WESTREED ROAD, mile 14. Eight miles of marked trail remain before the Drymer posts, and the cloud will take the light in a little over two hours. The Circuit Cup card calls the playoff crossing a favourite's job. It is a half-page with a green border, a start time, and a line set in the same type as the water allowance: thrive as favourites.
Captain Elowen Parr read the line at the noon halt. She set a hoof on the card and told the Westreed company the Drymer hold was ground a good file should be glad to meet. The bounty board in the last town had nailed the same card under a header that priced the crossing as soft time. Penny Ledger initialed the margin. The margin allows four victory carrots a head and a finish window of two hours and ten minutes. Copper Gauge took that window off the issued map. The map ends at a drawn ford.
Tamsin Brack keeps the way-hut where the trees stop. She laid her copy on the stump and put a chipped hoof on the blank under the ford.
"They quit drawing where the ink was easy," Brack said. "Past the shelf the posts walk. Wind takes them. Put the second file on the high side. The bank goats hit the second set of panniers, and the cut below the stone is deeper than it looks from the path."
The bank goats come off the warm stone when the first pony breaks the skyline. The second pony is watching that tail. The goats want the buckles. They shove once. A pony who sits when they hit keeps the hoof. Cam Hollick hopped to save a sack of oats. He has marked for Westreed for six seasons. His left fore is in a feed sack and a strip of gate leather. He can stand. The shelf is finished for him.
"She told us to thrive," Hollick said. "I had both hooves on the chalk. The chalk is past the ford. The goats are past the ford. The card has carrots on it."
Parr came down the file after the wrapping. She looked at the feed sack and then at the scribe the Cup had sent to collect a sentence from the favourites.
"We thrive as the favourites," Parr said. "Drymer is the job in front of us. We walk onto that ground at full size."
Two touring ponies in the green sash the board sells beside the roll stood where the scribe could see them. Merit Lassiter, who has walked three exhibition crossings this season and finished each of them outside the prize file, told a supper contractor the finish meadow would want bunting before dusk.
"They fold when the flags go up," Lassiter said. "Favourites ought to look like favourites from the rail."
Brack kept her hoof on the blank. She lives at the tree line. The Drymer ponies keep a ditch on the far side of the posts, and the ditch runs waist-deep on a pony after rain. It rained in the night. Their trail mare, Nell Quist, sent that in one line to the Cup office before noon. The office put the line in correspondence. Ledger's margin was left as written. Gauge's two hours and ten minutes still sits in the header.
Distance left is eight miles if the posts are where Gauge drew them. Brack put it nearer eleven, judging by the lean of the grass, which is how the posts show they have moved. Daylight covers the eight and quits before eleven. The company can make the first Drymer marker if Hollick rides and the file stays off the warm stone. The only cart is the vegetable cart that brought the carrots. One wheel keeps a true circle. The other sheds its rim if the cart leans left.
Under the first card the board has pinned a second. The second card names the mountain stage that follows a Westreed win, with a departure hour already filled in. Hollick's name is absent from the second card. The scribe wrote the thrive line twice. The feed sack stayed off the copy.
Lassiter and the other sash have gone up the road the map does draw. That road is dry. It ends at a viewing rail the office set last spring for ponies who prefer a crossing they can watch. Brack has the hut bench and a basin. The favourite card is on the stump beside her. The bank goats are back on the warm stone.
