They counted twice. Fifty-one loose, six ridden, two packed. Ruth's mare made sixty animals where there should have been sixty-one.
Benito swung toward the trail behind them.
“I'll go.”
“You keep them together,” Mateo said.
He eased his horse beside Lark. Ruth glanced at his knee.
“I can look alone.”
“And bring her out of whatever she's found alone?”
“He can take a rope,” Benito said.
Mateo gave him the shotgun. “You stay with Inés.”
It settled the argument in a way Ruth didn't altogether like. But Benito took the gun and checked its position across his saddle, and Mateo turned back without waiting for her to decide.
Carmela moved Eva in front of her. Teresa and the others drew the stock into a patch of grass clear of the road. They had six mounts for Carmela, Mateo, Luis, Teresa, Inés and Benito; one of those was going back with Ruth. There weren't spare bodies enough for any of them to be wasted.
Inés called after them. “I saw her at the lower water. By the broken fence.”
“You sure?” Mateo asked.
She nodded hard. “Her ear.”
They found the mark where the mare had left the yard. It led past a loose board and down into the old overflow channel below the pond. She had gone after grass, then kept going when the bank hid her from the others.
Ruth could see Silas's roof but not the porch. On the rise Asa sat watching. He had seen two riders separate. He would have seen which two.
“Keep near the bank,” she told Mateo.
“So you can get a good look at my back?”
“So he can't.”
Mateo looked uphill, understood, and went ahead.
The roan stood in the channel with a trailing piece of fence wire caught around one hind pastern. She hadn't cut herself badly. But each movement tightened the loop, and the mare had begun to fling her head when she couldn't step free.
“Easy,” Ruth said.
The mare lunged away from her voice. The wire sang against the post.
Mateo dismounted. He did it on the good leg, carefully. Ruth held Lark still while he went down the shallow slope, keeping low beside the bank. The mare's nostrils widened. She smelled the other horses and wanted them, which made standing still harder.
“Give me her head,” Mateo said.
Ruth slipped a loop over the mare's neck. The animal struck backward. Mateo waited until the leg came down, then reached for the wire.
It was a small, ugly piece of work: the mare trembling, Ruth giving and taking on the rope, Mateo trying to lift the slack without putting his hands where a kick would break them. Asa moved on the ridge. Ruth saw him come downhill at a walk.
“He's coming,” she said.
“I can't ask her to hurry.”
Ruth kept the mare's head turned. The wire had caught around a half-buried stone as well as the post. Mateo pulled it clear and tried to rise. His bad knee folded.
He made a sound Ruth hadn't heard from him before.
The mare jumped. Ruth let rope slide, burned her palm and held. Mateo lay flat against the bank, very still. The wire came loose from the animal's leg and sprang back against the dirt.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then the mare took a step.
Ruth led her uphill, slow enough not to provoke another lunge. She fastened the rope to the old post and went back for Mateo.
He had both hands around his knee. His face was gray under the dust.
“Can you stand?”
“Don't know yet.”
Asa stopped above them.
“You want help?”
Ruth looked up. He sat easily, one hand on his horn. She hated that he might mean it.
“Stay there.”
“I can get him on a horse.”
“I can do it.”
Mateo put a hand against her arm. “Let me get my breath.”
Asa waited. The wind lifted the brim of his hat. He looked at the roan's leg, then at the loose wire.
“That one sound?”
“Scratched,” Ruth said.
“Harlan wants them sound.”
“He can worry about Mateo too.”
Asa's expression didn't change. He turned his horse and rode uphill.
Getting Mateo mounted took the better part of Ruth's strength and most of his. They used the bank for height. He couldn't bend the leg enough to swing it cleanly, so Ruth held the stirrup out and guided his boot while he gripped the saddle with both hands. She had to stop looking at his face.
When he was seated, sweat ran along his jaw.
“Don't tell Carmela I fell,” he said.
Ruth almost agreed. Then he let out a breath.
“She'll see it. Tell her before I get there.”
They brought the roan back with the sun sliding west. Benito took her, checked the leg and led her into the loose stock. Inés watched, then began counting again without being asked.
“Sixty,” she said at last. “And Lark.”
Carmela stood beside her husband's stirrup. She reached up and put a hand against his cheek. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then she asked what he needed, and he told her.
Ruth cleaned her burned palm with water she would have preferred to drink. They still had eight miles to make. The horses were watered and rested, but the people had used the rest on worry. There would be no leisurely start now, no stopping before they had to.
She tightened Lark's cinch and took the front. Behind her Mateo made his horse walk with a steadiness that cost him every step.