"Since before dark yesterday," the scout agreed. "And not empty." He moved down to the near hind wheel and pointed with his chin. The iron tire had sunk into the mud of the corral and the mud had frozen around it, so that the wheel sat in a little trough of its own as neat as a mold, and the trough was deep. Larrabee put his fingers into it. It went down past the second joint. "An empty wagon does not sink like that. A wagon with a load sinks, and stands, and the ground goes hard around it in the night, and holds it. This one has been heavy since yesterday. Before the frost. The others are the same. I looked at all of them."
Larrabee straightened up. Across the corral the fire in the barrel had died down and one of the teamsters was feeding it slats from a cracker box.
"The lashings," the scout said, and reached up and took hold of the rope that ran from the side ring of the box over the bow and down to the other side. It was a hemp rope, an inch thick, and it was tied off at the ring with a trucker's hitch and two half hitches, and Stays With the Horses took the tail of it between his fingers and bent it, or tried to. It did not bend. It was frozen solid, a stick of ice-hard fiber, and the knot at the ring was frozen into a single lump.
"Wet rope," he said. "A man ties a wagon with wet rope because the rope will shrink and pull tight. Then the night comes and the rope freezes, so." He let go. "These were tied wet. Yesterday, in the afternoon, when the sun was on the snow and the snow was melting on the ropes. Then they froze in the night. Nobody has touched these knots today. If they had been tied today, in the cold, the rope would be dry and it would bend."
"Kimbrough could say they were loaded Tuesday, and tied off Tuesday, and have stood ready since."
"He could say it." The scout shrugged, a small movement under the blanket coat. "But the mules have not stood ready since Tuesday. A man does not put mules in harness and leave them standing three days. He puts them in harness when he knows he will go. These were put in harness today, before the middle of the day, and they have been standing since, with the collars rubbing every time they shift their feet, waiting." He looked at Larrabee. "When did the order come to the soldier who writes the lightning talk?"
"A little after three."
"Then they knew at the middle of the day that the order would come. Or before." He touched the hub of the wheel beside him and held up his finger, black with axle grease. "And yesterday they greased the wheels. The grease is new, but there is the dust of a day on it. A wagon greased this morning would be clean." He wiped the finger on his legging. "Someone knew. That is all I am telling you. I do not know why."
Larrabee stood with his hand on the frozen rope and looked down the length of the train toward the gate, where the whole east side of the corral lay now in a single blue dusk. He could hear the bugler at the guardhouse sounding boots and saddles for his own troop, small and clear in the cold, and he thought of Philo Gaskell standing at the window of the adjutant's office with the folded message in his coat.