Carmela wouldn't discuss leaving within sight of the kitchen. She led Ruth to the wash line and handed her the end of a sheet.
“Hold that up.”
They stood with the wet linen between them and the house, its cool edge soaking Ruth's sleeve.
“My cousin has places for us,” Carmela said. “Not enough rooms. Enough floor.”
“Where?”
“Down toward the river. This side of it. He's at a stockyard. Mateo can shoe there. I can cook. Teresa's found sewing, if the woman hasn't filled it.”
Ruth tried to fit these arrangements around the image she had carried of Carmela waiting in this kitchen, year after year, for somebody to notice.
“When did you arrange it?”
“We have letters. The peddler carries them. Esteban expects us in four days.”
The sheet bellied between them. Carmela pulled it straight.
“Then why aren't you going?”
“On what?”
Ruth glanced toward the pasture and immediately knew what Carmela would say.
“He doesn't lend us his horses to leave him. Last time we went on foot. Eva was five. We got as far as the old freight road. Ate what we'd taken, and Mateo couldn't carry her and the water. A man offered a wagon ride for money we didn't have. Wade found us there.”
Wade Mercer had worked Harlan's stock as long as Ruth could remember.
“He made you come back?”
“He brought food.” Carmela's jaw worked. “Then he took us back.”
Ruth held the sheet while Carmela pinned it. Beyond the hanging linen, Inés and Luis were carrying firewood, arguing over which of them had taken the lighter load.
“How many this time?” Ruth asked.
“Seven. Benito too.”
“Can Mateo make it?”
“Ask Mateo.”
They found him in the shade repairing a shoe. Benito held a horse while he worked. The horse kept nosing Benito's pocket. He turned the pocket inside out for it. “Go on. Search the other. You'll be rich.”
At Ruth's approach he fell quiet.
Mateo listened to her question and pressed a thumb against the old swelling at his knee.
“Walking it? No. Riding, with time to stop? Yes.”
“The springs?”
“First Spring is full. The little pond above Cottonwood still has water. I was there with stock a month ago.”
“Harlan's lot would need—”
“His lot?” Benito said.
Ruth shut her mouth. She hadn't meant to say it yet.
He handed Mateo the lead and stepped close enough that she saw the fine white seam at his hairline.
“You can buy a lot of trouble. You can't make us the price.”
“I was thinking about mounts.”
“Then think where we can hear you.”
Before noon Ruth asked Harlan to meet her at his desk. She laid twelve hundred dollars before him. The notes looked smaller on the polished wood than they ever had in her lodging room, where she used to count them and imagine all the horses they might become.
“For their accounts,” she said. “All seven leave. Today.”
He didn't touch the money.
“What happened to buying horses?”
“This first.”
“And tomorrow somebody else decides they don't owe what they owe. Will you buy them too?”
“If twelve hundred isn't enough, tell me the figure.”
“It isn't about a figure.”
He looked so irritated that she believed him.
“I've a ranch to run. Hay to put up. Stock to winter. Carmela's not replaceable in a day, and Mateo knows every hoof here. I've made allowances for him for years. Half his work's done sitting down now.”
“Then pay him for the half.”
Harlan stood. He went to the window and looked out at the wash line. Ruth thought of the wet sheet, Carmela's hands laying out a road she had planned without Ruth.
“You were hungry once,” he said.
She had known he would say it. Still, it stopped her.
“I remember.”
“You came here with a dress you couldn't button, and a horse too old to sell, and no earthly idea what to do. I didn't ask for a contract. Didn't say, Pay me first, child. I took you in.”
“I remember that too.”
“Then don't come back and tell me what I am.”
She looked at his bent finger against the window frame. She had held that hand after the colt broke it, furious with the horse, terrified that Harlan would die of a finger because her father had died of a cough.
“I'm asking you to let them leave.”
“Carmela and Mateo can work down their accounts here. The children will be useful elsewhere. Your money won't change what's sensible.”
“And when is it worked down?”
“When it is.”
He turned back, impatient with her in a way he had been when she was slow over sums.
Ruth gathered the notes. One had slipped half under the blotter. She had to lift it to get the last dollar, and the little action humiliated her more than anything he had said.
At the door he called her name.
“You'll keep clear of this.”
It wasn't a question. For a moment she wanted it to be.
She went to Lark's stall and stood with her face against the mare's neck until the animal shifted, bored with being held. Ruth wiped her nose on her sleeve. Then she took the rifle from its scabbard and checked that it was empty before cleaning it.
Benito found her there.
“Did he sell us?”
She shook her head.
“Too dear?”
“He wouldn't name a price.”
Benito watched her work the cloth through the barrel.
“That's why we don't ask him anymore.”
He started away. Ruth called him back.
“I know a man at Red Tank.”
“Everybody knows a man somewhere.”
“Mine owes me a favor.”
Benito came back a step. “Then tell Carmela. And put that away before Luis sees it and decides he's forty.”
Ruth almost smiled. She put the rifle down.