Chapter 3 #2
"Good." Rebecca folded both sheets back into the stack, satisfied in a way that had nothing to do with relief and everything to do with a job done right. "You don't need me standing over your shoulder reading it to you. I just needed to know that for myself before I let it go."
"Three railcar numbers," Rebecca said, handing him the case. "Medical, boots, clothing. All the same yard, close together, from what Daniel had written."
"We remember," David said, gently.
"I know. I'm telling you anyway." She touched the edge of the case once before letting go of it entirely. "He'd like this."
"Us taking his paperwork?"
"Somebody finally using it."
David tucked the case into his saddle bag, in the pocket that buttoned shut and sat against his back where it wouldn't take rain even if the rest of him did.
"The river crossing," Rebecca said. "About sixty miles out."
"I marked it."
"I know. I'm reminding you anyway."
Karen, from atop Waylon, said, "Doctors do that."
"So do nurses," Rebecca said, and something passed between the two of them that didn't need any more words than that.
Rebecca looked past David toward the horses, toward the rifles slung across two saddles, toward the whole shape of what she'd set in motion three days after showing up half-dead at a gate she hadn't even known was there.
"Find it if it's there," she said. "Don't get hurt looking."
"That's the plan," David said.
She almost smiled at that, the way Grace had earlier, like the phrase had already become a small joke between the Hollow and the road ahead of it.
By then the sky had gone gray enough to see by, and the Hollow was waking up around them the way it woke up most mornings — nobody standing still for it.
Russ was already leading his mules toward the near field. Walter crossed behind the barn with a bucket in each hand, already deep into his morning rounds. Somebody's rooster was making its usual complaint about the hour, and somewhere down toward the garden a hoe was already striking dirt.
Ben and Matthew came down from the cabin together, Matthew still working a sleeve over one arm, hair standing up on one side the same way Luke's had the morning Rebecca first showed up.
"How far's Charlotte again?" Ben asked, like he was asking about the weather.
"Long way," David said. "You'll hear plenty about it when I'm back."
"Can we see the map?"
"When I get home. I'll show you exactly where we went."
Matthew's eyes went past David to where Smokey sat waiting by June's front legs. "Smokey's really going?"
"He'd follow us anyway," David said. "Might as well let him ride along on purpose."
That got a small smile out of Matthew, which was worth more than it looked like.
Ben crouched down and scratched behind Smokey's ears, and the dog leaned into it without breaking his watch on the yard.
"Take care of him," Ben said, not quite looking up.
"I will."
Luke came last, already dressed for the day's work rather than for sending his father off. David looked at him and didn't waste words on it.
"You know what you're doing?"
"Yeah."
"If you don't?"
"Ask."
"Good."
That was the whole conversation, and it was enough. David had spent enough of his life on speeches that didn't matter to know a short one that did was worth more.
Grace arrived at a near-jog from the direction of the seed shed, already answering a question somebody had called after her before she'd even reached the yard.
"Grace?" That was Carol Hendricks, hurrying to catch up. "Where do you want the seed potatoes staged? Near the fence, or closer to the barn?"
"Fence line, out of the wind," Grace said, without breaking stride. "And tell Russ I need him for twenty minutes once he's got the mules settled, not before."
Carol nodded and peeled off toward the barn. Before Grace had gone another ten feet, someone else caught her with a question about the repaired hoe, and she answered that one too, just as fast, just as certain.
A third voice called from near the garden, something about whether the greens should go in the shaded bed or the sunny one, and Grace answered without even slowing down enough to look, already three problems past that one in her head.
David watched her cross the yard doing three things at once and thought, not for the first time, that the Hollow had never really needed him standing in the middle of it.
It had needed somebody willing to hold all the pieces in their head at once.
That had never really been him. It had always been her.
Curtis, tightening Willie's cinch one more notch, said without looking up, "Madam Mayor."
Grace shot him a look that could have curdled milk. "Ride away, Curtis."
"Working on it."
She reached David a moment later, out of breath in the way that came from moving fast, not from anything wrong.
"You'll have that fixed before I'm back," David said, nodding toward wherever the seed potato question had come from.
"I've had it fixed since sunup. That was Carol not listening the first time." Grace looked past him at the four horses, the loaded pack, Curtis already mounted. "You're about ready."
"About."
David walked June a short distance from the others while Curtis and Karen finished with their gear, and Grace fell in beside him.
She checked the strap on his saddle bag without being asked, tightened it a half turn, and pulled a small wrapped bundle from her coat pocket.
"Russ already packed enough," David said.
"Russ packed what you need." She pressed it into his hand anyway — biscuits, from the smell of it, and something dried wrapped alongside. "This is what you want."
He took it without arguing further, because arguing with Grace over food she'd already decided to give him had never once worked in his favor.
"Four weeks," Grace said.
"That's the plan."
"You said three if everything went right."
"Nothing goes that right."
She almost smiled at that. "Four weeks before I start being mad."
"What happens at five?"
"You don't want to know."
He looked at her a moment, the yard behind her full of motion — Curtis checking Willie one more time, Karen settling her bag against the saddle, Whiskey shifting his weight under the pack.
None of it seemed to need David standing in the middle of it, which was exactly how it should have felt and somehow still didn't sit entirely easy.
"You'll be all right," he said. It wasn't a question, but it wasn't quite a statement either.
"I'm always all right," Grace said. "Whether you're standing here or not."
"I know it."
"Then stop looking at me like you're not sure."
He hadn't realized he was doing it until she said so.
She didn't ask him further. She kissed him, quick and unceremonious, the kiss of two people who'd done this enough times to trust it would happen again. Then she stepped back and looked at him the way she looked at a piece of work she'd already decided was going to turn out fine.
"Go on," she said. "Before the whole Hollow lines up to watch."
David mounted June. Curtis swung up onto Willie without much ceremony.
Karen settled onto Waylon and gathered her reins the way Curtis had shown her.
David took Whiskey's lead rope in his free hand, and Whiskey fell in without protest, already used to following June from a hundred mornings of lighter work.
Smokey moved to the front of the group and waited.
Luke was at the barricade gate when they reached it, one hand already on the log that swung it open.
"See you in a month," David said.
"Better," Luke said.
"That's my line."
Luke pulled the gate open, and David rode June through it with Whiskey trailing, Karen and Curtis close behind.
David looked back once. Grace stood near the gate, arms crossed against the morning chill, watching without waving, which was exactly right.
Luke swung the gate shut behind them, and the log settled into place with a sound David had heard a hundred times from the other side and never once from this one.
Then the road bent, and the Hollow was gone.
Every mile put the Hollow behind him instead of bringing it closer, which was a strange feeling to carry after three months of walking the opposite direction the year before.
David settled into the rhythm of it anyway — the small adjustments of weight, the sound of four sets of hooves finding their own separate cadence on the road, Whiskey's lead rope going taut and slack in his hand with the rise and fall of the ground.
The road here was one he knew well enough to ride half-asleep if he'd had to, fence lines and tree breaks he could have named from memory, but even familiar ground felt different under him this morning, knowing how many unfamiliar miles waited past it.
He let a loose order take shape without announcing it.
June out front, Whiskey on the lead behind her.
Karen and Waylon settled in the middle. Curtis and Willie held the rear, watching the road behind them without being told to.
Smokey ranged along the ditch line, nose down, moving in wide loops that always brought him back within call.
David kept an eye on his pace without making a thing of it — a dog could cover twenty miles easier than most people gave him credit for, but not day after day at a dead run, and David meant to have him fresh a month from now, not spent by the second week.
The four horses were already working out their own small order.
Waylon fell in beside June without any fuss, accepting her lead the way an older, settled animal accepts most things.
Willie kept angling toward Whiskey's packs until Whiskey pinned an ear back hard enough to change his mind, and after that Willie settled for walking close enough to keep an eye on things without testing his luck again.
"Does she always walk in front?" Karen asked, nodding at June.
"Pretty much."
"Willie thinks he should," Curtis said from behind them.
"Willie can think whatever he wants," David said.
"Usually does."