The man reached for the page, and I pulled it back inside my coat before I had decided to, so that his fingers closed on the last of the light and on air.
He did not look cheated. He studied the spot where the paper had been, then my hands and the road, as a man regards what he has stopped wanting, and he lifted his bag off the stones.
"Keep it."
"Will you not take it."
"No." He hooked the strap over his elbow. "I am paid by the mile, not by the page. Whatever is on that paper, I would have to carry it down the rocks in my head, and thinking costs more than the load pays."
He swung up onto the tailboard, and the shafts rose, and the wagon rolled out through the gateway with its wheels grinding on the frost, and the road took it down between the crags until it was only a crease of dust
