Read the excerpt from The Land. "Well, who's going to be your rider?" asked the man of my daddy.

My daddy looked at me. "This boy Paul here."

The man gave me a look-over and said, "He seems a bit mite to me."

My daddy nodded, as if he hadn't considered that. "Could be you're right. He sits a horse well, though."

This dialogue advances the plot of the story by setting up a situation in which