Dan Quint's stepfather, Judd Hurley, always meant trouble. When he married Dan's mother, Judd and his son, Blix, moved to the farm and took over. Dan -- the target for Judd's meanest moods -- had left the farm when he was seventeen, and his visits to his mother since then had been seldom. Now he was twenty-three, and he would take no more of Judd's bossing.