Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 21 of 21

Fern slept by the ashes with the hide under her cheek. Mercedes stood at the post before dawn and listened to the herd breathe in the trees. The binding held, but she could feel the soft place in it, the empty breath near the end where the lost line should have been. A hard wind, a wolf on the wrong side of the creek, and the herd would test that gap. She needed a wall the rite alone could not give her. She walked the edge of the camp at first light and picked her line. The creek ran on one side. The alders ran thick on the other. Between them was open ground the elk could bolt through if they spooked. She marked the run with sticks, then went to the sled and pulled out the last of the trapper's planks and the coil of hemp. It would not be enough. She would need to cut more from the deadfall along the ridge. She woke Fern and told her the plan. Fern was to stand at the post and speak the lines through the day while Mercedes worked. If the bull lifted his head, Fern was to begin again from the top. Fern nodded and took her place with the hide. Mercedes brought the blue roan down from the picket. He was sound again, heavy through the chest, quiet at the halter. She hitched him to a drag line and started pulling deadfall out of the alders. She notched each log at the ends and lashed them between standing pines. By midday she had one section standing, snow already caught in the grain of the wood. By dusk she had four. The fence ran waist high across the open ground, rough and uneven, but solid where she leaned her weight against it. The cub came out from under the sled and followed her along the line, black fur dark against the snow, sniffing each post. He stopped where the fence met the alders and set his paws and growled at nothing she could see. Mercedes went still. She watched the trees for a long minute. Nothing moved. But the cub had shown her the weak point before she had finished building it. She dragged two more logs into that gap and lashed them tight. At the post, Fern was still speaking, her voice small and even under the wind. The bull stood with his head down at the hay. The herd had not shifted. Mercedes stepped back and looked at what she had built. A fence, not a wall. It would not stop a determined bear or a hard-pushed herd. But it would slow a bolt long enough for a voice at the post to catch them. The binding had a body around it now. She had bought the herd one more thing they could break against before they broke apart.