The latch had never sounded so loud.
Ruth held it against the post while Benito eased the gate toward him. Even so, the hinge complained. In the house a lamp burned behind Harlan's bedroom curtain. He sometimes rose at night to read when his back hurt. Ruth watched the yellow square while sixty horses waited in the dark.
Carmela had Eva in front of her on the saddle, wrapped in a blanket. The child's hair stuck to her cheek. Teresa passed a rope across the second pack and pulled. Mateo checked the loads by feeling under them, then tightened one knot that would otherwise have worked against a gelding's skin.
Luis came from the far fence.
“Wade's asleep. I heard him.”
“He might sleep quieter than you think,” Mateo said. “Take the outside.”
They put Moth through first. She hesitated at the dark opening, sniffing the ground where water from a bucket had made a black patch. Ruth let Lark stand on the other side. Benito shook a little feed, low in his palm. Moth stretched her neck, took a step and passed between them.
The first few followed. Then a gelding swung backward into the others and the whole opening filled with shoulders. Ruth felt the movement before she could see it: pressure becoming a jam.
“Stop,” she said.
Luis clapped his hands. The horses bunched harder.
“Luis, stop. Everybody still.”
She backed Lark away. Benito came around the gelding's shoulder, letting him turn toward the space he wanted instead of pushing him against it. His rope brushed a board. A horse snorted, loud enough to wake the world.
Harlan's curtain moved.
Ruth kept her hands low. Benito whispered something to the gelding that she couldn't hear. The animal took two sideways steps and the knot of bodies loosened.
The curtain fell back into place.
They counted as the lot passed, not loudly, Ruth holding a number while Mateo took it from her at each ten. Thirty. Forty. A small mare tried to turn after the horses still in the pasture. Inés rode outside her, patient as a woman twice her age, until the mare faced the opening again.
Sixty.
Benito shut the gate. He lowered the latch instead of dropping it.
At the kitchen Carmela had left the bread for the men on the table. Ruth thought of that as they took the first rise: enough time to set food where Harlan would find it, after everything. She nearly asked why. Then she remembered the full packs. Carmela had taken the bread she could carry.
They crossed the low ground west of the ranch and turned east by a stock trail that skirted the steep country. Behind them the house vanished. No one spoke until the sky lightened enough for Ruth to see Teresa's face.
“Your coat,” Teresa said.
Ruth looked down. A strap had dragged the hem near Lark's flank.
“Thank you.”
“I meant take it off. You're sweating already.”
They stopped after the first long mile to settle the packs and let Eva drink. The child wanted to get down. Then, once down, she wanted to be carried. Carmela closed her eyes for a moment.
Luis swung out of his saddle and held out his arms.
“I'll carry you to that bush.”
“The other bush.”
“That one's too far.”
“Then you're not strong.”
Inés made a choking sound into her sleeve. Luis picked Eva up and carried her to the farther bush, furious with everybody.
For most of the morning they walked the stock. The loose horses spread to graze whenever the trail widened, and it took people on both sides to keep a direction without wearing them out. Mateo rode the drag, watching feet. Benito worked the outside with a looseness Ruth envied, as if he and his gelding were moving on an errand unrelated to the herd. She and Lark held the front.
Once Ruth turned to find Carmela looking over her shoulder.
“Nothing there,” Ruth said.
“I know what nothing looks like.”
Ruth faced forward.
By midday they reached First Spring, twelve trail miles from the ranch. Water spilled from a rocky lip into a broad pond dammed long ago for stock. The wet bank bore old hoofprints. There was enough room for horses to come down in small groups while the rest grazed above it.
Ruth wanted to water everything at once and move. Mateo shook his head.
“They'll mire the bank.”
They worked the horses through. It took time. Everything took time: unfastening the packs, shifting Eva, finding the coffee, coaxing a gelding away from another's feed, checking the rubbed place on a saddle blanket. Ruth's imagined drive had been a line on the country. The real one was sixty-one mouths, eight people and a knot no one could untie with cold fingers.
She took the knot from Teresa and made it worse.
“Give it here,” Teresa said.
Ruth gave it back.
They ate beside a fire no higher than Ruth's hand. Mateo slept with his boot on a rolled blanket, his knee bent a little. Carmela washed Eva's face. The child began crying because the cloth was cold, then couldn't stop.
“She's tired,” Carmela told no one.
Ruth looked toward the trail behind them. She knew the length of Wade's stride on a good horse. She knew how quickly Asa could saddle. Twelve miles wasn't a wall.
Lark raised her head from the grass. Ruth followed the mare's ears and saw a rider on the western rise.
He was alone, coming at an easy walk.