you for your Sunday\nsuit. Have you had nothing new since then?\"\n\n\"No, this is all I have,\" said Renti meekly; for he thought the woman\nwas displeased with him for the way he looked.\n\n\"It is not your fault,\" she said, noticing his embarrassment. \"But now,\nRenti, you mean to obey me, and to do what is right, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; indeed I do!\" said Renti, smiling up at her with the old\nhonest look in his face. His words, too, sounded so hearty and natural\nthat the woman could only wonder more and more.\n\nWhen they came within sight of Lindenhof Renti's eyes sparkled. \"There\nis the roof!\" he cried. \"Do you really mean that I am to stay here\nagain?\"\n\n\"The staying depends very much upon you, Renti; but if you walk so fast\nI cannot keep up with you.\"\n\nThe boy could hardly hold back his steps as they approached the house.\nSuddenly he asked: \"May I run up to the alder meadow for a moment? I\nwill come right back.\"\n\nThe woman looked at him sharply. \"Renti,\" she said, \"you aren't\nthinking of running away already, are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, no; I am here now, you see. Where could I run?\" he said with a\nhappy smile.\n\nThe woman shook her head as though she did not understand. \"What do you\nwant in the alder meadow?\"\n\n\"Only to run over and tell Gretchen about it; then I will come right\nback.\"\n\n\"Then run,\" she said in kindly tones; but it all seemed most\nextraordinary to her.\n\nRenti ran as fast as he could. Gretchen was still sitting on the wall,\nbut she looked sad, for she thought Renti was not coming; perhaps he\nwas in trouble again.\n\n\"Gretchen, Gretchen!\" she suddenly heard him call. He was running\ntoward her, waving his arms in the air and calling excitedly,\n\"Gretchen, Gretchen! I am at home again!\"\n\nGretchen had not the slightest idea what he meant, but she ran toward\nhim eagerly. When they met, Renti was so excited and so happy that he\ncould hardly tell his story; he had to shout aloud, turn somersaults,\nand leap into the air for a while. When Gretchen finally began to\nunderstand that Renti's old mistress had gone to get him and that he\nwas now to live at Lindenhof again, she also broke forth into shouts\nof joy, and cried out again and again: \"O Renti! now we shall be happy\nas we used to be. And you will be here for the herding! Oh, I am so\nglad, so glad! I have been thinking how sad it would be when I had to\ncome to pasture all alone, and you were far away herding other cows.\nBut now we'll be together again.\" And at the thought they both became\nso hilarious that the neighboring hills entered into their joy and\nrepeated the merry shouts.\n\n\"Renti,\" said Gretchen suddenly, in thoughtful tones,--she always was a\nmeditative little Gretchen,--\"why was it that the mistress of Lindenhof\nso suddenly took your part, when all the other people said they did not\nwant you because you were good for nothing? It could not have been on\naccount of the work that she took you.\"\n\n\"No, I don't believe it was,\" said Renti rather shamefacedly; \"but I\ndon't know what other reason she could have had.\"\n\nThen Gretchen said earnestly: \"Renti, I believe that God put it into\nher mind to go and bring you home. I have been praying to him every\nday; for though I saw no way out of your troubles, I trusted God, and\nknew that he would find a way to help you.\"\n\n\"Oh, there is something I have not told you!\" exclaimed Renti. \"I kept\nmy promise all the week about praying away the bad words and evil\nthoughts when they tried to arise, and kept saying over and over,\n\n    \"For if your faith be sure,\n     And your courage endure,\n       God will be your friend.\"\n\n\"And see how it has come true! We trusted God and he has given us our\nreward,\" said Gretchen joyfully.\n\nNow it was Renti's turn to look thoughtful. Suddenly he said, \"I hadn't\nthought of that before,\"--for he had been saying the verse merely as\na remedy against bad words and thoughts, without thinking much about\nits meaning; but now he began to understand that God was ready, if one\nturned to him, to do a great deal more than one really asked of him.\n\nThese meditations kept Renti very thoughtful for a while; then he\nsuddenly realized that it was time for him to go, and he hastily bade\nGretchen good night and started down the hill.\n\n\"Good night, Renti!\" she called after him happily, and they went their\nseparate ways.\n\nAs Renti neared the house he broke forth into a loud, ringing yodel.\n\n\"That doesn't sound like a sneaking hypocrite,\" said the farmer's wife\nto herself, as she passed through the garden. Before she reached the\ndoor Renti was by her side.\n\n\"May I run out to the barn a moment?\" he asked.\n\n\"I am willing,\" the woman answered.\n\nRenti darted off toward the stables, and going up to Brindle's stall\nput his arms about her neck and said, \"Brindle, dear Brindle, do you\nknow me?\" And Brindle answered so lustily that all the other cows\njoined in, and Renti received a welcome that made the rafters tremble.\n\nThen he went up to the hayloft, and from there climbed still higher to\nthe upper floor. Here he scrambled around in all the corners, and when\nhe came down he had his cap full of eggs.\n\nWhen he entered the kitchen the housewife was at her usual evening\nduties. Seeing him she stopped and exclaimed, \"Where did you find so\nmany fine eggs?\"\n\n\"In the barn,\" said Renti with shining eyes. \"Look at these! and\nthese! Here are Brown Betty's, and here are Snow White's, and these\nare from the speckled Bobtail, and these from the two young hens. What\nfine ones!\" And Renti laid them all out on the table, as eager and\ninterested as though they were all his own property.\n\n\"Now look at that!\" exclaimed the woman, viewing the collection\nadmiringly. \"Andrew has been telling me all along that my hens were not\ngood layers; and I always had the best hens in the parish. The trouble\nhas simply been that he did not know where to look for the eggs. How\ndid you know where to find them, Renti?\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\"I have always known,\" said Renti; \"and I know of other nests that I\nhave not searched yet. I used to watch to see where every hen laid\nher eggs. But now I must fetch the wood.\"\n\nAnd he went eagerly to work, running to and fro as swift as a weasel.\nHe asked no questions; he knew just what had to be done. When the wood\nbox was full to overflowing, he picked up the water bucket and filled\nall the vessels to the brim. After that he brought out shoe brushes\nand blacking from a box on the floor, and seating himself on a little\nthree-legged stool in the corner, he took up the shoes, one after\nanother, that stood in a row by the wall, brushing and polishing them\nwith all his might.\n\nThe mistress looked at him, shaking her head in a puzzled sort of\nway, and said nothing. Never, since Andrew, the young hired man, came\ninto the house, had she been so beautifully served. She had never\ncomplained, because she would have no unpleasantness in her home; but\nnow that everything was being done so nicely, without a word from her\nand without the clatter of heavy feet, the woman breathed a sigh of\nrelief and could hardly keep from telling Renti what a load was falling\nfrom her. But she did not want to spoil him. Yet how was it possible\nthat this was the boy whom nobody wanted?\n\nThe farmer came home a little later than usual that day. He was\nsomewhat nervous, for he thought his wife would be full of complaints\nabout the boy, and he did not want to hear them.\n\nHe was surprised to find, when he entered the room, that she had not\na word of criticism, and that she did not look at all worried, and\nhe sat down to his supper with a little sigh of relief. Again he was\nsurprised to find how solicitous his wife was about keeping the boy's\nplate filled with good things, while Renti meanwhile was gazing about\nthe room with beaming eyes, apparently finding new delight in every\ndetail of the old Dutch stove, and dwelling on the gray purring cat as\nthe most beautiful object in all the world.\n\nAfter supper the woman said, \"Renti, you know the way to your room.\nYour bed is just where it used to be.\"\n\nWhen Renti found himself in his own dear little room once more his joy\nwas complete, and he felt like shouting and yodeling; but of course\nthat would not have been fitting, so he sat down on the edge of his\nbed--for he was too happy to sleep--and thought over all that had\nhappened, and how it was that he was back here once more. He recalled\nwhat Gretchen had said, and he felt very thankful that the dear God had\ncome to his help as soon as he had tried to do right.\n\nDownstairs the man was saying to his wife, \"He is not so bad as you\nexpected, is he?\"\n\nThereupon the wife broke forth into such expressions of joy and praise\nthat the man listened in amazement and finally said: \"Be on your guard.\nThere must be something wrong about him, and you will probably discover\nit soon enough.\"\n\nThe wife said she would watch the boy carefully before she put her full\ntrust in him. Her worst fear was that Renti had fallen into bad company\nand had in that way learned to run away, and that he might be misled\nagain. She determined to keep him at home altogether for a week, so\nthat she might know what he was about.\n\nMonday came; from morning till evening Renti ran about, here and there,\nfrom one to another, helping now the farmer, now the wife, now the\nhired man. He knew just what was needed and what was to be done, for he\nknew the orderly, systematic work of the place, and was everywhere apt\nand as quick as a flash. His whole heart and mind were in the work, for\nhe loved the dear familiar tasks; he was at home once more.\n\nIt was the same on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and on Thursday. The farmer\nseemed to have four hands; his work was done before he knew it. When he\nneeded help anywhere Renti was immediately beside him, even before he\ncalled, ready for the next step in the work.\n\nOn Thursday the hired man said to his master: \"I'd rather get along\nwith just the boy. He is three times as quick as Andrew; he knows the\nwork and is always willing; and even if Andrew has the advantage in\nstrength, the little fellow makes up for it with his good sense and\nintelligence.\"\n\nThis was exactly what the farmer wanted; but he had been holding back\nto see how the boy would turn out, and whether he would show any bad\ntricks.\n\nWhen the farmer spoke to his wife about the matter, she exclaimed:\n\"Thank goodness! Now I shall be rid of those clumping feet in my\nkitchen. When I have the boy alone with me I feel as though I were in\nheaven.\"\n\nBut she had not yet satisfied herself in regard to the boy's\ncompanionship. So one evening when the other servants had gone to bed\nand the farmer was busy about his last duties in the barn, she called\nto the boy to come and sit down beside her at the table; she wanted to\nhave a serious talk with him.\n\n\"Now be honest, Renti, and tell me where you used to spend your time\nwhen you ran away and went tramping. Tell me just exactly who was with\nyou.\"\n\nRenti was a little frightened to have his evil days thus brought up\nbefore him, and he said in a meek, penitent voice: \"I always ran\nstraight home, back here to Lindenhof; and then I would sit out behind\nthe barn, or I would go into the shed sometimes, when no one was\nlooking, and would coax the hens to me. I used to stay with them a long\ntime, and sometimes I climbed up in the barn where I could look down on\nthe cows.\"\n\nThe woman scrutinized the boy closely without speaking. She knew he was\ntelling the truth. Finally she said, \"But, Renti, why did you never\ncome in to see me, if you felt so?\"\n\nRenti hung his head and said: \"On Sundays, when I might have come, I\nhad been running away all the week, because I could not keep away from\nhere; and then I thought you must be angry with me.\"\n\nNow the woman began to understand her little friend. It was out of\npure devotion to her and her house that the boy had fallen into evil\nways. She must make amends to him; she was touched by the discovery\nshe had made. What a load he had taken from her! She need fear no bad\ncompanions, no tempters, who would come after the boy to lure him away.\nTrickery and hidden malice were out of the question. And now she might\ndismiss forever the dread of having to send the boy away, thus letting\nthe woman of Stony Acre triumph over her and giving the other women a\nchance to express sympathy. Best of all, though, was the thought that\nshe was going to have the nimble, happy, devoted little fellow to serve\nher again. She had always liked him and now felt more attached to him\nthan ever.\n\n\"Renti,\" she said at last, with a voice full of emotion, \"you must have\nno more fears. As long as I am at Lindenhof you shall have a home here.\"\n\nA happier boy than Renti was that night could not have been found in\nall the parish of Buschweil.\n\nAnd the farmer was so glad at the turn things had taken, and the way in\nwhich his work was being done, that he would stop in the fields to tell\npeople all about his wife's wonderful achievement in making a model boy\nout of Renti. The hired man, who had always found Andrew too clumsy to\nbe of much assistance, heard with satisfaction that the little fellow\nwas now to be taken instead, and he went about telling people that his\nmistress had but to look at a boy and she could do anything with him.\n\nSo, before another Sunday came, everybody in Buschweil had heard the\nnews and was talking about the way Renti had been reformed in one week.\nIt sounded so improbable that most people rather doubted the truth of\nthe report.\n\nBut the mistress of Lindenhof said that they would see on Sunday that\nshe was not afraid to appear with her boy. She fitted him out with new\nclothes from head to foot, finishing off with a little black cap that\nset off his bright face and dancing eyes most jauntily.\n\nAs Renti walked home from church beside his mistress, many a head\nwas turned to look after them. \"Can that be the boy whom no one\nwanted?\" said one. Others said, \"No one else in the world could have\naccomplished what she has with the boy.\" And all seemed pleased with\nher success.\n\nThe woman of Stony Acre alone did not care to talk about the wonder\nthat had been wrought at Lindenhof. She walked straight home without\nonce looking round. The other woman also went her way; she did not\ncare to boast, or to be flattered for what she had done; she merely\nwanted people to know that Renti was not the good for nothing that they\nthought him. He should have his good name back, she said.\n\nOn the way home she fell in with the family from The Alders. They had\nheard the news and greeted Renti pleasantly when they saw him; but\nGretchen was beaming with joy to find that he was now one of the very\nbest looking boys in all the parish, and to know that, being part of a\nwell-ordered household once more, he would henceforth come to school\nand to church regularly.\n\nSince that day the lessons in Sunday school have had a new interest\nfor the little girl. She has found out that the verses she learns may\nbe of great help and comfort if one will try to think them out; and\nsometimes, when she is called upon for her old verse, a particular\nearnestness comes into her voice that makes some one mother say to\nanother, as they come from church: \"Gretchen's verses to-day did not\nsound like a mere recitation. It seemed as though she were saying the\nwords especially to me, and for me, to give me comfort.\"\n\nTo Renti the words bring many memories that make him thoughtful and at\nthe same very happy.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nSmall capitals have been rendered in full capitals.\n\nA number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note.\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"#\n\n#\n\n_La historia contada aqu\u00ed tiene lugar cerca de un siglo  \nantes de los sucesos descritos en_ Juego de tronos.\n\n# EL CABALLERO ERRANTE\nLa tierra estaba blanda por las lluvias de la primavera y Dunk cav\u00f3 la fosa sin dificultad. Eligi\u00f3 la falda occidental de una colina, porque al viejo siempre le hab\u00eda gustado ver ponerse el sol. \"Otro d\u00eda que se va\", sol\u00eda suspirar. \"A saber qu\u00e9 nos deparar\u00e1 el de ma\u00f1ana, \u00bfeh, Dunk?\"\n\nPues bien, uno les hab\u00eda deparado lluvias que los hab\u00edan calado hasta los huesos, el siguiente viento a rachas y h\u00famedo, y el tercero fr\u00edo. Amanecido el cuarto, el viejo ya no ten\u00eda fuerzas para montar. Ahora estaba muerto. Hac\u00eda pocos d\u00edas a\u00fan cantaba a caballo la vieja tonada de la doncella de Puerto Gaviota, s\u00f3lo que cambiaba el nombre de la ciudad por Vado Ceniza. \"Voy a Vado Ceniza, a ver a mi bella dama, vaya, vaya, vaya\", recordaba Dunk, cavando con tristeza.\n\nCuando el agujero le pareci\u00f3 bastante hondo, tom\u00f3 en brazos el cad\u00e1ver del viejo y lo llev\u00f3 al borde. Hab\u00eda sido un hombre bajo y delgado, y ahora que ya no llevaba cota de malla, yelmo ni cincho para la espada, pesaba igual que un saco de hojas secas. Dunk pose\u00eda una estatura descomunal para su edad. A sus diecis\u00e9is o diecisiete a\u00f1os \u2014nadie sab\u00eda de cierto cu\u00e1ntos\u2014 su cuerpo larguirucho y poco gr\u00e1cil alcanzaba ya los cinco codos, y eso que a\u00fan no robustec\u00eda. El viejo hab\u00eda dedicado muchos elogios a su fortaleza. Siempre hab\u00eda sido pr\u00f3digo en ellos. Nada m\u00e1s ten\u00eda que dar. Dunk lo deposit\u00f3 en la fosa y aguard\u00f3 un poco antes de cubrirla. El aire volv\u00eda a oler a lluvia. Habr\u00eda que echar tierra antes de que cayeran las primeras gotas, pero no era f\u00e1cil sepultar aquel rostro viejo y cansado. \"Deber\u00eda estar un sept\u00f3n para dedicarle unas oraciones, pero s\u00f3lo me tiene a m\u00ed.\" El viejo le hab\u00eda transmitido toda su ciencia sobre espadas, escudos y lanzas, pero no hab\u00eda sido buen profesor de palabras.\n\n\u2014Le dejar\u00eda la espada, pero se oxidar\u00eda \u2014dijo Dunk al fin, como quien pide perd\u00f3n\u2014. Yo creo que los dioses le dar\u00e1n otra. Ojal\u00e1 no hubiera muerto, ser \u2014enmudeci\u00f3 unos instantes sin saber qu\u00e9 a\u00f1adir; no conoc\u00eda ninguna oraci\u00f3n entera, pues el viejo no hab\u00eda sido hombre de oraciones\u2014. Fue un caballero cabal y jam\u00e1s me golpe\u00f3 sin merecimiento \u2014logr\u00f3 decir al cabo\u2014, salvo aquella vez en Poza de la Doncella. Ya le dije que el pastel de la viuda se lo comi\u00f3 el mozo de la posada, no yo. En fin, ya no importa. Vaya con los dioses, ser.\n\nEch\u00f3 tierra con el pie. Despu\u00e9s llen\u00f3 la fosa de manera met\u00f3dica, sin mirar lo que yac\u00eda al fondo. \"Tuvo una larga vida\", pens\u00f3. \"Seguro que estaba m\u00e1s cerca de los sesenta que de los cincuenta. \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos pueden presumir de lo mismo?\" Al menos hab\u00eda visto otra primavera.\n\nCerca del crep\u00fasculo dio de comer a los caballos. Eran tres: el jamelgo de Dunk, el palafr\u00e9n del viejo y Trueno, su caballo de batalla, un corcel zaino reservado para los torneos y la guerra. Trueno hab\u00eda perdido la rapidez y fuerza de anta\u00f1o, pero conservaba el coraje, el brillo en la mirada y era la posesi\u00f3n m\u00e1s valiosa de Dunk. \"Si vendiera a Trueno y al viejo Casta\u00f1o, con sus sillas y bridas, me dar\u00edan suficiente plata para...\" Frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo. S\u00f3lo conoc\u00eda una vida, la de caballero errante: cabalgar de castillo en castillo, servir a tal o cual se\u00f1or, luchar en sus batallas, comer en sus salones y, terminada la guerra, proseguir el viaje. De vez en cuando tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda torneos, si bien con menor frecuencia. Dunk sab\u00eda que en los inviernos crudos algunos caballeros errantes se dedicaban al robo. No hab\u00eda sido el caso del viejo.\n\n\"Podr\u00eda buscarme a otro caballero errante que necesitara a un escudero para cuidarle las bestias y limpiarle la cota\", pens\u00f3, \"o ir a alguna ciudad, Lannisport o Desembarco del Rey, y unirme a la Guardia de la Ciudad. Tambi\u00e9n podr\u00eda...\"\n\nHab\u00eda dejado amontonadas las pertenencias del viejo al pie de un roble. El monedero de tela conten\u00eda tres piezas de plata, diecinueve peniques de cobre y un granate mellado. La mayor parte de las riquezas terrenales del viejo hab\u00eda sido gastada en caballos y armas, como era la norma entre caballeros errantes. Ahora Dunk era due\u00f1o de varias cosas: una cota de malla a la que hab\u00eda quitado mil veces la herrumbre, un morri\u00f3n de hierro con barra nasal ancha y una muesca en la sien izquierda, un cincho de cuero agrietado, una espada larga con funda de madera y cuero, una daga, una navaja de afeitar, una piedra de afilar, grebas, gola, una lanza de seis codos \u2014de fresno, con punta de duro hierro\u2014 y un escudo de roble con ribete mellado de metal y las armas de Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda: un c\u00e1liz con alas, plata sobre marr\u00f3n.\n\nContempl\u00f3 el escudo y levant\u00f3 el cintur\u00f3n. Despu\u00e9s volvi\u00f3 a mirar el escudo. El cincho se hab\u00eda confeccionado para las caderas estrechas del viejo y a Dunk le quedaba tan peque\u00f1o como la cota. At\u00f3 la funda a una cuerda de c\u00e1\u00f1amo, se la pas\u00f3 por la cintura y desenvain\u00f3 la espada.\n\nLa hoja era recta, muy pesada: buen acero forjado en el castillo. La guarnici\u00f3n era de cuero blando sobre madera y el pomo una piedra negra pulida. Era una espada sencilla, pero que se amoldaba bien a la mano. Dunk conoc\u00eda su filo por haberlo aguzado muchas noches con piedra de afilar y hule, antes de acostarse. \"La empu\u00f1o con la misma facilidad que \u00e9l\", rumi\u00f3, \"y en Vado Ceniza se celebra un torneo\".\n\nEl trote de Paso Quedo era m\u00e1s \u00e1gil que el del viejo Casta\u00f1o. Aun as\u00ed, cuando divis\u00f3 la posada, una estructura alta de madera y adobe, Dunk ya estaba cansado y dolorido. La c\u00e1lida luz amarilla que se derramaba por las ventanas era tan acogedora que fue incapaz de pasar de largo. \"Tengo tres monedas de plata\", se dijo. \"Bastante para una buena cena y toda la cerveza que me venga en gana.\"\n\nMientras desmontaba vio llegar del r\u00edo a un ni\u00f1o desnudo que empez\u00f3 a secarse con una capa marr\u00f3n de tela basta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEres el mozo de cuadra? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk. Enclenque, paliducho y con barro hasta los tobillos, el chico no aparentaba m\u00e1s de ocho o nueve a\u00f1os. Lo m\u00e1s raro era que no ten\u00eda pelo\u2014. Me gustar\u00eda que me cepillen el palafr\u00e9n y les pongan avena a los tres. \u00bfTe encargas t\u00fa?\n\nEl ni\u00f1o mir\u00f3 a Dunk con descaro.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo si quiero.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo.\n\n\u2014No me hables as\u00ed, que soy un caballero. No me obligues a demostr\u00e1rtelo.\n\n\u2014No lo pareces.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSon todos iguales?\n\n\u2014No, pero t\u00fa no lo pareces. Llevas una cuerda por cintur\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Lo importante es que la funda aguante. Vamos, ll\u00e9vate los caballos. Si me los cuidas bien te dar\u00e9 una moneda de cobre, y si no un golpe en la oreja.\n\nDio media vuelta, sin importarle la reacci\u00f3n del mozo, y abri\u00f3 la puerta con un hombro.\n\nLo previsible a aquella hora era encontrar la posada llena, pero en el comedor casi no hab\u00eda nadie. En una de las mesas roncaba un joven se\u00f1or con buen manto de damasco, sobre un charco de vino. Por lo dem\u00e1s, ni un alma. Dunk mir\u00f3 la sala sin saber qu\u00e9 hacer hasta que sali\u00f3 de la cocina una mujer baja, rechoncha y de tez blanca.\n\n\u2014Si\u00e9ntese donde guste \u2014le dijo\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 le sirvo, cerveza o comida?\n\n\u2014Las dos cosas.\n\nEscogi\u00f3 una silla al lado de la ventana, lejos del joven dormido.\n\n\u2014Hay cordero asado con hierbas, que est\u00e1 muy rico, y mi hijo caz\u00f3 unos cuantos patos. \u00bfQu\u00e9 se le antoja?\n\nHac\u00eda m\u00e1s de medio a\u00f1o que Dunk no com\u00eda en una posada.\n\n\u2014Las dos cosas.\n\nElla rio.\n\n\u2014Espacio no le falta \u2014llen\u00f3 una jarra de cerveza y la llev\u00f3 a la mesa de su nuevo cliente\u2014. \u00bfTambi\u00e9n quiere una habitaci\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014No \u2014Dunk so\u00f1aba con dormir bajo techo, en un blando colch\u00f3n de paja, pero hab\u00eda que administrar las monedas con prudencia. Se conformar\u00eda con el suelo\u2014. En cuanto tenga comida y cerveza en el est\u00f3mago seguir\u00e9 el viaje hacia Vado Ceniza. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto falta?\n\n\u2014A caballo, un d\u00eda. Cuando llegue al molino quemado y vea que el camino se bifurca, vaya hacia el norte. \u00bfY sus caballos? \u00bfSe los cuida mi ni\u00f1o o volvi\u00f3 a escaparse?\n\n\u2014No, ya me los cuida \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Veo poca clientela.\n\n\u2014Medio pueblo se fue a ver el torneo. Los m\u00edos tambi\u00e9n quer\u00edan, pero se los prohib\u00ed. Cuando muera les dejar\u00e9 la posada, pero el ni\u00f1o prefiere estar de vago con la soldadesca, y la ni\u00f1a... Cada vez que mira pasar a un caballero s\u00f3lo r\u00ede como tonta y suspira. \u00a1Le juro que no entiendo! Son como los dem\u00e1s hombres, y no s\u00e9 de ninguna justa que haya cambiado el precio de los huevos \u2014lanz\u00f3 a Dunk una mirada curiosa; la espada y el escudo eran indicio de algo que al mismo tiempo desment\u00edan el cintur\u00f3n de cuerda y la t\u00fanica de tela basta\u2014. \u00bfTambi\u00e9n va al torneo?\n\nAntes de contestar, Dunk tom\u00f3 un trago de cerveza. Era de color tostado, algo pastosa al paladar, tal como le gustaba.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo\u2014. Quiero ser palad\u00edn.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 la posadera con educaci\u00f3n.\n\nAl fondo, el joven se\u00f1or levant\u00f3 la cabeza del charco de vino. Ten\u00eda el pelo enmara\u00f1ado, la cara con mal color y la incipiente barba m\u00e1s rubia que el cabello. Despu\u00e9s de pasarse la mano por la boca, mir\u00f3 a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Acabo de so\u00f1ar con usted \u2014dijo y lo se\u00f1al\u00f3 con una mano temblorosa\u2014. No se acerque a m\u00ed, \u00bfeh? Mant\u00e9ngase bien lejos.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3 con semblante perplejo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi se\u00f1or?\n\nLa posadera se agach\u00f3 para decirle algo.\n\n\u2014No le haga caso. Se pasa el d\u00eda bebiendo y hablando de sus sue\u00f1os. Voy por la comida.\n\nY se alej\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfComida? \u2014el joven se\u00f1or pronunci\u00f3 la palabra como si le diera asco; despu\u00e9s se levant\u00f3 con dificultad, con una mano apoyada en la mesa\u2014. Estoy a punto de vomitar \u2014declar\u00f3; ten\u00eda la parte delantera de la t\u00fanica cubierta de manchas viejas de vino\u2014.Quer\u00eda una puta, pero no queda ninguna. Todas se fueron a Vado Ceniza. Que los dioses me asistan. Necesito vino.\n\nSali\u00f3 del comedor con pasos vacilantes. Dunk lo oy\u00f3 subir por la escalera con una canci\u00f3n en los labios.\n\n\"Qu\u00e9 triste espect\u00e1culo\", pens\u00f3. \"Pero \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 crey\u00f3 reconocerme?\", medit\u00f3 entre tragos de cerveza.\n\nEl cordero era de los mejores que hab\u00eda probado, pero el pato lo superaba, cocinado con cerezas, lim\u00f3n y menos grasa de lo habitual. La posadera trajo ch\u00edcharos con mantequilla y un pan de avena a\u00fan caliente. \"Ser caballero es esto\", se dijo Dunk, chupando los huesos con ah\u00ednco: \"Buena comida, cerveza a pedir de boca y nadie que te lance coscorrones\". Pidi\u00f3 tres jarras m\u00e1s: una para el resto de la cena, otra para digerir y la cuarta porque nadie se lo imped\u00eda. Cuando estuvo satisfecho pag\u00f3 una moneda de plata a la posadera y a\u00fan recibi\u00f3 un pu\u00f1ado de las de cobre.\n\nAl salir de la posada descubri\u00f3 que era de noche. Ten\u00eda la barriga llena y el monedero un poco m\u00e1s liviano, aunque se dirigi\u00f3 al establo con una sensaci\u00f3n de bienestar. Escuch\u00f3 un relincho.\n\n\u2014Tranquilo \u2014dijo una voz de ni\u00f1o.\n\nDunk apret\u00f3 el paso con el entrecejo fruncido.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 al mozo a lomos de Trueno, con la armadura del viejo puesta. La cota de malla le llegaba por debajo de los pies y hab\u00eda tenido que inclinar el yelmo hacia atr\u00e1s para que no le tapara los ojos. Estaba muy concentrado. Y muy rid\u00edculo. Dunk se qued\u00f3 riendo a la puerta del establo.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o levant\u00f3 la cabeza, se ruboriz\u00f3 y salt\u00f3 a tierra.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser, yo no quer\u00eda...!\n\n\u2014Ladr\u00f3n \u2014dijo Dunk, intentando poner voz seria\u2014. Qu\u00edtate la armadura y da gracias de que Trueno no te haya pegado una coz en esa cabeza de chorlito. Es un caballo de batalla, no un poni para ni\u00f1os.\n\nEl mozo se quit\u00f3 el yelmo y lo tir\u00f3 por la paja.\n\n\u2014Yo sabr\u00eda montarlo tan bien como t\u00fa \u2014dijo en el colmo del atrevimiento.\n\n\u2014Cierra la boca, que no quiero insolencias. Y qu\u00edtate tambi\u00e9n la cota de malla. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te propon\u00edas?\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo quieres que lo diga con la boca cerrada?\n\nEl ni\u00f1o se quit\u00f3 la cota con cierta dificultad y la dej\u00f3 caer.\n\n\u2014\u00c1brela, pero s\u00f3lo para contestar \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Ahora recoge la cota, qu\u00edtale el polvo y devu\u00e9lvela al lugar de donde la tomaste. Lo mismo para el morri\u00f3n. \u00bfCumpliste mis instrucciones? \u00bfLes diste de comer a los caballos y cepillaste a Paso Quedo?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014contest\u00f3 el muchacho, sacudiendo la cota para desprender la paja\u2014. Te diriges a Vado Ceniza, \u00bfverdad? Ll\u00e9vame contigo.\n\nYa se lo hab\u00eda advertido la posadera.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 dir\u00eda tu madre?\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi madre? \u2014el ni\u00f1o arrug\u00f3 la cara\u2014. Nada, porque est\u00e1 muerta.\n\nDunk se sorprendi\u00f3. \u00bfEntonces no era hijo de la posadera? Quiz\u00e1 lo tuviera como aprendiz. La cerveza le hab\u00eda enturbiado un poco el entendimiento.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEres hu\u00e9rfano? \u2014pregunt\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY t\u00fa? \u2014replic\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Lo fui \u2014reconoci\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\"Hasta que el viejo me tom\u00f3 a su cargo.\"\n\n\u2014Si me llevas contigo ser\u00eda tu escudero.\n\n\u2014No me hace falta.\n\n\u2014Todos los caballeros necesitan escuderos \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014, y t\u00fa tienes aspecto de necesitarlo m\u00e1s que ninguno.\n\nDunk levant\u00f3 la mano en actitud amenazadora.\n\n\u2014Y t\u00fa, de necesitar un buen golpe en la oreja. Ll\u00e9name un saco de avena. Salgo para Vado Ceniza... yo solo.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o disimulaba bien su miedo, si es que lo ten\u00eda. Permaneci\u00f3 unos instantes con los brazos cruzados y encar\u00e1ndolo, pero justo cuando Dunk estaba a punto de dejarlo por necio, dio media vuelta y sali\u00f3 en busca de la avena.\n\nPara Dunk result\u00f3 un alivio. \"L\u00e1stima\", pens\u00f3, \"pero aqu\u00ed en la posada vive bien, mejor que sirviendo a un caballero errante. No le har\u00eda ning\u00fan favor si me lo llevo\". Aun as\u00ed permaneci\u00f3 sensible a la desilusi\u00f3n del ni\u00f1o. Al montar en Paso Quedo y tomar la rienda de Trueno, pens\u00f3 que tal vez un penique lo alegrar\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Ten, muchacho, por tu ayuda.\n\nLe tir\u00f3 la moneda con una sonrisa, pero el mozo no hizo el adem\u00e1n de recogerla. Cay\u00f3 al suelo entre sus pies descalzos y ah\u00ed se qued\u00f3.\n\n\"En cuanto me marche la tomar\u00e1\", se dijo Dunk. Hizo dar media vuelta al palafr\u00e9n y se alej\u00f3 de la posada, seguido por los otros dos caballos. La luna iluminaba los \u00e1rboles y el cielo despejado reluc\u00eda de estrellas. Al avanzar por el camino Dunk sinti\u00f3 a sus espaldas la mirada del ni\u00f1o, hosco y silencioso.\n\nMientras se extend\u00edan las sombras vespertinas, Dunk tir\u00f3 de las riendas al borde del gran prado de Vado Ceniza. Ya hab\u00eda sesenta pabellones: peque\u00f1os, grandes, de lona, de lino, de seda... Si en algo coincid\u00edan era en sus colores vivos y en los largos estandartes sujetos al poste central, que ofrec\u00edan un espect\u00e1culo crom\u00e1tico superior al de un prado de flores silvestres: rojos intensos, amarillos luminosos, matices infinitos de verde y azul, negros, grises, morados...\n\nAlgunos de los caballeros hab\u00edan sido compa\u00f1eros del viejo. A otros Dunk los conoc\u00eda por historias que se contaban en los mesones y alrededor de las hogueras. Nunca hab\u00eda aprendido la magia de la lectura y la escritura, pero el viejo hab\u00eda puesto todo de su parte para inculcarle nociones de her\u00e1ldica en forma de largos sermones cuando iban a caballo. Los ruise\u00f1ores pertenec\u00edan a lord Caron de las Marcas, tan buen arpista como justador. El ciervo coronado identificaba a ser Lyonel Baratheon, la Tormenta que R\u00ede. Dunk reconoci\u00f3 el cazador de los Tarly, el rel\u00e1mpago morado de la casa de Dondarrion y la manzana roja de los Fossoway. El le\u00f3n de Lannister rug\u00eda en oro sobre gules y la tortuga marina de los Estermont nadaba, verde oscuro, en campo de sinople. La tienda marr\u00f3n sobre la que ondeaba un caballo rojo s\u00f3lo pod\u00eda alojar a ser Otho Bracken, merecedor del apodo de Bestia de Bracken por haber matado a lord Quentyn Blackwood tres a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s, durante un torneo en Desembarco del Rey. Se dec\u00eda que el golpe de ser Otho con el hacha roma hab\u00eda sido tan fuerte, que hab\u00eda hundido la visera del yelmo de lord Blackwood y le hab\u00eda destrozado la cabeza. Dunk tambi\u00e9n vio algunos estandartes de los Blackwood. Estaban en el l\u00edmite occidental del prado, lo m\u00e1s lejos posible de ser Otho. Marbrand, Mallister, Cargyll, Westerling, Swann, Mullendore, Hightower, Florent, Frey, Penrose, Stokeworth, Darry, Parren, Wylde... Parec\u00eda que todas las casas nobles del norte y el sur hubieran enviado a Vado Ceniza a uno o m\u00e1s caballeros para ver a la bella dama y justar en su honor.\n\nPor gratos que aquellos pabellones fueran a la vista, Dunk era consciente de que no estaban destinados a \u00e9l. Pasar\u00eda la noche con el \u00fanico abrigo de una capa ra\u00edda de lana. Los grandes del reino y los caballeros cenar\u00edan capones y lechones, mientras que \u00e9l se conformar\u00eda con un tasajo de buey correoso. Bien sab\u00eda que el hecho de acampar en aquel prado multicolor lo someter\u00eda a mudos desdenes y burlas abiertas. Quiz\u00e1 unos pocos lo trataran con consideraci\u00f3n, pero en cierto modo eso era peor.\n\nPara un caballero errante el orgullo era una cuesti\u00f3n capital, pues sin \u00e9l val\u00eda tan poco como un mercenario. \"Debo ganarme un puesto entre esta gente. Si combato bien es posible que alg\u00fan se\u00f1or me tome a su servicio; entonces cabalgar\u00e9 en noble compa\u00f1\u00eda, cenar\u00e9 a diario carne fresca en una sala del castillo y plantar\u00e9 mi propia tienda en los torneos. Lo primero, sin embargo, es destacar.\" No tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que dar la espalda al campo de justas y volver al bosque con sus caballos.\n\nPor los alrededores del prado, a unos mil pasos de la ciudad y el castillo, encontr\u00f3 el recodo de un riachuelo donde el agua era profunda. Estaba bordeado de un juncar muy poblado, a la sombra de un olmo de gran copa. Ning\u00fan estandarte era m\u00e1s verde que aquella hierba primaveral, mullida al tacto. El lugar era hermoso y a\u00fan no hab\u00eda sido reclamado por nadie. \"Ser\u00e1 mi pabell\u00f3n\", se dijo Dunk, \"un pabell\u00f3n con techo de hojas y m\u00e1s verde que los estandartes de los Tyrell y los Estermont\".\n\nLo primero eran los caballos. Una vez atendidas sus necesidades, Dunk se desnud\u00f3 y se meti\u00f3 en el agua para quitarse el polvo del camino. \"Cualquier caballero que se precie debe ser tan limpio como p\u00edo\", sol\u00eda decir el viejo, que insist\u00eda en que se ba\u00f1aran de pies a cabeza cada cambio de luna, tanto si ol\u00edan mal como si no. Dunk jur\u00f3 hacerlo porque ya era caballero.\n\nSe sent\u00f3 desnudo al pie del olmo para secarse y disfrutar de la calidez primaveral que le acariciaba la piel. Contempl\u00f3 el vuelo perezoso de una lib\u00e9lula por los juncos. \"\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 las llamar\u00e1n dragones?\",* se pregunt\u00f3. \"No se parecen en nada.\" No es que Dunk hubiera visto alg\u00fan drag\u00f3n, pero el viejo s\u00ed. Dunk lo hab\u00eda o\u00eddo contar cincuenta veces la misma historia, aqu\u00e9lla de cuando era ni\u00f1o y su padre lo hab\u00eda acompa\u00f1ado a Desembarco del Rey, donde vieron al \u00faltimo drag\u00f3n, un a\u00f1o antes de que muriera. Era una hembra de color verde, peque\u00f1a y debilitada, con las alas atrofiadas. Todos sus huevos se hab\u00edan echado a perder. \"Hay gente que dice que la envenen\u00f3 el rey Aegon\", contaba el viejo. \"Deben de referirse al tercero, no el padre del rey Daeron, sino aquel al que llamaban Veneno de Drag\u00f3n o Aegon el Funesto. Vio al drag\u00f3n de su t\u00edo devorar a su propia madre y les ten\u00eda mucho miedo. Desde la muerte del \u00faltimo drag\u00f3n los veranos se han acortado y los inviernos son m\u00e1s largos y crueles.\"\n\nCuando el sol se ocult\u00f3 en las copas de los \u00e1rboles empez\u00f3 a refrescar y lleg\u00f3 un momento en que a Dunk se le puso la piel de gallina. Sacudi\u00f3 la t\u00fanica y los pantalones contra el tronco del olmo para desempolvarlos lo mejor posible y volvi\u00f3 a pon\u00e9rselos. La inscripci\u00f3n en el torneo, previa b\u00fasqueda del maestro de justas, pod\u00eda esperar a la ma\u00f1ana siguiente. Sus esperanzas de participar depend\u00edan de que aprovechara la noche en otros menesteres.\n\nNo le hizo falta ver su reflejo en el agua para saber que no ofrec\u00eda un aspecto demasiado caballeresco. Se ech\u00f3 pues el escudo de ser Arlan a la espalda, a fin de dejar el emblema a la vista. Despu\u00e9s mane\u00f3 los caballos y dej\u00f3 que pacieran bajo el olmo, mientras \u00e9l caminaba hacia el escenario de las justas.\n\nComo era costumbre, el prado surt\u00eda de tierras comunales a los habitantes de la villa de Vado Ceniza, situada en la otra orilla del r\u00edo. El torneo la hab\u00eda transformado. De la noche a la ma\u00f1ana hab\u00eda surgido otra poblaci\u00f3n, no de piedra, sino de seda, mayor que su hermana y m\u00e1s hermosa. Al borde del prado hab\u00edan plantado sus puestos decenas de comerciantes que vend\u00edan toda clase de art\u00edculos: fieltro, fruta, cinturones, zapatos, pieles, piedras preciosas, halcones, objetos de metal, especias, plumas... Entre el p\u00fablico circulaban juglares, titiriteros y magos. Tambi\u00e9n putas y ladrones, que aprovechaban para ejercer su profesi\u00f3n. Dunk vigilaba sus monedas.\n\nA su nariz lleg\u00f3 el olor de las salchichas, que al fre\u00edrse desprend\u00edan un humo espeso, y se le hizo agua la boca. Se gast\u00f3 una moneda de cobre en una salchicha y un cuerno de cerveza. Mientras com\u00eda, presenci\u00f3 la lucha entre un caballero de madera pintada y un drag\u00f3n del mismo material. No menos pintoresca resultaba la persona que mov\u00eda los hilos del drag\u00f3n, una joven alta, con la piel oscura y el cabello negro t\u00edpicos de Dorne. Era delgada como una lanza, apenas con pecho, aunque a Dunk le gust\u00f3 su cara y el movimiento de dedos con que hac\u00eda caracolear el drag\u00f3n al otro extremo de los hilos. Si le hubiera sobrado una moneda se la habr\u00eda arrojado, pero no era el caso.\n\nSus esperanzas de encontrar vendedores de armas y armaduras quedaron confirmadas. Vio a un tyroshi con barba azul en doble punta que ofrec\u00eda yelmos profusamente adornados, piezas prodigiosas de oro y plata con formas de p\u00e1jaros y otros animales. Tambi\u00e9n encontr\u00f3 a un espadero que pregonaba hojas de acero a bajo precio, y a otro que las comercializaba mucho m\u00e1s finas, pero Dunk ya ten\u00eda espada.\n\nEl hombre al que buscaba estaba al final de una hilera de puestos, sentado a una mesa en la que descansaban una cota de malla de excelente factura y un par de guanteletes que Dunk inspeccion\u00f3 con detenimiento.\n\n\u2014Eres un buen artesano \u2014dijo.\n\n\u2014El mejor.\n\nEl armero en cuesti\u00f3n superaba a duras penas los siete palmos. Empero, ten\u00eda el torso igual de ancho que Dunk, adem\u00e1s de una barba negra, manos enormes y ni el menor asomo de humildad.\n\n\u2014Necesito una armadura para el torneo. Una buena cota de malla, gola, grebas y yelmo completo.\n\nEl morri\u00f3n del viejo era de su talla, pero Dunk deseaba protegerse la cara con algo m\u00e1s que una simple barra nasal.\n\nEl armero lo mir\u00f3 de arriba abajo.\n\n\u2014Eres alto, pero he hecho armaduras para otros que lo eran todav\u00eda m\u00e1s \u2014sali\u00f3 de detr\u00e1s de la mesa\u2014. Arrod\u00edllate y te medir\u00e9 los hombros, y ese cuello que parece un tronco de \u00e1rbol \u2014Dunk obedeci\u00f3. El armero le pas\u00f3 por los hombros una cinta de cuero con nudos, gru\u00f1\u00f3, us\u00f3 la misma cinta para el cuello y volvi\u00f3 a gru\u00f1ir\u2014. Levanta el brazo. No, el derecho \u2014gru\u00f1\u00f3 por tercera vez\u2014. Ya puedes levantarte \u2014la parte interior de una pierna, el grosor de la pantorrilla y el tama\u00f1o de la cintura suscitaron nuevos gru\u00f1idos\u2014. Es posible que te convengan algunas piezas que llevo en el carro \u2014dijo al acabar\u2014. Sin adornos, \u00bfeh? Ni oro ni plata. S\u00f3lo acero, sencillo pero del bueno. Yo hago yelmos que parecen yelmos, no cerdos alados ni frutas ex\u00f3ticas. Ahora bien, si recibes un lanzazo en la cara te ser\u00e1n de mayor utilidad los m\u00edos.\n\n\u2014No pido m\u00e1s \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto pides?\n\n\u2014Ochocientas monedas, y te estoy haciendo un favor.\n\n\u00a1Ochocientas! Era m\u00e1s de lo esperado.\n\n\u2014Hum... Podr\u00eda darte una armadura usada, hecha para un hombre m\u00e1s bajo... Un morri\u00f3n, una cota de malla...\n\n\u2014Pate s\u00f3lo vende lo que fabrica \u00e9l mismo \u2014declar\u00f3 el armero \u2014, aunque el metal podr\u00eda aprovecharse. Si no est\u00e1 demasiado oxidado, me lo quedo y te armo por seiscientas.\n\nDunk ten\u00eda la posibilidad de rogar a Pate que le fiara, pero no se hac\u00eda ilusiones de la respuesta. Hab\u00eda pasado bastante tiempo en compa\u00f1\u00eda del viejo para saber que los comerciantes recelaban sobremanera de los caballeros errantes, algunos de los cuales eran poco menos que ladrones.\n\n\u2014Te doy dos monedas de plata y ma\u00f1ana traigo la armadura y las que faltan.\n\nEl armero lo mir\u00f3 con atenci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Con dos monedas te doy un d\u00eda de plazo. Si no lo cumples, vender\u00e9 la armadura a otra persona.\n\nDunk sac\u00f3 las monedas de la bolsa y las deposit\u00f3 en la mano encallecida del mercader.\n\n\u2014Las tendr\u00e1s todas. Vine al torneo para ser un palad\u00edn.\n\n\u2014Claro \u2014Pate mordi\u00f3 una de las monedas\u2014. Y supongo que los dem\u00e1s s\u00f3lo vinieron a apoyarte.\n\nCuando emprendi\u00f3 el camino de regreso al olmo, la luna ya estaba muy por encima del horizonte. A sus espaldas, el prado de Vado Ceniza aparec\u00eda salpicado de antorchas. Se o\u00edan cantos y risas, pero Dunk no estaba de humor para festejos. S\u00f3lo se le ocurr\u00eda una manera de conseguir el dinero para la armadura. Y si lo derrotaban...\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo necesito una victoria \u2014musit\u00f3\u2014. \u00a1Tampoco es tanto!\n\nPoco o mucho, el viejo jam\u00e1s lo habr\u00eda deseado. Ser Arlan no hab\u00eda participado en ninguna justa desde la de Basti\u00f3n de Tormentas, donde hab\u00eda sido arrojado de su montura por el pr\u00edncipe de Rocadrag\u00f3n, y de eso hac\u00eda ya muchos a\u00f1os. \"Pocos hombres pueden presumir de haber quebrado siete lanzas contra el mejor caballero de los Siete Reinos\", dec\u00eda. \"\u00bfPara qu\u00e9 insistir si jam\u00e1s obtendr\u00eda mayor gloria?\"\n\nDunk hab\u00eda sospechado que el retiro del viejo guardaba m\u00e1s relaci\u00f3n con su edad que con el pr\u00edncipe de Rocadrag\u00f3n, pero nunca se hab\u00eda atrevido a decirlo. El viejo hab\u00eda conservado su orgullo hasta el final. \"Soy r\u00e1pido y fuerte\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, obstinado. \"\u00c9l mismo me lo dec\u00eda. Que \u00e9l no pudiera no significa que no pueda yo.\"\n\nCaminaba entre matojos, barruntando sus posibilidades de victoria, cuando entrevi\u00f3 una hoguera a trav\u00e9s de la vegetaci\u00f3n. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00eda? Desenvain\u00f3 la espada sin pens\u00e1rselo dos veces y avanz\u00f3 por la hierba.\n\nEmergi\u00f3 de all\u00ed profiriendo palabras malsonantes, pero fren\u00f3 en seco al ver junto a la hoguera al ni\u00f1o de la posada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfT\u00fa? \u2014baj\u00f3 la espada\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 haces aqu\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Pescado a la brasa \u2014dijo el cr\u00edo, siempre lenguaraz\u2014. \u00bfSe te antoja?\n\n\u2014Lo que te pregunto es c\u00f3mo llegaste aqu\u00ed. \u00bfRobaste un caballo?\n\n\u2014Subido al carro de un hombre que llevaba corderos al castillo para la despensa del se\u00f1or de Vado Ceniza.\n\n\u2014Pues ve averiguando si sigue por aqu\u00ed o b\u00fascate otro carro, porque yo no te quiero.\n\n\u2014No puedes obligarme \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o con impertinencia\u2014. Ya estoy harto de la posada.\n\n\u2014Basta de insolencias \u2014advirti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Lo que deber\u00eda hacer es echarte a lomos de mi caballo y devolverte a casa ahora mismo.\n\n\u2014Te perder\u00edas el torneo \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o \u2014, porque soy de Desembarco del Rey.\n\n\"Desembarco del Rey.\" Dunk sospech\u00f3 que le tomaba el pelo, pero aquel muchacho no pod\u00eda saber que \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n era nativo de la misma ciudad. \"Seguro que es otro pobre diablo del Lecho de Pulgas. No me extra\u00f1a nada que quisiera marcharse.\"\n\nSe sinti\u00f3 rid\u00edculo con la espada en la mano, delante de un hu\u00e9rfano de ocho a\u00f1os. La envain\u00f3 con mala cara, para que el ni\u00f1o se diera cuenta de que no tolerar\u00eda m\u00e1s desplantes. Pens\u00f3 que deber\u00eda propinarle unos azotes, pero le daba demasiada l\u00e1stima. Ech\u00f3 un vistazo alrededor. La hoguera ard\u00eda con fuerza en su c\u00edrculo de piedras. Los caballos hab\u00edan sido cepillados y la ropa puesta a secar en el olmo, por encima del fuego.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 hace mi ropa colgando?\n\n\u2014La lav\u00e9 \u2014contest\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Tambi\u00e9n limpi\u00e9 los caballos, encend\u00ed el fuego y pesqu\u00e9 esto. Quer\u00eda montar la tienda, pero no la encontr\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00c9ste es mi pabell\u00f3n.\n\nDunk levant\u00f3 el brazo para se\u00f1alar las ramas que los cubr\u00edan.\n\n\u2014Eso es un \u00e1rbol \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o, impasible.\n\n\u2014A un caballero de verdad no le hace falta otro pabell\u00f3n. Preferir\u00eda dormir con las estrellas como techo que en una tienda llena de humo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY si llueve?\n\n\u2014Me proteger\u00e1 el \u00e1rbol.\n\n\u2014Traspasa.\n\nDunk rio.\n\n\u2014Es verdad. Te ser\u00e9 sincero: no tengo con qu\u00e9 pagar un pabell\u00f3n. Y ya que estamos en esto, te aconsejo que gires el pescado o se chamuscar\u00e1 de un lado y quedar\u00e1 crudo del otro. No sirves para pinche.\n\n\u2014Si quisiera s\u00ed \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o.\n\nAun as\u00ed gir\u00f3 el pescado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 pas\u00f3 con tu pelo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Me lo raparon los maestres.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o se puso la capucha de su capa marr\u00f3n, como si de repente se avergonzara.\n\nDunk hab\u00eda o\u00eddo contar que era un remedio contra los piojos o determinadas enfermedades.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s enfermo?\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo te llamas?\n\n\u2014Dunk.\n\nEl pobre muchacho se rio a carcajadas, como si fuera lo m\u00e1s divertido que hubiera o\u00eddo en su vida.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDunk? \u2014repiti\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfSer Dunk? No es un nombre de caballero. \u00bfEs una abreviaci\u00f3n de Duncan?\n\n\u00bfUna abreviaci\u00f3n? Dunk no recordaba haber sido llamado de otra manera por el viejo ni guardaba demasiados recuerdos de su vida anterior.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014contest\u00f3\u2014. Ser Duncan de... \u2014No ten\u00eda apellido ni linaje. Ser Arlan lo hab\u00eda encontrado viviendo por los lupanares y callejones del Lecho de Pulgas, como un simple vago que no conoc\u00eda a sus padres. \u00bfQu\u00e9 contestar? \"Ser Duncan del Lecho de Pulgas\" no sonaba muy caballeresco. Pod\u00eda ponerse del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, pero \u00bfy si le preguntaban d\u00f3nde quedaba eso? Dunk nunca hab\u00eda estado en \u00c1rbol de la Moneda ni sab\u00eda mucho de la poblaci\u00f3n por boca del viejo. Frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo, guard\u00f3 silencio y acab\u00f3 por a\u00f1adir\u2014: Ser Duncan el Alto.\n\nLo de alto era indiscutible y sonaba imponente.\n\nEl renacuajo no dio muestras de compartir su opini\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Es la primera vez que oigo el nombre de ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfO sea que conoces a todos los caballeros de los Siete Reinos?\n\nEl ni\u00f1o lo mir\u00f3 con descaro.\n\n\u2014A los buenos s\u00ed.\n\n\u2014Yo no estoy por debajo de nadie. Al final del torneo quedar\u00e1n convencidos. \u00bfY t\u00fa, ladr\u00f3n? \u00bfTe llamas de alguna manera?\n\nEl ni\u00f1o titube\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Egg** \u2014dijo al fin.\n\nDunk evit\u00f3 re\u00edrse. \"Es verdad que tiene una cabeza que parece un huevo. Los ni\u00f1os peque\u00f1os pueden ser muy crueles, igual que las personas mayores.\"\n\n\u2014Egg \u2014dijo\u2014, deber\u00eda darte una buena paliza y despacharte, pero la verdad es que no tengo pabell\u00f3n ni escudero. Si juras cumplir mis \u00f3rdenes te permitir\u00e9 servirme lo que dure el torneo. Despu\u00e9s veremos. Si decido que me convienen tus servicios, ir\u00e1s vestido y comido. Puede que la ropa que te d\u00e9 sea muy tosca y la comida, tasajos de carne y pescado con alguna que otra pieza de caza cuando no haya guardias forestales rondando, pero hambre no pasar\u00e1s. Adem\u00e1s, prometo no pegarte si no te lo mereces.\n\nEgg sonri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014lo corrigi\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. S\u00f3lo soy un caballero errante.\n\nSe pregunt\u00f3 si el viejo lo estar\u00eda viendo desde las alturas. \"Le ense\u00f1ar\u00e9 las artes de la batalla, ser, las que t\u00fa me ense\u00f1aste a m\u00ed. Parece que tiene madera y no se debe descartar que llegue a caballero.\"\n\nEl pescado, cuando lo comieron, result\u00f3 un poco crudo por dentro y el mozo no hab\u00eda quitado todas las espinas, pero no dejaba de ser una exquisitez en comparaci\u00f3n con la dureza del tasajo de buey.\n\nEgg no tard\u00f3 en caer dormido junto a las brasas. Dunk se tendi\u00f3 de espaldas, a poca distancia, con las manos en la nuca, contemplando el firmamento estrellado. A sus o\u00eddos llegaba la m\u00fasica del prado, a unos mil pasos de distancia. Las estrellas se contaban por millares. Vio caer una, trazando un rastro verde que brill\u00f3 y desapareci\u00f3.\n\n\"Las estrellas fugaces dan suerte al que las ve\", pens\u00f3, \"pero a estas horas los dem\u00e1s caballeros se encuentran en sus pabellones, viendo seda en lugar de cielo. La suerte, por lo tanto, es toda m\u00eda\".\n\nEn la ma\u00f1ana lo despert\u00f3 el canto de un gallo. Egg segu\u00eda acurrucado debajo de la peor de las dos mantas del viejo. \"No aprovech\u00f3 la noche para escapar. Por algo se empieza.\"\n\nLo sacudi\u00f3 con el pie.\n\n\u2014Arriba, que hay trabajo \u2014el ni\u00f1o se levant\u00f3 con rapidez, frot\u00e1ndose los ojos\u2014. Ay\u00fadame a ensillar a Paso Quedo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY el desayuno?\n\n\u2014Hay tasajo de buey, pero ser\u00e1 para despu\u00e9s.\n\n\u2014Preferir\u00eda comerme el caballo \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Ser.\n\n\u2014Si no obedeces te comer\u00e1s mi pu\u00f1o. Ve a buscar los cepillos. Est\u00e1n en la alforja. \u00c9sa, s\u00ed.\n\nCepillaron juntos la gualdrapa del palafr\u00e9n, le echaron al lomo la mejor silla de ser Arlan y ataron las correas. Dunk comprob\u00f3 que, cuando Egg se concentraba, era buen trabajador.\n\n\u2014Calculo que estar\u00e9 fuera todo el d\u00eda \u2014le dijo despu\u00e9s de montar\u2014. T\u00fa qu\u00e9date, arregla el campamento y cerci\u00f3rate de que no merodee ning\u00fan otro ladr\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe puedes dejar una espada para ahuyentarlos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg.\n\nDunk repar\u00f3 en que ten\u00eda los ojos azules y muy oscuros, casi violetas. Su calvicie hac\u00eda que parecieran enormes.\n\n\u2014No \u2014contest\u00f3\u2014. Bastar\u00e1 con un cuchillo. Y m\u00e1s vale que te encuentre aqu\u00ed a mi regreso, \u00bfeh? Como me robes y huyas juro que te perseguir\u00e9. Con perros.\n\n\u2014No tienes \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\u2014Ya los conseguir\u00e9 \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. S\u00f3lo para ti.\n\nDirigi\u00f3 a Paso Quedo hacia el prado y sali\u00f3 al trote, confiado en que la amenaza persuadiera al muchacho. A excepci\u00f3n de la ropa que llevaba, la armadura de la alforja y el caballo que montaba, dejaba el resto de sus pertenencias en el campamento. \"Fue una sandez fiarme tanto del ni\u00f1o\", pens\u00f3, \"pero el viejo hizo lo mismo por m\u00ed. Debi\u00f3 de enviarlo la Madre para darme la oportunidad de saldar mi deuda.\"\n\nAl cruzar el prado oy\u00f3 martillazos a la orilla del r\u00edo. Eran carpinteros que montaban barreras y una tribuna de considerable altura. Tambi\u00e9n se erig\u00edan nuevos pabellones, mientras los caballeros que ya estaban aposentados descansaban de la juerga nocturna o desayunaban. Dunk oli\u00f3 a humo y tocino.\n\nAl norte del prado corr\u00eda la R\u00eda de los Mejillones, afluente del caudaloso Mander. La ciudad y el castillo estaban al otro lado del vado, de escasa profundidad. Durante sus viajes con el viejo, Dunk hab\u00eda visto varias villas de mercado. Vado Ceniza se contaba entre las m\u00e1s bellas. Las casas encaladas, con techumbre de paja, presentaban un aspecto acogedor. De peque\u00f1o siempre hab\u00eda tenido curiosidad por saber c\u00f3mo se viv\u00eda en aquellos lugares: dormir siempre bajo techo, despertarse cada ma\u00f1ana entre los mismos muros... \"Es posible que no tarde en descubrirlo. Y Egg tambi\u00e9n.\" \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no? Cosas m\u00e1s raras se ve\u00edan a diario.\n\nEl castillo de Vado Ceniza era una construcci\u00f3n de piedra de forma triangular, dotada de torres redondas de cuarenta varas de altura en cada \u00e1ngulo y un grueso recinto amurallado que las un\u00eda. En sus almenas hab\u00eda estandartes anaranjados con el blas\u00f3n de su se\u00f1or: un sol y un cheur\u00f3n blancos. Varios alabarderos con librea anaranjada y blanca guardaban las puertas del castillo; observaban a la gente y parec\u00edan menos ocupados en mantenerla a distancia del port\u00f3n que en cruzar bromas con alguna lechera de buen ver. Dunk tir\u00f3 de las riendas delante del individuo bajo y con barba al que tom\u00f3 por el capit\u00e1n y pregunt\u00f3 por el maestro de justas.\n\n\u2014Al que buscas es a Plummer, el mayordomo. S\u00edgueme.\n\nUna vez en el patio de armas dej\u00f3 a Paso Quedo en manos de un mozo de cuadra, se ech\u00f3 al hombro el escudo mellado de ser Arlan y sigui\u00f3 al capit\u00e1n de la guardia desde el establo hasta una peque\u00f1a torre cobijada en un \u00e1ngulo de la muralla. Los escalones que llevaban al camino de ronda eran muy empinados.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVienes a inscribir a tu se\u00f1or para el torneo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 el capit\u00e1n durante el ascenso.\n\n\u2014No, quiero inscribirme yo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? \u2014le pareci\u00f3 ver una sonrisa burlona en el rostro del capit\u00e1n, pero no estaba seguro\u2014. Es aquella puerta. Yo vuelvo a mi puesto.\n\nDunk abri\u00f3 la puerta y encontr\u00f3 al mayordomo sentado a una mesa de caballete, escribiendo a pluma en un pergamino. Ten\u00eda el pelo blanco, con entradas, y una expresi\u00f3n muy seria.\n\n\u2014\u00bfS\u00ed? \u2014dijo al levantar la cabeza\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 quieres?\n\nDunk cerr\u00f3 la puerta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEres Plummer, el mayordomo? Vengo por el torneo, a apuntarme en la lista.\n\nPlummer apret\u00f3 los labios.\n\n\u2014El torneo de mi se\u00f1or est\u00e1 reservado a los caballeros. \u00bfT\u00fa eres uno?\n\nDunk asinti\u00f3 con la cabeza, pregunt\u00e1ndose si se le habr\u00edan puesto rojas las orejas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY por ventura tienes nombre?\n\n\u2014Dunk \u2014\u00bfc\u00f3mo se le ocurr\u00eda?\u2014. Ser Duncan. El Alto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY de d\u00f3nde vienes, ser Duncan el Alto?\n\n\u2014De todas partes. He sido escudero de ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda desde los cinco o seis a\u00f1os. \u00c9ste es su escudo \u2014lo ense\u00f1\u00f3 al mayordomo\u2014. Ven\u00edamos al torneo, pero se resfri\u00f3 y muri\u00f3. Antes del \u00faltimo suspiro me arm\u00f3 caballero con su propia espada.\n\nDunk desenvain\u00f3 el arma y la dej\u00f3 sobre la castigada mesa de madera. El maestro de justas apenas la mir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014No cabe duda de que es una espada, aunque debo decir que desconoc\u00eda al tal Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda. \u00bfEras pues su escudero?\n\n\u2014Siempre dijo que se propon\u00eda verme armado caballero. Antes de morir pidi\u00f3 su espada e hizo que me arrodillara. Despu\u00e9s me toc\u00f3 una vez en el hombro derecho, otra en el izquierdo y pronunci\u00f3 unas palabras. Cuando me levant\u00e9 dijo que ya era caballero.\n\n\u2014Hum \u2014el tal Plummer se rasc\u00f3 la nariz\u2014. Es cierto que cualquier caballero tiene derecho a armar a otro, si bien lo habitual, antes de hacer los votos, es someterse a una vigilia y ser ungido por un sept\u00f3n. \u00bfHubo alg\u00fan testigo en la ceremonia?\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo un zorzal en un espino. Lo o\u00ed cantar mientras mi viejo se\u00f1or pronunciaba las palabras. Me exhort\u00f3 a ser buen caballero, obedecer a los siete dioses, defender a los inocentes y los desvalidos, servir a mi se\u00f1or con lealtad y defender el reino con todas mis fuerzas. Yo jur\u00e9 hacerlo.\n\n\u2014Estoy seguro de ello \u2014sin poder evitarlo, Dunk se fij\u00f3 en que Plummer no se dignaba llamarlo \"ser\"\u2014. Tendr\u00e9 que consultarlo con lord Ashford. \u00bfHay entre los presentes alg\u00fan caballero de renombre que sea capaz de identificarte a ti o a tu difunto se\u00f1or?\n\nDunk reflexion\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Creo haber visto un pabell\u00f3n con el estandarte de la casa Dondarrion. Negro, con un rel\u00e1mpago amarillo.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo puede ser el de ser Manfred, miembro de la casa a la que te refieres.\n\n\u2014Hace tres a\u00f1os ser Arlan sirvi\u00f3 a su padre en Dorne. Es posible que ser Manfred me recuerde.\n\n\u2014Yo te aconsejar\u00eda que hablaras con \u00e9l. Si responde por ti, tr\u00e1elo ma\u00f1ana a la misma hora.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed lo har\u00e9, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nDunk dio un paso hacia la puerta.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014lo llam\u00f3 el mayordomo.\n\nDunk dio media vuelta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s consciente de que salir derrotado de un torneo significa entregar las armas, la armadura y el caballo al vencedor y pagar por su rescate?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, lo s\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPosees la suma necesaria para el rescate en cuesti\u00f3n?\n\nEsta vez se sinti\u00f3 seguro de que ten\u00eda las orejas rojas.\n\n\u2014No la necesitar\u00e9 \u2014dijo, rezando por que fuera cierto.\n\n\"S\u00f3lo necesito una victoria. Si venzo en mi primera justa, tendr\u00e9 la armadura y el caballo del perdedor, o sus monedas, y podr\u00e9 superar una derrota.\"\n\nBaj\u00f3 con lentitud por los escalones, reacio a dar el siguiente paso. Al llegar al patio interpel\u00f3 a uno de los mozos de cuadra.\n\n\u2014Tengo que hablar con el caballerizo de lord Ashford.\n\n\u2014Ahora mismo le aviso.\n\nEl establo era fr\u00edo y oscuro. Pas\u00f3 al lado de un caballo gris, que se le encabrit\u00f3. En cambio, Paso Quedo relinch\u00f3 con suavidad y toc\u00f3 con el morro la mano que le acercaba Dunk.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa s\u00ed que eres buena \u2014murmur\u00f3 \u00e9l.\n\nEl viejo siempre hab\u00eda dicho que a un caballero no le conven\u00eda encari\u00f1arse con ning\u00fan caballo, porque lo l\u00f3gico era que se le murieran unos cuantos con la silla puesta, pero \u00e9l hab\u00eda sido el primero en no seguir su propio consejo. M\u00e1s de una vez Dunk lo hab\u00eda visto gastarse la \u00faltima moneda de cobre en una manzana para el viejo Casta\u00f1o o un poco de avena para Paso Quedo y Trueno. Ser Arlan hab\u00eda usado el palafr\u00e9n como caballo de viaje, cabalgando miles de kil\u00f3metros sobre su lomo a lo largo y ancho de los Siete Reinos. Dunk tuvo la sensaci\u00f3n de traicionar a un viejo amigo, pero no ten\u00eda elecci\u00f3n. Casta\u00f1o era demasiado viejo para valer gran cosa y a Trueno lo necesitaba para las justas.\n\nEl caballerizo se aperson\u00f3 con cierta demora. Durante la espera, Dunk oy\u00f3 trompetas en la muralla y una voz en el patio. La curiosidad lo hizo llevar a Paso Quedo hasta la puerta del establo para averiguar qu\u00e9 ocurr\u00eda. Estaba llegando al castillo una gran comitiva de caballeros y arqueros a caballo, cien hombres o m\u00e1s a lomos de unas monturas superiores a cuantas hubiera visto Dunk. \"Ha venido un gran se\u00f1or.\" Tom\u00f3 por el brazo a un mozo de cuadra que pasaba corriendo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9nes son?\n\nEl muchacho lo mir\u00f3 con extra\u00f1eza.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo ves los estandartes?\n\nSe zaf\u00f3 de Dunk y prosigui\u00f3 su carrera.\n\n\"Los estandartes...\" Justo cuando Dunk volv\u00eda la cabeza, una r\u00e1faga de viento levant\u00f3 del asta el negro pend\u00f3n de seda y fue como si el fiero drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen desplegara las alas y respirara fuego. El abanderado era un caballero alto, con oro engastado en la armadura blanca. Llevaba una capa blanca inmaculada que flotaba al viento. De blanco iban tambi\u00e9n otros dos jinetes. \"Caballeros de la Guardia Real, con el estandarte del monarca.\" Nada hubo de extra\u00f1o en que lord Ashford y sus hijos salieran corriendo por las puertas del castillo, como lo hizo tambi\u00e9n la hermosa doncella, una joven baja y rubia, de cara redonda y sonrosada. \"A m\u00ed no me parece tan hermosa\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. La titiritera era m\u00e1s guapa.\n\n\u2014Chico, suelta ese penco y cu\u00eddame al caballo.\n\nEra la voz de un caballero que acababa de desmontar frente al establo. Dunk se dio cuenta de que se dirig\u00eda a \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014No soy mozo de cuadra, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor falta de seso?\n\nEl autor de la pregunta llevaba una capa negra con ribete de raso granate, pero las vestiduras de debajo eran una llameante sinfon\u00eda de rojos, amarillos y dorados. Era un joven delgado y derecho como hoja de daga, aunque de estatura mediana, y rondaba la edad de Dunk. Su rostro, enmarcado por bucles muy rubios, era altivo y de facciones perfectamente dibujadas: frente alta, p\u00f3mulos marcados, nariz recta y piel clara, sin la menor irregularidad. Sus ojos eran de color violeta oscuro.\n\n\u2014Si te superan los caballos, tr\u00e1eme vino y una moza bien guapa.\n\n\u2014Es que... Le pido perd\u00f3n, mi se\u00f1or, pero tampoco soy criado. Tengo el honor de ser caballero.\n\n\u2014La caballer\u00eda ha ca\u00eddo muy bajo \u2014dijo el joven.\n\nJusto entonces acudi\u00f3 corriendo uno de los mozos de cuadra, y el pr\u00edncipe dio la espalda a Dunk para entregarle las riendas de su palafr\u00e9n zaino, un animal espl\u00e9ndido. Aliviado, Dunk volvi\u00f3 a meterse en el establo a la espera de que apareciera el caballerizo. Bastante inc\u00f3modo se sent\u00eda ya entre los nobles y sus pabellones. Hablar con pr\u00edncipes no era lo suyo.\n\n\u00bfY qu\u00e9 otra cosa pod\u00eda ser aquel bello mozalbete sino un pr\u00edncipe? Los Targaryen llevaban la sangre de la perdida Valyria, allende los mares; su rub\u00edsimo cabello y sus ojos viol\u00e1ceos los diferenciaban de la gente normal. Dunk sab\u00eda que el pr\u00edncipe Baelor era mayor, pero acaso aquel joven fuera uno de sus hijos: Valarr, llamado con frecuencia \"el Pr\u00edncipe Joven\" para diferenciarlo de su padre o Matarys, \"el Pr\u00edncipe a\u00fan m\u00e1s Joven\", como en cierta ocasi\u00f3n lo hab\u00eda llamado el buf\u00f3n del anciano lord Swann. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda pr\u00edncipes de menor rango, primos de Valarr y de Matarys. El buen rey Daeron hab\u00eda engendrado a cuatro hijos mayores de edad, tres de los cuales ten\u00edan a su vez descendencia. En vida de su padre el linaje de los reyes drag\u00f3n hab\u00eda estado a punto de extinguirse, pero se comentaba que Daeron II y sus hijos lo hab\u00edan afianzado por los siglos de los siglos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Eh, t\u00fa! Mandaste llamarme, \u00bfno? \u2014el caballerizo de lord Ashford era rojo de cara, y a\u00fan lo parec\u00eda m\u00e1s por el color anaranjado de la librea. Era, adem\u00e1s, brusco en el hablar\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 pasa? No tengo tiempo para...\n\n\u2014Quiero vender este palafr\u00e9n \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3 Dunk para evitar que se marchara\u2014. Es buena yegua, de paso seguro...\n\n\u2014Ya te dije que no tengo tiempo \u2014el caballerizo apenas se fij\u00f3 en Paso Quedo\u2014. Mi se\u00f1or no necesita ninguno. Ll\u00e9valo a la ciudad y puede que Henly te d\u00e9 un par de monedas de plata.\n\nYa daba media vuelta.\n\n\u2014Gracias, se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk antes de que se alejara\u2014. Dime, \u00bfha venido el rey?\n\nEl caballerizo se rio.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ni lo quieran los dioses! Bastante tenemos con esta invasi\u00f3n de pr\u00edncipes. \u00bfDe d\u00f3nde saco establos para todas sus bestias? \u00bfY forraje?\n\nSe march\u00f3, lanzando \u00f3rdenes a los mozos. Cuando Dunk sali\u00f3 del establo, lord Ashford hab\u00eda entrado con sus hu\u00e9spedes en el sal\u00f3n, pero en el patio quedaban dos de los caballeros de la Guardia Real. Llevaban armadura y capa blancas, y hablaban con el capit\u00e1n. Dunk se detuvo a su lado.\n\n\u2014Disculpe que me presente. Soy ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Es un placer, ser Duncan \u2014contest\u00f3 el m\u00e1s corpulento\u2014. Yo soy ser Roland Crakehall y \u00e9ste es mi hermano de guardia, ser Donnel de Valle Oscuro.\n\nLos siete paladines de la Guardia Real eran los guerreros m\u00e1s temibles de toda la faz de los Siete Reinos, con la posible excepci\u00f3n del mism\u00edsimo pr\u00edncipe heredero, Baelor Rompelanzas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfViene a inscribirse en el torneo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk con inquietud.\n\n\u2014No ser\u00eda decoroso que just\u00e1ramos contra aquellos a los que hemos jurado proteger \u2014contest\u00f3 ser Donnel, pelirrojo y barbirrojo.\n\n\u2014El pr\u00edncipe Valarr tiene el honor de ser uno de los paladines de lady Ashford \u2014explic\u00f3 ser Roland\u2014, y dos de sus primos tienen la intenci\u00f3n de participar. Los dem\u00e1s s\u00f3lo venimos como espectadores.\n\nAliviado, Dunk agradeci\u00f3 a los caballeros blancos su amabilidad y sali\u00f3 a caballo por la puerta del castillo antes de que a otro pr\u00edncipe se le ocurriera abordarlo. \"Tres infantes\", pens\u00f3, mientras guiaba el palafr\u00e9n por las calles de la ciudad de Vado Ceniza. Valarr era el hijo mayor del pr\u00edncipe Baelor, segundo en la l\u00ednea sucesoria del Trono de Hierro; Dunk, sin embargo, ignoraba hasta qu\u00e9 punto hab\u00eda heredado la m\u00edtica destreza de su padre con la lanza y la espada. De los otros pr\u00edncipes Targaryen sab\u00eda todav\u00eda menos. \"Si me veo en el trance de justar contra un pr\u00edncipe, \u00bfc\u00f3mo reaccionar\u00e9? \u00bfSe me permitir\u00e1 retar a alguien de tan alta cuna?\" Desconoc\u00eda la respuesta. El viejo le hab\u00eda dicho varias veces que era m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo, y as\u00ed se sent\u00eda en aquel momento.\n\nAntes de conocer las intenciones de Dunk, Henly alab\u00f3 el aspecto de Paso Quedo. Cuando supo que quer\u00eda venderla, todo fueron defectos. Ofreci\u00f3 trescientas monedas de plata. Dunk dijo necesitar tres mil. Despu\u00e9s de muchos regateos y reniegos, cerraron un trato por setecientas cincuenta monedas de plata. Como se trataba de una cantidad m\u00e1s pr\u00f3xima al precio de partida de Henly que al suyo, Dunk pens\u00f3 que sal\u00eda perdiendo, pero su adversario en la puja no quiso subir ni una moneda m\u00e1s y al final no hubo m\u00e1s remedio que ceder. El estira y afloja se repiti\u00f3 cuando Dunk advirti\u00f3 que la silla no iba incluida en el precio, en tanto que Henly insist\u00eda en lo contrario.\n\nAl fin se pusieron de acuerdo. Henly fue a buscar las monedas, momento que Dunk aprovech\u00f3 para acariciarle la crin a Paso Quedo y darle \u00e1nimos.\n\n\u2014Te prometo que, si gano, volver\u00e9 a buscarte.\n\nTen\u00eda la seguridad de que para entonces los defectos del palafr\u00e9n habr\u00edan desaparecido y el precio para volver a comprarlo doblar\u00eda el de venta.\n\nEl tratante le dio tres dineros de oro y el resto en plata. Dunk mordi\u00f3 una de las monedas de oro y sonri\u00f3. Era la primera vez que probaba y tocaba ese rubio metal. Aquellas monedas recib\u00edan el nombre de \"dragones\" por llevar acu\u00f1ado en una cara el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen. La otra ostentaba la efigie del monarca. Dos de las monedas que le entreg\u00f3 Henly llevaban la del rey Daeron, mientras que la tercera, m\u00e1s antigua, mostraba a otra persona. El nombre estaba impreso debajo del perfil, aunque Dunk no alcanz\u00f3 a leerlo. Sin embargo, s\u00ed se dio cuenta de que le hab\u00edan raspado oro por los cantos. Se lo indic\u00f3 a Henly con indignaci\u00f3n y el tratante, aunque reacio, compens\u00f3 la falta de peso con unas cuantas monedas de plata y un pu\u00f1ado de piezas de cobre. Dunk le devolvi\u00f3 una parte de estas \u00faltimas y se\u00f1al\u00f3 a Paso Quedo con la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Para ella \u2014dijo\u2014. Haz que esta noche le den avena. Ah, y una manzana.\n\nCon el escudo en el brazo y al hombro el saco de la armadura vieja, recorri\u00f3 a pie las calles soleadas de Vado Ceniza. Con tantas monedas en la bolsa se sent\u00eda raro, entre euf\u00f3rico y nervioso. El viejo nunca le hab\u00eda confiado m\u00e1s que alguna moneda muy de vez en cuando. La suma que llevaba era suficiente para un a\u00f1o. \"\u00bfY qu\u00e9 har\u00eda despu\u00e9s de gastarla? \u00bfVender a Trueno?\" Era un camino que llevaba a la mendicidad o el robo. \"Esta oportunidad no se repetir\u00e1. Debo arriesgar el todo por el todo.\"\n\nCuando sali\u00f3 del agua en la orilla opuesta del r\u00edo de los Mejillones \u2014la meridional\u2014, la ma\u00f1ana tocaba a su fin y el prado volv\u00eda a ser un hervidero de gente. Los vendedores de vino y salchichas no se daban abasto. Hab\u00eda un hombre con un oso amaestrado que bailaba al son que le marcaba un bardo. Los juglares ejecutaban sus malabarismos y los titiriteros asestaban los \u00faltimos mandobles de una nueva batalla.\n\nDunk se detuvo a presenciar la muerte del drag\u00f3n de madera. Cuando el caballero articulado le cort\u00f3 la cabeza, de la que brot\u00f3 aserr\u00edn rojo, rio a mand\u00edbula batiente y arroj\u00f3 dos monedas de cobre a la muchacha.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Una es por la noche anterior! \u2014dijo.\n\nLa joven las cogi\u00f3 al vuelo y sonri\u00f3 a Dunk con una dulzura desconocida.\n\n\"\u00bfMe sonr\u00ede a m\u00ed o a las monedas?\" Dunk nunca hab\u00eda estado con mujeres y lo pon\u00edan nervioso. Tres a\u00f1os antes, con la bolsa llena en pago por medio a\u00f1o de servicio al invidente arist\u00f3crata lord Florent, el viejo le hab\u00eda dicho que era el momento de llevarlo a un burdel y convertirlo en hombre. Lo hab\u00eda anunciado en un momento de borrachera, y al serenarse ya no se acordaba. Por un lado Dunk era demasiado vergonzoso para record\u00e1rselo y, por otro, no estaba muy seguro de desear los favores de una puta. Ya que no pod\u00eda aspirar a una doncella de alta cuna, como los caballeros de verdad, al menos quer\u00eda a una que le tuviera m\u00e1s cari\u00f1o a \u00e9l que a su dinero.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres que nos tomemos un cuerno de cerveza? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 a la titiritera, que met\u00eda aserr\u00edn en el drag\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfO una salchicha? Anoche me com\u00ed una y estaba buena. Me parece que son de cerdo.\n\n\u2014Se lo agradezco, se\u00f1or, pero tenemos otra funci\u00f3n.\n\nLa chica se levant\u00f3 para acercarse a la ruda y gruesa dorniense que manipulaba al caballero. Dunk se sinti\u00f3 est\u00fapido, pero no dej\u00f3 de apreciar la forma de correr de la muchacha. \"Joven guapa y alta. \u00a1Para besar a \u00e9sta no me har\u00eda falta ponerme de rodillas!\" Besar s\u00ed sab\u00eda. Se lo hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado un a\u00f1o antes la muchacha de una taberna de Lannisport, pero era tan baja que para llegar a los labios de Dunk hab\u00eda necesitado sentarse en la mesa. El recuerdo hizo que le ardieran las orejas. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 mentecato! Hab\u00eda que pensar en justas, no en besos.\n\nLos carpinteros de lord Ashford encalaban las barreras de madera, altas hasta la cintura, que separar\u00edan a los justadores. Dunk se entretuvo en observarlos. Se trazar\u00edan cinco pasillos de norte a sur, para que el sol no diera en los ojos de ning\u00fan caballero. En el lado este se hab\u00eda erigido una tribuna de tres pisos con un toldo naranja para proteger a los nobles de la lluvia y el sol. La mayor\u00eda se sentar\u00eda en bancos, pero en el centro de la plataforma hab\u00eda cuatro sillas de respaldo alto para lord Ashford, la hermosa doncella y los pr\u00edncipes visitantes.\n\nEn el margen oriental del prado hab\u00eda un poste con un escudo donde probaban sus lanzas diez o doce caballeros. Dunk vio llegar el turno de la Bestia de Bracken, seguido a su vez por lord Caron de las Marcas. \"Los dos tienen mejor montura que yo\", pens\u00f3 con inquietud.\n\nLos dem\u00e1s justadores se repart\u00edan por el prado y se entrenaban a pie con espadas de madera, entre los comentarios soeces de los escuderos. Dunk observ\u00f3 el enfrentamiento entre un joven bajo y fornido y un musculoso caballero, cuya rapidez y agilidad parec\u00edan dignas de un gato mont\u00e9s. Ambos llevaban pintada en el escudo la manzana roja de los Fossoway, pero el del m\u00e1s joven no tard\u00f3 en quedar hecho trizas.\n\n\u2014Esta manzana a\u00fan no est\u00e1 madura \u2014dijo el mayor al hender el escudo de su contrincante.\n\nEn el momento de la rendici\u00f3n, el Fossoway de menor edad estaba amoratado y cubierto de sangre. El otro, al parecer fresco como una rosa, se levant\u00f3 la visera, mir\u00f3 alrededor y repar\u00f3 en Dunk.\n\n\u2014\u00a1T\u00fa! \u2014dijo\u2014. S\u00ed, t\u00fa, el grandul\u00f3n. El caballero del c\u00e1liz alado. \u00bfLo que llevas es una espada?\n\n\u2014Me pertenece por derecho \u2014dijo Dunk a la defensiva\u2014. Soy ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Y yo ser Steffon Fossoway. \u00bfAceptar\u00eda entrenar conmigo, ser Duncan? Me ser\u00eda grato tener un nuevo contrincante. Ya vio que mi primo a\u00fan no est\u00e1 maduro.\n\n\u2014Adelante, ser Duncan \u2014inst\u00f3 a Dunk el Fossoway vencido, mientras se retiraba el yelmo\u2014. No niego que est\u00e9 verde, pero mi buen primo ya est\u00e1 agusanado. S\u00e1quele las semillas.\n\nDunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 aquellos se\u00f1oritos lo mezclaban en sus ri\u00f1as? \u00c9l no quer\u00eda saber nada.\n\n\u2014Mil gracias, ser, pero debo ocuparme de ciertos asuntos.\n\nLo incomodaba llevar tantas monedas.\n\nCuanto antes pagara a Pate y dispusiera de su armadura, m\u00e1s feliz ser\u00eda.\n\nSer Steffon le dirigi\u00f3 una mirada burlona.\n\n\u2014El caballero errante est\u00e1 ocupado \u2014mir\u00f3 a ambos lados hasta divisar a otro posible oponente\u2014. \u00a1Ser Grance, qu\u00e9 alegr\u00eda verlo! Venga a entrenar conmigo. Me s\u00e9 al dedillo todos los trucos que ha aprendido mi primo Raymun, y ser Duncan, por lo visto, debe volver a los caminos. Venga, venga.\n\nDunk se alej\u00f3 ruborizado. \u00c9l no ten\u00eda demasiados trucos, ni buenos ni malos, y prefer\u00eda no ser visto luchando antes del torneo. El viejo siempre dec\u00eda que el conocimiento del enemigo facilitaba la victoria. Los caballeros como ser Steffon pose\u00edan el don de reconocer la debilidad de un contrincante a simple vista. Dunk era fuerte y r\u00e1pido, y ten\u00eda la ventaja del peso y la estatura, pero no se enga\u00f1aba tanto como para juzgarse a la altura de aquellos caballeros. Ser Arlan hab\u00eda puesto su empe\u00f1o en educarlo, pero no era el mejor de los maestros, ya que ni siquiera de joven hab\u00eda pertenecido a la \u00e9lite de los caballeros. Los miembros de \u00e9sta no erraban por el mundo ni mor\u00edan al borde de un camino enfangado. \"A m\u00ed no me pasar\u00e1\", se jur\u00f3 Dunk. \"Les demostrar\u00e9 que puedo ser algo m\u00e1s que un caballero errante.\"\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Duncan! \u2014el menor de los Fossoway se apresur\u00f3 a alcanzarlo\u2014. Hice mal en impulsarlo a retar a mi primo. Me enfurec\u00eda su arrogancia, y al verlo tan alto pens\u00e9... En cualquier caso fue un error. No lleva armadura. Mi primo no habr\u00eda vacilado en romperle una mano o una rodilla. Durante los entrenamientos hace lo posible por machacar a sus oponentes; de esa manera, si vuelven a enfrentarse en el torneo, los encuentra magullados y vulnerables.\n\n\u2014A usted no lo machac\u00f3.\n\n\u2014No, porque soy de la familia, aunque de una rama secundaria, como no se cansa de recordarme. Me llamo Raymun Fossoway.\n\n\u2014Encantado. \u00bfParticipar\u00e1n los dos en el torneo?\n\n\u2014\u00c9l s\u00ed, no lo dude. En cuanto a m\u00ed, bien quisiera, pero soy un simple escudero. Mi primo prometi\u00f3 armarme caballero, pero insiste en que me falta madurez \u2014chato, cuadrado de rostro, con el pelo corto y lanudo, a Raymun lo redim\u00eda su encantadora sonrisa\u2014. Adivino que vino a justar. \u00bfA qui\u00e9n se propone retar?\n\n\u2014Poco importa \u2014dijo Dunk. Era la respuesta que esperaban todos: una respuesta falsa, porque s\u00ed importaba, y mucho\u2014. No participar\u00e9 hasta el tercer d\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Cierto. Para entonces ya habr\u00e1n ca\u00eddo algunos paladines \u2014dijo Raymun\u2014. Bien, pues que le sea propicio el Guerrero.\n\n\u2014Que lo sea tambi\u00e9n para usted.\n\n\"Si este hombre s\u00f3lo es escudero, \u00bfqu\u00e9 derecho tengo yo a la caballer\u00eda? Uno de los dos se est\u00e1 haciendo tonto.\"\n\nA cada paso que daba tintineaban las monedas de su bolsa, pero era consciente de que pod\u00eda perderlas en un tris. Incluso las reglas del torneo jugaban contra \u00e9l, al reducir casi a cero las probabilidades de que se enfrentara a un enemigo inexperto o d\u00e9bil.\n\nLos torneos pod\u00edan ajustarse a decenas de modalidades, al capricho del se\u00f1or que los organizara. Algunos imitaban batallas entre equipos de caballeros; otros consist\u00edan en una lucha de todos contra todos donde la gloria reca\u00eda en el \u00faltimo que quedara en pie. Cuando se eleg\u00eda la modalidad de combate individual, los emparejamientos pod\u00edan decidirse por sorteo o al albedr\u00edo del maestro de justas.\n\nLord Ashford hab\u00eda convocado el torneo para celebrar el decimotercer aniversario de su hija. La hermosa doncella estar\u00eda sentada al lado de su padre como reina del Amor y la Belleza. La defender\u00edan cinco paladines, cada uno con una prenda de la joven. Los dem\u00e1s participantes tendr\u00edan que retarlos, pero aquel que venciera a uno de los cinco ocupar\u00eda su lugar y se convertir\u00eda a su vez en palad\u00edn hasta ser vencido por otro. Al t\u00e9rmino de los tres d\u00edas de torneo los cinco que quedaran decidir\u00edan si la doncella conservaba la corona del Amor y la Belleza o hab\u00eda que entreg\u00e1rsela a otra muchacha.\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 con atenci\u00f3n el palenque y las sillas vac\u00edas de la tribuna, mientras evaluaba sus posibilidades. S\u00f3lo necesitaba una victoria. Entonces presumir\u00eda de haber figurado entre los paladines del prado de Vado Ceniza, aunque s\u00f3lo fuera por espacio de una hora. Pese a haber fallecido poco antes de los sesenta a\u00f1os, el viejo nunca hab\u00eda sido palad\u00edn. \"Si los dioses son ben\u00e9volos no ser\u00e1 pedir demasiado.\" Record\u00f3 las canciones que hab\u00eda o\u00eddo, las que hablaban del ciego Symeon Ojos de Estrella, del noble Serwyn del Escudo Espejo, del pr\u00edncipe Aemon, de ser Ryam Redwyne y de Florian el Buf\u00f3n. Todos ellos hab\u00edan vencido a enemigos mucho m\u00e1s temibles que cuantos pudieran enfrentarse con \u00e9l. \"S\u00ed, pero eran grandes h\u00e9roes, valientes de alta cuna, a excepci\u00f3n de Florian. \u00bfY qui\u00e9n soy yo? \u00bfDunk del Lecho de Pulgas o ser Duncan el Alto?\"\n\nSupuso que no tardar\u00eda en averiguarlo. Levant\u00f3 el saco de la armadura y encamin\u00f3 sus pasos a los puestos de los comerciantes, en busca de Pate.\n\nEgg hab\u00eda trabajado duro en el campamento y Dunk qued\u00f3 satisfecho. Hab\u00eda abrigado alg\u00fan temor de que su escudero protagonizara una nueva huida.\n\n\u2014\u00bfConseguiste un buen precio por tu palafr\u00e9n? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo sabes que lo vend\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Saliste a caballo y vuelves a pie. Si fuera cosa de ladrones estar\u00edas mucho m\u00e1s enfadado.\n\n\u2014Me pagaron lo suficiente para esto \u2014Dunk sac\u00f3 su nueva armadura para mostr\u00e1rsela al muchacho\u2014. Si pretendes llegar a caballero tendr\u00e1s que aprender a diferenciar el buen acero del malo. F\u00edjate en \u00e9ste: es de calidad. Esta malla es doble. Cada anillo cuelga de otros dos. Protege m\u00e1s que la simple. Y mira el yelmo: Pate lo hizo redondeado por arriba. \u00bfVes la curva? Desv\u00eda las espadas o las hachas. Si fuera plano podr\u00edan hacer un corte \u2014Dunk se coloc\u00f3 el yelmo en la cabeza\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo me queda?\n\n\u2014No hay visera \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\u2014Tiene agujeros de respiraci\u00f3n. Las viseras son vulnerables \u2014se lo hab\u00eda dicho Pate\u2014. Si supieras la cantidad de caballeros que han recibido un flechazo en el ojo al levantarla para respirar, preferir\u00edas no tenerla \u2014explic\u00f3 a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Tampoco hay cimera \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. No tiene adornos.\n\nDunk se levant\u00f3 el yelmo.\n\n\u2014La gente como yo no los necesitamos. \u00bfTe has fijado en c\u00f3mo brilla el acero? Que siga brillando ser\u00e1 cosa tuya. \u00bfSabes limpiar una cota de malla?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, en un barril de arena \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o \u2014, pero t\u00fa no tienes. \u00bfTambi\u00e9n compraste una tienda?\n\n\u2014No me pagaron tanto \u2014\"Este ni\u00f1o es demasiado atrevido para su propio bien. Tendr\u00e9 que ense\u00f1arle a palos a que no lo sea.\" En el mismo momento de pensarlo, supo que no lo har\u00eda. Le gustaba la audacia. A \u00e9l, en particular, le hac\u00eda falta una buena dosis. \"Mi escudero es m\u00e1s valiente y m\u00e1s listo que yo\"\u2014. Hiciste un buen trabajo, Egg. Ma\u00f1ana por la ma\u00f1ana iremos juntos al prado para echar un vistazo al palenque. Compraremos avena para los caballos y para nosotros, pan reci\u00e9n hecho. Tampoco estar\u00eda mal un poco de queso. Vi un puesto donde vend\u00edan uno bastante bueno.\n\n\u2014No tendr\u00e9 que ir al castillo, \u00bfverdad?\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no? Tengo la esperanza de vivir alg\u00fan d\u00eda en uno.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o no hizo ning\u00fan comentario. \"Quiz\u00e1 tenga miedo de entrar en la morada de un se\u00f1or\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Ser\u00eda normal. Ya se le pasar\u00e1.\"\n\nSigui\u00f3 admirando su armadura y pregunt\u00e1ndose cu\u00e1nto tiempo la llevar\u00eda.\n\nSer Manfred era un hombre delgado y con cara de pocos amigos. Llevaba una sobreveste negra con el rel\u00e1mpago morado de la casa Dondarrion, pero a Dunk le habr\u00eda bastado su cobriza y rebelde cabellera para reconocerlo.\n\n\u2014Ser Arlan sirvi\u00f3 a su se\u00f1or padre en los tiempos en que \u00e9ste y lord Caron obligaron al rey Buitre a salir por el fuego de las Monta\u00f1as Rojas \u2014dijo con una rodilla en el suelo\u2014. Yo entonces era un ni\u00f1o, pero lo serv\u00ed como escudero. Ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda.\n\nSer Manfred frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo.\n\n\u2014No, no lo conozco. Tampoco a ti, muchacho.\n\nDunk le ense\u00f1\u00f3 el escudo del viejo.\n\n\u2014Su emblema, el c\u00e1liz con alas.\n\n\u2014Mi padre fue a las monta\u00f1as con ochocientos caballeros y unos cuatro mil soldados de a pie. No se me puede pedir que los recuerde a todos ni a sus emblemas. No digo que no estuvieras con nosotros, pero...\n\nSer Manfred se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\nPor unos instantes, Dunk enmudeci\u00f3. \"El viejo fue herido por servir a su padre. \u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible que lo haya olvidado?\"\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo me dejar\u00e1n participar si un noble o caballero responde por m\u00ed.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY a m\u00ed qu\u00e9 me importa eso? \u2014dijo ser Manfred\u2014. Ya te conced\u00ed demasiado tiempo.\n\nVolver al castillo sin ser Manfred equival\u00eda al desastre. Dunk mir\u00f3 el rel\u00e1mpago morado que llevaba ser Manfred en su gonela de lana negra.\n\n\u2014Me acuerdo de cuando su padre cont\u00f3 a sus hombres el origen del emblema de su familia \u2014dijo\u2014. Una noche de tormenta, cuando el primero de su linaje llevaba un mensaje por las marcas de Dorne, su caballo, muerto de un flechazo, se desplom\u00f3 bajo \u00e9l. Entonces salieron de la oscuridad dos dornienses con cota de malla y yelmos con cimera. En su ca\u00edda, su antepasado hab\u00eda roto la espada, y al verlo se tuvo por perdido, pero justo cuando sus enemigos se dispon\u00edan a abatirlo, un rel\u00e1mpago cay\u00f3 de las alturas. Su color era p\u00farpura encendido y golpe\u00f3 de lleno el acero de las armaduras de los dornienses, muertos al instante. Gracias al mensaje, el rey de la tormenta obtuvo la victoria sobre Dorne, y en prueba de reconocimiento otorg\u00f3 un se\u00f1or\u00edo al mensajero. \u00c9ste fue el primer lord Dondarrion. Escogi\u00f3 como emblema un rel\u00e1mpago bifurcado de color morado, sobre campo de sable salpicado de estrellas.\n\nMuy errado estaba Dunk si pretend\u00eda impresionar a ser Manfred con la historia.\n\n\u2014No hay mozo de cuadra al servicio de mi padre que en un momento u otro no oiga contar la historia. El hecho de saberla no te convierte en caballero. M\u00e1rchate.\n\nDunk regres\u00f3 al castillo de Ashford con un gran peso en el coraz\u00f3n, discurriendo qu\u00e9 decirle a Plummer para ser aceptado en el torneo. El hecho fue que no encontr\u00f3 al mayordomo en la sala de la torre. Un guardia le dijo que quiz\u00e1 estuviera en la gran sala.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLo espero aqu\u00ed? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto tardar\u00e1?\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 s\u00e9 yo? Haz lo que te parezca.\n\nEl sal\u00f3n no era tan grande como indicaba su nombre, pero Vado Ceniza era un castillo peque\u00f1o. Dunk entr\u00f3 por una puerta lateral y de inmediato reconoci\u00f3 al mayordomo. Estaba al fondo, en compa\u00f1\u00eda de lord Ashford y diez o doce hombres. Fue hacia ellos, arrimado a una pared cubierta por tapices de lana que representaban frutas y flores.\n\n\u2014...fueran hijos tuyos no lo tomar\u00edas tan a la ligera \u2014dijo alguien con enojo cuando se acercaba Dunk.\n\nEl pelo lacio del hombre en cuesti\u00f3n, as\u00ed como su barba cuadrada, eran tan claros que la penumbra los volv\u00eda casi blancos. No obstante, cuando Dunk redujo la distancia, vio que en realidad eran de un color plateado con hebras rubias.\n\n\u2014No es la primera vez \u2014contest\u00f3 otra persona, a la que Dunk no vio debido a que la tapaba Plummer\u2014. Fue mala idea ordenar a Daeron que participara en el torneo. No es lo suyo. Y lo mismo digo de Aerys y Rhaegel.\n\n\u2014Lo que quieres decir es que Daeron prefiere montar a una meretriz que a un caballo \u2014dijo el del cabello plateado. Robusto y de gran presencia, el pr\u00edncipe \u2014otra cosa no pod\u00eda ser\u2014 llevaba un peto de cuero con tachuelas de plata, y encima una capa negra y gruesa con ribetes de armi\u00f1o. Sus mejillas estaban picadas de viruela, que la barba s\u00f3lo ocultaba a medias\u2014. Mira, hermano, no tengo necesidad de que me recuerdes las carencias de mi hijo. S\u00f3lo tiene dieciocho a\u00f1os. A\u00fan es tiempo de que cambie. \u00a1Y a fe que cambiar\u00e1 o juro verlo muerto!\n\n\u2014No seas idiota. Daeron es como es, pero sigue siendo de tu sangre y la m\u00eda. Estoy seguro de que ser Roland los encontrar\u00e1, a \u00e9l y a Aegon.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, cuando se haya acabado el torneo.\n\n\u2014Queda Aerion, que maneja la lanza mejor que Daeron, si es el torneo lo que te preocupa.\n\nEsta vez Dunk s\u00ed vio al tercer hombre. Estaba sentado en la silla m\u00e1s elevada, sosteniendo un fajo de pergaminos y con lord Ashford muy cerca del hombro. Sentado y todo, parec\u00eda llevarle una cabeza al otro, a juzgar por la longitud de las piernas, que sobresal\u00edan del asiento. Ten\u00eda el pelo muy corto, de color oscuro y con algunas canas. El afeitado de su fuerte mand\u00edbula era impecable. Parec\u00eda haber sufrido m\u00e1s de una fractura de nariz. Pese a la sencillez de su atuendo \u2014jub\u00f3n verde, manto marr\u00f3n y botas gastadas\u2014 transmit\u00eda aplomo, poder y seguridad.\n\nDunk pens\u00f3 que aquellas palabras no estaban destinadas a sus o\u00eddos. \"Es preferible que me vaya y vuelva m\u00e1s tarde, cuando hayan acabado\", decidi\u00f3. Por desgracia era demasiado tarde, porque el pr\u00edncipe de barba plateada acababa de fijarse en \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n eres y c\u00f3mo se te ocurre interrumpirnos? \u2014inquiri\u00f3 con dureza.\n\n\u2014Es el caballero al que esperaba nuestro buen mayordomo \u2014dijo el hombre sentado, que sonre\u00eda a Dunk como si ya hubiera reparado desde tiempo atr\u00e1s en su presencia\u2014. En este caso, hermano, los intrusos somos t\u00fa y yo. Ac\u00e9rcate \u2014dijo a Dunk.\n\n\u00c9ste obedeci\u00f3 con lentitud, sin saber qu\u00e9 hacer. De nada le sirvi\u00f3 mirar a Plummer, porque el adusto mayordomo \u2014tan resuelto en la anterior entrevista\u2014 permaneci\u00f3 en silencio, mirando fijamente el enlosado.\n\n\u2014Nobles se\u00f1ores \u2014dijo Dunk \u2014, he solicitado el aval de ser Manfred para participar en el torneo, pero me lo neg\u00f3. Asegura no conocerme, aunque yo juro que ser Arlan estuvo a su servicio. Tengo su espada y su escudo, y...\n\n\u2014No se es caballero por tener espada y escudo \u2014declar\u00f3 lord Ashford, alto, calvo, de cara redonda y roja\u2014. S\u00e9 de ti por Plummer. Aunque acept\u00e1ramos que tus armas pertenecen al tal ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, cabe la posibilidad de que lo hayas encontrado muerto y se las robaras. Mientras no dispongas de pruebas m\u00e1s s\u00f3lidas, como un documento o...\n\n\u2014Yo s\u00ed me acuerdo de ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda \u2014dijo con sosiego el hombre sentado\u2014. Que yo sepa no gan\u00f3 ning\u00fan torneo, pero tampoco hizo nada que lo avergonzara. Hace seis a\u00f1os, en Desembarco del Rey, en el combate cuerpo a cuerpo derrib\u00f3 a lord Stokeworth y al Bastardo de Harrenhal, y mucho antes, en Lannisport, descabalg\u00f3 al mism\u00edsimo Le\u00f3n Gris, que en aquel entonces no deb\u00eda de serlo tanto.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, me lo cont\u00f3 muchas veces \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\nEl hombre alto lo mir\u00f3 con atenci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Recordar\u00e1s entonces el nombre verdadero del Le\u00f3n Gris.\n\nPor unos instantes la mente de Dunk se qued\u00f3 en blanco. \"Le o\u00ed la historia al viejo m\u00e1s de mil veces. El le\u00f3n, el le\u00f3n, su nombre, su nombre, su nombre...\" Se acord\u00f3 en el \u00faltimo momento, cuando estaba al borde de la desesperaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Damon Lannister! \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014. \u00a1El Le\u00f3n Gris! Ahora es se\u00f1or de Roca Casterly.\n\n\u2014En efecto \u2014dijo el hombre alto con placidez \u2014, y entrar\u00e1 en liza ma\u00f1ana por la ma\u00f1ana.\n\nDio una sacudida al fajo de pergaminos que ten\u00eda en la mano.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible que te acuerdes de un caballero insignificante y sin tierras que tuvo la suerte de derribar a Damon Lannister hace diecis\u00e9is a\u00f1os? \u2014dijo, ce\u00f1udo, el pr\u00edncipe de la barba plateada.\n\n\u2014Tengo por costumbre averiguar cuanto puedo de mis enemigos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 te dignar\u00edas combatir contra un caballero errante?\n\n\u2014Fue hace nueve a\u00f1os, en Basti\u00f3n de Tormentas, durante los festejos de lord Baratheon por el nacimiento de un nieto. El primer sorteo me emparej\u00f3 con ser Arlan. Rompimos cuatro lanzas hasta que lo derrib\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Siete! \u2014precis\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \u00a1Y fue contra el pr\u00edncipe de Rocadrag\u00f3n!\n\nEnseguida lament\u00f3 haberlo dicho. Le pareci\u00f3 o\u00edr la voz del viejo: \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo\".\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es \u2014el pr\u00edncipe de la nariz rota sonri\u00f3 con dulzura\u2014. S\u00e9 que mucho contar magnifica las historias. No tengas en menos a tu se\u00f1or, pero me temo que las lanzas fueron cuatro.\n\nDunk agradeci\u00f3 la penumbra de la sala, consciente de que se le hab\u00edan puesto rojas las orejas.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or... \u2014\"No, eso tampoco est\u00e1 bien dicho\"\u2014. Excelencia... \u2014cay\u00f3 de rodillas y baj\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. Tiene raz\u00f3n, fueron cuatro. No pretend\u00eda... Jam\u00e1s se me... El viejo, ser Arlan, siempre me acusaba de ser m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo, y m\u00e1s lento que un uro.\n\n\u2014E igual de fuerte, si no miente tu aspecto \u2014dijo Baelor Rompelanzas\u2014. En pie, que no dijiste nada malo.\n\nDunk obedeci\u00f3, dudando entre mantener la cabeza gacha o mirar al pr\u00edncipe a la cara. \"Tengo delante a Baelor Targaryen, pr\u00edncipe de Rocadrag\u00f3n, mano del rey y heredero del Trono de Hierro de Aegon el Conquistador.\" Como simple caballero errante, \u00bfqu\u00e9 osar\u00eda decir a semejante personaje?\n\n\u2014Re... recuerdo que le devolvi\u00f3 su caballo y su armadura y no le pidi\u00f3 rescate alguno \u2014balbuce\u00f3\u2014. El viejo, ser Arlan... Me dijo que usted era la personificaci\u00f3n de la caballer\u00eda y que un d\u00eda los Siete Reinos estar\u00edan a salvo en sus manos.\n\n\u2014Rezo por que no sea pronto \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe Baelor.\n\n\u2014No, claro \u2014dijo Dunk, horrorizado. Estuvo a punto de a\u00f1adir que no lo hab\u00eda dicho en el sentido de querer ver muerto al rey, pero se contuvo a tiempo\u2014. Le pido perd\u00f3n... excelencia.\n\nSe acord\u00f3 a destiempo de que el hombre robusto de barba plateada se hab\u00eda dirigido al pr\u00edncipe Baelor como \"hermano\". \"Tambi\u00e9n lleva la sangre del drag\u00f3n, tonto de m\u00ed.\" S\u00f3lo pod\u00eda ser el pr\u00edncipe Maekar, el menor de los cuatro v\u00e1stagos del rey. El pr\u00edncipe Aerys era un gran erudito, y el pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel un loco cobarde y enfermizo. Parec\u00eda dif\u00edcil que alguno de los dos cruzara medio reino para presenciar un torneo. Maekar, en cambio, ten\u00eda fama de temible guerrero por derecho propio, aunque siempre a la sombra de su hermano mayor.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDeseas, pues, inscribirte en las justas? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Baelor\u2014. La decisi\u00f3n est\u00e1 en manos del maestro de justas, pero yo no veo ninguna raz\u00f3n para neg\u00e1rtelo.\n\nEl mayordomo inclin\u00f3 la cabeza.\n\nDunk trat\u00f3 de dar las gracias con palabras balbucientes, pero lo cort\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Maekar.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ya vemos que eres un hombre agradecido, pero m\u00e1rchate de una vez.\n\n\u2014Deber\u00e1s perdonar a mi noble hermano \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe Baelor\u2014. Le extra\u00f1a la tardanza de dos de sus hijos y teme por ellos.\n\n\u2014Las lluvias primaverales han engrosado muchos r\u00edos \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 se trate de un simple retraso.\n\n\u2014No vine a escuchar los consejos de un caballero errante \u2014comunic\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Maekar a su hermano.\n\n\u2014Puedes marcharte \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe Baelor a Dunk con un tono bastante amable.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nDunk hizo una reverencia y dio media vuelta. Cuando estaba a punto de salir, oy\u00f3 que el pr\u00edncipe lo llamaba.\n\n\u2014Otra cosa. \u00bfNo eres descendiente de ser Arlan?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or... \u00a1Qu\u00e9 digo! No, no lo soy.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe se\u00f1al\u00f3 con la cabeza el maltrecho escudo que llevaba Dunk y el c\u00e1liz alado de su faz.\n\n\u2014La ley manda que s\u00f3lo los hijos leg\u00edtimos hereden las armas de un caballero. Tendr\u00e1s que buscarte otro emblema, uno que s\u00f3lo sea tuyo.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed lo har\u00e9 \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. De nuevo muchas gracias, excelencia. Le aseguro que combatir\u00e9 con valent\u00eda.\n\n\"Para valent\u00eda\", dec\u00eda el viejo a menudo, \"la de Baelor Rompelanzas\".\n\nLos marchantes de vino y salchichas obten\u00edan ganancias r\u00e1pidas y las meretrices se paseaban con descaro entre los puestos de venta y los pabellones. Las hab\u00eda bastante guapas, sobre todo una pelirroja. Dunk no evit\u00f3 una mirada a sus pechos, que se bamboleaban bajo la tela suelta del vestido. Se acord\u00f3 de las monedas que llevaba en la bolsa. \"Si quisiera podr\u00eda tenerla para m\u00ed. Le gustar\u00eda mucho el tintineo de mis monedas. Podr\u00eda llev\u00e1rmela al campamento y yacer con ella toda la noche.\" Nunca se hab\u00eda acostado con ninguna mujer y nada imped\u00eda que muriera en su primera justa. Los torneos eran peligrosos... pero tambi\u00e9n las putas, seg\u00fan le hab\u00eda advertido el viejo. \"Podr\u00eda robarme mientras duermo, \u00bfy entonces qu\u00e9?\" Cuando la pelirroja le lanz\u00f3 una mirada por encima del hombro, Dunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza y se alej\u00f3.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 a Egg entre los espectadores de las marionetas, cruzado de piernas en el suelo, escondiendo su calvicie con la capucha de la capa. Atribuy\u00f3 el temor del ni\u00f1o a entrar en el castillo a una mezcla de timidez y verg\u00fcenza. \"No se considera digno de alternar con nobles y damas, y menos con pr\u00edncipes.\" De peque\u00f1o, a \u00e9l le hab\u00eda pasado lo mismo: m\u00e1s all\u00e1 del sucio barrio del Lecho de Pulgas el mundo le parec\u00eda tan intimidatorio como fascinante. \"Egg s\u00f3lo necesita tiempo.\" Por el momento juzg\u00f3 m\u00e1s considerado darle unas monedas de cobre y dejar que se divirtiera en la feria que arrastrarlo al castillo contra su voluntad.\n\nLas titiriteras representaban la historia de Florian y Jonquil. La gruesa dorniense manejaba a Florian, con su armadura multicolor, mientras la joven alta tiraba de los hilos de Jonquil.\n\n\u2014\u00a1T\u00fa no eres caballero! \u2014dec\u00eda al ritmo con que la marioneta abr\u00eda y cerraba la boca\u2014. Te conozco: eres Florian el Buf\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Tiene raz\u00f3n, se\u00f1ora \u2014contestaba la otra marioneta, puesta de rodillas\u2014. No ha habido buf\u00f3n mayor ni caballero m\u00e1s valiente.\n\n\u2014\u00bfBuf\u00f3n y caballero a la vez? \u2014dec\u00eda Jonquil\u2014. En mi vida o\u00ed tal cosa.\n\n\u2014Gentil se\u00f1ora \u2014dec\u00eda Florian \u2014, en cuesti\u00f3n de mujeres todos los hombres son bufones y caballeros.\n\nEl espect\u00e1culo era una mezcla lograda de tristeza y fantas\u00eda. No faltaba el duelo final a espada ni un gigante muy bien pintado. A su t\u00e9rmino, la mujer gorda se pase\u00f3 entre el p\u00fablico recogiendo monedas, mientras la chica guardaba los t\u00edteres. Dunk recogi\u00f3 a Egg y fue a verla.\n\n\u2014\u00bfS\u00ed, se\u00f1or? \u2014dijo ella, mirando de reojo y sonriendo a medias.\n\nPese a llevarle una cabeza, Dunk nunca hab\u00eda visto a una chica tan alta.\n\n\u2014Estuvo muy bien \u2014dijo Egg, entusiasmado\u2014. Me gusta mucho la manera de moverlos: Jonquil, el drag\u00f3n... El a\u00f1o pasado vi unas marionetas, pero se mov\u00edan a sacudidas. Las suyas no.\n\n\u2014Gracias \u2014dijo la chica con educaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, y hay que decir que tienen figuras muy bien talladas \u2014intervino Dunk\u2014; sobre todo el drag\u00f3n, que es una bestia horrible. \u00bfTambi\u00e9n las fabrican?\n\nLa chica asinti\u00f3 con la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Las esculpe mi t\u00edo y yo las pinto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPodr\u00edas pintarme algo a m\u00ed? Te pagar\u00eda \u2014se baj\u00f3 el escudo del hombro para ense\u00f1\u00e1rselo\u2014. Necesito que me pinten algo por encima del c\u00e1liz.\n\nLa chica mir\u00f3 primero el escudo y despu\u00e9s a su due\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 desea que le pinten?\n\nDunk no se lo hab\u00eda planteado. \u00bfQu\u00e9 escoger aparte del c\u00e1liz alado del viejo? Ten\u00eda la cabeza hueca. \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo\"\n\n\u2014Pues... No estoy seguro \u2014se dio cuenta, abatido, de que se le enrojec\u00edan las orejas\u2014. Debo de parecerte tonto de remate.\n\nLa chica sonri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Todos los hombres son bufones y caballeros.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 colores tienen? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 \u00e9l con la esperanza de que le diera una idea.\n\n\u2014Con mezclas puedo conseguir el que quiera.\n\nEl marr\u00f3n del viejo siempre le hab\u00eda parecido muy soso a Dunk.\n\n\u2014El campo deber\u00eda tener el color de una puesta de sol \u2014dijo de pronto\u2014. Al viejo le gustaban. En cuanto al emblema...\n\n\u2014Un olmo \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Un olmo grande como el del r\u00edo, con el tronco marr\u00f3n y las ramas verdes.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk \u2014, no estar\u00eda mal. Un olmo... pero con una estrella fugaz encima. \u00bfPodr\u00edas hacerlo?\n\nLa joven asinti\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Deme el escudo y lo pintar\u00e9 esta misma noche. Lo tendr\u00e1 ma\u00f1ana a primera hora.\n\nDunk se lo tendi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Me llamo ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Yo Tanselle \u2014la chica rio\u2014. De ni\u00f1a me llamaban la Giganta.\n\n\u2014No lo eres \u2014dijo Dunk sin pensar\u2014. Tienes la estatura perfecta para...\n\nAl darse cuenta de lo que estaba a punto de decir, se puso como un tomate.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPara qu\u00e9? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Tanselle, ladeando la cabeza inquisitivamente.\n\n\u2014Para las marionetas \u2014dijo \u00e9l para salir del paso.\n\nEl primer d\u00eda del torneo amaneci\u00f3 claro y soleado. Dunk compr\u00f3 comida para llenar todo un saco, lo cual les permiti\u00f3 desayunar huevos de oca, pan frito y tocino. No obstante, una vez preparada la comida, Dunk se hall\u00f3 sin apetito. Se notaba la barriga dura como una piedra, aun a sabiendas de que no era el d\u00eda de su estreno como justador. El derecho a retar por primera vez a los paladines reca\u00eda en los caballeros de cuna m\u00e1s noble y mayor renombre, as\u00ed como en los se\u00f1ores con tierras, sus hijos y los paladines de otros torneos.\n\nEgg habl\u00f3 sin parar durante todo el desayuno, haciendo comentarios y previsiones sobre tal y cual caballero. \"Aquello de que conoc\u00eda a los mejores de los Siete Reinos no era broma\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, atribulado. Encontraba humillante prestar tanta atenci\u00f3n a las palabras de un hu\u00e9rfano mal alimentado. No obstante, si llegaba la hora de enfrentarse con alguno de esos caballeros, los conocimientos de Egg le ser\u00edan de utilidad.\n\nEl prado era un hervidero de gente, todos decididos a hacerse de un buen lugar para observar. Los codazos de Dunk nada ten\u00edan que envidiar a los ajenos. Adem\u00e1s, contaba con la ventaja de su estatura. Avanz\u00f3 hasta subirse a un mont\u00edculo, a cinco pasos de la valla. Cuando Egg se quej\u00f3 de que s\u00f3lo ve\u00eda culos, Dunk se lo subi\u00f3 a los hombros. Al otro lado del prado la tribuna se iba llenando de se\u00f1ores y damas de alta alcurnia, a los que hab\u00eda que sumar a unos cuantos burgueses y una veintena de caballeros que hab\u00edan decidido retrasar su entrada en liza. Dunk no vio al pr\u00edncipe Maekar, pero s\u00ed reconoci\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe Baelor, sentado junto a lord Ashford. El sol arrancaba destellos dorados de la f\u00edbula con que el pr\u00edncipe se sujetaba la capa en el hombro y de la diadema que le ce\u00f1\u00eda las sienes. Por lo dem\u00e1s, el atuendo de Baelor era m\u00e1s sencillo que el de los dem\u00e1s nobles. \"La verdad es que con ese pelo negro no parece un Targaryen.\" Se lo dijo a Egg.\n\n\u2014Dicen que sali\u00f3 a su madre \u2014le record\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o\u2014, una princesa dorniense.\n\nLos cinco paladines hab\u00edan levantado sus pabellones en el borde septentrional del palenque, muy cerca del r\u00edo. Los dos m\u00e1s peque\u00f1os eran de color naranja, y los escudos expuestos a la entrada llevaban el emblema del sol y el cheur\u00f3n blancos. Deb\u00edan de ser Androw y Robert, hijos de lord Ashford y hermanos de la hermosa doncella. Dunk nunca hab\u00eda o\u00eddo comentar sus proezas a ning\u00fan caballero, se\u00f1al de que ten\u00edan muchas posibilidades de ser los primeros en caer.\n\nAl lado de los pabellones de color naranja hab\u00eda otro mucho mayor, de un verde saturado. Lo remataba un estandarte con la rosa de Altojard\u00edn, emblema que tambi\u00e9n adornaba un gran escudo verde al lado de la entrada.\n\n\u2014Es Leo Tyrell, se\u00f1or de Altojard\u00edn \u2014dijo Egg.\n\n\u2014Ya lo s\u00e9 \u2014repuso Dunk, irritado\u2014. Serv\u00ed con el viejo en Altojard\u00edn cuando t\u00fa ni siquiera hab\u00edas nacido \u2014personalmente apenas se acordaba, aunque ser Arlan le hab\u00eda hablado mucho del se\u00f1or de Altojard\u00edn: incomparable en los torneos, y eso que ya peinaba canas\u2014. El de al lado de la tienda, vestido de verde y oro y con barba gris, debe ser lord Leo.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Lo vi una vez en Desembarco del Rey. No te conviene enfrentarlo.\n\n\u2014Mira, ni\u00f1o, para saber a qui\u00e9n retar no me haces falta.\n\nEl cuarto pabell\u00f3n estaba hecho de trozos de tela en forma de rombo, unos rojos y otros blancos. Dunk no reconoci\u00f3 los colores, pero Egg dijo que pertenec\u00edan a un caballero del valle de Arryn, un tal Humfrey Hardyng.\n\n\u2014El a\u00f1o pasado, en Poza de la Doncella, gan\u00f3 en un combate cuerpo a cuerpo. Tambi\u00e9n derrib\u00f3 a ser Donnel de Valle Oscuro en un combate singular y a los se\u00f1ores de Arryn y Royce.\n\nEl \u00faltimo pabell\u00f3n era el del pr\u00edncipe Valarr. Estaba confeccionado con seda negra y una franja de pendones puntiagudos de color rojo que colgaban del techo como largas llamas. El escudo expuesto era de un negro lustroso, con el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen. Lo acompa\u00f1aba un miembro de la Guardia Real, cuya armadura, blanca y resplandeciente, contrastaba con el negro de la seda. Al verlo, Dunk se pregunt\u00f3 si habr\u00eda alg\u00fan caballero que se atreviera a tocar con la lanza el escudo el drag\u00f3n. A fin de cuentas Valarr era nieto del rey e hijo de Baelor Rompelanzas.\n\nSu inquietud era infundada. Cuando sonaron los clarines que convocaban a los retadores, los cinco paladines de la hija de lord Ashford fueron llamados en su defensa. Dunk oy\u00f3 el murmullo de entusiasmo con que la multitud acog\u00eda la llegada de los retadores, que desfilaron uno a uno por el extremo sur del palenque. Los heraldos proclamaron sus nombres a cada aparici\u00f3n. Los caballeros hicieron un alto delante de la tribuna, donde bajaron las lanzas en saludo a lord Ashford, el pr\u00edncipe Baelor y la hermosa doncella, y siguieron hacia el norte del prado, donde elegir\u00edan a sus oponentes. El Le\u00f3n Gris de Roca Casterly toc\u00f3 el escudo de lord Tyrell, al tiempo que su rubio heredero, ser Tybolt Lannister, desafiaba al hijo mayor de lord Ashford. Lord Tully de Aguasdulces aplic\u00f3 su borne al escudo de rombos de ser Humfrey Hardyng. Ser Abelar Hightower toc\u00f3 el de Valarr, y el menor de los Ashford recibi\u00f3 el desaf\u00edo de ser Lyonel Baratheon, llamado la Tormenta que R\u00ede.\n\nLos retadores trotaron de nuevo hacia el margen sur del palenque, donde aguardaron la llegada de sus enemigos: ser Abelar, de plata y gris, con el emblema de una torre de piedra coronada por el fuego; los dos Lannister de rojo, con el le\u00f3n dorado de Roca Casterly; la Tormenta que R\u00ede de oro, con un ciervo negro en el peto y el escudo, y una cornamenta de hierro por cimera; por \u00faltimo lord Tully, cuya capa azul y roja se sujetaba en ambos hombros gracias a sendas truchas plateadas. Los cinco levantaron sus lanzas, de nueve codos de longitud, mientras el viento hac\u00eda restallar los pendones.\n\nEn el extremo norte del campo los escuderos sujetaban los corceles, de vistosas bardas, para que los montaran los paladines. \u00c9stos se pusieron los yelmos y tomaron lanzas y escudos, iguales en esplendor a los de sus contrincantes: las sedas anaranjadas de los Ashford, los rombos rojos y blancos de ser Humfrey, los jaeces de raso verde con rosas doradas del caballo de lord Leo... Destacaba, por supuesto, Valarr Targaryen. El corcel del Pr\u00edncipe Joven era negro como la noche, a juego con el color de su armadura, lanza, escudo y guarnici\u00f3n. La cimera era un drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas con las alas abiertas, esmaltado en rojo. Otro drag\u00f3n, igual al primero, figuraba en la brillante superficie del escudo. Cada palad\u00edn llevaba anudada al brazo una cinta de seda naranja, prenda de la hermosa doncella.\n\nEn el momento que los paladines ocuparon sus puestos, el prado de Vado Ceniza enmudeci\u00f3. Despu\u00e9s son\u00f3 un clar\u00edn y la algarab\u00eda estall\u00f3 sin transici\u00f3n. Diez pares de espuelas plateadas se hincaron en los flancos de diez grandes corceles; mil voces prorrumpieron en gritos y v\u00edtores; cuarenta cascos herrados golpearon y arrancaron la hierba; diez lanzas quedaron fijas en posici\u00f3n horizontal; todo el prado vibr\u00f3, y entre fragores de madera y metal se verific\u00f3 el encontronazo entre paladines y retadores. Poco despu\u00e9s las parejas se hab\u00edan separado y los caballeros daban media vuelta para otra acometida. Lord Tully se tambale\u00f3 en su silla, pero se mantuvo sin caer. Cuando el p\u00fablico se dio cuenta de que se hab\u00edan roto las diez lanzas estall\u00f3 en una gran ovaci\u00f3n, espl\u00e9ndido augurio para el \u00e9xito del torneo y testimonio de la destreza de los competidores.\n\nLos escuderos entregaron nuevas lanzas a los justadores en sustituci\u00f3n de las rotas, que arrojaron, y por segunda vez se clavaron las espuelas. Dunk sinti\u00f3 temblar el suelo bajo sus pies. Sentado en sus hombros, Egg dio gritos de alegr\u00eda y agit\u00f3 sus brazos delgad\u00edsimos. El caballero que pas\u00f3 m\u00e1s cerca de ellos fue el Pr\u00edncipe Joven. Dunk vio que la punta de su lanza negra besaba la torre del escudo enemigo y se desviaba hacia el peto, al tiempo que el asta de ser Abelar se quebraba contra el de Valarr. La fuerza del impacto ech\u00f3 hacia atr\u00e1s al corcel gris con arreos grises y plateados, y ser Abelar Hightower, alzado en sus estribos, cay\u00f3 lentamente al suelo.\n\nTambi\u00e9n cay\u00f3 lord Tully, derribado por ser Humfrey Hardyng, pero se levant\u00f3 sin la menor demora y desenvain\u00f3 la espada. Ser Humfrey solt\u00f3 su lanza, intacta, y desmont\u00f3 para proseguir el combate a pie. Ser Abelar no fue tan \u00e1gil. Su escudero lleg\u00f3 corriendo, le solt\u00f3 el yelmo y pidi\u00f3 ayuda. Dos criados levantaron por los brazos al aturdido jinete y lo acompa\u00f1aron al pabell\u00f3n. Mientras tanto, en el resto del prado los seis caballeros que permanec\u00edan montados ejecutaban la tercera vuelta. Se quebraron m\u00e1s lanzas, y en esta ocasi\u00f3n lord Leo Tyrell apunt\u00f3 con tal pericia que le arranc\u00f3 el yelmo al Le\u00f3n Gris. Descubierto el rostro, el se\u00f1or de Roca Casterly levant\u00f3 la mano, desmont\u00f3 y se reconoci\u00f3 vencido. Para entonces ser Humfrey hab\u00eda forzado la rendici\u00f3n de lord Tully, tras demostrar la misma destreza con la espada que con la lanza.\n\nTybolt Lannister y Androw Ashford chocaron tres veces antes de que ser Androw se quedara sin escudo, sin caballo y sin victoria, todo al mismo tiempo. El menor de los Ashford dur\u00f3 todav\u00eda m\u00e1s y rompi\u00f3 nada menos que nueve lanzas contra ser Lyonel Baratheon, la Tormenta que R\u00ede. La d\u00e9cima acometida se sald\u00f3 con el derribo de ambos, pero la lucha continu\u00f3 a pie, espada contra maza. Por fin el magullado ser Robert Ashford admiti\u00f3 su derrota, aunque su padre, sentado en la tribuna, parec\u00eda cualquier cosa menos descontento. Los dos hijos de lord Ashford hab\u00edan tenido que abandonar las filas de los paladines, pero se hab\u00edan desempe\u00f1ado con nobleza contra dos de los mejores caballeros de los Siete Reinos.\n\n\"S\u00ed\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, al mirar que el vencedor y el vencido se abrazaban y abandonaban juntos el terreno, \"pero yo tengo que hacerlo a\u00fan mejor. No basta con que pelee bien y pierda. Debo ganar como m\u00ednimo la primera justa o me quedar\u00e9 sin nada\".\n\nEl siguiente paso era que ser Tybolt Lannister y la Tormenta que R\u00ede fueran nombrados paladines en sustituci\u00f3n de los caballeros derrotados por ellos. Los pabellones de color naranja ya estaban siendo desmontados a pocos metros de donde el Pr\u00edncipe Joven descansaba en una silla de campa\u00f1a, frente a su gran tienda negra. Se hab\u00eda quitado el yelmo y dejado a la vista un pelo oscuro como el de su padre, si bien con una franja rubia. Bebi\u00f3 un sorbo de la copa de oro que le trajo un criado. \"Si es prudente, ser\u00e1 agua\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"y si no, vino\". Se pregunt\u00f3 si Valarr hab\u00eda heredado parte de las artes guerreras de su padre o s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda tenido la suerte de emparejarse con el contrincante m\u00e1s d\u00e9bil.\n\nUna fanfarria anunci\u00f3 la entrada en liza de tres nuevos retadores, cuyos nombres fueron proclamados por los heraldos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Pearse, de la casa Caron, se\u00f1or de las Marcas!\n\nEl emblema de su escudo era un arpa plateada, si bien la sobreveste llevaba ruise\u00f1ores.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Joseth, de la casa Mallister, de Varamar!\n\nSer Joseth llevaba un yelmo con alas. En el escudo volaba un \u00e1guila de plata contra un cielo a\u00f1il.\n\n\u2014Ser Gawen, de la casa de Swann,*** se\u00f1or de Tim\u00f3n de Piedra y del cabo de la Ira.\n\nEn el escudo, dos cisnes, uno negro y el otro blanco, libraban una lucha furiosa. La armadura y la capa de lord Gawen, as\u00ed como la barda de su caballo, repet\u00edan el conflicto entre negros y blancos, que se extend\u00eda a las franjas de su vaina y su lanza.\n\nLord Caron, arpista, cantor y caballero de renombre, aplic\u00f3 el borne a la rosa de lord Tyrell. Ser Joseth golpe\u00f3 los rombos de ser Humfrey Hardyng. En cuanto al caballero blanco y negro, lord Gawen Swann, desafi\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe negro. Dunk se frot\u00f3 la barbilla. La edad de lord Gawen era todav\u00eda m\u00e1s avanzada que la del viejo, su difunto se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Oye, Egg, \u00bfcu\u00e1l de los retadores es el m\u00e1s peligroso? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 al ni\u00f1o que sosten\u00eda en hombros y que tanto parec\u00eda saber de aquellos caballeros.\n\n\u2014Lord Gawen \u2014repuso \u00e9l sin vacilar\u2014, el contrincante de Valarr.\n\n\u2014Del pr\u00edncipe Valarr \u2014lo corrigi\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Para ser escudero hay que hablar con cortes\u00eda.\n\nLos tres retadores ocuparon sus puestos, mientras los tres respectivos paladines montaban. Entre el p\u00fablico todo eran apuestas y exclamaciones de aliento, pero Dunk s\u00f3lo ten\u00eda ojos para el pr\u00edncipe. En la primera vuelta Valarr golpe\u00f3 de refil\u00f3n el escudo de lord Gawen, y al igual que con ser Abelar Hightower vio desviarse la punta enromada de su lanza, s\u00f3lo que al vac\u00edo, en direcci\u00f3n opuesta. La lanza de lord Gawen se quebr\u00f3 de frente contra el peto del pr\u00edncipe, que por unos instantes pareci\u00f3 al borde de la ca\u00edda.\n\nEn el segundo embate Valarr orient\u00f3 la lanza hacia la izquierda y apunt\u00f3 al pecho de su enemigo, pero s\u00f3lo lo golpe\u00f3 en un hombro. Aun as\u00ed fue suficiente para que el anciano caballero se quedara sin lanza. Lord Gawen hizo molinetes con un brazo y cay\u00f3 de la montura. El Pr\u00edncipe Joven baj\u00f3 de la silla y desenvain\u00f3 la espada, pero lord Gawen le hizo se\u00f1as y se levant\u00f3 la visera.\n\n\u2014Me rindo, excelencia \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014. Buen golpe.\n\nLo repitieron a gritos los nobles de la tribuna, mientras Valarr se pon\u00eda de rodillas para ayudar a levantarse al caballero de cabello gris.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Buen golpe! \u00a1Buen golpe!\n\n\u2014No lo fue \u2014se quej\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\u2014Calla o te mando al campamento.\n\nUn poco m\u00e1s lejos ser Joseth Mallister abandonaba el campo en estado de inconsciencia, mientras el arpista y el se\u00f1or de la rosa luchaban con denuedo con hachas sin filo, para entusiasmo de una multitud desatada. Dunk estaba tan concentrado en Valarr Targaryen que apenas los ve\u00eda. \"Es buen caballero, pero no excepcional\", se oy\u00f3 pensar. \"Contra \u00e9l tendr\u00eda posibilidades. Si los dioses me fueran propicios hasta podr\u00eda derribarlo, y una vez en pie mi peso y mi fuerza f\u00edsica decidir\u00edan.\"\n\n\u2014\u00a1Contra \u00e9l! \u2014exclam\u00f3 Egg con ardor, tan entusiasmado que cambiaba su punto de apoyo en los hombros de Dunk\u2014. \u00a1Dale, dale! \u00a1As\u00ed! \u00a1Ya lo tienes! \u00a1Un poco m\u00e1s!\n\nPor lo visto daba \u00e1nimos a lord Caron. El arpista, dedicado a otra m\u00fasica, hac\u00eda retroceder r\u00e1pidamente a lord Leo con golpes incesantes de acero contra acero. El p\u00fablico parec\u00eda dividido a partes iguales entre los partidarios de uno y otro, y en el aire matinal se mezclaban v\u00edtores y reniegos. Del escudo de lord Leo saltaban astillas de madera y trozos de pintura, a medida que el hacha de lord Pearse deshojaba los p\u00e9talos de su rosa de oro hasta hacer trizas, por \u00faltimo, el escudo. En el momento de henderlo, el hacha se qued\u00f3 trabada en la madera... y la de lord Leo rompi\u00f3 el mango del arma de su contrincante, a un palmo de su mano. Entonces arroj\u00f3 el escudo roto, y de pronto era \u00e9l quien llevaba el ataque. En cuesti\u00f3n de segundos el caballero arpista se apoyaba en una rodilla y pronunciaba su rendici\u00f3n.\n\nTermin\u00f3 la ma\u00f1ana y la tarde avanz\u00f3 sin muchos cambios. Los retadores entraban en lid en n\u00famero de dos o tres, y alguna vez hasta de cinco. Sonaban clarines, los heraldos proclamaban nombres, los corceles embest\u00edan, el p\u00fablico aplaud\u00eda, las lanzas se quebraban como fr\u00e1giles ramas y las espadas hac\u00edan sonar los yelmos y la malla. El pueblo llano estuvo de acuerdo con la nobleza en que hab\u00eda sido un d\u00eda de justas espl\u00e9ndido. Ser Humfrey Hardyng y ser Humfrey Beesbury, este \u00faltimo caballero de corta edad y gran audacia, que llevaba en el escudo tres colmenas sobre franjas amarillas y negras, rompieron nada menos que una docena de lanzas por cabeza, en una lucha \u00e9pica que no tard\u00f3 en ser llamada por el pueblo \"la batalla de Humfrey\". Ser Tybolt Lannister fue derribado por ser John Penrose y al caer se le rompi\u00f3 la espada, pero resisti\u00f3 con el escudo hasta salir vencedor y quedar como palad\u00edn. El caballero tuerto ser Robyn Rhysling, hombre curtido y de barba entrecana, perdi\u00f3 el yelmo en el primer embate por una lanzada de lord Leo, pero se neg\u00f3 a rendirse. Chocaron tres veces m\u00e1s, con la cabellera de ser Robyn ondeando al viento, mientras le pasaban al lado como cuchillos volantes las astillas de las lanzas, un hecho que todav\u00eda maravill\u00f3 m\u00e1s a Dunk cuando Egg le dijo que el maduro caballero hab\u00eda perdido el ojo cinco a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s por culpa de una astilla desprendida justo de una lanza. Leo Tyrell era demasiado caballeroso para apuntar hacia el rostro desprotegido de su contrincante, pero eso no impidi\u00f3 que el terco arrojo de Rhysling \u2014\u00bfo su temeridad?\u2014 dejara a Dunk at\u00f3nito. Por \u00faltimo, el se\u00f1or de Altojard\u00edn dio un fuerte golpe al peto de ser Robyn, por encima del coraz\u00f3n, y lo derrib\u00f3 con estr\u00e9pito.\n\nTambi\u00e9n ser Lyonel Baratheon se destac\u00f3 en repetidas ocasiones en la lid. Muchas veces, cuando le tocaban el escudo enemigos de poca talla, romp\u00eda en sonoras carcajadas, que se prolongaban durante la carga y el momento de arrancarlos de sus estribos. Si el oponente llevaba alguna clase de cimera, ser Lyonel la cortaba y la arrojaba al p\u00fablico. Como se trataba de piezas muy trabajadas, hechas de cuero o madera labrada y en algunos casos con ba\u00f1o de oro o esmalte, cuando no de plata maciza, la costumbre de ser Lyonel no era del agrado de los vencidos, si bien es cierto que le granjeaba el favor del p\u00fablico de a pie. Lleg\u00f3 el momento en que s\u00f3lo lo desafiaban caballeros sin cimera. A pesar de las risas de ser Lyonel, Dunk acordaba la preeminencia a ser Humfrey Harding, que humill\u00f3 a catorce caballeros, cada uno m\u00e1s temible que el anterior.\n\nEntretanto, el Pr\u00edncipe Joven segu\u00eda sentado a la entrada de su pabell\u00f3n negro, bebiendo de su copa de plata y levant\u00e1ndose de vez en cuando para montar en su corcel y vencer al en\u00e9simo y modesto enemigo. Ya hab\u00eda obtenido nueve victorias, pero Dunk las ten\u00eda a todas por muy poco gloriosas. \"Vence a viejos, a escuderos venidos a m\u00e1s y a algunos nobles de alta cuna y pocas dotes guerreras; los mejores caballeros ignoran su escudo, como si no lo vieran.\"\n\nHacia el final de la jornada una fanfarria ensordecedora anunci\u00f3 la entrada en liza de otro retador. Lleg\u00f3 a lomos de un gran corcel rojo con aberturas en la barda negra, y bajo ellas destellos de amarillo, rojo y naranja. Cuando se acerc\u00f3 a la tribuna para rendir homenaje a los presentes, Dunk vio su rostro bajo la visera alzada y reconoci\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe que lo hab\u00eda abordado en los establos de lord Ashford.\n\nEgg le apret\u00f3 el cuello con las piernas.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Para! \u2014dijo Dunk, separ\u00e1ndoselas\u2014. \u00bfEs que pretendes ahogarme?\n\n\u2014Aerion Llama Brillante \u2014anunci\u00f3 un heraldo \u2014, pr\u00edncipe de la Fortaleza Roja de Desembarco del Rey, hijo del pr\u00edncipe Maekar de Refugio Estival, de la casa Targaryen, nieto de nuestro se\u00f1or Daeron II el Bueno, rey de los \u00e1ndalos, los rhoynar y los primeros hombres y se\u00f1or de los Siete Reinos.\n\nAerion llevaba en el escudo un drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas, pintado con colores mucho m\u00e1s vivos que el de Valarr: las tres cabezas eran, respectivamente, naranja, amarilla y roja, y las llamas que sal\u00edan de sus bocas ten\u00edan el brillo del pan de oro. Su sobreveste era un remolino de tonos grises y rojos, y su escudo negro estaba rematado por llamas rojas.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de una pausa para bajar la lanza ante el pr\u00edncipe Baelor \u2014tan breve que qued\u00f3 en un mero formulismo\u2014, el reci\u00e9n llegado galop\u00f3 hacia el norte del campo sin detenerse en los pabellones de lord Leo y la Tormenta que R\u00ede. S\u00f3lo redujo el paso al aproximarse a la tienda del pr\u00edncipe Valarr. El Pr\u00edncipe Joven se levant\u00f3 y qued\u00f3 apostado con rigidez en la proximidad de su escudo. Por unos instantes Dunk alberg\u00f3 la certeza de que Aerion se propon\u00eda tocarlo, pero el nuevo contendiente rio y pas\u00f3 de largo. Su borne acab\u00f3 en los rombos de ser Humfrey Hardyng.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Salga, salga, peque\u00f1o caballero! \u2014dijo con voz clara y potente\u2014. Lleg\u00f3 la hora de enfrentar al drag\u00f3n.\n\nSer Humfrey inclin\u00f3 la cabeza con frialdad hacia su contrincante, mientras le tra\u00edan el caballo. Mont\u00f3 en \u00e9l sin mirar a Aerion, se ci\u00f1\u00f3 el yelmo y asi\u00f3 la lanza y el escudo. Los dos caballeros ocuparon sus puestos bajo la silenciosa mirada del p\u00fablico. Dunk oy\u00f3 el ruido met\u00e1lico con que ca\u00eda la visera del pr\u00edncipe Aerion. Son\u00f3 el clar\u00edn.\n\nTras un arranque lento, ser Humfrey fue ganando rapidez; su enemigo, en cambio, espole\u00f3 con fuerza al corcel rojo. Egg volvi\u00f3 a juntar las piernas.\n\n\u2014\u00a1M\u00e1talo! \u2014exclam\u00f3 de pronto\u2014. \u00a1M\u00e1talo, que ya lo tienes! \u00a1M\u00e1talo, m\u00e1talo, m\u00e1talo!\n\nLa lanza del pr\u00edncipe Aerion, con punta de oro y franjas rojas, naranjas y amarillas en el asta, apunt\u00f3 hacia el suelo. \"Demasiado bajo\", pens\u00f3 Dunk nada m\u00e1s verlo, \"necesita levantarla o en lugar de a ser Humfrey le dar\u00e1 al caballo\". Entonces, con incipiente horror, empez\u00f3 a sospechar que Aerion no ten\u00eda la menor intenci\u00f3n de elevarla. \"No puede ser que quiera...\"\n\nViendo con ojos enloquecidos lo que se le ven\u00eda encima, el corcel de ser Humfrey trat\u00f3 de apartarse en el \u00faltimo momento. Demasiado tarde. La lanza de Aerion se clav\u00f3 justo encima de la pieza que cubr\u00eda el estern\u00f3n del animal y sali\u00f3 por el otro lado del cuello con un chorro de sangre roja. El caballo se derrumb\u00f3 con un chillido y su ca\u00edda lateral hizo pedazos la barrera. Ser Humfrey quiso zafarse, pero se le qued\u00f3 un pie en el estribo. Se le oy\u00f3 gritar, la pierna apresada entre la barrera rota y el corcel.\n\nEl prado de Vado Ceniza se llen\u00f3 de gritos. Varios hombres corrieron al centro para liberar a ser Humfrey, pero los detuvieron las coces del caballo agonizante. Aerion, que hab\u00eda seguido hasta el final del pasillo con despreocupaci\u00f3n, dio la vuelta a su caballo y regres\u00f3 al galope. Tambi\u00e9n gritaba, pero los relinchos del caballo, casi humanos, impidieron a Dunk entender lo que dec\u00eda. El pr\u00edncipe salt\u00f3 a tierra, desenvain\u00f3 la espada y se acerc\u00f3 a su contrincante ca\u00eddo. Tuvieron que retenerlo sus propios escuderos, con la ayuda de uno de los de ser Humfrey. Egg se retorci\u00f3 sobre los hombros de Dunk.\n\n\u2014\u00a1D\u00e9jame bajar! \u2014dec\u00eda\u2014. \u00a1Pobre caballo! \u00a1D\u00e9jame bajar!\n\nDunk tambi\u00e9n se sent\u00eda mareado. Se pregunt\u00f3 qu\u00e9 habr\u00eda hecho \u00e9l si a Trueno le hubiera ocurrido lo mismo. Un soldado remat\u00f3 al corcel de ser Humfrey con un hacha y dio fin a los atroces chillidos. Dunk dio media vuelta y se fragu\u00f3 camino por la densa multitud. Una vez en campo abierto baj\u00f3 a Egg de sus hombros. El ni\u00f1o ten\u00eda puesta la capucha y los ojos rojos.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, es un espect\u00e1culo horrible \u2014le dijo Dunk al ni\u00f1o\u2014, pero los escuderos deben ser fuertes. Me temo que en otros torneos ver\u00e1s accidentes mucho peores.\n\n\u2014No fue accidente \u2014dijo Egg con labios temblorosos\u2014. Aerion lo hizo a prop\u00f3sito. T\u00fa lo viste.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo. A \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n le hab\u00eda parecido, pero resultaba dif\u00edcil aceptar la existencia de caballeros tan poco caballerosos, y m\u00e1s cuando se trataba de alguien del linaje del drag\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Me ha tocado ver a alg\u00fan caballero m\u00e1s verde que la hierba en verano y que ha perdido el control de su lanza \u2014dijo con obstinaci\u00f3n\u2014. No se hable m\u00e1s. Me parece que por hoy no habr\u00e1 m\u00e1s justas. Ven, chiquillo.\n\nDunk ten\u00eda raz\u00f3n en lo segundo. Una vez remediado el caos, faltaba poco para que se escondiera el sol, por lo que lord Ashford suspendi\u00f3 el torneo. Al caer la noche cien antorchas iluminaron la hilera de puestos de venta. Dunk se compr\u00f3 un cuerno de cerveza y medio para el ni\u00f1o, que segu\u00eda con los \u00e1nimos por el suelo. Durante un rato pasearon, escuchando una briosa melod\u00eda tocada por gaitas y tamboriles y viendo un espect\u00e1culo de marionetas sobre Nymeria, la reina guerrera due\u00f1a de diez mil nav\u00edos. Las titiriteras s\u00f3lo ten\u00edan dos, pero eso no les impidi\u00f3 escenificar una batalla naval electrizante. Dunk quiso preguntar a Tanselle si hab\u00eda terminado de pintar su escudo, pero la vio ocupada. \"Esperar\u00e9 a que termine el trabajo\", decidi\u00f3. \"Quiz\u00e1 entonces tenga sed.\"\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014dijo alguien tras \u00e9l\u2014. \u00a1Ser Duncan! \u2014de repente Dunk se acord\u00f3 de que era \u00e9l\u2014. Lo vi hace unas horas entre el p\u00fablico, con este ni\u00f1o en hombros \u2014dijo Raymun Fossoway, mientras se acercaba sonriente\u2014. En realidad habr\u00eda sido dif\u00edcil no verlo.\n\n\u2014Es mi escudero. Egg, te presento a Raymun Fossoway.\n\nDunk tuvo que empujarlo y ni siquiera entonces el ni\u00f1o alz\u00f3 la cabeza. Mascull\u00f3 un saludo con la mirada fija en las botas de Raymun.\n\n\u2014Encantado, muchacho \u2014dijo Raymun con desenvoltura\u2014. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no subi\u00f3 a la tribuna, ser Duncan? Est\u00e1 abierta a todos los caballeros.\n\nDunk se encontraba a gusto entre el pueblo llano y la servidumbre. Lo incomodaba la idea de hacerse un lugar entre nobles, damas y terratenientes.\n\n\u2014Me alegro de no haber visto la \u00faltima justa m\u00e1s de cerca.\n\nRaymun hizo una mueca.\n\n\u2014Y yo. Lord Ashford declar\u00f3 vencedor a ser Humfrey y le concedi\u00f3 el corcel del pr\u00edncipe Aerion, pero no podr\u00e1 seguir. Se rompi\u00f3 la pierna en dos secciones. El pr\u00edncipe Baelor envi\u00f3 a su propio maestre para curarlo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLo sustituir\u00e1 alg\u00fan otro caballero?\n\n\u2014Lord Ashford ten\u00eda la intenci\u00f3n de ceder su puesto a lord Caron o al otro ser Humfrey, el que pele\u00f3 tan bien con Hardyng, pero el pr\u00edncipe Baelor le dijo que, dadas las circunstancias, no estar\u00eda bien desmontar el pabell\u00f3n de ser Humfrey y retirar su escudo. Me parece que seguir\u00e1n con cuatro paladines.\n\n\"Cuatro paladines\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Leo Tyrell, Lyonel Baratheon, Tybolt Lannister y el pr\u00edncipe Valarr.\" Lo visto aquel d\u00eda era indicio suficiente de las pocas probabilidades que tendr\u00eda contra los tres primeros. Por lo tanto, s\u00f3lo quedaba...\n\n\"Un caballero errante no puede desafiar a un pr\u00edncipe. Valarr es segundo en la sucesi\u00f3n al Trono de Hierro. Es hijo de Baelor Rompelanzas y lleva la sangre de Aegon el Conquistador, el Joven Drag\u00f3n y el pr\u00edncipe Aemon. Yo s\u00f3lo soy un ni\u00f1o al que encontr\u00f3 el viejo en el Lecho de Pulgas, detr\u00e1s de un tenderete de comida.\"\n\nTan s\u00f3lo de pensarlo le dol\u00eda la cabeza.\n\n\u2014\u00bfA qui\u00e9n piensa desafiar su primo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 a Raymun.\n\n\u2014Puestos a escoger, y como da lo mismo, eligi\u00f3 a ser Tybolt. Forman buena pareja. De todos modos mi primo sigue todas las justas con atenci\u00f3n. Si se diera el caso de que ma\u00f1ana por la ma\u00f1ana alguien fuera herido o diera se\u00f1ales de fatiga o debilidad, cuente con que Steffon se apresurar\u00e1 a tocar su escudo. Nunca lo han acusado de exceso de caballerosidad \u2014con una risa pali\u00f3 la mordacidad de sus palabras\u2014. \u00bfLe parece que tomemos un vaso de vino, ser Duncan?\n\n\u2014Tengo un asunto pendiente \u2014dijo Dunk, a quien incomodaba la idea de aceptar una invitaci\u00f3n sin poder corresponderla.\n\n\u2014Si lo deseas me quedo y traigo el escudo cuando haya terminado el espect\u00e1culo \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Dentro de un rato contar\u00e1n la historia de Symeon Ojos de Estrella y volver\u00e1n a sacar el drag\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Ya lo ve: asunto solucionado. Vamos, que el vino espera \u2014dijo Raymun\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, es del Rejo. \u00bfC\u00f3mo rechazarlo?\n\nDunk, que se hab\u00eda quedado sin excusas, no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que marcharse con el joven y dejar a Egg con las marionetas. Encima del pabell\u00f3n dorado donde Raymun serv\u00eda a su primo flotaba la manzana de la casa de Fossoway. Tras \u00e9l, sobre un peque\u00f1o fuego, dos criados vert\u00edan miel y hierbas arom\u00e1ticas sobre un cabrito.\n\n\u2014Si tiene hambre tambi\u00e9n hay comida \u2014dijo Raymun con despreocupaci\u00f3n, mientras sosten\u00eda la tela para que entrara Dunk. El interior estaba iluminado por un brasero, que aseguraba una calidez agradable. Raymun sirvi\u00f3 dos copas de vino\u2014. Dicen que Aerion est\u00e1 enfadado con lord Ashford por haberle entregado su caballo a ser Humfrey \u2014coment\u00f3 entretanto \u2014, pero seguro que fue consejo de su t\u00edo.\n\nOfreci\u00f3 a Dunk una de las copas.\n\n\u2014El pr\u00edncipe Baelor es un hombre de honor.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY no lo es el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante? \u2014Raymun se rio\u2014. No se ponga tan nervioso, ser Duncan, que estamos solos. Nadie ignora que Aerion es una mala pieza. Demos gracias a los dioses porque quede muy abajo en la l\u00ednea sucesoria.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEn verdad cree que mat\u00f3 al caballo a prop\u00f3sito?\n\n\u2014\u00bfExiste alguna raz\u00f3n para dudarlo? De haber estado presente el pr\u00edncipe Maekar, tenga por seguro que las cosas habr\u00edan sido distintas. Cuentan que delante de su padre Aerion es todo sonrisas y caballerosidad. En cambio, en su ausencia...\n\n\u2014Not\u00e9 que la silla del pr\u00edncipe Maekar estaba vac\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Se march\u00f3 de Vado Ceniza en busca de sus hijos, con Roland Crakehall, de la Guardia Real. Circulan rumores sobre unos caballeros bandidos que acechan la regi\u00f3n, pero soy del parecer de que el pr\u00edncipe sufre una de sus borracheras.\n\nEra un vino excelente, afrutado y sabroso como no lo hab\u00eda probado Dunk en su vida. Se lo dej\u00f3 un momento en la boca.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe qu\u00e9 pr\u00edncipe habla? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 despu\u00e9s de tragar.\n\n\u2014Del heredero de Maekar. Se llama Daeron, como el rey. Le dicen Daeron el Borracho, pero nunca en presencia de su padre. Tambi\u00e9n lo acompa\u00f1aba el benjam\u00edn. Salieron juntos de Refugio Estival, pero no han llegado a Vado Ceniza \u2014Raymun apur\u00f3 la copa y la dej\u00f3 a un lado\u2014. \u00a1Pobre Maekar!\n\n\u2014\u00bfPobre? \u2014dijo Dunk, sorprendido\u2014. \u00bfPobre el hijo del rey?\n\n\u2014Hijo, s\u00ed, pero s\u00f3lo el cuarto \u2014puntualiz\u00f3 Raymun\u2014. Menos valiente que el pr\u00edncipe Baelor, menos listo que el pr\u00edncipe Aerys y menos cort\u00e9s que el pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel. Ahora, para colmo, debe aguantar que sus hijos queden eclipsados por los de su hermano. Daeron es un borracho, Aerion un cruel y un vanidoso, el tercero promet\u00eda tan poco que lo entregaron a la Ciudadela para que lo hicieran maestre, y el menor...\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Duncan! \u2014era Egg, que entr\u00f3 sin aliento; se le hab\u00eda bajado la capucha y sus ojos, oscuros y grandes, reflejaban la luz del brasero\u2014. \u00a1Corre, que la est\u00e1 maltratando!\n\nDunk se levant\u00f3 con dificultad y sorpresa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n maltrata a qui\u00e9n?\n\n\u2014\u00a1Aerion! \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. \u00a1A ella, la titiritera! \u00a1Deprisa!\n\nGir\u00f3 sobre sus talones y volvi\u00f3 a la oscuridad del prado. Dunk hizo adem\u00e1n de seguirlo, pero Raymun lo sujet\u00f3 por el brazo.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan, dijo que era Aerion. De la casa real. Tenga cuidado.\n\nDunk supo que el consejo era atinado y que lo mismo le habr\u00eda dicho el viejo, pero no pod\u00eda acatarlo. Se zaf\u00f3 de Raymun y sali\u00f3 de la tienda. Oy\u00f3 gritos en los puestos de venta. Egg se hab\u00eda alejado tanto que apenas lo distingu\u00eda. Dunk corri\u00f3 tras \u00e9l y la longitud de sus piernas le permiti\u00f3 acortar distancias en un parpadeo.\n\nEn torno a las titiriteras se hab\u00eda formado una pared de espectadores. Dunk se abri\u00f3 paso ignorando sus protestas. Un soldado con librea real le cerr\u00f3 el camino, pero Dunk le puso en el pecho una de sus grandes manos y lo hizo caer sobre el trasero mediante un simple empuj\u00f3n.\n\nLa caseta de las titiriteras hab\u00eda sido derribada. La dorniense gruesa lloraba, sentada en el suelo. Otro soldado sujetaba los hilos de Florian y Jonquil para que les prendiera fuego un compa\u00f1ero. Hab\u00eda tres soldados m\u00e1s que abr\u00edan arcones, sacaban marionetas y las destrozaban a pisotones. La figura del drag\u00f3n estaba hecha pedazos a sus pies: por aqu\u00ed un ala, por all\u00e1 la cabeza, la cola en tres trozos... En medio de todo el pr\u00edncipe Aerion, con jub\u00f3n rojo de terciopelo y largas mangas con festones, retorc\u00eda el brazo de Tanselle con ambas manos. La chica imploraba piedad de rodillas, pero Aerion, sordo a sus quejas, le abri\u00f3 una mano a la fuerza y se apoder\u00f3 de un dedo. Dunk, estupefacto, no daba cr\u00e9dito de lo que ve\u00eda. De repente oy\u00f3 un crujido y un grito de Tanselle.\n\nUno de los hombres de Aerion trat\u00f3 de detenerlo, pero sali\u00f3 volando. En tres zancadas Dunk agarr\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe del hombro y lo oblig\u00f3 a retroceder. Se hab\u00eda olvidado de todo: la espada, la daga, las ense\u00f1anzas del viejo... Su pu\u00f1o levant\u00f3 del suelo a Aerion, que recibi\u00f3 en pleno abdomen la punta de una bota. Cuando Aerion trataba de alcanzar el pu\u00f1al, Dunk le pis\u00f3 la mu\u00f1eca y le dio otra patada, esta vez en la boca. De no ser por los hombres del pr\u00edncipe, que se lanzaron sobre \u00e9l, lo habr\u00eda matado a patadas. Lo sujetaron dos soldados, uno de cada brazo, mientras otro le daba pu\u00f1etazos en la espalda. Bastaba con librarse de uno para que acudieran dos m\u00e1s.\n\nAl fin lograron derribarlo y lo clavaron en el suelo por los brazos y las piernas.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe se toc\u00f3 la boca ensangrentada.\n\n\u2014Me aflojaste un diente \u2014se quej\u00f3\u2014. Por lo tanto, empezaremos por romperte los tuyos \u2014se apart\u00f3 el pelo de los ojos\u2014. Tu cara me suena.\n\n\u2014Me confundi\u00f3 con un mozo de cuadra.\n\nAerion sonri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ya recuerdo. Te negaste a tomar mi caballo. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 te buscas la muerte? \u00bfPor esta puta? \u2014acurrucada en el suelo, Tanselle se tomaba la mano lisiada. Aerion la empuj\u00f3 con el pie\u2014. Dudo que lo merezca, porque es una traidora. El drag\u00f3n nunca pierde.\n\n\"Est\u00e1 loco\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"pero no deja de ser hijo de un pr\u00edncipe, y piensa matarme\". Tuvo ganas de rezar, pero no sab\u00eda ninguna oraci\u00f3n completa y tampoco hab\u00eda tiempo. Ni siquiera para tener miedo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo tienes nada m\u00e1s que decir? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Aerion\u2014. Me aburres \u2014volvi\u00f3 a tocarse la boca ensangrentada\u2014. Wate, trae un martillo y p\u00e1rtele los dientes \u2014orden\u00f3\u2014; luego lo abriremos en canal y le ense\u00f1aremos el color de sus entra\u00f1as.\n\n\u2014\u00a1No! \u2014exclam\u00f3 una voz de ni\u00f1o\u2014. \u00a1No le hagan nada!\n\n\"\u00a1El ni\u00f1o!\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"\u00a1Qu\u00e9 valiente y qu\u00e9 insensato!\" Intent\u00f3 librarse de sus captores, pero era imposible.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Calla, ni\u00f1o est\u00fapido! \u00a1Corre o acabar\u00e1s mal!\n\n\u2014No \u2014Egg se acerc\u00f3\u2014. Si me hacen algo tendr\u00e1n que responder ante mi padre. Y mi t\u00edo. He dicho que lo suelten. Wate, Yorkel, ustedes me conocen. Cumplan mis \u00f3rdenes.\n\nDunk not\u00f3 que le soltaban un brazo y despu\u00e9s el otro. Vio retroceder a los soldados sin entender nada. Hubo uno que incluso se arrodill\u00f3. A continuaci\u00f3n los espectadores dejaron paso a Raymun Fossoway. Su primo ser Steffon, que lo segu\u00eda a pocos pasos, ya hab\u00eda desenvainado la espada. Iban acompa\u00f1ados por media docena de soldados con la manzana roja bordada en el pecho. El pr\u00edncipe Aerion no les hizo el menor caso.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Criatura insolente! \u2014dijo a Egg y escupi\u00f3 sangre a los pies del ni\u00f1o\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te pas\u00f3 en el pelo?\n\n\u2014Me lo cort\u00e9, hermano \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. No quer\u00eda parecerme a ti.\n\nEl segundo d\u00eda de torneo amaneci\u00f3 nublado, con rachas de viento del oeste. \"Con este tiempo lo l\u00f3gico es que haya menos p\u00fablico\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. Habr\u00eda sido m\u00e1s f\u00e1cil encontrar sitio cerca de la valla. \"Egg podr\u00eda haberse sentado en la barandilla y yo de pie, a sus espaldas.\"\n\nSin embargo, Egg tendr\u00eda que sentarse en la tribuna, vestido de seda y pieles; en cuanto a Dunk, su visi\u00f3n quedar\u00eda limitada por los cuatro muros de la celda donde lo hab\u00edan encerrado los hombres de lord Ashford. Aun as\u00ed, en cuanto sali\u00f3 el sol se sent\u00f3 como pudo al lado de la ventana y mir\u00f3 con tristeza la ciudad, el prado y el bosque. Le hab\u00edan quitado su cintur\u00f3n de cuerda, junto con la espada y la daga que pend\u00edan de \u00e9l. Tambi\u00e9n su dinero. Confi\u00f3 en que Egg o Raymun se acordaran de Casta\u00f1o y Trueno.\n\n\u2014Egg \u2014murmur\u00f3.\n\nSu escudero, un ni\u00f1o pobre recogido en las calles de Desembarco del Rey. Jam\u00e1s ning\u00fan caballero hab\u00eda hecho un rid\u00edculo mayor. \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo, y m\u00e1s lento que un uro\".\n\nNo lo hab\u00edan dejado hablar con Egg desde que los soldados de lord Ashford los hab\u00edan prendido a todos en el puesto de marionetas. Tampoco con Raymun, Tanselle ni el propio lord Ashford. Se pregunt\u00f3 si volver\u00eda a verlos, ya que era muy posible que lo dejaran morir en esa celda. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 esperabas?\", se pregunt\u00f3 con amargura. \"Derribaste al hijo de un pr\u00edncipe y le diste una patada en la cara.\"\n\nBajo aquel cielo gris los espl\u00e9ndidos ropajes de se\u00f1ores de alta cuna y esforzados paladines no se mostrar\u00edan tan vistosos como el d\u00eda anterior. El sol, estorbado por las nubes, no acariciar\u00eda sus yelmos de acero ni har\u00eda destellar los adornos de oro y plata de sus armaduras. Aun as\u00ed Dunk dese\u00f3 hallarse entre el p\u00fablico y presenciar las justas. Ser\u00eda un buen d\u00eda para los caballeros errantes, hombres con simple cota de malla y caballos sin barda.\n\nAl menos alcanzaba a escuchar. Los clarines eran n\u00edtidos y de vez en cuando se o\u00edan los gritos de la multitud, se\u00f1al de alguna ca\u00edda, puesta en pie o haza\u00f1a de especial bravura. Tambi\u00e9n se adivinaba el galope de los caballos y, muy de vez en cuando, un choque de espadas o la rotura de una lanza. Dunk siempre daba un respingo al o\u00edr lo \u00faltimo, porque le recordaba el ruido del dedo de Tanselle al ser roto por Aerion. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda sonidos m\u00e1s cercanos: pasos al otro lado de la puerta, ruido de cascos en el patio y voces desde las murallas. En ocasiones imped\u00edan o\u00edr el torneo. Dunk supuso que eso era preferible.\n\n\"Los caballeros errantes son los m\u00e1s aut\u00e9nticos, Dunk\", le hab\u00eda dicho el viejo mucho tiempo atr\u00e1s. \"Los otros sirven a se\u00f1ores que los mantienen o les han dado tierras; nosotros, en cambio, viajamos a nuestro antojo y s\u00f3lo nos ponemos al servicio de causas en las que creemos. Todos los caballeros juran proteger a los d\u00e9biles y los inocentes, pero yo soy del parecer de que nosotros somos los m\u00e1s fieles a ese voto.\" Dunk qued\u00f3 sorprendido por la nitidez con que lo recordaba. Eran palabras que casi hab\u00eda olvidado, y en sus \u00faltimos d\u00edas probablemente el viejo tampoco se acordara demasiado de ellas.\n\nPas\u00f3 la ma\u00f1ana y empez\u00f3 la tarde. El rumor del torneo se iba diluyendo. El crep\u00fasculo empez\u00f3 a filtrarse en la celda, pero Dunk segu\u00eda sentado junto a la ventana, contemplando la incipiente oscuridad y tratando de ignorar su est\u00f3mago vac\u00edo.\n\nDe pronto oy\u00f3 pisadas y el tintineo de unas llaves de metal. Se levant\u00f3 justo cuando se abr\u00eda la puerta. Irrumpieron dos centinelas, uno de ellos con una l\u00e1mpara de aceite, seguidos por un criado con una bandeja de comida. El \u00faltimo en entrar fue Egg.\n\n\u2014Dejen la l\u00e1mpara y la bandeja y salgan \u2014orden\u00f3.\n\nObedecieron, aunque Dunk se fij\u00f3 en que dejaban entreabierta la pesada puerta de madera. El olor a comida lo hizo constatar lo fam\u00e9lico que estaba. Hab\u00eda pan con miel, un cuenco de pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos y una brocheta de cebollas asadas y carne muy cocida. Se sent\u00f3 al lado de la bandeja, rompi\u00f3 la hogaza de pan con las manos y se meti\u00f3 un trozo en la boca.\n\n\u2014No hay cuchillo \u2014observ\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfTemen que te ataque?\n\n\u2014No me lo dijeron \u2014Egg llevaba un jub\u00f3n ajustado de lana negra, ce\u00f1ido a la cintura y con mangas largas forradas de raso rojo. La pechera estaba adornada con el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen\u2014. Dice mi t\u00edo que debo pedirte humildemente perd\u00f3n por haberte enga\u00f1ado.\n\n\u2014Tu t\u00edo \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Es decir, el pr\u00edncipe Baelor.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o parec\u00eda abatido.\n\n\u2014Yo no quer\u00eda mentir.\n\n\u2014Pues lo hiciste, y en todo. Empezando por tu nombre, porque nunca he o\u00eddo hablar de ning\u00fan pr\u00edncipe Egg.\n\n\u2014Es un diminutivo de Aegon. Me lo puso mi hermano, que ahora est\u00e1 en la Ciudadela, aprendiendo a ser maestre. A veces tambi\u00e9n me llaman as\u00ed Daeron y mis hermanas.\n\nDunk cogi\u00f3 la brocheta y mordi\u00f3 un trozo de carne. Era cordero, con alguna especia que desconoc\u00eda, reservada a los ricos. La grasa gote\u00f3 por su barbilla.\n\n\u2014Aegon \u2014repiti\u00f3\u2014. Claro, c\u00f3mo no. Igual que Aegon el Drag\u00f3n. \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos reyes ha habido con el nombre de Aegon?\n\n\u2014Cuatro \u2014contest\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Cuatro Aegon.\n\nDunk mastic\u00f3, trag\u00f3 y arranc\u00f3 otro trozo de pan.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 lo hiciste? \u00bfPara re\u00edrte de un tonto caballero errante?\n\n\u2014No \u2014el ni\u00f1o estaba a punto de llorar, pero aguant\u00f3 como todo un hombre\u2014. Ten\u00eda que ser escudero de Daeron, que es mi hermano mayor. Aprend\u00ed lo necesario para hacerlo bien, pero Daeron no es demasiado buen caballero, y como no quer\u00eda participar en el torneo, al salir de Refugio Estival despist\u00f3 a su escolta. En vez de dar media vuelta sigui\u00f3 directo hasta Vado Ceniza, pensando que ser\u00eda el \u00faltimo lugar donde nos buscar\u00edan. \u00c9l me rap\u00f3, a sabiendas que mi padre enviar\u00eda soldados en nuestra b\u00fasqueda. Daeron tiene el pelo normal, entre casta\u00f1o y rubio, y no destaca, pero yo lo tengo igual que Aerion y mi padre.\n\n\u2014La sangre del drag\u00f3n \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Lo sabe todo el mundo: cabello rubio plateado y ojos violetas.\n\n\"Siempre tan duro de entendimiento.\"\n\n\u2014S\u00ed. Por eso me afeit\u00f3 Daeron. Quer\u00eda que nos escondi\u00e9ramos hasta el final del torneo, pero me confundiste con un mozo de cuadra y... \u2014Baj\u00f3 la mirada\u2014. A m\u00ed me daba igual que Daeron participara o no, pero quer\u00eda ser escudero de alguien. Lo lamento, ser. De veras que lo lamento.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3, pensativo. \u00c9l tambi\u00e9n sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 era desear algo incluso al extremo de no retroceder ante la peor de las mentiras.\n\n\u2014Hasta ayer cre\u00eda que eras como yo \u2014dijo \u2014, y quiz\u00e1 tuviera raz\u00f3n, pero no como pensaba.\n\n\u2014A\u00fan tenemos en com\u00fan ser de Desembarco del Rey \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o, esperanzado.\n\nDunk no se aguant\u00f3 la risa.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, t\u00fa de arriba, de la Colina Alta de Aegon, y yo de abajo.\n\n\u2014No hay tanta distancia, ser.\n\nDunk tom\u00f3 un trozo de cebolla.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDebo tratarte de usted? \u00bfDe excelencia? \u00bfC\u00f3mo?\n\n\u2014En la corte s\u00ed, ser \u2014admiti\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o\u2014, pero en las dem\u00e1s ocasiones, si lo prefieres, puedes seguir llam\u00e1ndome Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 har\u00e1n conmigo, Egg?\n\n\u2014Mi t\u00edo desea verte cuando termines de comer.\n\nDunk apart\u00f3 la bandeja y se levant\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Pues ya termin\u00e9. Despu\u00e9s de dar una patada a un pr\u00edncipe en la boca, no pienso hacer esperar a otro.\n\nLord Ashford hab\u00eda cedido sus aposentos al pr\u00edncipe Baelor. Fue, pues, a las estancias del se\u00f1or del castillo, a donde lo condujo Egg \u2014\"No, Aegon\": tendr\u00eda que acostumbrarse\u2014. Baelor le\u00eda a la luz de una vela de cera de abeja. Dunk se arrodill\u00f3 ante \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014De pie \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe\u2014. \u00bfLe apetece vino?\n\n\u2014Como guste, excelencia.\n\n\u2014Sirve a ser Duncan una copa del tinto dulce de Dorne, Aegon \u2014orden\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe\u2014. E intenta no ech\u00e1rselo encima, que bastante lo has perjudicado ya.\n\n\u2014No lo har\u00e1, excelencia \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Es un buen chico y un buen escudero. Adem\u00e1s, s\u00e9 que no me deseaba ning\u00fan mal.\n\n\u2014No es imprescindible quererlo para hacerlo. Al ver el trato de su hermano hacia aquellas titiriteras, Aegon deber\u00eda haber acudido a m\u00ed, no a usted. Con ello no le hizo ning\u00fan favor. En cuanto a su reacci\u00f3n... Es posible que yo la hubiera compartido, pero soy pr\u00edncipe del reino, no caballero errante. Motivos al margen, nunca es prudente golpear al nieto de un rey cuando est\u00e1 furioso.\n\nDunk, muy serio, asinti\u00f3 con la cabeza. Egg le ofreci\u00f3 una copa de plata rebosante de vino, que acept\u00f3 y de la que bebi\u00f3 un sorbo.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Odio a Aerion! \u2014dijo Egg con vehemencia\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, t\u00edo, no tuve m\u00e1s remedio que avisar a ser Duncan porque el castillo quedaba demasiado lejos.\n\n\u2014Aerion es tu hermano \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe con firmeza\u2014, y los septones dicen que debemos amar a nuestros hermanos. Ahora d\u00e9janos solos, Aegon. Quiero hablar con ser Duncan en privado.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o dej\u00f3 el frasco de vino e inclin\u00f3 la cabeza con rigidez.\n\n\u2014Como mande, excelencia.\n\nSali\u00f3 por la puerta de los aposentos y la cerr\u00f3 con suavidad.\n\nBaelor Rompelanzas escrut\u00f3 los ojos de Dunk durante largo rato.\n\n\u2014Perm\u00edtame una pregunta, ser Duncan: \u00bfhasta qu\u00e9 punto es un buen caballero? \u00bfCu\u00e1l es, con franqueza, su dominio de las armas?\n\nDunk no supo qu\u00e9 contestar.\n\n\u2014Ser Arlan me ense\u00f1\u00f3 a usar la espada y el escudo, y a lancear con blancos fijos.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Baelor parec\u00eda preocupado por la respuesta.\n\n\u2014Hace unas horas que mi hermano Maekar volvi\u00f3 al castillo. Encontr\u00f3 a su heredero borracho en una posada, a un d\u00eda a caballo en direcci\u00f3n al sur. \u00c9l jam\u00e1s lo admitir\u00eda, pero tengo para m\u00ed que su esperanza secreta era ver a sus hijos llev\u00e1ndose la palma del torneo por encima de los m\u00edos. Lo cierto es que lo han avergonzado, pero \u00bfqu\u00e9 puede hacer \u00e9l? Son sangre de su sangre. Maekar est\u00e1 enfadado y necesita un blanco para sus iras. Lo ha escogido a usted.\n\n\u2014\u00bfA m\u00ed? \u2014dijo Dunk, acongojado.\n\n\u2014Aerion ya lo convenci\u00f3 y no puede decirse que Daeron le haya sido de gran ayuda. Para excusar su propia cobard\u00eda, le cont\u00f3 a mi hermano que a Aegon se lo llev\u00f3 un ladr\u00f3n de gran estatura con el que se encontr\u00f3 de modo inesperado en el camino. Temo, se\u00f1or m\u00edo, que lo hayan identificado con ese ladr\u00f3n. Seg\u00fan el cuento de Daeron, durante estos d\u00edas ha estado persigui\u00e9ndolo sin descanso para rescatar a su hermano.\n\n\u2014Pero Egg dir\u00e1 la verdad. Perd\u00f3n, Aegon.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, no lo dudo \u2014repuso el pr\u00edncipe Baelor\u2014, aunque a \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n se le conoce m\u00e1s de una mentira. No es necesario que se lo diga. \u00bfA cu\u00e1l de sus hijos dar\u00e1 cr\u00e9dito mi hermano? En cuanto a las titiriteras, Aerion har\u00e1 que parezcan culpables de alta traici\u00f3n. El drag\u00f3n es el emblema de la casa real. Representar a uno decapitado, con aserr\u00edn rojo brotando del cuello... En fin. No dudo de su inocencia, pero pecaron de imprudentes. Aerion lo presenta como un ataque velado contra la casa Targaryen, una incitaci\u00f3n a rebelarse, y es muy probable que Maekar se muestre de acuerdo. Mi hermano es de talante susceptible, y como Daeron lo ha decepcionado tanto, tiene puestas sus esperanzas en Aerion \u2014el pr\u00edncipe tom\u00f3 un sorbo de vino y dej\u00f3 la copa\u2014. M\u00e1s all\u00e1 de lo que crea o deje de creer mi hermano, hay algo indiscutible: le puso las manos encima a un representante del linaje del drag\u00f3n. Se trata de un delito por el que debe ser juzgado y castigado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCastigado?\n\nA Dunk no le agrad\u00f3 la palabra.\n\n\u2014Aerion quiere su cabeza, con o sin dientes. Le prometo que no la tendr\u00e1, pero lo que no puedo negarle es un juicio. Dado que mi padre, el rey, se halla a cien leguas de aqu\u00ed, se impone que mi hermano y yo presidamos su juicio en compa\u00f1\u00eda de lord Ashford, en cuyos dominios nos encontramos, y de lord Tyrell de Altojard\u00edn, de quien es vasallo. La \u00faltima vez que se declar\u00f3 culpable a un hombre de golpear a alguien de sangre real, se decret\u00f3 que perdiera la mano autora del golpe.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi mano? \u2014exclam\u00f3 Dunk, horrorizado.\n\n\u2014Y tambi\u00e9n el pie. \u00bfO no es verdad que lo pate\u00f3?\n\nDunk se hab\u00eda quedado sin habla.\n\n\u2014Como es natural, exhortar\u00e9 al resto de los jueces a la compasi\u00f3n. Soy la mano del rey, heredero del trono, y mi palabra goza de cierta autoridad. Tambi\u00e9n la de mi hermano, por desgracia. He ah\u00ed el peligro.\n\n\u2014Pero... \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Pero excelencia... No... No lo hac\u00edan por traici\u00f3n. S\u00f3lo era un drag\u00f3n de madera, sin nada que ver con pr\u00edncipes reales.\n\nEso habr\u00eda querido decir, pero se hab\u00eda quedado sin palabras. Nunca hab\u00edan sido su fuerte.\n\n\u2014No obstante, hay otra posibilidad \u2014dijo con calma el pr\u00edncipe Baelor\u2014. Ignoro cu\u00e1l de las dos sea preferible, pero le recuerdo que cualquier caballero acusado de un delito tiene el derecho de exigir un juicio por combate. Le pregunto una vez m\u00e1s: ser Duncan el Alto, \u00bfcu\u00e1l es, con franqueza, su dominio de las armas?\n\n\u2013Un juicio de siete \u2014dijo sonriente el pr\u00edncipe Aerion\u2014. Hasta donde entiendo estoy en mi derecho.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Baelor tamborile\u00f3, ce\u00f1udo, en la mesa. A su izquierda, lord Ashford asinti\u00f3 con lentitud.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9? \u2014quiso saber el pr\u00edncipe Maekar, inclinado hacia su hijo\u2014. \u00bfTemes enfrentarte a solas con este caballero errante para que los dioses decidan si son ciertas tus acusaciones?\n\n\u2014\u00bfMiedo? \u2014dijo Aerion\u2014. \u00bfMiedo yo de alguien as\u00ed? No seas absurdo, padre. Pienso en mi querido hermano. Tambi\u00e9n Daeron ha sido ofendido por el tal ser Duncan y goza del derecho a ser el primero en derramar su sangre. El juicio de siete nos permitir\u00eda enfrentarnos a los dos con \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Ah\u00f3rrame tus favores, hermano \u2014murmur\u00f3 Daeron Targaryen. El hijo mayor del pr\u00edncipe Maekar presentaba un aspecto todav\u00eda m\u00e1s penoso que en su encuentro con Dunk en la posada. En esta ocasi\u00f3n parec\u00eda sobrio y no hab\u00eda manchas de vino en su jub\u00f3n rojinegro, aunque ten\u00eda los ojos inyectados en sangre y una fina capa de sudor le cubr\u00eda la frente\u2014. Me satisfar\u00e9 con aplaudirte cuando mates al rufi\u00e1n.\n\n\u2014Eres demasiado amable, hermano del alma \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe Aerion, deshecho en sonrisas\u2014, pero ser\u00eda ego\u00edsta negarte el derecho a demostrar la verdad de tus palabras con peligro de tu cuerpo. Debo insistir en que se celebre un juicio de siete.\n\nDunk se sent\u00eda desorientado.\n\n\u2014Excelencia, se\u00f1ores \u2014dijo hacia el estrado\u2014, no entiendo nada. \u00bfQu\u00e9 es un juicio de siete?\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Baelor cambi\u00f3 de postura, en se\u00f1al de que estaba inc\u00f3modo.\n\n\u2014Se trata de otra forma de juicio por combate, una forma antigua y poco usada. Cruz\u00f3 el mar Angosto con los \u00e1ndalos y sus siete dioses. En todos los juicios por combate el acusador y el acusado piden a los dioses que decidan su pleito. Los \u00e1ndalos cre\u00edan que si en cada bando luchaban siete caballeros, habr\u00eda m\u00e1s posibilidades de que los dioses, al verse honrados, intervinieran en la consecuci\u00f3n de un resultado justo.\n\n\u2014O s\u00f3lo les gustaba usar la espada \u2014dijo lord Leo Tyrell con una sonrisa c\u00ednica\u2014. Poco importa. El caso es que ser Aerion est\u00e1 en su derecho y deber\u00e1 ser un juicio de siete.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY deber\u00e9 luchar contra siete hombres? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk, desesperado.\n\n\u2014No a solas \u2014se impacient\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Maekar\u2014. No se haga el tonto, que de poco le servir\u00e1. Deben luchar siete contra siete. Necesitar\u00e1 encontrar a seis caballeros para que peleen a su lado.\n\n\"Seis caballeros\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. Tanto daban seis como seis mil. \u00c9l no ten\u00eda hermanos, primos ni antiguos camaradas ligados a \u00e9l por mil y una batallas. \u00bfQu\u00e9 motivo tendr\u00edan seis extra\u00f1os para arriesgar sus vidas en la defensa de un caballero errante contra dos pr\u00edncipes reales?\n\n\u2014Excelencia, se\u00f1ores \u2014dijo \u2014, \u00bfqu\u00e9 ocurre si no hay nadie que tome mi partido?\n\nMaekar Targaryen lo mir\u00f3 con frialdad.\n\n\u2014Si la causa es justa, habr\u00e1 hombres que la defiendan. Si no encuentra a nadie, se\u00f1or m\u00edo, significar\u00e1 que es culpable. \u00bfHay cosa m\u00e1s clara?\n\nDunk nunca se hab\u00eda sentido tan solo como al salir del castillo de Ashford y o\u00edr el chirrido del rastrillo a sus espaldas. Ca\u00eda una llovizna suave, liviana como el roc\u00edo, pero el contacto del agua lo hizo tiritar. Al otro lado del r\u00edo los pocos pabellones donde segu\u00edan encendidas las hogueras aparec\u00edan circundados por un halo de luz. Supuso que la noche estar\u00eda en su tramo final. En pocas horas lo encontrar\u00eda el alba. \"Y con el alba vendr\u00e1 la muerte.\"\n\nPese a haber recuperado su espada y sus monedas, cruz\u00f3 el r\u00edo con pensamientos l\u00fagubres. Se pregunt\u00f3 si esperar\u00edan que saliera huyendo a lomos del primer caballo. Nada se lo imped\u00eda. A partir de entonces ya no ser\u00eda caballero, sino un simple forajido a la espera del d\u00eda en que alg\u00fan noble lo atrapara y le cortara la cabeza. \"M\u00e1s vale morir caballero que vivir as\u00ed\", pens\u00f3 con tozudez. Pas\u00f3 junto al palenque vac\u00edo, mojado hasta las rodillas. Casi todos los pabellones estaban oscuros. Sus due\u00f1os dorm\u00edan, pero quedaban algunas velas dispersas. Oy\u00f3 gemidos y gritos de placer en una carpa, y se pregunt\u00f3 si morir\u00eda sin haber conocido mujer.\n\nEntonces oy\u00f3 el relincho de un caballo y supo con certeza que era Trueno. Cambi\u00f3 la direcci\u00f3n de sus pasos y corri\u00f3 hasta encontrarlo atado junto con Casta\u00f1o, al lado de un pabell\u00f3n circular iluminado por un vago resplandor dorado. El estandarte del poste central estaba mojado, pero Dunk discerni\u00f3 la curva oscura de la manzana de los Fossoway. Se parec\u00eda a la esperanza.\n\n\u2013Juicio por combate \u2014suspir\u00f3 Raymun\u2014. \u00a1Por todos los dioses, Duncan! Eso significa lanzas de guerra, hachas de batalla... \u00bfSe da cuenta de que las espadas tendr\u00e1n filo?\n\n\u2014Raymun el Reticente \u2014se burl\u00f3 su primo, ser Steffon, cuya capa de lana amarilla estaba sujeta por una manzana de oro y granates\u2014. No temas, primo, que es un combate entre caballeros, y como t\u00fa no lo eres, tu pellejo no peligra. Disponga al menos de un Fossoway, ser Duncan. Del maduro. Vi a la perfecci\u00f3n lo que Aerion les hizo a aquellas titiriteras, y estoy de su lado.\n\n\u2014Y yo \u2014dijo Raymun, enfadado\u2014. S\u00f3lo quer\u00eda decir...\n\nLo interrumpi\u00f3 su primo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 otros caballeros luchan en nuestro bando, ser Duncan?\n\nDunk mostr\u00f3 las palmas con desesperanza.\n\n\u2014No conozco a nadie m\u00e1s. S\u00f3lo a ser Manfred Dondarrion, que no quiso responder de mi condici\u00f3n de caballero. Mucho menos querr\u00e1 arriesgar su vida.\n\nSer Steffon no pareci\u00f3 afectado.\n\n\u2014En tal caso necesitamos a cinco hombres m\u00e1s que sepan pelear. Por fortuna mis amistades no se reducen a cinco. Leo Longthorn, la Tormenta que R\u00ede, lord Caron, los Lannister, ser Otho Bracken... Ah, y los Blackwood, aunque es imposible hacer coincidir en el mismo bando a los Blackwood y los Bracken. Ir\u00e9 a hablar con algunos de ellos.\n\n\u2014Se tomar\u00e1n a mal que los despiertes \u2014objet\u00f3 su primo.\n\n\u2014Tanto mejor \u2014declar\u00f3 ser Steffon\u2014. Enojados luchar\u00e1n con mayor denuedo. Conf\u00ede en m\u00ed, ser Duncan. Primo, si amanece y no he vuelto, tr\u00e1eme mi armadura y haz lo necesario para tenerme ensillado y embardado a C\u00f3lera. Nos reuniremos en el cercado de los retadores \u2014ser Steffon rio\u2014. Preveo una jornada memorable.\n\nSu expresi\u00f3n, al salir de la tienda, casi era de alegr\u00eda. No as\u00ed la de Raymun.\n\n\u2014Cinco caballeros \u2014dijo con voz sorda al quedarse a solas con Dunk\u2014. No quisiera ir contra sus esperanzas, Duncan, pero...\n\n\u2014Si su primo consiguiera a los hombres a los que se refiri\u00f3...\n\n\u2014\u00bfA Leo Espinalarga? \u00bfA la Bestia de Bracken? \u00bfA la Tormenta que R\u00ede? \u2014Raymun se levant\u00f3\u2014. No pongo en duda que los conozca, pero s\u00ed que tal conocimiento sea rec\u00edproco. Para Steffon esto es una oportunidad para adquirir renombre, pero usted se juega la vida. Deber\u00eda buscar usted mismo a sus hombres. Yo lo ayudar\u00e9. M\u00e1s vale que sobren paladines a que falten \u2014oy\u00f3 algo fuera y gir\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. \u00bfQui\u00e9n va?\n\nPrimero entr\u00f3 un ni\u00f1o y despu\u00e9s un hombre delgado con una capa negra mojada.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Egg! \u2014Dunk se puso de pie\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 haces aqu\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Soy tu escudero \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Necesitar\u00e1s a alguien que te arme, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSabe tu padre que saliste del castillo?\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ni lo quieran los dioses!\n\nDaeron Targaryen abri\u00f3 la f\u00edbula y dej\u00f3 caer la capa de sus hombros estrechos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Usted! \u00bfQu\u00e9 locura es \u00e9sta de venir aqu\u00ed? \u2014Dunk desenfund\u00f3 la daga\u2014. Deber\u00eda clav\u00e1rsela en la tripa.\n\n\u2014Es probable \u2014admiti\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Daeron\u2014, aunque personalmente preferir\u00eda una copa de vino. M\u00edreme las manos.\n\nTendi\u00f3 una, que temblaba.\n\nDunk se acerc\u00f3 a \u00e9l con mirada iracunda.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 me importan sus manos? Minti\u00f3 sobre m\u00ed.\n\n\u2014\u00a1De alguna manera deb\u00eda justificar el paradero de mi hermano menor ante mi padre! \u2014repuso el pr\u00edncipe. Despu\u00e9s se sent\u00f3, en nada intimidado por Dunk y su cuchillo\u2014. A decir verdad, ni siquiera me hab\u00eda dado cuenta de que se hubiera marchado. No estaba en el fondo de mi copa de vino, el \u00fanico lugar donde miraba...\n\nSuspir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014intervino Egg\u2014, mi padre piensa sumarse a los siete acusadores. He intentado disuadirlo, pero no me escucha. Dice que es la \u00fanica manera de rescatar el honor de Aerion y el de Daeron.\n\n\u2014Que yo sepa \u2014dijo con amargura el pr\u00edncipe Daeron\u2014 nunca le ped\u00ed a nadie que rescate mi honor. Quien lo tenga, que se lo quede. Pero en fin, aqu\u00ed estamos. No s\u00e9 si es un gran consuelo, ser Duncan, pero de m\u00ed no debe temer nada. Lo \u00fanico que me gusta menos que los caballos son las espadas. Pesan mucho y cortan una barbaridad. En la primera carga me esforzar\u00e9 por mantener las apariencias, pero a partir de all\u00ed... Digamos que podr\u00eda darme una buena lanzada a un lado del yelmo. Que haga ruido, pero no demasiado. No s\u00e9 si me entienda. En cuesti\u00f3n de luchas, bailes, ideas y libros mis hermanos me llevan la delantera, pero no hay ninguno que me iguale en el arte de quedarse inconsciente en el barro.\n\nDunk se sinti\u00f3 impelido a mirar al pr\u00edncipe con fijeza y preguntarse si pretend\u00eda tomarle el pelo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfA qu\u00e9 vino?\n\n\u2014A avisarle lo que se avecina \u2014dijo Daeron\u2014. Mi padre ha ordenado a la Guardia Real que luche de su lado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa Guardia Real? \u2014dijo Dunk, consternado.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo a los tres que est\u00e1n aqu\u00ed. Por fortuna el t\u00edo Baelor dej\u00f3 a los otros cuatro en Desembarco del Rey, con nuestro abuelo, el rey.\n\nEgg pronunci\u00f3 sus nombres.\n\n\u2014Ser Roland Crakehall, ser Donnel del Valle Oscuro y ser Willem Wylde.\n\n\u2014No tienen elecci\u00f3n \u2014dijo Daeron\u2014. Juraron proteger las vidas del rey y la familia real, y mis hermanos y yo somos del linaje del drag\u00f3n.\n\nDunk cont\u00f3 con los dedos.\n\n\u2014Ya son seis. \u00bfQui\u00e9n es el s\u00e9ptimo?\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Daeron se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014Ya se las arreglar\u00e1 Aerion para encontrar a alguien. En caso de necesidad comprar\u00e1 a un palad\u00edn. Si algo le sobra es oro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfT\u00fa de qui\u00e9n dispones? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\u2014Del primo de Raymun, ser Steffon.\n\nDaeron hizo una mueca.\n\n\u2014\u00bfS\u00f3lo uno?\n\n\u2014Ser Steffon sali\u00f3 en busca de unos amigos.\n\n\u2014Yo puedo conseguirte gente \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Caballeros.\n\n\u2014Egg \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, luchar\u00e9 con tus hermanos.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, pero a Daeron no le har\u00e1s ning\u00fan da\u00f1o \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Acaba de decirte que se tirar\u00e1 al suelo. En cuanto a Aerion... Recuerdo que de peque\u00f1o ven\u00eda a mi dormitorio en plena noche y me pon\u00eda el cuchillo entre las piernas. Dec\u00eda que le sobraban hermanos varones y que acaso alguna noche me convirtiera en hermana porque as\u00ed podr\u00edamos casarnos. Adem\u00e1s, tir\u00f3 a mi gato al pozo. \u00c9l lo niega, pero es un mentiroso.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Daeron se encogi\u00f3 cansinamente de hombros.\n\n\u2014El ni\u00f1o no miente, no: Aerion es un verdadero monstruo. Se cree un drag\u00f3n en forma humana. Por eso se enoj\u00f3 tanto con las titiriteras. L\u00e1stima que no sea de la familia Fossoway, porque entonces se creer\u00eda manzana y todos estar\u00edamos m\u00e1s tranquilos. En fin, qu\u00e9 se le va a hacer... \u2014se agach\u00f3 para recoger la capa ca\u00edda y le sacudi\u00f3 la lluvia\u2014. Debo volver al castillo en secreto antes de que mi padre se extra\u00f1e de que tarde tanto en afilar la espada. Antes, sin embargo, me gustar\u00eda decirle algo a solas, ser Duncan. \u00bfSalimos a dar un paseo?\n\nLa primera reacci\u00f3n de Dunk fue de desconfianza.\n\n\u2014Como guste, excelencia \u2014enfund\u00f3 la daga\u2014. Debo ir a buscar mi escudo.\n\n\u2014Egg y yo buscaremos caballeros \u2014prometi\u00f3 Raymun.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Daeron se at\u00f3 la capa al cuello y se puso la capucha. Dunk sali\u00f3 con \u00e9l a la llovizna. Caminaron hacia los carromatos de los mercaderes.\n\n\u2014So\u00f1\u00e9 con usted \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe.\n\n\u2014Eso dijo en la posada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? Pues era cierto. Mis sue\u00f1os no son como los suyos, ser Duncan. Los m\u00edos son reales. Me dan miedo, y usted me da miedo. So\u00f1\u00e9 con usted y con un drag\u00f3n muerto: una bestia enorme, con alas tan inmensas que cubr\u00edan todo este prado. Se le hab\u00eda ido encima, pero usted estaba vivo y el drag\u00f3n, muerto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfYo lo hab\u00eda matado?\n\n\u2014Lo ignoro, pero ah\u00ed estaban los dos, usted y el drag\u00f3n. Anta\u00f1o los Targaryen \u00e9ramos se\u00f1ores de dragones. Ahora no queda ninguno, pero s\u00ed nosotros. Yo no quiero morir. El motivo s\u00f3lo lo conocen los dioses, pero as\u00ed es. Le pido pues un favor: aseg\u00farese de que al que mate sea a mi hermano Aerion.\n\n\u2014Yo tampoco quiero morir \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014No ser\u00e9 yo el que lo mate. Retirar\u00e9 mi acusaci\u00f3n, pero de nada servir\u00e1 si no hace lo propio Aerion \u2014el pr\u00edncipe suspir\u00f3\u2014. Es posible que mi mentira sea la causa de su muerte. Lamentar\u00eda que as\u00ed fuera. S\u00e9 que estoy condenado a alguna clase de infierno, donde sospecho que no habr\u00e1 vino.\n\nSinti\u00f3 un escalofr\u00edo. A continuaci\u00f3n se separaron, debajo de una lluvia fresca y lenta.\n\nLos vendedores hab\u00edan dejado sus carromatos en el borde occidental del prado, al pie de un bosquecillo de abedules y fresnos. Bajo esos mismos \u00e1rboles, Dunk contempl\u00f3 con impotencia el espacio vac\u00edo donde hab\u00eda estado el carro de los titiriteros. \"Se marcharon.\" Era la confirmaci\u00f3n de sus temores. \"Si no fuera tan duro de entendimiento, yo tambi\u00e9n huir\u00eda.\" Se pregunt\u00f3 c\u00f3mo conseguir otro escudo. Tal vez le alcanzar\u00eda el dinero, siempre que hubiera alguno en venta.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ser Duncan! \u2014lo llam\u00f3 alguien en la oscuridad. Al volverse reconoci\u00f3 a Pate con una linterna de hierro en la mano. Llevaba una capa corta de cuero; desnudo de cintura para arriba, exhib\u00eda la negra pelambrera de su torso y sus brazos\u2014. Si vienes en busca del escudo, me lo dej\u00f3 la chica \u2014mir\u00f3 a Dunk de arriba a abajo\u2014. Dos manos y dos pies. \u00bfAs\u00ed que ser\u00e1 un juicio por combate?\n\n\u2014Un juicio de siete. \u00bfC\u00f3mo lo adivinaste?\n\n\u2014Pues... Podr\u00edan haberte dado besos y un feudo, pero no parec\u00eda lo m\u00e1s probable. En caso contrario te faltar\u00eda alg\u00fan miembro. S\u00edgueme.\n\nEl carro del armero se reconoc\u00eda con facilidad por la espada y el yunque pintados en un costado. Dunk entr\u00f3 detr\u00e1s de Pate. El armero colg\u00f3 la linterna en un gancho, se quit\u00f3 la capa mojada sin ayuda de las manos y se pas\u00f3 una t\u00fanica de tela basta por la cabeza. Despu\u00e9s abati\u00f3 una tabla sujeta con bisagras a la pared, que serv\u00eda de mesa.\n\n\u2014Si\u00e9ntate \u2014dijo, y acerc\u00f3 a Dunk un taburete.\n\nAs\u00ed lo hizo Dunk.\n\n\u2014\u00bfA d\u00f3nde se marcharon?\n\n\u2014Iban hacia Dorne. El t\u00edo de la muchacha es un hombre prudente. Lo mejor es esfumarse, y as\u00ed el drag\u00f3n no se acuerda de ti. Tampoco le pareci\u00f3 conveniente que ella se quedara a verte morir \u2014Pate fue al fondo del carro, revolvi\u00f3 en la oscuridad y reapareci\u00f3 con el escudo\u2014. El marco era de acero viejo y barato. Estaba oxidado y se romp\u00eda con facilidad. Te confeccion\u00e9 uno nuevo con el doble de grosor, y puse cintas en el reverso. Ahora pesar\u00e1 m\u00e1s, pero tambi\u00e9n ser\u00e1 m\u00e1s resistente. La pintura es de la chica.\n\nDunk no esperaba un trabajo de tanta calidad. Hasta a la luz de la linterna aparec\u00edan vivos los colores del crep\u00fasculo. El \u00e1rbol se ve\u00eda alto, fuerte y noble. La estrella fugaz era una pincelada luminosa en un cielo rojizo. No obstante, al verlo de cerca tuvo la impresi\u00f3n de que hab\u00eda un error. en lugar de pasar, la estrella ca\u00eda. \u00bfQu\u00e9 emblema era aqu\u00e9l? \u00bfCaer\u00eda \u00e9l con la misma rapidez? Adem\u00e1s, el crep\u00fasculo anuncia la llegada de la noche.\n\n\u2014Deber\u00eda haberme quedado con el c\u00e1liz \u2014dijo entristecido\u2014. Al menos ten\u00eda alas para salir volando, y ser Arlan dec\u00eda que la copa estaba llena de fe, compa\u00f1erismo y cosas buenas para beber. Parece que este escudo representa la muerte.\n\n\u2014El olmo est\u00e1 vivo \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Pate\u2014. \u00bfVes lo verdes que son las hojas? Sin duda es un follaje de verano. Adem\u00e1s, he visto escudos con calaveras, lobos y cuervos; hasta con ahorcados y cabezas ensangrentadas, y sirvieron bien a sus due\u00f1os. \u00c9ste tambi\u00e9n lo har\u00e1. \u00bfConoces la cancioncita del escudo? \"Prot\u00e9janme, roble y hierro...\"\n\n\u2014\"...o acabar\u00e9 en el infierno\" \u2014termin\u00f3 Dunk. Hac\u00eda muchos a\u00f1os que no se acordaba de ella. Tiempo atr\u00e1s se la hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado el viejo\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto te debo por el marco nuevo y las correas? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 a Pate.\n\nEl armero se rasc\u00f3 la barba.\n\n\u2014Por tratarse de ti, una moneda de cobre.\n\nAl despuntar en el oriente los primeros albores casi no llov\u00eda, pero el agua hab\u00eda hecho su trabajo. Los hombres de lord Ashford hab\u00edan retirado las barreras y el prado era como una gran ci\u00e9naga, mezcla de barro y hierbas arrancadas. Dunk se encamin\u00f3 hacia el palenque en compa\u00f1\u00eda de Pate. En sus pies se enroscaban volutas de niebla parecidas a serpientes.\n\nLa tribuna empezaba a llenarse de nobles y damas que se arrebujaban en sus capas para protegerse del fr\u00edo matinal. Tambi\u00e9n acud\u00eda el pueblo llano, en forma de cientos de personas alineadas a lo largo de las vallas.\n\n\"\u00a1Cu\u00e1nto p\u00fablico para verme morir!\", pens\u00f3 Dunk con amargura, pero los juzgaba mal.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Buena suerte! \u2014exclam\u00f3 una mujer a pocos pasos.\n\nUn anciano se acerc\u00f3 para darle la mano.\n\n\u2014Que los dioses le den fuerza \u2014dijo.\n\nA continuaci\u00f3n, un hermano mendicante de h\u00e1bito marr\u00f3n y desgastado bendijo su espada, y una joven le dio un beso en la mejilla. \"Est\u00e1n de mi lado.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 a Pate\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ven en m\u00ed?\n\n\u2014A un caballero que record\u00f3 sus votos \u2014respondi\u00f3 el armero.\n\nEncontraron a Raymun fuera del recinto de los retadores, en el extremo sur del palenque, donde esperaba con los caballos de su primo y Dunk. Trueno soportaba mal el peso de la barda. Pate la examin\u00f3 y dijo que era de buena calidad, aunque la hubiera forjado otra persona. Dunk se alegr\u00f3 de tenerla, aunque desconociera su procedencia.\n\nEntonces vio a los otros: un tuerto de barba entrecana y un joven caballero con sobreveste de rayas amarillas y negras y colmenas en el escudo. \"Robyn Rhysling y Humfrey Beesbury\", pens\u00f3 con asombro, \"y tambi\u00e9n ser Humfrey Hardyng\". Este \u00faltimo iba montado en el corcel rojo de Aerion, cuya barda hab\u00eda sustituido por la suya, de rombos rojos y blancos.\n\nFue hacia ellos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo les pagar\u00e9 esta deuda?\n\n\u2014Es Aerion el que est\u00e1 en deuda \u2014repuso ser Humfrey Hardyng \u2014, y pretendemos hac\u00e9rsela pagar.\n\n\u2014Me dijeron que ten\u00eda la pierna rota.\n\n\u2014Y no le mintieron \u2014dijo Hardyng\u2014. No puedo caminar, pero mientras est\u00e9 en condiciones de montar podr\u00e9 combatir.\n\nRaymun llam\u00f3 a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Esperaba que Hardyng quisiera la revancha sobre Aerion \u2014dijo\u2014, y as\u00ed ha sido. Da la casualidad de que el otro Humfrey es cu\u00f1ado suyo. Ser Robyn es cosa de Egg, que lo conoce de otros torneos. Son cinco, por lo tanto.\n\n\u2014Seis \u2014dijo Dunk con cara de sorpresa, se\u00f1alando a alguien: un caballero entraba en el recinto, seguido de un escudero que tiraba del caballo\u2014. La Tormenta que R\u00ede \u2014ser Lyonel, que superaba por una cabeza a ser Raymun y casi igualaba la estatura de Dunk, llevaba una sobreveste de brocado con el ciervo coronado de la casa Baratheon, y sosten\u00eda el yelmo con astas bajo el brazo. Dunk le tendi\u00f3 la mano\u2014. Ser Lyonel, no hay palabras suficientes para agradecerle su presencia, ni a ser Steffon por haberlo tra\u00eddo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer Steffon? \u2014ser Lyonel qued\u00f3 perplejo\u2014. El que vino a buscarme fue su escudero, Aegon. El m\u00edo quiso ahuyentarlo, pero el ni\u00f1o se le meti\u00f3 entre las piernas y derram\u00f3 una copa de vino encima de mi cabeza \u2014rio\u2014. \u00bfSab\u00eda que hace m\u00e1s de cien a\u00f1os que no se celebra un juicio de siete? Por nada del mundo me habr\u00eda perdido la oportunidad de pelear contra los caballeros de la Guardia Real y de paso retorcerle la nariz al pr\u00edncipe Maekar.\n\n\u2014Seis \u2014dijo Dunk a ser Raymun con tono esperanzado, mientras ser Lyonel se un\u00eda los dem\u00e1s\u2014. Seguro que su primo traer\u00e1 al que falta.\n\nLa multitud prorrumpi\u00f3 en gritos. Al norte del prado, entre la niebla del r\u00edo, se acercaba al trote una columna de caballeros. La encabezaban los tres de la Guardia Real, que parec\u00edan fantasmas con sus armaduras esmaltadas de blanco y sus largas capas del mismo color. Hasta sus escudos eran por completo blancos, como reci\u00e9n nevados. Tras ellos iban el pr\u00edncipe Maekar y sus hijos. Aerion montaba un caballo pinto que a cada paso dejaba entrever por la coraza destellos grises, anaranjados y rojos. El corcel de su hermano era zaino, m\u00e1s peque\u00f1o, acorazado, con escamas negras y doradas. El yelmo de Daeron llevaba una pluma verde de seda. No obstante, el aspecto m\u00e1s sobrecogedor lo ofrec\u00eda su padre: en los hombros, la cimera y la espalda llevaba sendos colmillos de drag\u00f3n, negros y curvos. La maza con pinchos sujeta a su silla de montar era un arma de aspecto tan mort\u00edfero que Dunk no recordaba haber visto otra igual.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Seis! \u2014exclam\u00f3 Raymun de repente\u2014. S\u00f3lo son seis.\n\nDunk vio que era cierto. \"Tres caballeros negros y tres blancos. Tambi\u00e9n les falta un hombre.\" \u00bfSer\u00eda posible que Aerion no hubiera hallado al s\u00e9ptimo? \u00bfQu\u00e9 significaba? \u00bfLuchar\u00edan seis contra seis, en caso de que ninguno encontrara al s\u00e9ptimo? Mientras trataba de resolver el enigma, Egg apareci\u00f3 a su lado.\n\n\u2014Es hora de que te pongas la armadura, se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Gracias, escudero. Si eres tan amable...\n\nPate ayud\u00f3 al ni\u00f1o. Cota de malla, gola, grebas, guantelete, cofia, bragueta de armar... Luego de comprobar tres veces la firmeza de cada hebilla y cada cierre, lo convirtieron en un ser met\u00e1lico. Sentado, ser Lyonel afilaba su espada con piedra de amolar, mientras los Humfreys hablaban en voz baja, ser Robyn rezaba y Raymun Fossoway se paseaba inquieto, pregunt\u00e1ndose por el paradero de su primo.\n\nCuando lleg\u00f3 ser Steffon, Dunk estaba del todo armado.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Raymun! \u2014dijo\u2014. Mi cota de malla, por favor.\n\nSe hab\u00eda puesto un jub\u00f3n acolchado para llevar por debajo del peto.\n\n\u2014Ser Steffon \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, \u00bfqu\u00e9 hay de sus amigos? Para ser siete necesitamos a otro caballero.\n\n\u2014Temo que necesitaremos a dos \u2014dijo ser Steffon.\n\nRaymun le enlaz\u00f3 la parte trasera de la cota.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDos, dice?\n\nDunk no entend\u00eda.\n\nSer Steffon cogi\u00f3 un guantelete de excelente acero, meti\u00f3 la mano izquierda y flexion\u00f3 los dedos.\n\n\u2014Yo veo a cinco \u2014dijo, mientras Raymun le ataba el cintur\u00f3n\u2014. Beesbury, Rhysling, Hardyng, Baratheon y usted.\n\n\u2014Y usted \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Es el sexto.\n\n\u2014Yo soy el s\u00e9ptimo \u2014dijo ser Steffon, sonriendo\u2014, pero del otro bando. Lucho con el pr\u00edncipe Aerion y los acusadores.\n\nRaymun, que estaba a punto de entregar el yelmo a su primo, qued\u00f3 en suspenso.\n\n\u2014\u00a1No!\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014ser Steffon se encogi\u00f3 de hombros\u2014. Seguro que ser Duncan comprender\u00e1. Tengo un deber para con mi pr\u00edncipe.\n\n\u2014Le dijiste que se fiara de ti.\n\nRaymun se hab\u00eda puesto blanco.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? \u2014ser Steffon tom\u00f3 el yelmo de manos de su primo\u2014. Sin duda fui sincero en el momento de decirlo. Traeme mi caballo.\n\n\u2014Ve a buscarlo t\u00fa \u2014dijo Raymun, furioso\u2014. Si crees que estoy dispuesto a tomar parte en algo as\u00ed es que eres tan necio como vil.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVil? \u2014ser Steffon chasque\u00f3 la lengua\u2014. Vigila esa lengua, Raymun. Los dos somos manzanas del mismo \u00e1rbol y t\u00fa eres mi escudero. \u00bfNo habr\u00e1s olvidado tus votos?\n\n\u2014No. \u00bfY t\u00fa los tuyos? Juraste ser un caballero.\n\n\u2014Antes de que acabe el d\u00eda habr\u00e9 dejado de ser un simple caballero para convertirme en lord Fossoway. Me gusta c\u00f3mo suena.\n\nSonriente, se puso el otro guantelete, dio media vuelta y cruz\u00f3 el recinto en direcci\u00f3n a su caballo. Los dem\u00e1s defensores lo miraban con desprecio, pero ninguno intent\u00f3 detenerlo.\n\nDunk vio que ser Steffon llegaba al otro lado del prado. Apret\u00f3 los pu\u00f1os, pero ten\u00eda la garganta demasiado agarrotada para hablar. \"De todos modos la gente de esa cala\u00f1a no se inmuta por nada.\"\n\n\u2014\u00c1rmeme caballero \u2014Raymun puso una mano en el hombro de Dunk y lo hizo dar la vuelta\u2014. Ocupar\u00e9 el lugar de mi primo. \u00c1rmeme caballero, ser Duncan.\n\nSe apoy\u00f3 en una rodilla.\n\nCe\u00f1udo, Dunk puso la mano en el pu\u00f1o de la espada, pero vacil\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Raymun... No estar\u00eda bien.\n\n\u2014Es necesario. Sin m\u00ed s\u00f3lo son cinco.\n\n\u2014Tiene raz\u00f3n \u2014dijo ser Lyonel Baratheon\u2014. H\u00e1galo, ser Duncan. Todo caballero cuenta con el derecho de armar a otro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDuda de mi valor? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Raymun.\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Dunk \u2014, por supuesto que no, pero...\n\nA\u00fan titubeaba.\n\nUna fanfarria hizo temblar la neblina. Egg lleg\u00f3 corriendo.\n\n\u2014Lo llama lord Ashford, ser.\n\nLa Tormenta que R\u00ede sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza con impaciencia.\n\n\u2014Vaya, ser Duncan. Yo me ocupar\u00e9 de armar a Raymun \u2014desliz\u00f3 la espada fuera de la vaina y apart\u00f3 a Dunk con el hombro\u2014. Raymun de Fossoway \u2014pronunci\u00f3 con solemnidad, tocando al escudero en el hombro derecho con la hoja\u2014, en el nombre del Guerrero le ordeno ser valiente \u2014la espada se traslad\u00f3 del hombro derecho al izquierdo\u2014. En el nombre del Padre le ordeno ser justo \u2014de nuevo al derecho\u2014. En el nombre de la Madre le ordeno defender a los j\u00f3venes y los inocentes \u2014izquierdo\u2014. En el nombre de la Doncella le ordeno proteger a las mujeres...\n\nDunk los dej\u00f3 en aquel punto, con una mezcla de alivio y culpabilidad. \"A\u00fan nos falta uno\", pens\u00f3, mientras Egg le sujetaba a Trueno. \"\u00bfD\u00f3nde encontrar\u00e9 a otro hombre?\" Dio la vuelta al caballo y trot\u00f3 hacia la tribuna, donde aguardaba lord Ashford. El pr\u00edncipe Aerion fue a su encuentro desde el lado norte.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014dijo en tono alegre\u2014, parece que s\u00f3lo tiene cinco paladines.\n\n\u2014Seis \u2014dijo Duncan\u2014. Ser Lyonel est\u00e1 armando caballero a Raymun Fossoway. Lucharemos seis contra siete.\n\nConoc\u00eda casos de victorias con una desventaja mucho mayor. Sin embargo, lord Ashford sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza.\n\n\u2014No est\u00e1 permitido, se\u00f1or. Si no halla a otro caballero que se ponga de su lado, se le declarar\u00e1 culpable de los delitos que se le imputan.\n\n\"Culpable\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Culpable de haber aflojado un diente, y por ese delito debo morir.\"\n\n\u2014Le pido unos instantes, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Concedidos.\n\nSe desplaz\u00f3 por la valla. La tribuna estaba repleta de caballeros.\n\n\u2014Nobles se\u00f1ores \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014, \u00bfhay alguien aqu\u00ed que recuerde a ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda? Yo fui su escudero y servimos a m\u00e1s de uno de los presentes. Comimos en sus mesas y dormimos en sus salas \u2014en la fila superior vio a Manfred Dondarrion\u2014. Ser Arlan fue herido al servicio de su padre \u2014lejos de prestarle atenci\u00f3n, el caballero dijo algo a la dama de al lado y Dunk no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que seguir\u2014. Lord Lannister, en cierta ocasi\u00f3n ser Arlan lo derrib\u00f3 en un torneo \u2014el Le\u00f3n Gris se mir\u00f3 los guantes, sin intenci\u00f3n de levantar la vista\u2014. Era un hombre bueno y me ense\u00f1\u00f3 las artes de la caballer\u00eda. No s\u00f3lo la espada y la lanza, sino el honor. Dec\u00eda que los caballeros defienden a los inocentes. Es lo \u00fanico que he hecho. Necesito a otro caballero que luche de mi lado. S\u00f3lo uno. \u00bfLord Caron? \u00bfLord Swann?\n\nLord Swann contest\u00f3 con una risa disimulada al comentario que le susurraba lord Caron al o\u00eddo.\n\nDunk tir\u00f3 de las riendas a la altura de ser Otho Bracken y baj\u00f3 la voz.\n\n\u2014Ser Otho, sus dotes guerreras son de todos conocidas. Le ruego que se una a nosotros. Se lo ruego en nombre de los dioses antiguos y de los nuevos. Mi causa es justa.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 \u2014dijo la Bestia de Bracken, que al menos tuvo la cortes\u00eda de responder\u2014, pero es suya, no m\u00eda. Yo a usted no lo conozco, joven.\n\nDunk, abatido, dio media vuelta a Trueno e hizo varias pasadas ante las hileras de hombres fr\u00edos y p\u00e1lidos, hasta que la desesperaci\u00f3n le arranc\u00f3 un grito.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo hay aqu\u00ed caballeros de verdad?\n\nPor \u00fanica respuesta obtuvo el silencio.\n\nAl fondo del prado se oy\u00f3 la risa del pr\u00edncipe Aerion.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Del drag\u00f3n nadie se burla! \u2014exclam\u00f3.\n\nEntonces se oy\u00f3 otra voz.\n\n\u2014Yo luchar\u00e9 en el bando de ser Duncan.\n\nLa niebla del r\u00edo se abri\u00f3 para dar paso a un corcel negro, montado por un jinete del mismo color. Dunk vio el escudo del drag\u00f3n y la cimera de tres cabezas esmaltada de rojo. \"El Pr\u00edncipe Joven. V\u00e1lganme los dioses. \u00bfDe verdad que es \u00e9l?\"\n\nLord Ashford cometi\u00f3 el mismo error.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPr\u00edncipe Valarr?\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or \u2014el caballero negro levant\u00f3 su visera\u2014. Como no hab\u00eda previsto participar en las justas, no traje armadura. Mi hijo tuvo la bondad de prestarme la suya.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Baelor sonri\u00f3 casi con tristeza.\n\nDunk vio que entre los acusadores reinaba el desconcierto. El pr\u00edncipe Maekar espole\u00f3 su montura.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPerdiste el juicio, hermano? \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 a Dunk con un dedo cubierto de malla\u2014. Este hombre atac\u00f3 a mi hijo.\n\n\u2014Este hombre \u2014replic\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe Baelor\u2014 protegi\u00f3 a los d\u00e9biles, como es el deber de cualquier caballero que se precie. Que decidan los dioses si tuvo o no raz\u00f3n.\n\nTir\u00f3 de las riendas para girar el descomunal caballo negro de batalla de Valarr y trot\u00f3 hacia el sur del prado. Dunk lo sigui\u00f3 a lomos de Trueno y los dem\u00e1s defensores se congregaron alrededor: Robyn Rhysling, ser Lyonel y los Humfreys. \"Excelentes caballeros, pero \u00bfser\u00e1n bastante buenos?\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfY Raymun?\n\n\u2014Ser Raymun, con su permiso \u2014el joven lleg\u00f3 a medio galope, sonriendo forzadamente bajo el yelmo emplumado\u2014. Le pido disculpas, ser. Me vi obligado a introducir ciertos cambios en mi escudo de armas, a fin de no ser confundido con mi poco honorable primo \u2014mostr\u00f3 a todos el escudo. El campo de oro segu\u00eda como antes; tambi\u00e9n la manzana de los Fossoway segu\u00eda en su lugar, pero ya no era roja, sino verde\u2014. Me temo que a\u00fan no estoy maduro, pero mejor verde que agusanado, \u00bfverdad?\n\nSer Lyonel se rio y Dunk no pudo reprimir una sonrisa. Hasta el pr\u00edncipe Baelor parec\u00eda complacido.\n\nEl sept\u00f3n de lord Ashford, que se hab\u00eda colocado frente a la tribuna, alz\u00f3 su copa de cristal y llam\u00f3 a todos a oraci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Esc\u00fachenme todos \u2014dijo Baelor en voz baja\u2014: en la primera carga los acusadores ir\u00e1n armados con pesadas lanzas de batalla. Son de fresno, con una longitud de seis codos, protegidas con cintas contra las roturas y dotadas de una punta de acero bastante afilada para que el peso de un corcel le permita horadar una armadura.\n\n\u2014Nosotros usaremos las mismas \u2014dijo ser Humfrey Beesbury.\n\nA sus espaldas el sept\u00f3n invocaba a los Siete, pidi\u00e9ndoles que juzgaran aquel pleito y otorgaran la victoria a los caballeros cuya causa fuera justa.\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Baelor\u2014. Nosotros lucharemos con lanzas de torneo.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1n hechas para romperse \u2014objet\u00f3 Raymun.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, pero tienen nueve codos de longitud. Si nosotros damos en el blanco, ellos no podr\u00e1n tocarnos. Apunten al yelmo o al peto. En los torneos es galante romper la lanza contra el escudo del enemigo, pero aqu\u00ed significar\u00eda la muerte. Si logramos derribarlos y seguir montados, la ventaja ser\u00e1 nuestra \u2014mir\u00f3 a Dunk\u2014. En caso de que usted muera, ser Duncan, se considerar\u00e1 que los dioses lo han juzgado culpable y finalizar\u00e1 el combate. Lo mismo ocurrir\u00e1 si mueren sus dos acusadores o retiran sus acusaciones. En cualquier otro caso, para que acabe el juicio deben morir o rendirse los siete caballeros de un bando u otro.\n\n\u2014El pr\u00edncipe Daeron no luchar\u00e1 \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014O en todo caso lo har\u00e1 mal \u2014dijo ser Lyonel, divertido\u2014. En contrapartida tenemos como oponentes a tres de las Espadas Blancas.\n\nBaelor se lo tom\u00f3 con calma.\n\n\u2014Fue un error de mi hermano ordenar a la Guardia Real que luche por su hijo. Su voto les proh\u00edbe herir a un pr\u00edncipe de sangre real. Contamos con la fortuna de que yo lo sea \u2014esboz\u00f3 una sonrisa\u2014. Si logran alejarme de los otros, la Guardia Real corre por mi cuenta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe ajusta a caballer\u00eda lo que dice, excelencia? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Lyonel Baratheon, mientras el sept\u00f3n daba fin a su plegaria.\n\n\u2014Nos lo har\u00e1n saber los dioses \u2014dijo Baelor Rompelanzas.\n\nEl prado de Vado Ceniza estaba sumido en un silencio profundo y expectante.\n\nA cien varas, el corcel de Aerion relinchaba de impaciencia y piafaba en el barro. En comparaci\u00f3n, Trueno estaba muy quieto. Era un caballo m\u00e1s viejo, veterano de medio centenar de batallas, y sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 se esperaba de \u00e9l. Egg entreg\u00f3 el escudo a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Que los dioses te acompa\u00f1en, ser \u2014dijo el muchacho.\n\nLa visi\u00f3n del olmo y la estrella fugaz dio \u00e1nimos a Dunk, que meti\u00f3 el brazo por la correa y apret\u00f3 con fuerza con la mano. \"Prot\u00e9janme, roble y hierro, o acabar\u00e9 en el infierno.\" Pate le trajo la lanza, pero Egg insisti\u00f3 en que \u00e9l deb\u00eda ser el que la pusiera en manos de Dunk.\n\nLos otros caballeros levantaron las suyas y se distribuyeron a ambos lados de Dunk. A su derecha estaba el pr\u00edncipe Baelor y a su izquierda ser Lyonel, pero la estrechez de la ranura limitaba su visi\u00f3n a lo que se encontraba justo delante. Desaparecida la tribuna, invisible el p\u00fablico apretujado contra la valla, s\u00f3lo quedaba el campo embarrado, la niebla lechosa en movimiento, el r\u00edo, la ciudad y el castillo al norte, y el pr\u00edncipe con su corcel gris, llamas en el yelmo y drag\u00f3n en el escudo. Dunk lo vio tomar de manos de su escudero una lanza de batalla de seis codos y color negro. \"Si puede, me la clavar\u00e1 en el coraz\u00f3n.\"\n\nSon\u00f3 un clar\u00edn.\n\nPor un instante brev\u00edsimo, y a pesar de que todos los caballos ya hab\u00edan salido al galope, Dunk guard\u00f3 la misma inmovilidad que una mosca en \u00e1mbar. Se sinti\u00f3 atravesado por una punzada de p\u00e1nico y pens\u00f3 enloquecidamente: \"Se me olvid\u00f3 todo. Me cubrir\u00e9 de verg\u00fcenza y lo perder\u00e9 todo.\"\n\nTrueno lo salv\u00f3. El corcel casta\u00f1o conoc\u00eda mejor que su amo el protocolo e inici\u00f3 un trote lento. Al fin se impuso la instrucci\u00f3n de Dunk, que dio al caballo un suave toque de espuelas y baj\u00f3 la lanza. Al mismo tiempo levant\u00f3 el escudo hasta cubrirse casi toda la mitad izquierda del cuerpo y le imprimi\u00f3 el \u00e1ngulo necesario para desviar los golpes. \"Prot\u00e9janme, roble y hierro, o acabar\u00e9 en el infierno.\"\n\nLos gritos del p\u00fablico se escuchaban distantes como el oleaje. Trueno pas\u00f3 de trotar a galopar y adquiri\u00f3 tal rapidez que Dunk apret\u00f3 las mand\u00edbulas en forma inconsciente. Carg\u00f3 todo su peso en los estribos, tens\u00f3 las piernas y dej\u00f3 que el cuerpo participara del movimiento del caballo. \"Soy Trueno y Trueno es yo; somos un solo animal; estamos unidos y somos uno.\" En el interior del yelmo el aire se hab\u00eda calentado tanto que casi le imped\u00eda respirar.\n\nEn un torneo habr\u00eda tenido al contrincante a mano izquierda, detr\u00e1s de la barrera, y se habr\u00eda visto forzado a pasar la lanza por encima del cuello de Trueno, en un \u00e1ngulo que propiciaba la rotura de la madera. Aquello, sin embargo, no era un torneo, sino un juego mortal. A falta de barreras que los separaran, los corceles cargaban de frente. El del pr\u00edncipe Baelor, grande y negro, era mucho m\u00e1s veloz que Trueno. Dunk lo vio galopar a trav\u00e9s de la ranura. A los dem\u00e1s, m\u00e1s que verlos los intu\u00eda. \"No tienen importancia. S\u00f3lo la tiene Aerion. S\u00f3lo \u00e9l.\"\n\nVio al drag\u00f3n aproximarse. Los cascos del corcel gris del pr\u00edncipe Aerion salpicaban barro. Dunk mir\u00f3 ensancharse las fosas nasales del animal. La lanza negra segu\u00eda apuntando hacia arriba. El caballero que sostiene la lanza en alto y apunta en el \u00faltimo momento siempre corre el riesgo de bajarla demasiado. Eso le hab\u00eda dicho el viejo. Con la suya, Dunk apunt\u00f3 al centro del peto del pr\u00edncipe. \"Mi lanza forma parte de mi brazo\", se dijo. \"Es mi dedo, un dedo de madera. S\u00f3lo necesito tocarlo con mi largo dedo de madera.\"\n\nSe esforz\u00f3 en no ver la punta acerada de la lanza negra de Aerion, que a cada paso del caballo aumentaba de tama\u00f1o. \"El drag\u00f3n\", pens\u00f3. \"Mira el drag\u00f3n.\" La gran bestia de tres cabezas, alas rojas y aliento de fuego dorado cubr\u00eda el escudo del pr\u00edncipe. \"No\", record\u00f3 de pronto Dunk, \"s\u00f3lo tienes que mirar en el momento del golpe\". Por desgracia su lanza ya se hab\u00eda desviado. Intent\u00f3 corregirlo, pero era demasiado tarde. Vio que la punta chocaba contra el escudo de Aerion y se clavaba entre dos cabezas de drag\u00f3n, con lo que arranc\u00f3 un pedazo de fuego pintado. El sordo crujido fue acompa\u00f1ado por la sensaci\u00f3n de que Trueno retroced\u00eda, acusando con temblores la fuerza del impacto. Justo despu\u00e9s not\u00f3 un choque tremendo en el flanco. Los caballos colisionaron con gran violencia y arrancaron a las bardas un ruido met\u00e1lico. Trueno tropez\u00f3 y Dunk perdi\u00f3 la lanza. Despu\u00e9s se alej\u00f3 de su enemigo, aferrado a la silla con desesperaci\u00f3n para no caer. Trueno resbal\u00f3 en el barro y Dunk sinti\u00f3 ceder las patas posteriores. Despu\u00e9s de varios resbalones el corcel cay\u00f3 con dureza sobre los cuartos traseros.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Arriba! \u2014rugi\u00f3 Dunk, hincando las espuelas\u2014. \u00a1Arriba, Trueno!\n\nEl viejo corcel recuper\u00f3 el equilibrio.\n\nDunk sinti\u00f3 un dolor agudo bajo las costillas y un peso en el brazo izquierdo. Con su lanza, Aerion hab\u00eda atravesado roble, lana y acero. Del costado de Dunk pend\u00edan dos codos de fresno astillado y dur\u00edsimo hierro. Desplaz\u00f3 la mano derecha, tom\u00f3 la lanza justo debajo de la punta, apret\u00f3 los dientes y se la sac\u00f3 de un solo y brutal estir\u00f3n. Un chorro de sangre se filtr\u00f3 por la malla y manch\u00f3 la sobreveste. El mundo se volvi\u00f3 borroso y Dunk estuvo a punto de caer. Con vaguedad, a trav\u00e9s del dolor, oy\u00f3 su nombre en varias bocas. Su precioso escudo ya no serv\u00eda de nada. Lo arroj\u00f3 al suelo, roble y estrella fugaz, y con \u00e9l la lanza rota. Al desenvainar la espada sinti\u00f3 un dolor tan extremo que no se sinti\u00f3 capaz de manejarla.\n\nHizo que Trueno dibujara un c\u00edrculo para ver qu\u00e9 ocurr\u00eda en el resto del prado. Ser Humfrey Hardyng se aferraba al cuello de su montura y parec\u00eda malherido. El otro ser Humfrey yac\u00eda inm\u00f3vil en un charco de sangre y barro, con una lanza clavada en la entrepierna. Dunk vio que el pr\u00edncipe Baelor, cuya lanza segu\u00eda intacta, derribaba del caballo a un miembro de la Guardia Real. Era el segundo caballero blanco en caer. Tambi\u00e9n el pr\u00edncipe Maekar hab\u00eda sido desmontado. El jinete restante de la Guardia Real esquivaba a ser Robyn Rhysling.\n\n\"\u00a1Aerion! \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 Aerion?\" En ese momento oy\u00f3 un ruido de cascos y gir\u00f3 la cabeza con brusquedad. Trueno relinch\u00f3 y dio coces in\u00fatiles, justo cuando el corcel gris de Aerion se abalanzaba sobre \u00e9l a todo galope.\n\nEsta vez no hubo posibilidad alguna de evitar la ca\u00edda. Dunk perdi\u00f3 la espada y vio acercarse el suelo. El impacto lo sacudi\u00f3 hasta los huesos y le provoc\u00f3 un dolor tan atroz que solloz\u00f3. Por unos instantes no pudo hacer otra cosa que quedarse tendido, con sabor a sangre en la boca. \"Dunk el necio. \u00a1\u00c9l que ya se ve\u00eda caballero!\" Supo que si no volv\u00eda a levantarse estaba muerto. No pod\u00eda respirar, y menos ver. La rendija del yelmo se le hab\u00eda llenado de barro. Logr\u00f3 levantarse a ciegas y quitarse el barro con el guantelete. \"As\u00ed est\u00e1 mejor.\"\n\nVislumbr\u00f3 entre los dedos el vuelo de un drag\u00f3n y una bola con p\u00faas que daba vueltas al final de una cadena. Acto seguido le pareci\u00f3 que se le hac\u00eda a\u00f1icos la cabeza.\n\nAl abrir los ojos volv\u00eda a estar en el suelo, esta vez de espaldas. Encima s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda un cielo oscuro y gris. Le dol\u00eda la cara y sent\u00eda la fr\u00eda presi\u00f3n del metal en la mejilla y la sien. \"Me parti\u00f3 la cabeza y estoy muriendo.\" Lo peor era que los otros morir\u00edan con \u00e9l: Raymun, el pr\u00edncipe Baelor y el resto. \"Les fall\u00e9. No soy ning\u00fan palad\u00edn. Ni siquiera soy un caballero errante. No soy nada.\" Se acord\u00f3 de cuando el pr\u00edncipe Daeron se hab\u00eda jactado de ser el mejor en quedarse inconsciente en el barro. \"No conoce a Dunk, el necio.\" Peor que el sufrimiento era la verg\u00fcenza.\n\nEl drag\u00f3n apareci\u00f3 encima de \u00e9l. Ten\u00eda tres cabezas y llameantes alas rojas, amarillas y naranjas. Se re\u00eda.\n\n\u2014\u00bfYa moriste, caballero pat\u00e1n? \u2014pregunt\u00f3\u2014. Implora merced, reconoce tu culpa y quiz\u00e1 me conforme con una mano y un pie. Ah, y los dientes, pero \u00bfqu\u00e9 importan unos dientes? Seguro que alguien como t\u00fa puede vivir a\u00f1os a base de pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos \u2014volvi\u00f3 a re\u00edrse\u2014. \u00bfNo? Pues c\u00f3mete esto.\n\nLa bola con p\u00faas dio varias vueltas contra el cielo y cay\u00f3 sobre Dunk con la rapidez de una estrella fugaz.\n\nDunk rod\u00f3 por el suelo.\n\nNo supo de d\u00f3nde sacaba las fuerzas, pero las encontr\u00f3. Golpe\u00f3 las piernas de Aerion, le sujet\u00f3 el muslo haciendo pinza, lo derrib\u00f3 en el barro entre maldiciones y se le puso encima. \"\u00a1Que juegue ahora con su maldita bola!\" El pr\u00edncipe intent\u00f3 golpear a Dunk en la cabeza con el borde del escudo, pero el yelmo, aunque maltrecho, resisti\u00f3 el impacto. Aerion era fuerte, pero m\u00e1s su contrincante, adem\u00e1s de superarlo en estatura y peso. Dunk sujet\u00f3 el escudo con las dos manos y lo retorci\u00f3 hasta romper las correas. Luego lo us\u00f3 para golpear en repetidas ocasiones el yelmo del nieto del rey, hasta destrozar las llamas de su cimera. El escudo, hecho de roble con refuerzo de hierro, era m\u00e1s grueso que el de Dunk. Primero se solt\u00f3 una llama y despu\u00e9s la otra. El pr\u00edncipe se qued\u00f3 sin llamas mucho antes de que Dunk se quedara sin golpes.\n\nAerion acab\u00f3 por soltar el mango de su bola, in\u00fatil ya, y quiso echar mano del pu\u00f1al de su cintura. Logr\u00f3 desenvainarlo, pero a Dunk le bast\u00f3 un golpe de escudo certero para arrojar el arma al barro.\n\n\"A ser Duncan el Alto podr\u00eda vencerlo, pero no a Dunk del Lecho de Pulgas.\" El viejo le hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado el manejo de la lanza y de la espada, pero aquella clase de pelea la hab\u00eda aprendido mucho antes, en oscuros callejones y pasajes sinuosos. Solt\u00f3 el escudo abollado y levant\u00f3 la visera del yelmo de Aerion.\n\nRecord\u00f3 el comentario de Pate sobre la vulnerabilidad de las viseras. El pr\u00edncipe apenas opon\u00eda resistencia. Sus ojos viol\u00e1ceos estaban llenos de pavor. Dunk sinti\u00f3 el impulso repentino de reventarle uno entre los dedos del guantelete, como una simple uva, pero habr\u00eda sido poco caballeresco.\n\n\u2014\u00a1R\u00edndase! \u2014exclam\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Me rindo \u2014susurr\u00f3 el drag\u00f3n, casi sin mover los labios p\u00e1lidos.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3 parpadeando, sin dar cr\u00e9dito a lo que acababa de o\u00edr. \"\u00bfEso es todo?\" Gir\u00f3 la cabeza con lentitud a ambos lados, tratando de ver algo. La ranura del yelmo hab\u00eda quedado parcialmente cerrada por el \u00faltimo golpe, que la hab\u00eda hundido contra el lado izquierdo del rostro. Entrevi\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe Maekar con la maza en la mano, tratando de correr hacia su hijo mientras Baelor Rompelanzas lo sujetaba.\n\nDunk logr\u00f3 ponerse de pie, oblig\u00f3 al pr\u00edncipe Aerion a levantarse, se deshizo los lazos del yelmo y despu\u00e9s de quit\u00e1rselo lo arroj\u00f3 a lo lejos. Al instante lo abrumaron visiones y sonidos: gru\u00f1idos, palabrotas, los gritos de la multitud, el relincho de un corcel y otro corriendo por el prado sin jinete... Por doquiera chocaban los aceros. Raymun y su primo, ambos a pie, intercambiaban mandobles delante del estrado. Sus escudos eran amasijos de astillas donde apenas se reconoc\u00edan las manzanas verde y roja. Uno de los caballeros de la Guardia Real se llevaba a rastras a un colega herido. Las armaduras y las capas blancas no permit\u00edan diferenciarlos. El tercero estaba en el suelo y la Tormenta que R\u00ede se hab\u00eda unido al pr\u00edncipe Baelor contra el pr\u00edncipe Maekar. Se o\u00eda un choque met\u00e1lico de mazas, hachas y espadas contra yelmos y escudos. Por cada golpe que asestaba, Maekar recib\u00eda tres. Dunk vio que no tardar\u00eda en caer. \"Debo poner fin al combate antes de que haya m\u00e1s muertes.\"\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Aerion se lanz\u00f3 de s\u00fabito hacia el mangual. Dunk le dio una patada en la espalda, lo puso boca abajo, lo tom\u00f3 por una pierna y empez\u00f3 a arrastrarlo por el prado. Cuando lleg\u00f3 a la tribuna donde estaba sentado lord Ashford, el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante ten\u00eda el color marr\u00f3n de una letrina. Dunk lo oblig\u00f3 a ponerse de pie y le propin\u00f3 una fuerte sacudida, que salpic\u00f3 de barro a lord Ashford y la hermosa doncella.\n\n\u2014\u00a1D\u00edgalo!\n\nAerion Llama Brillante escupi\u00f3 hierba y tierra.\n\n\u2014Retiro mi acusaci\u00f3n.\n\nDunk no recordaba si hab\u00eda abandonado el prado por su propio pie o hab\u00eda necesitado ayuda. Le dol\u00eda todo el cuerpo, algunas partes m\u00e1s que otras. Record\u00f3 haberse preguntado: \"\u00bfAhora soy un caballero de verdad? \u00bfUn palad\u00edn?\"\n\nEgg lo ayud\u00f3 a quitarse las grebas y la gola. Tambi\u00e9n contribuyeron Raymun y Pate, aunque Dunk estaba demasiado aturdido para diferenciarlos. Se reduc\u00edan a dedos, pulgares y voces. Eso s\u00ed, supo que el que se quejaba era el armero.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Mi armadura! \u2014dec\u00eda\u2014. \u00a1Est\u00e1 destrozada, llena de muescas y abolladuras! \u00bfPara eso tanto esfuerzo? Y lo peor es que ya veo que tendr\u00e9 que romper la cota para quit\u00e1rsela.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Raymun! \u2014dijo Dunk con urgencia, tomando a su amigo de la mano\u2014. \u00bfY los dem\u00e1s? \u00bfC\u00f3mo les fue? \u2014ten\u00eda que saberlo\u2014. \u00bfMuri\u00f3 alguno?\n\n\u2014Beesbury \u2014contest\u00f3 Raymun\u2014. Lo mat\u00f3 Donnel del Valle Oscuro en el primer choque. Tambi\u00e9n ser Humfrey est\u00e1 malherido. Los dem\u00e1s nos encontramos magullados y ensangrentados, pero nada m\u00e1s. Excepto usted.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY los acusadores?\n\n\u2014A ser Willem Wylde, de la Guardia Real, se lo llevaron inconsciente, y creo haber roto unas costillas a mi primo. \u00a1O eso espero!\n\n\u2014\u00bfY el pr\u00edncipe Daeron? \u00bfSobrevivi\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Una vez derribado por ser Robyn no volvi\u00f3 a levantarse. Es posible que tenga roto un pie, porque su propio caballo lo pisote\u00f3 al correr suelto por el prado.\n\nEl aturdimiento de Dunk no le impidi\u00f3 sentir un alivio enorme.\n\n\u2014Es decir que el sue\u00f1o del pr\u00edncipe sobre la muerte del drag\u00f3n no era cierto; a menos, claro est\u00e1, que haya muerto Aerion... Pero sigue vivo, \u00bfverdad?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. T\u00fa le perdonaste la vida. \u00bfNo lo recuerdas?\n\n\u2014Supongo que s\u00ed \u2014el recuerdo del combate empezaba a desdibujarse\u2014. Hay ratos en que me siento como borracho, y otros en que me duele tanto el cuerpo que estoy seguro de morirme.\n\nLo obligaron a tenderse de espaldas. Mientras los dem\u00e1s hablaban, \u00e9l se qued\u00f3 mirando el cielo gris. Como le parec\u00eda que a\u00fan no era mediod\u00eda, se pregunt\u00f3 cu\u00e1nto habr\u00eda durado la lucha.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Por todos los dioses! \u00a1La punta de la lanza clav\u00f3 las mallas en la carne! \u2014oy\u00f3 decir a Raymun\u2014. S\u00f3lo podremos evitar que se gangrene si...\n\n\u2014Emborr\u00e1chenlo y echen aceite hirviendo \u2014propuso alguien\u2014. Es lo que hacen los m\u00e9dicos.\n\n\u2014Vino \u2014la voz pose\u00eda una tonalidad met\u00e1lica extra\u00f1a\u2014. Aceite no, porque lo matar\u00eda. Vino hirviendo. Mandar\u00e9 al maestre Yormwell cuando haya acabado de cuidar a mi hermano.\n\nDunk ten\u00eda junto a \u00e9l a un caballero de gran estatura, con una armadura negra cubierta de abolladuras y muescas. \"El pr\u00edncipe Baelor.\" El drag\u00f3n rojo de su yelmo hab\u00eda perdido una cabeza, las dos alas y casi toda la cola.\n\n\u2014Excelencia \u2014dijo Dunk \u2014, soy su hombre. Por favor. Su hombre.\n\n\u2014Mi hombre \u2014el caballero negro puso una mano en el hombro de Raymun para no perder el equilibrio\u2014. Necesito buenos caballeros, ser Duncan. El reino...\n\nArrastraba las s\u00edlabas de forma extra\u00f1a. Quiz\u00e1 se hab\u00eda mordido la lengua.\n\nDunk estaba muy cansado y le costaba no dormirse.\n\n\u2014Su hombre \u2014murmur\u00f3 de nuevo.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe movi\u00f3 la cabeza con lentitud hacia ambos lados.\n\n\u2014Ser Raymun... Mi yelmo, si es tan amable. La visera est\u00e1... rota, y siento los dedos... como de madera...\n\n\u2014Ahora mismo, excelencia \u2014Raymun cogi\u00f3 con las dos manos el yelmo del pr\u00edncipe y gru\u00f1\u00f3\u2014. Ay\u00fadame, maese Pate.\n\nEl armero acerc\u00f3 un taburete de montar.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 hundido por detr\u00e1s, excelencia, hacia el lado izquierdo. Se aplast\u00f3 contra la gola. Buen acero tiene que ser para aguantar un golpe semejante.\n\n\u2014La maza de mi hermano, sin duda \u2014dijo Baelor con voz pastosa\u2014. Es fuerte \u2014hizo una mueca\u2014. Me... siento raro...\n\n\u2014All\u00e1 va \u2014Pate retir\u00f3 el yelmo abollado\u2014. \u00a1Por todos los dioses! \u00a1Ay, dioses! \u00a1Ay, dioses! \u00a1Ay, dioses!\n\nDunk vio caer del yelmo algo rojo y h\u00famedo. Se oy\u00f3 un grito largo y horrible. Contra el cielo gris y oscuro, un pr\u00edncipe alt\u00edsimo con armadura negra oscil\u00f3 con medio cr\u00e1neo. Dunk vio que al otro lado hab\u00eda sangre roja, hueso blanquecino y algo m\u00e1s, una masa entre gris\u00e1cea y azulada. Por el rostro de Baelor Rompelanzas pas\u00f3 una expresi\u00f3n peculiar, como una nube delante del sol. Levant\u00f3 la mano y se toc\u00f3 la parte posterior de la cabeza con dos dedos y mucha, mucha suavidad. Luego cay\u00f3.\n\nDunk lo sujet\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Arriba! \u2014dijo, igual que a Trueno en el primer choque\u2014. \u00a1Arriba!\n\nLuego ya no se acordaba. En cuanto al pr\u00edncipe, nunca se levant\u00f3.\n\nBaelor, de la casa Targaryen, pr\u00edncipe de Rocadrag\u00f3n, mano del rey, Protector del Reino y heredero del Trono de Hierro de los Siete Reinos de Poniente, tuvo su pira funeral en el patio de armas del castillo de Vado Ceniza, en la orilla norte del r\u00edo de los Mejillones. A diferencia de otras grandes casas, algunas de las cuales enterraban a sus muertos o los hund\u00edan en el fr\u00edo y verde mar, los Targaryen desped\u00edan a los difuntos con letras de fuego, puesto que llevaban la sangre del drag\u00f3n.\n\nHab\u00eda sido el mejor caballero de su \u00e9poca, y hubo quien se pronunci\u00f3 a favor de que lo enviaran a la oscuridad con cota y armadura, espada en mano. Al final, sin embargo, prevalecieron los deseos de su padre, Daeron II, de car\u00e1cter apacible. Cuando Dunk pas\u00f3 arrastrando los pies junto al f\u00e9retro del pr\u00edncipe Baelor, \u00e9ste llevaba una t\u00fanica de terciopelo negro, y bordado en rojo el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas. Una cadena de oro macizo le ce\u00f1\u00eda el cuello. La espada estaba envainada al lado del cad\u00e1ver, pero lo que s\u00ed llevaba era un fino yelmo, de oro, con la visera levantada para no tapar el rostro.\n\nValarr, el Pr\u00edncipe Joven, vel\u00f3 el f\u00e9retro en la capilla ardiente de su padre. Era parecido a \u00e9l, pero m\u00e1s bajo, m\u00e1s delgado y m\u00e1s apuesto, sin aquella nariz, rota en dos ocasiones, que hab\u00eda prestado a Baelor un aspecto m\u00e1s humano que regio. Valarr ten\u00eda el pelo casta\u00f1o, pero con una mecha plateada. Al verla, Dunk se acord\u00f3 de Aerion, pero supo que era una comparaci\u00f3n injusta. El pelo que volv\u00eda a crecer en la cabeza de Egg era tan claro como el de su hermano, y para ser pr\u00edncipe, Egg era buen chico.\n\nCuando Dunk se detuvo para dar el p\u00e9same, profusamente aderezado con palabras de gratitud, el pr\u00edncipe Valarr lo mir\u00f3 con unos ojos muy azules.\n\n\u2014Mi padre s\u00f3lo ten\u00eda treinta y nueve a\u00f1os \u2014dijo parpadeando\u2014. Estaba destinado a ser un gran rey, el mayor desde Aegon el Drag\u00f3n. \u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible que se lo llevaran los dioses y lo dejaran a usted? \u2014acentu\u00f3 el \"usted\" y sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. M\u00e1rchese, ser Duncan, m\u00e1rchese.\n\nDunk, que se hab\u00eda quedado mudo, se alej\u00f3 cojeando del castillo en direcci\u00f3n al remanso del r\u00edo. No habr\u00eda sabido qu\u00e9 responder a Valarr. Los m\u00e9dicos y el vino hirviendo hab\u00edan sido eficaces y la herida se curaba limpiamente, no sin dejarle una gruesa cicatriz entre el brazo izquierdo y el pez\u00f3n. No pod\u00eda ver la herida sin pensar en Baelor. \"Me salv\u00f3 una vez con la espada y otra con la palabra, a pesar de que en ese momento ya fuera hombre muerto.\" Un mundo donde mor\u00eda un gran pr\u00edncipe por la vida de un caballero errante era un lugar sin sentido. Sentado al pie del olmo, Dunk, taciturno, se miraba el pie.\n\nHoras despu\u00e9s, al mirar acercarse a su lugar de acampada a cuatro soldados con librea real, tuvo la certeza de que ven\u00edan a matarlo. Como estaba demasiado d\u00e9bil para levantar la espada, aguard\u00f3 con \u00e9sta contra el olmo.\n\n\u2014Nuestro pr\u00edncipe solicita el favor de unas palabras en privado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1l pr\u00edncipe? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk con cautela.\n\n\u2014\u00c9ste \u2014dijo una voz ruda, que se adelant\u00f3 al capit\u00e1n.\n\nMaekar Targaryen sali\u00f3 de detr\u00e1s del olmo. Dunk se levant\u00f3 con lentitud. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 querr\u00e1 de m\u00ed ahora?\"\n\nEn respuesta a unas se\u00f1as de Maekar, los soldados protagonizaron una desaparici\u00f3n tan repentina como lo hab\u00eda sido su llegada. El pr\u00edncipe mir\u00f3 a Dunk con gran detenimiento. Luego se gir\u00f3, se fue hacia el r\u00edo y contempl\u00f3 su reflejo en el agua.\n\n\u2014Envi\u00e9 a Aerion a Lys \u2014anunci\u00f3 con brusquedad\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 unos cuantos a\u00f1os en las Ciudades Libres lo cambien para mejor.\n\nDunk no supo qu\u00e9 decir, porque nunca hab\u00eda estado en las Ciudades Libres. Ni su alegr\u00eda porque Aerion ya no se encontrara en los Siete Reinos ni su esperanza de que jam\u00e1s regresara eran adecuadas para dec\u00edrselas a un padre. Prefiri\u00f3 guardar silencio.\n\nEl pr\u00edncipe Maekar se gir\u00f3 a mirarlo.\n\n\u2014Habr\u00e1 quien diga que quise matar a mi hermano. Los dioses saben que es falso, pero oir\u00e9 murmuraciones hasta el d\u00eda de mi muerte. Adem\u00e1s, estoy seguro de que el golpe mortal lo asest\u00f3 mi maza. S\u00f3lo luch\u00f3 contra tres hombres m\u00e1s: los tres caballeros de la Guardia Real, cuyos votos les proh\u00edben otra cosa que no sea defenderse. Por lo tanto fui yo. Es extra\u00f1o, pero no recuerdo el golpe que le parti\u00f3 el cr\u00e1neo. \u00bfSer\u00e1 una suerte o una maldici\u00f3n? Yo creo que un poco de ambas cosas.\n\nA juzgar por su mirada, el pr\u00edncipe quer\u00eda una respuesta.\n\n\u2014No sabr\u00eda decirlo, excelencia \u2014quiz\u00e1 Dunk hubiera debido odiar a Maekar, pero lo que sent\u00eda por \u00e9l era una extra\u00f1a compasi\u00f3n\u2014. El mazazo lo asest\u00f3 usted, pero el pr\u00edncipe Baelor muri\u00f3 por m\u00ed. Por lo tanto, soy tan responsable de su muerte como usted.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014convino el pr\u00edncipe\u2014. Tambi\u00e9n usted escuchar\u00e1 murmullos. El rey es anciano. Cuando muera, Valarr subir\u00e1 al Trono de Hierro en sustituci\u00f3n de su padre. Cada vez que se pierda una batalla o una cosecha, los tontos dir\u00e1n: \"Baelor no lo habr\u00eda permitido, pero le fall\u00f3 el caballero errante\".\n\nDunk supo que era cierto.\n\n\u2014Si no hubiera luchado, me habr\u00edan cortado la mano y el pie. A veces me siento debajo de este \u00e1rbol, me miro los pies y me pregunto si no podr\u00eda haber renunciado a uno. \u00bfQu\u00e9 valor tiene uno de mis pies en comparaci\u00f3n con la vida de un pr\u00edncipe? Sin olvidar a los Humfreys, que tambi\u00e9n eran buenos caballeros.\n\nAquella misma noche ser Humfrey sucumbi\u00f3 a sus heridas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 respuesta le da su \u00e1rbol?\n\n\u2014Ninguna. Al menos no la oigo, pero el viejo, ser Arlan, dec\u00eda cada anochecer: \"A saber qu\u00e9 nos deparar\u00e1 el d\u00eda de ma\u00f1ana.\" Ni \u00e9l lleg\u00f3 a enterarse ni nosotros lo sabremos. \u00bfY si alg\u00fan d\u00eda necesito ese pie? \u00bfY si llega el d\u00eda en que lo necesite el reino, en que lo necesite m\u00e1s a\u00fan que la vida de un pr\u00edncipe?\n\nCon la boca apretada tras la barba plateada, que daba una apariencia tan cuadrada a su rostro, Maekar se tom\u00f3 su tiempo para digerir las palabras de Dunk.\n\n\u2014Lo dudo mucho \u2014dijo con mal tono\u2014. El reino anda sobrado de caballeros errantes, tantos como caminos, y todos tienen pies.\n\n\u2014Si su excelencia tiene una respuesta mejor, me gustar\u00eda escucharla.\n\nMaekar frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo.\n\n\u2014Es posible que los dioses tengan querencia por las bromas crueles. O que no haya dioses. Quiz\u00e1 lo ocurrido carezca de sentido. Se lo preguntar\u00eda al sept\u00f3n supremo, pero la \u00faltima vez que le ped\u00ed consejo me dijo que las sendas de los dioses escapan a la comprensi\u00f3n de los humanos. Quiz\u00e1 le convenga dormir al pie de un \u00e1rbol \u2014hizo una mueca\u2014. Parece que mi hijo menor le ha tomado cari\u00f1o. Es hora de que se haga escudero, pero se niega a servir a otro caballero que no sea usted. Ya se habr\u00e1 dado cuenta de que es un chiquillo revoltoso. \u00bfLo aceptar\u00eda a su cargo?\n\n\u2014\u00bfYo? \u2014Dunk abri\u00f3 la boca, la cerr\u00f3 y volvi\u00f3 a abrirla\u2014. Egg... Perd\u00f3n, Aegon... es un buen ni\u00f1o. Pero, excelencia... s\u00e9 que es un honor, pero... soy un simple caballero errante.\n\n\u2014Puede remediarse \u2014dijo Maekar\u2014. Aegon regresar\u00e1 a mi castillo de Refugio Estival. Si lo desea, hay sitio para usted. Quedar\u00e1 adscrito a mi casa. Me jurar\u00e1 lealtad y Aegon podr\u00e1 servirle como escudero. Mientras usted lo entrene, mi maestro de armas acabar\u00e1 de formarlo \u2014el pr\u00edncipe mir\u00f3 a Dunk con picard\u00eda\u2014. No dudo que el tal ser Arlan se desviviera por usted, pero le queda mucho por aprender.\n\n\u2014Lo s\u00e9, excelencia \u2014Dunk mir\u00f3 alrededor: la hierba verde, los juncos, el olmo frondoso, las ondas que bailaban en la superficie del remanso... Otra lib\u00e9lula volaba sobre el agua, a menos que fuera la misma. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 eliges, Dunk?\", se pregunt\u00f3. \"\u00bfLib\u00e9lulas o dragones?\" Pocos d\u00edas atr\u00e1s habr\u00eda contestado sin vacilar. Era su gran sue\u00f1o, pero ahora que lo ten\u00eda a su alcance lo asustaba\u2014. Justo antes de la muerte del pr\u00edncipe Baelor le jur\u00e9 fidelidad.\n\n\u2014Fue una impertinencia \u2014dijo Maekar\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 respondi\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Que el reino necesitaba buenos caballeros.\n\n\u2014Muy cierto. \u00bfQu\u00e9 quiere decir?\n\n\u2014Acepto a su hijo como escudero, excelencia, pero no en Refugio Estival, al menos durante uno o dos a\u00f1os. Considero que ya ha visto suficientes castillos. S\u00f3lo lo acepto si se me permite llev\u00e1rmelo por los caminos \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 al viejo Casta\u00f1o\u2014. Montar\u00e1 en mi penco, llevar\u00e1 mi capa vieja y mantendr\u00e1 afilada mi espada y limpia mi cota. Dormiremos en posadas y establos, unas veces en las tierras de un se\u00f1or y otras, si es necesario, bajo los \u00e1rboles.\n\nLa mirada del pr\u00edncipe Maekar era de incredulidad.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAcaso el juicio le ha reblandecido el cerebro? Aegon es pr\u00edncipe del reino, y los pr\u00edncipes no est\u00e1n hechos para dormir en zanjas ni comer tasajo de buey \u2014mir\u00f3 vacilar a Dunk\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tiene miedo de decirme? Hable a su antojo.\n\n\u2014Adivino que Daeron nunca ha dormido en ninguna zanja \u2014dijo Dunk con mucha calma \u2014, y lo m\u00e1s probable es que Aerion s\u00f3lo se haya alimentado de filetes de buey gruesos y al punto.\n\nMaekar Targaryen, pr\u00edncipe de Refugio Estival, contempl\u00f3 largamente a Dunk del Lecho de Pulgas, moviendo la mand\u00edbula en silencio bajo la barba de plata. Despu\u00e9s dio media vuelta y se alej\u00f3 sin hablar. Dunk oy\u00f3 que se marchaba con sus hombres. Despu\u00e9s de su partida, el \u00fanico ruido fue el ligero zumbido de las alas de la lib\u00e9lula al rozar el agua.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o lleg\u00f3 a la ma\u00f1ana siguiente, justo al salir el sol. Llevaba botas viejas, pantalones pardos, una t\u00fanica de lana del mismo color y una capa gastada de viajero.\n\n\u2014Dice mi padre que debo servirte.\n\n\u2014Que debo servirte, ser \u2014le record\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Empieza por ensillar los caballos. Casta\u00f1o es para ti, as\u00ed que tr\u00e1talo bien. Y que no te encuentre montado en Trueno a menos que yo mismo te lo haya ordenado.\n\nEgg fue en busca de las sillas de montar.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAd\u00f3nde vamos, ser?\n\nDunk reflexion\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Nunca he cruzado las Monta\u00f1as Rojas. \u00bfSe te antoja echar un vistazo a Dorne?\n\nEgg contest\u00f3 con una sonrisa socarrona.\n\n\u2014Dicen que all\u00ed hay buenos titiriteros.\n\n* Lib\u00e9lula en ingl\u00e9s es _dragonfly._\n\n** Es decir, \"Huevo\". Por tratarse de una abreviaci\u00f3n, como se ver\u00e1 m\u00e1s tarde, se prefiri\u00f3 mantener la palabra inglesa. (N. del T.)\n\n*** Con una sola \"n\", significa \"cisne\".\n\n# LA ESPADA LEAL\nEn la encrucijada se pudr\u00edan dos muertos bajo el sol, en una jaula de hierro.\n\nEgg se detuvo a mirarlos desde abajo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9nes crees que eran, ser?\n\nMaestre, su mula, agradeci\u00f3 el descanso, que aprovech\u00f3 para pastar entre la hierba seca y marr\u00f3n del margen del camino, sin que la molestaran las dos enormes barricas de vino que llevaba en el lomo.\n\n\u2014Ladrones \u2014dijo Dunk, que al estar montado en Trueno le quedaban mucho m\u00e1s cerca los cad\u00e1veres\u2014. Violadores. Asesinos.\n\nSu vieja t\u00fanica verde presentaba un c\u00edrculo oscuro bajo cada brazo. El cielo era azul, el sol intenso y Dunk hab\u00eda sudado a c\u00e1ntaros desde su salida matinal del campamento.\n\nEgg se quit\u00f3 el sombrero blando de paja de ala ancha, bajo el que reluc\u00eda una cabeza calva, y lo us\u00f3 para ahuyentar las moscas. Eran centenares las que corr\u00edan por los muertos y otras tantas las que revoloteaban, perezosas, por el aire inm\u00f3vil y caliente.\n\n\u2014Algo malo tuvieron que haber hecho para que los hayan dejado morirse en una jaula para cuervos.\n\nA veces Egg mostraba la sabidur\u00eda de los maestres, pero otras segu\u00eda siendo un ni\u00f1o de diez a\u00f1os.\n\n\u2014Hay de se\u00f1ores a se\u00f1ores \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. A algunos no les hace falta un gran motivo para dar muerte a un hombre.\n\nLa jaula de hierro apenas ten\u00eda cabida para un solo hombre, pero eran dos los que hab\u00edan sido embutidos en su interior, cara a cara, enredados de brazos y de piernas, con la espalda clavada al hierro negro y caliente de los barrotes. Uno de los dos hab\u00eda intentado comerse al otro, roy\u00e9ndole el cuello y un hombro. De ambos se hab\u00edan alimentado los cuervos, los cuales, al aparecer Dunk y Egg a la vuelta del camino, se hab\u00edan levantado como una nube negra, con una densidad que hab\u00eda asustado a Maestre.\n\n\u2014No s\u00e9 qui\u00e9nes eran, pero parecen medio consumidos por el hambre \u2014dijo Dunk. \"Esqueletos con piel, y aun \u00e9sta verde y podrida\"\u2014. Tal vez robaron pan o cazaron furtivamente un ciervo en los bosques de un se\u00f1or.\n\nCon la sequ\u00eda en su segundo a\u00f1o, la mayor\u00eda de los se\u00f1ores se hab\u00edan vuelto menos tolerantes, si cab\u00eda, con la caza furtiva.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 formaran parte de una banda de forajidos.\n\nEn Dosk hab\u00edan o\u00eddo cantar a un arpista \"El d\u00eda en que ahorcaron a Robin el Negro\", y desde entonces Egg ve\u00eda gallardos forajidos tras cualquier matorral.\n\nDunk hab\u00eda conocido a unos cuantos durante su \u00e9poca como escudero del viejo y no ten\u00eda prisa por conocer a m\u00e1s. Ninguno de los que se hab\u00edan cruzado con \u00e9l era en especial gallardo. Recordaba a un forajido al que hab\u00eda ayudado a ahorcar ser Arlan. Tan aficionado era a robar anillos, que para conseguirlos cortaba los dedos a los hombres, mientras que a las mujeres prefer\u00eda mord\u00e9rselos. A Dunk no le constaba ninguna canci\u00f3n sobre aquel personaje. \"Cazadores furtivos, forajidos... Poco importa. No es buena la compa\u00f1\u00eda de los muertos.\" Hizo que Trueno rodeara la jaula con lentitud. Parec\u00eda que los ojos huecos lo siguieran. Uno de los muertos ten\u00eda inclinada la cabeza y la boca muy abierta. \"No tiene lengua\", observ\u00f3 Dunk. Supuso que se la habr\u00edan comido los cuervos. Hab\u00eda o\u00eddo decir que siempre empezaban por los ojos, pero quiz\u00e1 el segundo lugar lo ocupara la lengua. \"A menos que se la hiciera arrancar alg\u00fan se\u00f1or, en castigo por algo que hubiera dicho.\"\n\nSe pas\u00f3 los dedos por su mata de pelo entreverado de sol. A los muertos no pod\u00eda ayudarlos. Adem\u00e1s, deb\u00edan llevar barricas a Tiesa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor d\u00f3nde vinimos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3, mirando los dos caminos\u2014. Estoy desorientado.\n\n\u2014A Tiesa se va por all\u00ed, ser \u2014dijo Egg, se\u00f1alando.\n\n\u2014Pues por all\u00ed necesitamos ir. Podemos estar de vuelta para el anochecer, pero no si nos pasamos el d\u00eda aqu\u00ed sentados, contando moscas.\n\nDunk toc\u00f3 a Trueno con los talones e hizo que el gran corcel girara hacia el ramal de la izquierda. Egg volvi\u00f3 a ponerse el sombrero blando y estir\u00f3 con fuerza la cuerda de Maestre. La mula dej\u00f3 de mordisquear la hierba y por una vez no se hizo rogar. \"Tambi\u00e9n tiene calor\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"y seguro que las barricas pesan mucho\".\n\nCocido por el sol de verano, el camino parec\u00eda de ladrillo, con surcos tan profundos que pod\u00edan partir la pata de un caballo, de modo que Dunk se esmer\u00f3 en que Trueno se mantuviera entre ellos. El tobillo ya se lo hab\u00eda torcido \u00e9l poco despu\u00e9s de irse de Dosk, al caminar de noche porque se estaba m\u00e1s fresco. Como siempre hab\u00eda dicho el viejo, los caballeros deb\u00edan aprender a convivir con los achaques y dolores. \"S\u00ed, muchacho, y con los huesos rotos, y las cicatrices. Forman parte de la condici\u00f3n de caballero, tanto como las espadas y los escudos.\" En cambio, si era Trueno el que se romp\u00eda una pata... un caballero sin caballo no era tal.\n\nEgg lo segu\u00eda a cinco varas, con Maestre y las barricas. El ni\u00f1o caminaba con un pie descalzo en un surco y el otro fuera, de modo que sub\u00eda y bajaba a cada paso. Llevaba la daga al cinto, en una funda, las botas sobre la mochila y la t\u00fanica parda, hecha jirones, arremangada y anudada en la cintura. Bajo el sombrero de paja de ala ancha se ve\u00eda un rostro sucio, cubierto de manchas, y unos ojos grandes y oscuros. Ya ten\u00eda diez a\u00f1os y med\u00eda poco m\u00e1s de siete palmos. En los \u00faltimos tiempos hab\u00eda dado un estir\u00f3n, aunque todav\u00eda le faltaba mucho para alcanzar a Dunk. Era en todo parecido al mozo de cuadra que no era, y en nada al que era de verdad.\n\nPronto los muertos se perdieron de vista, pero Dunk sigui\u00f3 pensando en ellos. Eran tiempos en que el reino andaba lleno de facinerosos. La sequ\u00eda no daba muestra alguna de remitir y el pueblo llano hab\u00eda tomado por millares los caminos en busca de alg\u00fan sitio donde a\u00fan lloviera. Lord Cuervo de Sangre les hab\u00eda ordenado que volvieran a sus tierras y con sus se\u00f1ores, aunque pocos obedec\u00edan. Muchos culpaban de la sequ\u00eda a Cuervo de Sangre y al rey Aerys. Era, dec\u00edan, un juicio de los dioses, pues sobre aquel que mata a alguien de su propia sangre cae una maldici\u00f3n. Ahora bien, si eran prudentes no lo dec\u00edan en voz alta. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene Cuervo de Sangre?\", rezaba el acertijo o\u00eddo por Egg en Antigua. \"Mil, y uno m\u00e1s.\"\n\nSeis a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s Dunk lo hab\u00eda visto con sus propios ojos en Desembarco del Rey, montado en un caballo blanco por la calle del Acero, al frente de cincuenta Dientes de Cuervo. Era antes de que el rey Aerys subiera al Trono de Hierro y lo nombrara mano del rey, pero aun as\u00ed llamaba la atenci\u00f3n con sus ropajes color humo y escarlata, y con Hermana Oscura al cinto. Con su p\u00e1lida tez y su cabello blanco como el hueso, parec\u00eda un cad\u00e1ver viviente. Una marca de nacimiento color vino se extend\u00eda por su mejilla y su ment\u00f3n. Dec\u00edan que era como un cuervo rojo, pero Dunk s\u00f3lo vio un pedazo amorfo de piel descolorida. Tanta atenci\u00f3n prest\u00f3, que Cuervo de Sangre se dio cuenta, y al pasar por su lado el real hechicero se gir\u00f3 para escrutarlo. Ten\u00eda un solo ojo, para colmo rojo. La otra \u00f3rbita estaba vac\u00eda, regalo de Acero Amargo en el campo de Hierba Roja. Aun as\u00ed Dunk se hab\u00eda llevado la impresi\u00f3n de que eran dos ojos los que penetraban en su piel y le escudri\u00f1aban el alma.\n\nA pesar del calor, el recuerdo le produjo escalofr\u00edos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer? \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. \u00bfTe sientes mal?\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Tengo el mismo calor y la misma sed que ellos.\n\nSe\u00f1al\u00f3 el campo detr\u00e1s del camino, en cuyos zarcillos se arrugaban hileras de melones. En los m\u00e1rgenes del camino se aferraban a\u00fan a la vida los abrojos y las matas, pero los cultivos ten\u00edan una peor suerte. Dunk sab\u00eda muy bien c\u00f3mo se sent\u00edan los melones. Ser Arlan dec\u00eda que ning\u00fan caballero errante deb\u00eda pasar sed. \"No mientras tenga un yelmo donde recoger la lluvia. No hay mejor bebida que el agua de lluvia, muchacho.\" Pero el viejo nunca hab\u00eda visto un verano as\u00ed. Dunk hab\u00eda dejado su yelmo en Tiesa. Estaba demasiado caliente y pesaba demasiado para pon\u00e9rselo. Por otro lado, la lluvia que pudiera recogerse brillaba por su ausencia. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 hace un caballero errante cuando hasta los setos pardean, se secan y mueren?\"\n\nTal vez se diera un ba\u00f1o al llegar al arroyo. Sonri\u00f3 al pensar en lo agradable que ser\u00eda zambullirse en el agua y salir de ella mojado y sonriente, con el agua corriendo por sus mejillas y el pelo enredado, la t\u00fanica empapada, pegada a la piel. Acaso a Egg tambi\u00e9n le apeteciera un ba\u00f1o, aunque parec\u00eda fresco y seco, con m\u00e1s polvo que sudor. Nunca sudaba mucho. Le gustaba el calor. En Dorne se hab\u00eda paseado desnudo de cintura para arriba y se hab\u00eda puesto moreno como los dornienses. \"Es por su sangre de drag\u00f3n\", se dijo Dunk. \"\u00bfSe ha visto alguna vez a un drag\u00f3n sudoroso?\" \u00c9l se habr\u00eda quitado con mucho gusto la t\u00fanica, pero no habr\u00eda resultado decoroso. Un caballero errante, si as\u00ed lo deseaba, pod\u00eda cabalgar desnudo. S\u00f3lo a s\u00ed mismo pod\u00eda avergonzarse. Era distinto cuando tu espada se hallaba juramentada. \"Cuando aceptas la carne y el hidromiel de un se\u00f1or, todos tus actos remiten a \u00e9l\", dec\u00eda ser Arlan. \"Nunca hagas nunca menos, sino m\u00e1s de lo que espere de ti. Que no te amedrenten las tareas ni las penurias. Y sobre todo nunca averg\u00fcences al se\u00f1or al que sirvas.\" En Tiesa, carne e hidromiel significaba pollo y cerveza, pero ser Eustace com\u00eda con la misma sencillez.\n\nDunk se dej\u00f3 la t\u00fanica a pesar del sofoco.\n\nSer Bennis del Escudo Pardo esperaba en el viejo puente de tablones.\n\n\u2014Conque han vuelto \u2014dijo en voz alta\u2014. Llevan tanto tiempo fuera que ya pensaba que se hab\u00edan escapado con la plata del viejo.\n\nMontado en su lanudo poni, mascaba un pu\u00f1ado de hojamarga que hac\u00eda parecer que su boca sangraba.\n\n\u2014Tuvimos que ir hasta Dosk para encontrar vino \u2014le explic\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Los krakens asolaron Peque\u00f1a Dosk. Se llevaron todo lo de valor y a las mujeres, y quemaron la mitad de lo que no robaron.\n\n\u2014Dagon Greyjoy se est\u00e1 ganando la horca \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Pero, claro, \u00bfqui\u00e9n lo colgar\u00e1? \u00bfVieron al viejo Pate, el Pellizcaculos?\n\n\u2014Nos dijeron que est\u00e1 muerto. Lo mataron los hombres del Hierro cuando intent\u00f3 impedir que le quitaran a su hija.\n\n\u2014Malditos sean los siete infiernos \u2014Bennis gir\u00f3 la cabeza y escupi\u00f3\u2014. A la hija la vi una vez, y les digo con franqueza que no merec\u00eda el sacrificio. El insensato de Pate me deb\u00eda media pieza de plata.\n\nEl caballero pardo estaba igual que cuando se hab\u00edan marchado y lo peor era que tambi\u00e9n ol\u00eda como entonces. Cada d\u00eda usaba el mismo atuendo: calzas marrones, una t\u00fanica amorfa de tela basta y botas de cuero de caballo. Cuando llevaba armadura, se enfundaba en una holgada sobreveste marr\u00f3n sobre una cota de malla oxidada. Su cinto era un cord\u00f3n de cuero hervido, que era tambi\u00e9n el material del que parec\u00eda hecha su cara. \"Tiene una cabeza que se parece a uno de los melones arrugados que vimos en el camino.\" Hasta sus dientes eran marrones por debajo de las manchas rojas dejadas por la hojamarga que tanto le gustaba mascar. Entre tanto marr\u00f3n destacaban sus ojos, de un verde claro, peque\u00f1os y juntos, relucientes de malicia.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo dos barricas \u2014observ\u00f3\u2014. Ser In\u00fatil* quer\u00eda cuatro.\n\n\u2014Tuvimos suerte de encontrar dos \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. La sequ\u00eda tambi\u00e9n lleg\u00f3 al Rejo. Nos dijeron que en las vides las uvas se est\u00e1n volviendo pasas y que los hombres del Hierro han hecho incursiones...\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer? \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Ya no hay agua.\n\nTan atento a Bennis hab\u00eda estado Dunk, que no se hab\u00eda dado cuenta. Bajo los tablones torcidos del puente s\u00f3lo quedaban arena y piedras. \"Qu\u00e9 extra\u00f1o. Cuando nos fuimos hab\u00eda poco caudal, pero algo corr\u00eda.\"\n\nBennis rio. Ten\u00eda dos tipos de risa. A veces cacareaba como las gallinas y otras rebuznaba con m\u00e1s fuerza que la mula de Egg. Esta vez su risa fue de gallina.\n\n\u2014Imagino que se sec\u00f3 en su ausencia. Es lo que tienen las sequ\u00edas.\n\nDunk qued\u00f3 consternado. \"Adi\u00f3s al ba\u00f1o.\" Se dej\u00f3 caer al suelo. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00e1 de las cosechas?\" La mitad de los pozos del Dominio se hab\u00eda secado y todos los r\u00edos llevaban poca agua, incluso el Aguas Negras y el caudaloso Mander.\n\n\u2014Menuda porquer\u00eda el agua \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Una vez beb\u00ed un poco y me mare\u00e9 como un perro. Es mejor el vino.\n\n\u2014Para la avena no ni para la cebada, ni para las zanahorias, las cebollas ni las coles. Hasta las uvas necesitan agua \u2014Dunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo puede haberse secado tan deprisa? S\u00f3lo estuvimos seis d\u00edas fuera.\n\n\u2014Nunca ha llevado mucha agua, Dunk. Mayores r\u00edos echaba yo en mis tiempos.\n\n\u2014Dunk no \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Ya te lo dije \u2014no supo por qu\u00e9 se molestaba. Bennis disfrutaba de meter ciza\u00f1a y burlarse de los dem\u00e1s\u2014. Mi nombre es ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n te llama as\u00ed, tu cachorro calvo? \u2014Bennis mir\u00f3 a Egg y solt\u00f3 su risa de gallina\u2014. Eres m\u00e1s alto que cuando estabas con ser Arlan, pero para m\u00ed sigues siendo el redomado Dunk.\n\nDunk se pas\u00f3 una mano por la nuca sin apartar la vista de las piedras.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 deber\u00edamos hacer?\n\n\u2014Entregar los vinos y decirle a ser In\u00fatil que su arroyo se sec\u00f3. Del pozo de Tiesa a\u00fan se puede sacar algo. Sed no pasar\u00e1.\n\n\u2014No lo llames In\u00fatil \u2014Dunk sent\u00eda afecto por el viejo caballero\u2014. Ya que duermes bajo su techo, mu\u00e9strale algo de respeto.\n\n\u2014Resp\u00e9talo t\u00fa por ambos, Dunk \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Yo lo llamo como quiero.\n\nLos tablones, de un gris plateado, crujieron con fuerza cuando Dunk se asom\u00f3 al r\u00edo y mir\u00f3, ce\u00f1udo, la arena y las piedras del fondo. Vio brillar entre las piedras algunos charcos peque\u00f1os y marrones, en ning\u00fan caso mayores que su mano.\n\n\u2014Miren, peces muertos. Aqu\u00ed... y all\u00ed...\n\nSu olor le record\u00f3 a los muertos de la encrucijada.\n\n\u2014Los veo, ser \u2014dijo Egg.\n\nDunk baj\u00f3 al lecho, se puso en cuclillas y gir\u00f3 una piedra. \"Seca y caliente por arriba y h\u00fameda y con barro por abajo.\"\n\n\u2014No puede llevar mucho tiempo seco \u2014se levant\u00f3 y lanz\u00f3 la piedra hacia la orilla, donde desprendi\u00f3 un terr\u00f3n reseco y lo desmenuz\u00f3 en polvo marr\u00f3n\u2014. El suelo est\u00e1 agrietado en la orilla, pero en medio est\u00e1 blando y cenagoso. Ayer estos peces estaban vivos.\n\n\u2014Dunk el necio, como te llamaba siempre ser Arlan. A\u00fan me acuerdo \u2014ser Bennis lanz\u00f3 a las piedras un escupitajo de hojamarga\u2014. Los necios no deber\u00edan esforzarse en pensar. La sesera no les da para tanto.\n\n\"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo.\" En boca de ser Arlan hab\u00edan sido palabras cari\u00f1osas. Era un hombre bondadoso, incluso al rega\u00f1ar. En boca de ser Bennis del Escudo Pardo sonaban distintas.\n\n\u2014Ser Arlan muri\u00f3 hace dos a\u00f1os \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, y yo me llamo ser Duncan el Alto.\n\nEstuvo muy tentado de estampar el pu\u00f1o en el rostro del caballero pardo y de hacer a\u00f1icos aquellos dientes rojos y podridos. Por repulsivo que fuera Bennis del Escudo Pardo, Dunk lo superaba por dos buenos palmos y dos buenas arrobas. Ser\u00eda necio, pero tambi\u00e9n corpulento. A veces parec\u00eda que se hubiera golpeado la cabeza en la mitad de las puertas de Poniente, por no hablar de todas las vigas de todas las posadas entre Dorne y el Cuello. En Antigua lo hab\u00eda medido Aemon, el hermano de Egg, y le hab\u00eda dado cinco codos y un dedo, pero de eso hac\u00eda un a\u00f1o. Quiz\u00e1 desde entonces hubiera crecido. Como dec\u00eda el viejo, una de las cosas que a Dunk se le daban en verdad bien era crecer.\n\nRegres\u00f3 junto a Trueno y mont\u00f3 de nuevo en \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Egg, vuelve a Tiesa con el vino mientras yo averiguo qu\u00e9 pas\u00f3 con el agua.\n\n\u2014No es nada raro que se sequen los arroyos \u2014dijo Bennis.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo quiero echar un vistazo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfComo el que echaste debajo de la piedra? Te aconsejo que no gires demasiadas, don necio. Nunca se sabe qu\u00e9 pueda salir. En Tiesa tenemos buenos camastros de paja. Casi todos los d\u00edas hay huevos y no se hace gran cosa aparte de o\u00edr los desvar\u00edos de ser In\u00fatil sobre lo importante que fue. Yo te aconsejo que lo dejes ser. El arroyo se sec\u00f3 y punto.\n\nSi algo era Dunk, era obcecado.\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace espera el vino \u2014le dijo a Egg\u2014. Dile a d\u00f3nde fui.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed lo har\u00e9, ser.\n\nEgg dio un jal\u00f3n a la cuerda de Maestre. La mula agit\u00f3 las orejas pero se puso de inmediato en marcha. \"Quiere quitarse del lomo las barricas de vino.\" Dunk no se lo pod\u00eda reprochar.\n\nCuando hab\u00eda agua en el arroyo, corr\u00eda hacia el norte y el este, as\u00ed que Dunk encamin\u00f3 a Trueno hacia el sur y el oeste. Antes de haber recorrido doce varas, Bennis lleg\u00f3 a su lado.\n\n\u2014Mejor que me cerciore de que no te ahorquen \u2014se meti\u00f3 otra hoja de hojamarga en la boca\u2014. A partir de aquel grupo de sauces toda la orilla derecha es territorio de ara\u00f1as.\n\n\u2014Me quedar\u00e9 en este lado.\n\nNo quer\u00eda problemas con la se\u00f1ora de Fosa Fr\u00eda. En Tiesa se o\u00edan malas cosas sobre ella. La llamaban la Viuda Escarlata por los maridos que hab\u00eda sepultado. El viejo Sam Encorvado dec\u00eda que era una bruja, una envenenadora y otras cosas peores. Dos a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s hab\u00eda enviado a sus caballeros del otro lado del r\u00edo para arrestar a un hombre de Osgrey al que acusaba de robarle ovejas. \"Cuando fue mi se\u00f1or a Fosa Fr\u00eda para reclamarle, le dijeron que buscara al fondo del foso\", explic\u00f3 Sam. \"La dama hab\u00eda metido al pobre Dake en un saco de rocas, lo hab\u00eda cosido y lo hab\u00eda hundido. Eso fue despu\u00e9s de que ser Eustace tomara a su servicio a ser Bennis para despejar sus tierras de ara\u00f1as.\"\n\nBajo el sol abrasador, Trueno iba despacio pero sin desfallecer. El cielo era de un azul inmisericorde, sin rastro de nubes. El sinuoso curso del arroyo rodeaba mont\u00edculos rocosos y sauces solitarios, entre \u00e1ridas y pardas lomas y campos de cereales muertos o agonizantes. A una hora del puente, r\u00edo arriba, se encontraron al borde del peque\u00f1o bosque de Osgrey, que recib\u00eda el nombre de bosque Cerrad\u00f3n. Visto de lejos, su color verde resultaba acogedor, y llen\u00f3 la cabeza de Dunk con visiones de valles umbr\u00edos y riachuelos rumorosos. No obstante, al llegar a los primeros \u00e1rboles vieron que eran finos y esmirriados, con las ramas ca\u00eddas. Algunos de los grandes robles estaban perdiendo sus hojas y la mitad de los pinos se hab\u00eda vuelto tan parda como ser Bennis, con los troncos rodeados por anillos de pinaza seca. \"Cada vez peor\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Bastar\u00eda una chispa para que todo ardiera como yesca.\"\n\nDe momento, sin embargo, el denso sotobosque por el que flu\u00eda el Jaquel segu\u00eda siendo una mara\u00f1a de zarzas, ortigas, brezo y brotes de sauce. En vez de abrirse paso por ella, cruzaron el lecho seco del arroyo hasta la orilla de Fosa Fr\u00eda, que hab\u00eda sido talada para su uso como pasto. Entre hierbas marrones y resecas y mustias flores silvestres pac\u00edan unas cuantas ovejas de morro negro.\n\n\u2014Nunca vi a un animal m\u00e1s tonto que las ovejas \u2014coment\u00f3 ser Bennis\u2014. \u00bfCrees que est\u00e1s emparentado con ellas, necio?\n\nComo Dunk no contestaba, solt\u00f3 otra vez su risa de gallina.\n\nMedia legua m\u00e1s al sur hallaron la presa.\n\nComo tal no era muy grande, aunque parec\u00eda resistente. Alguien hab\u00eda tendido entre las dos orillas dos firmes barricadas de madera hechas con troncos sin descortezar. El espacio de en medio estaba lleno de rocas y tierra, en una mezcla bien prensada. Al otro lado de la presa el agua sub\u00eda por las orillas y alimentaba una acequia cavada en los campos de lady Webber. Dunk se subi\u00f3 a los estribos para observar mejor. El reflejo del sol en el agua delataba decenas de canales de menor tama\u00f1o que sal\u00edan hacia todas partes como una telara\u00f1a. \"Nos est\u00e1n robando el arroyo.\" Se indign\u00f3 mucho al verlo, sobre todo cuando comprendi\u00f3 que los \u00e1rboles proceder\u00edan con seguridad del bosque Cerrad\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Ya ves lo que hiciste, necio \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. No te pod\u00edas conformar con que se secara el arroyo. No. Quiz\u00e1 esto empiece con agua, pero acabar\u00e1 con sangre. La tuya y la m\u00eda, sin duda \u2014el caballero pardo desenvain\u00f3 su espada\u2014. En fin, ya no hay remedio. Ah\u00ed tienes a los tres veces malditos cavadores. M\u00e1s vale que les metamos algo de miedo en el cuerpo.\n\nY espoleando su caballo sali\u00f3 al galope por la hierba.\n\nDunk no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que seguirlo. Llevaba junto a su cadera la espada de ser Arlan, larga y derecha, de acero de buen temple. \"Si estos cavadores tienen un \u00e1pice de sentido com\u00fan, saldr\u00e1n corriendo.\" Los cascos de Trueno levantaban terrones a su paso.\n\nS\u00f3lo un hombre dej\u00f3 caer su pala al ver aproximarse a los caballeros. Los cavadores eran unos veinte, bajos, altos, viejos, j\u00f3venes, todos tostados por el sol. Cuando Bennis redujo el paso, formaron algo parecido a una fila y se aferraron a sus palas y sus picos.\n\n\u2014Estas tierras son de Fosa Fr\u00eda \u2014dijo uno a pleno pulm\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Y aquel arroyo de Osgrey \u2014Bennis lo se\u00f1al\u00f3 con su espada larga\u2014. \u00bfQui\u00e9n levant\u00f3 esa presa del demonio?\n\n\u2014La hizo el maestre Cerrick \u2014dijo un cavador joven.\n\n\u2014No \u2014puntualiz\u00f3 otro de mayor edad\u2014. El cachorro gris fue se\u00f1alando y diciendo que se hiciera tal y cual cosa, pero nosotros la levantamos.\n\n\u2014Pues a fe que ya pueden desmontarla.\n\nLas miradas de los cavadores eran hoscas y desafiantes. Uno de ellos se sec\u00f3 el sudor de la frente con el dorso de la mano. Nadie dijo nada.\n\n\u2014No tienen muy buen o\u00eddo \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. \u00bfTendr\u00e9 que rasurar alguna oreja? \u00bfCon qui\u00e9n empiezo?\n\n\u2014Estas tierras son de los Webber \u2014era el viejo cavador, escu\u00e1lido, encorvado y terco\u2014. No tienen ning\u00fan derecho a estar aqu\u00ed. Si rasuran alguna oreja, mi se\u00f1ora los ahogar\u00e1 en un saco.\n\nBennis se acerc\u00f3 a caballo.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed no veo a ninguna se\u00f1ora: s\u00f3lo a un campesino respond\u00f3n.\n\nToc\u00f3 el pecho tostado y desnudo del cavador con la punta de la espada, lo justo para que saliera una gota de sangre.\n\n\"Est\u00e1 yendo demasiado lejos.\"\n\n\u2014Deja el acero \u2014le advirti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. No es su culpa. El maestre del que hablan fue el que los puso a trabajar.\n\n\u2014Es para las cosechas, ser \u2014dijo un cavador con orejas de soplillo\u2014. El maestre dijo que se estaban muriendo el trigo y los perales.\n\n\u2014Pues quiz\u00e1 se mueran los perales o quiz\u00e1 lo hagan ustedes.\n\n\u2014No nos asustar\u00e1n con palabras \u2014dijo el viejo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo? \u2014Bennis hizo silbar su espada larga y le abri\u00f3 un tajo desde la oreja hasta la mand\u00edbula\u2014. Dije que o se mueren los perales o se mueren ustedes.\n\nLa sangre del cavador corri\u00f3 muy roja por un lado de su cara.\n\nNo deber\u00eda haberlo hecho. Dunk tuvo que tragarse su ira. Bennis estaba de su lado.\n\n\u2014\u00a1M\u00e1rchense de aqu\u00ed! \u2014les grit\u00f3 a los cavadores\u2014. Regresen al castillo de su se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Corran \u2014los apremi\u00f3 ser Bennis.\n\nTres soltaron las herramientas e hicieron lo que se les ped\u00eda, correr por la hierba, pero otro hombre, moreno y musculoso, levant\u00f3 un pico.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo son dos \u2014dijo.\n\n\u2014Es de tontos pelearse con palas contra espadas, Jorgen \u2014dijo el viejo con la mano en la cara, mientras corr\u00eda la sangre entre sus dedos\u2014. Esto no se acaba aqu\u00ed. Lo dudo mucho.\n\n\u2014Una palabra m\u00e1s y ser\u00e1s t\u00fa el que se acabar\u00e1.\n\n\u2014No te deseamos ning\u00fan mal \u2014dijo Dunk, mirando el rostro ensangrentado del viejo\u2014. S\u00f3lo queremos nuestra agua. D\u00edselo a tu se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Se lo diremos, ser \u2014prometi\u00f3 el moreno sin soltar el pico\u2014. Se lo aseguro.\n\nA su regreso, cortaron por el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n, agradecidos por la escasa sombra que les daban los \u00e1rboles. Aun as\u00ed segu\u00edan achicharr\u00e1ndose. En principio ten\u00eda que haber ciervos en el bosque, pero lo \u00fanico vivo que atisbaron fueron moscas, las cuales zumbaban en torno a la cabeza de Dunk y correteaban por los ojos de Trueno, irritando sin descanso al gran corcel. El aire era inm\u00f3vil, sofocante. \"Al menos en Dorne los d\u00edas eran secos y de noche se levantaba un fr\u00edo que me hac\u00eda tiritar con capa y todo.\" En el Dominio las noches apenas eran m\u00e1s frescas que los d\u00edas, incluso tan al norte.\n\nAl agacharse para no chocar con una rama baja, arranc\u00f3 una hoja y la arrug\u00f3 entre sus dedos. Se le deshizo en la mano como un pergamino de mil a\u00f1os de antig\u00fcedad.\n\n\u2014No hac\u00eda falta herir al viejo \u2014le dijo a Bennis.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo fue un ara\u00f1azo en la mejilla, para que aprenda a dominar la lengua. Deber\u00eda haberle rebanado el pescuezo. El problema es que los dem\u00e1s habr\u00edan huido como conejos y nos habr\u00edamos visto obligados a abatirlos a todos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHabr\u00edas matado a veinte hombres? \u2014dijo Dunk con incredulidad.\n\n\u2014Veintid\u00f3s. Dos m\u00e1s que todos los dedos de tus manos y pies, necio. Habr\u00eda que matarlos a todos. Si no, se ir\u00edan de la lengua \u2014rodearon una trampa\u2014. Deber\u00edamos haberle dicho a ser In\u00fatil que esa meadilla de arroyo suyo no tiene agua por culpa de la sequ\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace. Le habr\u00edas mentido.\n\n\u2014Pues s\u00ed. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no? \u00bfQui\u00e9n le dir\u00eda lo contrario, las moscas? \u2014la sonrisa de Bennis sali\u00f3 babosa y roja\u2014. Ser In\u00fatil s\u00f3lo abandona la torre para ir a ver a los ni\u00f1os por las zarzamoras.\n\n\u2014Una espada juramentada le debe la verdad a su se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Hay de verdades a verdades, necio. Algunas no sirven \u2014escupi\u00f3\u2014. Las sequ\u00edas las hicieron los dioses, y con los dioses no hay mierda que valga. En cambio, la Viuda Escarlata... Como le digamos al In\u00fatil que el agua se la quit\u00f3 aquella perra, se sentir\u00e1 obligado por su honor a recuperarla. Espera y lo ver\u00e1s. Pensar\u00e1 que algo se necesita hacer.\n\n\u2014Y es cierto. Nuestro pueblo llano necesita el agua para sus cosechas.\n\n\u2014\u00bf\"Nuestro\" pueblo llano? \u2014ser Bennis rebuzn\u00f3 de la risa\u2014. \u00bfMe sorprendi\u00f3 cagando el momento en que ser In\u00fatil te nombr\u00f3 heredero? \u00bfDe cu\u00e1ntos hombres calculas que se compone ese pueblo llano tuyo? \u00bfDiez? Contando al hijo tonto de Jeyne la Bizca, el que no sabe por qu\u00e9 punta sujetar el hacha. Hazlos a todos caballeros y tendremos la mitad que la Viuda, sin contar a sus escuderos, arqueros y dem\u00e1s. Necesitar\u00edas las manos y pies para contarlos a todos, y tambi\u00e9n los dedos de tu mozo calvo.\n\n\u2014Yo no necesito dedos para contar.\n\nDunk estaba harto del calor, las moscas y la compa\u00f1\u00eda del caballero pardo. \"Aunque haya cabalgado con ser Arlan, fue hace muchos a\u00f1os. Se ha vuelto ruin, falso y cobarde.\" Clav\u00f3 los talones en su caballo y se adelant\u00f3 al trote para alejarse del hedor.\n\nTiesa s\u00f3lo era un castillo por cortes\u00eda. Pese a hallarse airosamente encaramada en una pe\u00f1a y ser visible desde varias leguas a la redonda, no pasaba de una torre vig\u00eda. Pocos siglos atr\u00e1s un derrumbe parcial hab\u00eda impuesto reformas que explicaban que en las caras norte y oeste la piedra de encima de las ventanas fuera gris clara, y la de abajo, la antigua, negra. Durante la reparaci\u00f3n se hab\u00edan a\u00f1adido torrecillas al tejado, pero s\u00f3lo en los lados rehechos. En las otras dos esquinas se agazapaban antiguas g\u00e1rgolas de piedra tan castigadas por los elementos, que costaba ver su antigua hechura. El tejado de madera de pino era plano, pero muy alabeado y propenso a las goteras.\n\nDesde el pie del risco hasta la torre hab\u00eda un camino sinuoso y tan estrecho que s\u00f3lo se pod\u00eda circular en fila de a uno. Durante la subida Dunk se puso a la cabeza, seguido a poca distancia por Bennis. M\u00e1s arriba divis\u00f3 a Egg en un saliente, con su sombrero blando de paja.\n\nSe detuvieron frente al peque\u00f1o establo de adobe y ca\u00f1as que al pie de la torre quedaba medio oculto por una masa amorfa de musgo morado. En una de las cuadras estaba el caballo castrado del viejo, al lado de Maestre. Al parecer Egg y Sam Encorvado hab\u00edan llevado dentro el vino. Por el patio se paseaban varias gallinas. Egg corri\u00f3 al encuentro de su se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAveriguaste la causa de lo del arroyo?\n\n\u2014La Viuda Escarlata hizo una represa \u2014Dunk desmont\u00f3 y entreg\u00f3 las riendas a Egg\u2014. No lo dejes beber mucho de un tir\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014No, ser.\n\n\u2014Mozo \u2014dijo ser Bennis en voz alta\u2014, tambi\u00e9n puedes llevarte mi caballo.\n\nEgg lo mir\u00f3 con insolencia.\n\n\u2014No soy tu escudero.\n\n\"Cualquier d\u00eda de \u00e9stos sale mal parado por culpa de esa lengua\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Si no te llevas su caballo, s\u00ed te llevar\u00e1s un golpe en la oreja.\n\nEgg puso cara de ofendido, pero hizo lo que le mandaban. Sin embargo, cuando quiso tomar la brida, ser Bennis carraspe\u00f3 y lanz\u00f3 un escupitajo. Un rojo y brillante gargajo aterriz\u00f3 entre los dedos de los pies del ni\u00f1o, que clav\u00f3 una mirada glacial en el caballero pardo.\n\n\u2014Me escupiste en el pie, ser.\n\nBennis se ape\u00f3 con torpeza del caballo.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es, y la pr\u00f3xima vez ser\u00e1 en la cara. No pienso consentir que me hables as\u00ed.\n\nDunk vio la mirada de rabia del muchacho.\n\n\u2014Oc\u00fapate de los caballos, Egg \u2014dijo antes de que la cosa fuera a mayores\u2014. Debemos hablar con ser Eustace.\n\nLa \u00fanica entrada a Tiesa era una puerta de roble y hierro situada quince codos por encima de ellos. Los primeros escalones eran bloques de piedra negra lisa, tan gastada que estaba hundida en el centro. M\u00e1s arriba daban paso a una empinada escalera de madera que en momentos conflictivos se pod\u00eda retirar a modo de puente levadizo. Dunk ahuyent\u00f3 las gallinas y subi\u00f3 de dos en dos escalones.\n\nTiesa era mayor de lo que aparentaba. Sus profundas bodegas y s\u00f3tanos ocupaban gran parte del monte donde se encumbraba. Ten\u00eda cuatro plantas en superficie, las dos de arriba con ventanas y balcones, y las dos de abajo s\u00f3lo troneras. En el interior hac\u00eda menos calor, pero era tal la oscuridad que Dunk necesit\u00f3 esperar a que se le acostumbrara la vista. Junto al hogar, la mujer de Sam Encorvado barr\u00eda la ceniza de rodillas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer Eustace est\u00e1 arriba o abajo? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Arriba, ser \u2014la vieja estaba tan encorvada, que la cabeza le quedaba por debajo de los hombros\u2014. Acaba de volver de visitar a los ni\u00f1os en las zarzamoras.\n\nLos ni\u00f1os eran los hijos de Eustace Osgrey: Edwyn, Harrold y Addam. Edwyn y Harrold hab\u00edan sido caballeros, y Addam un joven escudero. Hab\u00edan muerto quince a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s en el campo de Hierba Roja, al final de la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro. \"Tuvieron una buena muerte, luchando por su rey con valent\u00eda\", le hab\u00eda explicado ser Eustace a Dunk. \"Los traje a casa y los enterr\u00e9 entre las zarzamoras.\" Tambi\u00e9n era donde estaba enterrada su mujer. Cada vez que el viejo abr\u00eda una nueva barrica de vino, bajaba de la pe\u00f1a para verter sobre cada uno de sus hijos una libaci\u00f3n. \"\u00a1Por el rey!\", exclamaba antes de beber.\n\nEl dormitorio de ser Eustace ocupaba la cuarta planta de la torre, justo encima de sus aposentos. Dunk sab\u00eda que era donde se le pod\u00eda encontrar, ocupado entre arcones y toneles. En los gruesos muros grises de los aposentos colgaban armas herrumbrosas y estandartes capturados, trofeos de batallas libradas hac\u00eda varios siglos y que ya no recordaba nadie m\u00e1s que ser Eustace. La mitad de los estandartes estaban invadidos por el moho. Todos hab\u00edan perdido sus colores vivos, reducidos a grises y verdes, y a todos los hab\u00eda recubierto el polvo.\n\nCuando Dunk apareci\u00f3 por la escalera, ser Eustace frotaba un escudo roto con un trapo para quitar la suciedad. Detr\u00e1s de Dunk lleg\u00f3 Bennis, fragante. Los ojos del anciano caballero parecieron iluminarse un poco al ver a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Mi buen gigante \u2014declar\u00f3\u2014, y el valiente ser Bennis. Vengan a ver esto. Lo encontr\u00e9 al fondo de aquel ba\u00fal. Un tesoro, aunque terriblemente abandonado.\n\nEra un escudo, o los escasos restos de \u00e9l. Tajo a tajo hab\u00eda quedado reducido a la mitad. Lo dem\u00e1s estaba gris y astillado. El borde de hierro era pura herrumbre y la madera se notaba carcomida. A\u00fan conservaba algunas escamas de pintura, pero demasiado pocas para indicar la presencia de un emblema.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk. Hac\u00eda siglos que los Osgrey no eran se\u00f1ores, pero a ser Eustace lo complac\u00eda ser llamado as\u00ed, como un eco de las pasadas glorias de su linaje\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 es?\n\n\u2014El escudo del Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n \u2014el anciano frot\u00f3 el borde, que desprendi\u00f3 algo de herrumbre\u2014. Ser Wilbert Osgrey lo llevaba en la batalla el d\u00eda de su muerte. Seguro que conocen la historia.\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014, la verdad es que no. \u00bfEl Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n, dice? \u00bfEra un enano o qu\u00e9?\n\n\u2014Todo lo contrario \u2014al viejo caballero le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. Ser Wilbert era un var\u00f3n alto y fornido. Y un gran caballero. El nombre se lo pusieron en su ni\u00f1ez, por ser el menor de cinco hermanos. En aquellos tiempos a\u00fan hab\u00eda siete reyes en los Siete Reinos y a menudo guerreaban entre s\u00ed Altojard\u00edn y la Roca. Por aquel entonces nos gobernaban los reyes verdes, los Gardener. Eran de la misma sangre que el viejo Garth Mano Verde, y su estandarte real era una mano verde sobre un campo blanco. Gyles el Tercero llev\u00f3 sus estandartes al este para guerrear contra el rey de la tormenta, y todos los hermanos de Wilbert lo acompa\u00f1aron, ya que en esos tiempos el le\u00f3n jaquelado flameaba junto a la mano verde siempre que el rey del Dominio tomaba las armas.\n\n\"Empero, sucedi\u00f3 que en ausencia del rey Gyles, el de la Roca vio llegada la oportunidad de hacerse con una parte del Dominio, de modo que reuni\u00f3 a una hueste de hombres del oeste y se lanz\u00f3 contra nosotros. Como los Osgrey eran alguaciles de la Frontera Norte, el Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n tuvo que salir a su encuentro. Tengo para m\u00ed que a la cabeza de los Lannister iba el cuarto rey Lancel, a menos que fuera el quinto. Ser Wilbert cerr\u00f3 el camino al rey Lancel y le rog\u00f3 que se detuviera. 'No vaya m\u00e1s lejos', le dijo. 'Aqu\u00ed no se le quiere. Le proh\u00edbo que pise el Dominio.' No obstante, Lannister mand\u00f3 avanzar a todos sus estandartes.\n\n\"Medio d\u00eda dur\u00f3 el combate entre el le\u00f3n dorado y el jaquelado. Lannister iba armado de una espada valyria, con la que ning\u00fan acero com\u00fan es capaz de competir, as\u00ed que el Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n se vio en apuros, con el escudo destrozado. Al final, sangrando por una docena de graves heridas, y con su propia espada rota en la mano, se arroj\u00f3 contra su enemigo. Dicen los bardos que el rey Lancel casi lo parti\u00f3 en dos de un solo tajo, pero durante su agon\u00eda el Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n encontr\u00f3 un hueco en el brazal de la armadura del rey y clav\u00f3 su daga en \u00e9l. Cuando su rey muri\u00f3, los hombres del oeste se batieron en retirada y as\u00ed se salv\u00f3 el Dominio.\"\n\nEl anciano acarici\u00f3 el escudo roto con la misma ternura que a un ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014grazn\u00f3 Bennis\u2014, en estos tiempos no nos ir\u00eda mal un hombre as\u00ed. Dunk y yo fuimos a echarle un vistazo a su arroyo, mi se\u00f1or. Est\u00e1 m\u00e1s seco que un hueso, y no por la sequ\u00eda.\n\nEl anciano dej\u00f3 el escudo a un lado.\n\n\u2014Cu\u00e9ntenme.\n\nTom\u00f3 asiento y les indic\u00f3 que hicieran lo propio. El caballero pardo se embarc\u00f3 en su narraci\u00f3n. Ser Eustace lo escuchaba con atenci\u00f3n, la barbilla en alto y los hombros erguidos, tieso como una lanza.\n\nEn su juventud ser Eustace Osgrey deb\u00eda de haber sido la viva imagen de la caballer\u00eda, alto, ancho y bien parecido. El tiempo y las penas lo hab\u00edan azotado sin piedad, pero \u00e9l no se dejaba doblegar y segu\u00eda siendo un hombre de osamenta recia, anchos hombros y pecho fornido, con unas facciones fuertes y afiladas como las de una vieja \u00e1guila. Su pelo, muy corto, era ya blanco como la leche; sin embargo, el poblado mostacho que le tapaba la boca conservaba un color gris ceniza, el mismo que sus cejas, bajo las que unos ojos de un gris algo m\u00e1s claro se mostraban pre\u00f1ados de tristeza.\n\nY m\u00e1s tristes a\u00fan parecieron cuando Bennis habl\u00f3 de la presa.\n\n\u2014Hace por lo menos mil a\u00f1os que a aquel arroyo se le conoce como Jaquel \u2014dijo el anciano\u2014. De ni\u00f1o pesqu\u00e9 en \u00e9l, y como yo todos mis hijos. En d\u00edas calurosos como hoy, a Alysanne le gustaba chapotear en los baj\u00edos \u2014Alysanne era su hija, fallecida en primavera\u2014. A orillas del Jaquel fue donde bes\u00e9 por primera vez a una muchacha. Era prima m\u00eda, la menor de las hijas de mi t\u00edo, de los Osgrey de lago Frondoso. Ahora ya no queda ninguno, ni siquiera ella \u2014le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. Esto no se puede tolerar, se\u00f1ores. No se quedar\u00e1 mi agua. No se quedar\u00e1 mi agua jaquelada.\n\n\u2014La presa est\u00e1 bien construida, mi se\u00f1or \u2014le advirti\u00f3 ser Bennis\u2014. Entre ser Dunk y yo no podr\u00edamos echarla abajo en una hora, ni siquiera con la ayuda del ni\u00f1o calvo. Necesitaremos cuerdas, picos, hachas y una docena de hombres; y me refiero s\u00f3lo al trabajo, no al combate.\n\nSer Eustace se qued\u00f3 mirando el escudo del Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n.\n\nDunk carraspe\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Por cierto, mi se\u00f1or, al encontrar a los cavadores...\n\n\u2014Dunk, no molestes a nuestro se\u00f1or con nader\u00edas \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Lo \u00fanico que hice fue darle una lecci\u00f3n a un tonto.\n\nSer Eustace alz\u00f3 la vista con brusquedad.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 tipo de lecci\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014Con la espada, por decir algo: un moret\u00f3n en la mejilla, pero nada m\u00e1s, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nEl anciano caballero lo mir\u00f3 un largo rato.\n\n\u2014No... no fue muy prudente, ser. Aquella mujer tiene un coraz\u00f3n de ara\u00f1a. Asesin\u00f3 a tres de sus maridos y todos sus hermanos murieron en pa\u00f1ales. Eran cinco. O acaso seis. Ahora mismo no me acuerdo. Se interpon\u00edan entre ella y el castillo. No dudo que despellejar\u00eda a cualquier campesino que incurriera en su desagrado, pero que hayas sido t\u00fa el que hiri\u00f3 a uno... No, es un insulto que no tolerar\u00e1. No te enga\u00f1es. Vendr\u00e1 por ti como vino por Lem.\n\n\u2014Dake, mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo ser Bennis\u2014. Con su venia, se\u00f1or m\u00edo, usted lo conoci\u00f3 y yo no, pero se llamaba Dake.\n\n\u2014Si as\u00ed lo prefiere, se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, puedo ir a Sotodeoro y explicarle a lord Rowan lo de la presa.\n\nSe trataba del viejo se\u00f1or feudal de ser Eustace, del cual tambi\u00e9n emanaban las tierras de la Viuda Escarlata.\n\n\u2014\u00bfRowan? No, con \u00e9l no vayan en busca de ayuda. La hermana de lord Rowan se cas\u00f3 con Wendell, el primo de lord Wyman; es decir que est\u00e1 emparentado con la Viuda Escarlata, y por si fuera poco no me quiere bien. Ser Duncan, ma\u00f1ana en la ma\u00f1ana deber\u00e1s recorrer todos mis pueblos para reclutar a todos los hombres sanos y en edad de combatir. Soy viejo, pero no estoy muerto. \u00a1Pronto esa mujer descubrir\u00e1 que el le\u00f3n jaquelado a\u00fan tiene garras!\n\n\"Dos\", pens\u00f3 Dunk con des\u00e1nimo, \"y una de ellas soy yo.\"\n\nEn las tierras de ser Eustace hab\u00eda tres aldeas que en ning\u00fan caso pasaban de ser un pu\u00f1ado de chozas con sus rediles de ovejas y cerdos. La mayor contaba con un septo de una sola habitaci\u00f3n con techo de paja, en cuyas paredes se suced\u00edan toscas im\u00e1genes al carb\u00f3n de los Siete. Mudge, un viejo porquero jorobado que una vez hab\u00eda estado en Antigua, presid\u00eda las devociones cada siete d\u00edas. Dos veces al a\u00f1o ven\u00eda un aut\u00e9ntico sept\u00f3n para perdonar los pecados en nombre de la Madre. El pueblo llano se alegraba de la absoluci\u00f3n, mas no por ello dejaba de odiar las visitas del sept\u00f3n, debido a la obligaci\u00f3n de darle de comer.\n\nNo parecieron m\u00e1s contentos al ver a Dunk y Egg. Pese a que Dunk era conocido en las aldeas al menos como el nuevo caballero de ser Eustace, no se le ofreci\u00f3 ni un triste vaso de agua.\n\nComo la mayor\u00eda de los hombres estaba en el campo, fueron sobre todo mujeres y ni\u00f1os los que se asomaron a las chozas, junto con unos pocos abuelos demasiado achacosos para trabajar. Egg portaba el estandarte de los Osgrey, el le\u00f3n jaquelado verde y oro, rampante sobre campo blanco.\n\n\u2014Venimos de Tiesa para hacer un llamamiento en nombre de ser Eustace \u2014dijo Dunk a los aldeanos\u2014. Se ordena a todo var\u00f3n sano de entre quince y cincuenta a\u00f1os que acuda a la torre en la ma\u00f1ana.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs la guerra? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 una mujer delgada con dos ni\u00f1os escondidos en sus faldas y un beb\u00e9 pegado a su seno\u2014. \u00bfRegres\u00f3 el drag\u00f3n negro?\n\n\u2014Esto no tiene que ver con dragones negros ni rojos \u2014le dijo Dunk\u2014. Es entre el le\u00f3n jaquelado y las ara\u00f1as. La Viuda Escarlata les ha quitado el agua.\n\nLa mujer asinti\u00f3, aunque hizo un gesto de recelo cuando Egg se quit\u00f3 el sombrero para abanicarse la cara.\n\n\u2014Este ni\u00f1o no tiene pelo. \u00bfEst\u00e1 enfermo?\n\n\u2014Me rap\u00e9 \u2014dijo Egg.\n\nVolvi\u00f3 a ponerse el sombrero y, mientras hac\u00eda girar la cabeza de Maestre, se alej\u00f3 despacio.\n\n\"El muchacho anda irritable hoy.\" Casi no hab\u00eda abierto la boca desde el principio del viaje. Dunk toc\u00f3 a Trueno con la espuela y no tard\u00f3 en dar alcance a la mula.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s enfadado porque ayer no me puse de tu lado contra ser Bennis? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 a su arisco escudero de camino a la siguiente aldea\u2014. A m\u00ed me gusta tan poco como a ti, pero es caballero y tu obligaci\u00f3n es dirigirte a \u00e9l con cortes\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Escudero lo soy de ti, no de \u00e9l \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Es sucio, malhablado y me pellizca.\n\n\"Si tuviera la menor idea de qui\u00e9n eres, preferir\u00eda mearse encima a tocarte con un solo dedo.\"\n\n\u2014A m\u00ed tambi\u00e9n me pellizcaba antes.\n\nDunk lo hab\u00eda olvidado, hasta que se lo recordaron las palabras de Egg. Ser Bennis y ser Arlan hab\u00edan formado parte de un grupo de caballeros contratados por un mercader de Dorne para garantizar su seguridad entre Lannisport y el Paso del Pr\u00edncipe. Entonces Dunk no era mayor que Egg, aunque s\u00ed m\u00e1s alto. \"Me pellizcaba con tal fuerza bajo el brazo que me sal\u00edan moretones. Sus dedos parec\u00edan tenazas de hierro, aunque nunca se lo dije a ser Arlan.\" Uno de los otros caballeros hab\u00eda desaparecido cerca de Septo de Piedra y corri\u00f3 el rumor de que Bennis lo hab\u00eda destripado en una pelea.\n\n\u2014Si vuelve a pellizcarte me lo dices y no lo har\u00e1 m\u00e1s. Mientras tanto no te cuesta mucho cuidar su caballo.\n\n\u2014Alguien debe cuidarlo \u2014convino Egg\u2014. Bennis nunca lo cepilla. Tampoco limpia su establo. \u00a1Si ni siquiera le ha puesto nombre!\n\n\u2014Hay caballeros que no ponen nombre a sus caballos \u2014explic\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. As\u00ed no sufren tanto cuando los pierden en combate. Siempre se pueden conseguir caballos, pero es duro perder a un fiel amigo \u2014\"Al menos era lo que dec\u00eda el viejo, aunque era el \u00faltimo en seguir sus consejos: a todos sus caballos les hab\u00eda puesto uno.\" Dunk tambi\u00e9n\u2014. Veremos cu\u00e1ntos hombres aparecen en la torre... Ya sean cinco o cincuenta, tambi\u00e9n tendr\u00e1s que hacerlo por ellos.\n\nEgg se mostr\u00f3 indignado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTendr\u00e9 que servir al pueblo llano?\n\n\u2014No, servir no, sino ayudar. Debemos convertirlos en guerreros \u2014\"Si la Viuda nos da tiempo\"\u2014. Si nos sonr\u00eden los dioses, habr\u00e1 algunos que ya hayan combatido antes, pero la mayor\u00eda estar\u00e1n m\u00e1s verdes que la hierba en verano y m\u00e1s avezados en el uso de la azada que en la espada. Aun as\u00ed es posible que alg\u00fan d\u00eda nuestras vidas dependan de ellos. \u00bfQu\u00e9 edad ten\u00edas al tomar una espada por primera vez?\n\n\u2014Peque\u00f1o, ser. Era una espada de madera.\n\n\u2014Pues tambi\u00e9n los hijos del pueblo llano pelean con espadas de madera, aunque las suyas sean palos y ramas rotas. Egg, quiz\u00e1 a ti te parezcan unos necios. No conocer\u00e1n por su debido nombre las partes de la armadura ni las armas de las grandes casas. Tampoco sabr\u00e1n cu\u00e1l rey aboli\u00f3 el derecho de pernada del se\u00f1or... pero tr\u00e1talos de igual modo con respeto. Eres un escudero de noble linaje, pero no dejas de ser un ni\u00f1o. La mayor\u00eda ser\u00e1n hombres hechos y derechos. Los hombres poseen su orgullo, por muy humilde que sea su origen. En sus aldeas, t\u00fa parecer\u00edas tan perdido y tonto como ellos. Si lo dudas, ve a arar un campo y a esquilar una oveja, y dime los nombres de todas las malas hierbas y las flores silvestres del bosque Cerrad\u00f3n.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o lo pens\u00f3 un momento.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda ense\u00f1arles los emblemas de las grandes casas, y que la reina Alysanne convenci\u00f3 al rey Jaehaerys de abolir el derecho de pernada. Ellos podr\u00edan ense\u00f1arme cu\u00e1les son las mejores hierbas para preparar venenos y si las bayas verdes son comestibles.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00edan, s\u00ed \u2014reconoci\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, pero antes de llegar al rey Jaehaerys m\u00e1s vale que nos ayudes a que aprendan a usar la lanza. Y no comas nada que no se coma Maestre.\n\nAl d\u00eda siguiente lleg\u00f3 a Tiesa una docena de aspirantes a guerreros, que se agruparon entre las gallinas. Hab\u00eda uno demasiado mayor y dos demasiado j\u00f3venes. Un chico flaco result\u00f3 ser una chica flaca. Dunk envi\u00f3 a los cuatro a sus aldeas, con lo cual quedaron ocho: tres Wat, dos Will, un Lem, un Pate y el tonto de la aldea, Rob el Grande. \"Menuda tropa\", no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que pensar. No se ve\u00eda ni rastro de los robustos y apuestos campesinos que conquistaban a damas de alta cuna en las canciones. Cada hombre era m\u00e1s sucio que el anterior. Lem no bajaba ni por asomo de los cincuenta a\u00f1os. Pat ten\u00eda los ojos llorosos. Eran los dos \u00fanicos con experiencia en el combate. Ambos hab\u00edan acompa\u00f1ado a ser Eustace y sus hijos en la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro. Los otros seis estaban tan verdes como hab\u00eda temido Dunk. Los ocho ten\u00edan piojos. Dos de los Wat eran hermanos.\n\n\u2014Supongo que su madre no conoc\u00eda ning\u00fan otro nombre \u2014dijo Bennis con una risa gallin\u00e1cea.\n\nEn lo que a armas respectaba, hab\u00edan tra\u00eddo una guada\u00f1a, tres azadones, un cuchillo viejo y unos cuantos garrotes de madera muy resistentes. Lem ten\u00eda un palo afilado que servir\u00eda de lanza y uno de los Will reconoci\u00f3 ser buen lanzador de piedras.\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014, ahora ya tenemos una maldita catapulta.\n\nA partir de entonces se le conoci\u00f3 como Cata.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAlguno sabe usar el arco largo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nArrastraron los pies por el suelo, mientras las gallinas picoteaban alrededor.\n\nAl final contest\u00f3 Pate, el de los ojos llorosos.\n\n\u2014Perdone, ser, es que el se\u00f1or no nos permite tenerlos. Los ciervos de Osgrey son para los leones jaquelados, no para los de nuestra condici\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNos dar\u00e1n espadas, yelmos y cotas? \u2014quiso saber el m\u00e1s joven de los tres Wat.\n\n\u2014Por supuesto que s\u00ed \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014, en cuanto maten a uno de los malditos caballeros de la Viuda y dejen su cad\u00e1ver desnudo. Y no olviden meter la mano en el culo de su caballo, que es donde encontrar\u00e1n su dinero.\n\nPellizc\u00f3 al joven Wat por debajo del brazo hasta hacerlo gritar de dolor. Despu\u00e9s se los llev\u00f3 a todos al bosque Cerrad\u00f3n, a cortar lanzas.\n\nVolvieron con ocho endurecidas al fuego, de muy desigual longitud, y varios escudos rudimentarios, hechos con ramas trenzadas. Tambi\u00e9n ser Bennis se hab\u00eda hecho una lanza, con la que les ense\u00f1\u00f3 a atacar con la punta y esquivar con el astil. Tambi\u00e9n d\u00f3nde aplicar la punta para matar a alguien.\n\n\u2014Soy del parecer de que lo mejor es la barriga y el cuello \u2014se golpe\u00f3 el pecho con el pu\u00f1o\u2014. Aqu\u00ed dentro est\u00e1 el coraz\u00f3n, que tambi\u00e9n sirve. El problema es que est\u00e1 detr\u00e1s de las costillas. La barriga es muy blanda. Destripar es lento pero seguro. No s\u00e9 de ning\u00fan hombre que haya sobrevivido a que se le salieran las tripas. Si alg\u00fan tonto les da la espalda, metan la punta entre los omoplatos o atravi\u00e9senle el ri\u00f1\u00f3n, que est\u00e1 aqu\u00ed. Cuando hieres a alguien en el ri\u00f1\u00f3n no sobrevive mucho tiempo.\n\nLa presencia de tres Wat en el grupo daba pie a confusiones siempre que Bennis intentaba explicarles qu\u00e9 hacer.\n\n\u2014Deber\u00edamos ponerles nombres de aldea, ser \u2014propuso Egg\u2014, como ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, su antiguo se\u00f1or.\n\nBuena idea, si no fuera porque las aldeas en cuesti\u00f3n tambi\u00e9n carec\u00edan de nombre...\n\n\u2014Entonces \u2014dijo Egg\u2014 podr\u00edamos llamarlos por lo que cultivan, ser.\n\nUna aldea estaba entre campos de alubias, otra cultivaba sobre todo cebada y la tercera hileras de coles, zanahorias, cebollas, nabos y melones. Como nadie quer\u00eda ser Col o Nabo, el \u00faltimo grupo recibi\u00f3 el nombre de Melones. Al final hab\u00eda cuatro Cebadas, dos Melones y dos Alubias. Como los dos hermanos Wat eran Cebadas, se necesitaba otra distinci\u00f3n. Cuando el menor coment\u00f3 que una vez se hab\u00eda ca\u00eddo en el pozo de la aldea, Bennis le puso el apodo de Wat al Agua. As\u00ed qued\u00f3. Estaban encantados de recibir \"nombres de se\u00f1or\", salvo Rob el Grande, que al parecer era incapaz de recordar si era Alubia o Cebada.\n\nUna vez que todos tuvieron nombre y lanza, ser Eustace sali\u00f3 de Tiesa para dirigirles unas palabras. El anciano caballero se coloc\u00f3 ante la puerta de la torre con sus mallas y placas, bajo una larga sobreveste de lana que el tiempo hab\u00eda vuelto m\u00e1s amarilla que blanca. Llevaba cosido por delante y por detr\u00e1s el le\u00f3n jaquelado, en peque\u00f1os recuadros verdes y dorados.\n\n\u2014Muchachos \u2014dijo\u2014, todos se acordar\u00e1n de Dake. La Viuda Escarlata lo meti\u00f3 en un saco y lo ahog\u00f3. Le quit\u00f3 la vida y ahora se cree que tambi\u00e9n nos quitar\u00e1 el agua del Jaquel que alimenta nuestros campos... \u00a1No lo har\u00e1! \u2014levant\u00f3 la espada sobre la cabeza\u2014. \u00a1Por Osgrey! \u2014dijo con voz estent\u00f3rea\u2014. \u00a1Por Tiesa!\n\n\u2014\u00a1Osgrey! \u2014repiti\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nEgg y los reclutas retomaron su grito.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Osgrey! \u00a1Osgrey! \u00a1Por Tiesa!\n\nDunk y Bennis sometieron a instrucci\u00f3n a la peque\u00f1a compa\u00f1\u00eda, entre cerdos y gallinas, mientras ser Eustace observaba desde arriba, en el balc\u00f3n. Sam Encorvado hab\u00eda rellenado de paja sucia algunos sacos viejos, que se convirtieron en los enemigos. Los reclutas empezaron a practicar con sus lanzas, entre los berridos de Bennis.\n\n\u2014Claven, retuerzan y rasguen. Claven, retuerzan y rasguen. \u00a1Pero saquen la maldita lanza! No tardar\u00e1n en necesitarla para el siguiente. Demasiado lento, Cata, demasiado lento, maldita sea. Si no puedes hacerlo m\u00e1s deprisa, vuelve a lo tuyo, que es tirar piedras. Lem, aplica tu peso al atacar. As\u00ed me gusta. Meter y sacar, meter y sacar... \u00a1Como si fornicaran! As\u00ed, metiendo y sacando. Destr\u00f3zalos, destr\u00f3zalos, destr\u00f3zalos.\n\nUna vez hechos trizas los sacos por medio millar de lanzadas y desparramada la paja en el suelo, Dunk se quit\u00f3 la armadura y fue en busca de una espada de madera para ver c\u00f3mo se desempe\u00f1aban los hombres con un enemigo menos inerte.\n\nLa respuesta fue que no muy bien. S\u00f3lo Cata result\u00f3 bastante veloz para superar el escudo de Dunk con su lanza, y una sola vez lo consigui\u00f3. Dunk rechazaba una tras otra las torpes y vacilantes estocadas, antes de echar la espada a un lado y arremeter contra el campesino correspondiente. Si su espada hubiera sido de acero en vez de pino, los habr\u00eda matado a todos media docena de veces.\n\n\u2014En cuanto paso de este punto son hombres muertos \u2014les advert\u00eda, mientras lo acentuaba con golpes en piernas y brazos.\n\nAl menos Cata, Lem y Wat al Agua no tardaron mucho en aprender a ceder terreno. Rob el Grande solt\u00f3 la lanza y se fue corriendo. Bennis tuvo que salir en su persecuci\u00f3n y traerlo hecho un mar de l\u00e1grimas. Al final de la tarde todos estaban magullados y amoratados, con nuevas ampollas en las manos callosas tras haber sujetado las lanzas. En cuanto a Dunk, no le qued\u00f3 marca alguna, pero cuando Egg lo ayud\u00f3 a despojarse de su armadura le faltaba poco para ahogarse en su propio sudor.\n\nMientras se pon\u00eda el sol, Dunk se llev\u00f3 a la peque\u00f1a compa\u00f1\u00eda a la bodega y los oblig\u00f3 a ba\u00f1arse, incluso a los que ya lo hab\u00edan hecho el invierno anterior. Despu\u00e9s la mujer de Sam Encorvado les trajo cuencos de estofado con muchas zanahorias, cebollas y cebada. Estaban agotados, pero al o\u00edrlos parec\u00eda que todos fueran el doble de mort\u00edferos que un caballero de la Guardia Real. No ve\u00edan el momento de exhibir su valor. Ser Bennis los azuz\u00f3 a\u00fan m\u00e1s al contarles los placeres de la vida de soldado, sobre todo el pillaje y las mujeres. Los dos veteranos se mostraron de acuerdo. A juzgar por sus palabras, Lem hab\u00eda vuelto de la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro con un cuchillo y unas buenas botas, que si bien le quedaban peque\u00f1as estaban colgadas en la pared de su casa. Pat se deshizo en elogios sobre algunas de las cantineras a las que hab\u00eda conocido al seguir al drag\u00f3n.\n\nSam Encorvado les hab\u00eda preparado ocho camastros de paja en el s\u00f3tano, as\u00ed que despu\u00e9s de llenarse la barriga se fueron todos a dormir. Bennis se qued\u00f3 lo suficiente para lanzarle a Dunk una mirada de asco.\n\n\u2014Ser In\u00fatil deber\u00eda haberse chingado a algunas campesinas m\u00e1s mientras le quedaba algo de savia en esas tristes y viejas pelotas \u2014dijo\u2014. Si entonces hubiera sembrado una buena cosecha de bastardos, tal vez ahora tendr\u00edamos a alg\u00fan soldado.\n\n\u2014No me parecen peores que cualquier otra leva de campesinos.\n\nDunk hab\u00eda marchado junto a unas cuantas mientras era escudero de ser Arlan.\n\n\u2014Aj\u00e1 \u2014dijo ser Bennis\u2014. En quince d\u00edas m\u00e1s quiz\u00e1 logren plantar cara a otro hatajo de campesinos, pero \u00bfa caballeros...?\n\nSacudi\u00f3 la cabeza y escupi\u00f3.\n\nEl pozo de Tiesa estaba en la bodega, en una h\u00fameda estancia con muros de piedra y tierra. Era donde la mujer de Sam Encorvado remojaba, frotaba y vareaba la ropa antes de ponerla a secar en la azotea. El gran lavadero de piedra tambi\u00e9n se usaba para el aseo de las personas. Para ba\u00f1arse hac\u00eda falta sacar agua del pozo cubo a cubo, calentarla en el hogar en una gran caldera de hierro, vaciar esta \u00faltima en la tina y reemprender el proceso entero. Llenar la caldera requer\u00eda cuatro cubos y la tina, tres calderas. Cuando la \u00faltima caldera estaba caliente, el agua de la primera ya se hab\u00eda puesto tibia. A ser Bennis se le hab\u00eda o\u00eddo decir que era un engorro de los mil demonios; por eso estaba infestado de piojos y pulgas, adem\u00e1s de que ol\u00eda a queso podrido.\n\nAl menos Dunk contaba con la ayuda de Egg cuando apretaba la necesidad de un buen ba\u00f1o, como aquella noche. El muchacho sac\u00f3 el agua en un silencio hosco y apenas habl\u00f3 mientras se calentaba.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEgg? \u2014dijo Dunk justo cuando romp\u00eda a hervir la \u00faltima caldera\u2014. \u00bfOcurre algo? \u2014y como Egg no contestaba a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: Ay\u00fadame con la caldera.\n\nLa transportaron entre los dos del fuego a la tina, con cuidado de no salpicarse.\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014, \u00bfqu\u00e9 creen que piensa hacer ser Eustace?\n\n\u2014Derruir la presa y, si los hombres de la Viuda intentan imped\u00edrnoslo, luchar contra ellos.\n\nLo dijo en voz alta para que los chapoteos del agua no taparan su voz. Al verterla levantaban una cortina blanca de vapor que les enrojec\u00eda la cara.\n\n\u2014Sus escudos son de madera trenzada, ser. Podr\u00eda atravesarlos una lanza o la flecha de una ballesta.\n\n\u2014Cuando est\u00e9n listos tal vez les encontremos armaduras.\n\nEra a lo m\u00e1ximo que pod\u00edan aspirar.\n\n\u2014Es posible que los maten, ser. Wat al Agua casi es un ni\u00f1o. Will Cebada piensa aprovechar la pr\u00f3xima visita del sept\u00f3n para casarse, y Rob el Grande no sabe ni diferenciar su pie izquierdo del derecho.\n\nDunk dej\u00f3 caer la caldera vac\u00eda en el suelo de tierra prensada.\n\n\u2014Roger del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda era m\u00e1s joven que Wat al Agua cuando muri\u00f3 en el campo de Hierba Roja. Tambi\u00e9n en las huestes de tu padre hab\u00eda hombres a punto de casarse, y otros que nunca besaron a una chica. Hab\u00eda cientos o miles que no sab\u00edan diferenciar su pie izquierdo del derecho.\n\n\u2014No es lo mismo \u2014insisti\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Era una guerra.\n\n\u2014Y esto tambi\u00e9n. Igual, pero m\u00e1s peque\u00f1a.\n\n\u2014M\u00e1s peque\u00f1a y m\u00e1s tonta, ser.\n\n\u2014Ni t\u00fa ni yo somos nadie para decirlo \u2014contest\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Si los llama ser Eustace, su deber es ir a la guerra... y si es necesario, morir.\n\n\u2014Pues entonces no deber\u00edamos haberles puesto nombres, ser. S\u00f3lo servir\u00e1 para entristecernos m\u00e1s cuando mueran \u2014Egg arrug\u00f3 la cara\u2014. Si us\u00e1ramos mi bota...\n\n\u2014No.\n\nDunk se apoy\u00f3 en una pierna para quitarse la suya.\n\n\u2014Bueno, pero mi padre...\n\n\u2014No.\n\nLa segunda bota corri\u00f3 la misma suerte que la primera.\n\n\u2014Nos...\n\n\u2014No \u2014Dunk se pas\u00f3 por la cabeza su t\u00fanica manchada de sudor, que arroj\u00f3 a Egg\u2014. P\u00eddele a la mujer de Sam Encorvado que me la lave.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ser, pero...\n\n\u2014Dije que no. \u00bfNecesitas un golpe en la oreja para o\u00edr mejor? \u2014se desat\u00f3 los pantalones. Debajo no hab\u00eda nada m\u00e1s que piel. Era un d\u00eda demasiado caluroso para llevar ropa interior\u2014. Est\u00e1 muy bien que te preocupes por Wat y Wat y Wat y los dem\u00e1s, pero la bota est\u00e1 reservada para momentos de necesidad extrema \u2014\"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene lord Cuervo de Sangre? Mil, y uno m\u00e1s\"\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te dijo tu padre cuando te mand\u00f3 como mi escudero?\n\n\u2014Que me rapara o ti\u00f1era el pelo y no le dijera a nadie mi verdadero nombre \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o, a todas luces a disgusto.\n\nHac\u00eda ya un buen a\u00f1o y medio que Egg serv\u00eda a Dunk, aunque hab\u00eda d\u00edas en que parec\u00edan veinte. Juntos hab\u00edan escalado el Paso del Pr\u00edncipe y cruzado las profundas arenas de Dorne, las rojas y las blancas. Una gabarra los hab\u00eda llevado por el Sangreverde a la ciudad de Los Tablones, donde hab\u00edan zarpado para Antigua en la galeaza Dama Blanca. Juntos hab\u00edan dormido en establos, posadas y zanjas, compartido el pan con hermanos mendigos, putas y comediantes, y buscado cien funciones de t\u00edteres. Egg hab\u00eda tenido bien cuidado el caballo de Dunk, bien afilada su espada y sin herrumbre su cota de malla. No se pod\u00eda desear mejor acompa\u00f1ante, hasta el punto de que el caballero errante ya casi lo consideraba un hermano menor.\n\n\"Pero no lo es.\" A aquel \"huevo\" no lo hab\u00edan incubado pollos, sino dragones: aunque Egg fuera el escudero de un caballero errante, Aegon de la casa Targaryen era el cuarto y \u00faltimo hijo de Maekar, pr\u00edncipe de Refugio Estival, cuarto hijo a su vez del difunto rey Daeron el Bueno, el segundo de su nombre, el cual hab\u00eda ocupado durante veinticinco a\u00f1os el Trono de Hierro, hasta que se lo llev\u00f3 la gran epidemia primaveral.\n\n\u2014Para la mayor\u00eda de la gente Aegon Targaryen volvi\u00f3 a Refugio Estival con su hermano Daeron despu\u00e9s del torneo de Vado Ceniza \u2014le record\u00f3 Dunk al ni\u00f1o\u2014. Tu padre no quer\u00eda que se supiera que vagabas por los Siete Reinos con un caballero errante; es decir, no se hable m\u00e1s de tu bota.\n\nLa \u00fanica respuesta que obtuvo fue una mirada. Egg ten\u00eda unos ojos grandes que por alguna raz\u00f3n lo parec\u00edan a\u00fan m\u00e1s con la cabeza rapada. En la penumbra de aquella bodega iluminada con l\u00e1mparas parec\u00edan negros, pero con m\u00e1s luz se apreciaba su aut\u00e9ntico color: un violeta profundo y oscuro.\n\n\"Ojos valyrios\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. No era un color habitual en Poniente, salvo entre los de la sangre del drag\u00f3n, como no lo era tampoco tener el pelo como de oro batido, entreverado de hebras de plata.\n\nDurante la traves\u00eda por el Sangreverde las hu\u00e9rfanas hab\u00edan jugado a acariciar la cabeza rapada de Egg como si diera buena suerte. El ni\u00f1o se pon\u00eda m\u00e1s rojo que una granada.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 tontas son las ni\u00f1as \u2014dec\u00eda\u2014. La pr\u00f3xima que me toque, acaba en el r\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Pues entonces \u2014hab\u00eda tenido que decirle Dunk\u2014 ser\u00e9 yo el que lo haga: te dar\u00e9 tal golpe en la oreja que oir\u00e1s campanas durante toda una luna.\n\nSu respuesta no hab\u00eda hecho m\u00e1s que provocar la insolencia del muchacho.\n\n\u2014Mejor campanas que ni\u00f1as tontas \u2014insist\u00eda.\n\nSin embargo, no hab\u00eda llegado a arrojar a nadie al r\u00edo.\n\nDunk entr\u00f3 en la tina y se sumergi\u00f3 hasta que el agua le lleg\u00f3 a la barbilla. Por arriba todav\u00eda quemaba, aunque por abajo estaba m\u00e1s tibia. Apret\u00f3 los dientes para no gritar, porque el ni\u00f1o se habr\u00eda re\u00eddo. A Egg le gustaba ba\u00f1arse en agua hirviendo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNecesitas que ponga a hervir m\u00e1s agua, se\u00f1or?\n\n\u2014No, con esta ya est\u00e1 bien \u2014Dunk se restreg\u00f3 los brazos, y vio desprenderse la suciedad en largas nubes grises\u2014. Tr\u00e1eme el jab\u00f3n. Ah, y tambi\u00e9n el cepillo de mango largo.\n\nAl pensar en el pelo de Egg se acord\u00f3 de que el suyo estaba sucio, as\u00ed que respir\u00f3 hondo y se meti\u00f3 por debajo del agua para remojarlo bien.\n\nCuando volvi\u00f3 a emerger con un chapoteo, Egg estaba al lado de la tina con el jab\u00f3n y el cepillo de mango largo en las manos.\n\n\u2014Tienes pelos en la mejilla \u2014observ\u00f3 Dunk al tomar el jab\u00f3n\u2014. Dos. Debajo de la oreja. Que no se te olviden la pr\u00f3xima vez que te afeites la cabeza.\n\n\u2014No se me olvidar\u00e1n, ser.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o parec\u00eda complacido por el descubrimiento. \"Seguro piensa que con un poco de barba ya es un hombre.\" Lo mismo hab\u00eda pensado \u00e9l cuando le sali\u00f3 el primer vello en el labio superior. \"Intent\u00e9 afeitarme con mi daga y casi me reban\u00e9 la nariz.\"\n\n\u2014Ahora ve a dormir \u2014le dijo a Egg\u2014. No te necesitar\u00e9 hasta ma\u00f1ana en la ma\u00f1ana.\n\nTard\u00f3 un poco en arrancarse la suciedad y el sudor. Luego dej\u00f3 el jab\u00f3n, se estir\u00f3 cuan largo era y cerr\u00f3 los ojos. El agua ya hab\u00eda refrescado. Tras un d\u00eda de calor tan salvaje result\u00f3 un alivio. Se qued\u00f3 remojando hasta que se le arrugaron los pies, las manos, y se puso gris y fr\u00eda toda el agua. S\u00f3lo entonces sali\u00f3 a rega\u00f1adientes.\n\nAunque a Egg y a \u00e9l les hab\u00edan dado gruesos camastros de paja en la bodega, Dunk prefiri\u00f3 dormir en el tejado, donde el aire era m\u00e1s fresco y de vez en cuando soplaba algo de brisa. Por la lluvia no hab\u00eda que preocuparse. La pr\u00f3xima vez que lloviera all\u00e1 arriba ser\u00eda la primera.\n\nLleg\u00f3 al tejado, donde Egg ya dorm\u00eda, y se tendi\u00f3 de espaldas con las manos detr\u00e1s de la cabeza, contemplando el cielo. Estaba plagado de estrellas, a millares. Le record\u00f3 una noche en Vado Ceniza, antes de que empezara el torneo. Hab\u00eda visto una estrella fugaz, y como se supon\u00eda que daban suerte, pidi\u00f3 a Tanselle que se la pintara en el escudo. Sin embargo, si algo no le hab\u00eda reportado suerte era Vado Ceniza. Antes del final del torneo casi hab\u00eda perdido una mano y un pie, y tres buenos hombres hab\u00edan perdido la vida. \"Aunque gan\u00e9 un escudero. De Vado Ceniza ya me fui con Egg. Fue lo \u00fanico bueno que sali\u00f3 de todo aquello.\"\n\nEsper\u00f3 que aquella noche no hubiera estrellas fugaces.\n\nA lo lejos hab\u00eda monta\u00f1as rojas y arena blanca bajo sus pies. Dunk estaba cavando. Hincaba una pala en la tierra seca y caliente, y arrojaba por encima del hombro la fina arena. Estaba haciendo un agujero. \"Una tumba\", pens\u00f3, \"la de la esperanza\". Tres caballeros de Dorne lo observaban mientras intercambiaban comentarios burlones en voz baja. Algo m\u00e1s lejos esperaban los mercaderes con sus mulas, sus carros y sus trineos de arena. Habr\u00edan querido irse, pero Dunk deb\u00eda enterrar a Casta\u00f1o. No pensaba dejar a su viejo amigo a merced de las serpientes, los escorpiones y los perros del desierto.\n\nEl jamelgo hab\u00eda muerto con Egg sobre su lomo, durante la larga y sedienta traves\u00eda entre el Paso del Pr\u00edncipe y Vaith. Fue como si se le doblaran de golpe las patas delanteras y, tras quedarse apoyado en las rodillas, cayera de costado y se muriera. Sus restos yac\u00edan junto al agujero. Ya estaban r\u00edgidos. Pronto empezar\u00edan a oler mal.\n\nPara diversi\u00f3n de los caballeros de Dorne, Dunk lloraba al cavar.\n\n\u2014En el yermo es muy valiosa el agua \u2014dijo uno de ellos\u2014. No deber\u00eda malgastarla, ser.\n\nOtro se rio entre dientes.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 llora? \u2014dijo\u2014. S\u00f3lo era un caballo, un mal caballo.\n\n\"Casta\u00f1o\", pens\u00f3 Dunk mientras cavaba, \"se llamaba Casta\u00f1o y durante a\u00f1os me llev\u00f3 en su lomo sin un solo corcoveo ni un mordisco\". Junto a los gr\u00e1ciles corceles de la arena en que cabalgaban los dornienses, animales de cabeza elegante, cuello largo y generosa crin, el viejo penco no sal\u00eda muy airoso, pero lo hab\u00eda dado todo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfL\u00e1grimas por un jamelgo contrahecho? \u2014dijo ser Arlan con su voz de viejo\u2014. Pero, muchacho, si por m\u00ed, que te puse en su lomo, jam\u00e1s has llorado... \u2014se rio un poco en se\u00f1al de que el reproche no llevaba mala intenci\u00f3n\u2014. As\u00ed es Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo.\n\n\u2014Tampoco llor\u00f3 por m\u00ed \u2014dijo desde la tumba Baelor Rompelanzas\u2014, a pesar de que era su pr\u00edncipe y la esperanza de Poniente. No era designio de los dioses que muriera tan joven.\n\n\u2014Mi padre s\u00f3lo ten\u00eda treinta y nueve a\u00f1os \u2014dijo el pr\u00edncipe Valarr\u2014. Estaba destinado a ser un gran rey, el mayor desde Aegon el Drag\u00f3n \u2014Mir\u00f3 a Dunk con unos ojos de un azul glacial\u2014. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 se lo llevaron los dioses y lo dejaron a usted?\n\nEl Pr\u00edncipe Joven ten\u00eda el pelo casta\u00f1o de su padre, aunque lo recorr\u00eda un mech\u00f3n de plata y oro.\n\n\"\u00a1Est\u00e1n muertos!\", tuvo ganas de exclamar Dunk. \"\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no me dejan en paz, si los tres est\u00e1n muertos?\" Ser Arlan hab\u00eda muerto de fr\u00edo, el pr\u00edncipe Baelor por el golpe recibido de su hermano en el transcurso del juicio de siete de Dunk, y su hijo Valarr durante la gran epidemia primaveral. \"La culpa no fue m\u00eda. Est\u00e1bamos en Dorne. Ni siquiera nos enteramos.\"\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1s loco \u2014le dijo el viejo\u2014. A ti no te cavaremos ninguna fosa cuando te mates por esta locura. En lo profundo de las arenas hay que reservar el agua.\n\n\u2014M\u00e1rchese, ser Duncan \u2014dijo Valarr\u2014. M\u00e1rchese.\n\nEgg cavaba con Dunk. A falta de pala lo hac\u00eda con las manos, pero la arena se derramaba en la tumba con la misma rapidez con que los dedos lograban apartarla. Era como intentar hacer un agujero en el mar. \"Debo seguir cavando\", se dijo Dunk pese a que le dol\u00edan la espalda y los hombros a causa del esfuerzo. \"Debo enterrarlo bastante para que no puedan encontrarlo los perros del desierto. Tengo que...\"\n\n\u2014\u00bf...morir? \u2014dijo desde el fondo de la tumba Rob el Grande, el necio de la aldea.\n\nQuieto, fr\u00edo, con una gran herida roja en la barriga, no parec\u00eda grande en absoluto.\n\nDunk se detuvo y lo mir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa no est\u00e1s muerto. T\u00fa est\u00e1s durmiendo abajo, en la bodega \u2014mir\u00f3 a ser Arlan, en busca de su ayuda\u2014. D\u00edgaselo, ser \u2014le rog\u00f3\u2014. D\u00edgale que salga de la tumba.\n\nSin embargo, al que ten\u00eda delante no era a ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, sino a ser Bennis del Escudo Pardo. El caballero marr\u00f3n se limit\u00f3 a cacarear.\n\n\u2014Dunk, necio \u2014dijo\u2014, destripar es lento pero seguro. No s\u00e9 de ning\u00fan hombre que haya sobrevivido a que se le salgan las tripas.\n\nTen\u00eda espuma roja en los labios. Se gir\u00f3 para escupir y se la bebi\u00f3 la arena blanca. Detr\u00e1s de \u00e9l estaba Treb, con una flecha en el ojo, llorando poco a poco rojas l\u00e1grimas. Tambi\u00e9n estaba Wat al Agua con la cabeza partida casi en dos, as\u00ed como el viejo Lem y Pate, el de los ojos rojos, y todos los dem\u00e1s. Al principio Dunk pens\u00f3 que todos hab\u00edan mascado hojamarga con ser Bennis, pero luego se dio cuenta de que lo que goteaba de sus bocas era sangre. \"Muertos\", pens\u00f3, \"todos muertos\". El caballero pardo rebuzn\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Pues s\u00ed, es decir que no te entretengas, necio, que debes cavar m\u00e1s tumbas. Ocho para ellos, una para m\u00ed, una para el viejo ser In\u00fatil y la \u00faltima para tu ni\u00f1o calvo.\n\nA Dunk se le escap\u00f3 la pala de las manos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Egg \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014, corre! \u00a1Tenemos que correr!\n\nSin embargo, la arena ya empezaba a ceder bajo los pies de Dunk y los del ni\u00f1o. Cuando Egg intent\u00f3 salir del agujero, los lados se desmoronaron por completo. Justo cuando Dunk abr\u00eda la boca para gritar, vio que la arena engull\u00eda y sepultaba a su escudero, y aunque intent\u00f3 llegar hasta \u00e9l se vio rodeado por la arena, que lo arrastraba hacia la tumba y le llenaba la boca, la nariz, los ojos...\n\nAl despuntar el d\u00eda ser Bennis dio inicio a la labor de ense\u00f1ar a sus reclutas a formar una pared de escudos. Coloc\u00f3 a los ocho hombro con hombro, con los escudos en contacto y las puntas de lanza saliendo por los intersticios como largos dientes de madera. Acto seguido Dunk y Egg montaron y cargaron contra ellos.\n\nMaestre se neg\u00f3 a acercarse m\u00e1s de tres varas a las lanzas y fren\u00f3 en seco. En cambio, Trueno estaba adiestrado para ello. El gran corcel sigui\u00f3 al galope, cada vez m\u00e1s raudo. Entre sus patas las gallinas corr\u00edan gritando y aleteando. Su p\u00e1nico debi\u00f3 de ser contagioso. Una vez m\u00e1s fue Rob el Grande el primero en soltar la lanza y correr, con lo que dej\u00f3 un hueco en el centro de la pared. En vez de cerrar filas, los dem\u00e1s guerreros de Tiesa se sumaron a la huida y Trueno pisote\u00f3 los escudos arrojados al suelo antes de que Dunk lograra detenerlo con las riendas. Bajo sus herraduras se partieron las ramas enlazadas, reducidas a astillas. Ser Bennis solt\u00f3 una sarta de palabrotas hirientes, mientras por doquier corr\u00edan gallinas y campesinos. Egg hizo un viril esfuerzo por aguantarse la risa, pero al final sali\u00f3 perdedor.\n\n\u2014Ya basta \u2014Dunk refren\u00f3 a Trueno, desat\u00f3 su yelmo y se lo quit\u00f3\u2014. Si hacen lo mismo durante una batalla, los matar\u00e1n a todos.\n\n\"Y lo m\u00e1s probable es que a ti y a m\u00ed tambi\u00e9n.\" Ya hac\u00eda calor. Se notaba sucio y pegajoso, como si no se hubiera ba\u00f1ado. Le dol\u00eda mucho la cabeza. No pod\u00eda olvidar lo que hab\u00eda so\u00f1ado durante la noche. \"No fue as\u00ed\", intentaba convencerse. \"Pas\u00f3 de otra manera.\" Casta\u00f1o hab\u00eda muerto durante el largo viaje sin agua hasta Vaith. Eso era cierto. Dunk y Egg hab\u00edan montado juntos hasta que el hermano de Egg les dio a Maestre. En cambio el resto...\n\n\"No llor\u00e9. Puede que tuviera ganas, pero no llor\u00e9.\" Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda sentido ganas de enterrar al caballo, pero los caballeros de Dorne no se hab\u00edan mostrado dispuestos a esperar. \"Los perros del desierto necesitan comer y alimentar a sus cachorros\", le hab\u00eda dicho uno mientras lo ayudaba a despojar al animal de su silla y su brida. \"Su carne servir\u00e1 de alimento a los perros o a la arena. Dentro de un a\u00f1o sus huesos estar\u00e1n limpios. Esto es Dorne, amigo m\u00edo.\" Al recordarlo, Dunk sinti\u00f3 una curiosidad irremediable por saber a qui\u00e9n alimentar\u00eda la carne de Wat, y la del otro Wat, y la del otro. \"Quiz\u00e1 en el fondo del Jaquel haya peces jaquelados.\"\n\nVolvi\u00f3 a la torre a lomos de Trueno y desmont\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Egg, ayuda a ser Bennis a reunirlos y traerlos otra vez.\n\nPuso el yelmo en manos del muchacho y se acerc\u00f3 resuelto a la escalera.\n\nSer Eustace lo recibi\u00f3 en la penumbra de sus aposentos.\n\n\u2014No sali\u00f3 bien.\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. No servir\u00e1n.\n\n\"Una espada juramentada debe servicio y obediencia a su se\u00f1or, pero esto es una locura.\"\n\n\u2014Era la primera vez. Sus padres y hermanos lo hicieron igual de mal o peor cuando empezaron la instrucci\u00f3n. Antes de que fu\u00e9ramos en auxilio del rey mis hijos trabajaron con ellos a diario, durante no menos de dos semanas, y los convirtieron en soldados.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY al entrar en combate, mi se\u00f1or? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo les fue? \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos regresaron con usted?\n\nEl anciano caballero lo mir\u00f3 un largo rato.\n\n\u2014Lem \u2014dijo al fin\u2014, y Pate y Dake. Dake nos consegu\u00eda la comida. No he visto a nadie que lo hiciera mejor. Nunca and\u00e1bamos con el est\u00f3mago vac\u00edo. Volvieron tres, ser. Tres y yo \u2014le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 hagan falta m\u00e1s de dos semanas.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, la Viuda podr\u00eda llegar ma\u00f1ana mismo con todos sus hombres \u2014\"Son buena gente\", pens\u00f3, \"pero si se enfrentan con los caballeros de Fosa Fr\u00eda pronto ser\u00e1n gente muerta\"\u2014. Debe de haber otra manera.\n\n\u2014Otra manera \u2014ser Eustace roz\u00f3 con los dedos el escudo del Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n\u2014. No obtendr\u00e9 justicia de lord Rowan ni de este rey... \u2014tom\u00f3 a Dunk por el antebrazo\u2014. Ahora me viene a la cabeza que en tiempos pasados, cuando los reyes verdes gobernaban, se pod\u00eda pagar un precio de sangre a alguien si le hab\u00edas matado un animal o a un campesino.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn precio de sangre?\n\nDunk no lo ve\u00eda muy claro.\n\n\u2014Preguntaste si hab\u00eda otra manera. Tengo unas cuantas monedas apartadas. Seg\u00fan ser Bennis s\u00f3lo fue un moret\u00f3n en la mejilla. A \u00e9l podr\u00eda pagarle un venado de plata y a ella tres por el insulto. Podr\u00eda, y lo har\u00eda... a condici\u00f3n de que ella desmonte la maldita presa \u2014el anciano frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o\u2014. Pero no puedo ir a verla. No a Fosa Fr\u00eda \u2014junto a su cabeza pas\u00f3 zumbando una gran mosca negra que se pos\u00f3 en su brazo\u2014. Anta\u00f1o el castillo era nuestro. \u00bfLo sab\u00edas, ser Duncan?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nSe lo hab\u00eda contado Sam Encorvado.\n\n\u2014Durante los mil a\u00f1os anteriores a la Conquista fuimos alguaciles de la Frontera Norte. Nos juraban fidelidad una veintena de peque\u00f1os se\u00f1ores y un centenar de caballeros con tierras. Por entonces ten\u00edamos cuatro castillos y atalayas en los montes para avisar de la proximidad de nuestros enemigos. La mayor de nuestras residencias era Fosa Fr\u00eda. La erigi\u00f3 lord Perwyn Osgrey, al que llamaban Perwyn el Orgulloso.\n\n\"Despu\u00e9s del Campo de Fuego, Altojard\u00edn pas\u00f3 de reyes a mayordomos, y los Osgrey se vieron mermados y disminuidos. El rey Maegor, hijo de Aegon, fue el que nos arrebat\u00f3 Fosa Fr\u00eda, despu\u00e9s de que lord Osmond Osgrey manifest\u00f3 su rechazo a la supresi\u00f3n de las Estrellas y las Espadas, como llamaban a los cl\u00e9rigos humildes y los hijos del Guerrero \u2014su voz se hab\u00eda vuelto ronca\u2014. Encima de las puertas de Fosa Fr\u00eda hay un le\u00f3n jaquelado tallado en piedra. Me lo ense\u00f1\u00f3 mi padre la primera vez que me llev\u00f3 a ver al viejo Reynard Webber, y yo a mi vez se lo mostr\u00e9 a mis hijos. Addam... Addam sirvi\u00f3 como paje y escudero en Fosa Fr\u00eda, y... y nacieron afectos entre \u00e9l y la hija de lord Wyman, as\u00ed que un d\u00eda de invierno tom\u00e9 mis mejores vestiduras y fui a hablar con lord Wyman para proponerle matrimonio. Su negativa fue cort\u00e9s, pero al irme lo o\u00ed re\u00edrse con ser Lucas Inchfield. Desde entonces no he vuelto m\u00e1s que una vez a Fosa Fr\u00eda, cuando ella se jact\u00f3 de haberse llevado a uno de los m\u00edos. Cuando me dijeron que buscara al pobre Lem en el fondo del foso...\"\n\n\u2014Dake \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Bennis dice que se llamaba Dake.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDake? \u2014la mosca, que ya iba por la manga, se par\u00f3 a frotarse las patas como tienen las moscas por costumbre. Ser Eustace la ahuyent\u00f3 y se frot\u00f3 el labio por debajo del bigote\u2014. Dake. Es lo que dije. Un hombre fiel. Lo recuerdo a la perfecci\u00f3n. Durante la guerra nos buscaba la comida. Nunca and\u00e1bamos con el est\u00f3mago vac\u00edo. Cuando ser Lucas me inform\u00f3 de lo que le hab\u00edan hecho a mi pobre Dake, hice el voto sagrado de nunca m\u00e1s pisar aquel castillo salvo para tomar posesi\u00f3n de \u00e9l. Entiende, pues, ser Duncan, que no puedo ir. Ni para pagar el precio de sangre ni por ning\u00fan otro motivo. No puedo.\n\nDunk lo hab\u00eda entendido.\n\n\u2014Yo podr\u00eda ir, mi se\u00f1or. No he hecho ning\u00fan voto.\n\n\u2014Eres un buen hombre, ser Duncan. Un caballero valeroso y leal \u2014ser Eustace le apret\u00f3 el brazo\u2014. Ojal\u00e1 que los dioses no se hubieran llevado a mi Alysanne. Eres el tipo de hombre con el que siempre tuve la esperanza de que se casara. Un caballero de verdad, ser Duncan, un caballero de verdad.\n\nDunk se estaba sonrojando.\n\n\u2014Transmitir\u00e9 a lady Webber lo que ha dicho sobre el precio de sangre, pero...\n\n\u2014Salvar\u00e1s a ser Bennis de correr la misma suerte que Dake. Lo s\u00e9. Conozco a los hombres, y en este caso t\u00fa eres el que posee el temple verdadero. Les dar\u00e1s qu\u00e9 pensar, ser. Con tan s\u00f3lo mirarte. Cuando ella vea que Tiesa cuenta con un palad\u00edn as\u00ed, es posible que desmonte la presa por su propia voluntad.\n\nDunk no sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 decir. Se arrodill\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or, saldr\u00e9 por la ma\u00f1ana y har\u00e9 cuanto pueda.\n\n\u2014Por la ma\u00f1ana \u2014la mosca vol\u00f3 en c\u00edrculos hasta posarse en la mano izquierda de ser Eustace, que levant\u00f3 la derecha y la aplast\u00f3\u2014. S\u00ed. Por la ma\u00f1ana.\n\n-\u00bfOtro ba\u00f1o? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg, consternado \u2014. Pero si te ba\u00f1aste ayer.\n\n\u2014Y desde entonces he estado un d\u00eda entero nadando en sudor dentro de mi armadura. Cierra la boca y llena la caldera.\n\n\u2014Te lavaste la noche en que ser Eustace nos tom\u00f3 a su servicio \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Con el ba\u00f1o de anoche y el de ahora ya son tres veces, se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Debo negociar con una dama de alta cuna. \u00bfQu\u00e9 quieres, que me presente en su residencia oliendo como ser Bennis?\n\n\u2014Para oler tan mal tendr\u00edas que revolcarte en una tina llena de excrementos de Maestre, ser \u2014Egg llen\u00f3 la caldera\u2014. Dice Sam Encorvado que el gobernador de Fosa Fr\u00eda es tan alto como t\u00fa. Se llama Lucas Inchfield, aunque por su estatura lo llaman Tres Varas. \u00bfCrees que sea tan alto como t\u00fa, ser?\n\n\u2014No.\n\nHac\u00eda a\u00f1os que Dunk no ve\u00eda a nadie de su estatura. Tom\u00f3 la caldera y la colg\u00f3 sobre el fuego.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCombatir\u00e1s contra \u00e9l?\n\n\u2014No \u2014Dunk casi deseaba lo contrario. Tal vez no fuera el mejor combatiente del reino, pero su altura y fortaleza compensaban muchas carencias. \"No la de entendimiento, \u00e9sa no.\" Se le daban mal las palabras y peor las mujeres. Aquel gigante, Lucas Tres Varas, no lo amedrentaba ni la mitad que la idea de presentarse ante la Viuda Escarlata\u2014. S\u00f3lo ir\u00e9 a hablar con la Viuda Escarlata.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 le dir\u00e1s, ser?\n\n\u2014Que debe desmontar la presa \u2014\"Mi se\u00f1ora, debe desmontar la presa; de lo contrario...\"\u2014. Quiero decir que se lo pedir\u00e9 \u2014\"Por favor, devu\u00e9lvanos nuestra agua jaquelada\"\u2014. Si as\u00ed le place.\n\n\"Un poco de agua, mi se\u00f1ora, si as\u00ed le place. A ser Eustace no le gustar\u00eda rogarle. Si no, \u00bfc\u00f3mo lo digo?\"\n\nEl agua no tard\u00f3 en bullir y desprender vapor.\n\n\u2014Ay\u00fadame a llevarla a la tina \u2014le dijo al ni\u00f1o. Levantaron la caldera del fuego y cruzaron la bodega hasta la gran tina de madera\u2014. No s\u00e9 c\u00f3mo hablar con damas de alta cuna \u2014confes\u00f3 Dunk mientras vert\u00edan el agua\u2014. En Dorne casi nos matan a los dos por lo que le dije a lady Vaith.\n\n\u2014Lady Vaith estaba loca \u2014le record\u00f3 Egg\u2014, aunque podr\u00edas haber sido algo m\u00e1s galante... A las damas les gusta la galanter\u00eda. Si tuvieras que rescatar a la Viuda Escarlata como rescataste de Aerion a la titiritera...\n\n\u2014Aerion est\u00e1 en Lys y a la Viuda no le hace falta que la rescaten.\n\nDunk no quer\u00eda hablar de Tanselle. \"Tanselle la Giganta, la llamaban, pero para m\u00ed no era demasiado alta.\"\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014, hay caballeros que les cantan canciones galantes a sus damas o entonan melod\u00edas con el la\u00fad.\n\n\u2014Yo no tengo la\u00fad \u2014Dunk estaba taciturno\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, aquella noche en que beb\u00ed m\u00e1s de la cuenta en la ciudad de Los Tablones me dijiste que cantaba como un buey en un barrizal.\n\n\u2014Se me hab\u00eda olvidado, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo se te puede haber olvidado?\n\n\u2014T\u00fa me pediste que lo olvidara, ser \u2014dijo Egg, todo inocencia\u2014. Me dijiste que si volv\u00eda a hablar del tema recibir\u00eda un golpe en la oreja.\n\n\u2014Nada de canciones.\n\nAun si Dunk hubiera tenido la voz para ello, la \u00fanica canci\u00f3n que conoc\u00eda era \"El oso y la doncella\", y dudaba que fuera muy del gusto de lady Webber. La caldera volvi\u00f3 a hervir. La llevaron a la tina y la volcaron.\n\nEgg sac\u00f3 agua para llenarla por tercera vez y regres\u00f3 al pozo.\n\n\u2014Mejor que en Fosa Fr\u00eda no comas ni bebas nada, ser. La Viuda Escarlata ha envenenado a todos sus maridos.\n\n\u2014Veo dif\u00edcil que se case conmigo. Es de alta cuna y yo, por si no te acuerdas, soy Dunk del Lecho de Pulgas \u2014Dunk frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o\u2014. Por cierto, \u00bfcu\u00e1ntos esposos ha tenido? \u00bfLo sabes t\u00fa?\n\n\u2014Cuatro \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, pero ning\u00fan hijo. Cada vez que da a luz un demonio viene por la noche y se lleva el fruto. La mujer de Sam Encorvado dice que vendi\u00f3 a sus hijos por nacer al se\u00f1or de los siete infiernos a cambio de que le ense\u00f1ara sus malas artes.\n\n\u2014Las damas de alta cuna no hacen tratos con la magia negra. Cantan, bailan y bordan.\n\n\u2014Tal vez ella baile con demonios y borde hechizos mal\u00e9ficos \u2014dijo Egg, encantado\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, ser, \u00bfqu\u00e9 sabes t\u00fa de lo que hacen las damas de alta cuna? La \u00fanica a la que has conocido es lady Vaith.\n\nEra una impertinencia, pero cierta.\n\n\u2014Tal vez no conozca a damas de alta cuna, pero s\u00ed a un ni\u00f1o que se est\u00e1 ganando un buen golpe en la oreja \u2014Dunk se frot\u00f3 la nuca, que despu\u00e9s de todo un d\u00eda en cota de malla siempre se quedaba tiesa como la madera\u2014. T\u00fa has conocido a reinas y princesas. \u00bfBailaban con demonios y practicaban la magia negra?\n\n\u2014Lady Shiera s\u00ed. La amada de lord Cuervo de Sangre. Se ba\u00f1a en sangre para conservar su belleza. Y una vez mi hermana Rhae me puso en la bebida una p\u00f3cima de amor para que me casara con ella y no con mi hermana Daella.\n\nEgg lo dec\u00eda como si el incesto fuera lo m\u00e1s normal del mundo. \"Para \u00e9l lo es.\" Los Targaryen llevaban cientos de a\u00f1os cas\u00e1ndose entre hermanos a fin de garantizar la pureza de la sangre del drag\u00f3n. Aunque el drag\u00f3n propiamente dicho hubiera muerto antes de nacer Dunk, a\u00fan hab\u00eda reyes drag\u00f3n. \"Quiz\u00e1 a los dioses no les moleste que se casen con sus hermanas.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfY surti\u00f3 efecto la p\u00f3cima? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Lo habr\u00eda surtido \u2014dijo Egg\u2014 si yo no la hubiera escupido. No quiero casarme. Deseo ser caballero de la Guardia Real y no vivir para otra cosa que para servir y defender al rey. Los miembros de la Guardia Real hacen el voto de no casarse.\n\n\u2014Muy noble, pero cuando seas mayor quiz\u00e1 descubras que prefieres a una chica que una capa blanca \u2014Dunk pensaba en Tanselle la Giganta y en c\u00f3mo le hab\u00eda sonre\u00eddo en Vado Ceniza\u2014. Ser Eustace me dijo que soy como habr\u00eda querido que fuera el esposo de su hija. Se llamaba Alysanne.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 muerta, ser.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ya s\u00e9 que est\u00e1 muerta \u2014dijo Dunk, irritado\u2014. Si estuviera viva, dijo. En tal caso, a ser Eustace le habr\u00eda gustado que se casara conmigo. O con alguien como yo. Es la primera vez que un se\u00f1or me ofrece a su hija.\n\n\u2014A su hija muerta. Adem\u00e1s, aunque antiguamente los Osgrey fueran se\u00f1ores, ahora ser Eustace es un simple caballero con tierras.\n\n\u2014Ya s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 es. \u00bfQuieres un golpe en la oreja?\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, prefiero el golpe que a una esposa. Sobre todo si est\u00e1 muerta, ser. Ya est\u00e1 hirviendo la caldera.\n\nLlevaron el agua a la tina y Dunk se quit\u00f3 la t\u00fanica por la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Para ir a Fosa Fr\u00eda me pondr\u00e9 la t\u00fanica de Dorne.\n\nEra de seda cruda y la mejor de todas sus prendas, pintada con la imagen de su olmo y su estrella fugaz.\n\n\u2014Si cabalgas con ella se te mojar\u00e1 de sudor, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Ponte la misma que hoy. La otra la llevar\u00e9 yo y as\u00ed podr\u00e1s cambiarte al llegar al castillo.\n\n\u2014Antes de llegar. Si me ven cambiarme en el puente levadizo har\u00e9 el rid\u00edculo. \u00bfY qui\u00e9n dijo que me acompa\u00f1ar\u00edas?\n\n\u2014Impresionan m\u00e1s los caballeros cuando van con su escudero.\n\nEra verdad. De esas cosas el ni\u00f1o sab\u00eda mucho. \"Es normal. Fue paje en Desembarco del Rey durante dos a\u00f1os.\" Aun as\u00ed Dunk se resist\u00eda a llev\u00e1rselo a una misi\u00f3n tan peligrosa. No ten\u00eda la menor idea de c\u00f3mo ser\u00eda recibido en Fosa Fr\u00eda. Si la Viuda Escarlata en cuesti\u00f3n era tan peligrosa como se dec\u00eda, podr\u00eda acabar en una jaula de cuervos como los dos hombres a quienes hab\u00edan visto al borde del camino.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa te quedar\u00e1s para ayudar a Bennis con el pueblo llano \u2014le dijo a Egg\u2014. Y no pongas esa cara \u2014se quit\u00f3 los pantalones con dos puntapi\u00e9s y se meti\u00f3 en la tina de agua muy caliente\u2014. Ahora vete a dormir y deja que me ba\u00f1e. No vendr\u00e1s y punto.\n\nCuando Dunk se despert\u00f3, con el sol en la cara, Egg ya se hab\u00eda ido. \"V\u00e1lganme los dioses, \u00bfc\u00f3mo puede hacer este calor tan temprano?\" Se incorpor\u00f3, se desperez\u00f3 con un bostezo, se puso de pie y se acerc\u00f3 adormilado al pozo, donde tras encender un grueso cirio de sebo se refresc\u00f3 la cara y se visti\u00f3.\n\nAl salir al sol vio a Trueno al lado del establo, ensillado y embridado. Tambi\u00e9n Egg esperaba con su mula Maestre.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o se hab\u00eda puesto las botas. Por una vez parec\u00eda un escudero de verdad, con un bonito jub\u00f3n a cuadros verdes y dorados y unas calzas blancas de lana.\n\n\u2014Las calzas estaban rotas en la parte del trasero, pero me las cosi\u00f3 la mujer de Sam Encorvado \u2014anunci\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Era ropa de Addam \u2014dijo ser Eustace al sacar del establo su caballo gris. La ra\u00edda capa de seda que ca\u00eda de los hombros del anciano estaba adornada con un le\u00f3n jaquelado\u2014. El jub\u00f3n est\u00e1 un poco enmohecido, despu\u00e9s de tanto tiempo en el ba\u00fal, pero deber\u00eda servir. Impresiona m\u00e1s un caballero cuando lo acompa\u00f1a un escudero, as\u00ed que he decidido que Egg te acompa\u00f1e a Fosa Fr\u00eda.\n\n\"Me gan\u00f3 a listo un ni\u00f1o de diez a\u00f1os.\" Dunk mir\u00f3 a Egg y articul\u00f3 en silencio las palabras \"golpe en la oreja\". El ni\u00f1o sonri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n para ti tengo algo, ser Duncan. Ac\u00e9rcate.\n\nSer Eustace sac\u00f3 una capa y la sacudi\u00f3 con un gesto ceremonioso. Era de lana blanca, ribeteada con cuadrados de raso verde y tela de oro. Con aquel calor lo que menos necesitaba Dunk era una capa de lana, pero al ver la expresi\u00f3n de orgullo de ser Eustace al pon\u00e9rsela en los hombros no fue capaz de rechazarla.\n\n\u2014Gracias, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Te queda bien. Ojal\u00e1 pudiera ofrecerte algo m\u00e1s \u2014al anciano le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. Envi\u00e9 a Sam Encorvado a la bodega para que busque entre las cosas de mis hijos, pero Edwyn y Harrold eran m\u00e1s bajos, menos fornidos de pecho y de piernas mucho m\u00e1s cortas. Aunque me duela reconocerlo, nada de lo que dejaron te quedar\u00eda bien.\n\n\u2014Con la capa es suficiente, mi se\u00f1or. No la deshonrar\u00e9.\n\n\u2014No lo dudo \u2014ser Eustace dio una palmada a su caballo\u2014. Pens\u00e9 en acompa\u00f1arlos un trecho del camino, si no hay inconveniente.\n\n\u2014Ninguno, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nMuy erguido en Maestre, Egg los llev\u00f3 colina abajo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs necesario que lleve ese sombrero blando de paja? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 ser Eustace a Dunk\u2014. Queda un poco tonto, \u00bfno te parece?\n\n\u2014No tanto como cuando se le pela la cabeza, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nYa a esas horas en que el sol apenas se hab\u00eda separado del horizonte hac\u00eda calor. \"A mediod\u00eda quemar\u00e1n tanto las sillas que nos saldr\u00e1n ampollas.\" Por muy elegante que se viera Egg con las galas del ni\u00f1o muerto, al caer la noche se habr\u00eda achicharrado. Al menos Dunk podr\u00eda cambiarse de ropa. Llevaba la mejor de sus t\u00fanicas en la alforja y la vieja, la verde, a la espalda.\n\n\u2014Tomaremos el camino del oeste \u2014anunci\u00f3 ser Eustace\u2014. Desde hace unos a\u00f1os se usa poco, pero sigue siendo el camino m\u00e1s corto entre Tiesa y el castillo de Fosa Fr\u00eda.\n\nRodearon la colina por detr\u00e1s y pasaron junto a las tumbas donde el anciano hab\u00eda destinado el \u00faltimo reposo para su esposa y sus hijos, entre zarzamoras.\n\n\u2014A mis ni\u00f1os les encantaba venir aqu\u00ed a buscar moras. De peque\u00f1os volv\u00edan con la cara pegajosa y los brazos llenos de ara\u00f1azos, y no hac\u00eda falta que me dijeran d\u00f3nde hab\u00edan estado \u2014sonri\u00f3 con cari\u00f1o\u2014. Tu Egg me recuerda a mi Addam. Muy valiente para ser tan joven. Cuando les pas\u00f3 la batalla por encima, Addam intentaba proteger a su hermano Harrold, que estaba herido. Un hombre de las tierras de los r\u00edos con seis bellotas en el escudo le cort\u00f3 el brazo con un hacha \u2014sus ojos grises, llenos de tristeza, miraron los de Dunk\u2014. Tu antiguo se\u00f1or, el caballero del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda... \u00bfluch\u00f3 en la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or, antes de tomarme a su servicio.\n\nEntonces Dunk era un peque\u00f1o de tres o cuatro a\u00f1os que corr\u00eda medio desnudo por las callejuelas de Lecho de Pulgas, y parec\u00eda m\u00e1s animal que persona.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEn el bando del drag\u00f3n rojo o el del negro?\n\nIncluso despu\u00e9s de tanto tiempo la pregunta \"\u00bfrojo o negro?\" segu\u00eda siendo peligrosa. Desde los tiempos de Aegon el Conquistador, la casa Targaryen hab\u00eda tenido como emblema un drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas rojo sobre negro. Como muchos bastardos, Daemon el Pretendiente hab\u00eda invertido los colores en sus estandartes. \"Ser Eustace es mi se\u00f1or\", se record\u00f3 Dunk. \"Tiene derecho a preguntarlo.\"\n\n\u2014Combati\u00f3 bajo el estandarte de lord Hayford, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Palo ondeado de sinople sobre campo de oro enrejado de sinople.\n\n\u2014Es posible, mi se\u00f1or. Egg debe de saberlo.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o era capaz de recitar las armas de la mitad de los caballeros de Poniente.\n\n\u2014Lord Hayford era un destacado lealista. El rey Daeron lo nombr\u00f3 su mano justo antes de la batalla. Butterwell se hab\u00eda desempe\u00f1ado de modo tan funesto que muchos pon\u00edan en duda su lealtad. En cambio, lord Hayford mostr\u00f3 una fidelidad inquebrantable desde el primer d\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Ser Arlan estaba a su lado cuando cay\u00f3. Fue abatido por un se\u00f1or que llevaba tres castillos en el escudo.\n\n\u2014Ese d\u00eda cayeron muchos buenos hombres, tanto en uno como en otro bando. Antes de la batalla la hierba no era roja. \u00bfAs\u00ed te lo explic\u00f3 ser Arlan?\n\n\u2014A ser Arlan no le gustaba hablar de la batalla. Tambi\u00e9n fue donde muri\u00f3 su escudero. Se llamaba Roger del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda y era hijo de la hermana de ser Arlan.\n\nEl mero hecho de pronunciar su nombre hizo a Dunk sentirse vagamente culpable. \"Yo le rob\u00e9 su sitio.\" Los medios para mantener a dos escuderos s\u00f3lo los ten\u00edan los pr\u00edncipes y los grandes se\u00f1ores. Si Aegon el Indigno le hubiera entregado su espada a Daeron, su heredero, en vez de a Daemon, su bastardo, quiz\u00e1 no se habr\u00eda producido la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro y Roger del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda seguir\u00eda vivo. \"Ser\u00eda caballero en alguna parte, un caballero m\u00e1s cabal que yo. Yo habr\u00eda acabado en el pat\u00edbulo o me habr\u00edan enviado a la Guardia de la Noche para recorrer el Muro hasta mi muerte.\"\n\n\u2014Las grandes batallas son terribles \u2014dijo el anciano caballero\u2014, pero a veces, entre la sangre y la matanza, tambi\u00e9n hay belleza, una belleza que te romper\u00eda el coraz\u00f3n. Jam\u00e1s olvidar\u00e9 el aspecto del sol al ponerse en el campo de Hierba Roja... Deben de haber muerto diez mil hombres y el aire estaba cargado de gemidos y lamentos, pero encima de nosotros el cielo se puso dorado, rojo y naranja, y era tan bello que llor\u00e9 al pensar que nunca lo ver\u00edan mis hijos \u2014suspir\u00f3\u2014. El desenlace fue m\u00e1s apretado de como se explica ahora. De no ser por Cuervo de Sangre...\n\n\u2014Yo siempre hab\u00eda o\u00eddo que la batalla la gan\u00f3 Baelor \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Junto con el pr\u00edncipe Maekar.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl martillo y el yunque? \u2014el bigote del anciano dio un respingo\u2014. Los bardos omiten muchas cosas. Aquel d\u00eda Daemon fue la viva encarnaci\u00f3n del Guerrero. Nadie pod\u00eda hacerle frente. Destroz\u00f3 la vanguardia de lord Arryn y dio muerte al caballero de Nueve Estrellas y a Wyl Waynwood el Salvaje antes de enfrentarse con ser Gwayne Corbray, de la Guardia Real. Bailaron a caballo cerca de una hora, rode\u00e1ndose y lanz\u00e1ndose estocadas mientras los hombres mor\u00edan alrededor. Se dice que cada uno de los choques entre Fuego Oscuro y Dama Desesperada se escuchaba a una legua a la redonda. Era, dicen, mitad canci\u00f3n y mitad grito. Sin embargo, al final, cuando la Dama flaque\u00f3, Fuego Oscuro hendi\u00f3 el yelmo de ser Gwayne y lo dej\u00f3 ciego y ensangrentado. Daemon desmont\u00f3 para asegurarse de que no se pisoteara al enemigo ca\u00eddo y orden\u00f3 a Colmillo Rojo que se lo llevara a la retaguardia, junto a los maestres. Fue un error mortal, ya que los Dientes de Cuervo hab\u00edan conquistado los altos de Cresta Llorosa y Cuervo de Sangre vio el estandarte real de su hermanastro a trescientas varas, sobre Daemon y sus hijos. Al que mat\u00f3 primero fue a Aegon, el mayor de los gemelos, sabedor de que Daemon jam\u00e1s se apartar\u00eda del lado del muchacho mientras le quedara un \u00e1pice de calor en el cuerpo, aunque cayeran saetas blancas como lluvia. Y no se movi\u00f3, pese a que lo atravesaron siete flechas impulsadas a partes iguales por el arco de Cuervo de Sangre y la brujer\u00eda. El joven Aemon tom\u00f3 Fuego Oscuro cuando la espada se desliz\u00f3 de los dedos de su padre agonizante, de modo que Cuervo de Sangre tambi\u00e9n le dio muerte a \u00e9l, el menor de los gemelos. As\u00ed perecieron el drag\u00f3n negro y sus hijos.\n\n\"Ya s\u00e9 que a partir de ese momento ocurrieron muchas m\u00e1s cosas. Algo vi yo mismo... La retirada de los rebeldes, la loca carga de Aceroamargo al frente de los desbandados... Su lucha contra Cuervo de Sangre, superada tan s\u00f3lo por la de Daemon contra Gwayne Corbray... El mazazo del pr\u00edncipe Baelor a la retaguardia rebelde, los gritos de los dornienses al llenar el aire de lanzas... En resumidas cuentas no importaba. Con la muerte de Daemon termin\u00f3 la guerra.\n\n\"Fue tan apretado... Si Daemon hubiera pasado por encima de Gwayne Corbray, dej\u00e1ndolo a su suerte, podr\u00eda haber roto la izquierda de Maekar antes de que Cuervo de Sangre conquistara la cresta. Muerta la mano y libre el camino a Desembarco del Rey, la victoria habr\u00eda sido de los dragones negros. Daemon podr\u00eda haberse sentado en el Trono de Hierro antes de que llegara el pr\u00edncipe Baelor con sus se\u00f1ores de la tierra de la tormenta y sus dornienses.\n\n\"Que hablen los bardos de su martillo y de su yunque, ser, pero el que volvi\u00f3 las tornas fue el asesino de los de su sangre, con una flecha blanca y un negro sortilegio. Y no te enga\u00f1es, que tambi\u00e9n a nosotros nos gobierna ahora. Tiene dominado al rey Aerys. No me sorprender\u00eda enterarme de que Cuervo de Sangre hechiz\u00f3 a su majestad para que lo obedezca. No es de extra\u00f1ar que estemos condenados.\"\n\nSer Eustace sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza y se sumi\u00f3 en un silencio pensativo. Dunk se pregunt\u00f3 cu\u00e1nto hab\u00eda o\u00eddo Egg, pero no pod\u00eda pregunt\u00e1rselo. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene lord Cuervo de Sangre?\", pens\u00f3.\n\nEstaba haciendo m\u00e1s calor. \"Hasta las moscas huyeron\", observ\u00f3. \"Tienen m\u00e1s sentido com\u00fan que los caballeros. Se apartan del sol.\" Se pregunt\u00f3 si en Fosa Fr\u00eda se les brindar\u00eda hospitalidad a Egg y a \u00e9l. Una jarra de cerveza tostada, bien fr\u00eda, se agradecer\u00eda mucho. En eso cavilaba, complacido, cuando se acord\u00f3 de lo que hab\u00eda dicho Egg sobre el envenenamiento de los esposos de la Viuda Negra y la sed se le pas\u00f3 de golpe. Cosas peores hab\u00eda que un gaznate seco.\n\n\u2014Hubo un tiempo en que la casa de Osgrey fue due\u00f1a de todas las tierras en muchas leguas a la redonda, desde Nunny, al este, hasta Refugio Empedrado \u2014dijo ser Eustace\u2014. Fosa Fr\u00eda era nuestra, y tambi\u00e9n las colinas de la Herradura, las cuevas de las colinas de la Gesta, los pueblos de Dosk y Peque\u00f1a Dosk y Valle Brandy, ambas orillas del lago Frondoso... Las doncellas Osgrey se casaban con los Florent, los Swann, los Tarbeck y hasta los Hightower y los Blackwood.\n\nYa se ve\u00eda el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n. Dunk se protegi\u00f3 la vista con una mano y escrut\u00f3 el follaje. Por una vez envidi\u00f3 el sombrero blando de Egg. \"Al menos tendremos un poco de sombra.\"\n\n\u2014En otros tiempos el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n llegaba hasta Fosa Fr\u00eda \u2014dijo ser Eustace\u2014. Antes de la Conquista, en este bosque hab\u00eda uros y grandes alces de diez palmos o m\u00e1s. Hab\u00eda tantos ciervos rojos que ning\u00fan hombre podr\u00eda haber cazado a todos en una sola vida, porque aqu\u00ed solo pod\u00edan cazar el rey y el le\u00f3n jaquelado. Incluso en tiempos de mi padre hab\u00eda \u00e1rboles a ambos lados del arroyo, pero las ara\u00f1as talaron el bosque para que pastaran sus vacas, sus ovejas y sus caballos.\n\nPor el pecho de Dunk se deslizaba un fino dedo de sudor. Lo sorprend\u00eda en s\u00ed el ferviente deseo de que su se\u00f1or se callara. \"Hace demasiado calor para hablar. Hace demasiado calor para ir a caballo. Hace demasiado calor y sanseacab\u00f3.\"\n\nUna vez en el bosque encontraron los restos de un gran gato arb\u00f3reo marr\u00f3n infestado de gusanos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Puaj! \u2014dijo Egg al rodearlos de lejos con Maestre\u2014. Apesta m\u00e1s que ser Bennis.\n\nSer Eustace tir\u00f3 de las riendas.\n\n\u2014Un gato arb\u00f3reo. No sab\u00eda que quedara alguno en este bosque. Me gustar\u00eda saber qu\u00e9 lo mat\u00f3 \u2014como nadie respond\u00eda, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: Dar\u00e9 media vuelta. Ustedes sigan por el camino del oeste y llegar\u00e1n a Fosa Fr\u00eda. \u00bfLlevan las monedas? \u2014Dunk asinti\u00f3\u2014. Muy bien. Regresen con mi agua, ser.\n\nEl anciano caballero se march\u00f3 al trote por donde hab\u00edan venido.\n\n\u2014He estado pensando en c\u00f3mo deber\u00edas hablar con lady Webber, ser \u2014dijo Egg cuando estuvieron solos\u2014. Deber\u00edas gan\u00e1rtela con cumplidos galantes.\n\nSe le ve\u00eda tan fresco con su t\u00fanica jaquelada como a ser Eustace con su capa. \"\u00bfSoy yo el \u00fanico que suda?\"\n\n\u2014Cumplidos galantes \u2014repiti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tipo de cumplidos galantes?\n\n\u2014T\u00fa me entiendes, ser. Dile lo bella y primorosa que es.\n\nDunk ten\u00eda sus dudas.\n\n\u2014Tras haber sobrevivido a cuatro esposos, debe de ser tan vieja como lady Vaith. Si le digo que es bella y primorosa, y resulta vieja y llena de verrugas, me considerar\u00e1 un mentiroso.\n\n\u2014Basta con que encuentres algo que decirle sin necesidad de mentir. Es lo que hace mi hermano Daeron. Dice que hasta las putas viejas y feas pueden tener el pelo bonito o las orejas bien formadas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLas orejas bien formadas?\n\nLas dudas de Dunk no hac\u00edan sino crecer.\n\n\u2014O los ojos bonitos. Dile que su vestido realza el color de sus ojos \u2014el muchacho reflexion\u00f3 un momento\u2014. A menos que tenga uno solo, como lord Cuervo de Sangre.\n\n\"Mi se\u00f1ora, este vestido realza el color de su ojo.\" Dunk hab\u00eda escuchado piropos as\u00ed a m\u00e1s de un caballero y se\u00f1or joven, aunque nunca eran tan francos. \"Mi noble se\u00f1ora, lleva un vestido muy bonito. Realza el color de sus dos bellos ojos.\" A veces las damas en cuesti\u00f3n eran viejas y escu\u00e1lidas, o gordas y rubicundas, o feas y picadas por la viruela, pero todas llevaban vestido y ten\u00edan dos ojos. Si mal no recordaba Dunk, a todas les hab\u00edan gustado aquellas flores. \"Qu\u00e9 hermoso vestido, mi se\u00f1ora. Realza la encantadora belleza de sus ojos, de tan hermoso color.\"\n\n\u2014La vida del caballero errante es m\u00e1s sencilla \u2014dijo cariacontecido\u2014. Si me equivoco al hablar, lo m\u00e1s probable es que lady Webber me meta en un saco de piedras, lo cosa y lo eche al foso.\n\n\u2014Dudo que tenga un saco tan grande, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Siempre podr\u00edamos usar nuestra bota.\n\n\u2014No \u2014gru\u00f1\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, no podr\u00edamos.\n\nAl salir del bosque Cerrad\u00f3n se encontraron bastante lejos de la presa, r\u00edo arriba. El agua hab\u00eda subido lo suficiente para que Dunk se diera el chapuz\u00f3n con que hab\u00eda so\u00f1ado. \"Bastante profunda para que se ahogue alguien\", pens\u00f3. Al otro lado hab\u00edan cavado una zanja en la ribera para desviar una parte del caudal hacia el oeste. Paralela al camino, la zanja alimentaba una infinidad de canales de menor tama\u00f1o que recorr\u00edan, sinuosos, los cultivos. \"Cuando crucemos el arroyo estaremos en poder de la Viuda.\" Se pregunt\u00f3 hacia qu\u00e9 cabalgaba. En su bando s\u00f3lo estaban \u00e9l y un ni\u00f1o de diez a\u00f1os que le proteg\u00eda la espalda.\n\nEgg se abanic\u00f3 la cara.\n\n\u2014Ser, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 nos detenemos?\n\n\u2014No paramos.\n\nDunk clav\u00f3 los talones en su montura y se meti\u00f3 en el r\u00edo. Egg lo sigui\u00f3 con su mula. El agua subi\u00f3 hasta la panza de Trueno antes de empezar a bajar. Salieron chorreando en el lado de la Viuda. La zanja se alejaba con la rectitud de una lanza, verde y dorada bajo el sol.\n\nVarias horas despu\u00e9s, cuando atisbaron las torres de Fosa Fr\u00eda, Dunk hizo un alto para ponerse la t\u00fanica dorniense y aflojar la espada dentro de la funda. No quer\u00eda que se le atascara en un momento de necesidad. Tambi\u00e9n Egg sacudi\u00f3 la empu\u00f1adura de su daga con una expresi\u00f3n solemne bajo el sombrero blando. Siguieron cabalgando lado a lado, Dunk a lomos de su gran corcel, el ni\u00f1o encima de su mula, mientras en su asta pend\u00eda con languidez el estandarte de Osgrey.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de todo lo dicho por ser Eustace, Fosa Fr\u00eda result\u00f3 un poco decepcionante. En comparaci\u00f3n con Basti\u00f3n de Tormentas, Altojard\u00edn u otras residencias se\u00f1oriales que Dunk hab\u00eda visto, era un castillo modesto... pero castillo al fin, no atalaya fortificada. Su muralla exterior con almenas ten\u00eda una altura de diez varas y en cada esquina una torre la mitad de grande que Tiesa. Y de cada torreta, de cada chapitel, colgaba con pesadez el estandarte negro de los Webber, con una ara\u00f1a moteada sobre una red de plata.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer? \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. El agua. Mira a d\u00f3nde va.\n\nAl llegar al muro este de Fosa Fr\u00eda, la zanja desaguaba en el foso que daba su nombre al castillo. El borboteo del agua provoc\u00f3 en Dunk una sensaci\u00f3n desagradable. \"No se quedar\u00e1 mi agua jaquelada.\"\n\n\u2014Ven \u2014le dijo a Egg.\n\nPor encima del arco de la puerta principal colgaba, fl\u00e1cida, una hilera de estandartes con ara\u00f1as sobre otro sello m\u00e1s antiguo, grabado a profundidad en la piedra. Aunque lo hubieran desgastado varios siglos de viento y de intemperie, la forma del emblema segu\u00eda siendo muy visible: un le\u00f3n rampante compuesto por cuadrados jaquelados. Debajo la puerta estaba abierta. Mientras chacoloteaban con las herraduras por el puente levadizo, Dunk se fij\u00f3 en cu\u00e1nto hab\u00eda bajado el nivel del foso. \"Al menos un metro y medio\", calcul\u00f3.\n\nEn el rastrillo dos lanceros les cerraron el paso, uno de ellos de gran barba negra, que exigi\u00f3 saber a qu\u00e9 ven\u00edan.\n\n\u2014Me manda mi se\u00f1or de Osgrey para negociar con lady Webber \u2014le dijo Dunk\u2014. Mi nombre es ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Ya dec\u00eda yo que no eras Bennis \u2014dijo el otro lancero, que no llevaba barba\u2014. Lo habr\u00edamos olido antes de llegar.\n\nLe faltaba un diente y ten\u00eda una insignia con una ara\u00f1a de lunares cosida sobre el coraz\u00f3n.\n\nEl de la barba miraba con recelo a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Nadie ve a su se\u00f1or\u00eda sin permiso de Tres Varas. Acomp\u00e1\u00f1eme. Su mozo de cuadra puede quedarse aqu\u00ed con los caballos.\n\n\u2014Soy escudero, no mozo de cuadra \u2014puntualiz\u00f3 Egg\u2014. \u00bfEres ciego o s\u00f3lo tonto?\n\nEl lancero sin barba se ech\u00f3 a re\u00edr. El otro aplic\u00f3 la punta de su lanza al cuello del muchacho.\n\n\u2014Rep\u00edtelo.\n\nDunk le dio a Egg un golpe en la oreja.\n\n\u2014No, ten la boca cerrada y oc\u00fapate de los caballos \u2014desmont\u00f3\u2014. Quiero ver a ser Lucas.\n\nEl de la barba baj\u00f3 la lanza.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 en el patio.\n\nTras pasar bajo el rastrillo de p\u00faas de hierro y por una buhedera, llegaron al patio exterior. En los cubiles ladraban sabuesos y Dunk oy\u00f3 cantos detr\u00e1s de las vidrieras de un septo heptagonal de madera. Frente a la herrer\u00eda, un herrero herraba un corcel con la ayuda de un aprendiz. Cerca de ellos, en el campo de tiro, un escudero disparaba flechas y una joven pecosa, con una larga trenza, igualaba sus disparos. Un estafermo daba vueltas mientras media docena de caballeros con protectores se turnaban para golpearlo.\n\nEncontraron a ser Lucas Tres Varas entre los espectadores del estafermo, hablando con un sept\u00f3n alto y grueso que sudaba m\u00e1s que Dunk, un verdadero salchich\u00f3n humano con las vestiduras tan mojadas como si se hubiera ba\u00f1ado con ellas. A su lado estaba Inchfield, tieso, erguido, muy alto... pero no tanto como Dunk. \"Nueve palmos y siete dedos\" \u2014calcul\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, \"y orgulloso hasta del \u00faltimo\". Pese a ir vestido con seda negra y tela de plata, ser Lucas aparentaba estar tan fresco como si caminara por el Muro.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014lo llam\u00f3 el lancero\u2014, aqu\u00ed hay uno que viene de la torre de los pollos, para una audiencia con su se\u00f1or\u00eda.\n\nEl primero en girarse fue el sept\u00f3n, con un grito de alborozo que hizo sospechar a Dunk que estaba borracho.\n\n\u2014Pero \u00a1qu\u00e9 veo! \u00bfUn caballero errante? El Dominio est\u00e1 lleno de caminos \u2014el sept\u00f3n hizo una se\u00f1al de bendici\u00f3n\u2014. Que el Guerrero luche siempre a su lado. Soy el sept\u00f3n Sefton. Poco afortunado nombre, pero es el m\u00edo. \u00bfY usted?\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Modesto el hombre \u2014le dijo el sept\u00f3n a ser Lucas\u2014. Si yo fuera tan alto como \u00e9l me har\u00eda llamar ser Sefton el Inmenso. Ser Sefton la Torre. Ser Sefton el de las Nubes en torno a las Orejas.\n\nSu cara redonda estaba roja y en sus vestiduras hab\u00eda manchas de vino.\n\nSer Lucas estudi\u00f3 a Dunk. Era algo mayor, cuarenta a\u00f1os por lo menos, por no decir cincuenta. M\u00e1s que musculoso era nervudo y llamaba la atenci\u00f3n por la fealdad de su rostro. Ten\u00eda los labios gruesos, unos dientes amarillos que se encabalgaban, la nariz ancha y carnosa y los ojos saltones. \"Y est\u00e1 enojado\", intuy\u00f3 Dunk antes de o\u00edrlo hablar.\n\n\u2014En el mejor de los casos, los caballeros errantes son mendigos con espada, y en el peor forajidos. M\u00e1rchese. Aqu\u00ed no queremos a los de su cala\u00f1a.\n\nDunk puso mala cara.\n\n\u2014Me env\u00eda de Tiesa ser Eustace Osgrey para negociar con la se\u00f1ora del castillo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfOsgrey? \u2014el sept\u00f3n lanz\u00f3 una mirada a Tres Varas\u2014. \u00bfEl Osgrey del le\u00f3n jaquelado? Cre\u00eda que la casa Osgrey se hab\u00eda extinguido.\n\n\u2014Tan cerca est\u00e1 de hacerlo que es como si lo estuviera. El viejo es el \u00faltimo que queda. Le hemos permitido conservar una atalaya medio en ruinas, a algunas leguas al este \u2014ser Lucas mir\u00f3 a Dunk, ce\u00f1udo\u2014. Si ser Eustace quiere hablar con su se\u00f1or\u00eda, que venga \u00e9l mismo \u2014su mirada se vovi\u00f3 penetrante\u2014. Usted es el que estuvo con Bennis en la presa. No se moleste en negarlo. Deber\u00eda ahorcarlo.\n\n\u2014Por la misericordia de los Siete... \u2014el sept\u00f3n se sec\u00f3 el sudor de la frente con una manga\u2014. Conque un bandolero. Y grande. Ser, arrepi\u00e9ntase de sus maldades y la Madre tendr\u00e1 compasi\u00f3n \u2014la piadosa s\u00faplica del sept\u00f3n se vio interrumpida por un pedo\u2014. Vaya. Disculpe mi ventosidad, ser. Es lo que pasa por comer alubias y pan de cebada.\n\n\u2014No soy ning\u00fan bandolero \u2014les dijo Dunk con toda la dignidad de que fue capaz.\n\nSu negativa no tuvo efecto alguno en Tres Varas.\n\n\u2014No abuse de mi paciencia, ser... en caso de que usted sea un ser. Regrese corriendo a su torre de los pollos para decirle a ser Eustace que nos entregue a ser Bennis de la Peste Parda. Si nos ahorra la molestia de sacarlo de Tiesa, tal vez su se\u00f1or\u00eda se sienta m\u00e1s inclinada a la clemencia.\n\n\u2014De ser Bennis y el altercado en la presa hablar\u00e9 yo mismo con su se\u00f1or\u00eda. Tambi\u00e9n del robo de nuestra agua.\n\n\u2014\u00bfRobo? \u2014dijo ser Lucas\u2014. Si as\u00ed se lo dice a nuestra se\u00f1ora, antes de que se ponga el sol estar\u00e1 nadando en el interior de un saco. \u00bfTan seguro est\u00e1 de querer verla?\n\nDe lo \u00fanico que estaba seguro Dunk era de querer estampar el pu\u00f1o en los dientes torcidos y amarillos de Lucas Inchfield.\n\n\u2014Ya dije lo que quiero.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jalo hablar con ella \u2014intervino el sept\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 da\u00f1o puede hacer? Ser Duncan ha hecho una larga cabalgata bajo este horrendo sol. Que diga lo que necesite decir.\n\nSer Lucas volvi\u00f3 a estudiar a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Nuestro sept\u00f3n es un hombre devoto. Acomp\u00e1\u00f1eme. Le agradecer\u00e9 que sea breve.\n\nEmpez\u00f3 a dar zancadas por el patio, obligando a Dunk a apretar el paso para alcanzarlo.\n\nSe hab\u00edan abierto las puertas del septo del castillo. Ya bajaban los fieles por los escalones. Hab\u00eda caballeros, escuderos, una docena de ni\u00f1os, varios ancianos, tres septas con t\u00fanica y capucha blancas... y una mujer entrada en blandas carnes, una mujer de alcurnia, con un vestido de damasco azul oscuro con encaje de Myr tan largo que arrastraba el borde por el polvo. Llevaba el pelo recogido en alto, bajo una red de plata hilada, pero lo m\u00e1s rojo de todo era su cara.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo ser Lucas al llegar ante ella y sus septas\u2014, este caballero errante dice traer un mensaje de ser Eustace Osgrey. \u00bfDesea o\u00edrlo?\n\n\u2014Si es su deseo, ser Lucas...\n\nLa dama mir\u00f3 con tal ah\u00ednco a Dunk que \u00e9ste, de manera irremediable, se acord\u00f3 de lo que hab\u00eda dicho Egg sobre la brujer\u00eda. \"No creo que se ba\u00f1e en sangre para conservar su belleza.\"\n\nLa Viuda era baja y rechoncha, con una cabeza de extra\u00f1a forma que el pelo no disimulaba del todo. Ten\u00eda demasiado grande la nariz y demasiado peque\u00f1a la boca. A Dunk lo alivi\u00f3 comprobar que ten\u00eda dos ojos, aunque para entonces en lo \u00faltimo que pensaba era en ser galante.\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace me pidi\u00f3 que hable con usted sobre el altercado que se produjo junto a su presa...\n\nElla parpade\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi... presa, dice?\n\nEmpezaba a formarse un grupo alrededor de ambos. Dunk sinti\u00f3 miradas hostiles.\n\n\u2014El arroyo \u2014dijo\u2014, el Jaquel. Construy\u00f3 una presa para embalsarlo, mi se\u00f1ora...\n\n\u2014No, eso no es posible \u2014contest\u00f3 ella\u2014. Dediqu\u00e9 toda la ma\u00f1ana a mis devociones, ser.\n\nDunk oy\u00f3 la risa de ser Lucas.\n\n\u2014No quise decir que lo haya construido con sus propias manos, mi se\u00f1ora, sino que sin agua morir\u00e1n nuestras cosechas... El pueblo llano tiene alubias y cebada en los campos, y melones...\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? Me gustan mucho los melones \u2014la peque\u00f1a boca de la dama se curv\u00f3 de alegr\u00eda\u2014. \u00bfDe qu\u00e9 variedad son?\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 con inquietud el c\u00edrculo de rostros mientras sent\u00eda que la suya se iba calentando. \"Aqu\u00ed pasa algo raro. Tres Varas me est\u00e1 tomando el pelo.\"\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora, \u00bfpodr\u00edamos seguir hablando en un sitio m\u00e1s... privado?\n\n\u2014\u00a1Apuesto una pieza de plata a que este necio pretende acostarse con ella! \u2014brome\u00f3 alguien.\n\nAlrededor de Dunk todo eran risas. La dama se encogi\u00f3, medio de miedo, y se protegi\u00f3 la cara con las manos. Una de las septas se apresur\u00f3 a ponerse a su lado y pasarle un brazo por los hombros en adem\u00e1n protector.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 tanto alborozo? \u2014una voz serena y firme se sobrepuso a las carcajadas\u2014. \u00bfNadie me explica la broma? Se\u00f1or caballero, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 importuna a mi cu\u00f1ada?\n\nEra la joven a la que hab\u00eda visto en el campo de tiro. Llevaba un carcaj de flechas apoyado en la cadera, y un arco tan alto como ella, lo cual no era decir mucho. Si Dunk superaba en un dedo los cinco codos, la arquera no pod\u00eda superar en m\u00e1s de dos los siete palmos. Dunk podr\u00eda haber rodeado su cintura con las manos. Su trenza pelirroja era tan larga que rozaba sus muslos. Ten\u00eda un hoyuelo en la barbilla, nariz respingada y pecas claras en las mejillas.\n\n\u2014Disc\u00falpenos, lady Rohanne \u2014dijo un joven y apuesto se\u00f1or que llevaba bordado en su jub\u00f3n el centauro de los Caswell\u2014. Este necio confundi\u00f3 a lady Helicent con usted.\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 a las dos se\u00f1oras.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUsted es la Viuda Escarlata? \u2014se oy\u00f3 decir a s\u00ed mismo\u2014. Pero si es demasiado...\n\n\u2014\u00bfJoven? \u2014La muchacha arroj\u00f3 el arco al joven larguirucho con el que hab\u00eda estado practicando el tiro\u2014. Resulta que tengo veinticinco a\u00f1os. \u00bfO quiso decir \"baja\"?\n\n\u2014Bella. Quise decir bella \u2014Dunk no supo de d\u00f3nde lo sacaba, pero se alegr\u00f3 de haberlo dicho. Le gustaba la nariz de aquella dama y los senos peque\u00f1os pero bien formados que cubr\u00eda el jub\u00f3n de cuero\u2014. Hab\u00eda pensado que ser\u00eda... bueno... dicen que ha enviudado cuatro veces, de modo que...\n\n\u2014Mi primer marido falleci\u00f3 cuando yo ten\u00eda diez a\u00f1os y \u00e9l, doce. Era escudero de mi padre y lo abatieron en el campo de Hierba Roja. Lamento decir que mis esposos no acostumbran a quedarse mucho tiempo. El \u00faltimo muri\u00f3 en primavera.\n\nEra lo que se dec\u00eda siempre de los que hab\u00edan muerto dos a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s en la gran epidemia primaveral: \"Muri\u00f3 en primavera\". Decenas de miles hab\u00edan muerto en primavera, entre ellos un rey anciano y sabio, y dos j\u00f3venes pr\u00edncipes con un largo futuro por delante.\n\n\u2014Lo... lo siento mucho, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014\"Una galanter\u00eda, necio, dile una galanter\u00eda\"\u2014. Quer\u00eda decir... que su vestido...\n\n\u2014\u00bfVestido? \u2014lady Webber se mir\u00f3 las botas, los pantalones, la t\u00fanica suelta de hilo y el jub\u00f3n de cuero\u2014. No llevo vestido.\n\n\u2014Quiero decir que su cabello... es suave...\n\n\u2014\u00bfY eso c\u00f3mo lo sabe, ser? Si alguna vez hubiera tocado mi cabello, creo que lo recordar\u00eda.\n\n\u2014No, suave no \u2014dijo Dunk, apesadumbrado\u2014. Quise decir rojo. Su cabello es muy rojo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMuy rojo? Ah, pero no tanto como su cara, espero.\n\nLa joven se rio y con ella los espectadores.\n\nTodos salvo ser Lucas Tres Varas.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora \u2014terci\u00f3\u2014, este hombre es uno de los mercenarios de Tiesa. Estaba con Bennis del Escudo Pardo cuando atac\u00f3 a sus cavadores en la presa y le dej\u00f3 marcado el rostro a Wolmer. Lo env\u00eda el viejo Osgrey para negociar con usted.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es, mi se\u00f1ora. Me llamo ser Duncan el Alto.\n\n\u2014Mejor dicho ser Duncan el Bobo \u2014dijo un caballero barbado, que ostentaba el triple rel\u00e1mpago de Leygood.\n\nSe oyeron m\u00e1s carcajadas. Incluso lady Helicent se recuper\u00f3 lo suficiente para emitir una risita.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAcaso muri\u00f3 la gentileza en Fosa Fr\u00eda con mi se\u00f1or padre? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 la joven. \"No, joven no, sino mujer cumplida\"\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo, me pregunto, lleg\u00f3 a cometer ser Duncan semejante error?\n\nDunk lanz\u00f3 a Inchfield una mirada llena de encono.\n\n\u2014La culpa fue m\u00eda.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe verdad? \u2014la Viuda Escarlata mir\u00f3 a Dunk de los pies a la cabeza, aunque donde m\u00e1s se detuvo fue en su pecho\u2014. Un \u00e1rbol y una estrella fugaz. Es la primera vez que veo tales armas \u2014toc\u00f3 su t\u00fanica y sigui\u00f3 con dos dedos una rama del olmo\u2014. Y pintadas, no bordadas. He o\u00eddo que en Dorne se pintan sus sedas, pero usted parece demasiado alto para ser dorniense.\n\n\u2014En Dorne no todos los hombres son bajos, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014Dunk sinti\u00f3 los dedos de la dama sobre la seda. Tambi\u00e9n ten\u00eda pecas en las manos. \"De seguro toda ella es pecosa.\" Sinti\u00f3 una extra\u00f1a sequedad en la boca\u2014. Viv\u00ed un a\u00f1o en Dorne.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY all\u00e1 crecen tanto todos los robles? \u2014dijo ella mientras segu\u00eda con los dedos otra rama, alrededor del coraz\u00f3n de Dunk.\n\n\u2014Representa un olmo, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Lo recordar\u00e9 \u2014la dama retir\u00f3 la mano con solemnidad\u2014. Aqu\u00ed en el patio hace demasiado calor y hay demasiado polvo para conversar. Sept\u00f3n, mu\u00e9strale a ser Duncan el camino de mi sala de audiencias.\n\n\u2014Con much\u00edsimo gusto, cu\u00f1ada.\n\n\u2014Nuestro invitado tendr\u00e1 sed. Tambi\u00e9n puedes mandar que traigan una jarra de vino.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? \u2014el orondo personaje sonri\u00f3 de oreja a oreja\u2014. En fin, si eso es de tu agrado...\n\n\u2014Me reunir\u00e9 con usted en cuanto me haya cambiado \u2014la dama se desabroch\u00f3 el cintur\u00f3n y el carcaj y se los entreg\u00f3 a su acompa\u00f1ante\u2014. Que est\u00e9 tambi\u00e9n presente el maestre Cerrick. Ser Lucas, vaya a avisarle que venga.\n\n\u2014Ahora mismo lo traigo, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo Lucas Tres Varas.\n\nLa mirada de la dama a su castellano fue glacial.\n\n\u2014No es necesario. S\u00e9 cu\u00e1ntos deberes requiere desempe\u00f1ar en el castillo. Bastar\u00e1 con que pida al maestre Cerrick que acuda a mis estancias.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo Dunk cuando la dama ya se iba\u2014, hicieron esperar a mi escudero en la puerta. \u00bfPuede reunirse tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l con nosotros?\n\n\u2014\u00bfSu escudero? \u2014al sonre\u00edr, la dama pareci\u00f3 una joven de quince a\u00f1os, no una mujer de veinticinco. \"Una chica guapa, p\u00edcara y risue\u00f1a\"\u2014. Si as\u00ed le place, faltaba m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014No bebas el vino, ser \u2014le susurr\u00f3 Egg mientras esperaban con el sept\u00f3n en la sala de audiencias.\n\nEl suelo estaba cubierto de esteras fragantes y las paredes de tapices con escenas de torneos y batallas.\n\nDunk resopl\u00f3 por la nariz.\n\n\u2014No le hace falta envenenarme \u2014susurr\u00f3\u2014. Me considera un necio con pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos en las orejas.\n\n\u2014Da la casualidad de que a mi cu\u00f1ada le gusta el pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n Sefton al reaparecer con una jarra de vino, otra de agua y tres copas\u2014. S\u00ed, s\u00ed, lo escuch\u00e9. Soy gordo, pero no sordo \u2014sirvi\u00f3 dos copas de vino y otra de agua. La tercera se la dio a Egg, que tras una mirada suspicaz la dej\u00f3 a un lado. El sept\u00f3n no se fij\u00f3\u2014. Este vino es del Rejo \u2014le dijo a Dunk\u2014. Muy buena cosecha. El veneno le da un picor especial \u2014le gui\u00f1\u00f3 el ojo a Egg\u2014. Yo la uva casi nunca la toco, pero es lo que dicen.\n\nTendi\u00f3 una copa a Dunk.\n\nEra un vino dulce y aterciopelado, pero Dunk lo bebi\u00f3 con precauci\u00f3n y s\u00f3lo despu\u00e9s de que el sept\u00f3n se empinara de tres grandes y ruidosos tragos la mitad de su copa. Egg se cruz\u00f3 de brazos y sigui\u00f3 ignorando el agua.\n\n\u2014Es verdad, le gusta el pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n\u2014, y tambi\u00e9n usted, ser. Conozco a mi cu\u00f1ada. Al verlo en el patio abrigu\u00e9 ciertas esperanzas de que fuera un pretendiente llegado de Desembarco del Rey para pedir la mano de mi se\u00f1ora.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo sabe que soy de Desembarco del Rey, sept\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014Los de all\u00e1 tienen un dejo especial \u2014el sept\u00f3n tom\u00f3 un buen trago de vino, se lo dej\u00f3 un momento en la boca y luego de trag\u00e1rselo suspir\u00f3 de placer\u2014. Pas\u00e9 muchos a\u00f1os en Desembarco del Rey al servicio de nuestro sept\u00f3n supremo en el Gran Septo de Baelor \u2014suspir\u00f3\u2014. No reconocer\u00eda la ciudad desde la primavera. Los incendios la cambiaron. De cada cuatro casas, una desapareci\u00f3 y otra est\u00e1 vac\u00eda. Tambi\u00e9n se fueron las ratas. Es lo m\u00e1s raro. Nunca hab\u00eda pensado ver una ciudad sin ratas.\n\nTambi\u00e9n Dunk lo hab\u00eda escuchado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEstuvo en Desembarco del Rey durante la gran epidemia primaveral?\n\n\u2014\u00a1Vaya si estaba! Horribles momentos, ser. Al rayar el alba se despertaba un hombre sano y al caer la noche estaba muerto. Murieron tantos tan deprisa que no hab\u00eda tiempo de enterrarlos, as\u00ed que los amontonaban en el Pozo Drag\u00f3n, y cuando la profundidad de los cad\u00e1veres llegaba a siete codos lord R\u00edos ordenaba a los piromantes que les prendieran fuego. Por las ventanas entraba la luz de las hogueras, como anta\u00f1o, cuando a\u00fan hac\u00edan su nido los dragones debajo de la c\u00fapula. Por la noche se ve\u00eda el resplandor en toda la ciudad, el fulgor verde del fuego valyrio. Hasta hoy me persigue el color verde. Dicen que en Lannisport fue dura la primavera y en Antigua a\u00fan m\u00e1s, pero en Desembarco del Rey seg\u00f3 cuatro de cada diez vidas. No se salvaron j\u00f3venes ni viejos, ricos ni pobres, grandes ni humildes. Se llev\u00f3 a nuestro buen sept\u00f3n supremo, la voz de los dioses en la tierra, junto a un tercio de los M\u00e1ximos Devotos y casi todas nuestras hermanas silenciosas. Su majestad el rey Daeron, el dulce Matarys y el bravo Valarr, la mano... Qu\u00e9 tiempos tan horrendos. Al final, media ciudad le rezaba al Desconocido \u2014volvi\u00f3 a beber\u2014. \u00bfY d\u00f3nde estaba usted, ser?\n\n\u2014En Dorne \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Demos gracias entonces a la Madre por su clemencia \u2014a Dorne no hab\u00eda llegado la gran epidemia primaveral, quiz\u00e1 porque sus habitantes cerraron puertos y fronteras , al igual que los Arryn del Valle, otros que hab\u00edan sobrevivido\u2014. Tanto hablar de muerte le quita uno hasta el gusto del vino, pero en tiempos como los que vivimos cuesta hallar alegr\u00eda. Pese a todas nuestras oraciones, persiste la sequ\u00eda. El bosque Real es todo yesca, presa de incendios desatados d\u00eda y noche. Aceroamargo y los hijos de Daemon Fuegoscuro urden conspiraciones en Tyrosh y los krakens de Dagon Greyjoy merodean como lobos por el mar del Ocaso, con incursiones que llegan tan al sur como el Rejo. Se dice que se llevaron la mitad de las riquezas de Isla Bella y a cien mujeres. Lord Farman est\u00e1 reparando sus defensas, aunque a mi juicio es como si un hombre le pusiera un cintur\u00f3n de castidad a su hija embarazada cuando su barriga ya est\u00e1 tan grande como la m\u00eda. Lord Bracken muere despacio en el Tridente y su hijo mayor falleci\u00f3 en primavera. Ser\u00e1 por lo tanto ser Otho el que deba sucederlo. Los Blackwood jam\u00e1s tolerar\u00e1n como vecino a la Bestia de Bracken. Ser\u00e1 la guerra.\n\nDunk estaba al corriente de la antigua enemistad entre los Blackwood y los Bracken.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo los obligar\u00e1 su se\u00f1or a la paz?\n\n\u2014Lord Tully, por desgracia \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n Sefton\u2014, es un ni\u00f1o de ocho a\u00f1os rodeado de mujeres. Poco har\u00e1 Aguasdulces y menos el rey Aerys. Es posible que el asunto ni siquiera llegue a su real conocimiento, a menos que alg\u00fan maestre escriba un libro al respecto. Es dudoso que lord R\u00edos permita que hable con \u00e9l alg\u00fan Bracken. Si toma cartas, s\u00f3lo ser\u00e1 para ayudar a sus primos a pararle los pies a la Bestia. La Madre marc\u00f3 a lord R\u00edos el d\u00eda en que naci\u00f3 y Aceroamargo lo hizo de nuevo en el campo de Hierba Roja.\n\nDunk supo que se refer\u00eda a Cuervo de Sangre. El verdadero nombre de la mano era Brynden R\u00edos. Era hijo de una Black-wood y del rey Aegon IV.\n\nEl orondo sept\u00f3n bebi\u00f3 vino y reanud\u00f3 su perorata.\n\n\u2014En lo que respecta a Aerys, a su alteza le interesan m\u00e1s los pergaminos y las profec\u00edas cubiertas de polvo que los se\u00f1ores y las leyes. Ni siquiera se mueve para concebir a un heredero. La reina Aelinor reza a diario en el Gran Septo para rogarle a la Madre que la bendiga con un hijo, pero sigue siendo doncella. Aerys vive recluido en sus estancias y dicen que prefiere llevarse un libro que una mujer a la cama \u2014volvi\u00f3 a llenarse la copa\u2014. No se enga\u00f1e: el que nos gobierna es lord R\u00edos, con sus hechizos y esp\u00edas. Nadie le hace frente. En Refugio Estival el pr\u00edncipe Maekar no hace m\u00e1s que rabiar contra su hermano el rey. El pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel es tan manso como loco, y sus hijos... sus hijos son unos ni\u00f1os. Todos los puestos de gobierno est\u00e1n dominados por amigos y favoritos de lord R\u00edos. Los se\u00f1ores del Consejo Real le lamen la mano y el nuevo gran maestre est\u00e1 tan pre\u00f1ado de hechizos como \u00e9l. La guarnici\u00f3n de la Fortaleza Roja est\u00e1 compuesta por Dientes de Cuervo, sin cuyo permiso nadie puede ver al rey.\n\nDunk se removi\u00f3 en su asiento, inc\u00f3modo. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene lord Cuervo de Sangre? Mil, y uno m\u00e1s.\" Esper\u00f3 que la mano del rey no tuviera tambi\u00e9n mil y un o\u00eddos. Algunas cosas de las que dec\u00eda el sept\u00f3n Sefton sonaban a traici\u00f3n. Ech\u00f3 un vistazo a Egg para ver c\u00f3mo se lo tomaba. El ni\u00f1o se esforzaba al m\u00e1ximo por contener su lengua.\n\nEl sept\u00f3n se puso en pie.\n\n\u2014Mi cu\u00f1ada a\u00fan tardar\u00e1 un poco. Los primeros diez vestidos que se pruebe no se adecuar\u00e1n a su estado de \u00e1nimo, como sucede con todas las grandes damas. \u00bfLe apetece algo m\u00e1s de vino?\n\nRellen\u00f3 las dos copas sin esperar la respuesta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa dama a la que confund\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk con muchas ganas de cambiar de tema\u2014 es su hermana?\n\n\u2014Todos somos hijos de los Siete, ser, pero aparte de eso... No, que los dioses me guarden. Lady Helicent era hermana de ser Roland Uffering, el cuarto marido de lady Rohanne, que muri\u00f3 en primavera. Mi hermano era su predecesor, ser Simon Staunton, que tuvo la gran desgracia de atragantarse con un hueso de pollo. Hay que decir que Fosa Fr\u00eda est\u00e1 plagada de fantasmas. Mueren los esposos, pero se quedan sus parientes para beber los vinos de mi se\u00f1ora y comer sus fiambres como una plaga de langostas gordas y rosadas, enfundadas en seda y terciopelo \u2014se limpi\u00f3 la boca\u2014. Sin embargo, debe volver a casarse, y sin tardar demasiado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDebe? \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Lo exige el testamento de su se\u00f1or padre. Lord Wyman quer\u00eda nietos que continuaran su linaje. Al enfermar trat\u00f3 de darla en matrimonio a Tres Varas, para morir a sabiendas de que un hombre fuerte la proteger\u00eda, pero Rohanne se neg\u00f3. El se\u00f1or se veng\u00f3 en su testamento. Si al cumplirse dos a\u00f1os del fallecimiento de su padre sigue sin casarse, Fosa Fr\u00eda y sus tierras pasar\u00e1n a su primo Wendell. Es posible que lo haya visto en el patio: un hombre bajo, con bocio, propenso a las flatulencias. Aunque no soy qui\u00e9n para decirlo. Tambi\u00e9n a m\u00ed me atormenta el exceso de aire. Que as\u00ed sea. Ser Wendell es codicioso y tonto, pero su se\u00f1ora esposa es la hermana de lord Rowan... y una mujer con una fertilidad de los mil demonios, no puede negarse. Pare con la misma frecuencia con que se tira pedos su marido. Sus hijos varones son tan malos como \u00e9l, sus hijas peores y todos empezaron ya a contar los d\u00edas. Teniendo en cuenta que lord Rowan corrobor\u00f3 el testamento, mi se\u00f1ora s\u00f3lo tiene hasta la pr\u00f3xima luna nueva.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 esper\u00f3 tanto? \u2014se pregunt\u00f3 en voz alta Dunk.\n\nEl sept\u00f3n se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014Por escasez de pretendientes, si he de serle franco. Mi cu\u00f1ada, como habr\u00e1 observado, no es ofensiva a la vista, y a sus encantos se a\u00f1aden un s\u00f3lido castillo y muchas tierras. Lo l\u00f3gico ser\u00eda suponer que la rodeen como moscas hijos menores y caballeros sin tierras. L\u00f3gico, pero err\u00f3neo. Los disuaden los cuatro maridos muertos, y hay quien dice, para colmo, que es est\u00e9ril... aunque nunca cerca de ella, salvo que deseen ver por dentro una jaula de cuervos. Ha dado a luz a dos beb\u00e9s, ni\u00f1o y ni\u00f1a, pero ninguno vivi\u00f3 hasta el d\u00eda del nombre. Los pocos a los que no arredran los rumores sobre veneno y brujer\u00eda no quieren saber nada de Tres Varas. En su lecho de muerte lord Wyman le encomend\u00f3 proteger a su hija de cualquier pretendiente indigno y \u00e9l lo interpret\u00f3 como cualquier pretendiente a secas. Todo aspirante a obtener la mano de mi se\u00f1ora tendr\u00eda que enfrentarse primero a la espada de Tres Varas \u2014el sept\u00f3n se acab\u00f3 el vino y dej\u00f3 la copa\u2014. No crea por ello que no ha habido ninguno. Los m\u00e1s persistentes han sido Cleyton Caswell y Simon Leygood, aunque parecen m\u00e1s interesados en sus tierras que en su persona. Si yo fuera dado a las apuestas, pondr\u00eda mi oro en Gerold Lannister. Todav\u00eda no ha hecho acto de presencia, pero dicen que tiene el pelo dorado y es ingenioso, y mide casi nueve palmos de estatura...\n\n\u2014...y a lady Webber la complacen mucho sus misivas \u2014la dama en cuesti\u00f3n estaba en la puerta, junto a un maestre joven y feo de gran nariz de gancho\u2014. Perder\u00edas la apuesta, cu\u00f1ado. Gerold jam\u00e1s renunciar\u00e1 de grado a los placeres de Lannisport y el esplendor de Roca Casterly a cambio de un peque\u00f1o se\u00f1or\u00edo. Su influencia como hermano y consejero de lord Tybolt es mayor que la que podr\u00eda esperar como mi esposo. En cuanto a los dem\u00e1s, ser Simon tendr\u00eda que vender la mitad de mis tierras para saldar sus deudas, y ser Cleyton tiembla como una hoja cada vez que Tres Varas se digna a mirarlo. Adem\u00e1s es m\u00e1s lindo que yo. Y t\u00fa, sept\u00f3n, tienes la boca m\u00e1s grande de todo Poniente.\n\n\u2014Hace falta una gran boca para una gran barriga \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n Sefton sin inmutarse\u2014. Si no, la barriga se hace peque\u00f1a enseguida.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUsted es la Viuda Escarlata? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg, estupefacto\u2014. \u00a1Si casi soy tan alto como usted!\n\n\u2014Hace menos de medio a\u00f1o otro ni\u00f1o hizo la misma observaci\u00f3n y lo envi\u00e9 al potro para que lo hicieran m\u00e1s alto \u2014tras sentarse en el trono de la tarima, lady Rohanne se coloc\u00f3 la trenza por delante, apoyada en el hombro izquierdo. Era tan larga que se le enroscaba en el regazo como un gato dormido\u2014. Ser Duncan, hice mal en burlarme de usted en el patio cuando tanto se esforzaba en mostrarse gentil. Es que se ruboriz\u00f3 tanto... \u00bfNo hab\u00eda chicas que le lanzaran piropos en el pueblo donde creci\u00f3 tan alto?\n\n\u2014El pueblo era Desembarco del Rey \u2014Dunk no mencion\u00f3 el Lecho de Pulgas\u2014. Muchachas las hab\u00eda, pero...\n\nEn el Lecho de Pulgas los piropos a veces consist\u00edan en cortar un dedo del pie.\n\n\u2014Supongo que ten\u00edan miedo de burlarse de usted \u2014lady Rohanne se acarici\u00f3 la trenza\u2014. Sin duda las asustaba su tama\u00f1o. Le ruego que no piense mal de lady Helicent. Mi cu\u00f1ada es un persona algo simple, pero sin malicia. Pese a ser tan piadosa, no podr\u00eda ni vestirse sin sus septas.\n\n\u2014No fue culpa suya. El error fue m\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Miente con mucha galanura. S\u00e9 que fue ser Lucas. Es un hombre de humor cruel y a simple vista lo ha ofendido.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo? \u2014dijo Dunk desconcertado\u2014. Yo no hice nada.\n\nLa sonrisa de lady Rohanne le hizo desear que fuera menos agraciada.\n\n\u2014Lo vi junto a \u00e9l y lo aventaja como por medio palmo. Hace mucho tiempo que ser Lucas no conoce a nadie a quien no pueda mirar desde arriba. \u00bfQu\u00e9 edad tiene, ser?\n\n\u2014Casi veinte, mi se\u00f1ora, con su permiso.\n\nA Dunk le gustaba c\u00f3mo sonaba \"veinte\", aunque con toda probabilidad fuera un a\u00f1o menor o dos. Nadie lo sab\u00eda con certeza, \u00e9l menos que nadie. Debi\u00f3 tener madre y padre, como todo el mundo, pero no los conoci\u00f3, ni siquiera de nombre, y en el Lecho de Pulgas a nadie le importaba mucho cu\u00e1ndo y de qui\u00e9n hab\u00eda nacido.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs tan fuerte como aparenta?\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1nta fuerza aparento, mi se\u00f1ora?\n\n\u2014La suficiente para irritar a ser Lucas. Es el gobernador de mi fortaleza, aunque no por mi voluntad. Lo hered\u00e9 de mi padre, al igual que Fosa Fr\u00eda. \u00bfLleg\u00f3 a caballero en alg\u00fan campo de batalla, ser Duncan? Su modo de hablar parece indicar que no naci\u00f3 de noble cuna, si no es impertinente de mi parte.\n\n\"Nac\u00ed en el arroyo.\"\n\n\u2014De ni\u00f1o me tom\u00f3 como escudero un caballero errante que se llamaba ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda. \u00c9l me ense\u00f1\u00f3 la caballer\u00eda y el arte de la guerra.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY el tal ser Arlan fue el que lo arm\u00f3 caballero?\n\nDunk movi\u00f3 los pies y vio que ten\u00eda medio deshechos los cordones de una bota.\n\n\u2014Habr\u00eda sido dif\u00edcil que lo hiciera otro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 ahora ser Arlan?\n\n\u2014Muri\u00f3 \u2014levant\u00f3 la vista. Ya habr\u00eda tiempo de anudarse la bota\u2014. Lo enterr\u00e9 en una colina.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCay\u00f3 con valent\u00eda en la batalla?\n\n\u2014Llov\u00eda y se resfri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Me consta que los ancianos son fr\u00e1giles. Lo aprend\u00ed de mi segundo esposo. Me cas\u00e9 con \u00e9l a los trece a\u00f1os. Si \u00e9l hubiera vivido suficiente para ver su siguiente d\u00eda del nombre, habr\u00eda cumplido cincuenta y cinco. Cuando llevaba medio a\u00f1o bajo tierra le di un hijo var\u00f3n, pero tambi\u00e9n vino a llev\u00e1rselo el Desconocido. Los septones dijeron que su padre lo quer\u00eda junto a \u00e9l. \u00bfUsted qu\u00e9 opina, ser?\n\n\u2014Pues... \u2014dijo Dunk, vacilante\u2014. Es posible, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Tonter\u00edas \u2014dijo ella\u2014. El ni\u00f1o naci\u00f3 demasiado d\u00e9bil. Qu\u00e9 peque\u00f1o era... Apenas ten\u00eda fuerzas para tomar el pecho. En fin. Al padre los dioses le dieron cincuenta y cinco a\u00f1os. Habr\u00eda sido de esperar que concedieran m\u00e1s de tres d\u00edas al hijo.\n\n\u2014En efecto.\n\nPoco o nada sab\u00eda Dunk de los dioses. De vez en cuando iba al septo y rezaba al Guerrero para que le diera fuerza en los brazos, pero por lo dem\u00e1s no importunaba a los Siete.\n\n\u2014Lamento la muerte de ser Arlan \u2014dijo lady Rohanne\u2014, y m\u00e1s a\u00fan lamento que se haya puesto al servicio de ser Eustace. No todos los ancianos son iguales, ser Duncan. Har\u00eda bien en volver a su hogar, en el \u00c1rbol de la Moneda.\n\n\u2014Mi \u00fanico hogar es donde juramento mi espada.\n\nDunk nunca hab\u00eda visto el \u00c1rbol de la Moneda. Ni siquiera habr\u00eda sabido decir si se localizaba en el Dominio.\n\n\u2014Entonces juram\u00e9ntela aqu\u00ed. Son tiempos de incertidumbre y yo necesito caballeros. A juzgar por su aspecto goza de buen apetito, ser Duncan. \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos pollos puede comer? En Fosa Fr\u00eda podr\u00eda saciarse de carne roja y caliente, y de dulces tartas de fruta. Tambi\u00e9n su escudero parece necesitado de sustento. Se ve tan escu\u00e1lido que se le cay\u00f3 el pelo. Aqu\u00ed compartir\u00e1 celda con otros ni\u00f1os de su edad. Le gustar\u00e1. Mi maestro de armas puede instruirlo en todas las artes de la guerra.\n\n\u2014Eso ya lo hago yo \u2014dijo Dunk a la defensiva.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qui\u00e9n mas? \u00bfBennis? \u00bfEl viejo Osgrey? \u00bfLas gallinas?\n\nM\u00e1s de un d\u00eda Dunk hab\u00eda puesto a Egg a perseguir gallinas. \"Lo ayuda a ser m\u00e1s r\u00e1pido\", pens\u00f3, a sabiendas de que si lo dec\u00eda en voz alta lady Rohanne se reir\u00eda. Lo estaba distrayendo con su nariz respingada y sus pecas. Tuvo que recordarse el motivo por el que ser Eustace lo hab\u00eda enviado.\n\n\u2014Mi espada est\u00e1 juramentada a mi se\u00f1or de Osgrey, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo\u2014. As\u00ed son las cosas.\n\n\u2014Pues que as\u00ed sean, ser. Hablemos de asuntos menos agradables \u2014lady Rohanne dio un estir\u00f3n a su trenza\u2014. No toleramos ataques contra Fosa Fr\u00eda ni su gente. D\u00edgame entonces por qu\u00e9 no debo meterlo en un saco y que lo cosan.\n\n\u2014Vine a parlamentar \u2014le record\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, y beb\u00ed de su vino \u2014a\u00fan ten\u00eda en la boca su sabor, dulce y aterciopelado. De momento no lo hab\u00eda envenenado. Quiz\u00e1 su arrojo proviniera del vino\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, no tiene un saco bastante grande para m\u00ed.\n\nLo alivi\u00f3 comprobar que la broma de Egg la hac\u00eda sonre\u00edr.\n\n\u2014Pero tengo varios con cabida para Bennis. El maestre Cerrick dice que a Wolmer le rajaron la cara casi hasta el hueso.\n\n\u2014Ser Bennis perdi\u00f3 los estribos, mi se\u00f1ora. Ser Eustace me envi\u00f3 a pagar el precio de sangre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl precio de sangre? \u2014lady Rohanne se rio\u2014. Ya s\u00e9 que es un anciano, pero no sab\u00eda que lo fuera hasta ese extremo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 se cree, que vivimos en la Edad de los H\u00e9roes, cuando se calculaba que la vida de un hombre no val\u00eda m\u00e1s que una bolsa de piezas de plata?\n\n\u2014Al cavador no lo mataron, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014le record\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Que yo sepa no hubo v\u00edctimas mortales. Recibi\u00f3 un corte en la cara, pero nada m\u00e1s.\n\nLos dedos de lady Rohanne se mov\u00edan sin rumbo por su trenza.\n\n\u2014Y d\u00edgame, \u00bfcu\u00e1nto calcula ser Eustace que vale la mejilla de Wolmer?\n\n\u2014Un venado de plata. Y tres para usted, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Mezquino precio fija ser Eustace en mi honor, si bien reconozco que tres piezas de plata son mejores que tres pollos... Har\u00eda mejor en entregarme a Bennis para que reciba una lecci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfIntervendr\u00eda en ella el saco que ha nombrado?\n\n\u2014Tal vez \u2014se enrosc\u00f3 la trenza en una mano\u2014. Que se quede Osgrey con su plata. La sangre s\u00f3lo se paga con sangre.\n\n\u2014Ser\u00e1 como dice, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, pero \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 no manda llamar al hombre al que hiri\u00f3 Bennis y le pregunta si prefiere un venado de plata o que metan a Bennis en un saco?\n\n\u2014Ah, sucede que si no pudiera tener ambas cosas, optar\u00eda por la plata. Eso no lo dudo, ser. La elecci\u00f3n, sin embargo, no es suya. Ahora no se trata de la mejilla de un campesino, sino del le\u00f3n y de la ara\u00f1a. Yo quiero a Bennis y a Bennis tendr\u00e9. Nadie hace una incursi\u00f3n en mis tierras, causa da\u00f1o a uno de los m\u00edos y sale indemne, ri\u00e9ndose de ello.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora, usted hizo una incursi\u00f3n en tierras de Tiesa y caus\u00f3 da\u00f1o a uno de los de ser Eustace \u2014dijo Dunk antes de detenerse a pensarlo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAh, s\u00ed? \u2014lady Rohanne se volvi\u00f3 a estirar la trenza\u2014. Si se refiere al ladr\u00f3n de ovejas, era sabida su mala fama. Me quej\u00e9 dos veces con Osgrey y \u00e9l no hizo nada. Yo no pido las cosas tres veces. Las leyes del rey me dan poder de ejecuci\u00f3n.\n\nEgg respondi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014En sus propias tierras \u2014puntualiz\u00f3 el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Las leyes del rey dan a los se\u00f1ores poder de ejecuci\u00f3n en sus propias tierras.\n\n\u2014Muy listo \u2014dijo ella\u2014. Si tanto sabes, no ignorar\u00e1s que los caballeros con tierras no tienen derecho a impartir ning\u00fan castigo sin la autorizaci\u00f3n de su se\u00f1or. Ser Eustace posee Tiesa de lord Rowan. Al derramar sangre, Bennis quebrant\u00f3 la paz del rey y debe responder por ello \u2014mir\u00f3 a Dunk\u2014. Si ser Eustace me entrega a Bennis, le rajar\u00e9 la nariz y ah\u00ed quedar\u00e1 todo. Si me veo obligada a ir a buscarlo, no prometo lo mismo.\n\nDe repente Dunk sinti\u00f3 n\u00e1useas en la boca del est\u00f3mago.\n\n\u2014Se lo dir\u00e9, pero no le entregar\u00e1 a ser Bennis \u2014titube\u00f3\u2014. La causa de todo este problema fue la presa. Mi se\u00f1ora, si estuviera dispuesta a desmontarla...\n\n\u2014Imposible \u2014declar\u00f3 el joven maestre que estaba al lado de lady Rohanne\u2014. El pueblo llano de Fosa Fr\u00eda es veinte veces m\u00e1s numeroso que el de Tiesa. Su se\u00f1or\u00eda tiene campos de trigo, ma\u00edz y cebada que se mueren a causa de la sequ\u00eda. Tiene media docena de huertos, con manzanos, albaricoqueros y tres tipos de perales. Tiene vacas a punto de parir, y quinientas cabezas de ovejas de morro negro, y cr\u00eda los mejores caballos del Dominio. Tenemos a una docena de yeguas a punto de alumbrar a sus potrillos.\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n ser Eustace tiene ovejas \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. En sus campos hay melones y alubias y cebada y...\n\n\u2014\u00a1Se llevaban agua para el foso! \u2014dijo en voz alta Egg.\n\n\"Estaba a punto de llegar al foso\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014El foso es esencial para las defensas de Fosa Fr\u00eda \u2014insisti\u00f3 el maestre\u2014. \u00bfSugieren acaso que lady Rohanne se exponga a cualquier ataque en tiempos de tanta incertidumbre?\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Dunk con lentitud\u2014, un foso seco sigue siendo un foso. Y mi se\u00f1ora tiene fuertes murallas, con hombres de sobra para defenderlas.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014dijo lady Rohanne\u2014, cuando se levant\u00f3 el drag\u00f3n negro yo ten\u00eda diez a\u00f1os. Le supliqu\u00e9 a mi padre que no se pusiera en peligro o que al menos me dejara a mi esposo. \u00bfQui\u00e9n me proteger\u00eda si se iban mis dos hombres? Entonces me hizo subir con \u00e9l a la muralla y se\u00f1al\u00f3 los puntos fuertes de Fosa Fr\u00eda. \"Mantenlos fuertes\", dijo, \"y te proteger\u00e1n. Si te ocupas de tus defensas, ning\u00fan hombre te har\u00e1 da\u00f1o\". Lo primero que se\u00f1al\u00f3 fue el foso \u2014se acarici\u00f3 la mejilla con la punta de la trenza\u2014. Mi primer esposo pereci\u00f3 en el campo de Hierba Roja. Mi padre me busc\u00f3 a otros, pero tambi\u00e9n se los llev\u00f3 el Desconocido. Ahora ya no me f\u00edo de los hombres, por numerosos que parezcan. Me f\u00edo de la piedra, del acero y del agua. Me f\u00edo de los fosos, ser, y el m\u00edo no se secar\u00e1.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 muy bien lo que dijo su padre \u2014contest\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, pero no le da derecho a apoderarse del agua de Osgrey.\n\nLady Rohanne se estir\u00f3 la trenza.\n\n\u2014Supongo que ser Eustace le habr\u00e1 dicho que el arroyo le pertenece.\n\n\u2014Desde hace mil a\u00f1os \u2014dijo Dunk. Se llama Jaquel. Eso est\u00e1 claro.\n\n\u2014En efecto \u2014uno, dos, tres estirones\u2014. Del mismo modo que el r\u00edo se llama Mander, aunque hayan pasado mil a\u00f1os desde que los Manderly fueron expulsados de sus orillas. Altojard\u00edn sigue siendo Altojard\u00edn a pesar de que el \u00faltimo jardinero haya muerto en el Campo de Fuego. Roca Casterly est\u00e1 llena de Lannister y no se encuentra un solo Casterly. El mundo cambia, ser. El Jaquel nace en las colinas de la Herradura, que por lo que s\u00e9 me pertenecen en toda su extensi\u00f3n. Tambi\u00e9n el agua es m\u00eda. Mu\u00e9streselo, maestre Cerrick.\n\nEl maestre baj\u00f3 de la tarima. No pod\u00eda ser mucho mayor que Dunk, pero sus vestiduras grises y su collar de eslabones le prestaban un aire de l\u00fagubre sabidur\u00eda en desacuerdo con sus a\u00f1os. Ten\u00eda en sus manos un antiguo pergamino.\n\n\u2014V\u00e9alo usted mismo, ser \u2014dijo al desenrollarlo y ofrec\u00e9rselo a Dunk.\n\n\"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo.\" Dunk volvi\u00f3 a notar que se le pon\u00edan rojas las mejillas. Tom\u00f3 el pergamino con cuidado de manos del maestre y frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o al contemplar las letras. Todo le resultaba ininteligible, pero conoc\u00eda el sello de lacre debajo de la r\u00fabrica: el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen. \"El sello del rey.\" Estaba viendo alg\u00fan tipo de real decreto. Movi\u00f3 la cabeza de un lado a otro para que creyeran que le\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed hay una palabra que no entiendo \u2014murmur\u00f3 al cabo de un momento\u2014. Egg, ven a echar un vistazo, que tu vista es mejor que la m\u00eda.\n\nRaudo, el ni\u00f1o acudi\u00f3 a su lado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1l palabra, ser? \u2014Dunk se\u00f1al\u00f3\u2014. \u00bf\u00c9sta? Ah.\n\nEgg ley\u00f3 deprisa, mir\u00f3 a Dunk a los ojos y asinti\u00f3 con un peque\u00f1o gesto.\n\n\"El arroyo es de ella. Tiene un documento.\" Dunk tuvo la sensaci\u00f3n de haber recibido un pu\u00f1etazo en la barriga. \"El sello del rey, ni m\u00e1s ni menos.\"\n\n\u2014Esto... tiene que ser un error. Los hijos del anciano murieron al servicio del rey. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 iba a quitarles el arroyo su majestad?\n\n\u2014Si el rey Daeron no hubiera sido tan clemente, tambi\u00e9n debi\u00f3 quitarle la cabeza.\n\nPor unos instantes Dunk no entendi\u00f3 nada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 quiere decir?\n\n\u2014Quiere decir \u2014respondi\u00f3 el maestre Cerrick\u2014 que ser Eustace Osgrey es un rebelde y un traidor.\n\n\u2014Entre el drag\u00f3n rojo y el negro, ser Eustace opt\u00f3 por el negro, con la esperanza de que un rey Fuegoscuro devolviera a los Osgrey las tierras y castillos perdidos bajo los Targaryen \u2014dijo lady Rohanne\u2014. Lo que m\u00e1s ambicionaba era Fosa Fr\u00eda. Sus hijos pagaron la traici\u00f3n de su padre con su sangre. Cuando ser Eustace se trajo sus huesos y entreg\u00f3 a su hija como reh\u00e9n a los hombres del rey, su esposa se arroj\u00f3 de lo m\u00e1s alto de la atalaya de Tiesa. \u00bfSe lo hab\u00eda contado ser Eustace? \u2014su sonrisa era triste\u2014. No, ya me lo parec\u00eda.\n\n\u2014El drag\u00f3n negro \u2014\"Juramentaste tu espada a un traidor, necio. Has comido el pan de un traidor y has dormido bajo el techo de un rebelde\"\u2014. Mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo, dando palos de ciego\u2014, el drag\u00f3n negro... De eso hace quince a\u00f1os. Ahora hablamos del presente, y hay sequ\u00eda. Aunque en otros tiempos ser Eustace fuera un rebelde, no deja de necesitar agua.\n\nLa Viuda Escarlata se levant\u00f3 y se alis\u00f3 la falda.\n\n\u2014Pues m\u00e1s le vale rezar por que llueva.\n\nEntonces Dunk record\u00f3 las palabras de despedida de Osgrey en el bosque.\n\n\u2014Si no le reconoce ninguna parte del agua por su bien, h\u00e1galo por el de su hijo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSu hijo?\n\n\u2014Addam. Sirvi\u00f3 aqu\u00ed como paje y escudero de su padre.\n\nLa expresi\u00f3n de lady Rohanne se volvi\u00f3 p\u00e9trea.\n\n\u2014Ac\u00e9rquese.\n\nA Dunk no se le ocurri\u00f3 nada m\u00e1s que obedecer. La tarima a\u00f1ad\u00eda m\u00e1s de un palmo a la estatura de la dama. Incluso as\u00ed Dunk a\u00fan la dominaba.\n\n\u2014Arrod\u00edllese \u2014dijo ella.\n\nLo hizo.\n\nLa bofetada transmiti\u00f3 toda la fuerza de lady Rohanne, mayor de la que aparentaba. Dunk sinti\u00f3 que le ard\u00eda la mejilla. Reconoci\u00f3 en la boca la sangre de un labio partido. Sin embargo, lady Rohanne no le hab\u00eda hecho da\u00f1o de verdad. Al principio lo \u00fanico que pudo pensar fue en asirla por aquella larga trenza pelirroja y acomod\u00e1rsela en las rodillas para propinarle una nalgadas, como a un ni\u00f1o que se port\u00f3 mal. \"Entonces chillar\u00e1 y veinte caballeros irrumpir\u00e1n para matarme.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfOsa apelar a m\u00ed en nombre de Addam? \u2014lady Rohanne ten\u00eda las fosas nasales muy abiertas\u2014. L\u00e1rguese de Fosa Fr\u00eda, ser. De inmediato.\n\n\u2014No era mi intenci\u00f3n...\n\n\u2014Si no lo hace, hallar\u00e9 un saco lo bastante grande para usted, aunque yo misma deba coserlo. D\u00edgale a ser Eustace que ma\u00f1ana en la ma\u00f1ana me traiga a Bennis del Escudo Pardo. De lo contrario ir\u00e9 yo misma a buscarlo a fuego y espada. \u00bfMe entendi\u00f3? \u00a1A fuego y espada!\n\nEl sept\u00f3n Sefton tom\u00f3 a Dunk del brazo y se lo llev\u00f3 con rapidez de la sala. Egg los segu\u00eda de cerca.\n\n\u2014\u00c9sa fue una gran imprudencia, ser \u2014susurr\u00f3 el grueso sept\u00f3n, mientras los conduc\u00eda hacia los escalones\u2014. Una grand\u00edsima imprudencia. Mencionar a Addam Osgrey...\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace me dijo que lady Rohanne sent\u00eda cari\u00f1o por el muchacho.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCari\u00f1o? \u2014El sept\u00f3n resopl\u00f3 con gran enojo\u2014. Estaba enamorada de \u00e9l, y \u00e9l de ella. Nunca fueron m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de uno o dos besos, pero... Fue por Addam por el que mi se\u00f1ora llor\u00f3 despu\u00e9s del campo de Hierba Roja, no por el esposo al que apenas conoc\u00eda. Culpa a ser Eustace de su muerte, y merecidamente. El ni\u00f1o ten\u00eda doce a\u00f1os.\n\nDunk sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 era llevar una herida en el alma. Cada vez que alguien hablaba de Vado Ceniza, pensaba en los tres hombres buenos que hab\u00edan muerto para salvarle el pie, y nunca dejaba de dolerle.\n\n\u2014D\u00edgale a su se\u00f1ora que no era mi intenci\u00f3n ofenderla. Supl\u00edquele que me perdone.\n\n\u2014Har\u00e9 cuanto pueda, ser \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n Sefton\u2014, pero usted d\u00edgale a ser Eustace que haga comparecer lo antes posible a Bennis ante ella. De lo contrario lo pasar\u00e1 mal, muy mal.\n\nDunk esper\u00f3 a que, al oeste, las murallas y torres de Fosa Fr\u00eda hubieran desaparecido a sus espaldas antes de girarse hacia Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 palabras hab\u00eda escritas en el papel? \u2014pregunt\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Era una concesi\u00f3n de derechos, ser. A lord Wyman Webber, de parte del rey. En pago por sus fieles servicios al final de la rebeli\u00f3n, lord Wyman y sus descendientes recibieron todos los derechos sobre el Jaquel, desde su nacimiento en las colinas de la Herradura hasta las orillas del lago Frondoso. Tambi\u00e9n dec\u00eda que lord Wyman y sus descendientes tendr\u00edan derecho a cazar a su albedr\u00edo ciervos rojos, jabal\u00edes y conejos en el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n, y a talar veintitr\u00e9s \u00e1rboles al a\u00f1o \u2014el ni\u00f1o carraspe\u00f3\u2014. Ahora bien, la concesi\u00f3n s\u00f3lo era temporal. En el papel se lee que en caso de que ser Eustace fallezca sin heredero var\u00f3n, Tiesa volver\u00e1 a la corona y los privilegios de lord Webber se extinguir\u00e1n.\n\n\"Fueron alguaciles de la Frontera Norte durante mil a\u00f1os.\"\n\n\u2014Lo \u00fanico que le dejaron al viejo fue una torre donde morir.\n\n\u2014Y su cabeza \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Su majestad le dej\u00f3 la cabeza, ser. Pese a que era un rebelde.\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 al ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfT\u00fa se la habr\u00edas quitado?\n\nEgg lo medit\u00f3.\n\n\u2014A veces, en la corte, serv\u00eda en el Consejo Privado, y sol\u00eda haber discusiones sobre el tema. El t\u00edo Baelor dec\u00eda que con enemigos honorables lo mejor era la clemencia. Si un hombre derrotado cree que lo perdonar\u00e1n, tal vez deje la espada e hinque la rodilla. De lo contrario luchar\u00e1 hasta la muerte y matar\u00e1 a m\u00e1s hombres leales y a m\u00e1s inocentes. En cambio, lord Cuervo de Sangre dec\u00eda que cuando perdonas a los rebeldes, no haces m\u00e1s que sembrar las semillas de la siguiente rebeli\u00f3n \u2014la voz de Egg delataba sus dudas\u2014. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 se levant\u00f3 ser Eustace contra el rey Daeron? Era un buen rey. Lo dice todo el mundo. Incorpor\u00f3 Dorne al reino y nos granje\u00f3 la amistad de sus habitantes.\n\n\u2014Tendr\u00edas que pregunt\u00e1rselo a ser Eustace, Egg.\n\nDunk cre\u00eda conocer la respuesta, pero no habr\u00eda sido del agrado del ni\u00f1o. \"Quer\u00eda un castillo con un le\u00f3n en la torre de entrada, pero lo \u00fanico que consigui\u00f3 fueron tumbas entre las zarzamoras.\" Cuando juramentabas tu espada a un hombre, promet\u00edas servirlo y obedecerlo, luchar por \u00e9l siempre que lo necesitara, sin entrometerte en sus asuntos ni poner en duda sus alianzas... Ser Eustace, sin embargo, le hab\u00eda tomado el pelo. \"Dijo que sus hijos murieron luchando por el rey, y me hizo creer que el arroyo era suyo.\"\n\nLa noche los sorprendi\u00f3 en el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n.\n\nFue culpa de Dunk. Debi\u00f3 haber tomado el camino m\u00e1s corto de regreso, el mismo que en la ida, pero decidi\u00f3 desviarse hacia el norte para ver de nuevo la presa. Se planteaba intentar deshacerla con sus propias manos, pero ni los Siete ni ser Lucas Tres Varas se mostraron tan serviciales. Al llegar a la presa, Dunk y Egg se la encontraron vigilada por dos ballesteros con insignias de la ara\u00f1a cosidas en sus jubones. Uno de ellos ten\u00eda los pies descalzos en el agua robada. S\u00f3lo por eso Dunk habr\u00eda podido estrangularlo con mucho gusto, pero el ballestero los oy\u00f3 llegar y aprest\u00f3 el arma con rapidez. Su compa\u00f1ero, a\u00fan m\u00e1s veloz, ya ten\u00eda el virote a punto. Lo \u00fanico que hizo Dunk fue mirarlos con ce\u00f1o amenazador.\n\nA partir de ese momento s\u00f3lo les qued\u00f3 volver sobre sus pasos. Dunk no conoc\u00eda tan bien aquellas tierras como ser Bennis y habr\u00eda sido humillante perderse en un bosque tan peque\u00f1o como el Cerrad\u00f3n. Cuando cruzaron el arroyo, casi se hab\u00eda puesto el sol y ya sal\u00edan las primeras estrellas, junto con nubes de mosquitos. Entre aquellos \u00e1rboles altos y negros Egg recuper\u00f3 el uso de su lengua.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer? El sept\u00f3n gordo dijo que mi padre rabia en Refugio Estival.\n\n\u2014Las palabras son aire.\n\n\u2014Mi padre no rabia.\n\n\u2014Pues podr\u00eda \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. T\u00fa s\u00ed que lo haces.\n\n\u2014Yo no. Ser \u2014Egg frunci\u00f3 el se\u00f1o\u2014. \u00bfAcaso lo hago?\n\n\u2014Un poco. Aunque no a menudo. De lo contrario te dar\u00eda m\u00e1s golpes en la oreja.\n\n\u2014Me diste uno en la entrada del castillo.\n\n\u2014A medias, cuando mucho. El d\u00eda en que te lo d\u00e9 completo lo sabr\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014A ti la Viuda Escarlata te lo dio completo.\n\nDunk se toc\u00f3 el labio hinchado.\n\n\u2014Tampoco hace falta que lo digas tan satisfecho \u2014\"A tu padre nunca le han dado un golpe en la oreja. Quiz\u00e1 por eso sea como es el pr\u00edncipe Maekar\"\u2014. Cuando el rey convirti\u00f3 a lord Cuervo de Sangre en su mano, tu se\u00f1or padre se neg\u00f3 a formar parte de su consejo y se fue de Desembarco del Rey para instalarse en su residencia \u2014le record\u00f3 a Egg\u2014. Lleva un a\u00f1o y la mitad de otro en Refugio Estival. \u00bfC\u00f3mo llamas a eso sino rabiar?\n\n\u2014Lo llamo estar enfadado \u2014declar\u00f3 Egg con solemnidad\u2014. Su alteza deber\u00eda haber nombrado mano del rey a mi padre. Es su hermano y no hay en todo el reino mejor caudillo en las batallas desde que muri\u00f3 lord Baelor. Lord Cuervo de Sangre ni siquiera es lord de verdad. Se trata de una simple y tonta cortes\u00eda. Es un hechicero, y por si fuera poco de baja cuna.\n\n\u2014Bastarda, pero no baja.\n\nAunque Cuervo de Sangre no fuera un aut\u00e9ntico lord, s\u00ed era noble por ambos costados. Su madre hab\u00eda sido una de las muchas amantes del rey Aegon el Indigno. Desde la muerte del anciano rey, los bastardos de Aegon hab\u00edan sido la cruz de los Siete Reinos. A todos los hab\u00eda legitimado en su lecho de muerte; no s\u00f3lo a los Grandes Bastardos, como Cuervo de Sangre, Aceroamargo y Daemon Fuegoscuro, hijos de damas, sino a los que hab\u00eda tenido con putas y mozas de taberna, hijas de mercaderes, criadas de comediantes y todas las campesinas guapas que se le pon\u00edan a tiro. El lema de la casa Targaryen era \"fuego y sangre\", pero Dunk hab\u00eda o\u00eddo decir a ser Arlan que el de Aegon deb\u00eda haber sido \"b\u00e1\u00f1enla y tr\u00e1iganmela al lecho\".\n\n\u2014El rey Aegon limpi\u00f3 de bastard\u00eda a Cuervo de Sangre \u2014le record\u00f3 al muchacho\u2014, igual que al resto.\n\n\u2014El antiguo sept\u00f3n supremo le dijo a mi padre que una cosa son las leyes de los reyes y otra las de los dioses \u2014se empecin\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Los hijos leg\u00edtimos se conciben en un lecho conyugal y reciben la bendici\u00f3n del Padre y de la Madre. En cambio los bastardos, dijo, los engendra la lujuria y la debilidad. El rey Aegon decret\u00f3 que sus bastardos no eran bastardos, pero lo que no pod\u00eda cambiar era su naturaleza. El sept\u00f3n supremo dijo que todos los bastardos son hijos de la traici\u00f3n: Daemon Fuegoscuro, Aceroamargo e incluso Cuervo de Sangre. Dijo que lord R\u00edos fue m\u00e1s astuto que los otros dos, pero que al final demostr\u00f3 que \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n era un traidor. El sept\u00f3n supremo le aconsej\u00f3 a mi padre que jam\u00e1s confiara en \u00e9l ni en ning\u00fan otro bastardo, de alta o baja condici\u00f3n.\n\n\"Hijos de la traici\u00f3n\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Hijos de la lujuria y la debilidad. Ninguno es de fiar, ni de alta ni de baja condici\u00f3n.\"\n\n\u2014Egg \u2014dijo\u2014, \u00bfnunca se te ha ocurrido que yo sea bastardo?\n\n\u2014\u00bfT\u00fa, se\u00f1or? \u2014el ni\u00f1o qued\u00f3 desconcertado\u2014. No lo eres.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda serlo. No conoc\u00ed a mi madre ni s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 fue de ella. Quiz\u00e1 nac\u00ed demasiado grande y caus\u00e9 su muerte. Lo m\u00e1s probable es que fuera una puta o una moza de taberna. En el Lecho de Pulgas no se encuentra a damas de alta cuna. Y si lleg\u00f3 a casarse con mi padre, \u00bfqu\u00e9 habr\u00e1 sido de \u00e9l? \u2014a Dunk no le gustaba que le recordaran su vida antes de que fuera encontrado por ser Arlan\u2014. En Desembarco del Rey hab\u00eda un tenderete al que le vend\u00eda ratas, gatos y palomas para el guiso. El cocinero siempre dec\u00eda que mi padre deb\u00eda de ser alg\u00fan ladr\u00f3n, alg\u00fan ratero. \"Lo m\u00e1s seguro es que lo haya visto ahorcado\", me dec\u00eda, \"aunque tambi\u00e9n puede ser que lo enviaran al Muro\". En mis tiempos como escudero de ser Arlan siempre ped\u00eda viajar a esas tierras para servir en Invernalia o alg\u00fan otro castillo del norte. Ten\u00eda la idea de que si llegaba al Muro tal vez me encontrara con alg\u00fan anciano muy alto que se me pareciera. Sin embargo, nunca fuimos. Ser Arlan dec\u00eda que en el norte no hab\u00eda setos donde dormir y que todos los bosques estaban llenos de lobos \u2014sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. En resumidas cuentas, es muy probable que seas el escudero de un bastardo.\n\nPor una vez Egg no tuvo nada que decir. Empezaba a caer la noche. Entre los \u00e1rboles las luci\u00e9rnagas se mov\u00edan despacio y con sus lucecitas parec\u00edan estrellas fugaces. Tambi\u00e9n en el cielo hab\u00eda estrellas, m\u00e1s de las que aspirar\u00eda a contar un ser humano, aunque llegara a la edad del rey Jaehaerys. Dunk s\u00f3lo necesitaba levantar la vista para encontrar a viejos amigos: el Semental, la Puerca, la Corona del Rey, el Farol y la Vieja, la Galera, el Fantasma, la Doncella Luna... Al norte, sin embargo, hab\u00eda nubes, y no alcanz\u00f3 a divisar el ojo azul del Drag\u00f3n de Hielo, que se\u00f1alaba en esa direcci\u00f3n.\n\nYa hab\u00eda salido la luna cuando llegaron a Tiesa, erguida oscuramente en su monta\u00f1a. Dunk vio que por las ventanas m\u00e1s altas de la torre se filtraba con debilidad una luz amarilla. La mayor\u00eda de las noches ser Eustace se acostaba justo despu\u00e9s de cenar. Al parecer no era el caso. \"Nos est\u00e1 esperando\", supo Dunk.\n\nTambi\u00e9n Bennis del Escudo Pardo aguardaba despierto. Lo encontraron sentado en los escalones de la torre, mascando hojamarga y afilando su espada a la luz de la luna. Desde muy lejos se o\u00eda el lento frotar de la piedra contra el acero. Aunque ser Bennis descuidara su atuendo y su persona, cuidaba bien sus armas.\n\n\u2014Ya vuelve el necio \u2014dijo\u2014. Y yo aqu\u00ed afilando mi acero para ir a rescatarte de la Viuda Escarlata.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n los hombres?\n\n\u2014Treb y Wat montan guardia en el tejado, por si la Viuda viene a visitarnos. El resto se fue al catre con el rabo entre las piernas. Les duele hasta el \u00faltimo hueso. Les di trabajo. Al grandote tonto le saqu\u00e9 algo de sangre s\u00f3lo para enfadarlo. Lucha mejor cuando se enoja \u2014exhibi\u00f3 su sonrisa marr\u00f3n y roja\u2014. Bonito traes el labio. La pr\u00f3xima vez no busques bajo las piedras. \u00bfQu\u00e9 dijo la mujer?\n\n\u2014Piensa quedarse con el agua y tambi\u00e9n te quiere a ti por haber herido al cavador al lado de la presa.\n\n\u2014Ya me lo imaginaba \u2014Bennis escupi\u00f3\u2014. Cu\u00e1ntas molestias por un campesino. Deber\u00eda darme las gracias \u00e9l a m\u00ed. A las mujeres les gustan los hombres con cicatrices.\n\n\u2014Pues entonces no te importar\u00e1 si la viuda te rebana la nariz.\n\n\u2014Y un cuerno. Si la quisiera rebanada lo har\u00eda yo mismo \u2014apunt\u00f3 hacia arriba con el pulgar\u2014. A ser In\u00fatil lo encontrar\u00e1s en sus aposentos, rumiando lo importante que fue.\n\nEn ese momento intervino Egg.\n\n\u2014Luch\u00f3 para el drag\u00f3n negro.\n\nDunk tuvo ganas de darle un golpe, pero el caballero pardo se limit\u00f3 a re\u00edr.\n\n\u2014Pues claro. No hace falta m\u00e1s que verlo. \u00bfTe parece de los que eligen al bando ganador?\n\n\u2014No m\u00e1s que t\u00fa. De lo contrario no estar\u00edas aqu\u00ed, con nosotros \u2014Dunk se gir\u00f3 hacia Egg\u2014. Oc\u00fapate de Trueno y Maestre, y luego re\u00fanete con nosotros.\n\nCuando Dunk subi\u00f3 por la trampilla, el anciano caballero estaba sentado en camis\u00f3n junto al hogar, pese a que no hab\u00eda fuego encendido. Ten\u00eda en la mano la copa de su padre, pesada, de plata, fabricada antes de la Conquista para alg\u00fan lord Osgrey. El vaso estaba adornado con un le\u00f3n jaquelado hecho de escamas de jade y oro, aunque faltaban algunas de jade. Al o\u00edr los pasos de Dunk el viejo caballero levant\u00f3 la vista y parpade\u00f3 como quien despierta de un sue\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan. Has vuelto. \u00bfTe dio qu\u00e9 pensar el aspecto de Lucas Inchfield?\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or. M\u00e1s bien \u00e9l fue el que se enoj\u00f3.\n\nDunk explic\u00f3 todo como mejor pudo, aunque omiti\u00f3 la parte de lady Helicent, que lo dejaba como un tonto de remate. Tambi\u00e9n habr\u00eda omitido lo del bofet\u00f3n, pero su labio partido estaba el doble de grande de lo normal por la hinchaz\u00f3n y ser Eustace no pudo menos que darse cuenta.\n\nAl hacerlo frunci\u00f3 el cejo.\n\n\u2014Tu labio...\n\nDunk se lo toc\u00f3 con cuidado.\n\n\u2014La se\u00f1ora me dio un bofet\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe peg\u00f3? \u2014ser Eustace abri\u00f3 la boca y la cerr\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfLe peg\u00f3 a mi emisario, que acudi\u00f3 a ella bajo el le\u00f3n jaquelado? \u00bfOs\u00f3 ponerte las manos encima?\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo una, ser. Cuando nos fuimos del castillo ya no sangraba \u2014Dunk cerr\u00f3 el pu\u00f1o\u2014. No quiere su plata, sino a ser Bennis, y no est\u00e1 dispuesta a demoler la presa. Me ense\u00f1\u00f3 un pergamino con un texto y el sello personal del rey. All\u00ed dice que el arroyo es suyo. Y... \u2014vacil\u00f3\u2014. Dice que usted... que se hab\u00eda...\n\n\u2014\u00bf...levantado con el drag\u00f3n negro? \u2014ser Eustace pareci\u00f3 encorvarse\u2014. Me lo tem\u00eda. Si deseas abandonar mi servicio, no ser\u00e9 yo el que te lo impida.\n\nEl anciano caballero contempl\u00f3 su copa. Dunk no habr\u00eda sabido decir qu\u00e9 miraba.\n\n\u2014Me hab\u00eda dicho que sus hijos murieron luchando por el rey.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed fue. El rey leg\u00edtimo, Daemon Fuegoscuro. El rey que Esgrimi\u00f3 la Espada \u2014al viejo le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. Los hombres del drag\u00f3n rojo se hacen llamar lealistas, pero en su tiempo los que elegimos al negro fuimos igual de leales. Ahora, sin embargo... Todos los hombres que marcharon junto a m\u00ed para sentar al pr\u00edncipe Daemon en el Trono de Hierro se han deshecho como el roc\u00edo. Tal vez s\u00f3lo los so\u00f1\u00e9, aunque lo m\u00e1s probable es que lord Cuervo de Sangre y sus Dientes de Cuervo les hayan metido el miedo en el cuerpo. No pueden haber muerto todos.\n\nDunk no pod\u00eda negar que era verdad. Hasta entonces nunca hab\u00eda conocido a ning\u00fan hombre que hubiera luchado a favor del Pretendiente. \"Pero a alguno tengo que haber conocido. Eran miles. La mitad del reino estaba a favor del drag\u00f3n rojo y la otra mitad del negro.\"\n\n\u2014Ser Arlan siempre dec\u00eda que ambos bandos lucharon con valent\u00eda.\n\nLe parec\u00eda que al anciano caballero pod\u00eda gustarle o\u00edrlo.\n\nSer Eustace sujetaba la copa de vino con ambas manos.\n\n\u2014Si Daemon hubiera pisoteado a Gwayne Corbray... Si en v\u00edsperas de la batalla no hubieran dado muerte a Bola de Fuego... Si Hightower y Tarbeck y Oakheart y Butterwell nos hubieran aportado todas sus fuerzas, en vez de intentar tener un pie en cada bando... Si Manfred Lothston hubiera resultado fiel en vez de un traidor... Si las tormentas no hubieran hecho que lord Bracken zarpara con retraso junto a sus ballesteros de Myr... Si no hubieran sorprendido a Dedos Veloces con los huevos de drag\u00f3n robados... Tantos \"si\", ser... De haber cambiado uno solo de ellos, el desenlace habr\u00eda sido distinto. Entonces se nos llamar\u00eda lealistas a nosotros y se recordar\u00eda a los dragones rojos como hombres que combatieron en vano para mantener al usurpador Daegon el Espurio en un trono robado.\n\n\u2014Ser\u00e1 como usted dice, mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, pero las cosas fueron como fueron. Han pasado a\u00f1os y a usted se le perdon\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Nos perdonaron, s\u00ed. Daeron perdon\u00f3 a los traidores y rebeldes a condici\u00f3n de que hinc\u00e1ramos la rodilla y le entreg\u00e1ramos a un reh\u00e9n en prenda de nuestra futura lealtad \u2014el tono de ser Eustace era amargo\u2014. Yo rescat\u00e9 mi cabeza mediante la vida de mi hija. Alysanne ten\u00eda siete a\u00f1os cuando se la llevaron a Desembarco del Rey, y veinte al morir como hermana silenciosa. Una vez fui a verla a Desembarco del Rey y ni siquiera quiso hablar conmigo, su propio padre. La clemencia de un rey es un regalo envenenado. Daeron Targaryen me conserv\u00f3 la vida, pero me arrebat\u00f3 mi orgullo, mis sue\u00f1os y mi honor \u2014su mano tembl\u00f3 y derram\u00f3 vino tinto en su regazo. El anciano, sin embargo, no se dio cuenta\u2014. Deber\u00eda haberme exiliado con Aceroamargo, o muerto junto a mis hijos y mi dulce rey. Habr\u00eda sido una muerte digna de un le\u00f3n jaquelado, descendiente de tantos se\u00f1ores orgullosos y de tantos grandes guerreros. La misericordia de Daeron me empeque\u00f1eci\u00f3.\n\n\"En su coraz\u00f3n no ha llegado a morir el drag\u00f3n negro\", comprendi\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or...\n\nEra la voz de Egg. El ni\u00f1o hab\u00eda entrado en el momento que ser Eustace hablaba de su muerte. El anciano caballero lo observ\u00f3 parpadeando, como si lo viera por primera vez.\n\n\u2014Dime, muchacho. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ocurre?\n\n\u2014Con su permiso... La Viuda Escarlata dice que se rebel\u00f3 para obtener su castillo. Miente, \u00bfverdad?\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl castillo? \u2014ser Eustace parec\u00eda confuso\u2014. Fosa Fr\u00eda... S\u00ed, Daemon me prometi\u00f3 Fosa Fr\u00eda, pero... no fue por beneficiarme, no...\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9, entonces? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9?\n\nSer Eustace frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 fue un traidor, si no era s\u00f3lo por el castillo?\n\nMir\u00f3 largo rato a Egg antes de responder.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa s\u00f3lo eres un ni\u00f1o. No lo entender\u00edas.\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, tal vez s\u00ed.\n\n\u2014La traici\u00f3n... no es m\u00e1s que una palabra. Cuando dos pr\u00edncipes luchan por un asiento que s\u00f3lo uno de ellos puede ocupar, es necesario que tomen partido tanto los grandes se\u00f1ores como el pueblo llano. Al final de la batalla se ensalzar\u00e1 a los vencedores como hombres leales y de palabra, mientras que a los derrotados se les conocer\u00e1 para siempre como rebeldes y traidores. Tal fue mi destino.\n\nEgg lo medit\u00f3 a conciencia.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or, pero... el rey Daeron era un buen hombre. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 eligi\u00f3 a Daemon?\n\n\u2014Daeron... \u2014la lengua de ser Eustace casi se trab\u00f3 al pronunciarlo. Dunk se dio cuenta de que estaba medio borracho\u2014. Daeron era un hombre esmirriado, de hombros ca\u00eddos, con una barriguita que se balanceaba al caminar. Daemon ten\u00eda porte, orgullo y una barriga lisa y dura como un escudo de roble. Adem\u00e1s sab\u00eda combatir. Con el hacha o la lanza o el mangual, no ced\u00eda ante ning\u00fan caballero que hayan visto mis ojos; con la espada, sin embargo, era el Guerrero personificado. Cuando el pr\u00edncipe Daemon ten\u00eda en sus manos Fuego Oscuro, no hab\u00eda qui\u00e9n lo igualara. Ni Ulrick Dayne con Albor ni tan siquiera el Caballero Drag\u00f3n con Hermana Oscura.\n\n\"A un hombre lo conocer\u00e1s por sus amigos, Egg. Daeron se rodeaba de maestres, septones y bardos. Siempre le susurraban mujeres al o\u00eddo y su corte estaba llena de dornienses. \u00bfC\u00f3mo no iba a ser as\u00ed, si hab\u00eda metido en su lecho a mujeres de Dorne y vendido a su propia y dulce hermana al pr\u00edncipe de Dorne, aunque ella estuviera enamorada de Daemon? Daeron llevaba el mismo nombre que el Joven Drag\u00f3n, pero cuando su esposa dorniense le dio un hijo, \u00e9l puso al ni\u00f1o el nombre de Baelor, en honor al rey m\u00e1s d\u00e9bil que se haya sentado jam\u00e1s en el Trono de Hierro.\n\n\"En cambio Daemon... Daemon no era m\u00e1s piadoso de lo necesario en un rey y a \u00e9l acud\u00edan todos los grandes caballeros del reino. A lord Cuervo de Sangre le convendr\u00eda que sus nombres quedaran olvidados y por eso nos prohibi\u00f3 cantar sobre ellos, pero yo s\u00ed me acuerdo. Robb Reyne, Gareth el Gris, ser Aubrey Ambrose, lord Gormon Peake, Byren Flores el Negro, Colmillo Rojo, Bola de Fuego... \u00a1Aceroamargo! Te pregunto: \u00bfha habido alguna vez tan noble compa\u00f1\u00eda, semejante lista de h\u00e9roes?\n\n\"\u00bfPor qu\u00e9, muchacho? \u00bfMe preguntas por qu\u00e9? Porque Daemon era el mejor. Tambi\u00e9n el viejo rey se daba cuenta. La espada se la entreg\u00f3 a Daemon. Fuego Oscuro, la espada de Aegon el Conquistador, la hoja que hab\u00edan empu\u00f1ado todos los reyes Targaryen desde la Conquista... esa espada la puso en manos de Daemon el d\u00eda en que lo arm\u00f3 caballero, cuando era un ni\u00f1o de diez a\u00f1os.\"\n\n\u2014Dice mi padre que fue porque Daemon era espadach\u00edn, cosa que nunca fue Daeron \u2014observ\u00f3 Egg\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 sentido tiene darle un caballo a un hombre que no sabe montar? Dice que la espada no era el reino.\n\nLa mano del anciano caballero sufri\u00f3 tal sacudida que se le derram\u00f3 el vino de la copa.\n\n\u2014Tu padre es un necio.\n\n\u2014No lo es \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o.\n\nLa cara de Osgrey se crisp\u00f3 de rabia.\n\n\u2014Me hiciste una pregunta y yo la respond\u00ed, pero no pienso tolerar impertinencias. Ser Duncan, deber\u00edas golpear m\u00e1s a menudo a este ni\u00f1o. Su cortes\u00eda deja mucho que desear. Si es necesario que lo haga yo mismo, lo har\u00e9...\n\n\u2014No \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, no lo har\u00e1. Ser... \u2014se hab\u00eda decidido\u2014. Es de noche. Nos iremos al alba.\n\nSer Eustace se le qued\u00f3 mirando, acongojado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe van?\n\n\u2014De Tiesa. Y de su servicio.\n\n\"Nos minti\u00f3, y diga lo que diga no tuvo nada de honroso.\" Se desabroch\u00f3 la capa, la enroll\u00f3 y la deposit\u00f3 sobre las piernas del anciano.\n\nOsgrey entorn\u00f3 los ojos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLes ofreci\u00f3 ella que entren a su servicio? \u00bfMe abandonan por el lecho de esa puta?\n\n\u2014No s\u00e9 si sea una puta \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, o una bruja o una envenenadora, o ninguna de las tres cosas, pero poco importa. Volvemos a los caminos, no a Fosa Fr\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Quieren decir a las zanjas. Me abandonan para merodear como lobos por los bosques, y atacar en los caminos a personas honradas \u2014a ser Eustace le temblaban las manos. Se le cay\u00f3 la copa de entre los dedos y rod\u00f3 por el suelo, salpicando vino\u2014. L\u00e1rguense, pues. L\u00e1rguense. No quiero saber m\u00e1s de ustedes. No deber\u00eda haberlos aceptado a mi servicio. \u00a1 L\u00e1rguense!\n\n\u2014Como diga, ser.\n\nDunk hizo se\u00f1as a Egg, que lo sigui\u00f3.\n\nDunk quiso pasar la \u00faltima noche lo m\u00e1s lejos posible de Eustace Osgrey, as\u00ed que durmieron abajo, en la bodega, entre los dem\u00e1s integrantes de la magra hueste de Tiesa. Fue una noche accidentada. Tanto Lem como Pate, el de los ojos rojos, roncaban, el uno con fuerza y el otro con constancia. La bodega estaba llena de h\u00famedos vapores que sub\u00edan por la trampilla. Dunk no dejaba de dar vueltas en el \u00e1spero camastro, y cuando m\u00e1s profundamente dorm\u00eda se despertaba de golpe en la oscuridad. Lo escoc\u00edan mucho las picaduras recibidas en el bosque. Tambi\u00e9n en la paja hab\u00eda pulgas. \"En buena hora me ir\u00e9 de este sitio, del viejo, de ser Bennis y de los dem\u00e1s.\" Tal vez fuera el momento de llevar de nuevo a Egg a Refugio Estival, para que viera a su padre. Se lo preguntar\u00eda al ni\u00f1o por la ma\u00f1ana, cuando ya estuvieran lejos.\n\nLa ma\u00f1ana, sin embargo, parec\u00eda muy lejana. Dunk ten\u00eda llena la cabeza de dragones, rojos y negros... de leones jaquelados, viejos escudos, botas gastadas... de arroyos y fosos y presas y papeles con el gran sello del rey, que no pod\u00eda leer.\n\nTambi\u00e9n estaba ella, la Viuda Escarlata, Rohanne de Fosa Fr\u00eda. Ve\u00eda su cara pecosa, sus brazos esbeltos y su larga trenza roja, y se sent\u00eda culpable. \"Deber\u00eda estar so\u00f1ando con Tanselle. Tanselle la Giganta, la llamaban, aunque para m\u00ed no era demasiado alta.\"\n\nLe hab\u00eda pintado un emblema en su escudo y \u00e9l la hab\u00eda salvado del Pr\u00edncipe Brillante, pero Tanselle hab\u00eda desaparecido antes del juicio de siete. \"No soportaba verme morir\", se dec\u00eda Dunk a menudo, pero \u00bfqu\u00e9 sab\u00eda \u00e9l? Era m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo. Lo demostraba el mero hecho de que pensara en la Viuda Escarlata. \"Tanselle me sonre\u00eda, pero nunca nos abrazamos; nunca nos besamos, ni siquiera en la mejilla.\" Al menos Rohanne lo hab\u00eda tocado. Pod\u00eda demostrarlo al mostrar su labio hinchado. \"No seas bobo. No es para alguien como t\u00fa. Es demasiado menuda, inteligente y peligrosa.\"\n\nPor fin concili\u00f3 el sue\u00f1o y so\u00f1\u00f3. Corr\u00eda por un claro, en el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n. Corr\u00eda hacia Rohanne, que disparaba flechas contra \u00e9l. Las saetas, infalibles, se clavaban siempre en el pecho de Dunk, pero hab\u00eda una extra\u00f1a dulzura en el dolor. Deber\u00eda haber dado media vuelta y salir huyendo. Lo que hac\u00eda, sin embargo, era correr hacia ella, con lentitud, como se corre siempre en sue\u00f1os, como si el aire se hubiera vuelto miel. Lleg\u00f3 otra flecha, y luego otra. Parec\u00eda que nunca se acabaran en el carcaj. Los ojos de Rohanne eran grises y verdes y llenos de picard\u00eda.\n\n\"Su vestido realza el color de sus ojos\", quer\u00eda decirle Dunk, pero ella no llevaba vestido. De hecho no llevaba ropa. Sus peque\u00f1os senos estaban salpicados de peque\u00f1as pecas y sus pezones eran rojos y duros como bayas. Erizado de flechas que lo asemejaban a un puercoesp\u00edn gigante, Dunk daba tumbos hasta llegar a los pies de ella, pero encontraba las fuerzas necesarias para aferrarse a su trenza. La hac\u00eda caer sobre \u00e9l mediante un fuerte estir\u00f3n y le daba un beso.\n\nSe despert\u00f3 de golpe al o\u00edr un grito.\n\nEn la oscuridad de la bodega todo era confusi\u00f3n. Se o\u00edan palabrotas y lamentos. Los hombres tropezaban los unos con los otros al buscar a tientas sus lanzas o sus pantalones. Nadie sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 pasaba. Egg encontr\u00f3 la vela de sebo y la encendi\u00f3 para echar algo de luz en la escena. El primero en subir por la escalera fue Dunk, que estuvo a punto de chocar con Sam Encorvado, el cual bajaba a toda prisa, resoplando como fuelle y farfullando incoherencias. Dunk tuvo que sujetarlo por los hombros para que no se cayera.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 pasa, Sam?\n\n\u2014El cielo \u2014gimote\u00f3 el viejo\u2014. \u00a1El cielo!\n\nAl no sacarle nada con sentido, todos subieron al tejado a mirar. Ser Eustace, que se les hab\u00eda anticipado, estaba en camis\u00f3n junto al parapeto, con la mirada perdida en la distancia.\n\nAmanec\u00eda en el oeste.\n\nDunk tard\u00f3 un buen rato en darse cuenta de lo que significaba.\n\n\u2014Se est\u00e1 quemando el bosque Cerrad\u00f3n \u2014dijo en voz baja.\n\nEn la base de la torre se oyeron las imprecaciones de Bennis, una retah\u00edla de vulgaridades tan soeces que hasta Aegon el Indigno se habr\u00eda sonrojado. Sam Encorvado empez\u00f3 a rezar.\n\nEstaban demasiado lejos para avistar las llamas, pero el rojo resplandor invad\u00eda la mitad del oeste del horizonte y encima de la luz desaparec\u00edan las estrellas.\n\nLa Corona del Rey ya hab\u00eda quedado oculta tras el velo del humo que sub\u00eda.\n\n\"A fuego y espada, dijo ella.\"\n\nEl incendio se prolong\u00f3 hasta la ma\u00f1ana. Aquella noche nadie durmi\u00f3 en Tiesa. No tardaron mucho en oler el humo y ver bailar las llamas a lo lejos, como chicas con faldas rojas. Todos se preguntaban si llegar\u00eda hasta ellos el fuego. Dunk, con los ojos irritados junto al parapeto, estaba atento por si ven\u00edan jinetes durante la noche.\n\n\u2014Bennis \u2014dijo cuando subi\u00f3 el caballero pardo, mascando su hojamarga\u2014, a quien quiere ella es a ti. Quiz\u00e1 sea mejor que te vayas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHuir yo? \u2014rebuzn\u00f3 Bennis\u2014. \u00bfCon mi caballo? Para eso intento escaparme en uno de esos pollos de los demonios.\n\n\u2014Pues entonces r\u00edndete. S\u00f3lo te cortar\u00e1 la nariz.\n\n\u2014Mi nariz me gusta como est\u00e1, necio. Que intente atraparme y hablaremos de cortar.\n\nSe sent\u00f3 con las piernas cruzadas en el suelo y la espalda apoyada en una almena, y sac\u00f3 de su zurr\u00f3n una piedra de afilar para su espada. Ser Eustace estaba a su lado, de pie. Hablaron en voz baja sobre c\u00f3mo guerrear.\n\n\u2014Tres Varas nos esperar\u00e1 en la presa \u2014oy\u00f3 decir Dunk al anciano caballero\u2014, as\u00ed que en vez de eso le quemaremos a ella las cosechas. Fuego por fuego.\n\nA ser Bennis le pareci\u00f3 perfecto, con la salvedad de que acaso les conviniera prender tambi\u00e9n fuego al molino de la viuda.\n\n\u2014Queda a seis leguas por detr\u00e1s del castillo. All\u00e1 Tres Varas no nos buscar\u00e1. Quememos el molino y matemos al molinero. Ser\u00e1 un duro golpe para ella.\n\nEgg tambi\u00e9n escuchaba. Tosi\u00f3 y mir\u00f3 a Dunk con los ojos muy abiertos y muy blancos.\n\n\u2014Ser, debe detenerlos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk. \"Ya los detendr\u00e1 la Viuda Escarlata, y Lucas Tres Varas\"\u2014. Son simples bravuconadas, Egg. De lo contrario se mear\u00edan en los pantalones. Adem\u00e1s, ahora no nos va ni nos viene.\n\nEl alba trajo un cielo gris y turbio, y un aire que irritaba los ojos. La intenci\u00f3n de Dunk era salir temprano, pero despu\u00e9s de casi toda una noche sin dormir no sab\u00eda hasta d\u00f3nde llegar\u00edan. Desayun\u00f3 huevos revueltos, al igual que Egg, mientras Bennis reanudaba la instrucci\u00f3n del grupo. \"Son hombres de Osgrey, y nosotros no\", se dijo Dunk. Se comi\u00f3 cuatro huevos. A su modo de ver, era lo m\u00ednimo que le deb\u00eda ser Eustace. Egg se comi\u00f3 dos. Los acompa\u00f1aron con cerveza.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00edamos ir a Isla Bella, ser \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o mientras recog\u00edan sus pertenencias\u2014. Si sufren incursiones de los hombres del Hierro, es posible que lord Farman est\u00e9 buscando espadas.\n\nEra buena idea.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHas estado alguna vez en Isla Bella?\n\n\u2014No, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, pero dicen que es bella. Tambi\u00e9n es bella la residencia de lord Farman. Se llama Torre la Bella.\n\nDunk se rio.\n\n\u2014Pues a Torre la Bella se ha dicho \u2014parec\u00eda que le hubieran quitado un gran peso de encima\u2014. Me ocupar\u00e9 de los caballos \u2014dijo, tras haber hecho un fardo con su armadura y atarlo con cuerda de c\u00e1\u00f1amo\u2014. T\u00fa ve al tejado y baja nuestras esterillas, escudero \u2014si algo quer\u00eda evitar esa ma\u00f1ana era otra discusi\u00f3n con el le\u00f3n jaquelado\u2014. Si ves a ser Eustace, no lo molestes.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed lo har\u00e9, se\u00f1or.\n\nFuera, Bennis hab\u00eda hecho formar a sus reclutas con sus lanzas y escudos e intentaba ense\u00f1arles a avanzar al un\u00edsono. El caballero pardo no prest\u00f3 la menor atenci\u00f3n a Dunk cuando \u00e9ste cruz\u00f3 el patio. \"Los llevar\u00e1 a todos a la muerte. La Viuda Escarlata puede aparecer en cualquier momento.\" Egg irrumpi\u00f3 por la puerta de la torre y baj\u00f3 en forma ruidosa con sus esterillas por los escalones de madera. M\u00e1s arriba, en el balc\u00f3n, ser Eustace ten\u00eda las manos apoyadas en el parapeto. Al mirar muy tieso a Dunk, le tembl\u00f3 el bigote y se gir\u00f3 con rapidez. El aire estaba opaco por el humo.\n\nBennis llevaba su escudo a la espalda: un largo escudo cometa de madera sin pintar, oscurecido por innumerables capas de viejo barniz y con refuerzos de hierro en toda la superficie. No llevaba blas\u00f3n, s\u00f3lo un bulto en el centro que a Dunk le recordaba un gran ojo cerrado. \"Igual de ciego que \u00e9l.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo piensas enfrentarte a ella? \u2014pregunt\u00f3.\n\nSer Bennis, rezumando hojamarga roja entre los labios, mir\u00f3 a sus soldados.\n\n\u2014Con tan pocas lanzas no podemos defender la monta\u00f1a. Tendr\u00e1 que ser la torre. Nos refugiaremos dentro \u2014la se\u00f1al\u00f3 con la cabeza\u2014. S\u00f3lo hay una entrada. Si levantamos la escalera de madera, les ser\u00e1 imposible llegar hasta nosotros.\n\n\u2014Hasta que se fabriquen su propia escalera. Es posible que tambi\u00e9n traigan cuerdas y rezones y los invadan por el tejado. A menos que se limiten a permanecer a distancia con sus ballestas y los llenen de virotes mientras intentan guardar la puerta.\n\nLos Melones, Alubias y Cebadas oyeron sus palabras. Sus bravatas se las hab\u00eda llevado el viento, aunque no soplara. Se aferraban a sus palos afilados mirando a Dunk y Bennis, y mir\u00e1ndose entre ellos.\n\n\u2014De nada te servir\u00e1n estos hombres \u2014dijo Dunk, se\u00f1alando con la cabeza el lastimoso ej\u00e9rcito de Osgrey\u2014. Si los dejas a campo abierto, los caballeros de la Viuda Escarlata los har\u00e1n picadillo, y dentro de la torre no les servir\u00e1n de nada las lanzas.\n\n\u2014Pueden tirar cosas del tejado \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Treb es un experto en lanzar piedras.\n\n\u2014Supongo que una o dos podr\u00eda tirarlas \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, hasta que uno de los ballesteros de la Viuda lo atraviese.\n\n\u2014Ser... \u2014Egg estaba al lado de Dunk\u2014. Ser, si hay que irse mejor que sea ahora. No vaya a venir la Viuda.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o ten\u00eda raz\u00f3n. \"Si nos entretenemos quedaremos atrapados.\" A pesar de todo Dunk segu\u00eda vacilante.\n\n\u2014Deja que se vayan, Bennis.\n\n\u2014\u00a1C\u00f3mo! \u00bfPerder a estos mozos tan valientes? \u2014Bennis mir\u00f3 a los campesinos y rebuzn\u00f3 de risa\u2014. Nada de ocurrencias \u2014les advirti\u00f3\u2014. Al que intente huir lo destripo.\n\n\u2014Int\u00e9ntalo y yo te destripar\u00e9 a ti \u2014Dunk desenvain\u00f3 la espada\u2014. M\u00e1rchense todos a sus casas \u2014les dijo a los campesinos\u2014. Vuelvan a sus aldeas y vean si sus casas y cosechas se salvaron del fuego.\n\nNadie se movi\u00f3. El caballero pardo miraba con fijeza a Dunk, moviendo la boca. Dunk no le hizo caso.\n\n\u2014M\u00e1rchense \u2014repiti\u00f3 a los campesinos. Era como si alg\u00fan dios hubiera puesto la palabra en su boca. \"El Guerrero no. \u00bfHabr\u00e1 un dios de los tontos?\"\u2014. \u00a1M\u00c1RCHENSE! \u2014repiti\u00f3 a todo pulm\u00f3n\u2014. Ll\u00e9vense sus lanzas y escudos, pero m\u00e1rchense o no vivir\u00e1n un d\u00eda m\u00e1s. \u00bfQuieren volver a besar a sus mujeres? \u00bfAbrazar a sus hijos? \u00a1M\u00e1rchense a casa! \u00bfAcaso todos se quedaron sordos?\n\nNo. Entre los pollos se arm\u00f3 la desbandada. Rob el Grande pis\u00f3 una gallina al salir huyendo y Pate estuvo a menos de un palmo de destripar a Will Alubia al tropezarse con su propia lanza, pero al final se alejaron corriendo. Por un lado iban los Melones, por otro los Alubias y por un tercero los Cebadas. Ser Eustace gritaba desde arriba, pero nadie le hac\u00eda caso. \"Para lo que les dice \u00e9l s\u00ed que son sordos\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nCuando el anciano caballero sali\u00f3 de su atalaya y baj\u00f3 a toda prisa por los escalones, entre las gallinas s\u00f3lo quedaban Dunk, Egg y Bennis.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Regresen! \u2014grit\u00f3 ser Eustace a sus hombres, mientras hu\u00edan a toda velocidad\u2014. No tienen mi permiso para partir. \u00a1No tienen mi permiso!\n\n\u2014Es in\u00fatil, mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Bennis\u2014. Se han marchado.\n\nSer Eustace la tom\u00f3 contra Dunk con un temblor de rabia en el bigote.\n\n\u2014No ten\u00edas ning\u00fan derecho a decirles que se fueran. \u00a1Ning\u00fan derecho! Yo les dije que no lo hicieran. Se los prohib\u00ed. A ti te prohib\u00ed despedirlos.\n\n\u2014No lo escuchamos, mi se\u00f1or \u2014Egg se quit\u00f3 el sombrero para alejar el humo\u2014. Las gallinas cacareaban demasiado fuerte.\n\nEl anciano se dej\u00f3 caer en el primer escal\u00f3n de Tiesa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 les ofreci\u00f3 esa mujer a cambio de que me entreguen? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 con voz sombr\u00eda a Dunk\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto oro les dio por traicionarme, hacer que se vayan mis muchachos y dejarme aqu\u00ed solo?\n\n\u2014No est\u00e1 solo, mi se\u00f1or \u2014Dunk se envain\u00f3 la espada\u2014. Yo he dormido bajo su techo y esta ma\u00f1ana com\u00ed sus huevos. Todav\u00eda le debo alg\u00fan servicio. No pienso escabullirme con la cola entre las piernas. Aqu\u00ed sigue mi espada.\n\nSe toc\u00f3 el cinto.\n\n\u2014Una espada \u2014el anciano caballero se levant\u00f3 despacio\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 puede hacer una sola espada contra esa mujer?\n\n\u2014Para empezar, lo posible para que no entre en sus tierras.\n\nYa le habr\u00eda gustado a Dunk sentirse tan seguro como parec\u00eda por su tono.\n\nCada vez que el anciano caballero respiraba, el bigote le temblaba.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo al fin\u2014. M\u00e1s vale ser audaz que esconderse tras los muros de piedra. Mejor morir le\u00f3n que conejo. Durante mil a\u00f1os fuimos alguaciles de la Frontera Norte. Necesito mi armadura.\n\nEmpez\u00f3 a subir.\n\nEgg miraba a Dunk.\n\n\u2014No sab\u00eda que tuvieras cola, ser \u2014dijo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres un golpe en la oreja?\n\n\u2014No, ser. \u00bfT\u00fa quieres tu armadura?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, y otra cosa.\n\nSe habl\u00f3 de que ser Bennis los acompa\u00f1ara, pero al final ser Eustace le orden\u00f3 quedarse y custodiar la torre. De poco servir\u00eda su espada en una situaci\u00f3n de tanta desventaja como la que era probable que encontraran. Adem\u00e1s, la Viuda se habr\u00eda enfurecido a\u00fan m\u00e1s al verlo.\n\nNo hicieron falta grandes esfuerzos para convencer al caballero pardo. Dunk lo ayud\u00f3 a desprender las clavijas de hierro que manten\u00edan la escalera en su lugar. Bennis subi\u00f3, desat\u00f3 la vieja cuerda gris de c\u00e1\u00f1amo y la estir\u00f3 con todas sus fuerzas. La escalera de madera rechin\u00f3 y cruji\u00f3 al subir, hasta dejar tres metros de aire entre el primer pelda\u00f1o de piedra y la \u00fanica entrada de la torre. Sam Encorvado y su mujer ya estaban dentro. Las gallinas tendr\u00edan que valerse por s\u00ed mismas. Abajo, montado en su caballo gris, ser Eustace levant\u00f3 la voz.\n\n\u2014Si al anochecer no hemos vuelto...\n\n\u2014Cabalgar\u00e9 a Altojard\u00edn , mi se\u00f1or, y le dir\u00e9 a lord Tyrell que esa mujer quem\u00f3 su bosque y lo asesin\u00f3.\n\nDunk sigui\u00f3 a Egg y Maestre por la ladera. Detr\u00e1s iba el anciano, haciendo un suave ruido de metal con su armadura. Por una vez se levantaba el viento. Dunk oy\u00f3 chasquear su capa.\n\nEn el emplazamiento del bosque Cerrad\u00f3n encontraron un p\u00e1ramo cubierto de humo. Para cuando llegaron el incendio casi se hab\u00eda apagado por s\u00ed solo, pero a\u00fan quedaban partes que se quemaban, islas de fuego en un mar de ceniza. El resto eran troncos de \u00e1rboles quemados que se elevaban hacia el cielo como lanzas renegridas. Otros \u00e1rboles se hab\u00edan desplomado y yac\u00edan sobre el camino de poniente con las ramas chamuscadas y rotas, mientras en sus huecos corazones los rescoldos ard\u00edan sordamente. Tambi\u00e9n en el suelo del bosque hab\u00eda partes calientes y otras sobre las que flotaba el humo como una bruma gris y caliente. Ser Eustace sufri\u00f3 un ataque de tos y por unos instantes Dunk temi\u00f3 que se vieran obligados a regresar, pero se le pas\u00f3.\n\nObservaron los restos de un ciervo rojo y m\u00e1s tarde quiz\u00e1 los de un tej\u00f3n. No hab\u00eda nada vivo, a excepci\u00f3n de las moscas, al parecer capaces de sobrevivir a todo.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed deb\u00eda de ser el Campo de Fuego \u2014dijo ser Eustace\u2014. Fue donde empezaron nuestros males, hace doscientos a\u00f1os. En aquel campo pereci\u00f3 el \u00faltimo de los reyes verdes, rodeado por lo m\u00e1s granado del Dominio. Mi padre dec\u00eda que el fuegodrag\u00f3n ard\u00eda de tal modo que se les derritieron las espadas en las manos. M\u00e1s tarde recogieron las hojas y las usaron para fabricar el Trono de Hierro. Altojard\u00edn pas\u00f3 de reyes a mayordomos, y los Osgrey declinaron hasta que los alguaciles de la Frontera Norte se vieron reducidos a caballeros con tierras, vasallos de los Rowan.\n\nComo Dunk no ten\u00eda nada que decir, cabalgaron un rato en silencio hasta que ser Eustace tosi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014dijo\u2014, \u00bfrecuerdas la historia que te cont\u00e9?\n\n\u2014Tal vez, ser \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1l?\n\n\u2014La del Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, me acuerdo. Era el menor de cinco hijos.\n\n\u2014Muy bien \u2014otra tos\u2014. Cuando dio muerte a Lancel Lannister, los hombres del oriente dieron media vuelta. Sin el rey no hab\u00eda guerra. \u00bfEntiendes lo que digo?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk de mala gana.\n\n\"\u00bfPodr\u00eda yo matar a una mujer?\" Por una vez dese\u00f3 ser en verdad m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo. \"No hay que llegar hasta ese extremo. No puedo permitirlo.\"\n\nEn el cruce entre el camino de poniente y el Jaquel quedaban algunos \u00e1rboles en pie, con un lado del tronco chamuscado y negruzco. Justo detr\u00e1s brillaba, oscura, el agua. \"Azul y verde\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"pero ya no queda oro\". El humo hab\u00eda velado el sol.\n\nSer Eustace se detuvo al llegar al borde del agua.\n\n\u2014Hice un voto sagrado. No cruzar\u00e9 el arroyo. No mientras las tierras del otro lado sean de ella.\n\nEl anciano caballero llevaba armadura y malla bajo su sobreveste amarillenta, y una espada al cinto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY si no viene, ser? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Egg.\n\n\"A fuego y espada\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Vendr\u00e1.\n\nVino, y en menos de una hora. Primero oyeron los caballos y despu\u00e9s un susurro met\u00e1lico de armaduras, cada vez m\u00e1s intenso. Con el humo era dif\u00edcil saber a qu\u00e9 distancia estaban, hasta que el portaestandarte perfor\u00f3 la gris y deshilachada cortina. El remate del asta era una ara\u00f1a de hierro pintada de blanco y rojo, bajo la que pend\u00eda con flacidez el estandarte negro de los Webber. Se detuvo en la orilla al verlos del otro lado. En un abrir y cerrar de ojos apareci\u00f3 ser Lucas Inchfield cubierto de los pies a la cabeza por una armadura.\n\nS\u00f3lo entonces apareci\u00f3 lady Rohanne montada en una yegua negra azabache con hilos de seda plateada, como si estuviera cubierta por una telara\u00f1a. Del mismo material era la capa de la Viuda, que flu\u00eda de sus hombros y mu\u00f1ecas con la ligereza del aire. Tambi\u00e9n ella llevaba una armadura, en su caso hecha con escamas de esmalte verde y engastes de oro y plata. Ce\u00f1ida a su cuerpo como un guante, la hac\u00eda parecer vestida de hojas de verano. Su larga trenza roja colgaba a su espalda y oscilaba con los movimientos del caballo. Acompa\u00f1aba a la Viuda el sept\u00f3n Sefton, con la cara roja, a lomos de un gran caballo gris. Al otro lado estaba el joven maestre Cerrick, montado en una mula.\n\nLlegaron caballeros hasta completar media docena, con sus correspondientes escuderos. La retaguardia la formaba una columna de ballesteros a caballo, que se abri\u00f3 hacia ambos lados del camino al llegar al Jaquel y ver que Dunk los esperaba al otro lado. En total hab\u00eda treinta y tres hombres de armas, sin contar al sept\u00f3n, el maestre y la propia Viuda. Uno de los caballeros llam\u00f3 la atenci\u00f3n de Dunk: un hombre calvo, ancho, achaparrado, de rostro iracundo y aquejado de bocio.\n\nLa Viuda Negra acerc\u00f3 su yegua al agua.\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace, ser Duncan \u2014dijo en voz alta por encima del r\u00edo\u2014, esta noche hemos visto arder su fuego.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVisto? \u2014contest\u00f3 ser Eustace con todas sus fuerzas\u2014. Lo han visto, s\u00ed... despu\u00e9s de provocarlo.\n\n\u2014Ruin acusaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Para un acto ruin.\n\n\u2014Esta noche me hallaba dormida en mi lecho, rodeada por mis damas. Me despertaron los gritos desde las murallas, como a casi todo el mundo. Hab\u00eda viejos que sub\u00edan a las torres por escaleras empinadas y beb\u00e9s de pecho que lloraban de miedo al ver la luz roja. Es lo \u00fanico que s\u00e9 de su fuego.\n\n\u2014Suyo, querr\u00e1 decir, se\u00f1ora \u2014insisti\u00f3 ser Eustace\u2014. Mi bosque se perdi\u00f3. \u00a1Digo bien: se perdi\u00f3!\n\nEl sept\u00f3n Sefton carraspe\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace \u2014dijo con voz sonora\u2014, tambi\u00e9n en el bosque Real hay fuego, y aun en la selva. La sequ\u00eda ha convertido en yesca todos nuestros bosques.\n\nLady Rohanne levant\u00f3 una mano y se\u00f1al\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Mire mis campos, Osgrey. Vea lo secos que est\u00e1n. Muy tonta tendr\u00eda que ser para haber provocado un incendio. Si hubiera cambiado la direcci\u00f3n del viento, las llamas podr\u00edan haber cruzado el arroyo y quemado la mitad de mis cosechas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPodr\u00edan? \u2014exclam\u00f3 ser Eustace\u2014. El que se quem\u00f3 fue mi bosque, y usted es la que le prendi\u00f3 fuego. \u00a1De seguro hizo levantarse el viento con alg\u00fan conjuro de bruja, del mismo modo que us\u00f3 sus oscuras artes para asesinar a sus esposos y hermanos!\n\nLa expresi\u00f3n de lady Rohanne se endureci\u00f3. Era la misma mirada que vio Dunk en Fosa Fr\u00eda justo antes de la bofetada.\n\n\u2014Basta de ch\u00e1chara \u2014le dijo al anciano\u2014. No malgastar\u00e9 m\u00e1s palabras con usted, ser. Entregue a Bennis del Escudo Pardo o iremos a buscarlo.\n\n\u2014No lo har\u00e1n \u2014declar\u00f3 ser Eustace con tono ampuloso\u2014. Eso jam\u00e1s \u2014le tembl\u00f3 el bigote\u2014. No se acerquen m\u00e1s. Este lado del arroyo es m\u00edo, y aqu\u00ed no es bienvenida. De m\u00ed no recibir\u00e1 hospitalidad alguna. Nada de pan ni de sal. Ni siquiera sombra y agua. Viene como intrusa. Le proh\u00edbo poner el pie en tierras de Osgrey.\n\nLady Rohanne se pas\u00f3 la trenza por el hombro.\n\n\u2014Ser Lucas \u2014fueron sus \u00fanicas palabras.\n\nEn respuesta a un gesto de Tres Varas, los ballesteros desmontaron, prepararon los resortes de sus armas y sacaron virotes de sus carcajs.\n\n\u2014Y bien, ser \u2014pregunt\u00f3 en voz alta la dama una vez que todas las ballestas se encontraron a punto \u2014, \u00bfqu\u00e9 me hab\u00eda prohibido?\n\nDunk ya hab\u00eda o\u00eddo suficiente.\n\n\u2014Si cruzan el arroyo sin permiso, estar\u00e1n infringiendo la paz del rey.\n\nEl sept\u00f3n Sefton hizo avanzar un paso a su caballo.\n\n\u2014El rey no lo sabr\u00e1 ni le importar\u00e1 \u2014dijo\u2014. Todos somos hijos de la Madre, ser. Ap\u00e1rtense, en nombre de ella.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014De dioses no s\u00e9 mucho, sept\u00f3n... \u00bfpero no somos tambi\u00e9n hijos del Guerrero? \u2014se pas\u00f3 una mano por la nuca\u2014. Si intentan cruzar los detendr\u00e9.\n\nSer Lucas Tres Varas se rio.\n\n\u2014Vea, mi se\u00f1ora: un caballero errante con ganas de ser un puercoesp\u00edn \u2014le dijo a la Viuda Escarlata\u2014. Con s\u00f3lo una palabra suya lo atravesaremos con una docena de virotes. A esta distancia penetrar\u00e1n en la armadura como si estuviera hecha de saliva.\n\n\u2014No. Todav\u00eda no, ser \u2014lady Rohanne estudi\u00f3 a Dunk desde la otra orilla\u2014. Son dos hombres y un ni\u00f1o. Nosotros, treinta y cinco. \u00bfC\u00f3mo se proponen impedir que crucemos?\n\n\u2014Pues... \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Se lo dir\u00e9, pero s\u00f3lo a usted.\n\n\u2014Como guste \u2014lady Rohanne clav\u00f3 los talones en su yegua y la hizo meterse en el arroyo. Fren\u00f3 cuando el agua lleg\u00f3 a la panza del animal y permaneci\u00f3 a la espera\u2014. Aqu\u00ed me tiene. Ac\u00e9rquese, ser. Prometo no meterlo en un saco.\n\nSer Eustace asi\u00f3 a Dunk por el brazo antes de que contestara.\n\n\u2014Vaya con ella \u2014dijo el anciano caballero\u2014, pero recuerde al Peque\u00f1o Le\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Como diga, mi se\u00f1or \u2014Dunk se meti\u00f3 con Trueno en el agua y lleg\u00f3 hasta lady Rohanne\u2014. Mi se\u00f1ora...\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan... \u2014ella levant\u00f3 una mano y le toc\u00f3 el labio hinchado con dos dedos\u2014. \u00bfHice yo esto, ser?\n\n\u2014\u00daltimamente no me ha abofeteado nadie m\u00e1s, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014Pues hice mal. Fue una falta a la hospitalidad. Ya me rega\u00f1\u00f3 el buen sept\u00f3n \u2014mir\u00f3 a ser Eustace por encima del agua\u2014. Apenas me acuerdo de Addam. Hace de ello m\u00e1s de la mitad de mi vida. Lo que s\u00ed recuerdo es que lo amaba. De ninguno de los otros estuve enamorada.\n\n\u2014Su padre lo puso entre las zarzamoras, con sus hermanos \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Le gustaban mucho las zarzamoras.\n\n\u2014Me acuerdo. Iba a buscarlas para m\u00ed y nos las com\u00edamos en un cuenco de nata.\n\n\u2014El rey perdon\u00f3 al anciano por Daemon \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Ya va siendo hora de que lo perdone usted por Addam.\n\n\u2014Entr\u00e9gueme a Bennis y lo pensar\u00e9.\n\n\u2014No soy yo el que puede hacerlo.\n\nLady Rohanne suspir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014De buen grado me abstendr\u00eda de matarlo.\n\n\u2014De buen grado seguir\u00eda yo con vida.\n\n\u2014Pues entr\u00e9gueme a Bennis. Le cortaremos la nariz, se lo devolveremos y no habr\u00e1 m\u00e1s que hablar.\n\n\u2014Al contrario \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Quedan por resolver la presa y el incendio. \u00bfNos entregar\u00e1 usted a los que lo provocaron?\n\n\u2014En aquel bosque hab\u00eda luci\u00e9rnagas \u2014dijo ella\u2014. Es posible que lo incendiaran con sus peque\u00f1as linternas.\n\n\u2014Basta de bromas, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014advirti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. No es momento para ellas. Derribe la presa y permita que ser Eustace tenga agua en compensaci\u00f3n por el bosque. Es justo, \u00bfno le parece?\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 lo fuera si el bosque lo hubiera quemado yo, cosa que no hice. Estaba en Fosa Fr\u00eda, durmiendo en mi lecho con tranquilidad \u2014lady Rohanne mir\u00f3 el agua\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 nos impide cruzar el arroyo sin m\u00e1s? \u00bfAcaso distribuyeron abrojos por las rocas? \u00bfO escondieron arqueros entre la ceniza? Expl\u00edqueme qu\u00e9 cree que nos detendr\u00e1.\n\n\u2014Yo \u2014Dunk se quit\u00f3 un guantelete\u2014. En el Lecho de Pulgas siempre fui m\u00e1s alto y fuerte que los otros ni\u00f1os, y por eso sol\u00eda pegarles unas palizas tremendas y robarles. El viejo me ense\u00f1\u00f3 a no hacerlo. Dec\u00eda que estaba mal. Adem\u00e1s, a veces los ni\u00f1os peque\u00f1os tienen hermanos mayores y altos. Mire esto.\n\nDunk se quit\u00f3 el anillo del dedo y se lo tendi\u00f3 a lady Rohanne, que tuvo que soltar su trenza para tomarlo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfOro? \u2014dijo al notar el peso\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 es, ser? \u2014lo gir\u00f3 entre sus manos\u2014. Un sello. Oro y \u00f3nice \u2014la mirada de sus ojos verdes se aguz\u00f3 al estudiar el sello\u2014. \u00bfD\u00f3nde lo encontr\u00f3, ser?\n\n\u2014En una bota. Envuelto en unos trapos y metido en la punta.\n\nLos dedos de lady Rohanne se cerraron alrededor del anillo. Mir\u00f3 a Egg y al anciano ser Eustace.\n\n\u2014Corre un gran riesgo al mostrarme este anillo, ser, pero \u00bfen qu\u00e9 nos aprovecha? Si les doy a mis hombres la orden de cruzar...\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, entonces yo tendr\u00eda que luchar.\n\n\u2014Y morir.\n\n\u2014Es muy probable. Entonces Egg regresar\u00eda a su lugar de procedencia y explicar\u00eda lo ocurrido aqu\u00ed.\n\n\u2014No si tambi\u00e9n muere.\n\n\u2014No creo que mate a un ni\u00f1o de diez a\u00f1os \u2014dijo Dunk con la esperanza de tener raz\u00f3n\u2014. A \u00e9ste seguro que no. Como bien dice, ha venido con treinta y tres hombres, y los hombres hablan. Sobre todo aqu\u00e9l tan gordo. Por muy profundas que cave las tumbas, se correr\u00eda la voz, y entonces... pues tal vez la picadura de una ara\u00f1a moteada mate a un le\u00f3n, pero un drag\u00f3n es fiera muy distinta.\n\n\u2014Del drag\u00f3n preferir\u00eda ser amiga \u2014lady Rohanne se prob\u00f3 el anillo. Hasta en el pulgar le quedaba grande\u2014. De todos modos, dragones al margen, debo tener a Bennis del Escudo Pardo.\n\n\u2014No.\n\n\u2014Es tozudo de punta a punta de sus cinco codos.\n\n\u2014Y un dedo.\n\nLe devolvi\u00f3 al anillo a Dunk.\n\n\u2014No puedo volver a Fosa Fr\u00eda con las manos vac\u00edas. Dir\u00e1n que la Viuda Escarlata ya no pica, que ha sido demasiado d\u00e9bil para hacer justicia, que no ha sabido proteger al pueblo llano... No lo entiende, ser.\n\n\u2014Tal vez s\u00ed \u2014\"Mas de lo que se cree\"\u2014. Recuerdo que una vez un peque\u00f1o se\u00f1or de las tierras de la tormenta tom\u00f3 a su servicio a ser Arlan para que lo ayudara a combatir contra otro peque\u00f1o se\u00f1or. Cuando le pregunt\u00e9 al viejo por qu\u00e9 luchaban, contest\u00f3: \"Por nada, muchacho. Es para ver qui\u00e9n mea m\u00e1s lejos\".\n\nLady Rohanne lo mir\u00f3 escandalizada, pero en un abrir y cerrar de ojos se le escap\u00f3 una sonrisa.\n\n\u2014A lo largo de mi vida he o\u00eddo mil zalamer\u00edas vacuas, pero usted es el primer caballero que usa el verbo mear en mi presencia \u2014su rostro pecoso se volvi\u00f3 m\u00e1s serio\u2014. Con esos concursos de meadas los se\u00f1ores juzgan mutuamente sus fuerzas, y ay del que muestre alguna flaqueza... Las mujeres, si pretenden gobernar, est\u00e1n obligadas a mear con el doble de fuerza. Y si da la casualidad de que son menudas... Lord Stackhouse codicia mis colinas de la Herradura, ser Clifford Conklyn reclama desde hace tiempo el lago Frondoso, los siniestros Durwell viven de robar ganado... y yo, bajo mi propio techo, tengo a Tres Varas. Siempre me despierto pensando si ser\u00e1 el d\u00eda en que se case conmigo a la fuerza \u2014crisp\u00f3 los dedos en torno a su trenza como si estuviera a punto de caerse de un precipicio y la trenza fuera una cuerda\u2014. S\u00e9 que \u00e9l lo desea. Se contiene por temor a mis iras, del mismo modo que Conklyn, Stackhouse y los Durwell se andan con cuidado en lo referente a la Viuda Escarlata, pero si alguno de ellos considerara por un solo instante que me he vuelto d\u00e9bil y blanda...\n\nDunk volvi\u00f3 a ponerse el anillo y desenfund\u00f3 su daga.\n\nLa viuda abri\u00f3 mucho los ojos al ver el acero desnudo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 hace? \u2014dijo\u2014. \u00bfHa perdido el juicio? Le apunta una docena de ballestas.\n\n\u2014Quer\u00eda sangre por sangre \u2014apoy\u00f3 la daga en su mejilla\u2014. Le informaron mal. No fue Bennis el que le hizo el corte al cavador, sino yo \u2014presion\u00f3 el borde del acero contra su rostro y cort\u00f3 hacia abajo. Cuando sacudi\u00f3 la sangre de la daga, algunas gotas cayeron en el rostro de lady Rohanne. \"M\u00e1s pecas\", pens\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Bueno, queda saldada la deuda con la Viuda Escarlata. Mejilla por mejilla.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 loco \u2014el humo hab\u00eda llenado de l\u00e1grimas los ojos de lady Rohanne\u2014. Si fuera de mejor cuna me casar\u00eda con usted.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1ora; y si los cerdos tuvieran alas y escamas, y respiraran fuego, ser\u00edan como dragones \u2014Dunk volvi\u00f3 a enfundarse la daga. Hab\u00eda empezado a dolerle la cara. La sangre que corr\u00eda por su mejilla goteaba en su gorjal. Al olerla, Trueno resopl\u00f3 y piaf\u00f3 en el agua\u2014. Entr\u00e9gueme a los que incendiaron el bosque.\n\n\u2014Nadie incendi\u00f3 el bosque \u2014dijo ella\u2014, pero si lo hubiera hecho alguno de mis hombres habr\u00eda sido para complacerme. \u00bfC\u00f3mo podr\u00eda entregarle a un hombre as\u00ed? \u2014mir\u00f3 a su escolta\u2014. Lo mejor ser\u00eda que ser Eustace retire su acusaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Antes respirar\u00e1n fuego los cerdos, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\n\u2014En tal caso debo proclamar mi inocencia ante los ojos de los dioses y de los hombres. D\u00edgale a ser Eustace que exijo disculpas... o un juicio. La decisi\u00f3n es suya.\n\nDio media vuelta a su caballo para regresar junto a sus hombres.\n\nEl campo de batalla ser\u00eda el arroyo. El sept\u00f3n Sefton se adelant\u00f3, bambole\u00e1ndose, y enton\u00f3 una oraci\u00f3n en que suplicaba al Padre Celestial que mirara a aquellos dos hombres y los juzgara con justicia, adem\u00e1s de pedirle al Guerrero que prestara su fuerza al hombre cuya causa fuera justa y verdadera, y a la Madre, para el mentiroso, misericordia y perd\u00f3n por sus pecados. Terminada la plegaria, el sept\u00f3n se gir\u00f3 por \u00faltima vez hacia ser Eustace Osgrey.\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014dijo\u2014, le ruego una vez m\u00e1s que retire su acusaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014No lo har\u00e9 \u2014dijo el anciano con un temblor en el bigote.\n\nEl grueso sept\u00f3n se gir\u00f3 hacia lady Rohanne.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora cu\u00f1ada, si t\u00fa fuiste la responsable, confiesa tu culpa y br\u00edndale al buen ser Eustace alg\u00fan tipo de indemnizaci\u00f3n por su bosque. De lo contrario deber\u00e1 correr la sangre.\n\n\u2014Mi palad\u00edn demostrar\u00e1 mi inocencia ante los ojos de los dioses y los hombres.\n\n\u2014Existen otras v\u00edas adem\u00e1s del juicio por combate \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n con el agua en la cintura\u2014. Les imploro a los dos que vayamos a Sotodeoro y sometamos el asunto al veredicto de lord Rowan.\n\n\u2014Jam\u00e1s \u2014dijo ser Eustace.\n\nLa Viuda Escarlata sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza.\n\nSer Lucas Inchfield mir\u00f3 a lady Rohanne con semblante furibundo.\n\n\u2014Cuando esta farsa acabe se casar\u00e1 conmigo. Como deseaba su se\u00f1or padre.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or padre no lleg\u00f3 a conocerlo como yo \u2014replic\u00f3 ella.\n\nDunk se arrodill\u00f3 al lado de Egg y puso el sello en manos del ni\u00f1o. Cuatro dragones de tres cabezas, dos a un lado y dos al otro: las armas de Maekar, pr\u00edncipe de Refugio Estival.\n\n\u2014Vuelve a meterlo en la bota \u2014dijo\u2014, pero si muero acude al amigo de tu padre que tengas m\u00e1s cerca y p\u00eddele que te lleve a Refugio Estival. No intentes cruzar t\u00fa solo el Dominio. Procura no olvidarlo. Si no, mi fantasma vendr\u00e1 y te dar\u00e1 un golpe en la oreja.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, pero preferir\u00eda que no muriera.\n\n\u2014Hace demasiado calor para morir.\n\nDunk se puso el yelmo. Egg lo ayud\u00f3 a ajust\u00e1rselo al gorjal. La cara de Dunk estaba pegajosa de sangre, a pesar de que ser Eustace hab\u00eda arrancado un jir\u00f3n de su capa para ayudar a contener la hemorragia. Dunk se levant\u00f3 y se acerc\u00f3 a Trueno. Al montar en la silla vio que casi todo el humo se hab\u00eda despejado, pero que el cielo segu\u00eda oscuro. \"Nubes\", pens\u00f3, \"nubes negras\". Cu\u00e1nto tiempo sin verlas. \"Tal vez sea un augurio. \u00bfPero para \u00e9l o para m\u00ed?\" De augurios Dunk no sab\u00eda gran cosa.\n\nAl otro lado del arroyo ser Lucas tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda montado. Su caballo era un corcel zaino, un magn\u00edfico animal fuerte y veloz, pero menor que Trueno. Lo que le faltaba en tama\u00f1o lo compensaba en armadura: llevaba capizana, testera y una cota de malla ligera. En cuanto a Tres Varas, iba cubierto por placas esmaltadas de negro y malla plateada. Sobre su yelmo se asentaba una maligna ara\u00f1a de \u00f3nice. En cambio, su escudo mostraba sus propias armas: barra siniestra en blanco y negro jaquelado sobre campo gris claro. Dunk vio que se lo entregaba a un escudero. \"No piensa usarlo.\" Supo por qu\u00e9 cuando otro escudero le hizo entrega de un hacha de guerra. Era larga y letal, con cintas en la empu\u00f1adura, cabeza pesada y una siniestra pica por detr\u00e1s. Se trataba sin embargo de un arma para las dos manos. Tres Varas deber\u00eda fiarse de la protecci\u00f3n de su armadura. \"Debo hacer que lo lamente.\"\n\nEl escudo de Dunk estaba en su brazo izquierdo. Era el que le hab\u00eda pintado Tanselle, el del olmo y la estrella fugaz. Se le pas\u00f3 por la cabeza una canci\u00f3n infantil. \"Prot\u00e9janme, roble y hierro, o acabar\u00e9 en el infierno.\" Sac\u00f3 su espada de la vaina. Le gust\u00f3 sentir su peso.\n\nClav\u00f3 los talones en los flancos de Trueno para que el gran corcel se internara en el agua. Lo mismo hizo ser Lucas en la otra orilla. Dunk fue hacia la derecha para ofrecerle el flanco izquierdo, protegido por su escudo. Ser Lucas no estaba dispuesto a hacerle aquella concesi\u00f3n. Hizo girar su corcel con rapidez y chocaron en un tumulto de acero gris y gotas verdes. Ser Lucas atac\u00f3 con el hacha. Dunk tuvo que girarse en la silla de montar para recibir el hachazo en el escudo. La fuerza del golpe le hizo bajar el brazo y apretar los dientes. Su respuesta fue blandir la espada y descargar un corte lateral que alcanz\u00f3 al otro caballero por debajo de su brazo en alto. Se oy\u00f3 el chirrido de los dos aceros. El combate hab\u00eda empezado.\n\nTres Varas espole\u00f3 su corcel para, en una maniobra circular, tratar de plantarse en el flanco desprotegido de Dunk, pero Trueno gir\u00f3 a su encuentro y lanz\u00f3 una tarascada al otro caballo. Se suced\u00edan los duros hachazos de ser Lucas, que se hab\u00eda levantado en los estribos para aplicar todo su peso y fuerza en el arma. Dunk mov\u00eda el escudo para detener uno tras otro los golpes. Medio agazapado tras la madera de roble, daba estocadas a los brazos, los flancos y las piernas de Tres Varas, pero la armadura de este \u00faltimo siempre los rechazaba. Giraban y giraban, con el agua en las piernas. Tres Varas atacaba. Dunk se defend\u00eda a la espera de encontrar un punto d\u00e9bil.\n\nPor fin lo vio. Cada vez que ser Lucas levantaba el hacha para descargarla, aparec\u00eda un hueco bajo el brazo. Hab\u00eda malla y cuero y gambax, pero placa no. Dunk mantuvo el escudo levantado, tratando de elegir el momento justo para el ataque. \"Falta poco. Falta poco.\" El hacha cay\u00f3, se desprendi\u00f3 y volvi\u00f3 a subir. \"\u00a1Ahora!\" Clav\u00f3 las espuelas en Trueno, se acerc\u00f3 y tendi\u00f3 la espada para meter la punta por la abertura.\n\nEl hueco, sin embargo, desapareci\u00f3 con la misma rapidez con que hab\u00eda aparecido. La punta de la espada se desliz\u00f3 por una rodela y Dunk casi se cay\u00f3 de la silla por haberse estirado en demas\u00eda. El hacha descendi\u00f3 con todo su peso, desviada por el borde de hierro del escudo de Dunk. Choc\u00f3 con un lado de su yelmo y golpe\u00f3 de refil\u00f3n el cuello de Trueno.\n\nEl corcel relinch\u00f3 y se levant\u00f3 sobre sus patas traseras, con los ojos en blanco de dolor, mientras el aire se llenaba del intenso olor a cobre de la sangre. Justo cuando se acercaba Tres Varas, Trueno lanz\u00f3 una doble coz con sus cascos de hierro. Uno de ellos alcanz\u00f3 a ser Lucas en la cara y el otro en un hombro. Despu\u00e9s el pesado caballo de batalla cay\u00f3 encima del corcel.\n\nTodo fue muy r\u00e1pido. Los dos caballos cayeron enredados, d\u00e1ndose coces y mordiscos, y agitando el agua y los lodos del fondo del r\u00edo. Dunk intent\u00f3 tirarse de la silla, pero se le trab\u00f3 un pie en el estribo y cay\u00f3 de bruces. Antes de que el agua entrara a chorros por los agujeros del yelmo, aspir\u00f3 una desesperada bocanada de aire. Segu\u00eda sin conseguir soltar el pie. Sinti\u00f3 un estir\u00f3n brutal. Era Trueno, que al debatirse estuvo a punto de descoyuntarle la pierna. Al momento siguiente qued\u00f3 libre y empez\u00f3 a caer hacia el fondo, mientras agitaba in\u00fatilmente brazos y piernas. El mundo era azul, verde y marr\u00f3n.\n\nEl peso de la armadura lo arrastr\u00f3 hasta hacerlo chocar con el hombro en el lecho del arroyo. \"Si esto es abajo, lo otro es arriba.\" Sus manos, rodeadas de acero, tantearon las piedras y la arena. Sin saber muy bien c\u00f3mo, puso las piernas por debajo y se irgui\u00f3. Le daba vueltas la cabeza. Chorreaba cieno y agua por los orificios de respiraci\u00f3n de su yelmo mellado, pero estaba de pie. Aspir\u00f3 el aire.\n\nConservaba su abollado escudo en el brazo izquierdo, pero no la espada. La vaina estaba vac\u00eda. Dentro del yelmo no hab\u00eda s\u00f3lo agua, sino sangre. Cuando intent\u00f3 apoyarse en el otro pie, su tobillo lanz\u00f3 una saeta de dolor por el resto de su pierna. Vio que los dos caballos hab\u00edan conseguido levantarse. Gir\u00f3 la cabeza y mir\u00f3 por un solo ojo, a trav\u00e9s de un velo de sangre, en busca de su enemigo. \"No est\u00e1\", pens\u00f3. \"Se ahog\u00f3 o Trueno le aplast\u00f3 el cr\u00e1neo.\"\n\nSer Lucas surgi\u00f3 del agua justo enfrente de \u00e9l, con la espada en la mano, y lanz\u00f3 una salvaje estocada al cuello de Dunk, que s\u00f3lo conserv\u00f3 la cabeza en los hombros gracias al grosor del gorjal. Dunk no ten\u00eda espada para responder, s\u00f3lo el escudo. Cedi\u00f3 algo de terreno. Tres Varas fue tras \u00e9l, gritando y lanzando mandobles. El brazo en alto de Dunk recibi\u00f3 un abrumador impacto por encima del codo. Un corte en la cadera lo hizo gru\u00f1ir de dolor. Mientras retroced\u00eda, su pie resbal\u00f3 en una piedra. Se qued\u00f3 apoyado en una rodilla, con el agua a la altura del pecho. Levant\u00f3 el escudo, pero esta vez ser Lucas golpe\u00f3 con tal fuerza que parti\u00f3 por la mitad el grueso roble y lanz\u00f3 los restos a la cara de Dunk. Pese a que los o\u00eddos le zumbaban y a que ten\u00eda la boca llena de sangre, Dunk oy\u00f3 gritar a Egg en la distancia.\n\n\u2014\u00a1A por \u00e9l, ser, a por \u00e9l! \u00a1Ya lo tienes!\n\nDunk se abalanz\u00f3. Ser Lucas hab\u00eda desprendido su espada para volver a usarla. Dunk se lanz\u00f3 sobre \u00e9l a la altura de la cintura y lo derrib\u00f3. El arroyo volvi\u00f3 a engullirlos a ambos, pero esta vez Dunk estaba preparado. Sujetando con un brazo a Tres Varas, lo oblig\u00f3 a bajar. Tras la visera abollada y retorcida de Inchfield sali\u00f3 un chorro de burbujas. Aun as\u00ed se resist\u00eda. Encontr\u00f3 una piedra en el lecho del arroyo y empez\u00f3 a aporrear con ella la cabeza y las manos de Dunk, que buscaba a tientas en su cinto.\n\n\"\u00bfTambi\u00e9n perd\u00ed la daga?\", se pregunt\u00f3. No, ya la ten\u00eda. Su mano se cerr\u00f3 en la empu\u00f1adura. La sac\u00f3 y la impuls\u00f3 con lentitud por los remolinos de agua y por las anillas de hierro y el cuero hervido debajo del brazo de Lucas Tres Varas, a la vez que la giraba. Ser Lucas salt\u00f3 y se retorci\u00f3, mientras perd\u00eda fuerzas. Dunk lo empuj\u00f3 y sali\u00f3 a flote. Le ard\u00eda el pecho. Ante su cara pas\u00f3 fugazmente un pez largo, blanco, fino.\n\n\"\u00bfQu\u00e9 es eso?\", se pregunt\u00f3 Dunk. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 es eso? \u00bfQu\u00e9 es eso?\"\n\nNo se despert\u00f3 en el castillo donde deb\u00eda hacerlo. Cuando los ojos se le abrieron no supo d\u00f3nde estaba. Daba gusto estar tan fresco. Not\u00f3 un regusto a sangre en la boca. Le tapaba los ojos una tela, tupida e impregnada de alg\u00fan tipo de ung\u00fcento. Le pareci\u00f3 que ol\u00eda a clavo.\n\nSe palp\u00f3 la cara y se la destap\u00f3. Ten\u00eda encima un techo alto en el que oscilaba luz de antorcha. En las vigas caminaban cuervos que lo miraban con sus peque\u00f1os ojos negros y le graznaban.\n\n\"Al menos no estoy ciego.\"\n\nSe encontraba en la torre de un maestre. En las paredes hab\u00eda anaqueles llenos de hierbas y p\u00f3cimas en tarros de cer\u00e1mica y recipientes de cristal verde. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda una larga mesa de caballete cubierta de pergaminos, libros y extra\u00f1os instrumentos de bronce, todo salpicado por los excrementos de los cuervos de las vigas, a los que o\u00eda murmurar.\n\nIntent\u00f3 sentarse. Craso error. Le daba vueltas la cabeza y el menor esfuerzo en la pierna izquierda provocaba un dolor atroz. Vio que le hab\u00edan vendado el tobillo y que tambi\u00e9n ten\u00eda tiras de tela en el pecho y los hombros.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9dese quieto.\n\nSobre \u00e9l apareci\u00f3 una cara joven, circunspecta, de ojos marr\u00f3n oscuro a ambos lados de una nariz de gancho. Dunk la conoc\u00eda. Su due\u00f1o iba todo de gris, con una cadena alrededor del cuello, una cadena de maestre hecha de muchos metales. Dunk lo asi\u00f3 por la mu\u00f1eca.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde...?\n\n\u2014Fosa Fr\u00eda \u2014dijo el maestre\u2014. Estaba demasiado malherido para regresar a Tiesa, as\u00ed que lady Rohanne orden\u00f3 que se le trajera aqu\u00ed. Beba esto.\n\nAplic\u00f3 a los labios de Dunk una copa de... algo. La p\u00f3cima ten\u00eda un sabor amargo, como el vinagre, pero al menos le quit\u00f3 el regusto a sangre.\n\nHizo el esfuerzo de beberlo todo. Despu\u00e9s dobl\u00f3 los dedos, primero de la mano con que usaba la espada y luego de la otra. \"Al menos a\u00fan me responden las manos y los brazos.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde... d\u00f3nde me hice da\u00f1o?\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde no? \u2014el maestre resopl\u00f3\u2014. Fractura de tobillo, esguince de rodilla, clav\u00edcula rota, moretones... Tiene gran parte del torso verde y amarillo, y el brazo derecho violeta. Yo cre\u00eda que tambi\u00e9n se hab\u00eda roto el cr\u00e1neo, pero al parecer no fue as\u00ed. No olvidemos el corte de la cara, ser. Me temo que le dejar\u00e1 una cicatriz. Ah, y cuando lo sacamos del agua estaba ahogado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAhogado? \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Nunca me hab\u00eda imaginado que una sola persona fuera capaz de tragar tanta agua, ni siquiera alguien tan grande como usted, ser. Tiene suerte de que yo sea natural de las islas del Hierro. Los sacerdotes del Dios Ahogado saben ahogar y resucitar a un hombre, y yo he estudiado sus creencias y costumbres.\n\n\"Me ahogu\u00e9.\" Dunk trat\u00f3 una vez m\u00e1s de incorporarse, pero no ten\u00eda fuerzas. \"Me ahogu\u00e9 donde el agua no me llegaba ni al cuello.\" Primero se rio. Despu\u00e9s gimi\u00f3 de dolor.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer Lucas?\n\n\u2014Muerto. \u00bfLo dudaba?\n\n\"No.\" Dunk dudaba de muchas cosas, pero no de aqu\u00e9lla. Record\u00f3 c\u00f3mo los brazos y las piernas de Tres Varas se hab\u00edan quedado de s\u00fabito sin fuerzas.\n\n\u2014Egg \u2014dijo\u2014. Quiero a Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe le antoja un huevo? El hambre es buena se\u00f1al \u2014dijo el maestre\u2014, pero ahora mismo lo que le hace falta no es comer, sino dormir.\n\nDunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza y se arrepinti\u00f3 de inmediato.\n\n\u2014Egg es mi escudero.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAh, s\u00ed? Un muchacho valiente y m\u00e1s fuerte de lo que parece. \u00c9l lo sac\u00f3 del r\u00edo. Tambi\u00e9n nos ayud\u00f3 a quitarle la armadura y de camino hacia aqu\u00ed mont\u00f3 con usted en el carromato. No quer\u00eda dormir. Estuvo sentado a su lado, con la espada en las rodillas, por si alguien intentaba hacerle da\u00f1o. Sospechaba de todos, hasta de m\u00ed, e insisti\u00f3 en probar cuanto quise darle de comer. Un ni\u00f1o extra\u00f1o, pero abnegado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1?\n\n\u2014Ser Eustace le pidi\u00f3 que le sirviera en el banquete de bodas. No ten\u00eda a nadie m\u00e1s de su lado. Habr\u00eda sido descort\u00e9s negarse.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn banquete de bodas?\n\nDunk no entend\u00eda nada.\n\n\u2014Claro, usted no lo sabe. Despu\u00e9s de la batalla Fosa Fr\u00eda y Tiesa se reconciliaron. Lady Rohanne pidi\u00f3 permiso al anciano ser Eustace para cruzar sus tierras y visitar la tumba de Addam. \u00c9l se lo dio. Lady Rohanne se arrodill\u00f3 ante las zarzamoras y se ech\u00f3 a llorar. \u00c9l qued\u00f3 tan conmovido que fue a consolarla. Estuvieron hablando toda la noche del joven Addam y del noble padre de mi se\u00f1ora. Antes de la rebeli\u00f3n de los Fuegoscuro, lord Wyman y ser Eustace eran grandes amigos. Esta ma\u00f1ana nuestro buen sept\u00f3n Sefton uni\u00f3 en matrimonio a ser Eustace y mi se\u00f1ora. Ahora Eustace Osgrey es se\u00f1or de Fosa Fr\u00eda y su le\u00f3n jaquelado ondea junto a la ara\u00f1a de los Webber en todas las torres y murallas.\n\nA Dunk todo le daba vueltas con lentitud. \"Es la p\u00f3cima. Me hace volver a dormir.\" Cerr\u00f3 los ojos y esper\u00f3 a que se le pasara el dolor. O\u00eda los graznidos y gritos de los cuervos. Tambi\u00e9n su propia respiraci\u00f3n, y algo m\u00e1s... Un sonido de mayor suavidad y regularidad, a la vez gr\u00e1vido y calmante.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 es eso? \u2014murmur\u00f3, adormilado\u2014. Se oye un ruido...\n\n\u2014\u00bfEso? \u2014el maestre escuch\u00f3\u2014. Nada, lluvia.\n\nA ella no la vio hasta el d\u00eda en que se despidieron. Mientras Dunk cruzaba el patio con una fuerte cojera, levantando el pie entablillado y apoyado en una muleta, el sept\u00f3n Sefton se quejaba:\n\n\u2014Esto es una locura, ser. El maestre Cerrick dice que ni siquiera est\u00e1 medio curado, y con esta lluvia... Seguro que se resfriar\u00e1, si es que no se vuelve a ahogar. Espere al menos a que deje de llover.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda tardar a\u00f1os \u2014Dunk le estaba agradecido al orondo sept\u00f3n, que hab\u00eda ido a verlo casi a diario... en principio para rezar por \u00e9l, aunque parec\u00eda que dedicaran m\u00e1s tiempo a las an\u00e9cdotas y los rumores. Echar\u00eda de menos su lengua suelta y vivaracha, y su alegre compa\u00f1\u00eda. Sin embargo, nada cambiaba\u2014. Debo irme.\n\nAlrededor de ambos llov\u00eda a c\u00e1ntaros, una lluvia que era como mil fr\u00edos l\u00e1tigos en la espalda de Dunk. Ya se le hab\u00eda empapado la capa. Era la de lana blanca que le hab\u00eda dado ser Eustace, con ribete de cuadros verdes y dorados. El anciano caballero lo hab\u00eda obligado a aceptarla como un regalo de despedida.\n\n\"Por tu valent\u00eda y tus leales servicios, ser\", le hab\u00eda dicho. Tambi\u00e9n el broche que se la sujetaba en el hombro era un regalo: una ara\u00f1a de marfil con patas de plata. Las manchas de la espalda eran racimos de granates triturados.\n\n\u2014Espero que no cometa la insensatez de pretender salir en busca de Bennis \u2014dijo el sept\u00f3n Sefton\u2014. Est\u00e1 tan magullado que temer\u00eda por usted si alguien lo halla en semejante estado.\n\n\"Bennis\", pens\u00f3 Dunk con amargura, \"el maldito Bennis\". Mientras Dunk se bat\u00eda en el arroyo, Bennis hab\u00eda atado a Sam Encorvado y su mujer, hab\u00eda saqueado hasta el \u00faltimo rinc\u00f3n de Tiesa y se hab\u00eda ido con todos los objetos de valor que hall\u00f3, desde velas, ropa y armas hasta la antigua copa de plata de los Osgrey y un peque\u00f1o tesoro de monedas que el anciano ten\u00eda oculto en sus aposentos, tras un tapiz enmohecido. Dunk abrigaba la esperanza de reencontrarse alg\u00fan d\u00eda con ser Bennis del Escudo Pardo. Entonces...\n\n\u2014Lo de Bennis esperar\u00e1.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAd\u00f3nde ir\u00e1?\n\nEl sept\u00f3n jadeaba. Estaba demasiado gordo para ir tan deprisa como Dunk, incluso con muletas.\n\n\u2014A Isla Bella. A Harrenhal. Al Tridente. En todas partes hay caminos \u2014se encogi\u00f3 de hombros\u2014. Siempre he tenido ganas de ver el Muro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl Muro? \u2014el sept\u00f3n fren\u00f3 en seco\u2014. \u00a1Me desespera, ser Duncan! \u2014exclam\u00f3 de pie en el barro, con las manos tendidas, mientras llov\u00eda alrededor\u2014. \u00a1Rece, ser, rece por que la Vieja le aligere el viaje!\n\nDunk sigui\u00f3 caminando.\n\nElla lo esperaba en el establo, junto a las balas amarillas de heno, con un vestido verde como el propio verano.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan \u2014dijo al verlo entrar por la puerta. Su trenza roja colgaba por delante de su cuerpo, rozando los muslos con la punta\u2014. Me alegro de verlo en pie.\n\n\"No ha llegado a verme tumbado\", pens\u00f3 \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1ora, \u00bfqu\u00e9 la trae al establo? Llueve mucho para dar un paseo a caballo.\n\n\u2014Lo mismo podr\u00eda decirle yo a usted.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe lo cont\u00f3 Egg?\n\n\"Le debo otro golpe en la oreja.\"\n\n\u2014D\u00e9 gracias por ello. Si no, lo habr\u00eda hecho perseguir por mis hombres y traerlo a la fuerza. Ha sido una crueldad intentar escabullirse sin una triste despedida.\n\nLady Rohanne no hab\u00eda ido a verlo mientras estuvo al cuidado del maestre Cerrick. Ni una sola vez.\n\n\u2014Le sienta bien este verde, mi se\u00f1ora \u2014dijo \u00e9l\u2014. Realza el color de sus ojos \u2014apoy\u00f3 con cuidado el peso de su cuerpo en la muleta\u2014. Vengo en busca de mi caballo.\n\n\u2014No hace falta que se vaya. Aqu\u00ed hay un puesto para usted cuando se recupere: capit\u00e1n de mi guardia. Egg puede unirse a mis otros escuderos. No es necesario que alguien se entere de qui\u00e9n es.\n\n\u2014Gracias, mi se\u00f1ora, pero no.\n\nTrueno estaba a unas doce cuadras. Dunk coje\u00f3 hacia \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Recapacite, ser, por favor. Son tiempos peligrosos, incluso para los dragones y sus amigos. Qu\u00e9dese hasta que se haya curado \u2014lady Rohanne camin\u00f3 a su lado\u2014. A ser Eustace tambi\u00e9n le agradar\u00eda. Lo tiene en mucho afecto.\n\n\u2014Mucho afecto \u2014convino Dunk\u2014. Si su hija no estuviera muerta, me querr\u00eda a m\u00ed como su esposo. Entonces usted podr\u00eda ser mi se\u00f1ora madre. Yo nunca he tenido madre, y menos se\u00f1ora madre.\n\nPor unos instantes pareci\u00f3 que lady Rohanne iba a darle otra bofetada. \"Quiz\u00e1 s\u00f3lo me quite la muleta con un puntapi\u00e9.\"\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 enojado conmigo, ser \u2014dijo ella sin hacer lo uno ni lo otro\u2014. Debe permitir que lo desagravie.\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo \u00e9l\u2014, podr\u00eda ayudarme a ensillar a Trueno.\n\n\u2014Yo pensaba en otra cosa \u2014lady Rohanne tendi\u00f3 una mano hacia la de Dunk: una mano pecosa, de dedos fuertes y delgados\u2014. \u00bfSabe mucho de caballos?\n\n\u2014Monto en uno.\n\n\u2014Un viejo corcel criado para la batalla, lento y con mal genio. No para cabalgar de un sitio a otro.\n\n\u2014Si necesito ir de un sitio a otro deber\u00e9 elegir entre \u00e9l o \u00e9stos.\n\nDunk se se\u00f1alaba los pies.\n\n\u2014Tiene los pies muy grandes \u2014observ\u00f3 ella\u2014. Y tambi\u00e9n las manos. Seguro que todo usted es grande. Demasiado para la mayor\u00eda de los palafrenes. Con usted encima de sus lomos parecer\u00edan ponis. De todos modos le convendr\u00eda mucho una montura m\u00e1s veloz. Un gran corcel con algo de sangre dorniense que le diera resistencia \u2014lady Rohanne se\u00f1al\u00f3 la cuadra situada frente a la de Trueno\u2014. Como \u00e9ste.\n\nEra una yegua de color bayo oscuro, ojos brillantes y larga y lustrosa crin. Lady Rohanne sac\u00f3 una zanahoria de sus mangas y se la dio, mientras le acariciaba la cabeza.\n\n\u2014La zanahoria, no los dedos \u2014le dijo al caballo antes de girarse de nuevo hacia Dunk\u2014. Yo le digo Llama, aunque le puede poner el nombre que m\u00e1s le plazca. Si quiere, ll\u00e1mela Desagravio.\n\nDunk se qued\u00f3 un momento sin habla. Apoyado en la muleta, mir\u00f3 con otros ojos la yegua baya. Era magn\u00edfica. El viejo jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda tenido una montura as\u00ed. Bastaba con mirar aquellas patas largas y limpias para saber lo veloz que pod\u00eda ser.\n\n\u2014La cri\u00e9 por su belleza y su velocidad.\n\nDunk se gir\u00f3 hacia Trueno.\n\n\u2014No puedo aceptarla.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9?\n\n\u2014Es demasiado buen caballo para m\u00ed. No hay m\u00e1s que verla.\n\nLady Rohanne empezaba a sonrojarse. Tom\u00f3 entre sus dedos la trenza y la retorci\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ten\u00eda que casarme, ya lo sabe. El testamento de mi padre... No sea tan tonto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 pretende que sea? M\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo, y encima bastardo.\n\n\u2014Acepte el caballo. Me niego a permitir que se marche sin un recuerdo de m\u00ed.\n\n\u2014La recordar\u00e9, mi se\u00f1ora, no tema.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Ac\u00e9ptelo!\n\nDunk tom\u00f3 la trenza en una mano y acerc\u00f3 su cara a la de lady Rohanne. Con la muleta y la diferencia de estatura le resultaba inc\u00f3modo. Estuvo a punto de caerse antes de unir sus labios con los de ella. La bes\u00f3 con fuerza. Ella le pas\u00f3 una mano por la nuca y otra por la espalda. Dunk aprendi\u00f3 m\u00e1s de besos en un solo instante que en todas sus observaciones anteriores. Cuando se separaron, sin embargo, desenfund\u00f3 la daga.\n\n\u2014Ya s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 recuerdo deseo de usted, mi se\u00f1ora.\n\nEgg lo esperaba en la torre de entrada, montado en un nuevo y hermoso palafr\u00e9n alaz\u00e1n, y con la cuerda de Maestre en la mano. Cuando Dunk se acerc\u00f3 a lomos de Trueno, el ni\u00f1o puso cara de sorpresa.\n\n\u2014Hab\u00eda dicho que quer\u00eda regalaros un caballo, ser.\n\n\u2014Ni siquiera las damas de alta cuna consiguen cuanto quieren \u2014dijo Dunk mientras cruzaban el puente levadizo\u2014. No era un caballo lo que yo quer\u00eda \u2014el foso estaba tan lleno de agua que amenazaba con anegar sus bordes\u2014. Me llevo otro recuerdo de ella: un mech\u00f3n de su cabello pelirrojo.\n\nMeti\u00f3 una mano por debajo de la capa y sonri\u00f3 al sacar la trenza.\n\nEn la jaula de hierro de la encrucijada los cad\u00e1veres segu\u00edan abrazados. Inspiraban soledad y desamparo. Hasta las moscas los hab\u00edan abandonado, al igual que los cuervos. Sobre los huesos de los muertos s\u00f3lo quedaban algunos jirones de piel y algunos pelos.\n\nDunk se detuvo, muy serio. Le dol\u00eda el tobillo por el viaje, pero no importaba. Tan propio de la caballer\u00eda era el dolor como las espadas y los escudos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor d\u00f3nde se va hacia el sur? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 a Egg.\n\nCostaba saberlo en aquel mundo reducido a lluvia y barro, y bajo un cielo gris como una pared de granito.\n\n\u2014Por all\u00e1, ser \u2014Egg se\u00f1al\u00f3 con el dedo\u2014. Y por all\u00e1 hacia el norte.\n\n\u2014Refugio Estival queda hacia el sur. Tu padre.\n\n\u2014El Muro queda al norte.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Es un largo camino.\n\n\u2014Tengo un caballo nuevo, ser.\n\n\u2014Es verdad \u2014Dunk tuvo que sonre\u00edr\u2014. \u00bfY por qu\u00e9 quieres ver t\u00fa el Muro?\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, dicen que es muy alto.\n\n* Juego de palabras: en vez de \"ser Eustace\", se refiere a \u00e9l como \"ser Useless\" (ser In\u00fatil), cuya pronunciaci\u00f3n en ingl\u00e9s es casi hom\u00f3fona. (N. del T.)\n\n# EL CABALLERO MISTERIOSO\nCa\u00eda una suave lluvia de verano cuando Dunk y Egg se despidieron de Septo de Piedra.\n\nDunk iba en su viejo caballo de batalla, Trueno. A su lado, en el brioso y joven palafr\u00e9n al que hab\u00eda puesto el nombre de Lluvia, Egg tiraba de su mula Maestre. Llevaba esta \u00faltima en su lomo un fardo con la armadura de Dunk, los libros de Egg, las esterillas, tiendas y ropa de ambos, varios cortes de tasajo de buey, medio frasco de hidromiel y dos odres de agua. El viejo sombrero de paja de Egg, blando y de ala ancha, proteg\u00eda de la lluvia la cabeza de la mula. El ni\u00f1o hab\u00eda hecho agujeros para las orejas de Maestre. En la cabeza de Egg estaba su nuevo sombrero de paja. Dunk los ve\u00eda iguales, a excepci\u00f3n de los agujeros para las orejas.\n\nAl acercarse a las puertas de la villa, Egg tir\u00f3 con fuerza de las riendas. Sobre la entrada estaba la cabeza de un traidor empalada en una pica de hierro. A juzgar por su aspecto era reciente, con carne m\u00e1s rosada que verde, pero las cornejas ya hab\u00edan empezado a dar cuenta de ella. Los labios y las mejillas del muerto estaban destrozados, y sus ojos eran dos orificios marrones que lloraban lentas l\u00e1grimas rojas, al mezclarse las gotas de lluvia con la sangre encostrada. El cad\u00e1ver ten\u00eda la boca muy abierta, como si arengara a los viajeros que cruzaban las puertas bajo \u00e9l. No era la primera vez que Dunk ve\u00eda algo semejante.\n\n\u2014De peque\u00f1o, en Desembarco del Rey, rob\u00e9 una cabeza de su pica \u2014le explic\u00f3 a Egg.\n\nEn realidad hab\u00eda sido Hur\u00f3n el que hab\u00eda escalado el muro para llevarse la cabeza, despu\u00e9s de que Rafe y Morcilla aseguraron que no se atrever\u00eda, pero la hab\u00eda soltado al ver llegar corriendo a los guardias y la cabeza hab\u00eda ca\u00eddo en manos de Dunk.\n\n\u2014Era alg\u00fan se\u00f1or rebelde o alg\u00fan caballero ladr\u00f3n. A menos que fuera un simple asesino de a pie... Las cabezas son cabezas. Despu\u00e9s de unos d\u00edas en una pica, todas se parecen.\n\nDunk y sus tres amigos hab\u00edan usado la cabeza para aterrorizar a las ni\u00f1as del Lecho de Pulgas. Las persegu\u00edan por los callejones y las obligaban a darle un beso antes de soltarlas. A aquella cabeza la hab\u00edan besado mucho, recordaba. En Desembarco del Rey no hab\u00eda ninguna ni\u00f1a que corriera tanto como Rafe. Aquella parte, sin embargo, mejor que no la oyera Egg. \"Hur\u00f3n, Rafe y Morcilla. Menudos tres monstruitos. Y yo el peor de todos.\" Sus amigos y \u00e9l hab\u00edan guardado la cabeza hasta que la carne se hab\u00eda puesto negra y empezado a desprenderse. A partir de entonces ya no ten\u00eda gracia perseguir a las ni\u00f1as, as\u00ed que una noche entraron furtivamente en un tenderete y echaron los restos en un guiso.\n\n\u2014Los cuervos siempre empiezan por los ojos \u2014le dijo a Egg\u2014. Luego se hunden las mejillas, la carne se pone verde... \u2014aguz\u00f3 la mirada\u2014. Espera. Yo esta cara la conozco.\n\n\u2014Es verdad, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Hace tres d\u00edas. El sept\u00f3n jorobado al que o\u00edmos predicar en contra de lord Cuervo de Sangre.\n\nSe acord\u00f3 con brusquedad. \"Era un hombre santo, juramentado a los Siete, aunque predicara la traici\u00f3n.\"\n\n\u2014Sus manos est\u00e1n manchadas con la sangre de un hermano, y tambi\u00e9n con la de sus j\u00f3venes sobrinos \u2014hab\u00eda dicho el jorobado ante la multitud reunida en la plaza del mercado\u2014. Por orden suya, una sombra estrangul\u00f3 en el \u00fatero materno a los hijos del valeroso pr\u00edncipe Valarr. \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 ahora nuestro Pr\u00edncipe Joven? \u00bfD\u00f3nde su hermano, el dulce Matarys? \u00bfA d\u00f3nde fue el buen rey Daeron y el intr\u00e9pido Baelor Rompelanzas? A todos se los llev\u00f3 la tumba, y sin embargo \u00e9l permanece, como p\u00e1lido p\u00e1jaro de pico ensangrentado que, subido al hombro del rey Aerys, le grazna cosas al o\u00eddo. Lleva en el rostro y en la \u00f3rbita vac\u00eda la marca del infierno, y nos ha tra\u00eddo la sequ\u00eda, la peste y el asesinato. Yo les digo que se levanten y recuerden a su verdadero rey, al otro lado de las aguas. \u00a1Siete son los dioses, y siete los reinos, y el Drag\u00f3n Negro engendr\u00f3 a siete hijos! Lev\u00e1ntense, se\u00f1ores y se\u00f1oras. Lev\u00e1ntense, valientes caballeros y robustos labriegos, y derroquen al vil hechicero Cuervo de Sangre si no quieren que sus hijos y los hijos de sus hijos queden malditos para siempre.\n\n\"Ni una sola palabra que no fuera traici\u00f3n.\" Aun as\u00ed impactaba verlo en ese estado, con las \u00f3rbitas vac\u00edas.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, es \u00e9l \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Otro buen motivo para dejar atr\u00e1s esta ciudad.\n\nToc\u00f3 a Trueno con las espuelas y cruz\u00f3 en compa\u00f1\u00eda de Egg las puertas de Septo de Piedra, mientras escuchaban el suave ruido de la lluvia. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene lord Cuervo de Sangre?\", dec\u00eda el acertijo. \"Mil, y uno m\u00e1s.\" Algunos dec\u00edan que la mano del rey era un estudioso de la magia negra, capaz de cambiar de cara, adoptar la forma de un perro tuerto e incluso de convertirse en niebla. Se dec\u00eda que a sus enemigos los persegu\u00edan jaur\u00edas de lobos grises y fam\u00e9licos, y que ten\u00eda a su servicio cornejas esp\u00edas que le susurraban secretos al o\u00eddo. Dunk estaba seguro de que en la mayor\u00eda de los casos eran simples cuentos, pero nadie dudaba de que Cuervo de Sangre tuviera informadores en todas partes.\n\nDunk lo hab\u00eda visto una vez con sus propios ojos en Desembarco del Rey. Blancos como el hueso eran la piel y el pelo de Brynden R\u00edos, y su ojo \u2014uno solo, ya que el otro se lo hab\u00eda quitado su hermanastro Aceroamargo en el campo de Hierba Roja\u2014, rojo como la sangre. Llevaba en la mejilla y el cuello la marca de nacimiento color vino por la que le hab\u00edan puesto su apodo.\n\nLejos ya de la ciudad, Dunk carraspe\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Mal asunto cortarles la cabeza a los septones \u2014dijo\u2014. Lo \u00fanico que hizo fue hablar. Las palabras son aire.\n\n\u2014Algunas son aire, ser, y otras traici\u00f3n.\n\nEgg estaba flaco como un palo y era todo costillas y codos, pero boca s\u00ed ten\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Ahora s\u00ed que hablas como un verdadero principito.\n\nEgg se lo tom\u00f3 como un insulto, y lo era.\n\n\u2014Aunque fuera sept\u00f3n, predicaba mentiras, ser. La sequ\u00eda no es culpa de lord Cuervo de Sangre, ni la gran epidemia primaveral.\n\n\u2014Es posible, pero si empezamos a cortarles la cabeza a todos los insensatos y mentirosos, la mitad de las ciudades de los Siete Reinos se quedar\u00e1 vac\u00eda.\n\nSeis d\u00edas despu\u00e9s la lluvia era s\u00f3lo un recuerdo. Dunk se hab\u00eda quitado la t\u00fanica para disfrutar del calor del sol en su piel. Cuando se levant\u00f3 algo de brisa, fresca y fragante como aliento de doncella, suspir\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Agua \u2014anunci\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfLa hueles? El lago ya no puede estar muy lejos.\n\n\u2014Yo s\u00f3lo huelo a Maestre, ser. Apesta.\n\nEgg dio un brutal estir\u00f3n a la mula, que se hab\u00eda detenido a comer hierba en las lindes del camino, como de vez en cuando ten\u00eda por costumbre.\n\n\u2014A orillas del lago hay una vieja posada \u2014Dunk se hab\u00eda alojado una vez en ella cuando era escudero del viejo\u2014. Ser Arlan dec\u00eda que hac\u00edan buena cerveza tostada. Tal vez podamos probarla mientras esperamos la barca.\n\nEgg lo mir\u00f3 esperanzado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPara acompa\u00f1ar la comida, ser?\n\n\u2014\u00bfA qu\u00e9 comida te refieres?\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn trozo de asado? \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o\u2014. \u00bfUn poco de pato? \u00bfUn cuenco de estofado? Lo que tengan, ser.\n\nHac\u00eda tres d\u00edas que no com\u00edan nada caliente. Hab\u00edan sobrevivido a base de imprevistos y tasajo de buey, duro como madera. \"Estar\u00eda bien meternos en la barriga un poco de comida digna de ese nombre antes de salir hacia el norte. El Muro queda muy lejos.\"\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n podr\u00edamos pasar la noche \u2014propuso Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDesea mi se\u00f1or un lecho de plumas?\n\n\u2014Me conformo con paja, ser \u2014dijo Egg, ofendido.\n\n\u2014No tenemos dinero para dormir en cama.\n\n\u2014Tenemos veintid\u00f3s peniques, tres estrellas, un venado y el viejo granate mellado, ser.\n\nDunk se rasc\u00f3 la oreja.\n\n\u2014Cre\u00eda que ten\u00edamos dos piezas de plata.\n\n\u2014Las ten\u00edamos hasta que compraste la tienda. Ahora s\u00f3lo queda uno.\n\n\u2014Y si empezamos a dormir en posada no nos quedar\u00e1 ninguno. \u00bfQu\u00e9 quieres, compartir la cama con un vendedor ambulante y despertarte con sus pulgas? \u2014Dunk resopl\u00f3 por la nariz\u2014. Yo no. Tengo las m\u00edas y no les gustan los desconocidos. Dormiremos bajo las estrellas.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1n bien las estrellas \u2014reconoci\u00f3 Egg\u2014, pero el suelo es duro, ser, y a veces es bueno tener una almohada para la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Las almohadas son para los pr\u00edncipes \u2014no se pod\u00eda desear mejor escudero que Egg, pero muy de vez en cuando le daban arrebatos principescos. \"El ni\u00f1o tiene sangre de drag\u00f3n, nunca lo olvides.\" Dunk la ten\u00eda de mendigo. Al menos era lo que siempre le hab\u00edan contado en el Lecho de Pulgas, cuando no le auguraban con seguridad la horca\u2014. Tal vez podamos permitirnos un poco de cerveza y una cena caliente, pero no pienso dilapidar buenas monedas en una cama. Debemos ahorrar nuestros peniques para el barquero.\n\nLa \u00faltima vez que hab\u00eda cruzado el lago, la barca s\u00f3lo costaba unos cuantos cobres, pero de eso hac\u00eda seis o siete a\u00f1os y desde entonces todo se hab\u00eda encarecido.\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, tal vez podr\u00edamos usar mi bota para el cruce.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00edamos \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, pero no lo haremos.\n\nUsar la bota era peligroso. \"Se correr\u00eda la voz. Siempre se corre la voz.\" Su escudero no era calvo por casualidad. Egg ten\u00eda los ojos morados de la vieja Valyria y un pelo que brillaba como oro batido entreverado de hebras de plata. Dejarse crecer un pelo as\u00ed era como llevar un broche con un drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas. Corr\u00edan tiempos peligrosos en Poniente, y... No val\u00eda la pena arriesgarse.\n\n\u2014Como vuelvas a nombrar la bota de los demonios, te dar\u00e9 tal golpe en la oreja que cruzar\u00e1s volando el lago.\n\n\u2014Preferir\u00eda nadar, ser \u2014Egg era un buen nadador, a diferencia de Dunk, que no sab\u00eda. El ni\u00f1o se gir\u00f3 en la silla de montar\u2014. Ser, se acerca alguien por detr\u00e1s en el camino. \u00bfOyes los caballos?\n\n\u2014No soy sordo \u2014Dunk tambi\u00e9n ve\u00eda el polvo que levantaban\u2014. Un grupo grande. Y con prisas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCrees que se trate de forajidos, ser?\n\nEgg se levant\u00f3 en los estribos, m\u00e1s impaciente que asustado. As\u00ed era el ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Los forajidos ser\u00edan m\u00e1s sigilosos. Los \u00fanicos que hacen tanto ruido son los se\u00f1ores \u2014Dunk sacudi\u00f3 la empu\u00f1adura de su espada para aflojar la hoja en la vaina\u2014. De todos modos nos apartaremos del camino para dejarlos pasar. Hay de se\u00f1ores a se\u00f1ores.\n\nNunca estaba de m\u00e1s ser cauteloso. Los caminos no eran tan seguros como cuando ocupaba el Trono de Hierro el buen rey Daeron.\n\nDunk y Egg se escondieron tras unas zarzas. Dunk se quit\u00f3 el escudo y se lo pas\u00f3 por el brazo. Era viejo, alto, pesado, en forma de cometa. Estaba hecho de madera de pino ribeteada de hierro. Lo hab\u00eda comprado en Septo de Piedra para sustituir el que le hab\u00eda hecho astillas Tres Varas al luchar contra \u00e9l. Como no hab\u00eda tenido tiempo de pintar su olmo y su estrella fugaz, a\u00fan llevaba las armas del due\u00f1o anterior: un t\u00e9trico y gris ahorcado bajo una horca. \u00c9l no habr\u00eda elegido un emblema as\u00ed, pero el escudo le hab\u00eda salido barato.\n\nPoco despu\u00e9s pasaron al galope los primeros jinetes: dos j\u00f3venes se\u00f1ores montados en sendos corceles. El del bayo llevaba un yelmo abierto de acero dorado, con tres grandes penachos: uno blanco, uno rojo y el otro dorado. La capizana de su caballo llevaba penachos a juego. El corcel negro de al lado ten\u00eda barda azul y oro, y el viento hizo rielar sus jaeces al pasar como una exhalaci\u00f3n. Los jinetes, que cabalgaban uno junto al otro, gritaban y re\u00edan en una vor\u00e1gine de capas largas.\n\nLos segu\u00eda con mayor sosiego otro se\u00f1or a la cabeza de una larga columna. El grupo constaba de dos docenas de hombres, entre mozos de cuadra, cocineros y criados, todos al servicio de tres caballeros, a los que se a\u00f1ad\u00edan soldados y ballesteros a caballo. Llevaban una docena de carromatos muy cargados de armaduras, tiendas y provisiones. El se\u00f1or llevaba colgado de su silla de montar un escudo de color naranja oscuro, con tres castillos negros.\n\nDunk conoc\u00eda aquellas armas, pero \u00bfde d\u00f3nde? El se\u00f1or que las llevaba era un hombre de cierta edad, mueca amarga y taciturna, y barba corta salpicada de canas. \"Tal vez estuviera en Vado Ceniza\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"A menos que sirvi\u00e9ramos en su castillo cuando yo era escudero de ser Arlan.\" El viejo caballero errante hab\u00eda servido en tantas fortalezas y castillos que Dunk no se acordaba ni de la mitad.\n\nEl se\u00f1or tir\u00f3 con brusquedad de las riendas y mir\u00f3 las zarzas, ce\u00f1udo.\n\n\u2014Ustedes, los de la zarza. Mu\u00e9strense.\n\nDetr\u00e1s de \u00e9l dos ballesteros introdujeron sendas flechas en la ranura. Los dem\u00e1s siguieron su camino.\n\nDunk sali\u00f3 de entre las hierbas altas con el escudo en el brazo y la mano derecha en la empu\u00f1adura de su espada. El polvo levantado por los caballos hab\u00eda convertido su rostro en una m\u00e1scara de color marr\u00f3n rojizo. Estaba desnudo de la cintura para arriba. Su aspecto, lo sab\u00eda, era de gran desali\u00f1o. Aun as\u00ed lo m\u00e1s probable era que la cara de sorpresa del se\u00f1or se debiera a su estatura.\n\n\u2014No buscamos problemas, mi se\u00f1or. S\u00f3lo somos dos, mi escudero y yo.\n\nLe hizo se\u00f1as a Egg de que se adelantara.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEscudero? \u00bfPretendes ser caballero?\n\nA Dunk no le gust\u00f3 c\u00f3mo lo miraba aquel hombre. \"Estos ojos podr\u00edan desollarte.\" Le pareci\u00f3 prudente apartar la mano de la empu\u00f1adura.\n\n\u2014Soy un caballero errante en busca de servicio.\n\n\u2014Lo mismo dec\u00edan todos los caballeros ladrones a los que he ahorcado. Tal vez su divisa sea prof\u00e9tica, ser... si es que eres tal. \u00bfSon \u00e9sas tus armas?\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or. Debo volver a pintar el escudo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9? \u00bfLo robaste de un cad\u00e1ver?\n\n\u2014Lo compr\u00e9, y sus buenas monedas me cost\u00f3 \u2014\"Tres castillos, negro sobre naranja... \u00bfD\u00f3nde lo he visto?\"\u2014. No soy ning\u00fan ladr\u00f3n.\n\nLos ojos del se\u00f1or eran como esquirlas de pedernal.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo te hiciste la cicatriz de la mejilla? \u00bfA causa de un latigazo?\n\n\u2014Una daga, aunque mi rostro no es de su incumbencia, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 es de mi incumbencia lo decido yo.\n\nPara entonces los dos caballeros m\u00e1s j\u00f3venes ya hab\u00edan regresado al trote, con la intenci\u00f3n de averiguar la causa de la demora.\n\n\u2014Ah, Gormy, aqu\u00ed est\u00e1s \u2014dijo el del corcel negro, un joven \u00e1gil y delgado, de rasgos agradables y cara bien afeitada. Le ca\u00eda casi hasta los hombros un pelo negro y lustroso. Su jub\u00f3n era de seda azul oscuro, con ribetes de raso dorado. Llevaba bordadas en el pecho, con hilo de oro, una cruz angrelada con un viol\u00edn de oro en el primer y tercer cuarto y una espada tambi\u00e9n de oro en el segundo y el cuarto. Sus ojos, que reflejaban el oscuro azul de su jub\u00f3n, chispeaban de alborozo\u2014. Alyn ya tem\u00eda que te hubieras ca\u00eddo del caballo. Clara excusa, creo yo. Estaba a punto de dejarte en el polvo de mi caballo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9nes son estos forajidos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 el jinete del bayo.\n\nEgg se encresp\u00f3 por el insulto.\n\n\u2014No tiene ning\u00fan derecho a llamarnos forajidos, mi se\u00f1or. Al ver su polvareda tambi\u00e9n pensamos que ustedes lo eran. Por eso nos escondimos. Aqu\u00ed tiene a ser Duncan el Alto. Yo soy su escudero.\n\nLos j\u00f3venes se\u00f1ores le hicieron tan poco caso como al croar de una rana.\n\n\u2014Me parece que nunca hab\u00eda visto a un pat\u00e1n de tales dimensiones \u2014declar\u00f3 el caballero de los tres penachos, que bajo su pelo, rizado y de oscuro color miel, ten\u00eda una cara regordeta\u2014. Apuesto a que supera en varios dedos los cinco codos. Menudo estruendo har\u00e1 al caer.\n\nDunk not\u00f3 que se sonrojaba. \"Perder\u00edas la apuesta\", pens\u00f3. La \u00faltima vez que lo hab\u00edan medido, Aemon, el hermano de Egg, hab\u00eda declarado que exced\u00eda los cinco codos, pero en un solo dedo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAqu\u00e9l de all\u00e1 es tu corcel, ser Gigante? \u2014dijo el se\u00f1or de los penachos\u2014. Supongo que podr\u00edamos descuartizarlo y usarlo de comida.\n\n\u2014Lord Alyn se olvida a menudo de la cortes\u00eda \u2014dijo el caballero del pelo negro\u2014. Le ruego, ser, que olvide sus palabras groseras. Alyn, pide perd\u00f3n a ser Duncan.\n\n\u2014Si no hay m\u00e1s remedio... \u00bfMe perdona, ser?\n\nHizo girar su bayo sin aguardar la respuesta y se alej\u00f3 al trote por el camino.\n\nEl otro se qued\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe dirige a la boda, ser?\n\nPor alguna raz\u00f3n, su tono dio ganas a Dunk de estirarle el bucle de la frente, pero resisti\u00f3 el impulso.\n\n\u2014Nos dirig\u00edamos a la barca, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Como nosotros... Pero aqu\u00ed los \u00fanicos se\u00f1ores son Gormy y el gandul que acaba de dejarnos, Alyn Cockshaw. Yo soy un caballero errante, como usted. Me llaman ser John el Violinista.\n\nEra el tipo de nombre que eleg\u00edan los caballeros errantes. Dunk, sin embargo, nunca hab\u00eda visto a ninguno vestido, armado o montado con tal esplendor. \"Dorada errancia\", pens\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Mi nombre ya lo conoce. El de mi escudero es Egg.\n\n\u2014Bien hallado, ser. Vamos, cabalguen con nosotros hasta Muros Blancos y rompan algunas lanzas para ayudar a lord Butterwell a celebrar sus nuevas nupcias. Estoy seguro de que no quedar\u00e1n en mal lugar.\n\nDunk no hab\u00eda participado en ninguna justa desde Vado Ceniza. \"Si pudiera ganar algunos rescates comer\u00edamos bien durante el viaje al Norte\", pens\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan debe proseguir su viaje, al igual que nosotros \u2014dijo, sin embargo, el se\u00f1or de los tres castillos en el escudo.\n\nJohn el Violinista no le hizo caso.\n\n\u2014Con sumo gusto cruzar\u00eda mi espada con la suya, ser. Me he medido con hombres de muchas tierras y razas, pero jam\u00e1s con uno de su estatura. \u00bfSu padre tambi\u00e9n era alto?\n\n\u2014No conoc\u00ed a mi padre, ser.\n\n\u2014Me apena saberlo. Tambi\u00e9n el m\u00edo me fue arrebatado a deshora \u2014el Violinista se volvi\u00f3 hacia el se\u00f1or de los tres castillos\u2014. Deber\u00edamos pedirle a ser Duncan que se una a nuestra alegre comitiva.\n\n\u2014No necesitamos a los de su cala\u00f1a.\n\nDunk no sab\u00eda qu\u00e9 decir. No era frecuente que los caballeros errantes y sin recursos fueran invitados a cabalgar con nobles de alta cuna. \"Yo tendr\u00eda m\u00e1s en com\u00fan con sus criados.\" A juzgar por la longitud de su columna, lord Cockshaw y el Violinista tra\u00edan mozos de cuadra para atender los caballos, cocineros para darles de comer, escuderos para limpiarles las armaduras y guardias para defenderlos. Dunk ten\u00eda a Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSu cala\u00f1a? \u2014rio el Violinista\u2014. \u00bfY de qu\u00e9 cala\u00f1a se trata? \u00bfLa alta? F\u00edjense en su estatura. Nos interesan hombres fuertes. A menudo he o\u00eddo decir que valen m\u00e1s espadas j\u00f3venes que nombres viejos.\n\n\u2014Se lo habr\u00e1 escuchado a necios. No sabes nada de este hombre. Podr\u00eda ser un bandolero, o uno de los esp\u00edas de lord Cuervo de Sangre.\n\n\u2014Yo no esp\u00edo para nadie \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, mi se\u00f1or no tiene ning\u00fan derecho a hablar de m\u00ed como si estuviera sordo o muerto o en Dorne.\n\nLos ojos de pedernal se le quedaron mirando.\n\n\u2014Dorne ser\u00eda un buen lugar para usted, ser. Tiene mi permiso para hacer el viaje.\n\n\u2014No le haga caso \u2014dijo el Violinista\u2014. Es un viejo amargado que no se f\u00eda de nada. Gormy, este amigo me da buena espina. Ser Duncan, \u00bfnos acompa\u00f1a a Muros Blancos?\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or... \u2014\u00bfc\u00f3mo iba a unirse al campamento de una gente as\u00ed? Sus criados levantar\u00edan pabellones, sus mozos de cuadra almohazar\u00edan los caballos y sus cocineros les servir\u00edan a cada uno un cap\u00f3n o un asado de cordero. En cambio Dunk y Egg ro\u00edan trozos de tasajo de buey\u2014. No me es posible.\n\n\u2014Ya lo ven \u2014dijo el se\u00f1or de los tres castillos\u2014. Conoce su lugar y no es junto a nosotros \u2014orient\u00f3 de nuevo su caballo hacia el camino\u2014. Lord Cockshaw ya nos lleva media legua.\n\n\u2014Supongo que tendr\u00e9 que volver a darle caza \u2014el Violinista lanz\u00f3 a Dunk una sonrisa de disculpa\u2014. Tal vez volvamos a encontrarnos. As\u00ed lo espero. Ser\u00eda un placer probar mi lanza en usted.\n\nDunk no supo qu\u00e9 decir.\n\n\u2014Buena suerte en la liza, ser \u2014respondi\u00f3 al fin, pero ser John ya hab\u00eda dado media vuelta para salir en persecuci\u00f3n de la columna.\n\nEl mayor de los se\u00f1ores se march\u00f3 tras \u00e9l. Dunk se alegr\u00f3 de que se fuera. No le hab\u00edan gustado sus ojos de pedernal ni la arrogancia de lord Alyn. En cuanto al Violinista, pese a su afabilidad, tambi\u00e9n ten\u00eda algo raro.\n\n\u2014Dos violines y dos espadas, y una cruz angrelada \u2014le dijo a Egg mientras miraban la nube de polvo\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 casa es \u00e9sa?\n\n\u2014Ninguna, ser. Nunca hab\u00eda visto un escudo as\u00ed en los armoriales.\n\n\"Quiz\u00e1 s\u00ed sea un caballero errante, a fin de cuentas.\" Dunk hab\u00eda creado sus armas en Vado Ceniza, cuando una titiritera, Tanselle la Giganta, le pregunt\u00f3 qu\u00e9 quer\u00eda que le pintara en el escudo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl mayor de los se\u00f1ores ten\u00eda alg\u00fan parentesco con la casa Frey?\n\nLos Frey llevaban castillos en sus escudos y sus tierras no quedaban a gran distancia de donde se encontraban ellos.\n\nEgg puso los ojos en blanco.\n\n\u2014Las armas de los Frey son dos torres azules unidas por un puente, sobre campo gris, mientras que en este caso eran tres castillos negros sobre naranja, ser. \u00bfViste alg\u00fan puente?\n\n\u2014No \u2014\"S\u00f3lo lo hace para molestarme\"\u2014. Y la pr\u00f3xima vez que me pongas los ojos en blanco te dar\u00e9 tal golpe en la oreja que te quedar\u00e1 al rev\u00e9s.\n\nEgg parec\u00eda arrepentido.\n\n\u2014No quer\u00eda...\n\n\u2014Me da igual lo que quisieras. T\u00fa dime qui\u00e9n era y punto.\n\n\u2014Gormon Peake, el se\u00f1or de Starpike.\n\n\u2014Eso se localiza en el Dominio, \u00bfno? \u00bfTiene tres castillos de verdad?\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo en el escudo, ser. Es cierto que antiguamente la casa Peake ten\u00eda tres castillos, pero perdi\u00f3 dos de ellos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo se pierden dos castillos?\n\n\u2014Luchando a favor del drag\u00f3n negro, ser.\n\n\u2014Ah.\n\nDunk se sinti\u00f3 tonto. \"Otra vez lo mismo.\"\n\nPor doscientos a\u00f1os el reino hab\u00eda sido gobernado por los descendientes de Aegon el Conquistador y sus hermanas, los cuales hab\u00edan unificado los Siete Reinos y forjado el Trono de Hierro. Sus reales estandartes llevaban el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Targaryen en rojo sobre negro. Hac\u00eda diecis\u00e9is a\u00f1os que un hijo bastardo del rey Aegon IV, Daemon Fuegoscuro, se hab\u00eda alzado en rebeld\u00eda contra su hermano leg\u00edtimo. Tambi\u00e9n Daemon usaba el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas en sus estandartes, pero con los colores al rev\u00e9s, como muchos bastardos. Su rebeli\u00f3n hab\u00eda terminado en el campo de Hierba Roja, donde hab\u00edan muerto Daemon y sus dos hijos gemelos bajo la lluvia de flechas de lord Cuervo de Sangre. A los supervivientes dispuestos a hincar la rodilla se les hab\u00eda perdonado, pero algunos perdieron tierras y otros t\u00edtulos y otros oro. Todos entregaron rehenes en prenda de su futura lealtad.\n\n\"Tres castillos, en negro sobre naranja.\"\n\n\u2014Ahora me acuerdo. A ser Arlan nunca le gust\u00f3 hablar del campo de Hierba Roja, pero una vez que estaba bebido me cont\u00f3 c\u00f3mo hab\u00eda muerto el hijo de su hermana \u2014casi volv\u00eda a o\u00edr la voz del viejo y a reconocer el olor del vino en su aliento\u2014. Roger del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, se llamaba. La maza de un se\u00f1or que llevaba tres castillos en su escudo le aplast\u00f3 la cabeza.\n\n\"Lord Gormon Peake. El viejo nunca sab\u00eda el nombre. O no quer\u00eda saberlo.\" Lord Peake, John el Violinista y su comitiva ya eran s\u00f3lo una columna de polvo rojo en la lejan\u00eda. \"De eso hace diecis\u00e9is a\u00f1os. El Pretendiente muri\u00f3, y sus seguidores fueron exiliados o perdonados. En todo caso nada tiene que ver conmigo.\"\n\nCabalgaron un rato sin hablar, oyendo el canto lastimero de los p\u00e1jaros. A media legua Dunk carraspe\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Butterwell \u2014dijo\u2014. \u00bfQuedan cerca sus tierras?\n\n\u2014Al otro lado del lago, ser. Lord Butterwell fue consejero de la moneda durante el reinado del rey Aegon. El rey Daeron lo nombr\u00f3 mano del rey, pero no dur\u00f3 mucho. Sus armas son ondeadas de sinople, blanco y amarillo, ser.\n\nA Egg le encantaba presumir de sus conocimientos de her\u00e1ldica.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs amigo de tu padre?\n\nHizo una mueca.\n\n\u2014A mi padre nunca le ha ca\u00eddo bien. Durante la Rebeli\u00f3n, el segundo hijo de lord Butterwell combati\u00f3 a favor del pretendiente, y el primog\u00e9nito a favor del rey. As\u00ed ten\u00eda la seguridad de estar del lado ganador. Lord Butterwell no combati\u00f3 por nadie.\n\n\u2014Algunos lo calificar\u00edan como prudente.\n\n\u2014Mi padre lo califica como cobarde.\n\n\"No me extra\u00f1a.\" El pr\u00edncipe Maekar era un hombre duro, orgulloso y despectivo.\n\n\u2014Para llegar al camino Real tenemos que pasar al lado de Muros Blancos. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no nos llenamos la barriga? \u2014las tripas le sonaron de s\u00f3lo pensarlo\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 alguno de los invitados de la boda necesite escolta para regresar a sus tierras.\n\n\u2014Hab\u00edas dicho que \u00edbamos al Norte.\n\n\u2014El Muro lleva ocho mil a\u00f1os en pie. Algo m\u00e1s durar\u00e1. Hasta all\u00e1 hay mil leguas, y no nos ir\u00eda mal un poco m\u00e1s de plata en nuestra bolsa.\n\nDunk se imaginaba derrotando a lomos de Trueno a aquel viejo se\u00f1or con cara de vinagre, el de los tres castillos en el escudo. Ser\u00eda un placer. \"Cuando viniera a rescatar sus armas y su armadura, podr\u00eda decirle: 'Fue derrotado por el escudero de ser Arlan, el ni\u00f1o que sustituy\u00f3 al otro al que mat\u00f3'\". Al viejo le habr\u00eda gustado.\n\n\u2014No estar\u00e1s pensando entrar en liza, ser.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 vaya siendo hora.\n\n\u2014No lo es, ser.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 sea hora de darte un buen golpe en la oreja \u2014\"S\u00f3lo necesitar\u00eda ganar dos justas. Si pudiera cobrar dos rescates y s\u00f3lo pagar uno, comer\u00edamos como reyes durante un a\u00f1o\"\u2014. Podr\u00eda participar en un combate cuerpo a cuerpo, si lo hubiera.\n\nLa estatura y fortaleza de Dunk le ser\u00edan de m\u00e1s utilidad en un combate cuerpo a cuerpo que en las justas.\n\n\u2014No es costumbre que en las bodas haya combates cuerpo a cuerpo, ser.\n\n\u2014Pero s\u00ed es costumbre celebrar un banquete. Nos queda un largo camino por delante. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 por una vez no lo emprendemos con el est\u00f3mago lleno?\n\nCon el sol en poniente, cerca del ocaso, vieron el lago y sus fulgores rojos y dorados, que lo asemejaban a una l\u00e1mina de cobre batido. Una vez que vieron despuntar sobre unos sauces las torrecillas de la posada, Dunk volvi\u00f3 a ponerse la t\u00fanica mojada de sudor y se detuvo a refrescarse la cara. Se limpi\u00f3 lo mejor que pudo el polvo del camino y se pas\u00f3 los dedos mojados por su mata de pelo aclarado por el sol. Su estatura no ten\u00eda remedio ni la cicatriz que marcaba su mejilla, pero quer\u00eda paliar en algo su fiero aspecto de ladr\u00f3n.\n\nLa posada era mayor de lo que esperaba: un laberinto gris de vigas y torres, la mitad del cual se apoyaba en pilares clavados en el agua. Una pasarela de tablones desbastados cruzaba el barro de la orilla hasta el embarcadero, pero no se ve\u00eda la barca ni a los barqueros. Al otro lado del camino hab\u00eda un establo con techo de paja. El patio estaba rodeado por una cerca de piedra seca, aunque la puerta estaba abierta. Dentro encontraron un pozo y un abrevadero.\n\n\u2014Oc\u00fapate de los animales \u2014le dijo Dunk a Egg\u2014 y procura que no beban demasiado. Preguntar\u00e9 por la comida.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 a la posadera barriendo los escalones.\n\n\u2014\u00bfViene por la barca? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ella\u2014. Pues llega tarde. Ya se est\u00e1 poniendo el sol, a Ned no le gusta cruzar de noche cuando no hay luna llena. Volver\u00e1 ma\u00f1ana a primera hora.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSabe cu\u00e1nto cobra?\n\n\u2014Tres peniques por persona y diez por caballo.\n\n\u2014Nosotros llevamos dos caballos y una mula.\n\n\u2014Por las mulas son diez m\u00e1s.\n\nDunk sum\u00f3 mentalmente y obtuvo un resultado de treinta y seis, m\u00e1s de lo que hab\u00eda tenido la esperanza de gastar.\n\n\u2014La \u00faltima vez que pas\u00e9 por aqu\u00ed s\u00f3lo costaba dos peniques y seis por caballo.\n\n\u2014D\u00edgale eso a Ned, que no es cosa m\u00eda. Si buscan cama no me queda ninguna. Lord Shawney y lord Costayne trajeron a sus s\u00e9quitos y tengo esto a reventar.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTambi\u00e9n est\u00e1 lord Peake? \u00ad\u2014\"Mat\u00f3 al escudero de ser Arlan\"\u2014. Iba con lord Cockshaw y John el Violinista.\n\n\u2014Se los llev\u00f3 Ned en el \u00faltimo viaje \u2014la posadera mir\u00f3 a Dunk de la cabeza a los pies\u2014. \u00bfEra parte de su compa\u00f1\u00eda?\n\n\u2014No, s\u00f3lo nos los encontramos en el camino \u2014por las ventanas de la posada sal\u00eda un buen olor que hizo salivar a Dunk\u2014. Nos interesar\u00eda una tajada de lo que est\u00e9 asando, si no es demasiado caro.\n\n\u2014Jabal\u00ed \u2014dijo ella\u2014, con su buena pimienta. Va servido con cebolla, champi\u00f1ones y pur\u00e9 de nabos.\n\n\u2014No hace falta que incluya los nabos. Nos bastar\u00eda con unas tajadas de jabal\u00ed y una jarra de esa cerveza tostada tan buena que hacen aqu\u00ed. \u00bfCu\u00e1nto nos cobra? \u00bfY por pasar la noche en el suelo del establo?\n\nFue un error.\n\n\u2014El establo, como indica su nombre, es para los caballos. Reconozco que usted es grande como un caballo, pero yo s\u00f3lo veo dos patas \u2014la posadera levant\u00f3 la escoba para ahuyentarlo\u2014. No se me puede pedir que alimente a todos los Siete Reinos. El jabal\u00ed es para mis hu\u00e9spedes. Mi cerveza tambi\u00e9n. No quiero que los se\u00f1ores vayan diciendo que se me acab\u00f3 la comida o la bebida antes de que estuvieran saciados. En el lago hay muchos peces, y all\u00e1, por los tocones, han acampado algunos vagabundos m\u00e1s. Bueno, caballeros errantes, seg\u00fan ellos \u2014su tono dejaba claro que ella no se lo cre\u00eda\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 tengan comida para compartir. No es cosa m\u00eda. Y ahora m\u00e1rchese, que tengo trabajo.\n\nEl portazo no le dio tiempo a Dunk de preguntar d\u00f3nde quedaban los tocones en cuesti\u00f3n.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 a Egg sentado en el abrevadero, con los pies en el agua, abanic\u00e1ndose la cara con su gran sombrero blando.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1n haciendo asado de cerdo, ser? Huele a cerdo.\n\n\u2014Jabal\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk de mal humor\u2014, pero \u00bfqui\u00e9n quiere jabal\u00ed cuando se tiene un buen tasajo de buey?\n\nEgg hizo una mueca.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEn vez de eso puedo comerme mis botas, ser, por favor? Ya me har\u00e9 otro par con el tasajo, que es m\u00e1s duro.\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Dunk, intentando no sonre\u00edr\u2014. No puedes comerte tus botas. Y como digas algo m\u00e1s te comer\u00e1s mi pu\u00f1o. Saca los pies del abrevadero \u2014encontr\u00f3 su yelmo a lomos de la mula y se lo arroj\u00f3 a Egg\u2014. Saca agua del pozo y remoja el buey \u2014si no se dejaba bastante tiempo en remojo pod\u00eda partir los dientes. Como mejor sab\u00eda era mojado en cerveza, pero tendr\u00edan que conformarse con agua\u2014. Y no uses la del bebedero, que no me interesa el sabor de tus pies.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo mejorar\u00edan el sabor, ser \u2014dijo Egg moviendo los dedos de los pies, aunque obedeci\u00f3.\n\nNo result\u00f3 dif\u00edcil dar con los caballeros errantes. Egg vio el resplandor de su hoguera por el bosque, junto a la orilla del lago. Se acercaron y dejaron los animales. El ni\u00f1o llevaba bajo el brazo el yelmo de Dunk, que a cada paso hac\u00eda ruido de agua. Para entonces el sol era un recuerdo rojo en el poniente. Pronto el bosque clare\u00f3 y Dunk y Egg se encontraron en lo que deb\u00eda de haber sido una antigua arboleda de arcianos. S\u00f3lo un c\u00edrculo de tocones blancos y un amasijo de ra\u00edces claras, de color de hueso, guardaba el recuerdo de cuando Poniente era gobernado por los hijos del bosque.\n\nEntre las cepas de arciano encontraron a dos hombres que se pasaban un odre de vino cerca de una hoguera. Sus caballos pac\u00edan detr\u00e1s de la arboleda. Hab\u00edan amontonado sus armas y armaduras con pulcritud. Apartado de ellos hab\u00eda otro hombre mucho m\u00e1s joven, con la espalda apoyada en un casta\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Bien hallados, se\u00f1ores \u2014dijo Dunk en tono cordial. Nunca era prudente tomar por sorpresa a hombres armados\u2014. Me llamo ser Duncan el Alto. Este ni\u00f1o es Egg. \u00bfNos permiten disfrutar de su hoguera?\n\nUn hombre robusto de mediana edad, con ropa de gala hecha jirones, se levant\u00f3 para recibirlos. Su rostro estaba enmarcado por un florido bigote.\n\n\u2014Bien hallado, ser Duncan. Usted es muy alto... y muy bienvenido, por cierto, al igual que este mozo. Egg, \u00bfverdad? \u00bfQu\u00e9 nombre es \u00e9se, valga la pregunta?\n\n\u2014Uno corto, ser.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o no era tan insensato como para reconocer que Egg era una abreviatura de Aegon, al menos ante desconocidos.\n\n\u2014Sin duda. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te pas\u00f3 en el pelo?\n\n\"Larvas\" \u2014pens\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \"Dile que fue por las larvas, muchacho.\"\n\nEra la versi\u00f3n menos peligrosa, lo que m\u00e1s a menudo contaban, pero a veces a Egg se le ocurr\u00eda alguna travesura infantil.\n\n\u2014Me lo rap\u00e9, ser. Quiero estar rapado hasta que me gane mis espuelas.\n\n\u2014Noble voto. Yo soy ser Kyle, el Gato del P\u00e1ramo Brumoso. Bajo aquel casta\u00f1o est\u00e1 sentado ser Glendon... Hum... Ball. Y aqu\u00ed tienen al bueno de ser Maynard Plumm.\n\nEl \u00faltimo nombre despert\u00f3 la atenci\u00f3n de Egg.\n\n\u2014Plumm... \u00bfEs pariente de lord Viserys Plumm, ser?\n\n\u2014Lejano \u2014confes\u00f3 ser Maynard, un hombre alto, delgado y encorvado, de pelo largo y muy rubio\u2014, aunque dudo que su se\u00f1or\u00eda lo reconozca. Si nuestro emblema es la ciruela, podr\u00eda decirse que \u00e9l es de las dulces y yo de las agrias.\n\nLa capa de Plumm era morada, como las ciruelas, aunque estaba ra\u00edda en los bordes y mal te\u00f1ida. La ce\u00f1\u00eda en el hombro un broche con una piedra de luna del tama\u00f1o de un huevo de gallina. Por lo dem\u00e1s su atuendo era de tela basta de color marr\u00f3n, y de cuero pardusco y lleno de manchas.\n\n\u2014Traemos tasajo de buey \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Ser Maynard tiene un saco de manzanas \u2014dijo Kyle el Gato\u2014. Y yo encurt\u00ed huevos y cebollas. \u00a1Pero si entre todos tenemos para un verdadero fest\u00edn! Si\u00e9ntese, ser. Tenemos las mejores cepas a su disposici\u00f3n. Nos quedaremos aqu\u00ed hasta media ma\u00f1ana, o mucho me equivoco. S\u00f3lo hay una barca y no tiene cabida para todos. Primero deben cruzar los se\u00f1ores y sus s\u00e9quitos.\n\n\u2014Ay\u00fadame con los caballos \u2014le dijo Dunk a Egg.\n\nDesensillaron a Trueno, Lluvia y Maestre.\n\nDunk esper\u00f3 a que los animales hubieran comido y estuvieran maneados para la noche antes de aceptar el odre de vino que le ofrec\u00eda ser Maynard.\n\n\u2014Hasta el vino avinagrado es mejor que ninguno \u2014dijo Kyle el Gato\u2014. Ya beberemos mejores cosechas en Muros Blancos. Dicen que lord Butterwell tiene los mejores vinos al norte del Rejo. Fue mano del rey, al igual que el padre de su padre, y tiene fama de piadoso, adem\u00e1s de ser muy rico.\n\n\u2014Toda su riqueza le viene de sus vacas \u2014dijo Maynard Plumm\u2014. Deber\u00eda tomar una ubre hinchada como emblema. A los Butterwell les corre leche por las venas, y los Frey tampoco son mejores. Ser\u00e1 un matrimonio de ladrones de ganado y aduaneros, un hatajo de juntamonedas uni\u00e9ndose con otro. Cuando se rebel\u00f3 el Drag\u00f3n Negro, este se\u00f1or de vacas mand\u00f3 a uno de sus hijos junto a Daemon y a otro junto a Daeron, para asegurarse de que hubiera un Butterwell del lado ganador. Ambos perecieron en el campo de Hierba Roja, y su hijo menor muri\u00f3 en primavera. Por eso organiz\u00f3 este enlace. Si su nueva esposa no le da un hijo, el nombre de Butterwell se perder\u00e1 con \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Y bien perdido \u2014ser Glendon Ball desliz\u00f3 una vez m\u00e1s la piedra de afilar por su espada\u2014. El Guerrero odia a los cobardes.\n\nSu tono de desprecio le gan\u00f3 la atenci\u00f3n de Dunk. La ropa de ser Glendon era de buena tela, pero estaba muy gastada y desigual. Parec\u00eda de segunda mano. Por detr\u00e1s de su medio yelmo de hierro asomaban mechones de color casta\u00f1o oscuro. El joven en s\u00ed era bajo y robusto, con los ojos peque\u00f1os y juntos, los hombros fornidos y los brazos musculosos. Sus alborotadas cejas parec\u00edan dos orugas tras una primavera de lluvias. Su nariz era bulbosa y su barbilla belicosa. Era joven, adem\u00e1s. \"Tal vez diecis\u00e9is a\u00f1os. A lo sumo dieciocho.\" Si ser Kyle no lo hubiera llamado \"ser\", Dunk podr\u00eda haberlo confundido con un escudero. En vez de patillas ten\u00eda granos en los cachetes.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1nto tiempo hace que es caballero? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Bastante. Cuando cambie la luna medio a\u00f1o. Me arm\u00f3 ser Morgan Dunstable, de la Cascada del Volatinero, en presencia de dos docenas de personas, pero desde que nac\u00ed me he entrenado para ser caballero. Antes de caminar ya montaba a caballo, y antes de que se me cayera un diente dej\u00e9 sin dentadura a un hombre adulto. Pienso hacerme un nombre en Muros Blancos y reclamar el huevo del drag\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl huevo del drag\u00f3n? \u00bfSer\u00e1 el premio del vencedor? \u00bfDe verdad? \u2014Hac\u00eda medio siglo que hab\u00eda muerto la \u00faltima dragona, aunque una vez ser Arlan hab\u00eda visto una nidada de sus huevos. Eran duros como piedras, le hab\u00eda dicho el viejo a Dunk, pero hermosos a la vista\u2014. \u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible que lord Butterwell haya encontrado un huevo de drag\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014Se lo dio como obsequio el rey Aegon al padre de su padre, tras hospedarse una noche en su antiguo castillo \u2014dijo ser Maynard Plumm.\n\n\u2014\u00bfFue en premio a alg\u00fan acto de valor? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nSer Kyle rio, socarr\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda decirse que s\u00ed. Parece ser que cuando su majestad lleg\u00f3 de visita, lord Butterwell ten\u00eda tres hijas doncellas, y que por la ma\u00f1ana las tres ten\u00edan bastardos reales en sus barriguitas. Qu\u00e9 noche m\u00e1s ardua.\n\nDunk ya hab\u00eda o\u00eddo contarlo. Aegon el Indigno se hab\u00eda acostado con la mitad de las doncellas del reino, y supuestamente hab\u00eda engendrado bastardos en cada una de ellas. Lo peor de todo, sin embargo, era que el viejo rey los hab\u00eda legitimado a todos en su lecho de muerte, tanto a los de baja cuna, hijos de mozas de taberna, putas y pastoras, como a los Grandes Bastardos, cuyas madres eran de alto abolengo.\n\n\u2014Con que fuera cierta la mitad de esas historias, todos ser\u00edamos hijos bastardos del viejo rey Aegon.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qui\u00e9n dice que no es as\u00ed? \u2014brome\u00f3 ser Maynard.\n\n\u2014Deber\u00eda venir con nosotros a Muros Blancos, ser Duncan \u2014lo conmin\u00f3 ser Kyle\u2014. Tiene garantizado el inter\u00e9s de alg\u00fan joven se\u00f1or a causa de su estatura. Tal vez encuentre un buen servicio. S\u00e9 que yo lo hallar\u00e9. A esta boda asistir\u00e1 Joffrey Caswell, el se\u00f1or de Puenteamargo. Le hice su primera espada cuando ten\u00eda tres a\u00f1os. La tall\u00e9 en madera de pino para que le cupiera en la mano. En mis a\u00f1os mozos jurament\u00e9 mi espada a su padre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTambi\u00e9n estaba tallada en madera de pino? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Maynard.\n\nKyle el Gato tuvo la gentileza de re\u00edrse.\n\n\u2014Le aseguro que de buen acero, y con sumo gusto volver\u00e9 a manejarla al servicio del centauro. Ser Duncan, incluso si opta por no entrar en liza, acomp\u00e1\u00f1enos, se lo ruego, en el festejo nupcial. Habr\u00e1 bardos, m\u00fasicos, juglares, volatineros y un grupo de comediantes enanos.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014A Egg y a m\u00ed nos espera un largo viaje. Vamos al Norte, a Invernalia. Lord Beron Stark est\u00e1 reuniendo espadas para expulsar de una vez por todas a los krakens de sus costas.\n\n\u2014Demasiado fr\u00edo para m\u00ed \u2014dijo ser Maynard\u2014. Si quiere matar krakens vaya al oeste. Los Lannister est\u00e1n construyendo barcos para atacar a los hombres del Hierro en sus propias islas. Es as\u00ed como hay que acabar con Dagon Greyjoy; de nada sirve combatirlo en tierra firme, porque le basta con retirarse de nuevo por mar. Hay que vencerlo en el agua.\n\nSonaba cierto, pero la idea de luchar contra los hombres del Hierro en el mar no era muy del agrado de Dunk. Ya lo hab\u00eda probado en el Dama Blanca durante la traves\u00eda entre Dorne y Antigua, al ponerse la armadura para ayudar a la tripulaci\u00f3n a rechazar un asalto. Hab\u00eda sido una batalla cruenta y desesperada, que en un momento dado estuvo a punto de arrojarlo al mar, en cuyo caso no habr\u00eda vivido para contarlo.\n\n\u2014El trono deber\u00eda aprender de Stark y Lannister \u2014declar\u00f3 ser Kyle el Gato\u2014. Al menos luchan. \u00bfQu\u00e9 hacen los Targaryen? El rey Aerys se esconde entre sus libros, el pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel se pavonea desnudo por las salas de la Fortaleza Roja y el pr\u00edncipe Maekar rabia en Refugio Estival.\n\nEgg atizaba la hoguera con un palo para levantar chispas que se perd\u00edan en la noche. A Dunk le satisfizo ver que no hac\u00eda caso a la menci\u00f3n del nombre de su padre. \"Puede que al fin haya aprendido a frenar su lengua.\"\n\n\u2014Por mi parte la culpa se la atribuyo a Cuervo de Sangre \u2014continu\u00f3 ser Kyle\u2014. Pese a ser la mano del rey, no hace nada mientras los krakens siembran el fuego y el terror a lo ancho del mar del Ocaso.\n\nSer Maynard se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014Permanece atento a Tyrosh, mientras que Aceroamargo, en el exilio, conspira con los hijos de Daemon Fuegoscuro. Por eso tiene a mano los barcos del rey, por si intentaran cruzar.\n\n\u2014Es posible \u2014dijo ser Kyle\u2014, pero m\u00e1s de uno agradecer\u00eda el regreso de Aceroamargo. Cuervo de Sangre es la ra\u00edz de todos nuestros males, el gusano blanco que roe el coraz\u00f3n del reino.\n\nDunk, ce\u00f1udo, record\u00f3 al sept\u00f3n jorobado de Septo de Piedra.\n\n\u2014Esas palabras pueden costarle a uno la cabeza. Algunos dir\u00edan que usted habla como un traidor.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo puede ser traidora la verdad? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Kyle el Gato\u2014. En tiempos del rey Daeron no hab\u00eda que tener miedo de decir lo que se pensaba. Ahora, en cambio... \u2014hizo un ruido soez\u2014. Cuervo de Sangre sent\u00f3 al rey Aerys en el Trono de Hierro, pero \u00bfpor cu\u00e1nto tiempo? Aerys es d\u00e9bil y a su muerte habr\u00e1 una guerra encarnizada entre lord R\u00edos y el pr\u00edncipe Maekar por la corona: la mano del rey contra el heredero.\n\n\u2014Se olvida del pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel, amigo m\u00edo \u2014objet\u00f3 ser Maynard con comedimiento\u2014. El siguiente en la l\u00ednea sucesoria no es Maekar, sino \u00e9l, y lo siguen sus hijos.\n\n\u2014Rhaegel es de mente d\u00e9bil. No es que le desee ning\u00fan mal, pero se le puede dar por muerto, como a los gemelos. La \u00fanica duda es si morir\u00e1n por la maza de Maekar o por los conjuros de Cuervo de Sangre.\n\n\"Que los siete nos amparen\", pens\u00f3 Dunk cuando intervino Egg en voz alta y estridente.\n\n\u2014El pr\u00edncipe Maekar es hermano del pr\u00edncipe Rhaegel. Lo quiere y jam\u00e1s le har\u00eda da\u00f1o. Tampoco a los suyos.\n\n\u2014C\u00e1llate, ni\u00f1o \u2014gru\u00f1\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. A estos caballeros no les interesa lo que opines.\n\n\u2014Si quiero hablar, puedo.\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, no puedes \u2014\"Alg\u00fan d\u00eda esa boca ser\u00e1 tu perdici\u00f3n. Y la m\u00eda, muy probablemente\"\u2014. Creo que el tasajo de buey ya estuvo bastante tiempo en remojo. Tr\u00e1eles una tajada a todos nuestros amigos, y no tardes.\n\nEgg se ruboriz\u00f3. Durante un fugaz instante Dunk temi\u00f3 que replicara, pero no: opt\u00f3 por mostrarse enfurru\u00f1ado, como s\u00f3lo saben hacerlo los ni\u00f1os de once a\u00f1os.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ser \u2014dijo, mientras buscaba con la mano en el fondo del yelmo de Dunk.\n\nSu cabeza rapada reflej\u00f3 la luz roja de la hoguera mientras repart\u00eda el tasajo.\n\nDunk tom\u00f3 su trozo y se entretuvo con \u00e9l. El remojo hab\u00eda convertido la carne de madera en cuero, pero nada m\u00e1s. Chup\u00f3 una esquina para notar el gusto de la sal, procurando no pensar en el jabal\u00ed asado de la posada, que estar\u00eda chisporroteando en su espet\u00f3n y goteando grasa.\n\nAl ir oscureciendo llegaron del lago nubes de moscas y mosquitos picadores. Las moscas prefer\u00edan cebarse en los caballos. A los mosquitos, en cambio, les gustaba la carne humana. La \u00fanica manera de evitar sus picaduras era estar cerca del fuego, respirando humo. \"Asarte o que te devoren\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, cariacontecido\u2014: \"el dilema del mendigo\". Se rasc\u00f3 los brazos y se aproxim\u00f3 m\u00e1s a la hoguera.\n\nPronto el odre regres\u00f3 a sus manos. Era un vino \u00e1spero y avinagrado. Dunk bebi\u00f3 un buen trago y pas\u00f3 el odre, mientras el Gato del P\u00e1ramo Brumoso empezaba a explicar c\u00f3mo le hab\u00eda salvado la vida al se\u00f1or de Puenteamargo durante la rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro.\n\n\u2014Cuando se cay\u00f3 el portaestandarte de lord Armond, baj\u00e9 de mi caballo, rodeado de traidores...\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Glendon Ball\u2014, \u00bfqui\u00e9nes eran esos \"traidores\"?\n\n\u2014Me refer\u00eda a los hombres de Fuegoscuro.\n\nLa luz de la hoguera se reflej\u00f3 en el acero que ten\u00eda ser Glendon en la mano. Las marcas de viruela de su cara estaban rojas como llagas abiertas. Ten\u00eda los nervios tensos como una ballesta.\n\n\u2014Mi padre luch\u00f3 por el drag\u00f3n negro.\n\n\"Otra vez.\" Dunk resopl\u00f3 por la nariz. No se pod\u00eda andar por el mundo preguntando \"\u00bfrojo o negro?\" Siempre ocasionaba problemas.\n\n\u2014Estoy seguro de que ser Kyle no quiso insultar a su padre.\n\n\u2014En absoluto \u2014confirm\u00f3 ser Kyle\u2014. Lo del drag\u00f3n rojo y el negro es historia antigua. No tiene sentido que nos peleemos ahora por ella, muchacho. Aqu\u00ed todos somos hermanos.\n\nSer Glendon pareci\u00f3 sopesar las palabras del Gato para decidir si se burlaba de \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Daemon Fuegoscuro no era ning\u00fan traidor. A \u00e9l le dio la espada el viejo rey. Vio lo que val\u00eda Daemon pese a sus or\u00edgenes bastardos. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 otra raz\u00f3n habr\u00eda puesto Fuego Oscuro en su mano y no en la de Daeron? Quer\u00eda que tambi\u00e9n el reino fuera suyo. Daemon era el mejor de los dos.\n\nNadie dijo nada. Dunk oy\u00f3 c\u00f3mo la hoguera crepitaba con suavidad. Not\u00f3 mosquitos en su nuca y les dio un golpe con la mano abierta, mientras observaba a Egg y deseaba que no abriera la boca.\n\n\u2014Cuando se libr\u00f3 la batalla del campo de Hierba Roja \u2014dijo cuando parec\u00eda que nadie m\u00e1s hablar\u00eda\u2014 yo era muy ni\u00f1o, pero fui escudero de un caballero que luch\u00f3 por el drag\u00f3n rojo y m\u00e1s tarde serv\u00ed a otro que lo hizo por el negro. En ambos lados hab\u00eda valientes.\n\n\u2014Valientes \u2014repiti\u00f3 Kyle el Gato sin mucha convicci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014H\u00e9roes \u2014Glendon Ball fue moviendo su escudo para que todos vieran las armas que llevaba pintadas: una bola de fuego roja y amarilla en un campo negro como la noche\u2014. Yo tengo sangre de h\u00e9roes.\n\n\u2014Usted es el hijo de Bola de Fuego \u2014dijo Egg.\n\nFue la primera vez que vieron sonre\u00edr a ser Glendon.\n\nSer Kyle observ\u00f3 al joven con atenci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible? \u00bfPues qu\u00e9 edad tienes? Quentyn Ball muri\u00f3...\n\n\u2014...antes de que naciera yo \u2014termin\u00f3 la frase ser Glendon\u2014, pero revivi\u00f3 en m\u00ed \u2014envain\u00f3 ruidosamente su espada\u2014. Se lo demostrar\u00e9 a todos en Muros Blancos, cuando reclame el huevo de drag\u00f3n.\n\nEl d\u00eda siguiente confirm\u00f3 la profec\u00eda de ser Kyle. La barca de Ned distaba mucho de tener cabida para cuantos deseaban cruzar el lago, as\u00ed que primero subieron lord Costayne y lord Shawney, con sus respectivos s\u00e9quitos. Para ello hicieron falta varios viajes, cada uno de los cuales consumi\u00f3 m\u00e1s de una hora. Hab\u00eda que lidiar con zonas de marisma, hacer subir caballos y carromatos a la pasarela, cargarlos en la barca y descargarlos de nuevo al otro lado del lago. Los dos se\u00f1ores demoraron a\u00fan m\u00e1s el proceso al discutir a voces por la precedencia. Shawney era el mayor, pero Costayne se consideraba de mejor cuna.\n\nA Dunk no le qued\u00f3 m\u00e1s remedio que esperar y sofocarse de calor.\n\n\u2014Si me dejaran usar mi bota, ser\u00edamos los primeros en subir \u2014dijo Egg.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00edamos \u2014contest\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, pero no lo haremos. Lord Costayne y lord Shawney llegaron antes que nosotros, y adem\u00e1s son se\u00f1ores.\n\nEgg hizo una mueca.\n\n\u2014Se\u00f1ores rebeldes.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3 con mala cara.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 lo dices?\n\n\u2014Estaban a favor del drag\u00f3n negro; al menos lord Shawney y el padre de lord Costayne. Aemon y yo representamos muchas veces la batalla en la mesa verde del maestre Melaquin, con soldados pintados y peque\u00f1os estandartes. Las armas de Costayne se dividen entre un c\u00e1liz plateado sobre campo negro y una rosa negra sobre campo de oro. Aquel estandarte se encontraba a la izquierda de las huestes de Daemon. Shawney estaba con Aceroamargo a la derecha, pero muri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Eso es agua pasada. Ahora est\u00e1n aqu\u00ed, \u00bfno? Se\u00f1al de que hincaron la rodilla y el rey Daeron les concedi\u00f3 su perd\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, pero...\n\nDunk le cerr\u00f3 los labios al ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Frena esa lengua.\n\nEgg la fren\u00f3.\n\nEn cuanto hubo zarpado el \u00faltimo cargamento de hombres de Shawney, aparecieron en el embarcadero lord y lady Smallwood con su propio s\u00e9quito, as\u00ed que hubo que volver a esperar.\n\nEstaba a la vista que la hermandad de los caballeros errantes no hab\u00eda sobrevivido a la noche. Ser Glendon, quisquilloso y taciturno, iba a la suya. En cuanto a Kyle el Gato, al considerar que no los dejar\u00edan subir a la barca antes de mediar el d\u00eda, se separ\u00f3 de los dem\u00e1s para tratar de ganarse a lord Smallwood, al que conoc\u00eda por alg\u00fan breve encuentro. Ser Maynard mataba el tiempo chismorreando con la posadera.\n\n\u2014A \u00e9se no te acerques ni por asomo \u2014le advirti\u00f3 Dunk a Egg. Algo no le cuadraba en Plumm\u2014. No podemos estar seguros de que no sea un caballero ladr\u00f3n.\n\nDe lo \u00fanico que sirvi\u00f3 la advertencia fue para que Egg se interesara m\u00e1s por ser Maynard.\n\n\u2014Nunca he conocido a un caballero ladr\u00f3n. \u00bfCrees que se propone robar el huevo de drag\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014Estoy seguro de que lord Butterwell lo tiene a buen resguardo \u2014Dunk se rasc\u00f3 las picaduras de mosquito del cuello\u2014. \u00bfT\u00fa crees que lo expondr\u00e1 en el banquete? Me gustar\u00eda ver uno.\n\n\u2014Le ense\u00f1ar\u00eda el m\u00edo, ser, pero est\u00e1 en Refugio Estival.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl tuyo? \u00bfTu huevo de drag\u00f3n? \u2014ce\u00f1udo, Dunk mir\u00f3 al ni\u00f1o sin saber si era una broma\u2014. \u00bfDe d\u00f3nde lo sacaste?\n\n\u2014De un drag\u00f3n, ser. Me lo pusieron en la cuna.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres un golpe en la oreja? No hay dragones.\n\n\u2014No, pero huevos s\u00ed. El \u00faltimo drag\u00f3n dej\u00f3 una nidada de cinco, y en Rocadrag\u00f3n tienen m\u00e1s, huevos viejos de antes de la Danza. Todos mis hermanos poseen uno. El de Aerion parece de oro y plata, con venas de fuego. El m\u00edo es blanco y verde, como remolinos.\n\n\u2014Tu huevo de drag\u00f3n \u2014\"Se lo pusieron en la cuna.\" Dunk estaba tan acostumbrado a Egg que a veces se le olvidaba que Aegon era pr\u00edncipe. \"Pues claro que le pusieron un huevo de drag\u00f3n en la cuna\"\u2014. Bueno, procura no hablar de \u00e9l cuando alguien pueda o\u00edrte.\n\n\u2014No soy tonto, ser \u2014Egg baj\u00f3 la voz\u2014. Alg\u00fan d\u00eda volver\u00e1n los dragones. Lo so\u00f1\u00f3 mi hermano Daeron y lo ley\u00f3 el rey Aerys en una profec\u00eda. Tal vez salgan del huevo. Eso ser\u00eda maravilloso.\n\n\u2014\u00bfS\u00ed?\n\nDunk albergaba sus dudas. Egg no.\n\n\u2014Aemon y yo jug\u00e1bamos a que eran nuestros huevos los que se abr\u00edan. Entonces podr\u00edamos volar a lomos de drag\u00f3n, como el primer Aegon y sus hermanas.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, y si se murieran todos los otros caballeros del reino yo ser\u00eda lord comandante de la Guardia Real. Si tan valiosos son los huevos, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 demonios regala el suyo lord Butterwell?\n\n\u2014\u00bfPara demostrarle al reino lo rico que es?\n\n\u2014Supongo \u2014Dunk volvi\u00f3 a rascarse el cuello y ech\u00f3 un vistazo a ser Glendon Ball, que ajustaba las cinchas de su silla de montar mientras esperaba la barca. \"Con ese caballo no se puede hacer nada.\" La montura de ser Glendon era un jamelgo de lomo ca\u00eddo, peque\u00f1o y viejo\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 sabes de su padre? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 lo llamaban Bola de Fuego?\n\n\u2014Por lo exaltado que era y por ser pelirrojo. Ser Quentyn Ball fue maestro de armas en la Fortaleza Roja. Ense\u00f1\u00f3 a luchar a mi padre y a mis t\u00edos. Tambi\u00e9n a los Grandes Bastardos. Como el rey Aegon le prometi\u00f3 que entrar\u00eda en la Guardia Real, Bola de Fuego hizo que su mujer ingresara en las hermanas silenciosas, pero cuando se produjo una vacante el rey Aegon ya hab\u00eda muerto y el rey Daeron nombr\u00f3 a ser Willem Wylde en su lugar. Mi padre dice que Bola de Fuego particip\u00f3 tanto como Aceroamargo en convencer a Daemon Fuegoscuro de que reclamara el trono, y que lo rescat\u00f3 cuando Daeron envi\u00f3 a la Guardia Real para que lo arrestara. M\u00e1s tarde Bola de Fuego mat\u00f3 a lord Lefford en las puertas de Lannisport e hizo refugiarse al Le\u00f3n Gris en la Roca. En el vado del Mander abati\u00f3 uno por uno a los hijos de lady Penrose. Dicen que le perdon\u00f3 la vida al menor como una atenci\u00f3n para su madre.\n\n\u2014Muy caballeresco \u2014admiti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. \u00bfSer Quentyn muri\u00f3 en el campo de Hierba Roja?\n\n\u2014Antes, ser \u2014contest\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Un arquero le atraves\u00f3 la garganta cuando desmontaba junto a un arroyo para beber agua. Fue un hombre del vulgo, por motivos que nadie conoce.\n\n\u2014Los hombres del vulgo pueden ser peligrosos cuando se les mete en la cabeza matar a se\u00f1ores y h\u00e9roes \u2014Dunk vio que la barca se acercaba lentamente por el lago\u2014. Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1.\n\n\u2014Va muy lenta. \u00bfIremos a Muros Blancos, ser?\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no? Quiero ver el huevo de drag\u00f3n. Dunk sonri\u00f3\u2014. Si gano el torneo, los dos tendremos un huevo de drag\u00f3n.\n\nEgg lo mir\u00f3 con escepticismo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 me miras as\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda dec\u00edrtelo, ser \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o con solemnidad\u2014, pero debo aprender a frenar mi lengua.\n\nA los caballeros errantes los sentaron muy lejos de los invitados de honor, m\u00e1s cerca de las puertas que de la tarima.\n\nComo castillo, Muros Blancos era casi nuevo, ya que s\u00f3lo lo hab\u00eda construido cuarenta a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s el abuelo del se\u00f1or actual. El pueblo llano de la zona lo llamaba la Lecher\u00eda, porque sus muros, torres y torreones estaban hechos con magn\u00edficos sillares de piedra blanca procedente de las canteras del Valle y tra\u00edda a alto precio del otro lado de las monta\u00f1as. Dentro hab\u00eda suelos y columnas de m\u00e1rmol blanco como la leche, con vetas de oro. Las vigas de los techos estaban talladas en troncos de arciano, blancos como el hueso. Dunk ni siquiera imaginaba lo que hab\u00eda costado.\n\nDe todos modos la sala principal no era tan grande como otras que hab\u00eda visto. \"Al menos nos dejaron entrar\", pens\u00f3 al ocupar su sitio entre ser Maynard Plumm y Kyle el Gato. Aunque no estuvieran invitados, les hab\u00edan dado de inmediato la bienvenida al banquete. Daba mala suerte que un novio, el d\u00eda de su boda, negara su hospitalidad a un caballero.\n\nEl que no lo tuvo tan f\u00e1cil fue ser Glendon, el m\u00e1s joven.\n\n\u2014Bola de Fuego no tuvo hijos varones \u2014oy\u00f3 Dunk que le dec\u00eda en voz alta el mayordomo de lord Butterwell.\n\nEl mozalbete se acalor\u00f3 al contestar y varias veces sali\u00f3 a relucir el nombre de ser Morgan Dunstable, pero el mayordomo no daba su brazo a torcer. En el mismo instante en que ser Glendon llev\u00f3 la mano a la empu\u00f1adura de su espada, apareci\u00f3 con lanzas en la mano una docena de hombres de armas. Por un momento pareci\u00f3 que correr\u00eda la sangre. S\u00f3lo salv\u00f3 la situaci\u00f3n la intervenci\u00f3n de un caballero alto y rubio cuyo nombre era Kirby Pimm. Dunk estaba demasiado lejos para o\u00edrlo, pero vio que Pimm le pasaba el brazo por los hombros al mayordomo y le murmuraba algo entre risas al o\u00eddo. El mayordomo frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o y le dijo algo a ser Glendon que hizo sonrojarse mucho al joven. \"Parece a punto de llorar\", pens\u00f3 Dunk al observarlos. \"O de matar a alguien.\" A partir de ese momento al fin franquearon al joven caballero la entrada a la sala del castillo.\n\nMenos suerte tuvo el pobre Egg.\n\n\u2014La gran sala es para los se\u00f1ores y los caballeros \u2014los inform\u00f3 con altivez un vicemayordomo en el momento en que Dunk pretend\u00eda entrar con el ni\u00f1o\u2014. Montamos mesas en el patio interior para los escuderos, los mozos de cuadra y los soldados.\n\n\"Si tuvieras la menor idea de qui\u00e9n es, lo sentar\u00edas en un trono con cojines, sobre la tarima.\"\n\nA Dunk no le gust\u00f3 mucho el aspecto de los otros escuderos. Algunos ten\u00edan la edad de Egg, si bien la mayor\u00eda eran combatientes mayores y curtidos que ya hab\u00edan tomado tiempo atr\u00e1s la decisi\u00f3n de servir a un caballero en vez de serlo ellos mismos. \"A menos que no tuvieran alternativa.\" Para ser caballero no bastaba con la cortes\u00eda y la destreza con las armas. Se necesitaban tambi\u00e9n cosas caras, como una espada y una armadura.\n\n\u2014Cuidado con lo que dices \u2014le indic\u00f3 a Egg antes de dejarlo en semejante compa\u00f1\u00eda\u2014. Son hombres hechos y derechos, que no se mostrar\u00e1n comprensivos con tus insolencias. Si\u00e9ntate, come y escucha. Quiz\u00e1 aprendas algo.\n\nPor su parte Dunk se alegr\u00f3 mucho de refugiarse del calor del sol y de tener delante una copa de vino y la ocasi\u00f3n de llenarse la barriga. Hasta los caballeros errantes se cansan de mascar durante media hora hasta el \u00faltimo bocado. All\u00e1 abajo no paladear\u00eda exquisiteces, pero tampoco le faltar\u00eda comida. A \u00e9l le iba perfecto encontrarse lejos de las mesas de honor.\n\nSin embargo, como dec\u00eda el viejo, el orgullo del campesino es la verg\u00fcenza del se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014No puede ser \u00e9ste mi sitio \u2014le dijo, acalorado, ser Glendon Ball al vicemayordomo. Para la fiesta se hab\u00eda puesto un jub\u00f3n limpio, una prenda hermosa y antigua con encaje de oro en los pu\u00f1os y el cuello, y el cabrio rojo y los roeles blancos de la casa Ball cosidos en el pecho\u2014. \u00bfSabes qui\u00e9n era mi padre?\n\n\u2014No me cabe duda de que un noble caballero y poderoso se\u00f1or \u2014dijo el vicemayordomo, pero lo mismo podr\u00eda decirse de muchos de los que est\u00e1n aqu\u00ed. Tome asiento o m\u00e1rchese, se lo ruego. A m\u00ed me da lo mismo, ser.\n\nAl final el muchacho se sent\u00f3 con los dem\u00e1s con una mueca de mal humor. La sala, larga y blanca, se fue llenando con la aparici\u00f3n de m\u00e1s caballeros, que se apretaban en los bancos. Dunk no hab\u00eda previsto tanta gente. A juzgar por su aspecto, algunos invitados ven\u00edan de muy lejos. Ni \u00e9l ni Egg hab\u00edan frecuentado a muchos se\u00f1ores y caballeros desde Vado Ceniza y era imposible adivinar qui\u00e9n ser\u00eda el siguiente en aparecer. \"Deber\u00edamos habernos quedado en los caminos, durmiendo bajo los \u00e1rboles. Como me reconozcan...\"\n\nUn criado puso una hogaza de pan negro frente a cada invitado, encima del mantel. Contento de entretenerse con algo, Dunk cort\u00f3 el pan a lo largo, vaci\u00f3 la parte inferior para usarla como tajadero y se comi\u00f3 la de arriba. Estaba duro, pero en comparaci\u00f3n con su tasajo de buey parec\u00eda natilla. Al menos no hab\u00eda que remojarlo en cerveza, leche ni agua de modo que estuviera bastante blando para masticarlo.\n\n\u2014Por lo visto llama mucho la atenci\u00f3n, ser Duncan \u2014observ\u00f3 ser Maynard Plumm cuando lord Vyrwel y su s\u00e9quito desfilaron hacia los puestos de honor de lo alto de la sala\u2014. Las chicas de la tarima no apartan los ojos de su persona. Seguro que nunca hab\u00edan visto a un hombre tan alto. Incluso sentado aventaja por una cabeza a todos los presentes.\n\nDunk encorv\u00f3 los hombros. Estaba acostumbrado a que lo miraran, pero eso no quer\u00eda decir que le gustara.\n\n\u2014Que miren.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00e9l de all\u00e1, al pie de la tarima, es el Viejo Buey \u2014dijo ser Maynard\u2014. Tiene fama de ser enorme, pero a m\u00ed me parece que lo m\u00e1s grande que tiene es la barriga. A su lado usted es un gigante, qu\u00e9 demonios.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es, ser \u2014dijo uno de sus compa\u00f1eros de banco, un hombre cetrino y taciturno con atuendo gris y verde. Ten\u00eda los ojos peque\u00f1os y sagaces, muy juntos bajo finas cejas arqueadas. En compensaci\u00f3n por su incipiente calvicie, una barba negra y bien cuidada le enmarcaba la boca\u2014. En un campo as\u00ed su estatura por s\u00ed sola deber\u00eda convertirlo en uno de los competidores m\u00e1s temibles.\n\n\u2014O\u00ed que quiz\u00e1 venga la Bestia de Bracken \u2014dijo otro de los ocupantes del banco, algo m\u00e1s lejos.\n\n\u2014No creo \u2014dijo el de verde y gris\u2014. Son unas simples justas para celebrar las nupcias de su se\u00f1or\u00eda, unos choques en el patio en honor de los choques entre s\u00e1banas. Demasiada molestia para alguien como Otho Bracken.\n\nSer Kyle el Gato bebi\u00f3 algo de vino.\n\n\u2014Apuesto a que tampoco mi se\u00f1or de Butterwell entrar\u00e1 en liza. Animar\u00e1 a sus paladines en la sombra, desde el palco de su se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014En tal caso los ver\u00e1 caer \u2014se ufan\u00f3 ser Glendon Ball\u2014, y al final me entregar\u00e1 a m\u00ed su huevo.\n\n\u2014Ser Glendon es el hijo de Bola de Fuego \u2014le explic\u00f3 ser Kyle a su nuevo interlocutor\u2014. \u00bfTendr\u00edamos el honor de conocer su nombre, ser?\n\n\u2014Ser Uthor Underleaf, hijo de alguien sin importancia \u2014pese a ser de buena tela y estar limpio y cuidado, el atuendo de Underleaf era de corte sencillo. Su capa estaba sujeta por un cierre de plata en forma de caracol\u2014. Si su lanza est\u00e1 a la altura de su lengua, ser Glendon, es posible que pueda competir incluso con alguien de las dimensiones de nuestro amigo, aqu\u00ed presente.\n\nSer Glendon ech\u00f3 un vistazo a Dunk mientras les serv\u00edan vino.\n\n\u2014Si nos enfrentamos caer\u00e1 \u00e9l. Me da igual lo alto que sea.\n\nDunk vio c\u00f3mo un criado le llenaba la copa de vino.\n\n\u2014Soy mejor con la espada que con la lanza \u2014admiti\u00f3\u2014, y a\u00fan mejor con el hacha. \u00bfHabr\u00e1 combate cuerpo a cuerpo?\n\nEn caso afirmativo le ser\u00edan de provecho su estatura y fuerza, y podr\u00eda dar lo m\u00e1ximo de s\u00ed. Las justas eran harina de otro costal.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCombate cuerpo a cuerpo? \u00bfEn una boda? \u2014ser Kyle parec\u00eda escandalizado\u2014. Ser\u00eda indecoroso.\n\nSer Maynard rio entre dientes.\n\n\u2014Las bodas son combates cuerpo a cuerpo, como se lo dir\u00e1 cualquier hombre casado.\n\nTambi\u00e9n ser Uthor rio.\n\n\u2014Me temo que s\u00f3lo habr\u00e1 justas, aunque aparte del huevo de drag\u00f3n lord Butterwell prometi\u00f3 treinta dragones de oro al que pierda el \u00faltimo enfrentamiento y diez a cada caballero derrotado en la ronda anterior.\n\n\"Diez dragones no est\u00e1n mal.\" Con diez dragones podr\u00eda comprarse un palafr\u00e9n para no tener que usar a Trueno m\u00e1s que en la batalla. Con diez dragones podr\u00edan comprar una armadura para Egg y una tienda digna de un caballero, con el \u00e1rbol y la estrella fugaz de Dunk cosidos en ella. \"Diez dragones son ganso asado y jam\u00f3n y pastel de pich\u00f3n.\"\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n habr\u00e1 rescates para los que venzan en sus lides \u2014dijo ser Uther, mientras vaciaba su tajadero\u2014, y o\u00ed rumores de que algunos apuestan. A lord Butterwell no le gusta correr riesgos, pero entre sus invitados hay los que lo hacen fuerte.\n\nAcababa de decirlo cuando una fanfarria de trompetas en la galer\u00eda de los m\u00fasicos anunci\u00f3 la entrada de Ambrose Butterwell. Dunk se puso en pie, al igual que el resto, mientras Butterwell, por una alfombra decorada de Myr, acompa\u00f1aba del brazo a su nueva esposa a la tarima. Era una joven de quince a\u00f1os, reci\u00e9n salida de la infancia, mientras que su se\u00f1or esposo ten\u00eda cincuenta a\u00f1os y acababa de quedarse viudo. Ella era rosada; \u00e9l, gris. La novia arrastraba el manto nupcial, de colores verde, blanco y amarillo ondeados. El aspecto de la prenda era tan caluroso y pesado que a Dunk le extra\u00f1\u00f3 que la soportara. Tambi\u00e9n lord Butterwell presentaba un aspecto caluroso y pesado con sus grandes cachetes y su pelo rubio cada vez m\u00e1s escaso.\n\nLa novia iba seguida de cerca por su padre, que tomaba de la mano a su hijo peque\u00f1o. Lord Frey del Cruce era un hombre delgado y elegante, vestido de azul y gris, y su heredero un ni\u00f1o de cuatro a\u00f1os, sin barbilla, con la nariz llena de mocos. Los siguientes eran lord Costayne y lord Risley con sus se\u00f1oras esposas, hijas de lord Butterwell y su primera mujer. Los segu\u00edan las hijas de Frey con sus consortes. Detr\u00e1s iban lord Gormon Peake, lord Smallwood, lord Vyrwel, lord Shawney y varios se\u00f1ores de menor importancia y caballeros con tierras. Dunk reconoci\u00f3 entre ellos a John el Violinista y Alyn Cock-shaw. Lord Alyn parec\u00eda achispado, pese a que propiamente hablando a\u00fan no hubiera empezado el banquete.\n\nUna vez que todos llegaron, sin prisa, a la tarima, la mesa de honor qued\u00f3 tan llena como los bancos. Lord Butterwell y la novia se sentaron en un doble trono de roble dorado, con mullidos cojines de plumas. El resto ocup\u00f3 sillas altas, de brazos tallados en formas pintorescas. En la pared del fondo hab\u00eda dos enormes estandartes colgados de las vigas: las dos torres de Frey, en azul sobre gris, y el ondeado verde, blanco y amarillo de los Butterwell.\n\nEl primer brindis corri\u00f3 a cargo de lord Frey.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Por el rey! \u2014dijo con toda sencillez.\n\nSer Glendon levant\u00f3 su copa de vino por encima del cuenco del agua. Dunk hizo chocar su copa con la de \u00e9l y tambi\u00e9n con las de ser Uthor y el resto. Bebieron.\n\n\u2014Por lord Butterwell, nuestro gentil anfitri\u00f3n \u2014proclam\u00f3 a continuaci\u00f3n Frey.\n\n\u2014Que el Padre le conceda larga vida y muchos hijos.\n\nVolvieron a beber.\n\n\u2014Por lady Butterwell, la novia, y mi querida hija. Que la Madre la haga f\u00e9rtil \u2014Frey sonri\u00f3 a la muchacha\u2014. Desear\u00e9 un nieto antes de que acabe el a\u00f1o. Todav\u00eda me agradar\u00eda m\u00e1s que fueran gemelos, as\u00ed que esta noche a batir bien la mantequilla, dulce m\u00eda.\n\nResonaron risas por las vigas. Los invitados bebieron una vez m\u00e1s. Era un vino tinto, dulce, aterciopelado.\n\n\u2014Brindo por la mano del rey \u2014dijo a continuaci\u00f3n lord Frey\u2014, Brynden R\u00edos. Que la l\u00e1mpara de la Vieja le ilumine el camino de la sabidur\u00eda.\n\nLevant\u00f3 mucho la copa y bebi\u00f3 junto con lord Butterwell, su novia y los otros ocupantes de la tarima. Entre los caballeros errantes, ser Glendon volc\u00f3 la copa para derramar su contenido en el suelo.\n\n\u2014Triste manera de desperdiciar buen vino \u2014dijo Maynard Plumm.\n\n\u2014Yo no bebo por los que matan a los de su propia sangre \u2014dijo ser Glendon\u2014. Lord Cuervo de Sangre es un brujo y un bastardo.\n\n\u2014Bastardo de nacimiento \u2014respondi\u00f3 ser Uthor, comedido\u2014, pero su real padre lo legitim\u00f3 antes de morir.\n\nTom\u00f3 un buen trago, como ser Maynard y muchos otros en la sala. Fueron menos los que bajaron la copa o la volcaron como Ball. A Dunk le pesaba la suya en la mano. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene lord Cuervo de Sangre?\", dec\u00eda el acertijo. \"Mil, y uno m\u00e1s.\"\n\nSe sucedieron los brindis, algunos en boca de lord Frey y otros a cargo de alguien m\u00e1s. Brindaron por el joven lord Tully, se\u00f1or de lord Butterwell, que se hab\u00eda disculpado por no poder asistir a la boda. Brindaron por la salud de Leo Espinalarga, se\u00f1or de Altojard\u00edn, que seg\u00fan los rumores se encontraba a las puertas de la muerte. Brindaron por el recuerdo de sus nobles muertos. \"S\u00ed\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, acord\u00e1ndose\u2014, \"por ellos brindo encantado\".\n\nEl \u00faltimo brindis lo pronunci\u00f3 ser John el Violinista.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Por mis valientes hermanos! \u00a1S\u00e9 que esta noche est\u00e1n sonriendo!\n\nComo era la v\u00edspera del torneo, Dunk no hab\u00eda querido beber tanto, pero despu\u00e9s de cada brindis se volv\u00edan a llenar las copas y \u00e9l se descubr\u00eda sediento. \"Nunca rechaces una copa de vino ni un cuerno de cerveza\", le hab\u00eda dicho ser Arlan, \"pues quiz\u00e1 tardes un a\u00f1o en ver otro\".\n\n\"Habr\u00eda sido una descortes\u00eda no brindar por los novios\", se dijo\u00ad, \"y peligroso no hacerlo por el rey y su mano entre tantos desconocidos\".\n\nPor suerte el brindis del Violinista fue el \u00faltimo. Lord Butterwell puso en pie su corpulencia y dio a todos las gracias por haber venido. Tambi\u00e9n prometi\u00f3 unas buenas justas la ma\u00f1ana siguiente.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Que empiecen los festejos!\n\nEn la mesa de honor se sirvi\u00f3 lech\u00f3n, un pavorreal asado con su plumaje y un lucio con costra de almendras molidas. De todo eso no lleg\u00f3 ni un solo bocado a las mesas bajas. All\u00e1, en vez de lech\u00f3n, se sirvi\u00f3 cerdo en salaz\u00f3n remojado en leche de almendras y con un agradable toque de pimienta. En vez de pavo tuvieron capones bien tostados y crujientes, con un relleno de cebollas, hierbas, champi\u00f1ones y casta\u00f1as asadas. En vez de lucio comieron trozos de bacalao blanco y tierno dentro de un envoltorio de masa, con una salsa marr\u00f3n y sabrosa que Dunk no supo de qu\u00e9 estaba hecha. El acompa\u00f1amiento consist\u00eda en pur\u00e9 de ch\u00edcharos, nabos con mantequilla, zanahorias con miel y un queso blanco muy maduro que ol\u00eda tan fuerte como Bennis del Escudo Pardo. Dunk comi\u00f3 bien, pero sin dejar de preguntarse ni un momento qu\u00e9 le habr\u00edan dado a Egg en el patio. Se meti\u00f3 medio pollo en el bolsillo de la capa, por si acaso, adem\u00e1s de algunos trozos de pan y un poco de queso apestoso.\n\nMientras com\u00edan, el aire vibr\u00f3 con las alegres melod\u00edas de las gaitas y los violines. La conversaci\u00f3n se centr\u00f3 en el torneo de la ma\u00f1ana siguiente.\n\n\u2014Ser Franklyn Frey est\u00e1 bien considerado en el Forca Verde \u2014dijo Uthor Underleaf, al parecer buen conocedor de aquellos h\u00e9roes locales\u2014. Es el que est\u00e1 en la tarima, el t\u00edo de la novia. De Pantano de la Bruja vino Lucas Nayland, al que no hay que descartar; tampoco a ser Mortimer Boggs, de Punta Zarpa Rota. Por lo dem\u00e1s, deber\u00eda ser un torneo de caballeros de la casa y h\u00e9roes de aldea. Entre \u00e9stos los mejores son Kirby Pimm y Galtry el Verde, aunque ninguno de los dos es rival contra el yerno de lord Butterwell, Tom Heddle el Negro. Qu\u00e9 mala pieza. Dicen que consigui\u00f3 la mano de la hija mayor de su se\u00f1or\u00eda matando a tres de los otros pretendientes y que una vez descabalg\u00f3 al se\u00f1or de Roca Casterly.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9? \u00bfAl joven lord Tybolt? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Maynard.\n\n\u2014No, al viejo Le\u00f3n Gris, el que muri\u00f3 en primavera.\n\nEra como se refer\u00edan a los que hab\u00edan perecido durante la gran epidemia primaveral: \"Muri\u00f3 en primavera\". Lo hab\u00edan hecho decenas de miles de personas, entre ellas un rey y dos j\u00f3venes pr\u00edncipes.\n\n\u2014No desprecie a ser Buford Bulwer \u2014dijo Kyle el Gato\u2014. El Viejo Buey acab\u00f3 con cuarenta hombres en el campo de Hierba Roja.\n\n\u2014Y su cuenta aumenta cada a\u00f1o \u2014dijo ser Maynard\u2014. A Bulwer ya se le pasaron los buenos tiempos. Basta con verlo. Pasa de los sesenta a\u00f1os, est\u00e1 gordo y fofo y casi no ve nada con el ojo derecho.\n\n\u2014No se molesten en buscar al campe\u00f3n por la sala \u2014dijo una voz detr\u00e1s de Dunk\u2014. Aqu\u00ed me tienen, se\u00f1ores. Regoc\u00edjense la vista.\n\nAl girarse, Dunk vio ante s\u00ed a ser John el Violinista, que sonre\u00eda a medias. Su jub\u00f3n de seda blanca ten\u00eda mangas acuchilladas con forro de raso rojo, tan largas que las puntas le llegaban por debajo de las rodillas. Del pecho le colgaba una pesada cadena de plata llena de grandes amatistas cuyo color hac\u00eda juego con el de sus ojos. \"La cadena vale tanto como todas mis pertenencias\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nEl vino hab\u00eda coloreado las mejillas de ser Glendon e inflamado sus granos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n es usted para jactarse tanto?\n\n\u2014Me llaman John el Violinista.\n\n\u2014\u00bfM\u00fasico o guerrero?\n\n\u2014Da la casualidad de que puedo entonar dulces melod\u00edas tanto con la lanza como con el arco de resina. Toda boda precisa a un bardo, y todo torneo a un caballero misterioso. \u00bfMe permiten que me una a ustedes? Butterwell tuvo la bondad de sentarme en la tarima, pero yo prefiero la compa\u00f1\u00eda de los caballeros como yo a la de damas gordas y rosadas y hombres viejos \u2014el Violinista puso una mano en el hombro de Dunk\u2014. Sea buen compa\u00f1ero y h\u00e1game sitio, ser Duncan.\n\nDunk lo hizo.\n\n\u2014Llega tarde para la comida, ser.\n\n\u2014Da igual. S\u00e9 d\u00f3nde est\u00e1n las cocinas de Butterwell. \u00a1Espero que quede algo de vino!\n\nEl Violinista ol\u00eda a naranja y lima, con un toque de alguna extra\u00f1a especia oriental. Clavo, tal vez. Dunk no habr\u00eda sabido decirlo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 sab\u00eda \u00e9l de clavos?\n\n\u2014Su jactancia es indecorosa \u2014le dijo ser Glendon al Violinista.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe veras? En tal caso, ser, le suplico perd\u00f3n. Nada m\u00e1s lejos de mi intenci\u00f3n que ofender a un hijo de Bola de Fuego.\n\nEl joven qued\u00f3 desconcertado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSabe qui\u00e9n soy?\n\n\u2014El hijo de su padre, espero.\n\n\u2014Miren \u2014dijo ser Kyle el Gato\u2014, el pastel de boda.\n\nSeis pinches de cocina lo empujaban por la puerta sobre un gran carro con ruedas. Era un pastel marr\u00f3n, crujiente, enorme, de cuyo interior sal\u00edan ruidos: chirridos, graznidos, golpes... Lord y lady Butterwell bajaron de la tarima para recibirlo espada en mano. Cuando lo abrieron por la mitad, medio centenar de aves sali\u00f3 y vol\u00f3 por la sala. En otras bodas a las que hab\u00eda asistido Dunk los pasteles estaban llenos de palomas o p\u00e1jaros cantores. En cambio aquel conten\u00eda arrendajos, alondras, pichones, palomas, sinsontes, ruise\u00f1ores, peque\u00f1os gorriones pardos y un gran loro rojo.\n\n\u2014Ciento veinte especies de p\u00e1jaros \u2014dijo ser Kyle.\n\n\u2014Ciento veinte tipos de excrementos \u2014dijo ser Maynard.\n\n\u2014Lleva poca poes\u00eda en el coraz\u00f3n, ser.\n\n\u2014Y usted tiene mierda en el hombro.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed se rellenan los pasteles \u2014dijo ser Kyle mientras hac\u00eda ruido por la nariz y se limpiaba la t\u00fanica\u2014. El pastel representa el matrimonio, y los verdaderos matrimonios contienen muchas cosas: alegr\u00edas, tristezas, dolores, placeres, amor, deseo, fidelidad... Es adecuado, por lo tanto, que haya muchas especies de p\u00e1jaros. En el fondo no hay hombre que sepa qu\u00e9 le deparar\u00e1 una nueva esposa.\n\n\u2014Su co\u00f1o \u2014dijo Plumm\u2014. \u00bfSi no de qu\u00e9 servir\u00eda?\n\nDunk se apart\u00f3 de la mesa.\n\n\u2014Necesito respirar aire fresco \u2014lo que necesitaba, en realidad, era mear, pero en tan elegante compa\u00f1\u00eda resultaba m\u00e1s cort\u00e9s hablar de aire\u2014. Les ruego que me perdonen.\n\n\u2014Vuelva deprisa, ser \u2014dijo el Violinista\u2014, que a\u00fan deben salir juglares y no querr\u00e1 perderse el encamamiento.\n\nAl salir, el viento de la noche lami\u00f3 a Dunk como la lengua de un gran animal. Parec\u00eda que la tierra compactada del patio se moviera al pisarla. A menos que \u00e9l se balanceara...\n\nEl palenque estaba erigido en el centro del patio exterior. Hab\u00edan montado una tribuna de madera de tres pisos al pie de la muralla, para que lord Butterwell y sus invitados de noble alcurnia gozaran de sombra en sus asientos con cojines. A ambos lados del palenque hab\u00eda tiendas donde los caballeros pod\u00edan ponerse la armadura, y donde esperaban filas de lanzas de torneo. El viento levant\u00f3 fugazmente los estandartes y Dunk not\u00f3 el olor de cal de la barrera del palenque. Sali\u00f3 en busca del patio interior. Deb\u00eda encontrar a Egg y mandarlo con el maestro de justas para que lo apuntara en la lista, como era su obligaci\u00f3n de escudero.\n\nSin embargo, poco conocedor de Muros Blancos, se perdi\u00f3 y acab\u00f3 a la entrada de la perrera, donde los perros, al olerlo, se pusieron a ladrar y aullar. \"Quieren destrozarme el cuello\", pens\u00f3, \"si no es que quieren el cap\u00f3n de mi capa\". Volvi\u00f3 por donde hab\u00eda venido, al lado del septo. Una mujer pas\u00f3 corriendo, incapaz de respirar a causa de la risa, perseguida de cerca por un caballero calvo que todo el rato se ca\u00eda, hasta que al final ella debi\u00f3 volver en su ayuda. \"Deber\u00eda entrar en el septo y pedirles a los Siete que mi primer rival sea este caballero\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, pero ser\u00eda imp\u00edo. \"Lo que necesito de verdad es un retrete, no una oraci\u00f3n\". Cerca hab\u00eda unos arbustos, debajo de una escalera de piedra clara. \"Esto me ir\u00e1 bien.\" Se abri\u00f3 camino y, una vez detr\u00e1s de la escalera, se desabroch\u00f3 los pantalones. Ten\u00eda la vejiga a punto de reventar. Orinaba y orinaba sin parar.\n\nEncima de \u00e9l se abri\u00f3 una puerta. Oy\u00f3 pisadas en los escalones y una fricci\u00f3n de botas en la piedra.\n\n\u2014...banquete de mendigos que nos han organizado. Sin Aceroamargo...\n\n\u2014Al cuerno con Aceroamargo \u2014replic\u00f3 una voz conocida\u2014. De los bastardos uno no se puede fiar, ni siquiera de \u00e9l. Unas cuantas victorias no tardar\u00e1n en traerlo del otro lado de las aguas.\n\n\"Lord Peake.\" Dunk aguant\u00f3 la respiraci\u00f3n... y la orina.\n\n\u2014Es m\u00e1s f\u00e1cil hablar de victorias que obtenerlas \u2014era una voz m\u00e1s grave que la de Peake, una voz de bajo con un matiz de enfado\u2014. El viejo Sangre de Leche esperaba que se lo quedara el muchacho, y el resto tambi\u00e9n lo esperar\u00e1. Eso no puede suplirse con labia ni con encanto.\n\n\u2014Pero s\u00ed con un drag\u00f3n. El pr\u00edncipe insiste en que el huevo se abrir\u00e1. Lo so\u00f1\u00f3, como so\u00f1\u00f3 la muerte de sus hermanos. Con un drag\u00f3n vivo ganaremos todas las espadas que necesitemos.\n\n\u2014Una cosa es un drag\u00f3n y otra un sue\u00f1o. Le aseguro que Cuervo de Sangre no se dedica a so\u00f1ar. No necesitamos a un so\u00f1ador, sino a un guerrero. \u00bfEl muchacho es digno hijo de su padre?\n\n\u2014Usted cumpla lo que prometi\u00f3 y deje que de eso me preocupe yo. Cuando tengamos todo el oro y las espadas de la casa Frey, los siguientes ser\u00e1n Harrenhal y los Bracken. Otho sabe que no tiene ninguna posibilidad contra...\n\nSe alejaron, y con ellos las voces. La orina de Dunk volvi\u00f3 a correr. Se sacudi\u00f3 el miembro y se volvi\u00f3 a abrochar.\n\n\u2014Digno hijo de su padre \u2014murmur\u00f3.\n\n\"\u00bfDe qui\u00e9n hablaban? \u00bfDel hijo de Bola de Fuego?\"\n\nCuando sali\u00f3 de debajo de la escalera, los dos se\u00f1ores ya estaban lejos en el patio. Estuvo a punto de llamarlos a voces para ver sus caras, pero al final renunci\u00f3. Estaba solo, desarmado, y por si fuera poco medio borracho. \"O m\u00e1s que medio.\" Despu\u00e9s de quedarse un rato donde estaba, con el ce\u00f1o fruncido, regres\u00f3 a la sala.\n\nDentro hab\u00edan servido el \u00faltimo plato, y hab\u00eda empezado la juerga. Una de las hijas de lord Frey toc\u00f3, fatal, _Dos corazones que laten como uno_ con el arpa alta. Un grupo de juglares se arroj\u00f3 antorchas encendidas, y unos volatineros dieron volteretas por el aire. El sobrino de lord Frey empez\u00f3 a cantar _El oso y la doncella,_ mientras ser Kirby Pimm marcaba el ritmo en la mesa con una cuchara de madera. Otras voces se fueron sumando hasta que la sala bramaba: \"\u00a1Un oso! \u00a1Un oso! Era negro, era enorme, \u00a1cubierto de pelo horroroso!\" Lord Caswell se desmay\u00f3 en la mesa y cay\u00f3 de bruces en un charco de vino. Lady Vyrwel rompi\u00f3 a llorar sin que nadie supiera con certeza la causa de su angustia.\n\nEn ning\u00fan momento dejaba de correr el vino. Los tintos aterciopelados del Rejo dejaron su sitio a otros de la zona. Al menos as\u00ed lo dijo el Violinista, ya que a decir verdad Dunk no sab\u00eda diferenciarlos. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda hipocr\u00e1s. De eso ten\u00eda que probar una copa. \"Podr\u00eda tardar un a\u00f1o en beber la siguiente.\" Los otros caballeros errantes, todos buena gente, hab\u00edan empezado a hablar de las mujeres a las que hab\u00edan conocido, y Dunk se sorprendi\u00f3 al pensar d\u00f3nde estar\u00eda Tanselle aquella noche. De Lady Rohanne ya lo sab\u00eda: en el castillo de Fosa Fr\u00eda, en la cama, junto al viejo ser Eustace, que estar\u00eda roncando a trav\u00e9s del bigote. En ella, por lo tanto, intent\u00f3 no pensar. \"\u00bfPensar\u00e1n alguna vez en m\u00ed?\", se pregunt\u00f3.\n\nSus melanc\u00f3licas cavilaciones se vieron interrumpidas en forma grosera por un grupo de enanos pintarrajeados que, salidos de la panza de un cerdo de madera tra\u00eddo sobre un carro, empezaron a perseguir entre las mesas al buf\u00f3n de lord Butterwell y a pegarle con vejigas de cerdo hinchadas, que con cada golpe emit\u00edan ruidos soeces. Hac\u00eda a\u00f1os que Dunk no ve\u00eda nada tan gracioso. Se rio con todos los dem\u00e1s. El hijo de lord Frey qued\u00f3 tan encantado con las payasadas que se sum\u00f3 a ellas y empez\u00f3 a golpear a los invitados con una vejiga que le prest\u00f3 un enano. El ni\u00f1o ten\u00eda la risa m\u00e1s irritante que hubiera o\u00eddo Dunk en su vida, un hipo tan agudo y estridente que le dieron ganas de ponerse al ni\u00f1o sobre la rodilla o arrojarlo a un pozo. \"Como me pegue con la vejiga es posible que lo haga.\"\n\n\u2014Ah\u00ed tienen al autor del enlace \u2014dijo ser Maynard cuando pas\u00f3 gritando el mimado pillo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9? \u2014dijo el Violinista, levantando su copa vac\u00eda para que se la llenara un criado al pasar.\n\nSer Maynard lanz\u00f3 una mirada al estrado, donde la novia daba de comer cerezas a su esposo.\n\n\u2014Su se\u00f1or\u00eda no ser\u00e1 el primero que le ponga mantequilla a esa galleta. Dicen que a la novia la desflor\u00f3 un pinche en Los Gemelos. Ten\u00edan encuentros furtivos en la cocina. Por desgracia una noche el hermanito la sigui\u00f3 sin hacer ruido, y al ver que hac\u00edan la bestia de dos lomos solt\u00f3 un grito. Entonces vinieron corriendo los cocineros y los guardias, y se encontraron a mi se\u00f1ora y su marmit\u00f3n copulando en el m\u00e1rmol donde amasa el cocinero, desnudos los dos como el d\u00eda de su nombre, y enharinados de los pies a la cabeza.\n\n\"No puede ser verdad\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. Lord Butterwell ten\u00eda muchas tierras y ollas llenas de oro amarillo. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 se casar\u00eda con una chica mancillada por un pinche de cocina y entregar\u00eda su huevo de drag\u00f3n en conmemoraci\u00f3n del enlace? Los Frey del Cruce no eran m\u00e1s nobles que los Butterwell. En vez de vacas ten\u00edan un puente. Era la \u00fanica diferencia. Se\u00f1ores. No hab\u00eda quien los entendiera. Se comi\u00f3 unas cuantas nueces y reflexion\u00f3 sobre lo que hab\u00eda o\u00eddo mientras meaba. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 crees que escuchaste, borrach\u00edn?\" Se tom\u00f3 otra copa de hipocr\u00e1s, porque la primera le hab\u00eda gustado. Despu\u00e9s apoy\u00f3 la cabeza en sus brazos cruzados y cerr\u00f3 un momento los ojos para descansar del humo.\n\nCuando volvi\u00f3 a abrirlos, la mitad de los invitados estaba de pie, gritando.\n\n\u2014\u00a1A encamarlos! \u00a1A encamarlos!\n\nArmaban tal barullo que lo despertaron de un agradable sue\u00f1o en el cual aparec\u00edan Tanselle la Giganta y la Viuda Escarlata.\n\n\u2014\u00a1A encamarlos! \u00a1A encamarlos! \u2014gritaba todo el mundo.\n\nDunk se incorpor\u00f3 y se frot\u00f3 los ojos.\n\nSer Franklyn Frey llevaba en brazos a la novia por el pasillo, rodeado de hombres y ni\u00f1os. Las damas de la mesa de honor hab\u00edan rodeado a lord Butterwell. Lady Vyrwel, repuesta de su pena, intentaba sacar a su se\u00f1or\u00eda de la silla, mientras una de sus hijas le desataba las botas y alguna Frey le estiraba la t\u00fanica. Entre risas, Butterwell opon\u00eda una resistencia in\u00fatil. Dunk vio que estaba borracho, aunque no tanto como ser Franklyn, que estuvo a punto de dejar caer a la novia. Antes de que Dunk se diera cuenta, John el Violinista lo oblig\u00f3 a levantarse.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Aqu\u00ed! \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014. \u00a1Que la lleve el gigante!\n\nSin saber c\u00f3mo, se encontr\u00f3 en la escalera de una torre, con la novia forcejeando entre sus brazos. Le resultaba inconcebible que se mantuviera de pie. No hab\u00eda manera de que ella se callara, rodeada por hombres que se prodigaban en bromas soeces sobre enharinarla y amasarla bien, a la vez que le quitaban la ropa. Tambi\u00e9n participaban los enanos, que se agolparon en torno a las piernas de Dunk gritando, ri\u00e9ndose y d\u00e1ndole golpes en las pantorrillas con sus vejigas. Fue un milagro que no tropezara.\n\nNo ten\u00eda la menor idea de d\u00f3nde estaba el dormitorio de lord Butterwell, pero los otros hombres lo empujaron y azuzaron hasta que lleg\u00f3. Para entonces la novia ten\u00eda la cara roja y se re\u00eda, desnuda a excepci\u00f3n de la media de la pierna izquierda, que por alguna raz\u00f3n hab\u00eda sobrevivido al ascenso. Tambi\u00e9n Dunk estaba rojo, y no por el esfuerzo. Su excitaci\u00f3n habr\u00eda sido evidente para cualquiera que lo mirara. Por suerte la novia era el centro de las miradas. Lady Butterwell no se parec\u00eda en nada a Tanselle, pero tener a una agit\u00e1ndose medio desnuda en sus brazos lo hizo pensar en la otra. \"Tanselle la Giganta, se llamaba, pero para m\u00ed no era demasiado alta.\" Se pregunt\u00f3 si volver\u00eda a encontrarla alguna vez. Algunas noches hab\u00eda pensado que era un sue\u00f1o. \"No, necio, el \u00fanico sue\u00f1o fue el que tuviste al pensar que le gustabas.\"\n\nPor fin dio con la alcoba de lord Butterwell, grande y suntuosa, con alfombras de Myr en el suelo, un centenar de velas arom\u00e1ticas por los rincones, y al lado de la puerta una armadura con incrustaciones de oro y piedras preciosas. Hasta ten\u00eda su propio retrete, en un peque\u00f1o nicho de piedra de la pared exterior.\n\nCuando dej\u00f3 caer a la novia en el lecho nupcial, un enano aterriz\u00f3 de un salto junto a ella y empez\u00f3 a manosearle un pecho. Ella chill\u00f3. Los hombres se re\u00edan como locos. Dunk levant\u00f3 al enano por el cuello y lo apart\u00f3 a gritos de la dama. Justo cuando se lo llevaba al otro lado de la habitaci\u00f3n para arrojarlo por la puerta, vio el huevo de drag\u00f3n.\n\nLord Butterwell lo hab\u00eda colocado en un coj\u00edn de terciopelo negro, sobre un pedestal de m\u00e1rmol. Era mucho mayor que un huevo de gallina, aunque no tan grande como se lo hab\u00eda imaginado Dunk. Estaba recubierto de finas escamas rojas que a la luz de las l\u00e1mparas y de las velas brillaban como joyas. Dunk solt\u00f3 al enano y levant\u00f3 el huevo s\u00f3lo para tocarlo un momento. Pesaba m\u00e1s de lo esperado. \"Con esto podr\u00edas partirle la cabeza a alguien sin que se rompiera la c\u00e1scara.\" Las escamas eran suaves al tacto. Al girar el huevo en sus manos, pareci\u00f3 que su oscuro color rojo se tornasolaba. \"Sangre y llamas\", pens\u00f3, pero tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda salpicaduras doradas y remolinos negro azabache.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Eh! \u00bfQu\u00e9 cree que hace, ser?\n\nUn caballero al que no conoc\u00eda, alto, de barba muy negra, con for\u00fanculos, lo miraba de manera hostil. Sin embargo, lo que hizo parpadear a Dunk fue la voz, grave y llena de ira. \"Era \u00e9l, el que iba con Peake\", se dio cuenta mientras lo o\u00eda seguir hablando.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jelo en su sitio. Le agradecer\u00e9 que aparte sus sucios dedos de los tesoros de su se\u00f1or\u00eda. Por los Siete que en caso contrario se arrepentir\u00e1.\n\nParec\u00eda prudente hacerle caso, ya que no estaba ni la mitad de borracho que Dunk. Deposit\u00f3 con gran cuidado el huevo en el coj\u00edn y se limpi\u00f3 los dedos en la manga.\n\n\u2014No fue con mala intenci\u00f3n, ser.\n\nDunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo. Apart\u00f3 al de la barba negra y sali\u00f3 por la puerta.\n\nEn la escalera se o\u00edan ruidos, gritos de alegr\u00eda y risas femeninas. Las mujeres llevaban a lord Butterwell con la novia. Dunk, que no ten\u00eda el menor deseo de encontr\u00e1rselas, subi\u00f3 en vez de bajar y se encontr\u00f3 en la azotea de la torre, bajo las estrellas, rodeado por el claro resplandor del castillo a la luz de la luna.\n\nSe apoy\u00f3 en un parapeto, mareado por el vino. \"\u00bfVoy a vomitar?\" \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda tocado el huevo de drag\u00f3n? Se acord\u00f3 del espect\u00e1culo de marionetas de Tanselle y del drag\u00f3n de madera que hab\u00eda provocado todos los problemas en Vado Ceniza. Como siempre, se sinti\u00f3 culpable al acordarse. \"Tres buenos hombres muertos para salvarle el pie a un caballero errante.\" No ten\u00eda sentido. Nunca lo hab\u00eda tenido. \"Que te sirva de lecci\u00f3n, necio. A los de tu cala\u00f1a no les corresponde meterse en cosas de dragones y huevos.\"\n\n\u2014Casi parece de nieve.\n\nSe gir\u00f3. Ten\u00eda detr\u00e1s a John el Violinista, con su atuendo de seda e hilo de oro, y una sonrisa en los labios.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 parece de nieve?\n\n\u2014El castillo. Con tantas piedras blancas reflejando la luna... \u00bfAlguna vez ha estado al norte del Cuello, ser Duncan? Me han dicho que hasta en verano nieva. \u00bfHa visto el Muro?\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or \u2014\"\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 habla del Muro?\"\u2014. Es a donde vamos Egg y yo: al Norte, a Invernalia.\n\n\u2014Ojal\u00e1 pudiera ir con ustedes. Podr\u00edan mostrarme la ruta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa ruta? \u2014Dunk frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o\u2014. Basta con seguir el camino Real. Si sigue siempre hacia el norte, sin salirse del camino, no hay modo de perderse.\n\nEl Violinista rio.\n\n\u2014Supongo que no... aunque tal vez lo sorprenda c\u00f3mo se pierden algunos \u2014se acerc\u00f3 al parapeto y mir\u00f3 m\u00e1s all\u00e1 del castillo\u2014. Dicen que los norte\u00f1os son un pueblo salvaje y que sus bosques est\u00e1n llenos de lobos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 subi\u00f3, mi se\u00f1or?\n\n\u2014Me buscaba Alyn y no quise que me encontrara. Al beber se pone pesado. Lo vi salir con disimulo de aquella alcoba de los horrores y yo tambi\u00e9n me fui. Confieso que he tomado demasiado vino, pero no tanto como para ver a Butterwell desnudo \u2014sonri\u00f3 de modo enigm\u00e1tico a Dunk\u2014. So\u00f1\u00e9 con usted, ser Duncan. Antes de conocerlo. Al verlo en el camino enseguida reconoc\u00ed su cara. Era como si fu\u00e9ramos viejos amigos.\n\nEn ese momento Dunk tuvo una sensaci\u00f3n rar\u00edsima, como si ya hubiera vivido todo antes. \"Dice que so\u00f1\u00f3 conmigo. Mis sue\u00f1os no son como los suyos, ser Duncan. Los m\u00edos son reales.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfQue so\u00f1\u00f3 conmigo? \u2014dijo Dunk, arrastrando las palabras a causa del vino\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tipo de sue\u00f1o?\n\n\u2014Pues so\u00f1\u00e9 \u2014dijo el Violinista\u2014 que iba todo de blanco, de los pies a la cabeza, con una larga capa blanca que ca\u00eda flotando de sus anchos hombros. Era una Espada Blanca, un hermano juramentado de la Guardia Real, el mayor caballero de los Siete Reinos, y no viv\u00eda para nada que no fuera custodiar, servir y agradar a su rey \u2014puso una mano en el hombro de Dunk\u2014. Usted debe haber tenido el mismo sue\u00f1o. Estoy seguro.\n\nEra cierto. \"La primera vez que el viejo me dej\u00f3 tener su espada en mis manos.\"\n\n\u2014Todos los ni\u00f1os sue\u00f1an con servir en la Guardia Real.\n\n\u2014Pero s\u00f3lo siete ni\u00f1os, al crecer, logran llevar la capa blanca. \u00bfLe gustar\u00eda ser uno de ellos?\n\n\u2014\u00bfYo? \u2014Dunk movi\u00f3 el hombro para quitarse de encima la mano del joven se\u00f1or, que hab\u00eda empezado a masajearle el hombro\u2014. Tal vez s\u00ed. Y tal vez no \u2014los caballeros de la Guardia Real lo eran de por vida y hac\u00edan el voto de no casarse ni poseer tierras. \"Quiz\u00e1 alg\u00fan d\u00eda encuentre de nuevo a Tanselle. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no iba a tener esposa e hijos?\"\u2014. No importa lo que sue\u00f1e yo. S\u00f3lo un rey puede nombrar a un caballero de la Guardia Real.\n\n\u2014Entonces supongo que tendr\u00e9 que ocupar el trono. Preferir\u00eda con mucho ense\u00f1arle a tocar el viol\u00edn.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 borracho.\n\nLe dijo la sart\u00e9n a la olla.\n\n\u2014Estupendamente, s\u00ed. El vino, ser Duncan, lo hace todo posible. Yo creo que le quedar\u00eda bien el blanco, pero si no le gusta el color, \u00bfpreferir\u00eda tal vez ser un se\u00f1or?\n\nDunk se rio en su cara.\n\n\u2014No, preferir\u00eda que me salieran grandes alas azules y volar. Las dos cosas son igual de probables.\n\n\u2014Ahora se burla. Un caballero de verdad jam\u00e1s se burlar\u00eda de su rey \u2014el Violinista parec\u00eda dolido\u2014. Espero que ponga m\u00e1s fe en lo que le diga cuando vea salir al drag\u00f3n del huevo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQue saldr\u00e1 un drag\u00f3n del huevo? \u00bfUn drag\u00f3n vivo? \u00bfAqu\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Lo so\u00f1\u00e9. Este castillo tan blanco, un drag\u00f3n saliendo de un huevo... Lo so\u00f1\u00e9 todo, como so\u00f1\u00e9 en su d\u00eda la muerte de mis hermanos. Ellos ten\u00edan doce a\u00f1os y yo s\u00f3lo siete. Por eso se rieron de m\u00ed y murieron. Ahora tengo veintid\u00f3s y me f\u00edo de mis sue\u00f1os.\n\nDunk estaba recordando otro torneo, cuando hab\u00eda caminado con otro joven pr\u00edncipe bajo una llovizna primaveral. \"So\u00f1\u00e9 con usted y con un drag\u00f3n muerto\", le hab\u00eda dicho Daeron, el hermano de Egg, \"una bestia enorme, con alas tan inmensas que cubrir\u00edan todo este prado. Le hab\u00eda ca\u00eddo encima, pero usted estaba vivo y el drag\u00f3n muerto\". Lo estaba, en efecto. Pobre Baelor. Los sue\u00f1os eran un terreno traicionero donde construir.\n\n\u2014Como diga, mi se\u00f1or \u2014le dijo al Violinista\u2014. Le ruego que me disculpe.\n\n\u2014\u00bfA d\u00f3nde va, ser?\n\n\u2014A mi cama, a dormir. Tengo una buena borrachera.\n\n\u2014Pues entonemos juntos, ser. La noche est\u00e1 plagada de promesas. Podr\u00edamos cantar y despertar a los mism\u00edsimos dioses.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 quiere de m\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Su espada. Deseo que figure entre mis hombres y hacerlo llegar muy alto. Mis sue\u00f1os no mienten, ser Duncan. Usted llevar\u00e1 la capa blanca y yo debo conseguir el huevo del drag\u00f3n. Es necesario. Lo dejaron muy claro mis sue\u00f1os. Quiz\u00e1 el huevo se abra, o bien...\n\nTras ellos la puerta se abri\u00f3 con brusquedad.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nSalieron a la azotea dos soldados, con lord Gormon Peake detr\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Gormy \u2014dijo el Violinista con voz pastosa\u2014. \u00bfPero qu\u00e9 est\u00e1 haciendo en mi alcoba, mi se\u00f1or?\n\n\u2014Es una azotea, ser, y ha bebido demasiado vino \u2014lord Gormon hizo un gesto brusco. Los guardias se adelantaron\u2014. Permita que lo ayudemos a acostar. No olvide que ma\u00f1ana en la ma\u00f1ana hay un torneo, por favor. Kirby Pimm podr\u00eda resultar un enemigo peligroso.\n\n\u2014Ten\u00eda la esperanza de justar con el bueno de ser Duncan, aqu\u00ed presente.\n\nPeake mir\u00f3 a Dunk sin la menor simpat\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 despu\u00e9s. Como primer contrincante eligi\u00f3 a ser Kirby Pimm.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Pues entonces Pimm deber\u00e1 caer! \u00a1Como todos! El caballero misterioso se impone a todos sus contrincantes, dejando una estela de prodigios \u2014un guardia tom\u00f3 del brazo al Violinista\u2014. Ser Duncan, parece que debemos separarnos \u2014dijo el joven en voz alta mientras lo ayudaban a bajar por la escalera.\n\nEl \u00fanico que se qued\u00f3 con Dunk en la azotea fue lord Gormon.\n\n\u2014Caballero errante \u2014gru\u00f1\u00f3\u2014, \u00bfno le ense\u00f1\u00f3 su madre a no meter la mano en la boca del drag\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014No conoc\u00ed a mi madre, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Ahora me lo explico. \u00bfQu\u00e9 le prometi\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Un se\u00f1or\u00edo. Una capa blanca. Grandes alas azules.\n\n\u2014He aqu\u00ed mi promesa: dos codos de fr\u00edo acero clavados en la barriga si dice una sola palabra sobre lo ocurrido.\n\nDunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza para despej\u00e1rsela, aunque no pareci\u00f3 servir de nada. Se dobl\u00f3 por la cintura y vomit\u00f3.\n\nEl v\u00f3mito salpic\u00f3 un poco las botas de Peake, que solt\u00f3 una palabrota.\n\n\u2014Caballeros errantes \u2014exclam\u00f3 asqueado\u2014. \u00c9ste no es lugar para ustedes. Ning\u00fan caballero de verdad tendr\u00eda la descortes\u00eda de presentarse sin ser invitado, pero ustedes, hijos del camino...\n\n\u2014No se nos quiere en ning\u00fan sitio y aparecemos en todos, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nEl vino daba audacia a Dunk, que de lo contrario se habr\u00eda mordido la lengua. Se limpi\u00f3 la boca con el dorso de la mano.\n\n\u2014Procure acordarse de lo que dije, ser. De lo contrario le ir\u00e1 mal.\n\nLord Peake se sacudi\u00f3 el v\u00f3mito de la bota y se march\u00f3. Dunk volvi\u00f3 a apoyarse en el parapeto mientras se preguntaba qui\u00e9n estar\u00eda m\u00e1s loco, lord Gormon o el Violinista.\n\nCuando encontr\u00f3 el camino de vuelta a la sala, el \u00fanico de sus compa\u00f1eros que quedaba era Maynard Plumm.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTen\u00eda harina en las tetas cuando le quit\u00f3 la ropa interior? \u2014quiso saber.\n\nDunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza, se sirvi\u00f3 otra copa de vino, lo prob\u00f3 y decidi\u00f3 que ya hab\u00eda bebido suficiente.\n\nLos mayordomos de Butterwell hab\u00edan encontrado habitaciones en la fortaleza para los se\u00f1ores y las damas, y camas en los barracones para su s\u00e9quito. El resto de los invitados pod\u00edan elegir entre un camastro de paja en la bodega o levantar sus pabellones en una parcela aleda\u00f1a a la muralla oeste. La modesta tienda de lona adquirida por Dunk en Septo de Piedra no era ning\u00fan pabell\u00f3n, aunque proteg\u00eda de la lluvia y el sol. Algunos de sus vecinos segu\u00edan despiertos y las paredes de seda de sus pabellones brillaban en la noche como linternas. Dentro de un pabell\u00f3n azul cubierto de girasoles se o\u00edan risas, y en otro a rayas blancas y moradas sonidos amorosos. Egg hab\u00eda montado su tienda un poco apartada de las otras. Maestre y los dos caballos estaban atados cerca. Las armas y la armadura de Dunk se apoyaban bien amontonadas en la muralla del castillo. Al meterse en la tienda encontr\u00f3 a su escudero con las piernas cruzadas en el suelo, leyendo un libro al lado de una vela. Le brillaba la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Te quedar\u00e1s ciego por tanto leer libros a la luz de las velas.\n\nPara Dunk la lectura segu\u00eda siendo un misterio, aunque el ni\u00f1o hubiera intentado ense\u00f1arle.\n\n\u2014Necesito la vela para distinguir las palabras, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres un golpe en la oreja? \u00bfQu\u00e9 libro es?\n\nDunk vio muchos colores en la p\u00e1gina, peque\u00f1os escudos pintados que se escond\u00edan entre las letras.\n\n\u2014Un armorial, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfBuscas al Violinista? Pues no lo encontrar\u00e1s. En estos armoriales no incluyen a los caballeros errantes, s\u00f3lo a los se\u00f1ores y los paladines.\n\n\u2014No lo buscaba a \u00e9l, ser. He visto otros blasones en el patio... Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1 lord Sunderland, ser. Lleva tres cabezas de damas muy blancas, sobre un ondeado verdiazul.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn hermane\u00f1o? \u00bfDe verdad? \u2014las Tres Hermanas eran unas islas del Mordisco. Dunk hab\u00eda o\u00eddo decir a los septones que eran antros de pecado y de codicia. Villa Hermana era el nido de contrabandistas m\u00e1s c\u00e9lebre de todo Poniente\u2014. Viene de muy lejos. Debe estar emparentado con la nueva esposa de Butterwell.\n\n\u2014No, ser.\n\n\u2014Pues entonces vinieron por el banquete. En las Tres Hermanas comen pescado, \u00bfno? Los hombres se hartan del pescado. \u00bfComiste suficiente carne? Te traje medio cap\u00f3n y un poco de queso.\n\nDunk hurg\u00f3 en el bolsillo de su capa.\n\n\u2014Nos dieron costillas, ser \u2014Egg se encontraba absorto con el libro\u2014. Lord Sunderland combati\u00f3 a favor del drag\u00f3n negro, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfComo el viejo ser Eustace? \u00bfVerdad que no estaba tan mal?\n\n\u2014No, ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, pero...\n\n\u2014Vi el huevo de drag\u00f3n \u2014Dunk guard\u00f3 la comida con el pan duro y el tasajo\u2014. Era casi todo rojo. \u00bfLord Cuervo de Sangre tambi\u00e9n posee un huevo de drag\u00f3n?\n\nEgg baj\u00f3 su libro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 tendr\u00eda uno? Es de baja cuna.\n\n\u2014Bastardo, pero no de baja cuna \u2014Cuervo de Sangre hab\u00eda sido concebido en la cama err\u00f3nea, pero era noble por ambas partes. Dunk estuvo a punto de contarle a Egg la conversaci\u00f3n que hab\u00eda sorprendido, pero de repente se fij\u00f3 en su cara\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te pas\u00f3 en el labio?\n\n\u2014Una pelea, ser.\n\n\u2014Ens\u00e9\u00f1amelo.\n\n\u2014Sangr\u00f3 muy poco. Me puse algo de vino.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCon qui\u00e9n te peleaste?\n\n\u2014Con otros escuderos. Dijeron que...\n\n\u2014Me da igual lo que hayan dicho. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te orden\u00e9 yo?\n\n\u2014Que tuviera cuidado con lo que dijera y no me metiera en l\u00edos \u2014el ni\u00f1o se toc\u00f3 el labio partido\u2014. Pero llamaron a mi padre asesino de los de su propia sangre.\n\n\"Lo es, muchacho, aunque no creo que lo hiciera a prop\u00f3sito.\" Dunk le hab\u00eda dicho cincuenta veces a Egg que no se tomara tan a pecho aquel tipo de comentarios. \"T\u00fa sabes la verdad. Que te baste con eso.\" Ya lo hab\u00edan o\u00eddo decir m\u00e1s de una vez en tascas y tabernas de mala muerte, y en el bosque, en torno a las hogueras. Todo el reino sab\u00eda que la maza del pr\u00edncipe Maekar hab\u00eda abatido a su hermano Baelor Rompelanzas en Vado Ceniza. Era previsible que se hablara de conjuras.\n\n\u2014Si supieran que el pr\u00edncipe Maekar es tu padre no lo habr\u00edan dicho \u2014\"A tus espaldas s\u00ed, pero en tu cara jam\u00e1s\"\u2014. Y en vez de quedarte callado, \u00bfqu\u00e9 les dijiste a los otros escuderos?\n\nEgg puso cara de arrepentimiento.\n\n\u2014Que la muerte del pr\u00edncipe Baelor fue un simple accidente. Luego agregu\u00e9 que el pr\u00edncipe Maekar quer\u00eda mucho a su hermano Baelor. Entonces el escudero de ser Addam dijo que hay amores que matan, y el escudero de ser Mallor que mi padre piensa querer igual a su hermano Aerys. Fue cuando lo golpe\u00e9. Y muy bien.\n\n\u2014A ti deber\u00eda golpearte muy bien. Para que se te hinche la oreja a juego con el labio. Si tu padre estuviera aqu\u00ed, har\u00eda lo mismo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 te crees, que al pr\u00edncipe Makear le hace falta que lo defienda un cr\u00edo? \u00bfQu\u00e9 te dijo antes de que nos fu\u00e9ramos juntos?\n\n\u2014Que te sirviera con fidelidad como escudero y no me arredrara ni ante las m\u00e1s duras tareas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s?\n\n\u2014Que obedeciera las leyes del rey, las reglas de la caballer\u00eda y a ti.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s?\n\n\u2014Que me rapara o me ti\u00f1era el pelo \u2014dijo el ni\u00f1o, se notaba que a rega\u00f1adientes\u2014 y no le dijera a nadie mi verdadero nombre.\n\nDunk asinti\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1nto vino hab\u00eda bebido el chico al que golpeaste?\n\n\u2014Beb\u00eda cerveza de cebada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLo ves? Era la cerveza la que hablaba por su boca. Las palabras son aire, Egg. Deja que se las lleve el viento.\n\n\u2014Algunas palabras son aire \u2014si algo ten\u00eda aquel ni\u00f1o es que era tozudo\u2014. Y otras traici\u00f3n. Esto es un torneo de traidores, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo? \u00bfTodos? \u2014Dunk sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. En todo caso hace tiempo que lo fue. El drag\u00f3n negro est\u00e1 muerto y los que combatieron a su lado huyeron o fueron perdonados. Adem\u00e1s, no es verdad. Los hijos de lord Butterwell lucharon en ambos bandos.\n\n\u2014Lo cual lo convierte en medio traidor, ser.\n\n\u2014Hace diecis\u00e9is a\u00f1os \u2014Dunk ya no flotaba en las dulces brumas del vino. Ahora estaba enfadado y casi sobrio\u2014. El maestro de justas es el mayordomo de lord Butterwell, un tal Cosgrove. Ve a buscarlo e inscr\u00edbeme. No, espera... No digas mi nombre \u2014con tantos se\u00f1ores, tal vez alguno de ellos recordara a ser Duncan el Alto de Vado Ceniza\u2014. Inscr\u00edbeme como el caballero de la Horca.\n\nAl pueblo llano le encantaba ver aparecer en un torneo a un caballero misterioso.\n\nEgg se toc\u00f3 el labio hinchado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl caballero de la Horca, ser?\n\n\u2014Por el escudo.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, pero...\n\n\u2014Haz lo que te digo. Por esta noche ya le\u00edste suficiente.\n\nDunk apag\u00f3 la vela con el pulgar y el \u00edndice.\n\nSe hab\u00eda levantado un sol ardiente, duro e implacable. De las piedras blancas del castillo emanaba el calor en oleadas. Ol\u00eda a tierra cocida y hierbas arrancadas. Ni un soplo de viento mov\u00eda los estandartes, que pend\u00edan de la torre del homenaje y la de entrada, verdes, blancos y amarillos.\n\nDunk casi nunca hab\u00eda visto a Trueno tan inquieto. El corcel echaba la cabeza a ambos lados mientras Egg le ajustaba la cincha de la silla, e incluso le mostr\u00f3 sus dientes grandes y cuadrados. \"Hace tanto calor\", pens\u00f3 Dunk... Demasiado, tanto para los hombres como para los caballos, y los de guerra nunca son de temperamento pl\u00e1cido, para empezar. \"Con este calor hasta la Madre estar\u00eda con un humor de perros.\"\n\nEn el centro del patio dio inicio otra carrera entre los justadores. Ser Herbert iba en un corcel dorado cuya barda negra ostentaba las serpientes roja y blanca de la casa Paege. En cuanto a ser Franklyn, su alaz\u00e1n mostraba en la gualdrapa de seda gris las torres gemelas de Frey. En el momento del choque la lanza roja y blanca se parti\u00f3 limpiamente, y la azul se deshizo en astillas, pero ninguno de los jinetes cay\u00f3 del caballo. Se oyeron aplausos en la tribuna de espectadores y entre los guardias que ocupaban las murallas del castillo, pero fueron cortos, t\u00edmidos, ap\u00e1ticos. \"Hace demasiado calor para las ovaciones.\" Dunk se sec\u00f3 el sudor de la frente. \"Hace demasiado calor para las justas.\" Ten\u00eda la cabeza como un bombo. \"Gano esta liza y una m\u00e1s y me doy por satisfecho.\"\n\nLos caballeros giraron los caballos al final del palenque y arrojaron los restos de sus lanzas, las cuartas que romp\u00edan. \"Tres de m\u00e1s.\" Dunk pospuso el momento de ponerse la armadura todo el tiempo que le fue posible, y ya sent\u00eda que la ropa interior se le pegaba por debajo del acero. \"Peores cosas hay que estar empapado de sudor\", se dijo al recordar el combate a bordo del Dama Blanca, donde se hab\u00eda visto rodeado por los hombres del Hierro y hab\u00eda acabado el d\u00eda empapado de sangre.\n\nEmpu\u00f1ando nuevas lanzas, Paege y Frey volvieron a clavar las espuelas en sus caballos. A cada paso los corceles levantaban terrones resecos con los cascos. El crujido de las lanzas al partirse estremeci\u00f3 a Dunk. \"Anoche beb\u00ed demasiado vino y com\u00ed demasiado.\" Tuvo el vago recuerdo de haber llevado escaleras arriba a la novia y de haber hablado en una azotea con John el Violinista y lord Peake. \"\u00bfQu\u00e9 hac\u00eda yo en una azotea?\" Recordaba haber hablado de dragones, o de huevos de dragones, o de alguna otra cosa, pero...\n\nAlgo a medio camino entre un rugido y un gemido lo sac\u00f3 de sus cavilaciones. Dunk vio que el caballo dorado trotaba sin jinete hasta el final del palenque, mientras ser Harberg Paege ca\u00eda al suelo sin fuerzas. \"Faltan dos para mi turno.\" Cuanto antes derribara a ser Uthor, antes podr\u00eda quitarse la armadura, beber algo fresco y descansar. En principio al menos dispondr\u00eda de una hora antes de que volvieran a llamarlo.\n\nEl corpulento heraldo de lord Butterwell subi\u00f3 a lo m\u00e1s alto de la tribuna para convocar a la siguiente pareja de justadores.\n\n\u2014Ser Argrave el Desafiante \u2014proclam\u00f3\u2014, caballero de Nunny, al servicio de lord Butterwell de Muros Blancos. Ser Glendon Flores, caballero de Los Conejos. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\nSe alzaron risas de las tribunas.\n\nSer Argrave era un hombre enjuto y curtido, un avezado caballero de la casa con armadura gris mellada y caballo sin barda. Dunk hab\u00eda conocido a otros como \u00e9l. Eran hombres duros como las ra\u00edces viejas, buenos conocedores de su oficio. Su rival era el joven ser Glendon, montado en su triste roc\u00edn y protegido por una loriga de pesada malla y un medio yelmo de hierro que dejaba el rostro al descubierto. El escudo de su brazo ostentaba el fiero blas\u00f3n de su padre. \"Necesita un peto y un yelmo de verdad\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Vestido as\u00ed podr\u00eda morir de un golpe en la cabeza o en el pecho.\"\n\nSe notaba que ser Glendon estaba furioso por la forma en que lo hab\u00edan presentado. Hizo girar en redondo su caballo y exclam\u00f3 con enojo:\n\n\u2014Soy Glendon Ball, no Glendon Flores. Cuidado con burlarse de m\u00ed, heraldo. Llevo sangre de h\u00e9roes.\n\nEl heraldo no se dign\u00f3 en responder. Las protestas del joven caballero fueron acogidas con m\u00e1s risas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 se r\u00eden de \u00e9l? \u2014se pregunt\u00f3 Dunk en voz alta \u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 pasa, ser\u00e1 un bastardo? \u2014Flores era el apellido que se les daba en el Dominio a los bastardos de padres nobles\u2014. \u00bfY a qu\u00e9 vendr\u00e1 lo de Los Conejos?\n\n\u2014Puedo averiguarlo, ser \u2014dijo Egg.\n\n\u2014No, no es de nuestra incumbencia. \u00bfTienes mi yelmo?\n\nSer Argrave y ser Glendon bajaron las lanzas ante lord y lady Butterwell. Dunk vio que Butterwell se inclinaba para susurrarle algo al o\u00eddo a su esposa, que se puso a re\u00edr.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ser.\n\nEgg se hab\u00eda puesto el sombrero blando para protegerse los ojos y salvaguardar del sol su cabeza rapada. A Dunk le gustaba re\u00edrse de \u00e9l por su sombrero, pero en aquel momento dese\u00f3 tener uno. Con aquel sol m\u00e1s val\u00eda ir cubierto de paja que de hierro. Se apart\u00f3 el pelo de los ojos, se cal\u00f3 el yelmo con las dos manos y se lo ajust\u00f3 a la gola. El forro ol\u00eda a sudor viejo. Sinti\u00f3 en el cuello y los hombros el peso de tanto hierro. A\u00fan le dol\u00eda la cabeza por el vino de la noche anterior.\n\n\u2014Ser \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, no es demasiado tarde para retirarse. Si pierdes a Trueno y tu armadura...\n\n\"Ser\u00eda mi final como caballero.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 perder\u00eda? \u2014inquiri\u00f3 Dunk. Ser Argrave y ser Glendon ya estaban cada uno en un extremo del palenque\u2014. Tampoco es que me enfrente con la Tormenta que R\u00ede. \u00bfHay aqu\u00ed alg\u00fan caballero que pueda darme problemas?\n\n\u2014Casi todos, ser.\n\n\u2014Te debo un golpe en la oreja. Ser Uthor es diez a\u00f1os mayor que yo y la mitad de corpulento.\n\nSer Argrave se baj\u00f3 la visera. Ser Glendon no ten\u00eda visera que bajar.\n\n\u2014No has participado en una justa desde Vado Ceniza, ser.\n\n\"Ni\u00f1o insolente...\"\n\n\u2014He entrenado.\n\nNo con todo el denuedo posible, hab\u00eda que reconocerlo. Cuando hab\u00eda un estafermo o unas anillas a su disposici\u00f3n, los aprovechaba, y a veces le ordenaba a Egg que se subiera a un \u00e1rbol y colgara un escudo o una duela de barril bajo una rama de altura conveniente.\n\n\u2014Eres mejor con la espada que con la lanza \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Con el hacha o la maza existen pocos que compitan con tu fuerza.\n\nEra bastante cierto para que Dunk se molestara.\n\n\u2014A espada o maza no hay torneo \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3, mientras empezaban la carga el hijo de Bola de Fuego y ser Argrave el Desafiante\u2014. Ve por mi escudo.\n\nEgg hizo una mueca y fue a buscarlo.\n\nAl fondo del patio, la lanza de ser Argrave choc\u00f3 con el escudo de ser Glendon y se desvi\u00f3, dejando una muesca en el cometa. En cambio el borne de Ball golpe\u00f3 con tal fuerza el centro del peto de su rival, que revent\u00f3 la cincha de la silla de montar y ambos, caballero y silla, rodaron por el polvo. Dunk qued\u00f3 impresionado, a su pesar. \"Este muchacho justa casi tan bien como habla.\" Se pregunt\u00f3 si as\u00ed dejar\u00edan de re\u00edrse de \u00e9l.\n\nSon\u00f3 una trompeta, con bastante fuerza para estremecerlo. Una vez m\u00e1s subi\u00f3 el heraldo a la tribuna.\n\n\u2014Ser Joffrey de la casa Caswell, se\u00f1or de Puenteamargo y defensor de los Vados. Ser Kyle, el Gato del P\u00e1ramo Brumoso. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\nLa armadura de ser Kyle era de calidad, pero estaba vieja y gastada, con muchas muescas y ara\u00f1azos.\n\n\u2014La Madre ha sido misericordiosa conmigo, ser Duncan \u2014les dijo a Dunk y Egg de camino al palenque\u2014. Me enfrentan a lord Caswell, que es justo al que vine a ver.\n\nSi esa ma\u00f1ana se encontraba en el campo alguien peor que Dunk, s\u00f3lo pod\u00eda ser lord Caswell, que en el banquete hab\u00eda bebido hasta perder el conocimiento.\n\n\u2014Parece mentira que despu\u00e9s de lo de anoche vaya sentado en el caballo \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. La victoria es suya, ser.\n\n\u2014No, no \u2014ser Kyle sonri\u00f3 con suavidad\u2014. El gato que aspira a un cuenco de nata debe saber cu\u00e1ndo ronronear y cu\u00e1ndo ense\u00f1ar las garras, ser Duncan. Por poco que roce mi escudo la lanza de su se\u00f1or\u00eda, caer\u00e9 rodando al suelo. Despu\u00e9s, cuando le lleve mi caballo y mi armadura, lo felicitar\u00e9 por c\u00f3mo ha aumentado su destreza desde que le hice su primera espada. As\u00ed se acordar\u00e1 de m\u00ed, y antes de que se acabe el d\u00eda volver\u00e9 a ser de Caswell, un caballero de Puenteamargo.\n\n\"Eso no tiene nada de honroso\", estuvo a punto de decir Dunk, pero se mordi\u00f3 la lengua. Ser Kyle no era el primer caballero errante que trocar\u00eda su honor por el calor del hogar.\n\n\u2014Como diga \u2014murmur\u00f3\u2014. Que tenga suerte. O no, si as\u00ed lo prefiere.\n\nLord Joffrey Caswell era un joven enclenque de veinte a\u00f1os, aunque hab\u00eda que reconocer que impresionaba m\u00e1s con armadura que de bruces en un charco de vino, como la noche anterior. En su escudo hab\u00eda un centauro amarillo a punto de disparar un arco largo. El mismo centauro adornaba la gualdrapa de seda blanca de su caballo y brillaba, hecho de oro amarillo, en lo alto de su yelmo. \"Deber\u00eda montar mejor, teniendo en cuenta que su blas\u00f3n es un centauro.\" Dunk no sab\u00eda si ser Kyle manejaba bien o mal la lanza, pero tal como estaba sentado lord Caswell a lomos de su caballo parec\u00eda que incluso una simple tos lo derribar\u00eda. \"Al Gato s\u00f3lo le har\u00eda falta pasar a su lado a gran velocidad.\"\n\nEgg sujet\u00f3 la brida de Trueno mientras Dunk depositaba todo su peso en la silla alta y r\u00edgida y esperaba, sinti\u00e9ndose el centro de muchas miradas. \"Se preguntan si el caballero errante alto vale algo.\" Tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l se lo preguntaba. No tardar\u00eda en averiguarlo.\n\nEl Gato del P\u00e1ramo Brumoso hizo honor a su palabra. La lanza de lord Caswell se bambole\u00f3 por el palenque, mientras que la de ser Kyle apuntaba mal. Ninguno de los dos hizo pasar del trote al galope a su caballo. Aun as\u00ed el Gato cay\u00f3 al suelo cuando la punta de la lanza de ser Joffrey lo alcanz\u00f3 en un hombro por casualidad. \"Yo cre\u00eda que los gatos siempre ten\u00edan la elegancia de caer de pie\", pens\u00f3 Dunk al ver rodar por el polvo al caballero errante. La lanza de lord Caswell qued\u00f3 intacta. Al girar su caballo, la clav\u00f3 varias veces en el aire como si acabara de derribar a Leo Espinalarga o a la Tormenta que R\u00ede. El Gato se quit\u00f3 el yelmo y sali\u00f3 en persecuci\u00f3n de su caballo.\n\n\u2014Mi escudo \u2014le dijo Dunk a Egg.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o se lo levant\u00f3. Dunk pas\u00f3 el brazo izquierdo por la correa y cerr\u00f3 el pu\u00f1o alrededor del asa. El peso del escudo cometa lo tranquiliz\u00f3, aunque su longitud dificultaba su manejo y la visi\u00f3n del ahorcado le produjo una vez m\u00e1s cierta inquietud. \"Es un blas\u00f3n de mal ag\u00fcero.\" Decidi\u00f3 repintar el escudo lo antes posible. \"Que el Guerrero me conceda un buen galope y una r\u00e1pida victoria\", rez\u00f3 mientras el heraldo de ser Butterwell trepaba una vez m\u00e1s por los escalones.\n\n\u2014Ser Uthor Underleaf \u2014reson\u00f3 su voz\u2014. El caballero de la Horca. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\n\u2014Ten cuidado, ser \u2014le advirti\u00f3 Egg al tenderle una lanza de torneo, un asta de madera de casi diez codos que se iba adelgazando hasta acabar en una punta redondeada de hierro en forma de pu\u00f1o\u2014. Los otros escuderos dicen que ser Uthor monta bien. Y es r\u00e1pido.\n\n\u2014\u00bfR\u00e1pido? \u2014dijo Dunk con desprecio\u2014. Lleva un caracol en el escudo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tan r\u00e1pido puede ser?\n\nHinc\u00f3 los talones en los flancos de Trueno y, con la lanza en alto, hizo que el caballo avanzara con lentitud. \"Una victoria y no habr\u00e9 perdido nada. Dos me situar\u00e1n muy por delante. Con esta compa\u00f1\u00eda dos no es demasiado esperar.\" Al menos hab\u00eda tenido suerte en el sorteo. Podr\u00eda haberle tocado el Viejo Buey o ser Kirby Pimm, o alg\u00fan otro h\u00e9roe de la zona. Se pregunt\u00f3 si el maestro de justas enfrentaba adrede a los caballeros errantes entre s\u00ed para que ning\u00fan joven se\u00f1or tuviera que sufrir la ignominia de caer en la primera ronda ante alguno de ellos. \"Da igual. Paso a paso, rival por rival, como dec\u00eda siempre el viejo. Ahora en el \u00fanico que debo pensar es en ser Uthor.\"\n\nSe reunieron al pie de la tribuna donde estaban lord y lady Butterwell, sentados en cojines a la sombra de la muralla del castillo. Junto a ellos se encontraba lord Frey, columpiando en una rodilla al mocoso de su hijo. Una hilera de criadas con abanicos no imped\u00eda que lord Butterwell tuviera manchas bajo de los brazos en su t\u00fanica de damasco ni su se\u00f1ora el pelo lacio de sudor. Se le ve\u00eda acalorada, aburrida e inc\u00f3moda. No obstante, al ver a Dunk irgui\u00f3 el pecho de tal modo que \u00e9l se sonroj\u00f3 por debajo del yelmo. Inclin\u00f3 la lanza hacia ella y su se\u00f1or esposo. Lo mismo hizo ser Uthor. Butterwell les dese\u00f3 una buena justa. Su mujer sac\u00f3 la lengua.\n\nHab\u00eda llegado la hora. Dunk volvi\u00f3 al trote al extremo sur del palenque. A ochenta metros su rival tambi\u00e9n tomaba posiciones. Su corcel gris era menor que Trueno, pero tambi\u00e9n m\u00e1s joven y brioso. Ser Uthor llevaba la armadura esmaltada de verde y una cota plateada. De su bacinete redondeado colgaban tiras de seda verdes y grises, y su escudo verde ostentaba un caracol plateado. \"Una buena armadura y un buen caballo equivalen a un buen rescate si lo derribo.\"\n\nSon\u00f3 una trompeta.\n\nTrueno empez\u00f3 a trotar despacio. Dunk desplaz\u00f3 su lanza hacia la izquierda y la inclin\u00f3 hacia abajo, cruzada sobre la cabeza del caballo y la barrera de madera que lo separaba de su contrincante. Su escudo le proteg\u00eda la parte izquierda del cuerpo. Se encorv\u00f3 y tens\u00f3 las piernas mientras Trueno recorr\u00eda el palenque. \"Somos uno solo. Hombre, caballo y lanza formamos un solo animal de sangre, madera y hierro.\"\n\nSer Uthor cargaba a gran velocidad, levantando nubes de polvo con los cascos de su corcel gris. A cuarenta varas de distancia Dunk espole\u00f3 a Trueno para que galopara y apunt\u00f3 directamente hacia el caracol plateado con la punta de su lanza. El duro sol, el polvo, el calor, el castillo, lord Butterwell y su esposa, el Violinista y ser Maynard, los caballeros, los escuderos, los mozos de cuadra, el pueblo llano... Todo desapareci\u00f3. S\u00f3lo quedaba el contrincante. Otro golpe de espuelas. Trueno ech\u00f3 a correr. El caracol se aproximaba a gran velocidad, creciendo a cada paso de las largas patas del caballo gris... pero delante estaba la lanza de ser Uthor, con su pu\u00f1o de hierro. \"Mi escudo es fuerte. Mi escudo absorber\u00e1 el impacto. S\u00f3lo importa el caracol. Si acierto en el caracol, la justa ser\u00e1 m\u00eda.\"\n\nCuando quedaban diez varas entre ambos, ser Uthor levant\u00f3 la punta de su lanza.\n\nUn chasquido reson\u00f3 en los o\u00eddos de Dunk en el momento del impacto. Lo sinti\u00f3 en el brazo y el hombro, pero no lleg\u00f3 a ver el golpe. El pu\u00f1o de hierro de Uthor lo alcanz\u00f3 justo entre los ojos con toda la fuerza del hombre y el caballo que iban detr\u00e1s.\n\nDunk se despert\u00f3 de espaldas, mirando los arcos de una b\u00f3veda de ca\u00f1\u00f3n. Al principio no supo d\u00f3nde estaba ni c\u00f3mo hab\u00eda llegado all\u00ed. En su cabeza resonaban voces y pasaban rostros: el viejo ser Arlan, Tanselle la Giganta, Dennis del Escudo Pardo, la Viuda Escarlata, Baelor Rompelanzas, Aerion el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante y la triste y loca lady Vaith. De golpe y sopet\u00f3n se acord\u00f3 de la justa: el calor, el caracol, el pu\u00f1o de hierro acerc\u00e1ndose a su cara... Gimi\u00f3 y se apoy\u00f3 en un hombro, movimiento que hizo que su cr\u00e1neo se convirtiera en una especie de monstruoso tambor de guerra.\n\nAl menos parec\u00eda que los dos ojos le respond\u00edan. Tampoco se palpaba ning\u00fan agujero en la cabeza, lo cual era una suerte. Vio que estaba en una especie de bodega con barricas de vino y de cerveza en todas partes. \"Como sea aqu\u00ed dentro se est\u00e1 fresco\", pens\u00f3, \"y hay bebida a la mano\". La boca le sab\u00eda a sangre. Tuvo una punzada de miedo. Si se hab\u00eda cortado la lengua con los dientes se habr\u00eda quedado mudo, adem\u00e1s de ser un necio.\n\n\u2014Buenos d\u00edas \u2014grazn\u00f3 s\u00f3lo para o\u00edr su voz.\n\nLas palabras rebotaron en la b\u00f3veda. Trat\u00f3 de levantarse, pero el esfuerzo hizo que la bodega empezara a dar vueltas.\n\n\u2014Despacio, despacio \u2014dijo a su lado una voz tr\u00e9mula.\n\nJunto a la cama apareci\u00f3 un anciano encorvado, con unas vestiduras tan grises como su largo pelo. Llevaba al cuello una cadena de maestre, hecha de muchos metales. Su rostro provecto estaba lleno de arrugas, sobre todo a ambos lados de su gran nariz de pico.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9dese quieto y deje que le revise los ojos.\n\nPrimero escudri\u00f1\u00f3 el ojo izquierdo de Dunk y despu\u00e9s el derecho, abri\u00e9ndolos bien con el pulgar y el \u00edndice.\n\n\u2014Me duele la cabeza.\n\nEl maestre resopl\u00f3 por la nariz.\n\n\u2014Agradezca que a\u00fan la tiene sobre los hombros, ser. Tome esto, que tal vez lo ayude. Beba.\n\nDunk hizo el esfuerzo de no dejar ni una gota de aquella horrible p\u00f3cima, que logr\u00f3 no escupir.\n\n\u2014El torneo \u2014dijo al pasarse el dorso de la mano por la boca\u2014. D\u00edgame, \u00bfqu\u00e9 pas\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Las mismas tonter\u00edas de siempre en estas ri\u00f1as. Hombres que se derriban a palos de sus caballos. El sobrino de lord Smallwood se rompi\u00f3 la mu\u00f1eca y a ser Eden Risley su caballo le aplast\u00f3 una pierna, pero de momento nadie ha muerto. Aunque en su caso ten\u00eda mis temores, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe descabalgaron?\n\nA\u00fan se notaba la cabeza como llena de lana. De lo contrario no habr\u00eda hecho una pregunta tan tonta. Se arrepinti\u00f3 nada m\u00e1s decirlo.\n\n\u2014Con una ca\u00edda que sacudi\u00f3 hasta las m\u00e1s altas almenas. Los que hab\u00edan apostado sus buenas monedas por usted quedaron consternados, y su escudero estaba fuera de s\u00ed. Si no lo hubiera echado seguir\u00eda aqu\u00ed, a su lado. No quiero ni\u00f1os que me estorben. Le record\u00e9 su deber.\n\nDunk se dio cuenta de que tambi\u00e9n a \u00e9l deb\u00edan record\u00e1rselo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1l deber?\n\n\u2014Su montura, ser. Sus armas y su armadura.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk al acordarse.\n\nEl ni\u00f1o era buen escudero. Sab\u00eda cu\u00e1l era su obligaci\u00f3n. \"Perd\u00ed la espada del viejo y la armadura que me forj\u00f3 Pate, el armero.\"\n\n\u2014Otro que preguntaba por usted era su amigo el del viol\u00edn. Me pidi\u00f3 que lo cuidara lo mejor posible. A \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n lo ech\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1nto tiempo hace que me est\u00e1 cuidando?\n\nDunk flexion\u00f3 los dedos de la mano con que empu\u00f1aba la espada. Por lo visto a\u00fan funcionaban todos. \"S\u00f3lo me hice da\u00f1o en la cabeza, y ya dec\u00eda ser Arlan que de todos modos no la usaba.\"\n\n\u2014Seg\u00fan el reloj de sol, cuatro horas.\n\nCuatro horas no era tan grave. Hab\u00eda o\u00eddo hablar de un caballero que hab\u00eda sufrido un golpe tan duro que hab\u00eda dormido cuarenta a\u00f1os y al despertar se hab\u00eda encontrado viejo y marchito.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSabe si ser Uthor gan\u00f3 su segunda justa?\n\nQuiz\u00e1 el vencedor del torneo fuera el Caracol. Si Dunk pod\u00eda decirse que hab\u00eda perdido contra el mejor caballero en liza, tal vez la derrota le escociera menos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQue si gan\u00f3? \u00a1Y c\u00f3mo! Contra ser Addam Frey, primo de la novia y muy prometedor con la lanza. Al caer ser Addam, mi se\u00f1ora se desmay\u00f3 y debieron llevarla a sus aposentos.\n\nDunk hizo el esfuerzo de ponerse en pie. Todo le daba vueltas, pero el maestre lo ayud\u00f3 a no perder el equilibrio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 mi ropa? Debo irme. Debo... Tengo que...\n\n\u2014Si no se acuerda significa que no es tan urgente \u2014el maestre hizo un gesto irritado\u2014. Le aconsejo que no coma nada muy graso ni tome bebidas fuertes, y que evite m\u00e1s golpes entre los ojos... aunque hace tiempo aprend\u00ed que los caballeros no atienden a la sensatez. M\u00e1rchese, que tengo m\u00e1s necios que atender.\n\nAl salir vio un halc\u00f3n que daba vueltas en lo alto del resplandeciente cielo azul y sinti\u00f3 envidia. Al este se juntaban algunas nubes, negras como el \u00e1nimo de Dunk. Encontr\u00f3 el camino de regreso al palenque, mientras el sol le golpeaba la cabeza como un martillo en un yunque. Tuvo la impresi\u00f3n de que el suelo se mov\u00eda. Tambi\u00e9n pod\u00eda ser \u00e9l quien se tambaleara. Al subir de la bodega hab\u00eda estado a punto de tropezar dos veces con los escalones. \"Deb\u00ed hacerle caso a Egg.\"\n\nCruz\u00f3 con lentitud el patio exterior, bordeando la multitud. El orondo lord Alyn Cockshaw abandonaba el campo entre dos escuderos, \u00faltima y coja conquista del joven Glendon Ball. Otro escudero llevaba su yelmo, rotos ya los orgullosos tres penachos.\n\n\u2014Ser John el Violinista \u2014proclam\u00f3 el heraldo\u2014. Ser Franklyn de la casa Frey, un caballero juramentado de Los Gemelos al se\u00f1or del Cruce. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\nDunk no pudo sino ver c\u00f3mo entraba al trote en el palenque el gran corcel negro del Violinista, entre un remolino de seda azul y espadas y violines dorados. Tambi\u00e9n su peto estaba esmaltado de azul, al igual que sus rodilleras, codales, grebas y gola. Debajo, la malla era dorada. Ser Franklyn iba montado en un caballo pinto de larga crin plateada, a juego con el color gris de las sedas de su due\u00f1o, y con el plata de su armadura. Tanto el escudo como la sobreveste y la gualdrapa del caballo llevaban las torres gemelas de Frey. Se embistieron varias veces. Dunk lo presenci\u00f3 sin verlo. \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo\", se reprendi\u00f3. \"Ten\u00eda un caracol en el escudo. \u00bfC\u00f3mo se puede perder contra un hombre que lleva un caracol en el escudo?\"\n\nTodo eran aplausos alrededor. Al levantar la vista vio que Franklyn Frey era derribado. El Violinista hab\u00eda desmontado para ayudar a levantarse a su rival ca\u00eddo. \"Un paso m\u00e1s hacia su huevo de drag\u00f3n\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"\u00bfY d\u00f3nde estoy yo?\"\n\nAl acercarse a la poterna se encontr\u00f3 con el grupo de enanos de la fiesta, que se dispon\u00eda a marcharse. Estaban enganchando ponis a su cerdo de madera con ruedas y a otro carromato de dise\u00f1o m\u00e1s convencional. Vio que eran seis, a cual m\u00e1s peque\u00f1o y mal formado. Hab\u00eda unos cuantos que tal vez fueran ni\u00f1os, aunque todos eran tan bajos que no resultaba f\u00e1cil verlo. A la luz del d\u00eda, con pantalones de cuero de caballo y capas de tela basta con capuchas, parec\u00edan menos joviales que con su ropa de colores.\n\n\u2014Buenos d\u00edas \u2014dijo Dunk por buena educaci\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfSe preparan a emprender el camino? Al este hay nubes. Podr\u00eda ser se\u00f1al de lluvia.\n\nLa \u00fanica respuesta que obtuvo fue una mirada hostil del m\u00e1s feo de los enanos. \"\u00bfSer\u00e1 el que le quit\u00e9 de encima anoche a lady Butterwell?\" De cerca el hombrecillo ol\u00eda como un retrete. Una vaharada bast\u00f3 para que Dunk acelerara el paso.\n\nTuvo la sensaci\u00f3n de que tardaba tanto en cruzar la Lecher\u00eda como en atravesar con Egg las arenas de Dorne. Iba siguiendo la muralla. De vez en cuando se apoyaba en ella. Cada vez que giraba la cabeza todo le daba vueltas. Bebida, pens\u00f3. \"Necesito beber agua o me caer\u00e9.\"\n\nSe cruz\u00f3 con un mozo de cuadra que le explic\u00f3 d\u00f3nde estaba el pozo m\u00e1s cercano. All\u00ed descubri\u00f3 a Kyle el Gato hablando en voz baja con Maynard Plumm. Ser Kyle estaba abatido, ca\u00eddo de hombros. No obstante, al ver a Dunk se anim\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer Duncan? Nos hab\u00edan dicho que estaba muerto o moribundo.\n\nDunk se frot\u00f3 las sienes.\n\n\u2014Eso me gustar\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Conozco bien la sensaci\u00f3n \u2014ser Kyle suspir\u00f3\u2014. Lord Caswell no me reconoci\u00f3. Cuando le expliqu\u00e9 que le tall\u00e9 su primera espada, se me qued\u00f3 mirando como si no estuviera en mi sano juicio. Dijo que en Puenteamargo no hay sitio para caballeros tan d\u00e9biles como demostr\u00e9 ser yo \u2014el Gato se rio con amargura\u2014. Aun as\u00ed se qued\u00f3 mis armas y mi armadura. Tambi\u00e9n mi caballo. \u00bfAhora qu\u00e9 har\u00e9?\n\nDunk no supo qu\u00e9 contestar. Hasta un jinete libre necesitaba un caballo para montar. Los mercenarios requer\u00edan una espada.\n\n\u2014Ya encontrar\u00e1 otro caballo \u2014dijo al levantar el cubo\u2014. En los Siete Reinos hay muchos. Encontrar\u00e1 alg\u00fan otro se\u00f1or que le d\u00e9 armas.\n\nAhuec\u00f3 las manos, se las llen\u00f3 de agua y bebi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Alg\u00fan otro se\u00f1or. Claro. \u00bfConoce a alguno? Yo no soy tan joven y fuerte como usted. Tampoco tan alto. Para los altos siempre hay demanda. A lord Butterwell, sin ir m\u00e1s lejos, le gusta que sus caballeros sean as\u00ed. F\u00edjese en Tom Heddle. \u00bfLo ha visto justar? Derrib\u00f3 a todos sus rivales. Claro que el hijo de Bola de Fuego tambi\u00e9n. Y el Violinista. Ojal\u00e1 que me hubiera derribado \u00e9l. No quiere rescates. Dice que lo \u00fanico que busca es el huevo de drag\u00f3n... aparte de la amistad de sus rivales ca\u00eddos. Es un dechado de caballer\u00eda.\n\nMaynard Plumm se rio.\n\n\u2014De armon\u00eda, querr\u00e1 decir. Est\u00e1 tejiendo algo en verdad grande con sus cuerdas de viol\u00edn y todos har\u00edamos bien en irnos antes de que estalle la tormenta.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo quiere rescates? \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Noble gesto.\n\n\u2014Es f\u00e1cil mostrar gestos nobles con la bolsa llena de oro \u2014dijo ser Maynard\u2014. He aqu\u00ed una ense\u00f1anza para usted, si es bastante sensato para seguirla, ser Duncan. A\u00fan no es demasiado tarde para que se vaya.\n\n\u2014\u00bfIrme? \u00bfA d\u00f3nde?\n\nSer Maynard se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014A cualquier sitio. Invernalia, Refugio Estival, Asshai de la Sombra... Cualquier lugar es bueno menos \u00e9ste. Tome su caballo y armadura y salga por la poterna sin ser visto. No se le echar\u00e1 de menos. El Caracol piensa en su siguiente justa y los dem\u00e1s s\u00f3lo tienen ojos para el torneo.\n\nPor un breve instante Dunk estuvo tentado de hacerlo. Mientras tuviera armas y caballo, en cierto modo seguir\u00eda siendo un caballero, mientras que sin ninguna de ambas cosas era un simple mendigo. \"Un mendigo alto, pero un mendigo.\" Ahora, sin embargo, sus armas y su armadura pertenec\u00edan a ser Uthor, al igual que Trueno. \"Mejor mendigo que ladr\u00f3n.\" En el Lecho de Pulgas hab\u00eda sido ambas cosas, durante los tiempos en que corri\u00f3 con Hur\u00f3n, Rafe y Morcilla, pero el viejo lo hab\u00eda salvado de esa vida. Sab\u00eda la opini\u00f3n que habr\u00eda merecido la propuesta de Plumm a Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda. Muerto ser Arlan, Dunk la expres\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Hasta un caballero errante tiene su honor.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 prefiere, tener intacto su honor y morir, o tenerlo mancillado y vivir? No, ah\u00f3rreme la respuesta, que ya me la imagino. Ll\u00e9vese a su escudero y huya, caballero de la Horca, antes de que su blas\u00f3n se convierta en destino.\n\nDunk se encresp\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 sabe usted de mi destino? \u00bfTuvo un sue\u00f1o como John el Violinista? \u00bfQu\u00e9 sabe de Egg?\n\n\u2014S\u00e9 que a los huevos no les conviene acercarse a las sartenes \u2014dijo Plumm\u2014. Muros Blancos no es lugar seguro para el ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo le fue a usted en su justa, ser? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Pero si no me arriesgu\u00e9 a entrar en liza. Los augurios no eran buenos. \u00bfQui\u00e9n se imagina que pedir\u00e1 el huevo de drag\u00f3n?\n\n\"Yo no\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Eso lo saben los Siete, no yo.\n\n\u2014Intente adivinarlo, ser. Tiene dos ojos.\n\nPens\u00f3 un momento.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl Violinista?\n\n\u2014Muy bien. \u00bfLe importar\u00eda explicar su razonamiento?\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo es... una corazonada.\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n lo es en mi caso \u2014dijo Maynard Plumm\u2014: un mal presagio para cualquier hombre o ni\u00f1o que cometa la imprudencia de interponerse en el camino de nuestro Violinista.\n\nEgg estaba fuera de la tienda, cepillando el pelaje de Trueno, con la mirada perdida.\n\n\"Le sent\u00f3 muy mal que me derribaran.\"\n\n\u2014Ya est\u00e1 bien \u2014le dijo Dunk en voz alta\u2014. Si sigues dejar\u00e1s a Trueno tan calvo como t\u00fa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSer? \u2014Egg solt\u00f3 el cepillo\u2014. \u00a1Sab\u00eda que no ning\u00fan rid\u00edculo caracol podr\u00eda matarte, ser!\n\nLe ech\u00f3 los brazos al cuello.\n\nDunk recogi\u00f3 del suelo el sombrero blando de paja del muchacho y lo us\u00f3 para cubrirse la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Me dijo el maestre que te llevaste mi armadura.\n\nEgg le arrebat\u00f3 el sombrero, indignado.\n\n\u2014Limpi\u00e9 tu cota de malla y pul\u00ed tus grebas, tu gola y tu peto, ser, pero el yelmo est\u00e1 partido y mellado por el golpe de la punta de la lanza de ser Uthor. Tendr\u00e1 que arreglarlo un armero.\n\n\u2014Que mande arreglarlo ser Uthor, pues ahora es suyo \u2014\"Sin caballo, espada ni armadura. Quiz\u00e1 los enanos me dejen unirme a su compa\u00f1\u00eda. Ser\u00eda un espect\u00e1culo gracioso: seis enanos golpeando a un gigante con vejigas de cerdo\"\u2014. Tambi\u00e9n es suyo Trueno. Ven, se los llevaremos y le desearemos suerte en sus pr\u00f3ximas lizas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAhora, ser? \u00bfNo piensas pagar el rescate de Trueno?\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3n qu\u00e9, muchacho? \u00bfCon piedras y caca de oveja?\n\n\u2014Lo he estado pensando, ser. Si pidieras un pr\u00e9stamo...\n\nDunk lo interrumpi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Tanto dinero no me lo dar\u00eda nadie, Egg. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 iban a prest\u00e1rmelo? \u00bfQu\u00e9 soy yo sino un gran necio que se hac\u00eda llamar caballero hasta que estuvo a punto de atravesarle la cabeza un caracol con un palo?\n\n\u2014Bueno \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, podr\u00edas quedarte con Lluvia. Yo volver\u00e9 a montar en Maestre. Iremos a Refugio Estival. Puedes entrar al servicio de mi padre. Sus establos est\u00e1n llenos de caballos. Tendr\u00edas un corcel y tambi\u00e9n un palafr\u00e9n.\n\nLa intenci\u00f3n de Egg era buena, pero Dunk no pod\u00eda volver a Refugio Estival con la cola entre las piernas y menos sin plata, derrotado, buscando a qui\u00e9n servir sin una triste espada.\n\n\u2014Muchacho \u2014dijo\u2014, eres muy bueno, pero no quiero las migajas de la mesa de tu se\u00f1or padre ni las de sus establos. Tal vez haya llegado la hora de que nos separemos.\n\nDunk siempre pod\u00eda ingresar en la Guardia de la Ciudad de Lannisport o Antigua, donde los hombres altos eran bien recibidos. \"Me he dado golpes en la coronilla con todas las vigas de todas las posadas entre Lannisport y Desembarco del Rey. Tal vez vaya siendo hora de que mi estatura me haga ganar unas monedas y no s\u00f3lo unos chichones.\" Sin embargo, los guardias carec\u00edan de escuderos.\n\n\u2014Ya te ense\u00f1\u00e9 todo lo que pod\u00eda, que no era mucho. Te ir\u00e1 mejor si un verdadero maestro de armas supervisa tu formaci\u00f3n, alg\u00fan viejo y temible caballero que sepa de qu\u00e9 lado se empu\u00f1an las lanzas.\n\n\u2014Yo no quiero ning\u00fan maestro de armas \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Te quiero a ti. \u00bfY si uso mi...?\n\n\u2014No, de eso nada. Ni hablar. Ve a recoger mis armas, que se las presentaremos a ser Uthor junto con mi enhorabuena. Aplazar lo dif\u00edcil s\u00f3lo sirve para hacerlo m\u00e1s dif\u00edcil.\n\nEgg lanz\u00f3 patadas contra el suelo, tan deca\u00eddo en su expresi\u00f3n como el gran sombrero de paja.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, se\u00f1or, lo que digas.\n\nVista por fuera, la tienda de ser Uthor era muy sencilla: un gran cubo de lona parda clavada al suelo con estacas y cuerdas de c\u00e1\u00f1amo. El poste central estaba adornado con un caracol plateado, sobre un largo pend\u00f3n gris, pero no hab\u00eda ninguna otra decoraci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa espera aqu\u00ed \u2014le dijo Dunk a Egg. El ni\u00f1o sujetaba las riendas de Trueno. El gran corcel marr\u00f3n iba cargado con las armas y la armadura de Dunk, incluido el nuevo escudo viejo. \"El caballero de la Horca. Qu\u00e9 caballero misterioso m\u00e1s pobre he resultado ser\"\u2014. No tardar\u00e9 mucho.\n\nAgach\u00f3 la cabeza y se inclin\u00f3 para pasar por la abertura.\n\nEl exterior de la tienda no lo hab\u00eda preparado para las comodidades que encontr\u00f3 en el interior. Bajo sus pies, el suelo estaba cubierto con alfombras trenzadas de Myr, muy coloridas. Hab\u00eda una mesa de caballete rica en adornos, con sillas de campamento alrededor. El lecho de plumas estaba cubierto de blandos cojines, y en un brasero de hierro ard\u00eda incienso perfumado.\n\nSentado a la mesa, frente a un mont\u00f3n de oro y plata y un frasco de vino, ser Uthor contaba monedas con su escudero, un individuo desgarbado que andar\u00eda cerca de la edad de Dunk. De vez en cuando el Caracol mord\u00eda o apartaba una moneda.\n\n\u2014A\u00fan tengo mucho que ense\u00f1arte, Will \u2014lo oy\u00f3 decir Dunk\u2014. Esta moneda est\u00e1 cortada y esta otra, afeitada. \u00bfY \u00e9sta? \u2014hizo bailar una pieza de oro entre los dedos\u2014. F\u00edjate en las monedas antes de aceptarlas. A ver, dime qu\u00e9 ves.\n\nEl drag\u00f3n gir\u00f3 en el aire. Will intent\u00f3 atraparlo, pero le rebot\u00f3 en los dedos y cay\u00f3 al suelo. Tuvo que arrodillarse para buscarlo. Al encontrarlo lo gir\u00f3 dos veces antes de contestar.\n\n\u2014\u00c9sta es buena, mi se\u00f1or. En un lado hay un drag\u00f3n y en la otra un rey...\n\nUnderleaf ech\u00f3 un vistazo a Dunk.\n\n\u2014El Ahorcado. Me alegro de verlo caminar, ser. Tem\u00eda haberlo matado. \u00bfTendr\u00eda la bondad de instruir a mi escudero sobre la naturaleza de los dragones? Will, dale la moneda a ser Duncan.\n\nDunk no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que tomarla. \"Me tir\u00f3 del caballo. \u00bfEs necesario que tambi\u00e9n me haga hacer payasadas?\" Ce\u00f1udo, sopes\u00f3 la moneda en la palma de la mano. Despu\u00e9s examin\u00f3 ambos lados y la prob\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Es oro, sin cortar ni afeitar. Parece que pesa lo que debe pesar. Yo tambi\u00e9n la habr\u00eda aceptado, mi se\u00f1or. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tiene de malo?\n\n\u2014El rey.\n\nDunk se fij\u00f3. La efigie de la moneda era joven, apuesta y sin barba. El rey Aerys aparec\u00eda con barba en sus monedas, al igual que el rey Aegon. El rey Daeron, que hab\u00eda ocupado el trono entre ambos, no llevaba barba, pero aquel rostro no era el suyo. No parec\u00eda una moneda bastante gastada para ser anterior a Aegon el Indigno. Mir\u00f3 con intensidad la palabra debajo de la efigie. \"Seis letras.\" Parec\u00edan las mismas que hab\u00eda visto en otros dragones. Formaban el nombre DAERON. Dunk, no obstante, conoc\u00eda el rostro de Daeron el Bueno y no era aqu\u00e9l. Al volver a mirarlo vio algo raro en la forma de la cuarta letra. No era...\n\n\u2014Daemon \u2014dijo a bocajarro\u2014. Se lee Daemon, pero nunca ha habido un rey que se llamara Daemon, s\u00f3lo...\n\n\u2014...el Pretendiente. Daemon Fuegoscuro acu\u00f1\u00f3 moneda propia durante la rebeli\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Bueno, pero es oro \u2014aleg\u00f3 Will\u2014, as\u00ed que deber\u00eda servir igual que los otros dragones, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nEl Caracol le dio un golpe en un lado de la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Cretino. Es oro, s\u00ed: oro de rebeldes. Oro de traidores. Es traici\u00f3n poseer estas monedas, y doble traici\u00f3n entreg\u00e1rselas a alguien. Tendr\u00e9 que fundirlas \u2014volvi\u00f3 a golpear a su escudero\u2014. Fuera de mi vista, que este buen caballero y yo necesitamos hablar.\n\nWill sali\u00f3 de la tienda sin perder ni un momento.\n\n\u2014Si\u00e9ntese \u2014dijo ser Uthor con educaci\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfQuiere un poco de vino?\n\nDentro de su propia tienda Underleaf parec\u00eda otra persona que en el banquete. \"Los caracoles se esconden dentro de sus conchas\", record\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014No, gracias.\n\nVolvi\u00f3 a darle a ser Uthor la moneda de oro. \"Oro de traidores. Oro de Fuegoscuro. Egg dijo que era un torneo de traidores, pero yo no le prest\u00e9 atenci\u00f3n.\" Le deb\u00eda disculpas al muchacho.\n\n\u2014Media copa \u2014insisti\u00f3 Underleaf\u2014. Tal como lo oigo, la necesita \u2014llen\u00f3 dos copas de vino y le dio una a Dunk. Sin armadura parec\u00eda m\u00e1s un mercader que un caballero\u2014. Supongo que viene por el rescate.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014Dunk acept\u00f3 el vino. Quiz\u00e1 lo ayudara a no sentir tanto dolor de cabeza\u2014. Traje mi caballo, mis armas y mi armadura. Ac\u00e9ptelos junto con mi enhorabuena.\n\n\u2014Ahora es cuando le digo que combati\u00f3 con galanter\u00eda.\n\nDunk se pregunt\u00f3 si \"galanter\u00eda\" era una manera caballeresca de decir \"torpeza\".\n\n\u2014Muy amable de su parte, pero...\n\n\u2014Creo que no me oy\u00f3 bien, ser. \u00bfMe excedo si le pregunto c\u00f3mo fue armado caballero, ser?\n\n\u2014Me encontr\u00f3 ser Arlan del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda en el Lecho de Pulgas, persiguiendo cerdos. Como su escudero hab\u00eda muerto en el campo de Hierba Roja, necesitaba a alguien que cuidara su caballo y limpiara su cota de malla. Prometi\u00f3 ense\u00f1arme a usar la espada y la lanza, y a montar a caballo, a cambio de que me pusiera a su servicio, y acept\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Bonita historia... aunque en su lugar yo obviar\u00eda la parte de los cerdos. \u00bfY d\u00f3nde est\u00e1 ahora ser Arlan, d\u00edgame?\n\n\u2014Muri\u00f3. Lo enterr\u00e9 yo.\n\n\u2014Comprendo. \u00bfLo llev\u00f3 hasta \u00c1rbol de la Moneda, su hogar?\n\n\u2014No sab\u00eda d\u00f3nde quedaba \u2014Dunk nunca hab\u00eda visto el \u00c1rbol de la Moneda. Ser Arlan casi nunca hablaba de su lugar de origen, del mismo modo que tampoco Dunk sol\u00eda hablar del Lecho de Pulgas\u2014. Lo enterr\u00e9 en una ladera, hacia poniente, para que desde all\u00ed vea la puesta de sol.\n\nLa silla de campamento cruji\u00f3 de modo alarmante bajo su peso. Ser Uthor volvi\u00f3 a su asiento.\n\n\u2014Yo ya tengo armadura y un caballo superior al suyo. \u00bfPara qu\u00e9 querr\u00eda un viejo penco y un saco de placas melladas y malla oxidada?\n\n\u2014La armadura la hizo el armero Pate \u2014dijo Dunk con un toque de rabia\u2014. Egg la ha cuidado bien. En mi malla no hay ni rastro de herrumbre, y el acero es fuerte y de buena calidad.\n\n\u2014Fuerte, pesado \u2014se quej\u00f3 ser Uthor\u2014 y demasiado grande para cualquier persona de estatura normal. Su corpulencia es desusada, Duncan el Alto. En lo que a su caballo se refiere, es demasiado viejo para montarlo y demasiado duro para comerlo.\n\n\u2014Trueno ya no es tan joven como antes \u2014admiti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, y mi armadura es grande, como bien dice, pero podr\u00eda venderla. En Lannisport y Desembarco del Rey hay muchos herreros que se la quitar\u00edan de las manos.\n\n\u2014Por una d\u00e9cima parte de su valor, quiz\u00e1 \u2014dijo ser Uthor\u2014, y s\u00f3lo para fundir el metal. No. Lo que necesito es plata de la buena, no hierro del viejo. La moneda del reino. Bueno, \u00bfdesea recuperar sus armas mediante el pago de un rescate o no?\n\nDunk, ce\u00f1udo, gir\u00f3 entre las manos la copa de vino. Estaba hecha de plata maciza, con una hilera de caracoles de oro incrustada en el borde. Tambi\u00e9n el vino era bueno, que se sub\u00eda a la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Si fuera por m\u00ed le pagar\u00eda, s\u00ed, y con mucho gusto, pero...\n\n\u2014...no tiene ni dos venados para que se embistan.\n\n\u2014Si aceptara... prestarme de nuevo mi caballo y mi armadura, podr\u00eda pagar el rescate m\u00e1s tarde. En cuanto haya encontrado las monedas.\n\nEl Caracol parec\u00eda divertido.\n\n\u2014Y d\u00edgame, \u00bfd\u00f3nde las encontrar\u00eda?\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda entrar al servicio de alg\u00fan se\u00f1or, o... \u2014las palabras se le resist\u00edan y lo hac\u00edan sentir como un mendigo\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 tarde unos a\u00f1os, pero le pagar\u00eda. Lo juro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor su honor de caballero?\n\nDunk se ruboriz\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Podr\u00eda dejar mi marca en un pergamino.\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn rasgu\u00f1o de caballero errante en un trozo de papel? \u2014ser Uthor puso los ojos en blanco\u2014. A lo sumo me servir\u00eda para limpiarme el culo.\n\n\u2014Usted tambi\u00e9n es un caballero errante.\n\n\u2014Me est\u00e1 insultando. Yo cabalgo a donde quiero y no sirvo a nadie m\u00e1s que a m\u00ed mismo, es cierto... pero han pasado muchos a\u00f1os desde la \u00faltima vez que dorm\u00ed en un seto. Me parecen mucho m\u00e1s c\u00f3modas las posadas. Soy un caballero de torneos, acaso el mejor que conocer\u00e1 en su vida.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl mejor? \u2014su arrogancia irrit\u00f3 a Dunk\u2014. Quiz\u00e1 no est\u00e9 de acuerdo la Tormenta que R\u00ede, ser. Ni Leo Espinalarga ni la Bestia de Bracken. En Vado Ceniza nadie habl\u00f3 de caracoles. \u00bfA qu\u00e9 se debe, si tan famoso es ganando torneos?\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe oy\u00f3 decir que los gane? Por ese camino se obtiene renombre, y antes preferir\u00eda yo la viruela al renombre. No, gracias. Ganar\u00e9 mi pr\u00f3xima justa, s\u00ed, pero al final caer\u00e9. Butterwell tiene treinta dragones para el caballero que quede en segundo puesto. A m\u00ed me basta... adem\u00e1s de algunos rescates sustanciosos y las ganancias de mis apuestas \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 con un gesto las monta\u00f1as de venados de plata y de dragones de oro de la mesa\u2014. Parece un hombre sano y muy grande. El tama\u00f1o siempre impresiona a los necios, aunque en las justas carezca de importancia. Will consigui\u00f3 tres contra uno a su favor. El tonto de lord Shawney pag\u00f3 cinco contra uno \u2014tom\u00f3 un venado de plata y lo hizo girar con un chasquido de sus largos dedos\u2014. El siguiente en caer ser\u00e1 el Viejo Buey. Despu\u00e9s el caballero de Los Conejos, si sobrevive hasta entonces. En vista de que as\u00ed son los sentimientos, deber\u00eda conseguir buenas apuestas a favor de ambos. El pueblo llano quiere mucho a sus h\u00e9roes de aldea.\n\n\u2014Ser Glendon tiene sangre de h\u00e9roes \u2014solt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Eso espero! La sangre de h\u00e9roe deber\u00eda valer dos contra uno. La de puta no consigue tan buenas apuestas. Ser Glendon habla siempre que puede de su supuesto padre, pero \u00bfse ha fijado en que nunca menciona a su madre? Y con raz\u00f3n. Es hijo de una cantinera. Su nombre era Jenny, y hasta el campo de Hierba Roja la llamaban Jenny a Penique. La noche anterior a la batalla se foll\u00f3 a tantos hombres que a partir de entonces la llamaron Jenny Hierba Roja. No dudo que Bola de Fuego la poseyera, pero fue uno entre cien. Mucho da por supuesto nuestro amigo Glendon, me parece a m\u00ed. Ni siquiera es pelirrojo.\n\n\"Sangre de h\u00e9roe\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014\u00c9l dice que es caballero.\n\n\u2014Bueno, eso s\u00ed es verdad. \u00c9l y su hermana pasaron su infancia en un burdel que se llamaba Los Conejos. Al morir Jenny, las otras putas los tomaron a su cargo y le contaron al ni\u00f1o lo que se hab\u00eda inventado su madre de que era hijo de Bola de Fuego. La formaci\u00f3n la recibi\u00f3 de un viejo escudero que viv\u00eda cerca, a cambio de cerveza y co\u00f1o, pero al ser s\u00f3lo escudero y no caballero, no logr\u00f3 armar al peque\u00f1o bastardo. Dio la casualidad de que hace medio a\u00f1o pas\u00f3 por el burdel un grupo de caballeros, y un tal ser Morgan Dunstable se encaprich\u00f3 en plena borrachera con la hermana de ser Glendon. Result\u00f3 que ella a\u00fan era virgen y Dunstable no ten\u00eda con qu\u00e9 pagar su doncellez, as\u00ed que hicieron un trato: ser Morgan arm\u00f3 caballero al hermano de ella, all\u00ed mismo, en Los Conejos, con veinte testigos, y despu\u00e9s la hermanita se lo llev\u00f3 al piso de arriba y se dej\u00f3 desflorar. Listo.\n\nArmar era un derecho de cualquier caballero. En los tiempos de escudero de ser Arlan, Dunk hab\u00eda o\u00eddo an\u00e9cdotas sobre hombres que hab\u00edan comprado su condici\u00f3n de caballeros mediante un favor o una amenaza o una bolsa de monedas de plata, pero nunca con la virginidad de una hermana.\n\n\u2014Eso son cuentos \u2014se oy\u00f3 decir\u2014. No puede ser verdad.\n\n\u2014Me lo dijo Kirby Pimm, que asegura haber sido uno de los testigos de la ceremonia \u2014ser Uthor se encogi\u00f3 de hombros\u2014. Hijo de h\u00e9roe o de puta, o las dos cosas a la vez, da lo mismo: caer\u00e1 al enfrentarse conmigo.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 le toque en suerte otro rival.\n\nSer Uthor arque\u00f3 una ceja.\n\n\u2014A Cosgrave le gusta la plata como al que m\u00e1s. Le prometo que el siguiente que me toque ser\u00e1 el Viejo Buey y luego el muchacho. \u00bfQuiere apostar?\n\n\u2014No me queda nada que apostar \u2014Dunk no supo qu\u00e9 lo aflig\u00eda m\u00e1s: enterarse de que el Caracol estaba sobornando al maestro de justas para conseguir los emparejamientos deseados o comprender que lo hab\u00eda querido a \u00e9l. Se levant\u00f3\u2014. Ya dije lo que ten\u00eda que decir. Mi caballo y mi espada son suyos, y toda mi armadura.\n\nEl Caracol junt\u00f3 las puntas de los dedos para formar un tri\u00e1ngulo.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 exista otra manera. Usted no carece del todo de talento. Cae de maravilla \u2014a ser Uthor le brillaron los labios al sonre\u00edr\u2014. Le devuelvo en pr\u00e9stamo su corcel y la armadura... si entra a mi servicio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfServicio? \u2014Dunk no lo entend\u00eda\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tipo de servicio? Ya tiene escudero. \u00bfNecesita guarnecer alg\u00fan castillo?\n\n\u2014Si tuviera alguno podr\u00eda necesitarlo, pero lo cierto es que prefiero una buena posada. Mantener los castillos cuesta demasiado. No, el servicio que requiero de usted es que se enfrente a m\u00ed en algunos torneos m\u00e1s. Con veinte bastar\u00eda. Seguro que podr\u00e1 hacerlo. Se quedar\u00e1 una d\u00e9cima parte de mis ganancias y en lo venidero prometo no darle en la cabeza, sino en ese pecho tan ancho.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe har\u00eda viajar con usted para ser derribado?\n\nSer Uthor rio con afabilidad.\n\n\u2014Es un esp\u00e9cimen de tal prestancia que nadie creer\u00eda que un viejo de hombros ca\u00eddos y con un caracol en el escudo sea capaz de derrotarlo \u2014se frot\u00f3 la barbilla\u2014. Por cierto, necesita un nuevo blas\u00f3n. Reconozco que el ahorcado impone lo suyo, pero... est\u00e1 ahorcado, \u00bfno? Muerto y vencido. Se necesita algo m\u00e1s feroz. Tal vez una cabeza de oso. Una calavera. No, mejor a\u00fan: tres calaveras. Un beb\u00e9 empalado en una lanza. Tambi\u00e9n deber\u00eda llevar el pelo largo y dejarse barba, cuanto m\u00e1s frondosa y descuidada mejor. No se imagina cu\u00e1ntos torneos hay como \u00e9ste. Con las posibilidades que obtendr\u00eda yo, ganar\u00edamos bastante para comprar un huevo de drag\u00f3n antes...\n\n\u2014\u00bf...de que corra la voz de que no valgo para nada? Perd\u00ed la armadura, no el honor. Se quedar\u00e1 con Trueno y mis armas. Nada m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014A los mendigos no les conviene el orgullo. Hay cosas mucho peores que acompa\u00f1arme. Al menos podr\u00eda ense\u00f1arle un par de cosas sobre justas, tema que de momento ignora por completo.\n\n\u2014Me har\u00eda quedar como un tonto.\n\n\u2014Eso ya lo hice. E incluso los tontos necesitan comer.\n\nDunk ten\u00eda ganas de borrarle la sonrisa.\n\n\u2014Ahora entiendo que lleve un caracol en su escudo. No es un caballero de verdad.\n\n\u2014Palabras dignas de un aut\u00e9ntico zoquete. \u00bfTan ciego es que no se da cuenta del peligro que corre? \u2014ser Uthor dej\u00f3 la copa\u2014. \u00bfSabe por qu\u00e9 le di justo all\u00ed? \u2014se levant\u00f3 y toc\u00f3 con suavidad a Dunk en medio del pecho\u2014. Poner aqu\u00ed la punta de la lanza lo habr\u00eda derribado con la misma rapidez. La cabeza es un blanco m\u00e1s peque\u00f1o. Es m\u00e1s dif\u00edcil acertar... pero existen m\u00e1s posibilidades de que el golpe sea mortal. Me pagaron por que fuera all\u00ed.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPagaron? \u2014Dunk se apart\u00f3 de \u00e9l\u2014. \u00bfA qu\u00e9 se refiere?\n\n\u2014Seis dragones por anticipado y la promesa de otros cuatro cuando muriera. M\u00edsera suma por la vida de un caballero. Agradezca por ello. Si me hubieran ofrecido m\u00e1s, tal vez habr\u00eda metido la punta de mi lanza por uno de los orificios de la visera.\n\nDunk volvi\u00f3 a marearse. \"\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 iba a pagar alguien para que me maten? Yo no le he hecho da\u00f1o a nadie en Muros Blancos.\" Nadie pod\u00eda odiarlo tanto, salvo Aerion, el hermano de Egg, y el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante estaba exiliado al otro lado del mar Angosto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n le pag\u00f3?\n\n\u2014El oro me lo trajo al alba un criado, poco despu\u00e9s de que el maestro de justas colg\u00f3 la lista de rivales. Iba encapuchado y no pronunci\u00f3 el nombre de su se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Pero \u00bfpor qu\u00e9? \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014No se lo pregunt\u00e9 \u2014ser Uthor volvi\u00f3 a llenarse la copa\u2014. Creo que tiene m\u00e1s enemigos de lo que cree, ser Duncan. \u00bfY c\u00f3mo no? Hay quien dir\u00eda que fue la causa de todos nuestros males.\n\nDunk sinti\u00f3 una mano fr\u00eda en el coraz\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Expl\u00edquese.\n\nEl Caracol se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014Aunque yo no estuviera en Vado Ceniza, me gano la vida con las justas. Sigo de lejos los torneos con el mismo ah\u00ednco con que los maestres siguen las estrellas. S\u00e9 que cierto caballero errante se convirti\u00f3 en causante del juicio de siete en Vado Ceniza, cuya consecuencia fue la muerte de Baelor Rompelanzas a manos de su hermano Maekar \u2014ser Uthor tom\u00f3 asiento y estir\u00f3 las piernas\u2014. El pr\u00edncipe Baelor era muy querido. Tambi\u00e9n el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante ten\u00eda amigos que no olvidan la causa de su exilio. Piense en mi oferta, ser. Quiz\u00e1 el caracol deje un rastro de baba, pero a nadie le perjudica algo de baba... En cambio, si baila con dragones es de esperar que se queme.\n\nCuando Dunk sali\u00f3 de la tienda del Caracol, el d\u00eda parec\u00eda m\u00e1s oscuro que antes. Las nubes del este se hab\u00edan vuelto m\u00e1s grandes y m\u00e1s negras, y al oeste ya se pon\u00eda el sol, proyectando largas sombras en el patio. Se encontr\u00f3 con Will, el escudero, que inspeccionaba las patas de Trueno.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 Egg? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl ni\u00f1o calvo? \u00bfC\u00f3mo voy a saberlo? Se habr\u00e1 escapado a alguna parte.\n\n\"No fue capaz de despedirse de Trueno\", fue la conclusi\u00f3n de Dunk. \"Estar\u00e1 en la tienda, con sus libros.\"\n\nPero no, no estaba all\u00ed. S\u00ed estaban los libros, pulcramente apilados y atados junto a la esterilla de Egg. De \u00e9l, en cambio, no hab\u00eda ni rastro. Algo raro pasaba. Dunk se dio cuenta. Habr\u00eda sido impropio de Egg marcharse sin permiso.\n\nA pocos metros, junto a un pabell\u00f3n de rayas, beb\u00edan cerveza de cebada dos soldados canosos.\n\n\u2014...al demonio. Con una vez ya tuve suficiente \u2014murmuraba uno\u2014. Al salir el sol la hierba era verde... \u2014no se dio cuenta de que no estaban solos hasta que el otro lo interrumpi\u00f3 con un codazo\u2014. \u00bfSer?\n\n\u2014\u00bfHan visto a mi escudero? Se llama Egg.\n\nEl hombre se rasc\u00f3 los pelos grises de la barba bajo una oreja.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, me acuerdo. Menos pelo que yo y una boca como el triple de grande que \u00e9l. Lo zarandearon un poco algunos de los otros chicos, pero eso fue anoche. Desde entonces no lo he visto, ser.\n\n\u2014Se habr\u00e1 asustado \u2014dijo su compa\u00f1ero.\n\nDunk lo mir\u00f3 con mala cara.\n\n\u2014Si vuelve, d\u00edganle que me espere aqu\u00ed.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, ser, descuide.\n\n\"Puede que solo haya ido a ver las justas.\" Dunk regres\u00f3 hacia el palenque. Al pasar al lado de los establos, se encontr\u00f3 con ser Glendon Ball, que cepillaba a un bonito alaz\u00e1n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHa visto a Egg? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Pas\u00f3 corriendo hace un momento \u2014ser Glendon se sac\u00f3 una zanahoria del bolsillo y se la dio de comer al alaz\u00e1n\u2014. \u00bfLe gusta mi nuevo caballo? Lord Costayne mand\u00f3 a su escudero para rescatarlo, pero yo le dije que se ahorre el oro. Pienso qued\u00e1rmelo.\n\n\u2014A su se\u00f1or\u00eda no le gustar\u00e1.\n\n\u2014Su se\u00f1or\u00eda dijo que no ten\u00eda derecho a poner una bola de fuego en mi escudo. Me dijo que mis armas deber\u00edan ser unos conejos. Su se\u00f1or\u00eda puede irse al cuerno.\n\nA Dunk se le escap\u00f3 una sonrisa. De esa agua tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda bebido \u00e9l, del agua amarga que le hab\u00edan servido gente como el Pr\u00edncipe Brillante y ser Steffon Fossoway, y que se le hab\u00eda atragantado. Sent\u00eda cierta afinidad con aquel suspicaz y joven caballero. \"Que yo sepa, mi madre tambi\u00e9n podr\u00eda haber sido una puta.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos caballos ha ganado?\n\nSer Glendon se encogi\u00f3 de hombros.\n\n\u2014Perd\u00ed la cuenta. Mortimer Boggs a\u00fan me debe uno. Dijo que preferir\u00eda comerse su caballo que dejar que lo monte el hijo bastardo de una puta. Y antes de enviarme la armadura le dio golpes con un martillo. Est\u00e1 llena de agujeros. Supongo que a\u00fan podr\u00e9 sacar algo por el metal \u2014sonaba m\u00e1s triste que enfadado\u2014. Al lado de la... de la posada donde crec\u00ed hab\u00eda un establo en el que trabaj\u00e9 de ni\u00f1o. Siempre que pod\u00eda me escapaba con los caballos, mientras sus due\u00f1os estaban ocupados. Siempre se me han dado bien los caballos. Pencos, rocines, palafrenes, caballos de tiro, de arar, de guerra... En todos he montado. Hasta en uno de Dorne. Conoc\u00eda a un viejo que me ense\u00f1\u00f3 a hacer mis propias lanzas. Pensaba que si les demostraba a todos lo bien que lo hago, no tendr\u00edan m\u00e1s remedio que reconocer que soy hijo de mi padre, pero no lo reconocen. Ni siquiera ahora. No hay manera.\n\n\u2014Es que con algunos no hay manera \u2014le dijo Dunk\u2014. Da igual lo que haga. En cambio con otros... no todos son iguales. He conocido a algunos buenos \u2014pens\u00f3 un momento\u2014. Al final del torneo Egg y yo tenemos pensado ir hacia el norte, ponernos al servicio de Invernalia y luchar contra los hombres del Hierro para los Stark. Podr\u00eda acompa\u00f1arnos.\n\nSer Arlan siempre hab\u00eda dicho que el Norte era otro mundo. Parec\u00eda dif\u00edcil que all\u00e1 arriba se supiera la historia de Jenny a Penique y el caballero de Los Conejos. \"All\u00e1 arriba nadie se burlar\u00e1 de ti. S\u00f3lo te conocer\u00e1n por tu espada y s\u00f3lo te juzgar\u00e1n por lo que vales.\"\n\nSer Glendon lo mir\u00f3 con recelo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 iba a hacerlo? \u00bfMe est\u00e1 diciendo que debo escaparme y esconderme?\n\n\u2014No. S\u00f3lo se me ocurri\u00f3... que m\u00e1s valen dos espadas que una. Los caminos ya no son tan seguros como antes.\n\n\u2014Eso es verdad \u2014dijo a rega\u00f1adientes el muchacho\u2014, pero a mi padre le hab\u00edan prometido un puesto en la Guardia Real, y tengo la intenci\u00f3n de reclamar la capa blanca que no lleg\u00f3 a vestir.\n\n\"Tienes tantas posibilidades de llevar capa blanca como yo\", estuvo a punto de decir Dunk. \"A ti te pari\u00f3 una cantinera y yo sal\u00ed del arroyo del Lecho de Pulgas. A la gente como t\u00fa y yo no los colma el rey de honores.\" Sin embargo, el joven no se habr\u00eda tomado bien aquella verdad, as\u00ed que Dunk se la call\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Bueno, pues fuerza al brazo.\n\nS\u00f3lo se hab\u00eda alejado unos metros cuando ser Glendon lo llam\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Espere, ser Duncan. No... no hice bien en ser tan brusco. Mi madre siempre dec\u00eda que los caballeros deben ser corteses \u2014parec\u00eda que le costara encontrar las palabras\u2014. Despu\u00e9s de mi \u00faltima justa vino a verme lord Peake y me ofreci\u00f3 un puesto en Starpike. Dijo que se avecina una tormenta como no se ha visto en Poniente desde hace una generaci\u00f3n, y que necesitar\u00edan espadas y hombres que las empu\u00f1en. Hombres leales que sepan obedecer.\n\nA Dunk le cost\u00f3 creerlo. Gormon Peake hab\u00eda dejado muy claro su desprecio por los caballeros errantes, tanto en el camino como en la azotea. La oferta, sin embargo, era generosa.\n\n\u2014Peake es un gran se\u00f1or \u2014dijo con cautela\u2014, pero... pero no creo que me fiar\u00eda de \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014No \u2014el joven se ruboriz\u00f3\u2014. Hab\u00eda un precio. Dijo que me tomar\u00eda a su servicio... pero que primero tendr\u00eda que probar mi lealtad. \u00c9l se encargar\u00eda de que mi pr\u00f3ximo rival fuera su amigo el Violinista, y quiso que le prometiera que perder\u00eda.\n\nDunk le crey\u00f3. Sab\u00eda que deber\u00eda escandalizarse, pero por alguna raz\u00f3n no lo hizo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY usted qu\u00e9 contest\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Le dije que aunque me propusiera perder contra el Violinista quiz\u00e1 no lo lograra. Le dije que ya he derribado a hombres mucho mejores y que antes de que acabe el d\u00eda el huevo de drag\u00f3n ser\u00e1 m\u00edo \u2014Ball esboz\u00f3 una sonrisa\u2014. No era la respuesta que \u00e9l esperaba. Me llam\u00f3 tonto y me dijo que me ande con cuidado, que el Violinista tiene muchos amigos y yo ninguno.\n\nDunk le puso una mano en el hombro y se lo apret\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Tiene uno, ser. Dos en cuanto encuentre a Egg.\n\nEl muchacho lo mir\u00f3 a los ojos y asinti\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Da gusto saber que a\u00fan quedan caballeros de verdad.\n\nMientras buscaba a Egg entre la multitud que rodeaba el palenque, Dunk tuvo ocasi\u00f3n de ver bien por primera vez a ser Tommard Heddle. Fornido y ancho, con un pecho como un tonel, el yerno de lord Butterwell llevaba placas negras sobre cuero hervido, y un yelmo en forma de una especie de demonio con escamas y la lengua de fuera. Su caballo superaba a Trueno en casi dos palmos de altura y una arroba de peso. Era un verdadero monstruo, protegido por una cota de malla. Tanto hierro lo obligaba a ir despacio y por eso Heddle no super\u00f3 el medio galope en el palenque, lo cual no le impidi\u00f3 despachar en un abrir y cerrar de ojos a ser Clarence Charlton. Mientras se llevaban a Charlton en camilla, Heddle se quit\u00f3 su yelmo demoniaco. Ten\u00eda la cabeza ancha y calva, y una barba negra y cuadrada. En sus mejillas y su cuello hab\u00eda for\u00fanculos muy rojos.\n\nDunk conoc\u00eda aquella cara. Heddle era el caballero que le hab\u00eda gritado al tocar el huevo de drag\u00f3n, el hombre de voz grave al que hab\u00eda o\u00eddo hablar con lord Peake.\n\nSe le atropellaron las palabras en la memoria: \"...banquete de mendigos que nos han organizado... es digno hijo de su padre, el muchacho... Aceroamargo... necesita la espada... el viejo Sangre de Leche esperaba... es digno hijo de su padre, el muchacho... Le aseguro que Cuervo de Sangre no se dedica a so\u00f1ar... \u00bfEs digno hijo de su padre, el muchacho?\"\n\nClav\u00f3 la vista en la tribuna de espectadores, mientras se preguntaba si Egg se las hab\u00eda ingeniado para ocupar el lugar que le correspond\u00eda por derecho entre los notables, pero no se ve\u00eda al ni\u00f1o en ninguna parte. Tampoco estaban Butterwell ni Frey, aunque la esposa del primero segu\u00eda en su sitio, aburrida y descontenta. \"Qu\u00e9 raro\", se dijo. Era el castillo de Butterwell y su boda. Frey era el padre de la novia. Aquellas justas se hac\u00edan en honor de ambos. \u00bfA d\u00f3nde podr\u00edan haber ido?\n\n\u2014Ser Uthor Underleaf \u2014tron\u00f3 el heraldo. Por la cara de Dunk pas\u00f3 una sombra, mientras una nube se tragaba el sol\u2014. Ser Theomore de la casa Bulwer, el Viejo Buey, caballero de Corona Negra. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\nDaba miedo el Viejo Buey con su armadura rojo sangre y los cuernos negros de toro que sobresal\u00edan de su yelmo, pero necesit\u00f3 la ayuda de un escudero musculoso para subir a su caballo, y el hecho de que girara la cabeza en forma constante mientras avanzaba parec\u00eda indicar que ser Maynard estaba en lo cierto respecto a su ojo. Aun as\u00ed recibi\u00f3 una sonora ovaci\u00f3n al salir al palenque.\n\nNo as\u00ed el Caracol, que sin duda lo prefer\u00eda. En la primera pasada se desviaron mutuamente los golpes. En la segunda el Viejo Buey parti\u00f3 su lanza en el escudo de ser Uthor, mientras que el Caracol err\u00f3 el blanco por completo. Lo mismo ocurri\u00f3 en la tercera pasada. Esta vez ser Uthor se tambale\u00f3, como si se fuera a caer. \"Finge\", comprendi\u00f3 Dunk. \"Est\u00e1 alargando el combate para que la pr\u00f3xima vez aumenten las apuestas.\" Le bast\u00f3 echar un vistazo alrededor para ver a Will manos a la obra, apostando por su se\u00f1or. Hasta entonces no se le hab\u00eda ocurrido que \u00e9l pudiera haber engordado su propia bolsa con una o dos monedas a costa del Caracol. \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo.\"\n\nEl Viejo Buey cay\u00f3 a la quinta pasada, arrojado a un lado por una punta de lanza que resbal\u00f3 con destreza en su escudo para alcanzarlo en el pecho. Al caer se le enred\u00f3 un pie en el estribo y fue arrastrado cuarenta varas por el palenque antes de que sus hombres controlaran el caballo. Una vez m\u00e1s sali\u00f3 la litera para llevarlo con el maestre. Mientras se alejaba Bulwer empezaron a caer algunas gotas de lluvia que le dejaron manchas oscuras en la sobreveste. Dunk lo observaba todo sin alterarse. Pensaba en Egg. \"\u00bfY si est\u00e1 en poder de mi enemigo secreto?\" No era ning\u00fan disparate. \"El ni\u00f1o no tiene la culpa de nada. Si alguien tiene algo contra m\u00ed no deber\u00eda ser Egg el que responda.\"\n\nCuando encontr\u00f3 a ser John el Violinista, lo estaban armando para la siguiente justa. Lo atend\u00edan nada menos que tres escuderos, ocupados en abrochar las hebillas de su armadura y colocar la barda de su caballo. Cerca de ellos lord Alyn Cockshaw beb\u00eda vino aguado, con aspecto maltrecho y taciturno. Al ver a Dunk farfull\u00f3 algo y se manch\u00f3 de vino la pechera.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible que siga de pie, si el Caracol le hundi\u00f3 la cara?\n\n\u2014El armero Pate me hizo un yelmo muy resistente, mi se\u00f1or. Adem\u00e1s, ya dec\u00eda ser Arlan que tengo la cabeza m\u00e1s dura que la piedra.\n\nEl Violinista se rio.\n\n\u2014No le haga caso a Alyn. El bastardo de Bola de Fuego lo descabalg\u00f3 y desde que su mullido traserito choc\u00f3 contra el suelo, decidi\u00f3 que odia a todos los caballeros errantes.\n\n\u2014Ese horrible individuo lleno de granos no es hijo de Quentyn Ball \u2014insisti\u00f3 Alyn Cockshaw\u2014. No deber\u00edan haberle permitido competir. Si esto fuera mi boda lo habr\u00eda mandado azotar por su atrevimiento.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 doncella se casar\u00eda con usted? \u2014dijo ser John\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, el atrevimiento de Ball es mucho menos irritante que su pataleta. Ser Duncan, \u00bfpor casualidad es amigo de Galtry el Verde? Dentro de poco tendr\u00e9 que separarlo de su caballo.\n\nDunk no lo dud\u00f3.\n\n\u2014No lo conozco, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDesea una copa de vino? \u00bfPan con aceitunas?\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo unas palabras con usted, mi se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Todas las que quiera. Pasemos a mi pabell\u00f3n \u2014el Violinista le levant\u00f3 la solapa\u2014. Usted no, Alyn. A decir verdad no le ir\u00eda mal comer menos aceitunas.\n\nUna vez dentro el Violinista se gir\u00f3 hacia Dunk.\n\n\u2014Ya sab\u00eda yo que ser Uthor no lo hab\u00eda matado. Mis sue\u00f1os jam\u00e1s me enga\u00f1an. Pronto el Caracol deber\u00e1 enfrentarse conmigo. Despu\u00e9s de derribarlo le exigir\u00e9 que le devuelva sus armas y armadura. Tambi\u00e9n su corcel, aunque se merece una mejor montura. \u00bfAceptar\u00eda que le regale un caballo?\n\n\u2014Pues... no... no podr\u00eda \u2014la idea incomod\u00f3 a Dunk\u2014. No es que quiera ser desagradecido, pero...\n\n\u2014Si lo que le preocupa es la deuda, qu\u00edtesela de la cabeza. Yo no necesito su plata, ser. S\u00f3lo su amistad. \u00bfC\u00f3mo podr\u00eda convertirse en uno de mis caballeros sin caballo?\n\nSer John se puso los guanteletes de acero articulados y flexion\u00f3 los dedos.\n\n\u2014Desapareci\u00f3 mi escudero.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe habr\u00e1 fugado con alguna chica?\n\n\u2014Egg es demasiado joven para chicas, mi se\u00f1or. Nunca se ir\u00eda por su propio pie. Aun cuando yo me estuviera muriendo, se quedar\u00eda hasta que mi cad\u00e1ver estuviera fr\u00edo. Sigue aqu\u00ed su caballo, y tambi\u00e9n nuestra mula.\n\n\u2014Si quiere puedo pedirles a mis hombres que lo busquen.\n\n\"Mis hombres.\" A Dunk no le gust\u00f3 c\u00f3mo sonaba. \"Un torneo de traidores\", pens\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Usted no es caballero errante.\n\n\u2014No \u2014la sonrisa del Violinista pose\u00eda un gran encanto juvenil\u2014. Pero eso siempre lo ha sabido. Desde nuestro primer encuentro en el camino me llama \"mi se\u00f1or\". \u00bfPor qu\u00e9?\n\n\u2014Por su manera de hablar. Y su aspecto. Y sus actos \u2014\"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo\"\u2014. Anoche, en la azotea, dijo algunas cosas...\n\n\u2014El vino me hace hablar demasiado, pero lo dije todo en serio. Usted y yo estamos hechos el uno para el otro. Mis sue\u00f1os no mienten.\n\n\u2014Sus sue\u00f1os no mienten \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, pero usted s\u00ed. John no es su aut\u00e9ntico nombre, \u00bfverdad?\n\n\u2014No.\n\nLos ojos del Violinista brillaron, traviesos. \"Tiene los mismos ojos que Egg.\"\n\n\u2014Pronto se revelar\u00e1 su verdadero nombre a los que deban conocerlo \u2014lord Gormon Peake hab\u00eda entrado en el pabell\u00f3n\u2014. Le aviso, caballero errante... \u2014dijo, ce\u00f1udo.\n\n\u2014Vamos, Gormy, d\u00e9jelo ya \u2014dijo el Violinista\u2014. Ser Duncan es de los nuestros o lo ser\u00e1 pronto. Ya le dije que so\u00f1\u00e9 con \u00e9l \u2014fuera son\u00f3 la trompeta de un heraldo. El Violinista gir\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. Me llaman al palenque. Disc\u00falpeme, ser Duncan, por favor. Podremos reanudar nuestra conversaci\u00f3n una vez que haya despachado a ser Galtry el Verde.\n\n\u2014Fuerza al brazo \u2014dijo Dunk, por simple cortes\u00eda.\n\nLord Gormon se qued\u00f3 despu\u00e9s de que parti\u00f3 ser John.\n\n\u2014Nos matar\u00e1n a todos por culpa de sus sue\u00f1os.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 hizo falta para comprar a ser Galtry? \u2014se oy\u00f3 decir Dunk\u2014. \u00bfBast\u00f3 con plata o habr\u00e1 pedido oro?\n\n\u2014Veo que alguien se fue de la boca \u2014Peake se sent\u00f3 en una silla de campamento\u2014. Tengo una docena de hombres fuera. Deber\u00eda llamarlos y hacer que le rebanasen el cuello, ser.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no lo hace?\n\n\u2014Porque a su alteza le sentar\u00eda mal.\n\n\"Su alteza. Dunk tuvo la sensaci\u00f3n de haber recibido un pu\u00f1etazo en la barriga. Otra rebeli\u00f3n de los Fuegoscuro. Y pronto otro campo de Hierba Roja. Cuando sali\u00f3 el sol la hierba no era roja.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 se celebr\u00f3 esta boda?\n\n\u2014Lord Butterwell quer\u00eda que le calentara la cama una mujer nueva y joven, y lord Frey ten\u00eda una hija un poco mancillada. Su enlace era un pretexto veros\u00edmil para que se reunieran unos cuantos se\u00f1ores con ideas afines. La mayor\u00eda de los invitados combatieron a favor del drag\u00f3n negro. El resto tiene motivos de resentimiento contra el poder de Cuervo de Sangre o albergan sus propios rencores y ambiciones. Muchos ten\u00edamos hijos e hijas que fueron llevados a Desembarco del Rey como prenda de nuestra futura lealtad, pero la mayor\u00eda de los rehenes perecieron en la gran epidemia primaveral. Ya no estamos atados de manos. Lleg\u00f3 nuestra hora. Aerys es d\u00e9bil. No es un guerrero, sino un hombre de libros. El pueblo llano apenas lo conoce y lo que sabe no le gusta. Sus se\u00f1ores todav\u00eda lo aman menos. Es verdad que su padre tambi\u00e9n era d\u00e9bil, pero cuando su trono peligr\u00f3, tuvo hijos que salieron por \u00e9l al campo de batalla. Baelor y Maekar, el martillo y el yunque... Pero Baelor Rompelanzas ya no existe, y el pr\u00edncipe Maekar rabia en Refugio Estival, enemistado con el rey y con su mano.\n\n\"S\u00ed\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"y ahora un caballero errante necio ha puesto a su hijo favorito en manos de sus enemigos. \u00bfQu\u00e9 mejor manera de asegurarse de que el pr\u00edncipe nunca se mueva de Refugio Estival?\"\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n est\u00e1 Cuervo de Sangre, que no es d\u00e9bil \u2014dijo.\n\n\u2014No \u2014reconoci\u00f3 lord Peake\u2014, pero los hechiceros no le gustan a nadie, y el que mata a los de su propia sangre resulta igual de detestable a los dioses que a los hombres. A la primera se\u00f1al de debilidad o derrota, los hombres de Cuervo de Sangre se derretir\u00e1n como las nieves de verano. Y si se cumple lo que so\u00f1\u00f3 el pr\u00edncipe, si aqu\u00ed en Muros Blancos aparece un drag\u00f3n vivo...\n\nDunk acab\u00f3 la frase.\n\n\u2014...el trono ser\u00e1 suyo.\n\n\u2014Suyo \u2014dijo lord Gormon Peake\u2014. Yo s\u00f3lo soy un humilde servidor \u2014se levant\u00f3\u2014. No intente marcharse del castillo, ser. En caso contrario lo interpretar\u00e9 como una prueba de traici\u00f3n y responder\u00e1 con la vida. Hemos llegado demasiado lejos para que haya vuelta atr\u00e1s.\n\nCuando John el Violinista y ser Galtry el Verde tomaron nuevas lanzas en ambos extremos del palenque, el cielo plomizo escup\u00eda lluvia de la aut\u00e9ntica. Algunos de los invitados a la boda se refugiaban en la gran sala, protegidos por sus capas.\n\nSer Galtry montaba un corcel blanco. Su yelmo estaba adornado con un l\u00e1nguido penacho verde, igual al de la crin de su caballo. La capa se compon\u00eda de retales de distintos tonos de verde. Sus grebas y sus guanteletes ten\u00edan incrustaciones de oro que las hac\u00edan brillar, y su escudo ostentaba nueve salmonetes de jade sobre un campo verde puerro. Hasta su barba estaba te\u00f1ida de verde, a la manera de los hombres de Tyrosh, al otro lado del mar Angosto.\n\nNueve veces cargaron uno contra el otro, lanza en ristre, ser Galtry y el Violinista, el caballero de los retales verdes y el joven se\u00f1or de las espadas y violines dorados, y nueve veces se partieron sus lanzas. En la octava pasada el suelo ya estaba un poco blando y los grandes corceles cruzaron charcos de lluvia. A la novena el Violinista estuvo a punto de caer de su silla, pero se recuper\u00f3 antes de caer.\n\n\u2014Buen golpe \u2014proclam\u00f3 entre risas\u2014. Estuvo a punto de derribarme, ser.\n\n\u2014No tardar\u00e9 \u2014dijo el caballero verde a trav\u00e9s de la lluvia.\n\n\u2014Lo dudo.\n\nEl Violinista arroj\u00f3 los trozos de su lanza. Un escudero puso otra en su mano.\n\nLa siguiente pasada fue la \u00faltima. La lanza de ser Galtry resbal\u00f3, inofensiva, en el escudo del Violinista. En cambio ser John golpe\u00f3 al caballero verde justo en medio del pecho, y al arrojarlo de la silla lo hizo salpicar barro marr\u00f3n. Dunk vio un rel\u00e1mpago lejano al este.\n\nLas tribunas se estaban vaciando a gran velocidad. Pueblo llano y se\u00f1ores corr\u00edan para no mojarse.\n\n\u2014Mire c\u00f3mo corren \u2014murmur\u00f3 Alyn Cockshaw al aparecer junto a Dunk\u2014. Unas gotitas de lluvia y todos estos se\u00f1ores tan valientes se refugian entre gritos. Me gustar\u00eda saber qu\u00e9 har\u00e1n cuando estalle la tormenta de verdad.\n\n\"La tormenta de verdad.\" Dunk supo que lord Alyn no se refer\u00eda al tiempo. \"\u00bfY \u00e9ste qu\u00e9 quiere? \u00bfHabr\u00e1 'decidido ser mi amigo' de repente?\"\n\nEl heraldo subi\u00f3 una vez m\u00e1s a su plataforma.\n\n\u2014Ser Tommard Heddle, caballero de Muros Blancos al servicio de lord Butterwell \u2014voce\u00f3 mientras tronaba a lo lejos\u2014. Ser Uthor Underleaf. Adel\u00e1ntense y demuestren su valor.\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 a ser Uthor justo a tiempo para ver que el Caracol torc\u00eda el gesto. \"No es el rival por el que pag\u00f3.\" El maestro de justas lo hab\u00eda desairado, pero \u00bfpor qu\u00e9? \"Intervino otra persona a la que Cosgrove estima m\u00e1s que a Uthor Underleaf.\" Lo rumi\u00f3 un momento. \"No saben que Uthor no quiere ganar\", comprendi\u00f3 de golpe. \"Lo ven como una amenaza, y por eso quieren que Tom el Negro lo aparte del camino del Violinista.\" Heddle formaba parte de la conspiraci\u00f3n de Peake. Pod\u00edan confiar en que perder\u00eda cuando fuera necesario. Por lo tanto, no quedaba nadie m\u00e1s que...\n\nDe repente lord Peake corri\u00f3 por el campo embarrado y subi\u00f3 por la escalera de la plataforma del heraldo, haciendo ondear su capa.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Nos traicionaron! \u2014exclam\u00f3\u2014. Cuervo de Sangre tiene un esp\u00eda entre nosotros. \u00a1Robaron el huevo de drag\u00f3n!\n\nSer John el Violinista hizo girar su montura.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi huevo? \u00bfC\u00f3mo es posible? Lord Butterwell tiene guardias apostados d\u00eda y noche a la entrada de su dormitorio.\n\n\u2014Los mataron \u2014declar\u00f3 lord Peake\u2014, pero uno de ellos dijo el nombre del asesino antes de morir.\n\n\"\u00bfPretender\u00e1 acusarme a m\u00ed?\", se pregunt\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nAnoche una docena de hombres lo hab\u00eda visto tocar el huevo de drag\u00f3n, al llevar a lady Butterwell al lecho de su esposo.\n\nLord Gormon extendi\u00f3 un dedo acusador.\n\n\u2014All\u00ed est\u00e1. El hijo de puta. Capt\u00farenlo.\n\nSer Glendon Ball, que estaba al final del palenque, levant\u00f3 la vista, desconcertado. Al principio pareci\u00f3 que no entend\u00eda qu\u00e9 ocurr\u00eda, hasta que vio acudir a hombres desde varios puntos. Entonces se movi\u00f3 a mayor velocidad de lo que Dunk habr\u00eda considerado posible. Cuando el primer hombre le puso un brazo en el cuello, \u00e9l ya hab\u00eda desenvainado a medias su espada. Logr\u00f3 soltarse, pero ya ten\u00eda encima a dos hombres m\u00e1s, que se lanzaron contra \u00e9l y lo arrojaron al barro. Los rodearon muchos hombres m\u00e1s, gritando y pegando patadas. \"Podr\u00eda haber sido yo\", comprendi\u00f3 Dunk con la misma sensaci\u00f3n de impotencia que en Vado Ceniza el d\u00eda en que le dijeron que tendr\u00edan que cortarle una mano y un pie.\n\nAlyn Cockshaw lo retuvo.\n\n\u2014Si quiere encontrar a su escudero, no se meta.\n\nDunk se gir\u00f3 hacia \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 quiere decir?\n\n\u2014Es posible que yo sepa d\u00f3nde encontrar al ni\u00f1o.\n\nDunk no estaba de humor para bromas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde?\n\nAl final del palenque ser Glendon fue obligado a levantarse, encajado entre dos soldados con cota de malla y medio yelmo. Estaba cubierto de barro marr\u00f3n desde la cintura hasta el tobillo, y le corr\u00eda sangre y lluvia por las mejillas. \"Sangre de h\u00e9roe\", pens\u00f3 Dunk mientras Tom el Negro desmontaba ante el cautivo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 el huevo?\n\nDe la boca de Ball sal\u00eda un hilo de sangre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 lo robar\u00eda, si estaba a punto de ganarlo?\n\n\"S\u00ed\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"y no pod\u00edan consentirlo\".\n\nTom el Negro golpe\u00f3 a Ball en la cara con un pu\u00f1o envuelto en malla.\n\n\u2014Registren sus alforjas \u2014orden\u00f3 lord Peake\u2014. Apuesto a que encontraremos el huevo de drag\u00f3n envuelto y escondido.\n\nLord Alyn baj\u00f3 la voz.\n\n\u2014Lo encontrar\u00e1n. Si quiere hallar a su escudero, s\u00edgame. Es el mejor momento, mientras est\u00e1n ocupados.\n\nNo esper\u00f3 la respuesta.\n\nDunk tuvo que seguirlo. En tres zancadas alcanz\u00f3 al joven se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Como le hayan hecho da\u00f1o a Egg...\n\n\u2014No tengo inclinaci\u00f3n por los ni\u00f1os. Por aqu\u00ed. M\u00e1s deprisa.\n\nDunk fue tras \u00e9l, cruzando un arco y varios escalones enfangados antes de girar por una esquina. Iban pisando charcos bajo la lluvia, protegidos por la oscuridad de las paredes. Al fin se detuvieron en un patio cerrado, pavimentado con losas planas y resbaladizas. Estaban rodeados de edificaciones. Arriba hab\u00eda ventanas con los postigos cerrados, y en el centro del patio un pozo rodeado por un muro bajo de piedra.\n\n\"Qu\u00e9 lugar m\u00e1s solitario\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. Le daba mala espina. Un antiguo instinto lo hizo tratar de empu\u00f1ar la espada, hasta que se acord\u00f3 de que se la hab\u00eda ganado el Caracol. Mientras mov\u00eda la mano en el cinto, donde deber\u00eda haber estado la funda, sinti\u00f3 la punta de un cuchillo en la base de la espalda.\n\n\u2014Si intenta atacarme le saco un ri\u00f1\u00f3n y se lo doy a los cocineros de Butterwell para que lo sirvan frito en el banquete \u2014el cuchillo se hinc\u00f3 en el jub\u00f3n de Dunk con insistencia\u2014. Al pozo. Y nada de movimientos bruscos, ser.\n\n\"Como haya tirado a Egg al pozo necesitar\u00e1 algo m\u00e1s que un cuchillo de juguete para salvarse.\" Dunk avanz\u00f3 despacio, sintiendo crecer la rabia en sus entra\u00f1as.\n\nDej\u00f3 de sentir el cuchillo en la espalda.\n\n\u2014Ya puede girarse, caballero errante.\n\nDunk dio media vuelta.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or, \u00bfes por el huevo de drag\u00f3n?\n\n\u2014No, por el drag\u00f3n. \u00bfQu\u00e9 cre\u00eda, que me quedar\u00eda al margen mientras lo robaba? \u2014ser Alyn hizo una mueca\u2014. Hice mal en confiar en que lo matar\u00eda el desgraciado del Caracol. Recuperar\u00e9 hasta la \u00faltima de mis monedas de oro.\n\n\"\u00bf\u00c9l?\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"\u00bfEste se\u00f1oritingo gordo, p\u00e1lido y perfumado es mi enemigo secreto?\" No supo si re\u00edrse o llorar.\n\n\u2014Ser Uthor se gan\u00f3 su oro. Lo que ocurre es que tengo la cabeza dura.\n\n\u2014Eso parece. Retroceda.\n\nDunk dio un paso hacia atr\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014M\u00e1s. M\u00e1s. Uno m\u00e1s.\n\nEl siguiente paso lo hizo topar con el pozo, cuyas duras piedras presionaron la base de su espalda.\n\n\u2014Si\u00e9ntese en el borde. \u00a1No le dar\u00e1 miedo un peque\u00f1o ba\u00f1o! Mucho m\u00e1s mojado que ahora no podr\u00eda estar.\n\n\u2014No s\u00e9 nadar.\n\nDunk apoy\u00f3 una mano en el pozo. Las piedras estaban mojadas. Una se movi\u00f3 bajo la presi\u00f3n de la palma de su mano.\n\n\u2014Es una pena. \u00bfSaltar\u00e1 o tendr\u00e9 que pincharlo?\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 hacia abajo y vio las marcas de las gotas de lluvia en el agua, a unas siete varas. Las paredes estaban cubiertas de algas cenagosas.\n\n\u2014Yo nunca le he hecho nada.\n\n\u2014Ni me lo har\u00e1. Daemon es m\u00edo. Yo ser\u00e9 el que mande en su Guardia Real. Usted no es digno de la capa blanca.\n\n\u2014Nunca dije que lo fuera \u2014\"Daemon.\" El nombre reson\u00f3 en su cabeza. \"No es John, sino Daemon, en honor a su padre... Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo\"\u2014. Daemon Fuegoscuro tuvo siete hijos. Dos de ellos, gemelos, murieron en el campo de Hierba Roja.\n\n\u2014Aegon y Aemon. Unos pobres bravucones sin cerebro, como usted. Cuando \u00e9ramos peque\u00f1os se divert\u00edan tortur\u00e1ndonos a Daemon y a m\u00ed. Cuando Aceroamargo se lo llev\u00f3 al exilio, yo llor\u00e9, y volv\u00ed a llorar cuando lord Peake me dijo que regresaba. Entonces \u00e9l lo vio a usted en el camino y se olvid\u00f3 de mi existencia \u2014Cockshaw hizo un gesto amenazador con la daga\u2014. Puede meterse en el agua tal como est\u00e1 o sangrando. \u00bfQu\u00e9 elige?\n\nDunk cerr\u00f3 la mano alrededor de la piedra suelta, que result\u00f3 no estarlo tanto como esperaba. Antes de que lograra desprenderla ser Alyn se abalanz\u00f3 sobre \u00e9l. Dunk se apart\u00f3 lo suficiente para que la punta de la cuchilla le hiciera un corte en el brazo del escudo. Entonces s\u00ed se desprendi\u00f3 la piedra. Dunk se la dio de comer a su se\u00f1or\u00eda, cuyos dientes oy\u00f3 partirse por el golpe.\n\n\u2014El pozo, \u00bfeh? \u2014dio otro golpe en la boca del joven se\u00f1or. Despu\u00e9s solt\u00f3 la piedra, tom\u00f3 a Cockshaw por la mu\u00f1eca y se la retorci\u00f3 hasta partir el hueso. La daga rebot\u00f3 por las piedras\u2014. Usted primero, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nSe ech\u00f3 a un lado, tir\u00f3 del brazo del joven se\u00f1or y le dio una patada en los ri\u00f1ones. Lord Alyn cay\u00f3 de cabeza en el pozo. Se oy\u00f3 un chapuz\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Muy bien, ser.\n\nDunk dio la media vuelta. Lo \u00fanico que distingui\u00f3 a trav\u00e9s de la lluvia fue una silueta encapuchada y un solo ojo blanquecino. S\u00f3lo en el momento que el desconocido se acerc\u00f3, el rostro oculto bajo la capucha tom\u00f3 los rasgos conocidos de ser Maynard Plumm. El ojo p\u00e1lido no era m\u00e1s que el broche de piedra de luna que sujetaba la capa en uno de sus hombros.\n\nAbajo, en el pozo, lord Alyn se debat\u00eda, chapoteaba y ped\u00eda ayuda a gritos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Al asesino! \u00a1Que alguien me ayude!\n\n\u2014Intent\u00f3 matarme \u2014dijo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Ahora me explico la sangre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSangre? \u2014Dunk mir\u00f3 hacia abajo: el brazo izquierdo en toda su extensi\u00f3n, la t\u00fanica pegada a la piel\u2014. Ah...\n\nNo recordaba haberse ca\u00eddo, pero de repente estaba en el suelo, con la cara mojada de lluvia. O\u00eda quejarse a lord Alyn en el pozo, pero ya no chapoteaba con la misma fuerza.\n\n\u2014Debemos entablillar este brazo \u2014ser Maynard pas\u00f3 uno de los suyos por debajo de Dunk\u2014. Arriba. Yo solo no puedo levantarlo. Use las piernas.\n\nDunk las us\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Lord Alyn, se va a ahogar.\n\n\u2014No lo echar\u00e1n de menos, el Violinista menos que nadie.\n\n\u2014No es... \u2014dijo Dunk sin aliento, blanco de dolor\u2014. Violinista.\n\n\u2014No. Es Daemon de la casa Fuegoscuro, el segundo de su nombre. Al menos es como querr\u00eda ser llamado, si llega a alcanzar alguna vez el Trono de Hierro. Le sorprender\u00eda saber cu\u00e1ntos se\u00f1ores prefieren que sus reyes sean valientes y tontos. Daemon es joven y gallardo, y queda bien a caballo.\n\nLos sonidos del pozo casi eran inaudibles de tan d\u00e9biles.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo deber\u00edamos echarle una cuerda a su se\u00f1or\u00eda?\n\n\u2014\u00bfSalvarlo ahora para ejecutarlo despu\u00e9s? No creo. Que se coma lo que pensaba servirle a usted. Ap\u00f3yese en m\u00ed \u2014Plumm lo gui\u00f3 por el patio. Desde tan cerca las facciones de ser Maynard ten\u00edan algo an\u00f3malo. Cuanto m\u00e1s lo miraba Dunk, menos le parec\u00eda ver\u2014. Recordar\u00e1 que lo conmin\u00e9 a huir, pero tuvo en m\u00e1s estima su honor que la vida. Est\u00e1 bien morir con honra, pero \u00bfy si la vida que est\u00e1 en jaque no es la suya? \u00bfSer\u00eda igual su respuesta, ser?\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa vida de qui\u00e9n? \u2014se oy\u00f3 un \u00faltimo chapoteo en el pozo\u2014. \u00bfEgg? \u00bfSe refiere a Egg? \u2014Dunk le apret\u00f3 el brazo a Plumm\u2014. \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1?\n\n\u2014Con los dioses. Y creo que sabr\u00e1 por qu\u00e9.\n\nEl dolor que retorci\u00f3 las entra\u00f1as de Dunk lo hizo olvidarse de su brazo. Gimi\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Intent\u00f3 usar su bota.\n\n\u2014Eso me imagino. Le mostr\u00f3 el anillo al maestre Lothar, el cual lo entreg\u00f3 a Butterwell, que de seguro se orin\u00f3 en los pantalones al verlo y habr\u00e1 empezado a preguntarse si se equivoc\u00f3 de bando y hasta qu\u00e9 punto est\u00e1 al corriente Cuervo de Sangre de esta conspiraci\u00f3n. La respuesta a lo \u00faltimo es \"bastante\".\n\nPlumm rio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n es usted?\n\n\u2014Un amigo \u2014dijo Maynard Plumm\u2014. Alguien que lo ha estado observando y se extra\u00f1\u00f3 de su presencia en este nido de v\u00edboras. Y ahora calle hasta que lo hayamos curado.\n\nSe acogieron a las sombras para regresar a la peque\u00f1a tienda de Dunk. Una vez dentro, ser Maynard encendi\u00f3 fuego, llen\u00f3 un cuenco de vino y lo puso a hervir sobre las llamas.\n\n\u2014El tajo es limpio, y al menos no es el brazo con que empu\u00f1a la espada \u2014dijo al cortar la manga de la t\u00fanica ensangrentada de Dunk\u2014. Al parecer la estocada no lleg\u00f3 al hueso. Aun as\u00ed tendremos que lavar la herida. De lo contrario podr\u00eda perder el brazo.\n\n\u2014Da igual \u2014a Dunk le daba vueltas el est\u00f3mago. Ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de estar a punto de vomitar\u2014. Si Egg est\u00e1 muerto...\n\n\u2014...la culpa ser\u00e1 suya. Deber\u00eda haberlo mantenido a distancia de aqu\u00ed. De todos modos, en ning\u00fan momento dije que el ni\u00f1o est\u00e9 muerto, sino que est\u00e1 con los dioses. \u00bfTienen tela limpia? \u00bfSeda?\n\n\u2014Mi t\u00fanica. La buena que me dieron en Dorne. \u00bfQu\u00e9 significa que est\u00e1 con los dioses?\n\n\u2014Todo a su debido tiempo. Primero su brazo.\n\nEl vino no tard\u00f3 en desprender vapor. Ser Maynard encontr\u00f3 la t\u00fanica de seda de Dunk, la oli\u00f3 con recelo, sac\u00f3 una daga y empez\u00f3 a cortarla. Dunk se trag\u00f3 su protesta.\n\n\u2014Ambrose Butterwell nunca ha sido lo que podr\u00edamos llamar resuelto \u2014dijo ser Maynard al doblar tres tiras de seda y dejarlas caer en el vino\u2014. Desde el principio alberg\u00f3 dudas sobre esta conjura, y esas dudas se exacerbaron al enterarse de que el ni\u00f1o no llevaba la espada. Esta ma\u00f1ana, con el huevo de drag\u00f3n, desaparecieron sus \u00faltimos restos de valent\u00eda.\n\n\u2014El huevo no lo rob\u00f3 ser Glendon \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. \u00c9l estuvo todo el d\u00eda en el patio, justando o viendo justar.\n\n\u2014Aun as\u00ed Peake encontrar\u00e1 el huevo en sus alforjas \u2014el vino herv\u00eda. Plumm se enfund\u00f3 un guante de cuero\u2014. Procure no gritar \u2014dijo.\n\nSac\u00f3 del vino una tira de seda y empez\u00f3 a limpiar la herida.\n\nDunk no grit\u00f3. Apret\u00f3 los dientes, se mordi\u00f3 la lengua y se dio pu\u00f1etazos en el muslo con bastante fuerza para dejar moretones, pero no grit\u00f3.\n\nSer Maynard us\u00f3 el resto de su buena t\u00fanica para hacer un vendaje que le at\u00f3 alrededor del brazo.\n\n\u2014Horroroso \u2014Dunk se estremeci\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfD\u00f3nde demonios est\u00e1 Egg?\n\n\u2014Ya se lo dije, con los dioses.\n\nLevant\u00f3 el brazo y rode\u00f3 el cuello de Plumm con su mano ilesa.\n\n\u2014Hable claro. Estoy harto de insinuaciones y de gui\u00f1os. O me dice d\u00f3nde puedo hallar al ni\u00f1o o le parto el pescuezo, aunque sea amigo.\n\n\u2014En el septo. Ser\u00eda aconsejable que vaya armado \u2014ser Maynard sonri\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfLe parece bastante claro, Dunk?\n\nSu primera parada fue el pabell\u00f3n de ser Uthor Underleaf. Al entrar s\u00f3lo encontr\u00f3 a Will, el escudero, inclinado hacia una tina en la que lavaba la ropa interior de su se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014\u00bfOtra vez usted? Ser Uthor est\u00e1 en el banquete. \u00bfQu\u00e9 quiere?\n\n\u2014Mi espada y mi escudo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTrae el rescate?\n\n\u2014No.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPues entonces por qu\u00e9 lo dejar\u00eda que se lleve sus armas?\n\n\u2014Porque las necesito.\n\n\u2014No es una buena raz\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 tal \u00e9sta? Si intenta impedirlo, lo matar\u00e9.\n\nWill se qued\u00f3 boquiabierto.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1n all\u00e1.\n\nDunk se detuvo a la entrada del septo del castillo. \"Quieran los dioses que no llegue tarde.\" Hab\u00eda devuelto el cinto a su lugar acostumbrado, bien apretado en su cintura. Tambi\u00e9n se hab\u00eda atado al brazo herido el escudo de la horca, cuyo peso provocaba punzadas de dolor a cada paso que daba. Ten\u00eda miedo de gritar s\u00f3lo con que alguien lo rozara. Empuj\u00f3 la puerta con la mano buena.\n\nDentro del septo reinaban la penumbra y el silencio. La \u00fanica luz eran las velas que parpadeaban en los altares de los Siete. El que m\u00e1s velas encendidas ten\u00eda era el Guerrero, algo previsible durante un torneo. De seguro hab\u00edan venido muchos caballeros a pedir fuerza y valor antes de entrar en liza. El altar del Desconocido estaba a oscuras, con una sola vela. Tanto la Madre como el Padre las ten\u00edan a docenas, y el Herrero y la Doncella algunas menos. Bajo el resplandeciente farol de la Vieja estaba arrodillado lord Ambrose Butterwell, con la cabeza inclinada, rezando por tener sabidur\u00eda.\n\nNo estaba solo. En cuanto Dunk se acerc\u00f3 a lord Ambrose le salieron al paso dos soldados de semblante serio bajo el medio yelmo. Ambos llevaban cota de malla bajo unas sobrevestes con el ondeado verde, blanco y amarillo de la casa Butterwell.\n\n\u2014Det\u00e9ngase, ser \u2014dijo uno de los dos\u2014. No tiene por qu\u00e9 entrar.\n\n\u2014Al contrario. Ya les dije que me encontrar\u00eda.\n\nEra la voz de Egg.\n\nEn el momento que el ni\u00f1o sali\u00f3 de la penumbra, bajo el Padre, su cabeza rapada reflejando la luz de las velas, Dunk estuvo a punto de correr hacia \u00e9l para tomarlo en sus brazos con un grito de alegr\u00eda y estrujarlo, pero el tono de Egg lo hizo vacilar. \"Parece m\u00e1s enfadado que asustado, y nunca lo hab\u00eda visto tan serio. Encima Butterwell est\u00e1 de rodillas. Algo raro pasa aqu\u00ed.\"\n\nLord Butterwell volvi\u00f3 a ponerse de pie. Incluso a la d\u00e9bil luz de las velas su piel presentaba un aspecto p\u00e1lido y pringoso.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jenlo pasar \u2014les dijo a sus guardias. Cuando se apartaron hizo se\u00f1as a Dunk de que se aproximara\u2014. No le hice nada al ni\u00f1o. Conoc\u00ed bien a su padre en la \u00e9poca en que fui mano del rey. Es necesario que el pr\u00edncipe Maekar sepa que no fue idea m\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Lo sabr\u00e1 \u2014prometi\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\"\u00bfQu\u00e9 est\u00e1 pasando aqu\u00ed?\"\n\n\u2014Peake. \u00c9l organiz\u00f3 todo. Lo juro por los Siete \u2014lord Butterwell apoy\u00f3 una mano en el altar\u2014. Que me maten los dioses ahora mismo si miento. Me dijo a qui\u00e9n deb\u00eda invitar y a qui\u00e9n excluir, y trajo al muchacho, al pretendiente. Yo nunca he querido participar en ninguna traici\u00f3n. Tiene que creerme. Que me haya incitado Tom Heddle no lo niego. Es mi yerno, el marido de mi hija mayor, pero no le mentir\u00e9: es uno de los implicados.\n\n\u2014Es su palad\u00edn \u2014dijo Egg\u2014. Si \u00e9l est\u00e1 implicado, usted tambi\u00e9n.\n\n\"\u00a1C\u00e1llate!\", tuvo ganas de bramar Dunk. \"Har\u00e1s que nos maten con esa lengua tan suelta.\" Butterwell, no obstante, parec\u00eda asustado.\n\n\u2014No lo entiende, mi se\u00f1or. Heddle est\u00e1 al frente de mi guarnici\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Seguro que entre sus guardias habr\u00e1 alguno fiel \u2014dijo Egg.\n\n\u2014Estos hombres de aqu\u00ed \u2014dijo lord Butterwell\u2014, y algunos m\u00e1s. No niego que haya sido demasiado laxo, pero traidor jam\u00e1s. Desde el principio Frey y yo tuvimos dudas sobre el pretendiente de lord Peake. \u00a1No lleva la espada! Si fuera hijo de su padre, Aceroamargo lo habr\u00eda armado con Fuego Oscuro. Y tanto hablar de un drag\u00f3n... Locura, locura e insensatez \u2014su se\u00f1or\u00eda se sec\u00f3 el sudor de la cara con la manga\u2014. Y ahora se llevaron el huevo, el huevo de drag\u00f3n que recibi\u00f3 mi abuelo del rey en recompensa por su lealtad. Esta ma\u00f1ana, cuando me despert\u00e9, estaba en su sitio, y mis guardias aseguran que nadie entr\u00f3 ni sali\u00f3 de la alcoba. Es posible que los haya sobornado lord Peake. No lo s\u00e9, pero el huevo desapareci\u00f3. O lo tienen ellos o...\n\n\"O sali\u00f3 el drag\u00f3n\", pens\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nSi volv\u00eda a aparecer un drag\u00f3n vivo en Poniente, tanto los se\u00f1ores como el pueblo llano acudir\u00edan en masa al pr\u00edncipe con el derecho a reivindicarlo.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, quisiera hablar con mi... con mi escudero, si tiene la bondad.\n\n\u2014Como quiera, ser.\n\nLord Butterwell se arrodill\u00f3 de nuevo para rezar. Dunk se llev\u00f3 a Egg a un lado y se puso de rodillas para hablar cara a cara con \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014Te dar\u00e9 tal golpe en la oreja que la cabeza se te girar\u00e1 y pasar\u00e1s el resto de la vida viendo por d\u00f3nde vienes.\n\n\u2014Ser\u00eda lo justo, ser \u2014Egg tuvo la gentileza de mostrarse avergonzado\u2014. Lo siento. S\u00f3lo quer\u00eda mandarle un cuervo a mi padre.\n\n\"Para que yo pudiera seguir siendo caballero. La intenci\u00f3n era buena.\" Dunk mir\u00f3 de reojo a Butterwell, que rezaba.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 le hiciste?\n\n\u2014Asustarlo, ser.\n\n\u2014Eso ya lo veo. Antes de que anochezca tendr\u00e1 costras en las rodillas.\n\n\u2014No se me ocurr\u00eda nada m\u00e1s que hacer, ser. Al ver el anillo de mi padre, el maestre me llev\u00f3 con ellos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEllos?\n\n\u2014Lord Butterwell y lord Frey, ser. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda unos cuantos guardias. Estaban todos muy disgustados. Alguien rob\u00f3 el huevo de drag\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Espero que no hayas sido t\u00fa.\n\nEgg sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza.\n\n\u2014No, ser. Al ver que el maestre le ense\u00f1aba mi anillo a lord Butterwell, me di cuenta de que me hab\u00eda metido en un l\u00edo. Se me ocurri\u00f3 decir que era robado, pero me pareci\u00f3 que no se lo creer\u00edan. Entonces me acord\u00e9 de cuando o\u00ed hablar a mi padre de algo que hab\u00eda dicho lord Cuervo de Sangre, que era mejor dar miedo que tenerlo, y les dije que nos hab\u00eda enviado mi padre a espiarlos, que estaba a punto de llegar con un ej\u00e9rcito y que m\u00e1s le val\u00eda a lord Butterwell soltarme y renunciar a su traici\u00f3n para que no le cortaran la cabeza \u2014sonri\u00f3 con timidez\u2014. Sali\u00f3 mejor de lo que me esperaba, ser.\n\nDunk tuvo ganas de agarrar al ni\u00f1o por los hombros y zarandearlo hasta que le temblaran los dientes. \"Esto no es un juego\", podr\u00eda haber gritado. \"Esto es a vida o muerte.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfTambi\u00e9n lo oy\u00f3 lord Frey?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed. Le dese\u00f3 a lord Butterwell mucha felicidad en su matrimonio y anunci\u00f3 su inmediato regreso a Los Gemelos. Entonces su se\u00f1or\u00eda nos trajo aqu\u00ed a rezar.\n\n\"Frey pod\u00eda huir\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"pero no es una opci\u00f3n que tenga Butterwell, y tarde o temprano empezar\u00e1 a extra\u00f1arse de que no aparezcan el pr\u00edncipe Maekar y su ej\u00e9rcito.\"\n\n\u2014Si se entera lord Peake de que est\u00e1s en el castillo...\n\nLas puertas del septo se abrieron con brusquedad y, al girarse, Dunk vio a Tom Heddle el Negro en cota de malla y armadura, con los pies en el agua que ca\u00eda de su capa empapada por la lluvia. Junto a Heddle, muy serio, hab\u00eda una docena de soldados armados con lanzas y hachas. Tras ellos un rel\u00e1mpago azul y blanco rasg\u00f3 el cielo, y de un momento a otro llen\u00f3 de sombras el suelo de piedra clara. Una r\u00e1faga de viento h\u00famedo hizo temblar todas las velas del septo.\n\n\"Por los siete infiernos\", fue lo \u00fanico que tuvo tiempo de pensar Dunk antes de que hablara Heddle.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1 el ni\u00f1o. Capt\u00farenlo.\n\nLord Butterwell se hab\u00eda levantado.\n\n\u2014No, quietos. Al ni\u00f1o no hay que molestarlo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 significa esto, Tommard?\n\nHeddle hizo una mueca de desprecio.\n\n\u2014No todos tenemos leche en las venas, se\u00f1or\u00eda. Capturar\u00e9 al ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014No lo entiende \u2014la voz de Butterwell se hab\u00eda vuelto aguda y tr\u00e9mula\u2014. Estamos perdidos. Lord Frey se march\u00f3 y pronto se ir\u00e1n otros. El pr\u00edncipe Maekar est\u00e1 a punto de llegar con un ej\u00e9rcito.\n\n\u2014Raz\u00f3n de m\u00e1s para tomar al ni\u00f1o como reh\u00e9n.\n\n\u2014No, no \u2014dijo Butterwell\u2014, ya no quiero saber nada de lord Peake ni de su pretendiente. No luchar\u00e9.\n\nTom el Negro mir\u00f3 a su se\u00f1or con frialdad.\n\n\u2014Cobarde \u2014escupi\u00f3\u2014. Diga lo que quiera. O lucha, mi se\u00f1or, o morir\u00e1 \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 a Egg\u2014. Un venado para el primero que haga sangre.\n\n\u2014No, no \u2014Butterwell se gir\u00f3 hacia sus guardias\u2014. Det\u00e9nganlos. \u00bfMe oyeron? Se los ordeno. Det\u00e9nganlos.\n\nTodos los guardias, sin embargo, se hab\u00edan quedado quietos y perplejos, sin saber a qui\u00e9n obedecer.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTendr\u00e9 que hacerlo yo mismo?\n\nTom el Negro desenvain\u00f3 su espada. Lo mismo hizo Dunk.\n\n\u2014Detr\u00e1s de m\u00ed, Egg.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Suelten ambos los aceros! \u2014chill\u00f3 Butterwell\u2014. \u00a1No permitir\u00e9 que se derrame sangre en el septo! Ser Tommard, este hombre es el escudo juramentado del pr\u00edncipe. \u00a1Lo matar\u00e1!\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo si cae encima de m\u00ed \u2014Tom el Negro sonri\u00f3 con dureza, ense\u00f1ando los dientes\u2014. Lo he visto intentar justar.\n\n\u2014Se me da mejor la espada \u2014le avis\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nHeddle contest\u00f3 con un bufido y se lanz\u00f3 sobre \u00e9l.\n\nDunk empuj\u00f3 a Egg hacia atr\u00e1s sin contemplaciones y se gir\u00f3 para enfrentarse al acero de Tom el Negro. Par\u00f3 bien la primera estocada, pero el impacto de la hoja en el escudo y en la herida vendada de detr\u00e1s traspasaron su brazo de dolor. Intent\u00f3 replicar con una estocada en la cabeza de Heddle, pero Tom el Negro se apart\u00f3 y atac\u00f3 de nuevo. A duras penas Dunk logr\u00f3 girar su escudo a tiempo. Volaron astillas de pino y Heddle rio mientras segu\u00eda lanzando golpes a lo bajo y a lo alto. Dunk los paraba todos con su escudo, pero cada golpe era una agon\u00eda y constat\u00f3 que empezaba a ceder terreno.\n\n\u2014\u00a1A por \u00e9l, ser, a por \u00e9l! \u2014oy\u00f3 decir a Egg\u2014. \u00a1Ya lo tienes!\n\nDunk sent\u00eda un regusto a sangre en la boca, pero lo peor era que se le hab\u00eda reabierto la herida. Tuvo un mareo. La espada de Tom el Negro estaba haciendo a\u00f1icos el largo escudo cometa. \"Prot\u00e9janme, roble y hierro, o acabar\u00e9 en el infierno\", pens\u00f3 antes de recordar que aquel escudo era de pino. Al chocar de espaldas contra un altar cay\u00f3 sobre una rodilla y se dio cuenta de que no ten\u00eda m\u00e1s terreno que ceder.\n\n\u2014T\u00fa no eres caballero \u2014dijo Tom el Negro\u2014. \u00bfSon l\u00e1grimas las que hay en tus ojos, necio?\n\n\"L\u00e1grimas de dolor.\" Dunk se levant\u00f3 y se arroj\u00f3 contra su enemigo con el escudo por delante.\n\nTom el Negro perdi\u00f3 el equilibrio, pero consigui\u00f3 no caer hacia atr\u00e1s. Dunk se le ech\u00f3 encima y lo golpe\u00f3 sin tregua con el escudo, usando su tama\u00f1o y su fuerza para dejar tirado a Heddle en medio del septo. Despu\u00e9s solt\u00f3 el escudo y atac\u00f3 con la espada. Heddle grit\u00f3 cuando el acero se le clav\u00f3 en lo m\u00e1s profundo del muslo, seccionando lana y m\u00fasculos. \u00c9l tambi\u00e9n lanz\u00f3 una estocada salvaje, pero fue un golpe tan desesperado como torpe. Dunk lo absorbi\u00f3 de nuevo con el escudo antes de responder con todo su peso.\n\nTom el Negro dio un paso hacia atr\u00e1s y qued\u00f3 horrorizado al ver caer su antebrazo junto al altar del Desconocido.\n\n\u2014Usted es... \u2014balbuce\u00f3\u2014. Es...\n\n\u2014Se lo advert\u00ed \u2014Dunk le atraves\u00f3 el cuello\u2014. Se me da mejor la espada.\n\nDos de los soldados huyeron bajo la lluvia, mientras del cad\u00e1ver de Tom el Negro sal\u00eda un charco de sangre. Los otros vacilaron, aferrados a sus lanzas, y esperaron a que hablara su se\u00f1or, mientras lanzaban miradas recelosas a Dunk.\n\n\u2014No... no estuvo bien \u2014logr\u00f3 decir al fin Butterwell. Se gir\u00f3 hacia Dunk y Egg\u2014. Tenemos que irnos de Muros Blancos antes de que los dos soldados den la noticia a Gormon Peake, que tiene m\u00e1s amigos que yo entre los invitados. La poterna de la muralla norte. Saldremos sin ser vistos por ah\u00ed. Vamos, que no hay tiempo que perder.\n\nDunk envain\u00f3 la espada con rudeza.\n\n\u2014Egg, ve con lord Butterwell \u2014le pas\u00f3 un brazo al ni\u00f1o por la espalda y baj\u00f3 la voz\u2014. No te quedes con \u00e9l m\u00e1s tiempo de lo necesario. Da rienda suelta a Lluvia y m\u00e1rchate antes de que su se\u00f1or\u00eda vuelva a cambiar de bando. Ve hacia Poza de la Doncella, que est\u00e1 m\u00e1s cerca que Desembarco del Rey.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY t\u00fa, ser?\n\n\u2014De m\u00ed no te preocupes.\n\n\u2014Soy tu escudero.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, y si no haces lo que te digo recibir\u00e1s un buen golpe en la oreja.\n\nUn grupo de hombres abandonaba la gran sala, deteni\u00e9ndose lo justo para ponerse la capucha antes de exponerse a la lluvia. Entre ellos figuraban el Viejo Buey y el enclenque lord Caswell, borracho una vez m\u00e1s. Ambos evitaron a Dunk. Ser Mortimer Boggs le hizo el honor de mirarlo con curiosidad, pero no cometi\u00f3 la imprudencia de dirigirle la palabra. Menos t\u00edmido fue Uthor Underleaf.\n\n\u2014Llega tarde al banquete, ser \u2014dijo mientras se pon\u00eda los guantes\u2014. Y veo que vuelve a llevar espada.\n\n\u2014Si lo \u00fanico que le preocupa es el rescate, lo tendr\u00e1 \u2014Dunk se hab\u00eda despojado de su maltrecho escudo y se hab\u00eda envuelto el brazo herido con la capa para esconder la sangre\u2014. Salvo si muero. Entonces tendr\u00e1 mi permiso para saquear mi cad\u00e1ver.\n\nSer Uthor se rio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLo que huelo es gallard\u00eda o simple estupidez? Que yo recuerde son dos olores que se parecen mucho. No es demasiado tarde para aceptar mi oferta, ser.\n\n\u2014Es m\u00e1s tarde de lo que piensa \u2014le advirti\u00f3 Dunk.\n\nPas\u00f3 de largo sin esperar la respuesta de Underleaf y cruz\u00f3 la doble puerta. La gran sala ol\u00eda a cerveza, humo y lana mojada. En la galer\u00eda superior algunos m\u00fasicos tocaban con suavidad. Llegaba un eco de risas de las mesas de honor, donde ser Kirby Pimm y ser Lucas Nayland jugaban a qui\u00e9n beb\u00eda m\u00e1s. En la tarima lord Peake hablaba serio con lord Costayne, dejando abandonada en su sitial a la nueva esposa de Ambrose Butterwell.\n\nDunk encontr\u00f3 en las mesas bajas a ser Kyle, que ahogaba sus penas en la cerveza de lord Butterwell. Su tajadero estaba lleno de un denso estofado hecho con los restos de la noche anterior. Era lo que llamaban \"cuenco\" en los tenderetes de comida de Desembarco del Rey. Se notaba que no era del agrado de ser Kyle, ya que se hab\u00eda enfriado sin que lo tocara y ten\u00eda una capa brillante de grasa solidificada.\n\nDunk se sent\u00f3 a su lado en el banco.\n\n\u2014Ser Kyle.\n\nEl Gato lo salud\u00f3 con la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan. \u00bfQuiere un poco de cerveza?\n\n\u2014No.\n\nLo que menos le conven\u00eda era tomar cerveza.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo se encuentra bien, ser? Disc\u00falpeme, pero lo veo...\n\n\"...mejor de como me siento.\"\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 fue de Glendon Ball?\n\n\u2014Se lo llevaron a las mazmorras \u2014ser Kyle sacudi\u00f3 la cabeza\u2014. No s\u00e9 si sea un hijo de puta, pero no me parece un ladr\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014No lo es.\n\nSer Kyle lo mir\u00f3 con agudeza.\n\n\u2014Su brazo... \u00bfC\u00f3mo se...?\n\n\u2014Una daga.\n\nCe\u00f1udo, Dunk se gir\u00f3 hacia la tarima. En un d\u00eda se hab\u00eda salvado dos veces de morir. Sab\u00eda que a la mayor\u00eda de los hombres eso les habr\u00eda bastado. \"Dunk el necio, m\u00e1s duro de entendimiento que traspasar el muro de un castillo.\" Se puso de pie.\n\n\u2014Alteza \u2014dijo en voz alta.\n\nEn los bancos m\u00e1s pr\u00f3ximos, algunos hombres dejaron las cucharas e interrumpieron sus conversaciones para mirarlo.\n\n\u2014Alteza \u2014repiti\u00f3 Dunk con m\u00e1s fuerza. Fue hacia la tarima dando zancadas por la alfombra de Myr\u2014. Daemon.\n\nEl silencio se extendi\u00f3 a la mitad de la sala. En la mesa de honor, el hombre que se hab\u00eda hecho llamar el Violinista se gir\u00f3 a sonre\u00edrle. Dunk vio que para el banquete se hab\u00eda puesto una t\u00fanica morada. \"Para realzar el color de sus ojos.\"\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan. Me complace contar con su compa\u00f1\u00eda. \u00bfQu\u00e9 desea de m\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Justicia \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014 para Glendon Ball.\n\nEl nombre reverber\u00f3 entre las paredes y por breves instantes pareci\u00f3 que todos los hombres, mujeres y ni\u00f1os de la sala se hubieran convertido en piedra. Despu\u00e9s lord Costayne estamp\u00f3 el pu\u00f1o en la mesa.\n\n\u2014\u00c9se no merece justicia \u2014bram\u00f3\u2014, sino la muerte.\n\nUna docena de voces se hicieron eco de sus palabras.\n\n\u2014Es de origen bastardo \u2014declar\u00f3 ser Harbert Paege\u2014. Todos los bastardos son unos ladrones o algo peor. La sangre manda.\n\nPor un momento Dunk perdi\u00f3 la esperanza. \"Aqu\u00ed estoy solo.\" Sin embargo, Kyle el Gato logr\u00f3 ponerse de pie casi sin tambalearse.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 sea bastardo, mis se\u00f1ores, pero lo es de Bola de Fuego. Ya lo dijo ser Harbert: la sangre manda.\n\nDaemon frunci\u00f3 el entrecejo.\n\n\u2014Nadie honra m\u00e1s a Bola de Fuego que yo \u2014dijo\u2014, y no estoy dispuesto a creer que este falso caballero sea de su simiente. Rob\u00f3 el huevo de drag\u00f3n y para ello mat\u00f3 a tres buenos hombres.\n\n\u2014No rob\u00f3 nada ni mat\u00f3 a nadie \u2014insisti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Si hubo tres muertes, busquen al asesino en otra parte. Su alteza sabe tan bien como yo que ser Glendon estuvo todo el d\u00eda en el patio, encadenando justas.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, es verdad \u2014reconoci\u00f3 Daemon\u2014. A m\u00ed tambi\u00e9n me extra\u00f1\u00f3, pero hallaron el huevo de drag\u00f3n entre sus pertenencias.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSeguro? \u00bfAhora d\u00f3nde est\u00e1?\n\nLord Gormon Peake se levant\u00f3, imperioso, mirando con frialdad.\n\n\u2014A buen recaudo. \u00bfEn qu\u00e9 es de su incumbencia, ser?\n\n\u2014Mu\u00e9strelo \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Quisiera volver a verlo, mi se\u00f1or. La otra noche s\u00f3lo lo vi un momento.\n\nLa mirada de Peake se llen\u00f3 de recelo.\n\n\u2014Alteza \u2014le dijo a Daemon\u2014, ahora que lo pienso este caballero errante lleg\u00f3 a Muros Blancos con ser Glendon sin que lo hubieran invitado. Quiz\u00e1 sea su c\u00f3mplice.\n\nDunk no le hizo caso.\n\n\u2014Alteza, el huevo de drag\u00f3n que encontr\u00f3 lord Peake entre las pertenencias de ser Glendon lo puso all\u00ed \u00e9l mismo. Que lo muestre, si es que puede. Exam\u00ednelo usted. Apuesto a que s\u00f3lo es una piedra pintada.\n\nSe hizo el caos en la sala. Cien voces empezaron a hablar al mismo tiempo y una docena de caballeros se levantaron de un salto. Daemon casi parec\u00eda tan joven y perdido como ser Glendon al ser acusado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1 borracho, amigo m\u00edo?\n\n\"Ojal\u00e1 lo estuviera.\"\n\n\u2014Perd\u00ed algo de sangre \u2014admiti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014, pero no la cabeza. A ser Glendon se le acusa injustamente.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9? \u2014inquiri\u00f3 Daemon, perplejo\u2014. Si, como insiste, Ball no hizo nada malo, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 dir\u00eda su se\u00f1or\u00eda lo contrario e intentar\u00eda demostrarlo con una piedra pintada?\n\n\u2014Para apartarlo de su camino. Su se\u00f1or\u00eda compr\u00f3 al resto de sus rivales con oro y promesas, pero Ball no estaba en venta.\n\nEl Violinista se ruboriz\u00f3.\n\n\u2014No es verdad.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed lo es. Mande traer a ser Glendon y preg\u00fanteselo usted mismo.\n\n\u2014Es lo que har\u00e9. Lord Peake, que traigan ahora mismo al bastardo. Y el huevo de drag\u00f3n tambi\u00e9n. Quiero verlo m\u00e1s de cerca.\n\nGormon Peake lanz\u00f3 una mirada hostil a Dunk.\n\n\u2014Alteza, el bastardo est\u00e1 siendo interrogado. No tengo la menor duda de que dentro de pocas horas tendremos una confesi\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Lo que entiende mi se\u00f1or por \"interrogado\" es torturado \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Dentro de pocas horas ser Glendon confesar\u00e1 haber matado al padre de su alteza y tambi\u00e9n a sus dos hermanos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Basta! \u2014La cara de lord Peake casi estaba morada\u2014. Una palabra m\u00e1s y le arranco la lengua de tajo.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 mintiendo \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014. Son dos palabras.\n\n\u2014Y de las dos se arrepentir\u00e1 \u2014prometi\u00f3 Peake\u2014. Ll\u00e9vense a este hombre y encad\u00e9nenlo en las mazmorras.\n\n\u2014No \u2014la voz de Daemon ten\u00eda un tono inquietante de serenidad \u2014. Quiero saber la verdad. Sunderland, Vyrwel, Smallwood, vayan con sus hombres a buscar a ser Glendon a las mazmorras. Tr\u00e1iganlo sin tardanza y aseg\u00farense de que no le pase nada. Si alguien trata de ponerles alg\u00fan obst\u00e1culo, d\u00edganle que son \u00f3rdenes del rey.\n\n\u2014Como mande \u2014respondi\u00f3 lord Vyrwel.\n\n\u2014Lo resolver\u00e9 como lo habr\u00eda resuelto mi padre \u2014dijo el Violinista\u2014. Se acusa a ser Glendon de delitos muy graves. Como caballero tiene derecho a defenderse con la fuerza de las armas. Me enfrentar\u00e9 con \u00e9l en el palenque. Y que los dioses determinen su culpabilidad o inocencia.\n\n\"Sea de h\u00e9roe o de puta su sangre\", pens\u00f3 Dunk cuando dos hombres de lord Vyrwel arrojaron desnudo a sus pies a ser Glendon, \"ahora tiene bastante menos que antes\".\n\nLe hab\u00edan pegado una paliza tremebunda. Ten\u00eda la cara hinchada, llena de moretones, varios dientes rotos o ca\u00eddos, el ojo derecho ensangrentado y el pecho lleno de franjas de piel roja y agrietada, por la aplicaci\u00f3n de hierros candentes.\n\n\u2014Ya no corre peligro \u2014murmur\u00f3 ser Kyle\u2014. Aqu\u00ed s\u00f3lo hay caballeros errantes y saben los dioses que somos inofensivos.\n\nDaemon les hab\u00eda asignado los aposentos del maestre, con orden de curar las lesiones que pudiera haber sufrido ser Glendon y asegurarse de que estuviera preparado para la justa.\n\nAl lavar de sangre la cara y las manos del muchacho, Dunk vio que le hab\u00edan arrancado tres u\u00f1as de la mano izquierda.\n\nFue lo que m\u00e1s le preocup\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPuede sujetar una lanza?\n\n\u2014\u00bfUna lanza? \u2014cuando ser Glendon intentaba hablar babeaba sangre y saliva\u2014. \u00bfTengo todos los dedos?\n\n\u2014Diez \u2014dijo Dunk\u2014, pero s\u00f3lo siete u\u00f1as.\n\nBall asinti\u00f3 con la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Tom el Negro se dispon\u00eda a cortarme los dedos, pero lo llamaron. \u00bfCon \u00e9l tendr\u00e9 que combatir?\n\n\u2014No. Lo mat\u00e9.\n\nLa respuesta lo hizo sonre\u00edr.\n\n\u2014Alguien ten\u00eda que hacerlo.\n\n\u2014Deber\u00e1 enfrentar al Violinista, aunque su aut\u00e9ntico nombre...\n\n\u2014... es Daemon. S\u00ed, ya me lo dijeron. El Drag\u00f3n Negro \u2014ser Glendon rio\u2014. Mi padre muri\u00f3 por el suyo. Con gusto me habr\u00eda puesto a su servicio. Habr\u00eda combatido por \u00e9l y matado por \u00e9l y muerto por \u00e9l, pero no puedo perder por \u00e9l \u2014gir\u00f3 la cabeza y escupi\u00f3 un diente roto\u2014. \u00bfPuedo beber una copa de vino?\n\n\u2014Ser Kyle, traiga el odre.\n\nEl muchacho bebi\u00f3 un buen trago y se limpi\u00f3 la boca.\n\n\u2014M\u00edreme. Tiemblo como una doncella.\n\nDunk frunci\u00f3 el ce\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTodav\u00eda puede montar a caballo?\n\n\u2014Ay\u00fademe a lavarme y traiga mi escudo, mi lanza y mi silla \u2014dijo ser Glendon\u2014. Veremos qu\u00e9 puedo hacer.\n\nCasi hab\u00eda amanecido cuando la lluvia amain\u00f3 suficiente para que se celebrara el combate. El patio del castillo era un cenagal de lodo blando que brillaba, h\u00famedo, a la luz de cien antorchas. Al fondo del campo se levantaba una neblina gris cuyos dedos fantasmag\u00f3ricos sub\u00edan por los muros de piedra blanca para enroscarse en las almenas del castillo. Durante las \u00faltimas horas hab\u00edan desaparecido muchos de los invitados a la boda, pero los que quedaban volvieron a subir a la tribuna de espectadores y se sentaron en tablones de pino empapado. Uno de ellos era ser Gormon Peake, rodeado de se\u00f1ores de poca monta y caballeros de la casa.\n\nHac\u00eda pocos a\u00f1os que Dunk hab\u00eda sido escudero de ser Arlan y no se le hab\u00eda olvidado en qu\u00e9 consist\u00eda el oficio. Abroch\u00f3 las hebillas de la armadura de ser Glendon, que no era de su talla, ajust\u00f3 el yelmo a la gola, lo ayud\u00f3 a montar y le tendi\u00f3 el escudo. Las justas anteriores hab\u00edan dejado hondas muescas en la madera, pero a\u00fan se ve\u00eda la bola de fuego.\n\n\"Parece tan ni\u00f1o como Egg\", pens\u00f3 Dunk. \"Un ni\u00f1o asustado, y feroz.\" Su yegua alazana no llevaba barda y tambi\u00e9n estaba inquieta. \"Deber\u00eda haberse quedado su montura. Quiz\u00e1 este alaz\u00e1n sea de mejor raza, y m\u00e1s veloz, pero como mejor cabalgan los jinetes es en los caballos que conocen, y \u00e9ste le es desconocido.\"\n\n\u2014Necesitar\u00e9 una lanza \u2014dijo ser Glendon\u2014, una lanza de guerra.\n\nDunk fue a la armer\u00eda. Las lanzas de guerra eran m\u00e1s cortas y pesadas que las de torneo, que eran las que se hab\u00edan usado antes en las justas: seis codos de duro fresno y una punta de hierro. Eligi\u00f3 una, la sac\u00f3 y le pas\u00f3 la mano de un extremo al otro para cerciorarse de que no estuviera resquebrajada.\n\nEn la otra punta del palenque uno de los escuderos de Daemon le tend\u00eda una lanza del mismo tipo. Ya no era violinista. Ahora, en vez de espadas y violines, la gualdrapa de su caballo de guerra ostentaba el drag\u00f3n de tres cabezas de la casa Fuegoscuro, negro sobre campo rojo. El pr\u00edncipe tambi\u00e9n se hab\u00eda quitado el tinte negro del pelo, que ahora le ca\u00eda hasta el cuello en una cascada plateada y dorada que a la luz de las antorchas parec\u00eda metal batido. \"Si Egg se lo dejara crecer lo tendr\u00eda igual\", se dio cuenta Dunk. Aunque le costara imaginarlo as\u00ed, sab\u00eda que tendr\u00eda que hacerlo alg\u00fan d\u00eda, en caso de que ambos vivieran hasta entonces.\n\nEl heraldo subi\u00f3 una vez m\u00e1s a su plataforma.\n\n\u2014Ser Glendon el Bastardo est\u00e1 acusado de robo y asesinato \u2014proclam\u00f3\u2014, y comparece ahora para demostrar su inocencia a riesgo de su propio cuerpo. Daemon de la casa Fuegoscuro, el segundo de su nombre, rey leg\u00edtimo de los \u00e1ndalos y los rhoynar y los primeros hombres, se\u00f1or de los Siete Reinos y Protector del Reino, comparece para demostrar la veracidad de las acusaciones contra el bastardo Glendon.\n\nDe pronto se borr\u00f3 un a\u00f1o entero y Dunk volvi\u00f3 a encontrarse en Vado Ceniza, oyendo a Baelor Rompelanzas justo antes de que se enfrentaran por su vida. Dej\u00f3 la lanza de guerra en su sitio y sac\u00f3 una de torneo del siguiente bastidor: nueve codos de longitud, fina, elegante...\n\n\u2014Use \u00e9sta \u2014le dijo a ser Glendon\u2014. Fue lo que usamos en Vado Ceniza, en el juicio de siete.\n\n\u2014El Violinista eligi\u00f3 una lanza de guerra. Piensa matarme.\n\n\u2014Primero debe acertar. Si apunta bien no lo tocar\u00e1 su punta.\n\n\u2014No s\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Yo s\u00ed.\n\nSer Glendon le arrebat\u00f3 la lanza, dio media vuelta y trot\u00f3 hacia el palenque.\n\n\u2014Pues que nos salven los Siete a los dos.\n\nAl este, un rel\u00e1mpago zigzague\u00f3 en el cielo rosa claro. Daemon clav\u00f3 las espuelas de oro en los flancos de su corcel y ech\u00f3 a galopar como un trueno, a la vez que bajaba la lanza, con su mort\u00edfera punta de hierro. Ser Glendon levant\u00f3 el escudo y se apresur\u00f3 a ir a su encuentro, balanceando su lanza, m\u00e1s larga que la de su rival, a la altura de la cabeza de la yegua, a fin de dirigirla hacia el pecho del joven pretendiente. Uno y otro caballo hac\u00edan saltar el barro con sus cascos. Al pasar los caballeros pareci\u00f3 que el fuego de las antorchas se avivaba.\n\nDunk cerr\u00f3 los ojos. Oy\u00f3 un chasquido, un grito y un golpe sordo.\n\n\u2014\u00a1No! \u2014oy\u00f3 gritar a lord Peake con angustia\u2014. \u00a1Nooo!\n\nPor un fugaz instante Dunk casi se compadeci\u00f3 de \u00e9l. Volvi\u00f3 a abrir los ojos. Ya sin jinete, el gran corcel negro pasaba del galope al trote. Dunk se acerc\u00f3 de un salto y lo asi\u00f3 por las riendas. En el otro extremo del palenque ser Glendon Ball hizo girar la yegua y levant\u00f3 su lanza rota. Varios hombres corrieron por el campo hacia donde se hab\u00eda quedado inm\u00f3vil el Violinista, con la cara hundida en el barro. Lo ayudaron a levantarse, cubierto de barro de pies a cabeza.\n\n\u2014\u00a1El Drag\u00f3n Marr\u00f3n! \u2014exclam\u00f3 alguien.\n\nSe oyeron risas por el patio, mientras amanec\u00eda en Muros Blancos.\n\nMuy poco despu\u00e9s, mientras Dunk y ser Kyle ayudaban a desmontar a Glendon Ball, son\u00f3 la primera trompeta y los centinelas de la muralla dieron la voz de alarma. Hab\u00eda aparecido un ej\u00e9rcito a los pies del castillo, surgido de las nieblas matinales.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed que Egg no ment\u00eda \u2014le dijo asombrado Dunk a ser Kyle.\n\nDe Poza de la Doncella hab\u00eda acudido lord Mooton, del \u00c1rbol de Cuervos lord Blackwood, y de Valle Oscuro lord Darklyn. Las heredades reales de la zona de Desembarco del Rey enviaban a los Hayford, Rosby, Stokeworth, Massey y a las espadas juramentadas del propio rey, encabezadas por tres caballeros de la Guardia Real y reforzadas por trescientos Dientes de Cuervo con largos arcos de arciano blanco. De las hechizadas torres de Harrenhal ven\u00eda la mism\u00edsima Danielle la Loca, de la casa Lothston, con grandes efectivos y una armadura negra que le iba como un guante, sin olvidar su roja cabellera al viento.\n\nLa primera luz del sol se reflejaba en las puntas de quinientas picas y diez veces m\u00e1s lanzas. Los estandartes grises de la noche renac\u00edan en medio centenar de vivos colores. Y sobre todos ellos ondeaban dos regios dragones sobre campos negro azabache: el gran animal de tres cabezas del rey Aerys I Targaryen, rojo como el fuego, y una furia de alas blancas con rojo aliento de llamas.\n\n\"Al final no es Maekar\", supo Dunk al ver los estandartes. Los del pr\u00edncipe de Refugio Estival ten\u00edan cuatro dragones de tres cabezas, en dos pares, armas del cuarto hijo del difunto rey Daeron II Targaryen.\n\nUn solo drag\u00f3n blanco anunciaba la presencia de la mano del rey, lord Brynden R\u00edos.\n\nCuervo de Sangre ven\u00eda a Muros Blancos en persona.\n\nLa primera rebeli\u00f3n de Fuegoscuro hab\u00eda perecido en el campo de Hierba Roja con sangre y gloria. La segunda muri\u00f3 con un quejido.\n\n\u2014No podr\u00e1n acobardarnos \u2014proclam\u00f3 el joven Daemon desde las almenas del castillo tras mirar el anillo de hierro que los rodeaba\u2014, pues nuestra causa es justa. \u00a1Nos abriremos paso y cabalgaremos sin descanso hacia Desembarco del Rey! \u00a1Que suenen las trompetas!\n\nLo que se oy\u00f3 fueron murmullos, intercambiados por los se\u00f1ores y los caballeros, algunos de los cuales empezaron a alejarse con sigilo hacia los establos, hacia alguna poterna o hacia alg\u00fan escondite donde tuvieran la esperanza de quedar a salvo. Y cuando Daemon desenvain\u00f3 su espada y la levant\u00f3 por encima de la cabeza, todos sin excepci\u00f3n se percataron de que no era Fuegoscuro.\n\n\u2014Hoy haremos otro campo de Hierba Roja \u2014prometi\u00f3 el pretendiente.\n\n\u2014Me meo en lo que dices, Violinista \u2014replic\u00f3 a gritos un canoso escudero\u2014. Prefiero vivir.\n\nAl final el segundo Daemon Fuegoscuro parti\u00f3 solo en su caballo, se detuvo ante el regio invitado y desafi\u00f3 a lord Cuervo de Sangre a singular combate.\n\n\u2014Me enfrentar\u00e9 con usted o con el cobarde de Aerys, o con cualquier palad\u00edn a quien desee nombrar.\n\nNo fue eso lo que sucedi\u00f3, sino que los hombres de Cuervo de Sangre lo rodearon, lo bajaron del caballo y le pusieron grilletes de oro. El estandarte que hab\u00eda llevado Daemon qued\u00f3 clavado en el barro y se le prendi\u00f3 fuego. Ardi\u00f3 bastante tiempo, mientras desprend\u00eda una cinta retorcida de humo, la cual se distingu\u00eda desde varias leguas.\n\nEl \u00fanico derramamiento de sangre de aquel d\u00eda se produjo cuando un hombre al servicio de lord Vyrwel empez\u00f3 a presumir de haber sido uno de los ojos de Cuervo de Sangre.\n\n\u2014Con la pr\u00f3xima luna estar\u00e9 follando con putas y bebiendo tintos de Dorne \u2014se dijo que hab\u00eda proclamado justo antes de que uno de los caballeros de lord Costayne le rebanara el cuello.\n\n\u2014B\u00e9bete esto \u2014dijo el caballero mientras el hombre de Vyrwel se ahogaba en su propia sangre\u2014. De Dorne no es, pero s\u00ed tinta.\n\nPor lo dem\u00e1s rein\u00f3 un hosco silencio en la columna que cruz\u00f3 las puertas de Muros Blancos para arrojar sus armas a un reluciente mont\u00f3n, antes de que se los llevaran atados a esperar el juicio de lord Cuervo de Sangre. Dunk sali\u00f3 con los dem\u00e1s, junto a ser Kyle el Gato y Glendon Ball. Hab\u00edan buscado a ser Maynard para que se uniera a ellos, pero Plumm se hab\u00eda esfumado en alg\u00fan momento de la noche.\n\nEstaba bien avanzada la tarde cuando ser Roland Crakehall, de la Guardia Real, encontr\u00f3 a Dunk entre los prisioneros.\n\n\u2014Ser Duncan. \u00bfD\u00f3nde se escond\u00eda, por los siete infiernos? Hace horas que lord R\u00edos pregunta por usted. Le ruego que me acompa\u00f1e.\n\nDunk se coloc\u00f3 a su lado. La larga capa de Crakehall ondeaba a sus espaldas a cada nueva r\u00e1faga de viento, blanca como el reflejo de la luna en la nieve. Al verla Dunk se acord\u00f3 de lo que le hab\u00eda dicho en la azotea el Violinista. \"So\u00f1\u00e9 que iba todo de blanco, de los pies a la cabeza, con una larga capa blanca que ca\u00eda flotando de sus anchos hombros.\" Dunk resopl\u00f3 por la nariz. \"S\u00ed, y so\u00f1\u00f3 con dragones que sal\u00edan de huevos de piedra. Tan probable es lo uno como lo otro.\"\n\nEl pabell\u00f3n de la mano del rey estaba a mil pasos del castillo, a la sombra de un gran olmo. Cerca hab\u00eda una docena de vacas que pac\u00edan. \"Los reyes van y vienen\", pens\u00f3 Dunk, \"y las vacas y el pueblo llano van a la suya\". El viejo siempre lo hab\u00eda dicho.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00e1 de ellos? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3 a ser Roland al pasar junto a un grupo de cautivos sentados en la hierba.\n\n\u2014Ser\u00e1n llevados a Desembarco del Rey para juzgarlos. Dudo que los caballeros y los soldados reciban un gran castigo. No hicieron m\u00e1s que seguir a sus leg\u00edtimos se\u00f1ores.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY los se\u00f1ores?\n\n\u2014Algunos ser\u00e1n perdonados, siempre y cuando digan la verdad sobre lo que saben y entreguen a un hijo o hija en prenda de su lealtad futura. Los peor parados ser\u00e1n los que recibieron el perd\u00f3n despu\u00e9s del campo de Hierba Roja. Ir\u00e1n a prisi\u00f3n o ser\u00e1n deshonrados. Los peores perder\u00e1n la cabeza.\n\nAl llegar al pabell\u00f3n de lord Cuervo de Sangre, Dunk vio que este \u00faltimo ya hab\u00eda puesto manos a la obra. A ambos lados de la entrada estaban las cabezas de Gormon Peake y Tom Heddle el Negro, clavadas en sendas lanzas, con sus respectivos escudos en el suelo. \"Tres castillos, negro sobre naranja. El hombre que mat\u00f3 a Roger del \u00c1rbol de la Moneda.\"\n\nIncluso en la muerte los ojos de lord Gormon eran duros como pedernales. Dunk se los cerr\u00f3 con los dedos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 hizo eso? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 uno de los guardias\u2014. Pronto se los comer\u00e1n los cuervos.\n\n\u2014Se lo deb\u00eda.\n\nSi aquel d\u00eda Roger no hubiera muerto, el viejo nunca se habr\u00eda fijado en Dunk al verlo perseguir un cerdo por los callejones de Desembarco del Rey. \"Todo empez\u00f3 cuando un viejo rey, ya muerto, le dio una espada a un hijo en vez de a otro. Y ahora yo estoy aqu\u00ed, y el pobre Roger en la tumba.\"\n\n\u2014La mano espera \u2014le orden\u00f3 Roland Crakehall.\n\nDunk pas\u00f3 a su lado y se present\u00f3 ante lord Brynden R\u00edos, bastardo, brujo y mano del rey.\n\nSe encontr\u00f3 ante Egg, reci\u00e9n ba\u00f1ado y con galas principescas, como correspond\u00eda a un sobrino del rey. Cerca de \u00e9l estaba lord Frey, sentado en una silla de campamento, con una copa de vino en la mano y su horrible heredero retozando en su regazo. Tambi\u00e9n se hallaba presente lord Butterwell... de rodillas, p\u00e1lido y tembloroso.\n\n\u2014No es menos vil la traici\u00f3n porque el traidor resulte un cobarde \u2014dec\u00eda lord R\u00edos\u2014. Escuch\u00e9 sus quejas, lord Ambrose, y s\u00f3lo me creo una palabra de cada diez. Por eso le permitir\u00e9 conservar una d\u00e9cima parte de su fortuna. Tambi\u00e9n puede quedarse con su esposa. Le deseo que la disfrute.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY Muros Blancos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Butterwell con la voz tr\u00e9mula.\n\n\u2014Confiscada por el Trono de Hierro. Pienso derruirla piedra a piedra y echar sal en sus terrenos. Dentro de veinte a\u00f1os nadie recordar\u00e1 su existencia. Todav\u00eda hay viejos tontos y j\u00f3venes descontentos que peregrinan al campo de Hierba Roja para plantar flores donde cay\u00f3 Daemon Fuegoscuro. No tolerar\u00e9 que Muros Blancos se convierta en otro monumento al drag\u00f3n negro \u2014movi\u00f3 una mano p\u00e1lida\u2014. Y ahora arr\u00e1strate a otro sitio, cucaracha.\n\n\u2014La mano es bondadosa.\n\nButterwell se march\u00f3 a trompicones, tan ciego de dolor que no pareci\u00f3 reconocer a Dunk al pasar a su lado.\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n usted tiene mi permiso de marcharse, lord Frey \u2014orden\u00f3 R\u00edos\u2014. Ya hablaremos m\u00e1s tarde.\n\n\u2014Como ordene, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nFrey se llev\u00f3 a su hijo del pabell\u00f3n.\n\nS\u00f3lo entonces la mano del rey se gir\u00f3 hacia Dunk.\n\nEra m\u00e1s viejo de como lo recordaba Dunk, con facciones duras y arrugadas, aunque segu\u00eda teniendo la piel blanca como el hueso, y en su mejilla y cuello la fea mancha de nacimiento que a algunos les recordaba un cuervo. Sus botas eran negras y su t\u00fanica, escarlata. Llevaba por encima de ella una capa de color humo ce\u00f1ida con un broche en forma de mano de hierro. Llevaba el pelo hasta los hombros, largo, blanco y lacio, peinado hacia delante para disimular la falta de un ojo, aqu\u00e9l que le hab\u00eda sacado Aceroamargo en el campo de Hierba Roja. El ojo restante era muy rojo. \"\u00bfCu\u00e1ntos ojos tiene Cuervo de Sangre? Mil, y uno m\u00e1s.\"\n\n\u2014Sin duda el pr\u00edncipe Maekar tendr\u00eda sus motivos para permitir que su hijo sirviera como escudero a un caballero errante \u2014dijo\u2014, aunque me resulta inconcebible que incluyeran entregarlo en un castillo lleno de traidores que urd\u00edan una rebeli\u00f3n. \u00bfA qu\u00e9 se debe que haya encontrado a mi primo en este nido de v\u00edboras, ser? Lord Butterwell pretende convencerme de que el pr\u00edncipe Maekar lo envi\u00f3 para destapar la rebeli\u00f3n al hacerse pasar por un caballero misterioso. \u00bfEs cierto?\n\nDunk apoy\u00f3 una rodilla en el suelo.\n\n\u2014No, mi se\u00f1or. Bueno... s\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or. Fue lo que le dijo Egg. Perd\u00f3n, Aegon. El pr\u00edncipe Aegon. Es decir que esa parte es verdad, pero no lo que llamar\u00edamos verdad.\n\n\u2014Comprendo. De modo que usted y el pr\u00edncipe se enteraron de la conjura contra la corona y decidieron frustrarla por sus propios medios. \u00bfEs as\u00ed?\n\n\u2014No, tampoco. Supongo que podr\u00eda decirse que nos... tropezamos con ella.\n\nEgg cruz\u00f3 los brazos.\n\n\u2014Y ser Duncan y yo lo ten\u00edamos todo bien encarrilado antes de que apareciera usted con su ej\u00e9rcito.\n\n\u2014Nos ayudaron, mi se\u00f1or \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Caballeros errantes.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es, mi se\u00f1or. Ser Kyle el Gato y Maynard Plumm. Y Glendon Ball. \u00c9l derrib\u00f3 al Violi... al Pretendiente.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, eso ya lo escuch\u00e9 de medio centenar de bocas. El Bastardo de Los Conejos, descendiente de una puta y un traidor.\n\n\u2014Descendiente de h\u00e9roes \u2014insisti\u00f3 Egg\u2014. Si se encuentra entre los cautivos, quiero que se le busque y se le libere. Y se le recompense.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n eres t\u00fa para decirle a la mano del rey lo que debe hacer?\n\nEgg no se arredr\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Ya sabes qui\u00e9n soy, primo.\n\n\u2014Su escudero es un impertinente, ser \u2014le dijo lord R\u00edos a Dunk\u2014. Deber\u00eda quitarle esa costumbre a golpes.\n\n\u2014Lo he intentado, mi se\u00f1or, pero es un pr\u00edncipe.\n\n\u2014Lo que es \u2014dijo Cuervo de Sangre\u2014 es un drag\u00f3n. Lev\u00e1ntese, ser.\n\nDunk se levant\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Siempre ha habido Targaryen que so\u00f1aban con el porvenir, mucho antes de la Conquista \u2014dijo Cuervo de Sangre\u2014, de modo que no es de extra\u00f1ar que de vez en cuando un Fuegoscuro haga ostentaci\u00f3n del mismo don. Daemon so\u00f1\u00f3 con que en Muros Blancos nacer\u00eda un drag\u00f3n, y as\u00ed fue. En lo \u00fanico que se equivoc\u00f3 fue en el color, el muy tonto.\n\nDunk mir\u00f3 a Egg. \"El anillo\", vio. \"El anillo de su padre. Lo lleva en el dedo, no metido en la bota.\"\n\n\u2014Me inclino porque vuelvas con nosotros a Desembarco del Rey \u2014le dijo lord R\u00edos a Egg\u2014, y por tenerte en mi corte como... hu\u00e9sped.\n\n\u2014A mi padre no le sentar\u00eda bien.\n\n\u2014Supongo que no. El pr\u00edncipe Maekar es de car\u00e1cter... digamos... dif\u00edcil. Quiz\u00e1 sea mejor devolverte a Refugio Estival.\n\n\u2014Mi lugar est\u00e1 junto a ser Duncan. Soy su escudero.\n\n\u2014Que los Siete los salven. Como gustes. Eres libres de marcharte.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed lo haremos \u2014dijo Egg\u2014, pero antes necesitamos algo de oro. Ser Duncan debe pagarle su rescate al Caracol.\n\nCuervo de Sangre se rio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 el ni\u00f1o pudoroso que conoc\u00ed en Desembarco del Rey? Como digas, mi pr\u00edncipe. Dar\u00e9 \u00f3rdenes a mi bolsero de que les entregue el oro que quieran... Dentro de lo razonable.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo como pr\u00e9stamo \u2014insisti\u00f3 Dunk\u2014. Lo devolver\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Cuando aprenda a justar, sin duda.\n\nLord R\u00edos los despach\u00f3 con un gesto de los dedos, antes de desenrollar un pergamino y empezar a marcar nombres con una pluma.\n\n\"Est\u00e1 marcando a los que morir\u00e1n\", comprendi\u00f3 Dunk.\n\n\u2014Mi se\u00f1or \u2014dijo\u2014, vimos las cabezas en la entrada. \u00bfSer\u00e1...? \u00bfEl Violinista...? \u00bfDaemon...? \u00bfTambi\u00e9n van a cortarle la cabeza?\n\nLord Cuervo de Sangre levant\u00f3 la vista de su pergamino.\n\n\u2014Eso lo decidir\u00e1 el rey Aerys, pero... Daemon tiene cuatro hermanos peque\u00f1os, y tambi\u00e9n hermanas. Si yo cometiera la imprudencia de despojarlo de su bonita cabeza, su madre estar\u00eda de luto, sus amigos me maldecir\u00edan por matar a los de mi propia sangre y Aceroamargo coronar\u00eda a su hermano Haegon. Muerto, el joven Daemon es un h\u00e9roe. Vivo es un obst\u00e1culo en el camino de mi hermanastro. Parece dif\u00edcil que se convierta en tercer rey Fuegoscuro mientras siga con vida el segundo, con las molestias que ello implica. Adem\u00e1s, un cautivo tan noble ser\u00e1 de ornato en nuestra corte y un testamento vivo de la clemencia y misericordia de su majestad el rey Aerys.\n\n\u2014Yo tambi\u00e9n tengo una pregunta \u2014dijo Egg.\n\n\u2014Empiezo a entender que tu padre estuviera tan dispuesto a librarse de ti. \u00bfQu\u00e9 m\u00e1s quieres de m\u00ed, primo?\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n se llev\u00f3 el huevo de drag\u00f3n? Hab\u00eda guardias en la puerta y tambi\u00e9n en la escalera. Era imposible que alguien entrara en la alcoba de lord Butterwell sin ser visto.\n\nLord R\u00edos sonri\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Puestos a hacer conjeturas, yo dir\u00eda que alguien escal\u00f3 por el tiro del retrete.\n\n\u2014En el tiro del retrete no cabr\u00eda nadie.\n\n\u2014Un hombre no, pero s\u00ed un ni\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014O un enano \u2014dijo Dunk de sopet\u00f3n.\n\n\"Mil ojos, y uno m\u00e1s. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no iban a pertenecer algunos de esos ojos a una compa\u00f1\u00eda de comediantes enanos?\"\n\n# Acerca del autor\n\nGeorge R. R. Martin naci\u00f3 en 1948 en Bayonne, Nueva Jersey. Se licenci\u00f3 en periodismo en 1970 y public\u00f3 su primera novela, _Muerte de la luz_ , en 1977. Tras una trayectoria deslumbrante como escritor de ciencia ficci\u00f3n, terror y fantas\u00eda, se convirti\u00f3 en guionista de series televisivas como _Dimensi\u00f3n desconocida y La bella y la bestia_ , adem\u00e1s de realizar tareas de producci\u00f3n para diversos proyectos cinematogr\u00e1ficos. En la actualidad es uno de los autores de mayor \u00e9xito en el mundo con la saga Canci\u00f3n de hielo y fuego, cuyas sucesivas entregas le han granjeado un puesto de honor en la literatura fant\u00e1stica.\n\n\u00cdndice\n\nPortada\n\nP\u00e1gina de t\u00edtulo\n\nEl caballero errante\n\nLa espada leal\n\nEl caballero misterioso\n\nAcerca del autor\n\nCr\u00e9ditos\n\n#\n\nPRIMERA EDICI\u00d3N VINTAGE ESPA\u00d1OL, ABRIL 2015\n\n_Copyright de la traducci\u00f3n \u00a9 2015 por Jofre Homedes Beutnagel_\n\nCopyright de _The Hedge Knight (El caballero errante)_ \u00a9 1998 por George R. R. Martin.\n\nCopyright de _The Sworn Sword (La espada leal)_ \u00a9 2003 por George R. R. Martin.\n\nCopyright de _The Mystery Knight (El caballero misterioso)_ \u00a9 2010 por George R. R. Martin\n\nTodos los derechos reservados. Publicado en coedici\u00f3n con Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S.A. de C.V., M\u00e9xico, en los Estados Unidos de Am\u00e9rica por Vintage Espa\u00f1ol, una divisi\u00f3n de Penguin Random House LLC, Nueva York, y en Canad\u00e1 por Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, compa\u00f1\u00edas Penguin Random House. Originalmente publicado en ingl\u00e9s como _The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms_. Esta edici\u00f3n fue simultaneamente publicada en espa\u00f1ol como _El caballero de los Siete Reinos_ por Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S.A. de C.V., M\u00e9xico, 2015. Copyright de la presente edici\u00f3n para Am\u00e9rica Latina en lengua castellana \u00a9 2015 por Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S.A. de C.V.\n\nVintage es una marca registrada y Vintage Espa\u00f1ol y su colof\u00f3n son marcas de Penguin Random House LLC.\n\nEsta novela es una obra de ficci\u00f3n. Los nombres, personajes, lugares e incidentes o son producto de la imaginaci\u00f3n del autor o se usan de forma ficticia. Cualquier parecido con personas, vivas o muertas, eventos o escenarios es puramente casual.\n\nInformaci\u00f3n de catalogaci\u00f3n de publicaciones disponible en la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos.\n\n**Vintage Espa\u00f1ol ISBN en tapa blanda: 978-1-101-91227-0**\n\n**Vintage Espa\u00f1ol eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-97146-8**\n\n_Para venta exclusiva en EE.UU., Canad\u00e1, Puerto Rico y Filipinas._\n\nwww.vintageespanol.com\n_Dicen que en los detalles est\u00e1 el demonio._\n\n_Un libro tan largo como este tiene much\u00edsimos demonios, y hay que estar alerta para no caer en sus garras. Por suerte, yo conozco a much\u00edsimos \u00e1ngeles._\n\n_Mi agradecimiento y mi aprecio, por tanto, a todas esas buenas personas que me prestaron sus o\u00eddos y sus conocimientos (y, en varios casos, sus libros) para que pudiera salir bien parado entre tantos detalles: a Sage Walker, Martin Wright, Melinda Snodgrass, Carl Keim, Bruce Baugh, Tim O'Brien, Roger Zelazny, Jane Lindskold y Laura J. Mixon, y por supuesto, a Parris._\n\n_Y un agradecimiento especial a Jennifer Hershey, por sus esfuerzos que van por encima y m\u00e1s all\u00e1 del deber..._\n\nBran\n\nEl d\u00eda hab\u00eda amanecido fresco y despejado, con un fr\u00edo vivificante que se\u00f1alaba el final del verano. Se pusieron en marcha con la aurora para ver la decapitaci\u00f3n de un hombre. Eran veinte en total, y Bran cabalgaba entre ellos, nervioso y emocionado. Era la primera vez que lo consideraban suficientemente mayor para acompa\u00f1ar a su padre y a sus hermanos a presenciar la justicia del rey. Corr\u00eda el noveno a\u00f1o de verano, y el s\u00e9ptimo de la vida de Bran.\n\nHab\u00edan sacado al hombre de un peque\u00f1o fort\u00edn de las colinas. Robb cre\u00eda que se trataba de un salvaje que hab\u00eda puesto su espada al servicio de Mance Rayder, el Rey-m\u00e1s-all\u00e1-del-Muro. A Bran se le pon\u00eda la carne de gallina solo con pensarlo. Recordaba muy bien las historias que la Vieja Tata les hab\u00eda contado junto a la chimenea. Los salvajes eran crueles, les dec\u00eda, esclavistas, asesinos y ladrones. Se apareaban con gigantes y con esp\u00edritus malignos, se llevaban a los ni\u00f1os de las cunas en mitad de la noche y beb\u00edan sangre en cuernos pulidos. Y sus mujeres yac\u00edan con los Otros durante la Larga Noche, para dar a luz espantosos hijos medio humanos.\n\nPero el hombre que vieron atado de pies y manos al muro del fort\u00edn, esperando la justicia del rey, era viejo y huesudo, poco m\u00e1s alto que Robb. Hab\u00eda perdido en alguna helada las dos orejas y un dedo, y vest\u00eda todo de negro, como un hermano de la Guardia de la Noche, aunque las pieles que llevaba estaban sucias y hechas jirones.\n\nEl aliento del hombre y el caballo se entremezclaban en nubes de vapor en la fr\u00eda ma\u00f1ana cuando su se\u00f1or padre hizo que cortaran las ligaduras que ataban al hombre al muro y lo arrastraran ante \u00e9l. Robb y Jon permanecieron montados, muy quietos y erguidos, mientras Bran, a lomos de su poni, intentaba aparentar que ten\u00eda m\u00e1s de siete a\u00f1os y que no era la primera vez que ve\u00eda algo as\u00ed. Una brisa ligera sopl\u00f3 por la puerta del fort\u00edn. En lo alto ondeaba el estandarte de los Stark de Invernalia: un lobo huargo corriendo sobre un campo color blanco hielo.\n\nEl padre de Bran se ergu\u00eda solemne a lomos de su caballo, con el largo pelo casta\u00f1o agitado por el viento. Llevaba la barba muy corta, salpicada de canas, que le hac\u00edan aparentar m\u00e1s a\u00f1os de los treinta y cinco que ten\u00eda. Aquel d\u00eda mostraba una expresi\u00f3n adusta y no se parec\u00eda en nada al hombre que por las noches se sentaba junto al fuego y hablaba con voz suave de la Edad de los H\u00e9roes y los hijos del bosque. Bran pens\u00f3 que se hab\u00eda quitado la cara de padre y se hab\u00eda puesto la de lord Stark de Invernalia.\n\nEn aquella ma\u00f1ana fr\u00eda hubo preguntas y respuestas, pero m\u00e1s adelante Bran no recordar\u00eda gran cosa de lo que all\u00ed se hab\u00eda dicho. Al final, su se\u00f1or padre dio una orden, y dos de los guardias arrastraron al hombre harapiento hasta un toc\u00f3n de carpe situado en el centro de la plaza. Lo obligaron a apoyar la cabeza en la dura madera negra. Lord Stark desmont\u00f3 y Theon Greyjoy, su pupilo, le llev\u00f3 la espada. Se llamaba _Hielo_. Era tan ancha como la mano de un hombre y en posici\u00f3n vertical era incluso m\u00e1s alta que Robb. La hoja era de acero valyrio, forjada con encantamientos y negra como el humo. Ning\u00fan filo era comparable a los de acero valyrio.\n\nSu padre se quit\u00f3 los guantes y se los tendi\u00f3 a Jory Cassel, el capit\u00e1n de la guardia de su casa. Blandi\u00f3 a _Hielo_ con ambas manos.\n\n\u2014En nombre de Robert de la casa Baratheon, el primero de su nombre, rey de los \u00e1ndalos y los rhoynar y los primeros hombres, se\u00f1or de los Siete Reinos y Protector del Reino; y por orden de Eddard de la casa Stark, se\u00f1or de Invernalia y Guardi\u00e1n del Norte, te sentencio a muerte.\n\nAlz\u00f3 el mandoble por encima de su cabeza.\n\n\u2014Mant\u00e9n controlado al poni \u2014le dijo a Bran Jon Nieve, su hermano bastardo, acerc\u00e1ndose a \u00e9l\u2014. Y no apartes la mirada. Padre se dar\u00e1 cuenta.\n\nBran mantuvo controlado al poni y no apart\u00f3 la mirada.\n\nSu padre le cort\u00f3 la cabeza al hombre de un golpe, firme y seguro. La sangre, roja como el vino veraniego, salpic\u00f3 la nieve. Uno de los caballos se encabrit\u00f3 y hubo que sujetarlo por las riendas para evitar que escapara al galope. Bran no pod\u00eda apartar la vista de la sangre. La nieve que rodeaba el toc\u00f3n la bebi\u00f3 con avidez y se torn\u00f3 roja ante sus ojos.\n\nLa cabeza rebot\u00f3 contra una ra\u00edz gruesa y sigui\u00f3 rodando. Fue a detenerse cerca de los pies de Greyjoy. Theon era un joven de diecinueve a\u00f1os, flaco y moreno, que se divert\u00eda con cualquier cosa. Se ech\u00f3 a re\u00edr, y dio una patada a la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Imb\u00e9cil \u2014murmur\u00f3 Jon, en voz lo suficientemente baja para que Greyjoy no oyera el comentario. Puso una mano en el hombro de Bran, que alz\u00f3 la vista hacia su hermano bastardo, y le dijo con solemnidad\u2014: Lo has hecho muy bien.\n\nJon ten\u00eda catorce a\u00f1os, y ya hab\u00eda presenciado muchas veces la justicia.\n\nDurante el largo camino de regreso a Invernalia parec\u00eda hacer m\u00e1s fr\u00edo, aunque el viento ya hab\u00eda cesado y el sol brillaba alto en el cielo. Bran cabalgaba con sus hermanos, que iban a buena distancia por delante del grupo, aunque el poni ten\u00eda que esforzarse para mantener el paso de los caballos.\n\n\u2014El desertor muri\u00f3 como un valiente \u2014dijo Robb. Era fuerte y corpulento, y parec\u00eda crecer a ojos vistas; ten\u00eda la piel clara de su madre, y tambi\u00e9n el pelo casta\u00f1o rojizo y los ojos azules de los Tully de Aguasdulces\u2014. Al menos ten\u00eda coraje.\n\n\u2014No \u2014dijo Jon Nieve con voz tranquila\u2014. Eso no era coraje. Estaba muerto de miedo. Se le ve\u00eda en los ojos, Stark.\n\nLos ojos de Jon eran de un gris tan oscuro que casi parec\u00edan negros, y se fijaban en todo. Ten\u00eda m\u00e1s o menos la edad de Robb, pero no se parec\u00edan en nada. Jon era esbelto, y Robb, musculoso; era moreno, y Robb, rubio; era \u00e1gil y ligero, mientras que su medio hermano era fuerte y r\u00e1pido.\n\n\u2014Que los Otros se lleven sus ojos \u2014maldijo Robb sin mostrarse impresionado\u2014. Muri\u00f3 como un hombre. \u00bfUna carrera hasta el puente?\n\n\u2014De acuerdo \u2014asinti\u00f3 Jon espoleando su montura.\n\nRobb solt\u00f3 una maldici\u00f3n y sali\u00f3 disparado tras \u00e9l, y galoparon juntos sendero abajo. Robb iba riendo y provoc\u00e1ndolo, y Jon galopaba silencioso y concentrado. Los cascos de sus caballos levantaban nubes de nieve.\n\nBran no intent\u00f3 seguirlos. El poni no podr\u00eda mantener aquel paso. Tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l se hab\u00eda fijado en los ojos del hombre andrajoso, y estaba record\u00e1ndolos. Al cabo de un rato, el sonido de las risas de Robb se perdi\u00f3 a lo lejos, y los bosques quedaron de nuevo en silencio.\n\nSe encontraba tan inmerso en sus pensamientos que no oy\u00f3 que el resto del grupo le hab\u00eda dado alcance hasta que su padre se adelant\u00f3 para cabalgar junto a \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe encuentras bien, Bran? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 con tono que no carec\u00eda de dulzura.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, padre \u2014le dijo Bran. Alz\u00f3 la vista. Su se\u00f1or padre, vestido de cuero y envuelto en pieles, a lomos de su gran caballo de guerra, se alzaba a su lado como un gigante\u2014. Robb dice que ese hombre muri\u00f3 como un valiente, pero Jon opina que ten\u00eda miedo.\n\n\u2014Y a ti, \u00bfqu\u00e9 te parece?\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn hombre puede ser valiente cuando tiene miedo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Bran despu\u00e9s de meditar un instante.\n\n\u2014Es el \u00fanico momento en que puede ser valiente \u2014dijo su padre\u2014. \u00bfComprendes por qu\u00e9 lo hice?\n\n\u2014Era un salvaje \u2014dijo Bran\u2014. Secuestran a las mujeres y las venden a los Otros.\n\n\u2014La Vieja Tata te ha estado contando historias otra vez \u2014dijo su se\u00f1or padre con una sonrisa\u2014. La verdad es que ese hombre rompi\u00f3 su juramento, desert\u00f3 de la Guardia de la Noche. No existe ser m\u00e1s peligroso. El desertor sabe que, si lo atrapan, se puede dar por muerto, as\u00ed que no se detendr\u00e1 ante ning\u00fan crimen por espantoso que sea. Pero no me has entendido. No te pregunto por qu\u00e9 el hombre deb\u00eda morir, sino por qu\u00e9 ten\u00eda que ajusticiarlo yo en persona.\n\n\u2014El rey Robert tiene verdugos \u2014dijo Bran, inseguro. No sab\u00eda la respuesta.\n\n\u2014Cierto \u2014admiti\u00f3 su padre\u2014. Igual que los Targaryen, que reinaron antes que \u00e9l. Pero nuestras costumbres son las antiguas. La sangre de los primeros hombres corre todav\u00eda por las venas de los Stark, y creemos que el hombre que dicta la sentencia debe blandir la espada. Si le vas a quitar la vida a un hombre, tienes un deber para con \u00e9l, y es mirarlo a los ojos y escuchar sus \u00faltimas palabras. Si no soportas eso, quiz\u00e1 es que ese hombre no merece morir.\n\n\u00bbAlg\u00fan d\u00eda, Bran, ser\u00e1s vasallo de Robb, tendr\u00e1s tierras propias y deber\u00e1s defenderlas en nombre de tu hermano y de tu rey, y te corresponder\u00e1 hacer justicia. Cuando llegue ese d\u00eda, no te resultar\u00e1 grato, pero no debes apartar la vista. El gobernante que se esconde tras ejecutores a sueldo olvida pronto lo que es la muerte.\n\nEn aquel momento, Jon reapareci\u00f3 en la cima de la colina que se alzaba ante ellos.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Padre, Bran, venid, deprisa! \u00a1Mirad lo que ha encontrado Robb! \u2014les grit\u00f3 agitando los brazos y volvi\u00f3 a desaparecer.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAlg\u00fan problema, mi se\u00f1or? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Jory, que se les hab\u00eda acercado cabalgando.\n\n\u2014No me cabe duda \u2014respondi\u00f3 su padre\u2014. Venga, vamos a ver qu\u00e9 nueva travesura se les ha ocurrido ahora a mis hijos.\n\nPuso el caballo al trote. Jory, Bran y los dem\u00e1s lo siguieron.\n\nRobb estaba en el extremo norte del puente y Jon segu\u00eda a caballo, a su lado. Las nevadas de las postrimer\u00edas del verano hab\u00edan sido copiosas aquella \u00faltima luna. Robb estaba hundido hasta las rodillas en la nieve; se hab\u00eda echado la capucha hacia atr\u00e1s y el sol le arrancaba reflejos del pelo. Acunaba algo en el brazo, y los dos chicos hablaban en susurros emocionados.\n\nLos jinetes avanzaron con cautela entre los ventisqueros, siempre buscando los puntos firmes en aquel terreno oculto y desigual. Jory Cassel y Theon Greyjoy fueron los primeros en llegar junto a los chicos. Greyjoy re\u00eda y bromeaba mientras cabalgaba. Bran oy\u00f3 su exclamaci\u00f3n ahogada.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Dioses! \u2014se le escap\u00f3 a Greyjoy, mientras trataba de controlar a su caballo y al mismo tiempo desenvainar la espada.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Al\u00e9jate de eso, Robb! \u2014grit\u00f3 Jory, que ya la hab\u00eda empu\u00f1ado, con la montura encabritada.\n\n\u2014No puede hacerte da\u00f1o, Jory \u2014dijo Robb con una sonrisa mientras alzaba la vista del bulto que llevaba en brazos\u2014. Est\u00e1 muerta.\n\nPara entonces Bran ya estaba consumido de curiosidad. Habr\u00eda espoleado al poni, pero su padre lo oblig\u00f3 a desmontar junto al puente para acercarse a pie. Bran se baj\u00f3 de un salto y ech\u00f3 a correr.\n\nJon, Jory y Theon Greyjoy ya hab\u00edan desmontado tambi\u00e9n.\n\n\u2014Por los siete infiernos, \u00bfqu\u00e9 es eso? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Greyjoy.\n\n\u2014Un lobo \u2014le dijo Robb.\n\n\u2014Un monstruo \u2014replic\u00f3 Greyjoy\u2014. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 tama\u00f1o!\n\nEl coraz\u00f3n de Bran lat\u00eda a toda velocidad. Avanz\u00f3 por un ventisquero que le llegaba a la cintura para ir junto a su hermano.\n\nHab\u00eda una forma muerta, enorme y oscura, semienterrada en la nieve manchada de sangre. El tupido pelaje gris estaba lleno de cristales de hielo, y el hedor de la corrupci\u00f3n lo envolv\u00eda como el perfume a una mujer. Bran divis\u00f3 unos ojos ciegos en los que reptaban los gusanos y una boca grande llena de dientes amarillentos. Pero lo que m\u00e1s lo impresion\u00f3 fue el tama\u00f1o que ten\u00eda. Era m\u00e1s grande que su poni, el doble que el mayor sabueso de las perreras de su padre.\n\n\u2014No es ning\u00fan monstruo \u2014dijo Jon con calma\u2014. Es una loba huargo. Son mucho m\u00e1s grandes que los otros lobos.\n\n\u2014Hace doscientos a\u00f1os que no se ve un lobo huargo al sur del Muro \u2014dijo Theon Greyjoy.\n\n\u2014Pues ahora estoy viendo uno \u2014replic\u00f3 Jon.\n\nBran consigui\u00f3 apartar los ojos del monstruo. Solamente en aquel momento advirti\u00f3 el bulto en brazos de Robb. Dej\u00f3 escapar un grito de emoci\u00f3n y se acerc\u00f3. El cachorro no era m\u00e1s que una bolita de pelaje gris negruzco; todav\u00eda no hab\u00eda abierto los ojos. Hociqueaba a ciegas contra el pecho de Robb, buscando leche entre los pliegues de cuero de su ropa, sin dejar de gimotear. Bran extendi\u00f3 la mano, titubeante.\n\n\u2014Vamos \u2014le dijo Robb\u2014. T\u00f3calo, no pasa nada.\n\nBran hizo una caricia r\u00e1pida y nerviosa al cachorro, y se volvi\u00f3 al o\u00edr la voz de Jon.\n\n\u2014Toma. \u2014Su hermano le puso un segundo cachorro en los brazos\u2014. Hay cinco.\n\nBran se sent\u00f3 en la nieve y apret\u00f3 al cachorro contra el rostro. Ten\u00eda un pelaje suave y c\u00e1lido que le acariciaba la mejilla.\n\n\u2014Lobos huargo en el reino, despu\u00e9s de tantos a\u00f1os \u2014murmur\u00f3 Hullen, el caballerizo mayor\u2014. Esto no me gusta.\n\n\u2014Es una se\u00f1al \u2014dijo Jory.\n\n\u2014No es m\u00e1s que un animal muerto, Jory \u2014dijo el padre de los ni\u00f1os con el ce\u00f1o fruncido. Parec\u00eda preocupado. La nieve cruji\u00f3 bajo sus botas cuando camin\u00f3 en torno al cuerpo\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 la mat\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Tiene algo en la garganta \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Robb, orgulloso de haber dado con la respuesta aun antes de que su padre formulara la pregunta\u2014. Ah\u00ed, justo debajo de la mand\u00edbula.\n\nSu padre se arrodill\u00f3 y palp\u00f3 bajo la cabeza de la bestia. Dio un tir\u00f3n, y alz\u00f3 el objeto para que los dem\u00e1s lo vieran. Era un fragmento de dos palmos de asta de venado, ya sin puntas, empapado en sangre.\n\nSe hizo un silencio repentino en el grupo. Los hombres contemplaron el asta, intranquilos, y ninguno se atrevi\u00f3 a decir nada. Incluso Bran se dio cuenta de que ten\u00edan miedo, aunque no comprend\u00eda por qu\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Es incre\u00edble que viviera lo suficiente para parir \u2014dijo su padre mientras tiraba a un lado el asta y se limpiaba las manos en la nieve. Su voz rompi\u00f3 el hechizo.\n\n\u2014Quiz\u00e1 no vivi\u00f3 tanto \u2014dijo Jory\u2014. Se dice... A lo mejor ya estaba muerta cuando nacieron los cachorros.\n\n\u2014Nacidos de la muerte \u2014intervino otro hombre\u2014. Peor suerte a\u00fan.\n\n\u2014No importa \u2014dijo Hullen\u2014. Pronto estar\u00e1n muertos ellos tambi\u00e9n.\n\nBran dej\u00f3 escapar un grito de consternaci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Cuanto antes mejor \u2014asinti\u00f3 Theon Greyjoy y desenvain\u00f3 la espada\u2014. Trae aqu\u00ed a esa bestia, Bran.\n\n\u2014\u00a1No! \u2014exclam\u00f3 Bran con ferocidad. El animalito se hab\u00eda apretado contra \u00e9l como si pudiera o\u00edr y comprender\u2014. \u00a1Es m\u00edo!\n\n\u2014Aparta esa espada, Greyjoy \u2014dijo Robb. Durante un momento, su voz son\u00f3 tan imperiosa como la de su padre, como la del se\u00f1or que ser\u00eda alg\u00fan d\u00eda\u2014. Nos vamos a quedar con los cachorros.\n\n\u2014Es imposible, chico \u2014dijo Harwin, que era hijo de Hullen.\n\n\u2014Les haremos un favor mat\u00e1ndolos \u2014dijo Hullen.\n\nBran alz\u00f3 la vista hacia su padre, implorante, pero solo encontr\u00f3 un ce\u00f1o fruncido.\n\n\u2014Lo que dice Hullen es verdad, hijo. Es mejor una muerte r\u00e1pida que agonizar de fr\u00edo y hambre.\n\n\u2014La perra de ser Rodrik pari\u00f3 otra vez la semana pasada \u2014dijo Robb, que se resist\u00eda, testarudo\u2014. Fue una camada peque\u00f1a; solo vivieron dos cachorros. Tendr\u00e1 leche de sobra.\n\n\u2014Los matar\u00e1 en cuanto intenten mamar.\n\n\u2014Lord Stark \u2014intervino Jon. Resultaba extra\u00f1o que se dirigiera a su padre de manera tan formal. Bran lo mir\u00f3, aferr\u00e1ndose a aquella \u00faltima esperanza\u2014. Hay cinco cachorros \u2014sigui\u00f3\u2014. Tres machos y dos hembras.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9, Jon?\n\n\u2014Ten\u00e9is cinco hijos leg\u00edtimos. Tres chicos y dos chicas. El lobo huargo es el emblema de vuestra casa. Estos cachorros est\u00e1n destinados a vuestros hijos, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nBran vio c\u00f3mo cambiaba la expresi\u00f3n de su padre, vio las miradas que intercambiaban los dem\u00e1s hombres. En aquel momento quiso a Jon con todo su coraz\u00f3n. Pese a sus siete a\u00f1os, comprendi\u00f3 qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda hecho su hermano. Las cuentas cuadraban solo porque Jon se hab\u00eda excluido. Hab\u00eda incluido a las ni\u00f1as, incluso a Rickon, que era solo un beb\u00e9, pero no al bastardo que llevaba el apellido Nieve que, seg\u00fan dictaba la costumbre, deb\u00edan tener en el norte todos los desafortunados que nac\u00edan sin apellido propio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo quieres un cachorro para ti, Jon? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 con voz amable su padre, que tambi\u00e9n lo hab\u00eda comprendido.\n\n\u2014El lobo huargo ondea en el estandarte de la casa Stark \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Jon\u2014. Yo no soy un Stark, padre.\n\nSu se\u00f1or padre mir\u00f3 a Jon, pensativo. Robb se apresur\u00f3 a romper el silencio que reinaba.\n\n\u2014Yo alimentar\u00e9 al m\u00edo en persona, padre \u2014prometi\u00f3\u2014. Empapar\u00e9 un trapo en leche caliente para que la chupe.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Yo tambi\u00e9n! \u2014se apresur\u00f3 Bran.\n\n\u2014Resulta f\u00e1cil decirlo, pero ver\u00e9is que hacerlo no lo es tanto \u2014dijo el padre despu\u00e9s de estudiar larga y atentamente a sus hijos\u2014. No permitir\u00e9 que los criados pierdan el tiempo con esto. Si quer\u00e9is esos cachorros, los tendr\u00e9is que alimentar vosotros. \u00bfEntendido? \u2014Bran asinti\u00f3 a toda prisa. El cachorro se le retorc\u00eda entre los brazos y le lam\u00eda el rostro con una lengua c\u00e1lida\u2014. Tambi\u00e9n tendr\u00e9is que educarlos \u2014sigui\u00f3 su padre\u2014. Es imprescindible que los entren\u00e9is. El encargado de los perros no querr\u00e1 saber nada de estos monstruos, os lo aseguro. Y que los dioses os ayuden si los descuid\u00e1is, si los trat\u00e1is mal o si no los entren\u00e1is. No son perros; no os har\u00e1n caranto\u00f1as para conseguir comida, ni se marchar\u00e1n si les dais una patada. Un lobo huargo es capaz de arrancarle el brazo a un hombre tan f\u00e1cilmente como un perro mata una rata. \u00bfSeguro que quer\u00e9is esa responsabilidad?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, padre \u2014dijo Bran.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed \u2014asinti\u00f3 Robb.\n\n\u2014Y pese a todo lo que hag\u00e1is, los cachorros quiz\u00e1 mueran.\n\n\u2014No se morir\u00e1n \u2014dijo Robb\u2014. No lo permitiremos.\n\n\u2014Entonces, os los pod\u00e9is quedar. Jory, Desmond, recoged el resto de los cachorros. Ya es hora de que volvamos a Invernalia.\n\nSolo cuando estuvieron de nuevo a caballo y en marcha se permiti\u00f3 Bran disfrutar del dulce sabor de la victoria. Llevaba al cachorro entre los pliegues de las prendas de cuero para darle calor y protegerlo en la larga cabalgada de vuelta a casa. Se preguntaba qu\u00e9 nombre le iba a poner.\n\nEn mitad del puente, Jon se detuvo de pronto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 pasa, Jon? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 su se\u00f1or padre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo lo o\u00eds?\n\nBran o\u00eda el viento entre los \u00e1rboles, el sonido de los cascos de los caballos contra los tablones de carpe y los gemidos de su cachorro hambriento, pero Jon parec\u00eda percibir algo m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Ya lo tengo \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3 Jon.\n\nHizo girar al caballo y galop\u00f3 de vuelta por el puente. Lo vieron desmontar en la nieve junto a la loba muerta y arrodillarse. Un momento despu\u00e9s regres\u00f3 cabalgando hacia ellos. Sonre\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Este se debi\u00f3 de alejar de los dem\u00e1s \u2014dijo.\n\n\u2014O lo echaron \u2014replic\u00f3 su padre, con los ojos clavados en el sexto cachorro.\n\nTen\u00eda el pelaje blanco, mientras que los dem\u00e1s cachorros de la camada eran grises. Los ojos eran tan rojos como la sangre del hombre harapiento que hab\u00eda muerto aquella ma\u00f1ana. A Bran le pareci\u00f3 muy extra\u00f1o que ya los tuviera abiertos, mientras que los dem\u00e1s a\u00fan segu\u00edan ciegos.\n\n\u2014Un albino \u2014dijo Theon Greyjoy, burl\u00f3n\u2014. Este morir\u00e1 antes incluso que los dem\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014No, Greyjoy \u2014dijo Jon lanzando una mirada g\u00e9lida al pupilo de su padre\u2014. Este es m\u00edo.\n_Este es para Melinda._\n\nPr\u00f3logo\n\n\u2014Deber\u00edamos volver ya \u2014inst\u00f3 Gared mientras los bosques se tornaban m\u00e1s y m\u00e1s oscuros a su alrededor\u2014. Los salvajes est\u00e1n muertos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe dan miedo los muertos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Waymar Royce, insinuando apenas una sonrisa.\n\n\u2014Los muertos est\u00e1n muertos \u2014contest\u00f3 Gared. No hab\u00eda mordido el anzuelo. Era un anciano de m\u00e1s de cincuenta a\u00f1os, y hab\u00eda visto ir y venir a muchos j\u00f3venes se\u00f1ores\u2014. No tenemos nada que tratar con ellos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY de veras est\u00e1n muertos? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Royce delicadamente\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 prueba tenemos?\n\n\u2014Will los ha visto \u2014respondi\u00f3 Gared\u2014. Si \u00e9l dice que est\u00e1n muertos, no necesito m\u00e1s pruebas.\n\n\u2014Mi madre me dijo que los muertos no cantan canciones \u2014intervino Will. Sab\u00eda que lo iban a meter en la disputa m\u00e1s tarde o m\u00e1s temprano. Le habr\u00eda gustado que fuera m\u00e1s tarde que temprano.\n\n\u2014Mi ama de cr\u00eda me dijo lo mismo, Will \u2014replic\u00f3 Royce\u2014. Nunca te creas nada de lo que te diga una mujer cuando est\u00e1s junto a su teta. Hasta de los muertos se pueden aprender cosas. \u2014Su voz reson\u00f3 demasiado alta en el anochecer del bosque.\n\n\u2014Tenemos un largo camino por delante \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Gared\u2014. Ocho d\u00edas, hasta puede que nueve. Y se est\u00e1 haciendo de noche.\n\n\u2014Como todos los d\u00edas alrededor de esta hora \u2014dijo ser Waymar Royce despu\u00e9s de echar una mirada indiferente al cielo\u2014. \u00bfLa oscuridad te atemoriza, Gared?\n\nWill percibi\u00f3 la tensi\u00f3n en torno a la boca de Gared y la ira apenas contenida en los ojos, bajo la gruesa capucha negra de la capa. Gared llevaba cuarenta a\u00f1os en la Guardia de la Noche, buena parte de su infancia y toda su vida de adulto, y no estaba acostumbrado a que se burlaran de \u00e9l. Pero aquello no era todo. Will present\u00eda algo m\u00e1s en el anciano aparte del orgullo herido. Casi se palpaba en \u00e9l una tensi\u00f3n demasiado parecida al miedo.\n\nWill compart\u00eda aquella intranquilidad. Llevaba cuatro a\u00f1os en el Muro. La primera vez que lo enviaron al otro lado, record\u00f3 todas las viejas historias y se le revolvieron las tripas. Despu\u00e9s se hab\u00eda re\u00eddo de aquello. Pero ya era veterano de cien expediciones, y la interminable extensi\u00f3n de selva oscura que los sure\u00f1os llamaban el bosque Encantado no le resultaba aterradora.\n\nHasta aquella noche. Aquella noche hab\u00eda algo diferente. La oscuridad ten\u00eda un matiz que le erizaba el vello. Llevaban nueve d\u00edas cabalgando hacia el norte, hacia el noroeste y hacia el norte otra vez, siempre alej\u00e1ndose del Muro, tras la pista de unos asaltantes salvajes. Cada d\u00eda hab\u00eda sido peor que el anterior, y aquel era el peor de todos. Soplaba un viento g\u00e9lido del norte, que hac\u00eda que los \u00e1rboles susurraran como si tuvieran vida propia. Durante toda la jornada, Will se hab\u00eda sentido observado, vigilado por algo fr\u00edo e implacable que no le deseaba nada bueno. Gared tambi\u00e9n lo hab\u00eda percibido. No hab\u00eda nada que Will deseara m\u00e1s que cabalgar a toda velocidad hacia la seguridad que ofrec\u00eda el Muro, pero no era un sentimiento que pudiera compartir con un comandante.\n\nY menos con un comandante como aquel.\n\nSer Waymar Royce era el hijo menor de una antigua casa con demasiados herederos. Era un joven de dieciocho a\u00f1os, atractivo, con ojos grises, gallardo y esbelto como un cuchillo. A lomos de su enorme corcel negro, se alzaba muy por encima de Will y Gared, montados en caballos peque\u00f1os y recios adecuados para el terreno. Calzaba botas de cuero negro, y vest\u00eda pantalones negros de lana, guantes negros de piel de topo y una buena chaquetilla ce\u00f1ida de brillante cota de malla sobre varias prendas de lana negra y cuero curtido. Ser Waymar llevaba menos de medio a\u00f1o como hermano juramentado en la Guardia de la Noche, pero sin duda se hab\u00eda preparado bien para su vocaci\u00f3n. Al menos en lo que a la ropa respectaba.\n\nLa capa era su mayor orgullo: de marta cibelina, gruesa, suave y negra como el carb\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Apuesto algo a que las mat\u00f3 a todas con sus propias manos \u2014hab\u00eda comentado Gared en los barracones, mientras beb\u00edan vino\u2014. Seguro que nuestro gran guerrero les arranc\u00f3 las cabecitas \u00e9l mismo.\n\nTodos se hab\u00edan re\u00eddo.\n\n\u00abEs dif\u00edcil aceptar \u00f3rdenes de un hombre del que te burlas cuando bebes\u00bb, reflexion\u00f3 Will mientras tiritaba a lomos de su montura. Gared deb\u00eda de estar pensando lo mismo.\n\n\u2014Mormont dijo que sigui\u00e9ramos sus huellas, y ya lo hemos hecho \u2014dijo Gared\u2014. Est\u00e1n muertos. No volver\u00e1n a molestarnos. Nos queda un camino duro por delante. No me gusta este clima. Si empieza a nevar, tardaremos quince d\u00edas en volver, y la nieve es lo mejor que podemos encontrarnos. \u00bfHab\u00e9is visto alguna tormenta de hielo, mi se\u00f1or?\n\nEl joven se\u00f1or no parec\u00eda escucharlo. Observaba la creciente oscuridad del crep\u00fasculo con aquella mirada suya, entre aburrida y distra\u00edda. Will hab\u00eda cabalgado el tiempo suficiente junto al caballero para saber que era mejor no interrumpirlo cuando mostraba aquella expresi\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Vuelve a contarme lo que has visto, Will. Con todo detalle. No te dejes nada.\n\nWill hab\u00eda sido cazador antes de unirse a la Guardia de la Noche. Bueno, en realidad hab\u00eda sido furtivo. Los jinetes libres de los Mallister lo hab\u00edan atrapado con las manos manchadas de sangre en los bosques de los Mallister, mientras despellejaba un ciervo de los Mallister, y tuvo que elegir entre vestir el negro y perder una mano. No hab\u00eda nadie capaz de moverse por los bosques tan sigilosamente como Will, y los hermanos negros no tardaron en explotar su talento.\n\n\u2014El campamento est\u00e1 casi una legua m\u00e1s adelante, pasado aquel risco, justo al lado de un arroyo \u2014dijo Will\u2014. Me he acercado tanto como me he atrevido. Eran ocho, hombres y mujeres. Ni\u00f1os no, al menos no he visto ninguno. Hab\u00edan puesto una especie de tienda contra la roca. La nieve ya la hab\u00eda cubierto casi del todo, pero la he visto. No hab\u00eda hoguera, aunque el lugar donde hab\u00eda estado encendida se distingu\u00eda claramente. Ninguno se mov\u00eda; los he observado un buen rato. Ning\u00fan ser vivo ha estado jam\u00e1s tan quieto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHas visto sangre?\n\n\u2014La verdad es que no \u2014admiti\u00f3 Will .\n\n\u2014\u00bfY armas?\n\n\u2014Algunas espadas, unos cuantos arcos... Uno de los hombres ten\u00eda un hacha. De doble filo, parec\u00eda muy pesada, un buen trozo de hierro. Estaba en el suelo, junto a su mano.\n\n\u2014\u00bfRecuerdas en qu\u00e9 postura se encontraban los cuerpos?\n\n\u2014Un par de ellos estaban sentados con la espalda contra la roca \u2014contest\u00f3 Will encogi\u00e9ndose de hombros\u2014. La mayor\u00eda, tendidos en el suelo. Como ca\u00eddos.\n\n\u2014O dormidos \u2014sugiri\u00f3 Royce.\n\n\u2014Ca\u00eddos \u2014insisti\u00f3 Will\u2014. Hab\u00eda una mujer en la copa de un carpe, medio oculta entre las ramas. Una vig\u00eda. \u2014Esboz\u00f3 una sonrisa\u2014. He tenido buen cuidado de que no me viera. Cuando me he acercado, he visto que ella tampoco se mov\u00eda. \u2014Muy a su pesar, se estremeci\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTienes fr\u00edo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Royce.\n\n\u2014Un poco \u2014murmur\u00f3 Will \u2014. El viento, mi se\u00f1or.\n\nEl joven caballero se volvi\u00f3 hacia el soldado de pelo cano. Las hojas que la escarcha hab\u00eda hecho caer de los \u00e1rboles pasaron susurrantes junto a ellos, y el corcel de Royce se movi\u00f3, inquieto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 crees que pudo matar a esos hombres, Gared? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Waymar en tono despreocupado. Se ajust\u00f3 el pliegue de la larga capa de marta.\n\n\u2014El fr\u00edo \u2014replic\u00f3 Gared con certeza f\u00e9rrea\u2014. Vi a hombres morir congelados el pasado invierno, y tambi\u00e9n el anterior, cuando era casi un ni\u00f1o. Todo el mundo habla de nieve de veinte varas de espesor, y de c\u00f3mo el viento g\u00e9lido llega aullando del norte, pero el verdadero enemigo es el fr\u00edo. Se echa encima de uno m\u00e1s sigiloso que Will; al principio se tirita y casta\u00f1etean los dientes, se dan pisotones contra el suelo, y se sue\u00f1a con vino caliente y con una buena hoguera. Y quema, vaya si quema. No hay nada que queme como el fr\u00edo. Pero solo durante un tiempo. Luego se mete dentro y empieza a invadirlo todo, y al final no se tienen fuerzas para combatirlo. Es m\u00e1s f\u00e1cil sentarse, o echarse a dormir. Dicen que al final no se siente ning\u00fan dolor. Primero se est\u00e1 d\u00e9bil y amodorrado, y todo se vuelve nebuloso, y luego es como hundirse en un mar de leche tibia. Como muy tranquilo todo.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 elocuencia, Gared \u2014observ\u00f3 ser Waymar\u2014. No me imaginaba que te expresaras as\u00ed.\n\n\u2014Yo tambi\u00e9n he tenido el fr\u00edo dentro, joven se\u00f1or. \u2014Gared se ech\u00f3 la capucha hacia atr\u00e1s para que ser Waymar le viera bien los mu\u00f1ones, donde hab\u00eda tenido las orejas\u2014. Las dos orejas, tres dedos de los pies y el me\u00f1ique de la mano izquierda. Sal\u00ed bien parado. A mi hermano lo encontramos congelado en su turno de guardia, con una sonrisa en los labios.\n\n\u2014Tendr\u00edas que usar ropa m\u00e1s abrigada \u2014dijo ser Waymar encogi\u00e9ndose de hombros.\n\nGared mir\u00f3 al joven se\u00f1or y se le enrojecieron las cicatrices en torno a los o\u00eddos, all\u00ed donde el maestre Aemon le hab\u00eda amputado las orejas.\n\n\u2014Ya veremos hasta qu\u00e9 punto pod\u00e9is abrigaros cuando llegue el invierno. \u2014Se subi\u00f3 la capucha y se encorv\u00f3 sobre su montura, silencioso y hosco.\n\n\u2014Si Gared dice que fue el fr\u00edo... \u2014empez\u00f3 Will.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHas hecho alguna guardia esta semana pasada, Will?\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, mi se\u00f1or. \u2014No hab\u00eda semana en que no hiciera una docena de guardias de mierda. \u00bfAd\u00f3nde quer\u00eda llegar con aquello?\n\n\u2014\u00bfY c\u00f3mo estaba el Muro?\n\n\u2014Lloraba \u2014dijo Will con el ce\u00f1o fruncido. Ahora que el joven se\u00f1or lo se\u00f1alaba, estaba claro\u2014. Si el Muro lloraba, no se pudieron congelar. No hac\u00eda suficiente fr\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Muy perspicaz \u2014asinti\u00f3 Royce\u2014. La semana pasada tuvimos unas cuantas heladas ligeras, y algunas r\u00e1fagas de nieve, pero en ning\u00fan momento hizo tanto fr\u00edo para que ocho adultos murieran congelados. Y te recuerdo que eran hombres con ropa de piel y cuero, que estaban cerca de un refugio y que sab\u00edan encender una hoguera. \u2014La sonrisa del caballero no pod\u00eda ser m\u00e1s confiada\u2014. Ll\u00e9vanos hasta ese lugar, Will. Quiero ver a los muertos con mis propios ojos.\n\nY ya no hubo m\u00e1s que hablar. La orden estaba dada, y el honor los obligaba a obedecerla.\n\nWill abri\u00f3 la marcha con su montura desgre\u00f1ada, eligiendo cauteloso el camino entre la maleza. La noche anterior hab\u00eda ca\u00eddo una ligera nevada, y hab\u00eda piedras, ra\u00edces y depresiones ocultas al acecho del descuidado y el imprudente. A continuaci\u00f3n iba ser Waymar Royce sobre el gran corcel negro, que piafaba impaciente. Un corcel no era montura adecuada para una expedici\u00f3n de exploraci\u00f3n, pero cualquiera se lo dec\u00eda al joven se\u00f1or. Gared cerraba la marcha. El anciano soldado iba murmurando para sus adentros mientras cabalgaba.\n\nCa\u00eda la noche. El cielo despejado se volvi\u00f3 de un tono p\u00farpura oscuro, el color de un moret\u00f3n viejo, y se fue tornando negro. Empezaron a aparecer las estrellas y una media luna. Will agradeci\u00f3 la luz en su fuero interno.\n\n\u2014Seguro que podemos ir a mejor paso \u2014dijo Royce cuando la luna brill\u00f3 en el cielo.\n\n\u2014Con este caballo, no \u2014replic\u00f3 Will. El miedo lo hab\u00eda vuelto insolente\u2014. \u00bfQuiere mi se\u00f1or abrir la marcha?\n\nSer Waymar Royce no se dign\u00f3 responder.\n\nEn alg\u00fan lugar del bosque, un lobo aull\u00f3.\n\nWill hizo que su caballo se situara bajo un viejo carpe nudoso, y desmont\u00f3.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 te detienes? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Waymar.\n\n\u2014Mejor vamos a pie el resto del camino, mi se\u00f1or. Est\u00e1 cerca, tras aquel risco.\n\nRoyce se detuvo un instante, mirando a lo lejos con gesto reflexivo. El viento fr\u00edo soplaba entre los \u00e1rboles. La larga capa de marta se agit\u00f3 tras \u00e9l como una cosa semiviva.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed falla algo \u2014murmur\u00f3 Gared.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe verdad? \u2014dijo el joven caballero con una sonrisa desde\u00f1osa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo lo not\u00e1is? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Gared\u2014. Escuchad la oscuridad.\n\nWill s\u00ed lo notaba. Llevaba cuatro a\u00f1os en la Guardia de la Noche, y nunca hab\u00eda tenido tanto miedo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 pasaba?\n\n\u2014Viento. El susurro de los \u00e1rboles. Un lobo. \u00bfCu\u00e1l de esos ruidos es el que asusta tanto, Gared?\n\nAl ver que Gared no respond\u00eda, Royce se baj\u00f3 del caballo con gesto elegante. At\u00f3 el corcel a una rama baja, a buena distancia de los otros caballos, y desenvain\u00f3 la espada larga. La empu\u00f1adura refulg\u00eda con el brillo de las piedras preciosas, y la luz de la luna parec\u00eda fluir por el acero pulido. Era un arma magn\u00edfica, forjada en castillo, y estaba nueva. Will pens\u00f3 que nadie la hab\u00eda blandido jam\u00e1s con ira.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed, los \u00e1rboles est\u00e1n muy juntos \u2014avis\u00f3\u2014. La espada se os va a enredar con las ramas, mi se\u00f1or. Es mejor llevar un cuchillo.\n\n\u2014Cuando necesite consejos, los pedir\u00e9 \u2014replic\u00f3 el joven se\u00f1or\u2014. T\u00fa qu\u00e9date aqu\u00ed, Gared, vigila los caballos.\n\n\u2014Nos har\u00e1 falta una hoguera. \u2014Gared desmont\u00f3\u2014. Yo me encargo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEres completamente idiota, viejo? Si hay enemigos al acecho en este bosque, lo que menos falta nos hace es una hoguera.\n\n\u2014El fuego mantendr\u00eda alejados a algunos enemigos \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 Gared\u2014. Osos, lobos huargo y... y otras cosas.\n\n\u2014Nada de hogueras. \u2014Ser Waymar apret\u00f3 los labios.\n\nLa capucha de Gared le ensombrec\u00eda el rostro, pero Will advirti\u00f3 que ten\u00eda un brillo duro en los ojos al mirar al caballero. Durante un momento temi\u00f3 que el anciano fuera a desenvainar la espada. Era un arma corta y fea, con la empu\u00f1adura descolorida por el sudor y melladuras en la hoja tras muchos a\u00f1os de uso frecuente, pero Will no habr\u00eda apostado nada por la vida del joven se\u00f1or si Gared llegaba a esgrimirla.\n\n\u2014Nada de hogueras \u2014murmur\u00f3 Gared entre dientes bajando la vista.\n\nRoyce lo consider\u00f3 un acatamiento y dio media vuelta.\n\n\u2014Gu\u00edame \u2014dijo a Will.\n\nWill se abri\u00f3 camino por un bosquecillo y ascendi\u00f3 por la ladera hasta el peque\u00f1o risco donde pod\u00eda ocupar una posici\u00f3n ventajosa junto al \u00e1rbol centinela. Bajo la capa fina de nieve, el terreno estaba h\u00famedo y fangoso, resbaladizo, plagado de piedras y ra\u00edces ocultas con las que cualquiera pod\u00eda tropezar. Will no hac\u00eda el menor ruido al avanzar. A su espalda, o\u00eda el suave tintineo de la cota de malla del joven se\u00f1or, el crujir de las hojas y maldiciones entre dientes cada vez que la espada se le enredaba con las ramas y se le enganchaba la espl\u00e9ndida capa de marta.\n\nEl enorme centinela estaba justo en la cima del risco, donde Will recordaba; las ramas m\u00e1s bajas, a apenas un codo del suelo. Will se tendi\u00f3 de bruces sobre la nieve y el lodo, y se desliz\u00f3 bajo ellas para espiar el claro desierto de abajo.\n\nEl coraz\u00f3n le dio un vuelco. Durante un instante no se atrevi\u00f3 ni a respirar. La luz de la luna iluminaba el claro, las cenizas de la hoguera, la tienda cubierta de nieve, la gran roca y el arroyuelo casi congelado. Todo estaba igual que unas horas antes.\n\nHab\u00edan desaparecido. Todos los cad\u00e1veres hab\u00edan desaparecido.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Dioses! \u2014oy\u00f3 a su espalda. Ser Waymar Royce acababa de cortar una rama con la espada. Se encontraba junto al centinela, con el arma todav\u00eda empu\u00f1ada y la capa ondeando al viento; las estrellas iluminaban el noble perfil que cualquiera pod\u00eda ver.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Agachaos! \u2014susurr\u00f3 Will, apremiante\u2014. Algo va mal.\n\nRoyce no se movi\u00f3. Contempl\u00f3 el claro desierto al pie del risco, y dej\u00f3 escapar una carcajada.\n\n\u2014Por lo visto, tus cad\u00e1veres han levantado el campamento.\n\nWill se hab\u00eda quedado mudo. Las palabras no le acud\u00edan a la mente. Aquello era imposible. Recorri\u00f3 una y otra vez el campamento con la mirada. Un hacha de combate enorme, de doble filo, segu\u00eda tirada donde la hab\u00eda visto la vez anterior. Un arma de gran valor...\n\n\u2014Ponte de pie, Will \u2014orden\u00f3 ser Waymar\u2014. Ah\u00ed no hay nadie. No te quiero ver escondi\u00e9ndote bajo un arbusto. \u2014Will obedeci\u00f3 de mala gana. Ser Waymar lo mir\u00f3 con desaprobaci\u00f3n\u2014. No pienso fracasar en mi primera expedici\u00f3n y ser el hazmerre\u00edr del Castillo Negro. Encontraremos a esos hombres cueste lo que cueste. \u2014Mir\u00f3 a su alrededor\u2014. Sube a ese \u00e1rbol. Venga, deprisa. A ver si divisas una hoguera.\n\nWill dio media vuelta sin decir nada. Era in\u00fatil discutir. El viento soplaba y se le clavaba en los huesos. Lleg\u00f3 junto al \u00e1rbol, el centinela gris verdoso, y empez\u00f3 a trepar. Ya ten\u00eda las manos pegajosas de resina antes de desaparecer entre las ramas. El miedo le atenazaba las entra\u00f1as como una comida mal digerida. Susurr\u00f3 una plegaria a los dioses sin nombre del bosque y sac\u00f3 un pu\u00f1al de la vaina. Se lo puso entre los dientes para seguir trepando con las dos manos. El sabor del hierro fr\u00edo le proporcion\u00f3 cierto consuelo.\n\nDe pronto, oy\u00f3 la voz del joven se\u00f1or al pie del \u00e1rbol.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n anda ah\u00ed?\n\nWill detect\u00f3 cierta inseguridad pese al tono desafiante. Se detuvo. Escuch\u00f3. Mir\u00f3.\n\nLos bosques le dieron la respuesta: el rumor de las hojas, el g\u00e9lido discurrir del arroyo, el ulular lejano de un b\u00faho de las nieves...\n\nLos Otros no hac\u00edan ruido.\n\nWill divis\u00f3 un movimiento por el rabillo del ojo. Unas sombras claras se deslizaban entre los \u00e1rboles. Gir\u00f3 la cabeza y vio otra sombra blanca en la oscuridad. Desapareci\u00f3 al instante. El viento agitaba suavemente las ramas y hac\u00eda que se ara\u00f1aran unas a otras con dedos de madera. Will tom\u00f3 aliento para lanzar un grito de advertencia, pero las palabras se le congelaron en la garganta. Quiz\u00e1 estuviera equivocado. Quiz\u00e1 hubiera sido solo un p\u00e1jaro, un reflejo sobre la nieve, un espejismo de la luz de la luna. Al fin y al cabo, \u00bfqu\u00e9 hab\u00eda visto?\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1s, Will? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 ser Waymar desde abajo\u2014. \u00bfVes algo? \u2014Caminaba con cautela, de pronto alerta, espada en mano. \u00c9l tambi\u00e9n deb\u00eda de haber advertido su presencia, aun sin verlos\u2014. \u00a1Responde! \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 hace tanto fr\u00edo? \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3.\n\nEra cierto, hac\u00eda mucho fr\u00edo. Will, tiritando, se aferr\u00f3 todav\u00eda con m\u00e1s fuerza a la rama. Apret\u00f3 la cara contra el tronco del centinela. Not\u00f3 la savia dulce y pegajosa en la mejilla.\n\nUna sombra surgi\u00f3 de la oscuridad del bosque. Se alz\u00f3 ante Royce. Era alta, tan dura y flaca como los huesos viejos, con carne p\u00e1lida como la leche. Su armadura parec\u00eda cambiar de color cada vez que se mov\u00eda; en un momento dado era blanca como la nieve reci\u00e9n ca\u00edda, al siguiente negra como las sombras, o salpicada del oscuro verde gris\u00e1ceo de los \u00e1rboles. Con cada paso que daba, los juegos de luces y sombras danzaban como la luz de la luna sobre el agua.\n\nWill oy\u00f3 como a ser Waymar Royce se le escapaba el aliento en un sonido siseante.\n\n\u2014No te acerques m\u00e1s \u2014dijo el joven se\u00f1or.\n\nTen\u00eda la voz chillona como la de un ni\u00f1o. Se retir\u00f3 la larga capa de marta de los hombros para tener libertad de movimiento en los brazos durante el combate, y agarr\u00f3 la espada con ambas manos. El viento hab\u00eda cesado. Hac\u00eda mucho, mucho fr\u00edo.\n\nEl Otro se desliz\u00f3 adelante con pasos silenciosos. Llevaba en la mano una espada larga que no se parec\u00eda a ninguna que Will hubiera visto en la vida. En su forja no hab\u00eda tomado parte metal humano alguno. Era un rayo de luna transl\u00facido, una esquirla de cristal tan delgada que casi no se ve\u00eda de canto. Aquella arma emit\u00eda un tenue resplandor azulado, una luz fantasmag\u00f3rica que centelleaba en su filo, y sin saber por qu\u00e9, Will comprendi\u00f3 que era m\u00e1s cortante que cualquier hoja.\n\n\u2014Adelante si quieres, bailemos. \u2014Ser Waymar le hizo frente con valent\u00eda.\n\nAlz\u00f3 la espada por encima de la cabeza, desafiante. Le temblaban las manos a causa del peso, o tal vez fuera por el fr\u00edo. Pero Will pens\u00f3 que en aquel momento ya no era un cr\u00edo, sino un hombre de la Guardia de la Noche.\n\nEl Otro se detuvo. Will le vio los ojos; azules, m\u00e1s oscuros y m\u00e1s azules que ning\u00fan ojo humano, de un azul que ard\u00eda como el hielo. Estaban fijos en la espada temblorosa, sobre la cabeza de ser Waymar, en la luz de luna que flu\u00eda por el metal. Durante un instante, se atrevi\u00f3 a albergar esperanzas.\n\nSalieron de entre las sombras en silencio, todos id\u00e9nticos al primero. Eran tres... cuatro... cinco... Quiz\u00e1 ser Waymar lleg\u00f3 a sentir el fr\u00edo que emanaba de ellos, pero no los vio, no oy\u00f3 como se aproximaban. Will ten\u00eda que lanzar un grito de aviso. Era su deber. Y su muerte, si osaba hacerlo. Se estremeci\u00f3, se aferr\u00f3 al \u00e1rbol con m\u00e1s fuerza y guard\u00f3 silencio.\n\nLa espada transparente hendi\u00f3 el aire.\n\nSer Waymar la detuvo con acero. Cuando las hojas chocaron, no se oy\u00f3 el ruido de metal contra metal; tan solo un sonido agudo, silbante, apenas por encima del umbral de audici\u00f3n, como el grito de dolor de un animal. Royce par\u00f3 el segundo golpe, y el tercero, y luego retrocedi\u00f3 un paso. Otro intercambio de golpes, y volvi\u00f3 a retroceder.\n\nTras \u00e9l, a derecha e izquierda, los observadores aguardaban pacientes, silenciosos, sin rostro; el dibujo cambiante de sus delicadas armaduras los hac\u00eda casi invisibles en el bosque. Pero no hicieron adem\u00e1n alguno de intervenir.\n\nLas espadas chocaron una y otra vez, hasta que Will sinti\u00f3 deseos de taparse los o\u00eddos para protegerse del lamento angustioso que emit\u00edan. Ser Waymar jadeaba ya por el esfuerzo, el aliento le surg\u00eda en nubecillas blancas a la luz de la luna. La hoja de su espada estaba cubierta de escarcha; la del Otro brillaba con luz azul.\n\nEntonces, el quite de Royce lleg\u00f3 un instante demasiado tarde. La hoja transparente le cort\u00f3 la cota de malla bajo el brazo. El joven se\u00f1or lanz\u00f3 un grito de dolor. La sangre man\u00f3 entre las anillas. Desped\u00eda vapor en medio de aquel fr\u00edo, y las gotas eran rojas como llamas al llegar a la nieve. Ser Waymar se llev\u00f3 la mano al costado. El guante de piel de topo qued\u00f3 te\u00f1ido de rojo.\n\nEl Otro dijo algo en un idioma que Will no conoc\u00eda; la voz era como el crujido del hielo en un lago invernal, y las palabras sonaban burlonas.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Por Robert! \u2014grit\u00f3 ser Waymar Royce haciendo acopio de toda su furia.\n\nY se lanz\u00f3 hacia delante con un rugido, blandiendo la espada escarchada con ambas manos y descargando todo su peso en un ataque en arco paralelo al suelo. El Otro par\u00f3 el golpe con un movimiento casi fortuito.\n\nCuando las hojas se encontraron, el acero se quebr\u00f3.\n\nUn grito despert\u00f3 ecos en el bosque nocturno, y la hoja tembl\u00f3 y salt\u00f3 en mil pedazos que salieron disparados como una lluvia de agujas. Royce cay\u00f3 de rodillas entre gritos mientras se cubr\u00eda los ojos. La sangre le manaba entre los dedos.\n\nLos observadores se adelantaron al un\u00edsono, como si les hubieran dado alguna se\u00f1al. Las espadas se alzaron y descendieron en un silencio sepulcral. Fue una carnicer\u00eda sin ira. Las hojas transl\u00facidas hend\u00edan la cota de malla como si fuera seda. Will cerr\u00f3 los ojos. Bajo \u00e9l, sonaban voces y risas agudas como car\u00e1mbanos.\n\nCuando reuni\u00f3 el valor necesario para mirar de nuevo, ya hab\u00eda pasado mucho tiempo, y el risco estaba desierto.\n\nSigui\u00f3 entre las ramas, sin apenas atreverse a respirar, mientras la luna se deslizaba por el cielo negro. Por fin, con los m\u00fasculos agarrotados y los dedos entumecidos por el fr\u00edo, baj\u00f3 del \u00e1rbol.\n\nEl cad\u00e1ver de Royce yac\u00eda de bruces en la nieve, con un brazo extendido. La gruesa capa de marta estaba desgarrada por mil sitios. All\u00ed tendido, muerto, resultaba m\u00e1s obvio que nunca que era muy joven. Un ni\u00f1o.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 a unos pasos lo que quedaba de la espada, con la punta rota y retorcida como un \u00e1rbol sobre el que hubiera ca\u00eddo un rayo. Will se arrodill\u00f3, mir\u00f3 a su alrededor con cautela y la recogi\u00f3. La espada rota ser\u00eda la prueba que necesitaba. Gared sabr\u00eda qu\u00e9 significaba, y si no, lo sabr\u00eda el Viejo Oso, lord Mormont, o el maestre Aemon. \u00bfSeguir\u00eda Gared esperando con los caballos? Ten\u00eda que darse prisa.\n\nWill se levant\u00f3. Ser Waymar Royce estaba de pie junto a \u00e9l.\n\nSus ropas lujosas eran andrajos; el rostro, una m\u00e1scara ensangrentada. Ten\u00eda un fragmento afilado de su espada clavado en la pupila blanca y ciega del ojo izquierdo.\n\nEl derecho estaba abierto. La pupila ard\u00eda con un brillo azul. Ve\u00eda.\n\nLa espada rota se le cay\u00f3 de los dedos. Will cerr\u00f3 los ojos para rezar. Unas manos largas y elegantes le acariciaron la mejilla y se cerraron en torno a su garganta. Iban enguantadas en piel de topo de la mejor calidad, y estaban pegajosas por la sangre, pero su roce era fr\u00edo como el hielo.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}