Her father came up the road carrying the broken half of a wheel, and Ruth knew before he spoke that he expected the repair for nothing.
He stopped outside her shed. Five years had taken most of the red out of his beard. A piece of rim hung from the spokes against his knee.
“Still working Sundays?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“Well. That’s a relief.”
He smiled and lifted the wreckage a little, as though presenting flowers.
Ruth kept the drawknife across the shaving horse. Above her bench hung Mr. Selden’s old shotgun, with a swallow’s nest started between the pegs. Her father glanced at it, then at her.
Behind him the road bent between two gravel banks; beyond the bend, out of sight, a mule brayed. He had always arrived with noise somewhere behind him. Once it had been a brass band, hired with another man’s money for her twelfth birthday. She had enjoyed it enormously until the other man came.
“Where’s the rest?” she asked.
“Round the bend. Struck a rock.”
“You can put that down.”
She ought to have asked him to leave. Instead, she wanted to see him without the thing in his arms.
He did, carefully, with the broken ends against the wall. Then he noticed the blue wheel leaning under her bench.
“There we are.”
“That’s bought.”
“By whom?”
“Hollis Vane.”
Her father rubbed his beard.
At once she went past him, leaving her apron on. She knew Hollis’s wagon. She had fitted its left front wheel three weeks ago; he was to collect the right on his return from the mines. The mules were his, too. She could hear the smaller one complaining about being made to stand.
The wagon leaned at the bend, its front axle propped on stones. Hollis lay in the bed beside an ironbound chest. His gray trouser leg had been cut away. A wadded shirt beneath his thigh was black with blood.
He raised his head when he saw her. “You know him?”
Ruth looked at the red hairs caught in her father’s beard, the old scar beside his mouth. Hollis had been asking something else.
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him I’d be coming?”
“No.”
Her father had followed. “I saw your wheel when I lifted him in. That blue paint. So I came to you.”
“You shot him?”
“He went for his gun.”
“You hadn’t asked me to do anything yet,” Hollis said.
A fly settled on the cut edge of his trousers. Ruth brushed it away, and another took its place.
The doctor was in Bellweather, fourteen miles south. She had no riding horse; she had sold hers in February for seasoned timber. There had been no reason to regret that bargain until now.
“We need the wheel on,” she said. “Then we’ll go to Bellweather.”
“I’m going north.”
“He needs a doctor.”
“That’s why I brought him here.”
She waited for him to hear what he had said. He looked toward the pass.
“Take him into your room. I’ll send somebody down from Alder.”
“Alder’s a day’s ride.”
“There are men behind me, Ruth.”
Hollis lay back. His boot knocked the sideboard with a small, regular tapping.
She climbed up beside him. Under the shirt the bleeding had soaked into the wagon bed. She folded her apron into a thick pad and pressed it against his leg. He gripped her wrist so hard she nearly pulled away.
Her father stood below them, holding his hat.
“Clean cloth,” she told him. “In the chest beside my bed. Bring all of it. And water.”
He set his hat on the front seat and went. Even now, she was pleased that he knew which room was hers.
Hollis loosened his grip.
“He’s Amos Barlow,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’re his?”
She had painted R. Barlow, Wheels and Repairs on the shed in letters large enough for anyone on the road to read. For seven years, since her apprenticeship, people had worked out the connection or failed to. She had come to dislike both the pause and the bright expression that ended it.
“I’m Ruth.”
He shut his eyes. “I thought you might have been waiting for me.”
“I was. You owe me for two wheels.”
For a moment she thought he was laughing. Then his hand tightened again.
When her father came back, she made him hold the pad while she tore strips from a sheet. He obeyed without his usual suggestions. They bound the cloth in place together, Hollis swearing when they had to lift his leg. Ruth was glad of the swearing. He could still produce a remarkably long sentence.
“We can’t carry him all the way to the shed,” she said.
“I’ll bring your wheel.”
“And the jack. Under the bench.”
Her father started off.
“The wheel’s paid for,” he said over his shoulder.
“No. It isn’t.”
“You told me back there—”
“I said bought. He ordered it.”
Amos looked from her to the chest, as though the trouble had become conveniently small.
“I can settle that.”
She had never been able to explain to him why this offer made her angrier than being robbed.
They got the wagon level on Ruth’s jack and blocks. The mules stood unhitched, tethered to a scrub oak in the shade of the bank, eating weeds. Her father had thought to loosen their collars. He always remembered what might gall an animal.
While Ruth cleaned the spindle, he rolled the new wheel slowly between his palms. She had finished painting it that morning. His thumb left a pale patch on the blue rim.
“Good work,” he said.
She wanted him to say it again. That was the humiliating part.
He bent to inspect the hub. “You learned to bore them straight.”
“Mr. Selden taught me.”
“I showed you first.”
“Yes.”
At nine she had carried a little box of tools that he had cut down to fit her hands. Before he took to robbery he could make a sound wheel, and afterward he could still make one when he was drunk, though he would have to do it again in the morning. Mr. Selden had taught her how to keep accounts and how to turn away work she could not do well.
Her father set the wheel upright beside the wagon. The new paint looked extravagant against the dust.
“Come with me,” he said.
She kept wiping the spindle.
“I’ve enough in that box. You could have a place in Alder. A proper forge. Get a man to do the heavy work.”
“Somebody else’s place?”
“We’d buy it.”
“With that.”
“With money, Ruth. Same as everybody.”
Hollis spoke from the wagon bed. “Most of it’s wages.”
Her father’s mouth tightened. “You’re resting.”
The little mule pulled up a weed, shook dirt from its roots, and dropped it. Ruth watched the earth fall. She had lived on money like that. Boots, bacon, the brass band. She had once blamed her mother for knowing and still cooking the bacon. She hadn’t refused a slice herself.
“Help me lift,” she said.
He took the far side of the wheel. They heaved it up together, guided the hub onto the spindle, and pushed until it seated. It turned cleanly under her hand. All those evenings of measuring had come to this: she had built exactly what her father needed to get away.
She slipped the retaining pin into place.
“Give it a turn,” she said.
He spun it and watched the rim. When it stopped, he gave it another turn.
They lowered the wagon onto its new wheel. Ruth stowed the jack and blocks in the bed, then went to the mules.
“Where are you going?”
“To hitch them.”
“We’ve got to lift him out first.”
“No.”
He kept his hand on the rim.
“We’re taking him to Bellweather.”
Her father came around the wagon. There was a revolver on his right hip. She had been aware of it throughout the work, even when she wasn’t looking.
“If I go south, I hang.”
“I didn’t say you had to come.”
“And you’ll say I was here.”
“Yes.”
“You could wait till morning.”
She shook her head.
He took the smaller mule’s lead from her hand.
“I brought him to you alive. Most men wouldn’t.”
Hollis coughed. Amos glanced up at him, and Ruth reached for the lead. Her father pulled it away so sharply that the mule threw up its head.
He pulled the lead through his fist, gathering it up beyond her reach.
“I need this team.”
She lowered her hand. She had thought he might give up the chest. He could take a mule and ride north, leave her the wagon and the other animal, and she could contrive a way to get Hollis south. But he was looking at the money, measuring its bulk with his eyes. The chest had taken two men to load, Hollis had said while they worked on his leg. Her father had threatened the second man and sent him running.
The shotgun hung above her bench. To fetch it she would have to leave Hollis alone with him.
“Don’t lift him yet,” she said. “I’ll get a blanket to carry him in.”
Her father let the lead fall. “That’s better.”
She walked back to the shed. She listened for the wagon shifting behind her, for Hollis crying out, and heard only gravel under her shoes. She went faster.
She took down the shotgun. She had fired it at a board twice; both times the stock had bruised her shoulder. There was mud on its butt from the swallow’s nest. She rubbed it away with her sleeve.
She loaded it with fingers that would not work together. Then she carried it back around the bend.
Her father was standing on the wagon’s rear wheel, reaching down for Hollis. When he saw her, he stopped.
“Leave him,” she said.
Amos climbed down. He had always looked taller with his hat on. It was still on the front seat.
“Put that away.”
“Your pistol. On the ground.”
“Ruth.”
She had lifted the barrel too high. She lowered it to his chest, and something changed in his face.
“Do you understand what that thing does at this distance?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t, entirely. She understood the board breaking; she could not make that image belong to the man who had carried her sleeping across rivers. She kept trying, because he was watching to see if she could.
Hollis made a sound. Her father took half a step toward the wagon, and Ruth moved the barrel with him.
“Don’t.”
“I’m getting my hat.”
“Then get it with your left hand.”
He looked at her for a long time. At last he lifted the revolver out by its grip and set it in the dust.
“There.”
“Back away.”
“Not going to kiss me goodbye?”
She said nothing. Her mouth was dry enough to hurt.
He backed toward the bank. Ruth moved to the pistol and planted her boot on it. Then she pointed toward the mules.
“Hitch them.”
While he worked, she tried to arrange the journey south in her mind: her father driving, herself behind him with the shotgun. But there were fourteen miles of gullies and turns, and she would have to watch the road, watch Hollis, and watch the hand that had taught her to hold a knife.
She couldn’t do it.
When the mules were in harness, she told him to step away. Keeping the shotgun braced against her hip, she stooped for the revolver and slid it into her skirt pocket.
He stood beside the blue wheel. “You’re leaving me here?”
“You can walk.”
“To where?”
“You said Alder.”
He looked down at his boots, then north toward the pass. He reached for his hat very slowly and put it on.
Getting onto the seat without lowering the gun was clumsy. She banged her shin on the wheel and nearly fell. Her father took one pace toward her. She caught her balance; he stopped. She couldn’t tell whether he had meant to help.
She gathered the reins in one hand, the shotgun awkward across her knees.
“Ruth. The box.”
“It goes with the wagon.”
“Give me something.”
“No.”
The mules moved at her voice. For several yards she held the gun pointing back, then the wagon jolted and she had to turn. The bend would hide her father in a moment. She hated how badly she wanted him to call her name again.
“Tell them I brought him!” he shouted.
“I will.”
She did not look back.
A mile down the road, she stopped to pack the remaining sheet beneath Hollis’s leg. He was awake, looking at the shotgun on the seat.
“You let him go.”
“Yes.”
He watched her tuck the loose corners under the pad. Then he looked past her, up the empty road.
“There’s a rut by the culvert,” he said at last. “Take it wide.”
She climbed up and drove wide.
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