Harrow Switch had two hours of light left when the Measured Trail Desk called the roll. The loop on the card was eleven miles. The Harrow Striders were listed as hosts. Four of them could walk. The other five arrived on a flatcart, were chalked present, and stayed seated while a clerk read their names onto a sheet that has no line for a splint.
The Culvert Company came at midday from the salt cuttings, nine ponies, mesh still creased from the shop. They have started six jobs this season and finished none. On the third, the crew posted against them never left its yard, and the desk entered the loss in the ordinary column. Their line is a zero in the same size as the gate price. Nilson Carry walked behind with a rolled cloth reading GUEST WIN in ticket-colored thread, the date square empty, under orders to keep the cloth off the ground.
Pell Ash met me at the last gate before the firs. She has kept that fence since before this loop was a product. We walked the first mile, the only mile where the card and the ground agree. Past the second marker the map draws a path over ground that has been a shelf since the melt. The shelf is at the fourth mile. The map saves the trouble for the sixth and labels that sixth a spring.
"The drop is at four, on the left," Pell said. "I sent that Tuesday. They sold forty gallery tickets through dusk. The pace is coming off a cart. That stone will be in shadow before a sound leg would have reached it."
Reed Harlan has opened this loop for three seasons, so the desk left him first when the hock went. The wrap on the left hind was gray from the cart boards. Two Striders are at the switch house with shoulders that will not take a pack. A third sits the flatcart holding the map, the tube lashed to his splint, because the yard would not cut the cord. Filling out the home nine are a farrier's apprentice, a gate clerk, and a nephew chalked in when the roll came up short.
"I can make the first marker," Harlan said. "After that it's one hock paid to keep a pace it doesn't have. The loop is still eleven. It doesn't shrink because we're the ones at the post."
Penny Ledger kept the yard table. She had the ticket count, the zero, and a line of type that called the firs an opportunity for a complete card. The gallery staff were already on the path with a rope and a tin for bits. A touring quester in a clean cape told the buyers that a hard day had a shape worth standing in.
"Both companies are available," Ledger said. "The gallery is staffed. We don't scratch a hosted card for a wrap."
Maris Quen had her Culvert ponies throw the mesh twice at a stump so the rope line could see it open. The stump stayed put. On the walk north the same throw had caught one of her own, and she had called it timing. She looked from Harlan's wrap to the posted miles as if the miles might come down for a company that had closed nothing.
"Some sheet has to take a first mark," Quen said. "It can take it here, while the other card works through its list."
Nilson Carry shifted the roll. "I was hired to keep it clean," he said. "Nopony's priced a clean banner on the way home."
Three washouts sit between the second marker and the shelf. The spring on the card is dry stone. A ridge cat takes the unattended feed there whenever a crew stops to eat. Pell has watched it six times. It comes when the packs hit the ground, takes the sack nopony is holding, and goes into the firs when the shadow reaches the stone. The Striders left it a sack in each of the last two months. It has kept the hour better than the sheet has kept the distance.
The four who could walk stepped off. The flatcart remained in the yard with five chalked names and the map tube out to the side. The gallery rope was up. The zero was still a zero. The cat, on the hour Pell has been keeping, was already on the warm stone waiting for a sack that had not yet been dropped. Under Ledger's blotter sat tomorrow's card, Harlan first, the Culvert line still open for a digit.
