The morning Bramwell Voss found them. He almost didn't stop. That was the truth he'd carry a long time afterward. The ugly, uncomfortable truth that most people would never admit out loud. He almost kept riding.
He was already behind on fence work. The sun was already mean and high, even though it wasn't yet 9:00. And the water situation at Cinder Creek had been bad enough the night before that he'd lain awake doing math that didn't add up. No, no matter how many times he ran it, his well was dropping. Had been dropping since May.
It was now the third week of July, and the creek that gave the ranch its name had gone from a running stream to a series of muddy pools that even the cattle were starting to avoid. He had problems enough for three men. So when he spotted the wagon down in the ravine, the way the canvas was torn and collapsed in on one side, the way one of the rear wheels had sheared clean off, and the axle was resting in the dirt, his first instinct was to note it and keep moving. Could have been abandoned days ago. Could have been some family that already found their way to help.
Could have been any number of things that weren't his responsibility on a morning when he barely had enough water at home to make coffee. He was 20 yards past when he heard it, not a scream. Not even a shout, just a child's voice, low and horse, saying something he couldn't make out and then silence. Bram stopped his horse. He sat there for a moment that felt longer than it was.
The cicas were already going hard in the brush. The sky was white with heat haze. He turned back. The ravine wasn't deep eight, maybe 10 ft, with a gravel bottom and scrub grass along the edges. He had to dismount and lead his horse down the slopes sideways.
And as he got closer, he could smell it before he could see it properly. The sour smell of fever, sweat, and unwashed children, and something else underneath that he recognized from a hard winter 6 years back when his father had been sick for 3 weeks, and the nearest doctor was snowed out. He ducked under the torn canvas. The woman saw him before her eyes could fully focus, and she scrambled upright with a speed that surprised him. She looked ready to fight him with her bare hands if she had to.
She had a piece of broken wagon board in her grip, gripped so hard her knuckles were white. Her hair was loose and tangled. Her lips were cracked. Her dress was torn at one shoulder and stained with what looked like dried creek mud. But her eyes were sharp.
Whatever else was going wrong with her body, her mind was still working, and it it looked at him like a cocked hammer. "Back up," she said. Her voice was almost gone, rough as gravel. "You back up right now, ma'am. " Bram lifted both hands, palms out. He kept them there.
Didn't move. I'm not. I'm just a rancher. Cinder Creek Ranch. My name's Bram Voss.
I live about 3 miles that direction. He tilted his head, kept his hands up. I'm not going to touch anybody. She stared at him. Behind her, he could see children, one, two, three of them pressed together against the far side of the wagon bed.
A fourth one sitting up watching him with enormous eyes. And one more, the smallest, lying with his head in the older girl's lap. And that one wasn't moving. Bram looked at the small one and felt his stomach drop. "How long has the little boy been like that? " he asked, keeping his voice level.
The woman's grip on the board didn't loosen. 4 days, she said, and something in her voice cracked slightly when she said it not grief exactly, more like someone describing a wound while still standing in the middle of it. His fever started 4 days ago. I've been keeping him wet, running out of water. You got any left?
A pause. Then quietly, no. Bram turned back to his horse without another word. He had a canteen strapped to his saddle he always rode with two in summer. Old habit from a bad experience.
And he unhooked both and carried them back under the canvas. He held one out to her. She took it. Her hand was shaking. She didn't look away from him while she drank.
How long have you been in this ravine? He asked. Since yesterday morning. We were here before that, too. 2 days upstream when the wheel went.
My husband went to find help. She stopped, looked down at the canteen. 4 days ago, Bram said nothing to that. The older boy, 13 maybe, with a serious face and sunburned arms, was watching Bram with the particular intensity of a kid who's been trying to hold everything together and is running on empty. Their eyes met for a second.
The boy gave a small, barely visible nod, the kind that means I know exactly how bad this is, and I'm glad you're here. I can take you to my ranch, Bram said. He looked at the woman again. It's not much, but there's water and there's shade, and I can ride to town for medicine for your boy. It's 15 mi, but I can make it.
She studied him. He could see her running some calculation behind those dark, exhausted eyes, the same kind of math he'd been running since May. The kind where none of the numbers looked good, but you had to pick the best bad option. Why? She said.
Not thank you, not yes, just why. Bram almost said something sensible, something about being a decent man or about his father raising him right. Instead, he said the honest thing because that boy is going to die if he stays here another day. And I don't want that on my conscience. She looked at him for another long second.
Then she sat down the board. Elo and Harrow, she said. My name's Elo and Harrow. These are my children, Silas, Nell, Maisie, Tobin, and Finn. She pointed to each one in turn, ending with a small still shape at her knee.
Finn is the one who's sick. Can he be moved? He has to be, she said. Getting six people out of a broken wagon in a dry ravine with one horse and no shade and a sick four-year-old is the kind of thing you don't plan for. You just do it and figure it out as you go.
Bram took Finn first, wrapping the boy in the least filthy piece of canvas he could find to keep the sun off him. The child's skin was dry and burning, and he barely stirred when Bram lifted him, which was its own kind of terrible. He handed Finn up to Eloin on the horse's back, then went back for the two youngest who could walk a little, Tobin and Maisie, and got them up the slope, while the older two, Silas and Nell, carried the small bag of supplies that constituted everything this family had left. Bram walked three miles in July sun in Colorado territory, walking beside a horse carrying a woman and two children with two more walking alongside and a boy struggling to keep pace. It took the better part of 2 hours.
And by the time the ranch came into view, Bram's shirt was soaked through and his mouth tasted like chalk. Nell, the 10-year-old, had stopped complaining about the heat 20 minutes in and was just quietly moving. Her jaw set in a way that made her look like a tiny version of her mother. The ranch was not impressive. He knew it before they arrived, but seeing it through fresh eyes through the eyes of six people who'd just been pulled out of a ravine and were hoping for something better made him see it the way they did.
The house was weathered board, square and practical, nothing extra. The vegetable garden along the south fence was mostly dead. He hadn't been able to water it the way it needed. The chicken coupe out back had four hens left from the 12 he'd started the year with. The storage building beside the main house had a good roof, but the walls needed attention.
He watched Eloan take all of it in as she dismounted. Finn still in her arms. "I know it's not. It has shade," she said. "And water.