The Spring Between Us

Chapter 11: My Mother's Last Ride

I put the letters inside my jacket before Ruth reached the top of the ladder.

That was the only thing I did right. The lantern was on the floor and the box was open and the pry bar was beside it and there was no time to close anything, so I put the letters against my ribs and I stood up and put my boot on the open lid of the box and looked at her.

"A lockbox of my father's," I said. "Ore samples. Nothing worth the climb."

Ruth came up the last rungs and stood on the floorboards with her hands at her sides. The lantern light made her auburn hair look almost red. She looked at the box under my boot and then at the pry bar and then at my face, and her expression did not change at all.

"You broke the lock," she said.

"It was rusted."

"Of course." She walked past me to the crates and looked down into the fourth one, the one I had opened. "Your father kept ore samples in a locked box in the attic. That is very like him. He was a careful man." She turned. "Derya. Silas wants the map you gave me copied and sent by rider to the Council in the morning. He asked me to tell you that he will want to speak with you again before the rider goes. He says there is a question about your mother's death that he would like to clear up."

My boot was on the lid and my heart was going hard and the letters were against my ribs. "What question?"

"He did not say. He said it kindly. He said it would be a short conversation and that he did not want the pack to be alarmed." Ruth's grey eyes were steady. "I told him I would bring you to the small room at first light."

"You did not ask me first."

"I am your Beta. It is my job to spare you the small things." She smiled and went to the ladder. "Come down soon. It is cold up here and you have not eaten all day."

She went down. I stood there until I heard the stable door close and her boots cross the yard, and then I sat down on the floorboards and my legs would not hold me and I put my hand flat on my chest over the letters and breathed.

I did not go to the small room at first light. I went to the south rim.

The south track left the pack house at the back gate and ran along the top of the mesa for two miles before it turned down toward the creek. It was a bad road. My mother had been after the warriors for years to widen it and they had never got around to it. I took my horse out at first light with the letters still inside my jacket and the iron key on its cord around my neck under my shirt, and I rode the track slowly, the way she would have ridden it, and I did not let myself think about anything except what was in front of me.

The first mile was ordinary. Loose rock on the left, the drop on the right, juniper scrub. The second mile was where the road narrowed and the drop went from steep to sheer, and I got down off my horse and led him and looked at the ground.

The canyon had not had rain in five weeks. The dust was powder and it held a print like wet clay. I found my mother's horse's prints on the track near the narrow place, four of them, walking, and then a scuffle where the horse had turned, and then nothing on the road at all. The horse had gone over the edge twenty feet from the narrow place. I could see the break in the scrub where it had gone through, and the long scar down the rock where it had slid.

I went down on my hands and knees and looked at the track where the scuffle was.

There were skid marks. Not hoof marks. Boot marks, two of them, close together, and they went from the middle of the road to the edge and stopped, and the dust in them was not fresh, because they had been made three weeks ago and the wind had been at them. But they were there. Someone had stood at the edge of the south rim where my mother's horse went over and had slid to a stop with both boots.

I sat back on my heels. A wolf who has just watched a horse go over the edge does not slide to a stop at the edge. A wolf who has just pushed a horse over the edge does.

I followed the boot marks backward. They came up the track from the direction of the narrow place, and beside them, in the dust, there was a second set of hoof prints that were not my mother's horse. They were smaller and neater and they came up to the narrow place and stopped and did not go further.

I knew those hoof prints. I had seen them every morning for three weeks in the yard. Ruth's mare, the little bay with the white sock.

I sat on the south rim with the sun coming up over the mesa and the drop below me and the skid marks in the dust, and I thought about Ruth riding out with the search party. Ruth bringing my mother's body back wrapped in a canvas tarp. Ruth putting her hand on my shoulder in the yard and saying, "I am so sorry, Derya. She was the best of us."

Then I got up and got back on my horse and rode home.

I did not go to the small room. I went to the hall, where the pack was eating breakfast, and I walked in with my boots dusty and my hair down and the letters inside my jacket, and I stood at the head of the table.

"Ruth," I said. "Where were you the night my mother died?"

The hall went quiet. Ruth was at the near end of the table with her cup in her hand, and she set it down and looked at me with her patient face.

"I was here," she said. "In the pack house. I had a bad knee that week and I was not riding."

"You were not riding."

"No." She folded her hands. "Luna, what is this? The pack is eating. If you have a question for me, ask it in the small room and not over the bread."

"You rode out with the search party."

"At dawn, when word came that her horse had come home without her." Ruth's voice was very reasonable. "I was in the yard when the horse came up the road. Ask Tomas. Ask any of the warriors. I was here all night and I rode out at first light with the others."

Tomas, at the far end of the table, nodded. "That is right, Luna. The Beta was here. She was the one who roused us."

I looked at Tomas. He was old and his hip was bad and he had known my mother for forty years, and he was not lying. He believed what he was saying.

"Ruth," I said. "Your mare. The bay with the white sock. Where is she?"

Ruth's face did not change. "In the stable. Where she always is."

"Then let us go and look at her feet."

The hall made a sound. Ruth stood up slowly and put her napkin down on the table and looked at me across the length of it, and for the first time since I had known her, her grey eyes were not patient at all.

"Luna," she said. "I have served this pack for eleven years. I have served your mother and I have served you and I have done it without complaint. If you have something to say to me, say it. But do not stand in this hall in front of the warriors and the old ones and the children and speak to me as if I were a thief."

"I did not say you were a thief."

"You did not have to." She came around the table toward me, and her grey jacket was buttoned and her auburn hair was neat and her boots were the narrow neat boots I had seen in the dust by the ore cart. "I know what you are doing. You are grieving and you are frightened and you have a Council man in the pack house asking questions, and you want someone to blame. I understand it. But if you go on like this, Derya, you will tear this pack apart, and the Council will be glad to pick up the pieces."

The hall was silent. The warriors were looking at their plates. Old Tomas was looking at me with his mouth open.

And then Cal came in through the outer door, out of breath, and said, "Luna. There is a rider coming up the mesa road. He has a Council seal on his saddle and he is asking for the envoy. He says the Council of Alphas has received a complaint about the Kızıltaş succession and they are sending a second envoy to join the inquiry."

Ruth turned and looked at me, and this time she did smile. It was the warm, modest, tired smile from the breakfast tray, and it stayed on her face while she said, "A second envoy. How very thorough of them."