The white post leaned beside a pond wide enough to reflect a piece of sky. Carmela went straight to the flat stone at its foot. She left Eva with Luis, dismounted and lifted the stone with both hands.
Under it lay a folded paper inside a scrap of waxed wrapping.
She read it once, then again. Her mouth moved on a word. Ruth waited, aware of how badly she wanted to snatch the paper and make the answer happen faster.
Carmela called Teresa.
The two women bent over it. Mateo watched from his saddle. He had stopped trying to hide the pain. One boot hung loose in the stirrup, the bad leg nearly straight.
“Two wagons,” Carmela said. “Esteban and Rafael. At the lane this afternoon. He's got the roof.”
She passed Ruth the paper. Esteban had added a crooked line below the arrangements: his aunt and some of the yard people would walk out with food to meet them. Rafael was to stop at the first bend beyond the lane and wait for them there.
“How far past the enclosure?” Ruth asked Mateo.
“Two hundred yards. No more.”
“Your aunt?” Ruth asked Carmela.
“Ours. Our mothers' older sister. She'll have everybody out looking for us if we're late.”
Teresa read the last lines aloud. “The woman still needs work done. Bring your scissors.”
She put a hand against her dress where the little sewing bundle lay. Teresa smoothed the paper with her thumb and read that line again.
“There's a room later,” Carmela told Mateo. “Not now. Later, if we can pay.”
“We'll pay.”
“You have to get there first.”
He nodded. “I was hoping to.”
They watered the herd patiently. The pond was fed from a spring above it, its overflow running through a stone-lined spillway. Stock had used the place for years; there was a beaten approach, a firmer bank and a place where the shallow edge could mire a careless animal. Mateo pointed that out to Luis, who took the warning without arguing. Benito kept the loose horses from crowding. Ruth let them drink in groups, then graze.
She wanted to hurry every mouth. She looked at the wet muzzles, the sweat dried dark under the saddles, and made herself wait.
There would be thirteen miles after this water. Eleven to the lane. Two more to the settlement, though the wagons would carry the family before then. The animals could make it if they weren't driven like a storm. The people were less certain.
Mateo asked for paper. Ruth gave him the blank back of Silas's account. He balanced it on his saddle and drew with a short pencil.
He sketched the lane and the enclosure, marking where the eastern fence wing met the road.
“Wagons beyond here,” he said. “Before we turn the stock in.”
“Gate sound?” Ruth asked.
“Was when I worked there last spring. Boards replaced at the top. Bottom rail's ugly.”
Ruth added the little foot gate beside the funnel. She could almost feel the old splinter in her palm.
“We get everyone and the packs into the wagons first,” Carmela said.
“Six geldings unsaddled,” Teresa said. “Two packs off. All eight back with the rest.”
“Fifty-two loose makes sixty,” Mateo said.
“You get the packs up,” Ruth told Benito. “Then take the rear. I'll work the turn.”
Mateo shifted his bad leg. “I could—”
“You've done enough.”
“Wasn't going to offer to dance.”
Carmela tapped the mark where the wagons would stand. “No one leaves anybody behind. Rafael waits past the wing until you're up.”
Ruth nodded. She wanted the road in front of her before she promised more.
They packed while the horses finished grazing. Teresa checked every fastening. Carmela divided the remaining bread and wrapped pieces for the children to eat without stopping. Mateo studied the road with the expression he used to judge a hoof: something damaged that still had to bear weight.
Ruth tightened Lark's saddle. She had bought the mare seven years earlier from a man who called her mean because she wouldn't stand while he jerked at her mouth. It had taken Ruth three weeks to mount without the mare turning away. Since then Lark had carried her into every town where she had earned money of her own.
She pressed her thumb against the smooth leather of the cheekpiece.
“Nearly there,” she told her.
The mare blew warm breath across her sleeve. Ruth checked the girth once, then made herself stop checking it.
They left the pond with water dark on the horses' mouths. Wade's tracks crossed the road ahead. Asa's joined them a little farther down.
At the next low rise Ruth saw Harlan waiting in the distance. This time he was in the road.