Silas charged eighteen dollars for flour, beans, salt meat, coffee, oats and the leather Mateo chose from a box under his counter. Of her twelve hundred, Ruth had kept two hundred apart for expenses. She paid him from that reserve. He gave her a written account without her asking. She folded it into her pocket.
Outside, the horses grazed in the holding yard and the family ate in its narrow shade. The sun had crossed the middle of the sky. Ruth had less time than she needed to invent a different future.
She sat beside Carmela and opened the lining of her coat with Teresa's scissors.
“There's a thousand here,” she said. “The rest stays for supplies and emergencies. We can get a team, maybe two, and a small place if we—”
“Who's we?” Teresa asked.
Ruth stopped cutting.
“All of us.”
“You and Silas were all of us this morning.”
Carmela looked toward the children. Luis was feeding crumbs to the dog. Inés had pretended she didn't care whether it came to her and was now looking disappointed that it believed her.
“We'll go to Esteban,” Carmela said.
“I know. I'm saying we could buy—”
“You could buy,” Teresa said. “Whose names? Who decides where? Are we to pay it back? Work it off?”
The scissors slipped and pricked Ruth's finger. She put the finger in her mouth, buying a moment she hadn't earned.
“That's not what I meant.”
“Then say what you mean without giving us a master to replace him.”
Mateo sat with his leg stretched out, mending a loose strap. She waited for him to look up. He kept working.
The yard smelled of wet horse and old manure. On Silas's porch a fly worried the rim of a cup. Ruth had been ready to give Harlan every dollar. She lowered the scissors.
She finished opening the coat seam.
The notes were wrapped in oiled cloth. She counted out a thousand on the spread corner of a blanket. Her hands knew how to count even when she didn't want them to. A hundred. Two hundred. The bundle diminished. She put the remaining reserve with the eighteen-dollar account so she wouldn't pretend she had more than she did.
“You take it,” she said.
Teresa didn't reach.
“Is that an order?”
Ruth let out a breath that almost became a laugh. It hurt.
“No. It's a very badly made offer.”
“It is.”
“No repayment. No work. No part in deciding where you live. You and Carmela divide it how you choose.”
Teresa watched her face.
“And when it's gone?”
“It'll be gone.”
“When you want it back?”
“I won't get it.”
“You say that now.”
Ruth took Silas's pencil from her pocket, then put it down. A receipt would have made her feel safer. She saw Teresa notice the movement.
“I wrote things down before,” Ruth said. “You know what my promise is worth. I don't have a better one.”
Carmela reached for the money. She counted it herself, slowly, making Ruth wait. Then she handed the bundle to Teresa.
“Inside your dress. Not the pack.”
Teresa wrapped it again. Her fingers shook once, then steadied. She took the scissors from Ruth and cut a loose thread from the blanket before returning them to her pocket.
“This doesn't pay my wages,” she said.
“No.”
“Good.”
Mateo put down his repair. He looked at Ruth for a moment, then reached for his boot.
“We ought to move while the light's good.”
Nobody embraced her. Carmela called the children. Teresa began packing the flour.
Silas watched them saddle.
“You're going on?” he asked.
Ruth fastened the mended lining inside her coat. It felt strangely loose against her ribs.
“That's the plan.”
“With the horses?”
She looked at the six borrowed mounts. Mateo couldn't walk the remaining miles. Eva was asleep against her mother's shoulder. The packs on two more geldings held almost everything the family owned.
“For now. Unless you'll sell us six riding horses and two pack horses, and hold his sixty until he comes for them.”
Silas stared at her. “I already told you. I'm not holding his stock while you get away.”
“I heard.”
He helped her settle a sack behind Teresa's saddle.
“Thank you for the water,” Ruth said as she mounted.
He waved it away and went back to the porch.
They led the horses out of the side yard, east again. Harlan watched from above the road. Ruth didn't call up to explain what had changed. He took out his watch, looked at it, then closed the cover hard enough for her to hear.
“You had your hour.”
He pointed east. Ellis rode down to the road ahead of them. Ruth stopped Lark. Beside her Benito freed the rein from his pistol hand. For a few breaths nobody moved.
Silas came onto the porch. “Get them clear of my gate, Voss. I gave them water, not a place to shoot.”
Harlan glanced at the house. Ellis was alone across the road; Asa and Wade had stayed with him on the slope. He lifted two fingers. Ellis backed his horse aside, close enough that Teresa had to take the pack wide around him.
Harlan waited until the last animal passed. Then he and his men followed.
After a quarter mile Inés rode up beside her mother and whispered. Teresa shook her head, then looked toward the loose stock.
“Ruth,” she called.
Ruth turned.
Inés was counting on her fingers, her mouth forming numbers.
“The red mare,” she said. “The one with the torn ear.”
Ruth looked over the animals spread across the road.
“She'll be behind.”
“She isn't.”