Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 16 of 21

By afternoon the herd had settled around the carved post, but the bull kept lifting his head from the hay and working his tongue against his teeth. Two cows walked away from the ring and stood at the edge of the trees with their noses low, searching the snow. Mercedes saw one paw at a patch of ice and then step back. The herd was thirsty. The hay was dry, and the packed snow they had been eating was gone from the cleared ground. If the bull turned now to look for water, the cows would follow him back up toward the pass, or worse, scatter into the trees in pairs where she could not gather them again. Mercedes stood and listened past the sound of the herd. Under the wind she caught a thin steady noise she had not heard in months. Running water. She followed the sound east through the trees for a quarter mile and found a creek cutting down the slope, fed by the thaw. Snow still capped the banks, but the middle ran clear over stones, wide enough for the herd to drink shoulder to shoulder. She knelt and put her hand in. The cold bit to the bone. She traced the creek back toward the clearing and saw it bent north within sight of the post, hidden from the ring only by a stand of young spruce. Mercedes cut the spruce down with her hatchet, four trees, and dragged them clear until a narrow line of sight opened between the hay ring and the water. Then she went back to the bull. She soaked a strip of her sleeve in the creek and carried it dripping to him and held it under his nose. He jerked his head up. She stepped backward toward the water, dripping the wet cloth on the snow every few paces. He followed. Ten paces. Twenty. At the bank he stopped, then lowered his muzzle and drank. The lead cow came next, and then the rest in a loose line, breaking the ring apart and reforming along the creek. Mercedes counted them as they drank. Thirty-four. When the bull lifted his head, water ran from his chin, and he turned back toward the post on his own and began walking. The cows followed. The herd now had hay, a landmark, and water within sight of both. Mercedes sat down on the bank and watched the last cow drink. The creek would run until summer. She would not lose them to thirst. She would lose them, if she lost them, to something else.