Leda had left a blank space on the route board for her name.
The board hung beside the rail town’s freight office. It listed the roads that wagon drivers could take across the dry country. Leda had walked a short new pass two weeks ago. If she brought this party through it, the clerk had promised to add the road.
She had asked him to leave room.
Now she stood at the pass entrance with rain still hanging from her hat. Fresh white breaks showed on the stones across the track. A piece of hillside had fallen during the night.
“Those are small,” said Carter.
He had two wagons of machinery and a buyer waiting in the rail town. The buyer would leave tomorrow evening. Their contract said Leda would get the party there before then.
“They’re what reached us,” she said. “I’ll look farther.”
Hester pulled her daughter close to their wagon. It held the things from a house she had sold: a stove, two beds, a chest of clothes. Will, the hired driver, walked to the first bend and returned.
“The stone is slick,” he said. “My team can’t hold a loaded wagon on that turn. If it slides, the back wheel goes over the edge.”
“We’ll unload,” Leda said. “Carry the heavy things past it.”
Will looked at Carter’s machinery.
“And who carries that?”
They all looked at the crates. Carter’s men could open them, but the large wheels and iron frames inside would still need a wagon.
“We could take one at a time,” Leda said.
“You said this was a road,” Hester told her.
Leda had said it was a road. In dry weather she had walked all the way through. There had been a shoulder beside the narrowest bend. The descent beyond it had joined the old trail at the bottom.
She could still see that route on the map in her pocket.
“Let me look,” she said again.
Carter caught her sleeve.
“The long road takes another day. You know what happens if the buyer leaves.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll hold back the guide’s pay.”
She pulled her sleeve free and went around the bend.
The shoulder was gone.
She stopped well before the broken edge. Below her, white stone lay in the gully. The narrow strip left against the cliff was enough for a person. It was not enough for a wagon.
She had wanted to stand at the freight office while the clerk wrote her name. She had imagined another driver tracing it with a finger and asking who had found that way through.
At the bend, a little stream of gravel kept falling.
She went back.
Hester had tied a cloth over the stove door. Her daughter sat on the chest, gripping a doll by its cloth legs.
“My wagon is taking the long road,” Hester said. “Tell me how to reach it.”
“I’ll take you.”
“What about them?”
Leda turned to Carter and Will.
“The shoulder has fallen. I saw it. There isn’t space for a wagon. My old scouting doesn’t tell us what is there today.”
Carter stared at her. “Then why did we come this way?”
“Because I thought the pass would hold. I was wrong.”
Will began turning his team. Carter stepped into the track, then stepped aside before the horses reached him.
“You will answer for the day,” he said.
“I will. Turn the second wagon while there’s room.”
They lost more time reaching the long road. They camped that evening by an old stone trough. Leda checked the road ahead before she ate. When she returned, Carter had already finished his supper.
Hester passed her a bowl. She did not say the delay was for the best.
Her daughter wanted to know whether they would reach a house tomorrow.
“The town,” Leda said. “Your mother will decide which house.”
They arrived the next evening, after the machinery buyer had left.
Carter went to the freight office. Leda waited outside with Will. He loosened the team’s harness and rubbed a sore place beside one buckle.
“Could he have waited?” she asked.
“The buyer?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know. I drive the wagons.”
Carter came back with a receipt for storing his crates. He paid Leda the first half of the agreed fee and kept the second half.
“We’ll settle the rest when I find out what this has cost me,” he said.
She took the money he handed her. She wrote down the amount still in dispute, then asked him to sign beside the amount he had paid. He did.
Hester found her by the route board.
“My daughter is asleep in a bed,” she said. “You told us what was there when it mattered.”
“I should have checked sooner.”
“Yes,” Hester said. “You should.”
She touched Leda’s arm and went to buy food.
The clerk brought out his pencil.
“So? Shall I put the pass in?”
Leda took out her map. She showed him where the shoulder had fallen.
“Put it in as closed. No wagons.”
He wrote the warning. There was still a blank line beneath it.
“And the name?”
“Leave it.”
A storekeeper came from the loading yard. He had flour to send back along the old road and needed a guide for a hired driver who had not used it before.
“Do you know that road?” he asked.
“Yes. I came along it today.”
They agreed on the ordinary fee. She would collect the driver at sunrise.
Leda bought a pencil before the shops closed. In her own book she crossed out the short pass. The line went through her name too.
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