Part 7
Walter’s leg was broken cleanly above the ankle. It healed through spring, though he limped when tired and sometimes used that fact to escape chores. Iris retired the old gelding, and Pike took the school route full-time.
The county offered Mercer Farm a one-year agreement for trained pack and road animals, with modest flood-season pay and separate wages for handlers. At Nell’s insistence, no emergency order could overrule an animal’s recorded limits. Ezra paid for the damaged harness, sent lumber for the flood-struck fence, and thereafter asked Jesse which team was ready before naming the job.
By the third anniversary of the sale, nineteen of the original mules had been placed or assigned to long-term work across three counties. Three had died. Five required permanent care at Mercer, and their feed appeared in the accounts beside every other cost.
Lantern worked for the county under Jesse’s handling and spent the rest of his time at Mercer. Beck Crowder, a logging contractor known for keeping old teams, made three offers for him. Nell refused the first two. On the third visit, Jesse watched Beck wait ten minutes when Lantern stopped at the wagon ramp, without tightening the rope or looking toward the clock.
“He can go with him,” Jesse said that evening.
Nell looked up from the accounts. “Are you certain?”
“No. I’m certain Beck will listen when he isn’t.”
The sale paid for a new barn roof and winter feed. Jesse walked Lantern to the road at dawn. The gray followed Beck three steps, stopped, and looked back at the open barn doors.
Jesse stayed where he was. After a moment, Lantern turned toward the road and went on.
In February 1895, a Tennessee quarry asked Mercer Farm to take six abandoned mules before April. Nell had stalls for four and money for three without shortening feed for the animals already in her care.
She wrote that she could take three.
The answer she had almost given remained in the blotted curve of a six beside the clean three. Nell sealed the letter and set it by the door for Alma Reed.
Winter work began at seven. Jesse arrived exactly then. At nineteen, he had grown broad enough to fill the canvas coat, though its elbows were still patched with cloth from Samuel’s old work coat. He went to the round pen with Ada, a new bay molly that struck when anyone approached the left side of her head.
Nell heard him through the barn wall. He made no soothing promises and offered no command. When Ada lifted her chin and shifted her weight, Jesse stepped back before the warning became a blow.
“Saw it,” he said softly.
The mule lowered her head a fraction. Jesse waited, content to let that be the morning’s first answer.
Nell paused beneath the brass number 14. Once, she would have entered the pen to check the work, added one more instruction, and remained until the good moment belonged partly to her. She took her coat from the peg instead and walked toward the lower pasture.
Coal stood outside the shelter with snow silvering the gray hair around her muzzle. The near opening faced the barn. Through the far one, Nell could see a strip of pale ridge and the winter sky beyond it.
She had considered boarding that end against the weather. Coal had slept beneath the roof through three winters and no longer fled when a stall door moved. The extra opening wasted hay, admitted rain, and made no sense to visitors who saw only the animal Coal had become.
Nell left it as it was.
Coal walked to her and stopped within reach. Nell placed one hand against the warm side of her neck. The molly’s skin did not jump beneath it.
After a while, Coal turned toward the shelter. At its dark mouth she paused, one ear on Nell and the other toward the square of daylight at the far end.
Then she went in.
Through the open door beyond her, the snow on the ridge shone white.