They met in the harness shed after supper. Eva slept on a folded blanket, her mouth open. Luis was meant to be asleep too, but Carmela had finally told him to sit where she could see his ears instead of behind a wall where everybody could hear his boots.
Ruth laid out the sale she intended to make. Silas Reed bought horses at Red Tank. Three years ago she had recovered a string of his animals after a hired driver sold them and disappeared. Silas had paid her, then told her that if she ever needed a buyer in a hurry, he was her man.
“He takes horses with somebody else's mark?” Mateo asked.
“He has.”
“That's a yes with its hat on,” Benito said.
“Yes.”
“And he'll know these are stolen.”
“Yes.”
Teresa sat on an upturned feed box. “How much?”
“Less than they're worth. Enough to buy teams, tools, a place to start. It won't be a fair sale.”
“It's not a sale at all,” Inés said. She was beside her mother, plaiting a strip of leather. “It isn't ours.”
Ruth nodded. “No.”
For a while they listened to a mouse working somewhere inside the wall. Ruth wanted to fill the silence with reasons. None of her reasons would make the horses theirs, and none would make the walk possible for Mateo or Eva.
“We take enough to ride,” Carmela said, “whether he buys the others or not.”
“Seven mounts with Lark. Eva doubles with you. Two packs.”
“We go to Esteban,” Carmela said. “If you have a better price north, or south, that's your road. Ours goes east.”
“Red Tank is on it.”
“Keep it there.”
Mateo asked about the sale lot. Ruth listed thirty-six dry mares, twenty-four geldings, no stallion, no foal to drag a mare backward. Six of the geldings would carry them, two the packs. The other fifty-two would travel loose. All were mature stock that knew one another. It was a manageable lot if handled patiently. It was also sixty branded animals, each one a reason for Harlan to come.
“He'll come even if we take eight,” Benito said.
Nobody disagreed.
They went through food, blankets, ropes and the things Carmela had already hidden for departure. There was a little sack of oats for the working mounts, enough to rattle in a pan when a reluctant horse needed persuading. Mateo had gathered a small farrier's kit over months. Teresa had wrapped needles, thread and scissors in a piece of sacking. They weren't waiting for Ruth to furnish a life.
She offered to carry more of their things on Lark. Teresa declined without looking at her.
“We can load a pack.”
Benito and Mateo would bring their own weapons: a worn pistol and an old shotgun. Ruth would carry her rifle. Carmela looked hard at Luis, who was attempting to look uninterested.
“You touch none of them.”
“I didn't say—”
“I'm saving you the trouble.”
They left Eva sleeping with Teresa while Ruth took Mateo and Benito to the pasture. The moon hadn't risen. Ruth knew the sale animals by the shapes of their heads against the stars and the sound of hooves on the dry ground, but Benito knew which would come for a scrap of feed and which would stand while a rope slipped over its ears.
He rubbed a pale mare's nose. “Moth. She'll follow the bucket even if you put it in church.”
“She'll follow Lark,” Ruth said. They had grazed together all afternoon, Moth nosing after her mare like an acquaintance seeking an introduction. Lark merely moved away when she had had enough. “If Moth leads, we won't fight every turn.”
“Don't tell her that. She'll demand wages.”
Mateo made a small sound. Ruth realized it was a laugh.
They sorted the eight geldings through the side pen without lanterns. One, a heavy brown with a scar on his shoulder, nosed Ruth's coat. She remembered him as a yearling, all legs and foolishness. A red roan had a tear in her left ear. Benito asked whether she meant to saddle the mare too. Ruth told him she did still know the difference.
“Wanted to be sure. You've been among buyers.”
The roan stayed with the loose stock. They counted the geldings twice, then all sixty as they came through the narrow opening. Mateo moved pebbles from one pocket to the other, a stone for every ten. Ruth had forgotten the habit. It made her feel, unexpectedly, that she was the newcomer.
At the house Harlan sat by a lamp reading a newspaper several weeks old. He had left her cup beside the stove.
“You settled on a price yet?” he asked.
“I'm still looking.”
“Don't look a good horse into a bad one.”
She stood in the doorway. He took off his spectacles.
“Ruthie. About this morning.”
She waited.
“I know you've a soft heart. Your father did too. He'd give his dinner away and then wonder why he was hungry. But you're a businesswoman now. You can't carry everybody.”
“No,” she said. “I can't.”
He smiled, relieved that she had come around. She wanted to smash the cup. She wanted to sit down beside him and tell him she couldn't understand how to leave.
Instead she said good night.
In her room she rolled her spare clothes tightly and put them in her saddlebags. She left behind the dress she had brought for supper with him. It hung from a peg with its sleeves folded inward, like someone keeping her hands to herself.
She slept for less than an hour. When Carmela touched the door, Ruth was already dressed.
At the stable she fastened Lark's cinch, then checked the rifle in its scabbard. The mare lifted a hind foot and sighed. Ruth pressed her forehead against the warm place between the animal's eyes.
“You'll hate this,” she whispered.
Lark pushed her gently aside and went on eating.