“He was trying to stake me!” she protested. “I just got the better of him.”

She told Walter the story. By the time she finished, he had started pacing back and forth across the room, looking more and more worried. “This is bad. He thinks you tried to kill him.”

“But I didn’t. I made sure he’d survive the sun. I put him in the shade.”

“When we were kids, he almost got run over by a cart. The man driving the cart said it was an ...