NORTH TIMBER, fourteen marks short of the Crystal Empire stones — The fir wall takes the sun at 4:28. Marlow Ash stood at the eighth mark in an ochre saddle cloth with HUNTER stitched across the cantle in thread thick enough to read from the path, and he told the traveling desk the role suited him.
He is eleven season tallies behind Vesper Dunn. The Circuit Sheet lists tallies. Dunn is at the Crystal Empire range, where the last counting week ends, playing her marks on a heath the Circuit Office rakes twice a day. Her count updates when she finishes. The Empire desk set that for midafternoon. The office drew her at the third mark anyway, on a card, as a rabbit with the purse in its mouth.
"I've carried the lead. I know what that does to a swing," Ash said. "From back here I get to hunt. I like the freedom in it."
The Circuit Office had the cloths cut before he finished the sentence. Penny Ledger, who keeps the purse book, said forty-two ochre flashes left the crate at dawn, with the rabbit card and a brass sight screwed to Ash's browband.
"The timber is an opportunity," Ledger said. "Viewers like a role. The forest reads better when somepony is the hunter."
Nell Marsh lives in the edge cabin and has walked this line since before the Circuit put a purse on it. She watched the flashes come up the path and kept her plain cloth. The season map carries Sable Nightshade's stamp and shows solid heath from the eleventh mark through the thirteenth. Marsh had a stick in the mud at the twelfth. The stick was wet to the notch she cut yesterday, a hoof and a half up the shaft.
"Call it a hunt if it helps the cloth sell," Marsh said. "The twelfth is a wash. It has run since the third rain. The map left it out. The water is ahead of the whole party."
Between the ninth mark and the tenth, the picture crew left the posted path and dropped toward a stone they set for the late light. Hob Cotton was on that drop at midday with a flag iron on his shoulder. The ground went out from under the iron. He came down with it. His near hind is splinted with a tent peg and a strip torn off an ochre flash, which was the cloth in reach. He is sitting on the crate the flashes came in. The crate still smells like new dye, and his hoof is packed with the same mud as Marsh's stick.
"I was setting the flag where the sheet said the flag goes," Cotton said. "They wanted the short line for the picture. That drop took the leg. The leg is the bill for the picture."
At the ninth mark the office packed the cup with apple mash so the last stone of a counting round would sit in a wet gleam. A sow has come at dusk three evenings running and turned the cup out. She eats the mash, leaves the stone in the needles, and is back in the firs while the western trunks are still red. On Tuesday she put a shoulder into the rabbit card and walked off with the tack swinging. A jay has the card two trees off the path, working it into a nest printed-side down. The mash smell is still in the cup. The crew packed it again after she left.
Copper Gauge read the sheet at the eighth mark with the cloth at his back. He called eleven tallies, then the minute, and wrote 4:28 in the margin. The sheet takes a tally when a stone stays in a cup. He folded the paper and watched the fir wall.
The remaining fourteen marks start at first light. The picture stone is where the crew set it. Dunn's eleven sit on the sheet in the Empire, on raked heath under a clear count. The bounty board on Marsh's cabin wall was updated at noon, and somepony pinned an ochre flash over the top tally. Marsh took the flash down and dropped it in the wood box with the wet tacks.
Hob Cotton's peg-splint is on the near hind. The twelfth is running over a map that shows heath.
