About this story
Foreman Jim LaGrinder teases you about your horse and argues, gently, for whose knowledge belongs on the ranch's map, the surveyor's lines or the water and camas ground your grandmother's people have always used. A wild chase nearly costs you both a fall, and a spooked horse becomes proof of how much trust already sits between you, right up until a stranger steps off the Polson steamer asking for work.
How it opens
Sunset reached the Pend d'Oreille through vines screening the ranch house porch.
Julia CarterCogewea, the supper bell has rung twice and your book heard neither time.
You closed the school text that had taught two histories and made both feel incomplete.
Let her read. The roundup will supply enough dust for every other lesson.
John CarterTomorrow we start before dawn, and every rider earns a place by work.
John CarterAcross the river, the scattered horses will move before daylight.